Good afternoon, thank you for joining us today to discuss Purcari Wineries' 2024 preliminary results. My name is Eugeniu Baltag, and I'm the Investor Relations Director at Purcari. Today, we'll walk you through the key financial highlights, operational developments, and our outlook for 2025. Before we dive into the details, I would like to thank you, our shareholders, for their continuous support and our team for their hard work and dedication. To our agricultural team for taking care of more than 1,800 hectares of vineyards, to our production team which transformed the exceptional grapes into an amazing wine, sparkling and brandy, to our commercial and marketing teams, which make our wines available in over 40 countries over the world, and of course, to the finest team which managed to publish the results three days ahead of the Bucharest Stock Exchange deadline. The last but not least, to each of those over 800 group employees who stand behind Purcari's success story. Please consider that this call may include forward-looking statements based on current expectations and assumptions, which involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ. The financial figures discussed are unaudited and should be read in conjunction with the full reporting package available on our website and on the website of Bucharest Stock Exchange. Participants are advised to review all disclosures before making investment decision. I'm pleased to introduce our speakers for today, Alexandru Filip, Purcari Group's Chief Executive Officer, and Anatol Belibov, the Group Chief Financial Officer. Additionally, there is an extended team of senior executives and non-executives on this call, and we together aim to provide a comprehensive overview of a company's result and outlook. That being said, we can get started. Alex, the floor is yours. Super. Thank you, Eugeniu. One housekeeping comment. Please shoot questions in the chat as they come through. We will have a Q&A session at the end of the presentation. You can keep the questions for then, you can also send them in advance and the different colleagues can start preparing the answers. Just to remind ourselves what we're set out to do as communicated last October in our Investor Day, we are set out to build a global winemaking champion, focusing on indigenous grape varieties in what we call New Europe, which is fundamentally Central and Eastern Europe. We are building the foundation of such a champion, everything that we do has a dual perspective, delivering short-term results in line with expectations, but also building the foundation for a bigger and more solid company going forward. This is an important point to make because many of the investments that we make, given the specific of our industry, are long-term investments, be it in our vineyards or in our winemaking capabilities. These are long-term investments that we make every year with the ambition to build a global winemaking champion. That being said, if we focus on recent results and short-term priorities, just a few highlights, many of you might have listened in to the previous calls when we presented the quarterly results, so this might sound familiar, many of the points. Commercially, we continue to develop new products and to expand into new markets, this is an ongoing effort that we were doing, while also deepening our presence in some of our core markets like Romania, where we're very proud to have now as ambassador, Mircea Lucescu, which is the country's most distinguished football coach and currently the coach of Romanian national football team, a legend in the field. He's been coaching for more than 50 years now, and he hopefully might be the oldest coach qualified to the World Cup, the end of this year. Fingers crossed for Romania and for Mr. Rădoi. In terms of operational performance, financial results for full year, EBITDA reached RON 107 million, net profit, RON 57.4 million, 28% EBITDA margin, 15% net profit margin. Net profit performance affected by several one-off elements that we will explain in detail when we get there, so I will not insist too much here. Just mentioning one of them that you should know if you followed the previous calls, which is the deconsolidation of EcoSmart, our waste recycling company. Now it's complete. In terms of development, strategic acquisitions, both in Moldova and in Romania. We've added 200 hectares of prime vineyards, both in Purcari and in Dealu Mare. Timbrus located in Purcari, and Dealu Mare, our core winemaking region in Romania. We've expanded there. It's an ongoing process there. We will continue to look for additional opportunities to expand, again, with the mindset on building a future platform for growth, expanding our production capabilities. EcoSmart mentioned, we have a recent, you know, January 28, 2025 decision for insolvency, and as a consequence, the deconsolidation from the group. You know, corporate affairs, again, if you follow the company, you might have known we have completed the succession from Mr. Bostan, the founder, myself as in the CEO role. Mr. Bostan is actively engaged supporting myself and especially the winemaking team throughout this year. He's actually currently here at Purcari with the wine-making team tasting our 2024 vintage that we're about to bottle soon. Maintained the index's presence, paid a dividend, and we've also added one market maker into the capital as of October 1st, 2024. Now if we dive deeper into the commercial results. So as I mentioned, present in our core markets in Romania, wine events, also music festivals. We had a first sponsorship in the Jazz in the Park Festival in Cluj. We will continue to be there also this year, and we will soon communicate two other, you know, leading blockbuster festivals that we will sponsor this year. Marketing campaigns, I mentioned Mihai Eminescu. We also launched a new collection of wines, Sapiens. Multiple awards for Purcari. We continue to win medals, we also communicate about them. We will have a new campaign for Easter in Romania at the end of March. Otherwise, in terms of recognition of our quality, we were nominated the best winery in Moldova in 2024. If not mistaken, this is second time in the last three years. I think we were previously awarded the same award in 2022. You can see there the consistency in the production excellence, and also it's a recognition for our ability to sell internationally our wines. Multiple awards. We singled out Decanter because it's a leading competition, but also several others. If we move on. Yeah. An important priority for us, launching of new products and expanding the markets. Good presence in Israel. We launched, in addition to the standard retail brands, we also launched Nocturne, which is our HoReCa dedicated brand. First, you know, entry into the UAE market, both with alcoholic and non-alcoholic wine. We see a big opportunity for non-alcoholic wines in the Middle East, and we will expand there. Côte d'Ivoire, we launched Nid des Anges, both still and sparkling wines. And also a new range in the Netherlands, a blend range called Dos Familias. Otherwise, new markets, Nigeria, Slovakia, Canada, just some examples. We also communicated, I think at the end of first nine months, first exports to Cyprus, Northern Cyprus. I think Q4, we even have to the Greek part of the island, the first export. Multiple events in the U.S., Latvia, Serbia. Basically the 40 countries that Eugeniu mentioned. Strong activity throughout the key markets. If we move on, Eugenia. Yeah, numbers. Core markets remain the same. Romania, Moldova, Poland, Bulgaria. You see there fundamentally a growth across the board. Different speeds also reflecting our approach to managing profitability and long-term profitable growth in this market, especially the ones where we have, let's say, a lower growth rate. There we're also either investing in developing the market or managing the profitability of the existing ranges to ensure that for long-term, we have the profitability that we need and we expect across the board. I think good news, Romania, it's not just Purcari supporting the growth, but also Bardar. Moldova, it's a very competitive market with many local producers. There we have both Purcari and Cuza supporting the growth. There was a disruption in the market last year. Fundamentally, the challenges to the duty-free channel, which is an important export, if you want, channel for Moldovans and foreign nationals leaving Moldova. Poland, it's a very tough market with competitive, very price-sensitive consumers. There we're focusing on improving our profitability and growing the more profitable ranges within our portfolio. We're very happy to see that Purcari is growing faster than the overall market, and we'll continue to prioritize that. Bulgaria, you know, the wider distribution is showing the results. We are also investing more in ensuring the visibility not only for Angel's Estate, but also for Purcari. Purcari, especially in the HoReCa channel. We're very happy with the, you know, evolution of Purcari. We also started developing specific products out of our Bostavan winery for Bulgaria, so that's why we had the first delivery in Q4. The other markets, Czech Republic, Slovakia, solid growth. Asia, very good momentum in Q4. The rest of the world, these are more, let's say, midterm bets where we expect that volumes will pick up throughout the next years. We started first deliveries in some of these markets, we expect pick up renewed orders with high volumes. In terms of brands, you know, our flagship brand, Purcari, growing very nicely. Angel's Estate in Bulgaria also growing nicely. Domeniile Cuza, growing both in Romania and in Moldova. Bardar with the challenges that we indicated in the past, relatively low growth in Moldova in a very challenging pricing environment with multiple competitors getting into promotion wars, where we try to avoid getting into such competition because we wanna preserve the premium-ness of the brand. There, for us, the priority is also to develop additional export markets such as Romania but also Nigeria, for example, where we can export profitably our production. For Bardar in particular, given the specifics of the category, there is no short-term pressure in, let's say, getting rid of volumes because actually, brandy ages very well, and it increases value with time. There we have more maneuver space to ensure we have the right commercial opportunities for our brands. If we move on. I think, into the details, Anatol, if you wanna take over from here. Thank you, Alex. Good afternoon. For sure, apart from a strong, let's say, growing core business wine, total revenue increased by 3% year- on- year. For sure, it's important to mention that the decision to deconsolidate or discontinue EcoSmart activities have impact on total year revenue growth. 3%. Or in 2023, EcoSmart account for RON 30 million revenue, or it's more than 8% in 2023. That's why this had impact on growth for 2024. Also, this decision impact the gross margin. You can see that in 2023, EcoSmart represent half of the group profitability. That's why, after the consolidation, this help us to improve average in 2024, approx 1 percentage point our gross margin. If we speak about core wine business, you can see that in 2024, we managed to increase by 4-5 percentage points our margin. Here is important to mention, let's say, two main contributor. First, it's about pricing and mix improvement. As it was mentioned in previous slide about product performance and county performance. We managed to play with healthy mix. We managed to change our price in order to increase average price per bottle. This help us to improve profitability. In the meantime, we observe reduction in COGS rate. Apart from shifting production of less expensive wine from 2022, 2023. Also, our team managed well to negotiate with our customer and have cheaper price for bottle, for cork. We managed to improve production efficiency. All together help us to improve profitability in terms of gross profitability. Now moving to sales and general admin expense, for sure. Here is out of question, and I will be here to explain. Overall, total SG&A or OpEx reached RON 107 million, registering 31% increase year-over-year. Specific for marketing and selling, here, the biggest contribution of increase is coming from trade and marketing. Investment, which increased 27% year-over-year. For sure, our team was focused to improve and maintain our brand awareness to support our promotional activities. We focus in trade execution. All this, let's say, marketing initiative have a impact on total marketing spend. Salary cost increased 29% year-over-year. Here, for sure, next slide will give more, let's say, details. Yeah, here first impact on it, salary inflation, yeah, team expansion and implementation of management incentive plan 2024-2027, yeah, which was approved by General Shareholder Meeting. Logistic cost, yeah, also increased. This is in line with our strategy and vision to grow in export market. One important point here is implementation of RetuRO, yeah, which have an impact of RON 2.4 million. This is part also of marketing and sales expense. General and administrative cost, yeah, also increased by 31% and now account close to 30% in total revenue. Here, let's say, the contribution of the increase is coming from salary-related cost. Yeah. Half of this cost is driven by implementation of this management incentive plan. Yeah. In the next slide, I will show more details, but it's important now to mention that we have management incentive plan in terms of share awards and stock option. This stock option present one-off cost, like Alex already mentioned. We have all this cost in current year driven this increase in general admin cost. Moving to other income. No. Here, one second. Moving to other income, we register RON 8 million, which is mainly counted for rebates from our customer. Which is include also income from, let's say, sales of different fixed asset, and also adjustment of prior year provisions. For sure, before to move to EBITDA, I think it's important to mention that our operational result, yeah, as is stated in financial statement, Represent close to RON 83 million. Yeah, this is 12% increase versus 2023. Our operational profit or result increased in line with, let's say, rate of increase for core business. Now, about EBITDA. Currently EBITDA state at RON 107 million or 28% and net profit at RON 57.4. In the next slide, I will show more details for sure why it is lower versus prior year, minus 10%. In the meantime, yeah, EcoSmart consolidation. Yeah, at 31 of December 2024, the Group made the assessment based on IFRS term and concluded there is no control over EcoSmart. That's why we deconsolidate from the financial statement, and this had an impact of RON 4.6 million loss. If we, let's say, recalculate EBITDA and net profit, we can see that our normalized EBITDA, it's RON 112 million or 29%, and our normalized profit is close to 62%. I think it's also important to have a look on the next slide. Once again to, let's say, to state that our gross margin, it's improving over the last eight quarters. For sure, our operational decision are here to continue this trend of improvement. With focus on the right growth equation, meaning price and mix, and also taking care about cost, especially now in the current environment when cost became more, let's say, fluctuating. The next slide, which will, let's say, explain in more details how our profitability, let's say, evolved during the year. In 2023, we finished with RON 64 million profit. In 2024, we count for additional close to 30% in gross margin, and we already mentioned about this. We became more efficient, and we have also other income, close to RON 8.8 million. If we exclude, let's say, increase in OpEx, which is close to RON 19 million. We have also very strong negative impact coming from agriculture. We already mentioned in previous call that the current situation in 2024, it was not the best. We have lower, let's say, quantity of grapes. Yeah, that's why we registered a loss close to RON 7.2 million. Yeah, versus prior year, we have several one-off cost, which we have just in 2024. This is, first, it's tax. Yeah, you can observe in our financial statement that in tax increase versus last year, more than 80%. This is because in prior year, we have one-off adjustment of profit. Yeah, in our interim financial statement for 2023, we put close to RON 12 million. After some revision, yeah, it was reduced to RON 7 million. That's why this make an impact close to RON 6 million year-on-year variance. This continuation of EcoSmart, which is one of impact of RON 4.6 million, implementation of management incentive plan, specific stock option plan impact, which is RON 4 million. Like for like, for sure, you can observe that our net profit without this one-off, it was, it should be higher than prior year. For also Forex and other costs, which impact, let's say, decrease in our net profit result. Once again, a very important slide to mention that current year, it was highly impacted by this one-off cost. About balance sheet performance, here you can see that still, we have a very good, strong position. We are able to finance our investment strategy. With the current cash ratio, it's similar like prior year. We are planning to have enough liquidity, but also, to cover, we are looking to, let's say, not pay too much for the credit. In terms of net debt, yeah, it's increasing. For sure, this is in line with our strategy to CapEx strategy and invest on our production capacity. Net debt also increased, but it's still in the range of the market. Yeah, EBITDA at rate of 1.72, slightly increased because of increase in our debt exposure. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Anatol. Just to comment on how we fared versus the guidance that we had given. It's fair to admit that we failed to deliver on the revenue growth ambition. You see there, fundamentally the difference comes from the growth in wine revenues. We were planning to end between 15% and 20%. At the end of the year, we ended up with 13%. This has driven also the overall revenue growth accordingly. We were counting fundamentally on several export transactions to come through at the end of the year. This didn't happen, also the growth in the core markets was slightly below what we planned. EBITDA, I think this has been an important focus for us, the profitability has been towards the higher end of the range for us. Profitability has been the core element of our strategy and focus on our delivery, we're happy to, you know, reflect that we have delivered on this. I think for us, profitability, as mentioned, is a core element of sustainability of our growth and will continue to be so. Now, if we move to the guidance for 2025, we have now that EcoSmart is no longer a part of our activity, we're only looking at total revenues, which are fundamentally revenues from wine and ancillary activities. Our ambition is to achieve a growth between 12% and 17%. You see, the range is driven fundamentally by the uncertainty of the markets that we operate in and the world that we live in. Many things that can impact that, and hence we are taking a cautious stance. The growth should come from growing the core markets, and there we have clear plans to expand our product portfolio and improve the distribution and the turnover of our core products. We are looking fundamentally to launch new products, especially with above average margin, so improves the overall profitability of the portfolio, while investing in developing new markets to constantly diversify and strengthen the revenue base so we have a diversified footprint. The latter point, it's something that takes time and can short-term have an impact on both our operating cost and our margins. To give you an example, one of the things that we've done at the end of, as of, let's say, beginning of this year, we have expanded our international sales team with local representatives in Poland and Central Europe on one hand, North America on the other hand. This is an investment that we're making in growing significantly faster midterm than we have been able to do so thanks to the local presence and professional network that our sales colleagues should build. The cost, of course, comes first, then we will reap the results. Similarly, we're investing into market launches with new distributors in markets such as the ones I mentioned before. Of course, there is initially an investment in paid marketing communication in those markets to support the takeoff of the volumes in those markets. Overall, we will manage the profitability of the portfolio, taking into account these different factors. You see that we are consistent in our profitability estimates and ambition despite what we have communicated already to be more expensive 2024 vintage. We believe we have the instruments to manage the impact on the cost, both through the mix with previous cheaper vintages, but also with both cost management and revenue management actions. We have already started passing on some of the cost increases to our clients at the end of last year and also underway for the first half of this year. We expect to see the impact of that in the, in the, you know, remaining of the year. We are looking also at operational efficiency. We have started digitizing our operations, and this is an ongoing process, both in terms of the scale of the processes that we digitize, but also the rollout of the new processes to the different entities and operations that we have across the different markets. We remain positive. We remain optimistic that we will achieve our ambition, and we are very mindful of the midterm commitments that we made when we presented our 2027 strategy. We continue to invest, and we are confident that the, both the commercial investments that we'll make now, but also the investment in capacity, will show results midterm. We will also. One of the things that is very important for us is how we transfer the additional added value that we create through additional sales into net profit for the shareholders as we reap more scale effects from bigger sales. As I mentioned several times, investments are not linear. You need to make them in jumps. We're expanding production capacity. We're investing in vineyards. These are not linear investments, but rather taking us to a different scale, and we expect to also see the impact of this increased scale in the next couple of years in line with the midterm target that we communicate. I think now it's a good time to open up the floor for questions. I don't know, Eugeniu, if you already received some questions where people have indicated they're interested. Let's check the chat. W e have received one question. Are we going to launch a sparkling wine or will we make acquisitions? Okay. I guess we're referring to acquisitions of sparkling wine production. First of all, just to clarify a few things, we are already producing our own sparkling wines at Purcari, the classic method sparkling wine and they're... I think we launched it, Eugeniu, correct me, 2019. I don't know when we had the first production. We've been growing our sales and we're now looking at expanding the production capacity in line with the, with the demand, and sparkling wines for us at Purcari remain a priority because they're complementary to our core still wine offering and also offer higher than average margins. We will continue to develop that both commercially and from a production perspective. At the same time, for other brands in the group, we are already selling what is called Charmat method. slightly cheaper sparkling wines that we currently produce with third-party producers and we sell under our own brands. The plan for us is that as volumes consolidate and we have sufficient volumes that we can already produce ourselves, we will gradually make the switch and invest in our own production capacity. We're assessing the business case for this and figuring out what is the volume and the moment where it makes sense, mindful that we need to optimize the CapEx in line with the different priorities that the group has. At the moment, we are very happy and focused to develop the brands, and we have the, let's say, the consumers behind our brands. Midterm, we will consider the opportunity to switch to our own production, but we believe that it's more important to have the customers at the moment than the production capacity. I don't know if there are other questions. Alex, thank you for answer. Dear participants, you can address more questions. You can use either the chat or you can unmute yourself and address the question directly. Yeah, we have additional questions. From Adrian Hornia: "Good afternoon. Do you expect higher negative impact cost from the warranty return system in Romania, or it's not meaningful? Anatol, do you wanna- Yeah, yeah. You can comment, and I think it's also, to a certain extent, public information what is happening with the warranty system. Go ahead. Yeah, yeah. We already receive official communication that starting from 2025, the cost increase in average by 10%. For sure, this was not expected for us. That's why we update our budget and we will take some corrective measure in terms of, let's say as Alex mentioned, to take some correction in terms of pricing, which will be transferred to the market, but also to find other opportunity for saving. It's already plus 10% higher, let's say, fee in terms of SGR. Once again, the cost, we will try to minimize the impact in our margin. We'll take some action. Any other questions? From Mark Gordon-James: "Could you provide more granular explanation for your revenue growth target for 2025? How will it break down by brands/international markets? I'll try to give a satisfactory answer. I think for us, the story is as follows. If you think of absolute and relative terms, we expect no new brands, new markets to grow faster, or smaller markets to grow faster than our core markets. That being said, contribution in absolute terms at the end of the year, given the weight that both, let's say Romania, Moldova, Purcari, Bardar, Crama Ceptura will come in absolute terms from these, let's say, three, four markets that we indicated before. Romania, Moldova, Bulgaria, Poland, and then Purcari, Crama Ceptura, Bardar. It's just mathematics. Over time, we plan to reduce the weight of these markets and these brands short term, and we plan that for this year export will grow much faster. The rest of the world, the weight of the rest of the world should be bigger at the end of next year. That being said, contribution in absolute terms will still come from the core markets. How do you see Asian and North American markets in 2025? I'll take a very simple answer. We see them quite differently. We see Asian, which is fundamentally different by China, on a more challenging dynamic, and I think we were looking at the numbers. 2024 volumes are below 2019 for China, significant decrease in the market. That being said, we're relatively small in that market, we're not necessarily put off by the overall market dynamic. We still have our plans to grow, it's a more challenging environment. North America, it's actually a bit of the opposite. We see good momentum. For example, we exported for the first time a significant batch into Mexico. We're now very hopeful and excited to see the impact in the market because the products only got there November. We're now trying to see what is the market reaction and how the follow-up orders will be. North America, that's why we also invested in having local presence in Canada and U.S. It's actually a market where we see significant opportunity. We are already present both in Canada and the U.S., in addition to Mexico, we are hopeful that we can grow there, and that's the ambition. I think I see the question. There's a question for Purcari and the core markets, to which extent growth will come from volume and from price. I think there is a third element, we are also counting on that. It's also the mix of products. We are passing on some of the cost increases throughout the portfolio. And it's a balance between volume and price, but we're also investing significantly in promoting more expensive products, and that's a focus for us. I mentioned sparkling before. We're focusing on investing further in communicating our spark and pushing our sparkling presence. We're also investing more in our HoReCa channels where we have our specific offering with high margin. That's the element. One of the things that we're doing, we're also monitoring what we call the price index versus our competitors and we believe that we are moving, if we're looking historically at what the index has been, we're still operating within what the standard price index has been. We're making sure that we do not become too expensive for our consumers versus competitors. There is a question on EcoSmart from Adrian. I'm not sure I understand it. New services products. Just to make it plain, we're not expanding into new lines of services, new products and so on. We're sticking to wine-making and brandy for core products, and we are. The only services, if you want, are our hospitality services in Purcari and in Chișinău. We might develop, we have a plan, I don't know if it's gonna happen this year, we might develop also hospitality services in our other wineries, first and foremost Angel's Estate, also Crama. This is, from our point of view, you know, sticking to what we know. I don't know. It seems that we had a very detailed presentation, 'cause we received only a few questions so far. Yeah. In case there are no other questions, we can say thank you for attending our conference call. Yeah. Yeah. I think [crosstalk] As always, we're available for follow-up questions if there are any, Eugeniu and Victoria. We will also be attending several events throughout the next months, hopefully we'll meet some of you there. Yeah, happy to connect on specific points at any time. Thank you very much for attending the call and for following our company. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Bye-bye.