Thank you, Nadia. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.

This is Andreas Schaller speaking. On behalf of FUCHS SE, I wish you a very warm welcome to today's conference call on the annual results of 2025 and the outlook for 2026.

With me on the call today is our CEO, Stefan Fuchs, and our CFO, Esma Saglik. As always, Esma and Stefan will run you through the presentation, which is then followed by a Q&A session.

All the documents for this call are available on our homepage, and we assume that you have them in front of you. Please be also aware of our disclaimer on the last page of our presentation.

Now, it's my pleasure to hand over the call to Stefan for some introductory remarks. Please go ahead, Stefan.

Yes, hello, also from my side with the best regards from sunny Mannheim. I don't know where you are, but we have a lovely day here.

I think Esma and I will present you very solid figures for the year 2025, which are in line of the outlook from the end of July of last year. As if you remember, 2024 was the all-time high, and I think we met that number.

We even exceeded it a little bit. We had a strong cash flow.

I think we have a interesting dividend proposal, the 24th increase in a row. Furthermore, we want to grow sales and earnings in the year 2026.

To learn more of that, I will hand over to my colleague, Esma.

Thank you, Stefan. Hello and also a very warm welcome from my side.

Today, I will walk you through the 2025 financial performance, starting with the key highlights. For us, 2025 proved to be a very solid year, demonstrating financial strength, operational resilience, and a well-balanced strategic positioning.

After a challenging second quarter, we delivered a very strong third quarter, and this momentum continued into the fourth quarter as well, which allowed us to deliver on our revised full-year target of 2025, and in some areas, as Stefan indicated, even outperformed them. Sales reached €3.6 billion, an increase of around 1% year-on-year and a new all-time high.

This growth reflects both organic and external growth and was achieved despite challenging market environment and significant currency headwinds we have faced. EBIT came in at €435 million, a slight uptick, €1 million above last year, making another record level.

This underlines the quality of our earnings and the effectiveness of our cost discipline, which we have put in place. Free cash flow before acquisitions came in with €316 million, up by 3% compared to last year with a very strong cash conversion of one.

Earnings per share increased by 2% year-over-year, and our FUCHS Value Added reached €249 million. Now, turning to the next slide, let me briefly comment on the quarterly sales development.

As usual, the fourth quarter is seasonally the weakest due to the holiday season. Nevertheless, compared to last year, we achieved a slight increase in revenue, which is a solid performance, again considering the significant negative currency headwinds we have faced.

Looking at the EBIT on a quarterly base, we see also this typical seasonal pattern. However, on a year-over-year base, EBIT in Q4 improved by 9%, supported by positive mix effects and lower cost spend.

I also would like to highlight that our second-half year 2025 was the strongest half year we ever had. Now, let's look at the main drivers of our sales development.

Our sales for 2025 were €3.6 billion, as mentioned. Both organic growth and acquisitions were contributing positively.

Organic growth was mainly driven by Asia-Pacific and the Americas, reflecting successful business wins across multiple segments and underlining the strength of our local-to-local strategy. On the external growth side, the key contributor were the acquisitions of Lubcon and Strohm, as well as our new additions in 2025, Voss and Azul.

Currency headwinds were affecting our top line, unfortunately, negatively with 2%. Overall, we can say our underlying sales development was clearly positive.

Turning to our KPI summary. I have already covered sales side.

Moving over to our gross margin, our gross margin improved to 34.9% in 2025, an increase of 40 basis points compared to last year. Functional costs rose by 4% year-on-year, mainly driven by additional costs from recent acquisitions, one-off expenses for large customer projects, IT investments we have put in place, and inflation-related salary and wage increases.

As you all will recall, we implemented a cost avoidance and efficiency measure program in the middle of last year to counteract higher cost basis. What I can say, we are very satisfied with the results we have achieved.

Our EBIT reached €435 million, €1 million above last year, with a EBIT margin of 12.2%. This also means we achieved our revised outlook from July and delivered another record result.

Our capital expenditure increased year-on-year, preliminarily due to higher investments to our Transform to Grow project, which is the preparation of our S/4HANA rollout. Net working capital improved to 21% of annual sales.

It is below the prior-year level and contributed positively to our cash. In 2025, free cash flow before acquisitions amounted to €316 million, representing a year-over-year improvement of €10 million.

Let's take a closer look to the regions, starting with EMEA. Sales increased slightly, mainly driven by acquisitions, which also compensated for the softer organic growth.

The decline in organic sales was preliminarily due to challenging market environment in Europe, especially driven by the weak automotive manufacturing sector. At the same time, we saw positive developments in Germany, South Africa, and Sweden.

Despite all market challenges, total profitability in EMEA remained strong and was slightly above the prior-year's level, which also highlights the robustness of the region. Moving to Asia-Pacific, for the first time, sales in the region exceeded €1 billion, despite all significant negative currency effects.

Organic growth was very strong with 7%, mainly driven by China, Australia, and India, but also the other countries contributed positively. This clearly reflects the benefit of our investment in local production, which continue to pay off.

From a profitability perspective, Asia-Pacific developed very positively. EBIT increased by 12% year-on-year with positive contributions from almost all countries, underlining also the strong overall performance of the region.

Now turning to North and South America. Sales increased in the region by 2% year-on-year, supported by a very strong growth of 7% coming from several segments.

On the other hand, the growth got largely offset by negative currency effects, a similar effect as we have seen in Asia-Pacific. External growth was driven by the acquisitions of our trading partner in Peru, as well as Impco.

Unfortunately, the EBIT declined by 18% year-over-year, mainly due to negative mix effects and higher costs. Now, let's have a look to our net operating working capital.

Overall, we see the usual seasonal pattern, an increase over the course of the year, followed by a reduction towards the year-end. Compared to the end of 2024, our net operating working capital improved both in absolute terms and also as a percentage of sales, from 22.3% to 21%, which reflects a disciplined working capital management.

Moving over to our net liquidity, our free cash flow before acquisitions developed very positively and strong, reaching €316 million for the full year, driven by better earnings after tax, capex that remained below our depreciation level, and the improvement in our working capital. Dividend payments and spend for acquisitions were the main cash outflow for 2025.

As a result, our net liquidity improved year-over-year by €110 million, reaching €151 million for the full year. Based on our solid earnings performance and strong cash generation, we will continue with our progressive dividend policy.

For 2025, we will propose a dividend increase of 6 cents per share, resulting in a dividend of €1.23 per preference and €1.22 per ordinary share. This also represents our 24th consecutive dividend increase.

Before we talk about our outlook for 2026, let me briefly reflect on 2025. Last year was a challenging year with a lot of market volatility, FX headwinds, and geopolitical uncertainty.

Despite this, we were capable to deliver solid sales, good earnings, and an excellent free cash flow. I think this performance clearly shows the resilience of our business model.

I also think we can be proud of that what we have achieved. Let me start the outlook with raw materials, which is the key topic in the current environment.

The year started with stable conditions, but the situation changed with the conflict in the Middle East, affecting oil and petrochemical supply chains. Our sourcing set up is globally diversified, which gives us actually flexibility.

Nevertheless, visibility is currently poor, and it's difficult to foresee all implications as changes or changings happen every day. We are very closely monitoring the situation and have put countermeasures in place to address possible higher costs, which will occur actually.

Looking back into the past crisis, like the COVID time or the financial crisis, we as FUCHS have proven record that we can manage challenging market conditions successfully. Also for this crisis, we are confident that we will navigate through the situation in a successful way as well.

As of now, assuming there are no major disruptions in the global economy and supply chains, our outlook for 2026 is as following. We expect sales to increase to around €3.7 billion, with growth partly offset by negative FX effects.

This figure also includes the OPET FUCHS acquisition in Turkey, which we expect to close in the second quarter. It will add around 2/3 of its annual sales of roughly €100 million.

EBIT is expected to raise to around €450 million, supported by growth and continued cost discipline. Also here, our acquisition of OPET FUCHS is already included, incorporating the related integration costs as well.

FVA is expected at around €250 million, reflecting higher earnings, but also increased capital employed. Free cash flow before acquisitions is projected at around €270 million.

Overall, I would say we entered 2026 with confidence and a clear focus on profitable growth and cash generation. We also remain mindful of any macroeconomic, geopolitical, and cost uncertainties, which are currently not foreseeable.

Finally, a reminder. Our Capital Markets Day will take place on April 16th in Mannheim.

We are very much looking forward to welcoming you in person and having a open dialogue about our future steps. With that, I would like to hand back to Stefan.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Esma. Before we go into Q&A, I want to provide you with a little update on the FUCHS Group.

As the name said, our strategy program, FUCHS 2025, came to an end at the end of last year. Exactly round about now 7 years ago, we launched FUCHS 2025.

This was for us a huge transformation program built on structure, strategy, and culture. If you look on the structure, I think forever and a day, we have been a decentered organization.

We really have fully fledged legal entities, all functions in the country report to the CEO, we pay incentives on those countries, and I think this is a business model and operating model we want to continue in the future, and especially now with more local for local, I think that's the right way forward. However, we have in the course of FUCHS 2025 created a lot of powerful networks, yeah, especially not to reinvent the wheel and to go forward really in a more united manner.

Networks can be in finance, IT, product management, procurement, you name it. In such a network, normally the large companies are represented on the table.

Therefore, we have a good buy-in, and they define the basic strategies within their functions. Furthermore, we really push for entrepreneurship not only in the countries, but also in the functions.

That is very, very important for us. All in all, I can tell you we have a extremely committed workforce.

We are really proud that we had our first global employee survey with about 73% participation, and 87% of all the people said they are proud to work for FUCHS. I think that's something we can be proud of, and that's something we can build on.

The strategy part was mainly focused around the three megatrends: new mobility, sustainability, and digitalization. We also had this thing with the profitable growth through segmentation.

When you have this very decentered organization, and we have the huge variety of potential applications, we have a couple of white spots, which is for us some growth potential behind. Therefore, we segmented our business, and we made clear plans moving forward.

I think our people have done a really good job, and that's an excellent basis to build on in FUCHS 2025. Obviously, we always included innovation, and then for our own discipline, more project management.

Most important, and culture eats strategy for breakfast, was the cultural journey. Very important for us was the growth mindset.

Then very important, especially for us Germans, was the hierarchy-free communication, which I really liked a lot, because this is more a given in many other countries, but I think we have come a long way. Then the open feedback culture.

We always say feedback is a gift. Sometimes you personally don't experience it as a gift in the time it's spelled out, but it's only the expression of the perception of the people you talk to, and therefore, I think that's very important.

On all of that, we want to build on with FUCHS2025. If we think about FUCHS2025, we said it before, it's really not a revolution, but it's an evolution.

Many of the tasks we have done with FUCHS 2025, we don't have to repeat. Therefore, when we look at FUCHS2025, it's really built around growth.

We can focus on growth, which is very, very important for us. I can't talk too much.

It was a little bit a difficult situation for us now today and also in the annual report, and on Monday we have the global management meeting, because the official launch of FUCHS2025 will be on our Capital Market Day, where we really hope that many of you come. Obviously, that will be presented by Timo then.

We will have six global focus areas, and there is a huge commitment from our large markets. How it was built up, that it was built up bottom-up from the top 15 companies from our 70, and then we were working with the data, with the plans, we built up the strategy, and now we scale it up through the 70 organizations.

Sustainability will play a huge role as well, but mainly we really want to measure the customer benefits, because very often or most of the time the lubricants act very sustainably in the applications of our customers. People, we always say it's all about the people, and therefore, people will also play a huge role in that whole FUCHS2025 strategy.

We have our own organic growth plan, but we also always like to complement it with acquisitions. We have announced to you that we will take over the other 50% of FUCHS Turkey.

FUCHS Turkey has a history of about 20 years. Our partner, OPET in Turkey, is like a mineral oil company, they have filling stations, they have refineries, and their focus on lubricants is not like our focus.

We are friends, and we will continue to be friends, but they will sell us their shares. We have signed a deal, and the closing is for sure going to happen in the second quarter, because there are only formalities for the closing, like antitrust and things like this.

Then we will be 100% owner. The company, we said, does a sale of about €100 million per year and has got 250 employees.

Now you need to remember so far Turkey was at equity in our results. I think Esma has shown about €10 million of at-equity result of which FUCHS Turkey plays a role.

That will change into a full consolidation, with sales and gross profit and expenses, etc. The outlook we have shown to you includes a portion of this full consolidation part.

We really look forward. For us, Turkey is a key country for the future.

That was so far to our update, and now I hand it back to you, Andreas, and we look forward to a nice discussion with you.

Thank you very much, Stefan and Esma, for the overview and the insight. Now we are ready to start with the Q&A session, please.

Hello, good afternoon, and thanks for taking my three questions, please. Firstly, on the EMEA region.

In the recent years, 2023, 2024, 2025, we see a strange kind of seasonality in EMEA. Sales in Q4 is always lower than the other quarters because of Christmas holiday.

This is no surprise, this is clear, and fits to the group performance. However, earnings and margins in EMEA have been the highest in Q4 versus the other quarters.

How comes? Secondly, I know that you source locally, you produce locally, and you sell locally, and you can be flexible if necessary.

This is the strength of FUCHS we all know. I have a question on the availability of raw materials in Asia.

We know that Asian economies like China, India, Japan, highly depend on oil imports from Middle East. I heard about some force majeures in the petrochemical industry in Asia in recent days.

Do you see the risk, or did your suppliers already inform you about that force majeures? I guess it is more related to the base oils and not so much to the additives, hopefully, that's correct.

The third question in regards to pricing strategy. I understand that you already expect that raw materials costs go up and you want to pass them on.

Do you want to change your approach of passing on rising input costs to your customers when it comes to the clients who do not have the price variation clauses? The small clients.

In the past, you treated your clients gently by going to them several times in a year and re-setting prices in a step-by-step process. Will that change this year and you will become more aggressive by raising prices even more pronounced when also raw material costs go up strongly?

These are my three questions. Thank you.

Thanks a lot, Martin. Maybe I start with the sourcing, and I think that's a very good question, and the name of the game is really availability.

We purchase, we have good partnerships, we buy long-term from our partners, and therefore, they always treat us very good to an extent they can, yeah. That's the one part.

The other part, obviously, you can imagine, we have got orders like there would be no tomorrow. Now you need to check your orders, whether one customer not tries to buy much more because they shift from competition to us, or you've got orders all of a sudden new customers you never had before, and obviously, our priority is to service our existing customers.

We have not yet a force majeure as to my knowledge, but this plays the most important role. Talking about 100-plus different base oils around the world and a few thousand chemicals, it's very hard to say, this will be the impact.

Nobody knows the impact today. If you look back, I'm now 22 years the CEO, we had the Lehman crisis, we had the Corona part, we had in the year 2022 we had a 70% raw material increase, I think we have all weathered all those storms in a very good manner, and in all that time, we increased our dividend year-over-year.

I think we have really a good track record. Now obviously, we have created a couple of committees in various countries to check availability, to check incoming orders, but to also look at the pricing.

Even on price variation clauses, in the year 2022, we cancelled most of them, because for that high increase in such a short period of time, they didn't work. Now also, you should never be aggressive to your customers, but number one is availability, number two is visibility for them, and then pricing comes into play, and we do whatever we have to do.

I think looking at our track record, that was pretty good. Therefore, we are looking at the whole situation with concern, but we don't have any sleepless nights.

That's the most important. When I now look back, for example, to the year 2022, which was also almost an overnight explosion at that time, we've got a lot of positive remarks from our customers, how we serviced them, how we were flying partly, certain key raw materials, how we did exchanges in a transparent manner of certain materials we did not have, but still supplied them a product.

All in all, I think that is something we know how to do it, and certainly we will not run behind 6 months on that end.

Let me take over the margin improvement question, especially in EMEA, and I can fully understand, actually, because it's towards the year-end, and sometimes people think, okay, there are year-end effects, and I can assure you, of course, you will have always push and takes towards the year-end, but it is no year-end effects, and I stated in my initial, yeah, meeting in June, July, where I said we are not playing around with accruals. These two are not the effects.

What are the effects? Number one, in EMEA, we had, actually, in the fourth quarter, a very good customer mix, driven by a good pricing, and on the other hand, remember, we announced our cost measures, cost-saving initiatives, cost-avoidance initiatives somewhere in June, July.

It takes time until you see that in the P&L, and we saw them coming in in end of Q3 and especially now hit in Q4. Considering EMEA as the strongest region we are having with, yeah, a portion of 53%, that's weighing, of course, pretty heavily when you push a bit the brake in spending.

These are the main drivers why our margin, and especially also the EBIT in EMEA, was very positive.

Thank you very much.

Thanks for taking my question. Hello, everyone.

I'll start with the first one as a kind of follow-up on the raw material side. Can you just remind us maybe on the base oil side, whether first, we still talk about 60/40 type of split between chems and base oils, and within base oils, whether the 50/50 split between Group I and the higher groups are still valid, and adjacent to that, do you see any kind of pricing upward on the chemical side of the equation?

This would be my first question. The second one is on EMEA, what happened there in the fourth quarter.

We have seen quite a slowdown in organic sales growth rather to 5% from 8% seen in the third quarter, and also EBIT came down quarter-over-quarter. Any color what happened there in the fourth quarter, and how we should think about this into '26?

Then last not least, on your working capital, you squeezed quite a lot in the fourth quarter, also basically making it then on the free cash flow side. Obviously, this is something which can't be repeated all the time.

Therefore, that's probably baked into your outlook '26. My question is, how should we think about the kind of working capital components evolving?

How do you want to steer this in a certainly challenging market environment in '26? Thanks, guys.

Thanks a lot, Michael, for your questions. Coming back to the raw materials, this is rough estimate on 60% base oil on volume and 40% chemicals, and 40% base oil on value and 60% chemicals is still in place.

The 50/50 is difficult to say, always depending on the mix, but there is definitely a shift towards more Group III and PAOs. How it normally goes, everybody comes immediately and wants something.

The first one you probably have to take is the base oil increase, and then the chemical increase comes with a little bit of a time lag. We go out immediately and have factored in a number now, and then we will see how it goes.

As you remember, I think in the year 2022, we did minimum a handful, if not more, different price rounds, and our people are ready to go. In EMEA, I think, to your question, they have a good pipeline, and we have really in EMEA built our business over the year, and I think that was a really good fourth quarter for them, also from the mix, what Esma said.

If you remember, EMEA for us also includes Africa, which is for us a little bit of a rising star, South Africa, where we invested in the plant and in the site over the last couple of years, and they develop really really nicely. We see EMEA continuing to do well.

On the NOWC,

I

give back to Esma.

Michael, on the NOWC, yes, it is a good number what we see with the 21% and improvement percentage-wise, but we have to be honest, actually, the main improvement came from our payables, and we are aware, like you said, that's not always repeatable. Nevertheless, we are convinced that we have potential in our net working capital, especially in the inventories.

Frankly, I don't want to spoil it too early because we still have the Capital Markets Day coming up, but one of our biggest initiatives will be managing our capital much more efficient, and there is now already a project in place, how we can reduce our inventory levels as well. On the other hand, of course, we are looking also to the payment terms, but nevertheless, like Stefan mentioned before, currently availability is key for us.

While Esma is saying that, I can happily confirm that, finally, I believe we have a CFO who pushes the business. That's the way how it should be.

It's not only to make an annual report and the investor relations, but in the middle of last year, Esma started with a program of cost avoidance. Now she has her finance network with regard to our EBIT profitability, with the NOWC percentage.

Nothing will come overnight, but she questions a lot of things, and I think that's the way how it should be.

May I have a follow-up on this one? Maybe she can share also the number you have plugged in in terms of pricing for '26 in your outlook then basically, unpacking?

When you look on our outlook, and I really felt sorry with the auditor. Yesterday, the day before yesterday, we had the supervisory board meeting.

It was on yesterday, the supervisory board meeting, and on Wednesday, we had the audit committee meeting. We had to close the outlook and the results, and nobody knows what is the case in the Middle East.

Nobody knows, is the first round good enough of price increases, does there come a second, third, or fourth round, and therefore, we cannot answer your question sitting here.

Especially to the working capital, again, what Stefan says, we don't know what happens in the raw material, and now saying the working capital will do this and that is actually, yeah, it would be guessing, because it's not foreseeable. We faced that in 2022 with the high inflation.

If we are facing such a situation again, let's be honest, that will have an implication to our net working capital, and we should be honest on that one.

If you look on

Appreciate the feedback.

If you look on Andreas's long-term free cash flow analysis, the good thing is about FUCHS, the 0.8 cash conversion is a number we had for the last 10 years. Now if you remember in the chart in 2022, it was a horrible year for free cash flow, because all of that inflation cost us over €300 million in NOWC.

Then the following 2 years were massive cash flow, therefore, in average, I think we were always dealing with that in a responsible way.

Thank you.

Hi. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you so much for taking my questions.

Just the two, please. The first one is more of a follow-up on the raw materials question.

Did I understand it right when you answered the question that this time, the lag between the raw material inflation and the pricing increase would be less than 6 months? Because in 2022, when the raw material inflation was 70%, you said that it took about 3 to 6 months to pass on the price increases.

Is there any reason to believe that this time it's going to be less than that? That's first.

The second is on the sales outlook. What kind of a volume growth have you baked into the 2026 sales growth?

May I ask, where is this volume growth going to come from? What are the key contributors?

Is it the new wins, new contract wins, or new products, or is it the underlying demand? To frame the question other way, if the macros recovers and if there is a better demand environment than what you had anticipated, could it be that actual 2026 sales could be ahead of your estimates?

Basically, what are the swing factors for your 2026 sales? Thank you.

Thanks, Anil, for your question. Maybe I take the last one first from the swing factors.

I think the one part was, when you remember 2022, the high inflation, normally, the whole time I've been in FUCHS, the price went up and then down and up and down, and this time they went up and stayed up. What we saw a little bit is a softening of raw materials, a little bit in '24, a little bit in '25, and also subsequently of the selling price.

Therefore, in '24, we had a volume increase of low-single-digit percentage number. In 2025, we had a volume increase of mid-digit number, but there was a little bit of M&A also involved.

Still our sales were in '24 down, in '25 they were only up by 1%, aside of the currencies, also that sales price played a role. Now going into '26, we have, I think, planned all things being equal, what happens now with the price increases, I can't really really tell you.

This year will be organic sales growth, but obviously we also have some Turkish volumes in for the months as we planned for. Then on the raw materials, I can't promise you, but we are much firmer internally also in our discussions, also with all our managing directors to push them through with a earlier impact.

Also we don't know how quickly and how stiff the raw material price increases come and how long the whole situation lasts. Therefore, I can't really tell you, but my stomach feeling says we are more firm this time than we have ever been before.

Maybe let me add just one thing, because you asked for the swing. It is a mid-single-digit growth what we are still planning year-over-year, but with a significant headwinds.

Don't forget the FX raised actually, especially towards euro, dollar, Chinese renminbi, and Australian dollar, which are the main currencies affecting us mid of last year, and we will have a carryover effect even though there's a slight downtrending, but it is not going really back. We will have an impact, especially in the first half year.

Secondly, no price assumptions right now are underlying in our numbers, but we have seen from a pricing perspective, we kept it actually equally towards last year. Of course, like Stefan said, now the circumstances, they are bringing, yeah, other topics on the table, and we have to deal with it.

Right now, it's difficult to tell how and what.

Again, also on the pricing, once availability issues, normally the pricing goes through more smoothly. To be seen, the one plant you have seen yesterday being bombarded in Qatar, the GTL plant, it was the liquid gas plant plus a huge base oil plant on GTL.

We have no GTL base oils. This is mainly one large competitor, and many customers have seen resource problem with that competitor now, because that thing is out for a couple of years.

We can't take over those customers at the moment, but we watch those things carefully, and I think we deal with our existing customers in a partnership-like manner.

Sure. Thank you.

That's very helpful.

Good morning. Thank you very much for taking my questions.

I have two, please. Firstly, if you could provide a bit more details on developments that you have seen so far in the first quarter.

You have given some comments already in the opening remarks, but I'd be interested if you have any highlights, maybe more for January, February, of what kind of end markets performance you saw in different regions. Then secondly, in March, since the start of the conflict, have you been noticing any material changes in your order books so far?

Second is just a quick question in your current free cash flow outlook. What kind of capex development you have assumed in '26 versus 2025?

Thank you.

Thank you, Angelina. Obviously, with the March conflict, I was dreaming about such an order book last year.

The order book is full, as full can be. The question is, we will not serve all of those orders, which creates double work internally, because very often, large customers have dual sourcing, and we have competitors where we know they are in problems at the moment with the availability.

The customer wants to buy more from us. We need to be careful not to fulfill that part, and we have got a couple of customers they never bought from us, and we probably will not supply them either, yeah, because now we really make sure we get the availability right.

You can't be greedy on that end, you can't take it all and then can't supply your existing customers. If I look back in 2022, our customers were highly appreciative of how we dealt with the manner.

We went in various steps, and we always kept the availability up. The first quarter started according to our outlook, and we were pretty happy.

We saw continued growth in Asia. Europe was developing well.

In America, the order book was okay, I have to say okay, because in January it was very, very cold, and we have a lot of water-based products in the US, whether it's either for metalworking or for the coal mining industry, and we couldn't ship any of those for, I think, minimum 5 working days. All in all, we were satisfied.

Maybe let me add in regards to the capex question. For 2025, we had a level of €90 million.

This level will continue also for 2026, there are no special uplifts planned. In general, if you look to our capex development over the course of the years, it is around 2%, it is around 2% of sales, plus minus.

Great. Thank you very much.

Hey, afternoon, everyone. I've just got a couple left.

The first one, just going back to this idea of raw material availability. I guess this is a bit unusual as a cycle because, as you said, Stefan, there has been some physical damage to infrastructure that may take time to come back.

As it pertains to base oils, am I right in thinking that the Middle East isn't necessarily a big direct supplier to you on base oils? Is the risk here on availability that we see refineries reconfigure their product slate to produce more, I don't know, gasoline, distillate, fuel oil, etc., at the expense of base oil?

Is that why you get nervous about availability? The second question.

Last year, your Americas profit, EBIT, was down 18%, I think you said. We know from the earlier calls that there was some impact or distortion there from the aftermarket contract with Mercedes.

Not to preempt your Capital Markets Day, but your press release today does say that you're entering into additional global commitments with key customers. Does that mean we need to think about margins, if it's America or any other region, being structurally lower because there'll be other large contracts that will be dilutive to profitability, at least in the first instance?

Thank you.

Thanks a lot, Matthew, for those questions. Americas was the weak point last year, I think that's a very fair comment.

When you say, or rightfully say, the -18%, that is the number, but there's also a huge currency impact in. If I look at local currencies and the operating profits before license fees, they were down significantly, I think over 25% in the beginning of the year, and they have come out better towards the end of the year.

There is still work to do in the Americas, definitely. When you go later through our annual report, you will see we had last year two new board members, Esma and Matt, but we also had a properly succession planning in both China and in the US.

With Dr. Megan O'Meara, we have a new CEO and president for North America.

She's also part of our group management committee, and she has a clear way forward. She doesn't make any prisoner.

I really look forward to that part. Let's wait and see.

For us still America, especially the US, Mexico, and Canada, is a huge growth area. We have good business in the pipeline in all aspects, whether it's the under-proportioned margin business and the high-end business.

Due to new business of sales growth, there shouldn't be any deterioration in margins. This is all true before the first missiles were dropped on Iran.

Now we need to see moving forward, but nothing is in the pipeline where I would say we have startup problems or any issues.

Okay. On the base oil availability?

Sorry for that. Base oil availability, if you look, for example, the one good thing for us in the last 10 years, we localized a lot of products in China, and there are base oils available in China, so that is okay.

What I normally don't know, how much crude comes from out of China, that whole supply chain I can't explain to you. If you go to Group III base oils, normally the countries are, if you go, in our thinking, from west to east, Canada, Finland, Korea, and partly also Middle East.

The other question is, when something from Korea comes, does it now go around the Strait of Hormuz, around of Africa? To be seen, so far, we are not aware, but there will be also for us shortages.

How we dealt with in 2022, because on some of our very technical high-end products, we have to declare to the customer any changes, but before they run dry, they ticked them all off. We were always transparent with them.

We said, okay, there's a Group III base oil coming from Korea, can we exchange it against one from Finland or from Canada? I think we were always able to do that.

In the worst case, we are also flying a critical chemical for a short period of time. As I said before, availability is important.

On the pricing side, it's not only that you necessarily have to do what you have to do, but you can also cater for some of the upheaval in your company at that time, we see that also as an opportunity.

Thanks very much, Stefan.

Thank you, Matthew.

Hello, good afternoon, and thank you for taking my questions. My first one is on the raw material price side, and it's twofold.

Back in 2022, FUCHS had mid-teen or seemingly low-teens price increase, and flat EBIT. Is there any reason to assume that this time is going to be different in '26, aside from the company being a bit more upfront with price increases, the FX is a bit less favorable?

On a secondary point, have any of the competitors of FUCHS indicated that they are, let's say, going to declare force majeure or be unable to deliver products at this stage? My last question is on the Asian OEMs.

China volume growth highlight of '25, BYD and a few others appear to be being a bit more cautious more recently. Is this slowdown factored into FUCHS guidance?

What does it make of how Asian OEMs are going to do moving over the course of '26? Thank you.

Thank you, Sebastian. Great question.

If you go back to the year 2022, on average, and you can't calculate that number, but on average, roughly we have increased all over all our selling price by 25% in the 1 year, which I find remarkable. We also had a little bit of a volume decline in that year, and therefore the profit was the same, which I found for such a year pretty good.

To answer that question. Competitors, I don't want to really comment on.

I get daily emails now from suppliers and from competitors, but I think we deal with our tasks, and our competition should deal with their tasks. At the moment, it's really to make sure you have availability for your existing customers, to work on the pipeline where you have the contracts in, to get the pricing through, and then it's not the time to take large volumes from competition, because there's only a limited availability in the market.

I had the question on the Asian OEMs as well, but helpful firstly, thank you. The second one is how BYD and so on are looking, and how FUCHS's Asian OEM business might behave.

Sorry for that. I missed that one.

As we also discussed beforehand, Sebastian, for us, I find that the cool tendency moving forward is that we develop in China for China. We have a lot of business, and always is mentioned BYD and Nio, those type of companies, but if you see, the leading company on wind energy is China.

We are the leading supplier in China. We have got all the approvals, and a lot of the wind mills and wind equipment erected in India, Africa, or South America comes from China.

We have the approvals, we have blending plants in those countries, we can take the Chinese approvals and supply the customers in the different countries. Therefore, we have now also what we call liaison officers out of China sitting in the large regions which we have to support doing business with those Chinese customers outside of China.

Helpful. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thanks for the lively discussion and for your questions.

Thank you.