Good morning, everyone. Welcome to our first Capital Markets Day here in Einbeck, live from our headquarters. I am very happy to see so many familiar faces here, coming to Einbeck, coming to us. I also would like to welcome the participants joining today via our webcast. My name is Peter Vogt, Head of Investor Relations at KWS, and your host and moderator today. Before we start the program, just a few opening remarks. As customary, please take note of the cautionary language, as we will be making forward-looking statements today. Please take note of that language. This brings us to the agenda of today, fully packed. We have the first presentation of our CEO, Felix Büchting, and he will talk about the importance of seed innovation to address the challenges of agriculture and how we at KWS want to contribute to that. Second presentation by Sebastian Talg, member of the Executive Board on cereals and corn. Maybe I should say cereals and corn and sunflower. It's a crop that we haven't talked so much yet, but as we have matured our product pipeline over the last couple of years, we're actually at the edge of introducing a wave of new products coming in the next few years, and we have the ambition to build a significant, relevant business out of that, reaching EUR 100 million, hopefully, in 10 years. The third presentation will be delivered by Nicolás Wielandt on the one that on sugar beet, our flagship business, you could say. Nicolás will talk about how we will in future build on the success of the past innovations that we have with bringing new innovations. Here, we also have ambitions to expand our business, targeting EUR 1 billion sales by the end of the decade. Vegetables, where we have invested quite significantly in the past years. We are actually at a point where also here we have moved the product pipeline forward, and over the next two, three years, we will introduce new varieties from our strategic crops, and by 2028, all of our strategic vegetable crops should be on the market. After that, we will enter a break of about two hours, first for lunch, but also for an R&D tour. The second tour for today, in the morning, you participated here in Einbeck in the sugarb eet tour. The second tour will have the focus on R&D, and we want to show how we combine high-tech with handcraft, and I think that will be a very interesting excursion. I will talk a bit for those who are here in the room. I will give some instructions later once we are there. The afternoon will be kicked off by a presentation of Thomas Ehrhardt, our Head of Global Research on Research and Development, the longest presentation of today. As you can expect from a company that is so much dedicated to innovation, Tom will talk, among other things, about how we use cutting-edge technologies today to develop the products of tomorrow. After that, a presentation by Jörn Andreas, our CFO, on financial framework and outlook. He will also talk about our business model and why it is so attractive to be a pure-play seed breeder. There are even companies out there that are even breaking up these days to get there. That is, I think, a very good spot that we are in, and Jörn will talk about more of that. The day will be finished by our CEO, Felix Büchting, with closing remarks, and we will then also open up for Q&A. Our presenters will be on stage addressing your questions, so we have plenty of time either then or during the lunch break to talk about your questions as well. With this, leads me to wish you an insightful, informative day, and I'll leave the stage now for our CEO, Felix Büchting. Please. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Very happy to see that so many of you came here to Einbeck in the middle of nowhere in Lower Saxony, and also welcome to those participating online. It's a beautiful winter day. We had the first frost this morning. I had to scrape my windshield, so it shows we're in the seasons, and this is exactly what agriculture is all depending about. Thank you, Peter, for the introduction. My name is Felix Büchting. I'm the CEO of KWS, and I have a big pleasure of kicking off today's first-ever Capital Markets Day for KWS. For those of you who might not know, I have more than a professional relationship with KWS. I have the great privilege of being the seventh generation in operational responsibility. We are and remain a family company, and this has certain repercussions, in quotation marks, as you will see in the course of our presentations. It is the long look, it is thinking in generation, and not being afraid of tackling challenges that might not have an immediate return on invest next year or the year after. We are convinced that with these decisions, we pave the way for the future. Before looking into the future, it is important to know where we come from. The past, looking back at almost 170 years of history. It all started in a small village south of Magdeburg in Klein Wanzleben, therefore hence KWS, of course, for seeds. It was my ancestor that started sugar beet breeding, 1856. Today, we are a market leader, about 70% market share, and Nicolás will talk more about that. In the 1920s, we decided to go into portfolio diversification, as you would say today, and we picked up cereals breeding, so meaning wheat, barley, oats. Today, we're number one in winter wheat and winter barley in Europe, and we're a global leader in hybrid rye. In the mid-1950s, we launched our corn breeding activities and oilseed rape breeding activities. Today, in Europe, we're number one in silage corn, so for animal feed, and strong number three in grain corn. In oilseed rape, we're number two, and it's our clear ambition to become number one in Europe. In 2019, we started to step a little bit outside our comfort zone, in the sense to leave the world of row crops and to go into vegetable breeding. Today, we're market leader in spinach, strong in beans, and those five strategic crops that Peter alluded to, we'll see what will happen in the future. Our ambition is clear. With that, I would like to take a little bit a look at what is the field and the current situation we operate in. What's the framework for a seed company? What's the framework for agriculture? There are plenty of challenges. I think most of you are somewhat familiar with these numbers. They don't come as a surprise. Global population is rising. We expect to be roughly 10 billion people by 2050. That means we need to produce 60% more food and feed by then. At the same time, we lose arable land due to urbanization in the more favorable climate zones, and of course, due to climate change in certain regions of the world. This translates to the fact that we'll have 33% less acreage per capita by 2050. If we want to continue to feed everyone on this planet, we have to make up for this gap. We, as a seed specialist, are part of the solution. I think we're not so bold to say we're the only one. That would not be true, but we have an important role to play. We can bring a lot to agriculture, agricultural productivity, because the seed is at the start of the agricultural and food production value chain. We could say it starts with us. How are we going to contribute to these global challenges and have an impact? One, of course, is what we do. Since 170 years, it's increasing yields, leveraging genetic diversity, translating that into genetic gain, and at the end, allowing the farmer to harvest more on the same acreage or to produce the same with less acreage, per se, sustainable. This won't be enough. With climate change and irregular weather patterns, we focus on the development of resilient varieties. Varieties is what we call products. This means varieties that can cope with prolonged periods of drought or stress or pests. In addition, we see, especially in Europe, that we have an environment and a societal expectation that we reduce the input of crop protection. Reducing inputs. While this is clearly driving a more sustainable agriculture, it kind of counteracts productivity. Therefore, we see an opportunity to provide genetic solutions also in this regard. This relates, on the one hand side, to innovations in a given crop. On the other hand, we see a tremendous potential in what we call unleashing the power of crop rotations. Because one is controlling disease pressure or weeds in a given crop, and on the other hand, using crop rotation to preserve soil fertility and pest and weed management on a long-term basis. Last but not least, healthy nutrition, our venture into vegetables, a clear contribution on that side. We also know if we want to feed 10 billion people by 2050, we'll not be able to feed those people if they all live an American way of life in terms of diet. This means less meat, more vegetables. Last but not least, of course, also for agriculture, we were convinced to leverage digital solutions, holistic advice to our customers to run their farms effectively and efficiently. That's the big picture. That's our contributions. How do we want to leverage that in terms of value capture? Very easy. First on the bottom, classic breeding, cutting-edge technology. Tom Ehrhardt will allude more on that, what that means. In addition, you know that we continuously deliver explicit trait innovation. That's how we call it, explicit trait, because you can name it, you can price it, you can see it. That's CONVISO SMART, Cercospora Plus, Pollen Plus. In addition, we have digital tools and services to support our customers in running their farm operations. Nico will share with us how we venture into high-value crops, vegetables, the endeavor we have started in 2019, and a daunting challenge to convert the potato market from a tuber market to a seed market, but I don't want to spoil it too much. At the end, we also realized that leveraging our technology and our knowledge about pea genetics, we can identify genetics that bring advantages to the food industry as a food ingredient. Small activity, also there, Nico will share some more light on it, but we see potential for value capture also in this domain, maybe a little bit new business model compared to selling a bag of seed to a farmer. Taking all this together, we've given ourselves a relatively new strategic framework for the short and midterm. We've published that after our results published end of September, and it is clearly spelled out because it's very easy for numbers if you want, even though you only see three on the slide. 3%-5% organic sales growth, and Jörn will dive deeper into that. 19%-21% EBITDA margin, and a dividend payout ratio of 25%-30%. While some of you might say 25%-30% is not that ambitious, we're a family company, and we're convinced that it's most important to reinvest the money into the company to fuel tomorrow's innovations. All that based on our sustainability ambition. How are we going to achieve that? Three pillars: lead, build, advance. I'll briefly touch on those because later on, my colleagues will take you deeper into each of those segments. Lead refers to our broad portfolio in agricultural crops or row crops. I've already spelled out to you where we are currently in the markets and what we have achieved so far. We're convinced that with a customer-centric go-to-market, a full advice to the farmer on how to leverage crop rotations, we can leverage this very broad portfolio, which is almost unique in the industry. You see here, sugar beet, of course, we will continue to drive and lead the market with innovations. Silage corn, we're number one, and we're very strong in grain corn and will certainly make gains in market share and expansion in this area. You're also aware that we have reshaped our portfolio here. We've stepped out consciously out of the GM markets of North and South America to focus on the European and non-GM markets. Sebastian will share a bit more insights on that. You have the cereals. That's actually the cereals business unit because those of you that paid attention in biology will clearly say oilseed rape is not a cereal. I have to say you're absolutely right. Because cereals usually refers to monocots and oilseed rape is a dicot. We clustered under cereals. We are number one in hybrid rye. We're strong globally and number one in winter wheat and winter barley in Europe. As I said, number two in oilseed rape. We're very sure that we can leverage that portfolio even further. Also there on the horizons, I think we'll later in Tom's speech talk about that, what we see as the next step in cereal innovation, talking about hybrids. Build, the next pillar. This is our long-term value capture and growth drivers. On one hand side, vegetables. I remember very well the discussions we had in the executive board in 2019, if we should dare to step into that segment. On the one hand side, we can fully leverage our breeding expertise, know-how, our technologies to bring that to vegetable breeding. On the other hand, different breeding targets, different markets, different customers. Your average tomato grower in the south of Spain is not growing sugar beet. That was a little bit of a step out of the comfort zone. Here, we have a clear plan. We had a clear target. We know that it takes time to start breeding programs from scratch, but this is a hallmark of us as a seed specialist and a family company with a long look. In addition, we were able to acquire Pop Vriend Seeds. Today, our running operational vegetable business is going very strong, and Niko will share more about that. KWS Food Ingredients, as I said, bringing innovation to the food producers in terms of plant-based protein ingredients. The real challenge then, potato seeds, where we want to replace three tons of tubers for a hectare by a bag of seed. This also takes determination, innovation, and a long look. It goes way beyond the normal midterm horizon. Third pillar, advance, and we'll spend most of the afternoon, almost all of the afternoon, on this part. First, with a tour of R&D, and then with a presentation of Tom to look into where we are in trait development and breeding. I just want to leave it with this teaser, I think clearly showing that we have a track record in delivering innovation to farmers and the various crops we work in. With that, I would like to hand over to Sebastian to take you into the cereals, oilseed rape and corn and sunflower world. Wish you an enriching day. I hope you take a lot with you and that we can show you why we are unique, why KWS is special, why KWS is strong, and going strong as a seed specialist. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. I am Sebastian Talg. I'm the newest member of the executive board. I started in September this year. I am one of the few people in this company who have very little knowledge about seed breeding. Bear with me, you know, as I have to use my card and read a little bit and be very cautious with asking questions later on. I will do my very best. I would like to give you a little personal question. I am here because that is quite linked to the history of the strategy of the company itself. I grew up in agriculture, and for the last 23 years, I worked for the company Grimme. Grimme is a manufacturer for harvesting equipment for sugar beets, potatoes, and vegetables. I grew up in that company, spent six years in America, four years in China, worked in different functions, but mainly in sales and service. Mainly worked with customers all over the world, farmers all over the world. Grew up into the management position, and together with the two sons, it's a family business, I was running the management team for the last 10 years. Perfect conditions, everything was fine, and now you can ask the question, why would you change? I'd like to explain a little bit why I change. Felix Büchting mentioned already that in the next years, we will need about 60% more food. The question is, how do we make that? How do we get there? I mean, 60% more food in a shrinking, arable land environment, global climate change, we all know the factors. How do we manage to do that? When you look in the past, the main growth drivers, since the population was growing in the last 50, 100 years, already quite high, the main growth drivers were synthetic fertilizer, chemical plant protection, mechanization, my background, and plant breeding. If we look in the future, we have some major challenges in that way. Our farmers have some major challenges. Fertilizer use is very much regulated all over the world in the meantime. The amount of fertilizer being available to farmers to use on their land will go drastically down in the next years. Chemical plant protection is denied by the consumers. The consumers will not, or less and less, accept chemical plant protection in the future. It is also regulated by a lot of governments. The mechanization is at its limit. Like I said, I know that from my background. Today in Germany, there is only 1% of the population being employed in agriculture. The most gains in mechanization have already been accomplished. As you said, I think we can be proud that plant breeding is one of the major leverages to contribute to that 60% growth of food production. That was one reason for, or one motivator, or the biggest motivator for me to say, I like to change to KWS, to change from the mechanization industry into the seed breeding industry. Now I'm proud to be part of the management team of the new form, part of the management team, and on the other side, even more proud to be part of that fantastic team of 5,000 people spending every day and a lot of time during the day in seed innovation and trying to cope with that challenge we have for the future. Today I'm responsible for cereals and corn, and let's look at that business unit a little bit closer. 50% of the world's food production is done by cereals and corn. I think that's a tremendous number. I'm very honest that I'm being in charge of that very, very important section of our business. Let's look a little bit deeper into cereals. Does anybody know what kind of crop that is on this picture? I'm glad that there's not too many experts in the room then. I just want to make sure. This is rye, one of the very success stories in our portfolio. Today, Felix Büchting mentioned we are a market leader in a lot of crops, but that didn't happen overnight. It started actually at the end of the 19th century already with the family Lochow in a small village, Petkus, in Brandenburg, starting to develop and starting to create the breeding on rye and also already on wheat. KWS started, as Felix mentioned, in the 1920s. The Lochow family became much later part of the KWS family. Like I said, with a long, long history already. In 1955, we started oilseed rape. In 1987, the success story of hybrid rye started in Germany. In 2008, we started the breeding of sorghum. In 2014, we started looking on the grain side into North America, one of the biggest markets actually, with hybrid rye. Hybrid rye is not very successful, not very known in North America, but that started in 2014. In 2015, we launched some new things, some new hybrid wheat system and the first soft red varieties in North America in 2024. Last year, the year after last year, we started hybrid barley, which I'll come a little bit later to because that's a very, very important step. Let's look at the big growth drivers. We have had a very successful growth rate in the past 10 years, 9.2%, so almost 10% of growth year over year. Why is that? It's because we have a strong portfolio. Even though commodity prices are low, our portfolio is very, very strong, and we can leverage that, and we're able to grow also with new crops like oilseed rape, which is a part of that number, very heavily. You see, in 2024 and 2025, we have a little dip in that growth history, and that's mainly because the Russian market dropped out. You all know the reasons why that is. With grain, we have no cereals. We don't have no cereals. We don't have access to the Russian market anymore, so it dropped. Still, we have our target of more than EUR 300 million in the next, well, between 2028 and 2030. I think we can be very, very optimistic to get into this point. Let's look at the portfolio. Today, our cereals portfolio consists of hybrid rye. Like I said, success story of KWS is 38% of our total cereals portfolio. We have 31% oilseed rape, and that's growing very, very fast. It becomes a kind of an offset of the hybrid rye story. As of this year, I can give you a little preview. It's already at the same level as hybrid rye. It's a different market, as Felix mentioned. It's not cereals. It's a different market. Therefore, it's a perfect balance to hybrid rye. We have 15% wheat and 8% barley. The main reason this is smaller doesn't mean it's less important. The main reason for those two crops, they are not hybridized. They're standard production crops, no hybridization in there. We don't multiply the seed ourselves. I will dig a little bit deeper into that and explain a little bit more what that means. That means that third parties are multiplying the seeds. In reality, the business is much bigger, but we do not multiply the seed ourselves. Today, we are number one globally in hybrid rye, number two in oilseed rape in Europe. The oilseed rape business, we are very proud of since we are growing very, very fast on that. We believe it is a question of years that we can also capture position number one in oilseed rape in Europe. Wheat, we are number one in the EU plus the U.K. Also in winter barley, we are number one. What are the main growth drivers? Oilseed rape, hybrid rye. Like I said, that is our success story. If you ask anybody what is the big success of KWS, he will mention hybrid rye. We have 77% global market share that brings us, of course, to be number one in that market. With 5.3% annual growth rate, you can ask the question, how do we want to extend on that? How do we want to make that bigger? That is a very good question since 77% is very hard to top. Our answer to that is we have to increase the market on hybrid rye. Hybrid rye is right now a good solution in animal feed, but it is not known everywhere in the world. For example, in North America, hybrid rye, especially in pig feeding, is very, very limited. We are getting to the point that we are entering the market in North America and actually communicate to farmers that hybrid rye is a very good addition or very good balance to wheat in a lot of times. We also look at innovation because hybrid rye and rye in general has some disadvantages. On the one hand side, it's very critical to get the right seeding point of hybrid rye. You seed it here in Northern Germany, end of September, beginning of October. If you seed too late, you lose a lot of capacity, a lot of potential yield. Therefore, we introduced already a couple of years ago flexible types. You are much more flexible in seeding. You can seed much later or even in the early month of the year, like in January, February. That allows us to put that into a larger part of the crop rotation. In this way, we are able to increase the market by just extending the growing season, basically. On the other hand side, rye is a very tall crop. Everybody who has stood in a rye field, you can tell it's one of the tallest rye or grain cereal crops. Therefore, our breeders did a fantastic job in developing short varieties. Short types, we call them. The first variety for that is actually on the verge of being launched next year. This will also kill that disadvantage of the high-growing plant because especially when you are in heavier, richer soils with a lot of manure or fertilizers being spread on that, the downside is that the rye is going towards lodging. It will break down because it's getting too heavy. With a new variety, we will disconnect or take that disadvantage out and really, again, make it more attractive to growers to go into this type of rye. Whole crop types and green moss types are new varieties. Therefore, we tackle markets for using the whole plant for feeding or using the green moss types, especially in biogas plants, to again extend the portfolio to make the market bigger on ryes. Let's look at the oilseed rape. That's a real success story and one of the strong growth drivers right now. We are number two on the market position in Europe. We have had a steady growth of almost 19% in the last five years, year- over- year. Therefore, we gained 7% points on the market share side. This really tells that we have a strong portfolio on oilseed rape. It took a long time to get to this point. We started breeding of this crop a long time ago already. Now we are at the point that the portfolio is full, that we can leverage it. There's a lot of new varieties on the verge to being launched. One good example of how we can contribute to less chemical inputs, I like to explain a little bit deeper. This little black friend is called the cabbage stem flea beetle. Who managed that? The cabbage stem flea beetle is a big problem in European oilseed rape production since it's in a very early stage. It's going into the plant, it's drilling into the stems of the plant, and it can reduce the yield of up to 30%. The big downside of that is it's resistant to a lot of chemicals. Our farmers have a very hard time fighting those diseases for this little animal. The other part is that European legislation leads to a lot less chemicals being available. We have to find answers for that. Our breeders were able to change the genetics of our input by breeding, traditional breeding. With that, we were able to launch an innovation which is called InsectPROTECT. That reduces the infection of the cabbage stem flea larva, actually, by 30%. It's a true answer to that big problem. That leads a little bit back to the initial story I told that we have to cope with those climate changes. The beetle is part of the climate change problem. It's getting warmer. On the other side, to deal with legislation, less chemical input. I think that's a perfect example of how we can show that breeding is an answer to this question. Okay, let's look at wheat and winter barley. Number one in Europe plus U.K., both crops. In wheat, we have a market share of 20%. In winter barley, we have a market share of almost 30%. This, again, shows how an important player we are in both crops. We have an annual growth rate of 3.9%. It's not super impressive, but like I said, it's a very important market. I'd like to explain a little bit why that market can be even more important for us. Therefore, I have to show you a little bit more details. Seed value. This chart is very, very important. Therefore, I'd like to take some time to explain it. On the left high axle, you see production in million tons. On the horizontal axle, you see the average area planted all over the world. It's a global chart. For example, in corn, you see two—oh, sorry, go back. In corn, you see there's almost 50 million or roughly 55 million hectares being planted worldwide with roughly 500 million tons of production. Within the bubble, it says $213. That's the seed value. So $213 per hectare does a farmer need to spend to buy the seed for this important crop. Sugar beet, you see here on the left-hand side, 283, also a high-value seed crop. On the right-hand side, you see wheat. It's the most important crop since it's grown on more than 90 million hectares worldwide. The seed value is very, very low. It's only $10 per hectare. Why is that? The reason for that is that a lot of farmers are saving seed, farm saved seed, we call it. They're saving seed from the current production and replant in the next year. Therefore, the market for wheat is right now fairly small. What we're trying to do is by hybridization, creating new innovation for farmers to increase yield or deal with insects or climate change. With that hybridization, we're able to increase the seed value for wheat. The downside of hybridization for the farmer is that every year he has to buy new seeds. He cannot use the seed again. The upside is through the heterosis effect, our breeders were able to react to climate change and to needs the farmers have faster. We can increase the yield faster. That is the innovation we are working really on cereals, not only on wheat, but also on barley. We believe that through hybridization in the future, we can increase the seed value. Barley you see in the bottom is $20. We can increase the seed value of up to $100 per hectare. I mean, you can calculate it yourself. 90 million hectares worth of wheat multiplied with $100 per hectare, how much or how big that market can be. Again, in Western Europe, we are a market leader already. Hybridization will be a huge driver to become even bigger on that. Overall, to summarize, we are in a poor position in the run for global food security in cereals. We have a broad portfolio to fight climate change and to deal with less chemical input. We have significant, significant growth potential through hybridization, especially on wheat and barley, which we will launch the first varieties in wheat in the mid-2030s. Barley, the first variety is launched already. We are a little bit ahead of the curve. Those are huge impact drivers for the upcoming years. Let's look at corn and sunflower. I mean, we all know we live in a very changing environment. On the newspaper, in the news every morning, each of us hears war in Ukraine and Gaza and Sudan. We have a climate crisis. We deal with global trade protections. We have an energy crisis at the end. Therefore, I find it very, very smart and very brave for the former Executive Board that was a couple of years before my time to make the decision to divest from our businesses in North America, South America, and China. To show you a little bit what that effect was and how brave that decision was, I think this chart really is impressive and shows the outcome of that. In 2022 and 2023, we did more than EUR 1 billion worth of turnover with the two main areas. We call it GM markets, South America, North America, and China, and the European traditional market. In 2023, we decided to divest from the joint venture in China. In 2024, we decided to divest or sell the South American business. Now in 2025, we decided to sell the joint venture in North America. That led to a turnover reduction of more than half. Right now, we are right around EUR 450 million worth of sales. It made us way more robust, way less capital intensive, way more profitable than in the past. We have a much bigger focus on the traditional European market where we can really have potential to gain market share. I'd like to show you how we think we can gain market share in that. Today, the annual growth rate over the last 10 years is 2%, which is truly not impressive. Putting that into perspective, the area in Europe is shrinking due to several reasons. Still, especially in the last five years, we were able to grow. I found that quite impressive in a shrinking market, still growing. The question is, why? How did we do that? The main reason for that is innovative products. Our products, both on silage and corn, really have the potential to grow even more. Therefore, we believe that we can reach more than EUR 500 million turnover in the Western European market within the next four or five years. I'd like to show you how we are planning to do that. You know this chart. You have seen this chart already, but this is a little different than the first one you saw. This one focuses on the European market, not the global market like the one we saw before. The bubble size is not U.S. dollar per hectare like we saw on the previous chart. This one is euros total. For example, you see the grain and silage corn market being at EUR 3 billion total market in Europe. You see in the bottom, roughly 20 million hectares of corn are being planted in Europe. That shows very impressively that corn is the biggest seed value market in Europe. It is split up in grain and silage. Silage, roughly EUR 1 billion. Grain, roughly EUR 2 billion. 1/3 to 2/3 split up. You see the other crops in that chart. That's the reason I like that chart so much. You see wheat in Europe being planted at roughly 30 million hectares, only EUR 500 million seed market. Again, it's the most planted crop in open fields in Europe, but the seed market is only EUR 500 million. It's the same size like sugar beets in Western Europe, and sugar beets are being planted on 2 million hectares, roughly, in Western Europe. That shows, again, relating back to the wheat story, how much potential that has. Again, looking back to grain and silage, it is actually the biggest market with EUR 3 billion in Western Europe. I'd like to show you a little bit how we believe we can profit, how we can gain market share in this market. Today, we are number one in silage corn with 18% market share. Silage being used mainly as a whole plant for feeding cows or used in biogas plants. In grain corn, we are with 10% number three in the market, ahead of us being Pioneer and Bayer. Two big players, of course. Therefore, it's important that we are still being innovative for having a good pipeline to gain market share, especially on the grain corn side, since you've seen it's the bigger market. 2/3 of that is in the grain side. We believe that we can grow quite a bit. We've seen in the last five years, we were able to gain market share. We were able to increase the business. Starting with silage corn, we believe that we can strengthen our leading position by innovation. We see already we have top-tier performance in innovation coming up. Good example of that is EnergyBOOST Corn. Since silage corn, like I said, is mainly used in production of milk or meat or in biogas factories or biogas plants, the methodology is actually the same. You try to put as much energy into the cow, and the cow produces milk or meat. May say, may turn. The same happens in a biogas plant, by the way. That is the reason the systems are quite comparable to that. We have done in the past years a new innovation, which we call EnergyBOOST corn. That means you harvest more energy per hectare because it is a higher-dense energy corn. That being launched brought us to the fact that we are kind of market leader on the silage side today. The downside of that is digestibility. Digestibility means that a cow can only take a certain percentage of the energy being fed to her and transfer it into milk or meat. Digestibility was always a downside of having the high energy input. It was used by our competitors to be more creative. We have overcome that issue with a new innovation, which we call high-digestibility EnergyBOOST corn. We combined both innovations, high energy with digestibility, to a new innovation. That will bring us to a very competitive edge product. We see already the first trials, especially in France, that this innovation truly outperforms everything which was currently on the market. We are very anxious to the product launch, which will happen in 2027, 2028, because this will take or will boost again our position in the market and will boost again the market shares we saw already. A good example of how breeding can really contribute to less input, more output concept. Really, with this concept, we can, or farmers have a lot less input and more output to cope again with the challenges we've talked about earlier. Let's look at the grain corn side. Grain corn, super innovative as well. We've launched more varieties than all other competitors in the past three years. That shows how strong the portfolio is and will be. Over the next years, you'll see a lot of new varieties coming on the market. Therefore, we believe that we can even grow our market share, which is 10% in grain, as we've seen earlier, just by the speed of our breeding right now. We are really on the very competitive edge right now. With that speed of breeding, we believe we can really gain on the market share side. I brought three examples of that. We launched a couple of years ago already the Plus4 Grain varieties. This is a high-performance hybrid. On normal, suitable grain conditions or corn conditions, it outperforms yield-wise pretty much all competitors in the market. That is for standard grain production. We have launched a new variety or new varieties, new hybrids in the section of climate control. ClimaCONTROL3 Three actually means that we are, or this variety, this hybrid is able to cope with drought. This is a huge factor in a lot of Western and Eastern Europe also. Southeast Europe has a huge problem with climate change, and it is just raining not enough. We just talked to some colleagues a couple of weeks ago, and they actually had no rain during the whole growing season. This variety or those varieties can much better cope with this drought factor or with drought stress than conventional varieties. A new innovation in the run is Dry Down+. Dry Down+ is a variety in an innovation which is available especially for farmers in the northern parts of Europe, where the downside is that with cold, wet autumns, the problem is that you are not able to get the corn and dry. Therefore, it is important to have a new variety there, which is called this very early variety, Dry Down+. It makes it easier and earlier to harvest the grain dry. Therefore, we can also create other innovation by extending the crop rotation. By being able to harvest earlier, we can again put different crops in the ground with that. Let's look at our most beautiful crop in the portfolio, sunflower. Sunflower is a fairly new crop, and we are heavily working on that. At a certain point of time, we can call this business unit not cereals and corn anymore. We call it cereals, grain, and oilseed rape, and sunflower. Oilseed rape is growing very much. You have seen on the oilseed rape market, it is about EUR 400 million. On the oilseed rape side, we have 16% market share. On the sunflower market, we have 1.6% market share. The market of sunflower is EUR 1 billion. You saw that earlier in that nice seed value chart. Sunflower has an amazing amount of market. That market is still growing. Why? It is the global vegetable oil market. The global vegetable oil market consists of 220 million tons. 10% of that is sunflower. Experts believe that the vegetable oil market is expected to grow by 10% in the next five years, basically. It is growing. We have 10% sunflower content in vegetable oil in general. We have only 1.6% market share. That really shows that we can grow in this area. Here you can see a little bit of the story of sunflower. We started in 2011, basically, with the first breeding programs. Again, 10 years later, you can see the long breeding cycles. 10 years later, we launched the first own variety by KWS called KWS [Artikus]. Since then, from 2023 on, we are gaining market share. Right now, at 1.6%, but looking at the pipeline and the varieties to come and the market to expect it to grow, we believe that we can grow our market share to 10%, which would mean in the current market size already, EUR 100 million turnover. Yeah, to conclude overall, my last slide, I hope I was able to show you why I made personally the change from the mechanical industry to the seed industry. Because I truly believe that in KWS, we can answer, or with KWS, or KWS can answer a lot of the questions we have concerning the 60% more food we will need in the next years. KWS will cope with climate change and more regulation in terms of fertilizer input and chemical usage. I believe at the end, with KWS, we do not have to worry for the future. This is really a successful story. Therefore, I'd like to thank you for the attention and like to hand over to my colleague, Nicolás Wielandt. Right. Good Good morning, everybody. I hope you guys have a good breakfast. We're slightly behind schedule, but I hope we will finish on time for your lunch. I'm Nicolás Wielandt. I've been with KWS 19 years already. I'm originally from Chile, although my last name sounds German. Unfortunately, it didn't come with the DNA, didn't come with those skills. Last night, we were trying to speak in German a bit, but Spanish is, of course, my mother tongue. I've been very happy the last 19 years at KWS. I think KWS is a company from an employee perspective that provides a lot of opportunities. That was my case coming from Chile, moving here, taking roles, starting in regional responsibility for sales in sugar beet for quite some time. I took over the sugar beet business unit for five years. We had this head of business unit. I was in that role between 2014 and 2019. In 2019, I moved to corn. I was responsible for corn Europe. In 2022, I had the honor and the responsibility, which I took with a lot of humbleness and challenge, of course, to move into the executive board. In the last, basically since 2022 until this year, I was very much focused on what you have seen from Sebastian, the divestments we did of all our portfolio of the Americas, of the American corn market. Now, since July, I'm happy to be back on one side on the sugar beet part, and then also to take the challenge on vegetables, which I would like to walk you through. If we start with sugar beet, I brought some things that you can feel and touch, but this is not a real beet, but this is more or less what farmers will have actually harvested from a hectare of sugar beet. We have seen from Felix, we started in 1856 with the intention of the sugar industry to improve the raw material, to make this beet more productive. You have seen we have been growing, and this is only the last 10 years, very sustainable. This growth has been driven by innovation. We are today close to EUR 900 million, and the intention is to go to EUR 1 billion. I will walk you through what are those innovations actually that make us quite confident that we will reach this target. If we talk about the sugar beet acreage, unfortunately, we're not talking about hundreds of millions of hectares like in other crops. Unfortunately, it's only 4.6 million hectares. There is about 10%, and you see this orange bar is actually the percentage that represents the total market. The U.S. is about 10%, although it's a very important market for us. We have very strong markets there, all over, but in the U.S. in particular. There are about $200 million, almost $200 million sales that are coming actually from the U.S. The rest is, of course, in Europe. We have between EU 27, if you want, or the European Union plus East Europe, about 3 million hectares. Then the rest of the world, particularly North Africa, Middle East, is another 1.2 million hectares. That is today our footprint. That footprint of the crop has not been stable. If you look back in time, the acreage actually has reduced significantly. We were discussing yesterday that we work against ourselves. On one side, we want to be more sustainable, so we want to have more yield per hectare. That, of course, makes us produce more yield, so fewer hectares are needed. There have been a lot of sugar market reforms during the time, which are now well over. You can see that while the acreage reduced from 7.4 million hectares to 4.6 that we have today, our sales went up. Our revenue from EUR 131 million to this EUR 872 million record year we had last year. Our profitability, even more important, grew amazingly to EUR 367 million. This is based on our ability to turn innovation into value. While we launch innovation, of course, we became the preferable partner for the farmers, and this has been rewarded on our market share. Today, we are close to 70% market share. This is value-based market share because yesterday we were talking during dinner about, well, 70%, the chances to grow maybe are limited. Actually, we still, from a volume point of view, we're only at 60%. There is a 40% in terms of volume that we can capture ahead of us. You can see the main competitors. The strongest competitors here now is a joint venture between our historical competitors, the Depré Group. That was [Foreign language] for the ones who are familiar with our seed industry. DLF, which is a Danish breeder, has acquired a portfolio from Syngenta. Syngenta divested their sugar beet business, and this has been acquired by this group. Strube, a historical company based here in Germany, has been recently acquired by AGT, a French breeder. The rest are some local institutes, but today we're in a very strong position. The market size is EUR 1.2 billion per year. This has been developed and grown thanks to the innovation that we have brought to the market. If we talk about innovation, I think this is quite key to understand what have been the key milestones along this process, starting with the monogermity. That hopefully from one seed, it only grows one root, one plant. In the past, this was not the case. It was called multi-germ. You were putting one seed in the ground, and they were growing several plants. That was the first step technically to have a very uniform stand in the field. Later on, we introduced resistance to rhizomania and nematodes, which were diseases that were really affecting the crop. Then we started getting into what we call herbicide tolerance. During your crop, you have non-wanted plants, or weeds, as we will call it, starting in 2007 with the introduction of the transgenic Roundup Ready beets in North America. Moving into 2018, what we call CONVISO SMART. I will go into detail in Europe and the rest of the world. Now, recently, in 2021, a resistance to a fungal disease called Cercospora, which significantly affected the sugar beet. Actually, we have created a very interesting value in that regard. Starting with CONVISO, CONVISO was a collaboration we founded with Bayer. This was a joint work. On one side, Bayer had the responsibility to develop the herbicide. The herbicide is called CONVISO ONE. We have developed the varieties, the plant that actually can stand this herbicide without dying. Of course, the rest of the weeds are being eliminated or removed from the field. That really brings a lot of convenience for the farmers because the classical or the former way of managing the field required that the farmer need to go with the tractor three to four times in the field. Of course, when they have families, they have other crops, etc., have to go three to four times and in the right moment to spray. It is a tough challenge. With this, we introduced a lot of convenience for the farmer. As a result, you see you can manage the weeds much better. That, of course, increased the yield as well. This innovation has brought a lot of value. I will come into that now. You see here a little bit of the map on the adoption of how CONVISO SMART has been penetrating the market. Today, we are above EUR 300 million sales varieties which contain this technology. Not all the value is only on the CONVISO part, it's also on the genetic. The two things combined, we have sales for EUR 300 million. This year, we actually expect still another growth of about 10% in terms of value on this technology. As you can see as well, the penetration is still not reached its peak. There is more value to come on CONVISO. This has been driven by the registration of the herbicide and certain regulatory aspects. We could not launch all the countries at the same time. There are countries which are quite advanced and others which are still in development phase. I expect that we still have another two years of growth, at least on this product. We still need to have other chemistry. That is a requirement. We still need to have basically something to combine with CONVISO, especially to manage weed resistance. If you only spray the same product all the time, with time, the weeds actually do not get controlled. It is very important to have other alternatives. At the same time, as we have heard from my colleagues, the regulatory framework from pesticides, of all means, is getting tougher and tougher. Actually, many of the classical herbicides that used to exist in sugar beet are not available anymore. CONVISO has become really a fundamental solution for farmers today in Europe. Nobody's getting a call. It's not mine. Hopefully not. Okay. I will move to Cercospora. Cercospora is a fungal disease. Basically, you see the impact of this disease is quite significant. You can have 50% of losses because actually what it does, it destroys the leaves. You see there, the leaves get necrotic, the leaves die, and as a result, the roots start growing new leaves. That takes the sugar out. What we want to do at the end of the day is that the farmer harvests a beet full of sugar. If all the time the energy is going to grow new leaves, of course, you lose the performance of this product. This has been a KWS innovation which we have launched and that actually really balances or limits the damage of this disease. The penetration as well has been much faster. This has been really a very strong, successful story. I would say here we have really reached in most of the market a certain peak. Nevertheless, today we're close to EUR 250 million of varieties that have this technology. The best, of course, of all is when you have a variety like this one, which is basically a combination of both. You have CR+ and CONVISO SMART in one product. This has really boosted the sales. Today, if you combine both, we have about EUR 500 million sales of varieties either having CONVISO, Cercospora, or the combination. This has really been a great story of innovation on how do we bring innovation to the market. As I think Felix mentioned at the beginning, we're capturing value from the chemical industry into breeding. This is really a unique opportunity as a seed specialist that you can reduce fungicide applications, so less fungicide and more value into the seed, into the breeding pipeline. You might wonder, okay, what's next? Is this story going to continue? Yes, it will continue. We're investing about EUR 100 million per year on breeding. This is super important just for sugar beet in order to keep a pipeline of products coming up. We know these technologies do not last forever. You need to think on successful products. On one side, we have digital tools to manage resistance, to tell the farmers when is the right moment, for example, to spray so they have a better efficacy. We're about to launch a triple stack of herbicide tolerance in the U.S. I said in 2007, we have launched the Roundup Ready system. Glyphosate applied on the beets. With time, and especially in the U.S., the farmers are basically growing everything under Roundup. They only spray the same product. That, of course, with time creates this resistance. We have started this project in 2014. We have signed the agreement with Monsanto. Monsanto gave us the genes. We do the transformation into the sugar beet, and then we're ready to launch it. The launch will come in 2027, 2028. You need to think on how long it takes really all these developments, but we're quite excited. At the same time, we have Virus Yellows. I will go into that in detail. A new disease that has shown up, I think you were asking me yesterday, the situation is a disease that emerged now because of the ban on the neonics, and we're also having solutions for it. As I said before, the new generation of herbicide tolerance in the U.S. is called Truvera. It has three mode of actions. Farmers are really, really looking forward to it. The main reason why we cannot launch earlier is due to regulatory aspects. Some of the byproducts of the sugarbeet, like the pulp, etc., which is used for animal nutrition, are exported. Until all the regulatory frame is, for example, in Japan, in Europe, etc., is not done, we'd rather start small, knowing that basically everything we harvest, we stay in the U.S. We expect that after 2027, 2028, and the years after, the regulatory package will be ready, and then we can really go into a more broader launch. That will be the start. This is really something that we're quite looking forward to. I mentioned before, the ban of neonics has increased the spread of an insect, similar concept of what Sebastian was mentioning before in oilseed rape. The good news is we see variation within our portfolio. That tells us already, okay, we can tackle this problem through breeding. At the same time, working very closely with the sugar industry, we have found ways on when to spray, so when is the right time to spray certain insecticides to control it. This is really a joint effort in order to solve a problem that was becoming a big concern. Luckily, we are getting quite good results already in a relatively quick frame. Similar with Virus Yellows. Virus Yellows, again, this was also transmitted by a small aphid, a small insect. Basically, with the ban of neonics, which we used to put in the seed treatment, the plants become vulnerable to this attack of the aphids, and they transmit diseases, in this case, a virus. We have started already quite early a breeding program for Virus Yellows that actually, without having the insecticide, will give us a quite good level of resistance. We're planning to launch the first generation on 2027, 2028. That's, again, a way of how do we capture value that used to be in an insecticide. We bring it through the breeding material through our varieties. In short, we have very good news. We have a very strong pipeline of innovation coming up. I said we have Truvera, the next generation of herbicide tolerance for the U.S., about to be launched, and the Virus Yellows varieties. We have an ambition plan to go to this $1 billion sales in the near future. Of course, the objective is to maintain and to keep their profitability as we have done until today. Changing gears, now we're moving to what we say the build. What are we really going to grow in the future? These are long-term bets, very long-term bets. On one side, we have vegetables, potato, and the cabbage food ingredients. I will start with vegetables. I think it was mentioned we have done an acquisition in 2019. We have acquired Pop Vriend. And why we did that? Why we did the step into vegetables? On one side, Felix mentioned, we believe in having a more balanced and sustainable portfolio, also following what are the market trends, what are really the needs in terms of consumption per capita of more vegetable products, and the population growth that has been already mentioned and described. To give you an idea, if we talk about the global market size in terms of money, vegetables is about EUR 7 billion. Of course, within this EUR 7 billion, there are a lot of different crops. Within the different crops, there are a lot of different types of vegetables. You can find in the store today multiple types of tomato. You have the big tomato, the small tomato, the long tomato. Every single crop within vegetables can be split in another segment. Where are we today? When we acquired Pop Vriend, the sales actually at that time were high. We did some divestments of crops that did not really fit to what we wanted to develop. For example, carrots, and there were a few other crops that we were not really interested to keep, mainly due to the profitability and complexity. COVID came, and COVID for us has a significant impact because a lot of the sales we do today are in spinach, this baby spinach, the leaves that you eat in the salad. One of the main drivers are the restaurants in the United States. When COVID came, people did not go to the restaurants. That, of course, triggered a drop of market. We took about two years to recover. We are quite happy. We see now the trend in a positive direction. The aim, of course, of the overall business unit is to achieve EUR 100 million from here until 2030. We do not stay only there. The long-term ambition is really to go to EUR 300 million. Why do we step into vegetables? I mentioned the sustainability aspect. The other one is, of course, very important, the profitability one. Vegetables in general are crops that offer every day in the range of 20% and more, very similar to what we would expect in sugarbeet, for example. There are smaller niches. We think we have a very good opportunity to enter this market because there are different segments, so we can choose our battles. We have, and you will learn in the afternoon when you do the tour to research, that we have a very good base from a research point of view to support different crops. This has been the key, basically, to put the engine we have here of breeding and research to serve other crops which offer higher profitability. The market that we are targeting, and you can see the first four crops, is basically what we have acquired from Pop Vriend. We are talking about the Swiss chard, red beets, and spinach. The next five are something that we are starting from scratch. We are breeding really organically. That means we're basically carrying a backpack of investment for a few years of products that we still do not bring into the market. The market potential of all these nine crops is about EUR 3.9 billion, so half, basically, or a little bit less than EUR 1.3 billion, if you want, of the total potential of the market. The first steps that we have done is really to set up the infrastructure, mostly connected to research. Where do we do the research for the local markets? We have open stations starting from the Americas, in Brazil, in Mexico, to breed those crops. Inside Europe has a very important, of course, footprint. Spain, in Murcia and Almería. In the Netherlands, where we have the original acquisition from Pop Vriend. Turkey and Italy, of course, are also very important markets. The first step has been also to build up the team, to build up the infrastructure. Actually, we have been quite happy that we are already in all these five new crops quite active. If we look in more detail, spinach, spinach is still the main driver of the sales. From the EUR 72 million you saw, basically, EUR 48 million are coming from spinach. We are market leaders in spinach, so we have a market share of about 38%. There are different types of spinach. Our strongest footprint is in this baby leaf, as I said, for the salad, but we're targeting the other segments too. Profitability, super important, is delivering more than 20% every day. This is confirmed. The acquisition is responding to what we have planned. Similar story with beans, with a little bit smaller market size and still smaller market share. Here, there is also opportunity to grow. Especially, we see that we have the opportunity to grow in the fresh market, especially for the U.S. At the moment, we have about EUR 18 million sales, 19% market share. We see here we still have an opportunity to develop. Actually, there is a pipeline of products that fit new markets for us, which makes us quite excited. Last two, the smaller from the acquisition, Swiss chard and red beet. What is the cool thing or the opportunity we have with these two crops? It's exactly the same species as sugarbeet. As I said before, in sugarbeet, we're putting EUR 100 million research. Of course, we will never put EUR 100 million research in these small crops based on the market size. Swiss chard is only EUR 14 million, and red beet is EUR 40 million. Nevertheless, we can use all the technology because it's exactly the same species that we have derived and developed in sugarbeet into the service of these two crops. Here, we really expect that we'll be able to get market share and presence relatively fast. At the moment, also our current starting point in red beet is 4%. In Swiss chard, we're a little bit stronger, so we have 20% market share. As you have seen before, in sugarbeet, we have 70% market share. There is room to develop and to grow in these two areas. It has been mentioned also by Felix. The approach of these five crops should be delivering this pipeline, should be delivering now in the upcoming years. We have, I don't have it here, but actually, watermelon, we already started in Brazil. That went faster than we have foreseen. We have the first varieties already sold there. We are starting now with tomato. We will start adding melon, again, more watermelon, pepper, and cucumber. All the products should be delivering within the short term in order to reach that target, as I said before, of EUR 100 million sales. Now I will switch totally the gear and move into potato. Potato, actually, what you see here is what we call true potato seeds. I will maybe give you the chance to experience that. What I have here is about what you will need to plant 1 hectare of potato. I will pass it by. Don't drop it. It would be nice. That's basically that will replace three tons. If you think about three tons, imagine here there is a cubic meter times, let's say, four times. That's really what you're replacing with what you have in your hands. Here, the two challenges, on one side, the crop today is tetraploid. I won't go into a genetic class, but we're bringing it from tetraploid to diploid. What is the advantage of that? At the same time, we're creating hybrids, is that you're able to introduce resistance to different diseases, just like we do it in sugarbeet. You will be able to actually to, for example, one big disease called Phytophthora, you will be able to introduce innovation into potato much faster. We decided not to do this alone. We started with a company called Simplot. Simplot is a U.S. family-owned company. Maybe you guys have heard about it. These are the biggest suppliers of McDonald's. They have recently acquired Clarebout, a very big French rice processor in Belgium. The owner, Scott Simplot, he said, "Hey, we really want to do something with our raw material." That reminds me the story, the same what we did in sugarbeet or what the sugar industry said in 1856, "We want to make something with our raw material." I really believe that we are in the starting phase of a really big change regarding the crop. Of course, it required that farmers, instead of planting a tuber, will plant a true seed. You're seeing there is very small. It's a long process to get there. It's a lot of technical things we need to solve. Actually, we're making very good steps. We're focusing on French fries and crisp. These are the industrial segment. That's why the value is not the full potato world. It's just a part of it. The main reason, these are the ones that have very clear breeding targets and where the highest value is in. With that, we can really drive the innovation. With time, we can also go into the table potato or the ware potato that you will eat at home for other uses. The main focus has been really on this high value. A lot of sustainability aspect, of course. You don't need to store it. There is a lot of sanitary aspects which are improved. You don't transmit many diseases through this true potato seed compared to a tuber, which has a lot of water and is susceptible to diseases. We are really here. I'm quite excited. I think this will be a huge innovation. We have started this in 2018, this joint venture, although our program already started in 2011. We have been quite some time. We still have after 2030 is when I think you will start hearing us going with the first products into the market. Still a way to go. Nevertheless, every day in this case is similar to what you can see on sugarbeet. It is going to be a very interesting product for KWS. Last but not least, this was the top of the pyramid that was shown by Felix. It is about using our breeding innovation to change traits for consumers. In this case, we are talking about pea. I myself drink normally only plant-based milk. The example here, we have already a collaboration with vly to make basically milk with a better taste, but being able to find varieties of peas that actually have better taste. This is really a way for us to integrate ourselves in the value chain, in a food producer value chain. We are starting. This is really a first kind of exploratory set of projects and products that we are delivering. We think that breeding has that power of actually changing things all the way to the consumer. Putting the things all together, we are really very much excited about the vegetable position. I think that will really bring KWS into a very profitable and sustainable segment for the future. All these products that we are organically producing today will start delivering within the midterm. Potato, I hope you guys will have the chance to see it on the field. I was this year in Idaho seeing this true potato seed already planted in the field, and it is really overwhelming, I would say. We will really disrupt the market. I am quite convinced we will be able to do that. Last but not least, this opportunity to breed traits for the consumer is really something that is an untapped, basically, opportunity we have. I think we are in a very good position, actually, to make use of our breeding engine to provide added value all the way to the consumers. With that, I will hand it over to Peter, and looking forward to talk to you at lunch. Thanks. Thank you, Nico. We are perfectly in time to go into the break. This concludes the first part of the day today. For those who are joining us via the webcast, we will be back at 2:15 P.M. with the second part. For us, I would like to invite you. Okay, welcome back, everybody in the room, everybody online as well. I hope you had a refreshing break and got some inspiration by technology. I think it is, for me, the pleasure to build some bridges between the business and the tech that you have seen here today, to show you how we drive innovation at KWS. Before jumping into it, I would also like to start on a personal note. I can tell you I am a bit more than four years with KWS in the role as the Head of Global Research. I have worked 22 years before at BASF in crop protection research and trade research. I can tell you, when I joined here at KWS, the first thing that I noticed was the different kind of people and the team spirit that we have here. We really have some people here that want to roll up their sleeves, that show some agility, even when it comes to change. I see a remarkable difference here. Speaking as Head of Research, knowing that innovation is always about many people having to work for a common goal, and knowing that the people need some inspiration as well and a positive atmosphere, I feel this is super important. I see this actually as a key differentiator of KWS in the market of competitors that we have around us. With that little prelude, let's go into the topic of innovation. To start with some definitions from research, we like to do some definitions first. What is innovation about in our business here? I think you've heard already a lot about it. First of all, it's bringing reliably and sustainably good new products to the markets and generate some value for our customers and have some share of that value with us. Product in the market first. Second, you've seen a little bit of that, it's about efficiency increase and how we do our processes, how we can speed up the things, how we can take costs out, become more efficient in our innovation processes. Third is technology awareness. Becoming aware of what's going on out there and jumping on opportunities that are coming up. I'd like to frame a little bit the picture around these three dimensions and take you on that journey how KWS is innovating. I'm just picking up that slide shown by Felix already before. That is our retrospective in terms of pipeline that we have delivered over the last years. The first message here is already a repetition of what you've heard already. We think in decades. We think in long terms because breeding innovation is in itself a long-term process, 10- 12 years, typically from the first cross to a new variety reaching the market. That is by and large because we cannot help but the plants need their time from growth in the earth to set some new seeds. That is the biological limitation. Everything else around we can influence and we try to influence where we can. That is part of the story. The other part that you see is that we are talking about key innovations here that are in the most aspects traits. That are new features. We've heard about it, herbicide tolerance, biological tolerances, resistances to fungi, insects. We've seen all that already today. You see hybrids. Hybrids is another big topic, which I also like to give some insights on. That is not even the full picture because the core of the innovation is a very steady stream of incremental performance increase in our varieties. What is most important performance for the farmer? Yield, of course. I would like to shed some light on that in the first place to understand how our innovation engine works. That is a picture of our whole crop portfolio, 24 crops. You've heard that we are embarking just on most of the vegetables, which are new. You need more breeding programs to cater that because, for example, you've heard in corn, we have silage and we have grain corn. These are two different breeding targets that need to be catered by different breeding innovation processes. When you then look into the differentiation that you have in some of the vegetables, like tomatoes, small, big, cluster, tomato for pasta sauce, some for fresh markets, we've actually a fragmentation of significant size. That fragmentation also needs to be built up in the breeding process. You may ask, "Ooh, wow, that's a big portfolio." I think we have heard it is a pretty unique broad portfolio in the industry. How does that make sense? I mean, from a business perspective, we have already heard it. Chances and risk balances in different dynamics of different market segments, that's helping. From an innovation perspective, here you have one of the core messages I'd like to convey to you today. Breeding is a very fundamental and a very similar process from crop to crop. You all know it, what is breeding at the end, crossing two plants and selecting for some positive outcome. That is very comparable in the first place. I do not want to play it down, because there is a lot of knowledge involved in how to do it actually good and fast and reliable. In essence, it is very comparable. It is also very scalable. You can calculate how much output you will get after a couple of years when producing a certain input of numbers that you put into the system. Behind it, there is a lot of pure science and pure predictability. I think the message I want to convey here is that the core breeding innovation engine in the first part is very reliable and stable and very predictable in a way. That is the reason why the output of this innovation engine is very predictable. You see also looking back in decades, year by year, how many varieties has KWS gotten approved by variety approvals in the authorities overall. You see it's more or less a constant increase. That is about the reliability of this engine. Record high of 584 approvals in the last fiscal year. Of course, a substantial spend in terms of research input. I think there are some industries out there which would envy us for this kind of scalability that is in the process. This is not the whole story. I'll come to some more challenging parts of that in a second. You see also that we have about a third of our employees engaged in that, substantial commitment. You see that the general output of that for the farmer is an annual yield increase by 1%-2% that we deliver. Just to be very clear on that, the process of variety approvals in most of the markets is a super objective one. Officials do tests with our material, with our competitors' material and compare it against. Only if you really have a better performance of an existing product or it needs to be different too, then you get the approval. It is a very, very tight measure of innovation, what we see here. That is why I will not talk about the breeding process for the rest of the talk, but focus more on what we do on those step change innovations on traits. This is just a summary of the presentations of the colleagues in the first part, where you see the anticipated product launches that we have planned for our crops. We see again, we have traits like the digestibility you've seen, Truvera as a second generation, herbicide tolerance, and all the kinds of resistance traits in between. You also see that we want to launch hybrid barley as a new product that we get and the vegetable products which will come totally new to the market. Looking back as well as looking forward in the next years, I think it's proved that we have a pretty solid and reliable innovation machine that we are actually running. Looking a little bit more on the traits end and to give you a little bit of a feel for what that means in terms of scale and efforts. Again, maybe starting with the definition, what is a trait? You've heard it here and there. We offer special features and performances to the farmer that give an added value to him. We share that value in the seeds. Often it is actually reducing input costs. It is kind of herbicide use, fungicide, insecticide use, agronomic properties that includes fertilizers as well as other features in the plant. Actually, we help to do more with less input, and that's an economical benefit, not to speak about the sustainability aspects of shifting from chemicals to seed value. You also see that sugarbeet is our biggest traded crops, and we have already heard that there is a relationship between if you can really deliver innovation into traits that can deliver market leadership. You see the other here as well. When we look from that perspective of that portfolio, you often see in innovation-driven companies something like pipelines like this. On a very high level, about a third is very close to the market and 2/3 is not so close to the market. That is not an important message. The important message is behind that picture. That is if you compare this innovation pipeline with other industries, let's say agrochemical, for example, the question is where's the biggest risk? For agrochemicals, a big substantial risk is still in late phase. You can have already spent millions into a new chemical, and it hits a toxicological or whatever wall, and you cannot market it in some markets or get lost totally. This is totally different in our case. The biggest risk is actually here at the very beginning. The risk is just to find the trait, find the genes that make up the trait. Once you have identified it, everything else is classical breeding and bringing it through. I think it's a very important message because sometimes you look at risk and kind of reliability of innovation, and we have a very reliable innovation pipeline there as well. We could say at this point in time, everything is fine. We have a very good solid base to do our stuff, demonstrated by the successes in the last years. What's the biggest risk now? The biggest risk is complacency and limited foresight. Who of you still has a cathode ray TV and is not using display panels? Technological innovation, display technology. EV, electronic cars versus classical combustion engines, innovation in battery technology. Who would doubt that generative AI and AI as such will drive industries, also our industry in the future? What I want to say is the foresight, which is one of the core values of KWS, is very important to stay in the business, even if you have a reliable innovation engine of that kind. That is why it makes sense to look into breeding from the first stage where humankind started crossing and selecting for better performances. 10,000 of years, this worked very nicely. Until in the mid-1880s, a monk in Czechoslovakia has identified how this thing works in plants. He identified that what you actually see on the field is actually the result and correlated to a building plan inside the plant. That building plan, we all know today, are the genes and the genomic information that is the construction code. In the decades after that, we have learned to read this and to use this information. That was basically the kickstart of a big technological innovation. If you missed out in the industry, you could be lagging behind very quickly, although innovation timelines are long. The new kids on the block are genome editing and genomic selection. Genomic selection is the marker-based technologies that Wolfgang Michalek has talked about for you today. Let's go a little bit into this and summarize it on a sufficiently high level. What are the four key innovation drivers for us as KWS, and I would say in the industry overall? Marker and genomic selection, genome editing, it's a little bit newer, crop hybridization, and basically AI-driven data science. You see there are different levels of maturity with marker and genomic selection. You have seen throughput is the most mature. Genome editing is the new kid on the block. Hybridization, we are very good in, but we are still going for more. AI-driven breeding is then the future innovation wave to come. I would like to go through those with you a little bit. Starting with genomic selection. You have seen what our people are doing there. The principle is take a little sample from the plants, like here, cutting out a punch from a leaf, extract the DNA, and look at that marker map that is inside there. Because these markers tell you if a trait is there or not. You do not have to necessarily wait until the plant goes in the field and shows the properties, but you can actually deduce it already from that digital information that you have gained. It is an efficiency increase in one because you can save on doing field trials, and it is a way of accelerating parts of the process to market. Therefore, it is a process which has, after, let's say, 15-20 years of ramp-up, entered into a phase of scaling. We are only scaling. There is nothing technologically super new about it anymore. We know how to do it. You have seen the chips. They are loaded with samples. Scaling is about reducing cost. We are not talking about fancy technology. We are talking about really strong innovation by scaling cost. You see in the gray bars, we are doing more than 800,000 samples per year. We test 800,000 genomes in the plant per year. The cost per sample of doing this has at the same time halved. We are on a further journey by scaling effects and making that bigger. That is the result of the robotics that we have seen. A very mature technology delivering extremely well to our processes. Totally different story, genome editing, or also known as new breeding technologies, NBT. Big in the public awareness and debate. I would assume that everybody knows that there is something going on. Why is that important? What is so special about this for us as breeders? That is because it's totally different from breeding, but delivering the same results. What's different? Breeding is a shotgun approach. You basically put a lot of diversity in there, go to our elite spike, get some genetic diversity, and screen in the field for the properties, and maybe enhanced by genomic selection. Genome editing is the total opposite. It's like a laser-sharp scalpel where you can say, "I know which gene I want to have introduced or changed in the plant," and you do it in a single step, straightforward, super precise, super targeted, and therefore in itself very fast relative to continuous screening and breeding processes. Speed by precision. That doesn't mean that you can change the whole breeding approach in the future with that. Because what you need to know is what to actually change. That is where the knowledge and the precision then comes from. Overall, it's speeding up in the cases that we can use it. We have agreed on an improvement by two to three years, but nobody knows today because we are still not using it in full steam, delivering product to the market. That's the best estimation. I can tell you from a technical perspective, the examples Nico has mentioned, potato, which are basically impossible to breed today. Breeding progress is super slow in potato because of genetic complexity. Genome editing in potato is a super powerful tool to achieve things that classical breeding can't. The bandwidth of achievement by genome editing is very broad. KWS is very well positioned to genome editing because we are running a research center in St. Louis with about 50 people, which sole task is to develop the technology platform and put the first trade developments for future products in place. `We have technology access. It's a very new technology. There's IP around it, and that needs to be taken care of. We have all the tools in hand that we need to do this. By establishing the platform, we are already generating own IP to solidify our technological position. All of this goes mostly hand in hand with some strong partners that we have and that we use generally in innovation in our industry. This is maybe one more thing. Breeding is a method that is very standardized. You cross plants and get something out. Genome editing is not. Genome editing is actually a very plant-specific approach where you have to develop those technologies for each crop differently. Because I always say in the field, every plant does the same. In the lab, every plant is a diva. They want to be treated with special care. That is why technology development effort for genome editing is a little bit on the higher side than as compared to plant breeding. When we look at the timeline, there are two important messages for you here. First, it is about that thing that I said, have the foresight. Actually, the first reports of crop plants actually that they can be edited were in 2013. Two years later, KWS started with the GRC in production and having that lab ramped up and going live. That shows you that at that time, and it's well before my time joining the company, there were some decisions that had the foresight and were courageous because at that time, there were still many questions open. Can it work? Will it actually be delivering to the market? Actually, the second question is, what about today? How do we get the products to the market? I hope most of you know genome editing plants are currently in Europe still treated as genetically modified plant. That's a boo word. Nobody wants that. No consumer likes GMO plants. The regulatory hurdles and the efforts that you do and have to spend in money to develop plants as GMOs is just prohibitive. Currently, that is still the case, but there is a super active, and as we speak, actually in the European legislation, people are talking with each other. We have that so-called trialogue of Commission, Council, and Parliament talking with each other to find a compromise and have a regulation that is much more favorable of developing those plants in Europe. That sounds like a European problem, but it is not because from the GMO plant debate, we know, or from the situation we know. For example, our Truvera sugarbeet, it's a GM plant marketed in the US. In order to do this, you have import approval from a regulatory site in Europe for the produce actually coming. Even the sugar needs to be. We needed to make sure to say, "Hey, there are no genes in the sugar and whatnot." The regulatory hurdle, even for products that are produced somewhere else, is very high. Therefore, it is basically this is putting the plug out of the can and the whole thing will fly. That is also the basic principle how KWS approaches this. We are basically ready to bring the products quickly to the market once this door opens, and we are very confident to do so. Why are we confident about that? That is mainly because KWS is in a super middle position between the big companies, which are happening to be agrochemical companies, not only seed companies, and the very small breeders, which basically cannot afford using those technologies. We are in the perfect position to be a trustable, reliable partner, and we are influencing in these discussions and help showing the value of this technology to the public. Now, that is all about the technology itself. What are we actually doing today? We show you here the portfolio of genome-edited trait development products that is very resembling to the overall trait development picture that I have shown you, with a strong focus on biotic resistance, fungal, virus, insects, agronomic qualities, and a little bit quality and herbicide. Why should it be different than our breeding portfolio? Because it is basically just another technology approach to get to the same results. We would expect that this portfolio looks the same. The other number, which we are also a little bit proud of, is that the summarized value of this portfolio of activities in terms of a net present value is EUR 270 million that we want to realize in the next years to come. The ambition plan is to have the first products launched very, very early in the next decade. I just show two examples for you to just show, "Hey, there is something in the pipeline without going into the detail, obviously." You have heard that critter already, cabbage stem flea beetle. That is a part where our InsectPROTECT product line that comes from classical breeding delivers already that 30% that Sebastian has mentioned to you. The 30% is relatively low if you compare it to chemical solutions, which usually are 100% solutions, right? There is air to breathe and room to grow. In parallel, we use genome editing to test genes to add something on top. Here we have the first genes in hand where we see up to 50% saving of plants, so less feeding damage in our assays. We are very passionately now pushing those genes on top of the initial plants directly to find the next generation of solutions for cabbage stem flea beetle. Two more to share. You have heard about sugarbeet diseases, Virus Yellows, and SBR. We did not dare to spell the name, Syndrome des basses richesses. Say that three times fast, so it is really a tongue breaker. Syndrome des basses richesses is one of those upcoming new diseases that are shifting pests coming to the northern more cool areas, southern Germany, even middle Germany. Sugar beet areas are now infected. It's coming so fast that even academia didn't have a big chance to understand this disease. We know the principles already. It's two bacteria doing something, and it's actually coming together with another disease, which is called RTD. Super complex stuff. Here, the point is that genome editing can help to test and understand the disease very much from the beginning and then deliver some solution on it. It's very complementary, again, additive to what we do in classical breeding to deliver something. Virus yellows is a very similar story. I saved us some time going there. That's technology-wise on these genetic technologies. Next level, I'd like to talk about digitalization a little bit more. Oops, that was the wrong direction. I'd like to start with a product dimension on a product that you have already seen. We have our CONVISO SMART product, and here it's actually already a double product with other traits stacked on top of it. If you look to the package, it's Cercospora Plus as well as Rhizomania and Nematode. It's actually four products, a yield product and three traits in there. Plus, you see a sticker here, myKWS, that is our digital platform that we entertain. The farmer can find a useful tool to help him with that system in the field. In a few words, you've already heard from Nicolás. You have the seeds, which are resistant plants against the herbicide and the herbicide in one package. That gives you a very strong weed control solution in the field. The cave is that you have to spray the herbicide at the right point in time to get the full boost of only using one or two herbicide applications. The timing of that, the window is relatively narrow. If you spray too early, then the weeds have not even all come out of the field, and you have to spray a second time. If you spray too late, the weeds are too strong, and you need to spray a second and a third time because they're too strong already and will stand a little bit the herbicide. The timing is very important. Now, the digital tool behind this is simply a mobile phone app that the farmer can download. He makes some pictures of the weeds, and the tool understands the size and the timing and makes a prediction on the timing when to apply best to have that best opportunity of the product performance. It is actually another product stacked on top of the pure seed that we have given them. That is a little bit the strategy here to offer farmer complete package solutions in a sophisticated crop like sugarbeet. Talking about digitalization, there is another dimension, and that is the same dimension I have talked about with the genetic technologies for you. That is efficiency increase, speeding up in our innovation processes as such. Here are three examples, two of which I would like to go a little bit into the detail. The first, what you see here is an aerial view of a breeding plot of some, I guess it was cereals. It's too low of a resolution. Actually, a plot is a stripe like this finger. Yeah? It's always one different varieties in the field. We have lots of those in the field. Overall, roughly, at about 45 breeding stations that we have, we have two million of these plots per year in all our crops. Some are bigger, some are smaller, but it's a huge number. How do you do the logistics for that? How do you plan those field trials? How do you translate the wish of the breeder, "I need these and these things," into the practical reality? To do this, our IT folks have developed a digital twin, basically a field map in the computer where you have these plots, and you can plan the activities in the computer. As a next step, it's going to the stations. At the stations, they put the seeds on a seeding machine, and the seeds are put with GPS precision into the field. That is a GPS precision of 3 centimeters. It is not your car GPS with 20 meters or 100 meters. It is 3 cm of precision. We know exactly where which seed is, where which plant is, and we can map all the environmental data and all the evaluation data on top of it. This is a little bit of a techie story, I know, but take home is this is not something that you can buy. That is something that is so special that you need to do it on your own. We have the capabilities and the teams to do that. Here I have a little of those hands-on objects for you, which are obviously KWS, as you see by the color. To explain this one, who has recently bought a robotic lawnmower of you? None? Okay. If you had, it comes always with a second device that you put into your garden to increase GPS precision and let that little thing run precisely through your garden. You can buy that today for this, but this has been developed about seven years ago, and you need this on the field to have that GPS precision. This thingy here, please just do not fill it with the buttons, but you can hand it. That has been developed by our digital teams. There is no external company involved in that. I personally was super impressed when I saw that joining KWS, it is not only breeding and dealing with seeds, but there are actually teams of engineers, small teams that are developing those things. There's a little Raspberry Pi in there and a bit of software, and they 3D print the things, and off we go. The second is this year. What's that? A little numpad, very simple device you can hold in your hand, and you put in data. It's connected via Bluetooth with your mobile phone. Why is that good? Have you ever tried to stay in the sun on a field, having your digital app and putting in some numbers? Nobody likes that. That was the feedback that our digital guys got from the field station saying, it's nice, and we can enter all the data, but it actually is very cumbersome. Can you help us with that?" Now they go around, print these things, cost $50, and while having the database on their phone in one hand, they can basically touch field and make the rating at the field and so on. It's a nice example for me how passion and how good collegial interaction leads to very simple things which can make a big difference in our innovation process. That's the field explorer story, and there are many more tools that we develop for that. I will go one step back because the second example here in the middle is if it starts running. It's a little bit this kind of video thingies which always go wrong when you do presentations. Maybe like this. Yeah, now it works. Basically, you're standing at the edge of a cornfield here. What you see is a harvester machine in the breeding plot passing by the rows. You see an AI runtime seeing where the corn plants are, where in red the crops are, the ears are. It measures the ear height, which is a very important breeding parameter. It also measures plant height. It is all runtime AI. By harvesting, the machine collects the data to put to the database and have as information for the breeder making some decisions. The whole machine looks like that, big mess of wires and optics and so on, but it is even past the prototype status. It is a home innovation approach with lots of passionate people doing this stuff because we need it. That is, again, something which you cannot buy anywhere from the shelf. Getting close to the last topic, this is just a headlight on AI. I would say there's two kinds of AI. The one thing that everybody already uses today, which is kind of having your pictures in the phone and let them see, "Oh, it's a cat." Actually, you can Google the cat then. Great. For us, the equivalent is what I've just shown you, image data recognition. We use drone to fly the fields and digitally capture the data, things like that. We use these kinds of AI models a lot. The other next generation thing of AI is generative AI, and that is making use of deep data sets that we have. Here we are just at the beginning, and that is why I put this as the youngest part of innovation in our pipelines where we have to gain a lot. We have a very good base, good starting point, but there is still room to grow. Just to complete, we're not shy of including other data sets like public data sets, satellite data shows you the temperatures in the field, the weather, and so on, and integrating it into our things. The higher level message here, collaboration is key, is not only true for digital. This is actually one of our core elements that we go with academia, with startups, and use a lot of that knowledge in all kinds of innovation features. Coming to the last topic, we are good in time. I know it's a lot, so bear with me just 10 more minutes. Hybridization. You've heard about hybrids. Why are hybrids good and important? We have heard some of the stories already. If you do a Sunday walk through the fields in summer and pass a cornfield and some other fields, and you compare the cornfield, what you see with maybe a barley field that is just at the other side. The main difference is that the corn is basically standing there like soldiers in a row. It's super reproducible, like all of the same kind. Barley, it's a little bit more dynamic, a little bit bigger, a little bit smaller, and kind of thicker, thinner stems and so on. There's a little bit more variety in that. That's one of the features demonstrating that corn is actually a hybrid, that a hybrid produces more reproducibility, less variety, and more vigorous character. It actually produces more yield. It's also a way of introducing traits. We have heard already before from a breeding perspective, it's nice because a hybrid can only work one time in the field, and then the farmer has to buy a new bag of seeds in the next season. Breeders love hybrids. They love to sell hybrids, but to make hybrids, it's actually much more cumbersome than normal varieties. It's a little bit techie, but I think some of the principles need to be explained to get a feel for it. What is a hybrid? A hybrid is basically two breeding programs in parallel. You have one breeding program on the mother side and one breeding program on the father side. You basically inbreed to make these both lines very homogeneous. We call that homozygous. That means genetically they are very pure. When you cross in the seed production to fill the bag of seed sold to the farmer, when you cross one mother with one father there, you get this heterosis effect, the hybrid effect that the offspring potency is much higher than what the parental line does. The yield increase potential of this relative to classical varieties is in a double-digit area. That is why this hybrid is such a big thing for our industry. KWS has been pioneering hybrid crop development and market launch ever since. A good story of that we have heard already is hybrid rye, introduced around 1987 as a first time as hybrids. If you compare over time non-hybrids to hybrids, you have overall 23% in general yield increase relative to non-hybrids, and the slope of increase is also higher. Breeders love hybrids. When you look at our portfolio, most of our crops are already hybrids. We are taking good benefit of that. The only three left up, we have heard it already, barley, wheat, and potato. The last little tech information is to show you that it's not super trivial to make a non-hybrid into a hybrid. Just remember again, you need a mother line strictly separated from a father line and then cross them. Plants are spreaders. They have pollen and female organs, and they pollinate themselves. One of the big issues is to keep the mother plant, which actually gives the kernels and the seed, keep them from self-pollinating. The way how we do it, actually, you've seen it already today in the greenhouse, I hope. We emasculate. We take the pollen organs off the plant. In other words, we make the mothers sterile for pollen, male sterile pollen-free mother plants. If you have such a system, you're in good shape. You can do it. You don't want to do it by hand for seed production. In corn, it's easy because actually here are corn plants. What you see on top of the corn plants late in the season, these tassels, these are the pollen organs. The female organs are somewhere below. In the field production, just before the pollen gets fertile, we take a razor and cut the pollen from the plant so you only have the female. A separation of organs makes it very easy in corn. Where it's not easy is in small grain cereals. Why? Because the flower fertilizes itself even before you see it, right? It's actually hidden in between the leaves when the fertilization happens. We need genetic means to make the mother sterile, but we also need to make that switchable because if you keep mother sterile, you do not get any fertile seeds produced at the end. It is a huge complex system. Lots of features need to be, and we call that a working hybrid system needs to be in place. Some of the details are that you have to control flower biologies because you want pollen and female organs to develop in the same stage and have good fertilization and so on. You also need to take care of production because obviously having that complexity managed adds costs to the production process, and you want to have all these things at bay. At the end, you need all these mother and father lines in your breeding program as pools of diversity, and that is what we call optimal parent genetics, which we have under control. That is one of the core breeding things. I'll just quickly go through it. Where are we in winter barley, which is the most advanced, as we have heard already today? Basically, there are already hybrids produced in the market. The system is there. We have flower biology largely under control, and those things are more in an improvement phase, but they are principally already tackled. That is why we anticipate to have first-owned hybrids launched somewhat in 2027, 2028 to European markets and then take it off from there. In wheat, we are a little more behind, but shooting for mid of the decade, something like that. The good thing is that we have the working hybrid system in place. Just that little detail, I do not know, that does not work. You see the kernels in the back, right? You see they have different colors. There are some more bluish and some normal colored. That is why it is called blue aleurone system. Basically, the blue are the female infertiles on that side, and the others are the normal. You basically need a selection process where each and every seed is actually selected by a high-throughput seed sorter, all solutions that are there in the market, and that is the key of this system. KWS has developed that in the last years with a university in Sydney, and the whole industry is working on this since, I think, 40 years, even more. I do not know. It's a super long unsuccessful innovation event, and we have cracked the nut. What we now need to do is optimize on floral biology and all the other factors that will take a little bit more of time, but we are very optimistic that we can deliver that product to humankind. The last part, last tech slide here is on the potato side, where you've already heard that fantastic story of getting from tubers to seed, and where we've heard already that the hybrids are an intermediate step to get there. Today, everything is from an in vitro culture, and you basically cannot breed it, and we will leverage it by hybridization through the whole process. This is a super long innovation journey, which will take a few more years, but we are making all the progress that is needed step by step. We are still super confident to have that done. With that, I'm through my little presentation. I know it's a lot. Sorry for bothering you with techniques, but we are passionate for that. If there's three things that I'd like you to take home is, first of all, we have a core engine, which is very reliable, very scalable, and that is the core basis for innovation. We beef that up with traits, with hybridization and technologies that we know deliver superior performance in the market, and we use cutting-edge technologies to accelerate and improve efficiency along our innovation pipeline. That is why we feel confident that KWS is on a very good track. Thank you very much for your open ears, and looking forward to our Q&A session a little bit later. I will now hand over to something that is much more convenient to you, I guess, financial framework with Jörn helping you there. All right. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm really happy to have you all here in Einbeck, and of course, also welcome, belated welcome also from my side to those attending virtually. I said it already yesterday to you. What we want to make sure is that you come really closer to KWS here, a little bit what's going on behind the scenes, and provide you with clarity, provide you with clarity as to what makes us strong, the innovation power behind it, our portfolio, our products. I think it's fair to say that we covered already a lot, let's say, today in the presentations, of course, during the tours, also a lot that really shaped also my belief and also my view of KWS right from the beginning, and that also got me excited joining the company. I said it was yesterday, if plant breeding was a mystery for you before the KWS markets day, at least it should be a fascinating mystery after leave today. I think I've not overpromised on that side, but I think you already see what is shaping the company. Felix mentioned it at the beginning also of our talk, it's a very strong-rooted, truly lived long-term mindset, really on all levels of the organization, the way we make decisions. Innovation is not a buzzword, right? It's a really deep commitment to excellence. We talked about our portfolio, our diversified portfolio, our pipeline. Sebastian and Nico, you talked about also the customer relationships, so long-standing, reliable customer relationships that have been built over generations. This trust and this relationship, of course, is not something that you see on our balance sheet, but it's a real strategic asset. It's a real strategic asset for the company. What I want to do is to expand this picture on the financial framework. Okay, as I'm talking to analysts and investors, told me you're right. This is the moment you've all been waiting for. I would really like first to start with a bigger picture because what really makes it really a good industry to be in, right? For us, it's really an industry that is resilient, that's robust through a cycle. It's an industry that is really driven by innovation. It's not competing on price. Of course, it's an industry where the customer cannot really delay purchase decisions, and it's also an industry with high barriers to entry. All of this is basically the seed industry. All of this characterizes the seed industry. You see this when you look at seed prices and value and look at the agricultural commodity cycle. They've been relatively immune to this low elasticity. Of course, we heard it. It's all about innovation that we can then convert also into a premium product. Of course, our customers must plant, so they cannot delay purchase decisions, and that's a bit unlike, let's say, agricultural machinery where you can also postpone these kinds of decisions. Talking about barriers to entry, I think talking about the decades of breeding experience, it takes really to build a product. It is clear that we are in a fantastic industry, and KWS is a pure-play seed company, and I would say arguably also with the most diversified portfolio. In the robust and resilient industry, we are also even more diversified player, and that is really a strong starting position. We all know industry structure is one thing, but the other question is, okay, what do we remake out of this? How do you bring the horsepower, let's say, to the pavement? I think that slide illustrates pretty good how we have been able to translate also a, let's say, favorable industry structure at revenue growth and value growth for KWS. Over the last 10 years, we have been able to grow our revenue 6% every year. We heard it already today is really driven by innovation, CONVISO, CR+, but also new hybrids on the cereal side that we introduced in the market, rye, oilseed rape, recently was a big success. All of this is really driven by innovation, and that makes us confident. This track record, this strong track record makes us confident that we can also reach our midterm targets, 3%-5% over the midterm cycle. What is behind all of that? What is kind of our secret sauce? We believe it's our KWS value model, so classic gross compounder, if you want. It all starts with innovation. You've seen this. You heard it over the course of today. That's really the core, the decades of breeding experience, developing advanced, sophisticated products. Then we are able to convert. We are able to convert this innovation into premium pricing, into value capture via our trades. We are able to convert this also in very attractive gross margins. We saw also last year where revenue-wise, we are growing 1% on an organic basis, so more or less on par. On the gross margin, 63%, we even increased this slightly over previous years because we are able really to get the innovation also to our customers and are able to capture the value out of innovation. If we are then able to control our cost, control our SG&A, we are, of course, also able to generate the funds that we can then reinvest, redeploy into our, let's say, cycle, into our wheel, and that kind of sustains itself year- over- year, year- over- year. Numbers speak more than words. You see that. Every year over the last 10 years, we've been able to increase our R&D investments, increase our R&D expenses. At the same time, we've been able to increase, expand our margin from 16% to 20%. I think it's a clear testament that we're able really to convert, that we're able to maintain and increase our profitability. That's really a strong position to be in, and that really is something that propels us forward, like a classic, let's say, compound interest curve. Of course, we as a SE organization, as an admin organization, also want to contribute that we can achieve our margin goals and that we also contribute to that. I just give you just two examples how we are doing this from the admin side. One, of course, is our S/4 Hana program that we are running at the moment. Legacy-wise, we are on the SAP, but operating in a heterogeneous landscape. For us, bringing this all on one platform, one harmonized single source of truth across all regions, across all crops, is a major game changer because it provides us with clarity, it provides us with transparency, it provides us with better business steering, data-driven decision-making. We are really well underway. 15 of 27 countries are already covered. That's 55%. We want to complete this program by 2030. Very important initiative to really get this efficiency and get this drive, let's say, also into our admin processes. Having a, let's say, harmonized system is one thing, but you also need a platform, a structure, how you can scale this, how you can leverage this, and how you get the efficiencies out of this. The good thing here is that we have this already in place. We have one global shared service center in Berlin. We have there over 300 people. We cover almost 30 different languages, and this shared service center is doing all of our admin processes worldwide. From Chile to the United States, from China to Morocco, everything is handled out of this global shared service center in Berlin. That is, of course, a super strong hub, a super strong platform, and also a very nice launchpad if you think about introducing smart solutions, if you think about introducing digital solutions. One example that I have brought to you is Hypotenuse, for example, so an AI-based engine, smart solution for invoice processing. Sounds a bit boring, APAR, but what it actually helped us is actually to leverage efficiencies in the area of 20%. 20%, basically FTE that we could take out of our invoice processing processes and then redeploy into higher value-adding activities. That is the leverage, the efficiency that you have when you have one central place, one hub, one starting pad, and also digitalize and create efficiencies in those processes. All right. Let's move on from, let's say, value creation to value allocation. How do we then allocate the value that we are creating? Let's talk capital allocation. I think that's not, let's say, a surprise to you that our first priority is, of course, organic growth. We have plenty of really good reinvestment opportunities. We talked about expanding our market shares. We talked about our innovation programs, our pipelines. There is a lot that we are doing, and that is, of course, first and foremost our priority. M&A, yes. It is our part also of our menu card, focus and discipline, of course. For us, our approach is clearly broad on, not transformative. We want to stay independent. Felix mentioned this also in the morning, and that will also continue also going forward. What are our focus areas? Vegetables is clear. I mean, that's an area where we really feel we can also accelerate strategically. The other area would be certain regions, certain crops where we're underrepresented today and where we can continue also to build a stronger position and a stronger portfolio. Dividends, I think it's very clear. We said this also in the summer and the presentation of our full-year results that we've reinforced our commitment to attractive dividends. We've adjusted our payout ratio from 20%-25% of adjusted net income to 25%-30% of adjusted net income. The underlying spirit is the same: continuity, reliability in our dividends, stable, ideally increasing. Of course, with the 25%-30% payout ratio, this gives us also room for the coming years, and we will feel good about that. Very clear, everything starts with the first step. I think it is a strong signal also that we are proposing to the AGM to increase our dividends by 25%, EUR 1.25, of course, subject to AGM approval in two weeks. I think that is a good balance, and we want to keep that balance of really reinvesting into the future, fueling our innovation engine, and at the same time providing also attractive returns today. Free cash flow, because if you want to deliver attractive dividends, okay, and also reinvest, of course, in organic growth, then you also need attractive and good free cash flows, and that means discipline, right? Let me talk a little bit about how we are going to ensure this. You see over the last years that we've already, I think last year, increased our free cash flow contribution. That's good, but of course, we want to push that further. Let me quickly walk you through the main moving items. CapEx, we want to cap that essentially at EUR 120 million. That means, of course, also as the company grows, the capital intensity will then also decline over time. A key element, of course, of our free cash flow generation is our net working capital. Two main moving parts. One is receivables. Okay, we improved already. We brought it down by 15% last year, mainly through the portfolio transformation because after the disposal of the South American business with unfavorable payment terms, it already improved a lot. There is more that we can do in terms of collection discipline, dispute management, of course, system harmonization, understanding all the different payment terms across crops, across the different entities and countries. It is definitely an area we can do better. Inventory management, for sure, also going forward, inventory will follow the sales. I mean, that generally will also be the case going forward. There is an element also of volatility, which is just inherent in our business model, right? A big part of our production happens in the field. There are harvest cycles. There will be times when we have higher or lower inventories. Here also, I think there's really an element of improvement that we can bring, which is agility. Again, having a better view on how we steer our business, being able to quicker respond also to acreage developments and how we then manage also our own multiplication and production partners. I think there's an element of steering, of managing this into specific corridors that we can improve, and that's also something we want to look into also in the future. In Texas, so basically for your model, 30% I think is a good assumption because that reflects very much, let's say, our regional distribution as well as recent changes on the transfer pricing side. Just to finish up, let's say the housekeeping with a view on the financial position, really nothing spectacular to report, and I think that's good news, let's say, for financial position. have brought net debt substantially down to 0.3 times EBITDA by the end of the first quarter. That is good. Maturities, I think, by balance, we have two bullets in front of us. One in September next year, the other one then September 2029. At this time, without any, let's say, M&A considerations, we feel really good to cover this, let's say, with our own funds at hand. All right. With that, let me just quickly recap the first quarter results that we published last week. You know that the first quarter is not the, let's say, most meaningful quarter for us. July to September, we only generate 10%-15%, let's say, of our revenues. Apart for cereals, for which, of course, winter crop business, that is a very important quarter. There is really not a lot that you can really extrapolate from the first quarter. For cereals, actually, we've been quite happy also with the start, let's say, to our fiscal year, a very solid 4% growth. Sebastian was talking about the oilseed rape business that has grown 19% over the prior year. We kind of hoped and expected that in the performance trials, how our varieties perform in the field, but that we were really able also to bring this now into the market, gain significant market share. It's a strong step, and that will really propel us forward also to gain market leadership in oilseed rape. Sugar beet, on the other hand, was impacted by order phasing. We had last year an unusually high number of early order sales in sugarbeet, mainly in East Europe. That did come to fruition this year. It's an order pattern thing. We remained with our forecast unchanged for sugarbeet because, as you know, the big quarter, I mean, the really important quarter is the third quarter when we have the spring sowing season. EBITDA improved substantially in the first quarter, but that was because of the one-time effect with regards to the AgReliant divestiture or the AgReliant deal. We recognized the gain from the license agreement as part of this entire deal, EUR 33 million, recognized in the first quarter in the EBITDA. That is something also we flagged already at the end of last year when we signed the deal. Overall, I would say solid start to the year for us after the first quarter. In terms of outlook, I mentioned this already also to you that, of course, currently the uncertainty in the market is, of course, visible with the low agricultural commodity prices. There is an uncertainty among our customers on what to plant. We expect also a decline for business in Russia this year, this fiscal year. At the same time, this also offers opportunities because if there's uncertainty on what to plant, and given our very broad portfolio, there's also opportunities that we can capture. That is why we confirm our guidance of around ±3% organic sales growth for the year. We will be landing in the corridor of 19%-21% EBITDA margin. This is, of course, without the one-time gain, the $33 million one-time gain I mentioned that we also guided at the beginning of the year and that you can essentially already tick off your list because that's recognized settled in the first quarter. With that, let me wrap up. As I said, we are in the right industry. We have a winning portfolio that makes us really confident that we can also continue or maintain this momentum. We have a proven growth compounder model. It has worked for us in the past. It will work for us also in the future. Of course, we as an admin organization want to also pursue targeted transformation in order to make sure that we control SG&A, that we are able to also improve the margins. Capital allocation, I think, pretty clear first priority, organic sales, but we will also capture M&A opportunities if they are in front of us and if they make also strategic sense for us. We put a renewed focus on free cash flow generation, and that gives us confidence. That puts us in a good position to deliver on the 3%-5% midterm growth forecast and the 19%-21% EBITDA margin. Thank you for that. Felix, I hand it over to you for your closing remarks. Thank you, Jörn. Congratulations. You almost made it. I see a little bit maybe tired faces, lots of information, lots to digest, lots to take with you to take home. I hope that we got our point across what makes KWS special and why we are unique. I think we've very clearly laid out how and where we're going to play in the future, building on our existing large crop portfolio in the field crops lead. I think Nico and Sebastian very clearly underlined that, how that's going to look in the future regarding sugarbeet, hybrid rye, oilseed rape, or corn. Secondly, the growth opportunities, the building phase, entering new crops, new markets, new opportunities, vegetable, full steam ahead, KFI tapping into the food value chain, and the big bet on true potato seeds. I know, yes, it's going to take a little bit of time, but I'm very confident we'll meet here again at some point in time, and those little seeds in that little tube will have turned reality. Thirdly, our exciting innovation pipeline. Tom, thanks for giving us a detailed look into that. I hope you get some look and feel in that when you took the R&D tour, visited our facilities. Jörn took you through the financial figures, short and brief, precise, to the point, clearly laying out our ideas, ambitions, and hard facts and figures. With that, I think it's time to turn tables. We did a lot of talking. Now it's up to you to talk to us, to ask your questions. For that, I think we'll bring up some chairs on the stage. I would like my colleagues to join me here. I think Peter will moderate a little bit if that's necessary. With that, I would like to, first of all, again, thank you for coming here, finding little Einbeck on the German map, and taking that time, spending a whole day or maybe even more with us, and to get an understanding for what we are, KWS. With that, the floor is yours. Thank you, Felix. Just for the Q&A session, we have colleagues with a microphone, so please use a microphone that people attending via the webcast can also hear the questions. Please raise your hand and also state your name and the company, and that would be very helpful for the Q&A. Thank you. Thank you. Christian Faitz, Kepler Cheuvreux. Two questions, if I may, as a start. First of all, on your breeding efforts, can you share with us some thoughts on short stretcher corn varieties, which you might bring or might not bring? Because one of your at least key peers, and I think we both know them well, is quite successful launching short stretcher corn. Second, you are a EUR 300 million sales ambition in veggie seeds. That means you will still have to add some EUR 200 million in non-inflation adjusted, obviously, blah, blah, blah, into 2040. How much would you believe, as a guesstimate, is organic growth from your own breeding efforts? How much is acquisition? Because, as we all know, and I guess Pop Vriend Seed is also a good example for that, EBITDA sales margins are anywhere between 4% and 5% and sometimes even higher. Thanks very much. Do you want to start with the vegetables? Okay, I can start with that one. I think to the vegetable question, yes, indeed, most of the growth, which we are expecting or we plan, is mostly coming organically. It is not really counting. We do not have at the moment a transaction on the table that we are accounting for in that part. It is mostly these five new crops delivering, plus, as I mentioned during the presentation, the two crops within the existing portfolios, so red beet and Swiss chard, where we think we have a quick opportunity to win share there as well, and of course, continue our development in beans and spinach. It is mostly organic. As Jörn mentioned, we are looking also with a lot of interest to specific targets, of course, that can complement or speed up the development in some of the crops. Yeah, no M&A. No M&A in this figure. Right. Did you start with corn or? Yeah. Short stretcher corn is successfully progressed to some extent with lots of ambition and power. The product has not, to my understanding, fully materialized and taken grips to the market. It is a tool in the first instance related to the North American and U.S. market because it's actually a combination package of the whole traded package, which we are obviously not playing in that field anymore. I think it's fair to say that we have invested a little bit into such a direction, but the ambitions have reduced significantly with the new strategic position that we have in corn. Maybe just to add, because there are some products coming into Europe as well based on non-GM basis, there is a trade-off between the size of the plants or the machine that need to do the photosynthetic activity and yield. So far, we still see that. We see maybe a certain value on areas or under extreme conditions of wind, etc., where maybe a shorter plant can resist maybe better. There is a certain need for such a product. We actually have already a pipeline on that just by pure breeding. We have already shorter plants that can manage that. As Tom rightly mentioned, the target market, if we think about Brazil, South America, or also the U.S., for us, is not really one of our key topics today. Maybe to add on that, if you look at the development of corn plants over the last 20 years, there was a great tendency that plant length was elongating. Therefore, I think it's also kind of a natural phenomenon that you want to reduce plant height a little bit again. There is, of course, if you plot lines, a clear optimum in sowing density, plant height, and then yield output. There is just an optimum, and you can, of course, move those a little bit, but you cannot shift it biologically. Oliver Schwarz. Is this on? Yeah. Okay. Oliver Schwarz, Warburg Research. Thank you for taking my questions. First of all, thank you very much for the plethora of information we received. I'd like to challenge your 3%-5% organic growth aspiration for the coming years, coming from two, perhaps coming from two separate points. First of all, 20 years ago, your R&D ratio was 15%. Now it's 18%. Over the last couple of years, your CAGR in sales was 6%, and now you're aiming for 3%-5%. What is happening here? Why is growth going down while R&D expenditure has gone up? I appreciate that the margin has gone up to a level that seems, now it's 20%, that seems, given your aspiration of 19%-21%, which seems to be sustainable. That seems to be also just the result of scale effects in production and not reduced R&D costs to sales. At least that's the way it presents itself to me. The second one was, given all the very interesting projects you have and the record number of new products coming to a green light from the authorities and coming to the markets from your side and giving the sales potential of those projects, I appreciate that none of them will really spike just next year. We are talking about midterm targets. Probably until 2030, at least some of them will have made it to the market. Plus, let's say the tailwind from existing products, which are still growing, and still the organic growth rate is expected at 3%-5%. Please help me to, let's say, bridge that gap for me to understand what's happening here. Is it because you're now so focused on Europe, which seems to be a mature market, that your growth perspectives in that region are limited by the region itself? Maybe I can just get started, and then maybe others can chip in and add to that. First of all, I mean, if you can deliver more, we are, of course, happy about that. That's clear. We want to be also realistic, let's say, in talking about the environment in which we operate and figure right now, and also looking at what comes when exactly also on the market to fuel also further growth. When we look at, let's say, market growth, then in the 3%-5% corridor, then we look specifically over the next three years. We don't look at 2030. Say 2035, because you saw that already, that major contributions also will, of course, kick in a little bit later when you think about sunflower, when you talk about vegetables, when you talk about also hybrid wheat in the beginning of the 2030s. That is not baked in the 3%-5% growth ambition. We really look, let's say, over the really midterm period, next three years, because we want to give you also a clear visibility and a clear picture and not anchor some kind of funny number, let's say, in 10 years, but want to provide this clarity. If we compare ourselves against the market, and we talk about, let's say, 3%, 2.5%, 3% as a market growth rate, that's also, let's say, what I would say our peers are essentially guiding towards. We are already growing faster than the market. We're already growing faster than our peers. Right now, also with the environment in which we operate, which means low agricultural commodity prices, everyone a bit cautious as to when the pendulum will swing, because it will swing, but we don't know exactly when it will swing. We feel actually quite good with the 3%-5% growth, 3%-5% growth corridor. Maybe to add on that, if you look at the past growth rate, I think you have to clearly also take into account that Brazil was a strong growth driver. There we started in 2011 with roughly 1% market share, and we divested that business, reaching almost 12% market share. As you see on these other numbers, we're very strong in the markets we're in today. Of course, you can, if you're lucky with the right products, obtain a different growth rate in new markets that you enter. That was just what Jörn laid out. That is what is to come, but what is not in this three-year window. In addition, I would like to point out, since most of the markets we operate in are regulated markets, that means that the product that will come to the market tomorrow and after tomorrow are already in national registration. So we know what will come to the market, and it's not that we can say we have an innovation, we'll sell it tomorrow. We take the innovation, we have to submit it to the regulator, field trials, and therefore, of course, we have, on the other hand, a very clear visibility of what is coming in the next two to three years. Therefore, when we have a product ready, we have to take into account these one, two, or three years of official registration before the regulator says, "Okay, you're free to get that product into the market." Therefore, there's always that time delay you have to take into consideration. Maybe just to add to your question of the R&D ratio, which I think the rest has been answered, we discussed it yesterday. You have seen it as well today. We have a lot of products which are long-term investments, which are carrying a lot of research. From the hybridization, from the new fruity crops that we're breeding in vegetables, all those are not yet in the market. Nevertheless, we are investing quite a lot of resources into bringing them forward. The other component is that through the divestment, we have reduced, of course, top line, and that, of course, has the ratio today at the 18% where you have mentioned yesterday, and it's very much the main driver. Thank you very much. Hello, Leon Mühlenbruch and mwb research. I have only a short question. Where do you see the biggest risk for your business? You see it in the research part, you see it in the regulation part, or where do you see for you for the future the biggest risk? Tom, maybe from a research part first? I think I made a story more from the where's the low risk. I appreciate the question. There is, by and large, technical considerations, technical risks that need to be taken into consideration. As I've mentioned, we have those more or less under control. If there is an uncertainty, I would not call it a risk, then it's the uncertainty about how is the EU going into the editing area, because this will be an innovation leverage over time. This I wouldn't call risk so much, because as far as we see, we can be quite optimistic that there will be a solution. How far-reaching the solution may be basically determines how much we can leverage there, and we are prepared to adjust our activities according to that if necessary. Even that I wouldn't call a big risk. The question is, what is a big risk to be taken, to be considered in that? I don't see many of them. I think maybe to add on that, a risk, in quotation marks, of course, at the moment, certainly the geopolitical uncertainties. That is nothing particular to KWS, but we see a continuous ongoing war in Eastern Europe. We see a hard-to-predict U.S. government, and therefore we are in a state, I think, of less visibility than maybe 10 years ago, and that remains an uncertainty. Yeah, I just exactly want to add to that, because these are the two topics, let's say, from a financial geo perspective. You know that we still have a business in Russia. It's below 10% of our revenues. It has drastically been reduced over the last years, of course, since we're not able anymore to really have even business in corn and on the cereal side, but we still maintain a sugarbeet business in Russia. Right now it works. It's very difficult to substitute, but of course, that's not really in our control, let's say. That is definitely something that always continues and swings with us, let's say. On the tariff side, U.S. side, I would say I'm a bit more relaxed, let's say, because seed industry is an industry which is very local or regional. You produce locally, regionally, in the region, for the region. There's only one area, let's say, in our group where we export a meaningful share of seeds from Europe to North America, and that's spinach. It's on the vegetable side. Also here, 60% of our production in spinach is actually locally in North America. In the other areas of our business, we are not really affected by any tariff issues. Thank you very much. Andreas Anna, AHA advisory. I would like to spend a little bit on corn first. Last year was pretty lousy in the margin, I must say, in Europe, and this year should be much better. Could you elaborate on the reason for last year and for next year? Rapeseed is in a very good dynamic in growth now. I remember a period of more than 10 years ago when we have seen already a very dynamic growth, and then it stopped at one time, and market shares were even declining, and now they are recovering. What is your confidence that the varieties you bring to the market is not only for the next two to three years, but will extend this growth? The last one is on hybrid wheat. I'm not sure whether the competitors are real in what they say, but they want to come a couple of years earlier. I think as of 2027 is what KWS says, what Bayer says, and what also BASF say. They say this for long. I'm not sure whether this 2027 is real or whether you are more humble in saying it will be north of 2030 and might be still the first, but maybe you can elaborate how you see your competitive situation in that. Maybe I start with hybrid wheat to pick up on the last one. You used the word which I like very much, and that is humbleness. Yes, we would like to stay humble, whereas Tom said rather north of 2030. We, of course, observe what competitors are doing. They have a different approach in terms of communication and promising products to the market. We are very confident in our planning, our milestones in our more maybe conservative way, but I think you have gotten to know KWS as to delivering on our promises, and therefore, in this case, I would rather concentrate on ourselves than on our competition. Maybe I'll take the first question on the margin, on the corn business. Just that you take into consideration last year, of course, we still had a big portion of North America business in our segment reporting. The way we report our figures on a segment basis was on a quarterly basis, which means you have also 50% of the AgReliant share in our segment reporting. Of course, that has been a business which has had negative earnings in particular last year as we were going through a lot of restructuring, also preparing the business for sale. Of course, as this is out of the equation, and I think Sebastian mentioned this on his slide, when you look at the parameters, not only operative profitability, but also capital intensity and so on has, of course, substantially improved. Our goal is to deliver a 15% EBITDA margin for the corn business this year. We believe on the corn side that's not unrealistic because we have launched 12 new varieties in the last one and a half years. The growth drive, the innovation is there. It's not in the pipeline. We see that right now. Market share is gaining on that side, and I've explained and shown some of the innovations we have going. Additionally, to your question on rapeseed, rapeseed is a very good alternative for Western European farmers right now since commodity prices on rapeseed are high compared to everything else basically, except sugarbeets. Sugar beets are still strong, but rapeseed is a good alternative for cereal and grain or corn farmers. We see an uptrend market in general in rapeseed, and we are really there at the right time with our product portfolio to capture that. This 19% growth we have seen in rapeseed, we will see that this year too, or even stronger this year. The outlook is quite promising that we will continue to grow and capture market share additional to the growing market. Maybe in addition to that, I'm fully convinced of our strong portfolio in oilseed rape. On the other hand, of course, we're not alone in the market, and others will certainly try to beat us. That is what is in the interest of the farmer, to have the best product. We have to do what we can do in order to assure that our products are most competitive. On the other hand, if you look in the history of the winter oilseed rape market in Europe, I think it's one of the most volatile seed markets. If you look back 10 years, Monsanto, today Bayer, had 60% market share. There is a lot of volatility, and you need that little touch of luck maybe in your crosses at the end to be on the very front line. I think at the moment we're very well set up, and I'm fully confident that our portfolio will continue to go strong. Thank you. Axel Herlinghaus from the DZ Bank. I just have a question to the Russia business. How have these Russia revenues developed from 2023-2024 to 2024-2025? In the light of increasingly stringent import quotas, have you still relevant corn and cereal business in Russia? What import quota do you expect in 2026? Maybe I can get started, and then you maybe add, Nico. Overall, the last year, so 2024-2025 fiscal year compared to 2023-2024, it was a mixed picture, I would say. We had, of course, to face a situation that we did not anymore get business for corn business and not only, let's say, on the cereal side business that we were used to. That has really came down. Maybe you saw that in the charts of Sebastian, that cereals as a total BU dropped, let's say, 2024-2025 compared to 2023-2024. That was exactly because of this Russia effect. It was mixed, let's say. On those, let's say, crops where we did not get a quota or we only were able to get opportunistic business, there was a decline, where sugarbeet, on the other hand, actually upheld, let's say, its import quota share. Hence, we're also then still able to benefit, let's say, from the business in Russia. This is basically also how we started this year, that we aim to maintain our market share in terms of import quota. On the other, let's say, crops, it continues to be opportunistic. Sometimes there is a need for a truck or two, and then we deliver, but it's not really a reliable business. That's why also I guided also for the outlook this year that on those areas, so outside of sugarbeet, non-sugarbeet business, we see also a further decline of the revenues. For the quota next year, it's too early to say. We will only get this by the end of the year for next year. Maybe, Nico, if you want to maybe talk a bit more about the situation. I think it's almost all said. As you might be aware, the Russian government is trying to localize the seed production. The fact is that for sugarbeet, that's very difficult to do. They have been trying already for many years. We also did in the past some activities there, and they have not been able to have stable and high-quality seed. Basically, we're quite convinced that no matter what happens, they will require to import seed. That's a fact. That's why we think we still have a chance to import seed into the market. As Jörn mentioned, already for the sowing of 2026, that's pretty much set. We already have the quotas. The seed is on its way. That's done. Basically, what we are discussing now will be the quotas for the year after, for sowing 2027. There is already an indication, but what we don't know is how much, how the allocation will be distributed among the different seed players. The assumption is that it will be something similar to what we have done in the last year. At the moment, it is relatively stable, but of course, it's a situation that is not fully under our control. Once again, sorry for that. I'm Jürgen Schwarz, BCG. Two questions from my side. Could you give your thoughts on the West European sugar market? You showed the slide where the acreage has been declining for the last couple of years. It seems like sugar consumption in Europe is on the decline for various reasons, and also suppliers, hence the producers, seem to be aiming for a deficit market, which would imply that acreage has to decline further. Do you share that opinion? Is there somewhere, let's say, where that effect peters out, or will that continue for a prolonged period of time in your view? That would be my first question. A second one, completely unrelated, so to speak. Free cash flow on average was EUR 100 million on average over the last five years. Given that you stated that you want to have a stable CapEx of EUR 120 million, but increasing sales and earnings over the next couple of years, I would expect that number to increase, especially as you stated that you want to focus more on free cash flow generation and bring working capital quotas a tad down from their present numbers. That EUR 100 million number is likely to increase from my point of view. Even after the significant increase in the dividend, you're shelling out to shareholders EUR 40 million. You are aggregating capital over the next couple of years. I appreciate that you have M&A ambitions, but if they do not materialize, are there any plans to distribute some more funds to shareholders in the midterm, or would you just stack that up and wait for some attractive offer to come around to make a bold-on acquisition? Thank you. May I start with the last one? Yeah, take the last one because, I mean, there's really not much to say because you answered the question already yourself. It's exactly like you say. With all that, we look, let's say, into our projections, this number should increase. As you know, we don't give a specific free cash flow guidance because with harvest volatilities, it's difficult, but we want to improve that. I think last year is already a pretty big jump. 7% free cash flow of sales, previous two years was more like 3%-4%. That should be also the way going forward. We feel actually with this in our corridor, that's why we also increase our corridor to have that flexibility and to be able to also make steps then in the direction that you've described. For us, this consistency is important that we do not have big shifts from one year to the other year, but we have stable, ideally increasing dividends year over year. I think with what you described and also this increased payout ratio, that gives us exactly that flexibility. Compared to the sugar market, basically on one side, the demand of sugar inside of Europe is more or less stable, around 17 million tons per year. Normally, Europe produces about 16.5 million tons. In general, we are a net importer. We're talking about EU 27. The market persists protected. There are normally between 2 million-2.5 million tons per year that can be imported without any tariff. After that, the tariff applies and basically makes the whole importation non-attractive. It's almost double the world price today. That's basically not attractive for the producers. What happened at the beginning, especially at the low world market prices which we see today, which is one of the lowest we have in the last five years, is that sugar comes in. That's what already happened as soon as the calendar year opened. At the same time, the last two years have been very successful internally in Europe on sugar production. Also, there is also some sugar coming from Ukraine into the European market as well for different reasons. What happened as well is that the normal amount of sugar that will be exported out of the EU for countries, for example, in the Middle East, based on the low prices outside, they're also not going out. Today, we're in a, from my perspective, in a cycle, which I think is short term. It's not something that will stay, but the market needs to adjust. This is the news that you see today. We need to reduce the acreage because at the moment, we have contracted beet growers for a price of ton of beet that will derive in a sugar price which is higher than actually what we will be able to sell it. That is natural. It is a matter of demand and supply. We do not see those huge reductions we saw from the 7 million to the 4 million, what I was showing, 4.5 million. That has been driven by a lot of reforms. There were two waves of sugar market reforms in the last 30 years, which derived in a lot of closing of factories and things like that, where certain specific incentives for sugar production were allocated. All those are already gone. Basically, what remains is really those, as I said, info quotas. We were discussing a bit yesterday about MERCOSUR. MERCOSUR is also about 200,000 tons. It is also not going to be something that is going to move the needle. Short term, you might see these cycles affecting us on a yearly basis, I would say. It could also go the other way around. If there is a disaster in Brazil or in India regarding the weather, we had those not too a few years ago, and sugar prices go up, and then we will see another wave in the other direction. It is mostly, as anything we do in agriculture, driven by nature, I would say. Thank you, Christian Faitz again. Two quick questions. Sunflower, what makes you so confident that you can essentially win triple, I believe, if I remember the market, the number correctly, the market share over the next 10 years, and that the established producers are not fighting back, including your friends out of the Urbania region? Maybe a naive question, but can you share with us how competitive sugar from beets is at this point in time versus cane? Has this maybe changed with various burn bans in Brazil, for example, I think 10 years ago or so, or 12 years? On the sunflower question, bear with me. I am not an expert on that yet. You will support me. Thanks, Nico. No, I mean, we see a strong portfolio coming in, and the trials of those are really strong. We believe we have a competitive edge. You saw the time when we started breeding on that. The pipeline is just emerging. The first varieties are coming out, and the trials are very, very promising. We hope by innovation to gain market share on that. Of course, that's not easy right now. Since you've noticed already, we focus on Southeast Europe, and Southeast Europe is hit by drought. The acreage in that area is trending down. Although the innovations we are adding are focusing on drought resistance too, we believe that could be a little bit of competitive edge for us as well. At the same time, we also focus or look at different areas and change a little bit towards France and those areas because we believe that will be a growing market in that condition right now. Nico, please add. I think almost all said. I think we also, when we look at competition in the sunflower landscape, and you see the level of R&D investment, it's not like what we see in sugarbeets. It's not that people are investing $100 million+. Actually, if you look at the market, those who have the leading position in sunflower are likely not putting the right focus. That has driven in two things. On one side, I think we are catching up with them in terms of breeding progress, as you said. On the other side, we have been able to recruit a lot of highly talented people from those companies because they really appreciate this seed specialist approach that we have and the attention to the individual crops. In that regard, I'm quite confident that we will be able to catch up. The synergy with the crop in the go-to-market with corn and in the whole rotation is also something that makes us confident that having that portfolio, it will make us basically stronger. That is clear. Beet versus cane? Yes. Beet versus cane today, as maybe most of you know, about only 20% of the sugar which is sourced is coming from beet. 80% is coming from cane. The main exporter is Brazil. Brazil exports about 30 million tons per year into the market. You have different effects on one side, like today, when oil prices are low, Brazil moved the needle to produce more sugar instead of ethanol out of that cane. The quota moved more on the sugar side. In terms of competitiveness, from a cost point of view, today we have about a 30% GAP. Cane is 30% cheaper than beet, depending which market you compare to which market. I'm looking really to Brazil, the leading market, compared to what would be, for example, the Netherlands, which is highly, let's say, effective and efficient in beet production. What will happen in the long run, at least this is one of our long-term, and we do not present it here because it is going to take time to get there. The breeding in cane is super slow, very, very slow, just by the chromosomic composition of the plant. The fact that there are no private breeders really investing a lot in breeding in cane, basically that mostly public institutes in Brazil, in India, in Thailand. You see that the breeding progress is quite slow. The curves that Tom was showing, this 1%-2% that we get in beet and in other crops, at some point, we should be able to close basically that gap in terms of overall performance. It is not that we will replace cane. I think, to be realistic, maybe it will not be the outcome, but likely we will be able to serve markets like the Middle East and Africa that, due to transportation, etc., we are closer. We are quite optimistic that in the longer run, we should be able to offer more, let's say, world sugar source from beet. Are there more questions? Everyone's so much overwhelmed with all the detailed projects we introduced today. If not, that brings us to the end of the day. I think also on behalf of the presenters and the Executive Board, thank you very much for your attention, for your interest, and also participation. As I said, a lot of things that we presented today. Please feel free to reach out to my IR colleague, Talg, or myself in the next couple of days. Happy to answer your questions that may arise. For those who came to Einbeck, have a safe trip home, and see you soon. Bye-bye. Thank you. Thank you. Bye-bye.