Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to our full-year 2025 conference call.

It has been another year of good results, including a steady deleveraging at the corporate and Belron levels. Let me start with the three main messages we would like to convey today.

On an underlying basis, our classical KPI, the adjusted profit before tax group share, grew by 3.8% versus 2024 at our guidance foreign exchange rates. Second, our free cash flow remained very solid at about €374 million this year, demonstrating the robustness of our portfolio.

With those results, our Board of Directors will also propose a dividend per share of €2 per share to the General Assembly at the end of May. Then third, in terms of outlook, we expect to pursue our growth trajectory with a low to mid-single-digit growth percentage year-on-year in our adjusted PBT group share.

This again at constant foreign exchange rates, the ones of course then of 31st of December 2025. The comparable tables are to be found in our press release.

Before I go into more detail on the numbers, I would like to inform you also of an organizational set of change that we have made involving our investment directors more into our senior leadership as of now. Nicolas Saillez, our Chief Investment Officer, left the company at the end of last year, beginning of this year.

He had, of course, over the years, the decade that he was with us, helped us shape the investment strategy of the group and really left his mark on the company. He also built a strong investment management team.

I thank very much, of course, Nico for all the work he's done in the past decade. The fact that we have now a strong team in place, we have asked Charlotte Bouckenooghe, Timothée Moosh, and Stéphane Cammaert, three of our investment directors, to be part of our senior leadership team going forward so that we can continue on our strategy that has been the same since many years: on origination on the one hand, and on value creation with our existing activities on the other hand.

Before we dive into the details, let me highlight some of the key numbers at our activities. Belron basically delivered a record year on many metrics: more than 7% top-line growth at constant FX and a strong 23% adjusted EBIT margin achieved.

This exceptional performance absorbed the additional financial charge that did exist at Belron last year, of course, leading to a broadly stable adjusted PBT group share. D'Ieteren Auto had another strong year after what was already a record 2024, and that despite a market that was down.

It was down almost 8%, but thanks to a favorable vehicle mix, notably in the BEVs, the electric cars, and also the great efforts from the teams from D'Ieteren Automotive, the business did achieve another robust margin of 4.7%. PHE continued its compounding growth journey, driven by continuous market share gains, but also excellent execution on their M&A strategy.

The adjusted profit before tax group share at PHE grew with almost 10%, 9.7% to be precise, year-on-year. TVH then grew 1.5% 1.1% year-on-year at constant FX, thanks to some M&A and while it was navigating, as we've talked before, softer market conditions, specifically in materials handling and agricultural segments, but continues to grow in construction.

There were some negative mix effects, there were some additional freight costs, there was also some higher non-cash depreciation costs, and all of these together led to pressure on the margin. Then last but not least, Moleskine continued to face relatively challenging environments in its wholesale channel, although all the other channels—retail, e-commerce, and strategic partnerships—performed quite well with positive growth.

All of that together, given the size of the wholesale channel, did lead to a negative operating leverage overall. Let me now hand to Édouard to walk you through some of the financials in a bit more detail.

Thanks, Francis. Indeed, as previously mentioned, our headline KPI, the adjusted PBT group share, declined by 10.3% year-on-year on a reported basis from €1.065 billion to €956 million.

This is primarily due to three things: of course, the additional financial charges, both at Belron and at corporate levels; significant foreign exchange headwinds, particularly the weakening of the US dollar throughout 2025; and finally, the decline observed at both D'Ieteren Auto and TVH due to difficult market conditions. Now, if we exclude the net impact of the additional financial charges and apply December 31st, 2024 FX rates to both years, our adjusted PBT group share was €1.104 billion in 2024.

This was the basis of our guidance. Let me remind that it included some €30 million of financial revenues from the cash we had on balance sheet before the 2024 year-end financing operation.

The comparable figure for 2025 is €1.146 billion, representing an underlying growth of 3.8% year-on-year, what we had called the slight increase at the beginning of 2025. In 2025, additional financial charges at both D'Ieteren Group and Belron level were roughly €160 million, our share.

An adverse FX impact amounted to around €30 million when restating 2025 at December 31st, 2024 rates basis. Now, if we look at the decomposition of our KPI in 2025, you can see that Belron represents approximately half of it, while Auto is at 23%, PHE close to 20%, and our 40% stake in TVH represents roughly 8% now.

Now looking at the group share financials, sales were broadly flat, but operational profitability grew by 3%. Free cash flow declined as 2024 contained exceptional items definitely at D'Ieteren Auto and also a non-recourse factoring utilization at PHE.

Yet, as introduced by Francis, it remained strong at more than €373 million. Moving on, on indebtedness, our net financial position at the corporate segment improved throughout the year.

Excluding the inter-segment loan to Moleskine, it decreased from €908 million at the end of 2024 to €542 million at the end of 2025. This is explained, of course, by the extraordinary dividend of €400 million we received from D'Ieteren Automotive, as well as €160 million from Belron and €45 million from TVH, which had allowed us to reimburse anticipatively our bridge loan of €500 million in the first half of 2025.

Now looking at the latest developments over the past year, the group and our businesses have continued to evolve significantly. As just mentioned, we benefited from solid dividends flows from our businesses, and we were pleased to relaunch our solidarity-based €100 million share buyback program.

Most importantly, our businesses were also active on the consolidation front. First, PHE successfully completed the acquisition of Stock Car in 2025, marking its entry into the promising Irish market, as well as the acquisition of AD Freco in Spain.

More recently, PHE announced that it has entered into exclusive negotiations to acquire a 51% stake in two large distributors in Spain, further reinforcing its leadership position in that country. On the Belron side, they completed 18 acquisitions in the year across all regions.

Finally, TVH continued to position itself for growth through significant moves in its distribution network with the opening of two new distribution centers, one in the US in Reno and one in Poland, while also making progress on the construction of the sizable Plant T in Waregem in Belgium. There were also some significant management changes throughout the group.

The collaboration ended with Christophe Archambault at Moleskine. The very complementary team of Thomas Bouckard, until recently investment director within our group at D'Ieteren Group, and Laura Brown, formerly CEO and senior executive of several consumer goods brands including Veja, some trainers, they took over as co-CEOs.

In addition, in 2025, the strong credit profile of our businesses supported significant improvements in the pricing of the term loans at both Belron and PHE with strong demand from lenders. Now Francis will take you through a great year at Belron.

Thank you, Édouard. Yes, indeed, 2025 was a record year for Belron on many dimensions.

We're proud to have delivered fully in line with our outlook, posting a 7.1% growth at the guidance foreign exchange and an adjusted EBIT margin of 23%. Belron contributed over half a billion, €518 million to be precise, to the group's adjusted PBT group share and continued to demonstrate strong cash conversion as well.

That enabled the company to distribute more than €300 million in dividends to shareholders while also reducing its leverage to 4.5 times. As a reminder, the additional financing that we completed in October '24 had temporarily brought leverage first to 5.5 and 5.2 times at the end of 2024, and now we're at 4.5 times.

This once again evidences the ability of Belron to deleverage quickly. As I mentioned, Belron delivered top-line growth of 7%.

While the company is, of course, active around the world, all three regions did contribute to that growth in 2025. The growth was also mainly organic, close to 6%.

There was almost 1% of acquisition contribution. Not surprisingly, the foreign exchange headwind was rather negative, almost 3% for Belron.

Particularly in United States and in North America, we were pleased with the performance there. It finished the year on a very strong revenue momentum.

We ended up with full-year organic growth above 7%, marking a clear acceleration versus the first half of the year. The region did benefit from an improved situation around claims avoidance that has been with us for almost 18 months.

We've seen increased claims volumes again and continued to also make progress on some of the customer segments it was focusing on: the commercial market, the cash market in particular. It's also important to highlight the excellent operational execution at Belron.

The dedication, skills, and flexibility of our technicians around the globe allowed the business to capture demand seamlessly with a continued focus on customer satisfaction. NPS scores reached once again historical levels in the high 80s.

Very happy to hear about that. The number of total jobs, basically the vehicle glass replacement and repair prime jobs, but including also the recalibrations, was at 17.1 million, which is an increase of 3.2% year-over-year.

Belron also continued to capture value from increased windshield complexity, adding, as we've said, recalibration services and, of course, also the VAPs, the value-added products and services. Now, we are happy to have achieved the ambitions we set back, you may recall, 3 years ago in 2022, almost 4 years ago actually, in a very different environment at the time, delivering both strong top-line growth and also the 23% adjusted EBIT margin.

As anticipated, we saw a meaningful margin step-up in the second half of 2025, supported by an additional trading day, but also strong focus on efficiency and cost management, which contributed as well. Another notable achievement was to end the year with a nearly stable adjusted profit before tax group share, and that despite the additional financial charges, which, of course, were also quite significant at Belron.

On that point, the Belron lenders have clearly recognized the operational strength of the company. In July already last year, we secured a 25 bps repricing on the dollar tranche.

Then there was an automatic 25 bps step-down on both dollar and on euro tranches in October. Then at the beginning of this year in 2026, we did another successful repricing, leading to a further margin reduction of 25 bps in the US dollar tranche and a 50 bps in the euro loan part.

Evidently, cash conversion of the business is solid. We had an adjusted EBITDA growth north of 11%, €1.8 billion.

We generated close to €430 million free cash flow, and that despite the additional cash interest costs. This supported deleveraging, and it supported the distribution of more than €300 million in dividends that I talked about before.

Now looking at 2026 for Belron, what do we expect? We expect a continued strong performance.

As a reminder, our outlook is now based on the December '25 foreign exchange rates, and you'll find all the reconciliation tables in the press release and in the presentation later on. Our expectation is that sales are expected to continue to grow by mid- to high single-digit percentages year-on-year, and our adjusted operating profit margin will also continue to evolve, improving towards the 2028 ambition of greater than 25% that we set at our Investor Day last year in the month of May.

Now Édouard will now take us to the performance of D'Ieteren Automotive.

Yes, indeed. Thanks, Francis.

D'Ieteren Automotive, as a reminder, had a record year back in 2024, and we are proud of what the team achieved in 2025 despite a much more challenging market environment. Sales declined by 5.5% year-on-year, yet the business managed to maintain a very strong operating margin of 4.7%, which is a remarkable achievement given the context.

In addition, D'Ieteren Automotive still generated close to €150 million of free cash flow over the year. This solid cash generation allowed D'Ieteren Auto to close 2025 below 1x net leverage even after distributing an exceptional dividend of €400 million.

Now let me briefly frame what happened in the market in Belgium as conditions were quite different from those we experienced just a year earlier. Gross registrations fell by 7.5% to 415,000 new vehicles.

In that environment, D'Ieteren Automotive gave up a bit of market share, but importantly remained the leader in the electric segment with up to 28.8% market share. Besides, electrification continued to progress with fully electric vehicles now making up for 35% of new registrations, while the buyers mix continued to normalize with B2C customers accounting now for 42% of registrations.

Turning to how this translated into results, D'Ieteren Automotive's deliveries decreased by 13% compared to 2024: 15.5% for passenger vehicle, partially compensated by an increase of 5.7% for light commercial vehicles. However, thanks to a very supportive mix across brands, notably driven by electrification, the decline in reported sales was limited to only 5.5%.

This was further supported by sales growth in scale-up activities. Margin performance at D'Ieteren Auto also benefited from electrification.

BEV models contributed very positively to the margin with strong unit margin particularly at Audi and Porsche, of course, the most premium brands in our portfolio, and mainly in Q4 of last year. Other activities also supported the overall margin mix, notably with the scale-up pole contributing positively for the first time in 2025.

All together, this resulted in a very strong adjusted operating margin of 4.7%, coming from a record level of 5.1% in 2024. The contribution from the equity-accounted entities, especially and essentially VDFin, improved significantly versus 2024, which had been negatively impacted by the decline in residual values, and is now back in profitability.

All together, these elements led to an adjusted PBT group share of €215 million, down by less than 10% year-on-year. Free cash flow also remained robust, as we said, close to €150 million despite the slightly lower operational performance.

Net debt increased to €260 million at year-end as a result of the exceptional dividend paid out of available liquidity with the leverage ratio remaining very much low and under control at 0.8 times net debt to EBITDA. Now on the outlook for 2026, we remain relatively cautious in this tough market environment.

The market is expected to stay challenging and increasingly competitive with further mix normalization likely weighing on the top line. Combined with expected pressure on distribution margins, we anticipate a material decline in the adjusted operating margin after two consecutive years at exceptional levels.

Now Francis will elaborate on PHE.

At PHE, we again demonstrated the strength of the business model of 2025 in 2025. The company delivered 6.3% year-on-year sales growth, of which 3.9% organic, and a solid adjusted operating profit margin of 9.1%.

If you think about it, its contribution to the group's adjusted PBT group share is now almost 20%, €215 million, and the company continued to generate free cash flow while maintaining the leverage at a reasonable level, 3 times net debt to adjusted EBITDA. If we look at a breakdown of the sales, and we knew there were fewer trading days, there was lower price inflation, there was some down-trading in specific product categories, but nevertheless, both France and the international activities delivered organic growth of 2% and 7% respectively.

This performance reflects a continued gain in market shares across its different markets and also an outstanding and consistent service level, effective product category management aligned with what customers are asking PHE to deliver. The M&A did contribute nicely as well in 2025, an additional 2.4% contributing to total sales, notably through its entry into the Irish market in the beginning of 2025 that was, and the continued consolidation in Spain, where we added one region, AD Freco in particular.

Now the operating profit margin, adjusted, remained strong, 9.1%. It's marginally lower than the one of 2024.

What's important to note is that the profitability in France continued to improve, disciplined execution, disciplined cost management, and that despite some inflationary pressure that continued to exist throughout the year. At the same time, the company also made strategic investments in its international operations, which typically are also a bit of margin dilutive our acquisitions abroad.

That explains the slight decline in the margin, but a very nice 9.1% nevertheless. In terms of adjusted PBT group share, we are now at €182 million at PHE.

That's up 9.7% versus '24. It reflects, on the one hand, some lower financial charges because we did reprice again the term loan in September last year, which basically highlights the strong credit profile PHE has been able to build over the years and its attractiveness to institutional debt lenders overall.

Free-cash-flow-wise, you may remember that in 2024, we benefited from a positive working capital inflow that was related to the release of a non-recourse factoring reserve. This was now normalized in '25.

We didn't have that anymore, it results in a working capital outflow. When excluding that effect, the free cash flow did improve, and of course, mainly thanks to the strong operational results of the company.

The net debt remains broadly stable, and our leverage is 3 times, as already mentioned before. Now looking at 2026, what do we expect?

We expect another mid-single-digit organic sales growth rate at PHE. We'd also expect M&A to continue to contribute to overall growth.

As in exclusive negotiations, we've mentioned it before, to acquire over 50% stake in two Spanish distributors in relatively large regions. They together generated about €340 million in sales last year.

If that closes, this would help us representing a significant step forward in what is an important Spanish market for us overall at PHE. We do expect also the adjusted operating result margin to be broadly stable in 2026.

We will have continued operating leverage, will continue to be disciplined on cost control. There may be some cost inflation here and there.

It may be some dilution from acquisitions, as usually have, but overall, we expect a broadly stable margin there. With that, I hand it back to Édouard to talk a bit about TVH.

At guidance FX, TVH grew by 1.1% in sales, primarily driven by M&A. The trends seen in the first half of the year persisted in the second half, and adjusted operating profit margin, as anticipated, declined to 13.4%.

Realized and unrealized negative FX impacts in the net financial results led to a decline of 26% in the adjusted PBT group share. Free cash flow remained strong, also as anticipated, and leverage remained broadly stable at 3.1 times.

Starting with the top line, as mentioned, at budget FX, sales grew at 1. by 1.1% year-on-year.

If we look at reported figures, sales slightly decreased, which is basically explained by flat organic growth rate, 1.2% increase thanks to acquisitions, mainly Sincanli in Turkey, and then the negative FX translation headwind of 1.6% at TVH. The environment remained one of continued, typically, soft activity levels, mainly in materials handling and agriculture, despite some improvement in the volume trends at the end of 2025.

Given our more recent positioning in some of the construction segments, notably mobile elevating platforms and small earthmoving equipment, TVH continued to grow nicely in these construction segments. That sales development was also marked by some adverse mix effects: segment mix on one hand, but also client mix on the other hand, with larger clients performing better in volume.

This, together with increased freight costs and non-cash costs, understand depreciations, from previous growth investments, led to a negative margin development, as we anticipated, despite a strong focus on other costs. Also because, if you remember, 2024 had been positively impacted by an insurance payment of €6.6 million related to the cyberattack back in 2023.

TVH managed to absorb the new US trade tariffs by price increases, the impact there was minimal. However, it remained gross margin dilutive.

Adjusted net financial costs evolved negatively, largely explained by some realized and unrealized FX losses, and adjusted PBT group share declined by 26% versus 2024 to €72 million. The lower operating result impacted free cash flow, which remained tough at a robust level at of €72 million, €29 million our share.

Net debt and leverage increased slightly, and TVH distributed €112 million of dividend to its shareholders in 2025, which compared to €73 million in 2024. Looking at 2026, we remain relatively cautious about the trends likely to unfold for TVH.

As a CEO hiring is still ongoing. We saw some improvement on the volume side at the end of 2025 and expect for 2026 at year-end 2025 exchange rates sales to grow organically by a low to mid-percentage year-on-year.

While we continue to invest in future growth, we will see some ramp-up costs related to the new distribution centers in the US and in Poland related to people, inventory shipments, and depreciations from previous years' growth capital expenditures, which will all together weigh on the adjusted operating result, which we expect to decline in 2026. Now to Moleskine.

Thank you, Édouard. In February of 2026 of this year, Christophe Archambault, CEO, stepped down from his position, and he's replaced by two co-CEOs: Thomas Bouckard, who was investment director at our group since a number of years already, he's bringing 20 years of international experience in investments, strategy, operational leadership; and then Laura Brown, 30-plus years of experience leading and transforming global consumer brands, retail brands as well, most recently as the successful CEO of Veja.

We are convinced that Thomas and Laura's complementary areas of expertise will help guide Moleskine, together with the rest of the team, to its next phase of development. That's a bit of an ingoing statement, I would say, on Moleskine.

When I talk about its financial highlights of 2025, the wholesale channel, which is, of course, quite significant at Moleskine, continued to weigh on the results. We had a 2.2% organic decline overall.

The adjusted operating profit was at €8 million, and there were also €16 million financial charges mostly related to the shareholder loan we have with them. This led to an adjusted PBT group share of -€8 million overall.

The trading cash flow, however, was nicely positive at €15 million. What is also important to note, and we do our usual impairment tests every year, and so at Moleskine, the impairment test performed at the end of the period on the Moleskine CGU, the group did account for a net-of-tax impairment charge of €77.4 million, reporting that in an adjusting item.

As I said, organic decline was about -2.2% year-on-year. It's actually quite a different shaded picture if you look at it channel per channel.

All the channels did post a positive organic growth, except wholesale. Now, not surprisingly, that's the biggest channel, and that one continued to suffer, particularly in the US, where some of the larger customers did continue to show a cautious inventory management that didn't really help.

Now, there was also foreign exchange translation, like in all of our activities, was negative. In the case of Moleskine, it was -1.5%.

This decline in sales, as well as this channel mix, which was a bit different than before, did lead to a negative operating leverage overall and therefore also adjusted EBIT margin that was lower and is now standing at 6.5%. I did cover some of the other figures in the highlights, but there's also a €16 million financial charge, including leases, €14 million of which related to shareholder loan, and then the resulting PBT group share of -8.

Free-cash-flow-wise, it's a good situation, even a better situation versus '24. Despite the lower operating results, there was less cash interest paid, lower taxes paid, and a higher working capital inflow.

The net debt now stands at €270 million, of which the majority, 255, is the shareholder loan. Now what do we expect for 2026 with the new team?

We do expect to reconnect with sales growth. Low to mid-single-digit growth is what we anticipate year-on-year, and we also anticipate a growth in the operating results thanks to some operating leverage we will see.

Let me finish by the corporate segment briefly. Overall, on an operating level for the corporate segment, we did have an improved rental income.

You remember D'Ieteren Immo is also part of the corporate segment, and so we had a more than 9% increase year-on-year on rental income. Of course, the majority of the results at the corporate segment are impacted by the financial charges.

We now had in '24, we still had financial income. In '25, we have financial charges linked to the debt raised at the end of 2024, which is, of course, quite different from the year before.

We did, and I'm sure you remember that, reimburse €500 million, the bridge loan, already by the summer last year. The net debt position, if we exclude the shareholder loan of Moleskine, is now standing at about €540 million overall.

Let me conclude the presentation part of this results call by reiterating the main elements of 2025. One, the results are actually highlighting clearly the very solid underlying fundamentals of each and every one of our businesses.

That proved once again being able to show stamina, and we're very optimistic about the future prospects of the group overall. Let me now pause here and open the floor to any questions that you may have.

Operator, can you please take over?

Yes, thanks. Good evening, everyone, and thanks for taking my question.

The first two, let's say, on Belron. Is it correct that you assume organic growth of high single digit to low double digit for 2026, given that you probably include FX headwinds of say likely around [3%?]

in the guidance? If we zoom on the organic growth for 2026, is it related to a volume recovery?

Does it include a volume recovery in the US? If we could zoom on the normalization of insurance claim avoidance, in that area, and how much operating leverage is anticipated from this volume recovery?

If you could give us your analysis of the normalization, let's say, of insurance claim avoidance, if you've seen it trough in Q4 or is this expected in 2026? Then my third question, yeah, sorry, on the group guidance.

I think there is something like an 8% gap versus consensus. It seems you are especially more cautious on TVH and Auto.

If we could zoom on these two. Thank you.

Okay. On Belron, if I start first by the top line, our guidance for '26 is mid- to high single-digit sales growth is what we're guiding towards.

Indeed, and you have, of course, to use the year-end 2025 at year-end 2025 FX, right, which we communicate in the restatement is communicated in the appendix. Right.

Exactly. You will see on the appendix we have a column that shows exactly when you use now the December 31st, 2025 foreign exchange rates, what the top and bottom line basis is.

Typically, 6%... As our guidance is always taking a stable foreign exchange, and we take the most recent one, which is the one of December 2025.

When we talk mid- to high single digit, it's related to that that you have to compare it to. I think then you mentioned about the volumes and the claim avoidance in the US as a sub-element of the top-line development in Belron.

You may recall that we had in the whole first half of last year seen that claim avoidance really being present. Then over the summer, we saw some encouraging signs that it might be getting a little bit better, and that with actually H2, we ended the year saying that claims were again really there.

We saw claims volume improving from our point of view, if you know what I mean. Basically what it means is that when we guide for 2026, we are operating in an environment which is, yeah, closer to normal again on this whole claims avoidance issue.

We've seen the insurance players, yeah, they've come back a bit more to their profitability again last year. They're present again in some of the states that they may have retreated from.

They're doing their usual competitive behavior, if you like, and that typically drives again people to sign up, first of all, to insurance contracts, and second of all, to also use their claims when they have an issue to do that. We are in a more normal environment again from a claims avoidance point of view.

Then you had a third question, which was... Sorry.

It was on the group guidance. Where do you think basically consensus is too high?

On is it mostly TVH and Auto, and what are we missing? Especially, I think on Auto, you mentioned the distributor margin being under pressure.

I don't know exactly how the components of the consensus all are, but I can imagine that D'Ieteren Auto is probably something where you haven't noticed that in our guidance, we had '24 and '25 that were quite exceptional years, and we are guiding and planning on a more I wouldn't call it normal year, but on a more difficult year where we do anticipate, yeah, continued top-line pressure and a material decline in the margin. That's, I think, the main explanation of what may not necessarily have been reflected in what people were thinking about for 2026.

Just reinforcing that message indeed. The decline in top line and lower margin definitely.

In

2025 may have landed a bit higher than what people also have expected.

You talked about the distributor margin being under pressure. Is that some specific pressure from Volkswagen?

No, this is, as this is always the case. Each time a new model is being launched, they use it as an occasion, I would say, to put some additional pressure on the bottom part of the value chain, which are the importers, the distributors, the dealers, etc.

That's been the case since several years, and of course, that's also the case now. What you do have to note in Automotive is that we are now at the beginning of, let's say, the smaller electric vehicles that will increasingly start to be offered.

That will also have an impact on the mix overall. When you say distribution margin, yeah, the overall sales price of some of those smaller cars are a bit lower, while you do have a euro effect on that as well, even if the margin is more or less the same in terms of a percentage.

Okay. Maybe a very quick follow-up on TVH then.

What about the search for a new CEO? How close are we to the hiring of, yeah, this position?

The process is going very well, but as these type of things always take time. It's a very attractive business, we don't have all the difficulty to find strong candidates.

Of course, these processes take their time.

Thank you.

Yes, hi, and thanks for taking my questions. I have two on Belron, please, and maybe a third one on TVH.

The second-half margins were very strong at Belron, 24.4% if my maths are correct. I know you give a bit a wide range for the guidance, an improvement.

If I look into next year, you mentioned that the claim avoidance has normalized, so that should be a tailwind in the first half. You also don't have the transformation costs next year.

I think there will also be some price increases as well. I'm just wondering why is there any reason that margins in 2026 should materially differ from the second half?

Or if you can just highlight a bit the things that we should take into account. Then the second question on Belron is on the North America, the organic sales growth.

If I do the maths correctly, that's almost 11% in the second half. Can you give some color here on the volumes?

I assume they must be positive as claim avoidance has come down, but how positive are they, and how do they compare to the other regions? Then maybe as a third question on TVH, yeah, we have seen you lowering the guidance there on the organic growth in the first half.

Now you come in a bit short in the second half, despite there being an additional trading day, if I'm not mistaken. You expect a recovery in 2026.

Can you elaborate a bit on why you think this will be the case? Those would be my questions.

Maybe start with the Belron question. You cannot just extrapolate the H2 margin of '25 and say this is the basis for the margin of 2026.

It's not as simple as that. There's always a number of factors that determine what you ultimately end up having in a particular trimester or semester, for that matter.

It can be sector trends like claim avoidance that you talked about. It can be miles driven.

Q1 is a bit more weather-driven than the other quarters in the year. There may be some cost phasing that plays a role, some operating leverage that plays differently depending on the year, some trading days effects you may have here and there.

You really cannot just extrapolate the H2 margin to H1. Every year is somehow a bit different to have in there.

To the degree that claims avoidance is a bit more normalized, you should see some effect, as you say, in H1 versus in H1 of last year. On transformation costs, yeah, the transformation program is over, but that does not mean that there are no more programs or let's say IT investments going on that may link to system integration or other migration costs that may somehow have an impact on the way transformation is being accounted for.

There's always, but it's more business as usual now really, country per country. There are certain things that may be happening, but you're right that the actual transformation program as such is somehow over now.

One more element on the volume side

that was also... That was the other question, yeah.

...the US, is the fact that yes, there was a significant improvement on the claim avoidance side, but as well let's not forget continued progress on cash and commercial segments, right, as we had stated earlier, especially in the cash segment. They have rebuilt the team earlier, and they continue to deliver on that segment helped, of course, with a more favorable environment in H2.

If,

yeah, you had a question on TVH and its recovery. We guide to a continuing decline in margin at TVH.

Oh, yes, a recovery from the top line, low to mid single-digit top-line growth because we saw also a more favorable environment around the end of the year, mainly in material handling and agriculture, although construction remained the gains, let's say, of TVH remain strong. In that environment, we remain cautious, let's say, on the margin at TVH.

That's clear. Thank you.

Hey, hello. Thank you for taking my questions.

I would have three. The first one would be on TVH.

I'm just wondering how you see the path back to the 16% EBIT margin targets by 2028, considering that the mix and the pricing pressure that you mentioned seems to have altered that business dramatically. Second question would be on PHE.

I see acquisitions being done in Southern Europe, but you've probably noticed that some of the yeah, basically competitors in somewhat Western Europe are also announcing that they are revising their strategic options. I'm wondering how you look at or whether you are revising your strategic options with PHE on the back of their announcement.

Then the third question, and I hope you allow me to do this, is that basically the elephant in the room. You had two articles, one in Financial Times and one on Bloomberg, where it's stated that you're planning an IPO for Belron.

In the past, you've publicly stated that it's likely that one of the PE players in Belron will look for a liquidity event, considering their investment horizon. Considering that one of the PE investors is past that horizon, I'm just wondering what, in your view, would be an ideal environment for such a liquidity event?

Thank you.

All right. On TVH, of course, we stand very much by the ambitions that we mentioned at the Investor Day for 2028.

They still very much hold. We have de facto 3 full years to go.

As you've seen in the last 5 years, lots of things can happen for a global business, both positive and negative. We see many positive contributors that allow us to get to those margins that we have highlighted for 2028.

We don't change that at all. At PHE, you want to know whether we change our options with some of our competitors are revising it.

Our strategy is very clear at PHE. We're very happy to be in the leadership positions in the markets that we're in.

When we can, we add something from time to time, like we've done in Ireland, for instance, last year. For us, being part of the consolidation that may or may not happen at the European level is very central to our strategy.

We very much believe in the European market of spare parts that PHE is in, and we very much believe in our approach of growing our market share, doing organic performance, and complementing it here and there with some acquisitions as we do, for instance, in Spain. For us, there is really no change in strategy.

On the contrary, it just strengthens our belief and that we're on the right track with PHE in Europe. Then on the last question, yeah, the Financial Times and the Bloomberg, I cannot comment on rumors that they write about.

What I can talk about is that, of course, as we are at the table at Belron with other co-shareholders that at some point in time will want to exit. That's nothing new.

When that time will come, I cannot say because it's them more triggering that moment than we are. We are a majority shareholder at Belron, and we're very happy to be in that position.

At some point in time, they will want to exit. What is an ideal environment for such a liquidity event?

I can think of several ones. As as our leverage at Belron will continue to go down, the number of options available or the number of environments that could be a good and attractive liquidity event for our co-shareholders will only increase.

I think it's a dynamic statement to make of what would be an ideal environment for such a liquidity event. We'll tackle that when that moment comes.

I know I'm maybe repeating myself a little bit, but that's not because there are rumors in the press that there's anything new to say from our point of view.

Thank you for the answer. On TVH, could you just maybe clarify that path because, obviously, we start from a very tough environment right now.

The way you see to that 16% EBIT margin, is that from a better mix, or is that from volumes, or how do you see that?

You need some volume because you can actually have operating leverage from the fixed cost base that we have with the logistics footprint at TVH. We need a bit of price support, which we didn't have at all more recently, but I'm very confident that also price support is there from time to time and will come back.

If you have both of those elements and you combine it with good cost containment, then there's absolutely no reason why you cannot rapidly work on the margins again. You need a bit of all three.

That's what we've seen in some of the very strong years that we've had, and we haven't been around so long at TVH. In some of those years, we had a combination of those three.

When you have a combination of those three, then there's no reason to exceed even the margins that we mentioned in our Investor Day last year.

Thank you, and congrats on the good results.

Hi there. Thanks for taking my questions.

Two two short ones, I hope. Just in Belron, you mentioned there that Q1 is heavily impacted by the weather usually.

I just wondered if you could help us with year-to-date trading, whether you have seen the impact of the weather and then also on the back of the very, very strong second-half performance in terms of Belron organic growth. I don't know if you provided it earlier, but could you just give us an idea of volumes across North America and its other regions, and can we assume that's running into your year-to-date figures as well?

Then my second question is just on Belron margins. Again, you had a strong second half.

You hit your 23% margin. There's a lot of talk about how you could get there after first-half results.

Can you help us unpack how you did that in the end? I assume it's plenty of operating leverage, but I'm just interested in the impact of pricing, marketing, and so on.

Then also what are the main levers for margin growth in 2026 beyond operating leverage? Thank you.

Starting with the year-to-date trading, it's very early days, and we typically give a trading update at the end of Q1 in the month of May on top line, including for Belron. You may have noticed, of course, that there has been some serious winter in the US in the beginning of this year, even a little bit at the end of last year, by the way, which helped in December, but also in the beginning of this year, both in January, February, and even early March.

So...

Hello, can you still hear me?

I can go ahead. Thank you very much.

All right, so that was a part of the year-to-date trading, which is a bit early to tell really what the impact of that extreme winter will be. You should just note that in the midst of a real snowstorm, people stay at home and maybe blocked for a couple of days, to say.

Then it's more in the aftermath of that snowstorm where people get out again that you do see the effect on the windshields that are there, and then, of course, our service centers gets lots of demands and in there. You may have some timing differences between when the actual snowstorm happens and then the impact it has on the number of jobs that show up in our service centers.

Of course, we're trying to be as agile and flexible as possible in matching capacity, supply and demand of technicians, etc., together. That's point number one.

Then point number two, you asked a bit on the volumes, I think, for the US. Volumes overall, we ended the year with I think 0.5% job growth overall worldwide.

That was, of course, higher than in H1, where we were still negative in volume. You can assume that in H2, we did have a somewhat higher overall volume growth, probably around 1.5% or so.

The US did contribute overproportionately to that. The percentage in the US has been higher than this 1.5% and so it did contribute to that.

I think you had the question there on volume US. Then you asked a little bit about, yeah, the overall margin effect of H2 in the US.

It was really a combination of factors. We did have a good cost element and containments.

We had an additional trading day. We had the transformation costs that were a bit more on H1 versus H2.

We had supportive pricing. We had talked about mix before, but there was overall supportive pricing.

There was just operating leverage, given that we did have stronger volumes in H2. I talked about the lack of avoidance, I would say, in H2.

Then the good matching of supply and demand, which is always important because it's one thing to have the volumes, and you have to have the capacity at the right place. I think all the different pieces of the puzzle fell nicely together in H2 and helped explain the good operating leverage we had.

Thank you. That's

very helpful.

We are at 7:30 p.m., which I think more or less when we anticipated to finish off this call. In that sense, I will thank you all very much for your presence in our '25 results and look very much forward to meeting you in the course either of the coming days or the coming weeks or the coming months.

Thank you very much and have a great evening. Bye-bye.