Operator
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the conference call devoted to the financial performance of Grupa Azoty published yesterday. The results will be presented by Andrzej Skolmowski, CEO, Andrzej Dawidowski, Vice President, and Paweł Bielski, Vice President of the Management Board.
Before we move on to the presentation, let me remind you that you can ask questions via the grupaazoty.pl website. The floor is over to Andrzej Skolmowski.
Andrzej Skolmowski
20 months have passed of very demanding negotiations with financing institutions and recovery measures. As a result, we have gained approval for the publication of the stabilizing agreement.
We also secured a waiver for the non-delivery of the net debt to EBITDA ratio in order to stabilize the performance across the Azoty Group. All the leading companies across the group reported better performance in the nine months of 2025 compared to the previous year.
EBITDA for the nine months of 2025 came in at almost 390 million PLN. Excluding Grupa Azoty Polyolefins, it was up and came in at 315.9 million PLN.
The improvement of our performance in a very challenging macro situation is the result of the delivery of an end-to-end Azoty Business Recovery Program. I therefore emphasize the importance of this program and the involvement of the employees across the Azoty Group.
Thank you very much for your engagement and involvement. We have published the strategy until 2030.
We will deliver this strategy while restructuring bank debt. The strategy lives up to our competencies, ambitions, and possibilities, and will only focus on our core business.
We will deliver the strategy in a very challenging market situation. Core segments: fertilizers, chemicals, and advanced chemicals, and plastics, we will face a lot of problems.
We will focus on logistics, and we also will focus on the new segment: chemicals for defense. We have convened the General Meeting of Shareholders in order to take a decision on a two-stage issue of shares in order to recapitalize the company and deliver strategic investments.
In the first phase, we want to issue more than 33 million Series E shares of a total value of 600 million PLN addressed only to the State Treasury with no pre-emptive rights for former shareholders. Second stage, we consider the issue of, or maybe a couple of issues of up to 40.5 million PLN, excluding pre-emptive rights as well, addressed to market investors and the State Treasury as well.
After the two stages of the issue, the share of the State Treasury in our shareholder structure would not exceed 50%. This is a very important stage in the restructuring of our bank debt process and is expected by the entire market and our investors.
Grupa Azoty Polyolefins had an impact on our performance, a negative impact. However, it was down year-on-year due to a one-off event, that is the payout of guarantees.
This is a one-off event, as I said, because to a large extent due to the underutilization of our capacities due to lengthy shutdowns, regulation of our plants, and repairs of our plants, but also a very low demand in the polypropylene market and low spreads, which were due to macro situation. Our operations at Grupa Azoty Polyolefins is not profitable still.
It's worth emphasizing that the limited cash that we have at hand as well as the agreements we have between financing institutions impacts the delivery of the Polyolefins project. Our special purpose vehicle also has an impact under the agreements with the general contractor, and we paid out more than 170 million PLN—that is EUR under this agreement—and due to delivery of the contract, and we focused on the plans, schedules for the repairs and recovery of our operations for this particular plant.
This was welcomed by the financing institutions and should be financed by the guarantee. However, this plan has never been delivered due to the fact that the banks did not agree to it in the end.
In October, there was a set-off by the financing institutions in part to the payout or payback of the credits. On October 15th, ORLEN placed a non-binding offer for the purchase of all the shares of Grupa Azoty Polyolefins at the value of 1.02 billion PLN.
This offering assumes that all the shares and assets will be taken over on a cash-free, debt-free basis, and we will receive sources of cash to finance our payables. We focus on this offering very much.
We have signaled time and again that the solution to our problems related to this project will be delivered in cooperation with ORLEN. A word of gratitude to all our business partners, to all our customers for your trust on an ongoing basis.
This is a great capital and it will bear fruit and bring the company back on track. A word of gratitude to our employees as well for their involvement in this recovery process, the fight, the struggle to have savings on a daily basis.
Without this involvement, we wouldn't have been able to perform better results. Let us now move on to discuss the situation in the market.
The market environment, especially in terms of the prices of electricity, gas, and coal in the third quarter was favorable to Grupa Azoty. In the third quarter of 2025, we see declines, especially in terms of the prices of gas based on LNG supplies from outside of Europe to Europe.
Only in September, prices stabilized, and we saw an upward trend, and the main determinant here was the publication of assumptions for the EU's 19th sanctions package and instability in the Middle East. In terms of electricity, the price of electricity, we see a decline in the third quarter, especially due to increased production from renewable energy sources year-on-year going up by 1% in Poland, and as a result, unstable operation of conventional sources that are coal and gas-based sources towards the end of Q3 2025, which translated into a higher price of gas.
In the case of coal, at the end of the quarter, we saw the lowest levels of prices of coal for the past four years, which was due mainly to higher production from renewable energy sources in China and increased demand and consumption across the entire continent of Asia, which translated into a major drop in the price of coal, also due to lower prices of gas, making it easier to use coal sources and gas sources, and as a result, it is translated into lower prices of coal itself. In terms of the agro segment, the agro market, it was to a large extent determined by the situation and sentiment of farmers, which were relatively low in terms of expectations for the prices of agriculture products across the quarter.
The demand was dwindling for fertilizers, it was very weak, and also the global balance for the demand did not improve the prices levels. The prices went up for urea fertilizers, which increased the prices across the board for all other nitrogen-based products in the group.
Towards the end of quarter 3 2025, we see instability in terms of regulatory environment or expectations related to the European Union, especially CBAM and ETS2, which did not translate positively into the situation of producers across the European Union. The European market for compound fertilizers was characterized by low levels and stabilization of prices.
The demand for such products were pretty low in this period, and the spreads between feedstocks and the final product prices were shrinking. Conversely, higher spreads were only seen for ammonium phosphate, DAP, and in this area spreads in the third quarter were going up.
Upward trends were seen for the prices of our main feedstocks, that is sulfur and potassium chloride, while phosphate prices were stable.
When it comes to the challenges related to the agro segments, we still see impact of import of product both from the east and from the other regions from outside of EU and Europe. We can We've noted a significant decrease of almost 45% year-to-year when it comes to import of fertilizers, but still the volumes that arrived to Poland in the third quarter first half a year 2025 were ground-breaking, and this, in case of the division of sales in fertilizers in our region, meaning Poland, is going to have a significant impact on our sales till the end of 2025.
We've noticed that the decrease of volumes of imported products from Russia and Belarus of over 76% is positively transposed, but the results, as we've communicated before, are going to be visible in the first quarter of 2026. When it comes to chemicals, stable spreads in products of titanium white, the market is still under pressure when it comes to decreased consumptions from automotive segments and construction segment.
Similar case in oxo alcohols, here spreads are stable with a slight increase tendency in the third quarter of 2025. Segment of plastics, this is probably the most challenging ones in Grupa Azoty, especially when it comes to automotive segment and increasing import from Asia, especially from China.
It's not only about the product polyamide 6, but also ready-made products and ready-made cars, which are being imported from China, and relate to decrease in production in the EU. Significant decrease of raw materials and prices of products, very low level of prices from the very beginning of the first quarter 2023, don't allow us for rentable sales of this category of products.
With completed 20 months of talks, and we consequently implement the previously accepted repair program, and we, on an ongoing basis, are presenting the results of it. We've completed almost 20 months of demanding talks with financing institutions, we've been implementing consequently the accepted plan, and we, on an ongoing basis, are presenting the results of it to financial institutions.
The result of talks is an agreement, a consent to continue the stabilizing agreement. It's currently binding till 28th of November.
As I said before, we've we've also been working on solutions, and we still work on solutions that are going to allow the group to shift from the understandings with banks that were established for several weeks or a dozen of weeks to a to a phase of long-term understanding. At the same time, we are preparing for the new emission of shares of Azoty Group.
We underline that on the ongoing basis, we are meeting all the duties of ours related to paying the debt, which are resolved under the financing agreements, and this ensures the maintenance of the current situation. For the nine months of this year, the group increased the utilization of multi-purpose credit limits to by 54 million Polish zlotys and utilization of factoring limits by 117 million.
The banking net debt to EBITDA ratio at 30th September of 2025, just as it was in the case of 30th of June 2025, was recorded a positive value, and it equaled over 14 times, 13 times. The positive EBITDA caused that the net debt and investment expenses that we've been implementing caused that the net debt was increasing in a limited way.
It was 263 million Polish zlotys, and on the 30th of September 2025, the group's available credit limits amounted to 2028 million Polish zlotys. 1 billion 296 million zlotys is Grupa Azoty Polyolefins, and the factoring of the total available financing limits at 30th of September 2025 equaled to 1.726 million.
An additional liquidity buffer of the group's net cash balance, which amounted to 732 million at September 2025. The stabilization agreement of the Grupa Azoty Polyolefins with financing institutions, which regards financing of Polimery Police project, expired on the 30th of September 2025.
As per the day on the date of the creation of the report, we have ongoing talks with the banks about the continuation. On the 1st of August, we have signed a memorandum of understanding before Grupa Azoty, Grupa Azoty Police, Grupa Azoty Polyolefins, and ORLEN, effective retroactively from 31st of July 2025.
The conclusion of the memorandum constitutes another important step in the process of seeking solutions aimed at stabilizing the financial situation of Grupa Azoty Polyolefins. On the 14th of August 2025, Grupa Azoty Polyolefins decided to withdraw on the 14th of August from the EPC contract for reasons attributable to the contractor and to charge the contractor contractual penalties in connection with the withdrawal of the amount of and the withdrawal notice and the debit note were for the contractual penalties were delivered to the contractor on 14th of August.
On the 15th of October, we've received from ORLEN a non-binding offer to acquire shares in Grupa Azoty Polyolefins. The offer related to company's shares, including assets comprising it, free of encumbrances and on a cash-free, debt-free basis.
On the 13th of October, the financing institutions satisfied their due receivables accounting to 76.8 million euro under the credit agreement for financing the Polimery Police project. The financial results that we presented for the third quarter are in line with the published estimates that we've published several days ago.
Grupa Azoty has 2.9 billion of income in the third quarter, which means a decrease year-by-year by 6%. This is mainly driven by lower revenues in the Advanced Chemicals segment, in the businesses related to plastics and chemicals.
The Agro segment maintained a positive year-on-year revenue growth trend. The group reported EBITDA of 391 million Polish zlotys with the margin 13.5% in the relationship to the same period of the last year.
The consolidated EBITDA increased by 511 million and EBITDA margin by 17.4 percentage points. The improvement of EBIT and EBITDA was recorded across all Grupa Azoty segments.
In the results of the third quarter, we've taken into account the settlement of the EPC contract related to Polimery Police project recognized on the one-off item in 316 Polish zlotys. The consolidated EBITDA of the group for the third quarter without Polyolefins would amount to 186 million Polish zlotys.
The main factors affecting the year-on-year change in EBITDA were as follows: one-off events that I spoke about related to implementation of Polimery Police project, the total positive impact of them equaled to more or less 316 million, and moderate changes in raw material prices. The costs in the third quarter 2025 year-on-year decreased by 53 million Polish zlotys, mainly in the sector of the costs of labor due to lower amount of jobs in the whole of Azoty Group.
There was an improvement in the efficiency of the group's. In the third quarter of 2025, Grupa Azoty noted lower costs of the use of raw materials by 398 million Polish zlotys.
Of course, the biggest impact on lowering the costs was due to the decrease in decline in natural gas prices, and smarter that unit consumption costs of electricity, phenol, propane, and propylene decreased. In the period discussed, the gas accounted for 48% of the raw material consumption costs, which was 2 percentage points higher than the corresponding period of the previous year.
Majority of the companies from Azoty Group noted improvement of EBITDA results and achieved a positive level. The decrease of EBITDA by 29% was in the COMPO EXPERT Azoty Group.
The key drivers of the weaker performance in the third quarter were primarily market factors, such as macroeconomic slowdown, unfavorable weather conditions, and high inventory levels. Despite of the decline, the company continues to generate a positive result.
In the case of Grupa Azoty Polyolefins, the positive EBITDA level results from one-off events related to the settlement of the Polimery Police project.
Andrzej Skolmowski
In the Agro segment, the main drivers were higher sale prices of products, and declining prices of gas. You remember about NPK prices and an increase in the cost of production of compound fertilizers.
This was mainly determined by high imports of fertilizers from other regions. We're talking about more than 3 million tons in the first half of 2025, which will have a major impact on volume results of our production and sales in the second half of the year.
Moving on to our EBITDA performance, EBITDA improved to 3.7%, going up by 8.1 percentage points year-on-year versus the third quarter of 2024, and the improvement from -81 to +3 million PLN. In the Chemicals segment, as we said before, it was mainly determined by declining demand or no demand from the construction or automotive segment, but the improvement was seen for AdBlue and technical urea.
Other volumes of sales are going down, especially for titanium white and oxo alcohols. These are the products that are heavily impacted by the two segments.
In terms of the production of caprolactam, we did not resume the production at Puławy due to dwindling, very low demand for polyamide 6 across Europe. The entire segment came in at -6.1, that is translated into -1%, and the improvement was, however, up by 5.7 percentage points year-on-year.
In terms of the Plastics segment, we reported a positive EBITDA result due to one-off events, that is the recognition of contractual penalties under the Grupa Azoty Polyolefins agreement. Without this effect, we would have recognized a negative EBITDA.
Plastics were impacted by a very low demand or declining demand from the automotive and construction segment, and also declining prices of products. The improvement of this result, considering and not considering one-off events, was recognized.
However, it did not allow us to recognize positive EBITDA in a traditional sense, that is without one-offs. In the period of nine months of 2025, Grupa Azoty generated consolidated results from sales at the level of Again, within nine months of 2025, Grupa Azoty generated consolidated sales revenue at the level of over 10 billion PLN, and EBITDA at the level of 312 million PLN, with EBITDA margin which came in at 3.1%, going up by 6.1 percentage points year-on-year versus Q3 2025.
Consolidated EBITDA for the group for the nine months of 2025 without Grupa Azoty Polyolefins would have come in at 346 million PLN. It's worth emphasizing that as of the fourth quarter of 2024, the group without Grupa Azoty Polyolefins has recognized positive EBITDA in the so-called core business.
In the Agro segment, the EBITDA margin was at 2.8%, going up by 5.4 percentage points year-on-year versus Q3 2024. In the Chemicals segment, the EBITDA margin was at -5.1%.
Despite this negative result, it was still higher by 5.3 percentage points year-on-year. The EBITDA margin generated in the Plastics segment was at -9.1%, going up by 2.5 percentage points year-on-year.
Obviously, these results in the Chemicals segment were impacted by the results of Grupa Azoty Polyolefins. In the Agro segment, the key factors determining our results included a considerable increase in production volumes and sales, compounded or combined with the concurrent increase in the prices of products and considerable increase in the prices of gas.
As my colleague has already mentioned, the demand for chemicals remained pretty low and limited, and this was one of the main determining factors in the Chemicals segment. The prices of feedstocks in the Plastics segment, that is phenol or caprolactam, were going down as well, and the demand across most of our sectors of our customers remained stable, but low.
As we said before, in the third quarter alone, but also for the nine months of the year, all our main Grupa Azoty group companies reported higher performance versus the third quarter of 2024. At Puławy, EBITDA came in at 55 million PLN.
At Police, it was at 72 million PLN, we see a considerable improvement versus last year's negative performance. Grupa Azoty Kędzierzyn reported EBITDA which was four times higher than in 2024, and COMPO EXPERT reported EBITDA which was up by 15%, and the company invariably generates positive results across the board, including at the level of net profit.
In the nine months of 2025, as we said before, we generated consolidated revenue from sales at over 10 billion PLN, and we need to emphasize that EBITDA, which came in at 312 million PLN, excluding Grupa Azoty Polyolefins, would have been at 346 million PLN. A couple of words on our investment projects.
In terms of our CAPEX projects for nine months of the year, we focus on CAPEX Control Tower, and we are analyzing the entire portfolio of our CAPEX projects. Due to our current financial position, we took steps in order to limit our CAPEX spending, which is quite visible if you compare it to last year's CAPEX.
Our CAPEX spending, investment spending, were limited to a bare minimum. We focus only on our key investments of major importance to our business across the group.
Right now, we have four major investments: two in Tarnów and two in Puławy. In terms of Puławy and the construction of a power generating unit called base unit, we are currently analyzing the selection of the most optimum solution to finish that project, and we are taking an inventory, and Polimex Mostostal's part was Due to Polimex Mostostal's fault, this part of the contract was terminated.
After the publication of the strategy until 2030, we are now looking at a very consistent delivery of our goals, which were presented in that very strategy, and its operationalization. We are analyzing a non-binding offer which we received from ORLEN, and we are considering all the potential scenarios in relation to a very complex, comprehensive approach to that particular situation.
We announced the General Shareholders Meeting planned as at the 13th of February. At this meeting, we want to ask our shareholders to approve of the issue of shares in two stages.
We will continue our negotiations with our financing institutions in order to arrive at a long-term agreement which will stabilize the group's financial situation. We consistently keep delivering the Azoty Business Program, the results of this program are already visible in the improving EBITDA level.
This program brings together a couple of hundred of our employees, and our ambition is to make sure that some of these initiatives that are delivered under this program, the Azoty Business Program, the Recovery Program, will change the group thoroughly. The business environment in the Agro segment is changing positively, and the customs duties introduced as of the beginning of July are bearing initial fruit.
However, we will still have to wait for the effects of those new regulations until the beginning of the new year. The improving EBITDA is visible.
We are consistently delivering the assumptions of our Recovery Plan. We are emphasizing that we are already in the midst of the fourth quarter of the consecutively reported positive EBITDA across the Azoty Group.
Therefore, we need to still deliver our goals in terms of our negotiations with the financing institutions and the completion of these negotiations. We also need to prepare ourselves to a major breakthrough event, that is the General Shareholders Meeting convened as at the 13th of February 2026.
Thank you very much for this presentation, and now we can move on to a Q&A session. The first question, Dariusz Malinowski Mr.
Dawidowski has already partially answered that question: 'Do you see any effects of the new tariffs on Russian fertilizers, and if so, how, and to which extent, and when will these effects be visible fully in the fertilizers segment?' As I said before, we do not see those effects yet.
They were only implemented as of the 1st of July. The very high, record-breaking, if we compare it to the previous year's, levels of imports in the first half of the year translates into the situation in the market.
They are in Poland, but they are still in the transshipment terminals, and the prices are pre-customs duties prices still. We expect that the effects will be shifted by six months.
That means that the effects will be seen as of the 1st of January 2026. We need to remember that as a result of these changes, the gradual changes of customs duties, we can expect yet another increase in the price of products transported or imported from Russia and Belarus as of the second half of 2026.
Second question on Agro segment: 'What is your assessment of these higher customs duties on the prices of products across Poland?' As we said before, we see that the higher prices are not of major importance in Poland.
Those increases are not significant. Fertilizers in Poland are sold at very competitive prices versus other countries, we cannot say that it has any major impact on the situation of farmers.
'The offer of ORLEN is binding till December this year. We are approaching the end of the year.
When are we going to find out what's the final decision of the Grupa Azoty in the matter?' The offer of ORLEN is an offer of purchase 100% of shares of Azoty Polyolefins.
As we know, we do not own 100% of shares, and we are right now in the process of talks with institutions that are financing, and the ones that finance the whole project. The amount offered by ORLEN is a very demanding task.
It requires a lot of effort from all the sides to come up with the understanding. In the nearest future, the offer is binding till the end of the year 2025.
We assume that we are going to get the initial understanding in between parties, shareholders, and ORLEN, and we are going to do that under the condition of the consent of all the sides. 'When it comes to Polyolefins, why do we want to sell Polyolefins to ORLEN for 1 billion 22 million if the construction of the plant costed over 7 billion?
Why are we selling it for a lower price? Shouldn't it be higher?
Why is it so?' We want to underline that this is the public offer that has been submitted by the bidder, by ORLEN.
The offer is available to all potential other investors who could submit a different proposal. We underline that, of course, when looking at the cost of construction, the offer is several times lower, but the situation on the market is somewhat matching similar levels of quotations that we observe in other similar transaction, including similar installations that are on the European market.
The offer is publicly available to others who could submit a counter proposal. 'Question related to financial results: what was in over 400 million zlotys of income of remaining operational activity?'
In the results of the third quarter, we've also included one event that is one-off. This is an agreement with Polish Mining Group.
It's a settlement at the amount described in the financial report and in the ongoing report too. Now a question related to the segment of Chemicals for defense: 'How the company sees the further cooperation in that sector with PGZ company, PGZ?'
The company PGZ, we cooperate with it in several scopes. First of them is preparation to production of the product components which are going to be used in production of explosives.
The cooperation with Polish Armaments Group, meaning PGZ, has several sectors. Second one where we have big competences is engineering sector of the work on design.
We have communicated it yesterday that we've established yet another agreement with one of the companies that belong to the Polish Armaments Group. Both paths of cooperation are what we are going to continue.
Next question: 'In the fourth quarter, the EBITDA result of Azoty is going to take into account the compensations for the industry?' In the fourth quarter, information on the energy-intensive sector, information related to your question will be published in the first quarter of the next year because it's going to regard the fourth quarter of the previous year.
Thank you very much for your kind attention. Those were all the questions posed, see you on the next press conference.
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