Ladies and gentlemen, I welcome you to our earnings call on the first quarter of 2026. Today, Isabelle and I will provide a detailed look into the results from the first quarter.

With today's publication, we confirm the guidance for 2026 and the medium term, which we have published with the annual report end of March. At the end of the presentation, as usual, you will have the opportunity to ask questions, and we're pleased to answer them.

At the outset, I would like to present a brief overview of the key developments from the past 3 months. Let me start with a brief overview of the external environment, which remains challenging for the global automotive industry.

Rising global tensions, including the military escalation in Iran, are increasing regional spillover risks and posing threats to energy security and global stability. In parallel, sanctions, trade restrictions, and regulatory fragmentation continue to weigh on cross-border business.

These risk factors, combined with volatile energy prices and ongoing logistics disruptions, are increasing uncertainty for investment and production planning. At the same time, the industry remains in a profound transformation.

In Q1 2026, global light vehicle production declined by 3.4%. Despite this cyclical pressure, electrification momentum remains intact.

E-mobility continues to be the dominant long-term trend, even as regulatory requirements are being eased in Europe or partially rolled back in the US. China continues to act as the global pacesetter, driven by strong local ecosystems, technology leadership, and customer proximity.

Against this backdrop, ElringKlinger is well positioned. Our global footprint enables localized production close to customers and supports further optimization of supply contracts.

At the same time, we continue to strengthen our profile, supported by a solid position in established markets and growing order intake in new drive technologies. The next slide summarizes the company's overarching strategic framework, outlining its purpose, vision, and mission.

Our purpose underscores our commitment to innovative technologies that contribute to a sustainable future. Our vision is to remain the preferred partner in advancing technological innovation.

To translate this vision into reality, we have defined five key success factors that will enable the organization to fully realize its potential. Let me briefly walk you through the progress of SHAPE30.

Starting with growth, our E-Mobility business shows strong momentum. Sales increased by 42% year on year from €27 million in Q1 2025 to €38 million in Q1 2026, underlining the commercial traction of our strategic focus area, E-Mobility.

At the same time, we have made visible progress on profitability, particularly in the OE segment. The adjusted EBIT margin, excluding E-Mobility, improved by 3.1 percentage points, reaching 5.5% in Q1 2026, driven by operational improvements and disciplined cost management.

E-Mobility remains ramp-up phase. Adjusted EBIT in this business stood at -€16 million, compared with -€15 million in the prior-year quarter.

Importantly, this development is fully aligned with our roadmap, and we expect improvements will be realized in the course of the year. The classical business, excluding E-Mobility, continues to be profitable and serves as the financial backbone of the transformation.

At the same time, we are systematically reducing the cost base in E-Mobility step by step, with the clear objective of bringing this business into a profitable range by 2028 on a full-year basis. We expect €50 million in cost savings and ramp-up contributions.

Improving efficiency and contribution to margin by ramping up the major orders are crucial levers for reaching our mid-term profitability targets. Overall, these figures clearly demonstrate that SHAPE30 is progressing as planned.

Turning to the next slide, we illustrate how ElringKlinger is well positioned for changing market landscape. At group level, we're actively shaping our portfolio and sharpening our strategic profile.

Through continuous and systematic market analysis, we are deliberately discontinuing low-margin activities and focusing our resources on value-creating businesses. At the same time, our Powered by People approach underlines our strong corporate culture, creating the conditions for our employees to perform at their best.

A key element in this context is our new organizational structure, SHAPE to EMPOWER. This structure is fully aligned with our strategy and is designed to strengthen accountability, accelerate decision-making, and enhance customer proximity across the group.

SHAPE to EMPOWER builds on clear and consistent principles for action. Roles and responsibilities are clearly defined, interfaces in the organization simplified, and management structures standardized globally.

The organization is fully aligned with SHAPE30, with a stronger focus on speed, market and customer proximity, and efficiency. As part of this transformation, existing business units will evolve into business areas, strengthening entrepreneurial accountability.

In addition, we are establishing a new business area, Sealing Solutions and Engineered Metal Components, by merging two business units into one. As a result, we create a new business area with focus on metal and pure metal applications in a market that largely consolidates.

The objective is to further accelerate decision-making, enhance customer focus, and improve efficiency across the group. Overall, ElringKlinger is actively shaping the group and reorganizing its structure to sustainably strengthen competitiveness in a rapidly changing environment.

With having said all this, I now hand over to my financial colleague on the board, Isabelle.

Thank you, Thomas. Hello and good afternoon from me as well.

Starting with sales and the organic revenue on slide number 8, in a challenging market environment, ElringKlinger generated revenue of €430 million in the first quarter of 2026, representing a year-on-year increase of 1.6% according to reported figures. Both figures have been affected by M&A as well as FX effects this quarter.

In the prior-year quarter, the UK subsidiary that has been divested effective November 30th, 2025, had contributed €3.1 million, with the corresponding reference value for the previous amounting to €420 million. Additionally, revenue was diluted by currency effects equivalent to €9.7 million.

All in all, when excluding currency and M&A effects, revenue increased organically by 4.7% in the first quarter of 2026, and the companies remains fully on track to meet its fully year guidance as communicated in March. Notably, this growth represents a clear outperformance of the underlying automotive market.

While global automotive production declined by 3.4% year on year in the first quarter, Europe, ElringKlinger's core market, recorded only a modest decrease of 1%, excluding Russia, and Germany declined by 1.6%. Against this backdrop, ElringKlinger achieved solid organic growth, clearly demonstrating its resilience and competitive positioning in a contracting market environment.

The sales mix presented on slide 9 provides a more detailed breakdown. Within the segment breakdown, the Original Equipment segment remains the largest contributor, accounting for 65% of total group's revenue, which corresponds to €280 million in sales.

Compared to the same quarter last year, revenue in this segment was only slightly below the prior-year level. Within the OE segment, E-Mobility generated sales of €38 million in the first quarter of 2026.

The ramp-up phase of large-scale series orders for cell contact and systems is further progressing. Compared to the previous first quarter, revenues increased by 42%, highlighting the business unit's strategic importance for the group's transformation.

The Aftermarket segment continued its strong performance, increasing sales from €102 million in Q1 2025 to €110 million in the first quarter of 2026. In addition, the Engineered Plastics business was able to slightly increase revenue in the first quarter of 2026, rising from €39 million to €40 million, driven primarily by an improved product mix.

Growth was achieved in the European region, North America, and South America and the rest of the world, while revenues in Asia-Pacific declined year on year. Adjusted EBITDA of the group rose to €59 million, compared to €42 million in the last year's first quarter.

Including one-off items, reported EBITDA stood at €58 million. The increase in adjusted EBITDA was driven by a compensation received for an asset that was depreciated at the same time.

In Q1, adjusted EBIT reached €29 million, corresponding to a margin of 6.8%, which is in line with our full-year target guidance of 6% to 7% of sales. Adjustments totaling an amount of less than €1 million were related to exceptional items from the Streamline program.

Reported EBIT amounted to €28 million, corresponding to a margin of 6.6%. This is a noticeable increase to last year's figure, which stood at €20 million.

Both the Streamline program and the SHAPE30 measures aimed at annual savings of €50 million in total. Around €10 million of these savings are realized in Q1.

The full impact of these measures are expected for 2027. The adjusted group EBIT of €29 million already includes adjusted EBIT of the E-Mobility business unit, which came in at -€16 million, compared to -€15 million in prior-year quarter.

The planned improvements here will be realized in the upcoming quarters according to the ramp-up. Thanks to the strategic measures implemented under our transformation strategy, we're strongly positioned and operate from a more profitable base, enabling the group to sustain a solid adjusted EBIT margin at this level.

These actions refer to an EBIT improvement of €10.5 million compared to the prior year's first quarter and created a more resilient foundation for sustainable performance. In addition, product mix effects contributed to a better earnings.

These improvements have been partly compensated by tariffs totaling €2 million and ramp-up costs for the large-scale orders of almost €2 million. In the first quarter, the R&D ratio decreased to 5%, while absolute R&D spending edged down year on year slightly from €25 million to €22 million.

ElringKlinger's net working capital stood at €383 million in the first quarter of 2026. The ratio amounted to 23%, thereby achieving the group's short- and medium-term target of keeping the figure below 25%.

The development illustrates the group's continuous focus and optimization of capital efficiency and expanding operational flexibility in line with ramp-up related sales activities. Following a capex-intense fourth quarter in 2025, capital expenditure declined significantly and returned to a markedly lower level in the first quarter.

As anticipated, this figure was quite stable in absolute numbers in Q3, with capex at €21 million and a capex ratio 5%. This figure is fully in line with the full-year guidance, which calls for a ratio of 4% to 6% of sales.

In the first quarter of 2026, operating free cash flow was in a negative territory at -€109 million. This development was driven by a higher net working capital requirements due to the ramp-up of the large-scale orders, and in addition, cash-effective restructuring expenses of around €20 million related to the Streamline program.

Overall, the cash flow development followed largely the same seasonal pattern as last year, while still showing a slightly year-on-year improvement. Net debt stood at €430 million, corresponding to an adjusted net debt to EBITDA ratio of 2.1, which is stable compared to prior-year quarter.

Last but not least, group equity totaled €686 million by the end of the first quarter, slightly above the €666 million recorded at the close of Q4 2025 and on the same level of prior year's figure. Coming to the segment performance on slide 13, in the first quarter of 2026, the OE segment generated sales of €280 million.

When comparing this to the prior year's figure, we have to consider the sales contribution of €3 million from the divested entity in the UK. The adjusted segment EBIT margin stood at 0.9%, an improvement to prior year's figure.

The Aftermarket segment continues to successfully execute its growth strategy, once again posting a quarter-on-quarter increase in revenue. In the first quarter of 2026, sales reached €110 million, which implies a growth of roughly 8.8% compared to previous year's quarter.

With an adjusted EBIT margin of 24.3%, the segment once again delivered a strong level of profitability. The Engineered Plastics segment demonstrated a robust performance in the first quarter of 2026, supported by a wide and diversified industry footprint.

The segment recorded sales of €40 million, compared to €39 million in the first quarter of last year. With an adjusted EBIT margin of 10.6%, the segment demonstrates its resilience under challenging market conditions.

We remain firmly committed to our SHAPE30 group strategy, which continues to serve as the overarching strategic framework guiding our decision-making and positioning ElringKlinger for the long-term success. We are confident that SHAPE30 defines the right strategic priorities to effectively navigate market dynamics while further strengthening the group's long-term competitiveness.

We remain focused on driving profitable growth for further strengthening the group's competitiveness. Our priorities include: realizing growth on the basis of large-scale contracts in E-Mobility, further improving the profitability particularly in the OE segment, generating sustaining operating free cash flow, and further reducing net debt to enhance the group's financial resilience and balance sheet strength.

I will now turn the floor over to Thomas to provide concluding remarks on the market environment and the outlook.

Thank you, Isabelle. I will now review the market expectations and come to the outlook for the full fiscal year.

Let us now take a closer look at the market environment. As you can see on this slide, the global automotive market is expected to face a slowdown in 2026.

Across all major regions, light vehicle production is projected to decline year by year, although to different degrees. In North America, volumes are expected to decrease by around 2%, reflecting a moderation in demand following the post-pandemic recovery phase.

In Europe, production is also expected to decline by approximately 1.8% in 2026, driven by ongoing economic uncertainty and continued pressure on customer sentiment. Greater China is facing a somewhat more pronounced slowdown, with volumes forecast to decline by about 2.3%, reflecting market saturation and intensified competition.

On the global level, this results in a modest contraction of light vehicle production in 2026. Importantly, however, the medium-term outlook remains constructive.

By 2030, global volumes are expected to return to growth, underscoring that the current slowdown should be viewed as cyclical rather than structural. Coming to the next slide, we confirm our outlook for the full year 2026 as published in March, reflecting our expectations regarding the challenging market environment and our operational performance for the year.

Taken as a whole, our performance and our short- and mid-term ambitions demonstrate that we are on the right path with our SHAPE30 strategy. ElringKlinger's strong financial and strategic positioning provides a solid basis for further improving the group's profitability and delivering sustainable cash flow.

Finally, I would like to mention few points from our corporate calendar. On Tuesday, May 12th, we'll hold our annual general meeting in a virtual format.

This will be followed by the publication of our Q2 results in August and our Q3 results in November. With having said all this, we're now ready to answer your questions.

Thank you.

Michael Punzet. Good afternoon.

I have two questions. The first one is on your E-Mobility business.

When we listen to BMW, they are very positive, makes very positive statements on the demand for the iX3, the first car of the Neue Klasse. My question is now, do you see any rise in call-offs compared with the originally planned?

The second one is on your Aftermarket business. We saw a very strong margin development in Q1 after, I would say, a slowdown in former quarters.

What are your expectations on margin levels for the Aftermarket? Is it fair to assume that this will stay above the 20% level also in coming quarters?

Thank you for your questions. To your first question, you referred to one of our customers.

We have different sizable contracts starting right now. We can say that with all of the projects that we are working on, we see across the board pretty ambitious run-ups.

Yep. In that sense, yeah, without talking about one customer alone, we can confirm that there is a strong development for the first run-up phase here with different customers that we have, in particular with E-Mobility.

We're really busy in order to manage those run-ups in a good way. Overall, we can say yes, but it's not only one customer, but we see it with several customers, in particular in E-Mobility.

Yes, Mr. Punzet, I'll take your second question on Aftermarket.

Yes, we expect growth to continue during the year, as said, also with strong margins. Having said that, we do see some impact from the war in Asia, we have to see how that will develop over the coming months, the coming period.

In principle, yes, strong growth still expected, also maintaining profitability.

Okay. Thank you.

Maybe a follow-up to the first answer. Do you see any risk that you might be not able to fulfill all the demand from the E-Mobility side at this point in time with strong ramp-up?

No. We have our commitments in regard to the quantities.

From a risk perspective, but now very generally speaking, there's always operational risks involved, in particular during the run-up phases. There are risks.

Are we seeing something specifically that hints to the point that we're not going to be able to fulfill those requirements? No.

No, on the quantity side. For example, when the customer decided to call off 100,000 pieces a year, and now they came up with 150,000, are you able to fulfill also the additional order?

Would you be able to fulfill also the additional demand? That is the reason for my question.

What I answered was that right now, we don't see anything where we cannot fulfill demand in those run-ups. We agree that there is some flexibility involved in a lot of cases.

Yes, we're going to be able to fulfill.

Okay. Thank you.

Thanks.

Yes. Hello.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Yes. Hello.

Congrats of the strong quarter. I have three questions.

My first question would be about ElringKlinger confirms the full-year guidance despite the current difficult market situation consisting out of tariffs, war, and a general declining in the production rate of light vehicles. For my understanding, what are the core criteria for the strong performance at ElringKlinger when it comes to the resistance of the general market downturn?

Also a little follow-up here, and is Q1 more a one-off effect, or can the strong margin consist of 6.8% also be assumed for the rest of the year, because it's quite an impressive margin you achieved in Q1? My next question would be about the Q1 2026, the tax rate was around 61%, compared to 21% in Q1 2025.

What are the reasons here for the sharp increase, and can a guidance be given for the full year ahead? Same questions also applies to the financial income of around €9 million compared to €3 million from the previous quarter.

Just for my understanding here, because I didn't find an explanation in your concern presentations here. My last question would be about the capex guidance for 2026.

It is given as 4% to 6%. In the medium term, less is to be invested here at round about 2% to 4%.

How is that strategic planning to be understood here, as the E-Mobility production rate should be increase in the future, right? Or is the production already unutilized in the current stage of the production capacity at ElringKlinger?

Thank you for having my questions.

Yes, thank you for your questions, first of all. First question in regard to the confirmation of the guidance, no?

There is a lot of activity. We have the target to improve the cost base by €50 million.

Part of that is personnel costs, which we have done through Streamline last year, and that has given us some lower cost base for this year in regard to personnel costs. What you see here in terms of the improvement, no, from last year to this year, it's really mostly around €10 million.

This is the run rate for this year. There is, let's say, some items that spilled over into 2026 from a cost perspective.

This is what we mentioned earlier also, that we do not expect to arrive at the €50 million in 2026, but to a large extent, we should be able to, no? With the €10 million that we have here for Q1, expectation is that we're going to be having this as a run rate basis for lower cost space for this year.

Yeah. How robust are we in this regard, for example, the Iran war or other global impact items, there is to some extent, and I mentioned in the last call a low to mid single-digit amount in million euro that is accounted for.

That means that we should be able to absorb if there is more to come, no? If the impact would be higher, then we would have to assess specifically.

Part of the difficulties here in our global environment is already accounted for.

Okay.

On the taxes, the Q1 tax rate here, from a tax rate perspective, there is an expectation that step by step, we move to the nominal tax rate, which should be around 30% for the group. Since we divested loss-making entities in the group, and we implemented a new transfer pricing model, there is all the steps or almost all of the steps done that we should arrive at the nominal tax level.

We are not there yet. Why is that?

Because there's still some loss-making activities here in the group that, as part of the SHAPE30 activity, we need to address, of course. Step by step, we should be able to arrive at the nominal 30% tax rate that we would expect.

Approximately 30%, right?

Mhm. Then thank you.

I reply your question on capex. For this year, we started with a constraint on our capex, we tried and we will respect our guidance on capex.

We had a huge spend in the last 2 years to be able to ramp up in our E-Mobility business. That's now done, and we are confident in the coming 2 years, we will be able to hold our capex targets as set in our guidance, and we don't need additional capex to fulfill our ambitions.

Understood. When I'm allowed to ask a follow-up question, then is the E-Mobility production underutilized for now, or what is the kind of state when it comes to the productions?

Right now, we are not at full utilization, no? This is going to be expected in 2027 and 2028, and therefore for 2028, we expect really a break-even situation here for the full year for E-Mobility.

Right now, there's different projects in a run-up phase, and there's different phases that we have right now in the group, and typically, of course, there's a low utilization involved. Step by step, no, the run-up in terms of sales volume and also in terms of contribution margin of course helps to improve the EBIT situation that we want to step by step improve along with the run-up of those projects.

Okay.

Understood. Thank you very much for having my questions.

You also had a question on the one-offs. Was it for one-offs we still expect?

We still expect some one-offs during the year related to what we do with our strategy, not in the amount of the past 2 years, but there's still something to expect probably in the second half the year.

Okay.

Yes. Thank you.

I have two follow-up questions. The first one is you mentioned a negative effect from tariffs.

Maybe you can explain where this came from and how you will compensate for that. The second one is on E-Mobility again.

The €16 million loss, is it only coming from the operational performance, or are there any kind of one-offs included in that figure?

Thanks for your question. No, this is, from an operational perspective, this is sort of the current run rate approximately in terms of the loss-making here of E-Mobility.

Then first question, I didn't get. I didn't understand.

US tariffs. I think you mentioned something in the presentations that you have a negative effect from the US tariffs, I would like to have an indication which business unit is related to that negative effect and how you will compensate for that.

Yes, thank you. This is mainly our Aftermarket business, which is impacted by that, and as a compensation measure, we did increase prices last year.

That's not shown in the bridge, but there is some compensation on the price side to compensate for tariffs, not for the full 100%, though.

Okay. Maybe a last question on E-Mobility.

You mentioned that you expect break-even on a full-year basis in 2028. Is it fair to assume that we also might see already a break-even level on a quarterly base in 2027, or is that too optimistic?

No, that could be, but we want to be really clear, when we talk about the overall business, that 2028 for the full year should be what we will achieve. It could be from an earlier perspective that we see the one or the other quarter where we may break even as well, no?

We want to be very clear on 2028 is the target for the full year.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you.

Finally, I would like to thank you for your interest in ElringKlinger and your participation in our call on the figures of the first 3 months in 2026. On next Tuesday, we hold our annual general meeting in a virtual format, and would appreciate your attendance.

The next quarterly figures will be released on August 5th. We're looking forward to talk to you then again on a personal level.

Thank you, and you have a good rest of the week. Thank you much.