Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining this investor call for the full year results of the accounting year 2024/2025. We will start with the introduction by Francis, and then I will disclose a bit more on the financial results. You know these two presenters: Francis J. Kint, Chief Executive Officer, and myself, Nicolas De Clercq, the Chief Financial Officer. Good afternoon, everyone. Before we dive into the numbers, there are a few statements that we'd like to make that are qualitative, as you can see them. The first one is that we're happy to be in the category that we're in. Food and vegetables remain a very important traffic driver for all our retail customers. In fact, the more interaction we have with these customers, the more they are, and you might have noticed as a private individual going to shop in your local store, that you will notice that the fresh food and vegetables are increasingly important to position themselves versus their competitors. We did advance today's calls because, indeed, on the next slides, I will announce that our results are below expectations, and that's the reason why we wanted to advance these. Nicolas, I will come back on them. This being said, I believe that we have positioned a very solid management in the view of difficult economic circumstances, supply chain, and weather conditions throughout the group. Let me explain. By economic circumstances, I mention, in fact, more the uncertainties that affect us all. We have noticed, and economists do confirm it, that more and more consumers will also, I would say, mitigate the impact of a possible future with less money, also with their reduced food sales. The story about people always have to eat is, of course, still true, but we notice that they will also mitigate their food sales when necessary. One of our categories particularly was hit. I will come back on that. I will also come back on the weather conditions. Now, we believe that we put down a strong focus on operational performance and further streamlining of the group. We are realizing that we're in a thin-margin business and that we always need to have a competitive cost structure. The further streamlining in the group has also translated into some restructuring costs that we have had this year. Nicolas, I will come back on them, that have hit our bottom line. As you know, the CSRD reporting required by the EU is heavier every year. We support fully this strength because we believe that these topics are of the utmost importance, and they're really at the heart of our strategy. We have put in the necessary resources to gather the information and to bring down these reports. We can say that we're ready for this reporting. We also have significant process in realizing the numbers behind these ESG ambitions. Nicolas has one slide where we'll show KPI for the five KPIs where we are standing this year. Of course, in the background of us speaking here, there was the announcement of a voluntary and conditional takeover bid on all Greenyard shares by the family together with Solon Partners through a Luxembourg-based Garden SARL, and that this bid has been fully supported by the board of directors. These are the highlights of this year in terms of numbers. We did increase our top line with 5.1% to EUR 5.3 billion. We'll come back on the different segments, but on average, this 5.1% growth was driven by a volume increase of 2.9%, a price increase of 1.3%, and also a 0.9% increase of our service sales. We did set up quite an important operation in the city of Hamburg for an important German discounter by which we function as a hub for food. In this hub, we only charge through our services, and the product going through that box, I would say, is not going through the P&L, but the services, I would say, invoiced are important and did increase our top line by 1%. Disappointingly, our adjusted EBITDA decreased by EUR 3.5 million, landing at EUR 183 million, which is below, of course, the expectation that we had for the year, below the budgets that we had set for ourselves. On top of that, due to restructuring costs, higher depreciation and taxes, higher financial interests, the net result was EUR 18 million below last year, and we ended up below zero with a net result of minus EUR 2.9 million. Nicolas, I will come back to that and give you the difference, I would say, elements with more numbers. Positively, our net financial debt continues to drop year after year, this year by 3.7% to EUR 256 million, despite the impact of increased inventories. I'm going to stress that you will later see the number of about EUR 50 million of extra inventories. At this point, I will say that it's about 50/50 due to, I would say, the value of the stock itself and the volume in the stock. The value of the stock has increased, especially in long fresh, because of the two years of inflation of 2022/2023. The good thing is that we were able to keep our prices, even increase them slightly in 2024. Overall, of course, on a per-tonnage basis, our stock has increased. On top of that, because even though we had some very wet weather in 2024, we were still able to harvest the budgeted volumes, but we did not be able to sell them all. We also saw our inventories and tonnage increase. Of course, we will work next year at reducing them. Looking at everything that has passed us this year, but also what is in front of us, yesterday, our board had a discussion between 10:00 A.M. and 12:00 P.M. and decided to propose to the annual assembly not to pay dividends for next year, for this year. As you remember, the year before, we had paid the EUR 0.25 per share dividends. I will now dive a little bit more qualitatively, I would say, between the story of the business, yes, thank you, between fresh and long fresh, because frankly, the situations are in fact quite different. In the fresh segment, we had a sales growth of about 6%, which was mainly due to volume, about 5%. The rest due to price and then these increases in, I would say, invoicing of services. 80% of our sales are now within these customers that we call ICR customers. ICR for integrated customer relationships. These are relationships that we have for many years that lead to a certain type of integration between ourselves and the customers in terms of data exchange in order to make the supply chain much more efficient. They are now 80% of our volume. If we grow by 5.9%, it also means that these customers have grown by 5.9%, most probably, and for some of them, we actually know, gaining market share in the food and veg category versus their competitors. Some of them we do know, in fact, have a share which is higher than their fair share of their overall sales. We were impacted, especially on the overseas categories that are very important for us. In our import hubs, we are impacted by very high sorting and packing costs. You might ask the question, can't you push that through to our customers? That is partly true. Or can't you possibly claim it back from suppliers? Also, that is true, but there is a part of that that kind of remains in your own P&L. This year, we were particularly hit by that. We see, and I know that this phrase comes back in our presentations year after year, but we do see continued price pressure in the German markets. Germans are people that spend wise, I would say, on their foods. Of course, Germany is also the country where the discount, let's say, chains did find their first existence. This is for us a signal since many, many years that we need to remain cost competitive in order to be able to continue to serve these German customers. We did finalize the divestments of France or the closure of France this year, which has led to high restructuring costs this year, also already the year before, but we can now say that this thing is terminated with. We're also still streamlining our cost structure in Germany. As I just said, it's competitive markets. What I mean by streamlining, it's mainly to avoid the double-up of the structures. Originally, you used to have a structure in the source, in the country of sourcing, and you doubled it up with a structure in the country where you were selling it. This is less and less necessary since more and more of your customers also want to have direct contacts in origin. We're streamlining. Even last year, we did announce some restructuring costs. It's a continuous movement, but just remember that because of the streamlining of sourcing and fresh, we streamline our operations and we'll have, let's say, people either in origin or in the markets. The long fresh story is a little bit different, certainly in terms of, I would say, consumer behavior. Here, our sales growth is 1.7%, and for the first time in our history, we reached the EUR 1 billion mark for our long fresh segment. Now, this is clearly thanks to price, 5.1%, meaning that volume there was negative. This negativity is probably a little bit more in the prepared business, our canning business, where after years and years of slight erosion, for this year, we saw a pretty heavy erosion. We're still doing market analysis to see in what way this will continue. I think for the people amongst you that also follow, let's say, listed companies, you will see that in the canning area, where there are a few listed companies, they also have recorded decreases in sales of canning. The answer to that is, of course, diversification. We use this word for convenience, a little bit for different products in frozen and prepared, but by that, we mean products, of course, that are convenient to consume, a little bit more differentiated, and let's say closer to a ready meal than to an ingredient for a meal. We've continued to increase them nicely, which means that our products mix improves. It's logic that these products are more differentiated and carry a higher gross margin. We did invest quite a bit in CapEx this year to meet consumer demand. Part of that is in capacity. Of course, the list is very long of the projects that we have done. There's one that we want to cite here because it's speaking. I just said that the canning, let's say, category is suffering a little bit, the youth just buy less cans. We need to rejuvenate this category. We have decided to do it by introducing a new type of packaging, a carton packaging. That is called the brand name. We did that with Tetra Pak, and we are launching that on the market. By the way, as we speak, we are, of course, present at the PLMA in Amsterdam, which is the high mass for private label producers to produce their new products. There, of course, our new Tetra Pak is really put forward. It is a product that allows for more communication. It is nice and fresh in terms of looks. It is much more efficient to transport and also much more efficient for retailers to put them on the shelf. We have high expectations for that. I said already that we had particularly bad weather. When it comes to weather, the last year seems to always be impacted by something. I summarize it like this: 2022 was very late with a very cold spring. 2023 was very hot and dry. 2024 was extremely wet. This year, 2025 is extremely dry again. Last year, it was very wet, and that had an impact on us. Normally, we source from our 10 factories in the long fresh division. We source from a radius of about 150 km. These products had to be harvested very wet, come with a lot of mud. Nicolas will show the numbers on our water consumption. It has been pretty high. Also, in terms of production batches, it is not an efficient way of producing. That has definitely hit our bottom line. Finally, and it is part of a longer program, we have invested in the year 2024 quite heavily in the launch of our ice brand, Gigi, which are vegan ice. We do not position it as a vegan product. We just position it as a very special, totally different product with a taste that is made out of two fruits and a vegetable, of course, good for people that have allergies. We are just going to take our time. We started to invest last year. We were listed everywhere in our home country here, and we are going to extend it in other countries. This, of course, has cost money, and it has impacted our results. That is a little bit of an overview. As I said, fresh and long fresh have really quite different stories this year, and the numbers that Nicolas will show will be even more striking. Thank you, Nicolas. When we talk about our ESG scores, we are well underway currently to publish the whole CSRD figures and obligations in the annual report, which will be published in the beginning of June. When we talk about our top five metrics, we have more than 500 data points to measure in the double materiality analysis. When we talk about the top five points of the carbon oxide, we kept on switching to green energy and green electricity, low carbon fuels. We continue our energy efficiency improvements. Investments on solar panels kept on going. We still have some investments ongoing on solar panels on rooftops. We are busy with the big windmill in Bri. As you know, in most countries, permits are not always that easy. We estimate that depending on objectives to build that windmill together with Luminous Belgium Energy Company in the course of 2025-2026. The scope three supplier engagement is also increasing. Also, the scope three carbon oxide with our suppliers, their importance is increasing. Talking about water, as Francis said, it's too dry, too wet, and so on. We consume quite a lot of water, not in our fresh business, but mostly in our long fresh business where we have the real industrial processes. When the vegetables come very muddy from the field, as Francis said, we have to wash a lot. We had sometimes to wash twice before processing them. We consumed more water than expected. We only saved 61,000 cubic meters of water compared to the reference year of 2021, which had a target of 200,000. Of course, we also manage this. We started with a new project in our Bri factory where we will cool down the autoclaves with not with cold water anymore, but also with medium temperature water, which will save another 97,000 cubic meters this coming year. We are working on two large water use projects where we, when they are at full speed running on an annual basis, will save close to 500,000 cubic meters of water. Water target was not met last year. Also, this year will be difficult depending on the permits for those huge projects. The coming years, we are absolutely certain that we can get that target, of course, depending on the permits of the latter. Waste, very good progress. 96% of our organic waste goes already to biogas centrals or animal feed. We are hardly working on the last 4% to capture that as well. Packaging, we are already at 99.5% recyclability. Norms are there in the future becoming even a bit more stricter because they say, yeah, but not in all countries plastic is recyclable. Given the fact in the countries where most of our operations are in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, and so on, plastic is recycled. We are more on the recyclability there. We have one package still, 0.5% that's not recyclable. That are the pouches mainly for soups that have to stand up straight. The replacement packaging is not recyclable at the moment. Responsible sourcing, 90% of the volumes in high and medium countries are already certified. This is a very important target for us as well, as management team, given the fact that we are very strongly behind this target of making sure that our growers respect equal pay, minimum pay, child labor, and so on, so that the fruits and vegetables are cultivated in the right conditions. When we now take a step to the financial review, on the left-hand side above, you see the first graph where you see the difference between the first half year and the second half year. You see that the first half year still had a better growth of the volumes compared to the second half, mainly due to the fact that the already mentioned volume effect in long fresh mostly slowly started December last year, but increased after summer last year. Total increase of 5.1% when we take a consolidated view, so not on a segment view, but consolidated, a slightly positive price impact of 1.3%, quantity of close to 3%, and order is mostly that service sales Francis talked about of 0.9%. The EBITDA decreases with EUR 3.5 million and the margin from 3.6% to 3.4%. A slight mixed impact due to the fact that fresh grew stronger than long fresh, and fresh has a lower margin than compared to long fresh, but long fresh decreased from 9% to 8.4% EBITDA margin and fresh from 2.4% to 2.2%, leading to that EUR 3.5 million low result due to that price pressure on fresh and the volume decrease in long fresh combined with increased cost of labor, but coming back to that on the next slide. Nevertheless, the operational result decreased with EUR 3.5 million. We were able to further decrease the leverage from 1.87 to 1.86, thanks to lowering the net financial debt with EUR 9.8 million, thanks to, amongst others, working capital efforts, and there we compensated the increase of inventory of EUR 48 million. The net result is EUR 18 million lower than last year, so partly caused, of course, by the EUR 3.5 million lower operational result, but also by the already mentioned in our half-year results, the closing down of fresh France, which had an impact on the EBITDA, not on the adjusted EBITDA, but on the EBITDA of more than EUR 7 million. That's in the bridge between adjusted EBITDA and EBITDA, combined also with the reorganization provision that's already executed in Germany by closing a service center in Munich, and where we had a one-time book profit of selling two buildings that partly compensated the two restructuring provisions also in Munich and in Bremerhaven, where we sold two buildings. We had a book profit on the selling of those two buildings. That's in the bridge between adjusted EBITDA and EBITDA. Below EBITDA, you see depreciations going up with EUR 5 million. The EUR 5 million is mostly explained by the investment in the business and in long fresh. There we also saw that the investments in long fresh increased, but also partly one-time depreciations of the closed business in France and Germany, which had, give or take, EUR 1 million impact on the EUR 5 million increase in depreciations. The interests were lower than last year, but in the other finance result, when you have a look on the P&L and on the detailed lines of the finance result, you have the finance result itself decreased thanks to lower Euribor on the non-hedge part. Of course, the hedge part of our finance result stayed flat on an interest level. The non-hedge part had a positive impact of the Euribor decline, and that we saw on the financing, but also on the factoring. We had also an average lower net financial. That is combined we had, give or take, EUR 2 million lower finance result on that one. In the other finance result, we had in the accounting year 2023-2024, a EUR 5 million positive, I have to say, non-cash impact of the exchange rate, impact of the Zloty on the euro, so that the Zloty became stronger thanks to the strong performance of the Polish economy. This positive effect of EUR 5 million that which we had in the past year, we did not have this year. That explained also part of the difference of EUR 18 million. We had three points, close to EUR 4 million higher taxes due to the fact that last year we still could book some deferred tax assets in the profit and loss statement, and we had no capability anymore to book deferred tax assets or losses in some fiscal unities, leading to EUR 4 million more impact in the P&L of taxes. Summarized in this overview, not going to repeat the whole bridge, but again, the gross profit margin slightly decreased due to an already partly touched upon cost of labor was an important one. You all know that we had important inflation the past years, but especially in the Polish market where we are quite active with frozen, we had an 18%, 18% last year increase of the minimum wages, which of course had an upwards effect on all the wages above minimum wage. This year, Poland had another 10%. That combined with less efficient productivity due to the small batches coming from the field already touched upon led to a loss in productivity, which led also to pressure on the gross profit margin last year, leading also to the EBITDA margin of 3.4%. This all resulted in the diluted EPS of minus 0.09, which, as Francis said, led to the decision of the board to not propose a dividend for accounting year 2024-2025 to the General Assembly in September. Financially, a bit more on the segments. Fresh, one of our key customers grew quite importantly, and several of our customers grew importantly in the ECR business, and where you saw that now ECR has increased from 79% to 80% of the fresh sales year over year. That 5.9% was 4.8% quantity, 0.4% price only, and 0.9% service sales. As mentioned, we do sometimes additional service to our customers where the goods do not pass through our P&L, and they increased as well. Led to an increase of EBITDA of EUR 0.3 million, but the combination of all these effects led to a pressure on the margin from 2.4% to 2.2%. In long fresh, we saw the 1.7% sales increase, combination of two very different effects. On the one hand side, price increases of 5.1%, partly due to annualization of price increases still from accounting year 2023-2024, and some slight price increases in accounting year 2024-2025. As said, as from August, September, last calendar year, we really saw a pressure on the volumes coming in, especially in the canning business, where we saw pressure on the volumes, which also led. We, as Francis said, we saw that already for a few years that the volume was going down in canning, but always compensated by the price, but no longer last year. We took their actions by installing that new carton packaging line in Bri, which will be active, or which is active since the middle of March of this year. Combination of all the effects already mentioned led to a decrease of the EBITDA of EUR 4.8 million due to, as said, decreased volumes, increased some fruit prices, some raw material which increased as well, and the labor yields due to bad product quality and also less efficient production. Looking at all these evolutions, what does that give now for the cash? The operating results before lease payments slightly decreased from EUR 179 million to EUR 173 million. Lease payments slightly increased, also linked to inflation. A lot of the lease contracts, of course, linked to inflation, but a very good result from working capital, half of it mainly due to increased volume and more factoring on the one hand side. We increased our factoring efficiency and efficiency of our processes on the other hand side, and working together on supply chain financing, amongst others, to further improve our working capital, which compensated fully. What you see on the right-hand side, on the right graph, where you see the evolution of the inventory, and you know that in fresh inventory is quite low. This is mostly long fresh inventory that increased with EUR 48 million compared to the accounting year 2024-2025. Of course, the acquisition of Kremla Krem is also included in this delta of inventory, but that's a smaller explanation of the increase of inventory. Globally, we invested a bit the same as a company, between EUR 60-EUR 62 million. That's around the guidance we gave, between EUR 60-EUR 65 million. A bit less maintenance work and a bit more in expansion. We call expansion when we increase capabilities for the company to sell new products, additional products like the already mentioned carton packing line or an additional freezing tunnel for, by a matter of speaking, or a new spinach line in commine and frozen. Most of the expansion investments did happen in our long fresh division. We had some proceeds already mentioned of the sale of real estate, and acquisition of subsidiaries is the acquisition of Kremla Krem that you see on that line. We bought back for EUR 4.8 million shares last year. That was a share buyback program of 1,250,000, of which the bigger part of that 1,250,000 was in last accounting year, partly still in March the year before or in the last month of the previous accounting year. We did a EUR 0.25 dividend payment. As said, this will be proposed to be zero in the following accounting year to the General Assembly. Leading these free cash flow and reduction of net financial debt to a slight decrease of leverage ratio of 1.86. People who follow us longer know that you always have to compare a 12-month basis with a 12-month basis, given the fact that the seasonality of the working capital and the inventory that is a bit higher peak at the end of September. Our top inventory level is reached somewhere depending on the season, mid-November till mid-December. End of September is also always a bit higher than end of March. I give back the word to Francis. Yes, we'd like to continue through this chart. I'm going to be very short about it. These are the six strategic pillars that we show to our management and that guide our management for how to act. These are the things in which we want to win the battles. Of course, health and sustainability being fully in touch, we believe that we're in the right category for the future. We've talked about our ICR relationships. Maybe a little bit more attention now today on this IGR. What we do notice is we're going to have to spend more time and resources in relationships with the grower community. I would say on the fresh side, it is clear that if I think about the overseas parts in South America, as an example, South American growers have more, let's say, opportunities, for instance, in Asia and North America to sell their products. It is very important to spend the time and energy on these relationships. When it comes to the long fresh segments, as said, we source from about in a radius of 150 km. The relationship is a bit different according to the countries. Sometimes we have exclusive relationships with grower cooperatives. We need to intensify these contacts to work in the light of the climatic change, to work on harvesting techniques, on irrigation techniques, etc., to make sure that we're going to have to continue to have the products and to have the quality of products. They understand it very well. We are happy to see that more and more grower communities, producer organizations are happy to engage with us because, of course, we tell them the story of the market, and they have to tell us the story of the increased constraints, also for instance, because of the increased regulations in the EU. It is a very important pillar for us. Impactful innovation, I think I've been relatively open and straightforward on the decrease of consumption in the canning category. We need to replace that by impactful and innovative products. We introduced DIPS, for instance, as an example in our prepared business since quite a long time, and we collect today the benefits from this diversification, and we need to go further. Operational excellence, we do realize that we're in a margin-thin competitive business, and I've explained to you how we have continued to restructure, to look at our cost structure, and to make sure that we operate completely smoothly. We are going to continue to do so in 2025, 2026. The last one, of course, we do realize that both from a blue-collar point of view, as from white collars, all industries are fighting to find the right people, and we need to do so too. I believe we have a lot to say. A lot of people are attracted, certainly young people in our category, but it's a very important pillar for our strategy, a battle that we need to win. I think, yeah, maybe a last slide. In terms of outlook, our ambition is to grow to EUR 5.4 billion next year. However, when it comes to adjusted EBITDA, we have decided also in discussion with the board yesterday to reduce the outlook, which used to be, remember, between EUR 200 million and EUR 210 million, to reduce that to a bracket of EUR 190 million-EUR 200 million. Considering from where we come from, 183 for the things that we see before us, the goodies and the baddies, I would say, it was a wise thing to do, and I think we had to do it to reduce it. By the way, the reason to put everything forward by a day had to do with the fact that our net income was slightly negative, the fact that we have decided the board will propose not to pay dividends, and that we have reduced this outlook for 2025, 2026. I think we'll open it for questions right now. Yeah. You can type in the questions in the chat box, and we will see it. Read the question because the other participant cannot see the question, and we will answer it. The first question is, can you share a bit more about the takeover offer timeline and the status of the regulatory reviews? Of course, there is a process between the bidder and the financial market authorities in Belgium at the moment. As we understood, for the people who follow more the Belgian stock exchange, there are quite some files at the moment where the FSMA, the Belgian market authorities, are looking at, meaning they have quite some work. Reading and giving comments on the prospectus of the bidder takes a bit more time. As we understood it recently from our lawyers, it is assumed that the offer will open in the course of the month of June. Nothing special, but more administrative work between the bidder and the market authorities. Currently, we do not see any questions in the chat box. Please, if you have a question, type in your question, and we will answer. We do not see any further questions appearing, so we would like to thank you all for your presence in the call and for your understanding of making this appointment one day or 24 hours earlier and with your numerous presence today. Have a nice day. Goodbye.
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