Thank you. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for joining us for Vallourec's fourth quarter 2025 results presentation.

I'm Daniel Thomson, Director of Investor Relations at Vallourec. I'm joined today by Vallourec's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Philippe Guillemot, and Vallourec's Chief Financial Officer, Nathalie Delbreuve.

Before we begin our presentation, I would like to note that this conference call will be recorded. A replay will be available following the call.

You can find the audio webcast on our Investor Relations website. The presentation slides referred to during this call are also available for download here.

Today's call will contain forward-looking statements. Future results may differ materially from statements or projections made on today's call.

The forward-looking statements and risk factors that could affect those statements are referenced on slide 2 of today's presentation. They are also included in our universal registration document filed with the French financial markets regulator, the AMF.

This presentation will be followed by Q&A session. I'll now turn the call over to Philippe Guillemot.

Thank you, Dan. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for joining us to discuss Vallourec's fourth quarter and full year 2025 results.

You can see today's agenda on slide 3. I will move directly to slide 5, where I will start by discussing the highlights of 2025.

2025 was another transformative year for Vallourec. We progressed several major strategic initiatives and achieved key financial milestones.

We continued to drive operational excellence throughout the organization, including the execution of our cost reduction program in Brazil, completed in Q2, ahead of schedule. We significantly narrowed the profitability gap with our primary peers, demonstrating the effectiveness of our strategy and execution.

We stayed true to our value over volume operating model, securing a new and enhanced long-term agreement with Petrobras, winning major high-value tenders across the Middle East, and driving market share and margin growth in the US through our domestic footprint. We continued to streamline our sources and uses of capital, executing the sale of our non-core Serimax welding operations and redeeming 10% of our long-term notes.

Importantly, we also positioned the company for profitable growth. We successfully acquired and integrated Thermotite do Brasil, adding to our line pipe coating capabilities.

These are increasingly serving as a key differentiator in deepwater projects. In the US, we broke ground on a $48 million premium threading line investment in Youngstown to increase capacity to thread VAM high-torque connections, which are increasingly used in onshore wells with long laterals.

We made further progress on the Phase 2 extension of the mine, ahead of expected completion in 2027. As Nathalie will discuss, we built on our growing track record of consistent cash generation, with over €400 million of total cash generated in 2025 for the third straight year.

These improvements in our profitability and financial resilience were recognized with investment grade credit ratings across all three rating agencies, setting the stage for further optimization of our balance sheet on more favorable terms. Finally, in May, we paid a substantial dividend to shareholders for the first time in a decade, executed a minor buyback, and worked to enable our much more significant 2026 share buyback.

Let's turn to slide 6 to discuss our results and outlook. In the fourth quarter, we delivered solid results once again, with group EBITDA of €214 million, above the midpoint of our guidance.

This came with a robust 21% margin. We delivered excellent total cash generation of €177 million, thanks to robust collection and inventory management.

In the first quarter, we expect tubes EBITDA per ton to remain stable sequentially, while volumes will be below the Q4 2025 level due to slower international bookings in H2 2025. In Mine and Forest, production sold is expected to be around 1.4 million tons.

As a result, we expect Q1 EBITDA to range between €165 and €195 million. In the US, our assets remain highly utilized and recent booking activity remains strong.

Industry pricing has softened slightly, but we are encouraged by the downward trend in imports and the resilience of our customers' activity. In international markets, commercial activity remained somewhat subdued in H2 2025, but in the Middle East we are now seeing clear signs of acceleration, especially in markets with higher level of unconventional activity.

We see potential for activity to increase in the second semester and beyond as the oil market rebalances, gas-related activity increases, and our customers face accelerating decline rates. Turning to capital allocation, we are making good progress with our €200 million buyback announced in January, with €150 million remaining under the current program.

We have purchased 3 million shares year-to-date. Now let me provide you with an update on 2026 shareholder return on slide 7.

Today, I am pleased to announce Vallourec's expectation to propose, in addition to the €200 million share buyback, an interim dividend of approximately €450 million to be distributed in the third quarter this year. This would take the total return to shareholders to approximately €650 million between January and August 2026, representing a year-on-year increase of around €280 million.

This distribution represents approximately 90% of our 2025 total cash generation and 100% of the proceeds of the warrants, which are expected to be exercised before the end of June. We have adopted a balanced distribution framework, limiting warrant dilution through buybacks, growing our dividend, and maintaining a defensive balance sheet.

Based on our current share price, this distribution represents a potential interim dividend of €1.75 per share, including the anticipated dilution from the exercise of warrants. This is a healthy increase of 25 cents compared to last year's €1.5 per share.

Turning to slide 8, we show the usual comparison versus our primary public peer. The trend is clearly positive over the past year, and we remain focused on eliminating the gap entirely.

We continue to outperform in terms of return on capital, which is a key focus of our medium-term roadmap. On that note, let's turn to slide 10 for an update on our strategy priorities.

We have made substantial efforts to streamline our core asset base over the past several years, but there is still work to be done. Our key strategic priorities in 2026 are directed at unlocking this potential.

First, we will continue to drive operational excellence throughout the group. This is not a passive process.

We are actively implementing a new management system which is firmly results-driven and embedded in daily operations across all business functions. Bertrand Frischmann, our Chief Operations Officer, is responsible for its implementation.

We look forward on sharing more about this program with you in the coming months. Secondly, we will continue to optimize our asset base to drive improved return on capital.

Third, we are actively investing to position ourselves for profitable growth. Let me talk about a few examples on these later two initiatives now.

Let's turn to slide 11. Here, you can see the targeted set of high-return projects we have executed since the launch of the New Vallourec plan in 2022.

You will recall we began with a major downsizing of our rolling capacity in Germany and right-sizing in China and ultimately Brazil. We made the strategic decision to close loss-making capacity and exit low-margin business.

More recently, our focus has turned to the upstream and downstream elements of our value chain and is more about enabling profitable growth than shrinking our assets. In our upstream process, we have invested to expand capacity for high-quality iron ore production at our mine in Brazil.

Production from the Phase 1 extension started at the end of 2024. We are now working on Phase 2, with completion still scheduled for sometime in 2027.

We are now undertaking project to reconfigure our steelmaking assets in Brazil to reduce complexity and maximize operational flexibility, including the ability to run our steelmaking operations without the use of our blast furnace. In our downstream operations, we are investing heavily in our threading and coating capabilities, where technology barriers and returns on capital are higher.

We are adding to our threading line capability in the US, adding both large diameter and high-torque capabilities. Meanwhile, we see significant opportunities in advanced coating solutions and will be investing in both line pipe and OCTG coating line this year.

All of these projects will be executed within our expected capex envelope of €150 to €200 million, on top of significantly increased spending on safety initiatives, as laid out in our capital allocation framework. Let's turn to slide 12 to discuss one way in which we are positioning for profitable growth.

At our Capital Market Day in 2023, we highlighted our favorable positioning in the conventional geothermal market and the upside that could materialize in more advanced technologies. We are now seeing clear signs that these next-generation technologies are moving towards widespread adoption.

The momentum is driven by rising demand for low-carbon, baseload, and dispatchable power, with AI hyperscalers investing heavily to secure supply. The IEA has recently highlighted a fivefold surge in next-generation geothermal financing over the past 3 years to $2.2 billion in 2025.

The increase in financing has been underpinned by rapid technological progress, much of which relates to learnings from the shale industry. With drillings and well costs representing up to 80% of total costs, significant improvements in drilling speeds are dramatically improving geothermal project economics.

You can see the high potential of this market in the chart on the right, which comes on top of expected growth in conventional geothermal. We are already experiencing a significant increase in our geothermal bookings as our customers begin to execute on development pipelines that are orders of magnitude above today's installed capacity.

We are uniquely positioned to benefit from this growth thanks to our domestic footprint in the two largest markets for geothermal today: the US and Indonesia. Our cutting-edge research and development expertise has allowed us to continuously improve our product offering to meet the high demands of geothermal wells placed on tubular products.

We can pair these products with our world-class service offerings. Let's look more closely at the next-generation geothermal opportunity.

I am on slide 13. You can see the elements that differentiate traditional geothermal from next-generation applications.

On the left, you have conventional geothermal, which has seen steady growth over time, but is restricted by the requirements for hot water reservoirs and sufficient subsurface permeability. In the middle, enhanced geothermal mitigates the permeability constraint by using shale-like technology to add subsurface fractures into deeper conventional geothermal systems.

In closed loops or advanced geothermal, the only requirement is hot rock, with no need for an external water source or permeable rock. Naturally, this opens up the resource potential exponentially.

Turning to slide 14, you can see the typical characteristics for each geothermal development type. Much like the oil and gas industry used rapidly advancing technology to tap into unconventional and ultra-deepwater fields in the early 2000s, the geothermal industry is pushing technological boundaries that open new markets.

Vallourec is ideally positioned from its expertise in shale development to serve enhanced geothermal markets. Similarly, our unique vacuum insulated tubing solution is ideal for closed-loop systems.

This is not a fantasy. We are already serving customers across all of these product categories.

Clearly, though, the growth potential in next-generation solutions coupled with Vallourec's higher revenue opportunity per megawatt makes the growth in advanced and enhanced applications quite compelling. As you may have seen, in January, we announced an exclusive partnership with XGS Energy to support their delivery of a 3-gigawatt pipeline of commercial advanced geothermal projects across the Western US.

We hope this will be the first of many such fruitful relationships in this industry. Now let's turn to our usual discussion on the OCTG market.

I am on slide 16, where we focus on the US market. On the demand front, the horizontal oil rig count has been stable since mid-2025.

Gas-directed drilling activity has increased through 2025 and into 2026. A wave of LNG project start-ups and growing domestic gas demand is supporting market expectations.

Rigs drilling for gas now account for a quarter of the total count, up from 17% a year ago. Looking at the supply side, imports continue to decline through the fourth quarter following the administration's increase in Section 232 steel tariffs in June.

Notably, we can see from the chart that the tariffs have been more effective in curbing seamless imports compared to welded imports. On the right, seamless spot pricing has moderated slightly since the third quarter, though prices increased in both January and February alongside improving sentiment.

Overall, we are encouraged by the improving supply-side dynamics and the resilience of our customers' activity. Let's move to the international OCTG market on slide 17.

Demand remains stable in international markets, but was somewhat subdued in 2025 compared to the beginning of 2024. We saw slower tender activity in the second half of 2025 that will cause us to start 2026 at a slower shipment cadence.

In most of our core regions, in the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America, we have continued to perform well, in part due to our strong positions in high-value markets like unconventional gas and deepwater. Looking ahead, in the Middle East we are seeing some signs of an activity acceleration, especially in markets with higher levels of unconventional activity for which we are supporting customers today with our high-torque premium connections.

Our premium portfolio often allows us to outperform the price indicators we show on the right side of this slide. That said, the latest outlook from Rystad does show an improvement in market pricing in January.

I confirm that our average booking prices for international markets have remained at healthy levels due to our ongoing focus on value over volume. I will now hand the call over to Nathalie to comment on our financial results.

Thank you, Philippe, and good morning, everyone. Let me now lead you through our key figures and results for Q4 and the full year 2025.

Let's turn to slide 19 to discuss our full year results and the key figures. As you can see, tube volumes were 1,244 kilotons for the full year 2025, down slightly year-over-year with lower tubes volumes in South America and Eastern Hemisphere not fully offset by stronger volumes in the US.

The full year EBITDA was €819 million versus €832 million for the full year 2024. This slight decline includes a significant adverse foreign exchange impact of €47 million.

Tubes volume decline was more than offset by positive price mix effect in tubes, stronger contribution from Mine and Forest, and continued cost reduction initiatives, maintaining a strong 21% margin. Net income was €355 million versus €452 million in 2024.

Let's remember that 2024 was impacted by positive one-offs, with the sale of the Rathsattel in Germany generating a gain of sale of €139 million and with our refinancing last year. Overall, we continue to build on our track record of generating consistent net income.

Net cash ended the year at €39 million, slightly higher than end of 2024 and after €370 million having been returned to shareholders. Moving to slide 20, we can see that we continue to build on our track record in Q4.

It has now been 13 quarters that the EBITDA margin has been around 20%, showing the strong resilience of the group, its ability to adjust costs and maintain a strong margin. Since 2022, we have been reducing our working capital requirement in number of days, as you can see on the top right.

In Q4 2025, we further improved our working capital requirement with robust collections and inventory management. You can see on the bottom left that we have a track record of healthy positive total cash generation, with €177 million total cash generated in Q4 2025, which leads to positive cash at the end of the year, as you can see on the right.

Let's turn now to slide 21 to start discussing our Q4 results and key figures. Revenues were €1,043 million, down 2% year-over-year, but again impacted by negative currency effects of -6%, revenues at constant foreign exchange rate are up 4%.

Reduction in volume sold were more than offset by improvement in price mix and minor positive effect in Mine and Forest. EBITDA was €214 million or 20.5% of revenues, stable compared to Q4 2024.

Foreign exchange impact quarter-over-quarter is negative by €10 million. Like for the full year, the positive price mix effect in tubes across all regions as well as lower costs and cost savings did offset the impact of lower volumes, which I will comment in the next slide.

Adjusted free cash flow in Q4 2025 was €204 million to be compared to €178 million in Q4 2024, which I will comment in more details later. This led, as we saw, to a net cash position is €39 million achieved at the year-end.

We will now look at tube performance in Q4 on slide 22 and also 23. Looking at volumes, page 22, you can see that volumes were stronger quarter-over-quarter, as we guided.

They were lower year-over-year, mainly due to our US import business in the Gulf of America, as expected, and certain regions in Eastern Hemisphere. Average selling price was higher year-over-year as mix shifted more to international in Q4.

Overall, Q4 tubes revenue was 2% higher year-over-year and even 8% higher at constant foreign exchange rate. Revenue mix by geography that you see in the bottom left shows a reduction in North America contribution due to the decrease in imports versus Q4 2024, but also to a strong contribution from Middle East.

Slide 23, we can see the tubes profitability. Tubes EBITDA was €183 million and 18% of revenue.

As you can see, our margin is very stable and resilient. Tubes EBITDA per ton at €548 increased by €37 per ton year-over-year and even €65 if you consider constant foreign exchange rate, confirming, again, the positive impact of our value over volume strategy.

The decrease versus Q3 2024 EBITDA per ton is due to a less favorable mix this quarter and a lower proportion of services. Let's move now and look at the Mine and Forest performance on slide 24.

The production sold in Q4 2025 was close to 1.5 million tons, outperforming our expectations voiced during our Q3 call, leading to full year volume of 6.2 million tons. Mine and Forest EBITDA, as you can see on the right bottom, reached €38 million and 48% of total revenue, increasing sequentially by 10%.

This reflects higher iron ore market prices, partially offset by seasonally lower volumes. For the full year, EBITDA reached €171 million, up significantly year-over-year, reflecting higher quality in ore after the start-up of the Phase 1 extension in late 2024.

Let's look now on slide 25 at our net income key drivers and evolution. We continue to deliver a solid bottom line, as you can see on the right.

In Q4, net income was €96 million, that is 9% of total revenue, net income group share. You can see that Q4 2024 net result was higher at €163 million.

Again, as already explained, in 2024, the group net result had benefited from the one-off book gain on sale of the Rathsattel in Germany for €139 million. Looking on the left at Q4 and the bridge from EBITDA to net income group share, you can see that depreciation and amortization amount to -€52 million, very much in line with previous quarters and Q4.

Financial result is -€16 million. The other pillar of the bridge includes restructuring and some one-off impacts, such as, in the quarter, a positive reversal of impairment of assets in China for +€38 million, reflecting the good operational performance and evolution of China.

Income tax is -€35 million. Effective tax rate was 26% in Q4 2025.

Let's look now at cash flow analysis on slide 26. We can see how we convert EBITDA into cash flow for the quarter and for the full year.

We had excellent total cash generation in Q4 of €177 million, resulting in over 80% conversion of EBITDA to cash, thanks to robust collection and inventory management, driving the change in working capital that you see on the left. Capex was -€55 million, a bit elevated versus prior quarters, as work continues on our growth projects.

As you can see on the right, we did remain within the €150 to €200 million range, as disclosed in our CMD in the full year 2025, with total capex for the year of €176 million. For the full year 2025, we delivered over €400 million of total cash generation for the third straight year, with restructuring costs halving year-over-year and continued structural improvement in our working capital as we optimize our operations.

In the last slide, let's look at our debt and liquidity. Thanks to the excellent net cash generation I just commented, we turned net cash positive in Q4 with +€39 million of cash on the balance sheet at the end of the year.

As you can see on the right, we have significant liquidity above €1.6 billion, of which nearly €1 billion in cash.

Thank you, Nathalie. Let's turn to slide 29 to discuss our outlook.

Starting with our tubes business, in the first quarter we expect volumes to decrease sequentially. EBITDA per ton should remain similar to the fourth quarter level.

For the full year, we expect our North America tubes business to see sustained strength in volume thanks to market share gains during 2025. We expect a slight near-term decrease in US market prices, with improving industry supply-demand conditions, setting the stage for potential improvement later in the year.

In our international tubes business, we expect lower sales volume in H1 2026 due to slower bookings in H2 2025. We see activity recovery in the key Middle Eastern markets, setting the stage for higher second-half volumes.

We expect market pricing to remain broadly stable versus the second half of 2025, with discrete customer contracts driving selective price upside. For Mine and Forest, we expect production sold to be around 1.4 million tons in the first quarter.

We expect full year production of around 5.5 million tons, slightly lower year-over-year due to an improved production process focusing on value over volume. At the group level, we expect our first quarter EBITDA to range between €165 and €195 million.

Let's conclude on slide 30. We are driving further improvements in return on capital through a relentless push towards operational excellence and asset streamlining.

We are positioning for future profitable growth through targeted research and development and capital investments to solve the energy challenges of today and tomorrow. Finally, we are delivering on our commitments to shareholders, targeting a substantial €650 million in shareholder returns in the first 8 months of 2026, while maintaining our crisis-proof balance sheet.

Thank you again for your attention. Nathalie and I are now ready to take your questions.

Hi, guys. Thank you very much for your time.

I'd like to ask two questions. Firstly, what's about the buyback and distributions?

You've guided €650 million of payout to shareholder in 2026. I just wanted to ask about the allocation, and why you've allocated additional cash to dividend rather than to buyback to kind of offset some of the dilution impact of the warrants in 2026?

Then my second question was on working capital. You've had a big release this quarter.

I wanted to go into a little bit more detail on what the drivers of that is, and also how do we think about working capital in 2026? Thank you very much.

First, I will take your first question. As we have launched a share buyback plan for €200 million to be executed by end of June.

Given the daily volume traded and obviously how we can execute share buyback, I think we we were a bit capped, and that's why we only allocated €200 million out of this 650 to share buyback, remaining being, as you have seen, the sum of the proceeds of the share buyback of of the of the warrants and what was not used for the share buyback from the total cash generation of 2025. Second, on the return on capital employed and working cap, you clearly understood that since I joined, my main focus was on deleveraging the balance sheet of Vallourec, and we reached the zero net debt end of 2024.

Again, end of 2025, we have a positive net cash of €39 million. The levers we have used to achieve such performance was obviously to work on every aspect of our capital employed starting with the working cap.

By the way, there is a nice slide in Nathalie's presentation where you can see that our working cap in days of sales continued to decrease, and we still see further room for further improvement. On our asset base, as I have mentioned in my presentation, we continue to question and challenge any asset we have in Vallourec which is not absolutely needed to generate, obviously, the performance we're contemplating.

Great. Thank you very much.

Hi there. Good morning.

Thanks for taking my questions. I wanted to start on the mine, if I could.

You touched on new strategy, sort of value over volume there. I wondered if you could give us any update in terms of where you might put new guidance, perhaps, for annual EBITDA for that business versus what you've presented in the past?

What is the net-net of that strategy? I suppose a follow-up would be: does that have any implications for future mine expansion plans that you've talked to before, please?

That'd be the first one. Then the second one would be, thank you for the updates, as ever, around the US sort of OCTG market.

We can see those seamless imports coming down. I think the one sort of topic that scratching my head a bit is domestic supply in the US.

It was actually a source of a lot of supply growth in 2025, which doesn't seem to get much airtime. I just wondered if you could talk to the drivers of increased supply, domestic production in 2025.

If you saw the picture any differently for 2026? Your insights there would be really appreciated.

Thank you.

Okay. Thank you.

Let's start with the mine. First, we are very consistent with what we said in September 20 2023 about what we expect from the mine.

You remember Phase 1 now fully executed, around €100 million EBITDA. Phase 2, completed, 125.

There is no deviation versus what we said in 2023. What has changed in the meantime is that we have applied our recipe for success, value over volume, to the mine too.

Today, we extract less ROM, but we are able to generate to produce more iron ore, more high-quality iron ore, and obviously the EBITDA we are looking for. That's the logic behind this.

Again, I insist, no change versus what we said in September 2023 about what we expect from the mine. As far as the US mark OCTG US market is concerned, several yeah, first, imports have declined since the implementation of the 232 import tariff, which obviously let customers to buy more from domestic capacities.

In fact, first effect is a better use of existing domestic capacities starting with ours. As I said, we have nice volumes, and we are well loaded with our capacity today.

On top, what we see is a better sentiment, and as you have seen, pipe logic slightly going up in Jan, in Feb again, which obviously give us confidence that at some point the balance between supply and demand will translate into upward pressure on prices. This is likely to, obviously, happen in 2026.

On top, as we mentioned, we have invested in additional capacity to produce high-torque connection for unconventional drilling. That's the change in the market.

The market is becoming more premium. As as you have seen, our customers are able to produce as much oil with less rigs, less wells, thanks to this technology.

Obviously, there is real appetite for this technology that we have developed and for which we have gained market share. Obviously, we intend to continue to gain market share.

Perfect. Thank you.

Appreciate all the color. I'll hand it on.

Yes. Good morning.

Thanks for taking the questions. I have two, if I may.

The first one is maybe to understand a bit more the Q1 guidance, because at the time of the Q3 earnings, we were mentioning some shift in volumes from Q4 2025 to H1 2026. I was wondering if the lower volumes that you mentioned for Q1 means that those volume has been shifting to Q2 and maybe to understand a bit more the implication that we saw between the two quarters?

The second one, you talked about the geothermal activities during the presentation quite a lot, and recently you signed a deal with XGS. When we make some maths with the elements that you shared with us, this framework agreement could represent quite a lot of revenue, maybe something like 1.5 billion.

I was wondering if you can share a bit with us how you do see this XGS partnership impacting the revenue for Vallourec in 2026, 7, and 8, please?

Going back to Q1 volume being lower than Q4, I remind you that our volume in Q4 were much higher than Q3. Obviously, this has to be put in perspective.

When oil price started to go down, we have seen last year in H2 customers not canceling investment plans, but taking more time to decide on their investment and placing orders. That's what's reflected in our bookings and will translate in H1 in our invoicing.

Again, as I said, we see clear pick-up since the beginning of the year as, by the way, oil price went up $10 since. That's why I think the profile of this year, volumewise, is likely to be similar to the one of 2025.

As far as geothermal is concerned, yeah, thank you for noticing, obviously, bouncing back on what we said on geothermal. It's a new market which is opening.

Again, 3 years ago, obviously, we decided to, obviously, invest time and money on research and development on new application for our know-how. This geothermal enhanced and advanced technology was the right bet.

Yes, today, and thanks to the data centers which are popping everywhere and the huge need for baseload electricity, this technology now have, obviously, good prospect. As I said, there is more project in the pipeline than the existing installed base, and we are positioned on it.

We mentioned about XGS for which we provide unique technology. We are the only one able to provide the famous VIT technology, vacuum insulated tubes.

When you do the math, yes, I think your conclusion is the right one. I think these wells, because geothermal is based on wells, require technologies, premium technologies we have.

Obviously, this will come on top of our technologies to support our customers on unconventional, more gas-directed production.

Sorry if I may, follow-up, how would you, in a way, see the phasing? Would you consider that those opportunities will mostly materialize in 2028 because those guy needs to get a lot of financing or you do see already a lot of stuff in 2027, for example, or even sooner?

Data centers need electricity now and in the next years, there's no time to wait, and geothermal project can be executed as fast as they can drill. It's already today.

Obviously, it will ramp up nicely over the next years, but it's not something for the future. It's already something for project which are currently in execution phase.

Okay. Thanks.

Thanks a lot.

Hi. Yes, good morning, everybody.

Two questions from my side. First one is, if I look at your slide, page 11, I see you still have, let's say, a quite dense investment program for 2026.

Does it mean that in terms of capex, we should be in the upper range of your, let's say, capex guidance that you give in 2025? Second question, the geothermal market versus hydrogen market, it seems that you are more bullish right now on geothermal than, let's say, on hydrogen market.

What is your view on the hydrogen market? Is it, let's say, the next wave after geothermal in terms of sequence for you?

Thanks a lot.

As far as capex is concerned, yeah, we gave you on page 11 a sense of what we have been doing since 2022. Many projects, obviously, are in execution phase in 2026.

Nevertheless, we will be within the envelope we shared with you, between 150 to 200. No risk to go beyond what we said.

We stay, obviously, very disciplined on our capital allocation. The good news is that, obviously, the return on investment of all these projects is fairly consistent with our will to increase over time our return on capital employed.

As far as hydrogen and geothermal is concerned, it's true that 3 years ago nobody was talking about Gen AI, nobody was talking about data centers, hyperscale. Today, that's a fact.

There is a lot of investment. There is need for baseload electricity, and geothermal is one of the solution to provide this huge quantities of baseload electricity.

It's clear that it's come now faster than hydrogen and green hydrogen. Nevertheless, on green hydrogen, we're in talks with many customers whose project are in the FEED phase, engineering phase, which sooner or later will reach the FID stage, investment decision stage.

That's something to come, that will come on top. As you remember, our Delphy storage solution is the only one available today to store between 1 and 100 ton of hydrogen.

More to come. As you remember, we've decided to manage this business as a turnkey business.

Obviously, it could be a nice addition to our revenue and profitability in the future, and it's fully part of our 5-year plan.

Thank you very much.

Hi. Thank you for taking my question.

I have two, please. The first one would be about maybe your take on your German partner's agreement regarding HKM JV.

Do you have something to share with us or something like that? The second question about your improvement in EBITDA per ton, could you give us what come from downstream investment versus let's say historical restructuring of existing capacities?

Thank you.

First, on HKM, yeah, the agreement between Thyssenkrupp and Salzgitter opened the door for us as Thyssenkrupp will do to sell our shares to Salzgitter and terminate our shareholding of HKM. Obviously, there will be we'll have to provision for all the works that this server will have to do when they will be.

This is fully already covered by our balance sheet provisions. I think for us it's a good news.

I think Thyssenkrupp and Salzgitter have reached this agreement and that now we can execute this transaction. As far as EBITDA per ton is concerned, EBITDA is a result of, obviously, average selling price, which is driven by our value over volume strategy.

You remember, when I joined Vallourec, volume were 1.850 million tons. We are now slightly above 1.2.

Drastic change with the past, but average selling price has significantly increased. EBITDA per ton is a consequence of cost.

We have worked a lot in the last years, and we continue to do so to continue to lower our cost structure and ensure it's a very highly flexible industrial footprint. Whatever the volume, we protect our margin thanks to our ability to flex cost whenever we need it to adapt to the sequence of bookings and the cycle of this industry.

That's why we have been able to close the gap with our primary peer on EBITDA per ton, and you've seen the data on the slide showed earlier. We will, obviously, continue to do so, and we have projects in order to continue to improve on that front.

Thank you very much.

Hello. It's Mick here from Barclays.

Just a quick one. You talk about the international business improving in the second half.

Is there anything significant that we should be keeping an eye on, something like the big Kuwait orders, or is it just a general tick-up across the regions?

First, two things. One, when a barrel of Brent is going up $10, it's clear that there is an incentive for our customers to go a bit faster on executing their plans.

Second, what we see is that there are major unconventional oilfield opening which require many wells using our technologies starting with VAM high-torque, so that's something which seems to, yeah, pick up significantly since the beginning of the year. We may communicate more widely in the future on this.

Thank you.

Hi, guys. Am I able to ask one more?

Yeah. Please.

I just wanted to touch on Venezuela quickly. One of your peers spoke in length about opportunity in Venezuela.

I kind of wanted to ask about your position in the country and whether this is a market you think you'll be able to sell volumes into in the relatively near future? Thank you.

We used to sell to Venezuela years ago. What has changed in the meantime is now, thanks to all the investment we did in Brazil, we are able to make the pipe which are needed for Venezuela in Brazil, obviously much closer than it was in the past coming from Germany.

The onshore oilfield in Brazil are sour, you need sour service pipes, which we make and which are, obviously, very premium pipes. From a product standpoint, I think we are uniquely positioned.

On top, as given our strong presence in the US, we're the number two player on onshore business in the US, we have close relationship with the US customers. Today we have a task force which is a mix of our US sales team and Brazilian production team in order to seize any opportunities that may come in Venezuela.

More to come. Will depend, obviously, how fast our customer go forward with their project.

Great. Thank you.

Good morning. My question also relate to geothermal.

You mentioned, rightly, that the product you will deliver is very specific, with kind of pipe-in-pipe, also. Do you have a limiting factor which would be the capacity to produce those pipes in terms of your growth in sales or do you have a strong capacity to do this?

We have available capacity. VIT is a process in itself, because we need to weld one pipe inside another pipe, so that's a specific industrial setup that we have and for which we have capacity available.

No, obviously, it's clear that if we double our volume thanks to this new market, at some point we will reach our capacity limit, but it's not yet the case. Anyway, it's good to know that to be on more than one market, and obviously to mitigate any up and downs on any market that is the one in oil and gas.

Understood. From what you said, the EBITDA associated to this growth in geothermal could rapidly become in the tens of millions or could it be maybe at a later stage in the hundreds of millions?

In 2022, I said that we were expecting between, or maybe in 2023, that we were expecting between 10% and 15% of our group EBITDA coming from this new energy applications. It's fully part of it, and obviously we are very strict with our value over volume strategy, and I can guarantee you that it will not be dilutive to our EBITDA per ton.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. Thank you all.

I'm very pleased to be in the position we're today. Vallourec is a fully transformed company, evidenced clearly by our investment grade balance sheet and the robust returns we are delivering to our shareholders again in 2026.

Meanwhile, we continue to see opportunities as we drive operational excellence across our organization and position for profitable growth. We are well-positioned to serve the energy challenges of today and tomorrow.

Operator, you may end the call.