Good morning. This is the conference operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Orsero Group first galf 2026 results web call. All participants are in listen-only mode, and after the presentation, there will be a Q&A session. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Paolo Prudenziati, Chairman of Orsero. Please go ahead, sir. Hi. Good morning, everybody. First of all, I would like to address few points before I pass the word to Matteo, talking about numbers. We are saying in our press release that we are satisfied. I just would like to stress a little bit this point, why we are rationally satisfied, and address few points. First of all, in despite of the market circumstances, specifically for the banana and pineapple business, we are able to confirm at the middle of the year our year guidelines, which is not rather unique. If you think what happened in the banana business this year, which looks like a perfect storm, most of our competition, more influenced by banana business, are showing half of the profits or sometimes even losses. For our case, with our strategy, we are able to confirm our company guidelines overall. Second, the point of our growth strategy. We always been saying that our growth strategy is based on two pillars. One is organic growth, and then a second one in M&A. Talking about organic growth, between the lines, we always say that we want to stress the growth of the value-added products. This year again, we have something new, like the lychee importation from Madagascar within the end of the year, which we think is a clear point of correspondence between our strategy on organic growth and what we do. Second is the most important investment this year, the acquisition of an important factor in the U.S. market of the company, as you know. This is particularly important. It is particularly point of satisfaction for us because we really believe that in a few years, U.S. market will become, for us, an important pillar of our business on the top of the South European market. This is a particular factor of satisfaction for us, having found the right company, the right guy, and the right position for this. Third, the company is giving, and probably it goes between the lines, but I think it is important, since few years, consistent growing results. If you imagine what happened in the last five, six years overall worldwide from any point of view, and this company is been growing and growing and growing. So this is another point of rationally satisfaction. Last but not least, we are also happy to confirm that there is always a correspondence in what we communicate, in what we say, and what we execute. I think this is important for the market. I pass the word to Matteo to follow up. Thank you, Paolo, and good morning, everybody. Thanks for joining the call. I will give you some context about the business, the corporate happening of the first half, the main figures, and then I will leave the rest of the space for the Q&A section. As Paolo said, the market context in the first six months of the year, specifically beginning from February, was pretty complicated, mainly due to the external factor affecting all the condition of the market in Europe. We are talking about mainly the Middle East conflict that is still running, where we do not see a quick solution to the actual situation. In this context, the inflation rate, mainly driven by the main factor like oil price, is still running. Our company and our business model is capable to adjust to the situation, so we are able to increase our pricing, considering the market context and the external factor. But the most important thing is that our strategy is very strong on the product mix. It is very important to say that in these first six months, we grew 10% on the value-added product, while the staple goods like bananas, Plátano Canarias, and pineapple are struggling due to mainly what is related to the confusion and the oversupply of the European market, driven by the fact that many volumes that were historically allocated to the Middle East coming from our same origin, so Central America, basically, are diverted to Europe. What happened during spring and what happened during the summer, is that normally the business is able to increase the pricing and the value, specifically during the spring period. This year, the oversupply related to the Middle East conflict created a stress in the demand situation of the market, supply/demand situation of the market. We were not able to transfer, let's say, the value to the category, and this is happening for everybody. It is a situation that is continuing during the summer, and we hope that the market now is going to be adjusted and the supply-demand dynamic will go back to a pretty normal situation. On the shipping business, we see a resilience thanks to our integration. We were able to keep the pace on the shipping business, and the result are well in line with our expectation and with last year. Actually, it is slightly over our expectations, so we are happy about that. Going to the main corporate issues of the first half. As Paolo said, we have to remark the strategic investment we made in Trucco Group. We acquired 45% of the company. We are still waiting for some authorization to complete the deal on a smaller part of the group, but the main part of the group is already an investment for us. The total investment was around $46.5 million, and we are very keen and already working on developing the strategy on the U.S. market. The other CapEx of the period, the operative CapEx, are broadly in line with our expectation. But during the first half, we had some opportunity to expand our business in the future, so we decided to invest something more, mainly related to a development of the platform in the north of Spain, and other operative investment among the group infrastructure. The interest rate situation at the moment see us in a very good position because our long-term debt is hedged by 75%. Now it is 60%, but it is already covered for a percentage of 75% beginning from December 2026. This is very good news given the situation of the interest rate curves in the medium long term. Going to the main figures. Our sale grew by 1.8%, reaching EUR 860.5 million. Adjusted EBITDA decreased by almost 5.8%, reaching EUR 45.6 million. That is still a very good result in terms of profitability given our business, our sector, our competitors, and the market context. Adjusted EBIT stands to EUR 26.5 million, and the adjusted net profit reached EUR 18.6 million, decreasing by 11% comparing with last year. Net financial position grew to EUR 142.4 million, starting from EUR 116.1 million end of last year. This is mainly due to the impact of the Trucco acquisition. The deal was closed on June 30, so all the impact is already considered within the figures of this first half. Drilling down a bit the sales and EBITDA, as we said in terms of sales, the distribution grew by 1.6%, so it is EUR 12.6 million. The shipping grew by EUR 1.4 million. All the rest is negligible. This is mainly driven by the added value product mix that grew by 10% during the period. But we have some challenges, as we said, on the banana, pineapple, and the Plátano Canarias business. On the EBITDA, shipping is in line with last year, holding the services as a slightly higher cost base by EUR 0.9 million. The main impact is driven by distribution that decreased by EUR 2.2 million compared with last year. The main reason of this situation business-wise is the performance of the staple goods. We saw an increase of operative cost and SG&A, and this is mainly related to the fact that the company now is structured for the growth and the performance of some product does not allow us to cover the increase of cost. But it is something that we knew, we forecasted, it is under control and is going to be resulting in growth over the next years. Going to the net profit. The adjusted net profit H1 2025 reached EUR 20.9 million. Now we are reaching EUR 18.6 million. The main variance is related to the decrease of the adjusted EBITDA by EUR 2.8 million. We had more amortization provision D&A due to the investment we performed in the past. We have a better performance of the financial and share of profit of our not consolidated companies. Just for your memory and your guidance, we are not considering end of June any value of Trucco within our figures. So it will be considered in the second half of the year and on. Those are the main, let us say, items. Bridging the adjusted net profit with the reported one. This year, we are having slightly more non-recurring costs. Main ones are the costs related to all the legal and due diligence costs for the acquisition of Trucco, slightly over EUR 600K. A tax assessment litigation that we had in Italy that comes in with almost EUR 940K, and other items around EUR 1 million, mainly related to non-recurring costs of chartering of additional vessels on our COM service at the beginning of the year. If we look at the net equity variance, the net equity reached EUR 278.6 million. The main variance compared with the end of last year are the net profit of the period, EUR 14.6 million, the dividend paid towards Orsero shareholder in May. That comes in with EUR 10.4 million. Third-party dividends payout that is mainly related to the Blampin family share of Blampin in France, and the rest is quite negligible. Going to the net financial position, the main impact of the period is related to the Trucco acquisition that comes in with EUR 38.2 million. We had a strong cash flow generation by EUR 26.5 million, a good working capital release by EUR 5 million, operating CapEx for EUR 6.5 million, expansion CapEx for EUR 6.8 million, the cash dividend paid to the Orsero shareholder, EUR 8.5 million, and the effect of the mark-to-market change on the hedging instruments. So, net financial position, excluding the IFRS 16, reached EUR 77.2 million, and then we have the IFRS 16 effect that counts in for EUR 65.1 million. Last words before leaving you the stage for the Q&A session are related to the guidance. We decided to confirm the economic metrics of the guidance. So net sales, adjusted EBITDA, and adjusted net profit are confirmed, so no variance on that. We don't have, at this moment, the insights to increase our guidance. So we think that the guidance we released in February is still solid given the context we're playing in. What we obviously decided to do is to update the CapEx and the net financial position, increasing the CapEx that we forecasted between EUR 14 million and EUR 16 million at the beginning of the year. Now we see a range between EUR 19 million and EUR 20 million, and then we will see why in the next minutes. Then obviously, the net financial position considers the investment of Trucco, the increasing CapEx that we are seeing by the end of the year, and a working capital impact related to the new lychee importation campaign from Madagascar. So, drilling down the net financial position of our new guidance, we use, let's say, the lower end of our range. So at the beginning of the year, we forecasted the net financial position excluding the IFRS 16 impact between EUR 37 million and EUR 42 million. So we're bridging from EUR 37 million. We're adding EUR 38.2 related to the Trucco acquisition. We have additional CapEx by EUR 4.8 million, of which four related to new expansion initiatives. We are considering prudentially EUR 10 million impact of working capital related to the Madagascar lychee campaign. This is, let's say, a very unique campaign. Normally, the campaign is developed mainly during the month of December in terms of sales. So the cashing of the campaign will be visible in the first quarter of January, beginning of February 2027. This campaign works with relevant advances to the growers. So the reason why we're seeing this working capital effect by the end of this year is very simple. We are advancing payment to the growers to support the campaign during December. Let's say between end of October and December. We will receive the fruit beginning of December. We will perform sales over December and during the first two weeks of January, and then obviously the client will pay us on average between 30 and 40 days. That is the reason why we are seeing an impact in terms of advances, but still, at the end of the year, we do not see the cash impact of the sales. The other impact is EUR 5 million that we consider comprising total working capital change, excluding the lychee that we already drilled down, and some non-recurring costs we already spoke about. So acquisition-related costs, the tax litigation in Italy, and the non-recurring vessel hiring. Our new guidance on the net financial position, excluding IFRS 16, is between EUR 95 million and EUR 100 million. Considering IFRS 16 is passing by EUR 102 million and EUR 107 million that we released in February 2026, and now we forecast a range between EUR 160 million and EUR 165 million. Now I will leave you the rest of the time for the Q&A session. Thank you very much. Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To enter the queue for questions, please click on the Q&A icon on the left side of your screen. When announced, please click continue on the pop-up window. If you are connected in audio only, please press star and one on your telephone. The first question is from Gabriele Berti, Intesa Sanpaolo. Hi, good morning, everyone. Thanks for the presentation. I start with a few questions on Trucco. Could you help us understand the historical growth profile of the group, cash generation profile, and expected contribution in terms of share of profit? Then, what do you expect in terms of potential commercial synergies, if any? I am referring to efficiency on sourcing, for instance. In particular, should we expect Orsero to be directly involved in sourcing, commercial strategy, investment decision, or will the business remain highly autonomous? Lastly, I was wondering if the EUR 38 million M&A impact on net financial position already include the AJ Trucco transaction as well. Good morning. Thank you, Gabriele, for your question. Trucco is a company that grew over the past three, four years, by what we observed during the due diligence process, I would say massively. Thanks to the product mix they are trading. They are very strong in the kiwi importation. They are very strong in blueberries. They are very strong in chestnut, and they have some good business line with citrus. U.S. market is quite different compared to the one we have in the south of Europe. Normally, the companies are more category killer compared to us. In Italy, we are more generalist. We trade many different products. In the United States, it is more similar to market like France or Germany, where you have, big retailers. The market is wide and enormous, but the concentration of the retailers is pretty high there as well. Still, there are some regional ones, but the main ones are, national or clubs. Driven by the structure of the market, the [niche] section of companies are the ones that are able to be super expert and category killer on two, three, four business lines. The strategy of Trucco was dedicated to some product that now are booming in the U.S. market. Surely, in the past few years, the growth was very good. We see the company growing a lot organically in the next few years, but the strategy and the reason why we made the investment is to replicate our strategy in Europe. To mix an organic growth that we see stronger than the ones that we can have in Europe now, together with an M&A growth as well selected because United States is a big country. East Coast, West Coast are two different worlds. Now the company is focused on the East Coast. That is reaching 54%, 55% of the population in U.S. from the warehouse that Trucco operates in New Jersey. So is a very good coverage. But if you want to grow and to reach, 80% of the population, we will have to decide to go west or to expand our distribution capacity over the next year. The idea there is to obviously support and take advantage of the strong organic growth that we are already seeing in the company, but to mix it with some external growth as well as we did over the past year in Europe. This is even the reason why this acquisition is really a partnership, because the will of the two shareholders despite the fact that now we are a minority one, and in three years, we will become a majority one. Anyway, the goal of the two shareholder is very clear, and the word to use is growth and sustainable and financially healthy growth. The company, as you imagine, profit-wise, performed well in the past and is performing well and has all the elements to continue to perform well. The company is more profitable in our vision, potentially compared with the mix of our group. This is the strategy that we follow every time that we decide to strike a deal. We did it in France. Blampin and Capexo are more profitable than the group in the mix. The strategy on the value-added products and on the prospect market is very clear. We want to buy a company that has more potential to grow organically, where we see the market as a core potential market for the group, and where the mix of the product is very healthy and more profitable with the mix that we have now. This is the only receipt we can use to drive a fast growth and a very profitable one. In terms of financials, Trucco has no, let's say, net financial position, as we said in our press release. It's always cash positive, it's generating a very good cash yield. The cash yield is very comparable with our distribution performance. The dynamic of the business is quite the same. Obviously, being more profitable, the amount of cash generated can be higher. The dynamic of the business is really comparable with our distribution business. That's a bit what I can say at the moment about Trucco. You were asking me if you are active basically in the Trucco governance and management. The response is yes, we are. We joined the board. Raffaella Orsero and myself, we joined the board of the company. Apart, let's say, the board, we are working closely with Nick Pacia and his team and with the board to develop the business. It's very clear that it's a partnership. We are continuing working together in finding opportunity and to support with our structure, strength, and know-how, the growth of the company. What we are seeing is that obviously we have some, let's say, partner in common together with Trucco. We have some opportunity because some of our partners in production in Central, South America are wishing to collaborate with the group and with Trucco as well in the North American territory. All in all, we see big opportunities. We're working very well together with Trucco, and we are active in the governance, but it's very clear that we are keen to maintain the Trucco leadership as it is. The CEO will remain surely Nick Pacia because we are not seeing a better CEO for us in the U.S. market for the next year. That's a bit the situation. Okay. Thank you very much, Matteo. The next question is from Mathias Paladino at TP ICAP. Hello, everyone. Can you hear me? Yes, I do. Thank you for the presentation. Just one question on the distribution. You highlighted strong momentum in premium categories such as kiwi, blueberries, and exotic fruits. How do you see this contribution of these categories evolving in H2 relative to the more traditional fruit categories? Maybe this is one of the main reasons for your confidence in achieving the guidance. Thank you. Thank you, Mathias. Yes, you are right. As we clearly stated, and as it's unfortunately very visible as well in the result of our, let's say, main worldwide competitors, banana business mainly and pineapple business is not going to support, let's say, the year result, and the performance is weaker compared with what we forecast at the beginning of the year due to the, let's say, Middle East conflict indirect impact. That's the situation. Just a quick two words on bananas and pineapple. The good things and the bad things about those kind of products is that the world is moving fast and you can have, let's say, six months of very good results, then you can pass through a very difficult period, but it's not a structural situation. In terms of strategy, we push on the added value categories because we think that the staple goods can be worse or better during the season, during the year. But we cannot count on, let's say, a continuing growth and profits coming from those categories. We decide to keep a standstill position. We manage at best the operation and the sales, but the strategy is elsewhere. Our confidence in the guidance, it stems to what we are seeing in terms of performance of the added value mix, and obviously the support that we will have in terms of profit on the new campaign related to the lychee. The actual mix plus what we developed during this year, during this first six months, give us confidence in reaching our targets, despite, as we said, a very complex situation on the staple good categories. Thank you. Thank you, Matteo. Thank you. The next question is from Andrea Bonfà, Banca Akros. Hi, good morning to everybody. I hope you can hear me. My question is related again on the performance of distribution, and in particular, you were mentioning, if I understood correctly during your introduction, that anyway the situation on bananas and excess of, let's say, offer and volumes from the Middle East rerouted to Europe is kind of normalizing. Is that possible for you to elaborate a little bit more on that? Looking at the performance of the shipping, it seems that it's kind of booming in the Q2, in terms of profitability. I was wondering or anyway, definitely performing much better than the first quarter, if that might surprise in the upside also in the second half of the year. Thank you. Thank you, Andrea. On the distribution, talking about bananas, again, I understand is the main concern. As I just said to Mathias, the very bad situation is that normally during spring, the market is breathing and the results are positive. Normally during the summer, banana consumption is always weak. What happened this year, let's say the perfect storm is related to two main situations. As we said, again, for the last time, the Middle East conflict that oversupplied our market. This is something that happens, and then everybody is not willing to lose massive amount of money. Let's say the shipping of banana in Europe is getting normalized now. The problem that we experienced during the summer again, was that, as we all know, the temperature in Europe were really high. When the temperature are really high and the summer fruit production is very strong, we have an additional decrease in terms of the appetite of the people in buying bananas. Starting from end of May, beginning of June, we had not a good spring, and then we had a very difficult summer because the people were not willing to buy bananas, and they were buying summer fruits and other categories. We had a double impact of the very, very hot summer that is normally affecting the consumption of banana, plus an oversupply in spring. This is what happened. What we think now is that the temperature are getting normalized. The summer fruit is not there anymore because of the season. Normally the banana consumption is keeping up again. We are seeing a certain balance on the importation and shipment of bananas in Europe. We will have to see which are the impact of the climate condition worldwide and in Central America, because obviously everything is affected by the El Niño atmosphere situation. This is creating some stress. Somewhere is raining too much, somewhere there's no rain. The mix of the impact in the Central America will possibly result in a shortage of production over the next months. It's not happening now, but probably end of the year, beginning of next year, we could experience, let's say, a different situation compared to now. It's what I was saying before. Bananas and pineapples, we don't have to be excited when we have a very good six months, eight months, or four months. We don't have to be depressed when the situation is tough. Because it will always be like that. That's the category, and that is why we since 10 years, we are moving, let's say, rebalancing through our growth strategy out of banana business, maintaining our position, but not pushing and growing again on the category. That's what I can tell you about the banana situation. In terms of shipping, yes, we had a very good performance in Q2. The good performance is related to the fact that we have a very good loading factors. Obviously the increase of the oil price in our model is well hedged because we have commercial clauses within our contract with the third parties that are, let's say, rebalancing the impact of the oil on the freight rates and on our captive volume. Last year, we did a very good hedging. Now we're taking, let's say, the result of this prudent and consistent strategy that we apply every year since 10 years. Normally, the second quarter is a very good one because of the loading factor. This year, we have some additional good impact even related to the dry cargo services. The first quarter, Andrea, if you remember, was affected by some very strange situation related to the climate condition, to the port condition, and to the volume resulting in lower volumes. At the end of the day, you are comparing a Q2 that is good but it's not exceptional with a Q1 that was not very performing. If you go to the rest of the year, for the same reason why during the summer there's no consumption of bananas because of the temperature, because of the summer fruit, obviously the loading factor goes down during the Q3. This is related to the importation volume in Europe that are decreasing every year. Normally then, the Q1 is pretty good, the Q2 is very good, the Q3 is the worst of the year, and then in the Q4, you start again to have decent volumes on the loading factor. We do not expect to replicate the second quarter over the rest of the year, and that is why we did not consider to increase the guidance up. We never speculate on our expectation on the shipping. Shipping is affected by many different external factor. We are well-hedged, but the vessels are in the sea. We never try to be aggressive on our expectation on the shipping activity. We see a performance of the shipping over the year, more or less in line with last year. This is thanks to the Q2 performance. If I may, Matteo, the H2 shipping performance should benefit from the fact that there will not be dry-docking. Is that right? Yeah. We have no dry-docking this year. Unfortunately, if you go then to the reported figures, we had some additional non-recurring costs this year that we did not forecasted because of the additional hiring, chartering of the vessels to continue our operation. No, we have no— this year, there is no dry-docking, and we will not have a dry-docking until 2029 and 2030. The next years will be no dry-docking. Thank you very much. Thank you. As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please click on the Q&A icon on the left side of your screen, or press star one on your telephone. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please click on the Q&A icon on the left side of your screen, or press star and one on your telephone. Gentlemen. Mr. Prudenziati, there are no more questions registered at this time. I turn the conference back to you for any closing remarks. Hello, everybody. Thanks for your attention, and we will talk again after the next quarter. Thanks, everybody. Bye. Ladies and gentlemen— For attending. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining. The conference is now over, and you may disconnect your devices.