Thank you very much. Good morning, everybody.

Welcome to Arkema's Q2 2026 results conference call. Joining me today are Marie-José Donsion, our CFO, as well the Investor Relations team.

To support this conference call, we have posted a set of slides which are available on our website. I will first comment the highlights of the quarter before letting Marie-José go through the financials.

At the end of the presentation, as usual, we'll be available to answer your questions. The second quarter was, as marked by the challenging context in the Middle East.

Oil and raw material prices as well as energy and logistic costs rose sharply as a consequence of the conflict, and global supply chains were partly disrupted. We saw some temporary easing towards the end of the quarter, but following the cease-fire, the conflict resumed, and raw material prices have moved back up.

The market demand environment remained weak overall, in line with previous quarter, with no recovery yet in Europe and the US. On the other hand, Asia continued to be well oriented, notably Southeast Asia and India, while China domestic growth was more subdued.

In this complex environment, Arkema delivered a good second quarter performance, with EBITDA rising 7% year-on-year to €391 million despite a €10 million currency headwind. EBITDA margin reached quite a strong level, 16.1%, up 90 basis points year-on-year.

This marks a significant step-up and the first positive year-on-year EBITDA evolution in several quarters. This improvement was driven primarily by the strong performances of our Adhesives and Coating businesses, while High Performance Polymers were broadly stable.

As expected and as previously flagged, the disappointment came from Performance Additives. More fundamentally, these results demonstrate the quality of Arkema's portfolio and reflect the strategic transformation carried out over the years to focus the group on higher value-added applications and attractive growth markets.

I would like now to underline the hard work and commitment of our teams who remain fully mobilized to mitigate supply chain disruptions both in terms of raw materials availability and input cost inflation, closely working with our suppliers and with our customers. Now looking briefly at the performance of our Specialty Materials segments.

Adhesive Solutions posted a strong quarter, with EBITDA up 7% year-on-year. By the way, this was the best quarter ever achieved by Bostik, at par with Q2 2022.

This performance was mainly driven by the segment's continued product mix shift towards higher value-added solutions and pricing actions to pass through inflation of raw materials. Volumes were indeed broadly stable, with strong growth in durable goods markets, particularly aerospace, consumer electronics, and industrial assembly.

This was partially offset by volumes a bit below expectation in the construction market, in particular in Europe, and by packaging, which remained soft. In a still subdued demand environment, EBITDA margin increased to a good level, 15.1%, highlighting the ongoing efforts of the team to improve the profitability of the segment.

Advanced Materials delivered mixed results, as you could see in the quarter. High Performance Polymers gained some momentum, benefiting from our new business development, the ramp-up of our projects, and the good growth in batteries, 3D printing, and electronics.

PIAM delivered another very strong quarter, with EBITDA up 30% in local currency. Fluorospecialties were weaker than forecasted, but should improve in the second part of the year.

All in all, HPP achieved EBITDA on par with last year. On the other hand, Performance Additives were significantly down, impacted by the Middle East crisis, with particularly weak demand in some end markets such as refining and fertilizers, and also, as sulfur cost increase, which was significant.

The margin of the Advanced Materials segment remained overall at a solid level, around 19%, which leaves, nevertheless, space for improvement. Coating Solutions delivered a strong recovery in the quarter.

The EBITDA was significantly up from the low base of 2025. Our resin and additive businesses both posted strong results, but I would like to highlight especially the positive dynamics of Sartomer, delivering strong volume growth over the quarter, notably in electronics, 3D printing, and industrial coatings.

The segment's performance reflects also the ongoing refocusing of the portfolio towards higher value-added applications as well as the agile pricing management. As a result, we were very pleased by the segment margin, which reached a high level at 18.5%.

As for Intermediates, as anticipated, earnings were driven by the tighter spreads in acrylics, partially offset by the fading out of old generation refrigerant. In Asia, acrylic spreads rapidly declined, going back to their previous levels, while in Europe and the US, spreads have improved more gradually, which only moderately contributed to the earnings growth, as the volume environment remained so far subdued.

We also continued in Q2 to focus on strict cost discipline and cash allocation. We are, at the end of June, in line with our target to offset fixed cost inflation over the full year, which would be quite a performance, supported by a number of cost-cutting initiatives across the organization.

We also tightly control working capital, and our CapEx are below the level of last year, on track with our annual target. As a result, the group was able to generate a good level of recurring cash flow in the quarter, close to €80 million, which was not a given in the context of rising raw material costs.

It is also important to continue to implement our long-term strategy. From this standpoint, one of our priorities remained to ramp up our major projects, including recently our polyamide 11 and Rilsan Clear plant in Singapore, our new PVDF capacity in the US, which has recently started up.

We also started the new distillation in acrylics in our site of Carling in France, enabling the group to reduce the site's carbon footprint by 20% and its energy consumption by 25%. Altogether, our growth projects contributed around €25 million of additional EBITDA in H1 versus last year, fully in line with our full year target.

I will now hand it over to Marie-José for a more in-depth look at the financials before we discuss the outlook at the end of the presentation.

Thank you, Thierry, and good morning, everyone. I'll start with Arkema revenues at €2.4 billion.

Q2 sales were up 3.2% year-on-year organically. Volumes came in slightly down, 1.8%, due to an overall weak demand environment in Europe and in North America and to lower volumes in Performance Additives.

The price effect was a positive 5.1%, reflecting, on one hand, the pricing actions implemented by the group across all businesses to compensate the inflation of raw materials and, on the other hand, the better market conditions in upstream acrylics. Scope effect was a small negative at -0.7%, corresponding to the divestment of some small plastic additives businesses on the 1st of July.

Lastly, sales were impacted by a still negative 1.2% currency effect, reflecting the weakening of the US dollar against the euro. This effect was more moderate than in the first quarter.

Quarter two EBITDA came in at €391 million, up 7% year-on-year, mostly driven by strong performances in Adhesive Solutions and in Coating Solutions, while Advanced Materials were down year-on-year, impacted by the weaker performance of Performance Additives, while the High Performance Polymers remained stable. Intermediates were very much supported by the improved spreads in acrylics.

Quarter two EBITDA included a nonfavorable currency effect of €10 million. Depreciation and amortization stood at €171 million, leading to a recurring EBIT of €220 million, up 11%, and the REBIT margin improved to 9%.

Nonrecurring items amounted to €78 million. They included €32 million of PPA depreciation and €46 million of one-off charges, notably linked to the reorganization of our sites of Jarrie and Pierre-Bénite in France initiated last year and to ongoing legal proceedings as well as the divestment of some small plastic additives businesses completed recently.

Financial expenses stood at -€35 million, reflecting mainly the increased cost of our refinanced bonds. Quarter two adjusted net income stood at €129 million, which corresponds to €1.70 per share.

Moving on to cash flow and net debt. Arkema delivered a solid cash flow generation in quarter two.

Recurring cash flow stood at €78 million, reflecting a well-controlled working capital. The working capital ratio on annualized sales stood at 15.8%, much improved versus the 17% of last year.

I take this opportunity to commend the teams who have been able to strictly manage working capital despite rising raw material costs. Overall, the free cash flow delivered by the group in the first half was a solid print, slightly better than last year.

Total capital expenditure amounted to €170 million in quarter two, in line with our guidance of annual CapEx spend of under €600 million for the full year '26. Net debt and hybrid bonds at the end of June amount to €3.6 billion, including the €800 million of hybrid bonds.

Our debt remained stable year-on-year, confirming the solidity of our balance sheet in a weak market condition. The net debt to last 12 months EBITDA ratio currently stands at around 2.9 times.

I thank you for your attention, and we'll now hand it over back to Thierry.

Thank you, Marie-José. As you can see, despite the challenging context, we could deliver a solid achievement in the second quarter, with EBITDA growth year-on-year.

Looking at the first semester, our performance is as we were hoping, but with a first quarter a bit disappointing and the second quarter a bit higher than expected. EBITDA was slightly above last year at constant FX in the first half, keeping in mind that H1 was the better half of last year and that the environment became more demanding in the second half of the year as for all chemical companies.

As we enter the third quarter, demand trends remain broadly unchanged. The ongoing conflict in the Middle East continues to limit visibility on raw material cost development and to weigh on the macroeconomic outlook.

In this context, the teams remain agile, disciplined, with a continuous focus on operational excellence, pricing management, in order to navigate the current environment. Cash generation, capital allocation, as remain for Arkema key priorities, supported by strict working capital management and a disciplined approach to CapEx.

In parallel, we continue to build Arkema for the future, and this includes the execution of our major projects that you know. We confirm, as I said before, an additional contribution to the group's EBITDA of around €50 million versus last year for these major projects.

Based on our H1 achievement and in the current environment, we are confirming our guidance of a slight EBITDA growth at constant exchange rates for 2026. The balance between the two semesters would then reflect a traditional level.

In H2, our performance should benefit notably from year-on-year growth in Adhesive Solutions and Coating Solutions. Thank you very much for your attention.

Together with Marie-José, we are now ready to answer your questions.

Hi. Good morning.

Two questions for me, please. Firstly, you highlighted better dynamics in the High Performance Polymers division versus Q1.

Could you just elaborate, please, on what is driving this improvement and whether you have any conviction that the business has returned to growth for the remainder of the year, excluding the new projects ramp-ups? Secondly, I would just be interested in your commentary on the regional dynamics.

You noted some improvement in North America. Could you elaborate on why you're seeing improvements there, please?

Okay. Thank you very much for your question.

With regard to HPP, drivers are of different nature. Clearly, the ramp-up of the project is participating, but we see good growth in now in polyamide.

We had, let's say, a big part of the semester where it was still subdued, and we started to see during the second quarter the benefit from new business development, particularly on High Performance Polymer for battery. Even auto was a bit better than expected, and I would say electronics, again battery, semiconductors.

All these businesses which contribute to this pocket of growth that we have mentioned. Most of the pocket of growth basically are within this HPP, and we should see these dynamics contributing well in the second semester.

In HPP, maybe among the different business lines, the one which is currently more stable is specialty fluorospecialties. In fact, the growth is really coming from the pure polymers, PIAM, PVDF, and polyamide.

With regard to NA, I don't know if it was just referring to HPP or for the overall group. I will suppose this is for the overall group.

I would say, as I mentioned at the beginning of the call, in terms of regional dynamic, we still see NA So there are some exceptions. For example, aeronautics, as everybody knows, is going pretty well, but is not a big market for Arkema.

Overall, NA is still disappointing in terms of underlying dynamics. I think we have some business segments which are going quite strongly, but overall still in the continuity of the previous quarters, subdued demand.

The same for Europe, as we mentioned. For us, I would say in terms of volume after that, we can debate about the pricing story, but in terms of volume, I would say that really the growth for Arkema is still coming from Asia, in China, but China, as is more driven by the export from China of our customers than the domestic demand itself, which is really not so great.

Then by the Southeast Asia and India. We are not talking too much about it normally, but we were pleased by the momentum we saw in Q2.

Basically the geographical balance remain more or less the same as it was in the previous quarters. In maybe just to finish on NA, and you saw it through the release of the result of the coatings, the dynamics of coatings in the US, including Sartomer, but even beyond, is better than it was in previous quarters.

Great. Thank you.

You're welcome.

Hey, good morning, everyone. Thierry, I'd actually like to pick up on your last point about Sartomer and maybe to spend a few minutes elaborating on this business that perhaps has gone under the radar a bit historically.

From memory, it serves many different end markets. The growth that you're seeing, is this a function of now ramping up the capacity investments you've made in recent years?

In particular, am I right in thinking that you use UV resins for printed circuit boards, is this tying into the strong growth we're seeing in semiconductors, etc.? Finally, it's quite difficult because of the financial restatements that you've made on the coatings business to track performance over the years, but would you agree that Sartomer is a very, and I emphasize the word very, a very margin-accretive franchise, and that's been really important in explaining that 18% margin that you delivered in the division this quarter?

Thank you.

Thank you. Yes, Matthew.

Yes, these questions are very valid. Yes, it's true that Sartomer, in fact, has gone and it was disappointing in the past two years, particularly last year, through a more difficult time.

We were at the same time surprised because we, as it's an acquisition that we made a long time ago, and we strongly believe in these products, which are really accretive and high value. We started from the base last year, which was disappointing, and this year, we have a strong recovery for different reasons.

First, the Asian part thanks to electronics, to semiconductor, medical also application, 3D is doing quite well. Because of the Middle East, but also supply chain disruption, the US part, which was more I would say under was more challenging, surprisingly not because we are a leader there, is coming back to far more decent level of profitability.

Europe, we have very strong teams there, and they have been able to manage stability even in difficult market. Sartomer as a whole was a bright point, as you wisely mentioned, but it was not the only one.

The rheology additives through Coatex and the coating more traditional coating resins are behaving well. The 18.5%, we're very pleased about it of the second quarter.

If not the new norm, it's better to take the H1 average with a bit weak first quarter and a very strong second quarter. This means that we have the ingredients inside Coatings to really reach when some conditions are aligned quite a good level of results.

I think the good message for you and for the market, because maybe you had a few questions in the past which were valid because we saw some unexpected weaknesses. In fact, we see that as soon as the conditions are a little bit more favorable, we see strong leverage on the profitability of this business, and we are very pleased about it.

The fact that we separate acrylics, which was upstream, more volatile, back to Intermediates, and the coating solution itself, which is more the downstream, give a better understanding of and transparency of the profitability. Clearly, it worked on this second quarter.

Thanks very much.

Hi. Thanks for taking my question.

I had a very good Q2, but I was a bit surprised at the composition of that EBITDA growth, because it seems a lot of this is, in fact all of it is driven by pricing, because your volumes are down. I'm looking at even Adhesives.

Volumes are flat. EBITDA is up.

It seems like there is probably some phasing benefit of lower raw materials and higher prices. I don't know, but I think the crux of my question is, how should one get comfort that this pricing-driven earnings uplift will not wither away once the Middle East conflict-driven maybe tightness or panic buying, etc., starts to unwind later this year?

The second question is in your presentation, you've talked about start of Q3 in the same trend as what you've seen in the recent months. With that context, how are you thinking about third quarter, whether versus Q2 or whether versus last year?

Thank you very much.

Okay. No, the questions are valid, but I think the answer are very clear.

If you look it's also about the Middle East impact, but I think if you take Adhesives, clearly, Adhesives, Middle East has no impact on Adhesives. On the contrary, I would say the more you go downstream, the more the Middle East topic is a challenge, because you have strong raw material increase.

Your business is very fragmented by the nature of the adhesives, and we reached our best Q2 ever in Adhesives. This means that internally, we have a very strong momentum.

The teams are working crazy in order to restore profitability after last year, which had been disappointing. I think they are doing a good job, particularly because you mentioned pricing, but you missed something which is the mix.

For example, our durable good business, which is quite accretive in Adhesives, is really growing very strongly thanks to new business development and found a pocket of growth that we have there, again in electronic, in battery, in automotive, and is very pleasing. Adhesives, I would say, is a part of the answer to your question, because Adhesives is not at all the matter of net pricing or, they have been able to compensate the increase of raw material, but they are at par in terms of they have been it was not easy to have a sort of neutral impact of raw material cost, but not positive.

It's one element of answer. After that, with regard to the pricing on specialty materials more broadly, I would say we have, and it's come from coatings, a slight net positive pricing, but most of the positive pricing is coming from acrylics as expected, even if you take Asia, already in June, it was back to the norm of the first quarter.

In Q2 overall, I would say for us, and we thought about it, the impact of Middle East was positive on acrylics, was a little bit positive on the coatings, but was negative on the Performance Additives. The HPP development was more than offset by the challenge was creating on Performance Additives the Middle East situation.

To make the story short, we think that a big part of the profitability of the Q2, the large majority is really coming from our positioning, our mix, the work of the team in a environment which has some positive and some negative, as you can see, and is really depends on the business. Now on the Q3, I would say that we have so we don't guide quarter by quarter.

We never do that. You have a guidance for the full year, which is rather precise.

After that, you can see how do you want to weight Q3, Q4. In fact, we say that with no quarter is looking exactly like the same.

We have seen that on the first semester. It will be the same on the second semester.

There will be seasonality, but we have guided, confirmed the guidance, saying that we guide in fact to have a second semester which reflect back to traditional seasonality between the two semesters, which a certain level of growth of EBITDA in the second semester, mostly supported by Adhesives again and Coatings, and inside I would say a special High Performance between High Performance product and Performance Additives, a sort of offset, one by the other. This is what we have in mind.

Got it. Thank you very much.

Welcome.

Thank you. Firstly, I want to ask on the upstream acrylics, where you are mentioning, some slowdown in Europe.

Just want to understand what happened in Q2 in upstream acrylics, both product spreads-wise, where are we currently in terms of mid-cycle versus low-cycle, and what is sort of your structural view on this product line, in the next sort of 12 to 18 months? Then the second question is really on the Performance Additives part of Advanced Materials.

Just want to understand what really is going on here, how much of the Middle East crisis was an effect, and how much of an effect is other factors which may be stopping the performance here, and, again, when sort of can we expect a full recovery? Then the last question is really just on the M&A pipeline for Adhesives, considering, one of your competitors has recently made a fairly large acquisition.

What do you see in terms of the M&A pipeline in Adhesives these days? Thanks a lot.

Okay. Thank you for the questions.

With regard I will be quick on upstream acrylics because, as you could see, I think the big part of the call is really on the evolution of the product mix on the Specialty Materials. On the upstream acrylics overall between the three regions, we have different momentum.

Then I will mention Europe more specifically, but I would say that in Asia, and I think we had already this discussion when I was in London in March, is that in Asia, things are going very very quick, but on both ways. We had a surge, and then it went down quite quickly.

We are back to square one to quite low levels. In Europe and US, which is a little bit the same story, we started from low point.

We were at low cycle in those regions. What we see now is that it get so it's not fantastic.

It's just more normal. We get back close to mid-cycle, which means that it's hopefully something on which we can count going further.

It was necessary, because we were below the reinvestment point. No clear volume.

Now, when we mention the slowdown in Europe, sometimes you have to make it was important to restore the margin, and it was our priority. Instead of chasing the volume, which was more the policy last year where really the margin were anyway difficult, this year, it was our approach was more balanced, and this is why you could see temporarily, it was just you cannot extrapolate a quarter, but we decided in the second quarter to restore the margin to close to normalized condition in Europe.

With regard to Performance Additives, it's always difficult to separate all the factors. What is clear is that Middle East is a big the elephant in the room.

Why? Because Performance Additives is really the business line which is supplying, by the nature of its product, of Performance Additives, supplying to polymers, for example, has been impacted by Middle East because they have an important part of their business in Middle East.

Okay? On top of that, more indirectly, but at the end, it was direct, it's like this.

One of their big raw material is sulfur, which has gone to sky, it has been a very big impact for them. Then, as a part of the fertilizers so then, agrichemicals are linked to sulfur production, sulfur costs.

In fact, they had the three elements at the same time, and it has been a big factor. Now there are some other factor is that just because of the global context, the demand is not bright, they also suffer from it.

This is why we have a portfolio of business line, and this is why we have, I think, a strong Q2 is that because while Performance Additives is underperforming, the other lines are more where we expect or even better than expected. That's the beauty of the portfolio.

Now when can this factor reverse? The big question is when does Middle East cease, and nobody knows.

Difficult to answer your question. Again, in this situation, you have pros and cons.

Middle East has some positive impact, has some negative impact. We manage them with speed and with agility.

Last question regarding the M&A in Adhesives, we have a pipeline, as usual. By nature, everybody has a pipeline in Adhesives, but it's not a priority today.

Priority is what we did in Q2 is to take the profitability where we want. We have made in the past three, four years several acquisitions, invest in also in CapEx for Adhesives.

We put we have also reorganized top management a year ago in the Adhesives. For me, the priority today, and I told that to the team, is you deliver organically.

If there is really something on the market which is really an exceptional opportunity, we can consider it, and anyway, it will be a small-sized bolt-on, not big ones. We can live without it.

It's not the priority of the day in the current context to make acquisition in Adhesives. Let's focus on continuing to improve profitability.

We have a lot of possibilities in all the different business line of Adhesives.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you.

Morning, everyone, and thank you for taking my questions. I have two, please.

The first is on cost controls. They appear to be more effective than previous years.

Have you changed anything in the organization to promote this? Is there an opportunity to go beyond just an offset from 2027 onwards in the medium term?

Then secondly, I want to follow up on the margin profile of some of the new projects that you're Are there significant startup costs associated with these? Or in another way, are these projects expected to be part of the mix effect you've been referring to in 2027, 2028 as they're fully ramped up?

Thank you.

Okay. On the cost control, have we changed anything in the organization?

The way Arkema is working, I think when we work a lot of on empowerment. I think then clearly, given the I would say the state of the global economy and with the demand which is subdued, at least for Europe and US, the teams understand pretty well the need for cost control and for offsetting the inflation.

The way we work, this is the discipline of Arkema, the mindset of Arkema, the culture of Arkema. It's not like we launch a sort of big plan which with one element which will overwhelm all the other elements.

It is a sum of elements of taking advantage of retirement, to reinforce the creativity, to have productivity, to do it in a smooth manner. I think it has been quite successful so far.

We are also in line with our 3% headcount reduction, and we are also attentive to any new forms of working, digital, where we are starting to ramp up on digital. We have some quite good project, and we'll get more and more.

We have plenty I would say it's really a sum of initiatives, but the organization is, for most of it, staying the same, but the objective has been reinforced because of the because we are agile, because we adapt to what is the economy. Far, we really delivered.

You have some, as you could see, some summary of what we are doing, page four, which explain you that we are really aligned with our objective. Now for the, frankly speaking, for the mid-term, let's say the next three years, if we can offset the inflation in a higher inflation world, I can will sign now.

I think it's for chemical company to offset the inflation is a good target, I would not commit to more, but I will ready to commit to try to offset inflation for the next few years as we say, and it goes with 3% headcount reduction as we have announced already. On the new project, once it is fully ramped up, but on some projects like Singapore, it can take five years.

On some like PVDF, small deep but expansion, it can take two years. Once it is fully ramped up, it's accretive to the margin of the company, but it takes a few years to ramp up.

On the startup cost, I think not anymore, I would say. It was maybe the case a couple of years ago, but not at the not anymore, or it's Yes,

There are some other costs, but they're all, let's say, in EBITDA. The only handling that to place as nonrecurring cost was the Singapore startup cost, which was extremely material, and that we classified as nonrecurring.

Any startup cost of any new project is anyway a part of the fixed cost of the company.

Knowing that the wave of big project of major project is behind us, now we are more incremental. It's not a topic anymore, and now we refocus on the business ramp-up.

We ramp up slower than we would have expected three years ago, but we ramp up, and we'll be aligned with our target this year. Okay.

Thank you.

Yes. Good morning.

I'm sorry, but I'm going to go back to the Adhesives comments for the second half, as it seems that you are fairly confident that that will drive EBITDA growth for the group. I'm a bit puzzled because comparables are exactly the same between first half and second half in terms of volumes.

If I think about raw material inflation, you may not have seen all the inflation in Q2. Then on the volume side, you're more likely to have seen pre-buys than postponed orders.

I'm just wondering, given all the uncertainty, given all the issues around construction in particular, I'm just wondering what drives that confidence. I'm not saying I doubt your confidence.

I'm just wondering what's driving it. No, but

I think remember that last year, first quarter was really stronger than our first semester was really stronger than the second one. We'll grow compared to a base which last year was disappointing, and you know that I took some action to following the result that I consider for Adhesives based on our expectation disappointing.

I think the base of last year was not a strong one, I think we'll grow compared to this base. Now we see, especially in durable goods, after a lot of work, a lot of good momentum of new business development which will help.

Now on the pre-buys, I'm not really agree with you on Adhesives, because if you look at the volume growth, we are at zero. We were at zero in Q2, and we are at zero on H1, you don't see a difference between first quarter and second quarter.

In the first quarter, obviously, there was no pre-buys. Between construction and the rest of the business, clearly, it will come from industrial adhesives more than construction.

No, I think we have a good momentum. Now we are not going to say that the growth in Adhesives will be fantastic.

We'll be growing in Adhesives in the second semester. We have been growing in the first semester.

Everybody is pleased about it, and again compared to a base last year which was not fantastic. Okay.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Okay. I would like to thank you all for your questions.

Always interesting. Don't hesitate if you have any further questions to call Béatrice or James.

They will be really open. I wish you a summer break also, very nice summer break.

Looking forward to talking to you again. Thank you.