Wienerberger Aktie

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to today's conference call of Wienerberger's Q2 2026 Trading Update. My name is Judith, and I'm your operator for today. [Operator Instructions] The conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions]

We are looking forward to the presentation. And with this, I hand over to the Senior Officer, Investor Relations, Alfredo Sibilia.

Thank you, Judith, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to the call. Just a couple of words from my side. I just recently joined the Investor Relations team. I've been with the company for a little over 3.5 years, and I look forward to working with many of you on the call.

Before we get into the results, I hand it over to the Chair of the Supervisory Board, Mr. Peter Steiner, for some opening remarks. Thank you.

Thank you, Alfredo, and hello, everyone. Good morning, good evening, good afternoon, wherever you are joining us from. I know it is not the usual format. The Chairman of the Supervisory Board does not typically open an analyst call. So let me explain why I'm here.

Before Gerhard and Dagmar take you through the key developments and numbers, I want to address the announcement we've made the day before yesterday, and you deserve it to hear it from me personally.

On Monday, we announced that our CEO, Heimo Scheuch, had asked the Supervisory Board to accept the early termination of his mandate to allow him to fully focus on his personal health. The Supervisory Board accepted this decision, and we appointed Gerhard Hanke, who was Deputy CEO of Wienerberger and will now act as Interim CEO with immediate effect.

Heimo Scheuch took the helm of Wienerberger in 2009. Think about what the company looked like then: a traditional brick manufacturer, solid but narrow scope. What is Wienerberger today? A leading international group, a business spanning the entire building envelope and infrastructure, a company with a clear and credible sustainability agenda, present across markets that matter.

That transformation is his achievement, 17 years as CEO, 17 years of decisions of resilience, of building something that lasts, and is well positioned to get to the next level.

On behalf of the entire Supervisory Board, I want to express my profound gratitude for everything Heimo has built. We deeply respect his decision and sincerely hope that he can now dedicate all his energy to his health.

So where does that leave us? As Supervisory Board, it is now our responsibility to ensure continuity, and we are in a very solid position to do so. Let me tell you why. With Gerhard Hanke as Interim CEO, we have exactly the right person to lead us through this transition until we have appointed a new permanent CEO.

Gerhard has been with Wienerberger for over 25 years. He knows the company, he knows the business from every angle: operationally, financially, strategically. As he served as CFO from 2021 to 2025, many of you know him well.

In March 2025, Gerhard became COO Central and East. And in June 2026, he took on the role of Deputy Chairman of the Management Board. At the time, it reflected our commitment to strong operational leadership and the ongoing evolution of our management structure.

As it turns out, that decision serves us very well today. The rest of the Management Board remains unchanged. Dagmar Steinert continues as CFO. Harald Schwarzmayr continues as COO West. The leadership team around Gerhard is experienced, stable, and aligned. We are now conducting a structured search for permanent CEO successor and will communicate further in due course. So let me close with this.

Today's call is about performance, about results, about what more than 20,000 people across more than 200 sites across the world have delivered in the second quarter of 2026. There is no doubt some markets are currently facing very challenging conditions.

At the same time, I want to emphasize that Wienerberger is a company with a clear strategy and a strong team, a company that has pushed forward, evolved and reinvented itself again and again. That does not change today. Thank you very much for your attention.

With that, I will hand over to Gerhard and Dagmar. Thank you.

Thank you, Peter, for your opening remarks and also for joining us today. Also a lovely good afternoon from my side and the whole Wienerberger team. I'm glad to have you on the call today.

First of all, let me also take a moment and wish Heimo his speedy recovery and all the best for his future. Also from my side, I would like to express my sincere gratitude for his vision, dedication also for Wienerberger during the last almost 30 years.

You have received our trading update a few weeks back. We sent out on July 21st, where we informed you about the performance of the company. The next 30 minutes, we will focus, Dagmar and myself, on the most essential points of the half year numbers, respectively on the second quarter numbers. So let's walk quickly through the half year numbers and the second quarter results.

In general, the first half year 2026 was more challenging than we expected in the beginning of the year. On the one hand, you heard about, we had quite harsh weather conditions in January, February. We had a Middle East conflict, which started in end of March, which led to a higher cost inflation and also to higher financing costs.

And we had market developments, especially in the U.S., U.K., and Canada in new residential housing, which were further declining. And all that resulted that the group's performance stayed behind expectations.

Let me walk you especially to the -- through the second quarter. I mentioned it, we had this year, maybe a little bit a different start. We had on the one side, the harsh weather conditions in January, February.

By the end of the first quarter, the Middle East conflict started. So we had this year, let's say, a little bit later, a good view on the markets, on the quality of the markets and the market conditions, basically where we are in today.

The market conditions are characterized, let's say, by significant regional differences. We see that the infrastructure and the renovation markets remained resilient. They are according to our expectations. We see that the renovation market was supported by the decarbonization projects on the old European housing stock.

While in the piping segment, respectively, the infrastructure market, we have seen a solid demand driven by the European water resilience strategy and also by upgrades of the European power grids. The activities in Continental Europe, we have seen a normalizing after the first 2 months. We see a bottoming out even if across Europe, Continental Europe, we have different dynamics.

But overall, we see that the markets, the activities in Continental Europe are bottoming out and coming back to a normalized level. In contrast, and it was mentioned also already in our trading update, the residential housing markets in North America and U.K. remained substantially below our expectations. We have seen even a further decline, and this was definitely not foreseen or expected in the beginning of the year.

And this, at the end, translated to a second quarter performance financially that our revenues increased by plus 13% to EUR 1.4 billion, which reflects a 7% organic growth driven by volume and price and 6% came from the scope from the acquisitions, which we realized in the second quarter.

Operating EBITDA declined to EUR 230 million. We have seen a EUR 30 million headwind from weaker residential housing markets, mainly, as mentioned, in the U.S. and U.K. and Canada. And we were also -- or the result is impacted -- heavily impacted by cost inflation, which is driven by logistics, energy, and also by higher resin costs.

Let me say some words on our strategic transformation as we also took significant steps in the second quarter. The portfolio is continually transforming. We are moving further away from our cyclical residential new build portfolio to a more resilient renovation and infrastructure portfolio.

We have today after the last 2 acquisitions, around about 60% of our group revenues coming from these end markets, meaning renovation and infrastructure. So we are today structurally much more diversified, less cyclical, and much better positioned also to navigate the delayed recovery in residential new build markets.

The last 2 acquisitions during the second quarter, especially Italcer, but also NEWS Group are contributing significantly to this transformation, as I just explained.

But let me give you once more some insights on the Italcer acquisition. As most of you most probably know, it was -- the deal was closed in April this year. We bought a major stake in Italcer, an Italian specialist for ceramic wall and floor tiles.

And we bought a strong scalable platform to further create value. It is complementing perfectly our strategic focus on the building. And I put also here 2 pictures, which I think we're very nicely reflecting where this company is also in.

And it's not traditionally the floor tiles and the wall tiles, what you have maybe in mind from the kitchen and from the bathroom.

No, it is a strong footprint also in the facade. And this is also what we see after the first few months of integration that we see especially in the markets, Italy, France, U.S., where we have a strong footprint and also Italcer has a strong footprint or, let's say, a strong commercial network that we are realizing first commercial synergies by common customer basis.

So we see that especially from investors, developers, but also construction companies that we are able to benefit from our strong commercial network, but also from that what Italcer is providing to the group. So we are happy with this acquisition. Things are moving. We see already a strong contribution in the second quarter to our group results, and we're expecting basically the same also for the second half of this year.

The second one is a significant smaller one, what we realized. We bought in April the NEWS Group, a Swedish company located in Sweden, which has a turnover of plus/minus EUR 20 million, EBITDA of roughly EUR 3 million, EUR 4 million. So different size, more specialized, more specialized in the sense of water recycling and sewage treatment and brings us or provides us a good footprint also for the -- not only for Sweden, in principle for the whole Nordic region. So these 2 acquisitions are contributing also to the transformation where we are constantly working on.

And let me also just to complete, we did a major step also in 2024 when we bought Terreal Group, a major investment in the roofing business, which has a strong footprint also there. I mean, it's about renovation activities around the building, especially in the residential building. We took a major step also here a few years back.

The last slide before I hand over to Dagmar. For me, when Peter asked me, respectively, the Supervisory Board asked me to take on or to step into this Interim CEO role, it was clear for me I do that with a strong sense of commitment, respectively, with also with a great responsibility and with a lot of respect because we are fully aware where we are in.

We just sent out a trading update where we had to adjust the guidance. So it's clear what is needed and what is expected from us as Managing Board. We had -- we are basically facing a headwind in our EBITDA of around about EUR 100 million, as explained due to the markets which we -- which I described before.

When we did in the beginning, our regular pricing measures, what was foreseen and then was confronted with the Middle East conflict by the end of March, where basically the cost inflation started to increase, which we have seen then mainly in the second quarter, it was clear we have to take a second step on pricing, on the pricing measure.

And we also see that we are realizing now by end of June, beginning of July, that our pricing level is almost 5% above the beginning of the year. And this is also needed for us to cover the cost inflation what we have basically also in our books.

Secondly, it was clear we have to improve or to accelerate our program, our Fit for Growth program. We expect this year a contribution of around about EUR 25 million. So roughly about EUR 10 million in addition to that, what we have communicated in the beginning of the year.

Working capital management, it is -- there will be a strong focus in the second half year on the balance sheet. Part of it will be working capital management. Dagmar will say a little bit more about it, but we are expecting a EUR 50 million organic reduction, and we will also reduce our CapEx program to the most necessary things what is needed for the company.

Still, when we look to our balance sheet, I'm confident we have a robust balance sheet. We have a good and sound liquidity position, and we have a stable financing cost, which is important.

Top priority for the next months will be or will remain to proactively manage the performance, but also the leverage. And that means that things like capital allocation and working capital management, other cash conservancy measures are basically on top of the list of the Managing Board.

With that, I would like to hand over to Dagmar. Dagmar will provide you much more details also on the numbers for the second quarter in the first half year.

Thank you, Gerhard, and a warm welcome from my side. I will guide you now through our numbers, starting with the first quarter -- the second quarter, sorry, then, of course, give you the picture for the full half year and more insights about our measures, what actions we take to deliver.

So let's start with the overview. And what you see on Chart #9 is Wienerberger really shows resilience. And that is the result of our transformation, and what you see as well, the second quarter has a really strong growth. It's 13% above previous year's quarter. Yes, 6% is regarding to scope, but 7% organic growth. That's really a great number.

Unfortunately, on the results, operating EBITDA, as already mentioned, is below previous year's quarter. You heard about difficult market conditions, especially in new residential housing in U.K., U.S., and Canada, that really is a burden on our numbers. But I can assure you we focus on the right topics to maintain our profitability.

Looking slightly into working capital development in absolute numbers, it's EUR 1.4 billion. And compared with previous year, it's 6% up. But of course, due to acquisitions, scope that is included in that number. So organic, we are below previous year, even with quite a high inflation in the second quarter.

Coming now to the revenue bridge. And I would like to start with scope, the 6% or EUR 77 million growth because that is Italcer, it's NEWS Group, and Gerhard explained how it fits into our strategy and how it opens up our opportunities for further growth for the whole group.

As already mentioned, quite strong 7% organic growth in the second quarter, and despite these difficult market conditions for us. So new residential housing remains under pressure, and we've seen this weakness in our key markets.

So looking at the 7% a little bit deeper, it's like almost 2/3 volume and about more than 1/3 price. Why do we just see a bit more than 1/3 price in the second quarter? Because it's not on a full, like, run rate because the pricing effect in the second quarter is limited due to the lead times between announcement of a price increase and of course, the effective date. There, we will see more in the second half of the year.

Our growth, our organic growth, volume growth is supported by a strong performance in renovation and infrastructure. And that shows as well our resilience.

Coming to the operating EBITDA bridge, Chart #11. Scope gave us 8% higher operating EBITDA in the second quarter, mainly driven, of course, by Italcer and the NEWS Group. We show a negative organic growth of minus 15% or minus EUR 38 million.

And this is mainly the reason because we are missing a lot of contribution from our key markets in U.K., Canada, and U.S. in the residential new build sector. And it's not only that the demand is weak, of course, as well due to lower volumes, we see underutilization, we have higher cost of idle capacity.

And that there, we have not been able to offset that by a stable performance in renovation and infrastructure, which is in line with our original expectations. As already mentioned, our price increases in the second quarter are, of course, visible, but not in a full effect.

On the other hand, the inflation, which is -- or higher inflation, which was driven by the Middle East conflict really showed up, like, the full effect in the second quarter. Therefore, overall, we have still in the second quarter, a negative price over cost, and that's the reason why we show a negative organic growth. Overall, we see an inflation of around 7% in the second quarter.

The working capital bridge to give you there some -- a little bit more insight what we are doing regarding our working capital management and so on. As you can see, we see in absolute numbers, an increase of 6%.

But if you take out M&A, we see already minus EUR 29 million or between 2% and 3% organic working capital reduction despite higher inflation because there's quite a high inflation in plastic and resin prices, in energy prices, and logistics, and all other commodities.

So we have a strict working capital management in place. That is key priority. And we want to see at least a net organic reduction by EUR 50 million to support our net debt by the year-end.

Just a little bit view on our operating segments, Europe West, Europe East, and North America for the second quarter. In Europe West, starting with Europe West, that includes U.K. Therefore, the operating EBITDA is below previous year's figure.

On the other hand, our acquisition Italcer is partly included in the region Europe West and partly included in the region Europe East. So overall, looking at the performance and having in mind the difficult market environment regarding new build, we see a stable performance in Europe East.

We see, if you take into account the really double-digit negative development regarding U.K., you see a stable development in Europe West and a significant decline in North America.

And in North America, it's not only driven by the weakness in new residential housing, but as well, there's a pressure on pricing for PVC products in the U.S. I will give you some more insights into the regions regarding the development of one or the other country coming to our first half year figures.

A little bit just to sum it up about the inflation development. In the first quarter 2026, we've seen 2% inflation, which was broadly in line with our expectations. We've seen a stable development of energy prices, and there was not any impact of the Middle East conflict, which just started by the end of February.

In the second quarter, everything, of course, shows up. We've seen resin market with shortages, plastic prices really increased. We've seen increases, especially in Europe, in resin between 60% to 70%. We've seen very high peaks regarding gas prices.

And as you know, we always have a portion of unfixed volumes. And of course, higher oil prices impact everything, all other commodities.

Overall, we have seen an inflation in our second quarter by 7%. And for the half year 2026, it sums up to 4%.

I'm coming now to our -- to the development of our first half year, and I would like to start a little bit with our volume and price development.

And you see here a slightly different picture because we excluded U.K. and North America, and put the rest of Europe into one figure because it's just easier to explain. So overall, you can see we have a really steep -- strong decline in new residential housing in U.K. and North America. Volume-wise, it's minus 12%.

That at the end results in the group, it adds up to a figure by minus 4%. Rest of Europe in new residential housing, quite stable volume development of plus 1%. Renovation is as well not as good in U.K. and North America as in the rest of Europe.

Therefore, there we see a negative number of minus 7% positive. Continental Europe is plus 4%. So within the group, we see a positive figure, plus 2%. And infrastructure as well, U.K. and North America negative, but that's mainly North America.

Looking at the prices, price development. One number really pops up, that's minus 8% in infrastructure, U.K. and North America. And I would like to make really clear, that's only North America, and it's not U.K. And the number of negative price effect in North America is a double-digit number. Overall, in the group, we see a price effect of plus 2% as well as in Continental Europe plus 2%.

Coming now to the revenue and operating EBITDA bridge for the first half year, starting with the revenues. We've seen a weak first quarter affected by bad weather conditions. We've seen a strong second quarter on the top line.

And overall, of course, we see plus 4% in our revenue bridge as an increase. It's more or less attributable to our acquisitions to scope and just a really moderate organic growth. Therefore, let me say or put it in other words, the weak first quarter was compensated by the strong second quarter. And therefore, organically, it somehow leveled out in the half year.

Looking at our operating EBITDA, the picture is a little bit different because our operating EBITDA was -- in the first quarter, it was below previous year, in the second quarter as well. Therefore, overall, for the first half, we report minus 15% operating EBITDA and come out with a result of EUR 326 million.

Our negative organic growth sums up to minus EUR 71 million and that's driven by the weak volumes in the first quarter and the massive underperformance in new residential housing in our key markets, U.K., U.S., Canada, and of course, higher inflation. So these are the 3 reasons why we have this negative organic growth.

Coming now to our operating segments. And I would like to start with our region European West, where you can see that we have an increase in our top line by 5% and minus 8% operating EBITDA development. And just to remember, U.K. is included in the region Europe West.

So I would like now to give you a little bit more details about our markets in the different regions. And new residential housing that remains in the region Europe West at low levels, even if we see increases of planning permissions, but they are not translating into more housing starts. And this is especially true for markets like France and Germany. And I can't mention it more often, but U.K. is even worse.

On the other hand, we see housing starts in Benelux, they are stable to positive, but we see as well the swing towards more multifamily housing, and that is something which we see especially in Netherlands and that impacts, of course, our new build products as well.

Renovation, our renovation-driven demand in Europe West remains solid. It's supported by energy transition initiatives. And with the exception of Germany and U.K. where we see really a lack of consumer confidence, funding programs, driving the impact on the market, and that's really overall a stable development for us as expected.

Infrastructure is supported by, of course, raw material price increases, and we have seen stock building of one or the other customer. And -- but underlying demand is still okay, and our price increases are working.

I'm coming now to the region Europe East. And in Europe East, of course, as well, we've seen the difficult first quarter, but looking now at the half year figures, I would like to guide you through the market.

We've seen in new residential housing, a positive trend in building permits in some Eastern European countries. I would like there to name especially like Poland.

And -- but that is almost offset by declines in other Eastern European countries, Italy, Croatia, and the demand in single-family houses is largely stable, while growth is as in Western Europe, more in multi-story residential construction.

Coming to renovation. In renovation, our roofing business is okay. And we see there as well an increasing trend towards flat roofs in single-family homes, but the development is, as I said, quite balanced. The infrastructure business in Eastern Europe has been generally very stable in the first half of the year.

And I would like to point out here, for instance, Poland, for example, where the public sector is currently the most important driver for the growth.

In North America, our most typical segment in the current year, we see, of course, these very high interest rates, market uncertainty, which is really bad for housing demand, and in new residential housing, there's a double-digit decrease.

And if you make the split between U.S. and Canada, Canada is even worse compared with U.S. Renovation is solid in North America and infrastructure has a difficult development as well because prices are going down. And therefore, of course, that gives us as well a pressure on profitability and operating EBITDA.

But overall, looking at North America, we have on the other hand, a lot of initiatives to reduce costs and especially SG&A costs.

Now I would like to give you a little bit more insight about our reconciliation of EBITDA on group level to operating EBITDA because you see there a significant number of EUR 70 million one-off. And EUR 7 million are related to acquisition costs, mainly Italcer. We see EUR 17 million restructuring measures.

That, of course, is as in the past, to improve profitability in the coming years through optimizing our industrial footprint. In that case, especially in the piping and facing brick business, we took out one or the other capacity. And -- but that's, I would say, not a surprise.

What was, I guess, for you a surprise is this minus EUR 47 million U.S. antitrust lawsuit. And that is something where we had a lawsuit in the U.S. at our Jet Stream subsidiary, that Jet Stream is in the piping business, and we agreed to a settlement in the antitrust class action.

And at the end, we have to pay a total amount of USD 52 million or EUR 47 million. Why have we not been published that in our trading update? We haven't been allowed due to legal restrictions. Therefore, we want to apologize that you get it presented today and not earlier, but it was not possible.

Very important, we didn't do anything wrong. The question is you are part of this lawsuit, this action class in the U.S. and with other companies and other companies started to make settlements and then the risk increases that no matter if you didn't do anything wrong, that you might face a high number of -- that you will -- you take the risk that you have to pay really loss of million, much more than USD 52 million.

And therefore, the management decided to go for that settlement, to take risk away from the company, to avoid the uncertainty, and of course, to go out of that litigation. For us, we treat that amount as a one-off, but we will have to pay it in the current year. Therefore, it will reduce our cash flow.

This brings me to my next point, balance sheet management because besides profitability, besides our operating EBITDA, it is most important to keep a robust balance sheet to have actions and management plan in place to reduce our net debt because due to -- first, we are missing EUR 100 million operating EBITDA.

Second, we have an additional around EUR 50 million outflow from the settlement in the U.S. So we are missing EUR 150 million cash flow roughly. And that, of course, changed our net debt position by the year-end 2026.

And therefore, we are going to give you here an outlook on our leverage where we expect it to be by the end of this year, unfortunately, at 2.8. And there is a plan in place not only for the current year, for the running year, but as well how going forward, like, the next 18 months until the end of 2027, and the leverage 2.4 for us is the absolute minimum -- or maximum. The minimum target, but the maximum where we want to come out. We want to show a lower number, of course.

What are we doing? We have our cost management and saving costs, of course, Fit for Growth, which will contribute up to EUR 25 million in the current year, will save cash as well. We have strict working capital management. We are analyzing our inventories to see how are we able to decrease our inventories, our stock to get the positive effect on the working capital.

We have our departments like purchasing to even search more on the supplier side to optimize our procurement. We have a focus on CapEx, what do we need, when do we need it, and do we really have to spend it? Does it really has to be that much?

And there are a lot of things in place to manage and to reduce our leverage. And I want again to repeat this 2.4 by the end of 2027, that number is the maximum and would like to keep it like that.

On the other hand, looking at our financing costs, the financing cost will increase by EUR 10 million in the current year, and our interest rate is stable. It will be 4% in 2026 compared with 3.8% in 2025. And that's just the result of the financing the acquisition of Italcer.

And with that, I would like to hand over again to Gerhard to give you the outlook.

Thank you, Dagmar. Ladies and gentlemen, before we go to the outlook, let me say some words on the assumptions which we took in the beginning of the year as certain things really drastically changed also when we started this year and where we are today, and we tried to summarize this on this one slide.

And in principle, there are 2 major effects that would make the world differently than what we have assumed in the beginning of the year.

On the one side, we have not considered or foreseen the impact -- the heavy impact of the Middle East crisis. This was not reflected. And this had also the consequence that we have seen quite some inflationary pressure in the second quarter.

And that also will have some inflationary pressure also in the second half as a consequence and also interest rates were going up, financing costs are going up. So this was definitely not foreseen in the beginning of the year.

The second thing is that we, in the beginning of the year, have assumed flat markets when it's about residential housing in U.K. and North America. And on the other side, we have seen a further decline actually.

And considering these circumstances, this led to this EUR 100 million headwind, what Dagmar was mentioning before. I think important is the measures which are in place are clear. It's about discipline. It's about execution.

We expect market-wise, not a different picture in the second half. We expect that the infrastructure and renovation end markets stay on that level where we are. Residential housing, independently, if it is Continental Europe or if it is U.K. and North America, what we have seen in the second quarter, we believe, reflects also quite good what we expect for the second half.

So it's about implementing consequently measures to secure the performance. And on the other side, also executing measures when it's about capital allocation and also securing and controlling the leverage.

I mentioned it, I just wanted to repeat once more one crucial point. To reach the EUR 700 million on operating EBITDA is the pricing power, and we are confident there as we are seeing already almost the 5%, that this will cover our cost inflation, what we expect for the second half. Supported will be this measure by extra efforts out of our costs saving program, where we do an additional EUR 10 million this year.

And on the other side, we are focusing on our debt position to reach, as Dagmar mentioned, the 2.8x till the end of the year by bringing working capital down, and also reducing once more the CapEx for the second half to the minimum level. And this is the first step and the second step will follow then in 2027.

And the midterm goal, which we communicated already years before, the 2x is still valid, respectively, is a full commitment from the Management Board on this net debt leverage.

And with these words, I would like also to stop here, and I would like to hand over to you, ladies and gentlemen, and to get the Q&A started. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] Daniel Khajenouri from Morgan Stanley. The stage is yours.

Daniel, cannot hear you.

And I do want to send best wishes to Heimo and his family given his recent health challenge. Just back to my question on performance. It would be useful to start with the Q2 EBITDA bridge.

It does look like you experienced quite a lot of cost inflation despite the hedging program. Is there anything in last year's comparison base distorting the year-on-year movements? Am I wrong to assume you're benefiting from CO2 credit sales last year, which were included in the operating EBITDA and you're now missing that benefit? Am I wrong there?

No, there are no material CO2 credits in the last year's figures. And of course, there are not any in the current year.

Okay. Okay. And just a question on the full year guidance, the updated guidance. There's an implied pickup in H2 versus H1. And I know you walked through some of the working assumptions on the slides already, but it would just be useful to understand expectations around volumes and perhaps if you could talk to the updated phasing of the cost optimization program.

I know you added some cost savings. So just the working assumptions behind the new budget and the phasing of the cost optimization would be useful.

Well, the working assumptions behind our H2 in the running year, it's quite simple because we will see the full effect of our price increases, which have been just partly coming through or visible in the second quarter of the current year.

And therefore, we are looking towards a balanced price over cost number, and we don't expect that the new residential housing market, especially in U.K., U.S., and Canada is going to develop any better nor any worse.

And we see a performance as expected regarding in Continental Europe regarding our renovation and infrastructure business. And inflation, which accounted for minus 7% in the second quarter, of course, that will stay at a higher number in the second half of the year because 4% for the first half of the year is not a run rate because we haven't seen any inflation in the first quarter of the year.

And additional contribution, we will see through our Fit for Growth program. There we have around EUR 10 million contribution in the first half, and we expect a higher impact in the second half 2026.

And we will move on to Isaac Ocio from On Field Research.

Thanks for your presentation and best wishes to Heimo. First, I wanted to follow up on the Q2 EBITDA bridge. And kind of trying to break down the organic decline. So correct me if I'm wrong, but prices were kind of up 3% in Q2, so that would imply a EUR 40 million positive impact.

And with cost inflation of 7%, which implies maybe a EUR 70 million hit. And then you've got currency and scope adding EUR 16 million. So putting these together, we get to an EBITDA decline of around maybe EUR 40 million, excluding your volumes.

And you had a positive volume impact. So we would have expected some offset from that. So we're kind of struggling to reconcile that against your EUR 23 million decline. So could you maybe help us understand the gap? Is that the volume impact was lower because of geographic mix? And could you give maybe some color on that? Or are there some additional costs beyond the 7% inflation you disclosed? Or am I missing something?

Well, we have the negative effect from new resident housing in U.K. and Canada and U.S., and that accounts for more than EUR 20 million. And of course, that includes as well underutilization in that area. We have a positive volume effect in Continental Europe, and, like, a negative price over cost of yes, the figure in the mid-30.

Okay. And maybe so on volumes, have you seen any prebuying? And how is July tracking against Q2?

Well, volumes, of course, there might be one or the other prebuying, especially in infrastructure piping business because due to the really high increase of raw material prices, of course, customers expected on our side increasing prices as well. But we can't, of course, identify what is prebuying and whatnot. Therefore, it's a little bit difficult to make any statement regarding that.

And July is always not the strongest month in the summer. It's more or less everywhere, holiday time and...

I think the prebuying effects, what you have seen or what we have seen, we have seen more or less in March, April when the Middle East crisis started, and it was clear that we will be hit by some cost inflation. And therefore, there, we have seen some of them.

As Dagmar mentioned, July, August are rather, let's say, months which are maybe what you anyhow have to combine and what you have to add up as you have always within Europe and also North America, you have some shifts between July and August. But we do not expect any prebuyings or we do not see actually any prebuyings now in July. So we see so far a normalized, according to the expectations, July results.

Okay. And maybe finally, last question, sorry, but you had -- yes, so 3% pricing in Q2. So what would be your exit rate in Q3 and maybe H2? And could we get to a 5% pricing in the back half?

Well, just looking at Q3, Q4, it's not a number which is totally out of range. And -- but maybe to your former question, I would just like to add, we've seen, of course, in July, a very hot temperature, a very extreme summer, and that might even impact one or the other building activity.

And we will move on to Michael Marschallinger from Erste Group.

Also, all the best to Mr. Scheuch and a speedy recovery. I have 3 questions. Firstly, given the scale of the profit [indiscernible] and the much weaker-than-expected residential new build markets in North America, how should we think about the midterm targets you presented just a couple of months ago at your CMD? Are these targets still valid or delayed or need a reassessment?

Maybe if I may start with the first one, the scale or, let's say, the delay in the recovery. Yes, we confirm the EUR 1 billion. It is linked to the recovery of new housing in Europe and in the U.S. mainly.

Keep in mind, we are running our production sites today with a capacity utilization of plus/minus 60%, 65%, bringing this back on a normalized level to 80%, 85%, and this is also what we have communicated in the past. This will give already quite the leverage.

In addition to that, you remember all the initiatives what we have taken on restructuring costs, taking costs out. So I strongly believe we will emerge stronger if housing comes back than we are -- than we basically -- where we were before. So yes, this midterm target is confirmed.

Okay. Then could you please comment on further possible one-offs in H2, either structural adjustments or sale of noncore assets?

Well, of course, we intend to sell one or the other noncore property as already announced. And we will see there one or the other in the second half. Major restructuring costs are not...

We will see smaller things across the portfolio. We see some smaller things in East. Also, we have some smaller things in the West. We just discussed yesterday about U.S., the plant network in the U.S. So I would say, yes, we will see some of the one-offs, but I would say maximum to EUR 10 million one-off of restructuring.

Okay. And then my last question. With net debt operating EBITDA now guided to 2.8x at year-end, and if you take reported numbers, maybe above 3 even, does this higher leverage in your view affect the timing or likelihood of exercising the call option for the remaining Italcer shares in H1 '27?

No. We will continue because buying Italcer in 2 steps was to, like, make it a little bit easier for our net debt. And Italcer fits perfect into our strategy. And therefore, no, we will -- this doesn't defer that.

And if you look on the Chart 22, you see the roughly EUR 180 million amount, which is outstanding for acquisition to buy first, like, minorities of Italcer, which will be a number of EUR 160 million and the EUR 20 million are other purchase price liabilities we have to pay. So that's all included.

And we will move on to Julian Radlinger from UBS.

Yes. So 2 from me. First of all, if we could dig in a little bit on that neutral price cost assumption you're making in H2. So you sound -- on this part, you sound quite confident.

And I just wanted to double-check, is that based on an assumption of oil and gas, and as a result of oil, obviously, plastic resin input staying at the current levels? Or are you assuming a little bit of a drop-off or something over the course of the second half of the year?

Well, the assumption is, of course, that it is neutral or balanced only, but for renovation and infrastructure and the, like, negative price over cost we see in new build in U.K., U.S., and Canada is, of course, part of the EUR 100 million we are missing.

But maybe if I may add here, we have considering the hedging levels what we have on the energy and what is open positions, we -- this is why I think we feel comfortable to show a balanced price/cost spread in the second half. We have basically a clear understanding based on the long-term contracts and also on the hedging levels, what we have for the second half.

Okay. And then my second question is, so in Eastern Europe, your sales were up 29% year-on-year all in. I think you said that Italcer is sort of partly in Eastern and partly in Western Europe.

So if I split it down the middle, I'm left with double-digit organic growth in Eastern Europe in Q2. And based on what you're saying about pricing, I guess the bigger part of that will be volume.

So my question here is, first of all, is that correct? Did you have double-digit volume growth in Eastern Europe, which would be, I mean, really strong, obviously, in Q2? And I know what you said about customer stocking and maybe you had some here and there, it's hard to say. But are you factoring any kind of a reversal of that into the guidance? Are you seeing any reversal of that? Has that continued so far? Would love to understand that a bit better.

The volume growth in Eastern Europe is not double digit. It is a high single-digit volume growth. The rest is pricing in Eastern Europe. And the second part of the question, you said if we reverse...

The question was -- I think it was asked already before, basically whether you're assuming any kind of reversal from what might be stock building in the second half -- in the second quarter, basically, if you're factoring any of that into the guidance?

No.

No.

No.

No.

And we will move on to Markus Remis, who is currently via the phone in this call. Welcome Markus Remis from ODDO.

The first question relates to the investment volume that you have baked in your net debt target for the full year. Can you give us an update here? And related to that, I see EUR 130 million out for Italcer. If I'm not mistaken, the equity value was EUR 160 million mentioned at the Capital Markets Day. So is there still EUR 30 million then coming in the third quarter?

No, it's what you see, like, in the cash flow statement, it's EUR 160 million minus EUR 30 million net cash in hand on Italcer. So the purchase price for the 50% plus 1 was EUR 160 million. And there's nothing more to come in the second half of the year.

Okay. Very clear. And on the CapEx figure for 2026, can you give us an update?

Well, on the CapEx figure 2026, we are working on it. We have a program initiated and in place to reduce it. We have a strict control of every CapEx, not only growth CapEx, but maintenance CapEx as well. And you will see a lower number than originally communicated.

Okay. Staying on the net debt figure, you had quite a positive contribution from factoring at the end of last year. What's kind of the level you're currently running at the end of the first half and the cash inflow that you guided from working capital, is that -- is there also a share of rising factoring?

Well, working capital management is, of course, what we do, we focus on inventory, reducing inventory to have the real cash effect. Regarding factoring, of course, we do factoring. We increased factoring in 2025 because we integrated Terreal into our factoring programs.

We integrated one or the other country. And yes, there is a level of factoring in the half year figures, of course, as well, but less because we are changing a partner regarding factoring. Therefore, there's less factoring in June 2026.

And on the other hand, of course, the strong increase in receivables is due to the strong growth we've seen in sales, especially in May and June.

Okay. And 2.8x net debt target, just to make it clear, does it include an increase at year-end versus the '25 level?

In factoring, no, not really because it's -- the level will more or less be the same.

Okay. Can I then turn to the -- sorry, to the energy topic again, and ask for an indication on the level of forward buying into 2027? And maybe you can give some preliminary kind of assessment what it would do to your cost base if energy prices -- natural gas prices would stay at the level where they currently are.

Well, that's a difficult question because I'm sure you're aware of our fixing or hedging strategy regarding energy prices. And we have there always like as further it is away as less volume we secure. Therefore, there's a higher open position, which we close coming closer. And therefore, it's too early to make a prediction about our '27 energy prices in total and what impact that might have.

Okay. Maybe can you share which percentage is already hedged at this stage?

Well, at this -- at that stage, we are talking about 60% to 80% in some countries. Overall, on average, it's about, yes, between 60% and 70%.

60%, 70%. Okay. And one more question regarding the Jet Stream [indiscernible] accusation. Can you maybe shed some light on the reason for that? Is it like price fixing? Or is it other related collusion?

And forgive my ignorance, but you were saying you made the settlement despite no wrongdoing, and I understood it was more like a pressure because the others have made settlements.

I think, Markus, I think there's nothing -- I think -- and we tried to explain it. We did nothing wrong here and also to move, and I don't know how deep you are in U.S. legislation and how such a civil legal procedure works.

But it was, in our case, a clear rational decision to secure the business because these kinds of settlements, what you have can go -- could create quite a big impact, financial impact on the company. So it was -- from a business rationale, it was a clear decision, which was taken between the Supervisory Board and the Managing Board to go that way, even if it is clear that we have nothing -- that there was no -- any wrongdoing from our side.

And it would take too much time to explain you all the details. But it is something which was really a business decision where we said we take this EUR 50 million and close with that the whole thing of this legal case.

Okay. But the [indiscernible] thing was like price fixing or anything?

It was basically providing price data to an independent portal. And this was basically the trigger point in the U.S., which was used by every resin producer and also piping producers. There is also the big ones, the Westlakes and the [ Outterdals ].

I don't know how good you know all these names. But basically, it was driven around this portal, which was installed under a safe harbor regulation of the DOJ. So it is something what would need more time to understand. But for us, it was clear to go for a settlement and where we can take off this risk from our balance sheet.

Okay. And the last question is more understanding that the market headwinds, how you came up with this EUR 100 million coming from the new residential build market. Is that essentially the volume downside deviation times a contribution margin? Or how is the EUR 100 million...

It's a combination. If markets are dropping, and take a look at the U.S., where we are actually on a level -- on a market level like we have seen last time in the years 2009 and '10, where we had housing starts clearly, I think, around 1 million.

And this is a combination then. You have to adjust your capacity. You are running your plants on 60%, 65%, 70% maybe. But yes, your fixed cost coverage is simply poor at the moment.

So -- then the consequence is some overcapacity on the market, and then you get price pressure. So it is, I would say, you get simply pressure on your margin and on your fixed cost coverage.

So it is -- you know our business long enough. It is a heavy asset business. And therefore, if you not run the plants, you got hit by the fixed cost. And what we immediately has done is to bring down the shift pattern.

We have taken out as much as possible on fixed costs. We took out capacity. We went into mothballing, all these measures what we normally do when we see that there is really a cut in the market. And this we have really heavily materialized what we have seen in the first half year, especially in the U.S.

And we will move on to the person with the phone number ending 2809. You should be able to unmute yourself now. And please tell us your name and your institution.

Yes. This is Miro Zuzak from JMS. Can you hear me?

Yes.

Yes, we can hear you.

Just 2 quick ones. The first one was already touched before, the split of the Italcer sales into the 3 segments. Can you please help us there? It's like it was mentioned 50-50 before, but maybe you can provide us with the actual figures.

What you are interested in, in the revenue number between the regions, or the region East and the region West, how much revenue goes into East and West? Or what is exactly the question, Miro?

Yes. Yes. How much?

I'm afraid we have to provide you this in the second step. I think we do not have it now. If you don't mind and you send us a short message, we would provide you with this number just by e-mail after the call.

Okay. And the second one would also be on Italcer. So you consolidated 49% -- sorry, 50.1% for 2 months. And I didn't see any minorities there. So you consolidated the profits and the revenues, but minorities were still 0. Can you explain this, why there are no minorities?

You see the minorities in our equity. And of course, you see the minorities in the P&L after, like, in the report, in the financial report for the first half of the year. Hold on.

Okay. I'm on Page 18 of the report. It's the German report, there is 0. Is this just a mistake in the report? Or is it...

Well, from Italcer, we have this -- in the presentation, our contribution of operating EBITDA, then you have to take into account that Italcer is a business which was highly financed by private equity, and they had net debt with double-digit interest rates. And therefore, of course, the result after tax is not really visible.

On the other hand, we refinanced the whole net debt or the whole debt, but to be precise, the whole debt of Italcer already. And therefore, we will see in the second half of the year a positive, yes, figure for earnings after tax and the earnings after tax within the first 2 months of our consolidation have been around below EUR 1 million, but positive.

You will find the number in the second half, Miro Zuzak. It is plus/minus 0, as Dagmar just explained. So you will find the number back in the second half because then you will see a larger impact, let's say, that way of 8 months of Italcer.

And we will move on to Daniel Khajenouri again with some follow-ups. Daniel?

I do appreciate it. Just on the ETS news and the broader carbon framework developments, are there any changes to your business planning? It'd just be useful if you could update us on your inventory of the carbon credits and your plans around selling or buying and when that may take place.

In principle, you know that there are negotiations ongoing on the ETS scheme. So far, we are positive and happy with the developments, which are coming from Brussels. We also sent out, I think, last week, a short press release to that topic.

There's one topic pending. That's the ETS allocation for clay blocks where we do our necessary lobbying work in Brussels. And we're also confident there that we keep the allocation what we get today also for the next years.

It's just too early to give you now a better update, but we will keep you informed.

And we will close now with a follow-up question from Julian Radlinger.

I just want to get back to the H2 price/cost one more time. I know we're overlaboring this topic a little bit maybe, but I think it's really important for investors to understand this new guidance.

So my question is this, the 4.5% pricing, and the, sort of, the 5% that you've talked to, that's just Europe, and you've got negative pricing in the U.S. So the first part of my question would be, are you thinking about 5-ish or let's just call it, mid-single-digit pricing for the group in the second half of the year or just for Europe? And on a group basis, it's going to be a little bit lower than that, maybe 3%, 3.5%, something like that. Am I reading that correctly?

No. Daniel, I can -- Julian, I can already exclude. This is the impact what you are mentioning about Jet Stream because I think Dagmar mentioned it. The negative price impact what you see in the U.S. is mainly out of the piping business.

And it is not so big and impactful that you would basically create a 1, 2, 3 price notches down. So it is -- it will have an impact. The 5%, what we mentioned before, is on Europe level. We will see for the whole year in the U.S. or in North America, still a slightly negative price impact, but this will not harm, let's say, the total number of the group. Simply the business itself, the piping business itself is too small.

Okay. But North America is negative as a segment, even though it's just coming from piping there. Is that right?

Yes. In pricing in the -- talking about the first half, the second quarter? What do you want to...

Yes, yes, both, both, as well as what you're assuming for H2.

I think the -- let's move, Julian, onto Slide 16, because I think this is what you refer to, where we have the pricing effects on new residential housing U.K., North America, which is slightly positive.

Renovation is small in the U.S. And as we -- as Dagmar explained, the minus 8%, what you see is mainly out of the piping business in the U.S., also not in the U.K. And this is what Dagmar said, it is double digit. It does not mean that we erode the margin because also resin prices went down in the first half year.

So we are not expecting that this impact -- that this negative impact is harming, let's say, the full year forecast on pricing for the second half of the year.

Okay. Okay. That's clear. And then my ultimate question then is, so if we're going to have, again, something around 5% or so in the second half of the year, and you're talking about neutral price/cost, unless my numbers are wrong, to get to neutral price/cost with 4.5% or 5% price means that you have less inflation than the 7% in Q2. You have more like something like 5%. And so again, just to understand that, is that what you're implying? And if so, why? Or is there a base...

We only can confirm what you calculated. It's maybe a little bit the 5%, I expect that the 5% maybe will be 5.5% and the 5% what you mentioned on the cost inflation maybe is more in the direction of 6%. But yes, we are talking about the same numbers.

Okay. And why is that lower than in Q2?

As we have seen this significant impact out of the Middle East crisis, there was simply a spike, which is already now disappeared in the piping business. The level of the resin prices today is below the level of the resin prices what you have seen in Q2 there.

Thank you very much, and thank you all for the extra time you've put in. I would now like to turn the conference back to Dagmar Steinert for any closing remarks.

Yes. Thank you very much to all of you for your valuable questions. And yes, looking forward to our next call. And I'm sure we made it quite clear, we are resilient. Our business model works, and we have a plan how to move forward. Thank you very much.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

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

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to today's conference call of Wienerberger's Q1 2026 Results. I am Judith, your operator for today. [Operator Instructions] The conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] And with this, I hand over to Therese Jander.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you, Judith. Warm welcome to our Q1 results call. My name is Therese Jander, and I'm pleased to be hosting this call today from Vienna, our headquarters. And I'm joined here by Dagmar Steinert, our CFO. We will begin with a brief presentation of the key developments and our financials for the quarter, and then we will open the line for questions. So with that, I will hand over now to Steinert.

Yes. Thank you, Therese. Good morning, everyone, and a warm welcome from my side as well. Our CEO, Heimo Scheuch, is still recovering from an infection, and therefore, he is not participating today. So yes, let me start with the presentation and jump directly into it. And our first quarter is not a surprise at all. The soft start in the year is fully in line with our expectations, and it was driven by weather-related weakness, especially in January and February. Very important, we saw a clear recovery already in March and volumes picking up and our performance was back to prior year's levels.

At the same time, of course, we are operating in an environment of increased geopolitical uncertainty. And of course, that's related to the conflict in Middle East, and that is heavily impacting visibility. Under these circumstances, we reiterate our full year guidance, while, of course, we see that visibility remains limited. But of course, we focus on execution, particularly in integrating Italcer, where we had the closing by the end of April and our disciplined cost and margin management.

Now coming to our numbers. Our revenues are down by 7%. That reflects the soft start into the year and as you can see, our volume development, the market was down by 6%. Our operating EBITDA is close to EUR 100 million, which is significant below previous year's levels, but we've already seen a clear recovery in March. And let me just repeat it, it's not a surprise. We expected that. Important is maybe to mention that the first quarter 2025 was a strong quarter, so we compare a soft start in the year with a very strong quarter of previous year. So it's more like a transitional quarter rather than an indicative for the full year performance.

Let me now come to the market conditions, starting with Eastern and Central Europe. As you can see, our volumes are significantly impacted by, let me say it again, the severe weather conditions early in the quarter and housing starts remained flat year-on-year. The renovation market was also temporarily affected by the weather conditions and especially in the roof segment. On the other hand, our infrastructure market in that region remained broadly stable. So overall, the region shows a mixed picture with selective recovery. For instance, Poland is a good example where the weak start was mainly weather-related. Underlying demand remains intact. In the Czech Republic, we saw early signs of recovery in permits and starts, but on the other hand, very aggressive competition continues. Austria and Hungary, the demand remains subdued, but of course, with affordability constraints and therefore, it's a mixed picture.

Turning now to our region, Europe West. There, again, we see a mixed picture. And of course, volumes overall are down. Housing starts remained at a low level, while the renovation-driven demand was solid in that region. Infrastructure and energy transition supported overall our demand. But of course, the bad weather was the same issue in that region. And to give you a little bit more of a flavor from some countries, Germany was a very soft market in the first quarter and construction activity was still at a very low level, although we are expecting early signs of recovery.

In the U.K., the situation continues to deteriorate, and we see declining construction activity and weak consumer confidence. Ireland, on the other hand, is positive. We see public investments on a better level. And yes, Netherlands is showing signs of recovery. And France is still a mixed picture, but we expect an early recovery as well. Belgium, for instance, was quite stable. Overall, the same picture, January and February soft and March far better.

Coming now to North America, the North American market, and that was the most impacted region in our first quarter. We see a double-digit volume decline, and that was, of course, driven by the severe winter weather and as well weak new residential activity. The new construction activity remains subdued. Single-family market is stabilizing, but the multifamily market is at multiyear lows. The mortgage rates in North America remain at a high level. On the other hand, our roofing business benefited from a strong backlog and that allowed some more solid production volumes. In the piping business infrastructure, market remains somehow positive, but of course, due to the weather, we've seen there a strong volume decline. And in Canada, the situation is even more challenging.

So coming now to some acquisitions. We bought the NEWS Group, and that is an activity with a turnover of around EUR 20 million annually, and we had a closing by the end of April. The NEWS Group that will strengthen our position in water management in the water management segment. It's a very attractive niche for us, and it's a growing market. It's a perfect strategic fit, and it complements our infrastructure and piping portfolio. It's a small transaction, but long term, we see there a big growth potential.

Coming now to our recent acquisition, Italcer there as well, we had closing by the end of April. And I just would like to repeat a little bit to finance that acquisition, we don't need a capital increase. We have a strong balance sheet, and we will finance it by ourselves. We have a clear road map, integration, deleveraging, and of course, next year, we have with this call option, the opportunity to get the full ownership. With Italcer, we enter the high-end tiles market. It's strong in the renovation segment. And of course, we see synergies which will rise. And on the other hand, Italcer is active in the facade market, and that will even turn our synergies, which we see on a quite high level. Italcer in total is a company which is at the high-end, has high margins and is a strong multi-brand -- has a strong multi-brand position, not only across Europe but also in North America.

Turning now to our numbers. Starting with revenues and EBITDA. Our revenues, as already mentioned, are down by 7%. Operating EBITDA even further, it came in at EUR 97 million. That is far below the previous year's number. But to remember you, the first quarter 2025 was a very strong quarter. The key driver for that, of course, is the reduced volumes we have seen. And here, again, March far better compared with the soft start in the year.

Having a look at our revenue and EBITDA bridge, as you can see, of course, volume driven, we have a negative organic growth. So organic growth, our revenues are down by 6%. We lose a little bit on the currency side. And regarding our operating EBITDA, again, you see quite significant negative organic growth. But that's all volume driven and related to the soft start into the year, and that was already expected when we published our outlook. So it's not a surprise at all.

We have seen in the first quarter overall a cost inflation of 2%, and that is, again, mainly driven by labor and energy cost. And we don't see in the first quarter more or less any impact of the conflict regarding the Middle East. That will be visible in the second quarter and of course, rest of the year. Our cost inflation with 2% is somehow moderate. And on the energy side, as you know, we have our fixed positions in not only natural gas, but as well, of course, in overall in energy. And there, more or less now 80% of our needed volumes are fixed. Therefore, we are there in a quite good position. We remain to focus on, of course, cost discipline and operational excellence. We are still working on optimizing our production. And of course, we are driving an active margin management to overcome all the pressure we see in the running year.

Coming now to our regions, starting with Europe East. Revenues are down by 7%. That is in line with the group development. Operating EBITDA quite weak because it's even below the decrease within the group. There, we had not only the decreased volumes, what we've seen, but we've seen on the cost side, a higher inflation than regarding the group average and the volume decline hit all segments, all markets in the Eastern region, especially the pricing in that region was under pressure. But towards the end of the quarter, we are seeing here recovery as well.

Western Europe, our, let me say, most stable region in the first quarter, revenues only down by 3% and operating EBITDA by 14%. As already mentioned, we've seen quite a strong renovation demand and that, of course, supported the performance of that region. Energy transition continues to drive our roof and piping demand. And the weakness was mainly in the beginning of the year from new build and, of course, the severe weather conditions. It's a mixed regional picture, but the most stable development in our first quarter.

Coming now to our North America segment, that was the most challenging region because markets have been very soft, very weak and revenues are down by 21%, our operating EBITDA by 37%. As already mentioned, the very soft new build market with weak residential construction is still a topic in North America. And in combination with an ongoing pressure on prices in piping, of course, that's not a nice environment. The U.S. single-family market is stabilizing, but multifamily remains very, very low. And within North America, especially Canada, is more challenging than ever.

With that, I'm coming now to our outlook. And just to remind you a little bit on our assumptions for the current year, we are expecting not a structural recovery in residential construction, flat infrastructure and renovation market. And of course, we expect that we cover the inflation, which will increase, of course, during the year due to the Middle East conflict, but price increases. But the Middle East conflict gives us as well a really limited visibility of the total year impact so far.

We have mitigation measures already in place, and that's not only price increases. Of course, it's a strict and strong cost management with cost discipline. We have a strong execution. We are ongoing working on working capital management as well as having a focus on our CapEx and spending. And still the Fit For Growth program, which we implemented in autumn last year is, of course, in place and is running. And despite the high volatility and everything, we believe we are well positioned to deliver. And of course, we are supported by our mitigation measures.

And with that, I would like to close the presentation, and I'm open to take your questions.

[Operator Instructions] We have Ephrem Ravi.

So firstly, could you quantify a little bit the volume recovery that you're seeing in March, maybe by region? I understand from your comment that your results were back to normal. Is it -- does it mean that the volume were stable in March? Or do you see a recovery? Do you have any -- also on the volume side, do you have any color on what happened in the month of April?

My second question would be on the cost inflation. So I understand that you are hedged on gas and electricity, but you've got about 1/3 of your revenue, which is pipe, where costs have been historically correlated to PVC prices and oil price. When we integrate the recent move in oil price and PVC cost, what kind of cost inflation do you expect for 2026 at a group level? I can imagine it's going to be more than the 2% in Q1.

And the third question would be on the magnitude of the price increase that have been announced. It looks like prices was relatively flat in Q1, so not much going on. What kind of action have you taken notably in the pipe business to recover the cost inflation? And do you see any traction on the ceramic business to increase prices in April or later during the year?

Okay. Thank you for your questions. There's a bunch of questions. Let me start with the volume. Overall, in March, we have in the whole group, middle single-digit volume increase and it's continuing in April. Looking into the regions, we see just March, we see a strong increase of volumes in Eastern Europe and Western Europe. So overall, in Europe, it's double-digit number. And we still have a decrease in North America. That is our weakest region so far.

Coming to our like end markets, new residential, renovation and infrastructure, we see in March overall an increase. So that's a very nice development. Our cost inflation, the 2%, of course, for the first quarter will not be the number for the full year as originally expected because we will have an impact from Middle East, higher energy prices, but there, the impact for us is limited as we are fixed or most of the volume we need and just remaining volumes, we have to buy on the spot market. And prices, of course, for energy are going up and down. So it's highly volatile.

On the other hand, we've seen in the first quarter a strong decrease in raw materials, plastics for our piping business. And due to the Middle East conflict, of course, that turned around, and we have a strong increase in plastic resin prices in the -- we will see it in the second quarter and ongoing. So therefore, of course, the development changes turns. So therefore, there will be a much higher inflation in the next quarters to come. And of course, we are increasing our prices. And overall, in, let me say, in Europe, we are talking about a middle single-digit number in -- regarding our infrastructure, our piping business, of course, we are talking about double-digit numbers. Does that answer your questions?

On the -- just on the cost inflation side, so we will see a much bigger cost inflation. Is it too early to quantify or maybe at least for Q2, is a number of something like 4%, 5% reasonable at the group level for inflation?

It's too early to quantify that. And on that there's a strong movement, not only, of course, on the raw material side, we have an impact on more or less every material we buy. We see higher logistics, higher transport costs. So therefore, it's across like more or less the whole P&L, and it's too early to quantify it. [indiscernible] we are working against it with price increases, which are already implemented and in place. And we are talking about single digit, but double-digit price increases, and it varies from country to country, of course. And for instance, in some Eastern countries, we are increasing our prices by 20% and of course, piping business, but it's across our whole business.

And do you have a view on the number that you mentioned that double digit for piping and mid-single-digit price increase for ceramics. Were those price increase announced in April? Do you have a view on how much of those announcements are being realized? Or is it again too early to say how much we will take?

No, that's too early to say it. Of course, we announced price increases, not all in April. We started at the beginning of the year. But of course, it takes some time until you see it in our P&L. And therefore, in the first quarter, there is not a big impact visible on pricing, but there's more to come. We will see much more in the second quarter and of course, in the quarters to come.

And to follow on that -- if you look at all the different parameters that you already know, how confident are you in your ability to recover the cost inflation related to the war? Is it one of the main uncertainty that you're mentioning in your press release? Or do you feel comfortable that the price cost dynamic could be neutral?

So far, we are quite confident. That's, of course, why we reiterate our outlook. On the other hand, I would like to point out there is a low visibility regarding the impact of Middle East. And therefore, we have to see how market develops. I mean we had a strong volume growth in March and April. On the other hand, there might be, of course, some advanced sales purchases due to expected price increases. So we have to -- we will see -- we will have a better visibility with the second quarter regarding the development of the full year.

So the question is more on the volume side, where it's unclear whether the mid-single volume -- the mid-single-digit volume increase that you see in March and April are prebuying or whether they reflect the better market. But on the price -- on your ability to offset cost inflation, you would say that there is -- you don't see a risk that competition prevents you to do that in a context where everyone is increasing prices. Is that the right way to look at it?

Of course, there is nothing without any risk. On the other hand, we are increasing our prices. Our competitors are increasing their prices. So that's absolutely normal operating business. And it depends now how the market develops and how big the impact of the Middle East conflict will be. I mean, so far, we don't have any bottlenecks in our supply chain and so on. But of course, it's possible that, that all turns into inflation.

And maybe if I may, a very last small question for modeling. What kind of EBITDA contribution do you expect from acquisition this year?

Well, in our EUR 810 million operating EBITDA is a number of EUR 50 million included for acquisitions for Italcer. And the NEWS Group, of course, is not included, but it's a very minor acquisition. It's more strategic with a big potential to grow, but the impact -- the positive impact we will see in the running year will be very limited.

We will move on to Anna Schumacher from BNP Paribas Exane.

So you mentioned at full year, you would implement cost savings of, I believe, roughly EUR 30 million this year. And you've mentioned you will increase that this year. I was wondering whether you could tell us by how much you expect that to be now? And can you give us some examples of what you'll be doing? And secondly, on M&A, given the more volatile macro and that you've announced two acquisitions, is your appetite still the same for more M&A this year? Or should we expect less?

Well, I will start with your second question regarding M&A and our appetite. My appetite is done because I'm looking at our balance sheet, and I have a focus on remaining or keeping a solid balance sheet. And therefore, of course, our ability to finance acquisitions with -- now with Italcer is somehow done. There might be another very small acquisition in the running year, but nothing medium-sized or nothing bigger because I want to keep our net debt on a -- for me, a solid reasonable level to have a leverage 2.2x, and we have a strong commitment towards our investment-grade rating.

Regarding cost savings, of course, that is something which is an ongoing activity now for years. And with our like Fit For Growth program, we are streamlining our organization. We are getting like, let me say, more closer towards our customer and with all our, let me say, processes and operations. And that results, of course, in better performance, better processes and that saves costs. On the other hand, we are, of course, always looking at our production setup. We are bundling production sites. So we are going to taking out maybe one or the other capacity, but that will save costs, of course, but not resulting in as a burden for our customers that we are not able to serve them. On the -- another thing what we are doing this year, what I didn't mention so far is, of course, that we are going to sell noncore properties to support, of course, our cash flow. Does that answer your question?

Yes. Just on collection of this EUR 30 million that was roughly mentioned at full year, should we expect that to be a little bit more this year?

Well, the EUR 30 million, they are still well. It remain in place. And of course, we are trying to achieve already even more. But within the first quarter, it's too early to give you, yes, an updated number, but the EUR 30 million, that's definitely our commitment.

And we will move on with Julian Radlinger from UBS Limited.

So just a couple from me. So first of all, you've reiterated the EUR 810 million guidance, which after this Q1 means EUR 90 million more operating EBITDA year-on-year in the remaining three quarters versus last year or about EUR 40 million, excluding Italcer. So could you just elaborate -- I think you've touched on all the points already, but can you just elaborate what the main drivers for that year-on-year increase are now going to be, particularly if volumes won't be a big tailwind, and you still have that sort of locked in energy headwind that you've called out? And maybe related to that, if we think about price cost, so that was obviously negative in Q1, but I think that wasn't a surprise. You told us that was going to happen a couple of months ago already. When do you now think -- when should we think about price/cost flipping to positive? Is that already a Q2 story? Or is that more of an H2 expectation? So that's kind of my first question, the guidance and the price cost.

And then just a couple of quick ones on nat gas. So first of all, how should we think about the unhedged portion? I know it's not big at all, but is there any headwind from higher spot or 1-month forward prices in TTF that's going to impact you at all? And then secondly, may I ask in how far Italcer is hedged on nat gas? Is it similar to your level? Or is it different?

Yes. Thank you for your questions. Regarding our performance in the current year, 2025 was a year where there was a stronger start. And during the year, the market came down. So the start of the year 2026 besides the weather, of course, was on a lower level. And we expect a stronger second half of the year compared to the first half of the year, and that reflects overall, let me say, a flat volume. So of course, there will be a volume or we expect a volume increase during the year 2026. But as we start at a low level, overall, that our expectations are that it remains then on the same level like previous year. And yes, that is reflected in our outlook, and that's still our expectation.

The question, price over cost and when it flips, of course, we have a burden from our first quarter, which we have to carry, and we will see a much better second quarter, of course. And -- but as already mentioned, the second half of the year will be stronger than the first half of the year. Regarding the natural gas, we are fixed for roughly 80% in some countries a little bit more, in some countries a little bit less, but overall, it's 80%. And headwind from remaining volumes, which we have to buy from the spot market that will be very, very limited because, first of all, natural gas prices on the spot market came down. I'm not aware where they are today, but last week, it was around EUR 45. So it's not EUR 60-plus anymore. Therefore, it is -- the impact will be limited. Does that answer your questions? Or -- Italcer? Well, Italcer, of course, needs a little bit less energy than we do. But there, we have fixed volumes as well.

Okay. Perfect. That's really helpful. Can I just do one quick follow-up? So just to definitely get this right. So in Q2, when you're saying that price cost is going to be much better than in Q1, are you saying you would expect price versus cost to be positive already or just less negative? And I think this is an important point because as some of my colleagues already pointed out, raw materials are going up quite strongly. I think we all understand that. So for you to get positive price/cost would mean that you increase prices very, very fast sort of ahead of that, which when speaking to most other companies sort of in the construction industry, they're all kind of saying, even if price cost is going to be positive, there's going to be a little bit of a lag in the first few months. And so I just want to clarify that for Q2.

Well, for Q2, I mean, we are now in the middle of May. Therefore, of course, I have a visibility regarding April, but there is still half of the quarter to go. And I'm confident regarding price cost for Europe, but the North American market is for us at the moment, a difficult market. And therefore, I'm not able to give you a concrete or detailed answer on your question regarding the group performance, but I'm very confident for Europe.

And we will move on to Markus Remis from ODDO BHF Securities.

I would have a question related to the cash flow and your leverage target. I mean, can you remind us of your investment budget for the year and also shed some light on the kind of working capital trajectory that you expect over the course of the quarters? And if you feel still confident in the 2.2x EBITDA leverage by year-end? That will be the first one.

Yes. I feel still confident. And looking at our leverage target, which is 2.2x, of course, it's two sides of a coin. On the one hand, it's operating EBITDA. Of course, therefore, we have to deliver the EUR 810 million. And on the other hand, it's net debt, and we are working on both sides of the coin. We are working to optimize, to strengthen our profitability. On the other hand, of course, to strengthen our cash flow and to reduce net debt. We will see positive cash inflow or to reduce our net debt in the second half of the year because the second quarter will have the cash outflow for not only the purchase price of Italcer, the 50 plus -- 50% plus 1 share, which is EUR 160 million.

We have as well the cash outflow, but that's minor. That's less, of course, for the other small acquisition. Therefore, with our half year figures, you will see a much higher net debt figure. And in the second half of the year, we are working on decreasing it. Looking at our working capital, in the first quarter, we already managed to reduce our working capital, let me say, a little bit slightly by volumes. But of course, there is a pricing impact due to inflation included, which, of course, has an impact on the working capital as well. But we are working and still our targets remain to reduce it. It will be supported by the disposal of noncore properties that will strengthen our cash flow. And our CapEx expectations for the full year is EUR 160 million, which we will spend for maintenance CapEx plus another EUR 20 million, which is our budget for improving health and safety in our plants. And for growth CapEx, which included our ESG CapEx as well, there is a number of EUR 100 million.

All right. And how much leeway would you have to reduce CapEx in case, earnings or working capital development is not kind of panning out as expected?

Well, we are having a focus and we, of course, monitor our CapEx and our projects. First, what is necessary, what do we have to do? And the second thing is that we are looking at our supply chain, do we have the right suppliers? Are we able to get better ones, which might help with some cost savings. But of course, nothing to reduce quality or something like that. But of course, there's always a possibility to cut a little bit to get some reductions. On the other hand, maintenance is important, and we have a focus on both sides and on quality as well.

If I may round it up with another question related to the cost picture, talking about energy. I mean, what's your strategy now looking beyond 2026 in terms of forward buying? Can you help us understand if you just carry on with the kind of rolling forward as usual? Or are you a bit more hesitant at this stage when it comes to forward buying for '27 already?

Well, our strategy is that we cover volumes for a period of time of, let me say, 3 years. But of course, everything which is beyond, let me say, 12 months with much lower levels. And of course, we are having our, let me say, energy committee where we meet like twice a month and if necessary, even more often, where we discuss how the prices going to develop? Are we going to increase our level to fixed volumes for '27 or '28? Or are we waiting a little bit. So that is something which we closely monitor.

And on the price increases, should we expect kind of a time gap between pipes and the ceramic part? Or do you see that being implemented at a similar pace?

No, that's implemented at a similar pace. Of course, the price increases regarding the pipe segment are more visible, yes, they are much stronger.

And we will move on with Daniel Khajenouri from Morgan Stanley.

Just a few follow-ups from me. First of all, you commented on some noncore property sales this year. Is that part of the guidance? And if so, could you comment on how much that is? And I also wanted to ask if there were any carbon credit sales during the quarter? It'd be useful just to understand if that happened or not when the underlying performance is. And I just wanted to have a follow-up question on some of your comments on the volume trends -- on the recent volume trends. Did prebuy and the positive volume development continue into May?

Well, starting with the noncore properties, of course, it's included in our guidance. And what we expect a number of -- it's more included in our cash flow than regarding our earnings. And my expectation is that we will gain something between, I don't know, EUR 20 million, EUR 30 million out of the -- as a result, out of the sale of noncore properties. And yes, there are no sales of CO2 certificates.

And just a follow-up question to the volume -- the comments on prebuying volumes into May. Did that continue this month?

Well, we've seen quite a strong volume development in March and April. But of course, it's difficult to identify what portion is like a prebuying and not. And so far, what I see regarding the beginning of May, it's still continuing like March and April.

That's very useful. And perhaps maybe just one more, if I could squeeze it in. On Italcer, the slide deck says it will be closing April 30, so I assume that's closed now. Is that correct?

Yes, that's correct.

And you said the hedging exposure for '26 has already been locked in for energy.

Yes.

And the last one is a follow-up from Julian Radlinger.

Yes. Just a very quick follow-up. I hope I didn't actually miss this, but back to the price increases. So on -- in the slide deck, you write that you're increasing prices across Europe, and you didn't mention it regarding North America. I'm not sure if you said it or if I just didn't listen, but is -- I assume you're also increasing prices for, at least for pipes in North America. Is that right?

Well yes, it is right. In the first quarter, of course -- not of course, but in the first quarter, prices came down in the piping business and turning the situation that raw material prices for piping are increasing, but that's mainly Europe. That's not the case in that extent in North America, of course, then prices are increased. But it's more a question of Europe. And in North America, we expect far less price increases.

And a quick follow-up from Markus Remis.

Yes. On the gap between reported and operating EBITDA, did I understand correctly that you assume something like EUR 20 million to EUR 30 million of one-off gains from the real estate disposals? And is there already any kind of visibility on, well, restructuring costs and the like? Any kind of indication you can share with us?

No, that's too early.

Right. But the EUR 20 million to EUR 30 million positive effect that might be realized?

Yes.

And with that, we do not have open questions left, and I will hand back to Therese.

Thank you all for joining us today and for all your questions. We hope to welcome you again in our next results call, which will be in August -- on the 12th of August. So with that, thank you, and goodbye, and enjoy your day.

Thank you very much. Goodbye.

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

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to today's conference call of Wienerberger's Full Year 2025 Results. I am Judith, your operator for today. [Operator Instructions] The conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] We are looking forward to the presentation. And with this, I hand over to Therese Jander.

Good morning, everyone, and a warm welcome to the Wienerberger Full Year 2025 Results Presentation. My name is Therese Jander, and I'm pleased to host this call today from London. And I'm joined by our CEO, Heimo Scheuch; and our CFO, Dagmar Steinert.

We will begin with the presentation of our key developments of 2025 and the financials of the year and an update of today's news as well and an outlook for 2026. And afterwards, we will open up for your questions.

So with that, I hand over to Mr. Heimo Scheuch.

Thank you very much, and lovely good morning from our side from Wienerberger's team. I'm glad to have you on the call. Let's walk quickly through the results of 2025, here. You have received them actually a week ago, so I just focus on the most essential points.

If we look at '25, I think it was again a year that has to be characterized by a lot of volatility, politically speaking, financially speaking and also business-wise. The guidance that we actually delivered to you midyear with the EBITDA number has been fully reached. We have, considering the circumstances that we operate in, I think, shown a high degree of profitability with an EBITDA margin, which is more or less flat compared to last year, 16.5%.

Keep in mind that all of this comes at the market level when we talk a combined market level new build, new residential housing, infrastructure and renovation that even dropped compared to the year before. So we had a drop in the relevant markets from about 70%. You remember that we give indication that '21 is our reference here was 100%, so we dropped to 70% in '24 and to 65% in -- when we talk about '25. And again, here, Wienerberger has shown basically through the very strong cost discipline and the efficiency improvement, this strong margin in the year 2005 (sic) [ 2025 ].

Keep also in mind, and Dagmar will elaborate on that a little bit more, that we had quite a substantial cost inflation also last year, which we could counter with these measures in order to keep the level of profitability. Profit after tax, very good and strong performance. We more or less doubled it to EUR 168 million. And the free cash flow, this is, I think, a very important step forward to reach nearly EUR 500 million last year. So, again, we showed here the discipline in managing cash, managing the capital allocation throughout the business, especially and therefore, being able also to reduce debt further.

So let's move on a little bit when we look at the debt structure as such. We came in at net debt level about EUR 1.6 billion. So that's 2.2x. Considering what we have achieved with the acquisition of Terreal a year before and digesting it, it shows actually, again, the strength of Wienerberger to self-finance such transactions, to digest them, to integrate them and especially also financially also to be able to handle those.

Again, one of the important step next to the cost discipline, next to the efficiency improvements throughout the business, which contributed largely to these strong numbers was the reduction of working capital to 20%. Also, again, a very important step in this volatile time to focus clearly on working capital. So this -- all of this, I consider that has been a very strong approach, very firm approach of Wienerberger on the discipline side when it comes to the financials.

I already explained a little bit the market decline. And here, we have obviously the market decline when we talk about new residential housing. Here, again, you see that we have seen further declines in 2025 that have occurred, especially in the second half of the year. And we come obviously already when we look at the current status with a lower level into '26 compared to the year before, '24 to '25.

And again, at this stage, I just want to draw your attention because probably we are the first ones in the sector, but I don't shy away to make frank comments because it's no use to sort of wait and see. We had very harsh winter this year. It's an extremely strong winter, not only in North America, but also all around Europe with not only cold weather, freezing, snow, ice, but also flooding. So all of this has to be digested in the first quarter and will certainly have its effect in the second quarter as well.

So all in all, I think when we talk then a little later during the call about the outlook, which is, again, a strong outlook that Wienerberger will provide, but it comes in at the basis of, I call it, a weaker start in the year due to the weather conditions, the harsh one that we have to face this year.

Let's move on then a little bit to the different regions where we have seen in West, I think, I call it a stabilization throughout the different businesses. And you see also that, again, Wienerberger from a housing perspective and the new build segment outperformed the market with 2% volume increase. So very disciplined approach on renovation and new build when it comes to this part of the ceramic business, and also the pricing was very much in line with our expectations.

Again, also on the piping front, we were able to improve our performance, grabbing some market shares left and right. But again, you see here that the Western Europe has performed considering the market as such very well. And you see also the share of the business, which is, I think, very important to show that Wienerberger has emerged as a player, not only new resi, but also one in a stronger and even increasing share in infrastructure and in renovation.

If we move now a little bit to the East, a little different picture. Obviously, depressed markets when we come to the new resi markets with about 2% down. But again, here, we have sort of increased our activity and being a little bit more active in the market when it comes to volumes, so a plus 1% here and also from a pricing an okay situation throughout the year '25.

I would say on the piping front, the minus 3% in volume effects, yes, that's due to some of the projects get delayed when the European funds don't finance in certain countries where there's political turmoil. So these projects, the bigger ones tend to get delayed. So this has an impact on the volume. And therefore, the minus 3% when it comes to the volume in piping. And here, you see also that we have already from a revenue split improved our revenues in renovation and infrastructure, but not to the extent that we've done it in other areas. So this is some work in progress, I would say, as far as the share of different activities is concerned in Eastern Europe.

Now let's move across the Atlantic to North America. I would say a very -- from our perspective, was a very tough environment that we faced throughout the year, '25, in North America, both in the U.S. and especially in Canada. And in Canada, we had a drop of new resi of more than 30% to digest in the market. So that was rather dramatic, I would say; and also in the U.S., around 9%, 10%, depending on the states that we operated in.

So this affected obviously our new residential housing business essentially facing bricks. And you see it also on the revenue split that we are very much exposed to this sector yet or still in North America. The piping operations are doing well. We consider in this context that we only have one pipe factory in North America, but performing very well on the volume side. We extended our presence there due to investments in the production. So we grabbed a little bit of market share again in the piping segment. And above all, I think we performed even in this market where the margins are coming down from this very high level during the last couple 2 years now to a normal one and a very satisfactory trend still in the piping business in North America.

So all in all, I think driven by weak markets, North America suffered the most in our portfolio, and this is obviously then to be seen also in the profitability. But still, they have done a good job North American management in managing efficiencies and cost structure.

I think when you look to summarize the introduction, before I hand over to Dagmar, you see the strong development, how we have improved, again, our share in the different segments, and Wienerberger is now emerging as a strong player when it comes to the piping business in infrastructure, especially in the water management and energy management and in the renovation due to our strong growth in the roofing business.

So this is, I think, from my side, this introduction, and I hand over to you, Dagmar.

Thank you, Heimo. Yes, a warm welcome from my side as well, and I will give you a deeper insight into our financials.

It's now 12 months I'm with the company, and it's my first conference call for a full year, and I've seen how resilient and strong our business model is, and we delivered a solid set of results and that even in this really tough market.

So having a look at our revenues and operating EBITDA, we are delivering. We are delivering our guidance. We've seen a stable profitability with still a remarkable margin of 16.5% despite quite a high cost inflation. On the revenue side, Heimo already elaborated a bit about the market situation, about the volume overall for the whole group. On average, volumes are flat as well as prices. But of course, we managed to again increase our revenues with innovative products, which are now standing at 34%. And that, of course, is as well paying in for our profitability.

If we now go on further to the bridges, revenue bridge and operating EBITDA bridge. That, well, is dominated in 2025 by our growing exposure to our roofing business, especially in Western Europe, which pays into our strategy and shows that we are growing in renovation.

On the revenue side, yes, it's a flat development with overall plus 1% and a negative organic growth. So we already explained the volume softness in different markets, especially in North America. We've had some modest headwind from the currency side and the scope, the EUR 120 million scope that reflect our increasing exposure in roofing. On the operating EBITDA, we delivered. We delivered despite these rough markets and again, markets coming down, remarkable earnings, and we managed to absorb the overall cost inflation we faced, and that is a very strong result.

So how did we do that? Of course, overall cost inflation was plus 4% in the year 2025, and that accounts for more than EUR 100 million. And that's quite a big chunk we should -- we had to manage. This cost inflation was mainly driven by higher labor and energy costs, as we elaborated during all our conference calls already. We managed to have EUR 30 million overhead savings from ongoing strict cost discipline. That is something which we are doing since years, focusing on a strict cost discipline.

And if you have a look at the markets, which are softening year-by-year, it's quite a challenge to really deliver out of that some gains. What did we do? We delivered from structural simplifications, and we had a high focus on tighter spendings. And with that, as already said, we managed somehow to deliver EUR 30 million savings. Additionally, we are focusing on operational excellence. What does that mean? We have a look at production measures and capacity optimization, especially in the ceramic business in Europe.

We improved our operational performance through improved shift patterns, improved throughput and of course, one or the other energy savings. That helped quite a lot. And on the other hand, we started our program Fit for Growth in the third quarter 2025. Fit for Growth is about streamlining processes from holding to operations so that we are improving our culture, how we work together, that we become much more agile, that we are faster and that everything is towards the customer in a better optimized structure and way.

With that, of course, we will have -- we will see annual savings in the range of EUR 15 million to EUR 20 million once it is in a full swing. We haven't seen EUR 15 million to EUR 20 million in 2025. It was a bit less, but overall, that is sustainable and it will continue.

Coming now to our operating segments, starting with Western Europe. Western Europe had a really good performance in 2025 due to roofing and the renovation portion of that business. Renovation accounts for nearly 50% of the business in Western Europe, and it's dominated by our roofing business.

On the operating EBITDA on the profitability, of course, we had beside our strict cost control, we took capacity out, and we managed to have a higher utilization. We showed a strong operational excellence and with our well-balanced portfolio in Western Europe, as already mentioned, the roofing business is the main contributor.

In Eastern Europe, the picture is a little bit different. Markets are dominated by our new build business, our wall business, and that's a difference compared with Western Europe. Our exposure towards renovation and infrastructure is less. But anyhow, we managed to keep our revenues on previous year's level. And regarding the profitability, we had quite to digest a big jump from inflation, but we managed to have a recent operating EBITDA margin with 18.1%.

We focused a lot on cost efficiency and on capacity reductions, where we had one or the other winter still stand as well.

Coming now to North America, that is our segment where we have the highest exposure towards new build and Heimo already mentioned that the market is in 2025 in North America and Canada, especially, well, a disaster. So markets have been down significantly. And on the piping business, which accounts for roughly 20% of our business, we've seen volume increases. But on the pricing side, we faced due to deflation in raw materials, price decreases. Therefore, our revenues are significantly down by 12%.

Of course, that has a high impact on operating EBITDA, on the profitability, and we came in with EUR 132 million operating EBITDA and a remarkable strong margin of 19.0%.

And with that, I would like to go further to our free cash flow. Our free cash flow is the second highest free cash flow in the company history, and it's the second year in a row with a remarkable free cash flow. And I would like to put your attention on the change in working capital. We managed again to have a significant cash inflow from the reduction of our working capital. And that, of course, a high free cash flow is the basis to reduce net debt and to be ready for further growth.

With that, I would like to elaborate a little bit about our net debt development. We managed to reduce our net debt by roughly EUR 120 million, and therefore, our leverage by the year-end is 2.2. Beside our really good free cash flow, we had a strong focus on growth CapEx because we focused on high return projects, and that underpins again our future growth, which will be self-funded.

We've seen some smaller bolt-on acquisitions where we paid in total EUR 24 million in 2025. And of course, we, as always, have a significant amount, which we pay on dividends and share buybacks to our shareholders. And with all of that, I must say, we have a disciplined CapEx and cash management, and that is ongoing.

If we have a look at our balance sheet, don't look at all these numbers. It's just to give you an impression that we have -- that our fundamentals are in a really good shape. We have a robust balance sheet, a solid balance sheet, and we even managed to improve our equity ratio by 1% from 45% to 46%, despite different headwinds we faced. One headwind, of course, the really weak market and the other headwind regarding our equity ratio, the swing in negative currency impact.

On the other hand, positive, we reduced our gross debt by 10%. We reduced our net debt by 7%. And that, of course, goes hand-in-hand with the reduction of working capital where we improved the ratio towards revenues to 20%, coming from 24%. So as you can see, our fundamentals are in a really good shape.

We have an attractive shareholder return, paying dividends, which are solid, steady and reliable. Our dividend proposal for the year 2025 is EUR 0.95 per share, as we had in the last year. As you can see, if you look at the development of our dividend payout and share buyback, our dividend is stable and -- is stable or is even growing and never comes down. Our payout ratio is 28% of the free cash flow, and that is in line with our 20% to 40% range.

Now I would like to come to our outlook. What are the key assumptions? If we have the macroeconomic view, we expect, again, flat residential markets, no structural recovery. We see flat infrastructure and renovation markets, so there will be no real movement. And as well, we don't see any decline in long-term interest rates. Markets stay difficult, volatile and are not growing. Inflation is expected to be around 2.5%, and we will cover that by price increases up to 2%.

What are we doing to manage all these key assumptions? We focus again on optimization and efficiency measures. First, I would like to mention our Fit for Growth program. That is a cultural transformation. Our people are empowered to take on more responsibility and accountability to be more responsive and agile with a view to delivering future growth and profitability. We will see further consolidation of our plant network, and of course, we will see a payback of expanding our industrial footprint with new products.

Just to remind you, we are growing year-by-year our share of revenues from our innovative products. But we will have some special topics in 2026. And one I would really like to point out, put your focus on, is our energy inflation because that energy inflation is Wienerberger specific. It will be a burden of EUR 30 million in 2026. We faced highest energy costs of the past 10 years, and we will be not able to compensate these higher energy costs through price increases. It's not homemade, it's externally driven, and I will explain on the next chart why.

Here, you can see the development of the market price. Natural gas, which is the most important energy we use and the price we pay in our portfolio. As you can see, the market price came down from 2025 from EUR 37 in '26 to EUR 33 on an average. What we pay or paid for our portfolio in 2025 was an average price of EUR 24, and that goes up to EUR 32, maybe EUR 33, so it goes up to the market price. And out of that, we face this EUR 30 million extra one-off energy inflation, which we are not able to compensate.

If you look at the capital expenditure, we expect overall EUR 280 million. EUR 100 million will be growth CapEx for high profitable projects. On the other hand, we will spend roughly EUR 180 million, which is with EUR 160 million maintenance CapEx and additionally EUR 20 million for improving our Secure Zone Action Plan, which is to support the safety of all our plant workers.

A little view again on the market. Our assumptions are: we don't see a recovery of the market. 2026 will be flat, not only in new build as well -- but as well in renovation and infrastructure. I would like to draw your attention on the development during the year 2026. We start at a very low level in the first quarter, and the first quarter due to these really bad weather conditions will be a quite weak quarter. And therefore, we expect the first half 2026 to be below the second half 2026. And of course, the first half 2026 will be below the first half of the previous year. But that's all in line with the development of a flat market.

So coming now to the numbers of our outlook for the ongoing business. You can see here a bridge starting at our delivered guidance 2025, the EUR 754 million operating EBITDA. You will see out of organization and profitability measures, EUR 36 million, that includes everything, like our Fit for Growth, our operational excellence, what we do regarding operations, where we are improving our profitability in our processes towards better shifts, better mix and better utilization.

Then we would have an operating EBITDA of EUR 790 million. But unfortunately, we have this one-off in 2026 regarding our own energy inflation. And therefore, our guidance for our ongoing business for the year 2026 is with the assumption of flat markets, EUR 760 million operating EBITDA. But of course, that's not all because the future is going on, and we have our next chapter, and that's a growth chapter.

And with that, I would like to hand over again to Heimo.

Thank you, Dagmar. And ladies and gentlemen, I think what you have seen in the presentation of Dagmar is very clear. We have performed very well in the light of declining markets, in the light of sluggish, I call it, recession development over the last couple of years. Wienerberger has been very good. And on a personal note, with sadness, I sit here in this call because I remember 4 years ago, this dreadful invasion of the Ukraine by the Russians. And a lot of things have changed in business, not only energy costs, and not only the way how we do business, but we had to adjust in a lot of aspects of the business, and we adjusted very well as Wienerberger.

If you look at the performance of North America that Dagmar has shown in detail, I mean, when I compare the housing starts that we had last year in Canada and the U.S. and the performance of EBITDA wise to the ones that we have 5, 6 years ago, how strong we have been able to improve our EBITDA performance, our margins in North America, it's impressive. Impressive how we work on this every day, and our people put a lot of effort in making our business even more performant in the future.

Secondly, and that's also, I think, something to really -- before we go into the new chapter to stress is the innovation rate. It's a very strong rate above 30%, actually around 34% that we have in the group. We push through our systems more successfully. Otherwise, actually, if you sell only bricks, pipes, roof tiles, we wouldn't be able to make these margins in such depressed markets. So that's the system approach that helps us to increase margins, and we continuously do so.

Thirdly, and most importantly, you see also the strict discipline when we come to M&A. We have delivered over the last 10 years a lot of deals coming in, very disciplined when it comes to the pricing of the deals and also the payback. And every cent has been paid back, and that's why we have the strong performance.

If we look now at the new growth chapter that comes our way, we have the ideal fit for our business to grow and to improve when we talk about the Italcer acquisition. Why? And let me just summarize this in a nutshell. This is -- Italcer is the leading business when it comes to high-end solutions for tiles, for floors, for walls, for facades, for the inside, for the outside and especially in the renovation segment, which is very highly performing, modern production hubs in Italy and Spain. They are growing, not only in the local market, but especially with respect to exports.

It's not a new business for Wienerberger. I call it an adjacent business. Why? Because actually, we use the same raw material. It's clay. We have more or less the same technology. Obviously, these colleagues in the wall and floor tile industry are more specific, highly technology when it comes to the surface treatments, the colors, the structures. So this is a great addition to our facing business that is obviously very strong in North America, Western Europe and also increasingly strong in the renovation.

Here, we have an ideal sort of growth space for the future in order to improve our footprint there. Clients are more or less the same in a lot of countries. So we can sort of improve our footprint in the Southern European Hemisphere and also in the Western Hemisphere. And obviously, Italcer is a leading company when it comes to technology, as I said before, in manufacturing; also in capturing CO2 and improving the footprint there. They have the first kiln when it comes to electrified kilns in Spain, high performance.

And again, you see it's an ideal fit for Wienerberger on the growth path in the future and gives us a more and even stronger performance and a footprint in the renovation part of the business. So as I said, these are the reasons from our perspective to enter Italcer. We have here the leading company, solid growth, outperforming its markets over the last couple of years, very strong and committed management team that will stay in place and fits culturally and also from a performance very well with ours. So it's an easy integration, if I may say. So we will put the guys also on our platforms and integrate them as we did in the past with others on our back offices and business support centers and then therefore, ensure obviously, the growth in the future.

When we look further to this business, the transaction structure that we have put here and Dagmar has stressed this item very carefully and duly when we talk about financing. Again, we focus here on self-financing and support. So this is, again, an acquisition that we realized in this way in order to ensure this financing, buying 50% plus 1 share now. And then we will have the necessary approvals that are for such transactions. They are not the EU application as it's only in Germany and Austria and in other countries. So this will run through rather smoothly. We all expect that and then start the consolidation from Q2 onwards.

So again, it's a fully cash transaction funded from our existing liquidity. We have all the facilities in place in order to finance this transaction. When we look at the -- from our perspective, the integration as such, as I said, it's going to be a rather quick one on the back office side, on the front office side because in these markets, Italcer is very strong. We can obviously help them in order to improve the business throughout Europe and also in North America, where they have a strong business also exporting to the U.S. and our strong footprint with our outlets and sales offices throughout the country will help us to improve the performance.

On the financial front here, we see about EUR 10 million of synergies rather quickly to be grabbed here on the commercial side and a little bit on the cost side. But more will come in the future, but this is, I think, a good starting point.

When we summarize, again, in a nutshell, it's an ideal sort of addition to our portfolio. It's easy to manage, easy to integrate. We understand the business. We can handle it in our product assortment, can use it to improve our footprint in the facade business throughout the world, actually. It will strengthen our footprint also in the renovation segment, which is very strong. It helps us with architects, with planners, with designers in order to have here even a better footprint for Wienerberger when it comes to new build, but especially renovation.

We will get quite a substantial amount of synergies in, as I said, very quickly. It's a highly attractive financial profile because from a perspective of EBITDA, about multiples, we have here about EUR 82 million EBITDA that Italcer will provide us full year in 2026. We will come to this in a minute, but a strong sort of performance here, which gives us a multiple a little higher than 6, but nothing sort of that we look at comparable transaction in the past. So very attractive for us. We'll bring it down when we look at the EUR 100 million that we think we were able to achieve rather quickly to a multiple in the 5-ish for such an acquisition, I think a very strong track record, again.

So let's move on to the next slide. And here, you see from what has been presented by Dagmar on the outlook of the ongoing Wienerberger business, now the integration of Italcer. Obviously, when you look at the outstanding performance in 2025, all these measures that Dagmar has explained will make us performing in this scenario rather well.

Let me say one thing on this. Dagmar and myself used the word flattish, stable markets. Yes, that's an assumption. If the markets gets better and if something happens this year, we are ready. Don't worry about that. We have capacity in place, we have structure in place to satisfy. Only if you see all this volatility, and I think it's wise at this stage of the year to say clearly, let's see what comes our way, but we, as Wienerberger, we don't wait for the cycle. We create our own growth by doing the right things and improving our portfolio, focusing on the cost side, focusing on the organic growth side and therefore, reaching then the EUR 790 million when you talk about performance.

The EUR 30 million of one-off effects on the energy front, I think you have understood that. It's a result of our buying-forward strategy. Basically, it helps us in a long time, and then it comes a little bit against us, but I think it's a one-off, we digest it. So the EUR 760 million is a strong guidance for this year operating wise, and we will add the EUR 50 million coming from Italcer on top. That's, as I said earlier, provided that we get the necessary approvals in Q2, and then we will consolidate the EUR 50 million from this date onwards and then at the operating EBITDA guidance of EUR 810 million for the whole year of 2026.

If we look at a very important point because some of you will obviously ask these questions anyway. On the financing, Dagmar has clearly explained how we have brought down our debt in '25 to 2.2. The Italcer acquisition will bring in additional debt of about EUR 400 million. So we'll end up a little bit above EUR 2 billion of debt, it's about 2.5. If I then calculate the EUR 810 million as a reference already, and then we bring it down as to -- with very specific measures, as you have seen in '25, we have now already in place our reduction in working capital. We have also the CapEx adjustments that we will bring in and some real estate transactions where we have nonoperating real estate that we will sell off.

All of this brings in about EUR 220 million. So we will reduce towards the year-end 2026, again, our debt level to about 1.8. You see a very disciplined approach and how we can finance such a transaction and expansion of our portfolio rather quickly, fast and very efficiently throughout this year.

Again, when we look at the EUR 810 million outlook, it's in the light of a persistent geopolitical and macroeconomical uncertainty that we face. Guys, all of you that are listening in every day, there are other news on tariffs, on other things, we need to live with this. And this is something I think we have learned to do so, and therefore, we remain very optimistic, very positive and just do our work well and cut costs where we can, focus on margins.

And as I said, we assume right now that there's no real big recovery in the new residential housing market. There's somehow flattish infrastructure and renovation market. It might be better then towards the mid of the year. We will see. But as I said, we are prepared. We have a lot of attention to grow fast and react very quickly. But at this moment, the financing environment, the banking, how they react with real estate, I think, remains very restrictive. So there's not the green light that I see here or the tailwind that some of you talk about that is here in the market in order to boost the business.

Again, we will outperform, by this guidance, our markets. We'll focus on the debt reduction that we told you. Strong cash generation, obviously, goes by itself and integration of Italcer and therefore, expanding our earnings base. So a strong focus on the business again this year.

I think from my side, this is -- summarizes the year 2026. We will obviously have our Capital Markets Day a little later this morning, where we'll elaborate about the strategy in much more detail in the future. But this is, I think, from a perspective of year '25-'26 what we had to tell you today. So I hand over to all of you for further questions.

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from the line of Cedar Ekblom from Morgan Stanley.

Can you hear me now?

Yes, we can.

Perfect. That took a while on my side. So I've got a couple of questions, please. Can we just go back to Italcer? I'd like to get some final details around the purchase consideration on a 100% basis and the implied multiples pre and post synergy. I appreciate in the slides, you've got the cash impact of EUR 400 million in 2026. But my understanding is that is only for the initial 50% plus 1 share. And so it would be helpful to get a sort of a fully acquired impact to the gearing and the multiple and the cash impact. Do we multiply EUR 400 million by 2 to get to the sort of 100% EV implications for the business? So that's question one.

Question two, also around Italcer. To be honest, I'm not 100% sure on the sort of channel overlap here on the products. Maybe you can talk a little bit more about it. My understanding is that Italcer's products are sort of luxury high-end ceramic products for internal sort of design applications, fancy bathrooms, fancy tiles, et cetera. I don't get that how that overlaps with your external brick roofing product categories. I get that there's a regional overlap, but I don't see the end market overlap there. So a bit more color around how you see the fit would be helpful. So those are the 2 questions on Italcer.

And then there's 2 questions just on sort of the outlook or financials. Can you confirm if you had any benefits from carbon credit sales in the 2025 results, any positive impact there? And then just on the energy side of things, you have guided to this EUR 30 million impact, which I understand is around the way you purchase energy. Is there any way that you could soften that impact by doing some contracts, some hedging, et cetera, that you wouldn't normally do in order to try and soften some of that headwind? So quite a lot to unpack there. Those are my 4 questions.

Thank you, Cedar, for the questions. I will hand over and then come in if it's needed on the Italcer financials because Dagmar will take over right now, and then I will answer the rest.

Yes. Well, regarding on the Italcer financials and the additional EUR 400 million debt we will put on our balance sheet. Of course, we buy 50% plus 1 share. And with that, we are going to fully consolidate the whole group. And with that, we are taking debt over. Therefore, in 2027, when we make the second step to acquire the minorities, it will be far, far less than EUR 400 million. We see overall equity value of EUR 560 million.

And with that, I'm very confident that we will not only manage to bring our leverage by the year-end '26, again, down to 2.2, but we will see further improvement in the years to come, 2027 and ongoing.

Sorry, Dagmar, just before you go on, apologies. So I just want to be 100% clear here. You're saying EUR 560 million equity value?

No. Enterprise value.

No, enterprise value.

Enterprise value. Okay. So EUR 560 million. Okay, that's helpful. Apologies.

And as I said, Cedar, it's EUR 82 million full year EBITDA contribution from Italcer in '26, yes? And we will only consolidate EUR 50 million because we have the processes to go through on the approval side from antitrust authorities in Germany and Austria. Understood?

Understood.

Thank you. And let's now go into the 1 -- you had 2 questions, actually. The one was the channel question, distribution; and the other one was obviously the positioning of Italcer. First of all, let me start with the positioning. Yes, they started with the sort of -- I wouldn't call it only luxury but high-end sort of applications, tiles for floors, for walls and in the inside and renovation.

Yes, you are right. This is a business which is strong in renovation. There are some special dealers around Europe that sell those products, but they are also big distributors. I will refer to, for example, to a French one that is very well known to you. It's POINT.P, the Saint-Gobain distribution structure in France that sells all of their products. So here, Wienerberger products and Italcer products goes through the same channels.

Also in Italy, for example, we have the same. Also in the U.S. So there's a lot of common when we talk about distribution as such. Obviously, we will have a specific sales force as we have for facing bricks or for clay blocks or for also the roof tiles. So we will have the special and continue to have the special sales force for the tiles in Italcer. On top of it, and this is, I think, a very important aspect, I said, that strategically, you will see emerging very strongly in the next couple of years.

This company is leading when it comes to treatments of services, digital printing, colors, et cetera. So where do we need it? We see that the facing brick business moves towards a thinner product business. That means the bricks get thinner and thinner. We call them thin bricks or slips or whatever throughout the different markets. So here, we have a very ideal addition to our business where we can produce these products and replicate old bricks very easily through the Italcer channel.

So there's a lot of manufacturing synergies there and where we can improve the business because there's a lot of renovation work going to be on the outside in Europe of the old housing stock. So replicate those bricks that we do today burn in our kilns traditionally, cut them, have some waste and then put it to the market. We can produce it much quicker, much faster through the manufacturing base of Italcer. So this is something -- a growing business already for them. So they have here a business, a good business already, and due to the addition to ours, in Western Europe, especially and, above all, also in North America, this will play out as a very strong growing business for Wienerberger in the future.

So I hope I have addressed this part of Italcer for you strategically.

You had some questions about our energy pricing and ask if you are able to fix energy at lower prices with like future contracts. Of course, we do that. We did that in the past, but always like ongoing for the next years to come. And in the face of decreasing energy prices, of course, our level, what we fix is below what we did in the past. And we feel quite comfortable how we manage our risks and what actions we are taking. But 2026 will stay as it is.

We will pay energy prices on market level. And the years to come, of course, it highly depends how our energy prices are developing, what is going on with the war and so on. So that's a volatile environment.

But to add something what -- Dagmar, what Cedar has asked, there is no softening possibility of this EUR 30 million.

No. No, that's not.

This is, I think, what she wanted to understand. And here, we have done the utmost in order to bring it down to EUR 30 million. Yes?

Yes.

And could we get some color just on the carbon credit sales? I'm not sure if you disclose these numbers, but it would be helpful to know if you have been selling excess credits in the market in the last couple of years and put some numbers around what those benefits might have been?

Well, we are always selling some carbon credits, which we don't need for our ongoing business. And we have some gains out of that, but that's normal business, nothing unusual.

And what is the quantum there? Are we talking EUR 50 million or...

No, no, no. By no means, such high numbers. No. It's -- as Dagmar said, it's a normal sort of ongoing business thing. So it's not a few million euros. It's a double-digit amount, if I may say so, but nothing in the range of what you were referring to.

We now have a question from the line of Markus Remis from ODDO BHF Securities.

Can you hear me now?

Yes.

Okay. Excellent. I'd also like to start with a question on the '25 financial statement. And I'm trying to better understand the cash conversions because when I look at the receivables, the ratio compared to sales was the lowest since 2010. So can you maybe disclose the level of factoring by year-end to get an understanding to which extent this was operationally driven or how much financial engineering stands behind the receivables reduction?

Well, we have 2 effects on our receivables. First of all, regarding our working capital management, we focused on our trade payables and receivables, and we faced lower -- much lower sales volumes in the months November and December. That, of course, was one aspect of a reduction of receivables. On the other hand, we increased our factoring by roughly EUR 30 million towards year-end, but that's normal operating business as we had our Terreal acquisition integrated in our group and therefore, a bigger portion of that refers to the integration of Terreal into our factoring business. And the focus -- just to add, the focus for the year 2026 for the reduction of working capital is strongly on inventories.

Okay. And so factoring at year-end '25 was then close to EUR 200 million?

Yes.

Okay. That's very helpful. And then if I may follow up on the cost inflation part, you've flagged 2.5% of cost inflation, excluding this energy burden, this EUR 30 million. Can you shed some light on the remaining drivers? How that 2.5% is composed? Some indications here would be helpful. And then on the other hand of the price-cost equation, for which parts of the business are you most upbeat to raise prices to get to this 2% on the group level?

Well, I can answer that. For example, we are certainly on the roofing segment, which is a stronger segment than the new residential housing right now. So there, obviously, I think, we will have no problems bringing up the prices.

The 2.5% on an average inflation, it's just a normal inflation you face more or less in every country. In some, it's below. In some, it's even higher. And therefore, it's an average number, 2.5%. You see it on personnel expenses. You see it on -- yes, on everything more or less. So nothing specific, nothing...

Labor is the most important one.

Yes.

All right. And then the last question, again, to get it straight on Italcer. The EBITDA multiple that you mentioned. So it's like just over 6x. I think that was just mentioned, how is that derived? Because if I take the equity value and then assume something like...

Enterprise value.

Enterprise value.

Sorry, enterprise value. The EUR 70 million of current EBITDA, I get to quite a different...

No, no, you take EUR 82 million EBITDA, EUR 82 million.

Okay. So that's the kind of annualized contribution in the current year.

Correct. Correct.

And next in the line is Isaac Ocio from On Field Research.

Can you hear me?

Perfectly well.

So 2 questions regarding maybe '26 and 2030. So the first one would be, so is the current inability to pass on cost inflation behind us after the EUR 30 million hit in '26? And maybe my second question would be what is the pace of recovery in European residential construction you're expecting since we're seeing kind of some green shoots in Germany and France and maybe give a bit more color regarding that.

Thank you for the 2 questions. Yes, I agree with you that this one-off, as Dagmar has explained it, the EUR 30 million energy is then this one-off that we have to deal with this year. The rest is then a more, call it, stable development when it comes to inflation that we can digest with price increases on a yearly basis in the years to come.

Now from the future and if I may, we will do it, and I will speak about this in the Capital Markets Day presentation in more detail. But I've given you a base case that you will see in the presentation, where basically I say, it's a stable case in the future, where we, Wienerberger, can generate growth and don't wait for green shoots, as you have explained or you have referred to in France and Germany, et cetera.

So we say Wienerberger has the capacity to digest and to grow very quickly when it comes to better markets or stronger markets in new residential infrastructure and renovation because we have the capacity there. We have also, if the Ukraine war ends and there's more demand, also the possibility to substantially grow our business quickly, and that will have a huge financial impact. But at this very moment, obviously, these are things that might occur. We don't know when and how and there's a lot of volatility. So we don't want to put our business model only on this. But as I tried to explain on our own strengths and what we can influence and drive, therefore, the growth independently for this. And you will see the numbers that I'll present to you in a minute.

And I am moving on to Julian Radlinger from UBS Limited.

So a couple for me. First of all, could you help us with some of the moving parts in the 2026 guidance, please? What should we assume for D&A and net interest costs? I'd love to better understand the implied EPS guidance, either excluding Italcer or preferably including it?

And then secondly, so you're alluding to H1 '26 being particularly tough for a lot of reasons that makes sense. Could you elaborate on that a little bit, please? So historically, your adjusted EBITDA seasonality H1 versus H2, something like 48%, 52% of full year EBITDA. Are we thinking something like 45%, 46%? Is that the right kind of ballpark or should we think about it differently?

Well, first of all, I would like to start with our interest costs. Our interest costs in the year 2025 amount to EUR 100 million, and we usually build up during the year working capital. Therefore, we take more debt during the year on our balance sheet to bring it down by the year-end. And so the EUR 100 million, of course, are, first of all, like the basis. And then we will see additional EUR 400 million in the second quarter.

And our interest costs on average are between like 3.5% and 4%. So the impact will be digestible. But of course, we have to refinance the net debt of Italcer. Italcer pays a much higher interest rate. Therefore, we will see overall for 2026, of course, higher interest rate.

Okay. That's helpful. And the D&A?

The D&A, of course, is increasing as well. But if we look at the P&L of Italcer and the strong margin they are delivering, that will be less -- yes, I would say, a little bit less impact than we have on average in our business.

So that you're saying they have lower D&A as a percentage of sales than you do?

Slightly. But of course, we have to see regarding the purchase price allocation, what we identify in assets which we have to amortize. So what is like the split between goodwill and like customer lists and know-how and so on. And that work isn't done so far. So therefore, it's still a little bit, of course, of a slightly black box for us.

Understood. And then regarding the H1 '26, please?

H1 '26?

Yes, you mean your EBITDA split. I think historically, you're right, you can deduct this from all the information that you have available. But I wouldn't sort of count on this for this year. It's a very different year. We have never seen such a winter for the last 20 years or so. So I think we'll have to cope with it in the sense of how the business will start in March, when it starts, how quickly it takes off and how it develops, we will see. I think I don't want to make too many predictions. As we said, we give you a clear guidance for the year, which is already, I think, a very strong message from ourselves in this volatile market.

Thank you very much. There are no more questions at this time. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Therese Jander for any closing remarks.

Thank you very much, and thank you for joining and your interest in Wienerberger. And we hope you -- we welcome you back again for the first quarter call in May 13. And I hope you will also find a lot of useful information around our Capital Markets Day that we will now receive on our website. So thank you, everyone, and goodbye.

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

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to today's conference call of Wienerberger's Q1 to Q3 2025 Results. I'm Sarah, your operator for today. [Operator Instructions] And the conference is being recorded [Operator Instructions] We're looking forward to the presentation.

And with this, I hand over to Therese Jander.

Good morning, everyone, and warm welcome to Wienerberger's Q1 to Q3 Results Update. Thank you for taking the time to join us today. My name is Therese Jander, and I'm pleased to be hosting this call from the headquarters in Vienna. I'm joined by our CFO, Dagmar Steinert; and a special welcome also to our CEO, Heimo Scheuch, who is calling in today from Hungary. We will begin with a brief presentation of the key developments and the financials for the period and afterwards we will open the line for questions.

With that, I will hand over to Mr. Scheuch.

Thank you, Therese, and a warm welcome also from my side. You will wonder why I speak from Hungary. As you recall, we explained to you that the roofing is a very major attention point for our future development. And as you are well aware, we have been working on 2 new factories for concrete roof tiles and one is in Hungary, one is in the Southeast of London. Both of them are now operational. The one in England is already fully on the market and the one here in Hungary is about to go on stream. And so we are glad to say that in the record time of more or less 1 year, we have put 2 new factories up in this market and we grow our exposure to this very important segment of ours, the roofing segment in Europe. So that's why I'm here today with our Hungarian management. But let's go now to our set of results for quarter 3.

Ladies and gentlemen, if you look at our results and operating EBITDA with EUR 202 million EBITDA in the third quarter comes in more or less or roughly on the level of 2024, so in line with last year's performance, a slight margin expansion when you compare to last year, and the revenue is pretty much on the same level of last year as well. All of this is a very strong performance if you look at the underlying market. Why? Because we have seen, as we have told you, in the new residential housing segment, no major developments as far as uptick is concerned. On the contrary, if we move, first of all, to North America, the North American market has suffered considerably in the segment of new residential housing 1 and 2 family houses especially.

Let's start for a change with Canada, Ontario, the Toronto market, down compared to the previous year, 2024, this year with more than 30%. So we had to digest quite a significant decline in activity in this very important market. That's the major market of Canada anyway, Ontario. So you've seen here a strong decline in the new residential housing market. The U.S. as such has also suffered due to a lot of reasons. The mortgage rates are still pretty high. You have here also the instability, volatility, politically speaking, I don't have to expand on that. Everybody follows it very clearly and in detail. So this is obviously also an impact on the new residential housing market in the U.S. And therefore, we have a decline of about 10% in this market as well to digest when it comes to our activities. Keep in mind that this North American operation is the most exposed one to new residential housing market as it comes to Wienerberger because this is where we still have a majority of our business is exposed to new residential housing.

If we move now more to Europe, we have here, I would say, a situation where we see in the U.K. and in Ireland different market development. We have seen that especially now in -- after the summer, that the U.K. is also dropping in activity rate that's due to mortgage rates have not come down as everybody has expected. There's also some instability in the marketplace. And here with about -- when we compare running rates about 9% down in new residential housing market when we talk about September, October in this period of the year. So we have seen no pickup, on the contrary, a decline in activity. And also in Ireland, a slight decline in this new residential housing market. However, and this is now important because this is a major difference.

If you look at the U.K., Irish operations of Wienerberger, they have a majority of its exposure already in the roofing and in the piping business. So renovation and infrastructure plays an important role. And therefore, this business has performed overall better because here stability in turnover and in profitability. So we have not suffered so much when it comes to the profitability of the business in this region due to this new business that we have, a business that is far more oriented to renovation and to infrastructure. So a very important point to mention here to the respect of U.K. and Ireland.

On the continent, as such, we have seen a mixed picture. All of us have expected a better running rate when it comes to new residential housing in all of the European markets, this has not happened. The only market actually that performed according to our expectations is the Netherlands. So the rest of Europe, Western Europe especially, was down. There's no sort of uptick in the market as we speak. There are, however, some encouraging signs, if I may say so, in Germany and France because the permits are up in these 2 countries. So we can expect, hopefully, into the next year, a little better development in new residential housing.

Renovation has supported the strong roofing performance in the region. So there's a lot of activity, as I may say so, on the roof maintenance. So this has helped our business there. And infrastructures have been more or less stable, the spending. So here, a trend that we have basically built on, on the beginning of the year. And if you look now to Eastern Europe, Eastern Europe has been also a market where we have not seen any expansion of new residential housing. So I would say a rather stable, subdued market in a lot of these Eastern Europe economies. The only country where we have seen a little uptick is the one I'm currently in, in Hungary. This is to political reasons. Next year, we have Hungarian elections. So the Hungarian government has launched a special initiative to give sort of better mortgage rates to be first-time home builders and buyers.

So all-in-all, when you look at Wienerberger's performance in these geographies, and we have added some charts in the presentation. I don't need to go into the details, but you see actually 3 things. First of all, that the mortgage rates have not come down as we originally expected them to do so in order to stimulate new residential housing. So that's the first very important point. The second one is that the new residential housing markets, nearly in all of the markets, except, as I mentioned, the Dutch market and the Hungarian are down. So there's no uptick in these markets. So we were confronted with markets that are below the '24 levels.

And thirdly, which is also very positive, that Wienerberger in ceramics and pipes outperformed the underlying market due to our focus on innovation, very strong focus on our customers, and therefore we were able to outperform the underlying market. So I think this is the nutshell of the current environment that we are in. I don't see any major changes, by the way, for the rest of the year. So after the third quarter into October, November, December, we'll see the same trend. So this declining environment will continue for the rest of the year. So this is, I think, from my perspective, the major sort of underlying developments.

If we now move a little bit on from the macro and the sort of performance-oriented one to some of the numbers that Dagmar will elaborate a little later. So from a revenue perspective, you see here that we have more or less a little bit up by 4% compared to last year to about EUR 3.5 billion. EBITDA is slightly down from last year. This is obviously due to the fact that we have a lesser contribution from the new residential housing segment and also some cost pressure when it comes to labor cost and energy costs. But here, Dagmar will elaborate a little bit more in detail on the profit after tax side and the earnings per share side with a strong increase due to the fact that, obviously, there's no impact on some of the balance sheet issues that we had due to the sale of the Russian business last year. This year, obviously, is a normalized year. So here, we have strong uptick in these 2 aspects.

If we now move on a little bit more to the migration, as I call it, from Wienerberger's perspective, you see here that over the years, and I explained this already a few times, but you see it especially in these tough market environments that Wienerberger is operating in, how important it is and it was to migrate the business from a purely new residential housing business to now a much stronger resilient business based on new build infrastructure and especially renovation. So I think this has shown clearly that from a strategic path, we are on the right way forward. We will continue to do so. And I think the current environment offers us opportunities.

Let's move a little bit on in this external growth field. We have done several acquisitions. I mean when we look at Wienerberger over the last 10 years, it's by far more than 41 acquisitions that we did. So all of them are very strongly value enhancing. We have been very disciplined first of all, with the purchase price, with the integration and the synergies. When we take the biggest one that we did, Terreal, last year, we are fully on track with respect to synergies. So all the synergies that we have originally planned for are coming in actually a little bit better already. The market as such, the underlying is obviously weaker. I don't have to explain that I did it already at the introduction. So here, in this difficult market environment, from a pricing perspective and synergy perspective, we are doing better as we originally planned. So here, we see the strong operational leverage that we have when we do such acquisitions.

So they are from the first day onwards value enhancing. When you look at Terreal, I would say, what the difference or what the changes in prediction is that we see that the full contribution in EBITDA due to the fact that the markets are not yet picking up will be probably a year more that we gain this EUR 150 million EBITDA contribution. So we have put here the chart clearly in line for you that we expect this contribution a year later. However, as I said, from a synergy and cost perspective, we have already achieved all of it.

Let's look a little bit what we have done so far in this year 2025. Again, here, an interesting set of development because we have focused on water management clearly when it comes to all sorts of innovative features like creating a scalable platform for capturing growth when it comes to water quality to measure the volume of water and to help water companies in managing the water system. So that's WIONIQ, a strongly growing business when it comes to IT-based and artificial intelligence-based solutions for water management.

Then we have done a very important step in Ireland in order to consolidate further the market when it comes to infrastructure, drainage, roofline and cable ducting systems as a consolidation in this market, so fully effective there as well. And then we have bought 100% of our GSEi business. That's a framing business for solar panels. That's not solar panels as such. It's a framing operation where we have now 100% which is growing fast because here, we have this integrated solution for roofs and we grow, not only in France, but especially also outside France very quickly.

So when we look, strategically speaking, infrastructure and renovation are the key drivers also this year in this market circumstances where new residential housing is under pressure. So we will focus on this more in -- when we talk about infrastructure, it's the expansion of our piping operations, water management, especially. Here, we see a high degree of growth potential in all of our markets that we are active in. Keep in mind that Wienerberger is now with its operations in the north of Europe, now clear #1. We grow our business strongly in U.K. and Ireland, and we are also very strongly growing in the Benelux, especially in the Netherlands. And the next focus areas will be the eastern part of Europe where we want to grow this business and obviously also in Western Europe where we see still potential for further growth. So here, organic and inorganic growth is on the list for Wienerberger in the years to come.

Let's move then a little bit to the renovation market. The renovation market is for Wienerberger, especially the roof market. Here with the acquisition of Terreal and now the framing business for solar panels, we see here a strong potential for further growth. We will focus on accessories and parts that the roof needs on the roof and under the roof. We have here the necessary platform to do so. And we have seen that especially in situations where the markets get a little tougher, we have now strong market shares in order to have pricing power on one side, but also to push innovation and solutions through. So these are 2 especially very important markets for growth for Wienerberger.

And if I may, before I hand over to Dagmar, say a general word with respect to acquisitions as such. When we look at the current market environment in North America and in Europe, it offers unique opportunities for Wienerberger for attractive growth. Why? Because a lot of small and midsized companies, family-owned businesses in such difficult moments, they are not only driven by the macroeconomic development, but also the regulatory development, especially in Europe with all the new regulations coming its way. So here, we have a strong potential for further growth in order to expand our operations and to deepen the value creation when we talk about solution businesses on the roof and in the infrastructure field, but also in new residential housing.

So I think here, we are ideally positioned as Wienerberger to grow. We have shown that we are world-class operator when we integrate all these sort of operations very quickly, very efficiently on the platform side when it comes to systems like the whole back office, but on the front office as well due to our strong sales approach in the different geographies that we are active in, so a good base for further growth at Wienerberger.

So Dagmar, I may hand over to you to elaborate a little bit more on the financials. Thank you.

Yes. Thank you very much, Heimo, and a warm welcome from my side here from Vienna as well. I will go now a little bit more into details about our financials. And just to sum it up a little bit, our first 9 months result shows a really solid performance in this weak new build market, as Heimo explained. And our group revenues increased to EUR 3.5 billion, and operating EBITDA came in at EUR 584 million. Our margin amounts to 16.6%.

So let's now look a little bit more into detail and let's have a deeper look at the revenue and operating EBITDA bridge. Our revenue development. We increased our sales by 4% and that is driven, as you can see, by scope. And that's mainly due to our Terreal acquisition where we have a strong roofing performance, and which pays off in the renovation volume increase. Organically, we grew by 1%, what we lost as well on the currency side via translation. If you look at the operating EBITDA, it is slightly below previous year. And organically, we missed our previous year's performance and show there minus 4% and that's due to still ongoing cost inflation and that our pricing overall for the whole group is more or less in par with previous year. And therefore, we didn't manage so far to cover our cost inflation. On the currency side, it's minus 1% or minus EUR 5 million. And our M&A activities gave us EUR 13 million additional EBITDA. Overall, our profitability remains robust, and it's overall demonstrating the flexibility of our operations.

If we now have a look at our segments, starting with Western Europe. There, as you can see, our revenues increased by 8%, and that's a result of strong renovation activities. Roofing is the main driver and Belgium, Netherlands as well as France remain there the top performers. The new residential housing market, of course, is, as already explained, really weak, but we see a meaningful growth in Netherlands there. The U.K. market is difficult for us, especially in new build. But as we are strong in renovation and piping activities there, we outperformed that market as well. Looking at the operating EBITDA, it's up 15%. Of course, part of that is a result of our acquisitions of scope. But we continued to show a solid performance. We have a solid cost management. And therefore, due to higher utilization, we managed to increase our margin.

With that, I would like to come to our development in Eastern Europe. In Eastern Europe, our revenue grew by 2% and that was mainly supported by slightly higher clay block volumes. On the earnings side, operating EBITDA, it's down by minus 7%, but we are still showing a margin of 18.1%. In Eastern Europe, we have very high burdens on cost inflation, especially on the energy side. And there, it's mainly gas. There, we increased, there we had to face very deep increase of prices. Markets are difficult in Eastern Europe as well. And in the new residential housing market, only Hungary shows significant growth and that's due to government support because there they support fixed interest rates for first-time house buyers.

Let's now turn to the development in North America. North America at the moment is quite a difficult market. And of course, what you see in these pictures as well is a negative impact from currency translation. Our external revenues came down by minus 8% and that is due to weaker brick demand and, yes, the difficult markets. Our piping volumes improved, but we faced there due to lower raw material prices as well. Lower prices on our side. Operating EBITDA came in at EUR 106 million, and we still show a very healthy margin of 19%. North America remains for us a really profitable and strategically important region, and we are well positioned for recovery once new residential housing market returns.

In this challenging environment, we have set up a new program, Fit for Growth. And that program, Fit for Growth, that will deliver structural savings across all regions. And what are we doing with that? We are focusing on processes. We want to simplify processes. We want to reduce overhead. We want to become a much more agile organization, and we want to be as fast as possible towards our customers. Part of that program as well is the topic of optimizing production. We target EUR 15 million to EUR 20 million annual savings. That definitely is a run rate. And with that, of course, we want to ensure that we are best-in-class with serving our customers and have a really lean organization.

I already said -- mentioned in our half year call, and of course, it still remains as it is, we face very high-cost inflation, especially on the gas prices. And therefore, I would like to give you a little bit deeper insight how it works. As you know, we are fixing prices for our future volumes of gas which we need and, in the past, we benefited from that quite a lot. So in the years 2024 and 2025, for instance, we are buying gas for prices below market price. Anyhow, the prices we are paying today in 2025 are far above the levels we used to pay in the last year.

Giving you a little bit of an outlook for the year 2026. Due to the development of the market prices for gas, prices compared with the year 2025 came down. We still, of course, fixed a certain amount. But there, in the next year 2026, as far as we are able to see it, as of today, we will not benefit as much as we did in this year and the last years. I hope that will give you a better understanding how energy costs work within our group.

With that, let me turn to our free cash flow. Our free cash flow came in at EUR 155 million, and that's reflecting a solid cash generation for the first 9 months. As you might see, we are a little bit more investing in our working capital compared this previous year, but that's just a seasonal thing because, as you know, we are always building up inventory during the year, especially during the first 9 months. Maintenance CapEx is on the level of previous year, and there's no bigger change in lease payments as well.

Having said that, I would like to move over to our net debt development. Our net debt at the end of September amounts to EUR 1.9 billion and the leverage of that is 2.5. By the year-end 2024, we showed a number of 2.3. As you can see within the development, we have our free cash flow of EUR 155 million. Our growth CapEx and M&A amounts to EUR 105 million. And of course, we paid dividend, and we did some share buybacks, which amount to EUR 135 million. And I can assure you we have an ongoing disciplined CapEx and cash management, and we will keep the leverage stable. And of course, I'm sure that we won't increase last year's number.

So with that, before we come to the outlook, I would just like to sum up the -- for me, most important topics of our performance for the first 9 months. Looking at our macroeconomic environment, we are still facing high mortgage rates. On the other hand, new residential housing market is developing not as stable or positive as we originally expected, except the Netherlands and Hungarian market. And I would like to point out with our performance with these 9 months, we, as Wienerberger, outperformed the ceramic market and the pipe market regarding the market environment.

And with that, I would like to hand over again to Heimo.

Thank you, Dagmar. And I think you made it very clear, and I can only sort of add to that, that in this complex, volatile and really fast-changing environment, Wienerberger has proven that our not only strategy mid and long term, but our sort of proactive management style, focusing on costs and being very quickly when it comes to adjustments and efficiency improvements have proven right. Some of you will say, why didn't you start earlier to talk about a change in the outlook? Because at half year, we said, listen, from a perspective that we see summer months, July, August are always weak months and don't give a lot of indications.

When we look at the performance of quarter 3 and the September especially, we were hopeful that actually the markets as such were picking slightly up or developing in a better way. However, we have unfortunately seen that especially in North America and the U.K. were driving in the other direction. So again, we had here, obviously, to experience not only further declines but a much weaker environment in new residential housing that we originally anticipated.

Obviously, when we gave the full year guidance we said at the beginning of the year, under 2 assumptions, that interest rates would come down and that the new residential housing market will slightly improve, especially in the second half of 2025 and show positive trends. Both didn't materialize. On the contrary, and this is, I think, the strong message that we can send to you. We had to suffer a completely different environment that we originally planned for. And under these circumstances, I think this performance that we show that we are actually better performing than last year in an even lower market environment shows that we really work hard on our things that we can influence.

As Dagmar has shown, we have already implemented the Fit for Growth project again in order to make us even more efficient in more of the businesses. We have proven that from a pricing point of view, we are very disciplined when it comes to pricing and obviously also in digesting a very significant cost increase when it comes to wages, especially labor costs and on the energy side. So all of this coming our way, we had to digest this year. And so I think it has to be seen under these circumstances that we have a very solid, strong performance. The renovation markets are the only markets that remain stable as we have foreseen it. The infrastructure markets took a slight hit also due to the budgeting constraints that especially European countries imposed due to the shift more into defense budgets and to defense spending away from infrastructure. So these are things that we have to look at also from a perspective of current development.

Let's then summarize everything as the performance goes for the rest of the year. Some of you will ask Dagmar and myself already in a couple of minutes, are you really sure you will achieve the EUR 750 million? Yes, we will. The impact of FX, as Dagmar has explained in detail, is also an important one which we need to consider. But like-for-like basis, I think the EUR 750 million is the number that we will achieve. We are working hard. It means also for us a good and very strong quarter 4 where we work on right now and where, as I said, all the measures that we implement ourselves and with which we can influence are playing out in our favor. The rest we have to take as they come.

So this is, I think, a very important and clear message that Wienerberger does everything in order to improve its business in this, I would call it significant slowdown in new residential housing around our market. However, if I think -- and very important also, I think that what Dagmar says, she's keeping really a strict discipline in the company on the net debt position here. You have seen how disciplined we are on the CapEx and the spending side. So at the year-end, we will be in the range of 2.2 to 2.3 EBITDA to net debt. So here, again, strong performance when it comes to the financials of the company and the balance sheet discipline.

Let's not keep out of mind also the midterm and our development. Some of you will say, do you still have the EUR 1.2 billion as a midterm target in mind? Yes, of course. Why? Because obviously the company has this potential to grow to this number, provided that some criteria play out. And we've put here, I think, 4, that are very clear to determine on this slide. First of all, further interest rates cuts have to happen. You have seen how high actually the mortgage rates are. So we need to keep more an eye not on the interest rates in general, but especially mortgage rates and the mortgage policies in the different geographies that we are operating in because it gives a signal of affordability for people to buy into the house -- new residential housing market or not.

Then something which is very interesting to monitor for us is this European Social Housing Plan that might kick in. There's a lot of discussions. We have meeting at the month end again in Brussels with the commissioner and the commission about this. So this could also be of a very important part for the new residential housing market for us in the not-too-distant future. Obviously, potential peace in the Ukraine will boost the whole region of Eastern Europe. And therefore, we hope for that and for the people, especially in the Ukraine. And then also the U.S. market recovery because the potential and the demand level is substantial also in this geography in Canada and the U.S.

However, as I said earlier, the mortgage rates need to come down and a little bit more political stability should be also in the U.S. in order to stimulate the new residential housing market. Under these conditions, I think we are very well positioned in order to achieve this number. And Wienerberger, from an efficiency perspective, cost-based perspective and also the very important industrial base that we have now is a very strong one that we can work on and continue.

I think what you should take away from this call, that is more than a quarter call because we gave you some update on strategy, also the importance of the migration of this business, Wienerberger, from new residential to a much broader business and the resilient business proves right, gives the group a very strong direction when it comes to stability in cash flows and in margins, but also growth base for the future. And I think the U.K. and Ireland is a very, very good example. If you compare the 2, the U.K. and Ireland to North America. North America, we are still very exposed to new residential housing. That's why we'll take a hit there as far as profitability is concerned. And when we look our performance compared to the competitors that are more into new residential housing in U.K. especially, it's a much stronger one, it's a much more resilient one and margin-wise, a much better one because the business is already very balanced when it comes to infrastructure and renovation.

So I would like to close on these statements strategically and thank you very much for your attention. And Dagmar and myself, as always, will take your questions.

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from the line from Yassine Touahri from On Field Investment Research.

I think I would have 2 questions. First, I think you had cost inflation of 4%, 5% in 2025. You're expecting, I understand, a bit more energy inflation in 2026. Should we expect more of a mid-single-digit cost inflation next year? Or should we expect something similar to what we've seen in 2025? That would be my first question.

Then my second question is that we've seen so far that prices has been very broadly stable. So I think you've not been able to offset this cost inflation and all the benefit from the savings that you've been implementing have been absorbed by this cost inflation. How do you think about next year? Have you already started to announce price increase?

Do you see your competitor announcing price increase in an environment where the volume is a bit more muted that you were initially expecting? Do you believe that any price increase that have been announced could stick? Would be great to get a sense of the scenario that we've seen in 2025 where a lot of your efforts are absorbed by cost inflation could be [ overproduced ] or not next year?

Thank you very much, by the way, for these very important questions. I will leave, if I may, Dagmar, to you on the cost inflation side, and we'll focus on the price side to start with. I think we have shown a great discipline in pricing throughout the group this year. And you are absolutely right in such an environment, especially the new build sector, it's difficult to increase prices. However, we were able to do so in some geographies, so that cannot be sort of said with respect to the whole group right now. And 2026, it's too early to give here a statement.

However, as always, we start in November working on the markets, working with our customers to prepare them. So you will see a more detailed picture, I would say, in March of next year. If they stick or not, we will certainly do something in the pricing. It's not going to be huge steps, but I would say sufficient steps, and this is what we are going to work on for '26. But as I say, it's a difficult market environment when we talk about new residential housing. So I don't expect here big jumps, but we always work on this very hard in order to improve renovation and infrastructure will be a little different. I hand over to Dagmar.

Yes. Well, regarding cost inflation, yes, we face cost inflation between 4%, 4.5% for the running year. And yes, we will see some cost inflation, of course, next year as well. But I don't expect it to be at the level of the cost inflation 2025. And regarding the energy, what I try to explain regarding our gas price, what we are paying in the year 2026, that will be not above market price. But as we benefited from energy fixing in the running year, we will face some kind of inflation regarding the energy prices in the year 2026.

So just to understand on inflation, how the -- the 4% to 4.5% that you're seeing in 2025, is it mostly -- it's a mix of labor costs and energy costs. When you look at 2026, what would be the difference? You would see less labor cost inflation and energy inflation, something similar. So overall you would expect something which is less than the 4% to 4.5% that we're seeing in 2025. Is that the right way to look at it?

That's the right way to look at it, yes.

And -- but it's too early for you to give an idea if it's closer to 2% or 3% or 4%.

Yes, that's too early because we are still in the phase of preparing everything. And of course, there are price movements on the cost side as well. It will be below the inflation of the running year, but it's too early, far too early to give you a decent number.

So -- and then we have the next question from the line from Cedar Ekblom.

I just had a question on that cost point again. Just to confirm that 4% to 4.5% is across all buckets of costs, so energy, labor, et cetera. Could you give us a little bit of color on what the actual portion was for your fixed cost buckets? So that's the first question, just get a little bit of differentiation there. And then can you just remind us, there's a couple of cost-cutting programs that are now in the business and we've got the new announcement today. Can you just remind us how to think about efficiency gains into next year? Is it just the EUR 15 million to EUR 20 million or is there anything also coming from other programs that have been in place in this business for some time?

Thank you, Cedar, for the very spot on questions. Let me say something on the cost saving side and the program. The Fit for Growth is obviously, as Dagmar explained, a new program that will be added onto the existing ones. You remember that we said that the existing ones have come to an end and have proven to be very effective in the business. So they will obviously produce some additional input also next year because they are running these programs and they're not finished yet, as you correctly pointed out. So these will be to be added on, and Dagmar will give by all due means and respect a number at the beginning of next year. And I think if you bear with us a little bit, I think we are putting together budgets right now and in this volatile times, it's not easy.

We have also indicated to you that we would like to give you a much more detailed outlook and overview of the business early next year in a Capital Markets Day. So I think if you can sort of be patient with us on this subject to give you here a clear update. But to answer the questions, the EUR 15 million to EUR 20 million will be the new program running rate for -- as we speak from next year onwards and some inflow comes also from the existing program, Cedar. And for the cost structure and the fixed cost, I hand over to Dagmar, please.

Yes. Our cost structure is mainly dominated by personnel expenses. They account for roughly above 30% of our overall costs and our energy costs are 10% of our overall costs. And these 2, yes, portions dominate, of course, our cost inflation and all the rest, if it's like raw material, if it's rents, if it's consultants, IT costs, whatsoever, of course, there we face cost inflation as well. But on the other hand, if we have a very disciplined way to approach that, we manage to keep it low. And therefore, I would like to reduce for you our main cost drivers regarding inflation just to energy and personnel expenses.

That's really helpful. What I'm trying to understand is, can you give us a bit of color on what the sort of personnel expense inflation is? Because what I'm trying to break out is cost inflation on items that are within your control relative to cost inflation on the energy side of things, which obviously you can do your hedging, but to some extent that's much more a factor that you can't control. So could you give us a number for personnel cost inflation if the overall cost is 4% to 4.5%?

Well, the cost inflation regarding personnel expenses in the running year in 2025 is roughly for the group overall at 5%, and it will be below 5% 2026.

Cedar, keep in mind that we had higher cost inflation, obviously, in Eastern Europe also this running year. You remember when we told you that there is pressure in the labor market and especially in Eastern Europe, strong increases on labor and the collective bargaining agreements. So this is, I think, what Dagmar was referring to.

We now have a question from the line -- by now the last question from Julian Radlinger.

A couple ones left for me. So first of all, the implied Q4 guidance means that EBITDA in Q4 could actually be up year-on-year, despite all the headwinds you've called out. And so if that's the outcome, I'm just wondering what would that be driven by? Is that volume? Is that cost management? In what scenario would EBITDA be up in the fourth quarter?

And then secondly, so your margins actually expanded in Western Europe in Q3 on a year-on-year basis. Is that a clean result? Is that just higher capacity utilization like you wrote in the presentation? Or is there any kind of one-off effects in there that we should be aware of? And then just maybe a very quick last one. How much of your energy costs are now fixed for 2026? So how much visibility at this point do you have? I know it's usually quite a lot on a 12-month forward basis.

Dagmar, may I hand over to you to do this or if you want me, then you say.

No, no, that's fine. I do it. I will start with the energy. There, we fixed roughly overall for the whole group between 50% and 60% of the volume. And so there is still a lot of room for movement. Your question regarding our Q3 results, if there are any major one-offs? No, there are not any major one-offs included in our Q3 results. And it's a result of our strong performance in renovation and outperforming the market environment. And of course, regarding our cost discipline, things starting to pay off. And if we look at our adjusted full year outlook for the running year, if we deliver EUR 750 million operating EBITDA, that, of course -- it's mathematic. It's very easy.

It means that we have to reach in the first -- in the fourth quarter of the running year something between -- above EUR 160 million EBITDA. And that, of course, is above previous year. And I mean, we -- yes, at the moment, we are overall in our pricing more or less stable on the previous year's level. But as we told you, we see markets where we a little outperform even on the pricing side, the markets, we have, our initiatives, the running ones, the Fit for Growth, where we benefit from. And therefore, we are confident to deliver.

There are no more virtual hands at this time. I would like to turn the conference back over to Therese Jander for any closing remarks.

Thank you. I would like to state firstly that our -- you should save the date for our next Capital Markets Day, which we have scheduled now for the 24th of February next year. So just wanted to add that to the conversation and we will get you more information when it's a little bit closer. And by this, I would like to thank you all for joining us today and for all your questions, and we truly appreciate your engagement. And therefore, we also hope to see you again for our next results call, which is on the 18th of February. Until then, take care and goodbye from all of us here at Wienerberger.

May I just add something, Therese? In the name of Dagmar and myself, we all wish you a happy ending towards the year because with some of you we won't meet personally. So enjoy this season and all the best in this very volatile times and exciting times. But I think we gave you a good outlook for Wienerberger as far as our markets are concerned and be assured that Dagmar and myself will have our hands full for the rest of the year, as she said. So all the best and see you soon.

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