Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the PolyPeptide half year 2026 results presentation and business update conference call and live webcast. I am Sandra, the call's call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants have been placed in listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star and one on your telephone. Webcast viewers may submit their questions or comments in writing via the relative field. For operator assistance, please press star and zero. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it is my pleasure to hand over to Lauren Starr, Head of Corporate Communications. Please go ahead, madam. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to PolyPeptide's half year 2026 results presentation. I'm Lauren Starr, Head of Corporate Communications, and I'll be moderating today's session. Thank you for joining us, and I hope you're all having a good summer. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that today's discussion may contain forward-looking statements. Please refer to the disclaimer included in today's presentation. Following the presentation, we will open the line for Q&A. Questions can be submitted either via the conference call or through the webcast chat. Today's presentation will be led by our CEO, Juan José Gonzalez, who will provide a business update, followed by our Interim CFO, Tim Brandl, who will review the financial results. Juan José will then return to discuss our updated guidance and provide an update regarding Samsung Biologics' offer to acquire PolyPeptide. With that, it is my pleasure to hand over to our CEO, Juan José González. Thank you, Lauren, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us this morning. Let's start with key messages for today. First of all, we posted in the first half of 2026 a strong growth in revenues and profitability. Our revenues increased 41.6% versus the first half of 2025 across both commercial and development. This growth was driven by metabolics, which actually grew 72.6%. Our EBITDA margin improved from 2.7% in the first half of 2025 to 20.7% in the first half of 2026, and this reflects the benefit from the strong revenue growth of the company. We also benefit by one-time net favorable impact from exceptional items. From a financial flexibility point of view, we also finished the first half of the year in a stronger position. This is driven by our operating cash flow with a solid operating performance and further net influence from customer prepayments and the expansion of the revolving credit facility. Our capacity expansion across our global manufacturing network is on track, is not Braine that we discussed before already operating at target capacity, but our capacity expansions across Malmö, Strasbourg, and Ambernath are on track. More importantly, we have further expanded our rich pipeline. The number of phase III projects increased from 30 at the end of 2025 to 37 at the end of the first half of 2026. Just to give you a sense, just to put this into context, globally, the number of synthetic peptide drugs in development in phase III is about 70. That basically means that about half of all phase III development activity is going through PolyPeptide. On the back of the strong performance in the first half of 2026, we are upgrading our 2026 full year guidance and confirming our mid-term outlook. Now, with that as context, let's look at where we are from a market point of view. Peptide is one of the most attractive markets for CDMOs. On the left-hand side, you have a projection of the global therapeutic peptide market from 2023- 2025- 2031. What you can see is that the market is expected to quadruple from 2023- 2031, and the growth is mainly driven by metabolics. When you look at the number of peptide drugs in clinical development, if you include early-stage activity, you have about 1,600 programs. Of those ones, you already have 591 in clinical development. The clinical development is across multiple therapeutic areas. There is activity in metabolics, of course, but also oncology, neurology, cardiovascular, infectious diseases, and others. Actually, metabolic and oncology account for 40% of our clinical development activity. The most important thing is that we are seeing a next wave of innovation in metabolics, which is the main growth engine for peptides. We are seeing indications expansion, whether it is MASH, cardiovascular, sleep apnea, osteoarthritis. We are seeing extended dosing intervals, like monthly injections. We are seeing higher efficacy, better side effects profile. We are seeing alternative delivery routes like orals. Basically, what this is doing is enhancing the value proposition of metabolic peptide offerings, which will ensure that the strong demand that we are observing today continue for the foreseeable future. So this is in terms of the market. Now, let's talk about how PolyPeptide is positioned within this attractive market. Basically, there are two things which are important. One is, PolyPeptide have a deep peptide scientific expertise with over 70 years of experience and a strong track record, having developed and produced over 1000 therapeutic peptides. The second thing is that we have a multi-site network. We have infrastructure for development and manufacturing in the U.S., in Europe, and Asia. These give us significant flexibility to make sure that we can put offerings that are in line with customer supply chain strategy. It give us flexibility given the geopolitical environment, and it give us customer proximity, which is also one of the reasons why we have such a rich pipeline. So this is about the market, where are we positioned. Let's talk about the strategy for the company. Basically, the company is focused on having a very strong foundation. This is around our operational and quality excellence, our industrial scale capabilities, our talent and sustainability credentials, like the EcoVadis gold rating we just got. With those fundamentals, we work on three competitive advantages. Number one, proprietary technology, significant infrastructure, and expertise in development. As peptide becomes more complex, it is clear that PolyPeptide is the strongest partner to bring them to market. Our modularity expertise for capacity expansion. Our view is that as we work on these competitive advantages, we fulfill our vision of being the most innovative peptide CDMO, which we believe is the strongest position to make sure that you maximize the potential in this market. Let us see how this strategy is translating into result. On the left-hand side, you have the revenue by therapeutic area. In the first half of 2021, when the company went public, the company was EUR 135 million, out of which metabolics accounted for 25% of the revenues. What you can see is that in the first half of 2026, excluding COVID, the company had been growing at a CAGR of 18%. More importantly, metabolics now account for close to 70% of the total revenues of the company, growing at a CAGR of 35%. It is important to know that this rapid growth in metabolics is going to continue going forward on the back of the exposure we have with metabolics. We have over 30 programs across commercial and development in metabolics, working with multiple metabolic players. If you look at our revenue by business area, what you can see is that the growth is being driven by both our development activities as well as our commercial activities. As mentioned before, we are not only growing very rapidly, but we continue to strengthen our pipeline, which is an important indicator in terms of future growth. With 37 programs in phase III and working in terms of the commercialization, we are going to be able to continue our accelerated growth trajectory. Let us talk about capacity expansion. In terms of capacity expansion, I think we have shared before the successful ramp-up in Braine, where we are not only operating at target utilization, but actually we have been able to improve on our yield. We are also on track in Strasbourg, which is starting the ramp-up in the second half of 2026, and Malmö continues to be on track for the ramp-up in 2027. More importantly, in addition to that, we are also pursuing expansions in Ambernath and a downstream expansion in Torrance. These capacity expansion programs, given where we are today, is significantly de-risked, and we are confident it is going to help to support the growth of the company towards our midterm guidance in 2028. Of all these capacity expansions, the Malmö modular expansion is the most important one. Not just because of the value of the investment, which is around EUR 100 million, largely funded by a large pharmaceutical player in metabolics. More importantly, because this is our first Modular concept being implemented. Basically, our experience today is confirming the significant benefits in terms of modularity, a lower execution risk, a much accelerated time to construction, and then providing customer with more flexibility, because once you build a model, then you can build the next model relatively quickly. As you can see in the timeline, we started construction in 2024. By September 2025, all the models were basically delivered on the site. By July 2026, all the construction has been completed, and we are undergoing commissioning, and we are on track to start ramp-up in 2027. That basically means that from starting construction to the time this is completed, it is two and a half years. It is important to know that once you have done one module, the next modules are actually even faster. That we consider is a very important differentiator, and one that resonates very well with customers. That is in terms of the update on the market, the company, our evolution, where are we with our capacity expansion programs. Let me pass it to Tim that will talk about our financial results. Thank you, Juan José. Let me now take you through our H1 2026 financials, starting with revenue on this slide. In the first half of 2026, we generated EUR 236.6 million in revenue. That is an increase of 41.6% versus the same period last year, or 43.7% at constant currency rates. Growth was once again driven mainly by metabolic therapeutics, as Juan José said. Importantly though, both parts of our business contributed. Commercial revenue was up 35.8%, reflecting the high level of utilization in our new large-scale capacity in Braine, together with favorable market trends across our broad portfolio. Development revenue grew even faster, up 52.3%, as strong demand from our late-stage clinical pipeline came through. To give you a sense of the mix, revenue from metabolic therapeutics grew 73% year- on- year and now represents around 68% of total revenue. At the same time, we continue to maintain a diversified pipeline of active custom projects with strong exposure to metabolics, including GLP-1 receptor agonists, as well as oncology and neurology. That diversity underpins the quality and resilience of our growth. In short, large programs are driving strong, broad-based growth across both development and commercial. Moving on to profitability, where the improvement is even more striking. EBITDA reached 49.1%, compared with just EUR 4.4 million in H1 2025. That takes our EBITDA margin to 20.7%, up from 2.7% last year. Let me just bridge that for you. The main driver was, of course, higher sales from increased production output, contributing around EUR 45 million. This was partially offset by investments in our people ahead of the second half growth of around EUR 4.8 million compared to H1 2025. On exceptional items, we recorded a one-time favorable impact of EUR 9.2 million from the sale of intangible assets, which was partially offset by EUR 4.8 million of continued ERP-related investment. Even excluding that one-time net gain, the underlying EBITDA margin was a healthy 18.9%. The key message here is that the step-up is structural, driven by high utilization of our large-scale SPPS asset in Braine and strong operational execution across the network. Finally, let me move to the cash flow and our balance sheet. Net cash flow from operating activities, excluding changes in net working capital, reached EUR 44.7 million. Within net working capital, the year-on-year movement mainly reflects higher receivables balances due to revenue phasing, which was partially offset by the continued net inflow of additional customer prepayments received, underlining the strength of our commercial relationships. Net cash flow from investing activities was EUR 45.8 million, mainly related to the finalization of our Strasbourg and Malmö modular expansion projects. As Juan José mentioned, both projects continue to be progressing well and are expected to contribute to the growth of the group soon. On liquidity, at the end of June, we had drawn EUR 100 million of our committed EUR 200 million revolving credit facility, which we expanded in March. Cash and cash equivalents stood at EUR 59 million at the end of H1. Taken together, this gives us the financial flexibility to keep funding our capacity expansions while supporting the growth ahead. With that, I will hand back to Juan José to discuss our guidance and the Samsung Biologics offer. Thank you, Tim. Let's talk about our guidance for 2026. First of all, our priorities for the remaining of the year are unchanged. We are focused on meeting the increasing demand, especially in metabolics. We are focused on executing our capacity expansions across multiple sites, and we continue to advance negotiation for large commercial agreements to support our growth beyond 2028. On the back of the strong performance in the first half of the year, we are upgrading our guidance. Our revenue growth is increasing from 20%-25% to 25%-30%. Our EBITDA margin is increasing from mid to high teens, and our CapEx remain unchanged. It will continue to be forecasted at 15%-20% of revenues. This performance again reflect a strong, not just financial performance at the end of H1, but also the strong momentum that the company has. Now, let's talk about our midterm outlook. With this performance, we are in a comfortable position to hit our midterm outlook. We believe that again, our strategy around being the most innovative peptide, our focus of innovation on pipeline development, on capacity expansion, the execution of this strategy is allowing us to continue the accelerated transformation of the company. So we confirm our target of doubling 2023 revenues by 2028, an EBITDA margin approaching 25% by then, and capital expenditure for the period of around 15%-20%. We believe that this midterm outlook reflects adequately the strong performance of the company. Now let me just talk about the Samsung Biologics offer to acquire PolyPeptide. As we communicated on the 20th of July, PolyPeptide Group and Samsung Biologics announced they have entered into a transaction agreement under which Samsung Biologics agreed to make an all-cash public tender offer, to acquire all publicly held shares of PolyPeptide for CHF 44.31 per share. This transaction aims to provide PolyPeptide with the resources, investment capacity, and a strategic platform to pursue the next phase of its growth and innovation. The combination of PolyPeptide deep scientific expertise, rich pipeline with Samsung Biologics industrial scale resources and capabilities will create a transformational player to drive the growth in the overall peptide market. Our anchor shareholder supported the process and agreed to tender all of its shares, accounting for 55.65% based on total shares outstanding. The board of directors, acting through its independent and non-conflicted members, unanimously recommended that PolyPeptide shareholders accept the offer, a recommendation supported by an independent fairness opinion. This offer is a 40% premium over the undisturbed price before the market rumors of a potential transaction became public, and it is a 60% premium on the VWAP, on the 60-day volume-weighted average stock price, again before the news regarding a potential transaction became public. With that, let's go into the Q&A. We will now begin the question- and- answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question or make a comment may press star and one on the telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you've entered the queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to disable the loudspeaker mobile asking a question, and eventually turn off the volume of the webcast. Webcast viewers may submit their questions in writing via the relative field. Anyone with a question may press star and one at this time. Our first question comes from Charles Weston from RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead. Hello. Thanks for taking the questions. Three, please, on the market. First of all, can you give us some color on how you've seen the competitive landscape develop? Clearly, we've had results from WuXi, whose peptide revenues have been very impressive in terms of the growth backend and obviously yourselves. If you can just give us a sense of your view on how that competitive landscape is developing, and in particular also how pharma companies may also be looking to invest in their own capacity. My second question is on consumer peptides. There's been a lot of news, obviously, in the U.S. about those becoming perhaps more available. I don't think that the main pharma CDMOs, such as yourselves, are involved in those, but perhaps you could speculate as to whether that might change in the future. Lastly, in terms of generic semaglutide, could you provide us some color on how you see that landscape evolving and in particular also, who are the key manufacturers? Thank you. Thank you very much, Charles. In terms of the competitive landscape, we haven't seen much change. First of all, I think in the case of WuXi AppTec, it's important to know that what they report is their production of tetramer, which is a raw material used by other CDMOs in the production of tirzepatide fragments. Then the production of fragments itself, plus the production of peptides, plus oligos. So it's difficult to know really out of everything they report how much is really peptides. In any case, the concerns around biosecurity makes that when we look at Western customers, in most of the commercial negotiations that we discuss, we are only competing against other Western players. We do not compete against Chinese players. Now, the same token, when there is a tender for China, we do not participate, and it is mainly Chinese CDMO players participating. Basically, I would say the concerns around intellectual property continues to be a barrier for Chinese CDMOs to participate more actively in the Western side, and of course, is a benefit for companies like PolyPeptide. In the case of consumer peptides, we are following this development with interest. It could be an opportunity, but I have to say that demand from branded pharmaceutical and biotech players is so large that we as a company are very much focused on bringing all these new products to market and supporting their commercialization. Genetics is more or less the same. We do not really engage in terms of genetic production. We believe most of the production is being done by Chinese and Indian players. Again, going back to what I discussed in terms of the level of innovation and development in terms of metabolic peptide drugs, we've seen that there are many differentiated offerings coming to market, and the branded side of the market will continue to grow very rapidly. That's really helpful. I don't suppose you could share key names of the players you see as key manufacturers of generics in India and China, please? No. First of all, there are many, many players. It's difficult also to know what they report. In some cases, they say semaglutide when it is actually a raw material. In some cases, they are producing non-GMP versus GMP. But I think if you do some search, you will be able to find the players which are advertising that they can do semaglutide. But I can confirm is that this is mainly coming from China and India. Okay. Well, thank you very much. Congratulations. Thank you, Charles. on the Samsung deal. Thank you. Thank you very much. The next question. Next question. Charles Pitman- King from Barclays. Please go ahead. Hi, Charles Pitman- King from Barclays. Thanks so much. Three from me as well, please. Just in terms of the EBITDA one-offs, just trying to make sure I fully appreciate the moving parts here. You mentioned the one-off of the sale and intangibles and the ERP-related investments, but in the appendix, there is a EUR 7.3 million related to a one-time impairment due to previously capitalized projects being terminated unwell. Just wondering if you can confirm the actual underlying EBITDA comes in closer to EUR 37.4 million. And just wondering whether you can provide detail on what drove the project termination. Secondly, on Malmö, you kind of mentioned that this is the first modular experience and you are on track to ramp up in 2027. But can you just confirm when you are talking about bringing different modules online, this is the first module that is set to ramp up over 2027, and when should we expect the last module to come online? So what is the cadence to achieving full utilization? And then just maybe thirdly, if you are able to provide any thoughts on Samsung's potential to help fund your expansion into the U.S. market. Thank you. Yeah. Listen, thank you, Charles. Why don't we start then with a profitability question just to clarify that? Sure. No, thanks, Charles. So the write-down that you noticed in the back is below EBITDA, so it is included in EBIT. And it is a non-cash impact, so it is in the depreciation line as well. And in the P&L, you will see it in the G&A. So it is below EBITDA, but within EBIT. But if you want to adjust the EBITDA for that, it is a non-cash D&A impact, so I wouldn't adjust. Right. Now, in terms of the modeling in Malmö, basically, we use the term model to describe the entire capacity expansion, and what we are saying is that everything is coming online to support this EUR 100 million contract in 2027. in 2027, we start the ramp-up of the program, and we expect to finish the year at target utilization. Now, in the case of Samsung, I cannot comment on this as we are still going through the process. But if you look at the way that Samsung Biologics CEO have referred to this transaction, it is mainly to diversify geographically and to accelerate the growth of the company. And we believe this is actually a recognition to the significant progress over the last three years of PolyPeptide and the potential it has to be able to scale up with such a rich pipeline and expertise. Thank you very much. That is great, and congratulations as well. Thank you very much, Charles. Let us go to the next question. The next question comes from Estelle Bétrisey from Berenberg. Please go ahead. Yes, hello, and congratulations also on my side on the results today. Maybe just a brief one on your ongoing CapEx program in Strasbourg. You expect to start the ramp-up in second half. Should we already expect some of those revenue contribution this year already? Or, if you could just give me a bit more color on this. Thanks. Yeah. We will start the ramp-up, so there will be some level of invoicing, but it is going to be very small. We expect most of the benefit to come in 2027. Okay, very clear. Thank you. Thank you. Let's go to the next question. As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press star followed by one. The next question comes from Daniel Jelovcan from ZKB. Please go ahead. Yeah. Good morning as well from my side. Two remarks, how to say? The first remark is, of course, Juan José and Tim, we always had very nice conversations and road shows, and would be sad if the call today is the last one. I mean, officially there is March 1st, but you never know. So yeah. Was a great pleasure, thanks. That's the first remark. Second, the question actually is to double sales until 2028, is that with the current CapEx plans or I guess it is so, right? Then there's a second part of this question. Yeah. Daniel, first of all, thank you very much, and I also have enjoyed all of our conversations, and thank you for your interest on the company. In terms of our mid-term guidance of doubling sales, this is with 15%-20% CapEx target for the period. Again, based on how we finish the first half of 2026, the upgraded guidance for the year, we are in a very comfortable position to meet our mid-term guidance. Okay. The follow-up on this is, actually when you are successful in one of these 37 projects, I think in metabolic, if you get one, two, three big ones, which are then commercial, let's say, beyond your 2028 target. I have in mind that you have a lot of land in Braine. So the further question is, if you have significant volumes for the GLP-1 drugs or whatever, NASH, how quickly can you do this, let's say, brownfield, right? Yeah. Adding capacity to an existing site, is that a two, three, four year timeframe? Would you already begin to plan now? I think you got my point, right? Yeah. No, thank you, Daniel. It is clear. First of all, capacity expansion is one of the main areas of focus for any CDMO in a high-growth environment. In our case, as we have this very rich pipeline, we are not only in negotiations, but already evaluating our options to significantly increase capacity as we expect to sign more than one commercial agreement. We have opportunities to rapidly increase capacity. This is driven not just by our availability to access to land in Belgium, Torrance, and Ambernath, but also because of our modular approach. Our modularity is very fast, and that basically means that we can really ramp up large-scale capacity very quickly. Our plan is whatever capacity expansion we are doing going forward, that we use this modular technology to do it. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you, Daniel. Next question. So far, no further questions from the phone. Back over to you for the written questions. Okay. We have a question from Laura Pfeifer. "Please update us on your negotiations for large-scale volume contracts. What are the key topics you encounter, and have you seen any changes in demand dynamics? More specifically, how do customers react to the proposed takeover by Samsung? Yeah. First of all, maybe just a couple of points. One is we continue to see the imbalance between supply and demand. Because of the complexity of the next-generation metabolic drugs, that is putting PolyPeptide in a stronger position. One of the main highlights for us as a company at the end of the first half of 2026 is that our phase III pipeline grew so rapidly. It is growing not just because of our phase II projects moving into phase III, but because we are seeing phase III projects that used to be done by competitors move into PolyPeptide. This is just driven again by the complexity and the inability of some of our competitors to deal with that. We are very excited on that front. In terms of the customer reaction, again, it is not given where we are for us to comment. Of course, Samsung Biologics is one of the most successful CDMOs globally, and their track record and reputation is very, very high. Customers see this as an opportunity for PolyPeptide to access to resources and capabilities to scale up in a way that before was going to be very difficult. On that front, this is very positive. Thanks, Juan José. Now we have one from [Rolf Aesselgaus] With Frederik Paulsen's 56% stake, Samsung is already close to the minimum required 66% of PolyPeptide shares. Are there any indications from other major shareholders as to how they plan to respond to Samsung's offer? Tim, do you want to comment? No, I think it's probably not the right time for us to comment. Of course, we've had the chance to speak to some of our investors. But the prospectus has not been published, and the acceptance period has not started. We'll just need to see. But I guess, it's a very strong sign from our anchor shareholder that he supports the transaction. I think we had good discussions with our investors overall. Anything to add, Juan José? No. Nothing to add. Thank you, Tim. A question from Tanya Hansalik from UBS. Can you talk about how you see Big Pharma investing, building up its own in-house capacity? Do you see long-term demand for outsourced manufacturing continuing? Yeah. No, I think that's a very important question. Listening in, if you look at the peptide market, there is always a mix between in-house and outsourcing. So we have always been in an environment where some customers have in-house, some customers have two, some customers rely more on outsourcing. Now, based on what we see today, if you look at the number of pharmaceutical and biotech players moving to launch peptide drugs without any peptide manufacturing expertise, it's very large. That's why we see they are relying on a peptide CDMO support. We don't expect that to change. Again, you have 1,600 drugs in development. I don't think that is going to change the picture. In any case, what is important for us is that we continue to aggressively work in development to make sure that we are there for the commercialization. That, we believe, is the most sustainable position in the future. Thanks, Juan José. That now concludes the session. So thank you everybody for joining us today. Lauren, sorry. I just wanted to say a couple of things. This might be our last earnings call. First of all, I wanted to thank all the analysts that have been covering the company, Charles, Daniel, Tanya, Laura, for their focus and interest. More importantly, I wanted to finish this call thanking all PolyPeptide employees, because the results in the first half of the year, the transformation over the last three years reflect their perseverance, professionalism, and passion to see the company fulfill its potential. We wouldn't be what we are today without their efforts and the Samsung Biologics offer. I see it as a recognition to the quality and caliber of the organization that we have. Thank you very much, and enjoy the rest of the week.