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Operator: Welcome to Intrusion Inc.'s Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Earnings Conference Call and Webcast. [Operator Instructions] Please note this conference call is being recorded. An audio replay of the conference call will be available on the company's website within a few hours after this call. I would now like to turn the call over to Josh Carroll with Investor Relations. Josh Carroll: Thank you, and welcome. Joining me today are Tony Scott, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Kimberly Pinson, Chief Financial Officer. This call is being webcast and will be archived on the Investor Relations section of our website. Before I turn the call over to Tony, I'd like to remind everyone that the statements made during this conference call related to the company's expected future performance, future business prospects, future events or plans may include forward-looking statements as defined under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Please refer to our SEC filings for more information on the specific risk factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from the projections described in today's conference call. Any forward-looking statements that we make on this call are based upon information that we believe as of today, and we undertake no obligation to update these statements as a result of new information or future events. In addition to U.S. GAAP reporting, we report certain financial measures that do not conform to generally accepted accounting principles. During the call, we may use non-GAAP measures if we believe it is useful to investors, or if we believe it will help investors better understand our performance or business trends. With that, let me now turn the call over to Tony for a few opening remarks. Anthony Scott: Well, thank you, Josh, and good afternoon, and thank you all for joining us today. Fiscal year 2025 was a year that had an unexpected beginning and an unexpected ending along with a number of significant product milestones along the way. At the beginning of the year, we improved our balance sheet by fully eliminating our then outstanding debt and Series A preferred stock. At midyear, we rolled out production of our critical infrastructure solution to help safeguard essential assets like water, power and telecom facilities. In the third and fourth quarter, we expanded our access to our Shield Cloud solution by making 2 variations of the product available on the AWS marketplace. And towards the end of the year, we announced our partnership with PortNexus to provide secure network protection for their MyFlare safety technology, which is being deployed at schools in several states. In conjunction with PortNexus, we also launched the P.O.S.S.E program, which will give sheriffs and other law enforcement agencies critical network protection for their public safety networks. And our pilot experience with the P.O.S.S.E program is encouraging with a high adoption rate so far. And finally, we ended the year with an unexpected delay in the extension of the earlier mentioned critical infrastructure contract with the Department of War. And I'll start my detailed remarks with some more insight about this unexpected end-of-year development. Kim will provide more details on the overall numbers shortly, but our fourth quarter revenues decreased by 12%, compared to the prior year period as a result of the delayed timing of an expected contract extension for our critical infrastructure technology. But for this delay, we had expected to show quarter-on-quarter increases in revenue, and greater year-over-year increase in revenue overall. Now to be clear, the cost of providing the services for this critical infrastructure solution are included in our operating expenses, but the expected revenue is not and will show up in later periods when the contract is extended. The timing of this contract extension was and remains affected by the operational and administrative constraints associated with the U.S. government shutdown, which limited agencies' ability to initiate and process contract actions during that period. And the situation is further impacted by the events related to the war in Iran unfolding currently. This delay in funding reflects a broader trend, affecting companies with U.S. government contracts, particularly those operating within the defense sector. And while we're disappointed by this delay, we do believe that we will be able to recognize this revenue during the first half of 2026 once procurement activity normalizes, and we are continuing to support and enhance the solution that we have provided, and we look for further expansion of this solution in other regions in 2026. We're proud of our partnership with the U.S. Department of War and the critical role we play in protecting national security through our advanced cyber capabilities. We continue to view the critical infrastructure solution that we have rolled out with the Department of War as one of the key drivers of future growth, especially as cyber threats become more frequent and more sophisticated. To convert this opportunity into future growth, we've recently taken targeted steps to enhance our sales efforts and go-to-market strategy, and I'll discuss these initiatives in more detail shortly, but they are specifically designed to expand our customer base across the private sector as well as federal state and local government markets. Turning now to some fourth quarter developments. During the quarter, we announced the launch of our Shield Cloud offering on the AWS marketplace, expanding the opportunity for customers to access our Shield technology. Additionally, we've launched our Shield Cloud offering on Microsoft's Azure platform and it's now live. With availability across both leading cloud marketplaces, we've meaningfully expanded our sales reach, which will help enhance our customer pipeline and drive future revenue growth. On top of this customer access expansion effort, we've also continued to strategically invest in R&D to help provide enhanced offerings to our customers. This is evident by the recent launch of Shield Stratus, a cloud-native packet filtering solution that inspects every connection and blocks known threats immediately without the complexity or re-architecture required by traditional firewalls. Shield Stratus integrates seamlessly with AWS gateway load balancer and is a great addition to our Shield ecosystem. Now on to some of the more recent developments during the first few months of 2026. As you may recall, we began a partnership with PortNexus in 2025, who chose to embed our Shield endpoint solution into their MyFlare solution that helps provide enhanced security for education and law enforcement customer endpoints. In February, we expanded our partnership with PortNexus by launching the P.O.S.S.E program that utilizes our Shield On-Premise technology to help protect law enforcement from cyber threats. The program achieved high levels of adoption during the initial pilot. And in the pilot program, Intrusion Shield technology identified and stopped dozens of active threats. The program is now scaling across Texas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Iowa through our partnership with PortNexus. And this partnership provides distribution access to hundreds of sheriffs' departments, schools and government facilities, so an exciting development, and we look forward to working closely with PortNexus to help expand this program and increase the adoption of our technology. We also recently took steps to expand our business development efforts with the hiring of Valencia Reaves as our Public Sector Vice President of Sales; and Patrick Duggan is our Director of Channel Sales & Partnerships. These 2 additions to our team will help strengthen our U.S. business development efforts across the government sector and our channel partners. Now briefly on to our financials for the quarter and the year. Total revenues for 2025 were $7.1 million, up 23% year-over-year. This top line growth was largely driven by the contract expansion with the U.S. Department of War that I touched on earlier. Fourth quarter revenue was $1.5 million, a decrease of [ 25% ] sequentially, which was the result of the delay in the incremental funding of the Department of War contract that I previously referred to. Our operating expenses also saw a slight increase during both the quarter and the year. This increase in our expense reflects deliberate strategic investments to strengthen our business and position us to achieve our goal of creating sustainable growth and long-term profitability as well as the costs associated with the critical infrastructure deployment and operation I mentioned before. We've made meaningful progress against our goals, and we believe we're on track to breakeven operations. And finally, before I turn the call over to Kim, I'd like to wrap up by addressing some of the recent AI trends that we're seeing in the cybersecurity space. As I'm sure many of you are aware, the recent emergence of cloud code security has caused a bit of a shakeup in the cybersecurity space as some fear of this tool will change the industry by eliminating defects in software. However, I do not view this development as a threat to cybersecurity companies such as Intrusion, but more as a promising tailwind for the industry. While improved code quality is more than welcome, it's only one aspect of the landscape of cybersecurity vulnerabilities. And in fact, the rapid adoption of AI has materially increased cybersecurity risk as it has significantly reduced the cost, the technical expertise and the time required to develop and execute highly sophisticated and scalable attacks. As a result, this is only going to increase the need for cybersecurity solutions, such as the ones that we provide to our customers that help catch these malicious actors before they can cause harm. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Kim for a more detailed review of our fourth quarter and full year financial results. Kim? Kimberly Pinson: Thanks, Tony, and good afternoon, everyone. Fourth quarter results totaled $1.5 million in revenue, a decrease of 25%, compared to the prior quarter, and 12% when compared to the prior year period, as noted earlier on the call. This was due to the delayed incremental funding of a major U.S. government contract. The timing of this award was affected by funding and procurement constraints associated with the U.S. government shutdown and continuing resolution, which affected agency's ability to approve and initiate new contract actions during the period. We believe the delay in this contract award is primarily timing related and anticipate that a substantial portion of the delayed revenue associated with this contract will be recognized in future periods. Consulting revenues totaled $1.1 million in the fourth quarter, compared to $1.5 million in the prior quarter and $1.3 million in the prior year quarter. Shield revenues totaled $0.4 million in the fourth quarter, compared to $0.5 million in the prior quarter and $0.3 million in the fourth quarter of 2024. We anticipate that the sale of our OT Defender solution and other departments of the U.S. government as well as commercially will contribute to future growth. Additionally, during 2025, we partnered with PortNexus to integrate our Shield technology into its MyFlare Alert School Safety solution. Although sales to PortNexus did not materially impact 2025 revenues, the expanded pipeline for this offering is expected to support future Shield revenue growth. Fourth quarter gross profit margin was 74%, which was slightly down from the prior year period. For the full year, gross profit margin was 76%, down approximately 93 basis points versus 2024. Operating expenses in the fourth quarter of 2025 totaled $4 million, an increase of $0.3 million sequentially, and $0.8 million year-over-year. The fourth quarter increase both sequentially and compared to prior year was primarily driven by higher sales and marketing expenses reflecting increased participation in trade shows and expanded brand awareness and product marketing programs. For the full year, operating expenses totaled $14.5 million, an increase of $1.7 million, compared to 2024. In addition to the increased sales and marketing expense, the full year increase primarily related to onetime savings realized in 2024 from the negotiation or cancellation of existing contracts, which contributed $0.5 million in savings in 2024. Increased share-based compensation of $0.8 million from equity grants made in the first quarter of 2025 and cost of living and merit increases of $0.3 million. Net loss for the fourth quarter of 2025 was $2.8 million or $0.14 per share, compared to a net loss of $2 million for the fourth quarter of 2024. The increased fourth quarter net loss is the result of the reduction in revenues resulting from the delay in the incremental funding of government contract and increased operating expense. Net loss for the full year was $9.1 million or $0.46 per share, a $1.3 million increase from the prior year. Turning to the balance sheet. From a liquidity perspective, on December 31, 2025, we had cash and cash equivalents of $3.6 million. Looking ahead, we plan to seek a small debt financing in the near term to help further support our growth initiatives. We have already begun to have some initial discussions, and we'll provide an additional update on the debt financing during our first quarter earnings call. With that, I'd like to turn the call back over to Tony for a few closing comments. Tony? Anthony Scott: Thank you, Kim. 2025 was a year of meaningful progress for Intrusion from a product development standpoint and was marked by several key improvements, including new products. And while this progress was encouraging, we're not satisfied, and we realize that we have some significant work ahead of us. As we look to the remainder of '26, we will be doubling down on our sales efforts to expand our customer base to further improve our top line growth. We're confident that we have both the right people and the products in place that will help us achieve our goal of creating sustainable growth and long-term profitability. And before I wrap up, I want to extend my gratitude to our employees. The progress we've made this past year is a direct reflection of their dedication and hard work. And to our shareholders, we deeply appreciate your patience and steadfast support throughout this journey. And with that, I'll now turn the call over to the operator for Q&A. Operator: [Operator Instructions] Your first question is coming from Scott Buck from H.C. Wainwright. Scott Buck: Tony, I'm curious, can you provide a little more granularity on the unit economics of the P.O.S.S.E program? Like what is the average contract value for a typical sheriffs' department deployment? And what do the sales cycles look like with your partnership with PortNexus? Anthony Scott: Sure. Well, the device that they select will depend a lot on the network bandwidth that they need at the sheriffs' department. So those could range from a few thousand dollars up to tens of thousands of dollars depending on the size and bandwidth requirements of the particular sheriff. In the case of the pilots, we use some of our lower-end appliances. So it's a few thousand dollars in terms of unit pricing on those. But what I'm encouraged by is when we -- as we've experienced everywhere else, once we show the network traffic that's getting through the traditional firewalls and other technologies they have in place and also show the outbound traffic that should be blocked -- that's not currently being blocked, it makes the sale pretty quickly. So we're seeing a high adoption rate and we're going to expand into these other states, as I mentioned on the call. And the way it works is we loan them a unit, it goes in for a week to 10 days. We do a report and show them the traffic that we see and would have blocked if we've been in place, and they love it. So we're doubling down on that. We're increasing the number of POC units, and we'll see where it takes us. So that's kind of the way it works. Scott Buck: That's very helpful. And then I wanted to clarify something in your prepared remarks. Did you say that had you not had the delay from the government contract during the quarter that we would have seen sequential revenue growth from the third quarter? Anthony Scott: Yes. Yes. That is correct -- that is correct. Yes, we were expecting to report growth, both for the quarter and -- quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year above and beyond what we reported on the year-on-year. Scott Buck: So it's safe to assume that contract delay cost you at least $0.5 million in the quarter? Anthony Scott: Yes. Scott Buck: Yes. Perfect. And then, Kim, I wanted to ask about sales and marketing expense. I think it's the highest quarterly level of spend, maybe ever. Is this the new run rate? Or given some of the comments during the call, could we expect further investment in sales in 2026? Kimberly Pinson: We will continue to invest in sales and marketing. What we saw in the first quarter approximates the run rate, but we will see some increases from here. Anthony Scott: Scott, I'd also add, we're looking for cost efficiencies elsewhere. So it's important for us now to improve that sales and marketing muscle, and we'll look for other efficiencies elsewhere as we buttress up that capability. Scott Buck: Okay. So we may not see as material an increase in total operating expense because some of those dollars will... Anthony Scott: Could be offset... Scott Buck: Could come from other buckets? Anthony Scott: Yes. exactly. Operator: Your next question is coming from Ed Woo from Ascendiant Capital. Edward Woo: Did I hear you right that you said for the delayed contract that some of your expenses have already flown through the P&L already... Anthony Scott: That's correct. We've taken all the expenses associated with that. We just are not able to recognize the revenue at this point. Edward Woo: Okay. And then... Anthony Scott: I'm sorry? What that means is when the revenue does come, it will show up in a subsequent quarter, but the expense will already have been recognized. Edward Woo: Okay. So that would be a 100% margin when it comes through? Anthony Scott: Pretty nearly, yes. Edward Woo: Okay. And then are you seeing any -- what about the sales cycle pipeline for commercial customers? Have you seen any delays, any lengthening of sales cycle? Any concerns that you're hearing from Chief Information Officers out there? Anthony Scott: Beyond the government sector, no real change. I think the one concern that we hear all the time is that the dwell time for threats is getting shorter and shorter and shorter, which means you have to react faster than ever, once some suspicious activity is noted. And I think that bodes well for Intrusion's technology because we don't rely on the presence of malware or other known signatures, we're heavily focused on reputation, which means that we can stop things in real time versus waiting for something bad to happen and then have to react to it and then remediate and so on. So we're currently having some discussions with MSSPs and so on who are attracted to that kind of capability because it helps get out in front of these attacks versus waiting for an attack to actually happen. Operator: Your next question is coming from Howard Brous from Wellington Shield. Howard Brous: A couple of questions. Tony, critical infrastructure customers that you have, can you give us a general sense of what kind of customer it is? And is he happy with the work? Is this basically expandable for that particular customer? Anthony Scott: Yes. So this solution is protecting critical water infrastructure in the Asia-Pac region, and the customer is very happy with the solution. It's working as designed, and we continue to support it. And I think there's tremendous opportunities for this to expand beyond the region where it is now. We're doing one island right now in Asia-Pac. But as you know, there's a lot of islands that the Department of War has interest in, in that particular region. And so I think the revenue opportunity that comes from this is multiplied by the number of islands that still need this kind of protection. And that's not to mention the domestic facilities as well, which fall under Homeland Security jurisdiction generally. And with our new sales capability that I mentioned on the call, we're targeting those places as well. And we've got great customer reference from this initial deployment. So we're pretty excited about the revenue opportunity in '26 and going forward. There's a lot of this critical infrastructure around, whether it's water or telecom or electrical grid kinds of things, and our solution is tailorable to each of those environments. Howard Brous: So let me digress for a moment and talk about schools children. You install this in a school, and my understanding it's in every school room, every classroom and can be activated by a teacher if there is a potential event happening, where somebody is coming into the school with a weapon. Is that fair comment? Anthony Scott: Correct. Yes, that's the PortNexus solution that we're partners with. Yes. Howard Brous: Right. So you've got thousands of school districts throughout the country, why isn't everyone adopting this? It protects our children. There's nothing more important than that. How are you going about marketing this? Anthony Scott: Well, with PortNexus, we're attending events, where school administrators look for technology. We're also marketing, as we mentioned, to the sheriffs' department because -- or whoever the local law enforcement agency is that's associated with a particular school district because it takes the combination of them to really adopt the solution. The good news is it's very inexpensive. I've mentioned a couple of people. It's the kind of thing that, in many cases, the local PTA could fund even if the school couldn't afford to do it. But you're right. I think once you see the demo of this capability and the situational awareness that it brings to the law enforcement of people within seconds of an event occurring, it's a why wouldn't we want to have this kind of thing. And so we're really looking forward to 2026 to expand this greatly across lots of markets in the U.S. Howard Brous: And how your reception so far has been? Anthony Scott: It's been outstanding, yes. Again, once you see it, you go, dah, why would I ever want to be without this kind of thing. And parenthetically, I'll say it could apply to other public venues as well. It doesn't necessarily only get marketed to schools. But any place where people gather and there's a potential for disruptions, whether it's active shooters or fire or any other kind of an event that might be disruptive, it's really important for law enforcement to get situational awareness as quickly as possible. And this PortNexus solution allows for multiple perspectives to get that situational awareness as well as alerting the authorities very quickly when an event happens. It shaves minutes off of that critical first few minutes when you have a potential to avert disaster. And I don't know anybody who's ever seen it that doesn't think that's a good idea so... Howard Brous: Anything to protect our children is a very good idea. Can you talk about... Anthony Scott: You got it. Howard Brous: No doubt about that. Talk about the kind of cost? Is it per student, per classroom, per school? Anthony Scott: It's per classroom. The PortNexus solution would go into the classroom in the case of a school and attached to or become part of the smart whiteboard that's in the classroom and then school resource officers and teachers and anybody else that should be registered -- gets registered to that location. And then in the event of an incident, the panic button gets pushed, a text goes to all the preregistered cell phones. It turns the cell phone into lights up the camera and the microphone and the GPS signal and all of that gets fed to the law enforcement authorities along with video from the fixed cameras that usually are already installed in the school. So when an event happens, the law enforcement authorities have great situational awareness and location information from multiple perspectives, it's invaluable. And we license to PortNexus the network protection aspect of it. So the revenue we get comes from the number of classrooms and then the number of schools within the school district. Howard Brous: And the margins on this are high margins... Anthony Scott: So for us, it's very high, yes, because we don't actually have to go do any install or anything. We just license our software, PortNexus' team is responsible for the installs and first-level support and so on. So it's almost pure profit for us. Howard Brous: This is a big deal. Anything to protect our children, that's a good thing. Anthony Scott: You got it. Operator: Your next question comes from James Green. Unknown Analyst: My question concerns the potential emerging technologies and the ability for your technology to interface with those things. And I'm specifically thinking about as we move forward into a day in an era, where we have humanoid robots and we have autonomous cars, we have an imminent threat, where if they're compromised they can be an immediate danger if someone compromises it. Anthony Scott: Hello. I think we may have lost you, or I couldn't hear the rest of your question. Hello, can anyone hear me? Operator: Apologies. James Green's line has disconnected. Anthony Scott: Okay. Well, I think the question was -- I'll try to answer as best I can. Yes, there's more and more software, more and more autonomous things, whether it's robots or everything in your house, the emergence of AI and everything, I think widens the aperture for cybersecurity risk significantly. And our fundamental belief is that if you're not monitoring the network that all of these things need to operate on, if you're not monitoring it in real time packet-by-packet in multiple places in your network, you're likely to miss important things that would allow you to avert a disaster. And that's what Intrusion Shield does. We look at every packet in near real time and we make a decision about whether that packet is likely good or likely bad or unknown in some cases, and we make a decision. And I have used the analogy, it's like having continuous blood monitoring in your body. Most people get their blood drawn once a year when they go to physical exam, but some bad condition might have existed for almost a year, and you wouldn't know it until you get your blood drawn and get it tested. In our case, we're doing the equivalent of looking at every single drop of blood in the body all the time, every time it moves through the body, and that allows us to very quickly detect when there's something untoward going on. And so I think that type of protection is what's going to be more and more and more important as things move forward, specifically with AI and more and more software in our lives. The threat landscape just got a whole lot bigger and needs to be monitored and managed. Operator: And James Green, your line is connected and live. Unknown Analyst: Sorry, I accidentally got the line disconnected, so I missed the beginning of what you said. But since I missed the beginning, my question was, based off those emerging technologies, et cetera, is the current form factor or technology that you all utilize? Is it easily interfaced with those potential technologies? Or is there some minor alteration necessary to be able to utilize them in that? Anthony Scott: Yes. We -- yes, so the answer to that is we can attach to the network in any form that it occurs, whether it's wired or wireless or in the cloud or in a data center or in a home for that matter. And the important thing, as I was saying in my earlier answer is to be really safe, you need to be monitoring the network each and every packet all the time and monitoring from multiple places in your network to be assured that everything that is going on in the network is desirable and necessary even in some cases. So yes, we're very flexible in that regard. And we have put the R&D effort into making sure we can handle increasingly large bandwidth as that becomes a necessity. So I think we're well prepared for the future in that regard. Unknown Analyst: Okay. And 1 other question, which is since we have all these scenarios where people are going to have local agentic things running on their own potentially private networks walking back off a cloud, the speculation that companies might be trying to have all their things working within their own system, is there a way in which the technology deals with the agentic element even internally? Anthony Scott: Yes. I think to the degree that all of these agentic tools will use the network that allows us to monitor what that activity is. And I think you're going to see in 2026, I've made this prediction a number of times, you're going to see some pretty big accidents caused by unrestrained AI, where people lose something that got out of control somehow, whether it's privacy violation or whether it's a violation of releasing intellectual property in an unwarranted way. Who knows what it could be. But I think it's easily predictable that that's going to happen in '26. And for us, the only safeguard against that kind of thing is continuous real-time network monitoring, so that the nanosecond something bad happens that you can stop it and shut off its activities. So we think we're in a good spot as all of these things come to fruition. Unknown Analyst: So like within a local network, if there's agentic misbehavior, it can be controlled from being able to infect ones outside connected potentially? Anthony Scott: Yes. Yes. One of the characteristics of malware already today, even without AI, is what's known as a call home, an infected device inside the network makes a call home to a command-and-control server externally and looks for instructions in some cases or just reports its presence in the network, where it finds itself resident and then often waits for instruction on what to do next, launch a phishing campaign or launch some sort of other kind of attack. And Intrusion technology is particularly good at stopping those call homes that would otherwise be very dangerous. Now I'll say what we don't do is we don't go fix the device that had the problem. We just point you to it and say, this device over here has apparently got a problem. It's generating call homes to undesirable place. But most managed service providers and managed service security providers and institutions already have the tools to do remediation. What they lack is the early detection of that activity, and that's where Intrusion comes in. Operator: [Operator Instructions] Your next question is coming from Jerry Yanowitz [indiscernible] Unknown Analyst: Tony, last quarter, you opened your comments by saying you're pleased to report that during the third quarter, we continue our path towards achieving our goal of creating sustainable growth and long-term profitability. Today, you opened by saying you're on the path to breakeven operations. My question is, in what quarter do you expect to have those breakeven operations? Anthony Scott: Well, can you tell me when we're going to have another government shutdown or CR... Unknown Analyst: Assuming no government shutdown and no CR, what quarter would you expect to have breakeven operations? Anthony Scott: I would -- well, it depends on new contracts that we signed. As I mentioned, we think this critical infrastructure solutions got pretty big legs. Our first contract for that was a $3 million roughly annual contract, and it wouldn't take too many more of those to get us to that goal. So it's all dependent on timing in '26 of when we would get those. But we think we're in a good position to land more of those in '26 than we did in '25 and whether it's 2 or 3 or whatever. Unknown Analyst: Would you be extremely disappointed if you weren't breakeven in the third quarter of this year? Anthony Scott: Yes is the answer. I was disappointed that we weren't breakeven right now, to be honest with you. We thought we were on a path to get there more quickly than we have been, and that's life. And there's probably some mistakes that we made that we, in retrospect, would do differently. But I think -- I still think we're on the right path, and I'm pretty optimistic that '26 is our year. Unknown Analyst: All right. So by the third quarter, we should expect to see that as shareholders? Anthony Scott: I would hope so, yes. And I'm a shareholder, so... Unknown Analyst: You have skin in the game, so I appreciate it. Anthony Scott: Yes. Operator: Thank you. At this time, there are no other questions in the queue. I'll turn the call back over to our host, Mr. Tony Scott, for any closing remarks. Anthony Scott: Well, as I said before, I just want to thank everybody for your interest in Intrusion. As I said at the beginning, it was a year that was unexpected in many respects. And I look forward to the progress that we can make in '26 with a little more stability and a little more predictability coming our way. We've made, I think, all the right investments in our tech. We've begun the strategic investments in our sales and marketing capability that, frankly, we've lacked over the last couple of years. If I had to look back, I probably was a little too slow in building up that muscle. But I'm very pleased with the team that we have now, and they're showing remarkable ability to get us into places that -- and talk to people that we hadn't been talking to over the last couple of years. So that gives me hope. These are experienced sales and marketing people, and it's just a pleasure to work with them and see the progress every single day. So I'm appreciative of everyone's patience. I know it's been a long grueling road. But I remain optimistic and excited about what we can do together in '26. So appreciate everybody's time today, and I look forward to speaking with you at the next earnings call or maybe some announcements even before then. Thanks. Operator: Thank you. Everyone, this concludes today's event. You may disconnect at this time, and have a wonderful day. Thank you for your participation.
Operator: Hello, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to AAR Corp. Third Quarter Fiscal Year 2026 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]. I would now like to hand the conference over to Chris Tillett, Vice President, Investor Relations. You may begin. Chris Tillett: Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to AAR's Fiscal Year 2026 Third Quarter Earnings Conference Call. We're joined today by John Holmes, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Dylan Wolin, Chief Financial Officer. Presentation we are sharing today as part of this webcast can be found under the Investor Relations section on our corporate website. Comments made during the call will include forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements. Accordingly, these statements are no guarantee of future performance. These risks and uncertainties are discussed in the company's earnings release and the Risk Factors section of the company's annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended May 31, 2025. In providing the forward-looking statements, the company assumes no obligation to provide updates to reflect future circumstances or anticipated or unanticipated events. Certain non-GAAP financial information will be discussed during the call today. Reconciliations of these non-GAAP measures to the most comparable GAAP measures are set forth in the company's earnings release and slides. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to John Holmes. John Holmes: Great. Thank you, Chris, and welcome, everyone, to our third quarter fiscal year 2026 earnings conference call. I'll begin with key messages for the quarter on Slide 3. First, this was another outstanding quarter for AAR. Our focused business model is driving growth that is delivering durable results in both commercial and government end markets as evidenced by our third quarter performance. . Second, we continued our momentum in the quarter and delivered 25% growth in total sales, 31% growth in adjusted operating income and 26% growth in both adjusted EBITDA and adjusted earnings per share for the period. We saw growth across each of our parts, repair and software platform activities in the quarter. Total sales increase included 14% organic adjusted sales growth led by 36% organic growth in our new parts distribution activity. Third, we are continuing to execute across key initiatives advancing our strategic priorities. For example, in Repair & Engineering, the integration of HAECO Americas is ahead of schedule, and our hanger expansions are on track with Oklahoma City now complete, and I am expected to be operational later this summer. In parts supply, ADI is performing above expectations, and we continue to drive outsized growth in our new parts distribution activities. Also, our Trax software platform continues to gain momentum by growing its base of recurring revenue with new and existing customers. Finally, we are carefully managing our balance sheet for their strategic flexibility as we maintain our disciplined approach to capital allocation. We ended the third quarter with net leverage within our target range, supported by our strong operating cash flow in the period. Before I go to Slide 4, I would like to welcome Dylan Wolin back to AAR as the company's new Chief Financial Officer. Dylan was with the company from 2017 to 2024, it was instrumental in developing the strategy we are executing today. I would also like to thank Sarah Flan again for doing an outstanding job as our interim CFO over the last few months. I'm proud to be part of such a strong team. I also want to talk for a moment about the current environment. We are closely monitoring the events in the Middle East that have been in constant contact with our customers. And many of our customers have said publicly, Fundamental demand for air travel remains wrong with bookings at record levels even since the start of the conflict. While some customers may make modest capacity adjustments, at this time, we are not anticipating any meaningful impact to their maintenance schedules or need for parts. They continue to tell us they are preparing for a busy summer travel season, and we are planning accordingly. What's more, AAR is competitively positioned as an independent value-added aftermarket solution provider, which makes us a compelling solution for our customers as they look to reduce spending when fuel costs rise. Additionally, one of the benefits of AAR portfolio is our exposure to government and defense end markets. Over the decade, this balance between government and commercial markets has been a real advantage. On that note, the government side of our business is benefiting from a general need for increased operational readiness in the U.S. military. Our government customers today comprise roughly 30% of our sales and represented across all segments. AAR has a long history of working on some of the most critical aircraft for the U.S. military, including the C-17, the P-8, the C-40, the F-16 and the C-130, and it was programs like these that helped drive 19% increase in government sales this quarter and contributed to the strength of our results. Now on to Slide 4. We achieved 36% organic growth in new parts distribution driven by our 2-way exclusive distribution model. Volume and government distribution have been increasing steadily over the last year, and this quarter represented a 55% organic increase over this period last year. Also in Parts Supply, our acquisition of ADI outpaced expectations for the second quarter in a row, and ADI's adjusted margins were accretive to the company in the quarter. In repair and engineering, our Oklahama City facility completed its hangar capacity expansion in the quarter and began aircraft inductions in early March. We expect first revenues from these maintenance lines in our fourth quarter. Our component MRO business saw key wins from major U.S. and international carriers for expanded scopes of work, and this is a testament to our strategy to utilize our whole portfolio to drive more business to the higher-margin component MRO activity. Our HAECO Americas integration is progressing ahead of schedule, and we expect the full integration process to be complete in the earlier part of the 12- to 18-month window we provided previously. We also expect our acquisition of Aircraft Reconfig Technologies, or ART, to close in the fourth quarter. In our software activities, Trax had another record quarter as a result of growth with the addition of new customers as well as existing customer upgrades. Trax's agreement with Delta continues to ramp, already Trax has been deployed to more than 2,000 users across Delta, and we expect this to increase to more than 6,000 users in the coming months. Our Expeditionary Services business was recently awarded $450 million in a multiyear government contract to provide specialized talents to forward deployed military units as a result of increased operational tempo overseas. We are pleased with our results this quarter and the growth that we saw across the company. And I would now like to turn the call over to Dylan to go through the financial results in more detail. Dylan Wolin: Thanks, John. Looking at Slide 5. Total sales in the quarter grew 25% year-over-year, including 14% organic adjusted sales growth to $845 million. We drove revenue growth in each of our parts supply, Repair & Engineering and Integrated Solutions segments. Sales to commercial customers were up 27%, while sales to government customers were up 19% over the same period last year. For the quarter, 73% of our sales were to commercial customers and the remaining 27% were to government customers. Adjusted EBITDA in the quarter increased 26% year-over-year to $102.1 million and adjusted EBITDA margin increased to 12.1% from 12.0% a year ago. Adjusted operating income was up 31% to $86.2 million and adjusted operating income margin improved 50 basis points to 10.2%. The margin improvement in the quarter was driven by part supply and integrated solutions, including tracks and government programs, despite the expected short-term impact on margins from our recently acquired HAECO Americas business, at which we are in the process of rightsizing the revenue base, adjusting the cost structure and deploying our proprietary processes. Excluding HAECO Americas, adjusted EBITDA margin in the quarter would have been 70 basis points higher or 12.8%. This was the most critical integration quarter for HAECO Americas, and we expect sequential margin improvement going forward as we move through the remainder of the integration process. Finally, I'll mention that we recorded a gain in the quarter due to the accounting for our HAECO Americas acquisition, resulting in a bargain purchase. The gain reflects the excess of the fair value of the assets acquired over the purchase price and is excluded from our adjusted results. Adjusted diluted EPS was up 26% year-over-year to $1.25 per share, driven by our strong operational performance. Turning to parts supply on Slide 6. Total part supply sales grew 45% from the same period last year to $392.5 million. We had yet another quarter of above market growth in new parts distribution, which grew 62% in total and 36% organically, excluding the impact of our ADI acquisition. Sales to commercial customers were up 36% and sales to government customers were up 86%, driven by 55% organic growth in government distribution sales. Third quarter adjusted EBITDA of $59 million, was up 59% and adjusted EBITDA margin grew 130 basis points to 14.9%. Adjusted operating income rose 56% to $53.6 million, and adjusted operating margin increased 100 basis points to 13.7%. Higher margins in the period were driven by both the performance of the existing business and the addition of ADI. Now on Slide 7, for Repair & Engineering. Total sales increased 23% to $265 million. Sales growth was driven by the existing hanger operations, growth in our component repair shops as we continue to add new capabilities and customers and the year-over-year impact of the HAECO Americas acquisition. As I mentioned earlier and consistent with the outlook we described in last quarter's call, margins were negatively impacted in the quarter as we take actions at the recently acquired HAECO Americas operation to rightsize the revenue base, adjust the cost structure and improve processes. Segment margins were also impacted by the transition of work out of our Indianapolis facility, which we are in the process of exiting. Specifically, adjusted EBITDA margin decreased 190 basis points to 11.0% and adjusted operating margin decreased 150 basis points to 9.6%. We expect our revenue shaping, cost structure and process improvement actions to be completed towards the earlier end of the 12 to 18-month post-closing time line that we articulated previously, and for the quarter that we just ended to be the low point in terms of margin impact. Accordingly, we expect in the third quarter of fiscal 2027, our actions will result in the same quality and efficiency levels as we have achieved in our other airframe MRO facilities. And for Repair & Engineering margins to return to pre-acquisition levels. We expect the transition out of the Indianapolis facility, which is our highest cost site to continue into the fourth quarter of our fiscal 2027 and to realize further margin improvement once that is complete. Looking at Integrated Solutions on Slide 8. Sales increased 3% year-on-year to $167.8 million, driven by Trax and government programs. Third quarter adjusted EBITDA of $19 million was up 18%, and adjusted EBITDA margin grew 150 basis points to 11.4%. Adjusted operating income of $15.5 million was 25% higher with adjusted operating margin increasing from 7.6% to 9.2%. Improved margins were driven by mix shifts towards higher-margin contracts within government programs as well as by growth and higher margins at track. Turning to the balance sheet on Slide 9. We had a strong cash flow quarter, generating $75 million in cash from operating activities. Net large decreased to 2.17x net debt to adjusted EBITDA, comfortably within our target range of 2.0x to 2.5x. With that, I'll turn the call back over to John. John Holmes: Thank you, Dylan. Turning now to Slide 10 for an update on our outlook for the remainder of the fiscal year. For Q4, we are expecting total adjusted sales growth of 19% to 21%. Organic adjusted sales growth for Q4 is expected to be between 6% and 8% as we lap what was a very strong Q4 last year. This excludes the debenture of landing gear as well as the impact of fiscal 2026 acquisitions. We expect Q4 operating margin of 10.2% to 10.5%. Our outlook for Q4 has improved from what was implied in our guidance last quarter, given the ongoing strength we see across our markets. As a result, our full year expectation is for total sales growth of approximately 19% and for organic sales growth of approximately 12%, which is up from our prior outlook. . Finally, on Slide 11, I'm excited to share that AAR will be hosting an Investor Day on May 12 in New York City. AAR has been driving strategic transformation over the last several years, and we have a more focused, complete range of aftermarket solutions in parts repair and a software platform that worked together to drive growth. As the last several quarters have shown, this strategy has yielded results. At our event in May, we plan to share our strategic vision of how we will continue to cement our position as the independent leader in aviation aftermarket through our repositioned portfolio, focused strategy and differentiated culture. We hope to see many of you there. Before we open it up for questions, I'd like to thank our talented team members around the world as they drive excellence in quality, safety and service and the work we do for our customers. I'd also like to extend a thank you to our customers and shareholders for their ongoing support of the AAR. With that, we'll turn it over to the operator for questions. Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Michael Ciarmoli with Truist. Michael Ciarmoli: I guess, John, just on the topic everybody is asking about with oil prices kind of what we're seeing with some of the carriers trimming capacity. I mean historically, you've been in this business long enough. I mean, is there some sort of proxy you could give us how long do we need to see elevated fuel or once we start seeing some of these capacity cuts by the airlines, will that -- if it will at all translate into your business and fully realizing nobody is parking planes yet. They're just maybe trimming some routes. But any color you could give us there from a historical context? John Holmes: Yes. I would say that the #1 thing is -- and I appreciate the question. The #1 thing is that fundamental demand for air travel remains very strong. That's what you're hearing from all of our major customers. And obviously, we're hearing that from them every time we talk. And they've continued to see record bookings even after the conflict started. I would say, just to your point, what you're seeing now are modest capacity adjustments and they're not impacting any airlines individual fleets. . And so adjustments like that are not going to have any meaningful impact on the demand for Parts or Maintenance. So at this point, we feel very good. All the customers are talking to us about strong bookings and being prepared for a very busy summer, and they're making those plans with an assumption that fuel prices are going to remain elevated through that period of time, which we view as encouraging because they're factoring that in, yet their demand signals to us are still very strong. Michael Ciarmoli: Okay. Okay. That's helpful. And then maybe just on the more positive side, I mean, you guys continue to do really, really well on distribution that organic 36% on new parts, can you maybe just disaggregate that for us a bit? I mean, what was kind of new wins? What was same sale -- same-store sales, maybe pricing? I mean, just really strong growth. I mean you guys are doing a great job there. John Holmes: Yes, we're very proud of the continued growth we see in distribution, and our model there is clearly resonating. To your question, about 2/3 of the growth was same-store sales, so continued growth from contracts that have been in place for some time. And the remaining 1/3 was mostly new contract wins a little bit of price across all of them, but the majority of the growth, about 2/3 of the growth came from growth from existing contracts. Michael Ciarmoli: Got it. Is it -- the name jump out. Was it engine-related, airframe-related avionics, any -- or strength across the board that you're seeing? John Holmes: Great, across the board. But again, I would highlight the continued growth in Defense distribution. We've got a great offering there, and that was 55% organic in the quarter. And that though, we've been seeing a build. That wasn't a one-off. We've been seeing a build in growth in defense sales to the government. And certainly, our offering is resonating, and it reflects this administration's clear prioritization of sustainment and readiness. . Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Sheila Kahyaoglu with Jefferies. Sheila Kahyaoglu: Maybe to follow up on Mike's question. As you think about your new parts distribution business in Repair & Engineering, I know we're only seeing modest capacity cuts. How do you think about how quickly behavior has changed historically and what your visibility looks like in each? John Holmes: Yes. I mean we've got solid visibility currently through the quarter and the guidance we just provided, and I would extend that to the summer as well because that's what everybody is planning for right now. We've been in constant contact with the customers, -- we have not seen any material change in demand for maintenance lines or component repair. And you would have to see, I would say, a much more significant changes to their fleet plans for that to have any meaningful impact on our results. The other thing I would say is that if I think about this moment that we're in relative to historical mods, AAR is in a much different position in the marketplace. And I would say that we've been so focused on delivering superior service and quality to our customers that we feel pretty confident that they would deprioritize other vendors before they did anything with us. Sheila Kahyaoglu: Got it. And maybe if I could ask another one, really great execution this quarter. You held margins flat sequentially and are guiding to an improvement in Q4 given -- even with the HAECO dilution that's ongoing. So maybe can you give us some flavor into the sources of the outperformance? You called out ADI and HAECO outpacing expectations. Anything else notable? John Holmes: Those would be the big ones. ADI, the second quarter there of outperformance. HAECO, it's a lot of work. It's a lot of work to complete that integration. As we mentioned, this was the most critical quarter and we've been able to move some of our timetables up. So happy to say if we're going to be at the earlier window. I would also highlight this was a really strong quarter for Trax. Great momentum from a sales and margin perspective with Trax. And that's something we've been focused on growing, as you know. . Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Ken Herbert with RBC Capital Markets. Kenneth Herbert: Maybe first, If we look at your commercial aftermarket, John, the commercial business broadly, how much of that business would you characterize as book and shift for short cycle versus more sort of backlog driven? And I know, obviously, a lot of the heavy MRO piece of the business is now much more backlog-driven than maybe it was previously. But is there a way you would frame up that maybe that way to look at your business? John Holmes: Yes. As you pointed out, heavy maintenance is definitely backlog-driven. Much of the distribution business is backlog driven. Those are, I would say, the 2 -- and obviously Trax with us in its own category, but those would be the 2 long-cycle elements of the business. component repair tends to be a bit more short cycle. And also -- and obviously, USM is a shorter-cycle business. But the majority of the revenue now in commercial between distribution and heavy maintenance is longer cycle. Kenneth Herbert: Okay. Helpful. And obviously, really nice cash generation in the quarter. Can you give any commentary on what we should expect fourth quarter, which typically seasonally is very strong from a cash generation standpoint? And maybe any highlights either for you or Dylan on specifically some of the -- what we saw in the third quarter in terms of the strength? John Holmes: Great. Yes. No, we were really pleased with the cash flow results and customers paid us on time. So we're appreciative of that. And as it relates to the outlook for the rest of the year, we are planning to be cash flow positive in Q4 and again -- and cash flow positive for the whole year. . Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Scott Mikus with Melius Research. Scott Mikus: Quick question. I know it's still early in the war in Iran. How long does this potentially have to drag on before it starts maybe impacting your ability to source any of the parts you need in your part supply business? And then in contrast, could the worst stimulate demand for your component repair business if airlines are seeking to reduce maintenance costs to offset the higher fuel costs? John Holmes: Yes, great question. I wouldn't expect at this point that the war or the conflict at any length of time would impact the supply of material. I mean, unless you're talking about USM specifically and certainly, if for any reason, you see more aircraft retirements and subsequent teardowns, how that would result in more supply for that material. But in terms of the war or the conflict stimulating demand, Yes, I mean it could stimulate demand in a number of ways, obviously, on the defense side, and we're highlighting a few of those in the results. But then also, I mean, we are in many ways, a lower cost alternative to OEMs and other providers. We have seen this in prior cycles where we're able to win business as an alternative to OEMs with airlines what to reduce their costs. Scott Mikus: Okay. Got it. And then I wanted to follow up, the organic growth guide in the fourth quarter implies a deceleration but you should be getting some revenue contribution from the OKC capacity expansion. So is that kind of just some conservatism baked into the guidance? Or is there any pull forward into this quarter from a top line perspective? John Holmes: Yes. No pull forward into this quarter. Really, the impact you're seeing in Q4 is just lapping a really tough comp from last year. We had a really strong quarter in Q4 last year in a number of ways. And the guide there is reflective of that. But the guide is improved from what we implied with the Q3 guidance we gave last quarter. Operator: Next question comes from the line of Noah Levitz with William Blair. Noah Levitz: Yes. To start off, you gave a lot of good color on Trax and the implementation. But kind of drilling in on that, you mentioned that Delta, that the partnership with them has been deployed to 2,000 users and you expect 6,000 in the coming months. I'm curious like the 6,000 like the ninth inning? Or are you still early innings in the Delta deployment? And then following off of that, can you give a little bit more color on the time line for track establishing kind of that part Smartplace aspect of the business? John Holmes: Yes. Great set of questions. So I'm glad you asked about the Delta implementation. So kind of two ways to think about the Delta implementation. It's the whole thing will take approximately 3 years, and we're coming up on 1 year into that, and there's 3 modules. The first module is, I would say, basic functionality deployed across a large user base. So we've got basic functionality up and running. . And were deployed roughly 1/3 of the way across the user base of Delta. So that -- once all those 6,000 users have this first module in hand and working, that completes the first phase. The next 2 phases, Phase II and III, we'll be focused on deploying additional functionality to that large user base. And that is still -- and that's where the material ramp-up in the activity and the revenue delta will occur. And so that will start a few months from now and ramp through over the following, call it, 6 or 7 quarters. And then as it relates to the parts marketplace, something we are still very focused on and we do expect to go live on that and launch it yet this calendar year. Noah Levitz: Awesome. And then just 1 follow-up. The defense business is, I mean, more or less killing it, the 55% organic growth and government distribution is really impressive. In the slide deck, you do mention that higher-margin government work was a positive contributor. I think more so in the Integrated Solutions segment, is that something that you're expecting to continue as more or less like a new norm? Or was that more like a positive benefit this quarter that was somewhat unexpected. How should we think about specifically government margins on an improving basis going forward? John Holmes: Yes. You are referring to the margin improvement in the government portion of integrated solution government programs specifically. And that reflects sort of a mix shift towards higher-margin programs within government programs, and we do expect the benefit of that mix shift to continue going forward. Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Michael Leshock with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Michael Leshock: I wanted to follow up on the HAECO question, just given that that's progressing ahead of schedule. I know there was a cost element to the synergies there, but could you talk about how that integration is progressing in terms of cost-outs or operational efficiencies or just overall utilization, is there any way to bucket the primary drivers of that integration going ahead of schedule? . John Holmes: Yes. So just to describe it in a little bit more detail. We've got to rightsize the business in a couple of different ways. They had -- it was a much larger business in terms of revenue than how we intend to run it. because that revenue was not profitable. So we are continuing to close up those aircraft that we no longer be customers with us and ship them off. That work is getting done. At the same time, we're also making difficult decisions around the size of the workforce because we want to size the workforce to the new revenue base that we have. Those changes have been made. And when we say this was the most critical quarter. The changes to the size of the workforce to align with the new revenue base, all of those changes have been made. So that's in place. The last 2 major pieces are moving the work out of our Indianapolis facility and moving that into other AAR facilities, majority of which will go to HAECO and the GreenVille site and the happening now. And that's happening now. So that's the next significant phase. In the final phase that will be complete after all of that, but it's all going on in parallel is the implementation of our systems. We are certainly taking our rigor and our expertise in deploying it on the floor today. But ultimately, the paperless system that we've developed and utilized most of our AAR hinders, we want that fully deployed inside of the HAECO facilities as well. So that would be the very last piece to complete. But again, all of that at this point is pacing ahead of schedule. And it's a really heavy lift. You got a lot of moving parts there, but very proud of the way the team is executing. And also really happy with the way the HAECO team has embraced the culture that we're promoting. It's been a really good fit. Michael Leshock: Great. And then within Integrated Solutions, just given the recurring revenue nature of the Trax business as well as the new customer integration and ongoing upgrade cycle, should we expect growth there to be fairly linear going forward within the segment? Or is there anything that could drive lumpiness ahead? John Holmes: Overall, Linear, you do get lumpiness every now and then because of the way we book new implementations just based on the software and milestone accounting. So that does create some lumpiness in the results there. But the recurring revenue, which is the base of the business that we're most focused on growing that we expect to be linear. And again, we've doubled the size of track since we bought it. They were a $25 million business when we closed that pacing north of $50 million now. And based on the customer updates, their upgrades as well as new customers that we've captured we see a path to doubling that again from $50 million to $100 million. Operator: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, I would like to turn the call back over to John for closing remarks. John Holmes: Great. Thank you very much, and thank you for joining us today. We continue to execute with a high degree of discipline, and we are energized by the opportunities in front of us and really appreciate the support and interest in AAR. . Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.
Operator: Good afternoon. My name is Kevin, and I'll be your conference operator today. At this time, I'd like to welcome everyone to Paysign Inc.'s Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. The comments on today's call regarding Paysign's financial results will be on a GAAP basis unless otherwise noted. Paysign's earnings release was disseminated to the SEC earlier today and can be found on the Investor Relations section of our website, paysign.com, which includes reconciliations of non-GAAP measures to GAAP reported amounts. Additionally, as set forth in more detail in our earnings release, I'd like to remind everyone that today's call will include forward-looking statements regarding Paysign's future performance. Actual performance could differ materially from these forward-looking statements. Information about the factors that could affect future performance is summarized at the end of Paysign's earnings release and in our recent SEC filings. Lastly, a replay of this call will be available until June 24, 2026. Please see Paysign's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Earnings Call announcement for details on how to access the replay. It's now my pleasure to turn the call over to Mr. Mark Newcomer, President and CEO. Please go ahead. Mark Newcomer: Thank you, Kevin. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for Paysign's Year-end 2025 Earnings Call. I'm Mark Newcomer, President and Chief Executive Officer. Joining me today is Jeff Baker, our Chief Financial Officer. Also on the call are Matt Turner, our President of Patient Affordability; and Matt Lanford, our Chief Payments Officer, both of whom will be available for Q&A following our prepared remarks. Earlier today, we announced our fourth quarter and full year financial results for 2025, which demonstrated continued strength and exceptional growth across all key metrics. For the full year, revenue increased 40.5% to $82 million. Net income increased 98% to $7.6 million and adjusted EBITDA increased 107% to $19.9 million. Importantly, operating margins increased 723 basis points, providing clear evidence that we've reached a key inflection point where future revenue growth should drive increasing operating leverage and profitability. We continue to deliver strong growth in our patient affordability business. Annual revenue grew 168% year-over-year, reaching $33.9 million compared to $12.7 million in 2024 and claims processed increased by approximately 79%. For those newer to our story, our patient affordability platform helps pharmaceutical companies ensure patients can access high-cost medications by administering co-pay assistance programs. In 2025, our platform helped deliver nearly $1 billion in financial assistance to patients, supporting access to high-cost therapies for more than 840,000 individuals. At the same time, we help manufacturers better control how those dollars are spent, which is one of the key value propositions we provide. A key differentiator of our platform is our dynamic business rules technology, which helps pharmaceutical manufacturers avoid unnecessary costs associated with co-pay maximizer programs. In 2025 alone, this solution saved our clients over $325 million. And this year, we have already saved our clients almost $150 million. That level of savings represents a meaningful economic benefit for our customers and highlights the value of our platform. We added 55 programs during the year, bringing total active programs to 131 across more than 70 patient affordability clients. A mix of transition programs and new launches contributed to both immediate and long-term revenue growth. Our programs span both retail and specialty pharmacy as well as in-office administered and infused products. Oncology and other cancer treatment products remain a significant portion of our program base and biologics represent approximately 50% of claim volume across the platform. We continue to see strong expansion within our existing client relationships. For example, following the onboarding of one of the nation's largest pharmaceutical manufacturers in 2024, those programs scaled successfully throughout 2025. and we added 4 additional programs from that same manufacturer during the year. This type of expansion within large pharmaceutical clients highlights both the scalability of our platform and the durability of demand. Paysign now has active programs with 6 of the top 10 U.S. pharmaceutical manufacturers ranked by revenue. Next month, we attend the Asembia Specialty Pharmacy Summit here in Las Vegas. As in prior years, we are seeing strong interest from potential clients evaluating our solutions, and we enter the conference with a robust pipeline. Over the past several months, we've had conversations with shareholders, analysts and prospective investors to help them better understand the patient affordability business and the broader industry landscape in which we operate. Increasingly, those discussions have touched on legislative, regulatory and policy-related topics. So I thought it would be helpful to ask Matt Turner, our President of Patient Affordability, to provide some additional context. Matthew Turner: Thank you, Mark. Before addressing some of the questions we've been hearing from investors and analysts about potential headwinds to our business, I want to briefly give an overview of how our patient affordability business fits within the broader health care ecosystem. Our platform is focused on helping pharmaceutical manufacturers support patient access to high-cost branded therapies, primarily within the commercially insured patient population. These are typically branded medications where out-of-pocket cost can be significant and where co-pay assistance programs are essential to ensuring patients can begin and stay on therapy. At the same time, our platform helps manufacturers better manage how those assistance dollars are deployed, particularly in an environment where payer dynamics can introduce inefficiencies into the system. That combination of improving access while also driving economic value is what underpins the demand for our solutions. With that context, I'll address a few areas we've been asked about. First, on the expansion of the direct-to-consumer, also known as DTC and cash pay models, these programs have existed in various forms for over a decade and are not new. They were built primarily for products with little or no commercial insurance coverage. That is a very different segment from where we operate today. For the types of high-cost branded therapies on our platform, where list prices can be tens of thousands of dollars, which represents approximately 90% of the drugs in our platform, cash pay and discount alternatives are simply not a viable solution for most patients. Commercial insurance, combined with manufacturer co-pay assistance remains the most effective model for patients. As a result, we view DTC expansion as a complementary solution in certain cases, but not a meaningful substitute for our core business. Second, regarding pharmacy discount programs such as GoodRx, TrumpRx, Cost Plus or similar offerings. These products have existed for more than 20 years and serve an important role in reducing cost for lower-priced generic medications or for those patients without insurance. They are not designed for nor do they compete with branded specialty medications where commercial insurance and co-pay programs are the standard of care. Our business is squarely focused on that branded drug segment and the more than 850 specialty drugs. So these programs are simply not relevant to what we do. Third, and perhaps most important, given the current policy environment on legislative and regulatory considerations, most of the activity around co-pay accumulator and maximizer programs have taken place at the state level. And despite ongoing discussions and congressional committees, there has been no meaningful federal action to date nor do we expect any in the foreseeable future. The key reason is simply structural as a large portion of commercially insured Americans are covered under employer-sponsored health plans governed by ERISA, which limits the impact of state-level regulations. We do not see that as changing. As a result, these programs continue to operate despite changes in state laws. Importantly, demand for our dynamic business rule solutions, which helps manufacturers navigate maximizer programs continues to grow. As Mark said, this year, we have already saved our clients almost $150 million that would otherwise have been absorbed by those programs. So stepping back, we continue to monitor the competitive and regulatory landscape closely. But based on what we see today, we do not view these dynamics as a material threat to our business. If anything, they continue to reinforce the need for solutions like ours, which is reflected in the continued growth of our business and pipeline. Our differentiated dynamic business rules capability is a driving tangible ROI for our pharma customers while we enhance affordability for hundreds of thousands of consumers. Back to you, Mark. Mark Newcomer: Thank you, Matt. Turning to our plasma donor compensation business. In 2025, plasma compensation contributed $45.6 million in revenue, representing a 4% increase over 2024's $43.9 million. We believe the business will continue to exhibit revenue growth driven primarily by center filling excess capacity rather than new center openings. That said, we do expect a modest number of new center openings in 2026, maintaining our market share of just under 50%. We exited 2025 with 595 centers, an increase of 115 centers over the previous year, and we continue to engage the remaining plasma collection companies who are currently not our customers. We believe our expanded suite of donor management and engagement tools we acquired last year creates additional opportunities to grow our footprint in this space. As we await FDA 510(k) review of our donor management system, also known as a BECS or blood establishment computer system, we are actively working to integrate the BECS with a number of plasmapheresis device and strengthen our relationship with those manufacturers to make installations and transitions to our solution as seamless as possible. This integration is included in our latest filing with the FDA. Our broader suite of solutions continue to receive positive feedback from blood and plasma collection organizations across the United States, Europe and Asia, and we are highly encouraged by the long-term growth potential of this business. 2025 marked a meaningful step forward as our patient affordability business scaled and became a central driver of growth and profitability, while our plasma business continued to provide a stable foundation. We believe we are still in the early stages of our patient affordability opportunity and enter 2026 with strong momentum in which to build upon. With that, I'll turn it over to Jeff for additional details on our quarterly and full year-end financial results. Jeffery Baker: Thank you, Mark. Good afternoon, everyone. As Mark highlighted, the fourth quarter and full year results reflect both strong growth in our patient affordability business and the early benefits of operating leverage across the platform. For 2025, total revenues increased 40.5% to $82 million. Pharma industry revenue increased 167.8% to $33.9 million, driven by the addition of 55 net patient affordability programs launched during the past 12 months and a corresponding increase in monthly management fees, setup fees, claim processing fees and other billable services such as dynamic business rules and customer service contact center support. Process claims increased over 79%. This growth reflects continued expansion of our platform and increasing demand for solutions that improve patient access while helping manufacturers better manage their co-pay assistance spend. Plasma revenue increased 4% to $45.6 million, primarily due to the addition of 115 net plasma centers adding during the past 12 months, offset by a decline in average plasma donations per center as plasma inventory levels were elevated throughout much of 2025. This led to a reduction in our average monthly revenue per center as compared to the same period in the prior year. We exited the year with 595 centers versus 480 centers at the end of 2024. Other revenue increased by $671,000 or 36.2%, primarily due to the growth in usage in the number of cardholders of our payroll, retail and corporate incentive programs. More importantly, we are beginning to see the benefits of operating leverage across the business. Total operating expenses were $41.4 million, an increase of 32.6%, well below the revenue growth we experienced, which, coupled with our improved gross profit margin to 59.4% versus 55.1% drove our operating margins to 9% versus 1.7% in the prior year. We have reached an important inflection point where our fixed costs can support meaningful scalability without commensurate increased expenses. So we expect further improvements in these metrics throughout 2026. This is consistent with what Mark described earlier as patient affordability becomes a larger part of our business, we expect to see continued improvement in margins and operating leverage. Here are a few other important details to point out for the fourth quarter and full year results. For the fourth quarter, our earnings before taxes increased to $2.5 million versus $1.2 million the same period last year. Fourth quarter net income was impacted by a higher effective tax rate of 45.4%, which reduced earnings per share by $0.02 per fully diluted share versus the prior period. The fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA, which is a non-GAAP measure that adds back stock compensation to EBITDA was $5.4 million or $0.09 per diluted share versus $2.9 million or $0.05 per diluted share for the same period last year. The fully diluted share count for the quarters used in calculating the per share amounts was $61.6 million and $55.5 million, respectively. We exited the year with $21.1 million in cash, almost double from the prior year. This excludes any impact to pass-through receivables and payables we periodically have related to our pharma patient affordability business. We also continue to have zero bank debt, funding operations and our Gamma acquisition through operating cash flow. Turning to our outlook for 2026. We expect revenue of $106.5 million to $110.5 million, representing 30% to 35% year-over-year growth, with plasma and pharma contributing equally and other revenue contributing $2.5 million. Considering the seasonality in both our main health care businesses, we expect plasma revenue to be the lowest in the first quarter with tax refunds going out and ramp up throughout the remainder of the year, while we expect pharma revenues to be the highest in the first quarter and decline throughout the remaining of the year as patient affordability claims ramp down. This outlook reflects continued momentum in our patient affordability business, which we expect to remain the primary driver of growth. Gross profit margins are expected to be between 60% to 62%, reflecting increased revenue contribution from our pharma patient affordability business. Operating expenses are expected to increase 20% over 2025 as we continue to make investments in people and technology. Of this amount, depreciation and amortization expense is expected to be between $9.5 million and $10 million, while stock-based compensation is expected to be approximately $5.5 million. Given our large unrestricted and restricted cash balances and the current interest rate environment, we expect to generate interest income of approximately $3.1 million. Our full year tax rate is estimated to be between 22.5% and 25%. Net income is estimated to nearly double over 2025, reaching a range of $13 million to $16 million or $0.21 to $0.26 per diluted share and adjusted EBITDA to be in the range of $30 million to $33 million or $0.49 to $0.53 per diluted share. The number of fully diluted shares for the year is estimated to be 62.3 million. For the first quarter of 2026, we expect revenue of $27 million to $27.5 million, representing a 45.2% to 47.8% growth over first quarter 2025 and expect to have 137 active patient affordability programs and 589 plasma centers exiting the quarter. Margins are expected to expand across the income statement versus the same period last year, equating to an operating margin between 20% to 22%, net margin between 17% to 19% and adjusted EBITDA margin between 34.5% to 36.5%. Fully diluted earnings per share is estimated to be $0.07 to $0.08, while adjusted EBITDA per share is estimated to be $0.15 to $0.16. Overall, our outlook reflects continued strong growth driven primarily by our patient affordability business, along with further margin expansion as we scale. With that, I would like to turn the call back over to Kevin for questions and answers. Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our first question is coming from Jacob Stephan from Lake Street Capital Markets. Jacob Stephan: Congrats on a really nice quarter here. I appreciate all the color on the pharma industry. One thing I kind of wanted to touch on a little bit. So we're kind of hearing some pharma services providers that the drug manufacturers have actually been kind of less active recently with regards to new initiatives. I'm wondering if you're seeing any difference in behavior with your pharma manufacturers over the last few months here. Matthew Turner: No. I mean, this is Matt Turner. I would argue that it's just the opposite. If you were at JPMorgan and listening to the conversations there, nobody is slowing down anything. We were sitting there listening to Dave Ricks, the CEO of Lilly, and he was talking about the billions of dollars they're pumping into AI and the fact of doing a deal every 9 days. And almost all the presentations there really pointed to not a slowdown by any means. Everybody's pipelines are really strong right now. Almost every manufacturer has some form of a weight loss or GLP-1 type product in line. FDA calendar for PDUFA this year looks really good. So no, I mean, I don't really see a slowdown. I would say that the push for innovation is growing overall. And I think that's obviously what we've been trying to provide for the last 7 years as we built out this vertical really is the innovation side of things. So no, I don't see a slowdown from our perspective at all, especially not in the patient affordability business. Jacob Stephan: Okay. And maybe -- I mean, you did kind of touch on the GLP-1 opportunity. I'm wondering what that looks like for you guys? Do you have any current GLP-1s on the platform? And how are you thinking about attacking that market going forward? Matthew Turner: Yes. So that's -- we don't have any of the 2 larger GLP-1s that are for weight loss nor do we have the diabetes products. Those are largely retail plays, and we're certainly making a push. We've been making a push in that area. Those drugs have been in market now for a little bit. If you look at those products as well, they're very much -- they're much more of a DTC product than they are a traditional co-pay type product. It's not to say the co-pay offers aren't out there, they are. But it represents a very small subset of that actual volume is going through co-pay. So there's not a ton of upside on a GLP-1 product used for weight loss. There would be if you're looking at the diabetes side. We have one client that has the GLP-1 product. I think [indiscernible] that's coming to market. I think we're in an excellent position to win that business as we do have a very good portion of their retail as well as almost all of their specialty products. So I think we're in a very good spot to pick up a GLP-1 in the next 12 to 18 months. And I think that's as much as I can really say there. I don't -- we don't have any commitment saying that it's ours or anything and plus we don't know what the volume is going to look like there. But yes, we're certainly trying to make inroads to get access to more of those programs. Jacob Stephan: Got it. And then maybe just last one for me. Jeff, you made an interesting comment about fixed cost potentially kind of plateauing, minimal additions kind of needed. I'm wondering, from just looking at the math, that looks like around a $22 million to $23 million quarterly kind of cost basis. I'm wondering if you could kind of give me some more color on that. Jeffery Baker: Yes. So the comment really on the -- when we talk about fixed cost is like the base cost of what our business has been in 2025. So we looked at our OpEx of $41 million. The incremental costs that we have to add going forward as the business grows is certainly a lot less than what it has been historically. If you look at 2024, we were pushing -- SG&A growth was pretty much tracking with revenue growth. 2025, really strong improvements there. In 2026, we think there's even more operating leverage to win out of that business. So when you look at it, we're going to do a good job trying to control our costs. We're only looking for SG&A to grow 20%. And when you peel the onion back, keep in mind, some of that growth is related to the acquisition we did in March. It wasn't even in for a full year in 2025. So you have a full year of amortization in 2026. And then you have some stock comp increase about $1.5 million year-over-year. So take those 2, if you -- however you want to look at that and adjust it out or whatever, but our controllable SG&A is really looking very leverageable. Operator: Our next question today is coming from Gary Prestopino from Barrington Research. Gary Prestopino: I couldn't write down fast enough. Did you say you were going to exit Q1 with about 137 pharma programs? Jeffery Baker: Yes, that's correct. Gary Prestopino: And then -- and what did you say for the plasma? Was it 589? Jeffery Baker: 589. Yes, we had -- in the first quarter, we had 5 centers get sold to a competitor. So they left us and then 1 center closed. So there are 6 -- those are the 6 centers. Gary Prestopino: Okay. Okay. That's fine. And then just getting back to when you were talking about like the GLP-1s versus your high-cost branded pharmaceuticals. Is there any difference in the revenue per claim process there if you're doing basically kind of lack of a better word, it's not really a specialty drug, like, say, a cancer and oncology drug? Matthew Turner: Yes. So I mean each claim type, right, is going to have different potential transactional fees that will attach to it. If you look at the specialty -- and I would say that overall, if you just look at a base, say, pharmacy claim or medical claim, it doesn't really matter if it's specialty or pharmacy, we're going to make on that claim processing fee, we're going to make about the same. But when you look at the bolt-ons that can happen in the specialty space, they compound pretty quickly. A dynamic business rule claim is worth far more to us. than just the singular co-pay claim. So while the volume around retail products like GLP-1s or any of the cardiovascular drugs, if you go back historically and look at like Crestor, Lipitor, Plavix, Modern Day Brilinta. Sure, there's a lot of volume there, but your chance to make -- to kind of add on the additional functionality that can generate larger revenue is just not there on the retail side, which is one of the reasons we highly target the specialty space because we can make far more money on 1,000 DBR claims than we can on, say, 20,000 retail claims. So profit potential and even bottom line margin is far superior in the specialty space. That being said, we are working to bring on more retail brands so that we have a very weighted and comprehensive portfolio of products. Operator: Our next question is coming from Jon Hickman from Ladenburg Thalmann. Our next question is coming from Peter Heckmann from D.A. Davidson. Peter Heckmann: I had a follow-up, Jeff, on -- in terms of thinking about the guidance for 2026, you talked about equal contribution from plasma and pharma. I assume you're talking about from a dollar of revenue perspective. And if so, that still represents a pretty significant acceleration on the plasma side. I didn't hear in your prepared comments why that might be. And so if you could provide a little bit of additional color in terms of whether that's an increase in revenue per center or anticipation of a big addition of net centers for the year. Jeffery Baker: Yes. So -- the revenue comment -- the comment on the [ Equal ] business was revenue, both from the plasma and the patient affordability or pharma side. The one of the main drivers in the plasma, if you recall, we had 132 centers in June and July. So we're going to have those uncomped until that time, so midyear. So you're going to see the growth of plasma with those numbers for the first half of the year be much stronger than the second half of the year, obviously. My expectations haven't changed with plasma is that in a normalized year, it's about a 5% grower, and it's a very good cash cow, and we manage the business accordingly. Mark Newcomer: And let me give a little more color on the plasma revenue growth. The increase in collection efficiencies associated with the latest hardware upgrades effectively gives the average plasma center approximately 10% greater capacity. So a good way to look at that would be for every 10 centers, a collector can now get 11 centers worth of capacity, which is reducing the demand for new center openings. So that just -- it gives them the ability to collect more. Peter Heckmann: I see. That's helpful. Okay. And then just going back to the Nuvec system. Any feedback so far from the FDA or any thoughts in terms of the potential time line there for the completion of the review? Mark Newcomer: Yes. I mean it's currently under review. We expect to hear back from them within the next 60 days. And that's kind of about as much as I'll go into at this point. But so far, everything is very positive. We've gone into our substantive review with them. Operator: Our next question is coming from Jon Hickman from Ladenburg Thalmann. Jon Hickman: Could you give us some sense of where you are on the pharma side with your kind of part of the market? What's the TAM here? And where -- like are you in the second inning, third inning of growth here? Or can you elaborate? Matthew Turner: Yes. So we -- this is Matt. We always hesitate to give the TAM because it's very difficult for us to give a TAM for something that you can't -- you just -- there's no way to exactly tell the dollars are wrapped up in marketing amounts and everything else and nobody discloses exactly how much money they're paying these vendors. So we estimate the TAM is somewhere between $500 million to $850 million at any given time. We think with some of the offerings that we have, specifically the dynamic business rules that we are pushing that TAM higher as we're able to generate revenue from some of these unique offerings that we're bringing to the table. Also, as we continue to build this out and add more features, add more products, we think the TAM can expand even further upwards to $1 billion. Asking about kind of what inning we're in, I think we're in the first inning. There's still a lot of growth potential here. We don't see anything slowing down when it comes to new program acquisition. And if you look at the growth that we're doing year-over-year and not just from a dollar perspective, right, just from also throwing in the number of programs that we're adding in. Last year, it was 1 every 6-point-something days we were putting a new program up. And hopefully, this year, we have similar metrics as far as the number of programs that we're pulling in. But it's -- we're nowhere near the middle of this at all. We're very much in the beginning. And I think we'll continue to see very strong growth out of this vertical for many years to come. Jon Hickman: So a follow-up. So are you inviting competition here? Are people starting to pay attention to what you're doing? Mark Newcomer: There's always really been competition. Matthew Turner: I mean -- yes. Mark Newcomer: I mean we've come into the market and really gone up against the competition. And by bringing new functionality, new features to the market, that's part of the reason why we're winning the business. Matthew Turner: Yes. This was a very stale business that had become almost commoditized. It was treated like just picking something off of the shelf. And that made it very easy for some manufacturers. And of course, they enjoyed that when things like maximizers and accumulators weren't an actual threat to their bottom line. And as that has emerged as a bigger threat, the need for innovation was there. Unfortunately, kind of the legacy dinosaurs in the industry just never reacted. So yes, there's some new players popping up. It just -- that happens every time there's an industry that's ripe for disruption. I would say the good thing for us is we were ahead of that, and we also helped to cause a lot of the disruption. If you look at how we have sold into this industry, we have -- we've really shaken a lot of things up and forced manufacturers to rethink how co-pay programs should function as a whole, how they should pay for them. The open book pricing that we brought to the table where we're not making shading money that we can't tell people how we're getting paid, like that really was a disruptor to this marketplace. And if you kind of look at our -- the catapult that we had for growth, you go back to, I think it was 2023 when we -- in June, July, when we put out a webinar around pricing transparency and a lot of things in that area. That was really part of the lift off for us because we did show the industry there's a better way to do this. You can still make money, you can still have everything that you need. Just we can do it in a way that we're not robbing you blind behind your back, which is what a lot of other competitors were doing. Jeffery Baker: And another thing, Jon, when we look at our competitive advantage, certainly, that's one very important one. Another one is -- and we take it for granted as a payments company, but our competitors don't have the same say, insight into -- for their pharma customers' programs like we do. I mean we give our customers a web portal. They come in, they can see bank balances. They can see transaction data. They see a lot of information that we're able to provide them so they could figure out if their program is successful or not. And we take that as for granted as it's kind of table stakes as a payments company, but there -- our other competitors don't have that because they're not payments companies. And then the last thing is the dynamic business rules. I can't stress enough the fact that with 97% efficacy on first fill that's completely agnostic to the consumer that is getting their drug that we're able to identify whether that transaction is related to a Maximizer program or not. That's huge. It's unheard of and nobody else in the market has that technology. Jon Hickman: Okay. One more question. So Matt, what are you most worried about here on this side of the business? Matthew Turner: That's a tough one. I don't know that right now, we really have a lot of worries. We -- it's pretty positive on our side. If you look at what we've built out, I would say, going back 3 years, it was a lot around personnel and how would we scale this inside with people. It was about finding talent at that point that we could bring in and that could help the organization grow. And we spent the last few years really doing that. We invested a lot of time and energy in bringing the right people in creating a pathway for people that were really good to be able to grow inside the organization. And now that we have that in place, as you look at over the 55 programs that we brought in last year, we didn't have a growth issue when it came to dealing with people. We had already actually built the systems around that. So we were able to just drag people in, drop them into the right place. We have established training curriculums now. It's become a much easier lift for us. So I would say I don't really have any fears at the moment. It's all positive for us right now. And we look forward to the continued growth that we have. We're looking forward to expanding on the partnerships that we currently have. Jon Hickman: Nice results. Matthew Turner: Thank you. Operator: Our next question is coming from Gary Prestopino of Barrington Research. Gary Prestopino: Yes. I just have a follow-up. Did you give -- Mark, did you give any indication of your pipeline on the patient affordability side? I mean, at times, you have said that you feel pretty confident you're going to exit the year at x amount of programs. Could you maybe just comment on that? Matthew Turner: This is Matt. So I don't know that we've ever given that guidance this early in the year. And I'll also kind of point back to our selling cycle is for most of our opportunities is in the 90-day area. We know what the pipeline looks like right now for a number of opportunities. I think we would probably comment on that as we got a little more further down the year, exited the Asembia conference, things like that. That's really where we kind of start to narrow down what we think the pipeline will look like between now and the end of the year. Plus it gives us a chance to do a better evaluation of the FDA PDUFA calendar and what opportunities out of that, we believe are truly winnable for us. So yes, I don't think we can give a number of programs this early in the year. But hopefully, we can do that in the next quarter if everything lines up right. Gary Prestopino: All right. And you guys are doing really well. And obviously, the stock market has been a miniature disaster in the last couple of months here. Doesn't look like, obviously, the fundamentals of the business are reflected in the stock price. And I'm just wondering, as you go around and talk to investors, is it that they don't understand what's going on with your company? Is there, say, a fear that artificial intelligence is going to serve maybe your ability with your dynamic business rules? What can you pinpoint as to what is some of the hesitation among investors to grasp the story? Jeffery Baker: Yes, Gary. So when we talk to investors, everybody obviously understands the plasma business. It's kind of like retail same-store sales type stuff. And I think the biggest -- the market has been in a show-me state sort of stake with the operating leverage from the patient affordability business. Now there's a lot of noise out there always with direct-to-consumer. If you remember back when Donald Trump was going to solve all the pricing issues, he had his own Donald Trump pharmacy and he had his direct-to-consumer initiative. And quite frankly, I mean, they announced that I think there were 30 drugs or something whatever. We had 2 of them on there. And the pricing on the direct-to-consumer side for -- and again, those are cash paying customers was cheaper if you had insurance than if you paid directly to the consumer. So -- and keep in mind, there's roughly 160 million people out there on private insurance. That's what these co-pay programs are for. It's not for the cash paying customers. So I think there has -- I think people don't necessarily understand co-pay. I know for a fact, they don't understand co-pay. And we're going to work really hard in 2026 to tighten that message to make sure people understand that there is a copay -- the co-pay really exists. There's a market for co-pay. We have a better mousetrap that nobody else has, and it's showing up in the numbers. And now this year in 2025, you definitely saw the operating leverage possible. I mean our operating margin goes from 1.7% to 9%, and that's not insignificant. And then based on the guidance that I've given, we expect that to go up substantially in 2026 and beyond. So we -- I can't control the stock price or the investor community or whatever, but I think the numbers speak for themselves and eventually, the market is efficient over the long term. Matthew Turner: And one thing I'll add to, if you look at the other competitors that we have in the marketplace. If you go and look at Cencora, you look at McKesson, they both own co-pay offerings, right? But it's such a small part of their balance sheet that it never gets brought up in an earnings call. So we're really the first public company that's out here talking about this to where analysts are trying to absorb this information because for us, it's not a rounding error for McKesson, for Cencora, this represents a de minimis part of their overall portfolio. So I think it's also given the Street a chance to catch up to see this as a new offering in the market. And hopefully, they'll get behind this, and we'll have more people understand it. I think the private equity market understands this well. There's a number of private equity funds that have purchased assets like this privately. If you were to go look at the private markets, there's a lot of M&A activity happening in this space, not just the co-pay space, but patient services as a whole. It's constantly changing. So we had a chance to go down to the Cantor, HCIT conference and meet with a bunch of people and just listen to what they had to say. And it's -- there's a lot of activity in this space. It's just not in the public market. So I think that's part of the headwind for us, too, is explaining that and having people understand that this is -- there's a bigger amount of money at play here than what it just seems like on our side. Gary Prestopino: What about from the standpoint of your competitive advantages, those dynamic business rules? Is there a feeling out there? And I guess this is a stupid AI question, could AI somehow usurp what you're doing in the market? Matthew Turner: So I mean, I kind of -- I joke with clients when we talk on the phone that AI can do anything that you can dream of. I just don't know when it's going to be able to do it. I mean AI -- we don't view AI as a threat. We're working internally to build out our own AI-based systems to help us make our algorithm stronger so that we spot maximizers and accumulators easier. I think the other part of that to say is that just because they change what they're doing one time doesn't mean that we won't be right there changing it to find it. And not to go into a ton of detail, but once I have one patient, and I know that patient is impacted by a maximizer, I can -- it doesn't matter what the plan does. I can back into that patient because I know they were a maximizer patient yesterday. They're probably a maximizer patient today. So we don't think that's really a threat to our business model. We see AI on our side is actually a positive, and we're going to be implementing more of that on the patient affordability side to help us have a stronger, more robust product across our vertical. Operator: We reached the end of our question-and-answer session. I'd like to turn the floor back over for any further or closing comments. Mark Newcomer: Thank you, Kevin. In closing, we delivered strong results in 2025. We remain confident in our long-term strategy. I want to thank you all for joining us today, and we look forward to speaking with you again in Q1. Operator: Thank you. That does conclude today's teleconference webcast. You may disconnect your line at this time, and have a wonderful day. We thank you for your participation today.
Operator: Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Transgene 2025 Annual Results and Prospective for 2026 Conference Call and Webcast. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to our first speaker today, Lucie Larguier. Please go ahead. Lucie Larguier: Well, thank you, Nadia, and hello, everyone. So I'm Lucie, Chief Financial Officer at Transgene, and I'm with Dr. Alessandro Riva, our Chairman and CEO today. We will review the progress over 2025 and answer any questions you may have. Before I turn the call over to Alessandro, I'd like to remind everyone that today's discussion contains forward-looking statements which are subject to multiple risks and uncertainties. [Operator Instructions] With this, I now turn the call over to Alessandro. Alessandro Riva: Thanks, Lucie, and good morning, good evening, good afternoon, everyone. So 2025 has been a year of meaningful clinical progress for Transgene. As you all know, we advanced our individualized neoantigen therapeutic vaccine, INTV, TG4050, supported by compelling clinical and translational data in head and neck cancer that reinforce our confidence in its potential to prevent relapse in patients. I would say that there were 3 crucial moments this year that confirm our conviction that the myvac platform can bring benefit to patients. First of all, our Phase I data being presented already at ASCO in the same section as 2 Phase III trials in head and neck cancer. Second, the immunogenicity data that we present at the SITC conference in November in the United States of America; and third, the completion of EUR 105 million fundraising that provides financial visibility until the first quarter 2028 to support our priority programs. With these 3 major achievement, Transgene is on track to continue building the scientific and operational capability to execute our strategy. Now on Slide 5. TG4050, the first INTV based on our myvac platform is currently being evaluated in international randomized Phase I/II clinical trial in the adjuvant treatment of HPV-negative head and neck squamous cell carcinoma, a setting with significant unmet medical need as more than 30% of patients relapse after 3 years despite the recent advances in the innovation with checkpoint inhibitors. At ASCO, we presented Phase I data showing that all patients with HPV-negative cancer who received TG4050 after surgery and the standard chemo radiotherapy remained disease-free after at least 2 years of follow-up. Importantly, the trial met all endpoints for both safety and feasibility. This 100% disease-free survival rate compared with 3 relapses observed in the control arm provides the first clinical evidence supporting TG4050 potential to prevent cancer recurrence in early head and neck cancer patients. In November, at the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer Annual Meeting, we presented a compelling translational data that further strengthened the clinical proof of principle for TG4050. In particular, the data showed that TG4050 induced neoantigen-specific T cell responses in 73% of evaluable patients. Importantly, these responses were durable, persisting 24 months after the start of treatment and showed cytotoxic and effector phenotype markers up to 1 year after the end of treatment. Together, these findings demonstrated that TG4050 can generate potent and long-lasting immune responses capable of targeting and eliminating tumor cells contributing to the prevention of relapses. In January 2026, a comprehensive analysis of the Phase I clinical and translational data was published on the preprint platform of [ Med Archive ] and is currently under review by peer-review journal. I'm on Slide 6 now. Let me now turn on the ongoing Phase II part of the Phase I/II trial. The randomized Phase II part of the trial is in the same setting as the Phase I. All patients are close to being randomized, and this will be a key operational milestone for the program. The primary endpoint on the Phase I/II study is 2-year disease-free survival that is very well recognized by the health authorities being an important and critical milestone, and we expect this efficacy readout once all patients reached 2 years of follow-up from randomization. In second half 2026, we also expect to share the first immunogenicity data from patients from the Phase II cohort of the Phase I/II study. For the Phase I part of the study, we plan to report 3-year follow-up data on disease-free survival in second, third quarter 2026, followed by 4-year follow-up in second, third quarter 2027. Beyond head and neck cancer, we are working to broaden the spectrum of opportunity for myvac across additional solid tumor types where significant unmet medical needs remain. The platform, as you know, is designed to generate individualized neoantigen therapeutic vaccine tailored to each patient's tumor mutational profile. As mentioned, we are currently in the start-up phase of the new Phase I trial in a second not yet disclosed indication in early treatment setting, and our goal is to initiate this trial in 2026. We are actively optimizing our manufacturing process, improving turnaround time and preparing for increased production volumes. Importantly, part of the proceed is dedicated to advancing industrial and regulatory readiness, including the alignment with the FDA and the EMEA requirements as we move toward late-stage development. Now turning on Slide 7, BT-001, which is our intratumor administered oncolytic virus developed with our partner, BioInvent. At ESMO 2025, we presented a poster data evaluating BT-001 in combination with pembrolizumab in patients with advanced refractory tumors. This data shows positive abscopal and sustained antitumor activity in both injected and non-injected lesions. The immune-mediated tumor shrinkage observed is consistent with our mechanistic hypothesis. BT-001 in combination with pembrolizumab can convert cold tumors into immunologically active hot tumors. This data supports further development of BT-001 and you should be hearing from us about this development in the next couple of months. Now I would like to turn over to Lucie for the financial update. Lucie? Lucie Larguier: Thank you, Alessandro. So if we look at our financial position and what happened in 2025, we can definitely say that the most significant financial event of the year was the successful fundraising in December 2025 and through which we raised approximately EUR 105 million. And together with the conversion of EUR 39 million debt with TSGH into equity, Transgene strengthened its balance sheet, reduced its financial liabilities. The company is now virtually debt-free, and we are now ready to move and fund it until early 2028. If we look at our cash burn over last year, it was approximately EUR 38.2 million. So it reflects the investment in our Phase II trial, the fact that we manufacture and enroll patients into this Phase II in head and neck cancer. So I think that -- and I'm convinced that with the budget that we have, the money that we have, we have funded to deliver on key milestones, which include the development of 4050, the myvac platform, the planned Phase I trial in the second indication and also the work on manufacturing and process optimization, preparing late-stage development. So Alessandro, if you want to comment on outlook. Alessandro Riva: Yes. Thank you, Lucie. As we look ahead, our priorities as you know, are very clear. We remain focused on TG4050, our first INTV vaccine from the myvac platform. We intent being to continue to establish Transgene as a key player in the INTV field that is growing across the community, and it attracts a lot of interest. With the progress we have made so far and with the finance sources that Lucie just mentioned, we believe that we have what do we need to execute on the next phase of development. So overall, when we look at the next 24 months that are covered by our recent fundraising, we see a clear path of execution, multiple meaningful milestones and the financial visibility, as mentioned to support them throughout early 2028. Before opening the Q&A, let me also mention that we'll be participating in investor access events in Paris on April 9 and to the Life Science Conference in Amsterdam on April 16. And we would, of course, be very pleased to meet with those of you who may be attending. With that, the team and I will be happy to take your questions. Operator, please up to you. Operator: [Operator Instructions] And now we're going to take our first question. And it comes from the line of Chiara Montironi from Van Lanschot Kempen. Chiara Montironi: I actually have a couple. So the first one, how should we be looking at the 3 years DFS data that are approaching in Q2, Q3, given that the primary endpoint and the benchmark are 2 years? What do you expect to see here? And what will be a good result? And the second question is on the immunogenicity Phase II data in H2 '26? At which follow-up will be those data, we'll be able to see the induction of the immune response also to understand that these immune responses are durable? Alessandro Riva: Thank you, Chiara. So first question is on 3-year disease-free survival data. First of all, we plan to send an abstract for the ESMO conference in Q3 2026. And what we should expect, of course, we don't know because we have not analyzed the data. I mean the base case scenario is, of course, that we continue to see that the 2 curves stay separated throughout the additional follow-up. So that's the base case scenario. The best case scenario, which is which is not good for patients that have been randomized to the observation is to serve more relapses in the arm that did not receive the TG4050. And therefore, this scenario will show a larger magnitude of the separation of 2 curves. And that's what -- and of course, there is a worst-case scenario that is that we start to observe relapses in TG4050. So -- but in the base case scenario, in best case scenario, this is going to be quite good for the program and of course, for patients. Then in terms of the immunogenicity data of the Phase II study, we expect to start having the first set of data by the end of 2026. And of course, we will start to analyze the patients that were randomized first, right? So therefore, we expect that those patients have at least 1 year kind of follow-up with the potential to show durability over 1 year in the Phase II study. And of course, this will be important to start also to strengthen the data that we have presented earlier in 2025 with the Phase I. Hopefully, this is clear. Operator: And the question comes line of Dominic Rose from Intron Health. Dominic Rose: It's Dominic here. I've got a couple as well. My first question is, how do you think the GMP manufacturing reconfiguration will change the ability to get a deal done towards the end of the year? So how impactful is that versus getting new data? And my second question is what, if anything, do you hope to learn this year from the Moderna data readouts? Alessandro Riva: Okay. So the first question is around the GMP manufacturing. So as you know, it is important to continue to optimize manufacturing for an individualized antigen therapeutic company like Transgene. So we plan to have full GMP manufacturing by 2027, Q3 2027. And of course, having a full GMP manufacturing is an important value creation for myvac program and, of course, we strengthened the [indiscernible] from pharmaceutical companies for the simple reason that having a GMP manufacturing allow us or the potential partner to move forward to a potential pivotal trial. So that's the reason why we are investing significantly on the GMP. Again, it is critical to succeed in the individualized neoantigen therapeutic vaccine. And then the second question was around Moderna data. I mean, I guess you're referring to the Phase II that they've already published, but also the potential Phase III in adjuvant setting melanoma. So first of all, I mean, the long-term follow-up data set that they have published just recently, I would say, confirm what they've already published a few years ago in terms of the efficacy of their INTV in adjuvant setting melanoma. And of course, they clearly say that they will disclose the Phase III data always in adjuvant melanoma by the end of the year, beginning of 2027. And of course, for the INTV community, the Phase III data will be quite important because if the data is positive, the data will continue to derisk the INTV approach. And of course, if the data is negative, then as you know, Transgene has a different technology with a different vector. And we think that we will have to wait our data set in head and neck, specifically the randomized Phase II study before making any conclusion because, again, our technology is different from Moderna one. But of course, for patients for the field, we hope that the melanoma data, Phase III is going to be positive, right? So -- but of course, we have to wait. So -- and from a bio and tech point of view, right? So as you know, they are doing some changes in their leadership and they have recently also announced that they plan to close their Phase II trial in the [indiscernible] cancer because the competitive landscape has changed significantly. And therefore, what they said, of course, they do some reprioritization and now they are staying focused on pancreatic cancer and colon cancer, and we don't know the data, the studies are still ongoing. And again, of course, we hope for all it will be there for all the studies that are in the INTV field in early setting because, again, all the data points will help to continue to derisk the field and, of course, for biotech companies to continue to accelerate the development. Lucie Larguier: So we have received a few questions on the chat. So I'll take and read [indiscernible] question, [indiscernible] from Biomed Impact. So the question is regarding the new indication, TG4070 program as shown on the website, could you give us more information, solid tumors as far as I understand, will the population of patients be homogenic or will you address several types of solid tumors, single or multiple injections? Alessandro Riva: So this is going to be one indication. It's not a basket protocol. It's going to be randomized Phase I study in a new indication that, I would say, very similar to what we did in head and neck, same type of methodology, but in another indication, where the medical need is quite significant. And the indication will be very different from head and neck from a biological standpoint and also in terms of the potential of being immunogenic tumor. And I cannot disclose exactly what we are going to plan. So we are in the kind of waiting for the regulatory feedback on the final protocol. And as soon as we have, of course, the approval from the agencies, we're going to disclose the indication and the time lines associated to. We're very confident that this study can start this year. Lucie Larguier: So we had a question from [ Jamie Land ], but I think with [indiscernible] from all investment, I think we've answered it given the current landscape. I also have a question from Martial Descoutures, ODDO BHF, which is, as you expand myvac platform, thanks to the additional tumor types, how do you see the long-term value? Could we think that you will look for partners in the future? Or could we think that you will continue alone for the long term? On TG4050, what level of efficacy could you consider as clinically relevant in the Phase II? Alessandro Riva: So let's start from the last question perhaps. So everything that is similar to what we have observed in the randomized Phase I makes a lot of sense for patients. And you know what we have disclosed and the disease-free survival curve. So having a flat curve without any relapses by itself is very important for early setting head and neck cancer patients. So we hope that we are going -- as I said also answering the question from Chiara, we hope to see the same kind of shape of the curve, the same type of separation and of course, the same durability of the plateau that we are observing in the Phase I study. So in terms of the long-term strategy for Transgene related to myvac, so I would say that, first of all, our priority is to continue to create value for patients. So -- and of course, by doing that to stay very open on potential opportunities in terms of having a kind of constructive dialogue with the scientific community with the pharmaceutical companies. And we think that, of course, as we generate more data in terms of Phase II, in terms of optimization of the manufacturing, in terms of showing that we are able to do a second indication with a manufacturing process that is even better than what we have used in the Phase I and the Phase II study. So all this kind of value creation activities and catalysts will help significantly to attract the interest of pharmaceutical companies. So the objective that we have is ultimately to bring the organization to a kind of starting block for launching a potential pivotal trial. And we hope that if we demonstrate that in the next 24 months, we can generate interest from potential partners and working them together to launch a potential Phase III trial. So value creation first dialogue in parallel with the industry and third potential collaboration to continue to accelerate our program. Lucie Larguier: Okay. We have a quick few follow-up questions from [indiscernible] from [ All Invest ]. So any update on the media conference where you plan to report Phase I data, particularly the 3-year survival. Should we assume it's ASCO? Should we expect Phase II patient randomization to be completed during Q2 2026? And finally, how should we think about the timing for initiating a Phase I trial in a new indication this year? Alessandro Riva: So I mean the 3 years survival data for the Phase I study of TG4050 will be potentially that's our plan presented at ESMO. And of course, this requires that ESMO accept our abstract. So we plan to submit it and then we'll keep you posted whether this is accepted and ultimately disclosed and presented at the ESMO meeting. So that's your first question. So the second question related to the randomized Phase II trial. So I mean, the randomization will -- I mean, will be completed certainly by Q2, right? So that's our plan, right? So -- and of course, we will obviously sign an announcement as soon as we have this milestone completed, but we are kind of optimistic that really we are close to the final recruitment. And then the third question, there was another one. Lucie Larguier: How should we think about the timing for initiating a Phase I trial? Alessandro Riva: Yes. As we mentioned, it's going to be in 2026. As soon as we have the formal approval from the health authorities, we're going to move forward. Lucie Larguier: And I think that we have at least -- I don't have additional questions, a few wins. Thank you very much, everyone, for your questions. Alessandro Riva: Thank you for the questions. So just to close, I mean we think that 2025 was a year of strong progress for Transgene. As I mentioned, we continue our journey to continue to establish Transgene as a key player in this field of individualized neoantigen therapeutic vaccine that can be potentially transformative for patients and can, as you have seen, can go beyond one single indication. Looking ahead, we are confident in our strategy in the transformative potential of the myvac platform. And with the financial visibility until early 2028 and a clear path to clinical readouts, so we are very well positioned to deliver meaningful value for patients and shareholders alike. We are grateful for your, of course, continued support and looking forward to keep you updated on our progress. With this, I would like to conclude today's call. Have a great rest of the day and talk to you soon. Operator, please? Operator: This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now all disconnect. Have a nice day.
Operator: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Aimia Inc. Fourth Quarter 2025 Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]. Also note that this call is being recorded on March 24, 2026. I would now like to turn the conference over to Joe Racanelli. Please go ahead, sir. Joseph Racanelli: Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. Joining me on today's call are our Executive Chairman, Rhys Summerton, and Aimia's President and CFO, Steven Leonard. Before we begin, I want to make sure that everybody is aware that we issued our financial results for the fourth quarter earlier this morning. All of our materials, including the news release, MD&A and financial statements are available from our website and SEDAR+. We will be using a presentation today. And for those listening to our discussion by phone, a copy of that presentation is available from the IR section of our website. Some of the statements made on today's call may constitute forward-looking information, and future results may differ materially from what we discuss. Please refer to the risks and uncertainties that may affect our future performance referenced in our presentation as well as in our MD&A. In addition, we will be making note of GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliation is provided in the appendix of the presentation. And following today's presentation, please reach out to us if you have any outstanding questions or require any clarification of what we discuss today. With that, I'd like to turn the call over now to Rhys. Please go ahead, Rhys. Rhys Summerton: Yes. Thanks, Joe, and good morning, everyone. I think the transformation of Aimia into a useful permanent capital vehicle continues into the fourth quarter. We made progress against our 3-step strategy most notably for a permanent capital vehicle, what's important is that we continue to grow the cash position, and we generated a very strong EBITDA results in our core businesses. And overall, we achieved the guidance for the year. We continued with the momentum into the new year by entering into a definitive agreement that will result in the divestiture of our special chemicals core holding. The pending completion of the Bozzetto sale and the net proceeds it will generate will put us firmly on track towards our goal of enhancing shareholder value through making accretive investments in undervalued companies. In light of the developments in the Middle East and the timing of the Bozzetto transaction, the planned new investments could not have been more fortuitous. I'll expand on our progress against our strategy as well as our near-term priorities later in the presentation. But for now, I'll hand over to Steve to review the financial results in detail. Steven Leonard: Thank you, Rhys. I'd like to begin my remarks with an overview of our consolidated results. As you'll note from Slide 7, our results in the fourth quarter of '25 were marked by mixed performance when compared to last year. But when you take into account the backdrop of heightened geopolitical and economic uncertainty, it becomes clear that we delivered strong results in Q4. By case in point, our gross profit, cash flow from operations and adjusted EBITDA in Q4 '25 were at or slightly below results from last year. I would draw everyone's attention to a couple of items. First, our consolidated revenues were down in Q4 '25 due to lower volumes and pricing pressures in both core businesses, which I will provide more color in a few minutes. Gross profit margins held due to improvements in mix, resulting in adjusted EBITDA down $0.6 million for the quarter. Second, included in the increase in SG&A costs in Q4 '25 was driven by a combination of factors. These included $2.9 million of costs related to the Bozzetto transaction and $1.2 million related to a litigation settlement agreement with a former company executive claim launched in 2020. Excluding these one-off amounts, SG&A expenses declined on a year-over-year basis. And finally, our net loss for Q4 '25 included a noncash goodwill impairment charge of $14 million at Cortland. Turning to the performance of our core holdings, starting with Bozzetto on Slide 8. In Q4 '25, Bozzetto generated $84.2 million of revenue, a decrease of 1.9% when compared to last year. On a constant currency basis, Bozzetto's revenue was down 9.8%. The year-over-year variance was due to lower volumes sold by Bozzetto but Bozzetto's Textile and Water Solutions sectors. Two contributing factors were lower Textile Solutions sales into Bangladesh due to political instability in the country and Chinese competitors driving lower pricing in Water Solutions in markets where Bozzetto serves. Weaker results for Bozzetto's Textile and Water Solutions were partially offset by improved pricing and product mix experience from the dispersion solutions sector, where Bozzetto-focused on growing sales of agrochemical and plasterboard solutions. Q4 '25 Bozzetto generated adjusted EBITDA of $15 million, which represented a margin of 17.8% in the same period last year, Bozzetto generated adjusted EBITDA of $13.4 million and a margin of 15.6%. While year-over-year comparisons of Bozzetto results are favorable, quarter-over-quarter comparisons better illustrate some of the macroeconomic headwinds that Bozzetto faced over the past year. Turning to Cortland on Slide 9. Cortland generated $34.3 million of revenue in Q4 '25, down 17% from last year. Although Cortland results in Q4 '25 were impacted by unfavorable market conditions, including the effects of U.S. tariffs on global trade, particularly in marine and shipping rope sales. I should point out that Cortland's revenue in the comparative period last year was boosted by strong project sales in North America within the offshore energy sector that did not reoccur this year. On a constant currency basis, Cortland's revenue declined by $7 million or 16.9%. The decline in Cortland's top line numbers, coupled with an increase in SG&A costs, resulted in a decrease in adjusted EBITDA to $4.1 million. The $1 million in SG&A costs was driven by a combination of factors, including increased compensation and benefits expense related to Cortland's efforts to grow its sales force and strengthen customer relationships in key markets. This increase was partially offset by lower selling expenses due to reduced sales volumes. Subsequent to quarter end, Cortland made a management change and appointed Wolfgang Wandl as CEO. Given the increased focus on growing sales and operational excellence, we are optimistic Wolfgang will lead Cortland to its full potential. We ended the year with $109 million in cash, up from $106 million at the end of Q3. Slide 10 shows a waterfall of cash movements in the fourth quarter. Key drivers to the increase in liquidity included $19.4 million of cash flow from operations and an $8.8 million tax refund from Revenu Québec related to a tax audit of a former subsidiary. Cash flows in the fourth quarter included $6.9 million of interest payments against our 9.75% senior notes, $3.6 million of common share buybacks, including tax. $7.9 million of principal and interest payments on Bozzetto's credit facilities and $5 million of capital expenditures. Turning to Slide 11. Looking at our liquidity more closely, it shows a breakdown of our cash position by segment at the end of December. I'd like to make clear that our liquidity in the coming months will be impacted by the proceeds from the Bozzetto divestiture, which we expect at the end of Q2 of this year. We expect the net proceeds in the range of $265 million to $271 million. We anticipate our liquidity will be offset by the redemption of the senior notes and if all the notes are redeemed, that would be $142.6 million. Over the next 12 months, our cash requirements will include $7 million of operating expenses at the holdco level. Slide 12 shows our results for 2025 tracked against the guidance we provided a year ago. We had forecasted that Bozzetto and Cortland would generate between $88 million and $95 million of adjusted EBITDA on a combined basis. Their combined results, which totaled $85.6 million were broadly in line with our expectations for the year. At the holdco level, we forecasted cost to be $9 million for 2025. As a result of cost-cutting initiatives we implemented over the past year, including reduced audit and professional fees, lower insurance costs and decreased director fees, we did better than our target for the year. Holdco costs for 2025 were $7.7 million. We remain committed to reducing holdco cost to or below 1.5% of NAV. I should point out that in light of the planned sale of Bozzetto, we are not providing guidance for 2026. Key development subsequent to quarter end was our announcement of the signing of the definitive agreement to divest Bozzetto. While we have discussed some of the details previously, I think it would be helpful to review the salient aspects of the transaction and provide an update on the recent developments. As summarized on Slide 14, the sale of Bozzetto will generate proceeds in the range of $265 million to $271 million. We anticipate the transaction closing in Q2 as we await final regulatory approvals. As we have disclosed previously, we expect the use of the net proceeds towards making investments in undervalued companies with an ultimate goal of acquiring controlling interest in these investments. In addition, we will be reducing our debt by making an offer for our senior notes -- senior notes to be redeemed at principal value plus accrued interest. With more than $500 million of capital tax carryforwards at December 31, we do not anticipate paying any taxes on the gain from this transaction. Slide 15 illustrates the cash waterfall on the main transaction components. Although the Bozzetto transaction is dominated in euros, we have presented it in Canadian dollars, our reporting currency. As you can see, Bozzetto was valued at an enterprise value of $411 million. Taking into consideration Bozzetto's net debt, the value of minority interest and transaction costs, the sale of Bozzetto will generate net proceeds in the range of $265 million to $271 million. Amounts presented in the waterfall are subject to closing adjustments on net debt, working capital and currency rates. I should also note that we entered into a hedging strategy in February to mitigate the impact of major foreign currency volatility. We have hedged approximately 50% of the net euro proceeds into Canadian dollars, which essentially represents the par value of the senior notes if they were all redeemed after the divestiture closes. Slide 16 presents our cash position on a pro forma basis, taking into account the impacts associated with the Bozzetto divestiture on our liquidity as at December 31. As a reminder, our cash position at year-end was $109.2 million. This pro forma walk takes the estimated net proceeds from the Bozzetto sale, less $50 million of cash held by Bozzetto at December 31, and the use of $143 million towards the redemption of our senior notes, if all our shareholder -- all our noteholders accepted the offer. Once these items are taken into account, we derive $185 million of cash on a pro forma basis as of December 31. As noted earlier, this total is subject to the final closing adjustments. That concludes my prepared remarks. I would like to turn the call back over to Rhys to review Aimia's near-term priorities and outlook. Rhys Summerton: Good. Thanks, Steve. So Slide 18, I think it is -- we're going to just look ahead in the near-term activities. So we anticipate the Bozzetto transaction will close in Q2. There's the customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals, which Steve alluded to. And then within 30 days of closing, we will make an offer to purchase all the senior notes. The purchase offer is a requirement of our indenture agreement, which is triggered by the sale of Bozzetto. The offer to noteholders will be made at par value of the notes plus any accrued interest. And that value at 31 December 2025 was $142.6 million. The holders will retain the option to continue to hold the notes until maturity in January 2030. So there will be a decision that noteholders will have to make. In tandem with the offer to redeem the senior notes will begin to deploy the net proceeds towards the exciting part of Aimia's future, which is making investments in companies that we find that we believe would be undervalued and would be consistent with our strategy. So we've already identified a number of target companies. We won't share obviously any of the details with you, but I think we'll give a broad sketch or outline of that. So the companies we're looking at, we'll definitely have to get control of them. We'll look for things that have got strong dependable cash flows. They have balance sheets which are not just strong, but they are essentially net cash position balance sheets. And they'll be undervalued on a relative basis with a strong valuation or asset underpinned to them. So just to highlight on Slide 19, the impact of the early redemption of the senior notes -- these notes, they bear interest at 9.75% coupon and they consume $13.9 million of cash annually, and that cash comes from the holdco right at the center. Early redemption will result in cumulative cash savings to maturity in January 2030 of approximately $56 million if all of them are redeemed. It's worth remembering that we generated a gain of $53.8 million and annual cash savings of a further $5 million when we completed our substantial issuer bid last year when we exchanged our preferred shares at a discount to the face value of the senior notes. So with that out of the way, Slide 20 talks about the progress against our 3-step strategy. So remember those 3 steps reduce the holdco costs reduce the share price discount that it trades at and deploy the capital effectively. It's been less than a year since we introduced this strategy. On the holdco cost side, we reduced holdco cost to $7.7 million in 2025, surpassing our target, which was $9 million. So we did better there. And Steve and the team did a good job in reducing that number. And to put it into context, we're down from $12 million in 2024. On the share buybacks, we continued with our share buybacks. We've spent more than 3.6 million worth of shares in our NCIB in the fourth quarter at an average price of $2.80 per share. And more significantly, the sale of Bozzetto puts us on the cusp of being able to deploy the capital effectively executing on the final part of our strategy and the most important part, which will create value. We are excited about the path ahead, clearly. Once the Bozzetto divestiture closes, we'll have a strong cash position importantly, depending on the success of the redemption of the notes, we'll have no debt at the center. And the underlying companies will have net cash as well and we have more than $1 billion of tax losses -- tax loss carryforwards to utilize. So we are very aligned, both as a Board, as the executives of the company and the shareholders to take Aimia forward. As sanguine as we are about our prospects, I want to remind everyone that this process will take some time. So we've been at it for less than a year. The turnaround is gaining a lot of momentum. The team is executing very well, and we are very well placed to start executing on the next part of our strategy. Slide 21 talks about the progress in the NCIB. This, you can see, takes us all the way to the 28th of February 2026. So after year-end. We've continued to buy back shares from the start of the strategy. We've reduced the share count by over 10%. And we will continue with this until our current NCIB approval runs out in June, and then we will look to reinstate that at the next AGM. Going on to our summary and outlook slide. As you have heard, the fourth quarter was marked by progress against our 3-step strategy. We had solid financial results, even though there's been geopolitical uncertainty around the world. Our focus in the coming months will be to sustain the momentum that Aimia has. In particular, our priorities in the near term will center on closing the Bozzetto transaction, which we said will be in the second quarter, redeeming the outstanding senior notes and then starting the process to invest in new undervalued companies that meet the criteria that we specified earlier. We also have worked on secondary listings of Aimia. We have a listing now on the JSE, and we look to add one more additional listing of Aimia in another market. And this is all part of our strategy, which will become clear in the time ahead of how we plan to invest in undervalued companies. Finally, I want to point out that AGM materials will be mailed to investors in the coming weeks in advance of the shareholder meeting. This year's meeting will be held in Toronto on May 13. And I hope to meet as many of you in person as possible. I'm hoping that we can double the attendance from last year. Thank you for your time today, and we'll open the call to questions. Joseph Racanelli: Go ahead, operator, if you wouldn't mind pooling listeners for questions. Operator: [Operator Instructions]. Joseph Racanelli: Sorry, operator. Before we begin, Rhys, we did receive some questions, and I just want to ask those for you and Steve. And you talked about potentially monetizing some assets. Can you clarify which ones that you're considering? Rhys Summerton: Well, the balance sheet is now fairly transparent and the investments are easy to understand. So we have a few remaining smaller assets which we are going to look be in the process of monetizing. And those are some investments which we will redeem bringing in some of the cash into the center. We also have an investment in China which we don't believe is ready to be sold yet. But it is trending in the right direction. Performance has improved materially over the last year, and we think in the future, there will be an opportunity to exit that. But at this point, we are happy holders of that turnaround. Joseph Racanelli: Okay. Can you clarify a little bit in terms of your tax loss carryforwards? How would you utilize them with some of your planned investments? Do you need to acquire controlling stakes to utilize them? Steven Leonard: In each jurisdiction, there's particular parameters around utilizing the tax losses, the biggest parameter is change in control. So obviously, we're -- we have that top in mind as we make our -- as we deploy our investments and make our decisions going forward. I want to point out though, we were able to utilize our capital losses on the sale of the Bozzetto transaction. That's just another example of our ability to mitigate tax costs. Joseph Racanelli: And Rhys question for you, in particular, does Milkwood plan on adding or increasing its position in the company? Rhys Summerton: Yes, I don't think we'll make an answer about that now. We have a substantial investment already. I have material investment as well personally. And we'll have to see what happens in the next few days. But we increase our holding or our percentage of Aimia virtually every day because there's a share buyback going on and obviously, we're not sellers. But we'll see what happens with the market and where Aimia trades relative to its book value. Joseph Racanelli: Great. Operator, can you open the line to the person in queue, please? Operator: Certainly. First question from the phone is from Rob Byde at Zeus Capital. Robin Byde: Two from me, please. Firstly, on Cortland and EBITDA margins. You discussed in the statement, higher SG&A costs related to investments in sales and customer relationships. Are those investments now complete? And would you expect all other things being equal, the EBITDA margins in this division would now recover? And then secondly, just to press you a little bit more on acquisition strategy and targets. I know you can't give any precise details, but can you perhaps say anything on geographies and perhaps verticals? Rhys Summerton: Thanks, I'll give the question to you. The first one to Steve, and I'll take the second one. Steven Leonard: Yes. So in the quarter, in the fourth quarter, we had a little bit of -- as we highlighted some unusual items in the period on SG&A. But we decided in '25 to invest in our sales team in our getting to markets and establishing presence in different markets. So that has had a bit of a downward impact on EBITDA margins in '25. That work is done. We don't expect to be growing the sales force anymore. And we're starting to see some of the work that's been done behind that. coming through for '26. So we're expecting better margins in '26. Rhys Summerton: Thanks, Steve. The second question, some geographic indication of where we might make acquisitions. We look for value anywhere in the world. And at the moment, we've said it many times that the U.K., we think offers the best risk reward of any place that we look at. So the opportunities to deploy some of the capital in the short term, I think would make sense if valuations stayed where they are today in the U.K. That's where we see tremendous value. Balance sheets are not only strong, there's opportunities with companies with net cash on the balance sheet. There's good management teams. You don't overpay for management through SBC, which you get in the U.S. So we think it's a really good place to hunt for acquisitions. We also know the market very well. But that's kind of stage 1. Stage 2 as we get bigger and the investments work out, we would need to then look at Canada and the U.S. to utilize those tax losses. So to give you sort of a road map, we would say stage 1, look at things that have exposure to really the cheapest valuations with the best management and highest quality companies and stage 2, hopefully, the U.S. market sees some normality and valuations correct. And we'll be very well placed to start executing on our acquisition strategy in the U.S. and in Canada. Robin Byde: Well, that's great. Thanks very much. Operator: [Operator Instructions]. At this time, Mr. Racanelli, it appears we have no other questions registered. Please proceed. Joseph Racanelli: Great. Thank you again, everyone, for joining us. As mentioned, there are a couple of things to take note of, our upcoming AGM in May. And as well, if there are any additional questions as you review our material, please reach out to us. We'd be happy to answer any questions that you may have. Thank you again. Operator: Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, this does indeed conclude your conference call for today. Once again, thank you for attending. And at this time, we do ask that you please disconnect your lines. Enjoy the rest of your day.
Operator: Thank you for standing by. My name is Carly, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Vertical Aerospace Full Year 2025 Business and Strategy Update Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the call over to Samuel Emden, Head of Investor Affairs. Please go ahead. Samuel Emden: Good morning. I'm delighted to welcome you to Vertical Aerospace's Full Year Business and Strategy Update Call. Before we get started, I'd like to remind you that during today's call, we'll be making forward-looking statements. These statements involve risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially. Any forward-looking statements we make are based on assumptions as of today. We undertake no obligation to update these statements as a result of new information or future events. We've posted an accompanying slide deck to our Investor Relations website at investor.vertical-aerospace.com, which contains detailed information on forward-looking statements. For a more complete discussion about these risks and uncertainties, we have filed our 2025 annual report with the SEC earlier today. Please now let me hand over to our Chairman, Domhnal Slattery. Domhnal Slattery: Good morning, and thank you, Samuel, and thank you all for joining us this morning. So over the past several weeks, we've had the privilege of hosting a series of Valo showcase events here in the U.K. and London, New York, Miami and most recently in Atlanta. These events brought together our airline partners, our investors, regulators, our suppliers and the broader advanced air mobility ecosystem. And what has stood out most was the energy and the enthusiasm around the opportunity ahead. And before getting in today's earnings call, we wanted to give you a taste of it. [Presentation] Domhnal Slattery: So at each step, the message was consistent. The market is ready for safe, quiet, zero emissions urban air mobility. And the response to our aircraft, Valo has just been extraordinary. This is a product that is redefining the eVTOL market globally. Now before we dive into the detailed content of today's call, let me take a step back just to address some key top-of-mind issues. First, on our flight test progress. I'm delighted that our Chief Engineer, David King, will go into this in further detail later. But to sum it up, we are in the final innings of completing full pilot transition under the regulatory oversight of the CAA. We are close to being complete with the 5 profiles and expect to have this finalized soon. On capital, as Stuart will speak to later in this call, cash is critical through certification. And despite annual spend being a fraction of our peers, we will need to continue to raise capital. We are exploring all of the options that are available to us right now across the capital markets, strategics and with government support. And we will execute that when it is the right moment for the business. Stuart will take you through the detail of that later. Today, our call will be broken into 4 sections to address some of the key issues and questions we hear from our stakeholders. First, we'll talk you through the aircraft. We'll talk you through Valo, the size, the modularity and safety that makes Valo the industry Valo the industry-leading electric eVTOL. Following that, our Chief Engineer, David King, will walk you through our pilot transition flight test progress, and he will provide a detailed breakdown of where we are today and the remaining elements to be completed. Then our CEO, Stuart Simpson, will do a deep dive on our battery technology. And we believe this technology underpins both Valo and our hybrid aircraft and gives Vertical Aerospace a differentiated power platform. Finally, we will discuss our current financial snapshot and our plans for capital raising. So first, Valo. The excitement around Valo is not just about the promise of the category, it's about the product itself. Unquestionably, Valo is the highest quality eVTOL aircraft in development globally today. It combines the safety architecture of a modern commercial aircraft with the performance and efficiency required for real-world commercial airline operations. Our design philosophy has always been clear: build an aircraft that meets the standards of the best airlines in the world today. We have developed Valo together and working in collaboration with our customers for well over 5 years. And that is why it has some key differentiators other eVTOLs in the market simply do not have and cannot have because of their designs. Why Valo has a seat next to the pilot for training, separation between the pilot and the passengers and why we have, without doubt, the roomiest cabin and the largest luggage bay. And critically, the aircraft sizing to accommodate 4, then 5 and then 6 passengers. This is the first truly upgradable aircraft, improving economics for our operators. With our largest cabin and the modular architecture, Valo is without doubt the perfect fit for multiple applications across the emergency, medical services, cargo and beyond. And we plan to be the leader in the hybrid electric defense space. And we look forward to deepening our discussions already underway with militaries around the world but particularly here in Europe in the run-up to the Farnborough Air Show later this year in July. As we've spoken about several times, we are deliberately a pure-play OEM, relying and collaborating on Tier 1 aerospace partnerships who allocate the best talent in the world, the absolute best resources and IP to the development and the certification of our aircraft. And we have now contracted the vast majority of those partners. And we look forward to bringing the final partners on board later this year as we progress towards critical design review this summer. And with that, I'm delighted to hand over to David King, our Chief Engineer. David? David King: Good morning, all, and thank you, Domhnal. Let's talk about flight testing. We've been flight testing a full-scale piloted prototype of Valo for 20 months now. In November, we began piloted transition. The phase where the aircraft moves between hovering over a spot as needed for vertical takeoff and landing and wing-borne flight, Valo's cruise condition. This flight testing is progressing steadily under disciplined U.K. CAA oversight. And here's a short video to give you a flavor. [Presentation] David King: We are nearing completion of the transition flight test phase, and the data we are collecting each flight is directly informing certification of our final commercial design. By doing the disciplined engineering and regulatory work upfront in close collaboration with the CAA, we reduced certification risk and avoid redesign later. As Simon Davis, our Chief Test Pilot, explained in the video, we've approached full transition incrementally from both ends, validating performance and building an evidence base before moving to the next test point. We've accelerated from a hopper, tilting the propellers forward from vertical orientation of 90 degrees. We've decelerated from wing-borne flight, tilting the propellers from horizontal. We are methodically and incrementally closing the gap, studying the wealth of valuable data at each step while working side-by-side with our certification authority. For example, we recently took advantage of a break in the U.K. weather to complete a piloted profile with a conventional runway takeoff, a deceleration from wing-borne cruise condition, a controlled deployment of the stowed rear props, 40 degrees of upward prop tilt while slowing down towards thrustborn and then accelerating back to wingborne and restowing the rear crops before landing. This test demonstrated smooth transitions with optimized software with the propellers deploying and reparking exactly as designed. By working closely with the CAA upfront, we now have a clear, well-defined, tried and tested path to certification. The standards, the criteria and the means of compliance are published, approved and have been dry run on the prototype program. This upfront work puts us on track to certify Valo to globally portable airliner safety standards. Then after certification comes entry into service. So I want to briefly touch on initiatives to accelerate deployment of an eVTOL operational ecosystem across the globe, including the eVTOL, Integration Pilot Program known as eIPP, recently announced in the United States. We applaud the eIPP program as a means to accelerate the introduction of eVTOL into United States National Airspace. As a non-U.S. eVTOL manufacturer, we were not eligible to participate directly in the United States eIPP program. However, we are participating in similarly focused European initiatives to advance the introduction of eVTOL in Europe. In the U.K. and in the European Union, flight demonstrations are planned and supported by government-backed programs, including the U.K. government's Future Flight Challenge and in due course, SESAR in Europe. These are taxpayer-supported initiatives designed to develop infrastructure, air traffic management technologies and operational procedures for optimized eVTOL operations. These programs will also build public and stakeholder confidence through structured and visible demonstrations. In the U.K., we've been a long-standing participant in the Future Flight Challenge, a GBP 150 million government-backed program focused on demonstrating operational readiness and accelerating safe integration of eVTOL technologies. Through this program, we're supporting funded flight demonstrations, including upcoming flights at Skyports Vista VertiPort and related work to demonstrate the feasibility of eVTOL operations between Oxford and Cambridge. By combining learnings from eIPP in the United States and similar European initiatives, we expect to see accelerated deployment of a safe and effective eVTOL ecosystem across the globe. At Vertical, we are laser-focused on executing to our clear pathway from prototype to preproduction to certification and then to full-scale production. Our final prototype aircraft # 3 has completed its commissioning tests and last week was the first time we had both of our prototype aircraft running at the same time. By the middle of this year, we will complete critical design review for Valo, the gate which freezes design and enables full throttle on building 7 preproduction aircraft to be conformed to type design and used for certification credit. And now I'll hand the microphone to our CEO, Stuart Simpson. Stuart Simpson: Thanks, David. It's great to hear about Valo and our testing progress. We heard Domhnal speak earlier on what makes Valo a differentiated eVTOL aircraft. But let me touch on Vertical's true secret sauce, which is our battery technology. While our core strategy is to operate as an OEM, utilizing partnerships across Tier 1 aerospace suppliers to minimize certification risk, the battery system is our core in-house technology and a key value driver for the business. We source cells and then manufacture the batteries at our world-class facilities. As cell technology evolves, our battery packs will provide increased payload and range to our customers. Vertical's proprietary battery system will support both the electric Valo eVTOL and our hybrid aircraft. The testing we have done to date confirms our current batteries capabilities to deliver power such that at launch, the Valo will be able to provide lift for 1 pilot, 4 passengers and 70 pounds of luggage per person. We are already testing the next generation of batteries that will further improve payload range, ensuring this aircraft will only get better over time. And as announced last week, our battery pilot production line is now operational. In fact, I had the pleasure of undertaking many of the process steps yesterday. In addition, we are expanding our battery manufacturing capability and capacity through the development of a new 30,000 square feet vertical energy center adjacent to our existing facilities. This new facility will open later this year. And in July, just before the Farnborough Air Show, we will be hosting an Investor Day at the Vertical Energy Center to allow our shareholders, prospective investors and analysts to see the progress we are making. More details to come, and we look forward to seeing many of you there. Here is where the true value proposition comes in, our Battery-as-a-Service business line. We expect batteries to be replaced approximately one time per year over the circa 20-year operational life of the aircraft. What this means is a long-term, predictable, high-margin revenue stream. As we have said before, we anticipate margin for this to be circa 40% Note that our published Flight Path 2030 figures don't include wide-ranging second life opportunities for our batteries. Given European aerospace standards, once the battery degrades below a particular level, circa 93%, the battery will be removed from the Valo but will be perfect for other applications. Our lightweight and high-power batteries have multiple second life opportunities, including CTOL aircraft, surface transport, marine and storage. This drives significant additional revenue and margin opportunities for Vertical. We have had multiple inbound requests from third parties wishing to understand our technology and see if and how it is for sale above and beyond us using it in the Valo and our hybrid aircraft. As mentioned in our prior earnings calls, we have shifted from dream to reality. And as David mentioned, laser-focused on execution. As seen in 2025, we completed almost 100% of our stated milestones, the final one being transition, which will be closed out imminently. We have made a tremendous start to 2026 across product, customers and ecosystem. We kicked off the Valo roadshow in key U.S. hubs, signed a critical supplier partnership with Evolito for the development and supply of EPUs for the Valo and made strides on further integration and partnerships in artificial intelligence. We launched new customer partnerships with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Heli Air Monaco, JetSetGo and launched customer networks in and around London, New York, Miami and Atlanta. Now looking ahead to the balance of 2026. We categorized our operational goals into 3 buckets: aircraft, industrialization and commercialization. I'd just like to draw your attention to a couple of things. First, we'll be flying at Farnborough Air Show, and we look forward to seeing many of you there. Second, this year, we will open 2 new manufacturing facilities. Third, we will complete the CDR for Valo, locking in the final 25% of suppliers. And finally, we will begin assembly of the first preproduction Valo. This next slide shows that through fiscal year 2025, our spend was in line with our guidance of $110 million to $125 million. As stated, this is a fraction of what our main competitors spent but our progress, particularly in full-scale piloted and regulated test flight remains industry-leading. Our cash and cash equivalent position was $93 million as at the 31st of December 2025. As of today, our short-term liquidity is estimated at approximately $85 million, comprising cash on hand and anticipated near-term receipts. Our ATM facility, which was put in place in September 2025, has a remaining capacity of approximately $78 million. Over the next 12 months, we anticipate spending circa $190 million to $200 million as we ramp up our manufacturing footprint and move into the assembly of the first Valo. With that, I'll hand back to Domhnal for closing remarks. Domhnal Slattery: Thank you, Stuart, and thank you, David. We would like everyone on this call to walk away with just 3 key messages. First, our approach to flight testing is intentional, it's disciplined and certification focused. We are deliberately expanding the flight test envelope systematically to extract maximum value to derisk the ultimate Valo certification program. Secondly, we have optionality when it comes to capital raising, and we will execute when it is the right time for the business and our shareholders. And three, as Stuart illuminated, our battery technology is a key differentiator in our business model. With its high power and lightweight, use cases support our eVTOL and hybrid aircraft, along with multiple other applications in adjacent industries that we intend to pursue. So with that, we will hand over to Samuel to open up the line for questions. Thank you, Samuel. Samuel Emden: Yes, we asked our social media community for some questions. I'm just going to kick off the Q&A with one of them. So the question was, with EU delegation and British government representation at the Valo event in London, is there a credible likelihood of meaningful state financial support from the U.K. Domhnal Slattery: Stuart, maybe you could take that one, please. Stuart Simpson: Thank you. It's a good question. We have had tremendous support from the U.K. government. If you look at it over the prior years, this is up to around $100 million, and it shows the U.K.'s commitment to aerospace. And it's why we're based here in the U.K. in the heart of the European aerospace industry. Now the government knows we've had approaches from several other European countries as we move from the R&D phase to the industrialization phase of doing a business. We have had incoming requests for us to relocate to several European countries in many U.S. states. However, we remain committed to being anchored in the U.K. and are working closely with government to find a way to make sure that happens. Samuel Emden: Great. Thank you. And over to you, operator. Operator: [Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Edison Yu with Deutsche Bank. Xin Yu: First, I just want to check in on your comment you said about the pilot to full transition. You said it's very, very soon. Are there any regulatory hurdles that you're waiting for? I know weather has been an issue at times. Perhaps just elaborate on what's left to do. David King: Yes. Thanks, Edison. This is David. Thanks so much for the question. The short answer is the S curve. So if you were to -- and this is normal for envelope expansion. If you were to plot up test pass on the Y-axis versus time on the X-axis, this type of testing, you typically see a curve that looks like an S-leaning to the right in that it's the last few tests that have this tail end with this low slope, and that's where we are right now. So over the last couple of months, we did have a difficult winter, as you said, Records were broke in Bristol. I think there were 22 straight days without any sun and 45 straight days with rain. So we did have some weather difficulties. But with the spring time now, we're starting to see the forecast starting on Thursday to start to get a little bit better. So yes, we just have these last few tests to pass. And as we go through it, what we have done, and we tried to highlight this in the messaging is that we are doing these tests side-by side with the certification authority, the U.K. CAA. We are using our approved design organization, our DOA procedures, which are the same procedures we're going to use for certification to conduct the flight testing. So just to give you an example, as we conduct a test, we take the thousands of data points and then we compare it against our predictions that come from physics-based models. Where we see a slight deviation, we flagged that and we said, hey, we need to understand what that is before we move on. And when we have to go update and tweak our performance predictions in our models, then we go back to our airworthiness data package and update the appropriate sections to ensure that we still comply with the full airworthiness with this modification to the models before we move on to the next point. So it's using a certification process on the prototype, which is dry-running it to reduce the risk of certification later. Xin Yu: Understood. Appreciate the color. Separate topic on the strategic but from my understanding, there's been discussions going on. Any update on when we could maybe get something? And is the -- should we think about the full transition that I just asked about as a precursor for some type of strategic to come in? Domhnal Slattery: Edison, it's Domhnal. So the conversations that we are having with strategics are ongoing, and they've been ongoing now for a number of months. I'll refer back to our last earnings call. I think it's clear that the successful transition is a catalyst to moving to deepening those conversations into something tangible occurring, okay? So the focus right now from the entire organization is to complete that transition successfully and as quickly as possible from where we stand today. And the reality is it's taken us longer than we anticipated. On our last earnings call, I specifically said it's weeks, not months. Well, actually, as I was thinking about it this morning, it's months, not weeks. But we are very, very close at this juncture. Xin Yu: Understood. And just lastly for me, on the hybrid military side, I know you sort of alluded to some things earlier. Is that something that could happen as we get closer to Farnborough where you maybe announce some efforts or some programs? That's obviously a very hot topic or hot area given what's going on in the world. So curious your thoughts there. Domhnal Slattery: Yes. So maybe I'll bring in David just to give you some flavor from VERTICON, and we can supplement that. David? David King: Yes, yes. Thanks. Just to give you the perspective that I heard from the Vertical lift community at the Vertical Aviation International Trade Show in Atlanta 1.5 weeks ago, where people looked at the Valo and the differentiators resonated and one of those was the size of the aircraft and the ability to upgrade it to a hybrid configuration without changing the airframe, essentially just taking the spacious baggage bay and inserting a turbo generator system, and we are demonstrating that on our prototype aircraft #3. So the feedback that I heard was with the size of Valo and the versatility, what we were forecasting for the defense market we're not forecasting high enough is what I was hearing from the people. And as you mentioned, with the geopolitical situation as it is today, there are different opportunities. One that was talked about was distributed contested logistics where they said, if you look at the defense opportunities that are coming, they're based on vertical takeoff and landing in a configuration that can be turned into an autonomous platform quickly. And that's part of the value proposition of Valo and the Honeywell flight control system is it's one small step from fully autonomous and then to be able to have the room and the payload and the capacity in the baggage bay for the logistics to be able to turn it into that mission and open up a large set of demand. Domhnal Slattery: And maybe just to supplement that, Edison, we believe we are the only eVTOL manufacturer in the world that can basically create a hybrid from the current airframe, as David touched on. But from a time frame perspective, we'll have that aircraft certified in 2029. Our competitors are multiple years behind in that regard. Now in terms of commercializing that and actually generating sales, we're now dedicating a significant amount of internal resources to defense sales. And I hope during the course of this year, maybe as soon as the Farnborough Air Show, we'll be able to share some progress in that regard. But unquestionably, we've got the best product. We now need to make sure we can sell it. Operator: Your next question comes from Amit Dayal with H.C. Wainwright. Amit Dayal: So with respect to the timing for the fully -- the piloted transition flight, should we expect timing on that to be sort of mid-2026 or maybe later in the second half of 2026? Stuart Simpson: Thank you for the question. As David alluded to, we're really down to the very last little bit of this. Now we don't want to commit to a timing because, as David said, each time we put the aircraft in the air, we learn a little bit more. But with the weather improving, we actually flew yesterday, which was fantastic. We got some more learnings, nothing hindered us. We have literally a handful of flights to do to accomplish full transition as we sit here today. Now the timing of that very difficult to commit to because, as David said, we have the weather to contend with. We have new learnings. So it's something we anticipate over the coming weeks, I would say. Hopefully, that gives you a bit of color commentary. Amit Dayal: No, that's understandable. Just wanted to see if there was sort of a concrete time line to that but I can take that offline. The other question was the battery efforts, the $190 million to $200 million spend for the next 12 months, does that include your battery needs as well? Stuart Simpson: Yes, absolutely. The $190 million to $200 million is a rolling 12 months from end of March. It covers everything we need to do to remain on track with FlightPath 2030, delivering our new battery facility and new aircraft manufacturing facility, the conversion of Aircraft 3 into a hybrid and the build of the first Valo. So that financial number I mentioned covers all of the things we said we'd be doing in '26. Amit Dayal: Got it. And then just last one, the strategic investor you are sort of quoting and the other financial options that you are sort of looking at, how urgent are these needs given where the balance sheet is? Or are you comfortable at least for the remainder of 2026 to execute according to plan? Stuart Simpson: We're pretty comfortable as we sit here today. We've got line of sight to circa $150 million, $160 million as we sit here today. We're in constant discussions amongst a range of options for financing, and we'll execute as and when the time is right for the company. So we don't feel under pressure to do it. We'll do it as and when it's right for the company and the current shareholders. Operator: Your next question comes from Louie DiPalma with William Blair. Louie Dipalma: Stuart, Domhnal, and David congrats on the development of Valo and the demonstrations in London, New York City and Miami. For my first question, I was wondering, following these demonstrations and your test thus far, how do you feel that your Valo aircraft stacks up with peers in the market? Is the main difference between vertical and peers the balance sheet right now? Domhnal Slattery: Yes. Louie, great to hear from you. So I mean, we fundamentally believe, I mean, fundamentally that we've got the best product in terms of the size, shape and scale and its capabilities. We've believed that for a very long time. We've now shown the physical embodiment of that to our stakeholders, particularly in the United States over the last couple of months. So people have sat in the aircraft. People have seen the quantum of baggage that the aircraft actually takes. They've seen the cockpit and the segregation, which provides a very safe environment for the pilot. And so people are now getting really convinced that Valo as designed is the category killer in this space. It is not a minimum viable product that we believe some of our other competitors are developing. So our balance sheet, we think we've got the best product. We also think we've got the best supply chain collaboration globally, particularly with some of the major partners we have like Honeywell, Aciturri. But finally, we've got the best customer base. And at the end of the day, it's the customer base determines the success or failure of an aircraft. And if you look at our customers, they're globally diversified, Tier 1 airlines, many of them, and all of them are fully engaged in the constant development of the aircraft. And today, we're actually speaking from our battery facility here in the U.K., where I've just been brought through some of the unique proprietary battery systems that we've developed. We've basically collaborated on almost everything else with the aircraft because we think almost everything else is going to get commoditized. The battery, as Stuart said, is the special sauce. And our team is the best in the world in the development of our battery technology. So it's no surprise that we're convinced that we've got the best product but all of our stakeholders are telling us that now. Operator: Your next question comes from Austin Moeller with Canaccord Genuity. Austin Moeller: So just my first question here. Can you talk a little bit about the R&D and CapEx plans over the next 12 months that fits into the $195 million in cash you expect to burn? Like how many aircraft do you expect to build as part of that? Stuart Simpson: Austin, thanks for the question. Thanks for the continued support. The $190 million to $200 million is a rolling 12 months from the end of March. As I mentioned earlier, it covers everything we have laid out in FlightPath 2030 and today that we are going to achieve over the coming 12 months. So that is the public flight displays of the current prototype. It is the conversion of one of those into a hybrid. It is the expansion of the battery center where we are today, as Domhnal mentioned, it's the build of our aircraft manufacturing facility. And really importantly, it is the start of the build of the first Valo. So everything we said we'd be doing over this 12 months, that is funded within that $190 million to $200 million. Austin Moeller: Okay. And then is there an active program of record or the equivalent in the U.K. Ministry of Defense right now to procure a hybrid eVTOL aircraft? And are there other similar programs in the works with some of the allied NATO militaries? Stuart Simpson: So we've had multiple conversations across many different defense customers and defense partners in Europe and the U.S. There is no official program of record that we're attached to. However, we're in deep discussions with the U.K. government about this hybrid product. As David alluded to from his feedback from VERTICON, we are totally unique in this space in that we will be certifying a hybrid product in 2029 in an airframe that is sized and capable and perfectly usable by the military now. We do not have to go and redesign and defer this. So that is generating significant interest across the whole world for our product. We anticipate being able to close out something in that space over the coming months, the rest of this year because we definitively have the best product for the military. As Domhnal said, it's been widely recognized now we've showcased Valo, and that reads right across into the hybrid space as well. And David also touched importantly on autonomy. We are perfectly placed to jump quickly into autonomy because of our deep strategic partnership with Honeywell. So we are the first choice for military. Austin Moeller: Okay. And just my last question. Have you narrowed down any of the -- on the market or available hybrid powertrains to like 1 or 2 options yet? Stuart Simpson: We have. Actually, we've got a short list. I don't think we've announced who we are going with yet but we've had wide-ranging discussions. And interestingly, everyone wants to work with us because they've seen we have an airframe that is going to be highly, highly successful. So we have had inbounds for us for people that are absolutely desperate to be our partners on this because we are leading the way in the military and dual use space. Domhnal Slattery: Yes. And in that regard, Austin, we have European and U.S. alternatives from Tier 1 suppliers who are -- have gone from being, I would say, mildly interested in Vertical and our hybrid to being intensely focused because they can see the applicability. And to David's point, they also can see the absolute scale of the market opportunity, which I believe right now, we are currently underestimating. And we're going to have to take a good look at the scale of that defense opportunity globally, not just in Europe, but globally to ensure that our internal forecasts are really accurately reflecting the depth of that market opportunity, which is getting literally deeper by the month and quarter, given the scale of the budgets particularly in Europe that the European governments are allocating to defense. Operator: Your next question comes from Chris Pierce with Needham. Christopher Pierce: I was hoping to go a little bit deeper on the transition delays. Maybe delays harsh word. But either way, I'd just love to hear sort of if we think about a pie or 100%, however you want to bucket it, like what's within your control and what's been that you haven't been able to control from November until now. And in the U.S., we have like flight aware, we can sort of track and see flights that people are kind of flying, have there been weeks where you haven't been able to fly and that significantly pushed things out? Or I guess, kind of just let us know sort of what's -- kind of what's been going on in Cotswold? Stuart Simpson: Let me just -- I'll give you a little bit of color commentary, then I'll hand to David. You said were the weeks, we couldn't fly. I mean there were months, we couldn't -- it rained for 46 days in a row, as David said. We need a permit to fly every time we put the aircraft in the air, and we can't do it when it's raining. So there were 46 days in a row we could not fly just to orientate you. It isn't all in our control. Now David, if you want to give maybe a little bit more technical color. Domhnal Slattery: Well, certainly around the pie chart, David, I mean, how close are we? I mean, if you were to give a sense in a pie chart basis. David King: Yes. And so in terms of the number of tests that we have to do, it's less than 10% in a pie chart. It's in the tail end of the S-curve. So we're on that tail end of the S-curve. And as Stuart said, if you were then to create another pie chart that said, okay, what were the sources of not flying when you initially planned to fly, the biggest one was weather. And it was a really rough January and February. But on top of that, we also are doing envelope expansion testing. And as we do envelope expansion testing, each test point brings a database of data that gets compared with our predictions. So the wind conditions, we have a tight tolerance as well because we don't want to have that noise associated with the atmospheric disturbance. So in terms of the weather, the clouds, the wind conditions, that was the first one. And then the second one was as we conduct the test, and as we find that we have to make some adjustments to our predictive models to update our database, then we update the database and go through our full design organization procedures to get that new airworthiness document approved side-by-side with the CAA before we go to the next test. Domhnal Slattery: And maybe, Chris, just to bring that a little bit more to life because the environment that we're here in Europe is different to the United States. We are testing under a regulatory oversight. In the United States, it's an experimental -- the regulatory oversight effectively means that every time we fly, we have to receive a permit to fly, which means we sit with the CAA, we walk them through the learnings from the previous flight, any observations, any amendments, any changes. And that process is because it's the safest in the world, it is sequential. And unfortunately, it's slow. But slow is good because it means it's intentional and it ensures that we're flying in the safest manner possible. We all wish this was faster, but we're very comfortable about where we stand. And to David's pie chart picture there, we're into the last 10%. Christopher Pierce: Can you sort of help us with how slow is slow on those 2 sort of buckets that you just talked about, you fly, you compare the data, you have to tweak versus what you saw versus what you expected and then you need to take that to the CAA and then get approval to fly the next time. Are we talking days, weeks? Like what is the time frame between when you fly and when you're ready to fly the next time? And what's in your control and out of your control as far as that goes as well? Domhnal Slattery: Yes. It depends on the issue. We've had some issues that we get resolved in days. We've had a couple of issues over the last few months. They've taken several weeks actually. The good news in that scenario is we weren't able to fly anyway because of the weather. That's just the nature of the regulatory framework that we find ourselves in. It is the nature of 10 to the minus 9. But when we get through it, we will have the safest, commercially safest aircraft in the world. So the pain will be worth the gain. Stuart Simpson: Chris, just to give a final little comment on that. When we've taken learnings and made little tweaks, the joy of this is this aircraft we're flying now directly reads over to the Valo. So if you look at a top-down view of the Valo and the prototype, the rotors are the same size, the wing is of the same size and shape, the rears are almost exactly the same. So a lot of this stuff where we've had a few days delay or weeks delay, for example, this is stuff that we don't have to revisit because it goes directly into the Valo design. So we may have lost a little bit of time here, but we've actually derisked certification. This is one of the key things you've got to remember here. This derisks certification. Every single time we go back to CAA, we sit with them, with their experts, with our experts, we agree a way forward, and that is baked in knowledge learning and technical results and technical solutions that will be baked into the Valo. So it actually accelerates the whole program, which is why [ we are ] extremely confident. Christopher Pierce: Okay. I appreciate the details. And then just one other one. You guided to a 12-month cash burn of $200 million or $195 million. Is there any reason to think the next 12 months prior to that will be meaningfully different from that? As you ramp, like if I'm looking at Slide 17, you've got the 7 certification aircraft you're going to build. Like as we think about burn going forward before you have entry into service and revenue, how should we think about burn beyond the next 12 months, just... Stuart Simpson: Yes. We've actually put that out, I think FlightPath 2030. We've talked about the cash certification. It might be a little bit up on the $200 million, but it's in that ballpark. That's the way to think about it. Operator: Your next question comes from David Zazula with Barclays. David Zazula: First question is with respect to the selection of Evolito the EPU supplier. How has that been received by CAA and EASA? And I guess, do you perceive any risk with respect to certification with them relative to kind of the prior established Tier 1 supplier you had on the EPU side? Stuart Simpson: So actually, we didn't have an established Tier 1 supplier for certification. We're very proud to have been working with MAGicALL on that. But Evolito, we believe from a certification perspective, they're already up and running. They already have a DOA in place. They're working on a POA. They're highly, highly respected and it's proven, proven technology. So this is something from a certification perspective and support from regulatory bodies, we're very positive about. And David, if there's anything you want to add? David King: No. I mean it's a great question. And there are a couple of attributes of Evolito that are really a good fit for Valo. The first is, as Stuart said, is they have excellent certification processes in place, and they've really leaned forward on that. And they're not too far away, right? They're near Vista. And as we mentioned earlier, that Vista near Oxford is in the Oxford Cambridge Arc, which is one of the prime use cases for eVTOL in the United Kingdom. And so being here in the United Kingdom, it gives us advantage to work together on the U.K. CAA certification, and we have very complementary certification processes in place. David Zazula: Super helpful. I mean maybe can you frame how do you think they'll fit into the broader supplier strategy? How you think the supplier coordination is going to go? And I guess, broadly, how the suppliers will support your ability to ramp up production over the next couple of years? Stuart Simpson: David, thanks. We have been working with most of our supply chain for many, many years. They're deeply embedded in our process. Our whole Flightpath 2030 and certification date of 2028 has been done hand-in-hand with our supply chain. So they are there, ready, willing, committed. And as David alluded to, our CDR, a critical design review, where we'll have done the full design envelope of every single component. We're around 75% to 80% through that. Every single complex, long-term, difficult high-value component we've done. So EPUs, batteries, avionics, flight control systems, the airframe is locked in already, and they are there, ready and willing to make a certification aircraft in 2028. Operator: And there are no further questions at this time. I'll now turn the call back over to CEO, Stuart Simpson, for closing remarks. Stuart Simpson: I'd just like to thank everyone for listening into this call and all of the analysts for the questions. Really, really appreciate it. We are on the cusp of great things at Vertical. David and Domhnal said, we genuinely believe we have the industry-defining aircraft. The feedback we've had from everyone in this space has been outstanding, way above and beyond what we were expecting. We are going to bring the Valo to life. We will start building it at the end of this year, we'll be flying early next year. It's going to be an amazing 12 months. So thank you very much. Operator: This concludes today's conference. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.
Operator: Greetings. Welcome to Xiaomi's 2025 Annual Results Announcement Investor Conference Call and Audio Webcast. Today's conference will be recorded. If you have any questions or objections you may disconnect at this time. [Operator Instructions] Now we will have Mr. Xu Ran, General Manager of Group Investor Relations and Capital Markets Department to start. Ran Xu: Welcome, everyone. Welcome to the investor conference call and audio webcast for the company's 2025 annual results. Before we start the call, we would like to remind you that this call may include forward-looking statements, which are underlined by a number of risks and uncertainties and may not be realized in the future for various reasons. Information about general market conditions comes from a variety of sources outside of Xiaomi. This presentation also contains some unaudited non-IFRS financial measures, which should be considered in addition to, but not as a substitute for the company's financials prepared in accordance with IFRS. We have William Lu, Partner and President of Xiaomi Corporation; and Mr. Alain Lam, Vice President and CFO of the Corporation to talk to us. Mr. Lu will share recent strategic and business update. Thereafter, Mr. Lam will review the company's financial performance of 2025. And then after that, we will have the Q&A. Mr. Lu, please. Weibing Lu: Good evening. Thank you very much for coming to the 2025 full year call. Now this evening, I'll be talking about 3 points. First of all, review our main achievements in 2025. Second, share of breakthroughs in hard-core tech, in particular, in AI and embodied intelligence. And thirdly, we'll look ahead for the strategic direction focus in 2026. First of all, in 2025, some of our outstanding achievements. Well, in the year, our Xiaomi Group maintained high growth with both annual revenue and net profit reaching all-time highs. Total group revenue reached RMB 457.3 billion, surpassing the RMB 400 billion mark for the first time, up 25% year-on-year. Adjusted net profit reached RMB 39.2 billion, up 44% year-on-year. By segment, first of all, Smartphones. According to Omdia, in 2025, our global smartphone shipments ranked top 3. Market share was 13.3%, remaining global top 3 for 22 consecutive quarters. In Latin America and Southeast Asia, shipment ranking rose to second. In Europe and Africa, third. According to third-party data in Mainland China, our smartphone sales ranking rose to second. On premium models. In 2025, premium models in Mainland China accounted for 27.1% of total smartphone sales, up 3.8 percentage points. In RMB 6,000 to RMB 10,000 price bracket, our market share rose by 2.3 percentage year-on-year. We solidified our high-end base domestically and are making continuous breakthroughs in the RMB 6,000 to RMB 8,000 ultra-high-end market. By end of February 2026, we launched our first Leitzphone for global markets, priced at EUR 1,999, a new milestone in our overseas premium strategy. We'll continue achieving top-tier pricing in mature international markets and elevate our premium overseas sales to new heights. For IoT business in 2025, revenue surpassed RMB 120 billion for the first time, reaching RMB 123.2 billion and 18.3% year-on-year growth, hitting all-time high both domestically and internationally. For the home appliances revenue, it reached 23% plus growth with record shipments. Wearables ranked first globally, TWS earphones ranked second. Tablet shipments grew 25.2% year-on-year, ranked fifth. Our AI glasses released in June '25 ranked third globally and first in China. We continue to drive full category premiumization at home and abroad with overseas high-end products, achieving stellar performance. On premium strategy, in '25, our tech home appliances entered the European market already covering Spain, France, Germany, Italy and more. For autos, Xiaomi Auto delivered 410,000 units in 2025, far exceeding the 300,000 units target set at the year's start. February 13, '26, cumulative deliveries surpassed 600,000, and we are fully committed to delivering 550,000 units. In March 19, we officially launched a new generation SU7. It features major upgrades inside and out, including across the electric powertrain chassis, electronics architecture, et cetera. Within 34 minutes of launch, locked orders for SU7 exceeded 15,000, surpassing 30,000 orders after 3 days. For this year's MWC, we also showcased our Vision GT concept car, not just a concept car, this is Xiaomi Auto's latest exploration of design innovation built on hardcore technology. We are the first Chinese brand invited to participate, and it represents recognition by the world's top simulation driving platforms. For China's auto industry, it shows that in terms of design and innovation, Chinese automakers can already compete on par with the world's best. For hardcore tech, in '25, our R&D investment exceeded RMB 33 billion. For '26 we plan to invest over RMB 40 billion with more than RMB 16 billion for AI, embodied intelligence and other innovation fields. These investments build our solid product capability defenses. And for AI in 2025, we achieved breakthrough progress. For AI, it is an era of truly useful AI, undergoing historical leap from usable to truly useful, a paradigm shift from single tasks to complex tasks processing, from passive to active planning, from tool attributes to ecosystem attributes, and for us with rich terminal products and use cases across smartphones, cars, home appliances, IoT, real data value of AI far surpass the single category companies. Two, our foundation large models enter the leading global open-source tier. In March of the year, we released 3 models, Xiaomi MiMo-V2-Pro, MiMo-V2-Omni and MiMo-V2-TTS, completing our technical foundation for the Agent Era. MiMo-V2-Pro surpasses 1 trillion parameters, supporting 1 million token context windows and ranking 8th globally in Artificial Analysis Large Model Intelligence Index, fifth by global brand. During closed beta and public launch, these models rank first in weekly calls and held first place for many days on OpenRouter, single days as much as double in second place. And we will keep upgrading our foundation models as we move towards general intelligence. Three, we are poised to lead AI in the physical world, deep integration of AI in the physical world as the next frontier. We control over 1 billion hardware access points for its ecosystem. In March '26, our phone AI Agent, Xiaomi miclaw entered limited testing. We're the first OEM to attempt deploying [ launch ] Lobster on phone terminals, exploring the delivery of true AI phone and ecosystem to users. For auto, the new SU7 is equipped with our XLA Cognitive Large Model, achieving mall parking, navigation, complex scene understanding and voice control, improving both driving and experience. For SU7 Ultra, it's equipped with super shell AI, a smart cockpit and advanced AI. For the home in November '25, we launched our Miloco smart home solution, giving smart homes eyes and brains and hands and feet for the first time, a pioneering real world application of Xiaomi MiMo, laying a new vision for next-generation smart homes. Fourthly, for our AI is now Xiaomi core innovation engine in '25 with our tech-forward, about 2/3 of the winning projects used AI, reimagining work across fundamental materials, chipsets and OS, intelligent driving, tech home appliances and more, backed by China's strong AI industry. The coming decade belongs to China. And also Xiaomi is well positioned in person, car, home ecosystem. We'll invest RMB 60 billion in AI over the next 3 years. And in this era, we are confident that we'll place a new trade for Chinese AI. For embodied robotics, it is the ultimate integration platform for AI chips, OS and manufacturing capabilities, a high barrier field. In 2026, we launched a haptic-driven precision grasping, fine-tuning model, core tech for robotic dexterous hands. Shortly after, we open-source a Xiaomi Robotics VLA large model, Xiaomi-Robotics-0, achieving several new SOTA results. In March, Xiaomi embodied robot began internship in our car factory, achieving 90.2% deal size site simultaneous installation success for self-tapping nut workstations, meeting production line cycle times as quick as 76 seconds with 3 hours of auto operation. These are just starts. Over the next 5 years, we believe large numbers of embodied robots will work in Xiaomi's factories. And robots will break brown boundary between virtual and physical worlds. But there are challenges such as cost increase, et cetera. In the short term, there may be some pressure on our business. But on the other side, we will be steadfast in our strategy so that we will continue to have breakthroughs in AI, chips, OS and embodied intelligence. We are committed to scaling our global business model and advancing Chinese tech worldwide. This person, vehicle, home ecosystem is not just a product combination, but the platform for understanding users' full scenario data. We'll firmly seize the opportunities of AI era, and we are filled with endless possibilities and imagination. Alain Lam: Well, thank you, President Lu. As shared by Mr. Lu, in 2025, we have achieved historical leap. Our total revenue reached a record high of RMB 457.3 billion, setting a company best. This year, we achieved a year-on-year increase of 25%. Revenue in the fourth quarter is a new single quarter record. Overall, gross profit margin was 22.3%, up 1.3% year-on-year, historical high also. The second half of 2025 was more challenging for the first. For the full year, our smartphone times AIoT segment revenue was RMB 351.2 billion, up 5.4% year-on-year, which is also a new annual high. The smartphone times AIoT segment gross profit margin also reached a record 21.7%, up 0.5% year-on-year. For smartphones, for the year, revenue was -- sorry, RMB 186.4 billion, accounting for 40.8% of total revenue. In '25, our global shipments reached 165 million units. Our high-end strategy had significant results of continued product strength enhancement. Third-party data shows that in 2025, our high-end smartphone sales in the Mainland of China accounted for 27.1% of our total smartphone sales, up 3.8% year-on-year. In that, RMB 4,000 to RMB 6,000 price segment, our market share reached 17.3%, up 0.5% year-on-year. For RMB 6,000 to RMB 10,000 segment, our market share was 4.5%, nearly doubling year-on-year. According to third party in 2025, our global smartphone shipment volume ranked top 3 with market share 13.3%, maintaining a top 3 position globally for 5 consecutive years. In 58 countries and regions, our smartphone shipments ranked top 3. And in 70 countries and regions, we ranked top 5. Despite rising memory prices in 2025, our smartphone gross margin remained relatively healthy at 10.9% for the year. For IoT, for this year, our revenue and gross margin both performed remarkably. 2025 revenue from IoT grew rapidly by 18.3% year-on-year to RMB 123.2 billion, a new record. And both for domestic and international sales, it was at all-time highs, thanks to product structure optimization and improved product strength. For gross profit margin of IoT, it was a record high of 23.1%, up 2.8% year-on-year. By category, large smart home appliances performed exceptionally well with revenue up 23.1% year-on-year, a record high. Our wearable devices maintained rapid growth and an industry-leading position. Our wearable band ranked first in global shipments and TWS earphones ranked second. Tablet products continue to grow fast, ranking fifth globally with shipments up 25.2% year-on-year. Internet services. We continue to expand our user base. In December '25, our global MAU reached 750 million, up 7.4% year-on-year. Of these, Mainland China MAU reached 190 million, up 10.1% year-on-year. In 2025, our Internet service revenue hit a record RMB 37.4 billion, up 9.7% year-on-year. And of this, just in the fourth quarter 2025 alone, Internet service revenue reached RMB 9.9 billion. Throughout 2025, our Internet gross margin remained relatively stable at 76.5%. Advertising continued to drive Internet business growth with annual revenue of RMB 28.5 billion, a record high. Overseas Internet service revenue grew by 15.2% to a record RMB 12.6 billion, accounting for 33.8% of total Internet service revenue. Next, on EVs. Our EV and AI and innovation business segment, annual revenue for the segment reached RMB 106.1 billion, surpassing RMB 100 billion in less than 2 years, up over 200% year-on-year, accounting for 23.2% of the group's total revenue. Of this, Smart EV sales revenue was RMB 103.3 billion, with other related revenue at RMB 2.8 billion. For the year, gross profit margin for Smart EV and AI, innovation business segment was 24.3%, up 5.8% year-on-year. In 2025, the segment achieved positive annual operating profit for the first time, recording an operating profit of RMB 0.9 billion. We delivered a total of 411,082 new vehicles in 2025. In the fourth quarter alone, 145,115 new vehicles were delivered, a single quarter record high. The average post-tax unit price for the year was RMB 251,171, up 7% year-on-year. Next, over the past 5 years, our cumulative R&D expenditure was RMB 105.5 billion, up 37.8%. '25 alone, R&D expenditure was RMB 33.1 billion, up year-on-year, and we estimate starting from 2026, our cumulative R&D expenditure over the next 5 years will exceed $200 billion. For net profit in '25, the group's adjusted net profit was RMB 39.2 billion, a record high and up 43.8% year-on-year. For CapEx for '25, our CapEx reached RMB 18.2 billion, up 73% year-on-year. And of this, Smart EV and AI innovation accounted for 66% and over. We continue to enhance our shareholder value and we actively repurchased shares on the open market. In '25, our share repurchase was approximately HKD 6.3 billion. Since early '26, our share repurchase totaled about HKD 4.7 billion. In January '26, we announced an automatic share repurchase plan for a cap, with a cap of HKD 2.5 billion, demonstrating our confidence in our company's long-term future. We actively practice sustainable development. In low carbon initiatives in 2025, our group purchased more than 40 million-kilowatt hours of green electricity, over 10x of last year. In '25, our [ PV ] electricity usage in our auto plant exceeded 13 million-kilowatt hours, reducing carbon emissions by nearly 10,000 tonnes annually. On ESG ratings in '25 for CDP Climate Change and Water Security Survey, Xiaomi received a management level B score. Also, in March '26, we achieved our best-ever score of 81 in EcoVadis gold medal, marking another recognition of our ESG efforts. We will continue to follow a robust and enterprising operating strategy and look forward to an even greater achievement for 2026. Thank you so much. This ends my report for this evening. Next, we can have the Q&A session. Operator: [Operator Instructions] Morgan Stanley. Andy Meng: Greetings both. First of all, congratulations for 2025, revenue and profits have reached new record highs. I have two questions, one on memory. We see that memory prices have been rising significantly. Investors, what's most concerned about this for the segment of smartphones. And we noticed that there are already some smartphone selling price hikes in order to offset this memory prices hike. But your smartphone sets are still the same in terms of pricing. So perhaps in supply chain management and in inventory, you are better than your competitors so that in this challenging situation, you exceed your competitors in performance. Perhaps Mr. Lu can explain to us for your new thoughts concerning smartphones and what are your responses to this year's challenges? Weibing Lu: Right. For memory, yes, for each quarter, you have always been caring and concerning about this. And in different occasions, I have also talked about my views on this. In the past, I have said that this is a period that we are going through, and we have to look at 2027. And there may be high price hikes and we have done our work in this regard. But on the other hand, my own feeling is that the cycle of hikes may be longer than I had expected. First of all, there is the AI-led demand. And also for memory, the cost hikes magnitude, I think, is going to be higher and much higher than I had expected. My expectation in the industry was already forward, but I think it's going to be even higher in terms of price hikes for this. So it is longer cycles and the price hikes is going to be higher than I had expected. So for all the consumer items, it is going to impact greatly, not only for smartphones, which we are more concerned about. But for some categories, for some smaller capacity, categories with smaller memories, units, there is a situation where there is a cut in supply even. So this is an actual situation that's facing us in reality. The impact of that, we have a calculation which is very simple, and that is we look at the memory and it's part of the product. The more it is as a part of this product category, the more it will be impacted but less -- of course, it will be less impacted. And in our categories, smartphones, tablets, notebooks, they are more in terms of proportion. But on the other hand, there are some, for example, high-end smartphones. Relatively speaking, it is less for memory part. So for a company, if the products will have more memory as a part of their product then, of course, the impact will be higher, less will be less impact. So this is a very simplistic way of calculation I'm looking at it. In the past 2 weeks, looking at the memory price hikes, we already see some competitors raising their mid-priced smartphone prices. And I fully understand that. I think for annual smartphone manufacturer, if they do not unload to the consumer, it is very difficult to sustain this kind of price hikes. But I think it is inevitable for this. And for Xiaomi, our pressure is very, very large indeed. But as I say, we will try our very best to digest this to protect the consumer. And when we can do this no more, we will have to hike our smartphones prices, and we hope that our consumers and our customers will understand this. Yes, we are slower in price hikes, but it doesn't mean that we are immune from it. There are some competitive advantages for Xiaomi, which I can tell you. So for example, in home appliances, the category, for this category, it will be less impact. For smart cars, EVs, it would be higher because the memory part of that is higher. But on the other hand, compared to the proportion in smartphones, it will be lower. So with our variety of product segments, this is how I see it. And through this, I hope we will be able to better resolve this problem. For smartphones, tablets and notebooks, we are a company -- we are globally leading and also in EVs as well in the past few years. And for the memory suppliers around the world, we have built a very good relationship, mutual trust, and we have long-term supply contracts. So at this point, I do not feel that we have any risk of nonsupply or stopping of supply. So this is our competitive advantage compared to our competitors. The third point is that in my previous expectation, I was more pessimistic about memory price hikes. And therefore, I have been making more aggressive preparations. So in that case, our inventory sufficiency was higher. But overall speaking, for our terminal products cost, it is highly impactful. So this short-term pressure is definitely in existence, it is there. Andy Meng: Mr. Lu, this is very clear. My second question is about our vehicles. For the new generation of Xiaomi vehicles, there had been a successful announcement. And in the investor interaction, I noticed that some investors feel that we -- that Xiaomi doesn't -- no longer talk about or announce the data, but only for the unit data, well, and this is more negative. But for Xiaomi, what is the sale? I think it's going to be stable and it will be positive, and this is how I see it. Can you talk about these 2 investors' point of view? Unknown Executive: Andy, let me just answer that question. Well, for the announcement of sales from the users side, we see some phenomena. The first phenomenon is that for the first 3 days of sales, we already have achieved significant sales, 34 minutes, 150 locked-in sales. And after 3 days, it was over 30,000 units sales, and we have lived up to our commitment. And that is for the delivery starting from the fourth day of launch, we have already started delivery because we have already made preparations for the manufacturing of cars. And also, with some of the problems of the previous batch, they had to wait for a long time and before we could deliver to our users, those who have locked in their purchases. So we have absorbed our experience, and we had a new iteration. Well, as you have mentioned, why do we only disclose our locked-in contracts. We think that this is more fair. So it is not about preordering or big ordering. It is locked orders. Locked orders are solid, and that is the buyers are going to take delivery of these vehicles. And this governs our manufacturing cycle as well. So we think that's locked contracts or purchase is a fairer way of looking at it, and that is why we made the change. And in the industry, I'm sure people have their different practices, but this is what we maintain is the right way. So this is the first point. And also using this particular opportunity for our -- concerning the locked in contracts, let me share some information. So for the first point, it is that a lot of investors have asked about the locked orders. Buyers, are they from our previous buyers or new buyers or most of them we know are new buyers. For the locked orders, they come from new buyers. So it is not the original owners who are changing to -- changing from -- [ 2 Euro ] cars. For iPhone, about 50%, it is first generation. And for 60% of the new buyers, they are iPhone users. So for our locked contracts, the progress is faster than our first-generation users. So compared to the previous numbers, these locked orders are bigger. And also, you are very complementary of our allocation. About 60% of them are using the paid choice, the paid options. So compared to the previous generation, we think that the penetration is better. For example, female buyers, iPhone users penetration and also choosing different options of colors, for example, all these have been performing better in penetration than the last generation, the previous generation. Thank you for your question. Operator: Timothy Zhao from Goldman next. Timothy Zhao: I have 2 questions concerning AI. First of all, concerning in the past 2 years, there are some models and including the foundation models. So for AI capabilities in the ecosystem, what is our capability? And also for miclaw and also for the IoT, how is miclaw positioning? And how do we see it done with IoT? And how is miclaw going to be significant? And also, I would like to know how we consider AI in its users and also developers and internal to Xiaomi and its commercialization? In LLM, what are some KPI considerations for your team? You once said that in the next 3 years, there's going to be a RMB 60 billion expenditure? And how is this on OpEx and CapEx, the allocation, please? Unknown Executive: For 2023, we have used a lot of energy to consider our AI strategy going forward. So we have faced it. First of all, the infrastructure for AI, algorithm, et cetera. And out of the infrastructure, we had an exponential growth in terms of its application. And last year, we had already said that '26 was an explosive use of AI era. So from virtual, AI has moved into the physical world. And this is true to my earlier prediction. And with this prediction coming true, we will be developing our AI/LLM. We started investing in '24 and in 2025 in [ MiMo ] LLM or large language models, we have made a lot of progress. And we have been very clear last year in saying that this year, '26 will be the year of explosive use of AI. And last year, we were more considering about agents, AI agents. So in individual terminal, how can AI have a bigger usage so that people are able to do things that they were not able to use before. With OpenClaw, it's allowed us to very quickly roll out miclaw in testing. So at present, from the responses of our testing, it is very, very positive. And going forward, there is a huge market, and that is AI going to the physical world. So it will be in driving, in robots, in humanoids, et cetera. So in this area, Xiaomi has already made the deployment. And at the end, I think it will have to serve our entire ecosystem of Xiaomi. So this is a direction. This is a large direction, and we will continue to strategically follow that. And also, you mentioned miclaw. And for miclaw, this AI agent of Xiaomi, this is our own developed and it is an agent and it is going to test our modeling capability and also our limitation, and also, it's going to test how we are able to deeply integrate and also our data capability. And at Xiaomi, we will do our own integration with our own data from our users. So we will also be using cloud-based data. And also there will have to be certain integration into the system and also safety, we will be good in protecting safety. So for Xiaomi miclaw, it is going to be the prototype for the future AI agent. Now this is still early on. We do not have some specific commercialization model. And I don't have any KPI for the team yet because only when it is mature will the team has a certain KPIs. So as for the RMB 60 billion that you talked about, yes, my colleague will answer that question. Unknown Executive: That's right. For the [ RMB 16 billion ] and 3 years -- RMB 60 billion, it is -- it includes R&D and also CapEx. But of course, in R&D, it also includes the distribution from previous year's R&D. So it is our present period R&D and also our previous R&D and also CapEx. So there will be 3 parts. If you look at the 2026 [ RMB 16 billion ], most of it is R&D expenses, the present period. So it's a 70% present period R&D. So if it is CapEx plus the previous years, it would be the rest. So the next 3 years, every year, our CapEx will have some previous CapEx, which had been detained into this year. So it may be lower than the 70%. So it is for this period as well as a portion from the previous year's CapEx or amortization from previous year's CapEx. Operator: China Capital, Wen Hanjing next. Hanjing Wen: I have 2 questions. First question concerning our IoT business. We see 2025 IoT performance have been very, very good from revenue and also in progress and advancement. So for this year, there are 2 concern points. They are positive. And for home appliances, new highs reached. But some investors are concerned that with the domestic situation, what do you say the economy ramping down a bit? How do you see this? And also, what about IoT going overseas? What is the planning? And secondly, for vehicles in 2025, overall, for EVs, it is already profitable. And also for future planning for the entire year, how do you see profits for the entire year for vehicles? Weibing Lu: I'll be talking about IoT, and then Alain will answer the other question. For IoT for this business, because we have a number of different categories. I'll be talking about China market and overseas markets. For China market, I think there is an opportunity, and that is premiumization of IoT. For IoT business for us, even though it is very large scale, but our ASP is low. Last year, we had major progress made, but it is still far from our goal. Our watches, our, for example, our hairdryer, et cetera, I think still the average price is relatively low. So in R&D, with our investment in that, I think this year, we are going high end. I think there will be a lot, a lot of positive progress. So I think this is a huge opportunity. So for major home appliances, for our washing machines, our fridge, and it is 4 points. And for aircons, it is 10 points. So for ESG, I think there is still room for pricing. And for our IoT business, overall, last year, it is already at a very high level of AIoT as we will continue to do so. As for overseas business, I think there is a huge space for development because our market has always been the -- in China. If going to the North American market, it's going to be 3x of our original market size. And it's -- so that is to see it's going to be 6x if we reach our potential. It's going to be 6x or at least a few times our domestic China market. So there is a lot of empty room for us to fill in terms of overseas markets. We will send people. We will send our products. And with our IoT development, there had been a lot of overseas and information and testing, and there is huge room for overseas growth and development. So for our high ASP products, this is a high area of growth potential. So this is our overseas plan. Last year, it was 4.5 shops and it's going to grow to 10 or 10,000 shops. And I was in London in Xiaomi Home, I was able to observe that most of the products were high-end product selling. So you think that actually, our categories are very full in range, and these overseas markets, for example, in the U.K., they are selling at high end. So I think there is huge room for development in the overseas market. For the vehicle question, last year in 2025, we have delivered over 410,000 units, far exceeding the 300,000 unit target we set at the year start. So at the year start for this will be 550,000 units for this year's delivery target for 2026. So '26 compared to '25, there is growth. But for the overall situation in '26, there is pressure. So for our expectations, et cetera, we are still very confident that we'll be able to reach our target. As for our target profit. You would know for this category, it is AI and new business segment. So that would include our AI investment and also new development areas. So you cannot just look at the segment as just an auto segment. It includes other new businesses in this segment. But at present, the new businesses are still in the investment stage. As I've mentioned, in AI, for example, this year, we will continue to increase our investment in AI, including in robots. Robotics, we'll increase our investment there as well. So you have to look at 2 areas. One, auto in this segment. And secondly, AI plus new business investment. So for this particular segment, last year, it performed very well. For this year, as auto growth and also in other areas, the kind of fruit that we're going to pick from them, the results, this is going to be an encouraging segment. Operator: Kyna Wong, Citibank. Hiu King Wong: Can you hear me fine? Unknown Executive: Yes. We can. Hiu King Wong: I have 2 questions. First of all, I would like to know for the Middle Eastern situation recently, I don't know whether for the overseas business, including IoT, handsets, has it impacted you? Are there certain logistics and also cost of raw materials had presented issues to you? And also another question concerning your gross profit margin. For this year, for handsets or smartphones, is there a principle, let's say, under what kind of profit level will you be keeping it or making certain choices for adjusting the price. So for smartphone handsets to protect your profit margin, gross profit margin? And also for vehicles, there may be some pressure, as you have mentioned before. And how do you think this will be making your performance better than your competitors? Are there certain safeguards for profits and also AI, IoT because premiumization is a strategy of yours, you did say that for this kind of premiumization. What is your plan for AIoT, please? Unknown Executive: First of all, for Middle Eastern conflict, it's nothing that we want to see, certainly. I hope that there will be a solution for it because it's going to impact industries and economy around the world, it's going to impact big way. As for Xiaomi business, the Middle Eastern overall situation, for revenue from that part, it is not so much -- it is only in the single digits as a contribution to our profit. So in terms of the market from the Middle East, it's a small proportion of our overall at Xiaomi. So it is controllable from that regard. But at the same time, we also see that the oil situation from the Middle East, we already see some pellets, plastic pellets, and the raw materials is influenced or impacted. But overall speaking, it is still controllable. So that's for your first question. Second question, concerning cars, IoT and also smartphone handsets, the gross margin and what is our pricing strategy, well, for this, I would say, first of all, for memory, for memory components, we are to quantify that. I would say in the past, for a quarter, for example, we expect it to be at a certain high price, but actually, it's going to be at an even higher price, rising even higher. So we are very -- it's very hard for us to quantify that even for a small increase, it may because it is such a big part of the product, it will be impacting the cost of the product a lot. So it is very difficult to foretell early on, like what we had been able to do before. But for smartphones for this category, I think given our size and also our market share, it is very important for us. So if you say whether there's a principle, it would be that we hope. We try our best to make some balances. So my consideration is that we want to maintain our market position. That is very important to us because for smartphones, there are very few listed companies in this category. So I'm not being able to get a lot of accurate data from the industry competitors. But from my years of experience, I know the following. For example, in vehicles, the absolute number as a part of the overall car price, it is less in terms of its impact, but not as big as a smartphone part. For IoT, it is even -- it is also even lower in terms of memory, internal memory price impact. So different categories will have different impact. What is big impact would be smartphone, notebook and also tablets, less so for smart cars, less so for vehicles that is, and even less so for IoT. Operator: Next question, Citic, Xinchi. Xinchi Yin: I have 2 questions. First of all, on AI business. Miclaw has been introduced. And I was fortunate to have joined the launch. That was excellent. Can you give us more guidance? And that is at what point of maturity would you in big model or miclaw to commercialize them? And how would that be like in revenue? That's the first question. As for the second question for this year for chip, for example, do you think that you can have some progress to update us? Unknown Executive: For miclaw, I have already talked a lot about it, and I'm sure as a user, you will have felt this product, and you were there at the launch, and it's given us a lot of nice surprises, but it's a new product. And we still have a lot of -- there's a lot of room for improvement. And I, myself, also have gotten a lot of responses, so we have to improve on it. But I think the iterations will be very fast, and it will be a new version in a few days. So it's going to be -- it's going to have high speed iterations. For Xiaomi overall speaking, for AI, it's still going to be contributed to our users. For the commercialization of AI, I would say, at this point, it is still too early. Even though our large model, efficiency is high, our token commercialization, for instance. But from absolute numbers, it may be a little bit high. So at this point today, I would say commercialization is too early to talk about for us. And also, we already see our XLA model, XLA model. This is the XLA model, which is a cognitive large model. And SU7 is equipped with it from -- at present internally from our testing, it is very, very good in performance. So for these 2 models of cars, I am a user. And I personally would use -- if I use them, and if I have any questions in terms of use, I will put these cases to the team. And I personally experience these auto driving functions. It will be going forward step by step. And also our auto driving, whether the models or chips, we already have some deployments. So integration terminal to terminal, and when we have this ready, it's going to give a lot of new experience to our users. I don't know whether you've been driving our cars. Yes, watch out for its progress as we integrate more and more of our models into them for automotive. Operator: Because of time, this will be the last question from Zoe Xu of UBS. Zoe Xu: A lot of questions have already been asked by others. I have 2 questions to ask concerning new business investment and also IoT. For new business, with the models iterations faster, and you said that there will be more investment into AI. So for expenditure on new business, is chips side will be adjusted? Or do we see that there will be new chips introduced? Second question on IoT. Just now it's been mentioned for tablet and notebooks, there will be some cost impact. So will there be something like smartphones pricing strategy and that is to emphasize the experience for users, please? Unknown Executive: Well, for this year, we have increased a lot of R&D expenses. But for chip, it is a long-term strategic capability of ours. I have already said that this is a platform capability chip because it's going to provide capability for a lot of profit -- product types and product categories. So even though in AI, we have increased our investment, but we have not slackened our investment in chips. Actually, some of the chips, many of the chips. They are part of our big AI strategy. So we will definitely be steadfast with it. As for PC and tablets, we will follow more or less the same strategy as for smartphones. But please also notice that for the notebook that we have just launched, the Xiaomi NoteBook, after 4 years of development, it is selling very well. And it is the demand is even higher than we had expected. When we launched this NoteBook, we already knew that the memory part will be increasing in price. But on the other hand, the response has been so encouraging because of the product strength is good, even though it is more expensive, the users will be able to adopt it and they'll accept it. So I think product innovation, technological capability, these are important, even though memory is hiking in prices. But still, we will have ways to make our products attractive. In 2022, through our efforts, I think our company and our management team will still be able to deliver good performance for everyone. Operator: Thank you. We end the meeting here. Thank you very much for your participation. Thank you for your support for the company, Xiaomi. [Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]
Operator: Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Tongcheng Travel 2025 Fourth Quarter and Annual Results Announcement Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I'd now like to hand the conference over to Ms. Kylie Yeung, Investor Relations Director of the company. Please go ahead, ma'am. Kylie Yeung: Thank you. Good morning, and good evening, everyone. Welcome to Tongcheng Travel's 2025 Fourth Quarter and Annual Results Conference Call. I'm Kylie Yeung, Investor Relations Director of the company. Joining us today on the conference call are our Executive Director and CEO, Mr. Hope Ma; our CFO, Mr. Julian Fan; our Chief Capital Officer and President of Wander Hotels and Resorts, Ms. Joyce Li. For today's call, our management team will provide a review of the company's performance in the fourth quarter and full year 2025. Hope will brief us on the company's strategies. Joyce will discuss our business and operational highlights, and then Julian will address the details of financial performance accordingly. We'll take your questions during the Q&A section that follows. As always, our presentation contains forward-looking statements. Such statements are based on management's current expectations and current market operating conditions and relate to events that involve known or unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, which may cause the company's actual results, performance or achievements to differ from those in the forward-looking statements. This presentation also contains some unaudited non-IFRS financial measures. They should be considered in addition to, but not as a substitute for measures of the company's financial performance prepared in accordance with IFRS. For a detailed discussion of non-IFRS measures, please refer to our disclosure documents in the IR section of our website. Now let me introduce our CEO, Hope. Hope will be presenting in Mandarin, and our colleague will provide the English translation afterwards. Hope, please go ahead. Heping Ma: [Interpreted] In 2025, China's travel industry and the company entered a new phase of high-quality development. Over the past year, we witnessed resilient travel demand with increasingly diversified trends as immersive and experiential consumption continues to gain popularity. Amid this backdrop, we deeply dive into user needs and comprehensively optimize our travel products and user experiences. As a result, both our user base and ARPU demonstrated robust growth in 2025 with APU reaching a record high. The robust business growth reflected the ongoing enhancement of our service quality and the expanding influence of our brand. The year 2025 was a year of challenges and opportunities for us. In response to consumers' diversified and personalized needs, we continuously enriched our product offerings, facing growing expectations for premium services. We consistently improved our service quality. Amidst AI-driven technological revolution, we proactively embraced new frontier technologies with an open attitude. All these showcased our strong organizational agility and exceptional execution capabilities, further reaffirming our commitment to our user-centric mission of make travel easier and more joyful. The Chinese government sees travel as a vital pillar of national economic development. The latest 15th 5-year plan has explicitly stated the commitment to expanding the supplies of high-quality travel products and to enhancing travel service standards with the goal of establishing China as a premier travel destination from the pilot implementation of autumn and winter vacations in certain regions to the longest spring festival holiday on record. These expanding holiday arrangements underscore significant governmental support for the travel industry. In terms of demand, travel has become an essential part of people's pursuit of a better life with seasonal themes such as spring flower viewing, summer retreats, all foliage tours and winter snow activities continuously gaining popularity. In the coming year, we will remain focused on domestic market and deep dive into user needs, aiming to further solidify our leading position in the mass market. Simultaneously, we will make intensified efforts to capture growth opportunities in the outbound travel market to propel our global expansion strategy. On the operational front, we will continue to implement technological innovation and product upgrades centered on user experience while enriching membership privileges and deepening user engagement. In 2021, we tapped into the hotel management business. After several years of rapid expansion, it has now gained meaningful scale. The integration of Wanda Hotels and Resorts in 2025 marked a pivotal milestone in the development of our hotel management business. This strategic move strengthened our brand portfolio and ecosystem while substantially elevating our competitiveness and market influence. By consistently executing our strategy and leveraging our strong Internet DNA, we are well positioned to accelerate the segment expansion in 2026, laying a robust foundation for our long-term sustainable growth. Amidst the rapid advancement of AI technology, we are devoted to expanding the application of AI in our business process, further optimizing operational efficiency and enhancing user experience. Building on our user-centric value proposition, market acumen and superior execution capabilities, we are confident that we will continue broadening our competitive moat in the travel industry. Moving forward, we will continue to export our technologies and expertise to empower our partners and support the broader industry ecosystem while strengthening our commitment to corporate social responsibility to foster sustainable industry growth and create greater value for all stakeholders. Next, I will hand over the call to Joyce. She will share with you our business and operational highlights of the fourth quarter and the full year of 2025. Joyce, please go ahead. Joyce Li: Thank you, Hope. 2025 was a pivotal year of growth and achievement for our company. Beyond the steady expansion of our domestic business, our outbound travel and hotel management businesses made remarkable progress, contributing meaningfully to the overall growth momentum of the company. During the past year, we acutely grasped users' evolving preferences and precisely captured emerging demand. This enabled us to once again deliver solid growth across all business segments, highlighting our excellence in strategic execution, operational efficiency and organizational agility. Throughout the year, our accommodation business sustained robust growth momentum and achieved a record high in room nights sold. In early 2025, we identified a notable shift in users' preference towards high-quality hotels. In response to the changes, we strategically reallocated operational resources to meet this evolving demand, resulting in an approximately 5 percentage point year-over-year increase in the proportion of high-quality hotels sold on our platform. In the meantime, we prioritized enhancing user experience. We not only offer the best value for money products and services, but also provided faster and more responsive support to user requests to further strengthen our presence in the mass market. As for our international business, we continue to enhance our product capabilities by deepening partnerships with third-party providers as well as expanding our product and service offering. In addition, we leveraged our domestic user base to drive cross-sell initiatives and execute the precision marketing campaigns targeting high potential users. All these efforts collectively led to nearly 30% growth in our international room nights sold in 2025. In terms of our transportation business, it continuously demonstrated strong resilience throughout the year. Over the past year, we placed a strong emphasis on improving both user experience and engagement. At the core of the efforts is our Algorithm-driven Huixing system, which leverages advanced algorithm capabilities to provide users with viable and accessible travel solutions by utilizing a comprehensive range of transportation options. The intelligent system significantly enhances the overall travel experience for users. In the fourth quarter, we launched skiing-themed marketing campaigns and rolled out various benefits to skiing enthusiasts so as to reinforce our positioning as an experience-driven platform and further engage our user base. On the international front, we focused on improving operational efficiency by implementing a more disciplined subsidy policy and expanding our VAS offerings. As a result, we achieved a balanced growth in both volume and revenue throughout the year with volume growth of nearly 25% for 2025. As mentioned at the beginning of the speech, 2025 marked a milestone year for our hotel management business with significant progress achieved. This year, we successfully completed the acquisition of Wanda Hotels and Resorts, a company that possesses a renowned portfolio of upper upscale and luxury hotel brands with strong market presence in China. In addition to its hotel management expertise, the company is the only hotel management firm in China with proven specialization in operating scale resorts. This unique capability can help us strengthen supply chain resources in the travel industry, thereby enhancing our influence and competitiveness. Furthermore, Wanda Hotels and Resorts operates its own in-house design institute which is recognized as one of the leading hospitality design teams in China and has received numerous prestigious international awards. The team possesses strong capabilities in designing and managing large-scale hotels as well as convention and exhibition centers. Its design solutions serve not only its own properties, but also high-end hospitality projects across the industry. Following the acquisition, the Wanda Hotels and Resorts team underwent a seamless integration process, resulting in a significant boost to its vitality and optimized organizational capacity and refined strategic direction. This strategic integration has improved our brand portfolio, strengthened our market presence and accelerated the sustainable growth of our hotel management business. Regarding our eLong hotel technology platform, we remain focused on expanding our geographical footprint while prioritizing quality growth throughout the year. The platform also offers technology-enabled hotel management solutions featuring a proprietary property management system, a smart marketing solution, [indiscernible] and service robots for automated in-room delivery. By the end of December, our total number of hotels in operation exceeded 3,000 with more than 1,800 in the pipeline. Looking ahead, we are committed to further expanding our asset-light hotel management business through network expansion and ecosystem enablement. This strategic approach will position us to achieve leadership in China's hotel industry and establish a second growth engine for the company. Traffic operation has been the foundation of our success, leveraging the Weixin Mini program, we have effectively reached a broad user base across China, in particular, those in lower-tier cities. Over the past year, the Weixin ecosystem continued to serve as a critical traffic channel, where we focused on enhancing operational efficiency. At the same time, our stand-alone app, a key driver of new user acquisition, demonstrated strong growth momentum over the past 4 quarters. To attract younger demographics, we rolled out a series of innovative products and engaging marketing campaigns to enhance user mind share and solidify our positioning as an experience-oriented travel platform. As such, the average DAUs of our stand-alone app posted more than 30% growth year-over-year in 2025. Additionally, social media has played an increasingly vital role in engaging users, particularly those younger audiences. During the year, we stepped up our efforts in social media platforms to connect with younger travelers and broadened our user reach through effective and targeted user engagement. We have accumulated the most extensive user base in China's OTA industry. For the 12 months ended December 2025, our annual paying users climbed to 253 million, representing a year-over-year growth of 6%. In addition, the accumulated number of passengers served on our platform over the past 12 months continued to expand and reached 2,034 million with an annual purchase frequency exceeding 8x per user. Moreover, our annual ARPU for the year further rose to RMB 76.8, reflecting a year-over-year growth of 5.5%. Besides our MPU also maintained a growth trajectory throughout the year and increased by 6% year-over-year to 46 million for 2025. As an innovation-driven company, we fully embrace new technologies such as Gen AI to transform our business. In December, we rolled out collaboration with Yuanbao, enabling users to access to our travel booking services via the Weixin Mini program by searching travel itineraries on Yuanbao app. In mid-March last year, we introduced our AI-powered travel planner, DeepTrip, which integrates the supply chain capabilities and market insights of our platform with the resuming capabilities of DeepSeek. Over the past few quarters, we have continuously refined its functionality, incorporating social features to enhance its shareability among users. In the fourth quarter, we embedded a map tool to give users a clearer visual representation of their travel destinations. By the end of December, approximately 6.8 million users in total have utilized DeepTrip. Additionally, we extended its application to some business scenarios by integrating DeepTrip into air ticketing service. We aim to address users' prebooking inquiries as well as helping them find competitive ticket prices, which not only improved operational efficiency, but also enhanced overall user experience. In customer service, AI now covers around 80% of user inquiries, demonstrating its important role in streamlining operations and enhancing user experience. Over the past year, we have consistently advanced the integration of AI in every phase of the customer service process, which not only reduced the workload of customer service staff, but also improved overall operational efficiency. Furthermore, we have made continuous advancements in AI capabilities to enhance its precision in identifying user requests and delivering timeless, contextually relevant and human-like responses. By leveraging AI-driven solutions, we aim to further optimize customer interaction, reduce response time and maintain seamless user support as we continue to grow. In pursuit of global excellence in ESG practices, we have achieved milestones in improving our ESG performance over the past few years. Notably, in 2025, our MSCI ESG rating was elevated to the top AAA level, surpassing 95% of global industry players. In addition, we were included in the S&P Global Sustainability Yearbook China for the third consecutive year, and we were also honored with the Industry Mover Award for our remarkable progress in driving sustainable development within our sector. All these achievements have not only demonstrated our leadership in ESG performance among global peers, but also reflected our resilience and excellence in corporate sustainability in the face of market uncertainties, evolving policy landscape and dynamic social development, we remain dedicated to further strengthening our ESG practices and contributing to a more sustainable future. I'll stop here and give the call to our CFO, Julian. He will share with you the detailed financials in the fourth quarter and for the year of 2025. Julian, it's your turn. Lei Fan: Thank you, Joyce. Good evening, everyone. Over the past quarter, China's travel industry showcased remarkable resilience driven by rising demand for immersive and experiential travel experiences across both traditional holiday hotspots and newly emerging destinations. Leveraging our profound understanding of evolving traveler preferences, we delivered another quarter of robust performance, capping off a highly productive year. In the fourth quarter of 2025, we achieved healthy growth in both top and bottom line. We reported net revenue of RMB 4.8 billion, representing a 14.2% year-over-year increase from the same period of 2024. We executed targeted marketing campaigns to strategically prepare for the 2026 Chinese New Year, while upholding rigorous cost discipline to ensure financial prudence. During the fourth quarter, our adjusted net profit rose to RMB 779.8 million, reflecting an 18.1% year-over-year growth. The increase was principally fueled by the enhanced economies of scale and the optimized operations of our OTA business. Our core OTA business revenue registered a 17.5% year-over-year increase to RMB 4.1 billion during the fourth quarter of 2025. Our accommodation reservation business achieved RMB 1.3 billion in revenue for the fourth quarter of 2025, representing a 15.4% increase from the same period in 2024. The revenue increase was primarily driven by growth in hotel room nights sold, coupled with a modest rise in ADR. In our domestic accommodation business, we proactively explored diverse accommodation scenarios to capture emerging growth opportunities, including themed offerings tailored to specific demand such as winter vacation and exam season space. For our outbound accommodation business, we strengthened cooperation with third-party partners to expand product offerings as well as our destination footprint catering to growing user demand. In the fourth quarter, our ADR once again achieved year-over-year growth, benefiting from growing consumer demand for high-quality hotels and our proactive adjustment to user subsidy strategies, supported by precise and disciplined marketing strategies. Our net take rate remained stable year-over-year. Our transportation ticketing revenue for the fourth quarter reached RMB 1.8 billion, marking a 6.5% year-over-year increase compared with the same period of 2024. During the past quarter, we heightened our focus on improving user experience. We actively expanded travel supply chain and enriched VAS offerings to deliver a broader range of mobility options and ensure seamless travel experience for users. As for our international air ticketing business, it achieved balanced growth in both volume and revenue, which aligns with our long-term strategy. In the fourth quarter, our international air ticketing revenue increased to more than 7% of our total transportation ticketing revenue. Our other business segment maintained stellar growth momentum with revenue reaching RMB 916.7 million in the fourth quarter, representing a growth of 53% year-over-year. This growth was mainly propelled by outstanding performance of our hotel management business and the consolidation of Wanda Hotels and Resorts. Our tourism business achieved a revenue of RMB 777.5 million, which was largely flat year-over-year. mainly due to our proactive reduction in prepurchased business as well as softer demand for Southeast Asia and Japan. In terms of profitability, our gross profit increased by 18.5% year-over-year to RMB 3.2 billion for the fourth quarter of 2025. The operating profit margin of our core OTA business remained flat year-over-year for the fourth quarter of 2025, while the operating profit margin of our tourism business has been affected by the one-off goodwill impairment. Our adjusted EBITDA increased by 28.6% and reached RMB 1.3 billion in the fourth quarter of 2025. Adjusted net profit grew by 18.1% to RMB 779.8 million in the fourth quarter of 2025. Adjusted basic EPS for the fourth quarter of 2025 was RMB 0.33 with a 17.9% year-over-year increase compared to the same period in 2024. Service development and administrative expenses in the fourth quarter of 2025 increased by 6.8% from the same period of 2024. Excluding share-based compensation charges, service development and administrative expenses in total accounted for 18.1% of revenue in the fourth quarter compared with 18.6% of revenue in the same period of 2024. Selling and marketing expenses in the fourth quarter of 2025 increased by 22.7% from the same period of 2024, excluding share-based compensation charges. Selling and marketing expenses accounted for 32.4% of revenue in the fourth quarter compared with 30.2% of revenue in the same period of 2024. Now let's move to our results for financial year 2025. Our net revenue in 2025 achieved RMB 19.4 billion, representing an 11.9% year-over-year increase. The core OTA revenue achieved RMB 16.5 billion, representing a 16% year-over-year increase. Our accommodation reservation revenue was RMB 5.5 billion in 2025, representing a 16.8% year-over-year increase. Our transportation ticketing revenue reached RMB 7.9 billion, representing a 9.6% year-over-year increase. Other business revenue for 2025 achieved RMB 3.1 billion, representing a 34.4% year-over-year increase. Our tourism revenue for 2025 reached RMB 2.9 billion, representing a 6.9% year-over-year decrease. In terms of profitability, our gross profit in 2025 increased by 15.7% year-over-year to RMB 12.9 billion. Adjusted EBITDA for 2025 improved by 26.9% year-over-year to RMB 5.1 billion. Meanwhile, adjusted net profit for 2025 increased by 22.2% year-over-year to RMB 3.4 billion. Adjusted basic EPS for 2025 was RMB 1.45 with a 20.8% year-over-year increase. As of December 31, 2025, the balance of cash and cash equivalents, restricted cash and short-term investments was RMB 12.3 billion. We highly appreciate our shareholders' consistent support and are committed to delivering sustainable capital returns. Our Board of Directors has proposed a final cash dividend of HKD 0.25 per share, marking a 38.9% increase from last year. This reflects our commitment to enhance capital returns to shareholders. Over the past year, China's travel industry has demonstrated increasingly prominent trends towards diversification and personalization as consumers place growing emphasis on emotional value and unique experience-driven travel opportunities. Notably, the 2026 Spring Festival represented the longest holiday period on record. During the 9-day holiday, consumers divided their holidays into multiple shorter trips such as homecoming visits and vacation travel. Incremental demand from multiple trips during the festival has driven robust growth in our business volume. In addition, the pilot implementation of spring and autumn vacations initially launched in Zhejiang and Sichuan has been expanded to include more regions such as Jiangsu and Anhui. We believe this initiative will help stimulate travel consumption and provide additional momentum to the growth of the tourism industry. Such supportive government policy, combined with sustained strength in user demand, fuels our optimism about the upward trajectory of China's travel industry in the coming year. Moving forward, we will remain focused on our core OTA business, providing users with diverse domestic and international travel products while sparing no effort to enhance user experience. As we continue to improve operational efficiency in domestic OTA operations, we will actively expand our outbound business to bolster our global brand presence. Additionally, our hotel management business will enter a new phase of high-quality growth, building a solid foundation for the company's long-term sustainable development. Concurrently, we will continue to adopt technological innovations as well as deepening the integration of AI technology with our supply chain capabilities, striving to better meet user needs. Last but not least, we will strengthen our corporate social responsibility to support the healthy development of the travel industry and to create greater value for our stakeholders. With that, operator, we are ready to take questions now. Thank you. Operator: [Operator Instructions] We will now take our first question from the line of [ Xi Wei Liu ] from Citi. Unknown Analyst: Xi Wei From Citi. Congratulations to the company on a solid operating performance. I have 2 questions. The first about outbound travel. There have been many flight cancellations between China and Japan recently. How has this impacted your outbound business? Could you share the regional breakdown of your outbound markets? And what are your 2026 targets for outbound revenue growth and profitability? The second about large model and AI strategy. The company has actually rolled out some partnerships with large models so far. In the long run, as AI model portals become more important, how will the company position itself? Joyce Li: Thank you, Xi Wei for the question. The first one is in terms of outbound travel. We did observe a decline in Japan-bound travel volume given the current circumstance. However, the overall impact on our business has been limited as outbound travel accounts for only around 5% to 6% of our total transportation and accommodation revenue. And at the same time, outbound travel demand remains resilient, and we have been seeing users shift to alternative destinations rather than cancel their travel plans. During the Chinese New Year holiday, shop to middle-haul destinations within a 5-hour flight regions such as South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Macau remain among the most popular choices, while demand for Thailand also shown signs of gradual recovery. In addition, demand for long-haul travel increased year-over-year with European destinations such as Italy and Spain seeing particular strong growth. We have been actively adjusting our product offerings and marketing focus to capture this demand shift. Overall, given the relatively small contribution of our outbound travel to our core OTA business and the substitution effect across destinations, we do not expect a material impact on our overall performance. And looking ahead to 2026, our priority remains to further improve the quality of growth by enhancing pricing discipline, optimizing marketing efficiency and strengthening cross-selling from air tickets to accommodation and other travel products. At the same time, we will continue to deepen partnerships with global suppliers to improve service capabilities and user experience. Overall, we expect the international business to continue expanding in scale and become an increasingly meaningful contributor to our revenue. Over the next 2 to 3 years, growing business volume and expanding the user base will remain the key priorities while maintaining a strong focus on improving growth quality and profitability. We expect the revenue contribution from the outbound segment to increase to around 10% to 15% with increasing operating leverage over time. And in terms of the AI cooperation, our AI strategy focused on enhancing both user experience and operational efficiency as we continue to evolve from a traditional OTA toward a more intelligent travel platform. We see AI as a core capability that helps us better understand user needs, improving decision-making and optimize service delivery across the entire travel journey. At the same time, AI-driven efficiency improvements are significantly enhancing staff productivity and optimize our cost structure, which we believe will be an important driver of margin improvement over time. On the user side, we have integrated our proprietary travel-specific AI with advanced large language models to develop DeepTrip, which supports itinerary planning, travel inspiration and personalized product recommendations. By combining AI capabilities with our real-time supply and transaction ecosystem, DeepTrip provides a practical and actionable solution and enables a seamless end-to-end booking experience. We will continue to iterate its functionalities to better support users across different travel scenarios. And as a positioning of us, I think that we have been started exploring the partnership with large AI platforms and large model ecosystems. For example, we enabled traffic [ redirection ] from Yuanbao to our mini programs and apps. So our strategy is to actively participate in the emerging AI ecosystem by positioning our platform as a trusted travel service partner with deep market insights and a strong understanding of user behaviors. Leveraging our long-term accumulation of transaction data and operational experience, we are able to provide users with more accurate recommendations and practical bookable travel solutions on our AI platforms. Users who enter through AI platforms complete their bookings within our mini programs or apps and the related user and transaction data remain within our ecosystem. This allows us to maintain direct user relationships, accumulate valuable behavior insights and continuously optimize our product services and personalized recommendations. It also enables us to strengthen user engagement and lifetime value, which remains a key competitive advantage for our OTA platform. Going forward, we will continue to monitor development of the AI ecosystem and expand partnerships where it makes strategic sense, while maintaining our focus on strengthening our product service offerings, operational capabilities and user experience. Operator: We will now take our next question from Wei Xiong of UBS. Wei Xiong: First, I want to get your thoughts on regulations because recently, an OTA peer has been under antitrust investigation. So how should we think about the implications to the OTA sector? Do you foresee any impact on OTA's business model or lead to any change in the competitive landscape? Lei Fan: Thank you, Wei Xiong, -- please go on. Wei Xiong: Yes. Sure. So second question is on the hotel management business, which is set to become our second growth engine. So I wonder, could management elaborate your strategic focus and planning for this year? And what are the key operational goals and financial metrics that we look to achieve in 2026 and in the medium term as well? Lei Fan: Okay. Thank you for the question, Xiong, Wei. In terms of the investigations, as you mentioned, we closely monitor regulatory developments recently. At this stage, we have not observed any material changes that would impact our day-to-day operations. Tongcheng has always operated with a strong focus on compliance and fair cooperation with our partners. We believe a well-regulated market environment is beneficial to the long-term healthy development for the company and also for the industry. We will continue to adapt our business practices as required to ensure full compliance in the company. Overall, we remain focused on executing our strategy and delivering sustainable growth and profitability improvement. In terms of the hotel management plan, I think Joyce will have her words. Joyce Li: Thank you, Xiong, Wei. Actually, following the completion of the Wanda Hotels and Resorts acquisition, the integration has progressed smoothly and is better than our expectations. We have achieved rapid organizational alignment, revitalized organization and teams and further refined the strategic direction of the business. Overall, the post-acquisition integration has been very successful. On the synergy front, we are beginning to see encouraging early results. The addition of the Wanda's upscale and luxury brands has enhanced our overall brand portfolio and strengthened our positioning in the middle to high-end segment of our hotel management business. At the same time, the integration has enabled better resource sharing across business development, operations and membership, which is gradually improving operational efficiency. It also further reinforced Tongcheng's presence within the accommodation supply chain. From the other perspective, Tongcheng also empowers Wanda Hotels and Resorts through our technology capabilities. By providing standardized system tools and digital solutions, we help improve internal operational efficiency while reducing research and development efforts and lowering system maintenance and third-party service costs. From a financial perspective, the acquisition has already delivered a positive contribution at the operational level as Wanda Hotels and Resorts is an established hotel management company with a solid operating track record. The consolidation has enhanced our revenue scale, optimized the business mix and strengthened the earnings visibility of the segment. As we move forward, our development strategy will remain disciplined with a focus on balancing scale expansion with operational efficiency and healthy returns, ensuring sustainable and high-quality growth of the business segment. With continued expansion of scale and improving operational efficiency, together with the contribution from Wanda Hotels and Resorts, we expect the hotel management segment to maintain strong revenue growth with a further improvement in profitability from 2026 onwards. Thank you. Operator: We will now take our next question from the line of Brian Gong of Citi. Brian Gong: Two questions here. First is, how do you -- how is the travel consumption trend for the industry in the first quarter considering recovery on hotel ADR. Do we still expect teens level on room nights growth this year? Second question is that recently, [indiscernible] has been under government's investigation. Do you think this will impact their cooperation with us and their stakeholding on us? [indiscernible] is adjusting their hotel business to comply with government's requirement. How will this impact the industry and us? Lei Fan: Okay. Thank you for the questions, Brian. In terms of the first quarter's performance and also the industry outlook, actually, during the Chinese New Year holiday, as we mentioned in the prepared remarks, the China travel market continued to demonstrate very solid demand. According to the Ministry of Transport, national passengers throughput during the 9-day Chinese New Year holiday reached a throughput record 8.2% year-over-year growth during the holiday with decent growth for both long-haul and short-haul travel. Our passenger throughput of railway and airline increased by around 10% and 7% year-over-year, respectively. Meanwhile, according to the industry statistics, overall hotel ADR increased during the Chinese New Year holiday among all segments. With demand for family reunions concentrated in the pre-holiday period, we observed a pickup in passenger throughput during the latter part of the Chinese New Year holiday this year. In response, we promptly adjusted our operational resources, strengthened supply coordinations with our partners and enhance the targeted marketing efforts to capture the rebound in travel demand and improve conversion efficiency in the latter part of Chinese New Year holiday. So as a result, we continue to outperform the industry in the first quarter and also during the 9-day Chinese New Year holiday with especially strong momentum in our accommodation business. Average daily room nights sold increased by 30%. Specifically, room night growth for 3-star and above hotels significantly outpaced that of lower-tier properties. This reflects our ability to respond effectively to changing user preferences as more travelers place greater emphasis on higher quality accommodation experiences. As a result, our hotel ADR in quarter 1 maintained a positive trend during the period and once again exceeded the industry average. For transportation business, we continue to focus on improving monetization, while average daily air ticket volume was broadly in line with the overall market. And also for the room nights growth in the full year of 2026, actually, I cannot provide a very clear numbers here because of the short booking window. But as we mentioned, looking into 2026, we continue to view the long-term fundamentals of China's travel market positively. Consumer preferences are increasingly shifting towards experiential-oriented spending with growing interest in event-driven and themed travel such as concerts, exhibitions and outdoor activities. At the same time, travel is becoming more integrated into everyday lifestyle, supporting more frequent and diversified travel demand. In addition, supportive policy measures aimed at expanding domestic consumptions and promoting high-quality tourism development provide a favorable backdrop for the whole industry. And also for the second question about the investigation, actually, we don't monitor any change on the cooperation with Trip and also, we don't monitor any change of the shareholder structures or potential change of the shareholder structures. So currently, as I mentioned in previous question, we're just focusing on our own execution and long-term competitiveness improvement. So actually, our strategy remains very consistent, focusing on enhancing our user value, improve the ARPU, strengthening our product and service capabilities and deepening cooperation with our suppliers through a mutual beneficial approach. And also, at the same time, we will continue to take a disciplined and prudent approach while monitoring the industry regulatory development. Thank you for the question. Operator: We will now take our next question from Yang Liu of Morgan Stanley. Yang Liu: I have 2 questions. The first one is also related with AI. Could management elaborate more about the DeepTrip's contribution to the business, especially on the business -- overall business volume and also cross-selling side? And my second question is regarding the marketing intensity this year, given the geopolitical risk in both China and Japan and also Middle East this year, will management adjust the outbound business marketing intensity? Yes, that is my second question. Joyce Li: Thank you. The first question is concerning our DeepTrip. As I mentioned, DeepTrip is our AI-driven travel planner that use the reasoning power of DeepSeek and our platform supply chain advantages to create personalized travel itineraries. Since launch, DeepTrip has served about 7 million users with orders placed through the platform steadily increasing over the past few months. Over the past quarters, we continue to enhance DeepTrip with the goal of strengthening user awareness and building long-term trust. We have been continuously upgrading its user-facing capabilities to support more comprehensive travel planning. Key enhancements include the integration of trend transfer data to enable seamless multimodal itineraries. The addition of social sharing features to improve engagement as introduction of a map tool in the fourth quarter to provide a more intuitive visualization of travel plans. In addition, DeepTrip has been embedded into our air-ticketing service to help users address pre-booking inquiries and identify more competitive fare options, delivering a more seamless booking experience. Beyond user-facing applications, we have also extended DeepTrip into different business scenarios to improve operational efficiency. We integrated customer service agent capabilities into DeepTrip to respond to customer inquiries directly within DeepTrip and guide users to human support when needed. For corporate clients, we piloted a travel booking suggesting tool customized according to travel profiles, business travel policies and past bookings. In the future, DeepTrip will continue to serve as a platform for understanding and addressing users' comprehensive travel needs across diverse scenarios. We will further leveraging our AI capabilities across various business segments to provide valuable solutions to users, thereby strengthening our competitive advantages. Additionally, we have begun the cooperation with [indiscernible] to acquire more traffic. We're also actively exploring potential collaborations with our AI agent platform to further broaden our reach and engagement opportunities. We remain committed to leading AI innovation, continuously increasing the investments in this area and delivering cutting-edge user-focused features to elevate our user travel experience. And in terms of the current circumstance in terms of outbound business, we have seen considerable growth potential in the outbound tourism market. As the travel habits evolve, more travelers are eager to explore the international destinations. The number of outbound tourists is still significantly lower than the domestic travelers, revealing a substantial opportunities for expansion in this area. At present, we believe that there are only a limited number of Chinese OTA players have the capabilities and resources to actively drive outbound business. This situation place us in a favorable positioning facing relatively low competitive pressure and allowing us to fully capitalize on the growth potential of the market. Again, our strategy and confidence are anchored in the long-term growth prospects of China's outbound industry and our competitive advantages. While we remain agile in our short-term tactics in response to the market conditions, I think our business momentum remains unaffected. Thank you. Operator: In the interest of time, we will take our last question from Thomas Chong of Jefferies. Thomas Chong: Congratulations on a solid set of results. My first question is about our future growth driver and the take rate trend for accommodation and transportation. And my second question is relating to margin. How should we think about the 2026 margin trend as well as the margin driver in the future? Lei Fan: Thanks for the question, Thomas. For growth, actually, the company's focus remains on achieving a high-quality growth in 2026 by balancing scale expansion with operating efficiency improvement, while continuously enhancing our user value and ARPU. So in the first quarter and also the second quarter, we will prioritize healthy and sustainable growth across our core OTA segments, supported by improved operational efficiency and more refined resource allocation. At the same time, we will continue to strengthen our competitiveness positioning and capture growth opportunity to future expand our market presence. Within the core OTA business, we anticipate that the accommodation business will grow faster than transportation business through the whole year. For accommodation business, we believe that the growth will be driven by volume expansion and ADR improvement, as we mentioned a lot of times. Our volume is expected to continue outpacing the market growth, while our ADR will benefit from the ongoing upgrade in hotel star mix driven by shifts in user preference. So we think it's enough to support a very nicely growth for accommodation business by these 2 reasons. So this year, in terms of the take rate of the accommodation, we expect that the take rate may be stable year-over-year at 2025. For transportation business, volume growth will be in line with the market and still one of the reasons of the revenue growth for transportation. While our take rate improvement driven by cross-sell and VAS will continue to contribute to the revenue growth of the transportation segment. Also, we expect the hyper growth for other revenue, mainly due to Wanda consolidation since the middle of October last year and the hyper growth of our original hotel management and PMS business and also our Black Whale business, the membership business. In terms of the profitability, as we promised, the margin improvement is one of the very important strategic priorities for the company. For the reasons, one, for our core OTA business, the improvement in operational efficiency will continue to be an important driver of profitability over time. In particular, we are leveraging AI technologies to enhance both customer service automation and R&D efficiency, which help improve staff profitability and overall operating efficiencies. For the development of our hotel management business, including eLong Hotel Technology platform and Wanda Hotels and Resorts, we will continue to support its high-quality expansion with a near-term focus on scaling the business, while the return profile is expected to improve progressively as the business matures. For our international business, we will maintain a very prudent approach as we continue to build the foundation for future growth and cultivate the company's next growth engine over the coming years. Last, in terms of the marketing investments, our marketing dollars may fluctuate slightly depending on market opportunity. For example, in quarter 4 last year and quarter 1 this year, we identified strong early booking demand for the 9-day Chinese New Year holiday period and therefore, increased our marketing investments to capture early demand and gain market share. At the same time, we will continue to strengthen ROI management across different marketing channels. So overall, we will continue to balance growth opportunities with disciplined cost management while focusing on improving operational efficiency across the business and improve our margins. Thank you. Operator: That's the end of the question-and-answer session. Thank you very much for all your questions. I'd now like to turn the conference back to Ms. Kylie Yeung, for closing comments. Kylie Yeung: Thank you. We are closing the call now. If you wish to check out our presentation and other financial information, please visit the IR section of our company website. Thank you, and see you next quarter. Operator: Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect your lines.
Operator: Welcome to the Sanara MedTech Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Earnings Conference Call. Please note that this conference call is being recorded, and a replay will be available on the Investor Relations page of the company's website shortly. The company issued its earnings release earlier today. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that certain statements on today's call will include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. For more information about the risks and uncertainties involving forward-looking statements and factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected or implied by forward-looking statements, please see the risk factors set forth in the company's most recent annual report on Form 10-K. This call will also include references to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations of those non-GAAP measures to the most comparable measures calculated and presented in accordance with GAAP are available in the earnings release available on the Investor Relations section of our website. Today's call will include remarks from Seth Yon, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Elizabeth Taylor, Chief Financial Officer. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Yon. Please go ahead, sir. Seth Yon: Thanks, operator, and welcome, everyone, to our fourth quarter and full year 2025 earnings call. Let me outline the agenda for today's call. I'll begin by reviewing several key financial accomplishments for the full year 2025. I'll then discuss our fourth quarter net revenue performance as well as our commercial execution across the three key initiatives, our commercial strategy. After this, I'll provide an update on a few other select areas of operational progress in the quarter. Elizabeth will cover our fourth quarter financial results in further detail and review our full year net revenue guidance for 2026, which we reaffirmed in our earnings release today. I'll then conclude our remarks with some thoughts on our positioning as we enter 2026, our strategic priorities for the year and our outlook before we open the call for questions. With that said, let's get started. Looking back at our financial performance for the full year 2025, I'd like to highlight several key accomplishments to demonstrate the significant progress we've made as an organization. First, we exceeded $100 million of net revenue for the first time in our company's history. Specifically, we generated $103.1 million of net revenue for the full year 2025, representing growth of 19% year-over-year. Importantly, we accomplished this impressive performance while maintaining the size of our field sales team with 40 representatives at the end of 2025. Our field sales headcount at the end of 2025 was essentially unchanged compared to the end of 2024, 2023 and 2022. Our performance demonstrates the strength of our hybrid commercial model, which includes both field sales reps and a growing network of independent distributor partners. Together, they raise awareness of our products and educate prospective surgeon customers on their benefits and clinical applications. Second, we drove significant improvements in our profitability profile on a year-over-year basis. Specifically, we expanded our gross margins by approximately 200 basis points to 93% for the full year 2025 and demonstrated notable operating leverage. We ultimately achieved a $1.5 million or 80% reduction in net loss from continuing operations and a $7.9 million or 86% improvement in adjusted EBITDA, resulting in $17 million for the full year 2025. Third, this performance, coupled with improvements in our working capital management, ultimately enabled us to generate $6.8 million of cash provided by operations for the full year 2025. This compares to $24,000 of cash used in operations for the full year 2024. In short, our financial results in 2025 reflect the fundamental strength of our surgical business and support our recent strategic decision to focus our resources and capabilities on the surgical market. Turning to an overview of our fourth quarter net revenue performance. Our team delivered solid commercial execution in the fourth quarter, generating net revenue of $27.5 million, representing growth of 5% year-over-year. Our net revenue growth was largely driven by sales of soft tissue products with modest contributions from sales of our bone fusion products as well. As a reminder, our net revenue in the fourth quarter 2024 benefited from approximately $1.8 million of BIASURGE sales due to the industry disruption caused by Hurricane Helene. Excluding the $1.8 million of BIASURGE sales related to this dynamic, our net revenue in the fourth quarter of 2025 increased 13% year-over-year. Importantly, our fourth quarter net revenue performance came in at the high end of both the preliminary range that we provided in our press release on January 23, 2026, as well as the expectations we shared on our third quarter's earnings call in November 2025. With these results as our backdrop, I'll now share on our commercial execution. In 2025, our team continued to drive momentum across the three key initiatives of our commercial strategy, which represents important drivers of our growth. As a reminder, these three initiatives are: one, strengthening our relationships with independent distributors; two, selling into new health care facilities; and three, expanding the existing health care facilities we serve. I'll now share updates on our progress across each of these initiatives, beginning with our relationship development with independent distributors. In 2025, we significantly grew our network of distributor partners. Specifically, we ended 2025 with over 450 contracted distributors compared to over 350 at the end of 2024. Given the significant progress we've made in expanding the size of our distributor network, our team has also focused increasingly on optimizing our distributor relationships. We are doing this by onboarding newly contracted distributors, training their sales representatives and partnering with them to educate prospective surgeon customers about the clinical benefits of our products. Our partnership approach to engaging and working with our distributor remains our core component of our commercial philosophy. We believe it's one of the items that differentiates Sanara in the market and provides important advantages for our organization going forward. Turning to our second commercial initiative, adding new facility customers. We continue to leverage our network of distributor partners to begin selling into new health care facilities where our products have been contracted or approved. I'm pleased to report that we achieved our stated target, which we initially provided on our first quarter earnings call in May 2025 of selling into over 1,450 health care facilities by the end of 2025. This compares to over 1,300 facilities in 2024. We continue to see significant runway to add new health care facility customers to our base over the coming years as our products were contracted or approved for sale in over 4,000 facilities at year-end. With respect to the third initiative I mentioned, penetrating our existing facility customers, we continue to drive adoption of our products by adding new surgeon users within the health care facilities we currently serve. In both the fourth quarter and full year 2025, we realized strong year-over-year growth in the size of our surgeon customer base. We continue to add new surgeon users ranging across a variety of specialties, including our traditional focus of spine and orthopedics as well as general, plastic and vascular surgery. Despite our progress in 2025, our surgeon penetration within the over 1,450 health care facilities we serve remains relatively low. With that in mind, we believe that the opportunity to go deeper within these existing facilities remains perhaps our largest untapped opportunity for future growth. In summary, our progress across each of the key commercial initiatives leaves us well positioned as we enter 2026 with multiple levers to drive continued growth in the surgical market. In addition to our commercial execution, the broader Sanara team made significant progress during the fourth quarter with respect to multiple areas of our strategy. I'd like to take a minute to highlight several important operational accomplishments. During the quarter, we continued to wind down the operations of Tissue Health Plus or the THP segment following our decision to cease operations, which we discussed in detail on our third quarter 2025 earnings call. I'm pleased to report that the THP wind-down process was substantially complete at the end of 2025, consistent with our previously stated expectations. From a financial perspective, total cash use related to THP over the second half of 2025 was $5.3 million, below the $5.5 million to $6.5 million range we shared on our second quarter earnings call in August 2025. As a reminder, the operations of THP, which were previously reported as the THP segment are classified as discontinued operations for the three months and full years ending December 31, 2025, and 2024. And importantly, we continue to anticipate no material cash spend related to THP going forward. With this in mind, we are entering into 2026 as a leaner, pure-play surgical company focused on continuing to bring innovative products to the operating room setting. In the fourth quarter, we also continued to support the future growth of our BIASURGE product by expanding into health care facility approvals. Most notably, we secured an innovative technology contract from Vizient. For those unfamiliar, Vizient is the largest group purchasing organization in the U.S. with an extensive client base of health care facility customers. Through Vizient's innovative technology program, Vizient works with councils led by hospital experts from its client base. These councils are tasked with evaluating products and assessing their potential to bring innovation to health care delivery. Following evaluation, our BIASURGE product was awarded an Innovative Technology contract as it was deemed to offer unique qualities and a potential benefit over other products available in the market today. As a reminder, BIASURGE is a no-rinse irrigation solution that enables surgeons to cleanse wound bed more efficiently than with saline alone. It also provides broad-spectrum antimicrobial effectiveness, helping to reduce the risk of surgical site infections. Beginning January 1, 2026, BIASURGE is now available to Vizient's network of health care facility customers. We believe this contract provides approximately 1,800 health care facilities with access to BIASURGE at contracted pricing and prenegotiated terms. All in all, it represents a significant opportunity to further expand BIASURGE customer base in 2026 in the coming years. In addition to these efforts, we continue to support our surgical product portfolio by expanding and enhancing our body of clinical evidence. Our products were featured in multiple peer-reviewed studies published during the first quarter. I'll take a moment to highlight two of them. A comparative peer-reviewed in vitro study featuring BIASURGE was published in the Journal of Arthroplasty. It evaluated the effectiveness of 9 commercially available irrigation solutions, including BIASURGE. Specifically, it assessed their ability to prevent the formation of biofilm on orthopedic implant materials by two common types of bacteria that are notorious for causing severe antibiotic-resistant infections in surgical wounds. The researchers also evaluated the cytotoxicity of each irrigation solution to ensure the patient's safety. In this study, BIASURGE exhibited high antimicrobial efficacy and low cytotoxicity. It is identified as one of the two irrigation solutions that were most effective in preventing biofilm formation among the 9 products tested. Our ALLOCYTE Plus product was also featured in a long-term clinical study published in the Journal of Spine and Neurosurgery. This study evaluated the outcomes of lumbar spinal fusion that used ALLOCYTE Plus as a stand-alone graft substitute. Ten patients were followed for 24 to 36 months, demonstrated successful solid bone healing within 6 months of receiving the operation. No adverse events, including complication, graft failures or revision surgeries were reported during the follow-up period. Importantly, these patients also demonstrated sustained improvements in both neurological and clinical outcomes as well. The study's findings support our position that ALLOCYTE Plus provides a safe, biologically active alternative to using traditional autogenous iliac crest bone grafts, which tend to be associated with the complications in donor site morbidity. Our R&D team also remains focused on expanding our IP portfolio to protect and advance our existing products. As a reminder, in 2024, we submitted 11 provisional patent applications covering innovations in proprietary antimicrobial and hydrolyzed collagen technologies, including novel formulations, treatment applications and key component advancements. Over the course of 2025, our team converted these 11 provisional patent applications into nonprovisional filings, a major step forward in the progress towards securing approval while also submitting the corresponding U.S. and PCT applications for international protection. In addition to this progress, we submitted an additional three provisional patent applications that protect specific components and compositional aspects of our CellerateRX Surgical product. We look forward to continuing to expand the breadth of IP protection as well as our future product development efforts related to our surgical products. Lastly, we continue to make progress in our efforts to expand our portfolio through our partnership with Biomimetic Innovations, or BMI, with the goal of bringing OsStic to the U.S. commercial market. As a reminder, during the first 9 months of 2025, BMI achieved all of the key product development, clinical, regulatory and medical education milestones outlined under our agreement. Based on our continued progress in the fourth quarter of 2025 and the initial months of 2026, I'm pleased to report that we remain on track to introduce the OsStic synthetic injectable bone bio-adhesive to the U.S. market in the first quarter of 2027. Given its status as an FDA-designated breakthrough device, we believe OsStic will be the first synthetic injectable bone bio-adhesive available in the U.S. once it receives regulatory approval. In preclinical mechanical testing, OsStic demonstrated bonding to bone that was 40x stronger than traditional calcium phosphate bone cement. We expect OsStic to represent a new anchor product for our bone fusion portfolio and look forward to bringing this innovative technology to support the more than 100,000 periarticular fractures that occur in the U.S. each year. In summary, 2025 was a significant transition year for Sanara MedTech. Perhaps most notably, Sanara transitioned to new leadership in both CEO and CFO roles to guide the next phase of our growth and development as an organization. As a company, we navigated the strategic realignment of our business to focus solely on the opportunities in the surgical market going forward. And in tandem, our team successfully executed our strategy in the surgical market, driving significant commercial, financial and operational progress across all major fronts. Our progress this past year is a credit to the remarkable team of individuals who work at Sanara MedTech. It also reflects our team's commitment to advancing the treatment of surgical wounds for the benefit of all the constituents in the health care industry, including patients, surgeons and health care systems. With that said, I'll turn it over to Elizabeth to cover our fourth quarter 2025 financial results in greater detail and review our full year net revenue guidance for 2026. Elizabeth Taylor: Thanks, Seth. I will begin by reiterating that the operations of THP, which were previously reported as the THP segment, have been classified as discontinued operations for the three months and full years ended December 31, 2025 and 2024. As such, unless noted otherwise, all commentary that follows is on a continuing operations basis. In our earnings press release issued today, we have included tables detailing our historical results of operations on a continuing operations basis in 2025, 2024 and 2023, which aligns with our reporting going forward. Given that Seth covered our net revenue results for the quarter, I'll begin with gross profit. All percentage changes referenced throughout my remarks compare to the prior year period, unless otherwise specified. Fourth quarter gross profit increased $1.6 million or 7% to $25.7 million. Fourth quarter gross margin increased approximately 175 basis points to 93% of net revenue, driven primarily by sales of soft tissue repair products and lower manufacturing costs related to CellerateRx Surgical. Fourth quarter operating expenses increased $2.8 million or 13% to $24.6 million. The change in operating expenses was driven by a noncash impairment charge of $1.8 million in the fourth quarter of 2025, which was related to a write-down of certain IP assets in connection with our strategic shift to focus on products in the surgical market and a $1.2 million increase in research and development expenses, which was primarily due to product enhancement initiatives associated with our soft tissue repair products. Operating income for the fourth quarter was $1.1 million compared to $2.3 million last year. Excluding the aforementioned $1.8 million noncash impairment charge in the fourth quarter of 2025, our operating income increased $0.6 million or 28% to $2.9 million. Other expense for the fourth quarter was $2.2 million compared to $1.3 million last year. The increase in other expense was primarily due to higher interest expense and fees related to our CRG term loan as well as higher share of losses from equity method investments. Net loss from continuing operations for the fourth quarter was $1.1 million or $0.13 per diluted share compared to net income from continuing operations of $0.9 million or $0.10 per diluted share last year. Adjusted EBITDA for the fourth quarter of 2025 was $4.7 million compared to $4.1 million last year. Turning to the balance sheet. As of December 31, 2025, we had $16.6 million of cash and $46 million of long-term debt. This compares to $15.9 million of cash and $30.7 million of long-term debt as of December 31, 2024. For the full year 2025, we were pleased to generate $6.8 million of cash provided by operating activities compared to $24,000 of cash used in operating activities in the full year 2024. The increase in cash from operating activities was driven in part by the reduction in net loss from continuing operations and improvements in working capital efficiency compared to the prior year. Importantly, we estimate that $6.8 million of cash generated from operating activities in the full year 2025 was inclusive of approximately $9 million of cash used in operating activities related to THP. As Seth mentioned, we continue to anticipate no material cash spend related to THP going forward. Turning to our net revenue guidance for the full year 2026, which we introduced via press release in January and reaffirmed in our earnings release today, we continue to expect full year 2026 net revenue to range from $116 million to $121 million, representing growth of approximately 13% to 17% compared to net revenue of $103.1 million for the full year 2025. Lastly, we would like to share a few additional considerations for modeling purposes. With respect to operating expenses, as Seth will discuss further, in connection with our enhanced focus as an organization on the surgical market, we are investing in our field sales team and R&D initiatives to lay the foundation for strong, sustainable growth in 2026 and the coming years. With $16.6 million of cash at December 31, 2025, combined with our expected cash flows from operations, we are comfortable with our balance sheet liquidity in 2026. From a modeling perspective, as a reminder, we typically pay employee commissions and annual bonuses in the first quarter of our fiscal year, requiring a higher outlay of cash. Lastly, given the proximity to the end of the first quarter and for avoidance of doubt, we would like to provide additional transparency regarding our expectations for the first quarter net revenue results. Specifically, we expect net revenue of approximately $26.7 million to $27.2 million for the first quarter of 2026, representing growth of approximately 14% to 16% year-over-year. With that, I will now turn it back to Seth for closing remarks. Seth Yon: Thanks, Elizabeth. Sanara MedTech is providing full year net revenue guidance in 2026 for the first time in our company's history. The decision to introduce net revenue guidance was made as a part of our commitment to provide increased transparency regarding our anticipated future performance. It reflects the significant scale we have achieved as a company in recent years as well as the evolution and development of our organization across multiple fronts. As Elizabeth mentioned, we are reaffirming our full year net revenue guidance today, which reflects growth of 13% to 17% in 2026. We look forward to delivering growth within this range and providing updates on our progress throughout the year. Before opening the call for questions, I'd like to share some closing thoughts on our positioning and strategic priorities as we enter 2026. In short, we like how we're positioned heading into this year. We are entering 2026 as a focused pure-play surgical company dedicated exclusively to the operating room setting with three anchor products, two currently in the market, CellerateRx Surgical and BIASURGE and one in our pipeline, OsStic. Our anchor products possess differentiated capabilities that enable them to satisfy clear clinical needs in the treatment of surgical wounds. They are not subject to reimbursement risk, and they collectively address a multibillion-dollar annual opportunity in the surgical market. To effectively capitalize on this opportunity, we've developed an effective time-tested commercial team, model and strategy that has enabled us to achieve significant commercial scale and momentum. And based on our historically strong margin profile and balance sheet condition as of December 31, 2025, we believe we have the resources necessary to achieve our primary strategic and financial objectives this year through focused execution and disciplined capital allocation. In terms of our strategic priorities for 2026, we are focused on the following three items: First, continuing to penetrate the surgical wound market by executing our commercial strategy with our existing products. Specifically, we remain focused on driving further progress in developing our distributor network, expanding our facility customer base and adding new surgeon users within the facilities we currently serve. These three initiatives have been the foundation of our commercial success in recent years, and we see substantial runway for continued growth across each of them as we move through 2026 and beyond. Second, pursuing targeted investments in our business to support our growth in 2026 and future years. Stepping back, given Sanara's broader scope of focus in prior years, the company historically pursued investments in opportunities outside of our core business in the surgical market. Going forward, we are committed to pursuing a focused approach as a pure-play surgical company. With that commitment, we are intent on supporting our surgical product portfolio and commercial distribution network with investments that will protect and enhance our position in the surgical market and prove to be truly impactful over time. Specifically, we are investing in our surgical field sales team and R&D initiatives to lay the foundation for strong, sustainable growth. With respect to our field sales team, as I mentioned earlier, the size of our team has remained essentially consistent for multiple years with roughly 40 sales representatives. During the first quarter of 2026, we are making targeted investments to expand our sales rep coverage in key territories across the U.S. We are currently focused on onboarding and training, and we expect these new reps to become increasingly productive as they develop over the balance of 2026. With respect to our R&D initiatives, we will continue our efforts to expand the portfolio of clinical evidence supporting our anchor products while bolstering our IP protection. In addition, we are investing in several longer-term product development initiatives with a focus on pursuing enhancements to strengthening our existing surgical portfolio and address the evolving needs of our customers. These investments are designed to deepen our competitive moat and ensure that we maintain our position as a leader in bringing innovative surgical products to the market. Lastly, we are focused on bringing OsStic to market through our strategic partnership with BMI and preparing for U.S. commercialization in the first quarter of 2027. We believe OsStic represents a significant opportunity to expand our presence in the bone fusion market and provide surgeons with a truly differentiated solution for periarticular fracture repair. In conclusion, we are committed to focused execution and targeted capital allocation across these three strategic priorities in 2026. We believe our successful execution on these items will position us for strong, sustainable growth this year as well as cash generation and profitability in the years to come. I'd like to close by thanking the entire Sanara MedTech team for their exceptional work in 2025. I'd also like to thank our shareholders and customers for their continued support and to those on today's call for their interest in Sanara MedTech. With that, operator, you may now open the call for questions. Operator: [Operator Instructions] your first question for today is from Yi Chen with H.C. Wainwright. Eduardo Martinez-Montes: This is Eduardo on for Yi. Congrats on all the progress in the year. I had a question on BIASURGE, following the Vizient contract effective January 1, how much of your growth in 2026 do you think is attributable to this new volume of GPO versus organic growth in existing accounts? And do you anticipate any other of these deals to materialize in 2026? Seth Yon: This is Seth. So I'll answer that question. First of all, the Vizient contract was a really significant thing for us to accomplish and to get on to that contract. To our knowledge, we're the only [ wash ] to have done that. It will still take a little bit of time to go out and educate at the facility level. And so we haven't given guidance specific to a product in past, just talking more about soft tissue repair, which BIASURGE would fall to. So our team is working daily inside those 1,800 accounts to continue to get access into those accounts and bring that technology to life. It was a major step forward for us as we think back to a soft launch in that product just a couple of years ago. You're doing that at a pretty slow pace, right? You have to do that one facility at a time. And now to have on contract 1,800-plus facilities, we think that gives us great runway to perform in 2026, but truly well beyond that as well. Eduardo Martinez-Montes: Got it. And then if I could ask another one on CellerateRX growth. So with this new study and cost effectiveness, do you see any opportunity for -- what do you think the impact on growth and maybe reimbursement in terms of cost effectiveness? And do you expect any other studies for CellerateRX to come out during this next year that could also bolster? Seth Yon: Yes. Well, first of all, we believe strongly in clinical evidence, specific to our anchor products, CellerateRX, BIASURGE and then soon to be OsStic as well once that commercializes. So we'll continue to put energy against that from all those different fronts, both scientifically, clinically and then economically. We feel really confident in that economic study that came out. We think that facilities will see great value in that as well to showcase a product that, again, is a supply cost inside the DRG. So I think it's really important to understand for everybody on this call, we don't have reimbursement risk with that product and won't into the future. That, again, is a supply cost. So I think it only strengthens our relationships inside the hospital with the clinical evidence that we have specific to Cellerate and now the economic evidence to come alongside of that is really significant. So we think it has an impact for our numbers going forward as a result of all of that research that's been done. Operator: We are currently seeing no remaining questions at this time. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for your participation.
Operator: Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Tongcheng Travel 2025 Fourth Quarter and Annual Results Announcement Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I'd now like to hand the conference over to Ms. Kylie Yeung, Investor Relations Director of the company. Please go ahead, ma'am. Kylie Yeung: Thank you. Good morning, and good evening, everyone. Welcome to Tongcheng Travel's 2025 Fourth Quarter and Annual Results Conference Call. I'm Kylie Yeung, Investor Relations Director of the company. Joining us today on the conference call are our Executive Director and CEO, Mr. Hope Ma; our CFO, Mr. Julian Fan; our Chief Capital Officer and President of Wander Hotels and Resorts, Ms. Joyce Li. For today's call, our management team will provide a review of the company's performance in the fourth quarter and full year 2025. Hope will brief us on the company's strategies. Joyce will discuss our business and operational highlights, and then Julian will address the details of financial performance accordingly. We'll take your questions during the Q&A section that follows. As always, our presentation contains forward-looking statements. Such statements are based on management's current expectations and current market operating conditions and relate to events that involve known or unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, which may cause the company's actual results, performance or achievements to differ from those in the forward-looking statements. This presentation also contains some unaudited non-IFRS financial measures. They should be considered in addition to, but not as a substitute for measures of the company's financial performance prepared in accordance with IFRS. For a detailed discussion of non-IFRS measures, please refer to our disclosure documents in the IR section of our website. Now let me introduce our CEO, Hope. Hope will be presenting in Mandarin, and our colleague will provide the English translation afterwards. Hope, please go ahead. Heping Ma: [Interpreted] In 2025, China's travel industry and the company entered a new phase of high-quality development. Over the past year, we witnessed resilient travel demand with increasingly diversified trends as immersive and experiential consumption continues to gain popularity. Amid this backdrop, we deeply dive into user needs and comprehensively optimize our travel products and user experiences. As a result, both our user base and ARPU demonstrated robust growth in 2025 with APU reaching a record high. The robust business growth reflected the ongoing enhancement of our service quality and the expanding influence of our brand. The year 2025 was a year of challenges and opportunities for us. In response to consumers' diversified and personalized needs, we continuously enriched our product offerings, facing growing expectations for premium services. We consistently improved our service quality. Amidst AI-driven technological revolution, we proactively embraced new frontier technologies with an open attitude. All these showcased our strong organizational agility and exceptional execution capabilities, further reaffirming our commitment to our user-centric mission of make travel easier and more joyful. The Chinese government sees travel as a vital pillar of national economic development. The latest 15th 5-year plan has explicitly stated the commitment to expanding the supplies of high-quality travel products and to enhancing travel service standards with the goal of establishing China as a premier travel destination from the pilot implementation of autumn and winter vacations in certain regions to the longest spring festival holiday on record. These expanding holiday arrangements underscore significant governmental support for the travel industry. In terms of demand, travel has become an essential part of people's pursuit of a better life with seasonal themes such as spring flower viewing, summer retreats, all foliage tours and winter snow activities continuously gaining popularity. In the coming year, we will remain focused on domestic market and deep dive into user needs, aiming to further solidify our leading position in the mass market. Simultaneously, we will make intensified efforts to capture growth opportunities in the outbound travel market to propel our global expansion strategy. On the operational front, we will continue to implement technological innovation and product upgrades centered on user experience while enriching membership privileges and deepening user engagement. In 2021, we tapped into the hotel management business. After several years of rapid expansion, it has now gained meaningful scale. The integration of Wanda Hotels and Resorts in 2025 marked a pivotal milestone in the development of our hotel management business. This strategic move strengthened our brand portfolio and ecosystem while substantially elevating our competitiveness and market influence. By consistently executing our strategy and leveraging our strong Internet DNA, we are well positioned to accelerate the segment expansion in 2026, laying a robust foundation for our long-term sustainable growth. Amidst the rapid advancement of AI technology, we are devoted to expanding the application of AI in our business process, further optimizing operational efficiency and enhancing user experience. Building on our user-centric value proposition, market acumen and superior execution capabilities, we are confident that we will continue broadening our competitive moat in the travel industry. Moving forward, we will continue to export our technologies and expertise to empower our partners and support the broader industry ecosystem while strengthening our commitment to corporate social responsibility to foster sustainable industry growth and create greater value for all stakeholders. Next, I will hand over the call to Joyce. She will share with you our business and operational highlights of the fourth quarter and the full year of 2025. Joyce, please go ahead. Joyce Li: Thank you, Hope. 2025 was a pivotal year of growth and achievement for our company. Beyond the steady expansion of our domestic business, our outbound travel and hotel management businesses made remarkable progress, contributing meaningfully to the overall growth momentum of the company. During the past year, we acutely grasped users' evolving preferences and precisely captured emerging demand. This enabled us to once again deliver solid growth across all business segments, highlighting our excellence in strategic execution, operational efficiency and organizational agility. Throughout the year, our accommodation business sustained robust growth momentum and achieved a record high in room nights sold. In early 2025, we identified a notable shift in users' preference towards high-quality hotels. In response to the changes, we strategically reallocated operational resources to meet this evolving demand, resulting in an approximately 5 percentage point year-over-year increase in the proportion of high-quality hotels sold on our platform. In the meantime, we prioritized enhancing user experience. We not only offer the best value for money products and services, but also provided faster and more responsive support to user requests to further strengthen our presence in the mass market. As for our international business, we continue to enhance our product capabilities by deepening partnerships with third-party providers as well as expanding our product and service offering. In addition, we leveraged our domestic user base to drive cross-sell initiatives and execute the precision marketing campaigns targeting high potential users. All these efforts collectively led to nearly 30% growth in our international room nights sold in 2025. In terms of our transportation business, it continuously demonstrated strong resilience throughout the year. Over the past year, we placed a strong emphasis on improving both user experience and engagement. At the core of the efforts is our Algorithm-driven Huixing system, which leverages advanced algorithm capabilities to provide users with viable and accessible travel solutions by utilizing a comprehensive range of transportation options. The intelligent system significantly enhances the overall travel experience for users. In the fourth quarter, we launched skiing-themed marketing campaigns and rolled out various benefits to skiing enthusiasts so as to reinforce our positioning as an experience-driven platform and further engage our user base. On the international front, we focused on improving operational efficiency by implementing a more disciplined subsidy policy and expanding our VAS offerings. As a result, we achieved a balanced growth in both volume and revenue throughout the year with volume growth of nearly 25% for 2025. As mentioned at the beginning of the speech, 2025 marked a milestone year for our hotel management business with significant progress achieved. This year, we successfully completed the acquisition of Wanda Hotels and Resorts, a company that possesses a renowned portfolio of upper upscale and luxury hotel brands with strong market presence in China. In addition to its hotel management expertise, the company is the only hotel management firm in China with proven specialization in operating scale resorts. This unique capability can help us strengthen supply chain resources in the travel industry, thereby enhancing our influence and competitiveness. Furthermore, Wanda Hotels and Resorts operates its own in-house design institute which is recognized as one of the leading hospitality design teams in China and has received numerous prestigious international awards. The team possesses strong capabilities in designing and managing large-scale hotels as well as convention and exhibition centers. Its design solutions serve not only its own properties, but also high-end hospitality projects across the industry. Following the acquisition, the Wanda Hotels and Resorts team underwent a seamless integration process, resulting in a significant boost to its vitality and optimized organizational capacity and refined strategic direction. This strategic integration has improved our brand portfolio, strengthened our market presence and accelerated the sustainable growth of our hotel management business. Regarding our eLong hotel technology platform, we remain focused on expanding our geographical footprint while prioritizing quality growth throughout the year. The platform also offers technology-enabled hotel management solutions featuring a proprietary property management system, a smart marketing solution, [indiscernible] and service robots for automated in-room delivery. By the end of December, our total number of hotels in operation exceeded 3,000 with more than 1,800 in the pipeline. Looking ahead, we are committed to further expanding our asset-light hotel management business through network expansion and ecosystem enablement. This strategic approach will position us to achieve leadership in China's hotel industry and establish a second growth engine for the company. Traffic operation has been the foundation of our success, leveraging the Weixin Mini program, we have effectively reached a broad user base across China, in particular, those in lower-tier cities. Over the past year, the Weixin ecosystem continued to serve as a critical traffic channel, where we focused on enhancing operational efficiency. At the same time, our stand-alone app, a key driver of new user acquisition, demonstrated strong growth momentum over the past 4 quarters. To attract younger demographics, we rolled out a series of innovative products and engaging marketing campaigns to enhance user mind share and solidify our positioning as an experience-oriented travel platform. As such, the average DAUs of our stand-alone app posted more than 30% growth year-over-year in 2025. Additionally, social media has played an increasingly vital role in engaging users, particularly those younger audiences. During the year, we stepped up our efforts in social media platforms to connect with younger travelers and broadened our user reach through effective and targeted user engagement. We have accumulated the most extensive user base in China's OTA industry. For the 12 months ended December 2025, our annual paying users climbed to 253 million, representing a year-over-year growth of 6%. In addition, the accumulated number of passengers served on our platform over the past 12 months continued to expand and reached 2,034 million with an annual purchase frequency exceeding 8x per user. Moreover, our annual ARPU for the year further rose to RMB 76.8, reflecting a year-over-year growth of 5.5%. Besides our MPU also maintained a growth trajectory throughout the year and increased by 6% year-over-year to 46 million for 2025. As an innovation-driven company, we fully embrace new technologies such as Gen AI to transform our business. In December, we rolled out collaboration with Yuanbao, enabling users to access to our travel booking services via the Weixin Mini program by searching travel itineraries on Yuanbao app. In mid-March last year, we introduced our AI-powered travel planner, DeepTrip, which integrates the supply chain capabilities and market insights of our platform with the resuming capabilities of DeepSeek. Over the past few quarters, we have continuously refined its functionality, incorporating social features to enhance its shareability among users. In the fourth quarter, we embedded a map tool to give users a clearer visual representation of their travel destinations. By the end of December, approximately 6.8 million users in total have utilized DeepTrip. Additionally, we extended its application to some business scenarios by integrating DeepTrip into air ticketing service. We aim to address users' prebooking inquiries as well as helping them find competitive ticket prices, which not only improved operational efficiency, but also enhanced overall user experience. In customer service, AI now covers around 80% of user inquiries, demonstrating its important role in streamlining operations and enhancing user experience. Over the past year, we have consistently advanced the integration of AI in every phase of the customer service process, which not only reduced the workload of customer service staff, but also improved overall operational efficiency. Furthermore, we have made continuous advancements in AI capabilities to enhance its precision in identifying user requests and delivering timeless, contextually relevant and human-like responses. By leveraging AI-driven solutions, we aim to further optimize customer interaction, reduce response time and maintain seamless user support as we continue to grow. In pursuit of global excellence in ESG practices, we have achieved milestones in improving our ESG performance over the past few years. Notably, in 2025, our MSCI ESG rating was elevated to the top AAA level, surpassing 95% of global industry players. In addition, we were included in the S&P Global Sustainability Yearbook China for the third consecutive year, and we were also honored with the Industry Mover Award for our remarkable progress in driving sustainable development within our sector. All these achievements have not only demonstrated our leadership in ESG performance among global peers, but also reflected our resilience and excellence in corporate sustainability in the face of market uncertainties, evolving policy landscape and dynamic social development, we remain dedicated to further strengthening our ESG practices and contributing to a more sustainable future. I'll stop here and give the call to our CFO, Julian. He will share with you the detailed financials in the fourth quarter and for the year of 2025. Julian, it's your turn. Lei Fan: Thank you, Joyce. Good evening, everyone. Over the past quarter, China's travel industry showcased remarkable resilience driven by rising demand for immersive and experiential travel experiences across both traditional holiday hotspots and newly emerging destinations. Leveraging our profound understanding of evolving traveler preferences, we delivered another quarter of robust performance, capping off a highly productive year. In the fourth quarter of 2025, we achieved healthy growth in both top and bottom line. We reported net revenue of RMB 4.8 billion, representing a 14.2% year-over-year increase from the same period of 2024. We executed targeted marketing campaigns to strategically prepare for the 2026 Chinese New Year, while upholding rigorous cost discipline to ensure financial prudence. During the fourth quarter, our adjusted net profit rose to RMB 779.8 million, reflecting an 18.1% year-over-year growth. The increase was principally fueled by the enhanced economies of scale and the optimized operations of our OTA business. Our core OTA business revenue registered a 17.5% year-over-year increase to RMB 4.1 billion during the fourth quarter of 2025. Our accommodation reservation business achieved RMB 1.3 billion in revenue for the fourth quarter of 2025, representing a 15.4% increase from the same period in 2024. The revenue increase was primarily driven by growth in hotel room nights sold, coupled with a modest rise in ADR. In our domestic accommodation business, we proactively explored diverse accommodation scenarios to capture emerging growth opportunities, including themed offerings tailored to specific demand such as winter vacation and exam season space. For our outbound accommodation business, we strengthened cooperation with third-party partners to expand product offerings as well as our destination footprint catering to growing user demand. In the fourth quarter, our ADR once again achieved year-over-year growth, benefiting from growing consumer demand for high-quality hotels and our proactive adjustment to user subsidy strategies, supported by precise and disciplined marketing strategies. Our net take rate remained stable year-over-year. Our transportation ticketing revenue for the fourth quarter reached RMB 1.8 billion, marking a 6.5% year-over-year increase compared with the same period of 2024. During the past quarter, we heightened our focus on improving user experience. We actively expanded travel supply chain and enriched VAS offerings to deliver a broader range of mobility options and ensure seamless travel experience for users. As for our international air ticketing business, it achieved balanced growth in both volume and revenue, which aligns with our long-term strategy. In the fourth quarter, our international air ticketing revenue increased to more than 7% of our total transportation ticketing revenue. Our other business segment maintained stellar growth momentum with revenue reaching RMB 916.7 million in the fourth quarter, representing a growth of 53% year-over-year. This growth was mainly propelled by outstanding performance of our hotel management business and the consolidation of Wanda Hotels and Resorts. Our tourism business achieved a revenue of RMB 777.5 million, which was largely flat year-over-year. mainly due to our proactive reduction in prepurchased business as well as softer demand for Southeast Asia and Japan. In terms of profitability, our gross profit increased by 18.5% year-over-year to RMB 3.2 billion for the fourth quarter of 2025. The operating profit margin of our core OTA business remained flat year-over-year for the fourth quarter of 2025, while the operating profit margin of our tourism business has been affected by the one-off goodwill impairment. Our adjusted EBITDA increased by 28.6% and reached RMB 1.3 billion in the fourth quarter of 2025. Adjusted net profit grew by 18.1% to RMB 779.8 million in the fourth quarter of 2025. Adjusted basic EPS for the fourth quarter of 2025 was RMB 0.33 with a 17.9% year-over-year increase compared to the same period in 2024. Service development and administrative expenses in the fourth quarter of 2025 increased by 6.8% from the same period of 2024. Excluding share-based compensation charges, service development and administrative expenses in total accounted for 18.1% of revenue in the fourth quarter compared with 18.6% of revenue in the same period of 2024. Selling and marketing expenses in the fourth quarter of 2025 increased by 22.7% from the same period of 2024, excluding share-based compensation charges. Selling and marketing expenses accounted for 32.4% of revenue in the fourth quarter compared with 30.2% of revenue in the same period of 2024. Now let's move to our results for financial year 2025. Our net revenue in 2025 achieved RMB 19.4 billion, representing an 11.9% year-over-year increase. The core OTA revenue achieved RMB 16.5 billion, representing a 16% year-over-year increase. Our accommodation reservation revenue was RMB 5.5 billion in 2025, representing a 16.8% year-over-year increase. Our transportation ticketing revenue reached RMB 7.9 billion, representing a 9.6% year-over-year increase. Other business revenue for 2025 achieved RMB 3.1 billion, representing a 34.4% year-over-year increase. Our tourism revenue for 2025 reached RMB 2.9 billion, representing a 6.9% year-over-year decrease. In terms of profitability, our gross profit in 2025 increased by 15.7% year-over-year to RMB 12.9 billion. Adjusted EBITDA for 2025 improved by 26.9% year-over-year to RMB 5.1 billion. Meanwhile, adjusted net profit for 2025 increased by 22.2% year-over-year to RMB 3.4 billion. Adjusted basic EPS for 2025 was RMB 1.45 with a 20.8% year-over-year increase. As of December 31, 2025, the balance of cash and cash equivalents, restricted cash and short-term investments was RMB 12.3 billion. We highly appreciate our shareholders' consistent support and are committed to delivering sustainable capital returns. Our Board of Directors has proposed a final cash dividend of HKD 0.25 per share, marking a 38.9% increase from last year. This reflects our commitment to enhance capital returns to shareholders. Over the past year, China's travel industry has demonstrated increasingly prominent trends towards diversification and personalization as consumers place growing emphasis on emotional value and unique experience-driven travel opportunities. Notably, the 2026 Spring Festival represented the longest holiday period on record. During the 9-day holiday, consumers divided their holidays into multiple shorter trips such as homecoming visits and vacation travel. Incremental demand from multiple trips during the festival has driven robust growth in our business volume. In addition, the pilot implementation of spring and autumn vacations initially launched in Zhejiang and Sichuan has been expanded to include more regions such as Jiangsu and Anhui. We believe this initiative will help stimulate travel consumption and provide additional momentum to the growth of the tourism industry. Such supportive government policy, combined with sustained strength in user demand, fuels our optimism about the upward trajectory of China's travel industry in the coming year. Moving forward, we will remain focused on our core OTA business, providing users with diverse domestic and international travel products while sparing no effort to enhance user experience. As we continue to improve operational efficiency in domestic OTA operations, we will actively expand our outbound business to bolster our global brand presence. Additionally, our hotel management business will enter a new phase of high-quality growth, building a solid foundation for the company's long-term sustainable development. Concurrently, we will continue to adopt technological innovations as well as deepening the integration of AI technology with our supply chain capabilities, striving to better meet user needs. Last but not least, we will strengthen our corporate social responsibility to support the healthy development of the travel industry and to create greater value for our stakeholders. With that, operator, we are ready to take questions now. Thank you. Operator: [Operator Instructions] We will now take our first question from the line of [ Xi Wei Liu ] from Citi. Unknown Analyst: Xi Wei From Citi. Congratulations to the company on a solid operating performance. I have 2 questions. The first about outbound travel. There have been many flight cancellations between China and Japan recently. How has this impacted your outbound business? Could you share the regional breakdown of your outbound markets? And what are your 2026 targets for outbound revenue growth and profitability? The second about large model and AI strategy. The company has actually rolled out some partnerships with large models so far. In the long run, as AI model portals become more important, how will the company position itself? Joyce Li: Thank you, Xi Wei for the question. The first one is in terms of outbound travel. We did observe a decline in Japan-bound travel volume given the current circumstance. However, the overall impact on our business has been limited as outbound travel accounts for only around 5% to 6% of our total transportation and accommodation revenue. And at the same time, outbound travel demand remains resilient, and we have been seeing users shift to alternative destinations rather than cancel their travel plans. During the Chinese New Year holiday, shop to middle-haul destinations within a 5-hour flight regions such as South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Macau remain among the most popular choices, while demand for Thailand also shown signs of gradual recovery. In addition, demand for long-haul travel increased year-over-year with European destinations such as Italy and Spain seeing particular strong growth. We have been actively adjusting our product offerings and marketing focus to capture this demand shift. Overall, given the relatively small contribution of our outbound travel to our core OTA business and the substitution effect across destinations, we do not expect a material impact on our overall performance. And looking ahead to 2026, our priority remains to further improve the quality of growth by enhancing pricing discipline, optimizing marketing efficiency and strengthening cross-selling from air tickets to accommodation and other travel products. At the same time, we will continue to deepen partnerships with global suppliers to improve service capabilities and user experience. Overall, we expect the international business to continue expanding in scale and become an increasingly meaningful contributor to our revenue. Over the next 2 to 3 years, growing business volume and expanding the user base will remain the key priorities while maintaining a strong focus on improving growth quality and profitability. We expect the revenue contribution from the outbound segment to increase to around 10% to 15% with increasing operating leverage over time. And in terms of the AI cooperation, our AI strategy focused on enhancing both user experience and operational efficiency as we continue to evolve from a traditional OTA toward a more intelligent travel platform. We see AI as a core capability that helps us better understand user needs, improving decision-making and optimize service delivery across the entire travel journey. At the same time, AI-driven efficiency improvements are significantly enhancing staff productivity and optimize our cost structure, which we believe will be an important driver of margin improvement over time. On the user side, we have integrated our proprietary travel-specific AI with advanced large language models to develop DeepTrip, which supports itinerary planning, travel inspiration and personalized product recommendations. By combining AI capabilities with our real-time supply and transaction ecosystem, DeepTrip provides a practical and actionable solution and enables a seamless end-to-end booking experience. We will continue to iterate its functionalities to better support users across different travel scenarios. And as a positioning of us, I think that we have been started exploring the partnership with large AI platforms and large model ecosystems. For example, we enabled traffic [ redirection ] from Yuanbao to our mini programs and apps. So our strategy is to actively participate in the emerging AI ecosystem by positioning our platform as a trusted travel service partner with deep market insights and a strong understanding of user behaviors. Leveraging our long-term accumulation of transaction data and operational experience, we are able to provide users with more accurate recommendations and practical bookable travel solutions on our AI platforms. Users who enter through AI platforms complete their bookings within our mini programs or apps and the related user and transaction data remain within our ecosystem. This allows us to maintain direct user relationships, accumulate valuable behavior insights and continuously optimize our product services and personalized recommendations. It also enables us to strengthen user engagement and lifetime value, which remains a key competitive advantage for our OTA platform. Going forward, we will continue to monitor development of the AI ecosystem and expand partnerships where it makes strategic sense, while maintaining our focus on strengthening our product service offerings, operational capabilities and user experience. Operator: We will now take our next question from Wei Xiong of UBS. Wei Xiong: First, I want to get your thoughts on regulations because recently, an OTA peer has been under antitrust investigation. So how should we think about the implications to the OTA sector? Do you foresee any impact on OTA's business model or lead to any change in the competitive landscape? Lei Fan: Thank you, Wei Xiong, -- please go on. Wei Xiong: Yes. Sure. So second question is on the hotel management business, which is set to become our second growth engine. So I wonder, could management elaborate your strategic focus and planning for this year? And what are the key operational goals and financial metrics that we look to achieve in 2026 and in the medium term as well? Lei Fan: Okay. Thank you for the question, Xiong, Wei. In terms of the investigations, as you mentioned, we closely monitor regulatory developments recently. At this stage, we have not observed any material changes that would impact our day-to-day operations. Tongcheng has always operated with a strong focus on compliance and fair cooperation with our partners. We believe a well-regulated market environment is beneficial to the long-term healthy development for the company and also for the industry. We will continue to adapt our business practices as required to ensure full compliance in the company. Overall, we remain focused on executing our strategy and delivering sustainable growth and profitability improvement. In terms of the hotel management plan, I think Joyce will have her words. Joyce Li: Thank you, Xiong, Wei. Actually, following the completion of the Wanda Hotels and Resorts acquisition, the integration has progressed smoothly and is better than our expectations. We have achieved rapid organizational alignment, revitalized organization and teams and further refined the strategic direction of the business. Overall, the post-acquisition integration has been very successful. On the synergy front, we are beginning to see encouraging early results. The addition of the Wanda's upscale and luxury brands has enhanced our overall brand portfolio and strengthened our positioning in the middle to high-end segment of our hotel management business. At the same time, the integration has enabled better resource sharing across business development, operations and membership, which is gradually improving operational efficiency. It also further reinforced Tongcheng's presence within the accommodation supply chain. From the other perspective, Tongcheng also empowers Wanda Hotels and Resorts through our technology capabilities. By providing standardized system tools and digital solutions, we help improve internal operational efficiency while reducing research and development efforts and lowering system maintenance and third-party service costs. From a financial perspective, the acquisition has already delivered a positive contribution at the operational level as Wanda Hotels and Resorts is an established hotel management company with a solid operating track record. The consolidation has enhanced our revenue scale, optimized the business mix and strengthened the earnings visibility of the segment. As we move forward, our development strategy will remain disciplined with a focus on balancing scale expansion with operational efficiency and healthy returns, ensuring sustainable and high-quality growth of the business segment. With continued expansion of scale and improving operational efficiency, together with the contribution from Wanda Hotels and Resorts, we expect the hotel management segment to maintain strong revenue growth with a further improvement in profitability from 2026 onwards. Thank you. Operator: We will now take our next question from the line of Brian Gong of Citi. Brian Gong: Two questions here. First is, how do you -- how is the travel consumption trend for the industry in the first quarter considering recovery on hotel ADR. Do we still expect teens level on room nights growth this year? Second question is that recently, [indiscernible] has been under government's investigation. Do you think this will impact their cooperation with us and their stakeholding on us? [indiscernible] is adjusting their hotel business to comply with government's requirement. How will this impact the industry and us? Lei Fan: Okay. Thank you for the questions, Brian. In terms of the first quarter's performance and also the industry outlook, actually, during the Chinese New Year holiday, as we mentioned in the prepared remarks, the China travel market continued to demonstrate very solid demand. According to the Ministry of Transport, national passengers throughput during the 9-day Chinese New Year holiday reached a throughput record 8.2% year-over-year growth during the holiday with decent growth for both long-haul and short-haul travel. Our passenger throughput of railway and airline increased by around 10% and 7% year-over-year, respectively. Meanwhile, according to the industry statistics, overall hotel ADR increased during the Chinese New Year holiday among all segments. With demand for family reunions concentrated in the pre-holiday period, we observed a pickup in passenger throughput during the latter part of the Chinese New Year holiday this year. In response, we promptly adjusted our operational resources, strengthened supply coordinations with our partners and enhance the targeted marketing efforts to capture the rebound in travel demand and improve conversion efficiency in the latter part of Chinese New Year holiday. So as a result, we continue to outperform the industry in the first quarter and also during the 9-day Chinese New Year holiday with especially strong momentum in our accommodation business. Average daily room nights sold increased by 30%. Specifically, room night growth for 3-star and above hotels significantly outpaced that of lower-tier properties. This reflects our ability to respond effectively to changing user preferences as more travelers place greater emphasis on higher quality accommodation experiences. As a result, our hotel ADR in quarter 1 maintained a positive trend during the period and once again exceeded the industry average. For transportation business, we continue to focus on improving monetization, while average daily air ticket volume was broadly in line with the overall market. And also for the room nights growth in the full year of 2026, actually, I cannot provide a very clear numbers here because of the short booking window. But as we mentioned, looking into 2026, we continue to view the long-term fundamentals of China's travel market positively. Consumer preferences are increasingly shifting towards experiential-oriented spending with growing interest in event-driven and themed travel such as concerts, exhibitions and outdoor activities. At the same time, travel is becoming more integrated into everyday lifestyle, supporting more frequent and diversified travel demand. In addition, supportive policy measures aimed at expanding domestic consumptions and promoting high-quality tourism development provide a favorable backdrop for the whole industry. And also for the second question about the investigation, actually, we don't monitor any change on the cooperation with Trip and also, we don't monitor any change of the shareholder structures or potential change of the shareholder structures. So currently, as I mentioned in previous question, we're just focusing on our own execution and long-term competitiveness improvement. So actually, our strategy remains very consistent, focusing on enhancing our user value, improve the ARPU, strengthening our product and service capabilities and deepening cooperation with our suppliers through a mutual beneficial approach. And also, at the same time, we will continue to take a disciplined and prudent approach while monitoring the industry regulatory development. Thank you for the question. Operator: We will now take our next question from Yang Liu of Morgan Stanley. Yang Liu: I have 2 questions. The first one is also related with AI. Could management elaborate more about the DeepTrip's contribution to the business, especially on the business -- overall business volume and also cross-selling side? And my second question is regarding the marketing intensity this year, given the geopolitical risk in both China and Japan and also Middle East this year, will management adjust the outbound business marketing intensity? Yes, that is my second question. Joyce Li: Thank you. The first question is concerning our DeepTrip. As I mentioned, DeepTrip is our AI-driven travel planner that use the reasoning power of DeepSeek and our platform supply chain advantages to create personalized travel itineraries. Since launch, DeepTrip has served about 7 million users with orders placed through the platform steadily increasing over the past few months. Over the past quarters, we continue to enhance DeepTrip with the goal of strengthening user awareness and building long-term trust. We have been continuously upgrading its user-facing capabilities to support more comprehensive travel planning. Key enhancements include the integration of trend transfer data to enable seamless multimodal itineraries. The addition of social sharing features to improve engagement as introduction of a map tool in the fourth quarter to provide a more intuitive visualization of travel plans. In addition, DeepTrip has been embedded into our air-ticketing service to help users address pre-booking inquiries and identify more competitive fare options, delivering a more seamless booking experience. Beyond user-facing applications, we have also extended DeepTrip into different business scenarios to improve operational efficiency. We integrated customer service agent capabilities into DeepTrip to respond to customer inquiries directly within DeepTrip and guide users to human support when needed. For corporate clients, we piloted a travel booking suggesting tool customized according to travel profiles, business travel policies and past bookings. In the future, DeepTrip will continue to serve as a platform for understanding and addressing users' comprehensive travel needs across diverse scenarios. We will further leveraging our AI capabilities across various business segments to provide valuable solutions to users, thereby strengthening our competitive advantages. Additionally, we have begun the cooperation with [indiscernible] to acquire more traffic. We're also actively exploring potential collaborations with our AI agent platform to further broaden our reach and engagement opportunities. We remain committed to leading AI innovation, continuously increasing the investments in this area and delivering cutting-edge user-focused features to elevate our user travel experience. And in terms of the current circumstance in terms of outbound business, we have seen considerable growth potential in the outbound tourism market. As the travel habits evolve, more travelers are eager to explore the international destinations. The number of outbound tourists is still significantly lower than the domestic travelers, revealing a substantial opportunities for expansion in this area. At present, we believe that there are only a limited number of Chinese OTA players have the capabilities and resources to actively drive outbound business. This situation place us in a favorable positioning facing relatively low competitive pressure and allowing us to fully capitalize on the growth potential of the market. Again, our strategy and confidence are anchored in the long-term growth prospects of China's outbound industry and our competitive advantages. While we remain agile in our short-term tactics in response to the market conditions, I think our business momentum remains unaffected. Thank you. Operator: In the interest of time, we will take our last question from Thomas Chong of Jefferies. Thomas Chong: Congratulations on a solid set of results. My first question is about our future growth driver and the take rate trend for accommodation and transportation. And my second question is relating to margin. How should we think about the 2026 margin trend as well as the margin driver in the future? Lei Fan: Thanks for the question, Thomas. For growth, actually, the company's focus remains on achieving a high-quality growth in 2026 by balancing scale expansion with operating efficiency improvement, while continuously enhancing our user value and ARPU. So in the first quarter and also the second quarter, we will prioritize healthy and sustainable growth across our core OTA segments, supported by improved operational efficiency and more refined resource allocation. At the same time, we will continue to strengthen our competitiveness positioning and capture growth opportunity to future expand our market presence. Within the core OTA business, we anticipate that the accommodation business will grow faster than transportation business through the whole year. For accommodation business, we believe that the growth will be driven by volume expansion and ADR improvement, as we mentioned a lot of times. Our volume is expected to continue outpacing the market growth, while our ADR will benefit from the ongoing upgrade in hotel star mix driven by shifts in user preference. So we think it's enough to support a very nicely growth for accommodation business by these 2 reasons. So this year, in terms of the take rate of the accommodation, we expect that the take rate may be stable year-over-year at 2025. For transportation business, volume growth will be in line with the market and still one of the reasons of the revenue growth for transportation. While our take rate improvement driven by cross-sell and VAS will continue to contribute to the revenue growth of the transportation segment. Also, we expect the hyper growth for other revenue, mainly due to Wanda consolidation since the middle of October last year and the hyper growth of our original hotel management and PMS business and also our Black Whale business, the membership business. In terms of the profitability, as we promised, the margin improvement is one of the very important strategic priorities for the company. For the reasons, one, for our core OTA business, the improvement in operational efficiency will continue to be an important driver of profitability over time. In particular, we are leveraging AI technologies to enhance both customer service automation and R&D efficiency, which help improve staff profitability and overall operating efficiencies. For the development of our hotel management business, including eLong Hotel Technology platform and Wanda Hotels and Resorts, we will continue to support its high-quality expansion with a near-term focus on scaling the business, while the return profile is expected to improve progressively as the business matures. For our international business, we will maintain a very prudent approach as we continue to build the foundation for future growth and cultivate the company's next growth engine over the coming years. Last, in terms of the marketing investments, our marketing dollars may fluctuate slightly depending on market opportunity. For example, in quarter 4 last year and quarter 1 this year, we identified strong early booking demand for the 9-day Chinese New Year holiday period and therefore, increased our marketing investments to capture early demand and gain market share. At the same time, we will continue to strengthen ROI management across different marketing channels. So overall, we will continue to balance growth opportunities with disciplined cost management while focusing on improving operational efficiency across the business and improve our margins. Thank you. Operator: That's the end of the question-and-answer session. Thank you very much for all your questions. I'd now like to turn the conference back to Ms. Kylie Yeung, for closing comments. Kylie Yeung: Thank you. We are closing the call now. If you wish to check out our presentation and other financial information, please visit the IR section of our company website. Thank you, and see you next quarter. Operator: Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect your lines.
Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Exor Investor and Analyst Call. Please note that the presentation is available to download on Exor website www.exor.com under the Investors and Media, Events & Presentations section. Any forward-looking statements Exor management makes are covered by the safe harbor statement included in the presentation material. Please note that this conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions]. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to your host, CEO, John Elkann. Please go ahead. John Elkann: Good morning, good afternoon and good evening to all of you. Thank you for being here today with us. 2025 was a difficult year in many different ways for Exor and for our companies. But it also has been a year that has helped us be more focused and be more resilient, which enables us as a company to be better prepared for another difficult year, which will be 2026. Today, we want to talk to you about our companies. We have less of them and we have more in health care. We want to speak to you about Lingotto who has reached a very important milestone in '25, reaching EUR 10 billion of assets under management driven by performance, which is exactly in line with our intentions of building an investment organization interested in performance, not in gathering assets. And finally, our financials that on the back of disposals have provided us with a strong balance sheet and also the opportunity in '25 of doing a large buyback of EUR 1 billion, which if you add to the ones that we've done in prior years taking into account our large discount has allowed us to buy up to close to 15% of our shares. Our portfolio today reflects the latest disposal, which is JD, which we were able to conclude and the money got wired yesterday, and it reflects a Exor as we move towards '26, which would be one of less companies where we'll be able to focus particularly on our larger ones. And that's where I'd like to proceed. And I'd like to start with Stellantis who has been the one that has encountered both external difficulties and internal difficulties in the course of '25. It is resetting itself and under the leadership of Antonio Filosa, it is addressing the many challenges that is confronted with, both externally but also internally. We are getting to an important year in '26 with the Capital Markets Day, where Stellantis, end of May, will present its future, where it intends to be very clear about how it will improve as a company and make sure that it is and will remain one of the leaders in what is a defining industry. Ferrari, on the other hand, has already spoke about its future in '25 in the Capital Markets Day, where it is committed to growing, but growing in a way in which the uniqueness of what it does continues to be unique. And '26 is a defining year with the launch of the Ferrari Luce, the first-ever electric car, which will also happen in the end of May with the third act of the launch that started at the Capital Markets Day presenting the technologies of the Ferrari Luce, which then had beginning of this year with the interiors and finally, the final car, end of May in Rome. I would like now to pass to my colleague, Benoit, to speak to you about Philips, which is a company in which we continue to invest in '25. And today, is in terms of value, the second largest company for Exor. Benoit Ribadeau-Dumas: Thank you, John. 2025 was the last year of the '23, '25 plan that we underwrote in 2023 when we invested in Philips for the first time. So it was good to see at the end of this plan, the company delivering a strong performance, a solid performance with, in particular, a strong margin expansion, which is the result of the ambitious reorganization and productivity plans that have been launched by the CEO, Roy Jakobs. And second, we saw also in 2025, and it was long awaited a peak in the order intake after years of moderate growth and it was -- it is paving the way for a new momentum of the company. The stock price so far has not been following the performance. So we have decided to increase our stake last year to reach 90% -- 19% economic rights. Also, we were glad to see the company announcing earlier this year the new plan, the new 3-year plan for 2026, 2028, after a phase where the focus was on execution and on exiting the quality crisis of the Sleep and Respironics business. This is a renewed ambition for the company, which is now targeting mid-single-digit sales growth and mid-teens profit margin. Of course, continuing the efforts that they launched on quality and productivity enhancement, but also accelerating in the delivery of new products fueled by AI and fueled by the high level of R&D that this company has always been part of. So we are a happy shareholder of Philips, and we are looking forward to seeing their next progresses. Suzanne on CNH. Suzanne Heywood: Thank you, Benoit. So CNH had a challenging year in 2025 because of the downturn in the agricultural market. exacerbated, of course, by some of the geopolitical events that have been going on as well as some of the changes in tariffs and that is expected to continue into 2026 as already communicated by the company. At its Investor Day in May '25, CNH presented its path to 2030, and we think this is very important because it includes a number of different measures that will strengthen the company and enable it to come out of this downturn in a strong way. One is expanding the margins of the company through the cycle. And an important part of that is addressing some of the quality issues that it needs to address within the company. It is also looking to launch a series of new products new technologies, in particular, those around precision farming, which, of course, are very, very important for our customers and also a focus on costs, in particular, supply costs for the organization. The company has a lot to do, but it also has a lot to look forward to as it comes out of this cycle, given its tremendous lineup of products, both on the agriculture side and on the construction side, so we look forward to continuing to be a shareholder in the company. I also want to take this moment to do an update on Iveco. This is an important moment for Iveco. Last year, we celebrated with Iveco the first 50 years of its history. And this -- and last year, we also agreed and are participating in 2 extraordinary transactions in relation to Iveco. The first of these is the sale of Iveco Defence to Leonardo. This is the Iveco Defence business, and this transaction closed on March 18 with the expectation that the dividends will be distributed at the end of April. This transaction for Iveco Defence secures a future for the defense business within Iveco, secures a future for it now with Leonardo, which will give it increased scale. The remainder of the business, which is the trucks, buses and engines business will be combined with Tata Motors through a tender offer, which we're expecting to close at the end of the second quarter. The total valuation of both of these transactions will be EUR 5.3 billion. I want to take this moment to thank the 2 CEOs that have led Iveco through the period since it was spun out of CNH back in 2022, Gerrit Marx and Olof Persson, and of course, their management teams as well. We wish all parts of the Iveco business, a very successful next 50 years within their new ownership. I now pass back to John. John Elkann: Thank you, Suzanne, and it's also the opportunity for me to thank the leadership team and all their colleagues at Iveco and wish Iveco an important journey ahead as it opens for the new future with Leonardo and Tata. Coming back to Exor, if we look at our unlisted companies, they delivered mixed results. The good news is that our bigger companies in terms of value have performed better than our smaller ones. Welltec had an extraordinary year, while Shang Xia continued to have a difficult year. We expect the overall companies that we have as unlisted to present themselves in '26 with strong plans ahead and continuing to do in aggregate well. I would like now to speak about Lingotto which had a very important year in 2025. Lingotto was founded in '23 to really converge all the different investment activities that we were doing in partnering and directly in Exor. We now no longer have any investments outside of our companies, which are the ones in which we are involved in their governance. And everything we do outside will be carried forward within the investment strategies of Lingotto who today are 4. Of these 4, the one that has performed the best is the intersection fund led by Matteo Scolari and the overall aggregate returns of the 4 strategies have allowed ingot to reach USD 10 billion under management. What is encouraging is this has been driven by performance and what was really -- it was really what we expected when we founded Lingotto an organization, an investment management organization where the principle is what the organization cares about. And investing is what they do in order to grow through performance rather than gathering assets. The good news is on the interest of specific parties, which we've been very selective in allowing to invest alongside us, the quality of the investors and also the quality of what their mandate is, of which most are linked to societal causes are encouraging to see how we have alongside us very capable investors which invest for important causes. I would like now to pass it to Guido to walk you through our financials. Guido de Boer: Thank you, John. So on this slide, we recap what John, Suzanne and Benoit mentioned previously. So our NAV per share started the year at EUR 178 the biggest movers in a negative sense were 3 of our largest companies, Ferrari, Stellantis and CNH contributing in total for a EUR 25 per share decline in our NAV per share. This was partly offset by decent performance of our other companies, as John just highlighted, an outstanding performance at Lingotto, going up 40% in the year. And in addition, we invested EUR 1 billion in buybacks at over a 50% discount which contributed EUR 4.7 per share, and EUR 2.5 per share. So overall, we ended at EUR 164.4, so down for the year. If we look at our objectives, which are twofold. The first one is a relative performance metric where we look at NAV per share versus MSCI World Index. And the second one is an absolute performance measure, total shareholder return. So to first go to the relative one. In 2024, we actually had a pretty good year at 9% NAV per share growth at a very challenging benchmark, where the Magnificent 7 did great in the MSCI went up by 25%. 2025, we actually had a much easier comparable because those similar 7 companies did not perform as well. but we actually declined in NAV per share, as I just showed you. And on the back of an increase in the discount, our total shareholder return is below our NAV per share growth. So then moving to the measures that we track every year to make sure we operate in an efficient and disciplined way. The first one we track is free cash flow over dividend. As a measure of the financial health that we have in terms of cash flows. That is still at a very healthy level at almost 6x, notwithstanding a decline in the dividend of Stellantis. Management cost over GAV. So an indication of how efficiently we manage our overhead is world-class it went up largely driven by the decrease in GAV increasing it as a percentage. And also loan-to-value which measures how aggressively we are levered is down to 6.9%, notwithstanding the reduction in GAV. And that's primarily because we realized EUR 3 billion of proceeds from the sale of Ferrari shares. We reinvested that partially, but we also increased our cash position. So we're in a healthy place there. So if we look at our balance sheet, which is critical in these turbulent times, we are very strong. So our loan-to-value ratio is at 6.9%. Our bond maturities are very well spread out. We refinanced EUR 600 million in 2025. And now that has a maturity in 2035. We have a payment coming up of $170 million of a private placement, which we can finance out of our cash position. And on top of this low repayment requirement in the coming years, we have a EUR 1.1 billion credit facility, which we extended and doubled in the year. and we have a EUR 1.4 billion cash position as of December 2025. So in a very healthy position indeed. So these are the financial slides that I would like to present, and I want to hand over to John for the concluding slides. John Elkann: Thank you, Guido. We entered '26 with momentum. We have to complete the transactions that we have announced. On the back of those, as Guido mentioned, we will have been strengthening our balance sheet with close to EUR 3 billion additional resources. And if we look at the returns of what we have been divesting, we're speaking about 1.4x on cost. Now in moments like the ones we are living, which are uncertain times, what is key is to have liquidity and preserve capital. So we feel that having close to EUR 4 billion, as we conduct and conclude the transactions that I described puts Exor in a very strong position in an uncertain moment of time. I would like to conclude by giving you which are the priorities that we have as a company. We want to focus and focus particularly on our larger companies because that's where we believe the greatest value is. We want to continue to simplify our portfolio by conducting to closure the transactions that we have announced and continue to divest from our other assets. And we are committed to a strong balance sheet, which is even more valuable in moments like the ones we are living and be ready to deploy capital with discipline when the time is right. I would like to thank you all for your commitment. I would like to thank you all for believing in Exor. We realize that '25 was a difficult year on the back of a difficult year that '24 was. We are also very aware that the environment in which we find ourselves is uncertain in '26 but we do feel that the last 2 years have strengthened us and we enter this difficult year stronger than we were in the last 2 years. This is why I wanted to conclude with the quote that I have at the end of our letter which I deeply believe is one of the strengths that we have as an organization. Thank you, and we look forward to answering your many questions. Operator: [Operator Instructions]. We are now going to proceed with our first question. And the questions come from the line of Monica Bosio from Intesa Sanpaolo. Monica Bosio: Good morning, everyone, and good afternoon, everyone. I have basically 2, 3 questions. The first one is, obviously, cash is king in this tough environment. But maybe should we assume that no deal will be announced across the entire 2026 and that the time frame will be longer. And the last conference call, the company clearly stated its interest for 3 main sectors, the health care, the luxury and the technology with no clear priority. Are still the sector where the company wants to invest or maybe something else changed in the selection list. And another question is on deployment of the cash. Following the EUR 1 billion buyback in 2025. I was wondering if the company is willing to execute another buyback program in the future? And if yes, could the buyback be taken into consideration jointly with the new investments? Or could it be considered only in case no significant investments opportunities arise? John Elkann: [Foreign Language]. Monica, those were all incredible questions. The timing is really linked to making sure that we find the opportune investment. And I think that in times like the ones we're living on one side, one needs to be prudent. On the other side, one needs to be patient. And we want to make sure that we are sufficiently patient to capture the best possible opportunity. In terms of interest of sectors, we remain convinced that the sectors that you mentioned are interesting sectors, technology, luxury and health care with interesting valuations. But we also think that we should be open to other sectors and not preclude ourselves better opportunities if we were to find them. We also think that the companies that we own within the sectors in which we're present remain interesting, which is the reason why we have deployed money in '25 in Philips and bioMérieux. And if you add our investment in Institut Mérieux plus bioMérieux is de facto our fifth largest investment today. So the fifth most largest company if you combine Institut Mérieux with bioMérieux. In terms of buyback, as I mentioned, we have been aggressively buying back shares, EUR 2.5 billion in the last years, which is approximately close to 15% of our capital. and with wider discounts, which we look at very favorably because they are the opportunity to do buybacks, which is a way to invest in ourselves are opportunities that, of course, we will continue to look and look with discipline. As of now, we believe that, as you said, cash is king, and it is a moment where making sure that we do have a fortress balance sheet is important. And that is also the case for our companies. we believe that our companies are all with very strong balance sheets, which is the most important thing when you do enter in uncertain times as we have learned in the past. So as much as I feel bad about '24 and '25, I also realize that they have helped us both at Exor and our companies to enter these uncertain times much stronger. Operator: We are now going to proceed with our next question, and the question comes from the line of Martino De Ambroggi from Equita SIM. John Elkann: You must be happy about Iveco. Martino De Ambroggi: No. Not anymore. The first question is on Lingotto. Could you elaborate on what is the strategy going ahead? And I don't know if it's possible just to have a fair value, current fair value, considering what happened in the past few weeks in the market turmoil. I don't know if you have an indication you can provide. The second is on the additional divestitures because if I understood correctly, you were talking about more divestitures. Is there any clue on what could be a moving part going ahead? And third, I know I repeat basically every year the same question, but now it's quite a long time with a discount to net asset value, well in excess of 50% and this morning, even much, much higher. What are the 3 main reasons justifying such a high discount in your view? Just to have a very -- your personal impression. And last, the environment is getting worse and worse. Could you provide us an update on your view on the Stellantis environment and risks considering what is going to happen? John Elkann: There's a lot of questions. So Lingotto, the strategy is very much the one that was stated in the letter that I wrote as the founder of Lingotto in '23. So this is an organization that wants to attract exceptional investors and make sure that they can do what they love, which is investing. We have 4 distinct strategies, as we have described in the past, and those remain consistent with what the strategies are. which allows us to have a diversified sets of strategies, which are different from what we do directly as Exor and it allows the right discipline also being able to have selectively third-party capital from, as I mentioned before, very solid investors. In terms of the recent events, we don't comment on where we stand on mark-to-market. And if you look at the opportunity of the discount, we actually have viewed that in a positive way because it has allowed us to buy back shares as we've done in the past. I think that it is important to stress that in moments of uncertainty, you're better off being patient than rushing, which is why for any capital allocation. Is it in buying our own companies investing more in Lingotto strategies, investing in a new company or doing buybacks? We remain prudent but studious of what would be the different alternatives. Stellantis was able to raise through an hybrid issuance which increased already a strong balance sheet and the overall execution that is being carried forward is on the right track. Giving today any further information on Stellantis is not desirable because we are, as you know, in end of May, we will be assisting to the Capital Markets Day of Stellantis. Thank you, Luigi. Operator: We are now going to proceed with our next question. And the questions come from the line of Luuk Van Beek from Degroof Petercam. Luuk Van Beek: Yes, I have 2 questions. So first of all, have you reviewed your portfolio for the potential impact of higher energy prices and any other things that are happening in the world to see the exposure and the risk level? And the second question is on the discount to NAV. Do you consider to take any measures other than just executing the strategy and delivering and testing on that reducing the discount? John Elkann: Energy prices is premature to actually see the inflationary pressures. But that is definitely something that our companies are working actively in understanding the inflationary pressures that are happening and what type of impact that would have on some of their cost structure. We believe that the discount is actually an opportunity, and that's something that we have been able to capture in the past. Operator: We are now going to proceed with our next question. And the questions come from the line of Alberto Villa from Intermonte SIM. Alberto Villa: Actually, First of all, congratulations for the annual report. It is very clear and very nice also to read. So congratulations to the team. And secondly, going back to Lingotto, it's now more than 11% of your GAV thanks to the performance and looking at the composition of the investments. The vast majority, 70% is the intersection strategy. So the public investments that had a great 2025. I was wondering if in the future, you expect to maybe take advantage of the performance to reduce a little bit the exposure to Lingotto or maybe to mix a little bit more into the to shift a little bit more into the other strategies and how you feel about private markets? So there has been a lot of rumors about the outlook for these asset classes, especially in the U.S. So wondering if you want to share with us your thoughts on that. John Elkann: Thank you. And I will, with Guido, convey your message on our annual report. There was a lot of work in doing it. So our colleagues will be very happy that you appreciated it. Lingotto is made of different strategies. We had committed in '22 on the back of the disposal of PartnerRe, EUR 6.5 billion, which had been divided EUR 5 billion into 1 large investment and into 3 to 5 smaller investments. And we executed that with Philips being the large investments and LifeNet, TagEnergy, Clarivate and Institut Mérieux being 4 smaller investment, whilst EUR 1.5 billion would have been deployed in investments, which back then were Lingotto strategies and ventures, and that has been done. We've also said that as we would be realizing the investment in what used to be Exor Ventures now managed by Ora, we would be recycling it within the strategies of Lingotto. The actual exercise that we do internally the portfolio review is exactly meant on one side to try and see how we think about what we own and the opportunity ahead. As of now, we're not considering allocating more capital to Lingotto strategies, but equally, we're not considering reducing our exposure to Lingotto strategy. Alberto Villa: Any thoughts about the private markets situation? John Elkann: In credit? Alberto Villa: Yes. John Elkann: Luckily, we're not exposed to the credit market, and we are increasing our net cash position the actual environment, as you know, is very tight. Operator: We are now going to proceed with our next question. And the questions come from the line of [ Nicola Gude from Alexco Capital ]. Unknown Analyst: Sorry to come back to the discount theme. But I mean the discount today is such that the shares are at [ 0.44 ] on the dollar, which means if you invest $100 in your share, it's $125 of value and actually probably much more because the shares are depressed in the portfolio, too. And so obviously, compared to that, it's a high bar for the acquisition of a new company. And I guess, is there room to do both in the sense you're mentioning a firepower of $2.5 billion for an acquisition. But why not return, say, $1 billion here and now and then do a $2.5 billion acquisition or something along those lines? Why is there any -- why can't both be done at the same time, I guess, because that would certainly go a long way to create NAV per share, which is the objective at the end for shareholders. John Elkann: So as I mentioned, we haven't committed to no allocation as we speak. What we have committed to is to make sure that we have a strong balance sheet, and we have liquidity. As it pertains to how we will invest it everything is open, and we will make sure that we will be disciplined in how we proceed. Operator: [Operator Instructions]. We are now going to proceed with our next question. And the questions come from the line of Andrea Balloni from Mediobanca. Andrea Balloni: I have a couple. First one is on the potential share buyback. I understand the reason why this year, you are pretty cautious. What could trigger a different decision from a macro standpoint over the rest of the year? What would you consider to be a potential positive catalyst or trigger to start eventually a share buyback program? And my second question is on the potential investment that you are considering. You have mentioned a relevant size and also a material stake that may be taken by Exor. Yet, are you scouting among listed companies such as in the case of Philips or should we expect an investment in private companies? John Elkann: Those are very good questions. On the first one, Today, we have compounding uncertainties. We have uncertainties around the overall commerce that has been triggered by changes between tariffs and regulations. We have uncertainties linked to conflicts that are happening in different parts of the world. We have uncertainties linked to markets that are moving in different directions. And finally, we have uncertainties on the deployment of a substantial new technology, which is AI, which has the power of fire or electricity, hence going to impact in many ways, the way in which companies operate, both in what they do and how they do it. So this is an environment in which we believe that it's important to be prudent and patient in order to really make sure that we can take the best out of it and I remain optimistic about the future of Exor and our companies and in some ways, having had to go through very difficult internal and external situations in the course of '24 and '25 equipped us well to what is ahead. In terms of what are we looking for, we believe that Philips is a good example of the type of companies that Exor would be a good owner of. And that is a function of 3 things. One size we have said last year that we'd like to deploy more than 5% in one company. Second, we think that public markets offer interesting opportunities. And we believe that companies that have a large shareholder or a reference shareholder empirically have proven to perform better within their industry or within an index. And third, we think that the opportunity of sectors where some of these changes that we were describing before, can lead to improvement in these companies. Our role factors that we think describe Philips as a good example. And as of now, we have been, as Benoit mentioned, been very happily involved and the outcomes so far have been good for the company and for Exor. Andrea Balloni: And a follow-up, please. Would you consider to invest a part of this fire power in some of the investments you already have in the portfolio? I'm thinking about Stellantis, Ferrari and other companies, which had a very bad trend recently. I was wondering if you might consider to increase your stake. John Elkann: As I mentioned before, that's a very good question, and that's why today making firm commitments of capital where is where I'd like to be prudent and patient because where would we invest we'd invest in our companies. We know them well. That's what we did last year in Philips and bioMérieux. We would invest in Lingotto strategies. As of now, I said, there's no intention in doing that. We would invest in new opportunities and new Philips or we would be investing in ourselves through a buyback which, as most of you have told us, is definitely very attractive, and we would agree with that. And we think that the bigger the discount is, the more attractive it is. And we have been quite deliberate and decisive in doing that over the last years. So today, we want to make sure about 2 things. One, are we equipped Exor and our companies to go through turbulent times. We believe so. Secondly, are we sufficiently patient to try and understand what is happening in order to be able to underwrite within those 4 possible allocations of capital, what is the one where we as an organization and a Board feel that, that's the best usage of capital, which we want to be disciplined in doing in the best interest of our shareholders. Andrea Balloni: Thank you. Operator: This concludes the question-and-answer session on the phone. I will now hand over for the written questions. John Elkann: So we have a question from ING, which is about the economics of our investment in Lingotto and how Exor benefit -- how it -- benefits. I will pass it to Guido. Guido de Boer: Thank you, John. So we are an investor in ingot Lotos funds. So through that fund, we receive the returns after performance fees. What helps us is that we also own the asset manager, we have co-investors in Covéa and many others that help share the cost of the infrastructure. So in that way, it makes for us a very efficient way to invest behind some of the most talented investors in the world. So I hope that answers your question. There were some follow-up questions from another person on the assets under management for Lingotto. Would you like to take that? Or shall I -- so I wouldn't say that there is a maximum in terms of assets under management for Lingotto as a whole. For individual strategies, there are and they're depending on the type of strategy. For us, what is key is that like John mentioned earlier, the objective for Lingotto not to be an asset gatherer, but an investment manager that delivers outstanding performance. So we will be very cautious that we don't grow the capital too much that it goes at the expense of performance. So that is maybe a bit more philosophical answer, but I think that is critical behind our thinking on assets under management for Lingotto. So those were the questions that we had on the webcast. If there's nothing else or I don't know if you want to make any further remarks, John. John Elkann: Thank you, Guido. Thank you all, and we'll make sure to make '26 the best possible year out of very uncertain and difficult circumstances. Thank you. Operator: Thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.
Operator: Good day, everyone, and welcome to Leatt Corporation Fourth Quarter 2025 Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note, this call may be recorded. [Operator Instructions] It is now my pleasure to turn the conference over to Michael Mason. Please go ahead. Michael Mason: Thanks, Reza. Good morning, and welcome to the Leatt Corporation investor conference call to discuss the financial results for the fourth quarter and full year 2025. My name is Michael Mason. The company issued a press release today, Tuesday, March 24, 2026, at 8:00 a.m. Eastern and filed its report with the SEC. The press release is posted on Leatt's website at leatt-corp.com. This call is being broadcast live and may be accessed on the company's website. An audio replay of this call will be available for 7 days and may be accessed from North America by calling 1 (844) 512-2921 or 1 (412) 317-6671 for international callers. The replay pin number is 11161317. A replay of the webcast will be available immediately following this call and will continue for 7 days. Certain statements in this conference call may constitute forward-looking statements. Actual results could differ materially from those discussed in this call. Leatt Corporation does not undertake any obligation to update such statements made in this call. Please refer to the complete cautionary statement regarding forward-looking statements in today's press release dated March 24, 2026. The company will make a presentation on the quarterly results and then open the call to questions. I'd now like to turn the call over to Mr. Sean MacDonald, CEO of Leatt Corporation. Good afternoon to you in Cape Town, Sean. Sean MacDonald: Thank you, Mike, and thank you all for joining us today. 2025 was a remarkable year for us, fueled by strong international demand for our innovative products, improved stocking dynamics, encouraging ordering patterns and a surge in consumer direct sales. The global demand for our products and an expanding Leatt brand that reaches a much wider group of riders around the world are helping us to build tremendous traction and momentum. We achieved double-digit revenue growth for the fifth consecutive quarter and year-over-year growth for the sixth consecutive quarter following the post-COVID industry-wide inventory overhang. Total global revenues for the year were $61.91 million, a 41% increase over 2024. International revenues were $44.64 million for the full 2025 year, up 47% year-over-year as our distributors continue to reorder and restock in line with global demand and stocking dynamics. Customer direct sales, an important focus for us, increased by 44% year-over-year and dealer direct sales with our reorganized and reenergized domestic sales force increased by 22%. For the fourth quarter of 2025, revenues increased by 43% year-over-year and gross profit as a percentage of sales increased to 46% as domestic sales continue to grow, and we continue to ship our new products. Net income for the quarter was $465,000, an increase of 204% over last year. We closed the year with robust double-digit revenue growth in all of our major product categories in 2025. It's a testament to the expertise of our creative design and engineering team and continued strong brand momentum. Helmet sales grew by 59% year-over-year. Sales of our flagship neck brace increased by 18%. Body armor revenues increased by 29%, which included a 40% increase in footwear sales and sales in our other products, parts and accessories category increased by 56% as technical apparel sales continued to show strong progress. Gross profit as a percentage of sales for the year increased to 44% year-over-year as domestic trading conditions continue to improve and our supply chain team achieved logistical efficiencies despite some uncertainty around global trade tariffs. For the full year 2025, income before tax was $4.41 million, an increase of $7.1 million compared to the full year of 2024. Net income for the year 2025 increased by 248% to $3.26 million, which we believe is a testament to our ability to generate strong revenues and robust margins. As we announced in December, our Board authorized an extension of our share repurchase program to purchase shares of outstanding Leatt common stock valued at up to $750,000. The program has been extended to March 31, 2026. We believe that this demonstrates our continued confidence in the strength of the company and our business plan as well as our commitment to enhance long-term shareholder value. Now I will turn to more details on sales of our product categories for the full year 2025 compared to 2024. Sales of our flagship neck brace designed to prevent potentially devastating sports injuries to the cervical spine were $2.89 million. an 18% increase, primarily due to a 35% increase in the volume of neck braces sold. Neck braces represented 5% of our total revenues for the year. Our body armor products are comprised of chest protectors, full upper body protectors, upper body protection vests, back protectors, knee braces, knee and elbow guards, off-road motorcycle boots and mountain biking shoes. Body armor revenues were $28.98 million, a 29% increase over 2024. The increase was due primarily to a 22% increase in the sales of upper body and limb protection products and a 40% increase in footwear sales, comprised of motorcycle boots and mountain biking shoes. Body armor products represented 47% of our total revenues for 2025. Helmet sales were $13.31 million, a 59% increase, primarily due to a 33% increase in the volume of helmets sold during the year. Helmets represented 21% of our revenues for the 2025 year. Our other parts, products and accessories category is comprised of goggles, hydration bags and apparel items, including jerseys, pants, shorts and jackets as well as aftermarket support items. Other products , parts and accessories sales were $16.73 million, 56% increase in the sales volumes of our MOTO, MTB and ADV technical apparel lines designed for off-road motorcycle, mountain biking and adventure motorcycle riding. Other products, parts and accessories represented 27% of our total revenues for the year. Now I will turn to our financial results in a bit more detail. Total revenues for the fourth quarter of 2025 were $16 million, a 43% increase compared to $11.2 million for the fourth quarter of 2024. Net income for the fourth quarter was $465,000 or $0.07 per basic and $0.07 per diluted share as compared to a net loss of $447,000 or $0.07 per basic and $0.07 per diluted share for the fourth quarter of 2024. Total revenues for the full year 2025 were $61.91 million, a 41% increase compared to revenues of $44 million for the full year 2024. This increase in worldwide revenues is attributable to a $6.52 million increase in body armor sales, a $4.92 million increase in helmet sales, a $6 million increase in other products, parts and accessories sales and a $450,000 increase in net sales. Net income for the full year 2025 was $3.26 million or $0.53 per basic share and $0.51 per diluted share, up by 248% compared to a net loss of $2.2 million or $0.35 per basic share and $0.34 per diluted share for 2024. Leatt continued to meet its working capital needs from cash on hand and internally generated cash flow from operations. And at December 31, 2025, the company had cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash of $13.23 million compared to $12.37 million at December 31, 2024, and a current ratio of 4.9:1. Looking forward, the momentum we are achieving at all levels of our business has our entire team energized and optimistic about the future of the company. Although there are some potentially challenging geopolitical headwinds globally, domestic sales at the dealer level are gaining very promising traction, participation remains strong and international ordering patterns remain robust, all driven by strong demand for Leatt products around the world. Sales of our adventure motorcycling lineup of apparel, helmets and boots backed by positive industry reviews and our proven ability to develop exciting and durable products continues to exceed our expectations and contribute strongly to our revenues. We look forward to delivering a pipeline of new innovative products to the growing ADV market over the next several quarters. Total operating costs increased by 12%, and we do expect working capital investments to grow in the coming periods, reflecting our strong drive to continue building a global multichannel team of sales and marketing professionals in emerging and developed markets. The team is building and leveraging revenue opportunities by enabling our brand to reach a much wider group of riders of all levels around the world. We are confident that we have sufficient liquidity to fuel this growth. As always, we are very proud of our design engineering and innovation expertise focused on technical innovations and functional rider protection. These innovations are being increasingly recognized by riders at all levels all over the world as well as by our peers. Our team was honored twice at Eurobike 2025 for our 5.0 Gravity Helmet and our 6.0 HydraDri jacket designs. In conclusion, we are very enthusiastic about the future. With a growing portfolio of innovative products in the market and in the pipeline, a focus on elevating and amplifying our brand and a robust balance sheet position to fuel growth, we remain confident that we are very well positioned for future growth and sustained shareholder value. As always, we'd like to thank our entire Leatt family, our dedicated employees, business partners and team riders for their continued strong support. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to the operator for questions. Operator: [Operator Instructions] We'll take our first question from Olivier Colombo. Olivier Colombo: Congrats on the fantastic performance of 2025. I'm looking for future growth as well this year. I had 3 questions for you this afternoon. The first one is regarding the U.S. business, which saw a very significant growth of 27%. This is quite an achievement. How happy are you with this performance? And what are you taking -- what are you doing to push those U.S. sales even higher to match the overall international growth of 41%? Sean MacDonald: Thanks, Olivier. Good to hear from you. I think we're very happy with the performance. It's been quite a strong turnaround in the U.S. We have a brand-new management and sales team in place. We have a reenergized and refocused group of sales representatives on the motorcycle and the mountain biking side in place, all highly motivated to take sales in the U.S. to the next level. So I think it's a very strong performance. I'm proud of the team there. And I think this is just the beginning of what we can achieve in the U.S. I think we've managed to gain some significant footprint through our outreach to dealers around the country. We've managed to grow our consumer direct sales in the U.S. significantly also. So we really are pushing on all cylinders there. I think in future, you can expect us to continue to build up the team and to improve our dealer penetration across the country as well as our direct-to-consumer business, which is a strong focus area for us, balancing that out with our B2B business. So a strong push on the distribution side in the U.S. and also a very strong focus on marketing. We've got a new Head of Marketing Global, Nick Larsen, and he is very enthusiastic about the future and the opportunities that we still have. There will be a strong focus on the U.S. market, where I think we still got a lot of market share that we can still gain. So big opportunities in the U.S. for sure. Olivier Colombo: Perfect. My next question is regarding the tariffs. How much do you think the tariff situation has hurt your business in the U.S.? Sean MacDonald: It's an interesting question to quantify. I think it definitely has had an impact. Of course, we've tried our best to mitigate that as far as possible. We have had some price increases. But having said that, if I look at complete brands, the supply chain is very similar, and there have been increases across the board. I think the biggest impact has perhaps been due to the uncertainty that tariff situation created in terms of global trade. But the dollar has obviously weakened and it started to strengthen again. And for us, that is beneficial in Europe for sure. it impacts the retail selling price in Europe when the dollar gets a bit weaker. But the tariff uncertainty around the world definitely did impact our business, particularly in the first half of the year. I do think that we acted quite quickly. We got support of our suppliers. We increased pricing without doing anything that takes the price points outside of where the consumers are at. And we analyze the market very, very carefully to make sure that we were acting within market constraints. So I think it definitely did have an impact. I do not think it was extreme though. Olivier Colombo: Perfect. And my final question is, how much growth came from the new customers and distributors versus distributors restocking? Sean MacDonald: I think it was a combination of things in terms of -- on the distribution side. I think the biggest factor has been an increase in the demand for Leatt products. So of course, that leads to restocking. And that's certainly been the biggest contributor of the growth on the international side. If I look at the new customers that we brought on, we have new customers in emerging markets and also in some developed areas. I mean we had really strong sales to those customers as well, and they're very energized by the sell-through that they've experienced. So we are expecting that to carry on driving sales and reordering patterns in the future. So primarily restocking due to an increase in demand, but a really nice contribution from new customers as well. Operator: [Operator Instructions] It appears we have no further questions. I'll turn the call back to the speakers for any additional or closing remarks. Sean MacDonald: Thank you all for joining us today. We are looking forward to our next call to review the results for the 2026 first quarter. Operator: This concludes today's program. Thank you for your participation, and you may disconnect at any time.
Operator: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the LENZ Therapeutics Year-end 2025 Financial Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this call is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Dan Chevallard, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead. Daniel Chevallard: Thank you. Good morning, and thank you for joining us today. My name is Dan Chevallard, Chief Financial Officer of LENZ Therapeutics. We are joined today by Evert Schimmelpennink, our President and Chief Executive Officer; and Shawn Olsson, our Chief Commercial Officer; as well as Dr. Marc Odrich, Chief Medical Officer, who will join us for the question-and-answer session. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that this call will contain forward-looking statements regarding LENZ's future expectations, plans, prospects, corporate strategy, regulatory and commercial plans and expectations, cash runway projections and performance. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by these forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors and risks, including those discussed in our filings with the SEC and which can also be found on our website. In addition, any forward-looking statements represent only our views as of the date of this webcast and should not be relied upon as representing our views as of any subsequent date. We specifically disclaim any obligations to update such statements. The company encourages you to consult the risk factors contained in our SEC filings for additional detail, including in our 2025 Form 10-K, which will be filed later today. With that, I will now turn the call over to Eef. Evert Schimmelpennink: Thank you, Dan. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. We are now about 5 months into the launch of this. I would summarize where we are today in 3 simple observations. First, the product clearly works, something I know many of you are also hearing as you do your own bucket checks. Second, what we're seeing so far suggests the promising share of patients who buy the product tend to refill. And third, we are clearly building a new treatment category. And while new categories take time to develop, the signals we are seeing reinforce our confidence that this can become the blockbuster market opportunity we have always envisioned. At this early stage of the launch, our priority is putting the right foundations in place. This category can scale and adoption can accelerate over time. Importantly, we are executing this launch from a position of significant financial strength. We closed the fourth quarter with over $292 million in cash, which gives us the resources and flexibility to continue investing in building this category. Let me take you through each of these observations, starting with the product itself. Across the field, we continue to hear consistent feedback from both doctors and patients. The clinical performance we saw in our trials is translating directly into the real world. This works quickly with many patients noticing the effect within about 30 minutes and with the benefits of near vision typically lasting throughout the workday. Importantly, we're also seeing the same broad patient profile we observed in our clinical program. That breadth matters when you consider the scale of the opportunity. Presbyopia affects approximately 128 million people in the United States, and this is the first and importantly, the only once-daily eye drop capable of addressing such a broad segment of that population, which is what ultimately creates the opportunity for a large and durable category. From launch through the end of this quarter, we believe that we are on track to have sold over 45,000 boxes of this prescribed by more than 10,000 eye care professionals, creating a strong and rapidly expanding base of physicians adopting the product. In fact, the number of prescribing doctors we have seen at this stage of the launch already significantly exceeds what we observed with several recent eye care product launches. Importantly, we are seeing strong productivity within that base. As we look deeper into prescribing behavior, we're seeing a very encouraging pattern among our highest volume prescribers. When we normalize for the same script volume of around 45,000 scripts and compare prescribing frequency across top deciles of our ECPs, the data suggests that our top 1,000 prescribers are filling over 40% more scripts per doctor than what was observed at a comparable point in the VUITY launch. And based on the same data, we estimate that the total amount of prescribing doctors that took VUITY to get to this volume is approximately 2x . What this tells us is that once physicians understand how to integrate this into their practice, they are successful with it. We view this as an important signal because it suggests that the opportunity is not only to continue to bring more physicians into the category, but also to increase productivity across the broader ECP base as we learn from these top prescribers and use those insights as a blueprint to scale across the field. Equally important, we are seeing encouraging early signals around patient persistence. What we are seeing so far suggests that patients who try the product and choose to purchase it often continue using it, which is exactly the behavior we hope to see at this stage of the launch. Our sample strategy is a key part of this. By allowing patients to try the product first, we see a natural self-selection dynamic, but patients who experience the benefit and choose to purchase are more likely to continue using it. This does mean that the early new patient numbers developed differently compared to the launch of VUITY, where patients often had to purchase the product before trying it. That approach led to a faster initial ramp, but also a rapid drop-off as many patients did not continue therapy. Our approach is designed to build a more durable patient base from the start, even if that results in a more gradual early ramp in new patients. While the refill signals we're seeing are encouraging, the pace at which new patients are coming on to therapy is therefore developing more steadily, which is consistent with what we often see when an essentially new treatment category is being established. These are the typical dynamics you see when new categories are introduced and new prescribing habits are being developed. And importantly, they are very addressable through focused execution in the field, combined with effective consumer marketing. Let me discuss that some more. From our conversations in the field, there are 2 themes that emerge with ECPs as they build prescribing habits that will get this recommended to more patients more often. First, ECPs must learn how to best work this into their patient discussion and start from a place of unfamiliarity with respect to how to counsel patients on a presbyopia eye drop. Second, many physicians primarily think of this for early emerging presbyopes, patients who are just beginning to experience near vision challenges. The reality is much simpler. This can be introduced during a routine exam with a short 10-second discussion, and it works for a much broader patient population than only emerging presbyopes. Changing that mindset and helping physicians integrate the product naturally into their exam flow is a key focus for us. Based on what we've learned over these first months of launch, we are leaning in operationally to accelerate adoption. We've sharpened our physician messaging to address the 2 themes I just discussed. Specifically, our sales force is working closely with eye care professionals on how to naturally integrate this into the patient proposition and introduce the products during a routine exam by a simple, quick discussion. At the same time, we are reinforcing the breadth of the patient population. This works across a wide range of presbyopes, including contact lens wears, patients with prior LASIK, patients and not only the early emerging presbyopes. In addition, we are expanding our field presence to a total field organization of 117 reps. This expansion will allow us to increase call frequency with existing prescribers while also expanding the number of physicians we actively cover, enabling us to react to strong inbound interest from doctors who are not currently in our target panel, but who are already prescribing this because patients are asking about it or because they learned about the product through other channels. We are making this investment because we see a clear opportunity to accelerate adoption in the field, further integrating this into everyday clinical practice. Besides physician efforts, creating a new category also requires consumer awareness, and we are continuing to build the consumer side of the category. Many of you have complemented us on our direct-to-consumer campaign, which features Sarah Jessica Parker and asked when we expect to see that translate into prescription trends. As a reminder, we launched our DTC campaign in mid-January with February representing the first full month of activity. We are encouraged by the early signals we're seeing. The campaign is resonating with consumers and clearly driving engagement. Website traffic is now running roughly 5x higher than our baseline levels. And during national activations, we've seen spikes of up to 10x normal traffic. At the same time, consumer activation in a new category takes time. Across consumer-driven categories, people typically need to see it at 5 to 7x what they act on it. In our case, the journey from awareness to prescription naturally takes longer. The consumer first sees the advertisement, learns about the product, schedules an appointment with the eye care professional, receives a sample and only then transitions to purchasing a prescription. Pharmaceutical direct-to-consumer campaigns like ours, therefore, typically take at least 2 quarters to translate into prescription trends. What we are seeing today are encouraging early indicators of that process, and we would expect a more meaningful impact on script volume as we move into the second half of the year. In other words, the consumer awareness engine is now beginning to build momentum, while in parallel, we continue to focus on helping physicians integrate this more consistently into their patient discussions. With that, let me briefly summarize where I believe we are today. We have a product that clearly works and is delivering the real-world results we expected to see. We are seeing encouraging early signals around patient persistence, and we have already built a strong and rapidly growing foundation of prescribing physicians. At the same time, we're building a new treatment category, which naturally takes time. But as I've noted, the early signals we're seeing give us confidence that we are on the right path. With the operational actions we're taking in the field, expansion of our sales force and a growing consumer awareness driven by our direct-to-consumer campaign, both the physician and consumer adoption engines are now beginning to build momentum. And as prescriber habits build and consumer awareness grows, we expect to see an acceleration in new patient starts from that foundation. The opportunity in front of us remains exactly what we've always believed it to be, a large and underpenetrated market with 128 million presbyopes in the United States and a product that can meaningfully improve how patients manage their near vision. Our focus now is straightforward, continue executing, continue expanding adoption and continue building what we believe can become a blockbuster category. With that, I will now turn the call over to Shawn to give more insights into our commercial strategy. Shawn Olsson: Thank you, Eef, and good morning, everyone. As a quick reminder, presbyopia is the largest unmet vision condition in the United States. It affects approximately 128 million people, a population nearly 4x larger than those of dry eye. In fact, presbyopia affects more Americans than dry eye, demodex, childhood myopia, macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy and glaucoma combined. This is uniquely positioned to address this opportunity and performing exactly where it matters. The product works and early persistent signals are encouraging. Because this is a new category of creation, as Eef noted, ramp in new patients is developing gradually as physicians are starting to build the habit of introducing an eye drop option during routine visits. We're focused on accelerating uptake by sharpening our physician messaging, expanding our sales force to increase reach and frequency and building consumer pull through DTC so that more patients are offered VIZZ in the exam room and more come in asking about VIZZ. I will unpack these details and insights across our key strategic pillars. Doctors recommend us and consumers request us by name. Focusing first on our eye care professional strategy. We are encouraged by the progress of doctors who recommend this. Just 5 months into launch, aided awareness is already at 98% and unaided awareness is already at 79%. As a reminder, unaided awareness means that dye doctor brought up VIZZ in the survey as an eye drop to treat presbyopia unsolicited. So both metrics are above our targets and demonstrating that ECPs are very aware of VIZZ. In the same survey, we're also seeing accuracy of key VIZZ messages resonating with ECPs as they're prompted to write in what they know about VIZZ. We see consistent answers such as pupil selective, different MOA, not pilocarpine . The results demonstrate that ECPs understand VIZZ well. Confidence in VIZZ is also clear as reflected by more than 14,000 ECP locations enrolled in our . And most importantly, we expect to have over 10,000 prescribing ECPs by the end of Q1, which exceeds what we observed with several recent eye care product launches, including MIEBO and XDEMVY at this stage of their launch. In addition to the broad ECP prescriber base, we're also seeing ECP confidence as over 55% of these doctors have written VIZZ multiple times. As we look at the first 5 months of launch, we're also gaining important insights that continue to reinforce our confidence in the opportunity for VIZZ. First, we're seeing that access to optometrists and ophthalmologists is not a meaningful barrier for VIZZ, as evidenced by our consistent execution of our field team, which continues to deliver approximately 7 calls per day. Secondly, our sampling strategy is working. We see that most patients are able to obtain a sample. And when they do, it helps identify those who like the product, which in turn has supported encouraging refill rates. In terms of prescriber mix, it remains about 80% optometry and 20% ophthalmology with our expected top prescribers performing as anticipated. As Eef stated earlier, once these ECPs have integrated this into the practice, they're successful with it as data suggests, our top 1,000 ECPs are filling over 40% more scripts per doctor than what was observed at a comparable point with VUITY. Interestingly, we're also seeing adoption broaden across lower decile writers, which is an encouraging sign for the depth of the opportunity. Particularly notable is the growing number of eye care professionals writing VIZZ multiple times who never wrote VUITY. We view that as an important proof point. It suggests that VIZZ is not simply capturing prior prescribers in this category, but it's expanding physician engagement with the prescription presbyopia opportunity more broadly. And finally, while others enter this market, their limited success means this remains a true category build effort. We're working to build new prescribing habits and overcome legacy prescriptions from prior products. And our market research confirms there is still an opportunity to further educate ECPs that VIZZ is not just for early presbyopes and how to more routinely integrate VIZZ's discussions into the standard eye exam. Based on what we've learned in these initial months, we've already begun to implement clear steps to accelerate adoption. We're expanding -- we're excited to expand our field organization from 88 representatives to 117 representatives, as I noted earlier, which will allow the in-field organization to cover a broader set of ECPs who are already prescribing VIZZ and increase call frequency with eye care professionals. This expands the outside field team's reach to approximately 15,000 ECPs. We believe that added reach and frequency are important to supporting behavior change needed to build the category and integrate VIZZ as a routine part of the presbyopia discussion. We've already begun recruiting the expanded field and expect to be fully onboarded in Q2. At the same time, the field is focusing on the messages that matter most to bring up VIZZ more often, including the broader inclusion criteria from our clinical studies, which included moderate advanced presbyopia and strong success that we're seeing in the moderate advanced presbyopes as well as practical tools to make offering VIZZ to patients a simple and seamless addition to the office visit. Moving to our consumer strategy of driving patients to request VIZZ by name. We're encouraged by the early momentum we're seeing. Since launch and through the end of March, we expect to have sold more than 45,000 monthly packs of VIZZ. And importantly, this is proving to be a product that works for patients and is generating encouraging refill behavior. We are already seeing patients come back for refills, transition from 1-month to 3-month prescriptions and in many cases, start directly with a 3-month order, which reinforces our view on the benefit of the product that the most important near-term driver of growth is focusing on increasing NRxs. To support that, in addition to our work we just discussed with ECPs to bring VIZZ into the conversation more often, we've recently launched our direct-to-consumer campaign and have seen strong early uptake that I'll outline shortly. Our spokesperson, Sarah Jessica Parker, is resonating well with VIZZ consumers and our advertising is now running across a broad mix of high-impact media, including YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, ESPN, Paramount+, Uber, Pinterest and other platforms, helping us reach consumers where they spend their time and driving not only sustained increase in web visits, but up to a 10x increase in visits to vizz.com. We've also begun activating influencers across a diverse set of audiences from well-known reality personalities to recognizable voices in sports media and iconic actors who are now the Presbyopic age. In addition, we're seeing strong pickup across broad media platforms, including Good Morning America, New York Live, The New York Times and Late Night TV. As we look at what we are learning from our early consumer launch efforts, our consumer mix today is approximately 60% female and 40% male, with the majority of users between the ages of 45 and 65, which is consistent with the audience we target and expect it to reach. As we highlighted earlier, it typically takes a couple of quarters to see DTC take hold, and we're encouraged by the early performance indicators of our advertising, where click-through rates and cost per impressions are exceeding relevant benchmarks. For example, our early lift in brand awareness from YouTube is performing 2x above benchmark, and we're seeing similar lifts across both men and women demographics. Just as importantly, these campaigns are giving us useful insights into how our various creative assets perform across women and audiences, including which visuals, messages and executions are resonating the most strongly with consumers. Even with our early encouraging DTC metrics, we're actively optimizing our creative ads and media placement to maximize impact. We're increasing investment allocation behind the higher-performing media placements while reducing the allocation to lower-performing media, allowing us to concentrate resources where we are seeing the strongest response. We're also introducing new permutations of creators into the mix, which bring up the everyday frustration with reading glasses, which we believe is an important point of recognition as consumers consider VIZZ. Starting in April, we will pilot linear TV commercials in select markets across our top states to test patient response. Linear advertising is your traditional TV commercials on your common network stations like ABC, NBC and cable through typical providers like Comcast. Together, these actions will continue to optimize our media mix, ad messaging and build additional consumer demand for VIZZ. We're encouraged by the progress we've made. We are seeing broad physician adoption, growing commercial demand and encouraging early repeat behavior and the first signs that our consumer campaign is beginning to activate that market. We continue to believe this is a category of one. As the only approved presbyopia eye drop with up to 10 hours of duration, this offers a differentiated profile that we believe is well aligned with the need of both consumers and eye care professionals as demonstrated by the ECP adoption and encouraging patient persistence. I'd now like to hand the call over to Dan Chevallard, our CFO, to step through our financial results. Daniel Chevallard: Thank you, Shawn. As both Dave and Shawn have outlined, the fourth quarter and recent period of launch has been a tremendous time for LENZ as we have proudly introduced this into the U.S. marketplace, representing a novel solution for the treatment of presbyopia with the 128 million Americans frustrated with their near vision. As has been highlighted, this is a true market build and one that we're doing from a position of financial strength. This morning, I'd like to focus my remarks into 3 sections. First, summarizing our 2025 financial results, and discuss our outlook on 2026 capital allocation, and I will conclude by highlighting the significant progress made on the global expansion of VIZZ through our international partnership strategy. First, and as has been mentioned, we continue in the launch of VIZZ from a position of financial strength, ending 2025 with approximately $292.3 million in cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities. We remain debt-free and ended 2025 with approximately 31.3 million shares of common stock outstanding. Our Q4 results were highlighted by net product revenues of approximately $1.6 million in our first quarter of product launch with over 20,000 monthly paid and filled prescriptions. As you will recall, we launched VIZZ with availability through 2 consumer channels. The first, our e-pharmacy receives prescriptions from the ECP, processes individual orders and ships product directly to the consumer's home. We recognize revenue when our product is delivered to the consumer. Our second channel, the more traditional retail pharmacy is a channel supplied by our network of wholesalers. As is typical through this channel, we recognize revenue when shipments of VIZZ are received by the wholesaler, not upon delivery to the patient. Turning now to our operating expenses. We have discussed in previous quarters our planned ramp in spend as we move into launch, specifically driven by our commercial strategy. Our total Q4 operating expenses was approximately $40 million, including $4 million of noncash stock-based compensation expense compared to $31.4 million in Q3 of 2025. Importantly, net cash burn in the fourth quarter was approximately $32 million. Cost of goods sold in the fourth quarter totaled $400,000 and was primarily driven by indirect product costs associated with nonrecurring manufacturing processes. Going forward, we anticipate this to trend to an approximately 9% direct product gross margin. Total SG&A expenses increased to $39.6 million in Q4 2025 or approximately $35.9 million net of noncash stock-based compensation compared to $9.4 million for the same period in 2024, driven almost entirely by the establishment of our sales force and launch of VIZZ, including a significant nonrecurring investment in Q4 to enable the launch of our DTC campaign in early Q1 of 2026. Sequentially, quarter-over-quarter, SG&A increased by approximately 43% from $27.6 million in the third quarter. In recent quarters, we have discussed the importance of capital allocation at LENZ and the significant weighting of our SG&A spend towards sales and marketing to support VIZZ. In Q4, approximately 80% of our SG&A was driven by sales and marketing, with the remaining representing general and administrative expenses. This is a trend that we expect to continue. Total research and development expenses decreased to 0 in Q4 2025 compared to $5.9 million in the same period last year. Sequentially, R&D expenses decreased quarter-over-quarter by 100% from $3.8 million in the third quarter. This reduction was anticipated and was primarily a result of the conclusion of our positive Phase III CLARITY study and subsequent approval of VIZZ in July. Finally, our net loss per share, both basic and diluted, was $1.16 per share in the fourth quarter of 2025 on a net loss of $35.9 million compared to a net loss per share of $0.46 in the fourth quarter of 2024 on a net loss of $12.7 million. As we look ahead to 2026, I wanted to highlight a few points to help further characterize our P&L. First, on the revenue front, and after our first quarter of sales, we noted a better-than-anticipated blended gross to net ratio of approximately 90% or $67 per monthly package of VIZZ. Additional non-gross to net costs of the respective distribution channels have consistently resulted in a net cash per unit of $60 per monthly package with the difference flowing into our SG&A line. This net cash per unit of $60 is consistent with our long-standing expectations. Our Q4 2025 cash burn was substantially in line with our go-forward quarterly expectations over 2026. The recently initiated sales force expansion was in our 2026 operating plan. We will continue to target an allocation of approximately 75% to 80% of our OpEx to sales and marketing with an aim to maintain reasonably flat G&A spend period-over-period. R&D spend now becomes a de minimis line item on the P&L. The last point I'd like to highlight is an update on our recent progress advancing the global expansion of VIZZ through our international partnership strategy. We've seen significant progress across the globe in recent months and now anticipate potential approvals in multiple geographies in early 2027. Breaking that down, as we initially announced in Q3 of last year, the NDA review in China is now well underway. In May 2025, we executed a commercialization agreement with Lotus Pharmaceutical and are happy to report that of the 8 country license in Southeast Asia, we have NDA submitted and under review in 3 countries, including South Korea, Thailand and Singapore. As announced in early March, we recently submitted our central marketing authorization application to the European Medicines Agency for approval in Europe with our submission to the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency or MHRA in the U.K. to follow. Théa, our commercial partner in Canada, continues to make progress towards their submission to Health Canada and significant regulatory activities are already underway with Lunatus, our commercial partner for the recently signed 9 country distribution agreement in the Middle East region. In total, 5 ex U.S. NDA or equivalent submissions have been completed, and we anticipate over 10 to be completed by the end of this year with multiple potential approvals possible in 2027. In summary, we feel confident about where we are both financially and strategically, and the team is well positioned to execute and advance VIZZ on the back of a strong balance sheet with a broad strategic network of partners making regulatory advancements globally. With that, I'll turn the call back over to Eef. Evert Schimmelpennink: Thanks, Dan. To conclude, I'm incredibly proud of the LENZ team and the progress we are making in these early months of launch. We're seeing what we hope to see, a product that clearly works, encouraging early signals of patient persistance and a growing base of prescribing physicians. We are now focused on accelerating new patient adoption through disciplined execution in the field and continued investment behind the category. We believe we are in the early stages of building what can become a significant and durable market. As we continue to execute and prescribing habits built and consumer awareness grows, we expect to see an acceleration in new patient starts from this foundation. We look forward to updating you on our continued progress in the quarters ahead. With that, I'd like to open up the call for questions. Operator: [Operator Instructions] your first question comes from Stacy Ku with TD Cowen. Stacy Ku: We really appreciate all the detailed commentary on the VIZZ launch so far. We have a couple of questions. So first, maybe further discuss that sampling dynamic to NRx and the retention that you're seeing, how is refill, let's say, high level tracking to your internal expectations so far? So that's the first question. And then second, as you're trying to broaden patient demand, maybe talk a little bit more about the investments and where you think they can help with the friction points that you listed. Do you believe that select television advertising plans will also take about 2 quarters to lift prescriptions? We're asking because from what we remember, our consultants told us that VUITY ads were everywhere. Of course, the prescribers were not necessarily prepared to set expectations on VUITY's efficacy profile, which has been your focus, but just help us understand that dynamic. And maybe a reminder on the size of the VUITY sales force as you're expanding your sales force as well. And then the third question is on the prescriber additions. If you're willing to comment, what percentage are from your initial target group versus the imbalance from patient demand? And are you seeing a certain practice profile where the prescriber becomes a repeat? Evert Schimmelpennink: Thanks, Stacy. Appreciate your questions. Let me start off with the NRx and refill dynamic and give a little bit more color, and then Shawn will talk about the DTC and ECP question. So we feel very good about where we are actively, as I've mentioned, accelerating adoption. If you look at the strong foundation that we've built with the over 10,000 prescribing ECPs and more than 45,000 boxes sold, we believe that that's a great start. And what matters most early is to see that the product works, as I've mentioned, that we see that patients who choose the purchase continue to use it, and we're seeing both. So new patient starts are developing as expected for a new category that takes a little time, like I mentioned. We're actively working to continue to accelerate that as per plan. So significantly or specifically, we're expanding our sales force, like I mentioned, we're adding 29 reps to drive both breadth and frequency. And Shawn will probably talk about that a little bit more as he answers your ECP question because that allows us to increase coverage of physicians that are already showing interest, but also increases how often we engage with those existing prescribers. And along that, as I mentioned, we'll continue to build the consumer demand through DTC, and that ties into your second part of the question, I think. So as we now pivot into the refills, we know that this is a refill-driven category and early signals are encouraging. We're seeing patients come back and reorder. If we now look at that cohort of patients that got that first order in Q4 or the first quarter of our launch, we're seeing them come back and reorder. We're seeing patients move from initially a 1-month pack now to a 3-month pack, suggesting that they are committed and they're liking the product. We're also seeing patients that are new to the product now actually starting initially on multi-month supplies. So in our mind, that tells us that they had a chance to sample the product, the sampling strategy works. They self select and they like the product enough to start off with treatment. So all of that, we feel is very consistent with the product that's delivering for patients. And it's still early. So we want to make sure that we see this dynamic develops over multiple quarters. But again, the patterns that we're seeing so far are aligned with what we would expect. So with that, let me switch over to Shawn to talk about DTC and ECP. Shawn Olsson: Thanks, Eef. Thanks for the questions. When we look at broadening the patient demand and where we're focusing our investments to help, our primary focus has always been digital advertising to hit the patients where they are. So we know what these patients look like, and we knew that prior to launch, right? We knew that they make over $100,000 a year. They're mostly between 45 and 65. They're in major city centers. And that digital marketing is working. What we look at every single day is what's our click-through rates of different ads, what's our cost per impressions of not only different ads but different media placements. So inside that digital aspect, it's really a lot of optimizing, right? Do we actually see more benefit when we're putting the assets on YouTube versus when we put them on Instagram and how that translates to visits to our website. So that's a lot of optimization. The influencer standpoint, same thing. We look at the influencers post and we say, okay, we saw the post by Heather Dubrow and she got 650,000 views. What does that look like and what does it translate? So a lot of that is optimizing. With the addition of linear, what we're also seeing is there are select markets where the patients are early adopters. And therefore, as we continue to evolve and optimize that media mix, it's a good opportunity to bring linear TV in those select markets and test that response and we continue to optimize to get that broader adoption. You are correct. When VUITY launched, they're putting a big substantial media plan out there. We're being much more focused with targeting each individual that we want to drive in versus driving a shotgun approach of telling all 125 million people about it to make sure we have an efficient campaign. You also brought the sales force size. Looking into more and more about the VUITY launch, it appears they had a sales force of roughly 300 people specifically focused on VUITY. So therefore, our expansion from 88 to 116 (sic) [ 117 ] also makes sense, but it's also a more rationally sized sales force. So jumping into that, which was the second part of your question on the target groups of ECPs and where are they sitting. So our field, the outside portion of the field was focused before on about 12,000 eye care professionals that covered decile 4 through 10 of VUITY, 10 being the highest prescribers. And we continue to see that today. Our decile 10 doctors are our highest prescribers as well. And we have the inside sales team covering the lower deciles. The growth from targeting 12,000 to 15,000 ECPs at the outside field is because we were seeing those lower decile ones prescribing repeatedly as well as a good portion that we actually called in our analysis NA. These are doctors that have never written VUITY. So we have doctors that never wrote VUITY that are now wanting to write VIZZ. And so a good way to think about it is our target initial group from outside sales was 12,000 ECPs, and we've now grown that to 15,000 ECPs because of those deciles that were not targets. Now when we do that, we're growing not only the number of targets, but when we expand this field from 88 to 117, what you're also seeing is the ECPs per rep is getting smaller. So we can get in that doctor office more often and really work with them to make sure they can get to that 10-second conversation to bring it up to every patient and understand that they can offer this to more patients, not the early presbyopes. So hopefully, that answers your question, Stacy. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Yigal Nochomovitz with Citigroup. Yigal Nochomovitz: Just a few questions here. I'm wondering if you could spend a little more time talking about these top 1,000 writers in terms of their behavior and how they approach the conversation with the patient, their knowledge of the product. I know you mentioned that many of the ECPs that are familiar with VIZZ believed apparently erroneously that it was only for the early presbyopes and not for the other categories you mentioned, Shawn, like the contact lens wearers, the ones with prior LASIK and the pseudophakic. So I'm just curious how that crept into the message that some people apparently didn't understand that it was for a much, much broader set. And how are you planning to help correct that perception and then discuss the behavior of these top writers that seem to get it and have gotten it from the very beginning. So that was my first question. Evert Schimmelpennink: Thanks, Yigal. Great question. Shawn and I will tag team on that a little bit. So just to double-click on the stats that I shared. So very encouraging for us to see those 2 things that I have shared. One is that it's only taking us about half of the amount of prescribing doctors to get to the same script volume that VUITY got to at 45,000. So I think what that tells us is that doctors are enthusiastic. They like working with a drug, and they especially like working with a drug that's efficacious. And if you in that group, like look at the top 1,000, you see that they're actually writing 40% more. So those are the doctors that wrote the most for VUITY, they're writing even more for us. And your question on what makes them different. Again, I'll hand over to Shawn shortly, is really around they figured out how to, one, bring this up consistently and easily and quickly and offer it as an alternative option to their patients, setting the right expectations around what to expect from an eye drug and then realizing that, as you've mentioned as well, this is truly something that they can offer to pretty much every eligible presbyope in the practice. So I think that's what makes them different. And we're obviously trying to follow it up and share that with all the other doctors out there already prescribing and all the new ones that we're tapping into. So with that, I'll hand it over for Shawn to give some even more color on that. Shawn Olsson: Yes, absolutely. And thanks, Yigal, for the question. So Eef hit on a lot of the key points, but jumping in a little bit deeper. So our top 1,000 prescribers, again, they're tied to those higher decile accounts. So these are doctors that are more comfortable implementing new technologies, historically are also higher prescribers. But this is something that they're more used to doing in general on a day-to-day basis. What we're seeing is they follow that standard process, which we always continue message, make sure you give the patient a sample and a script, right? Allow all the patients to try it and then give them the script as well. And as they've said, they offer up as an option to more patients. They've figured out how to do the 10-second pitch, how to offer it and set the right expectations. In terms of your questions on the understanding of the broader use, why are some still thinking only about the early presbyope, this is really an effect of the previous product on the market, which really was tested in a younger population and the efficacy really only worked in that very early emerging presbyope. Therefore, people naturally go there. It is taking work to make sure people understand that we really did show just as much success in moderate advanced presbyopia. And then we show them the graphs to actually show those that have worse presbyopia gain more lines. And that's a process to understand that this product truly does work for that full scope of presbyopes. Yigal Nochomovitz: Okay. Awesome. And then this is really quick. Just maybe for maybe Shawn also. This is just more of an operational question. You mentioned doing the TV ads. I think that wasn't in the original blueprint. I'm sure it was one of your scenarios. But I assume this doesn't mean that your emphasis and investment in terms of targeting the regional influencers, one layer below the SJPs that, that's still in place as it was with the initial plan. And then also, are you able to track -- I know Eef mentioned the conversion to -- the uptick in the web traffic when you have various campaigns that are delivered to the market. Are you able to track the conversion rates there? And are you seeing higher conversion to Rxs as a result of these waves of coming to the website? Shawn Olsson: Great question, Yigal. So first, talking about the TV ads. So our strategy remains the same on primarily focused on digital ads and the influencers. So we never plan to do broad national linear TV campaigns. However, what we're seeing is there are key markets that are prescribing a lot more often than others. And so this is a perfect opportunity to drop linear advertising on network TV and cable in those targeted markets in a responsible, financially responsible way to see what type of response we see. So that's the opportunity that's now provided itself with linear TV. So think of these as key markets, we test the response. And in testing those response, you need exactly what you just brought up. How does that translate to then visits to the web and then does that then translate to actual scripts later on. And that's exactly what we're continuing to look at every day. So we can see when we actually run different ads in different markets, how that then responds to web traffic. I think we're early on in DTC, so we don't have a pure correlation from the web traffic to then a script later on. There isn't a connection there, but it's something that we'll continue to look at for correlation to make sure we continue to further optimize those DTC ads. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Marc Goodman with Leerink Partners. Unknown Analyst: This is Alyssa on for Marc. So you previously had highlighted 3 different patient categories as the foundation of the advertising strategy. Could you update us on which of those segments are driving the early adoption today? And then secondly, I might have missed this, but on the distribution, can you clarify whether prescriptions are being fulfilled entirely through the e-pharmacy channel or if retail is now kind of contributing to that? And how is the mix between those 2, if so? Shawn Olsson: Great. Thanks for the question. So if you think back to our strategy in terms of early adopters, we want to focus on those that are in contacts. We want to focus those that have had post refractive surgery and what we call the active lifestyle. So we commissioned a survey of patients that have recently received the product. And what we're seeing is those targets are right. When we actually look at the data, we're seeing about half of the patients on this have worn contacts. About 1/3 of them have had LASIK in the past and that about 1/4 of them have had BOTOX in the past 12 months. Now that quarter number is a little bit biased because we have an equal split of men and women, about 60% female, 40% male in terms of our prescriptions. And BOTOX does tend to be about 90% women, 10% men. So that would lift up that percentage overall. But we feel good about our targets that we're focused on there. And then in terms of the mix of retail as well as the pharmacy, both meaningful channels, we have not broken out or shared that mix yet. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Biren Amin with Piper Sandler. Biren Amin: For Q1, can you maybe tell us what the split is between the 1-month pack and the 3-month pack? My second question is, I think previously, you had estimated 5 refills per year. In your early adopters, do you feel that, that still would align with your annual refill projections? And then third question is, can you talk about how many of the samples in Q4 converted to scripts in Q1? I think that would be a good barometer of patient experience. Evert Schimmelpennink: Thanks, Biren. Great questions. And obviously, we all know that ultimately, these statistics are going to be very important to track the progress of the launch. We're also remaining with what we said before that refill -- actual refill percentages is something that we really start to look at in the second half of the year and start to communicate that. But what we do see at the moment on your various questions is that, like I mentioned earlier, that 3-pack is important in the market, and we're seeing that move. Again, this is early days. So like for many of the statistics and the parameters that we've spoken about, we really want to see a couple of quarters and see how this clearly develops before we feel that it's a reasonable number that we can start to share. Same goes for refills. Like I mentioned earlier, we're encouraged by what we're seeing. We also need to remind ourselves that the cohort that we currently can follow is the one from Q4 of last year. So our first 3 months of being in the market with this, the first consumers have a chance to buy this product. And that's probably a mix between initially when we just started to bring samples out, consumers that bought the product without having sampled and later in the quarter, that now most of the people will have had a chance to sample. So on top of that, you see that somebody bought a 3-pack, for example, in December, which is clearly happening, you wouldn't expect that person to come back until maybe late Q1 or even into Q2. So that means that the numbers that we're seeing now, we're really looking at them more as a barometer than the actual number. But clearly, like we shared, what we're seeing is encouraging us, and we feel that we have a product that does live up to what we want to see, a product that people like, that once they order it, they are sticky and they continue to buy it. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Jason Gerberry with Bank of America. Unknown Analyst: This is Melanie on for Jason. First, can you share any more details about indicators that are most encouraging regarding the DTC program that can spur growth? And secondly, anything you can share about key thresholds you're looking to see in NRx and refills in the second quarter? Shawn Olsson: Thanks, Melanie. I appreciate it. So in terms of the DTC program, when we think of our DTC, what we're really looking to see is are we driving consumer activation, right? And so in terms of this stage of a DTC program, where we're still fairly early on, the easiest items to look at that we're looking for, for indicators are, are we driving awareness? And are we driving increases in web traffic? And are we doing it at a responsible financial spend. So the indicators we continue to look at are, are we increasing people that are going to website? Not only are we seeing a sustained increase in website visitors, we're seeing up to a 10x increase in web visitors depending on what we're running. That's very good. When I look across the metrics of our DTC, I'm looking at what are we paying per 1,000 impressions, what are we paying per click. Again, what we're seeing right now with our ads, we're testing well. We're actually doing better than benchmarks for click-through rates as well as spend per impression. So that's looking positive. And then what we're continuing to look at is as we talk to the patients, serving them, did they see an ad, did that drive come in? And so those are all the metrics that we're continuing to look at. Evert Schimmelpennink: The second question was around key thresholds that we're looking for as we enter into the second quarter. But I think just looking back to what I shared earlier, there's 2 elements that we're focusing on and that Shawn just highlighted as well, activating the doctors to bring it up to more patients more often. Obviously, that's something that's ongoing. And then really starting to see that DTC play out. Those things all take a little bit of time, which is why we've said that the DTC, this is not only for us, but in general, any Nielsen report that you pick up will show you that it takes at least 2 quarters to really see that translate into DTC. I think early indicators that Shawn talked about that we're seeing are very positive. And similarly, with the expansion of the sales force happening in Q2, we would expect that to take a little bit of time for that to take effect. But we really are expecting more of a step change in acceleration of new patients as both of these mechanisms fully take a hold closer to the second half of the year. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Lachlan Hanbury-Brown with William Blair. Lachlan Hanbury-Brown: I guess the first, I'd be curious what you're finding in terms of how often or how many samples doctors giving out. Are you finding the reps when they go back the fridge is empty or they still have some? Do they have to go back earlier? Just I've spoken to a few docs that tend not to give the samples, they prefer to write a script. So kind of curious to see what you're seeing on the sampling and the volume front there. And then maybe a second one on the prescribers. Curious what you're seeing in terms of the time it takes for them to go from a single prescription to become a repeat prescriber? Is it -- there's a cohort of doctors that basically immediately prescribe it to multiple people and then others that prescribe one and takes much longer? Or is there a trend you're seeing there? Evert Schimmelpennink: Thanks, Lachlan. Good questions. Let me start off with the sampling and then double-click a little bit more on the sampling strategy and the conversion and how we think about that. So sampling in our case is really designed to bring the right patients into the therapy. So it's a central part of our strategy as we've highlighted early on because the product has such an immediate and observable effect. So we want to get samples out there, and that's how what we focused on to get as many samples as needed to as many offices as possible to make sure that those patients can really experience the product first and then self-select into the therapy. And we're seeing that, that's working. We believe that currently, probably more than 90% of people that start with this or new patients have had a sample first. So again, that strategy is working. What's also important is to understand how the sampling works. So the samples are dispensed, as you've mentioned, directly by physicians. So once our reps leave the samples with the doctor, there's no way for us to track individual samples and how they're being handed out to patients and how many are being handed out. But what we do see is that most of the doctors now are handing them out. But you are right that there's a group of doctors that just prefers to write a script directly. We'll continue to work with them to actually start to change that habit as well. So we actually don't really look at conversion as a key metric at this point. Samples for us are very cost effective and it's really a way to get as many people as we can to try the product, make sure they like it and then they self-select in. Like I said earlier, that this will lead to indeed a much more sticky patient population. I think your second question was around prescribing dynamics. What we see is that, as you would expect at this stage, there's a mix like Shawn highlighted, there's a great amount of doctors that are already doing what we would like them to do, provide a sample together with a script. There's also a group of doctors that wants to sample first and have the patient call back. If they like it, they write a script, the doctors that, to your point, write a script immediately put out a sample. So all the different flavors that you can think of are currently out there. And that's the focus of us now to take that blueprint of doctors that we know are very successful with the product, that high percentages of the patients converting and start to apply that or keep that to the rest of the doctor cohorts. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Matthew Caufield with H.C. Wainwright. Matthew Caufield: Can you speak more to the nuances you're seeing in terms of that initial refill patients? Like, for instance, have the refills been predominantly those early presbyopes so far? Shawn Olsson: Yes, great question. So when we look at the consumer, just given a little bit more detail. So when we dig into it and look at those people that are adopting the fastest, and we're seeing the refills come through. Again, what we're seeing when we break it down, it's 60% women, 40% men. Predominantly that 55- to 64-year-old, there are certain states that we see perform better than others. And when we dig into them, they are our target patients that are doing it. It is, as I stated earlier, half of those patients have worn contacts in the past. About 1/3 of them have had LASIK. And I said 1/4 of them have had BOTOX. But again, that's a bit biased by the mix of male, female. So we are right on that core target. We're hitting the right patients that want to use it. I think the most important thing is they get the sample and try it because that self-selection is so important. And that's what really drives that repeat behavior is getting them to self-select in, try the product, know it's for them and then continue to use it. So I think that's the important nuance to focus on. Operator: That concludes our question-and-answer session. As I'm showing no further questions, thank you for your participation, and we will now conclude today's conference call. You may now disconnect.
Walter Hess: So good morning, everybody, here in Zurich and at the webcast. It's a pleasure for us to present our full year results 2025. With me today is Daniel Wuest, our CFO. My name is Walter Hess. I'm CEO. Let's go straight to the highlights of 2025. We delivered on our promises, and we met the financial targets 2025. We achieved 11.1% of revenue growth and minus 48% adjusted EBITDA. And with that, we achieved our guidance. The growth of Rx was 33.2% and of non-Rx, 7.1%. The digital services with a growth of 110%, so a remarkable growth rate again and a significant profitability contribution, it's a contribution margin free, which is more than 50% already of the total company. Our AI Health Companion, which we have started to launch in October last year as a beta version in our app has been adopted really very fast. Already every third app user is utilizing this AI health assistant. And with the strong liquidity position of CHF 160 million by end of the year, we are very confident to execute in 2026 and 2027 according to our plans. We are fully aware of the challenging and also critical market environment. However, we today focus on the future on our successful transition and on our path to breakeven and to cash generation. We do that by giving you an update on our strategy first, followed by a business update and then the financial update and outlook given by my colleague, Daniel, before we come to the Q&A session. There are some real important megatrends in health care, which have a big impact on our business. And we see us at the sweet spot of the 3 major megatrends. One is the demographic change, which gives a structural shift towards prevention and longevity, but mainly also towards a higher chronic care demand. It's the growth of the pharmaceutical market, a market which is not dependent on the business cycles as we see right now in this difficult environment worldwide. Last year, the market size in Germany of pharmaceuticals reached already EUR 62 billion. It's a huge potential for us being captured with electronic prescriptions. And the third megatrend is the digitalization in health care, which is even accelerated now by AI. And also there, we are at the forefront with our digital and AI health platform. How our response to these megatrends looks like, we would like to show you with a short video. It's a video about our health companion, which is live in the app already since last October. [Presentation] Walter Hess: As you can see, we are evolving from a transaction-led retail business into a health platform that orchestrates and covers the full customer and patient journey. By merging the online pharmacy with a marketplace not only for products but also for health services, digital health services and telemedicine orchestrated by the AI Health Assistant alongside with a state-of-the-art retail media business, we have created a platform which is unique and it's a novelty in Europe. This trustworthy and integrated platform with more than 12 million active customers, more than 1,000 marketplace sellers and more than 6,500 established doctors in Germany allows us to capture the full value of the entire journey. It makes our business fundamentally more defensible and less dependent on linear retail market growth. With the structural foundation now firmly in place, we are ready to ignite the platform flywheel and accelerate our scale at low marginal cost. And with that, let's move to the business update now. And of course, starting with Rx. What you see here is the sustained quarterly growth of our Rx business. And I can already confirm now that this will continue in Q1 2026. Last year, we achieved a growth rate of -- a growth of 33%, which leads to a 1.8% higher revenue in Q4 last year compared to the first quarter in '24, just when eRx started in the German market. If it comes to the quality of the eRx customers, I have to mention that the European and the German Court of Justice last year they confirmed -- reconfirmed that we are allowed to give bonus to our customers and patients. Therefore, we have restarted to do it in July last year with the result of increased retention and higher order frequency of new and of existing customers. And this led to a 3x higher retention rate and order frequency of customers that they are getting now also bonus with eRx compared with the customers, the previous customers that sent to us the paper prescriptions. Also, the average order value is growing quarter-by-quarter. In Q4 last year, the average order value of an eRx order was already at EUR 128. And just a few days ago, we have waited a long time. The doctors and insurance associations communicated that they have agreed now on a chronic care flat rate for doctors, and they will start 1st of July. But it's limited to a few diseases and to specific customer segment groups. In our view, it's a good start. It's a start in the right direction, in the direction of a more efficient and a more customer-centric health care in Germany. And it's a start of a catalyst, which is called repeat script, which we have already integrated in our product as we speak right now. It was important that in the first 5 to 6 quarters, we could -- we invested in creating awareness for the CardLink solution, the solution that customers, patients can read in prescriptions digitally. We have seen that the incremental cost of new customers that we had to find and to acquire via upper funnel channels like TV, out-of-home or radio were ineconomic with regard to the relation of customer acquisition costs to customer lifetime value. Therefore, we have started to shift, and we have done it in Q4. We have shifted and we have reduced the marketing spend into the Rx acquisition. And we have started to prioritize on performance marketing channels to ensure that we remain in the economic zone, which you see on the slide, it's the green zone with our customer acquisition costs in relation to customer lifetime value. But in addition, we have a growth lever, which is the direct bonus and the exemption from co-payment, which in combination, gives us the right mix to continuously grow with our eRx business. Let's come to the non-Rx business now. Here, you see we grew by 7.1% last year. If we talk only about the OTC and BPC business, the growth was 4.8%. But this growth came with the discontinuation with Zur Rose brand, which accounted for 2% to 3%. So effectively, the growth of the OTC and BPC business last year with the remaining brands was between 7% and 8%. It also came with an improved marketing performance, leading to higher customer retention and better customer lifetime value of our OTC and Beauty Personal Care customers. The digital services continue to grow remarkably with 110% on revenue growth with continuous really attractive margin. Both will go on also this year and beyond. On Slide #13, you see that our core brand, DocMorris, accelerated really rapidly last year and grew by more than 20%. So this shows a clear proof point for the successful execution of our brand strategy that we have defined at the beginning of last year. At the same time, our sub-brands, Medpex and Apotal were managed well and kept at a slight growth, contributing positively to the overall platform performance. Let's deep dive a little bit in the 2 parts of the digital services, as a TeleClinic, the telemedicine platform and the Retail Media business. TeleClinic first. The number of treatments in 2025 was 2 million, which is a growth year-over-year of more than 50%. A patient in an average had a doctor on the screen, in the app within 5 minutes. That's amazing. Imagine how long it takes until you have an appointment and you see a local doctor if you have an emergency. TeleClinic is available 24/7 with GPs and specialists. And almost half of all the treatments have been done outside the opening hours of the doctor practices that shows the importance of this telemedicine pillar as part of the health care of the standard health care in Germany, but also in other countries. As said before, so the number of doctors already reached more than 6,500 and is continuously growing. But the most important and the key success factor for TeleClinic is the strong partner network, which is secured by long-term contracts. It's with insurance, digital health providers and doctor associations. To expand this partner network is the most important key strategic priority in TeleClinic also for this year and the years after and also expanding the services they give to these partners, be it insurance companies or doctor associations. In 2025, TeleClinic achieved a revenue of EUR \26 million. But please be aware, this EUR 26 million, that's not comparable with retail revenue. Retail revenue with relatively low margins. Here, we talk about take rate revenue with much higher margins and a complete different value. TeleClinic is the leading platform for statutory and private health care in Germany. And telemedicine is a key pillar also for the new ministry in Germany. It's part of the coalition agreement. And now as they are preparing the digital -- the new digital strategy, so TeleClinic is part of the primary care, but also of the emergency care solution of the future regulation. You see it's still a huge potential for telemedicine in general. The market penetration of telemedicine is still below 0.5%. So we are still at the very beginning and already now EUR 26 million of take rate, mostly take rate revenue. In '26, we expect a mid-double-digit revenue growth and a further increase of the EBITDA margin. Our Retail Media business, we started with it 3 years ago, and we are meanwhile the leading retail media health care platform in Germany. We could prove to the advertisers and their brands, the brands you all know that by using our retail media platform, they can strongly increase engagement and strongly increase conversion and achieving really attractive RAS metrics. Last year, -- with Retail Media, we generated a double-digit euro million revenue with really high margin, even higher than with the telemedicine platform. And also in the upcoming years, '26 and further, we expect continued strong and profitable growth of our Retail Media business. So let's come back to the health companion, where we have launched our AI Health Assistant in last October in the app. Right now, we are rolling it out in all our web applications. So during March and April, you will see more and more visibility of the assistant also in our web. The health assistant is the central intelligence of our platform. Here you see on this slide, Slide #17, 3 specific use cases of our health assistant. In the area of the transactional AI commerce, we integrated conversational intelligence in our search bar in order to give personalized responses and recommendations to every customer and patient using our app. In the center, you see the AI assistant, providing AI-generated advice-oriented insights and becoming more and more a trusted health adviser for our customers and patients. And on the right-hand side, -- the assistant acts as proactive health orchestrator, seamlessly guiding the user, for example, from having a symptom to a doctor, be it the local doctor or a telemedicine doctor from TeleClinic, of course, or guiding them to a skin check service. And there, by the way, within only 2 months that we have this service live, we could detect already more than 200 skin tumors and melanomas with our service and our digital health assistant. So by managing health in one place as we do, the AI assistant helps to maximize the patient and customer lifetime value and accelerates our transition to a digital and AI health platform. So on Slide #18, we are really very proud that today, together with Google, we could announce an incredible strategic partnership. We have chosen Google in order to leverage on their cutting-edge AI capabilities and infrastructure. Google has chosen us in order to combine their most advanced technologies with our deep digital health care and pharmaceutical expertise. Together, -- in this partnership, we are defining and delivering new seamless health products in the future in order to make health care better and more accessible. One point which was really important for us and which we secured is that we keep the full sovereignty of our data while meeting also the highest requirements for data privacy and security. Let me conclude this first part with the strategy and the business update. We have spent the last few years in building this platform engine. Now we have started to drive it. Our strategy is set. Our positioning is unique, and our priority is on relentless execution, just to unlock the full value of our DocMorris platform. And with that, I would like to hand over to Daniel for the financial update and the outlook. Daniel Wüest: Thank you, Walter, and also a very warm welcome from my side to the people here in the room and the ones on the webcast. First of all, I want to provide you with some further insights on the financial performance of '25, but then much more important also to provide you with the outlook and the guidance and specifically how we will achieve EBITDA breakeven in the course of '26 and then subsequently, free cash flow breakeven in the following year, meaning in '27. Let's start with a quick look back on the financial year '25. As Walter already have mentioned it, we could secure comfortable and good top line growth of 11.1 percentage in local currency. And I'm very proud that all the business lines have contributed to this growth. Of course, Rx and Digital Services had the lion's share of the growth with Rx growing more than 33% and digital services above 110%. Reported revenues, which are the revenues without Apotal showed even a better performance and grew with 12.4% in local currency. There, you already see that the growth of Apotal was below the average of the group and also to a small part, also the growth of the segment EU. I'm very proud also that the gross margin of the group increased by 90 basis points to 22.2% despite the reallocation of marketing expenses from marketing into bonus and co-payment, which had an impact that will be directly deducted from sales and therefore, has a negative impact on the gross margin. And therefore, the 90 basis points are even more remarkable. As you know, we only started with the co-payment and the bonus basically from Q4 onwards and until Q3, we did a lot of additional upper funnel marketing spend. Let's quickly deep dive into the 2 segments, where I will focus on segment Germany because that's the lion's share of the contribution. You see segment Germany a growth rate excess of the group of 11.7% also fueled by Rx and digital services. Even here, the gross margin is even developed a little bit better, 10 basis points more with 100 basis points in addition and that also with the reservation that the payment of bonus and the co-bonus will have a negative impact on gross margin, but will then be reversed on the CM3 level contribution margin 3 level because it's just a reallocation of direct marketing spend to bonus and co-payment. Segment EU, a modest growth. I think we would have expected a little bit higher growth, but they managed also to improve the gross margin by 40 basis points. But unfortunately, given the low growth and the indirect cost base that didn't manage then to have a positive effect on the EBITDA level, while that's the reason why that segment EU is still slightly EBITDA negative. With that, let's come to our KPIs, which all look very promising and which kind of pleasant in our view. Let's start with the active customers. For the first time, we have also included the TeleClinic customers because that's a significant number of customers. But let's, first of all, stick to the online pharmacy customers, which showed a substantial increase of 700,000 from 10.3 million to CHF 11 million. You remember Walter said told you that the discontinuation of the Zur Rose brand, and you can assume that a few hundred thousand customers have been lost. We have not adjusted for that. And without that, the number would even look better. But we are very pleased what we see here. Also, TeleClinic increased the customers on the platform by 300,000 from 0.9 million to 1.2 million, and both numbers are on an ongoing basis, increasing. Also in relation to the app downloads, I think there's an active tracking of the app downloads. I think it's an indication, but definitely not the one and only. But also here, you see a decent increase of 200,000 app downloads compared to '24, and we reached 2.1 million app downloads in '25. Now let's come to the average order values or the basket sizes. First of all, on Rx, you see an increase of EUR 4, which is by itself already a remarkable increase. But you have also seen a few slides before that in Q4, the average order size was EUR 128. And you see really that in the first 3 quarters, the average basket size was much lower compared to Q4, where we really started our efficient and dedicated marketing, and that also tells you something about the quality of the newly acquired customers. One remark, please note that our basket size is calculated excluding VAT -- just for reasons, if you compare other baskets, you always have to make sure that if it's with or without VAT, given that the VAT in Germany is 19% that makes pretty some difference. If you gross it up our basket, then it would be much higher than the [ EUR 114 ]. On OTC, Walter mentioned it, we focused also on economic and customer lifetime value and the economy of the customers. Therefore, slight decline from 42% to 41%, but basically almost stable and nothing to worry about it. The order frequency also here, good development from 3.9 to 4.0x. OTC remained flat with 2.0 orders per year. The repeat order rate, which was already extremely or very high and decently high at 76%, further increased to 77%, which is also a very good value. And just all in all, shows the quality and the quality of our existing, but also of our new clients, which we have acquired during the last year. Now let's quickly talk about a few highlights or perceived lowlights based on the first reactions. I do not want to go you through line by line through the whole P&L. I think the top line and gross margin, we have discussed. Let's focus on the different cost pillars. Personnel expenses, there, I'm very pleased we could lower the respective ratio by 50 basis points. That's the first -- showing the first positive impact on our managing the indirect costs, which are basically to 100% personnel costs, but also shows the improved efficiency where we really go through the processes and kind of automatize and also using KI to better allocate resources, and that has already a very nice impact in '25 on the personnel cost ratio, and there will be some much further leverage in the coming years. Marketing expenses, as mentioned, rose by over CHF 11 million. And there, we are talking only direct marketing expenses. We have said we shifted basically from direct marketing, not completely, but partially to indirect marketing, which you see as a decline or lower revenues. And therefore, it's not only the CHF 11 million, but you have to add a small single-digit million to really see the full additional marketing impact, which has been done in '25. Distribution expenses, there, the ratio unfortunately went into the wrong direction. On an absolute level, that shows the increase of the -- the orders, which come with higher distribution costs. But on top of that, we have seen a substantial increase of logistic costs, transport costs, given kind of the high demand for logistic services, but we think that, that should be come to an end. And otherwise, if it will be ongoing, and we have already started with that, that we have to pass it to the clients with different models that either they pay for earlier delivery or other models just to kind of compensate for any potential further distribution and logistic cost increases. I think reported EBITDA was CHF 1.6 million lower than the adjusted EBITDA, where the adjustments come from. We have a net restructuring cost with the closure of -- that's net minus CHF 1 million because we could also sell the property, and therefore, it's only net minus CHF 1 million. We also adjusted CHF 2 million positive EBITDA contribution through the sale of the Swiss properties. And then we made additional provisions for legal cases in the magnitude of CHF 2 million. I think in our business, that's business as usual and nothing to worry because you notice that every second week there, someone is kind of putting a claim against the online pharmacies. And therefore, we have kind of just for the corporate practice some legal provisions in the amount of CHF 2 million. On the net financial result, that also seems to be kind of going completely into the wrong direction with CHF 12 million additional net financial result. But just to call you down, it's the CHF 12 million are all noncash. It's CHF 5 million FX impact on our intercompany loans. You know we fund those in Swiss francs and give the intercompany loans in euro to our companies. And at the end of the year, we have to kind of compare it then with the actual euro value. And as you all know, the euro substantially devaluated against the Swiss franc. There, CHF 5 million from that side. And last year, we had a positive effect of CHF 4 million. If you add it up, then you are at CHF 9 million. And the other CHF 3 million, which would then add up to the CHF 12 million, and that has a cash effect, but it will level out. That was the early repayment and repurchase of the '26 convertible bond because, as you remember, the offer was 103.5%, and we had to take that as a financial expenses. But on the other hand, we will save more than the CHF 3.5 million in this year because we do not have to pay the coupon of 6.875% of the '26 convertible bond anymore. So therefore, if you deduct the CHF 12 million, basically exactly the same net financial result. And just for your information, going forward, we have now redeemed the CHF 26 million fully 250 million outstanding, 3% coupon, 7.5% and then you have to add CHF 4 million to CHF 5 million of IFRS 16 financial expenses, and that brings you to roughly CHF 12 million of real cash out interest financial expenses for the coming future. Also on tax, you have seen we have not paid, but recorded CHF 12 million tax -- negative tax burden. Also there, no cash at all. There's 0 cash has gone out. It must be also somehow logical because we have recorded still a loss. The reason for that is that the deferred tax assets where we have tax loss carryforwards of several hundred million. And given a little bit lower growth in Rx and in some of our subsidiaries, that's just a manual thing, and we had to devalue the deferred tax asset, the positive ones, and that was this booking of this CHF 12 million, no cash effect at all. And given that it's based on a 5-year plan, the next year, we most likely have to do it the other way around, and then you will see there a positive contribution, but also with no tax effect. So far to the P&L, the balance sheet, I keep it very short. I think as a CFO, I'm very relaxed with this balance sheet. It has been substantially strengthened in last year with the rights issue in May, but then also with the partial refinancing of the '26 convertible bond so that we now have a very strong liquidity base of CHF 160 million. The net debt has been reduced to CHF 138 million and the equity ratio, which was strong already before, is now even stronger and amounts to 50%. As you may have read, we had redeemed the remaining CHF 22 million of the '26 convertible bond by beginning of March. And that's what I said as from now on, we only have the CHF 50 million and the CHF 200 million convertible bond outstanding, which are the only financial and interest-bearing debt besides the CHF 4 million to CHF 5 million lease payments, which we have also to pay on an annual basis. Let's have a quick look on the indirect cost and the net working capital. Indirect cost, everything goes into the right direction. From my view, not -- the arrow is not yet steep enough, but it will definitely steepen 7.2%. That's nothing you can be or I as a CFO can be proud of. But as I said in the past, you can be assured that this ratio will become significantly below 5% in our midterm plan, and you will see on an annual basis, further improvement on that area. Net working capital, also there, maybe -- that's because the liquidity position was so comfortable or is so comfortable, maybe not that focus by the end of last year. We had some overstocking of CHF 11 million, but that was based on a very strong Q4, which already started by the end of Q3, and we had really to overstock and the flu season also was kind of skewed towards the end of the year. We have done it a little bit too much. I think definitely CHF 5 million could have been less stocking. And then what's kind of -- I do not like very much is the CHF 9 million accounts receivable there, let's call it, sloppiness and I take it on my part, but that is also a nice asset to reverse in this year and the coming years. So far, everything on the cost, net capital and indirect cost side on track. And now let's go into details how we will achieve EBITDA breakeven in '26 and then subsequently free cash flow breakeven in '27. And we heard some complaints that we have now introduced CM3 contribution margin 3. I would say, okay, maybe the analysts have not yet in the spreadsheet, but I think it's the highest transparency you can really get from our end and what is CM3? CM3 is the last line of operating profit. You only have to deduct indirect costs and then you are at EBITDA. And I think that's definitely kind of, in our view, how we steer the company and how we -- and that's really the basis and the fundamental of our target and our mission to become EBITDA breakeven, and that's the reason why we want to share that with you. As you can see in '25, and you see the value of digital services, basically 3/4 or even more than 3/4 of CM3 contribution came from digital services, while the online pharmacy, that's Rx and OTC, BPC, including EU are keeping up substantially in the second half. That's the green part of the bar. For '25, we are very open and nice and even put the number on it, slightly grounded, but nevertheless, a very good indication. And then you see where -- why we are so confident that we will reach EBITDA breakeven. There will be a substantial contribution from digital services. As you know, they grow top line. And as Walter said, it's basically take rate equals gross margin, more or less the slight reduction equals EBITDA. But also the online pharmacy is substantially keeping up in '26. You see that the green bar, and they are almost on an equal level in absolute terms with digital services with the CM3 contribution, okay, they are on the top line much bigger, and that should not be a surprise. But having said this, in '26, even Rx, and that's really exceptional, will be CM3 positive. That's due to our very focused and increased marketing efficiency, which has been substantially double-digit negative still in '25. And you see the same pattern goes on for the first half in '27 and the first half '22. We will increase the CM3 margin by more than 300 percentage by 3 percentage points and more than double the CM3 contribution in absolute terms in 2026. And you see there will be -- there's not the end that will be ongoing also into '27. I think that's really important because if you now have CM3, you deduct the indirect cost and then your EBITDA level. And how that looks, we go even further into the detail on the next slide. That's the -- that's really kind of to the heart of what the CFO usually not any longer in Excel, but in sheets keeps and does not share with anyone. But here, you see the phasing of our EBITDA ramp-up. The basis is Q4 '25. In Q4 '25, we had still a negative EBITDA, but it was in the area of minus CHF 7 million, which is a huge positive development due to the rights issue, we had to report Q1 '25 EBITDA, which was minus CHF 16 million. Q4, we were down at minus CHF 7 million. And Q4 is really the run rate for our journey -- EBITDA journey in '26 with Q1 being somewhere in the area of Q4 because we see the same trends, the same patterns, the same dynamics, improvement in Q2, which is usually the first 2 quarters are not the best ones. It has some seasonality in our business, but not too much because there is additional measures included. Then Q3, we are, at this point in time, confident that we will reach EBITDA breakeven and Q4 will then be EBITDA positive. And this altogether, you will see first half the lion's share of the negative EBITDA contribution and the second half of the year, there we will hopefully see kind of a positive EBITDA contribution. And that leads us -- that's a little bit that will come now later to our guidance, but you see that it's minus CHF 10 million to minus CHF 25 million is our guidance for the EBITDA. As I said, -- it's CM3, that's the bridge, the minus CHF 48.2 million. Then the CM3 contribution, I said more than double. That's -- we haven't put the numbers there, but you also have something to calculate. And then the indirect costs where we are really working hard and try to bring them down, but that's according to budget, still some negative contribution, and that will lead us to the EBITDA guidance, which you see on the screen of minus CHF 10 million to minus CHF 25 million. I think CM3 is a very important pattern to get there, but also in combination with operational and marketing efficiency. And then we will also very tight CapEx management and also on the indirect costs. You see we have many layers where we can play and really optimize to get -- to achieve our target, first of all, in '26 to become EBITDA breakeven in the course of '26. But then with the same patents and instruments, we will become free cash flow positive also in the course of '27. That brings me now to the guidance for First of all, for '26, the short-term guidance, we have pretty broad guidance on the top line, mid-single digit to low teens. Reason for that is that we achieve EBITDA breakeven also with relatively modest growth, which is more the left side of the mid-single digit. But we also see patterns that we could even become EBITDA breakeven with accelerated growth. And that's the reason why we just want to keep the flexibility to play EBITDA versus growth, especially on the marketing side, and that's one explanation for the rather broad guidance. And as you know, we try to definitely come out at the right end of the guidance. But given, let's say, the different patterns, we will then have to narrow it during -- in the course of the financial year '26. As a soft guidance, how does that translate into kind of the business segments? Rx will be around 20%, which is kind of basically in line what Walter showed before. We cut the 20% noneconomic customers that comes with kind of a little bit lower but much more profitable growth on Rx. OTC, we stick to the mid-single digit as we have been before and as we have demonstrated that, that's possible. And digital service, there we will see mid-double digit growth as digital service combined and with a substantial increase of the EBITDA margin of the already very high EBITDA margin, but there will be further appreciation of the margin. I talked about EBITDA, minus CHF 10 million to minus CHF 25 million. That's kind of -- that also needs to be said an improvement of 300 basis points or 3 percentage points of the EBITDA margin. That's coming from the wrong direction, but I think it's still substantial, such kind of relative increase. And then CapEx, roughly CHF 30 million, maybe rather at the high end and we are positive that could be maybe slightly lower as we have seen in '25 with CHF 27 million. That will lead us to our ultimate goals, EBITDA breakeven and free cash flow breakeven in '26 and '27. And with this 2 years, taking into consideration that we have to really drive profitability, maybe a little bit against growth. The midterm guidance, we are very pleased that we basically can confirm the midterm guidance, which we put out in -- ahead of the rights issue. Of course, it's not 20% CAGR anymore. It's 15% CAGR anymore. But I think the most -- the best or the most impressive thing in my view is that we can keep the 8%. We can even stay more behind it because given that the relative growth of Rx goes down, and that makes the relative weight of digital service even bigger at the back end. And therefore, the business mix is really in favor of us with kind of having OTC, which is very important also for customer acquisition for Rx, but also for our TeleClinic and Retail Media business. Rx, which is decently growing and then digital services with high EBITDA contribution and high growth, which will have a higher relative share at the back end of our 5-year business plan, meaning that this is true for 2030, basically covering 5 years. CapEx has also been reduced by CHF 5 million. I think we are comfortable with CHF 30 million average CapEx rate. And I think that's basically the guidance where we are -- what we are aiming for and where we are kind of being measured to. And before I hand over to Walter because he's already jumping up, just 2 subsequent events, which you have seen on the convertible bond, I've already talked about. The closure of Ludwigshafen, which we announced also today, just some -- I cannot say, highlights, but some financials to that. We will have onetime restructuring costs between EUR 3 million to EUR 4 million. If you take the midpoint, then you should be at the right spot. But these are we are talking euros. Out of this [ EUR 3 million ] to EUR 4 million, EUR 2 million have an impact on EBITDA because these are severance payments and the remaining part is below EBITDA. That's kind of onerous contracts because we have lease agreements which we have to -- due to IFRS immediately to write off, but that will be an impairment between EBITDA and EBIT. We will adjust for that, roughly EUR 2 million. But I think the very positive effect is that we will have at least from '27 onwards, EUR 2 million -- in excess of EUR 2 million annual recurring savings because we are moving the 3.5 million parcels from Ludwigshafen to Heerlen, where we have ample of capacity. There will be better capacity utilization in Heerlen. The handling and packaging is 2x more efficient than in Ludwigshafen because we are in Helen fully automated. And therefore, I think the EUR 2 million is a baseline annual savings, but there is definitely potential for more to come. And then last but not least, current trading, I said, we have seen the positive trend from Q4 ongoing in Q3. Everything is according to plan, meaning budget. And also, I think that gives us a lot of comfort to kind of handle and managing this challenging but very exciting times ahead of us until we are free cash flow breakeven. Thank you very much for your attention, and I'm happy to hand over to also again. Walter Hess: Yes. Thank you, Daniel. So just before we close and open the Q&A session, -- in the last 2 years, we have not only built the platform engine, as shown before, we have also built a high-performing leadership team, as you can see here on the slide, a leadership team that bridges the gap between traditional retail excellence and disruptive health tech and AI innovation. And I can assure you also in the name of the whole team that we are fully committed to execute the defined goals and to transform our platform into tangible shareholder value. It's not only at the level of the management, it's also a change which is mirrored at the Board of Directors. And therefore, we have informed that we nominate 3 new members of the Board that we will present to the AGM. It's Thomas Bucher, a well-known, seasoned CFO with a lot of experience in listed and private companies. It's Nicole Formica-Schiller. She's an expert in AI and digital health transformation, but also regulation on a European and the German level. And she has also a wide network in Germany, in the health care sector and a deep understanding of the regulatory landscape in Germany. And it's Thomas Reutter, an experienced corporate and capital markets lawyer. So these board nominations ensure that management and Board is perfectly synchronized with the company's vision and AI-first platform strategy and also shall provide the necessary stability to the company. And with that, we are at the end of the presentation. We had to tell you a lot to give you a lot of information. But now let's immediately move to the Q&A session. Operator: [Operator Instructions] Walter Hess: Okay. We will share the mic. Laura Pfeifer-Rossi: Here is Laura Pfeifer, Octavian. I have a question on your sales outlook for this year. So what is the primary swing factor within your guidance range? Is it mainly driven by uncertainty around Rx growth? Or is it rather related to OTC performance? And maybe specifically on OTC, could you elaborate on what you are currently observing in terms of competitive dynamics? Walter Hess: To the first and second part. Daniel Wüest: No, I think, Laura, the swing factor is definitely Rx, which -- and as I said, we have kind of -- we play operating profit against growth. And given that the co-payment and the bonus, which have been developing not in the entire group because we only did kind of a pilot with some selected Rx customers developed very well in Q4, and we rolled out kind of this concept to the whole DocMorris just recently. That really is kind of the swing factor and also the reason for the wide range of the guidance. I think you can assume that OTC, BPC, that's the mid-single digit, meaning something between 3% and 7%, not much deviation. Also, the absolute volume is high. The digital services, double-digit -- mid-double-digit growth and -- but on a relatively low revenue -- absolute revenue level and the swing factor is really Rx, whether that's kind of let's say, 10% or 40%. But that's not that you take that as just to show you what kind of the volatility could be on Rx. Walter Hess: Yes. And you mentioned the competitive landscape and the price pressure. I guess you meant there, in the course of last year, we have adapted our pricing strategy, improved our strategy. You have seen the improvement in the gross margin. That's a result of it. But in general, we don't see now a change on prices or price levels in the market. In our market, pricing, the pressure is always on, but not now a big change with new market entrants coming in. Urs Kunz: Urs Kunz Research Partners. Regarding midterm, is that around 2030. And then on your midterm growth target of 15%, I still find that a little bit high, the OTC part is growing at mid-single digit, I guess, in your outlook in midterm. And I guess on the digital service side, I don't know if you can have this mid-double-digit range also percentage range all the way in the midterm future. So that -- if I then go back to the Rx that should be higher than 20% Rx growth to reach this 15%. Am I right about that? Daniel Wüest: Yes, you are perfectly right. And I think what you need to really consider given EBITDA breakeven and free cash flow, as said that we have to limit the growth and really play on our marketing efficiency. And that's also why we stated in the guidance that the fine print in the [indiscernible] that it's back-end loaded in '26 and '27, you will definitely see lower Rx growth than what will then come again from '28 to '30 onwards. And if you said it's substantially about 20%, and I will -- I can sign into that. But it will be 20% in the first 2 years, but then we will substantially be keeping up again. Urs Kunz: And where do you take how this belief that it's higher than 20%. It's just that you put in more marketing again then or you see the market growing faster after 27% in online? Daniel Wüest: Yes. I think it's really kind of the -- that we then have other or once we are free cash flow positive, we can then really also not that we fall back in the old patterns that you won't see then kind of us spending all of a sudden CHF 30 million in TV again. But I think with the bonus and the co-payment that's a very strong instrument. But as said, at some point in time that you are in balance with growth and profitability, we have, for the time being, still certain limitations and there, you can definitely kind of play that even more aggressive. Walter Hess: And sorry, what we also will see is a platform dynamic kicking in. So you have seen the partnership also with Google. So where we have joint development teams also with them, developing new services, adding services to the platform. And this will drive traffic, will drive engagement, will drive loyalty. So we will see the effects there definitely within even 1 to 2 years already. Urs Kunz: Midterm is 2030 or? Daniel Wüest: 2030. Sibylle Bischofberger Frick: Sibylle Bischofberger, Bank Vontobel have 2 market questions. First, I remember the market share of online pharmacies was about 5, 6 years ago, about 1.3% in Germany. How has it developed? How much is the market share now? And how much do you want -- how much growth do you expect in the next couple of years? And the other interesting market, telemedicine, you mentioned 0.5% market share. Where do you expect it to be in the next couple of years? Walter Hess: So on the Rx, yes, it was 1.3 5, 6 years ago. It went down before eRx started to 0.75%. And since eRx was available now also for online pharmacies, it went up to roughly 1.7%. And where will it go? That's the 1 million question. So we have, for our assumptions, taken a really conservative view in our midterm plans of 5% to 6% in 5 years. But frankly speaking, we think it will be more. It will ramp faster. But in our plans, we did not go now more aggressive than 5% to 6%. And on telemedicine, so yes, the share as shown, the penetration is lower than 0.5%. TeleClinic is roughly at 0.3% so has about 60%. And where will it go? So it depends on how fast the digital strategy of the ministry will be defined and will go live and how prominent telemedicine will be in this different kind of future care pillars. And it's too early to say where it goes. But anyway from 0.5, it will definitely go northwards, definitely. And remember, it's -- we have 2 kind of businesses. We have a retail business, but we also have a digital service business with completely different metrics, valuation, et cetera. And there is a strong growth really already going on and will continue. Daniel Wüest: And I think if you are interested, I recommend you to read Page 175 of our financial report where all the details in relation to the goodwill impairment is, which we honor past. But there you have kind of the assumption, the current market share of telemedicine and Rx and what our underlying assumptions are. It's in Rx 1.7% and in 2030, 5%, 1.7% to 5%. And that's the overall market share. I think then for the whole market. And telemedicine, it's even more astonishing, 0.5%. And in 5 years' time, the penetration should be 1.6% -- that's what we base our goodwill impairment test, and you could also assume that, that's basically then somehow reflected in our business plan. Walter Hess: So no more questions here in the room in Zurich. So let's move to the webcast and adding questions from there. Operator: We have one question from Gian Marco Werro from ZKB. Walter Hess: Yes. Hi, Gian Marco. Please go ahead. Gian Werro: Hello. Thank you. I hope there's no echo on your side. So first question is the growth outlook for TeleClinics. You mentioned mid-double-digit revenue growth. Why not 80% or 90% again this year because the penetration is still so low? Do you not do more marketing also there? Because in my view, it's really so such a comfortable way to get a doctor appointment in Germany, and there must be a huge demand from the doctor and from the patient side. So from a top line perspective. And then the profitability of the overall services business, is that still fair to assume that you are meaningfully above the 55% EBITDA margin for this business? And you mentioned you want to increase the margin for TeleClinic, but can you give us a bit more detail about your margin improvement target also for the whole services business, that would be interesting. And then just a third question, if I may, if I have the opportunity, the logistic cost is just something -- I mean, you already elaborated on it. But don't you see risk of patients ordering then less or if they have to pay really then for even more for the delivery services, especially considering your growth expectations in Rx and OTC. Walter Hess: To the first question, the growth rate. So you can consider that the growth in absolute values remains at more or less the same level. And then you have to take in consideration that you always have to integrate new network partners, larger ones. And once you integrated them, the growth curve starts to slow down and then you integrate new ones. At the moment, the regulator is justifying the new digital strategy. And for example, the doctor associations -- we talked to several of them. They are ready, but they just want to wait until they know now what the regulator regulates -- and so this is the dynamic of the growth that we have predicted for this year. If it comes to the margin, you mentioned 55%. So some of the services are even higher. Some of the services are below this 55%. And I think -- yes. Daniel Wüest: I think on the margin, not sure where this 55% are coming from. I think as of currently, TeleClinic has margins in the low 30s that will substantially increase over time over the next 5 years to the figure you -- you mentioned, I would say that's kind of 45%, 50%, that's kind of a reasonable run rate. And on the other hand, Retail Media, that's also very highly profitable. That one is already on higher EBITDA margins, but will also kind of in a balanced model will be somewhere around 50% EBITDA margin. And I think that's the mix. You will see this year an overproportional increase of EBITDA contribution given that we do not have a triple-digit growth at TeleClinic. And I think it's always kind of 1 year, a little bit less growth, but then substantial improvement of profitability. The next year, strong growth, maybe a little less profitability than 1 year of consolidating everything, increasing margin. And I think that's -- but the overall pattern and growth pattern is very strong, but it's not a linear line. It's kind of some years with a little bit hold back on the top line, but push the bottom line and therefore, even faster. Walter Hess: And your third question about logistics, do you refer to what to the closing of Ludwigshafen or... Daniel Wüest: No, to the logistic costs. And I think there, Gian-Marco, it's not that we say, I think we do it a little bit more professional, not saying that you have now to pay EUR 2 more. I think you have definitely other measures. First of all, kind of not reducing, let's say, the order that you can say, okay, if you order until 5, you get it next day, you can even lower your logistic cost if you say, okay, if you order until 4, then you get it next day because that has already another price tag on the -- with the carrier. And you could also play then with the basket size, which is kind of then free of shipping just to balance this logistic cost. And we see it in the whole market. You see, for example, DM free of delivery charge is EUR 60, our friendly competitor and -- and thus, we are much lower. But I think you have many things to play and to optimize your logistic costs. And it's not a problem of DocMorris, it's kind of the whole online and not even Rx and OTC online, but the online industry, and we will just follow the market and to not getting -- being hit by higher logistic costs. Operator: And we have one more question from Jan Koch from Deutsche Bank. Jan Koch: Two questions. The first one is on your 2026 guidance, which essentially only implies less than 4% sequential growth per quarter. Why is this the case? And given that your group guidance is quite wide this year, is there a scenario where you accelerate Rx growth in 2026? And then secondly, you mentioned a strong liquidity position of CHF 160 million. But if I take the CHF 160 million at the end of 2025 and consider that you paid back the CHF 20 million convertible and consider a negative free cash flow in probably in the mid- to high double digits in 2026, you will start 2027 with probably less than CHF 100 million. Free cash flow is still expected to be negative next year, and you might have to refinance your 2028 convertible next year as well. So how do you plan to achieve this? Are you open to sell a minority share in TeleClinic? Walter Hess: Yes. Let me take the first question and then Daniel, the second one. So on the sequential growth, as we have shown before, the guidance, we have given us some space so that we can maneuver between growth and marketing spendings. And this is also what we see in the first quarter that it goes in a really good direction already. And -- if it continues like this, so we can go more to the upper end, but we want to be flexible in reacting. And for us, the priority this year is completely on becoming breakeven in the course of the second half year, possibly on the second half year in total. And therefore, we need this flexibility and we take for us this flexibility. And on the second question. Daniel Wüest: Yes. I think just to start top down, you're right with the CHF 160 million, you have to deduct the CHF 20 million or CHF 22 million, but let's deduct the CHF 20 million, that makes it easier for calculation. That's CHF 140 million. And you are also right that you can assume for this year and next year, negative free cash flows, but they will be substantially even already this year lower than last year and in '27 that the indication that in the course, of course, we aim for as low as possible negative free cash flow, but that should be not kind of the 2 figures added up should still leave us with a very comfortable remaining cushion of liquidity until we will become then for the full year free cash flow positive in '28. In relation to the refinancing of the '28 maturity, I think once we have demonstrated and shown that we are on the right path, -- that's then something which we will tackle by then. It's clear that we do not fully redeem the CHF 200 million, and it's also clear that it does not make sense from just -- at least that's what I learned at university, okay, acknowledging that was some time ago, but that the fully debt financed balance sheet is definitely not an efficient balance sheet. And I think let's take it one step after the other, and we have ideas. And you referred to kind of -- if I'm right, selling a minority stake of TeleClinic. And I think, of course, that it's a very valuable asset, which we have in our hand, but it's extremely valuable within our platform and therefore, definitely not any or the first priority to monetize TeleClinic at this point in time. Jan Koch: Understood. And one follow-up, if I may. Are you going to report EBITDA in Q3 and Q4 this year again so that we can track your progress? Daniel Wüest: Let's see. I think could well be. I think that -- and I think it would be important that at least we give you a very good indication where we are heading to. And I think this nice picture, which we draw in our presentation, you can basically on a quarter-by-quarter basis, track us and see whether the 2 guys in front of you have not only overpromise, but also deliver on that. But we have to see, but most likely, yes. Walter Hess: Okay. Then we come. Daniel Wüest: I just want to say that's the benefit of lunchtime. Walter Hess: Last question. Unknown Analyst: Not going to look. No. On the AI companion digital assistant. As I understand, you're not getting any money for it. Marketing and any plan that on later stage you get some money out, because you mentioned these 100 people they got saved from cancer. At the end, I think somebody is happy to pay something.. Walter Hess: Did anybody say we do not get any money out of it? I cannot remember. No, it's what we see and we measure very carefully, of course. We see an impact -- a positive impact on traffic already. We see a positive impact on engagement already. We see the conversion rates going up as soon as we can take someone by the hand and guide through the platform. And we see a significant increase of conversion rate. And this brings us already additional money. And as you have seen on the platform, the marketplace, this marketplace is a marketplace also for health services. And on a marketplace, you want to earn money. And we are filling this marketplace also with health services, and we will get additional margins, revenues and margins from there as well. Okay. So with that, we come to the end. Thanks a lot. It was a little bit long. Sorry for that, but we had a lot of information for you. Thank you for joining, and we wish you all a pleasant and happy day. Bye-bye. Thank you.
Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Exor Investor and Analyst Call. Please note that the presentation is available to download on Exor website www.exor.com under the Investors and Media, Events & Presentations section. Any forward-looking statements Exor management makes are covered by the safe harbor statement included in the presentation material. Please note that this conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions]. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to your host, CEO, John Elkann. Please go ahead. John Elkann: Good morning, good afternoon and good evening to all of you. Thank you for being here today with us. 2025 was a difficult year in many different ways for Exor and for our companies. But it also has been a year that has helped us be more focused and be more resilient, which enables us as a company to be better prepared for another difficult year, which will be 2026. Today, we want to talk to you about our companies. We have less of them and we have more in health care. We want to speak to you about Lingotto who has reached a very important milestone in '25, reaching EUR 10 billion of assets under management driven by performance, which is exactly in line with our intentions of building an investment organization interested in performance, not in gathering assets. And finally, our financials that on the back of disposals have provided us with a strong balance sheet and also the opportunity in '25 of doing a large buyback of EUR 1 billion, which if you add to the ones that we've done in prior years taking into account our large discount has allowed us to buy up to close to 15% of our shares. Our portfolio today reflects the latest disposal, which is JD, which we were able to conclude and the money got wired yesterday, and it reflects a Exor as we move towards '26, which would be one of less companies where we'll be able to focus particularly on our larger ones. And that's where I'd like to proceed. And I'd like to start with Stellantis who has been the one that has encountered both external difficulties and internal difficulties in the course of '25. It is resetting itself and under the leadership of Antonio Filosa, it is addressing the many challenges that is confronted with, both externally but also internally. We are getting to an important year in '26 with the Capital Markets Day, where Stellantis, end of May, will present its future, where it intends to be very clear about how it will improve as a company and make sure that it is and will remain one of the leaders in what is a defining industry. Ferrari, on the other hand, has already spoke about its future in '25 in the Capital Markets Day, where it is committed to growing, but growing in a way in which the uniqueness of what it does continues to be unique. And '26 is a defining year with the launch of the Ferrari Luce, the first-ever electric car, which will also happen in the end of May with the third act of the launch that started at the Capital Markets Day presenting the technologies of the Ferrari Luce, which then had beginning of this year with the interiors and finally, the final car, end of May in Rome. I would like now to pass to my colleague, Benoit, to speak to you about Philips, which is a company in which we continue to invest in '25. And today, is in terms of value, the second largest company for Exor. Benoit Ribadeau-Dumas: Thank you, John. 2025 was the last year of the '23, '25 plan that we underwrote in 2023 when we invested in Philips for the first time. So it was good to see at the end of this plan, the company delivering a strong performance, a solid performance with, in particular, a strong margin expansion, which is the result of the ambitious reorganization and productivity plans that have been launched by the CEO, Roy Jakobs. And second, we saw also in 2025, and it was long awaited a peak in the order intake after years of moderate growth and it was -- it is paving the way for a new momentum of the company. The stock price so far has not been following the performance. So we have decided to increase our stake last year to reach 90% -- 19% economic rights. Also, we were glad to see the company announcing earlier this year the new plan, the new 3-year plan for 2026, 2028, after a phase where the focus was on execution and on exiting the quality crisis of the Sleep and Respironics business. This is a renewed ambition for the company, which is now targeting mid-single-digit sales growth and mid-teens profit margin. Of course, continuing the efforts that they launched on quality and productivity enhancement, but also accelerating in the delivery of new products fueled by AI and fueled by the high level of R&D that this company has always been part of. So we are a happy shareholder of Philips, and we are looking forward to seeing their next progresses. Suzanne on CNH. Suzanne Heywood: Thank you, Benoit. So CNH had a challenging year in 2025 because of the downturn in the agricultural market. exacerbated, of course, by some of the geopolitical events that have been going on as well as some of the changes in tariffs and that is expected to continue into 2026 as already communicated by the company. At its Investor Day in May '25, CNH presented its path to 2030, and we think this is very important because it includes a number of different measures that will strengthen the company and enable it to come out of this downturn in a strong way. One is expanding the margins of the company through the cycle. And an important part of that is addressing some of the quality issues that it needs to address within the company. It is also looking to launch a series of new products new technologies, in particular, those around precision farming, which, of course, are very, very important for our customers and also a focus on costs, in particular, supply costs for the organization. The company has a lot to do, but it also has a lot to look forward to as it comes out of this cycle, given its tremendous lineup of products, both on the agriculture side and on the construction side, so we look forward to continuing to be a shareholder in the company. I also want to take this moment to do an update on Iveco. This is an important moment for Iveco. Last year, we celebrated with Iveco the first 50 years of its history. And this -- and last year, we also agreed and are participating in 2 extraordinary transactions in relation to Iveco. The first of these is the sale of Iveco Defence to Leonardo. This is the Iveco Defence business, and this transaction closed on March 18 with the expectation that the dividends will be distributed at the end of April. This transaction for Iveco Defence secures a future for the defense business within Iveco, secures a future for it now with Leonardo, which will give it increased scale. The remainder of the business, which is the trucks, buses and engines business will be combined with Tata Motors through a tender offer, which we're expecting to close at the end of the second quarter. The total valuation of both of these transactions will be EUR 5.3 billion. I want to take this moment to thank the 2 CEOs that have led Iveco through the period since it was spun out of CNH back in 2022, Gerrit Marx and Olof Persson, and of course, their management teams as well. We wish all parts of the Iveco business, a very successful next 50 years within their new ownership. I now pass back to John. John Elkann: Thank you, Suzanne, and it's also the opportunity for me to thank the leadership team and all their colleagues at Iveco and wish Iveco an important journey ahead as it opens for the new future with Leonardo and Tata. Coming back to Exor, if we look at our unlisted companies, they delivered mixed results. The good news is that our bigger companies in terms of value have performed better than our smaller ones. Welltec had an extraordinary year, while Shang Xia continued to have a difficult year. We expect the overall companies that we have as unlisted to present themselves in '26 with strong plans ahead and continuing to do in aggregate well. I would like now to speak about Lingotto which had a very important year in 2025. Lingotto was founded in '23 to really converge all the different investment activities that we were doing in partnering and directly in Exor. We now no longer have any investments outside of our companies, which are the ones in which we are involved in their governance. And everything we do outside will be carried forward within the investment strategies of Lingotto who today are 4. Of these 4, the one that has performed the best is the intersection fund led by Matteo Scolari and the overall aggregate returns of the 4 strategies have allowed ingot to reach USD 10 billion under management. What is encouraging is this has been driven by performance and what was really -- it was really what we expected when we founded Lingotto an organization, an investment management organization where the principle is what the organization cares about. And investing is what they do in order to grow through performance rather than gathering assets. The good news is on the interest of specific parties, which we've been very selective in allowing to invest alongside us, the quality of the investors and also the quality of what their mandate is, of which most are linked to societal causes are encouraging to see how we have alongside us very capable investors which invest for important causes. I would like now to pass it to Guido to walk you through our financials. Guido de Boer: Thank you, John. So on this slide, we recap what John, Suzanne and Benoit mentioned previously. So our NAV per share started the year at EUR 178 the biggest movers in a negative sense were 3 of our largest companies, Ferrari, Stellantis and CNH contributing in total for a EUR 25 per share decline in our NAV per share. This was partly offset by decent performance of our other companies, as John just highlighted, an outstanding performance at Lingotto, going up 40% in the year. And in addition, we invested EUR 1 billion in buybacks at over a 50% discount which contributed EUR 4.7 per share, and EUR 2.5 per share. So overall, we ended at EUR 164.4, so down for the year. If we look at our objectives, which are twofold. The first one is a relative performance metric where we look at NAV per share versus MSCI World Index. And the second one is an absolute performance measure, total shareholder return. So to first go to the relative one. In 2024, we actually had a pretty good year at 9% NAV per share growth at a very challenging benchmark, where the Magnificent 7 did great in the MSCI went up by 25%. 2025, we actually had a much easier comparable because those similar 7 companies did not perform as well. but we actually declined in NAV per share, as I just showed you. And on the back of an increase in the discount, our total shareholder return is below our NAV per share growth. So then moving to the measures that we track every year to make sure we operate in an efficient and disciplined way. The first one we track is free cash flow over dividend. As a measure of the financial health that we have in terms of cash flows. That is still at a very healthy level at almost 6x, notwithstanding a decline in the dividend of Stellantis. Management cost over GAV. So an indication of how efficiently we manage our overhead is world-class it went up largely driven by the decrease in GAV increasing it as a percentage. And also loan-to-value which measures how aggressively we are levered is down to 6.9%, notwithstanding the reduction in GAV. And that's primarily because we realized EUR 3 billion of proceeds from the sale of Ferrari shares. We reinvested that partially, but we also increased our cash position. So we're in a healthy place there. So if we look at our balance sheet, which is critical in these turbulent times, we are very strong. So our loan-to-value ratio is at 6.9%. Our bond maturities are very well spread out. We refinanced EUR 600 million in 2025. And now that has a maturity in 2035. We have a payment coming up of $170 million of a private placement, which we can finance out of our cash position. And on top of this low repayment requirement in the coming years, we have a EUR 1.1 billion credit facility, which we extended and doubled in the year. and we have a EUR 1.4 billion cash position as of December 2025. So in a very healthy position indeed. So these are the financial slides that I would like to present, and I want to hand over to John for the concluding slides. John Elkann: Thank you, Guido. We entered '26 with momentum. We have to complete the transactions that we have announced. On the back of those, as Guido mentioned, we will have been strengthening our balance sheet with close to EUR 3 billion additional resources. And if we look at the returns of what we have been divesting, we're speaking about 1.4x on cost. Now in moments like the ones we are living, which are uncertain times, what is key is to have liquidity and preserve capital. So we feel that having close to EUR 4 billion, as we conduct and conclude the transactions that I described puts Exor in a very strong position in an uncertain moment of time. I would like to conclude by giving you which are the priorities that we have as a company. We want to focus and focus particularly on our larger companies because that's where we believe the greatest value is. We want to continue to simplify our portfolio by conducting to closure the transactions that we have announced and continue to divest from our other assets. And we are committed to a strong balance sheet, which is even more valuable in moments like the ones we are living and be ready to deploy capital with discipline when the time is right. I would like to thank you all for your commitment. I would like to thank you all for believing in Exor. We realize that '25 was a difficult year on the back of a difficult year that '24 was. We are also very aware that the environment in which we find ourselves is uncertain in '26 but we do feel that the last 2 years have strengthened us and we enter this difficult year stronger than we were in the last 2 years. This is why I wanted to conclude with the quote that I have at the end of our letter which I deeply believe is one of the strengths that we have as an organization. Thank you, and we look forward to answering your many questions. Operator: [Operator Instructions]. We are now going to proceed with our first question. And the questions come from the line of Monica Bosio from Intesa Sanpaolo. Monica Bosio: Good morning, everyone, and good afternoon, everyone. I have basically 2, 3 questions. The first one is, obviously, cash is king in this tough environment. But maybe should we assume that no deal will be announced across the entire 2026 and that the time frame will be longer. And the last conference call, the company clearly stated its interest for 3 main sectors, the health care, the luxury and the technology with no clear priority. Are still the sector where the company wants to invest or maybe something else changed in the selection list. And another question is on deployment of the cash. Following the EUR 1 billion buyback in 2025. I was wondering if the company is willing to execute another buyback program in the future? And if yes, could the buyback be taken into consideration jointly with the new investments? Or could it be considered only in case no significant investments opportunities arise? John Elkann: [Foreign Language]. Monica, those were all incredible questions. The timing is really linked to making sure that we find the opportune investment. And I think that in times like the ones we're living on one side, one needs to be prudent. On the other side, one needs to be patient. And we want to make sure that we are sufficiently patient to capture the best possible opportunity. In terms of interest of sectors, we remain convinced that the sectors that you mentioned are interesting sectors, technology, luxury and health care with interesting valuations. But we also think that we should be open to other sectors and not preclude ourselves better opportunities if we were to find them. We also think that the companies that we own within the sectors in which we're present remain interesting, which is the reason why we have deployed money in '25 in Philips and bioMérieux. And if you add our investment in Institut Mérieux plus bioMérieux is de facto our fifth largest investment today. So the fifth most largest company if you combine Institut Mérieux with bioMérieux. In terms of buyback, as I mentioned, we have been aggressively buying back shares, EUR 2.5 billion in the last years, which is approximately close to 15% of our capital. and with wider discounts, which we look at very favorably because they are the opportunity to do buybacks, which is a way to invest in ourselves are opportunities that, of course, we will continue to look and look with discipline. As of now, we believe that, as you said, cash is king, and it is a moment where making sure that we do have a fortress balance sheet is important. And that is also the case for our companies. we believe that our companies are all with very strong balance sheets, which is the most important thing when you do enter in uncertain times as we have learned in the past. So as much as I feel bad about '24 and '25, I also realize that they have helped us both at Exor and our companies to enter these uncertain times much stronger. Operator: We are now going to proceed with our next question, and the question comes from the line of Martino De Ambroggi from Equita SIM. John Elkann: You must be happy about Iveco. Martino De Ambroggi: No. Not anymore. The first question is on Lingotto. Could you elaborate on what is the strategy going ahead? And I don't know if it's possible just to have a fair value, current fair value, considering what happened in the past few weeks in the market turmoil. I don't know if you have an indication you can provide. The second is on the additional divestitures because if I understood correctly, you were talking about more divestitures. Is there any clue on what could be a moving part going ahead? And third, I know I repeat basically every year the same question, but now it's quite a long time with a discount to net asset value, well in excess of 50% and this morning, even much, much higher. What are the 3 main reasons justifying such a high discount in your view? Just to have a very -- your personal impression. And last, the environment is getting worse and worse. Could you provide us an update on your view on the Stellantis environment and risks considering what is going to happen? John Elkann: There's a lot of questions. So Lingotto, the strategy is very much the one that was stated in the letter that I wrote as the founder of Lingotto in '23. So this is an organization that wants to attract exceptional investors and make sure that they can do what they love, which is investing. We have 4 distinct strategies, as we have described in the past, and those remain consistent with what the strategies are. which allows us to have a diversified sets of strategies, which are different from what we do directly as Exor and it allows the right discipline also being able to have selectively third-party capital from, as I mentioned before, very solid investors. In terms of the recent events, we don't comment on where we stand on mark-to-market. And if you look at the opportunity of the discount, we actually have viewed that in a positive way because it has allowed us to buy back shares as we've done in the past. I think that it is important to stress that in moments of uncertainty, you're better off being patient than rushing, which is why for any capital allocation. Is it in buying our own companies investing more in Lingotto strategies, investing in a new company or doing buybacks? We remain prudent but studious of what would be the different alternatives. Stellantis was able to raise through an hybrid issuance which increased already a strong balance sheet and the overall execution that is being carried forward is on the right track. Giving today any further information on Stellantis is not desirable because we are, as you know, in end of May, we will be assisting to the Capital Markets Day of Stellantis. Thank you, Luigi. Operator: We are now going to proceed with our next question. And the questions come from the line of Luuk Van Beek from Degroof Petercam. Luuk Van Beek: Yes, I have 2 questions. So first of all, have you reviewed your portfolio for the potential impact of higher energy prices and any other things that are happening in the world to see the exposure and the risk level? And the second question is on the discount to NAV. Do you consider to take any measures other than just executing the strategy and delivering and testing on that reducing the discount? John Elkann: Energy prices is premature to actually see the inflationary pressures. But that is definitely something that our companies are working actively in understanding the inflationary pressures that are happening and what type of impact that would have on some of their cost structure. We believe that the discount is actually an opportunity, and that's something that we have been able to capture in the past. Operator: We are now going to proceed with our next question. And the questions come from the line of Alberto Villa from Intermonte SIM. Alberto Villa: Actually, First of all, congratulations for the annual report. It is very clear and very nice also to read. So congratulations to the team. And secondly, going back to Lingotto, it's now more than 11% of your GAV thanks to the performance and looking at the composition of the investments. The vast majority, 70% is the intersection strategy. So the public investments that had a great 2025. I was wondering if in the future, you expect to maybe take advantage of the performance to reduce a little bit the exposure to Lingotto or maybe to mix a little bit more into the to shift a little bit more into the other strategies and how you feel about private markets? So there has been a lot of rumors about the outlook for these asset classes, especially in the U.S. So wondering if you want to share with us your thoughts on that. John Elkann: Thank you. And I will, with Guido, convey your message on our annual report. There was a lot of work in doing it. So our colleagues will be very happy that you appreciated it. Lingotto is made of different strategies. We had committed in '22 on the back of the disposal of PartnerRe, EUR 6.5 billion, which had been divided EUR 5 billion into 1 large investment and into 3 to 5 smaller investments. And we executed that with Philips being the large investments and LifeNet, TagEnergy, Clarivate and Institut Mérieux being 4 smaller investment, whilst EUR 1.5 billion would have been deployed in investments, which back then were Lingotto strategies and ventures, and that has been done. We've also said that as we would be realizing the investment in what used to be Exor Ventures now managed by Ora, we would be recycling it within the strategies of Lingotto. The actual exercise that we do internally the portfolio review is exactly meant on one side to try and see how we think about what we own and the opportunity ahead. As of now, we're not considering allocating more capital to Lingotto strategies, but equally, we're not considering reducing our exposure to Lingotto strategy. Alberto Villa: Any thoughts about the private markets situation? John Elkann: In credit? Alberto Villa: Yes. John Elkann: Luckily, we're not exposed to the credit market, and we are increasing our net cash position the actual environment, as you know, is very tight. Operator: We are now going to proceed with our next question. And the questions come from the line of [ Nicola Gude from Alexco Capital ]. Unknown Analyst: Sorry to come back to the discount theme. But I mean the discount today is such that the shares are at [ 0.44 ] on the dollar, which means if you invest $100 in your share, it's $125 of value and actually probably much more because the shares are depressed in the portfolio, too. And so obviously, compared to that, it's a high bar for the acquisition of a new company. And I guess, is there room to do both in the sense you're mentioning a firepower of $2.5 billion for an acquisition. But why not return, say, $1 billion here and now and then do a $2.5 billion acquisition or something along those lines? Why is there any -- why can't both be done at the same time, I guess, because that would certainly go a long way to create NAV per share, which is the objective at the end for shareholders. John Elkann: So as I mentioned, we haven't committed to no allocation as we speak. What we have committed to is to make sure that we have a strong balance sheet, and we have liquidity. As it pertains to how we will invest it everything is open, and we will make sure that we will be disciplined in how we proceed. Operator: [Operator Instructions]. We are now going to proceed with our next question. And the questions come from the line of Andrea Balloni from Mediobanca. Andrea Balloni: I have a couple. First one is on the potential share buyback. I understand the reason why this year, you are pretty cautious. What could trigger a different decision from a macro standpoint over the rest of the year? What would you consider to be a potential positive catalyst or trigger to start eventually a share buyback program? And my second question is on the potential investment that you are considering. You have mentioned a relevant size and also a material stake that may be taken by Exor. Yet, are you scouting among listed companies such as in the case of Philips or should we expect an investment in private companies? John Elkann: Those are very good questions. On the first one, Today, we have compounding uncertainties. We have uncertainties around the overall commerce that has been triggered by changes between tariffs and regulations. We have uncertainties linked to conflicts that are happening in different parts of the world. We have uncertainties linked to markets that are moving in different directions. And finally, we have uncertainties on the deployment of a substantial new technology, which is AI, which has the power of fire or electricity, hence going to impact in many ways, the way in which companies operate, both in what they do and how they do it. So this is an environment in which we believe that it's important to be prudent and patient in order to really make sure that we can take the best out of it and I remain optimistic about the future of Exor and our companies and in some ways, having had to go through very difficult internal and external situations in the course of '24 and '25 equipped us well to what is ahead. In terms of what are we looking for, we believe that Philips is a good example of the type of companies that Exor would be a good owner of. And that is a function of 3 things. One size we have said last year that we'd like to deploy more than 5% in one company. Second, we think that public markets offer interesting opportunities. And we believe that companies that have a large shareholder or a reference shareholder empirically have proven to perform better within their industry or within an index. And third, we think that the opportunity of sectors where some of these changes that we were describing before, can lead to improvement in these companies. Our role factors that we think describe Philips as a good example. And as of now, we have been, as Benoit mentioned, been very happily involved and the outcomes so far have been good for the company and for Exor. Andrea Balloni: And a follow-up, please. Would you consider to invest a part of this fire power in some of the investments you already have in the portfolio? I'm thinking about Stellantis, Ferrari and other companies, which had a very bad trend recently. I was wondering if you might consider to increase your stake. John Elkann: As I mentioned before, that's a very good question, and that's why today making firm commitments of capital where is where I'd like to be prudent and patient because where would we invest we'd invest in our companies. We know them well. That's what we did last year in Philips and bioMérieux. We would invest in Lingotto strategies. As of now, I said, there's no intention in doing that. We would invest in new opportunities and new Philips or we would be investing in ourselves through a buyback which, as most of you have told us, is definitely very attractive, and we would agree with that. And we think that the bigger the discount is, the more attractive it is. And we have been quite deliberate and decisive in doing that over the last years. So today, we want to make sure about 2 things. One, are we equipped Exor and our companies to go through turbulent times. We believe so. Secondly, are we sufficiently patient to try and understand what is happening in order to be able to underwrite within those 4 possible allocations of capital, what is the one where we as an organization and a Board feel that, that's the best usage of capital, which we want to be disciplined in doing in the best interest of our shareholders. Andrea Balloni: Thank you. Operator: This concludes the question-and-answer session on the phone. I will now hand over for the written questions. John Elkann: So we have a question from ING, which is about the economics of our investment in Lingotto and how Exor benefit -- how it -- benefits. I will pass it to Guido. Guido de Boer: Thank you, John. So we are an investor in ingot Lotos funds. So through that fund, we receive the returns after performance fees. What helps us is that we also own the asset manager, we have co-investors in Covéa and many others that help share the cost of the infrastructure. So in that way, it makes for us a very efficient way to invest behind some of the most talented investors in the world. So I hope that answers your question. There were some follow-up questions from another person on the assets under management for Lingotto. Would you like to take that? Or shall I -- so I wouldn't say that there is a maximum in terms of assets under management for Lingotto as a whole. For individual strategies, there are and they're depending on the type of strategy. For us, what is key is that like John mentioned earlier, the objective for Lingotto not to be an asset gatherer, but an investment manager that delivers outstanding performance. So we will be very cautious that we don't grow the capital too much that it goes at the expense of performance. So that is maybe a bit more philosophical answer, but I think that is critical behind our thinking on assets under management for Lingotto. So those were the questions that we had on the webcast. If there's nothing else or I don't know if you want to make any further remarks, John. John Elkann: Thank you, Guido. Thank you all, and we'll make sure to make '26 the best possible year out of very uncertain and difficult circumstances. Thank you. Operator: Thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.
Operator: Good morning, and thank you for joining the Lument Finance Trust Fourth Quarter 2025 Earnings Call. Today's call is being recorded and will be made available via webcast on the company's website. I would now like to turn the call over to Andrew Tsang, with Investor Relations at Lument Investment Management. Please go ahead. Andrew Tsang: Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our call to discuss Lument Finance Trust's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Financial Results. With me on the call today are Jim Flynn, our CEO; Jim Briggs, our CFO; Greg Calvert, our President; and Zach Halpern, our Portfolio Manager. Last evening, we filed our 10-K with the SEC and issued a press release to provide details on our recent financial results. We also provided a supplemental earnings presentation, which can be found on our website. Before handing the call over to Jim Flynn, I'd like to remind everyone that certain statements made during the course of this call are not based on historical information and may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Such forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties are discussed in the company's reports filed with the SEC, in particular, the Risk Factors section of our Form 10-K and Form 10-Qs. It is not possible to predict or identify all such risks and listeners are cautioned not to place undue reliance on our forward-looking statements. The company undertakes no obligation to update any of these forward-looking statements. Further, certain non-GAAP financial measures will be discussed on the conference call. Presentation of this information is not intended to be considered in isolation nor as a substitute for financial information presented in accordance with GAAP. Reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to the more comparable measures prepared in accordance with GAAP can be accessed through our filings with the SEC. For the fourth quarter and financial -- fiscal year of 2025, we reported GAAP net loss of $0.17 and $0.14 per share of common stock, respectively. For the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2025, we reported distributable earnings of approximately $0 and $0.14 per share of common stock, respectively. In December, we declared a quarterly dividend of $0.04 per common share with respect to the fourth quarter, bringing our cumulative declared dividends for 2025 to $0.22 per common share. And then last Thursday, we declared a quarterly dividend of $0.04 per common share with respect to the first quarter of 2026, unchanged from Q4's quarterly dividend. I will now turn the call over to Jim Flynn. Please go ahead. James Flynn: Thank you, Andrew. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Lument Finance Trust earnings call for the fourth quarter of 2025. We appreciate everyone joining us today. Taking a quick look at the market, the U.S. economy continues to remain resilient, although growth is moderating and uncertainty has increased modestly due to evolving monetary policy, fiscal dynamics and geopolitical risks and considerations. While the Federal Reserve began easing in 2025, the forward path of rates is expected to remain gradual and data dependent with inflation and labor market trends continuing to influence policy. Within commercial real estate, capital market conditions have improved with increased liquidity across both securitized and warehouse financing channels. However, transaction activity remains below historical averages as buyers and sellers continue to navigate pricing discovery and an elevated cost of capital environment. In multifamily, fundamentals are stabilizing following the peak of the recent supply cycle. New deliveries remain elevated in certain Sunbelt markets but are now expected to decline meaningfully into late '26 and '27, due to the sharply reduced starts over the past 18 months. As a result, rent growth remains modest, but is showing early signs of reacceleration in supply-constrained markets, while occupancy has remained relatively stable overall, albeit with some continued pressure in a few high delivery regions. Importantly, structural demand drivers for rental housing remain intact. Affordability constraints in the single-family housing market, coupled with the limited for-sale inventory and still elevated mortgage rates continue to support rental demand and long-term multifamily fundamentals. From a financing perspective, lower short-term interest rates relative to peak levels, combined with the still positive forward curve are constructive development for our borrowers. While debt service coverage remains under pressure for certain transitional assets, the modest easing in index rates and improved operating trends are helping to stabilize credit performance across the sector. The CRE CLO market remains an important source of liquidity with issuance volumes in 2025 exceeding $30 billion and a solid pace of activity continuing into 2026. Investor demand for floating rate exposure remains healthy, particularly for well-structured transactions backed by institutional quality collateral. Spreads have tightened modestly, reflecting improved sentiment, though they remain wide relative to long-term averages. Asset management -- active asset management remains our top priority. We continue to work closely with borrowers to drive outcomes that preserve capital and enhance long-term value, including modifications, extensions and asset level strategies where appropriate. Given the still uneven operating and financing environment, particularly for assets impacted by the recent supplier capital structure challenges, we remain proactive and disciplined in managing each position. During the quarter, portfolio credit metrics improved sequentially, primarily driven by the acquisition of additional performing assets associated with our recent CLO execution. At the same time, we increased reserves on select challenged legacy positions to reflect updated expectations and current market conditions. We have remained active in executing our financing strategy, taking advantage of improved but still selective capital market conditions while maintaining a disciplined approach to leverage and cost of capital. As referenced on last quarter's earnings call, in November of 2025, we entered into an uncommitted master repurchase agreement with JPMorgan Chase, which provides the company with up to $450 million borrowing capacity to finance first mortgage loans, controlling loan participations and other commercial mortgage loan debt instruments secured by commercial real estate. Further, in early December, we entered into a new loan agreement with Northeast Bank that provides the company with up to $50 million in advances to finance portions of our investment portfolio. This match term financing facility provides us with additional flexibility to resolve our REO holdings and achieve positive asset management outcomes. On the same day, the Northeast Bank facility closed, we executed the LMNT 2025-FL3 CLO transaction, a $664 million transaction with an effective advance rate of 88% and a weighted average cost of funds of approximately 191 basis points over SOFR, excluding fees and transaction costs. The initial collateral pool consisted of 32 first lien floating rate mortgage loans with participation secured by 49 multifamily and commercial real estate properties located across the United States. A portion of the collateral was owned by LFT prior to the closing and the remaining collateral was acquired by the company at fair market value plus accrued interest from an affiliate of Lument Investment Management LLC, the company's external manager. The weighted average collateral spread of the entire pool was approximately 321 basis points over 1-month SOFR. The FL3 CLO includes a 30-month reinvestment period, which allows us to redeploy loan principal repayments into new loan investments until June of 2028. In February, we redeemed the remaining outstanding loans and notes of LMF 2023-1 financing transaction and refinanced the underlying pool with our existing warehouse facilities. Given the relatively high weighted average cost of capital and the low current leverage of LMF, the redemption provided the company the ability to redeploy a portion of its investable capital into levered loan assets at more attractive financing terms over time. Finally, subsequent to quarter end, we also amended the terms of our existing secured corporate term loan, extending the maturity date to 2030 and providing us with an incremental $2.3 million of liquidity before fees and deal expenses. The term loan going forward bears an interest rate of 9.75%. During Q4, we generated approximately $104 million of payoffs with proceeds primarily used to reduce securitization liabilities. We also deployed approximately $400 million into loan assets, largely in connection with the FL3 transaction. We ended the year with approximately $23 million of unrestricted cash, combined with our available warehouse capacity, we believe our liquidity position remains appropriate to support portfolio management, asset resolution and selective capital deployment. Our near-term focus remains on active asset management, efficient resolution of legacy positions, and disciplined balance sheet management. While we are encouraged by improving conditions across commercial real estate credit markets, the recovery remains uneven and will likely take time to fully normalize. We continue to expect a market characterized by selectivity with outcomes increasingly differentiated by asset quality, sponsorship and capital structure. Against this backdrop, we remain cautious and highly selective in deploying capital with a focus on strong credit fundamentals, structural protections and risk-adjusted returns. We believe this approach positions us well to navigate the current environment while preserving flexibility to capitalize on opportunities as market conditions continue to evolve. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Jim Briggs, who will provide us details on our financial results. James Briggs: Thanks, Jim. Good morning. Last night, we filed our annual report on Form 10-K and provided a supplemental investor presentation on our website, which we'll be referring to during our remarks. Supplemental investor presentation has been uploaded to the webcast as well for your reference. On Pages 4 through 7 of the presentation, you'll find key updates and an earnings summary for the quarter. For the fourth quarter of '25, we reported net loss to common stockholders of $8.9 million or $0.17 per share. We also reported distributable earnings of approximately $0. There are a few items I'd like to highlight with regards to the Q4 P&L. Our Q4 net interest income was $5.3 million, a slight improvement from $5.1 million recorded in Q3. The weighted average coupon of our loan portfolio declined sequentially to 717 basis points compared to 777 basis points in the prior quarter due to lower spreads on newly acquired loans and a decline in the SOFR benchmark rate. The ending outstanding UPB of the portfolio increased due to the execution of the previously discussed FL3 CLO transaction in December, which we acquired approximately $383 million in assets from an affiliate of our manager. Total operating expenses, including fees to our manager, were elevated quarter-on-quarter at $3.8 million versus $3.1 million in the prior quarter, primarily attributable to onetime legal expenses related to REO assets, the previously mentioned FL1 redemption in November, as well as the financing initiative we elected not to proceed with after securing more attractive terms with the previously mentioned facilities. Primary difference between reported net income and distributable earnings for the fourth quarter was primarily attributable to $8.6 million of unrealized provision for credit losses, $200,000 realized loss on the sale of REO and approximately $296,000 of depreciation on REO. As of December 31, we had 8 loans risk rated 5. All of these are collateralized by multifamily assets. Greg will provide a bit more detail in his remarks. With respect to the allowance for credit losses, we evaluated these 8 risk-rated 5 loans individually to determine whether asset-specific reserves were necessary. After an analysis of the underlying collateral, we recorded a provision for credit losses in the quarter of approximately $8.6 million. Our specific allowance for credit losses has increased as a result to $17.6 million compared to $8.3 million as of September 30. And our general allowance for credit losses decreased $5 million -- decreased to $5 million from $5.7 million in the prior quarter, primarily driven by certain transfers to specific evaluation, payoffs during the quarter and changes to the macroeconomic forecast. We ended 2025 with unrestricted cash balance of $23 million and FL3 -- the CLO we closed in December was fully deployed. As Jim referenced earlier, FL3 provided effective leverage of 88% at a weighted average cost of funds of SOFR plus 191 basis points. The company's total book equity at the end of the quarter was approximately $219 million. Total book value of common stock was approximately $159 million or $3.03 per share, decreasing sequentially from $3.25 per share as of September 30. I'll now turn the call over to Greg Calvert to provide details on the company's investment activity and portfolio performance during the quarter. Greg? Greg Calvert: Thank you, Jim. During the fourth quarter, LFT acquired or funded $400 million of loan assets, the majority of which were obtained as initial collateral for the FL3 transaction. During the period, the company experienced $104 million of loan payoffs. As of December 31, our total loan portfolio consisted of 61 floating rate loans with an aggregate unpaid principal balance of approximately $1.1 billion, a weighted average floating rate of 333 basis points over SOFR and an unamortized aggregate purchase discount of $1.7 million. The weighted average remaining term of our book as of quarter end was approximately 21 months, assuming all available extensions are exercised by our borrowers. 100% of the portfolio was indexed to 1-month SOFR and 93% of the portfolio was collateralized by multifamily properties. As of December 31, approximately 83% of the loans in our portfolio were risk rated at 3 or better compared to 46% as of September 30. Our weighted average risk rating quarter-over-quarter improved to 3.2 from 3.6. This is primarily driven by the acquisition of additional loans for the period from an affiliate of the manager in connection with the FL3 transaction. During the period, we transitioned 1 loan with a UPB of $9.8 million from a 5 risk rating as of September 30 to a 4 or better rating as of December 30 due to an execution of a loan modification, which included a partial paydown of the loan by the borrower in exchange for an extension until Q4 2026. As of December 31, 2025, we had 8 risk-rated 5 loans with an aggregate principal amount of approximately $117 million or approximately 10% of the unpaid principal balance of the quarter end investment portfolio. These included one loan in maturity default that was downgraded to a risk rating of 5 during the quarter with a balance of $22 million collateralized by a multifamily property in Arlington, Texas; 1 loan in monetary default that was downgraded to a risk rating of 5 during the quarter with a balance of $18 million collateralized by a multifamily property in Tampa, Florida; 3 loans in maturity default that continue to be risk rated 5 with an aggregate principal balance of $40 million collateralized by multifamily properties in Philadelphia, Colorado Springs and Cedar Park, Texas; and 3 loans in monetary default that continue to be risk rated 5 with an aggregate principal balance of $38 million collateralized by multifamily properties in Des Moines, Iowa, Tallahassee, Florida and Ypsilanti, Michigan. During 2025, the company foreclosed on 4 REO assets. In late December, we sold one of the properties located in San Antonio, Texas to a third party for $8.2 million and recognized a $500,000 loss in the fourth quarter on the sale. As of December 31, our REO was comprised of 3 multifamily properties. Two of these remaining properties are located in San Antonio and the other is in Houston, Texas. As of quarter end, the properties had a weighted average occupancy rate of 69%. Achieving positive asset management resolutions and maximizing recovery values remains our priority. With that, I will pass it back to Jim Flynn for closing remarks and any questions. James Flynn: Thank you, Greg. Thank you all for joining, and we appreciate your continued partnership and support. And with that, I'd like to ask the operator to turn the call over to questions. Operator: [Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Jason Weaver with JonesTrading. Jason Weaver: I was wondering, can you give some context on how you view the risk reward and opportunity today for new capital deployment against the last few weeks' backdrop of elevated rate volatility? James Flynn: Sure. I mean, obviously, the very current market environment has created some incremental challenges when reviewing the assets. But the starting point is still what is focused on the sponsor in the market, what the expectations are for growth in that market and what the supply dynamics are along with the demand. So that is certainly an evaluation or part of the evaluation kind of the geopolitical volatility here. But we do still firmly feel resolved in the strength of the multifamily market and have to take a bit of a longer view. Our deals are typically structured with interest rate caps. So on the short-term basis, we're protecting ourselves during the initial term of the loan. But we do stress those scenarios, but I think the most important aspects of evaluating the risk around sponsor and market still carry the day even in the most volatile of times. And then structurally, you do your best to protect yourselves both from a leverage standpoint and an interest rate volatility standpoint with structure and caps. But again, sponsor market are going to be critical to that. Certainly, the hope is that over the 2- to 3-year period of a bridge loan that you have some stability return to the market, hopefully sooner than later, but it's obviously a consideration as we deploy capital. And again, I think it makes those first components even more important. Jason Weaver: Got it. And to that point, with the new CLO closed, is there an updated comfort zone for leverage over the near term? James Flynn: On a loan level basis? Is that what you mean or... Jason Weaver: Yes. Well, just overall, really. James Flynn: I mean on the loan level basis, I would say, on average, over the last couple of years since, call it, '23, really '24, average leverage at the asset level has declined relative to historical bridge lending activity. So you're seeing particularly on the lease-up side, construction deals coming on construction, but you're seeing regularly seeing assets in the 60s and low 70s, pretty much across the board. And you're seeing very few in the -- up in the -- into the 80% or higher range. So you've come down pretty meaningfully from what we were seeing in the late teens and early 2020s on a loan level basis. And overall, I mean, corporately, we've been around the same leverage. The leverage available in CLOs is slightly higher than historic norms that obviously we would want to take advantage of. But aside from that, we're not anticipating any material changes to the fully deployed leverage of the LC vehicle. Operator: The next question comes from Chris Muller with Citizens Capital Markets. Christopher Muller: So it looks like nonaccruals as a percent of the portfolio improved in the quarter, which I assume is mostly due to the $400 million of new loans. What was the balance of nonaccruals at year-end? And do you guys have how much of a drag on earnings those assets are? James Briggs: Chris, the nonaccruals, which we touched on in the footnotes individually is -- let me just quickly add this up. I don't have -- sorry -- the drag is about $0.02 and the UPB is $102 million. Christopher Muller: Got it. And then I guess on a similar note, how are you guys thinking about the path to dividend coverage this year? And I guess how it's related is, can you guys get there by cleaning up the existing portfolio in REO? Or do we need to see some portfolio growth to get back to that $0.04 level? James Flynn: So that is the primary topic that we've been focused on and focused on with our Board. The short answer is it's probably a little bit of both. I think on a fully deployed level, we feel that the dividend would be more than covered. What we've looked at is the timing for -- the anticipated timing that we see on the horizon for some of these assets, including those, but also some other payoffs that are anticipated, and then redeploying that capital into newer performing assets, along with the potential for a future financing -- of a future portfolio level financing, whether that be a new CLO, which certainly we'd like to be able to do. But if not a CLO, some broader performing loan portfolio financing to basically have 2 large vehicles similar to the current CLO that we have outstanding. So when we put together kind of the schedule of the timing for resolution and payoffs in the portfolio, the redeployment into performing loans and the potential for more attractive financing in the future, we weigh those things together and feel that it's appropriate to keep the dividend where it is and move through this year and move back toward full coverage of that dividend. Operator: The next question comes from Lee Zulch with Overcap. Lee Zulch: Could you give some color on Q1 2026? James Flynn: I mean I can't give you too much, obviously, as that's forward-looking. But our -- most critically, I suppose I would say is our asset management and where we see resolutions and asset performance, and it's in line with our expectations on a timing standpoint, as we kind of evaluated the plan for the dividend and earnings release, et cetera. So that's kind of, I guess, what I would say, where we've had the ability to redeploy capital with payoffs, we've been able to do so successfully with new performing loans. And obviously, the flurry of new financing activity between the CLO, the 2 warehouses, the refinancing of the term loan have all stabilized the credit side of our balance sheet. And now we're really fully focused on resolving some of these legacy assets that have been on the books for a while, and they're moving forward. We'd like to see everything move a little bit more quickly, but they are moving according to plan and relatively on schedule. I would just mention as well as Jim Briggs mentioned in the earnings call, we did call that 2023 financing transaction with that at a higher cost of funds. Operator: Thank you. As there are no more questions, I will pass back to James Flynn for any closing remarks. Please go ahead. James Flynn: Thank you. Again, thank you for your participation and continued interest in the platform, and we look forward to speaking to you again next quarter. Operator: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.
Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Nexteer Automotive Group Limited 2025 Annual Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the conference call over to Investor Relations Director, Mr. Tony Wang. Please go ahead. Tony Wang: Okay. Thank you, Jamie. Again, welcome, everyone, to our earnings call for the full year of 2025. We made the announcement of our annual results this evening, Hong Kong time. Before we begin today's call, I would like to remind you that this presentation contains a safe harbor statement. For additional information, please refer to the content in the second page of our slides. The presentation accompanying today's call are available on our company's website. Please visit nexteer.com to download slides if you have not done yet. Joining us today are Robin Milavec, Executive Board Director, President, CTO and Interim Global COO; Mike Bierlein, Senior Vice President and CFO. Starting the presentation, Robin and Mike will provide the business and financial highlights, respectively. And then we will open the lines for your questions. Please follow the limit of 2 questions per person. With that, let me turn the call over to our President, Robin. Robin Milavec: Thank you, Tony, and hello to everybody online today. I'll begin with an overview of our business performance and strategic progress, and then I'll hand it over to Mike Bierlein, our Chief Financial Officer, and he will walk you through our financial results and 2026 outlook. So starting with Slide 4 in our deck, let me start with a high-level overview of our full year business highlights. This reflects 5 key milestones demonstrating Nexteer's focus on long-term profitable growth. First is revenue. Our total revenue reached nearly $4.6 billion increasing 7.2% compared to 2024. And as a result, we achieved record revenue for a third consecutive year. This reflects sustained above-market growth driven by new and Conquest business wins. Second is program launches. We successfully launched 57 customer programs with particularly strong momentum in APAC, reflecting our deepening engagement with both global and Chinese OEMs. Third is new business bookings. We achieved customer program bookings totaling $4.9 billion, including new Steer-by-Wire wins with 2 leading Chinese NEV OEMs. The business development on Steer-by-Wire is well on track, along with the solid execution by our team in 2025. Fourth is revenue in our Asia Pacific division. APAC revenue reached a record of approximately $1.5 billion. This represents a 9.8% increase year-over-year, making the fourth consecutive year of record revenue in this region. This milestone highlights a remarkable organic growth trajectory with revenue surging from about USD 1 billion to USD 1.5 billion in less than 3 years. In 2025, Nexteer China and Nexteer India, each achieved record revenue, reflecting continued growth and strong regional execution. And finally, enhancing shareholder returns. We are glad to announce that the Board of Directors has approved a $46 million dividend subject to the approval of the shareholders in the upcoming Annual Shareholders Meeting. This dividend amount is more than double that of last year and represents a total of 45% payout ratio of the 2025 net profit attributable to equity holders which is an increase from 35% we had in 2024. These milestones collectively demonstrate Nexteer's ability to grow above market, while maintaining financial discipline. As I mentioned earlier, we successfully launched 57 customer programs across multiple product lines, regions, customers and vehicle segments. 42 of these were new or conquest wins and 36 were for electric vehicle platforms, demonstrating strong executions as bookings convert into revenue. Today, rather than walking through a detailed launch list line-by-line, this slide simply highlights the selection of major program launches that illustrate our new bookings wins that are translating into tangible growth. First, we achieved the initial launch of our Modular Column EPS or mCEPS in the EMEASA region. While Nexteer's mCEPS was first introduced in China, leveraging our industry-leading EPS building blocks. This successful EMEASA launch further enhances our competitiveness and our regional footprint. Second, we delivered the first Dual Pinion EPS program launch with a leading Chinese OEM. Following the inaugural Dual Pinion EPS launch in EMEASA, we have secured additional orders from multiple Chinese domestic OEMs and other European OEM over the past year. The customer demand for this product is strong, driven by the need for cost-effective speed-to-market solutions combined with Nexteer's proven steering, reliability and performance. At the same time, despite the emergence of Dual Pinion EPS, we have built a very solid and growing Rack EPS business foundation in China. Nexteer Technologies have been adopted across numerous mainstream and premium EV models with customers, including Xiaomi, XPeng, Li Auto, Zeekr, Chery, Changan, and others. Overall, the strong launch momentum across gear-based EPS platforms, including our single pinion, dual pinion and Rack EPS products continue to reinforce Nexteer's market leadership, particularly in the China market. Out of the 57 program launches, 48 of those were in APAC, supporting both Chinese and global customers. This, again, is another proof point of Nexteer's strategic targeting and capitalizing on the region's growth opportunities. This robust launch pipeline reflects increasing diversity across products, across customers and regions which is critical to our long-term success. Looking ahead, we are particularly excited about 2 Motion-by-Wire related product launches beginning in 2026. Turning now to new business awards. We secured $4.9 billion in customer program bookings in 2025, reflecting strong commercial momentum across products, regions and customers. These wins include several breakthrough awards and important first, underscoring our leadership in advanced steering technologies. Most notably, we secured Steer-by-Wire program with 2 leading Chinese new energy vehicle OEMs. And these cover both the handwheel actuator as well as the roadwheel actuator applications. These awards further reinforce Nexteer's leadership in next-generation Motion-by-Wire technologies. Let me expand a little bit more on these 2 customers. So building on our first Steer-by-Wire win with a leading Chinese OEM in the second half of 2024, we successfully secured a second award with this customer in 2025. This follow-on win demonstrates growing customer confidence and an expanding adoption of by-wire technology across the OEM's upcoming vehicle platforms. In addition, we secured our first Steer-by-Wire booking with another leading Chinese OEM, including, again, both the handwheel actuator and roadwheel actuator applications. This program is expected to launch as early as next year, reflecting a short lead time from a business award to production and strong execution capabilities. Beyond Steer-by-Wire, we continue to expand our dual pinion and rear wheel steering business across APAC and EMEASA, deepening relationships with existing Chinese OEMs, while also securing a new European-based OEM. These wins highlight not only the scalability of our dual pinion product technology, but also our ability to deliver cost-effective, lightweight rear wheel steering solutions that enable up to 12 degrees of rear wheel steering turning angle and supporting a broader growth pipeline. We also earned our first Column Assist EPS win with a market-leading OEM in India. This marks an important milestone for Nexteer in 1 of the world's fastest-growing automotive markets. This win demonstrates our ability to localize proven global electric power steering technologies and compete effectively on cost, quality and reliability in a highly value-focused market. Another important first is that we earned the first high output Column Assist EPS win with a leading Chinese OEM. This represents an important expansion of our Column EPS portfolio into higher performance and load applications. This win highlights our ability to extend Column EPS technology beyond the traditional output range to meet more demanding vehicle requirements. We continue to capture the global expansion of Chinese OEMs as they grow their presence in Europe and South America, by leveraging our strong China relationships and global footprint to support customers with consistent scalable steering solutions across regions. Importantly, this trend allows Nexteer to extend China originated wins into incremental global revenue opportunities. And lastly, we successfully conquested a new Power Column business for full-size truck platform in North America, strengthening our leadership position in this region as well. Looking at bookings across product lines and regions, over 75% of Nexteer's bookings were in our EPS product line and nearly half or 45% of our bookings were secured in the APAC region. Overall, this diversified portfolio indicates our technology is becoming the product of choice by many domestic and global OEMs. On the next slide, this highlights that customer diversification remains a core growth pillar for Nexteer. We partner selectively with OEMs to align with the long-term industry mega trends, including electrification, autonomy and connectivity. And today, we serve more than 60 OEMs globally. Over the last year, we've expanded our customer base by winning programs across a broad range of customer models from leading domestic OEMs in China to the market leader in India, to premium EV manufacturers in North America as well as an emerging autonomous mobility company. Importantly, these wins span a wide mix of technologies, including our Rack EPS, Column EPS, Dual Pinion, Rear Wheel Steering, Driveline and Columns and Intermediate Steering Shafts. This demonstrates our ability to deploy the full Nexteer portfolio. It positions us to capture growth from established volume leaders, while also participating in the emergence of new mobility players which are reshaping the industry. While every competitive situation is different, our success consistently comes down to a few core strengths. We bring world-class product and process technologies. Our quality and reliability performance as measured by our customers remains strong and continues to improve. We listen carefully to understand what each customer truly values. And as the Tier 1 in our space was experienced as a global OEM in our early history, we truly understand how critical speed, agility and mindset are in responding to those needs. And finally, flawless execution from development through launch remains a defining differentiator. Together, these capabilities underpin our ability to win, scale and grow profitably across a diverse and evolving customer base. We also continue to make disciplined progress in expanding our manufacturing and technical footprint across Asia Pacific to support long-term growth and localization. This slide shows the time line on how APAC steering production and validation has expanded in the past 5 years. In January of 2025, we opened our state-of-the-art Changshu Manufacturing and Testing facility in China, strengthening our ability to support the growing demand from Chinese OEMs, while aligning with China's focus on high-end intelligent and sustainable manufacturing. That expansion is complemented by our Asia Pacific technical center in Suzhou, which brings comprehensive engineering, validation and corporate functions together in 1 location, enabling faster development cycles and closer proximity to our customers. We have also expanded our India Technical Center near Bengaluru with additional physical validation capabilities, enhancing localized engineering support in that region. Looking into 2026, we've opened our first manufacturing facility in Rayong, Thailand, which has begun production with an initial focus on Column Assist EPS to support growing demand across Southeast Asia. And finally, we broke ground on new smart manufacturing facilities in both Liuzhou and Suzhou, further expanding capacity for advanced steering technologies, including EPS and Steer-by-Wire. Together, these initiatives reflect our disciplined approach to scaling capabilities and supporting customers across the region. On this next slide, I'd like to update the status of 1 of our most important Motion-by-Wire development portfolio products, which is electromechanical breaking or EMB. Nexteer publicly debuted EMB at the 2025 Shanghai Auto Show. We leveraged our technology building blocks to create a modular high-precision braking system to strategically expand into Motion-by-Wire chassis control. Following the Winter Test on EMB 1 year ago, a second round of winter vehicle tests were completed in Yakeshi, China during the period between December of 2025 and March of this year. In this event, we had more than 17 OEM customers that were engaged and had given very positive feedback on the vehicle performance through the on-site test driving and technical review. Meanwhile, our customers were surprised by the rapid pace of our EMB product development progress. Right now, we're developing highly automated production line to accelerate our industrialization process. And we also will continue to optimize the function, performance and durability of the EMB product. We're looking to secure our first business booking of EMB with the Chinese OEM in the course of this year. This next slide highlights how we are capitalizing on Motion-by-Wire and MotionIQ to enable Intelligent Motion in the vehicle. First, we're integrating smart chassis technologies, including steer-by-wire, rear wheel steering and brake-by-wire, with the electric powertrain architectures. This system-level integration allows us to deliver precise coordinated motion control across the vehicle, while supporting OEMs efforts to simplify platforms and scale advanced architectures. Second, we're embedding software-defined vehicle and AI capabilities directly into motion control. Through MotionIQ, we combine proven safety critical algorithms with flexible software tools enabling OEMs to develop, tune and update motion functions more quickly, while retaining control over vehicle differentiation. And third, these capabilities support autonomous vehicle applications, including Robotaxi and ADAS Level 3 Plus. Our Motion-by-Wire, hardware and software foundation enables the redundancy, the precision and the control required for higher levels of automation. Now I'll hand it over to Mike Bierlein for the financial review. Michael Bierlein: Thanks, Robin, and good day, everyone. Nexteer delivered a record year in 2025 with full year revenue reaching $4.6 billion. On an adjusted basis, excluding foreign exchange and commodity impacts, revenue increased 6.9% year-over-year outperforming the market by approximately 320 basis points. Importantly, all 3 regions delivered growth, supported by strong production schedules. Profitability continues to improve. EBITDA grew 11.2% year-over-year, with margins expanding by 40 basis points. We generated positive free cash flow of $124 million, and our balance sheet remains strong, ending the year with $414 million of net cash. From a growth and visibility standpoint, we secured $4.9 billion of customer program bookings during 2025, including 2 Steer-by-Wire program awards reinforcing our long-term growth outlook. Finally, reflecting our confidence in Nexteer's financial strength, our Board approved a $46 million dividend representing a 45% payout ratio, up from 35% in 2024. This confirms our commitment to disciplined capital allocation and increasing shareholder returns. This slide highlights our key financial metrics for 2025: revenue, EBITDA, net profit and free cash flow, and demonstrate solid improvement across our core earnings profile. Revenue reached $4.6 billion in 2025, up 7.2% year-over-year, reflecting favorable volumes and execution on New and Conquest program launches. EBITDA increased to $472 million representing an 11.2% increase versus 2024, with margins expanding to 10.3%, driven by favorable volume and improved operating performance. Net profit attributable to equity holders was $102 million or 2.2% of revenue compared to $62 million in 2024. This includes a $24 million of net impairment costs driven by customer program cancellations. While we recognized a similar net impaired cost of $23 million a year ago. Adjusting for these onetime items, our net income would be $126 million or 2.7% for the year of 2025. Free cash flow was $124 million in 2025 compared to $166 million in 2024. Improvements in EBITDA were offset by a onetime favorable tax benefit received in 2024 and by net investment in working capital to support growth. Overall, 2025 represents a year of improved earnings quality, supported by stronger volumes and operating performance. This slide shows a walk of 2024 revenue to 2025 revenue. Favorable foreign exchange increased revenue by $15 million, driven by the euro strengthening compared to the U.S. dollar. As noted here, the largest driver of the year-over-year increase in revenue was represented by volume, pricing and others, which provided an uplift of $293 million, driven by strong customer schedules and above-market growth in all 3 segments. APAC continued to lead with revenue growth, mainly with the China OEMs. Finally, commodity prices reduced slightly, causing a year-over-year revenue decrease of $1 million. This slide shows our year-over-year revenue growth versus the market in 2025, adjusted for foreign exchange and commodity price changes. On a global basis, Nexteer delivered 6.9% adjusted revenue growth year-over-year, outperforming the market by approximately 320 basis points. Looking at the regions. North America revenue increased by 4.4% year-over-year and 5.4% above market as our customer programs continue to perform well in the market. APAC continued to lead with 10.2% year-over-year growth and 3.1% growth over market, underscoring the strength of our regional execution and customer portfolio. EMEASA delivered strong growth with 8.5% year-over-year revenue increase and 9.5% above market, supported by program ramp-ups. This slide summarizes our 2025 revenue performance by region and highlights both the mix and growth dynamics across the business. Starting on the left. Total revenue increased from $4.3 billion in 2024 to $4.6 billion in 2025. From a mix standpoint, North America remains our largest region at 50% of total revenue, with APAC at 32%, and EMEASA at 17%. Overall, the regional mix remains balanced with continued structural growth in APAC. Turning to the regional growth performance on the right. North America revenue of $2.3 billion increased 4.4% year-over-year. APAC delivered strong growth of 9.8% or 10.2% excluding FX and commodity impacts supported by sustained momentum from New and Conquest program launches over the past several years and our leading position with the Chinese OEMs. EMEASA revenue increased 11.4% year-over-year or 8.5% excluding FX and commodity impacts driven primarily by Conquest program volume ramp-ups. This slide walks through the year-over-year change in EBITDA from 2024 to 2025. EBITDA increased from $424 million in 2024 to $472 million in 2025, representing an 11.2% year-over-year increase with margins expanding from 9.9% to 10.3% of revenue. Starting with the key drivers. Volume and mix contributed $59 million, reflecting higher revenue and improved operating leverage across the business. These gains were partially offset by $10 million related to troubled supplier costs as well as $10 million of net tariff impact, both of which pressured year-over-year performance in North America. Restructuring cost was $9 million in 2025, which was equal to our restructuring cost in 2024. Restructuring costs were primarily to support a further 15% reduction in U.S. salaried employment in 2025, as we continue to focus on optimizing our cost structure to improve margins and costs related to the transfer of the Columns operation from the U.S. to Mexico, which is nearing completion. All other performance factors contributed $9 million, reflecting continued improvement in manufacturing and material performance more than offsetting price reductions and economics. This slide highlights our EBITDA and margin performance by region in 2025 compared with the last year. Starting with North America. EBITDA was $174 million in 2025 compared with $178 million in 2024. EBITDA margin declined from 8.1% to 7.6%, as margin improvement initiatives were more than offset by troubled supplier and net tariff costs. APAC EBITDA increased to $243 million up from $230 million in the last year, driven by continued strong revenue growth, EBITDA margins remained robust at 16.6%. APAC continues to deliver solid earnings growth and margin performance supported by increased scale and operating execution. In EMEASA, EBITDA increased significantly to $69 million, up from $36 million in 2024. EBITDA margins expanded from 5% to 8.6%, driven by improving operating efficiency and revenue growth, reflecting meaningful year-over-year progress in the region. This slide shows our EBITDA to net profit walk for 2025. Overall, the year-over-year $48 million in EBITDA increase is driving the net profit increase from $62 million to $102 million. Depreciation and amortization totaled $309 million in 2025, broadly flat versus last year. D&A includes depreciation of plant, property and equipment as well as amortization of intangible assets. The results include a $24 million net program impairment charges recorded in 2025. And $23 million in 2024, primarily related to North America EV program cancellations and volume reductions. We continue to work with our customers on cost recoveries related to these programs. Operating profit increased to $163 million, up from $115 million last year, reflecting the stronger EBITDA performance. Below operating profit, JV earnings increased modestly, driven mainly by contributions from our Chongqing operations. Income tax expense increased to $55 million compared with $42 million last year. This increase was primarily driven by improved profitability. Our U.S. operations remain in a valuation allowance position, driving our effective tax rate to be elevated at 33% for 2025 compared to 36% in 2024. As our profitability continues to improve in the U.S., our effective tax rate will continue to reduce. For 2026, the forecast for effective tax rate is slightly below 30%, and our long-term effective tax rate remains in the high teens. Moving to the balance sheet and cash flow. On the left of the slide, you can see our full year 2025 cash flow performance compared with 2024. Cash from operating activities of $405 million in 2025 was $41 million lower than 2024, as increased EBITDA was offset by a onetime favorable tax benefit in 2024 and by a net investment in working capital to support growth. Cash used in investing activities totaled $281 million in 2025, largely in line with the last year. Overall, free cash flow was strong at $124 million. We ended 2025 with $501 million of cash on hand and gross debt of only $50 million with finance leases of $37 million, resulting in a net cash position of $414 million at year-end. Total liquidity stood at $833 million comprised of $501 million of cash and $332 million of committed credit facilities, providing significant financial flexibility. Turning to our 2026 operating considerations. Despite expectations for modestly lower global OEM production in 2026 we remain on track to deliver another year of record revenue. We expect above-market revenue growth in 2026 of approximately 200 to 300 basis points, driven primarily by continued growth in APAC, particularly in China as we continue to expand with both global and domestic OEMs. From a profitability perspective, we expect continued margin expansion benefiting from net performance improvements and increased volume leverage. Our Motion-by-Wire portfolio continues to build momentum with additional order opportunities anticipated and initial revenue recognition expected to begin in 2026, marking an important milestone in the commercialization of this technology. At the same time, geopolitical risks persist, including ongoing conflicts and trade tensions, we remain vigilant and continue to actively manage these risks through close engagement with customers, suppliers and our global operating footprint. Nexteer's long-term investment opportunity remains compelling, supported by above-market revenue growth, continued margin expansion through operational efficiency and execution, our leading position in Motion-by-Wire technology and a strong balance sheet, enabling strategic investments and increasing shareholder returns. In closing, Nexteer has a well-defined strategy focused on technology leadership, portfolio alignment with megatrends, disciplined cost management and targeted growth in China and emerging markets. Thank you for joining us today. Operator, Jamie, please open the line for Q&A. Operator: [Operator Instructions] And our first question today comes from Shelley Wang from Morgan Stanley. Shelley Wang: I have 2 questions. The first is about our new products. And it's good to see the progress on the Steer-by-Wire project wins. And then, I was wondering, like, in the long term, are we more focused on the Steer-by-Wire itself or we target to provide like the integrated solutions, maybe including the Steer-by-Wires like EMB. And then if it's the integrated one, then what's our advantage if comparing to other chassis suppliers and the start-up? So this is my first question. And my second question is about the impairments and the compensation. And because from the financial statements, we see we booked $54 million customer compensation in 2024, but only $8 million last year. So are we expected to receive more compensation this year? Or the $8 million is for the project installations last year? Yes. So that's my second question. Robin Milavec: Okay. Thank you, Shelley. This is Robin. I'll take the first question that you had, and then I'll turn it over to Mike to address your second question. So in terms of the new product strategy, certainly, we've been developing our Steer-by-Wire product for a number of years now, and we are beginning to see traction in the market, especially in the China market with Steer-by-Wire, new business wins, production launches that will start this year. And as a part of this by wire technology, our intention is to be a chassis Motion-by-Wire supplier. So that is the reason for the recent development of our electromechanical braking system. And that is a critical milestone in the Chassis-by-Wire system that we need to fulfill. So I would indicate that the advantage that we will have in this market, obviously, when you think about braking, we don't have a long history of braking as a company. However, we are very experienced in safety-critical vehicle systems, and the EMB product has -- shares a lot of commonality with electric power string in terms of the electric motor, the actuator, the electronics, the software, all of that is very scalable, and it builds on those critical technology building blocks with the EPS. So we see a lot of potential to increase our scale and really drive competitiveness by having both the Steer-by-Wire and the EMB products together. In addition, we don't have a lot of legacy investments in hydraulic braking. So we're really free from the past legacy of this older technology that will be phasing out and we are entering in this technology shift in the industry to electric braking. So we believe that is also an advantage for us. And the third advantage I would highlight is the close partnership that we have developed with the China OEMs. I noted that we had 17 customers evaluating our Brake-by-Wire vehicles in our Winter testing. There is significant interest from many of the China OEMs to support Nexteer, and we believe that relationship will lead to business sourcing for both Steer-by-Wire and EMB, and that will enable us to enter the braking market globally at some point in the near future. With that, let me hand it over to Mike for part 2 of your question, Shelley. Michael Bierlein: Thanks for the question, Shelley. So in terms of the impairments, it's certainly a challenging situation in North America with the changing, say, demand and support from government programs to support the electric vehicles. So each of our 3 major customers within North America determined to cancel or significantly reduce volumes on their EV truck and SUV platforms. And that happened towards the end of the year of 2025. We did record $32 million of impairments between write-offs for our engineering intangible assets as well as write-offs for some specific, say, machinery and equipment. We did recover $8 million that netted us down to $24 million on a P&L impact for the year. And because these program cancellations happen toward the end of the year, we were not able to fully negotiate the recoveries with our customers, and we do expect to receive recoveries yet in 2026. Now we also have to deal with challenges across our supply chain. And certainly, we have costs that our partners and our supply base have incurred relative to these program cancellations as well. But to answer your question, yes, we do expect to recover this further cost to offset these write-offs in 2026. Operator: And our next question comes from [ Jiayi Shi ] from Guotai Haitong Securities. Unknown Analyst: And I'm just wondering how much would you estimate the growth of revenue of each area in 2026 and the EBITDA margin of each area? Michael Bierlein: Thanks, Jiayi, for further questions. And certainly, considering the dynamic environment that we're facing in 2026, there has been certainly a mix of impacts on our revenue outlook forecast. As I mentioned, we are expecting our revenue to grow on a year-over-year basis, above market by 200 to 300 basis points. And with that, we are, at this point, anticipating a global market volumes to be lower by about 1% for the year. And I think that the 1% really depends on how this geopolitical conflict between the U.S., Israel and Iran ends up playing out over the years -- over the year. Hopefully, the conflict ends sooner. Our forecast is, of course, assuming a short-term conflict with that. So from a volume perspective, we are seeing that most of our growth over market will be in Asia Pacific. So you can think about, the 200 to 300 basis points growth being largely in Asia Pacific. From an earnings profile. We do see a continued margin expansion. And if you think about breaking that down then by region, I continue to challenge our Asia Pacific region to maintain profit margins in around the 16% to 17% EBITDA range. And we continue to see improvement and momentum in our EMEASA segment. So you can expect added improvements in EMEASA as well as we see improvements in North America as we have these onetime charges related to troubled suppliers and net tariff costs within North America. Operator: [Operator Instructions] And at this time, I'm showing no additional questions, we would like to thank you for the questions and today's participation. If there are any further queries, please contact us at investors@nexteer.com. The conference has now concluded. We do thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect your lines. Robin Milavec: Thank you, gentlemen.
Operator: Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Kingfisher plc Full Year 2025-'26 Results Presentation. [Operator Instructions] I would like to remind all participants that this call is being recorded. I will now hand over to Thierry Garnier to start the presentation. Thierry Dominique Garnier: Good morning, and thank you for joining us today for Kingfisher's Full Year Results Presentation. Bhavesh and I will take you through our full year results, our outlook for the coming year and provide an update on our key strategic initiatives. Following this presentation will be the usual Q&A. So let's start with the key messages. 2025 was a strong year for Kingfisher as we continue to execute our strategy at pace and delivered on all our financial priorities. And there are three points I want to highlight. First, our strategic growth initiatives are driving market share gains, a key indicator of our progress. We grew market share across each of our banners in the U.K., France and Spain, and maintained share in Poland. Our sales growth was high quality, led by growth in volume and transaction. We delivered double-digit growth in both trade and e-commerce sales during the year, while our 1P commerce sales were strong. I am particularly pleased with our progress in our marketplaces now reaching GBP 518 million on a GMV basis and up 58% year-on-year. Second, we maintained strong financial discipline amidst significant cost pressure. We grew gross margin by 80 basis points in the year, leveraging Kingfisher scales and sourcing power and benefited from marketplace and retail media, both of which are gross margin accretive. We delivered strong growth in adjusted profit before tax and in EPS. When excluding the business rates refund at B&Q in the prior year, profit is up 13%. And our profit growth, combined with a sharp focus on working capital management enabled us to deliver strong free cash flow. Third, we delivered attractive returns to shareholders. We completed our GBP 300 million share buyback program in March. And today, we announced our fifth GBP 300 million share buyback program, reflecting the momentum in the business. We also announced today a dividend of 12.4p per share, in line with last year. And let me now hand over to Bhavesh for the financial review and outlook. Bhavesh Mistry: Thank you, Thierry, and good morning, everyone. Let me start with an overview of our performance for the year. Total sales for the group were GBP 12.9 billion, with like-for-like sales up plus 1.4%, excluding a negative calendar impact of minus 0.3%. Our sales growth was led by strong performance from our U.K. banners. Adjusted profit before tax was GBP 560 million, up 6%. Adjusted EPS was 23.8p, up 15%, underpinned by our strong earnings growth in the year and supported by a 6% uplift from our share buyback program. Free cash flow generation was GBP 512 million. We delivered this while also increasing CapEx by GBP 71 million as we stepped up our investment in our stores, technology and property. Net leverage now stands at 1.4x, and we maintain a very healthy balance sheet. Turning now to our markets. B&Q reinforced its market-leading position with total sales growth of plus 3.9% or plus 5.9% when we include marketplace GMV sales. Like-for-like growth is plus 3.3%, significantly outperforming a flat market with our market share at record levels. From a product category perspective, core remained resilient with 12 consecutive quarters of underlying like-for-like growth. Big-ticket delivered strong growth of plus 6% in the year and seasonal was plus 30% in Q1, benefiting from favorable weather, which we will lap this quarter. We successfully captured the transference of customers from Homebase to B&Q and acquired 8 of their stores, which our team rapidly opened in time for peak trading. TradePoint sales grew by plus 5.2%, fueled by our enhanced loyalty program and an increased investment in trade sales partners. E-commerce sales grew by plus 21.5%, supported by marketplace growth. B&Q's marketplace is gross margin accretive and generated GBP 15 million of profit in the year. Looking to the year ahead, we will further enhance our trade offering with investment in our people, our offer and our stores, and scale marketplace as we onboard cross-border vendors. You'll hear more on this from Thierry later on. Screwfix delivered consistently strong performance throughout the year with total sales growth of plus 4.5% and like-for-like growth of plus 3.2%, significantly outperforming the market. Our Screwfix team have executed at a high level, enhancing the customer proposition through targeted marketing and promotional campaigns, competitive pricing, range improvements and deeper engagement with trade customers via app-driven reward initiatives. Screwfix opened 27 stores on a net basis during the year, further growing our footprint and convenience for customers. Looking forward, our focus is on growing our share of the trade wallet. We also see further range and space opportunities. Our U.K. banners generated GBP 575 million in retail operating profit, representing 78% of our group total retail profit. Profit grew by plus 2.9% in the year or plus 9.4%, excluding the impact of last year's B&Q business rates refund. We delivered this profit growth despite the significant increases in wages, higher national insurance contributions and the impact from EPR packaging fees. In France, against a subdued consumer backdrop and a home improvement market decline of around minus 3%, we are encouraged to see both of our banners outperforming the market. Castorama like-for-like sales were minus 2.2% in a year of significant change, particularly from the restructuring of several stores. I'll speak more on the progress of our Castorama plan shortly. From a strategic perspective, Castorama delivered a rapid rollout of its trade proposition across the estate, introduced CastoPro zones in 50 stores and implemented a trade loyalty program. Trade penetration reached 9% by the end of the year, up from below 1% a year ago. Good progress was also made on marketplace with 1.6 million SKUs now available to customers. Brico Dépôt delivered total sales of minus 1.8% and like-for-like sales of minus 2.3%. Brico improved its price positioning by 2 points over the year and delivered strong progress in its trade proposition with trade sales up 26% and trade penetration increasing to 17% at the end of the year. This performance was driven by an expanded trade-focused range, investment in dedicated trade colleagues and enhancements to its loyalty program. Brico also successfully opened 1 store transferred from Castorama, doubling sales densities. We feel good about Brico Dépôt, a capital-light model with a clear customer offering of discounted prices and high product availability. Our French banners delivered GBP 97 million of retail operating profit with a margin of 2.5%, up 10 basis points year-on-year. This was a strong performance as both banners offset sales deleverage from a declining market and higher social charges through gross margin expansion and structural cost reductions. Turning now to an update on our restructuring plan for Castorama. Since the plan was announced in March 2024, the new management team has moved at pace to improve competitiveness and efficiency, delivering good progress despite a weaker market, which declined by over 7% in 2024 and a further 3% in 2025. We've already talked about our progress in trade and digital. In addition, the team undertook a significant number of range reviews, which benefited several core categories, including surfaces & décor, tools and tiling. We took cost price and supplier management actions, streamlining the head office organization and rationalized the distribution network space by 15%. The reduction since 2019 was over 35%. Our store restructuring and modernization program is delivering tangible results. Right-sized stores are seeing much higher sales densities, while revamped stores are outperforming the Casto average. The two franchise stores have returned to profitability. This progress has been delivered against a backdrop of significant people change, including a 50% refresh of store managers and regional directors and a 40% change in category directors. We will continue to drive this agenda at pace in 2026, positioning the business to fully benefit when market conditions improve. For France, overall, we remain confident in delivering our medium-term margin target of circa 5% to 7%, with the timing and trajectory of reaching this target dependent upon the pace of the market recovery. In Poland, we remain optimistic about the medium-term growth opportunities. Castorama is a market leader with potential to increase space whilst building on both trade and e-commerce. Poland experienced a slow start to the year with unfavorable weather and political uncertainty weighing on home improvement spending. Like-for-like was minus 1.1% for the full year, though conditions improved in Q4 with a return to growth in both the market and our business. We continue to make good progress with our strategic initiatives, about GBP 1 in GBP 3 comes from trade customers, supported by the rapid rollout of CastoPro zones in more than half of the estate, the recruitment of specialized sales partners and a new trade loyalty program. And e-commerce sales increased 30% year-on-year, benefiting from the launch of marketplace in January 2025. Poland generated GBP 87 million in retail operating profit, representing around 12% of group retail profit. During the year, we accelerated technology investment, resulting in a one-off circa GBP 5 million impairment of legacy systems. Excluding this charge, Poland retail profit was up and profit margin was broadly flat year-on-year. Iberia had an excellent year with plus 8.8% like-for-like growth, outperforming a growing market, driven by competitive price positioning and strong progress in trade. Moving now to our profit performance in the year. Adjusted profit before tax rose by 6% or plus 13% when excluding last year's GBP 33 million business rates refund at B&Q. A key driver of profit growth was gross margin expansion, which increased by 80 basis points, driven primarily by group buying and sourcing benefits, progress in marketplace and retail media with FX also providing a tailwind. We also delivered significant operating cost reductions. Some specific examples include a reduction in our supply and logistics network space of around 10% in France and nearly 30% in Poland, efficiencies in our stores from the rollout of self-service checkouts and the implementation of new store operating models and property cost reductions through store rightsizing and regears. For the year, we delivered 30 basis points of retail operating margin expansion to 5.7% and adjusted profit before tax of GBP 560 million. Turning now to our group cash flow. Starting on the left of this chart. We generated adjusted EBITDA of GBP 1.3 billion. Working capital delivered a net inflow of GBP 74 million, driven by higher payables and our focus on inventory management. Tax, interest and other items amounted to GBP 13 million, including a GBP 60 million benefit from tax prepayment true-ups, which we will lap in H1 2026-'27. CapEx spend totaled GBP 388 million, an increase of GBP 71 million as we continue to invest in technology and our stores. Together, these drove free cash flow of GBP 512 million. We returned GBP 474 million to shareholders through dividends and share buybacks, and total net cash inflow for the year was GBP 107 million. Our dividend payments and share buybacks in 2025-'26 build on our track record of attractive returns to shareholders. Over the past 5 years, we have returned GBP 2.4 billion, equivalent to around 40% of our market capitalization. Looking ahead, we'll continue to build on this track record with a proposed dividend of 12.4p per share to be paid in July and the launch of our fifth share buyback program of GBP 300 million commencing shortly. Looking ahead, we see further opportunities across gross margin, costs and working capital. On gross margin, we expect continued benefit from group buying and sourcing, marketplace, retail media and logistics efficiencies. On the other hand, we expect mix effects from our growing trade penetration and from maintaining competitive prices. We see further opportunities through cost action. At store level, we will deliver savings through operating model enhancements and technology. We also see additional opportunities from improving head office efficiency and to further leverage our shared services center. Inventory also continues to be a priority. Our supply visibility tool is enabling us to reduce lead times and minimum order quantities with our OEB vendors. Coming out of a strong year, we are confident in our ability to capitalize on the attractive growth opportunities in our markets and are well positioned to continue growing sales ahead of our markets, profit ahead of sales and to generate strong free cash flow. For the financial year '26-'27, with a mixed consumer environment, we expect adjusted profit before tax in the range of GBP 565 million to GBP 625 million, and are targeting GBP 450 million to GBP 510 million of free cash flow. We remain mindful of the heightened macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainty in recent weeks. Where we stand today, we estimate that the in-year direct impact on energy and freight cost is limited. As you know, the situation remains fluid. In similar situations, our markets have behaved rationally on pricing and margin. We have a strong track record of maintaining competitive prices, managing gross margin effectively and flexing our cost base. You can expect us to maintain our disciplined approach. Let me now hand back to Thierry. Thierry Dominique Garnier: Thank you, Bhavesh, and I want to start by outlining the strategic growth drivers, which underpin our current performance and position us for future growth. You can see these priorities on this page. And let me start with trade. We continue to grow our exposure to trade customers, a segment that shops more frequently, spends more and exhibits more predictable purchasing patterns. Our trade strategy leverages our existing store footprint and supports both market share growth and higher store sales densities with little to no incremental CapEx. As a result, trade is both revenue and margin accretive at retail operating profit level. Screwfix treat penetration already stands at 75% across the rest of the group, trade sales grew by 23% and trade customers now account for GBP 1 in every GBP 3 of group sales. With this rapid progress, we are updating our medium-term ambition and now target GBP 5 billion of group sales from trade customers. So looking at some of our initiatives in a little more detail and starting with our stores. We are expanding dedicated trade space within our stores and now have trade zones live across all our banners. We made particularly strong progress in Castorama France during the year as we rolled out our trade proposition across the entire estate and opened 50 new CastoPro zones. We're also excited to announce our first stand-alone TradePoint store opening in London this week. We also continue to invest heavily in our people, 279 dedicated trade sales partners are enrolled across our banners, circa 3x more than last year. We are empowering our trade sales partners and see this as a key lever to unlock additional share of wallet. At Screwfix, our new rewards program provides an industry-leading proposition for our trade customers and is driving strong engagement via the Screwfix app. Customers who sign up to the program receive exclusive and personalized offers, but also surprise perks and gamified engagement. We now have 2.2 million active rewards customers showing higher frequency of visits and higher average order values. Screwfix is also a great example on how we have succeeded with an app-first approach with 41% of e-commerce sales now coming from the app. Another example of where our trade focus comes to life is Brico Dépôt France, a capital-light model with a strong discounter DNA. Trade customers like the efficient shopping experience, competitive pricing and high product availability. We trialed new Pro zones during the year and signed up over 210,000 trade customers to a Pro loyalty program. We also improved price competitiveness by 2 points and introduced bulk-buy discount. These actions enabled Brico Dépôt to grow trade sales by 26% and reached a trade penetration of 17% at the end of last year. We will further build on our trade proposition this year with more Pro zones and enhance our trade value offering through additional volume discounts. Moving now to the digital ecosystem we are building and it starts with a strong 1P e-commerce proposition with our stores at the center. In 2020, we made the strategic decision to leverage our store network to fulfill online orders. This enables us to offer market-leading fulfillment speed for click & collect and home delivery, while also driving incremental traffic to our stores. We continue to improve our core platform by transitioning of our e-commerce legacy systems towards modular and agile technology. This enables rapid feature innovation, faster site load times and market-specific feature deployment. We have developed a digital app store model to ensure excellent product availability for online orders, 94% of 1P orders are picked in-store and we offer rapid fulfillment options from store through our click & collect and home delivery propositions. All this, in turn, drives increased traffic, which supports the growth of our 3P marketplace. Our marketplace offers a broad choice with several million SKUs, which in turn generates more traffic to our websites and fuels additional 1P sales. Our stores also play a critical role for our marketplace. All stores accept marketplace returns and B&Q now offers in-store click & collect for marketplace items, driving additional footfall. Our loyalty programs provide us with rich customer data, enabling personalized offers and targeted promotions. The market is increasingly shifting towards mobile-first and app-based engagement, which provides us with access to data that allows us to improve and personalize customer interaction, and this leads us to monetization. With scale, traffic and comprehensive data, we can sell and grow retail media. As you know, there is lots of current news flow when it comes to agentic commerce. Our platforms are ready to connect to agentic commerce apps, and I will come back to this topic shortly. So to summarize, our digital ecosystem drives a virtuous cycle of value, leveraging our store assets, our web traffic and is powered by Kingfisher technology. So moving to Slide 22, which highlights our group e-commerce performance this year. Screwfix already generates 60% of sales from e-commerce. In the other banners, we grew e-commerce by 20%, and you can see progress in every one of our banners. At the group level, GBP 1 out of GBP 5 now come from e-commerce. Our target in the medium term is to reach e-commerce sales penetration of 30%, out of which 1/3 from marketplaces. So moving to our marketplaces, and I'm going to focus here on B&Q, which is most advanced and provides a clear blueprint for scaling across our other banners. We launched our B&Q marketplace in 2022 and have already achieved a cumulative GBP 1 billion of GMV sales since launch. We have scaled our platform significantly over the past 4 years, adding 2,800 vendors and 3.7 million SKUs while also improving convenience for our customers with the introduction of click & collect, a first for our marketplace in the U.K. B&Q's marketplace has generated GBP 50 million retail profit contribution last year and the marketplaces in France and Iberia have now reached breakeven early in their journey. So looking forward, we have ambitious growth plans, including the onboarding of more international cross-border vendors. And for context, cross-border accounts for broadly 50% of sales at mature pure-play marketplaces and only a few percent for us. An emerging income stream for us is the monetization of our customer data and our traffic. Our insight platform, Core IQ, underpinned by Kingfisher's first-party data enables us to monetize our data with our corporate vendors, having successfully built this capability in Castorama France, we plan to roll it out across all banners in 2026. So moving to retail media. We have brought capabilities in-house, build a group Center of Excellence, and each banner now has a dedicated retail media team. We have also started piloting advertising on digital screens in stores. While at an early stage, we are very excited about this new income stream as adoption of retail media is strong. We target 3% of our e-commerce sales as additional revenues with a significant drop-through to profit. Kingfisher is also a rapid adopter of AI. We see AI as a tailwind for our business and ourselves as leaders in this space. Our in-house AI agent, Hello Casto, was the first agentic agent in the global home improvement industry when we launched it in 2023, followed by Hello B&Q in 2025. Those early investments are paying off. We have seen an increase of over 60% of customers visiting Hello Casto online with conversion increasing by 95%. Last week, we announced a new strategic partnership with Google Cloud. Through this, we'll introduce AI-powered search across all our banner websites and apps, helping customers find products more intuitively. We have also done extensive work to enable AI agents to discover our products and to transact autonomously when this functionality becomes available in the U.K. and in Europe. This partnership will expand our capabilities further, allowing customers to complete purchases via Gemini and other AI agents. Underlying our business are strong own exclusive brands where we provide innovative solutions at affordable prices and which are accretive to our margin. In 2025, within our power tool categories, we launched our next-generation Erbauer range with best-in-class performance in power, in control and durability. Since launched, it has achieved plus 43% sales growth compared with the previous range, and Erbauer is now our #1 tool brand sold across the group. Our new Ashmead kitchen range delivers standout style at entry-level pricing. While our Pragma lowest-priced kitchen range, retails for less than EUR 200 and is 15% cheaper than branded alternatives. Our new kitchens have been a key driver of our strong big-ticket performance in the year. And alongside product innovation, we are developing a growing portfolio of complementary services that support customers with their project such as kitchen and bathroom design to rental, installation service and project finance. Our banners hold leading positions in their markets, each with a distinct model and clear customer proposition where attractive space opportunities exist that meet our investment criteria, we continue to complement our existing store estate. Our mid- to long-term ambition for store space remains at 1.5% to 2.5% sales contribution per annum, and 27 new store openings are planned for the coming year. We believe compact stores will play a more important role in the future across our markets, allowing us to meet customer needs in high-density urban areas and offering convenience and fast fulfillment through click & collect and home delivery. Let me now turn to Screwfix France, which is delivering plus 49% like-for-like store sales growth, in line with our expectation. Momentum continues across all KPIs with a 52% increase in unique customers year-on-year and growing national brand awareness. We continue to see good growth in our older cohorts after 3 years and particularly strong momentum in the north of France where we observe a network effect. So this performance gives us confidence in the future of Screwfix in France. The strategic growth drivers I have outlined underpin Kingfisher's attractive investment story. We have leading positions in our markets, and those markets have attractive structural growth drivers. We operate a diverse portfolio of banners, each with distinct formats and propositions that address a wide range of customer needs. Our strategic growth drivers are allowing us to grow our market share and give us confidence in our continued delivery against our financial priorities, growing our sales ahead of our markets, increasing our profit ahead of sales and generating strong free cash flow. So to summarize, '25-'26 was a strong year. We have clear and attractive growth drivers, and we are confident in our continued delivery in '26-'27 and beyond. With that, let's move to Q&A. Thank you, everyone. Operator: [Operator Instructions] I would like to remind all participants that this call is being recorded. We will take our first question from Richard Chamberlain with RBC. Richard Chamberlain: A couple of questions from me please to start. Can you hear me okay? Bhavesh Mistry: Yes, very good. Richard Chamberlain: Yes. Excellent, excellent. Yes. So first is on the space target you're setting out for the longer term. I think you're talking about 1.5% to 2.5% per year net. I wondered if you can just talk through what the key drivers of that space ambition will be? And also what would the gross space growth be in that scenario? That's the first question. Thierry Dominique Garnier: Thank you, Richard. So I think, first of all, indeed, that's our medium-term target. We believe that Screwfix first is our -- this area where we have a lot of potential. In the U.K., with a format like Screwfix City, but moreover in France. We know that today, we are happy with the store maturity, we will go for a large number of stores in France. In Poland, we have said that we'll probably cover about 50% of the city where we want to be. We have more store to open, not only big boxes as well as medium boxes, around 4,000 square meters of format, we really believe in and as well as smaller format, we call it Castorama Smart, about 2,000 square meters, a lot of potential in Poland. But in France, Brico Dépôt 1,000 is the format we are having high expectations upon that we have a few stores. We're still looking at the results, but it could be an attractive format as well as Iberia. So obviously, Richard, the expansion is not linear. Sometimes you have opportunities, sometimes you have up and down, but clearly, that's our medium-term target. Richard Chamberlain: Great. Very helpful color. And my second question is on the marketplace. Obviously, growth very strong last year. Can you give us a sense of how much that's being driven by newer vendors and how much by a sort of broader range of SKUs from existing vendors on the platform? Thierry Dominique Garnier: I think it's both. We are -- now B&Q, it's the third year in '25, will be the fourth year this year. So we keep increasing the number of SKU, if you compare year-on-year, the number of vendors. In the other countries, you have really a very strong scale up in France, in Poland, in Iberia, we really continue to grow the vendors. I think the big new things that started in '25 and that will be a bigger thing in '26 is what we call cross-border of vendors. In fact, today, when you look at the B&Q marketplace, we just have a few percent of our vendors that are not legally located in the U.K. And we know countries like Germany, for example, or other European countries, you have a very strong base of industrial vendors. It took us a while to find the tech solution to onboard and there is VAT and payment challenges. And now we are able to do that. So you will see a lot more cross-border vendors in the future. And for large marketplaces, I will not give you names, but you can guess the names, in Europe and in the U.S., it's broadly 50% of their vendors are not local vendors. So we feel that's a big opportunity for us looking forward. Bhavesh Mistry: Maybe a couple of things to add, Richard, why we like marketplace, it extends our ranges, lets us play in categories, we wouldn't align with our proposition, but it wouldn't make sense for us to stock directly. So things like white goods, bulky things that take a lot of space in stores, maybe lower margin cap products. But the other thing is marketplace that gets us to reach new customers, right? We have half of the customers that come to B&Q marketplaces are new to diy.com. And then they go on to buy 1P product as well. So we're attracting more customers onto our website to be able to sell them more 1P. Operator: Our next question comes from Tim Ramskill with Bank of America. Timothy Ramskill: I've got a few, so I'll maybe go one at a time. The first couple are kind of cash flow related. So I guess, you obviously highlighted the benefits delivered on inventory. But at the same time, looking at the balance sheet, that's sort of not immediately obvious numbers wise. So maybe you can just help me out. I think there may have been some Chinese New Year effects at play there. So maybe you can just sort of help us sort of square the kind of improvement of 5 days of inventory, please? Thierry Dominique Garnier: Maybe let me start and then we'll give you a few detailed color. I think we are very happy with our inventory program. You have seen it's not the first year we are decreasing our inventories days. I think number of days is really the way we are looking at it. And we had multiple programs from reducing the space of our DCs. And if you look at the past 5 years, we have been consistently reducing the number of DCs and the number of square meters, using better software to have real-time visibility on inventory across the group, from factories in China, ship DCs, providing real-time data to our vendors that allow us to negotiate lead time, minimum order quality. And now we are starting to really work on forecasting with AI and more software. So I would say, you have seen that in the past few years, and we are still very confident looking forward to work hard on our inventories and being able to reduce inventories. Bhavesh Mistry: Yes, not much to add. It's a key focus area for us. As Thierry said, we took out 5 days this year, 7 days last year. We expect continued steady progress. It's a key driver of our working capital improvement. And as Thierry mentioned, we try to focus on structural things, not tactical. So for example, we've got the supply chain visibility tool that we know where our stock sits. And so that means when we work with our factories in China, we can give them better data to better plan their production, and that means that we order less, we have shorter lead times. We order fewer sort of our minimum order quantity sizes are lower. So we're getting the product we need when we need it. That really helps. Just one example, but just gives you a bit of color on some of the structural initiatives that we're taking. Timothy Ramskill: Okay. Excellent. That's very helpful. The next sort of cash flow question was just a little bit around CapEx. Obviously, the guidance for GBP 400 million. What, if anything, is driving a little bit of a step-up? Is that just linked to the sort of store opening plans? And then maybe just some thoughts on how that sort of trends over the next few years, please? Bhavesh Mistry: Yes. So we spent GBP 388 million in CapEx this year, about 3% of sales, which is in line with our guidance. I guess the way we thought about it this year is as we navigated through, we had a good first half. And we're in constant dialogue with our businesses around where could we look for opportunity to deploy and invest more in our business first. That's the first pillar of our capital allocation strategy. That's what we focused on stores. So B&Q, for example, bought a freehold store that was opportunistic that came up, wasn't in our plan, but we felt the right thing to do. We also felt continued investment in maintenance of our stores. That's important. So customer-facing things like LED lighting, entrances, et cetera. So we sort of navigated through the year. And as we saw, we're having a good first half, we chose to take some of that performance and reinvest it, obviously, in the right project parts of the business that drive good returns and help our customer experience. Timothy Ramskill: Great. And then last one for me, if that's okay. Just in terms of marketplace, just help us think about how -- clearly, you've laid out ambition for where that gets to from a revenue contribution perspective. But what would be -- well, how do you expect to grow the costs to deliver that? So when should we start to see perhaps a sort of more dramatic drop-through to profitability? Just some parameters around that would be great. Thierry Dominique Garnier: Yes. Thank you, Tim. I think, first of all, I remind you that the market -- the B&Q marketplace delivered GBP 15 million of retail profit this year. So that starts to be meaningful. When I start from top line, the take rates, the commercial margin we are taking is around industry average for home improvement between 10% and 15%, and we are happy to see this margin across all our different countries. Then you have a bit of tech, but broadly, the investment has been done. We are working with Mirakl. So that's relatively -- it's a SaaS model. So we are -- it's really a small amount. They are small teams. If you take B&Q, we speak about 20 people for over GBP 400 million GMV. So the main variable is the marketing cost. And so when you start the marketplace, you want to be probably around 8% to 10% marketing investments. And then gradually, over time, you will decrease this marketing spend. And after a few years, you are at, let's say, a stable and standard level of marketing investment. So we are gradually decreasing our market investment. And overall, when you do the math, we are seeing very strong flows through to profit. To give you even more color, we will probably be able in the future to increase the take rates because we'll be able to sell more services to our vendors, retail media, fulfillment option, advisers. So a lot of things on the table as well on the take rates in the medium term. Operator: Our next question comes from Adam Cochrane with Deutsche Bank. Adam Cochrane: A couple of questions. First of all, you talked about the compact stores as being an area of growth. Can you just give us an idea of the dynamics on the compact stores. Are they -- despite a lower sales base, are they actually more profitable on a contribution margin than the larger stores? So where I'm going is, are they margin accretive across each of the different banners compared to where you currently are? Thierry Dominique Garnier: Maybe I'll start, and I think Bhavesh will give other views. I think firstly, you remember, we have started this journey a few years ago where we believe compact store format in DIY is an important trend. It's not an obvious format, there are countries that exist. When you look at France, we have in the market companies like Mr. Bricolage or Weldom that are, in fact, small format. In the U.K., you have less small format. So in the U.K., we have B&Q locals, and that's really a high street format. And we will start to open more B&Q locals this year, and we have a target in the medium term about 30 stores. We have a format that is called B&Q retail park, around 2,000 square meters. We have Screwfix City, very successful, and we believe we can open 100. We have Brico Dépôt 1,000 in France. I mentioned that it's a very important format for the future. In Poland, we have a great medium box, around 4,000 square meter, and we are working hard on the 2,000 square meter box that is not fully ready yet. And we are still working on our small format for Poland. And obviously, B&Q, we are as well very pleased with the medium box format. So I would say, on average, our medium box and smaller formats are in line or better than the average of their markets. There are a few exceptions. For example, if you tell me in Poland, smaller format, we are not up yet, so Brico Dépôt 1,000, there's still some improvement to do. But overall, what you see is sales density and profit in line or slightly better than the average. Bhavesh Mistry: And not much to add there, Adam. I think on B&Q Locals, we've got 11, 8 of them are working pretty well. The other 3 are not. Of the 8 that are working well, we look at what are the right ranges, what's the right delivery into a city center location, logistics, how are consumers engaging with us. So we're constantly learning as we build and adopt these. Adam Cochrane: And the second question I've got is, if we look at the B&Q performance as the year progressed, there may have been some drivers from Homebase customer transference. Did that make a material difference as each quarter went on? Can you just remind us of maybe when that annualizes? And the second part of that question is, if we assume that some of the B&Q like-for-like was from Homebase, and a decent proportion is coming through from the growth in trade, is there a question mark over the core U.K. DIY customer, which appears to be in reasonably low to mid-single-digit decline if you take into account the Homebase and your trade customer growth? And are you focusing so much on the trade customer that the DIY customer is getting less of a service than they were historically? Bhavesh Mistry: Let me -- thanks, Adam. Let me start with Homebase, and then I'll get Thierry answer the second one. So we haven't disclosed specifics on Homebase, but a couple of data points. Firstly, Homebase went to admin in November 2024, and then stores closed in January and February of 2025. And the way we sort of modeled and looked at it was one of the stores that are with -- B&Q stores that are within 20 minutes of a Homebase, and how are they performing versus the rest of the portfolio. And there -- that's where we did see an uplift. Obviously, the teams executed well. The 8 stores that we acquired, we made sure we're open for peak. We made sure we have the right product availability. As you know, we had a super strong seasonal last quarter 1. But Homebase was one of a number of drivers of B&Q's performance, right? We had good performance in big-ticket, continued growth in our core categories. We've got profitable growth in trade and e-commerce. And then obviously, the strong seasonal that you saw in H1. So yes, it benefited us, but one of many levers. Thierry Dominique Garnier: Yes, Adam, a few more comments. I think, first of all, we have to look at B&Q, including marketplaces. So we have indeed the store, we have trade, we have marketplaces. So when we add marketplaces, what we call the GMV, the B&Q sales growth is plus 5.9% in 2025-'26 versus the flat market. So yes, trade is growing. But you can't say that the rest of the perimeter is having difficulties. And it's all based on the same assets. So we are leveraging our assets to grow e-commerce and to grow trade. Another data I can give you is services installation. We're on 22% at B&Q. So clearly, we see a lot of good news on interaction with the customer. So you really have to keep looking at B&Q altogether, including marketplace. Bhavesh Mistry: And just to add, we performed above the market in the U.K. Well, that gives you a data point. Adam Cochrane: Okay. And final question is, you talked about growing sales ahead of the markets and profit ahead of sales. Your midpoint of the guidance implies a 6% increase in profits. Given that one number that today surprised me slightly was the OpEx growth, particularly in the U.K. is the implication to get to your midpoint that there's a low single-digit like-for-like in order to leverage that up to get to your 6% at the midpoint profit growth? Thierry Dominique Garnier: I think maybe to start, Adam, I think in the mixed consumer environment, we feel good with a 6% increase in the midpoint. We feel it's a good plan. It's predicated on continued progress in our strategy on trade and e-commerce and as well a lot of discipline on gross margin and costs. So in the current environment, we rather feel good around this midpoint guidance. Operator: Our next question comes from Grace Gilberg with Jefferies. Grace Gilberg: Can you hear me? Thierry Dominique Garnier: Yes. Grace Gilberg: Perfect, perfect. First one is around gross margin actually. I mean, obviously, it was a pretty good year in terms of your gross margin expansion and continuing in the second half after what was a pretty good first half, and that was quite impressive. You've mentioned that these have to do with primarily better sourcing as well as just getting better deals with your suppliers. How structural is -- or how structural are these gains? And what is -- what are the things that your suppliers are seeing that are having you to be able to have these better deals, for example? That's the first question. The second one is actually around France. It was a little bit weaker than the other two regions. Obviously, the market has been down, and it's very difficult to see, that hasn't been very helpful. But it seems from your perspective that the model is working particularly at Brico Dépôt. What are the benefits that we maybe haven't seen yet just because of the market? And what are you expecting to see going forward? I'll start with those two, and then I have one or two others. Bhavesh Mistry: Grace, so on gross margin, yes, look, we're really pleased with the performance in the year, right? We grew by 80 bps as we flagged. And as we look into the year ahead, we have different puts and takes. So on one hand, you're going to continue to see further expansion of marketplace, as Thierry mentioned earlier, that's margin accretive. We continue to look at the store as the heart of our digital ecosystem. So a lot of preparation and picking is done in the store. That means we need less logistics space. And so you'll see continued focus on logistics efficiencies. And then buying and sourcing was quite successful in this year that helped drive our margin, and we expect to continue to see that in the year ahead, particularly the insight that we get from our private label business. We look at something called should-costs. We understand the components of all of our products, and that gives us real data to negotiate with our branded suppliers. And that will continue. And then we expect further FX tailwinds based on our hedging. We hedge 100% of our committed orders into next year. So we have a pretty good read on FX. On the other hand, we have growing trade. We're really pleased with what we're doing with trade for all the reasons you heard us talk about. But at a gross margin level, it is dilutive. We always focus on maintaining competitive prices. And then freight is starting to turn into a headwind. So those are some of the pluses and minuses that we think about as we look at the year ahead on gross margin. Thierry Dominique Garnier: Now, I think to France, I think overall, I think we feel good about the progress in '25. Just to tell you what I have in mind. First, market was around minus 3%, so pretty difficult market. We did around minus 2%. So we overperformed the market. In a year where Castorama had significant disruption from store work, a lot of range reviews. We had a big head office restructuring. We were changing a lot of the team in the store. You heard in Bhavesh's comment that we changed about 50% of the store manager, 40% of the category manager. And as well in France, we have to remember that it's a lot of new tax and high wages in '25, like in the U.K. So in this environment, being able to gain market share in all banners, to have a profit up, to see the strategic progress on trade, on e-commerce, to deliver on the Casto plan, but as well on the Brico plan, to answer your question on Brico, probably the two biggest progress we made was continue to have an even lower price index because it's a discount -- discounter banner. And we did a lot, a lot of progress on the Pro sales. You saw that. And at the end, the team are in a good place. We see team engagement in France growing really in a strong position. So overall, I think it's a very strong year in a very difficult market. So indeed, we need the market to recover. But for me, the market recovery, the French market recovery is a question of time. Grace Gilberg: Okay. All clear. And then I suppose my last question is around the full year guidance for FY '27. Obviously, you do have some tough comparatives heading into Q1 given how strong B&Q was last year. And then many of your competitors have as well or just peers within the home market have cited that it's been pretty wet weather and hasn't been helpful for trading into the beginning of the year. What makes you confident in reaching your full year PBT numbers, given that you're facing some of these headwinds potentially? Bhavesh Mistry: Well, as you know, Grace, we don't provide current trading. So we don't guide for the current quarter. But factually, you're right, we had a very strong seasonal, so B&Q's Q1 seasonal last year was 30%. So it's a pretty tough comp to lap. But as we look ahead to sort of our guidance for the full year, we look at sort of what are of the drivers from a top line perspective. We've got a mixed consumer backdrop. But in the U.K., we expect continued momentum from our two banners, notwithstanding the tough comp in Q1 on Homebase transfers as we talked about earlier. Top line in France, it's still a weak market. It's improving, but very slowly. Savings rates are still elevated, 400 to 500 bps above the long-term average. So very much in France is focused on what we can control, differentiated proposition, discount proposition of Brico, all the heavy lifting we're doing at Casto. You heard us talk about in our prepared remarks. And then Poland was flat last year. Q4 was good, but I'd say we need to see more quarters of good sustained consistency in Poland. So that's sort of how we think about the top line when we set our guidance. And then we talked about in your earlier question, what things that we will continue to manage effectively got some puts and takes. And those will be the same things next year as we saw this year. And then continued focus on cost. We've got a track record of managing our costs pretty well. As and when trading environments change, we have the agility to flex our cost base. So those are some of the component parts that sort of set our full year guidance on profit and cash. Hopefully that adds. Thierry Dominique Garnier: Just to add a few words around general, how we feel, obviously, looking at the Middle East crisis. I think, obviously, we are very mindful. But we look at our top line first with resilient business. We have about 2/3 of our business is repair and maintenance, so less discretionary. We now have reached 30% of the group sales is delivered through trade. So as well more resilient. We really see the benefit of our strategy on e-commerce and trade. Looking again at B&Q in 2025, real growth, plus 5.9% in the flat market. So you start to see the benefit of the strategy. And as Bhavesh said, we have had a strong track record of discipline, margin management, cost management in all the past years. Operator: Our next question comes from Yashraj Rajani. Yashraj Rajani: I've got three, please. I'll ask them one by one. So the first one is on the cross-border vendor e-commerce, which you have fully highlighted. So is that just an element of introducing a different price point? Or do you think that you're missing something in the range architecture there, which is now being complemented with this cross-border vendor e-commerce? And how do you think about the right balance so that it doesn't cannibalize your own 1P sales? Thierry Dominique Garnier: So I think we -- thank you for the question, Yash, first of all. I think it's -- we really see that more as a range topic, as choice. In fact, we are already selling on our marketplaces, I think you should take the U.K., U.K.-based vendors. So you have a lot of very strong countries in the world with very strong industrial base. Germany, but even and as well China, we'll open gradually our marketplace to Chinese vendors. We see the potential here. But it's not around price competition. To give you another color, we are working hard on what we call buy box. And I will not enter into the tech detail, but we could do that off-line, if you want. That will allow us as well to have more price competition between the same SKUs from 2026. So cross-border is really around choice. Bhavesh Mistry: And what I said earlier, right? Yes, there's probably a little bit of cannibalization, but look at our 1P sales, it's stronger than our store sales. And 3P traffic brings new people to diy.com that we wouldn't otherwise get, and a lot of them go on to buy 1P product. So that's a benefit of having the choice that Thierry talks about. Yashraj Rajani: Sure, that's super helpful. And then the second question is, again, on France. So I appreciate you commented that the market is difficult, but there's obviously all the self-help initiatives that you highlighted. So even if you assume that the market stays where it is, what is the absolute margin improvement you can see from all the things that you control even if like-for-likes are negative? Thierry Dominique Garnier: Yes. I think, Yash, we are still confident in our 5% to 7% profit margin for France in the medium term. We always said part of it is really our self-help action, and we are progressing on this. To remind you as well that some of the self-help action, you have very short-term impact, when you do a head office restructuring, you have short-term impact. Some other, like range reviews or the store network restructuring, you need a bit of time to realize, to crystallize all the benefits. So one, self-help actions. Second part is the market improvement. Personally, I'm convinced that we'll see market improvement. It's a question of time, and we need both to achieve those 5% to 7%. Yashraj Rajani: Got it. Got it. Super helpful. And the last one from my end, maybe quite a topical one is the Middle East. So can you just sort of quantify any sort of freight headwinds or more broadly disruption that you're seeing, which would probably create some availability issues, if any? Or just anything else you'd like to highlight on the Middle East? Thierry Dominique Garnier: So maybe I'll start with supply chain, and then Bhavesh will come on the cost side. First, it's obvious that we have no operation in the region. We have nearly two suppliers in the region. So you see it's really a very, very limited direct impact. And before Bhavesh will comment on gross margin and costs, again, remind you that 2/3 of our business is repair and maintenance and 30% is trade. We are high expectation to deliver on our strategy on trade and e-commerce in 2026 and beyond. So we expect this to give us resilience looking forward. Bhavesh Mistry: Yes. I mean you heard me mention it in my prepared remarks, but the direct impacts, based on what we know today, and as you know, things are changing every day, but the impact for us is fairly limited energy. On energy, our quantum energy costs are less than 1% of our sales, and the majority of that is hedged. And then on freight, again, a small proportion of our COGS, about 20% of our COGS are sourced from Asia, and we typically lock in annual contracts with carriers. So those contracts have what we call like a fuel index, so there may be a little bit of a headwind, but we've locked in those contracts for the year. We looked at previous situations, the markets have behaved pretty rationally on pricing and margin. And we continue to stay focused on managing our margin and being super disciplined on cost. And so that's our focus, right, to continue to do that as we navigate our way through. Operator: Our next question comes from Mia Strauss with BNP Paribas. Mia Strauss: I just want to check a few. I think last year, you talked maybe about doing consumer surveys for your trade sales partners. And what sort of pipeline they're seeing over the next few weeks. Maybe if you can just give us a comment on that for the current year? Thierry Dominique Garnier: Yes, absolutely, Mia. And by the way, you will see that in the appendix of our document we released, Page 34. Indeed, we do a monthly survey for Screwfix. What you see on the Page 34 is that 93% of our trades people are working. So it's 2 points year-on-year. So slightly higher than last year. But we have a second category that is working and have more work to come, 79% of the survey and is 6 points up year-on-year. So we do this survey every month for the past few years. So it's pretty reliable. So we feel those results will remain strong. Mia Strauss: And then maybe just on your share of the trade wallet. What share do you currently have? And essentially, what is the realistic opportunity of what share you could get in the future? Thierry Dominique Garnier: I think Screwfix, our estimate is around 15%, 1-5. So for our trade business, you could say it's still relatively low, and that's why we believe we have a lot of opportunity ahead on Screwfix share of wallet on the range, the size of the range, B2B. We have a plan that will address more of this share of wallet growth in the future. And you have seen as well in the presentation, the rewards program. For all the big boxes, our estimate that is a few percent. Our share wallet in B&Q in France, in Poland is just a few percent of a very large market. Very often, the trade people, they already come to our stores, but mainly for urgencies. And that's why all this plan is finally leveraging your assets to sell more to people that are already in your stores through your loyalty program, traders sales partners. So we really feel starting from this very low base of share of wallet in our other big boxes, there is significant opportunities. Bhavesh Mistry: And look, in the U.K., it's a big market, right, it's GBP 30 billion, total trade market. TradePoint sales are close to GBP 1 billion. So a lot for us to still go after. Mia Strauss: That's helpful. And then maybe just for you, Bhavesh, on the free cash flow. So the guidance is a little bit lower year-on-year. And I think it's -- last year, you also talked about achieving over GBP 500 million over the full current year. I guess, last year, you saw about a GBP 91 million increase in payables. What was that from? And I guess, going forward, why is it a little bit lower? Bhavesh Mistry: So look, yes, pleased with our free cash guidance. We've delivered more than GBP 500 million over the last 3 years. And our focus this year will be continued on the profit drivers we talked about and working capital, and particularly inventory. So again, some of the stuff we mentioned earlier, some of the structural initiatives. We set a range of GBP 450 million to GBP 510 million, midpoint GBP 480 million. That's about GBP 30 million higher than the midpoint we set last year. And so confident that we'll continue to deliver cash flow well. We also still have spent more on CapEx this year. The question somebody asked earlier, as we saw and navigated through the year that we are trading well and had a good cash performance, we chose to redeploy some of that both in buying freehold, but also at our maintenance and tech. So we kind of navigate through the year. And then you always get fluctuations, right, in year-on-year. So sometimes one-offs. But over the medium term, we're still guiding to around GBP 500 million per annum free cash and have done that in the last 3 years. Mia Strauss: Great. Maybe just on the -- if we look back to '25, what was the reason for that significant increase in payables maybe? Bhavesh Mistry: I think timing, largely. We look -- as you'd expect any retailer, we kind of look at payment terms as well as something we navigate, but also, our sales was higher, right? So that sort of drives our payables. Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Georgina Johanan with JPMorgan. Georgina Johanan: Everyone, can you hear me okay? Thierry Dominique Garnier: Yes, Georgina. Bhavesh Mistry: Yes. Go ahead. Georgina Johanan: I've got three quick ones, please, really just following up some questions that have already been asked. The first one is very much appreciate that you prefer not to give current trading trends. But just in the context of maybe the consumer more broadly, particularly in the U.K., I think one of the early surveys that's been done since the start of the crisis and headlines around higher energy prices and so on, actually, we saw an 8-point fall in consumer confidence. So just wondering if you can kind of comment on how you're seeing consumer behavior rather than trading trends necessarily. The second one was, I appreciate you don't provide a like-for-like guidance, and of course, there are changes that will be made depending on trading performance. But if you were to see perhaps only a flat like-for-like this year, can you just confirm that you'd be able to hold profits in that scenario, please? And then finally, you very helpfully at the half year, I think, quantified some of the gross margin benefits from buying and sourcing initiatives. If I remember correctly, around 60 basis points. Is it reasonable to assume that you can actually achieve a similar level again in fiscal '27? And indeed, where did that land for fiscal '26 overall, please? Thierry Dominique Garnier: Thank you, Georgina. Let me start with the first one, and then Bhavesh will cover the two and three. So to be direct, indeed, we don't want to comment on the current trading. But I think it's an important topic, we have not seen up to now real impact on the customer. We have not seen a change of trend following the start of the Middle East crisis. Bhavesh Mistry: On your second question, we have different levers that we pull as we navigate through the year, margin, cost, investment in the business. We set our guidance range or profit range is the same as we said previously, GBP 60 million, around that midpoint, and we'll navigate and push and pull levers as trading evolves as you saw us do this year. On gross margin, I'm not going to quantify it, but I'd refer you to my previous response on the various puts and takes. We've got lots of things that are tailwinds, but we also have some things that are headwinds on gross margins. Operator: At this time, there are no further questions. I will now hand back to Thierry for closing remarks. Thierry Dominique Garnier: Just to thank you for joining us this morning, for your questions. Again, we are confident in our delivery of this year and our strategic progress. Confident in the fact we stay very disciplined on the thing we can control well as we did in the past. So again, thank you, and we are always available with the team if you have any questions. And for some of you, I think we'll meet in the coming days. Thank you very much. See you soon. Operator: Thank you for joining today's call. We are no longer live. Have a nice day.
Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I am Geli, your Chorus Call operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Public Power Corporation conference call to present and discuss the full year 2025 financial results. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Georgios Stassis, Chairman and CEO; Mr. Konstantinos Alexandridis, CFO; and Mr. Ioannis Stefos, Chief Investor Relations Officer. Mr. Stefos, you may now proceed. Ioannis Stefos: Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining today's conference call for PPC's full year 2025 results. We will begin with an overview of the group's results from our Chairman and CEO, Georgios Stassis, followed by a review of the financial performance for the period by our Group CFO, Konstantinos Alexandridis. After the conclusion of the presentation, we will open the floor for your questions during the Q&A session. The IR team will be available after the call for any follow-up discussions. With that, I will now turn the call over to Georgios. Georgios, please go ahead. Georgios Stassis: Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us for today's earnings call. PPC had a strong performance for another year, in line with the strategic targets set in the business plan with adjusted EBITDA increasing to EUR 2 billion and net income at EUR 0.45 billion, demonstrating the extent of the transformation and the growth that has been achieved during the last years. This significant growth in profitability has allowed us to keep increasing dividend distribution in line with our plan, which provides for further improvement of shareholders' remuneration with a gradual increase of dividend to EUR 1.2 per share in 2028. Investments stood at EUR 2.8 billion, with the majority allocated to renewables, flexible generation and distribution projects, supporting a further step-up in profitability going forward. Despite high CapEx, our balance sheet position remains solid with a net debt-to-EBITDA ratio at 3.2x at the end of 2025, providing the necessary room to implement our investment plan in the next years. Moving to Slide 7. The last years have been directing capital towards renewable energy, flexible generation and distribution. As a result of these investments, we have been able to increase both the regulated asset base, as we will see later, but also the renewables and flexible generation capacity, which now represents 80% of our total capacity. In this way, year after year, we are increasing our renewables footprint, combining it with flexible generation assets, while at the same time, we have made significant progress in phasing out lignite, a process which is at the final stage, with the last unit of 700-megawatt plan to cease its operation by the end of this year. Deep diving now to Generation business on Slide 8. As you can see, we have increased the total installed capacity to 12.4 gigawatts, led by the continuous rollout of new renewable projects, which has outweighed the reduction of lignite capacity during the last year. Our total generation output has remained practically stable, however, with increased participation of renewables on the back of reduced production from lignite and oil. More specifically, renewables output increased to 6.9 terawatt hours, driven by wind and solar generation, reflecting the addition of new capacity, which outbalanced the weak performance of large hydro power plants for last year. As a result, renewables increased its share to 33% of our total output. On the flip side, lignite generation declined at 2.7 terawatt hours and oil at 3.6 terawatt hours, corresponding to 13% and 17% of total output, respectively. 2026 is a milestone for PPC generation activity since it marks the end of lignite-fired generation after many decades, making PPC coal-free. Last, gas generation had no change versus 2024, being, however, a very important component of our energy mix today, corresponding to 37% of our total output. As a result, CO2 Scope 1 emissions declined by 0.5 million tonnes compared to last year. And going forward, we expect further improvements since we will cease our lignite operations by the end of the year. Now moving to Page 9. Let me briefly describe the progress in renewable projects that we have achieved in the fourth quarter of 2025. Executing our strategic plan with discipline, we completed the construction of an additional 800 megawatts of capacity across Greece and abroad. The majority of these additions were solar projects, which exceeded the 700 megawatt in total, complemented by the first 59 megawatts of battery energy storage installed in Greece and Romania as well as 36 megawatts from a wind farm in Northern Greece. In summary, 546 megawatts of renewable projects across various technologies were completed in Greece, along with 272 megawatts internationally in the fourth quarter, leading to total additions for 2025 at 1.7 gigawatts, as we will see in more detail in the following slides. Going to Slide 10, let's see in more detail the additions that we concluded in the fourth quarter of 2025. First, in Greece, major projects totaling 550 megawatts were completed since the November Capital Markets Day. Specifically, we completed the last 30 megawatt of a 550-megawatt solar project located in the former lignite area of Ptolemais in Northern Greece. In the same region, in cooperation with RWE, we completed the final 623 megawatts of a 938-megawatt solar project. In the Ptolemais region, again, in the former lignite area, we completed the first 125 megawatt of a 490-megawatt solar project. The second 125-megawatt cluster is currently under construction, and the third cluster is scheduled to begin construction later this year. For wind, we successfully completed 36.4 megawatts in Central Greece in the region of Fokida. And last, an important milestone was also the completion of our first battery project in Greece in the former lignite areas of [ Ptolemais ] as well. Outside of Greece, in the fourth quarter, we added 272 megawatts of capacity from renewable projects, mainly solar across Southeast Europe, as depicted in detail in Slide 11. Starting with Romania, we completed solar projects of 215 megawatts in total in various locations, along with 9 megawatts of batteries, which will enable us to enhance dispatch optimization and capture value from balancing services and price arbitrage. At the same time, we completed 17.5 megawatts of photovoltaics in Italy and 30 megawatts in Bulgaria, increasing our footprint in these countries. Overall, as you can see, we keep a good pace of additions, delivering significant renewable capacity while continuing to expand our construction pipeline. All of the above are summarized in the next slide, Slide 12, which shows that we remain on track to achieve our 2028 renewables target of 12.7 gigawatt, as presented in our last Capital Market Day. We have added 1.7 gigawatt in 2025, standing now at a total of 7.2 gigawatts. And we have another 3.7 gigawatts that are either in construction, ready to build or in the tender process, having secured, in essence, 86% of the capacity that we target for 2028. There has been further progress in our pipeline also in terms of maturity, having moved during the fourth quarter -- last fourth quarter, approximately 600 megawatts into the under construction and ready-to-build stages from the permitting and engineering stage. And this process of adding new capacity, maturing additional projects is something that we have been doing many quarters now, and we will continue to do so as we advance multiple projects across Greece and internationally. Let us now move to Slide 13, which provides key highlights of our retail activity and the overall environment in Greece and Romania. Electricity demand was slightly decreased in both countries by minus 1.3% in Greece, reflecting milder average temperatures compared to 2024 and by 0.6% in Romania. Our electricity sales decreased by 1.9% compared to 2024, primarily driven by lower demand in Greece and a slight market share reduction in both countries. Deep diving in the retail activity in Slide 14, despite this intensely competitive environment throughout 2025, we successfully defended our market share while expanding beyond the commodity segment, demonstrating our ability to diversify and deliver impactful results. Customers remain our top priority. This is reflected in our strong top line performance across all customer satisfaction metrics and the continued improvement in the quality of our customer base. Notably, bad debt exposure decreased by 14%, as shown in the bottom right graph, driven by improved penetration and more effective management of higher-risk customer segments. On top of various targeted propositions that we launched during the year, SME, family and other and as artificial intelligence continues to shape market developments; we launched in Greece a virtual assistant support our customers. This is the first AI-powered digital assistant in the market, designed to elevate the customer experience by providing clear explanations of bill charges in simple language. For our activities in Romania, 2025 was a transitional year following the lifting of the price caps. As competition has been growing, we focus on protecting and strengthening customer relationships through targeted retention actions. Looking ahead, we expect 2026 to remain highly competitive. We will continue to focus on delivering value, strengthening customer engagement and maintaining resilience in an evolving market landscape. Just a few words for several synergy streams in the retail activity that we set up in 2025, we are in Slide 15. Kotsovolos has been key for this, providing the opportunity to launch a broad range of initiatives. Our collaboration has evolved from establishing a strong in-store presence and developing dedicated PPC shop-in-shop corners featuring our products to extending field services coverage that delivers essential energy solutions to customers and households, services that are fundamental to everyday living. Looking ahead to 2026, we plan to further strengthen our footprint within PPC shops while expanding our product and service portfolio to reach additional customer segments, addressing a broader spectrum of needs. Next, in Slide 16, a few words of certain KPIs of our Distribution business. We continue to invest significantly in 2025 with CapEx increasing by 2% year-on-year, in line with our strategy to enhance and digitalize our electricity distribution networks. The total regulated asset base now stands at EUR 5.7 billion from EUR 4.9 billion last year, mainly driven by the increase in Greece following material investments. The strong investment activity is also reflected in the improvement of the reliability indices of our networks in both Greece and Romania, while smart meters penetration continues its upward trend with further room to grow, especially in Greece. Turning to Slide 17. We can see how the implementation of our strategic initiatives, combined with active engagement have resulted to actual progress in several ESG ratings and scores within 2025. Specifically, our efforts have been recognized by S&P Global, EcoVadis, MSCI, ATHEX ESG and ISS, all of which upgraded PPC's ratings and scores. These improvements reflect tangible progress in several key areas such as environmental management, renewables portfolio expansion, corporate governance, ESG integration and transparent reporting. These advancements underscore our commitment to sustainability, mitigating business risk and fostering long-term value for all stakeholders. Let me now pass it on to Konstantinos for the financial performance analysis. Konstantinos Alexandridis: Thank you, George, and good afternoon to all. Moving next to Slide 19 for an overview of the trends for the main energy-related commodities. To begin with TTF, gas prices in early 2025 were initially strong, supported by reduced Ukrainian transit and cold weather conditions before easing as demand weakened and geopolitical concerns softened. Subsequently, prices declined under the milder weather conditions, strong LNG inflows and lower storage targets from EU with a brief rebound driven by firmer demand and tighter Norwegian supply. Later in the year, gas prices remained broadly stable before falling to their lowest levels towards year-end. Overall, gas prices recorded a moderate year-on-year increase of 5%. Turning to carbon. EUA prices opened the year sharply, but reversed after mid-February, pressured by declining gas prices and uncertainty around U.S. tariffs. Prices later recovered on the back of easing trade tensions and a U.S.-China agreement, although gains driven by geopolitical developments proved short-lived. The market remained relatively balanced for a period before a rally emerged towards September driven by compliance buying with prices peaking towards the end of the year. Overall, carbon prices also recorded a moderate year-on-year increase of 12%. Finally, looking at power prices, they spiked early in 2025, driven by higher TTF and EUAs, easing later in Q1 on the weaker demand and the higher solar performance. Prices rose in Q2, tracking TTF and EUAs, but stayed stable in June, though elevated despite geopolitical tensions, thanks to record renewables output. In the second half of 2025, weather-driven demand and lower renewable output led to a steady rise in prices. Moving now on Slide 20, where we can see the key financial figures for the period, showcasing the strong financial performance recorded in 2025 with increased revenues mainly due to higher power prices and the contribution of Kotsovolos. Adjusted EBITDA reached EUR 2 billion, up by 13% year-on-year, an uplift driven by higher contribution of integrated activities in our two key countries, Greece and Romania. Adjusted net income post minorities stood at EUR 0.45 billion from EUR 0.36 billion in 2024, up by 23% year-on-year. The proposed dividend for 2025 is EUR 0.60 per share from $0.40 per share in 2024, demonstrating our strong commitment towards the increase of distributable profits for our shareholders and in line with our commitment in the latest Capital Markets Day. A more detailed overview of EBITDA and net income evolution will follow later in the presentation. Investments at EUR 2.8 billion, focusing mainly on renewables, flexible generation and distribution. Free cash flow continues to be driven by elevated investment levels in line with our business plan. Net debt at EUR 6.5 billion at the end of December 2025, with net debt-to-EBITDA ratio at 3.2x as anticipated, given the progress in our investment plan. Proceeding to Slide 21 for the revenues evolution of the group, which recorded an 8% increase. The largest part of this increase is driven by energy sales, which are up by approximately EUR 0.5 billion as a result of higher power prices we experienced both in Greece and Romania for the full year. The rest is mainly driven by sales of merchandise coming from the operations of Kotsovolos, which have a full year effect in 2025. These two factors have been able to more than offset the impact of our revenues from volume decline related to market share reduction and a slightly reduced electricity demand in both countries, as George mentioned before. All this resulted to a total revenue of EUR 9.7 billion in 2025, up by EUR 0.7 billion versus 2024. Moving to Slide 22 for the EBITDA performance by business activity. As you can see in the left side of the slide, EBITDA has recorded a 13% increase year-on-year with the integrated business being the key driver for this growth. I will provide more color on this in the coming slides. International contribution at 22%, mostly driven by Romanian operations, which stood at EUR 440 million. Next, on Slide 23, a few words on the evolution of the integrated business. The improvement that has been recorded versus last year has been taking place on the back of improved performance in the retail business and green and energy mix throughout our footprint as we increase renewables capacity. In addition, this improvement has been also supported by the reduction of fixed costs associated with lignite activity as we progress with the phasing out of the relevant units. All these factors have been the basis of our commitments in our Capital Markets Day some months ago to improve our profitability in the integrated business by EUR 0.2 billion year-on-year. Now proceeding to Slide 24 for a view of the distribution activity. With regards to Greece, the demand decrease of 1.3% versus 2024 negatively affected the approved network usage revenues that will be compensated in 2027. In Romania, the Distribution business marked a slight decrease versus full year 2024, but this was driven by seasonal effects. Adjusting for construction works that have already been included in the 2026 allowed revenues, the 2025 performance would be higher than last year. Proceeding to Slide 25 for a deep dive on the EBITDA-to-net income bridge. The improved performance in terms of EBITDA that we've discussed in the previous slides has also been reflected in the bottom line with adjusted net income after minorities standing at EUR 448 million, that is a 23% increase versus last year. In terms of EPS, the year-on-year increase is slightly higher, reaching the 24% given the ongoing share buyback program. Adjustments included in the net income includes special one-off items with the largest being the provision for incentives for volume direct exit schemes that we implemented, the PPAs revaluation as well as the incremental depreciation from the asset revaluation of December 2024. Moving on to Slide 26 for the analysis of the investments. We continue to keep a high level of investments reaching EUR 2.8 billion in 2025 despite the reduction of 9% year-on-year. Importantly, 87% of our investments are directed to our distribution networks, renewables and flexible generation in line with our strategic priorities. Distribution has been the largest component, reflecting our focus on network utilization and resilience in both Greece and Romania. At the same time, we are significantly expanding our renewables footprint along with increased investments in flexible generation to support the stability and monetizing the surplus of generation. Geographically, the majority of investments are concentrated in Greece, accounting for 72%, while Romania represents a growing share of 23%. Overall, our investment program is clearly aligned with the energy transition, strengthening our asset base and supporting long-term earnings visibility. Let's now move on to Slide 27 for the free cash flow analysis of the group. The strong operational performance, combined with the positive working capital resulted to a significantly positive FFO of EUR 1.9 billion. The change in working capital had a positive impact of EUR 161 million over the period, supported mainly by CO2 and our hedging activities. With regards to CO2, we had a positive impact in 2025, which is mainly attributed to timing of payments and the overall working capital management. With regards to our hedging activities, initial margin requirements related to new positions declined, mainly as an effect of lower and less volatile gas prices towards the year-end, while at the same time, prior periods positions continued to wind down. Looking at the trade receivables and excluding state-related entities, we had a positive change in working capital by EUR 70 million, partially offsetting the increase of trade receivables from the state-related entities. We have been working with the state to reduce the overdue amount, and we expect in the first half of this year to have positive results. Finally, within category Other, we had a negative impact of EUR 92 million as a result of last year's overperformance in December '24, where some payments were shifted to 2025. Overall, free cash flow is in line with our estimates, given the significant capital deployment that we are doing throughout Southeast Europe and across technologies. Turning to Slide 28. Let me walk you through our debt profile and liquidity position. Despite the acceleration of our investment program, liquidity remains robust, supported by a well-balanced mix of fixed and floating rate debt. We also maintained strong liquidity headroom with $4.6 billion of undrawn committed credit lines as of year-end 2025. At the same time, ongoing refinancing initiatives and favorable interest rate trends have contributed to a reduction in our average cost of debt, which stood at 3.8% by the end of 2025. Our debt maturity profile remains well spread with no material concentration risks. Over the next 3 years, maturities amount to $2.6 billion, including $500 million related to our sustainability-linked bond maturing in July 2028. In October 2025, we successfully issued a EUR 775 million green bond due in 2030 priced at 4.25% coupon with strong investor demand and 3.4x oversubscription. The proceeds were used to redeem in full the aggregate principal amount of sustainability linked senior notes due in 2026 and support eligible green investments in line with our financing framework. The remaining maturities primarily relate to long-term loans and committed facilities, which we expect to refinance in the normal course of business. Finally, our credit profile remains at BB- with both rating agencies with S&P recently revising the outlook to positive, while Fitch affirmed the stable outlook. Next, on to Slide 29 for the net debt evolution and our leverage position. Net debt and consequently, net leverage increased in 2025 as anticipated, reflecting the acceleration of our investment program in line with our business plan. Net leverage currently stands at 3.2x and is expected to evolve in line with our plan. We remain fully committed to our financial policy, including the 3.5x ceiling we have set. Let me now pass it on to Georgios for his concluding remarks. Georgios Stassis: Thank you. Now moving on Slide 31. Before I conclude my presentation, let me reaffirm our guidance on key figures for this year. Our expected adjusted EBITDA is at EUR 2.4 billion, and we anticipate more than EUR 700 million in terms of adjusted net income after minorities, leading to an EPS of EUR 2.1, demonstrating a 58% increase versus 2025. We are on very good track to achieve these targets for several reasons, as we saw at the right-hand side of the slide. First, we have been experiencing mild weather conditions in the first quarter of 2026 so far, which have led to improved margin in our retail activity. Second, wind conditions have been quite strong from the beginning of 2026, benefiting our assets both in Greece and Romania, which combined with better hydrological conditions in Greece, contribute to a good start of the year. And third, we are at a quite advanced maturity stage for the 1.8 gigawatts of new renewables that we are targeting to conclude in 2026, being already at an approximately 50% readiness. Moreover, we feel very comfortable in delivering our targets for 2026 as well. Once again, we highlight our strong commitment for our dividend policy that is expected to reach EUR 0.80 per share from $0.60 per share in 2025, an increase of 33%. In our concluding slide, Slide 32, let me now wrap up with a few final points. Overall, we are delivering on our strategy with strong execution across all key pillars. Our 2025 performance reflects the benefits of our integrated business model. We continue to deploy capital in a disciplined manner with EUR 2.8 billion invested in renewables, flexible generation and distribution, supporting our future growth. We have made significant progress in our renewables installed capacity, adding 1.7 gigawatts in 2025. And at the same time, we are building strong visibility on our targets going forward, with 86% of the capacity that we target for 2028 being already secured. Our transition away from lignite is progressing as planned with full phaseout expected by end of this year, further improving our environmental footprint. This shift is strengthening the resilience and flexibility of our portfolio, enhancing our position in a challenging and evolving energy landscape. We are very confident in delivering our 2026 targets, and we prepare ourselves to be able to meet our targets beyond this year, aiming at sustainable value creation for our shareholders, our customers and the market in which we operate. Thank you all. And now looking forward to get your feedback and your questions. Operator: The first question is from the line of Di Vito Alessandro with Mediobanca. Alessandro Di Vito: I have three. First question is on the general energy outlook. I wanted to understand which could be the implications for PPC in case the current escalation in Middle East extends for a longer period of time? And on this matter, if you could remind us the sensitivity you have to power prices. The second question is around the political debate to lower power prices in Europe. I wanted some color on your contribution to this debate. And if you see the risk some political intervention, both at national and at European level? Third question is on your procurement strategy. I wanted to understand if the current disruption in LNG supplies could affect the procurement for your CCGT plants or for your gas supply clients? And maybe just the last one, a clarification during the explanation of the guidance, I heard 2026 net income above EUR 700 million. So I wanted to understand whether this is confirmed or not. Georgios Stassis: Okay. Thank you very much for the questions. Now let me start from the general outlook. Of course, we cannot estimate how this will end and when it will end. And nobody is able to do that right now. However, there are -- because we have some experience now and our experiences from 2022, where we had a major energy crisis and impacting very much also our continent. I want to outline some points. First of all, we do not have any physical delivery issues because we are not procuring from that area, from the Strait of Hormuz. While in 2022, you remember when the pipe was interrupted, we had to handle physical delivery problems as well, which was really a big mess. But we are not in this situation. Therefore, and as far as I understand, this is the situation of Asia, in particular, or some other companies, maybe in Europe, but not ourselves. And then, of course, you may understand that then we need to handle the issue of prices. Today, we think that -- I mean, if we take the today news, every day is a new situation, of course, it is at 60 -- around 60, 62, 63 in the gas TTF. Gas is of our interest. So if you remember, 2022, we handled prices of 350. So I hope we will not see these prices, of course. But still, it is -- we have the experience and the management to handle the situation, first point. Second point, we are -- I mean, we are -- we have an overall portfolio that has -- part of it is fixed. Our fixed customers is already fully hedged. So there's no impact in that situation. And of course, one could question if things go really high, how this will pass into the market. I believe that starting from as you know, from 2023, there was a European directive, which defined when Europe will be considered on crisis and has the limit reaching gas prices at 180. So we are far away from that level, thankfully. And I don't think we will be needed right now to handle any situation like that. In any way, however, this, because of our vertical integration is not -- has been proven also in the past that we never had a problem into managing this situation. If even in the scenario of infra marginal caps, it simply means that we will not have, let's say, huge windfall profits. And those will be used by the governments of Europe to be -- to supporting the citizens of Europe. So what I'm trying to say is that point one, right now, we are not in this situation at all. I'm not sure if we will be. And if and if we will go in a very extreme situation, the tools are available to be used also at the European level, have been used in the past, and we proved that we were not affected by that, and we don't believe we'll be affected as well. Now the other thing is that the timing of this crisis is coming in a period of time, which is spring. And this is very important because we just closed winter. And this is a period of time where renewables are boosting very much. We are mostly of low prices. So I think that there is time in front of us before we move to the heart of the summer where we will have another peak or when we will reach the point that the European storage facilities will start to be having the need to be, let's say, filling up. And that would be possibly an issue which will impact 2027. We don't believe we will have a major impact in 2026 also in such a situation right now. So we wait and see how the situation will develop. But I think we are extremely protected as PPC right now, having worked in our overall vertical integration and our own capability to manage our overall customer base. Now going -- to the second part of your question about the discussion that has emerged in Europe about the energy prices, this is a valid point, I believe. It is a concern for everybody. And I believe it is also a valid point for the industry, which is an important parameter. I have the impression that -- I mean, we will know today, tomorrow, how things will develop in the council, but I have the impression that mostly the discussion will focus around an ETS reform for the future. As you may be aware, ETS is supposed to be formed in July, and there is today already taken decisions from the past to remove quantities from the ETS market from the quote that would tighten the market further and would result in a price increase in ETS. I see personally that there is room in the discussion of the European leaders to make this transition smoother and not so steep in the coming years. And I think, and this is the most important thing, that this is exactly how we were forecasting the development to happen even before this discussion becoming relevant. If you look on our slides on the Capital Market Day in November, you will see that the kind of path we have for ETS prices are reasonable because we were assuming from that time that we don't believe that the current situation will be activated in the sense that we don't believe we will see crazy prices of the ETS market. So we have already budgeted with a very smooth pattern from 2026 to 2028, even beyond 2030. And I think the conclusion of the discussions in Europe will more or less go in that direction. And then having said that, there is another element as well, which is very important, which is our region, because we put all this into a perspective, but we need to think of our region as well because every geography is different. In the Southeast European region, the corridor between Italy, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Poland, up to Ukraine, Moldova, all these kind of countries, Croatia; this is a corridor which is very tight from the capacity point of view. And on top of that, it has very old fleet. So because you have a sensitivity, even in our calculations with a lower EPS from our projections, we don't see the dam changing significantly because the assets that will be activated are quite mature and old fleet and into an area which is having a very old fleet. For all these reasons, I believe that we have been very prudent in managing our assumptions. And I think gradually, we are going in that direction. So we feel that not only for 2026, we are absolutely certain that we will deliver properly, but also for the coming years, we will be in line with our projections. Last, procurement. I didn't quite understood the last part of your question, but I can tell you that we don't feel any procurement issue as a result of the crisis right now in the rate. But if you can elaborate more of what you meant, I will be able to answer. Alessandro Di Vito: Yes. No, I think you already answered. I was asking about your procurement strategy and whether you would be affected by the disruption in the Middle East. But you already said that the fixed portion of supply is secured and you have no procurement from Middle East. The last question was on the net income for 2026, whether it is going to be around EUR 700 million or above EUR 400 million during the presentation, I had above, but I just wanted to make sure about the detail. Georgios Stassis: Okay. Listen, we just closed the year at EUR 450 million net result. I can tell you certainly that we will be in the area of 700. I could even tell you that we're having a good year today. So I would be most probably able to verify a number higher than this. But of course, we have -- we are in an environment of huge volatility. So the only thing I can confirm is the 700 level right now. Operator: The next question is from the line of Nestoras Katsios with Optima Bank. Nestor Katsios: Congratulations for your great set of results. So two questions from my side. The first one has to do with the data centers. Is there any update with your discussions on the data center front? And the second one is about [ Ptolemais ] 5. I understand that you will shut down this year. Are there any final investment decision for the future of [ Ptolemais ], I mean, some gas plant? Georgios Stassis: Okay. Let me start from the last because I think it's the easiest. I mean, for [ Ptolemais ] 5. I think we have already announced that we will convert it to gas, and we are already working in that direction. I think we will see it already in operation in gas from 2028 because we are already working in that direction. We have already secured the equipment we need. And I think we have sufficient time to do this transformation by 2028 early. So this is for [ Ptolemais ]. Now for the data centers, for those of you who are following our company, you may remember that we have announced our intention to develop a data center last April. It's almost a year, not even a year yet. And I told you from that day that I would expect -- I was expecting end of '26 to have some sort of real development. And this is our vision right now. However, we are in discussions with hyperscalers and those discussions are going a little bit better from what I thought. So I mean, we have progress. We have significant progress, but we are not there yet. This is the thing I can say right now. Operator: The next question is from the line of Karidis John with Deutsche Bank. John Karidis: I have four quick ones on just the telco business, please. The first question is, what was the CapEx in FY '25 in millions rather than billions? Secondly, how many customers did you have at the end of 2025? And how many do you have now? Thirdly, during the CMD, I asked you about the timing of the launch for voice services, and you said very soon. Could you please update me on that, hopefully, give me something like a date? And then lastly, a year ago, I asked you whether you were interested in mobile, and you said you were not. Has your view changed there at all? Georgios Stassis: Thank you very much for the questions. I can tell you that we have spent around EUR 200 million until now on this project. We have delivered more or less a network of 1.7 million, but only 1 million is commercially available. First, you create the backbone and then you make the remaining pieces. So very recently, we launched at the end of last summer, the service with a footprint of 500,000, let's say, households passed. And very recently, we opened from 500,000 to 1 million. I can tell you that we are currently connecting around 200 customers per day. This is the current pace we have. So you can calculate. I think we are quite happy with that because in that level, I think this in the coming months because it's too young, not even 6 months that we are working on that. In the current pace, we will probably reach a level of 250,000 in the coming months. And when we will open the remaining 500,000 and so on and so forth, I mean, going gradually as per our plan to 3.5 million; this means that with this trend, we will be reaching a level of around 700, 800 customers, maybe more per day. So we are very happy. We are learning as well from that. As you might have noticed, we are not pushing a lot advertising because we want to have a very good service on our customers. But very shortly, we will start pushing more commercially. So I'm expecting these numbers to pick up. But so far, so good. I mean, we are doing very well. We are very happy, and we will reach the target -- the number of target customers we have in our mind by the end of '28, beginning of '29. About voice, I think we are ready to launch it probably in June, June, July, we will launch voice. About mobile, we are not investing in mobile because our project is a very specific project. That's why we are so relaxed. I mean we are doing this -- we found this opportunity to roll out this fiber project only in Greece. It's not a big project for us versus our total CapEx. And we are in line exactly with the numbers we want to have day by day. So we will go gradually. We are not investing in the mobile. I can verify this 100%. Thank you. John Karidis: I'm sorry, could you please tell me how many customers you had in total at the end of 2025? Georgios Stassis: We have more than 12,000 customers. Operator: The next question is from the line of Walker-Hunt Ella with Citigroup. Ella Walker-Hunt: My first question relates to hedging. So in terms of power price exposure, could you tell us what's your hedge position at the end of the year? So how much in terms of terawatt hours have you sold forward and what duration? And then my second question is about the full-year results. So if you -- if we look at it on a quarterly basis, so the fourth quarter earnings were actually down almost 20% if you compare to the last year. So I was just wondering, what was driving that earnings contraction in the fourth quarter? Georgios Stassis: Okay. The first part -- what was the first part? The hedging, the hedging, we are at a level of more than 40% to 45% right now for the year for everything, all our position, not accounting the fixed customers, of course, that we have 100%, as I told you, on our fleet. Now for the fourth quarter, I mean, we navigated -- I mean, we have a sort of -- every year a sort of seasonality, and we are trying to govern the company also taking into account the market in general. So we chose to support more our customers at the end of the year. And -- but still, we brought our results. So -- but this has happened in many of our years, I mean, in the past years. There is a thin line where you need to keep the pace of growth in a reasonable level. And from quarter-to-quarter, we have and we have had differences like that in the past. This is normal. In the contrary, you will see that if you will compare this quarter, this current quarter when we will announce it because it's going well. With the quarter of last year, you will find exactly the opposite. But it is part of our -- the nature of our business. Operator: The next question is from the line of Pombeiro Mafalda with Goldman Sachs. Congratulations on the results. Mafalda Pombeiro: I only have two left, if possible. The first one would be any indication or guidance on the net debt levels for 2026, if you can share at least the main moving pieces? And the second one is just a clarification. Out of your retail sold volumes, could you please -- I understand that the part that is fixed contract fixed customers. So what percentage is that of the overall sold volumes? Georgios Stassis: Our fixed part is around 20%. And now Konstantinos will take the first one. One second, give us. Konstantinos Alexandridis: Yes. So the way we have set up the business plan that we discussed back in November is asking for additional investments. So we do expect that the more we are progressing, of course, leverage ratio will remain at the area of 3.3x to 3.4x. So that would be at an area in terms of net debt close to EUR 7.5 billion to EUR 7.7 billion. Operator: The next question is from the line of Anna Antonova with JPMorgan. Anna Antonova: Just a few from our side. So first, on the CapEx outlook for this year for 2026. I see that last year, you spent just a little bit lower than you guided below the EUR 3 billion. Is the CapEx for this year still expected around your target, which I think from the end of last year was EUR 3.8 billion? That's the first question. Georgios Stassis: Yes. We -- of course, from last year, the big deliveries of renewables started to arrive in our company. On the other hand, last year, we did our CapEx also with an acquisition. as we have noticed. But the last quarter, we brought 800 megawatts. So it's ramping up. And right now, we are going to deliver 1.8 gigawatt, and it's going fantastic. So we are able to confirm exactly our CapEx for this year. Anna Antonova: The second question is on the outlook for hydropower this year. I remember you commented during the call that in Q1, the weather conditions were quite favorable. So if you could maybe comment where you currently see the upside for hydro generation for this year compared to last year's maybe level, which was, I think, 3.4 terawatt hours. Georgios Stassis: Yes. Finally, we are having a good year on hydro after several years. We had the 3 bad years on hydro levels, and this is coming back this year. So I mean, I cannot predict exactly, but it's going to be for sure, more than last year. Operator: We have a follow-up question from Anna Antonova, JPMorgan. Anna Antonova: Just a quick follow-up question. So with all the events happening this year and higher power prices and kind of regulatory debate in Europe, can you comment if you see any downside to your targets for this year from the current conditions, both on the financials and on especially the lignite phaseout? You mentioned earlier the event of 2022, and I remember that at that time, the lignite decommissioning was a bit delayed due to everything that has been happening. So do you expect kind of any potential risks to the targets for this year? Georgios Stassis: Yes. And what was the lesson in 2022? We kept lignite because why? Not for economic reasons, because of lack of physical deliveries at that time in 2022. And what was the lesson? It was still more expensive than anything else. So we are not intending to keep it back by no means, especially now that we don't have any physical delivery issues. Other than that, I mean, knock wood, this is going very well this year. If it wasn't the Iran conflict, we would be able to be more optimistic, but we stay at this level right now. Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, there are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the conference over to Mr. Stassis for any closing comments. Thank you. Georgios Stassis: Maybe we have a question. Operator: Yes. We have one more question from Mr. Alderman Richard with BTIG. Richard Alderman: Can you hear me? Georgios Stassis: Yes, please go ahead. Richard Alderman: Just one follow-up question on the hedging there. Just so we don't misunderstand what you're saying about the gas element of the hedging within your retail book, are you essentially hedged for what you see would be your average demand through the rest of the year from your retail book at this point? And then obviously, if there are variations within that and that costs you more, you would pass that through to customers who are not on fixed contracts. I'm just trying to understand... Georgios Stassis: This is indeed -- this is exactly correct what you said. Richard Alderman: Okay. Because there's been some discussion in the market as to whether you had exposure to that, but that's reassuring to hear. Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, there are no further questions now. I will now turn the conference over to Mr. Georgios Stassis for any closing comments. Thank you. Georgios Stassis: I think 2025 has been an important year. because this company proved that it reached a level of significant net result versus the past years. 2026 will be another year like that. Our growth is very important versus last year. And we feel confident we are exactly on target, maybe a little bit more. We will see how the year will develop. But so far, so good. So we are excited with the development of the company. We are already working very much for 2027, 2028. I believe 2026 is secured. And I think the coming years will be very interesting. Thank you.
Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Drägerwerk Full Year 2025 Earnings Call. I'm Moritz, your Chorus Call operator. [Operator Instructions] The conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Stefan Drager, CEO. Please go ahead, sir. Stefan Dräger: Very good afternoon, and thank you for joining our conference call on our financial results for the fiscal year 2025. I have with me today Gert-Hartwig Lescow, CFO, as well as Tom Fischler and Nikolaus Hammerschmidt, both Investor Relations. We would like to take you through the results with the presentation that we made available on our web page this morning. Following the presentation, we will open the floor to your question. Let's get started on Page 5 with the business highlights. In 2025, we continued our successful course and generated the highest net sales in our company's history. Both divisions and all regions contributed to this. At around EUR 3.5 billion, net sales were slightly above our last forecast and around EUR 25 million above the level of the exceptionally strong coronavirus year 2020. Unlike during the pandemic, this is a new record that we achieved entirely without a special economic situation. Thanks to the operating momentum, our earnings before interest and taxes also developed very well. EBIT rose by more than 20% to around EUR 233 million despite difficult conditions. The EBIT margin increased by roughly 1 percentage point to 6.7%, also exceeding our last forecast. This shows that we are making progress in improving our profitability. Order intake also developed very well as with net sales, both divisions contributed to growth. This underlines the continuing demand for our Technology for Life and gives us a positive outlook for the future. Positive is also the key word with regard to our cash flow development, which Gert-Hartwig Lescow will explain later. We have also performed well on the stock market. Last year, our common shares rose by more than 1/3, while our preferred shares even increased by almost half and were included in the TecDAX. This means that we are once again one of the 30 largest listed technology companies in Germany. This listing increases our visibility on the capital market and could make us even more attractive to investors. In mid-January, we published our preliminary business figures for 2025 and our forecast for 2026. Our shares then rose significantly again and reached their highest level since July 2017. This shows that investor confidence in Dräger is higher than it has been for a long time. Our first goal remains to increase profitability such that our EBIT margin is the same as the last digit of the calendar year as we have more goals that are strategic to steer the company. We are strengthening our innovative power and expanding our competence in the systems business and further expanding our services and recurring business. In our Medical division, we are particularly driving forward the marketing of network solutions. To this end, we launched a large marketing campaign in 2025. Our goal is to strengthen Dräger's position as the leading provider of connected solutions in the hospital sector. That said, we are also launching a big wave of SDC-based solutions. That is service oriented device connectivity, the new standard for interoperability of medical devices according to IEEE 11073. It creates new functionalities and therefore, added value. With our new Silent Care Package, for example, we contribute to solving one of the biggest problems in the ICU by reducing the alarm noises. In the Safety division, connectivity is becoming more important, too. Our fire ground monitoring system, for example, helped us to win the Paris Fire Department as a new customer in 2025. Speaking of firefighting, we also received the important approval for our PSS AirBoss SCBA, in North America, reaching a milestone for strengthening our position in this key market. In addition to our core business, we are consistently investing in new business opportunities in areas such as clean tech and defense. Last year, our defense business grew significantly. We are well on track to triple our defense sales to more than EUR 300 million by 2028. I will talk about the other highlights on the past fiscal year, the dividend and the outlook at the end of our presentation. I would first like to explain in more detail on Page 6, what challenges we had to overcome last year. So Page 6, headwind compensated. Ladies and gentlemen, 2025 was a very successful year, particularly in light of the difficult condition. In 2024, we have benefited from positive one-off effects from the sale of a nonstrategic business activity that was the smoke and fire alarm systems in the Netherlands and some real estate loss in the United States. This has boosted our EBIT by around EUR 22 million. In the past year, we missed these effects and also faced strong headwinds from tariffs and currency. The tariffs imposed by the U.S. government had a negative impact of roughly EUR 26 million on our EBIT. Around EUR 21 million out of this was attributable to the Medical division and around EUR 5 million to the Safety division. In addition, EBIT was impacted by currency effects initiated from the White House and propagated over the world totaling to around EUR 45 million. Thereof, EUR 28 million were attributable to the Medical division and around EUR 16 million to the Safety division. So overall, we had to compensate opposing effects of more than EUR 90 million. The fact that we even overcompensated these effects is a clear proof of our resilience. We were, therefore, able to improve our profitability even under difficult conditions. Let's take a look at the margin development of recent years on Page 7. Following the significant loss in '22, we have shifted our focus from net sales growth to earnings growth. We have thus set ourselves the goal of increasing our EBIT margin by an average of 1 percentage point per year from 2024. The focus on profitability in accordance with our corporate objective #1 has worked well so far. After the strong turnaround in '23, we were able to improve our EBIT margin by roughly 1 percentage point in both '24 and '25. While positive one-off effects, in particular, contributed to the improvement in '24, the improvement in '25 came mainly from the operating business. This is a development that we very much welcome. And we have our strategic, our corporate objective 2 is innovation and our corporate objective 3 is systems business and recurring business. Now I would like to hand over to Gert-Hartwig to explain our business development further. I will then turn back with the dividend and the outlook. Gert-Hartwig? Gert-Hartwing Lescow: Thank you, Stefan. I would also like to extend a warm welcome to everyone joining this conference call for our results for the fiscal year 2025. Please turn to Page 6 for a view on the Dräger Group. As usual, I will be stating currency-adjusted figures, and I will be referring to growth rates. As Stefan mentioned, demand for our Technology for Life remains strong. Overall, orders increased by 7.7% to around EUR 3.6 billion. In Q4, orders rose by 5.6%. Both divisions contributed to growth in both reporting periods. Net sales climbed by 5.3% in the full year and by 8.7% in the fourth quarter. This was due to good development in both divisions and all regions. Like for orders, the Americas region and the EMEA region were the biggest growth drivers. At around EUR 3.5 billion, net sales -- reached 2025, the highest level in the company's history. In addition to the high order intake, this was mainly due to the strong year-end business. Benefiting from the record net sales in December and the margin improvement in the Medical division, our group's gross margin rose slightly by 0.3 percentage points to 45.2% in the full year. Functional expenses rose by 4.6% in 2025 after they had been positively impacted by one-off effects of around EUR 32 million in the prior year. These effects included the net sale of a nonstrategic business in the Netherlands and the sale of real estate in Spain and the U.S. Excluding these one-off effects, the increase in functional expenses in 2025 was only 2.5%. This increase is attributable to higher personnel expenses, which went up due to collective wage increases in Germany and higher number of employees, among other things. Despite the missing positive one-off effects in '24 and the negative currency and tariff effect in '25, our EBIT increased by more than 20% to around EUR 233 million. Consequently, our EBIT margin rose from 5.8% to 6.7%. The mentioned headwinds were overcompensated by the high order intake, the strong net sales momentum and the improved gross margin. In addition, the strong year-end business contributed to the resilient development. Our EBIT improved by around 37% in the fourth quarter, while the EBIT margin declined to 13.7% from 10.6% in that period. The full year EBIT development is in line with our medium-term goal to increase the EBIT margin by 1 percentage point per annum on average. Guided 2026 EBIT margin includes an additional margin improvement on the higher end of the guidance range. The result of the strong increase in earnings, our DVA in 2025 improved by roughly EUR 36 million to around EUR 9 million. Let us now take a closer look at the development of the 2 divisions, starting with the Medical division on Page 10. Following a slight increase in the prior year, our order intake in the Medical division rose by roughly 9% in 2025. This was primarily due to the high demand for our anesthesia machines, ventilator services and consumables. In addition, we received a major multiyear order for hospital infrastructure systems for Mexico, which significantly supported the above-average growth in the Americas region. Demand also developed positively in the other regions, particularly EMEA. In the fourth quarter, order intake rose by 2.2% as the decline in APAC and EMEA was overcompensated by significant growth in Americas and a high demand in Germany. Driven by growth in all regions, net sales in the Medical division increased by 7.4% in 2025 after decline in the prior year. In Q4, net sales rose by 13%, thanks to considerable growth in EMEA, Americas and Germany. Net sales in the APAC region were around 3% below the prior year level. Our gross margin in the division rose by 0.6 percentage points to 43.6%. The negative currency and tariff effects were overcompensated by the favorable product and country mix. In Q4, on the other hand, the gross margin decreased by 0.6 percentage points due to higher inventory write-downs. Functional expenses climbed by 5.7% in 2025, having been positively impacted in the prior year by one-off effects of around EUR 15 million from the sale of real estate and the adjustment of the product. Without these effects, the increase in 2025 amounted to only 3.7% with higher personnel expenses being the main cause. The EBIT of the Medical division doubled to EUR 57 million after a decline in the prior year. Consequently, the EBIT margin rose from 1.5% to 2.9%. In Q4, the EBIT increased significantly to by around 40% to roughly EUR 80 million, thanks to the strong year-end business. As a result of the strong increase in earnings, our DVA in the Medical division improved considerably in 2025 from around minus EUR 50 million to minus EUR 23 million. I will now turn to our Safety division, which delivered another good performance. We are now on Page 11. Our Safety business continues to grow. Order intake rose by more than 6% in 2025. This was primarily due to the high demand for engineered solutions and gas detection devices. In addition, respiratory and personal protection products as well as alcohol and drug testing devices contributed. The EMEA and Americas regions recorded a significant increase in orders, while the APAC region also developed positively. In Germany, demand declined after we had received a major order for NBC protection filters in the prior year. However, industrial demand in Germany is also generally restrained at present. Net sales increased by 2.6% in the fiscal year, driven by positive development in the EMEA and APAC regions. In Germany, net sales were roughly on par with the prior year, while the Americas recorded a decline. In Q4, net sales rose by just under 3% as the decline in the Americas and Germany was overcompensated by the growth in EMEA and APAC. Our gross margin in the division remained stable at 47.3% in 2025 with the negative currency and tariff effects being offset by the more favorable product mix and price adjustments. In Q4, the gross margin slightly decreased by 0.2 percentage points. Functional expenses went up by roughly 3%, having been positively impacted from the prior year by one-off effects of around EUR 17 million from the sale of a nonstrategic business area and from the sale of real estate. Excluding these effects, functional expenses fell by 0.4%. The capitalization of development costs led to a reduction in functional expenses in the reporting year. The EBIT of the Safety division increased in 2025 by 6.4% to around EUR 176 million, while the EBIT margin rose from 11.3% to 11.9%. In Q4, the EBIT climbed by around 33% to roughly EUR 77 million as a result of the strong year-end business. The EBIT margin also improved significantly by 4 percentage points to 16.5%. Our DVA in Safety division increased by around EUR 9 million to around EUR 113 million, coming from around EUR 104 million in the prior year. All in all, a very positive development in our Safety business. Let's move on to some key ratios on Page 12. Thanks to the strong growth in earnings, our cash flow from operating activities improved significantly by around EUR 71 million to around EUR 238 million in 2025. At the same time, outflow from investing activities rose from just under EUR 55 million to around EUR 98 million. Among other things, this was due to a supplier loan granted and the purchase of further shares in an investment. Moreover, the sale of our fire alarm systems business in the Netherlands and the sale of the property in the U.S. have led to a considerable inflow in 2024. All in all, our free cash flow amounted to around EUR 140 million, which is a considerable improvement of around EUR 60 million compared to the prior year. Since free cash flow was on par with net profit, the cash conversion rate amounted to 100%, the level we also expect for the current year. As a result of the decrease in free cash flow, cash and cash equivalents rose significantly by about EUR 22 million to EUR 282 million. This led to a considerable decline in net financial debt by around 25% to EUR 123 million. That said, the ratio of net financial debt to EBITDA declined from 0.5 to 0.3, keeping our leverage at a very healthy level. With regard to net financial debt, we expect the figure to increase in the current year. A large distribution center is currently being built in Lübeck where we intend to consolidate various logistics warehouses in the future. Dräger will rent the property on a long-term basis, which under IFRS results in a higher lease liability. This, together with higher investments is in turn a key driver for the higher expected net debt in 2026 with an increase of around 4% to EUR 1.7 million capital employed -- EUR 1.7 billion capital employed rose much lower than our EBIT. Therefore, our 12 months return on capital employed went up from 12.1% to 14.2%. Net working capital was around 2% higher than in the prior year at around EUR 755 million. Due to the good business development, in particular, our equity ratio stood at around 52% as of December 31, coming from roughly 50% at the end of the prior year. Let's take a closer look at our EPS on Page 13. With the increase in earnings since 2022 that Stefan Drager mentioned at the beginning of his presentation, our EPS has also improved continuously over the past years, coming from around minus EUR 3.50 per share in 2022, earnings per common share climbed to more than EUR 7.40 in 2025. At the same time, earnings per preferred share rose from around minus EUR 3.40 to roughly EUR 7.50 per share. Again, this clearly underlines the progress we are making in improving our profitability. Now I hand back to Stefan Drager for the outlook, starting with our dividend proposal on Page 14. Stefan Dräger: Thank you, Gert-Hartwig. Well, in line with our dividend policy, we intend to distribute around 30% of our net profit to our shareholders. Since our net profit has increased significantly, we will also increase the dividend significantly again for the third time in a row since 2023. We intend to propose a dividend of EUR 2.21 per common share and EUR 2.27 per preferred share for our Annual Shareholders Meeting in May. Our equity ratio is clearly over 50%. Provided that the equity situation remains as positive as it is now, we will continue to distribute at least 30% of our net profit in the coming years. That said, let's move on to our outlook for 2026 on Page 15. Ladies and gentlemen, with good demand, record sales and significantly improved earnings, 2025 was a very successful year. This is even more apparent when you consider the headwind from a difficult economic environment. Our operating business is showing good momentum. Both order intake and order backlog are at a high level. We, therefore, want to increase net sales again in the current fiscal year. In 2026, we expect an increase in net sales from 2% to 6% of net of currency effects at an EBIT margin between 5% and 7.5%. Both divisions are likely to contribute to net sales growth and a positive EBIT. We will continue to counter the U.S. import tariffs by raising prices. In the past fiscal year, we developed a package of measures to compensate for some of the customs duties. We expect this compensation to be more effective during the course of the 2026 fiscal year than before. For '26, we expect the level of custom duties at group level to be similar to the prior year overall. The burns in the Medical division are likely to be significantly higher than in the Safety division where we have more possibilities to concentrate and forward with improved prices. The corporate planning, therefore, the net sales and EBIT forecast for '26 are based on the assumption that custom duties will remain at the level of the reporting date for the annual financial statements. However, when we recall the Greenland discussion over a certain weekend in this spring, this is not guaranteed and it motivates us to further pursue increased profitability to be able to live through the challenges and uncertainties. When it comes to the war in Iran, we do not see any material impact on our business so far. We are present in the Middle East with our own Dräger people in Saudi Arabia and Dubai. Our local employees are doing well so far. In general, the region remains a growth market for us. Risks from the war depend heavily on its duration and regional extent and its impact on the global economy. We are able to mitigate this through our high level of diversification. We are very broadly positioned in terms of markets, products, geographies, business mechanics and customers. This strengthens our resilience and gives us a positive outlook to the future. With this, I would like to end the presentation and hand over to the operator to open the floor for your questions. Operator: [Operator Instructions] And the first question comes from Oliver Reinberg from Kepler Cheuvreux. Oliver Reinberg: Firstly, just on the Middle East situation as you just confirmed that you don't expect any kind of larger impact. Can you just confirm that there's also not any kind of expected impact from the developments basically in terms of supply chains and inflation? That would be question number one. Secondly, can you just provide an update on the ventilation market? We have seen quite some changes basically with Mindray -- I am sorry, with Medtronic and Bayer actually exiting the market. And I think Mindray is now entering in the U.S. market. I mean it's also a high base. Do you continue to expect actually significant growth in this market segment? Any update on the developments here would be helpful? And then thirdly, as you called out corporate objective #3 to increase the kind of recurring business at Dräger, can you just provide some kind of flavor where do you stand these days percentage-wise? And any kind of targets that you can share in that regard? Stefan Dräger: Well, on the Middle East, yes, I confirm that we do not see a material impact of the war on our business at the moment in the foreseeable future. Including the supply chain, there is no -- not to our knowledge, a significant impact on any specific component of production that we can see so far. We have taken some measures in the past to work with our suppliers more carefully with whom we work and have some reasonable stocking levels for our inventory for components. So we, of course, cannot compensate for all seasonal effects, and we will remain interdependent from the world and the supply chain. However, I confirm there is no impact that we can see from the current conflict in the Middle East. What I do see though is that the energy prices will remain worldwide on the current level and not return to the level they were like 6 weeks ago, including the electricity gas and fuel at the gas station. However, our sensitivity to energy in real is quite limited. So that has no material effect on our outlook and prognosis. Your second question, Mr. Reinberg, on the ventilation. So yes, there are 2 major players have exited the market. And, yes, Mindray is there. We, on the other hand, we do not see a significant effect or even, I would say, threat from Mindray having a more comprehensive offer in the U.S. Where we see more and we see they are more active is in Africa in remote regions where they have also political -- Chinese government has political influence in financing some of the African governments or very obvious direct influence and control on government and purchasing decisions. There, we are out. On the more developed markets I won't say it is a significant new development or a threat. On a global scale, yes, it is a good copy of Dräger with similar offerings and a similar portfolio on both the geographical scale and portfolio. So it is a very viable market companion, not only on ventilation, but in many modalities to watch geographically mostly in Africa. Your question on our corporate objective #3, which is developing the business model further from transaction-based device selling towards interoperability and systems business competence and actually doing, including recurring businesses, services based on contracts instead of transactions. Yes, we can say that last year, we crossed the EUR 1 billion threshold in services and some countries in Europe, our sales, the majority already is in services more than in devices, including our home market in Germany, but some other European countries as well, services sales is greater than devices. Oliver Reinberg: And can you share any kind of targets like where you want to go with this kind of offering? Stefan Dräger: Yes, the goal is to grow this further as it is a good way to defend our business over a business that is purely on cost like some of the business mentioned from Mindray in Africa where the decision is not alone, they have a larger share of mind, they are more deeply entrenched with the customer in offering the service. It is -- we have a better understanding of the customer needs and it's more challenging to replace the assets on a pure device that is -- the trend is that it may become a commodity. Operator: And the next question comes from Harald Hof from mwb research. Harald Hof: As we talked about the Iran conflict already, just 2 questions left from my side. The first one is talking about the tariffs. The situation has changed significantly. So what does this mean for Dräger? And will you apply for reimbursements? And the second question is how has the defense activities developed so far in 2026. Gert-Hartwing Lescow: Happy to. So firstly, there is a couple of developments firstly, the court decided that the tariffs that the Trump administration has put in place is not legal. And we have, in fact, also filed for a reimbursement. As of today, it is open, how fast the courts will decide and when or if we will in fact be paid out. And secondly... Stefan Dräger: It's not part of the plan. Gert-Hartwing Lescow: It's not part of the plan at this point. So if there was a significant payment that would be upside, so to speak and the signals have been mixed, how quickly that can happen. I think you've read the news, to courts as far as I remember, have decided they are not allowed to delay it, but so far, nothing has happened. So there is a chance that we can recollect some of our tariffs. Having said that, given that the previous tariffs have been declared illegal, the Trump administration has put in place another set of tariffs which are a little bit lower by 5 percentage points, but there are in fact for full year instead just 2/3 of the year. And if that is -- when those run out after 150 days, there are other potential tariffs to be enacted the one that may run. The so-called Section 122 tariffs may be replaced by Section 301 and Section 222 and we would expect that, that will actually take place in the second half of the year. So when it comes to effective tariff burden, we still assume that they will remain in place. And as we have seen earlier this year, and as Stefan Drager pointed out, sometimes, there is even a discussion about additional Greenland tariffs or not. But so far, we expect actual tariff burn to be of the same magnitude as last year. Stefan Dräger: Okay. And your other question on the defense business. Well, in general, we benefit in both divisions. The medical also benefits if there is the need, for instance, to additionally serve 1,500 wounded soldiers that come per day from the Eastern front. They're currently preparing and planning for that needs capacity in the German hospital system or the field hospitals or hospital war ships. But that is regular medical equipment. But we say we would not directly classify that as defense business. What we do call such is part of the safety portfolio that can be specific products for personal protection like the classical gas mask for a soldier or gas detection equipment, filters for military vehicles to protect those who protect us in our freedom to operate our democracy. And last year, around the same time of the year, we predicted that would actually more than triple until the year 2028 to approximately EUR 300 million. Well, already last year, we saw a good development, and we crossed the EUR 100 million threshold with these elements of the portfolio. And we confirm that we think in 2028, it can be EUR 300 million because there are quite some opportunities out there. Harald Hof: Just a quick follow-up. When talking about tariff reimbursement, do you communicate volume? How much is the figure that could be reimbursed? Stefan Dräger: We communicated that we paid the EUR 26 million. Gert-Hartwing Lescow: That's actually the net effect. So to the degree that it will be the net effect, it will be in that order. The gross effect is in turn higher runs around EUR 30 million, and that would be the impact if we get full reimbursement without the need to pass on anything to customers in that context. And as I said, at this point, we view that as perhaps not speculative, but we have not received a clear indication that we should account for that in the near future. But we'll keep you posted, obviously, when that situation changes. Operator: And the next question comes from Pierre-Yves Gauthier from AlphaValue. Pierre-Yves Gauthier: My question relates to your capital spending. You had quite a big surge in '25. Is that likely to last? Or is it some sort of a bump that we will not see in '26, '27? Gert-Hartwing Lescow: The part of the higher investment are due to a loan, which actually has to be accounted for to one of our suppliers, which have to be accounted for under IFRS as an investment. I'm not sure whether that is -- that actually was one of the reasons for the bump. And that we do not expect in '26 nor later. We do, however, as I pointed out in the presentation, have to account for an investment for a rental agreement. Again, that's due to the statement. So all in, we expect an increase in the investment volume from around EUR 103 million to EUR 110 million to EUR 130 million. And the substantial portion is, in fact, the long-term rental agreement, which is as these things are not cash effective for the full amount in the period of '26, but over the course of the rental agreement. Operator: And we do have a follow-up question from Oliver Reinberg from Kepler Cheuvreux. Oliver Reinberg: Three, if I may. One on China. Can you just provide an update what you see there on the ground? I mean, it's not a huge market, but any kind of pickup would be helpful to just get the latest dynamics here. Secondly, I think Q1 nearly comes to an end. Any kind of light you can share how you started into the year? And then last question, just on currencies. I mean, if -- I think in the last call, we guided for quite a significant impact. If currencies stay where they currently are, can you just give us any kind of flavor what kind of isolated margin impact you have? Stefan Dräger: I can -- Stefan speaking. I can pick the start in '26, where we started with a good order backlog after the order intake at the fourth quarter was also very good. And so with this, we had a good start in '26 and the order intake and sales at this moment is according to our expectations and planning. So it's on the way to deliver on our forecast and prognosis. Gert-Hartwing Lescow: And with regards to the FX development, in addition to the headwind that we had in '25, we overall see a further deterioration, but not by another similar amount. Our currency headwind when we look at net sales is around 1 percentage point. And when it comes to the EBIT margin, it's between 30 to 60 basis points. Stefan Dräger: I think Mr. Reinberg, this is important to figure in when you compare our actual '25 result, in particular, the EBIT margin and the prognosis for '26 because the prognosis for '26 and the whole planning for '26 is based on less favorable exchange rates. So if these develop and they would be the same as last year's actual exchange rates, then the outcome, of course, would be better than the current forecast and prognosis. But it's -- from our perspective, not safe to assume that it would be the same. So we have our best guess included into the planning. And that is the major reason if you wonder why our forecast does not show a stronger improvement because our goal is to improve our profitability by 1 percentage point per year. So on average, that is unchanged. Oliver Reinberg: China? Stefan Dräger: Yes, China, we didn't touch China. There is no relevant news on that. That is relatively stable and continues to be on a much lower level than it used to. Operator: [Operator Instructions] So it looks like there are no further questions. So I would like to turn the conference back over to Stefan Drager for any closing remarks. Stefan Dräger: We thank you very much for all of you being with us today during our annual results conference for '25. Thank you for your questions and the interaction. We look forward to meeting you again either online or preferably at some point in time in the not-too-distant future in person. Have a pleasant afternoon and evening. Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, the conference has now concluded, and you may disconnect. Thank you for joining, and have a pleasant day. Goodbye.