Okay, and thank you for standing by. Welcome the LANXESS Q3 2025 results. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you'll need to press Star 1 and 1 on your telephone, and you will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press Star 1 and 1 again. Please be advised today's conference is being recorded. I'd now like to hand the conference over to our first speaker today, Eva Husman, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead. Thank you very much. Also from our end, welcome to our Q3 earnings call. As always, we have our CEO, Matthias Zachert, and our CFO, Oliver Stratmann, here today. Please take notice of our safe harbor statement, and Matthias will start with a short presentation, and then we will open the floor for your questions. With that, I'm happy to hand over to Matthias. Please go ahead. Thank you, Eva. Welcome everybody to Q3 2025 LANXESS conference call. I start the presentation on page number 5, where we give the key updates on financials, on EBITDA being the first to be addressed. We have a decline of EUR 225 million compared to last year, partly driven by portfolio effect. We've divested the urethane business beginning of the year, but predominantly due to volume decline in the third quarter stemming from low demand in end industries, competitive pressure from Asia, and also due to respective uncertainties, also in the United States from the tariff situation. Volumes declined by 6.5%, leading to utilization, which is now around 67 percentage points, clearly too low to achieve good underlying profitability. As far as net debt is concerned, we managed that tightly, so we kept it stable compared to the second quarter, as you can see. One driver behind that is also the working capital management, which has here a positive contribution, but mainly stemming from better collection of receivables, but also lower sales driving receivables down. Noteworthy, of course, what we have communicated at the end of September, just for the fact that this was completed in the third quarter, was the right to exercise our put option in Invalio. Now, let's turn our attention to page number 5. Overall, the economic situation in the chemicals sector in the world has not changed, but Europe is under heavy pressure. For that very reason, we have now started a further cost reduction program, which is yet in the negotiation with Workers' Council and unions. The overall amount we are targeting is EUR 100 million, also coming from further streamlining of our admin functions. In order to support our target here, we have globally. Gone for a hiring freeze until further notice. Due to the sluggish performance in group profitability, we have, of course, also released our provisions in the third quarter for variable K as far as managerial grades are concerned. Page number 6 shows you what we have done in order to counteract the current weak economic environments. As you recall, 2023 was a tough year for the chemical sector already. At that point in time, we started the forward program. This is largely implemented as we speak. By the end of 2025, the headcount reduction and cost reduction will be in place. Summer this year in Q2, we gave reference towards production efficiencies that we will go for, especially through the site closure at Widnes, U.K., closure of the hexane oxidation in Uerdingen, and product optimization, production optimization in our Eldorado site. This is something we are implementing and working on. Hexane oxidation has gone offstream. Widnes is being prepared, and the same holds true for Eldorado plants. What we are now working on is the EUR 100 million restructuring program, basically coming from reduction in personnel and related costs. This will be done through the ongoing demographic change we have in Europe, but also focused redundancy packages. We will use both tools as we have done in the past. We will also adjust processes going forward in order to get further agility, and also assuming an underlying operational level where you simply need to be more competitive in order to regain power once momentum and volumes return. On page number 7, this is how we look into next year. I wouldn't say that the tariff situation will improve 2026, but there will definitely be—or that definitely is a too strong word in current times—but our assumption is that the high uncertainty on tariffs will somewhat soften. In many cases, there is some kind of agreement that's being found. We are not anymore in the full escalation process, but somewhat in the direction—at least this is our view—that people find bilateral or regional agreements. That should give a little bit more planning certainty for all of us and, of course, for all of our business units. Our assumption clearly is that the government stimulus that has been decided by the German government, and we see that they are working on it, should be visible in 2026, potentially more in the second half than in the first half. We see now that the respective. Regions and states within Germany are already working on it, and therefore it will still take some time. Our assumption clearly is that this is going to ramp up in 2026 for the German economy, being clearly positive. Business units that definitely should benefit because all of them are having business in a visible way in construction, for instance, is Advanced Industrial Intermediates, pigments, obviously, but also our polymer additives, where construction plays a major role. The same holds true with our biocides business. Therefore, these four business units are the most obvious candidates for benefiting from infrastructure stimulus. Now we also have anti-dumping, which should be mentioned. In many of our business units, we are working on specific cases, value chain by value chain. By now, however, I can fortunately confirm that two cases have been positively decided. One happened recently in October for. European adipic acids. Sorry, for adipic acids, not assets. Here, the European Union has decided on European protection of the respective value chain. As we are playing in this within Advanced Industrial Intermediates, we definitely have here a better position, even though it needs to be mentioned that, notably from China, substantial capacities have been sent to Europe pre the decision-making process. We currently, I think, in the next three months, will have to absorb the landed goods from China. From 2026 onwards, we will start seeing that this anti-dumping case plays in the right direction. Also, on the phosphor chloride ester products, we have a positive case decided for the European industry. Let's see what further decisions are going to follow. What we also take note of is market consolidation. At the end of the day, competitors also in our value chains step out. That is beneficial because we clearly see that our business units have a strong footprint where we play. We have always alluded to the fact that most of our businesses have very strong leadership positions, also through good technology and good plants. They have everything to be the last man standing. This definitely holds true for Advanced Industrial Intermediates, where we have seen that competitors have stepped out, like on hydrofluoric acids. We are clearly here the strongest in the markets. Therefore, my assumption is these plants will make it to the end and then take a good time afterwards. Right now, we are fighting and making sure that we are here in the markets to stay for good. The same can be said on Rhein Chemie with a more modest tonality. But also here, we are in the end consolidation in the Western hemisphere with our accelerators and antioxidants, but also in neighboring value chains. Of course, we know from our former business units, polyamide, which is now part of Invalio. Also here, for the Invalio business, there have been notifications by competitors of Invalio that they are closing capacity, like Fibrant recently went out and communicated in October that they will close their caprolactam capacity. And we know that Invalio has a very, very strong capacity in Antwerp and being world scale. At the end of the day, that will be positive for the ones that will be running in a more consolidated market. We see that in crisis times, markets consolidate. At the end of the day, the ones that stay in the market take the benefit. Ladies and gentlemen, let me now come to. Outlook. Described on page 8. As far as the macroeconomic environment is concerned, I think you all take note of the fact that the economic environment is volatile. High uncertainties persist. For that very reason, let's focus now on LANXESS. We are now adjusting our guidance to the lower end of the previously mentioned EUR 520 million-EUR 580 million. That is what we are seeing at this point in time. I would like to mention, of course, versus previous year, urethane is out. Q4 is normally seasonally weaker than Q3. What you should take into account, of course, we look into our business when we make our guidance. We are now beginning of November, so we look into the books of October and November. Based on this, we provide our guidance to you. This is not out of the blue, but with respective analysis and business judgments. Based on this, we are guiding around the lower end of 520. Ladies and gentlemen, this is what we would like to communicate to you. We are now open to your questions. Please go ahead. Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, you will need to press star one and one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. Thank you. We will now begin with our first question. This is from Christian Bell from UBS. Please go ahead. Yeah. Hi. Thank you for the presentation this morning. I think the extra context around the competition in Asia was really useful. I guess that's where I kind of want to start with my questions. I have two that both relate to competition coming from Asia. The first one is, are you able to indicate what proportion of LANXESS's business you would consider relatively insulated from Asian competition? For instance, sort of what product lines do you feel have a stronger competitive moat or less direct exposure to Asian imports? If possible, could you provide a rough percentage of the business that represents? The second question following from there, given the competition from Asia, what type of resolution or policy change would LANXESS need to see in order to restore competitiveness in the intermediate segment and your other segments? Once resolved, how quickly do you think LANXESS could regain lost volumes or margins in the affected business units? Thank you. Christian, let's take that step by step. I think on Asian competition, if you look into our three segments, you somehow can take the analysis from there. The business which has been most impacted is intermediates. You see here the profitability decline. You also see the volume decline. This business is more volume-driven. Relating to inorganic pigments, but also AII. Here, of course, we are in direct head-to-head competition with Asia, and here, notably, China. If you go to the intermediate space—sorry, into the additive space—this is the segment which is impacted, but not as heavily as advanced intermediates. Impact here clearly is there. Here, the impact, however, is also coming from the tariff situation. A lot of our flame retardant business from Eldorado, of course, uses the markets in China. I think you know very clearly that here the escalation on tariffs is at its toughest, and therefore, exporting flame retardants from the United States to China is not an easy sell. Additives are being impacted, but not the same way as. Intermediates is, which, of course, is by and large operating from Germany, where energy prices, etc., are not competitive. Now, the division that has been impacted least is Consumer Protection. That is the strategic direction that we have decided on and executed on. Consumer Protection, of course, sees its competitors here and there, but not at the same magnitude. I think this gives you a very good indication on exposure to Asian competition. Christian, let's face it. We see Asian competition everywhere in our German industries. We see that in the automotive industry. You have read Chinese competition being mentioned by the capital goods industry. There was an interview by a medicine company producing medical devices, B. Braun Melsungen, a German company, that also, despite producing medical devices, mentioned stronger competition because many, many, many of the goods that China shipped to the United States are currently being shipped to Europe. We see extra volumes due to the tariff escalations ending up in the European markets. This is in Q2, Q3. These have been the strongest quarters where the incremental volumes were visible. You see that not only in chemicals; you see that in end industries as well. Your second question was alluding to political changes. What does it take to restore our competitiveness? We are in dialogue with politicians. It is the level and not by failure, very clearly. We definitely find support. We definitely address our points also in Berlin, where more and more of our points are understood. It takes apparently a little longer in the European Union. All of my peers in the industry, we are very active on that end. I know that from my colleagues in neighboring industries, automotive industry, capital goods. We are also very. Often present in Brussels to make things aware there. In all clarity, Christian, we have decided now to simply go for regaining and restoring our competitiveness ourselves. That is the reason why we take further measures on the productivity side. We will again cut costs. We are not cutting capacity. We will streamline here, notably the functions, in order to keep the operational profitability where we want it to be when volumes return. Clearly, the organization will go through another lean efficiency program. Therefore, that is the way we want to restore competitiveness. Because when we take out another EUR 100 million, that would be eventually a higher competitiveness for our product base. That is our way to go for restoring our competitiveness. I hope that clarifies all of your questions. Yeah, that is fantastic context. Thank you very much. You are most welcome. Next question, please. Thank you. Next question is from Thomas Wrigglesworth, Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Afternoon, and thanks very much for the opportunity to ask questions. A couple, if I may. Firstly, the take-or-pay contract that you call out in Saltigo, does that have implications for 2026? Is this basically an early termination of an agreement that means you book the profit now, but then you do not have the business, or you have to find replacement business in 2026? And my second question is around free cash flow for 2025. Clearly, because working capital is unwinding this quarter versus last year where it was up. Obviously, you are trying to make the working capital more efficient. What can we expect from a full-year basis, and what other levers can you pull? Thank you. Thank you for participating, Tom, to our conference call. Of course, we will take. Both of your questions. I will take number one, and Oliver will take number two. The take-or-pay is in the business Saltigo. We have every now and then stressed that we here go for—I mean, this is custom manufacturing business, so specific projects for specific customers. And in many of our contracts, we have take-or-pay clauses. When a customer goes under a certain level of volume, he has to pay if he does not take. This is something that was triggered. Of course, leading to everything but good volume momentum. We get an equalization or protection for the lower volumes through the take-or-pay clause. That is the business model, and that was beneficial in the third quarter. For that reason, we have mentioned that we have this in a variety of contracts that is part of the business model. It protects us, of course, in a year like 2025. I give the word to Oliver on free cash flow. Oliver? Yes, thank you. Thomas, thanks for the question. On free cash flow, you've already hit the nail on the head that working capital plays a major role here, provided that we're going into Q4 with the typical weak seasonal business momentum. If you look back through the last years, what you've seen is the cash inflow that comes from our typical seasonality in terms of working capital. You know that we have typically our maintenance turnarounds in the fourth quarter and then consume the working capital, bringing it down. You can also expect us to continuously work on and deliver on cost savings. Of course, we'll be remaining very disciplined in terms of CapEx. Now, to bring it down to the point, and I will give a very comparable answer to the question. Compared to the last two years when I was asked that, we will be very diligently putting an eye on free cash flow generation and working into that direction. If you look at the inflows in the last four quarters of the last years, they were between EUR 70 million and north of EUR 200 million. Whether at the end of the day we'll be able to show a positive free cash flow for the full year, we'll have to see. I can assure that we put everything we have into that direction. Thank you. Just as a follow-up, Matthias, this is always going on, right, in the Saltigo business, this take-or-pay where customers are probably—it doesn't feel like this is a one-off, but more of a. This is just the nature of the business. We have done always long-term contracts on bigger projects with our customers and long-term contracts always with take-or-pay. This is nothing abnormal. Of course, the current demand environment is somewhat abnormal. That is the reason why. It is not the first time, but it has not happened that often that customers decided for pay rather than take. That is the reason why we stress that in this quarter. Understood. Thank you both very much. Sure. Most welcome. Next question, please. Thank you. Next question is from Martin Rüdiger from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead. Yes, good afternoon. I have a question on the bonus provision release, which was a low to mid-digit euro million figure, if I am right. A, is there a chance for another release of bonus provisions in Q4? B, if so, is that upcoming release of provision already baked in your guidance? C, what has been the total budget bonus put at length since at the beginning of the year? Maybe in that context, you write in your handout that the release of bonus provisions has positively impacted the segment Consumer Protection. Did other segments benefit from that release as well? I'm asking because I see that the reconciliation line is in Q3 less worse than in Q1 and Q2. I wonder, is there also an effect here as well, or is there another reason why the reconciliation line had a relatively low loss in Q3? Martin, all valid questions, and I hand all of them over to our CFO, and it will be in good hands with him. Go ahead, Oliver. Martin, thanks for your two or three questions. You've quoted directly the no to mid-double-digit million amount. I will start basically from the back with the other segments. What you have to imagine is, first of all, everywhere where our management people are working, they are eligible to a bonus if the criteria are met. Hence, if the criteria are not met, wherever they are working, the release of the provisions will be shown because they are also built in these line items. You will see them basically not only in every segment but also in every line item. With regard to the other segment and the development now and our guidance for full year, the point is for the first two quarters, provisions have been made. The provisions that were made all the way to the 30th of June were released. Hence, our corporate reconciliation segment looks quite substantially improved. For the fourth quarter, I would be rather expecting something that is more comparable to the amount of expenses we have had in the first or second quarter. If you sum it up, that leads to the amount that we are expecting there for the full year. You asked whether there's going to be another chance of a release. You know that our variable compensation is based on several criteria. The most important one is EBITDA. We have already mentioned that this has been released. I'm not expecting any further release. You have, of course, the fact that there is also no building of provisions, which in the fourth quarter is one building block that also flows into our guidance. Thank you. Welcome. Thank you. The next question is from Andres Castanos Mayor from Berenberg. Please go ahead. Hello. Thank you. Just a follow-up on the all other segments line, which is essentially a consent. You explained well the improvement there because of the bonus release. I wanted to ask if there are other corporate costs that are evolving favorably year- on- year and also on the current hedging impact that we're seeing this year. I assume that's a benefit. Can you compare it year- on- year, please? Thank you. That will be all addressed by Oliver. Yeah. On the corporate costs, indeed, our efforts to take out costs to save within FORWARD! and the newly announced program will not only come from business but will have a clear focus on our admin functions. We are taking out costs here in basically every function. The larger functions will, of course, contribute more. And you also know that. I've been talking about the implementation of our new SAP program for quite some time here. By the end of the year, we will come to an end. Next year, you will also see savings coming from this one. In terms of the hedging, indeed, you do see a relief because we have a rolling hedging approach. I would rather not quantify with a million number but guide you to the rule of thumb in terms of the overall impact, which still is there when you look at the weakening of the US dollar. That rule of thumb was €3 million per% change in the exchange rate. That is valid also going forward. All right. That's helpful. Thank you. You're welcome. Next question, please. Thank you. Next question is from Jeremy Kincaid from Van Lanschot Kempen. Please go ahead. Hi. Good afternoon. I also have two questions on the anti-dumping. Firstly, there were obviously two positively decided cases over the quarter. Are you able to quantify how much revenue and as a percentage of your business those two decisions could impact? My second question is you also mentioned that there are some cases in execution. Are you able to call out which cases could be most material for your business or which would be the largest impact to the business if successful? Definitely valid questions. On the first one, I can tell you that it is for the two business units being positively impacted by this. I mentioned AII and polymer additives. I will not flag to you revenue, but I will flag to you that this is on the EBITDA side, low double-digit amounts respectively. It is something that we see. That's on the first one, anti-dumping being decided upon. On the potential execution, I have to clearly state to you this is competitive intelligence. This is not for us favorable if we speak about that. Therefore, we keep it to our chest. Understood. Thank you. Most welcome. Next question, please. Thank you. Next question is from David Simmons, BNP Paribas. Please go ahead. Good morning. Thank you for taking my question. Just one from me, please. It's a follow-up on the Saltigo take-or-pay. Are there any shared services between Saltigo and Advanced Intermediates that might mean that the lower volume in Saltigo, which triggered the take-or-pay clause, also affected fixed cost coverage in Advanced Intermediates? Or are those businesses totally separate now? If I can squeeze another one in actually on the same subject, was the take-or-pay payment for lower volume in the third quarter or for lower volume in the first half? Thanks. I'll start with the second one. That is respectively for the running quarter. On the second question. Now on the third one. Let's be very clear. We are a group. We are playing together here. If one business unit makes take-or-pay contracts with the other business unit. Oh, goodness. We are not in this, we are not working like that. Saltigo is a very strong technology chemical player. Of course, Saltigo every now and then, when we meet our needs for specification, for analysis, extremely sophisticated chemical products, internally, some business units make use of Saltigo. But within the own group, within the own legal entity. Here in Germany, we do not go on a managerial basis on take-or-pay. That would be completely bureaucratic. Take-or-pay we have with external parties but not with internal parties. Thanks. Yeah. Sorry. Just to be clear, I meant because obviously the Saltigo business used to sit within Advanced Intermediates. That actually just meant are there any shared assets that would mean that if you ran a lower operating rate at Saltigo, it might impact fixed cost coverage in Advanced Intermediates? No, Saltigo has its own assets. Here we are speaking about small vessels. It is a custom manufacturing business, so it is very dedicated, focused value chains. In Intermediates, we are talking about big vessels. There is, again, some help here and there on research, application know-how, etc., on finding solution and chemical reaction. But the one business unit Saltigo does not produce for Advanced Intermediates, that's not the case. Okay. Understood. Thank you. Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one and one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. We will now take our next question. This is from Tristan Lamott from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead. Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. First one, I'm just wondering kind of high level, with the European chemicals industry under pressure, do you think that there could be significant knock-on effects from the closures of capacities of competitors given that chemicals is so interlinked and the companies buy from each other? Do those ongoing closures decrease the efficiency of the supply side in Europe? Definitely, we see that the weakest capacities will vanish. Therefore, I alluded to earlier to the Fibrant caprolactam capacities. We always stressed when we were owner of the polyamide value chain. We always stressed, as LANXESS, being 100% owner of the polyamides, that our Antwerp caprolactam plant was one or is one or was one, I refer to when we were owning it, of the most competitive ones in Europe. We always flagged that BASF Antwerp was also extremely powerful in its setting, thus clearly stating indirectly that all remaining capro plants in Europe would be less competitive. Now, looking at today's situation, the two Fibrant plants, I think DSM always mentioned that they were at a capacity around 140-150 KT, whilst ours was under LANXESS running at 230 KT. BASF was known to be also above 200. These are the most competitive capro sites, and the smaller ones vanish. If you have less. Competitors, your position gets even stronger when volumes return. Right now, the market is long. When volumes return and markets turn tight, the less competition you have, the better you shine. Therefore, the crisis that we currently have cleans up the capacities in the European setting. The strongest survive. You have to make sure that you belong to the strongest. With the setting that we have, I clearly see that most of our plants are world scale. We are in Europe in a good position. When the consolidation happens, it will eventually be beneficial to the ones that are still playing in the markets. That is how I look at consolidation. Thanks. Maybe a second unrelated question. I was just wondering how the agriculture business performed in the quarter, and how do you see conditions for that business developing over the next few quarters? Are you seeing pricing pressure there? Thanks. This quarter, we have a mixed picture. We saw companies last quarter sending a positive picture and then one quarter later completely changing their view on the market. We overall see that volumes in the agrochemical markets have stabilized and are improving, whilst pricing pressure in the market is still there. That is in a nutshell how we look at the agrochemical markets. On our order book, we have been very clear. We currently still see a very soft order book, and that is the reason why we keep the modest tonality on agro. Very helpful. Thanks a lot. Thank you. I would now hand the conference back to Matthias Zachert for closing remarks. Thank you. Operator, thank you very much for your moderation. To all of you, thank you very much for participating and listening to our Q3 earnings call. We will start roadshowing now. Oliver and I will look forward to seeing you on the road, answer your question. We send our best regards from Cologne. Bye-bye from LANXESS. Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.