Good morning everyone and welcome to Mondi's 2026 half-year results presentation. I'm Andrew King, your Group CEO and I'm joined this morning by our CFO, Mike Powell.

I'll begin with some key messages from the period under review and then Mike will take you through the financial performance in more detail. I'll return to provide an update on the performance of our business units and discuss some of the current market dynamics before taking you through various of the actions we are taking to strengthen our competitive advantage in what remains a volatile market backdrop.

After that, Mike and I look forward to taking your questions. In the first half of 2026, we delivered underlying EBITDA of €379 million, down on the prior year due mainly to margin pressure from lower average selling prices and higher input costs.

We were able to partially mitigate these pressures through higher sales volumes, strong cost control, and proactive pricing actions through the period. We remain focused on taking decisive action on those areas we can control.

Tight control of working capital mitigated the fall in earnings, allowing us to generate cash from operations of €347 million in the period, while lower capital expenditure also contributed to a stable net debt position. We continue to take actions on cost, operational excellence, and portfolio optimization, while ensuring we are well positioned to serve our customers with our broad range of innovative, sustainable solutions.

These actions, together with a significant competitive advantage we continue to enjoy as a business, ensure that Mondi is strongly positioned both to withstand the current market pressures and capture the upside as market conditions improve. With that, let me hand you over to Mike for more color on the financial performance.

Thank you, Andrew, and morning everybody. Thanks for joining.

Now let me take you through the group's financial results. Starting with the main movements in underlying EBITDA for the first half of 2026 when compared to the first half of 2025.

We achieved higher sales volumes across most of our packaging businesses, driven by the ongoing ramp-up of our major capacity expansion projects and an improvement in order books, along with a resilient performance in our converting businesses. Sales prices were on average below the prior year.

Pricing across our paper grades declined in the second half of 2025 and into early 2026, resulting in the group starting the year at lower levels. Although price increases were implemented during the first half and with some initial benefits realized in the period, average prices for the half remained below the prior year.

We expect to achieve the full effect of these price increases in the third quarter. Turning now to input costs, which increased with higher wood costs in Central and Eastern Europe, as well as the impact of higher energy and other categories due to the conflict in the Middle East.

As we enter the third quarter, input costs do remain volatile, and based on current spot, remain above average input cost levels seen in the first half. Whilst you can see and follow the energy indexes publicly for yourself, let me give you a little more color on Central and Eastern European wood costs, which are firming, and may be a little counterintuitive compared to the economic environment.

As the demand for items such as furniture and European wood exports into the Middle East decline, we are seeing less harvested volumes. Therefore, there's less sawmill activity, resulting in lower wood supply and wood chips into the market.

Alongside that, unlike Scandinavian markets where there is currently a degree of calamity wood, Central, Eastern Europe has little calamity wood. These factors result in the cost of wood increasing in our Central, Eastern European region and will continue to do so in the second half.

These intra-European fluctuations are not untypical of what we see in regional markets from time to time. For forestry fair value, we recognized a loss in the period of €35 million compared to a gain of €18 million last year, and that results in the €53 million delta that you see.

This loss was mainly the result of a reduction in local wood prices in South Africa during the period, and while the year-end valuation will be based on prevailing prices at the time and reliant on a number of market input factors in South Africa such as the export price of wood chips, the exchange rate, and the South African diesel price, which of course is linked to the oil price. Absent any significant changes to the current market environment, I would expect a fair value gain in the second half.

Fixed costs, we worked hard on, were flat year-on-year excluding the acquired Schumacher cost base, which reflects the continued focus on cost control and driving efficiency improvements to offset inflationary cost pressures. Andrew will touch more on some of these initiatives later in the presentation.

Lastly, FX and other totaled €42 million and was mainly attributable to the weaker U.S. dollar versus the euro and hence was a year-on-year headwind.

The dollar has largely been steady actually since the second half of 2025 and even recently shown a little bit of strengthening. Adding all that up results in an underlying EBITDA of the €379 million that you see on the right-hand side of the page.

Now looking at cash flow movements during the period. Our teams have worked really hard to mitigate the impact of lower earnings.

What I've done here is I've simplified the cash flow because as accountants tend to make it rather complicated in the statutory format these days. I'll start off with underlying EBITDA that you can see at the top of the slide and adjusting for the non-cash forestry fair value that I've just taken you through.

Then as expected, we had a working capital outflow in the period, which we generally do experience in half-year one, due to seasonality effects as well as the impact of higher prices at the end of the period. Pleasingly, this movement was less than the equivalent period last year.

Whilst not shown on the slide, when you do get a chance to look at the balance sheet, you'll see that our absolute total working capital balance at 30th of June 2026 was €122 million lower than the balance at 30th of June 2025. A real good testament to the strong focus on working capital management.

Tax and interest paid was higher, mainly driven by the timing of Eurobond coupon payments. That's only a timing issue.

Investment in property, plant and equipment was around €140 million lower than the prior year, and we continue to apply rigorous discipline to new CapEx approvals, leveraging our well-invested and well-maintained asset base, whilst ensuring we continue to prioritize safety and asset integrity. For the full year, we expect CapEx to be around the €500 million mark.

Previously, we guided to €550 million, somewhat lower than previous guidance and well below last year's €690 million. I do want to be clear on this.

We are not storing up an issue for the future here or risking safety or growth, and the reductions are spread across a broad portfolio of smaller projects. Taking all that into account, while earnings were down on the prior year, you can see about halfway down the slide, the 5 inflow versus the 18 outflow of last year shows our cash movement generated from the business was largely unchanged.

Dividend payments reflect the return of the full-year dividend to within cover range. Taking all of the items into account, including the acquisition of Schumacher in 2025, net debt was unchanged at €2.6 billion at 30th of June 2026.

While leverage is higher at 3.2 times at the end of the period, as can be seen at the bottom of the page, this is really driven by the lower 12-month trailing EBITDA, which does include a fair value loss for both of the periods shown. Moving forward, we expect leverage to reduce, supported by both the ongoing focus on cash management and the improving trading momentum.

Now I want to set out our robust financial position. We successfully refinanced our €1 billion RCF facility during the period.

We also repaid the remaining balance of the Eurobond that matured in April 2026, which we'd already refinanced in October last year. The only notable debt maturity in the near term is the €750 million Eurobond due to mature in April 2028.

We remain strongly positioned with liquidity totaling €1.15 billion, an investment-grade credit rating, and a reminder, we have no financial covenants. As you would have seen from our release this morning, we've recognized a €320 million of pre-tax special item charges in the period.

This comprised a non-cash impairment charge of €296 million and cash restructuring and closure costs of €24 million, which we expect to flow out as cash in the second half of the year. Impairment charges comprise €206 million at our Duino mill in Italy.

Whilst Duino continues to ramp up volumes in line with plan and we remain confident in its long-term future, the current outlook indicates a lower returns profile than previously anticipated, with returns highly sensitive to energy input costs and selling price assumptions, both of which are proving to be highly volatile in the current world. The remaining €90 million impairment charge was split between our Neusiedler uncoated fine paper operations in Austria, the Schortens solid mill in Germany, and the Stamboliyski mill in Bulgaria that ceased operations in 2024.

Lastly, technical guidance for 2026. After a normal review of the useful lives of our assets, we've reduced the expected depreciation and amortization guidance for the year to approximately €475 million, which reflects our well-invested and well-maintained asset base.

We've also reduced the guidance for the full-year impact of maintenance shuts from €100 million to €80 million, this reduction all attributable to the second half. To draw to a close, we have and continue to take a number of actions to deliver earnings and cash resilience in the short term, whilst continuing to enhance leverage to the upside as markets improve.

With that, Andrew, I'm back to you.

Many thanks, Mike. I'll now take you through a review of the business unit performance and thoughts on current market dynamics before again coming back to the actions we are taking to strengthen our competitive advantage.

If I move then to Corrugated Packaging. As you'll see, a highlight was the good volume development across our key segments.

Containerboard volumes were up around 12%, supported by the ramp-up of the recent capital investment projects at both Duino and Kuopio mills, while in the box business we delivered 2% volume growth on a like-for-like basis. In boxes, we continue to see quite divergent regional growth rates, with the Polish and surrounding emerging European market seeing continued good growth and Turkey recovering, albeit volatile, while Germany and Benelux continue to struggle.

Despite the generally low growth market, we are encouraged by the pipeline of opportunities in our portfolio, supported by the broader geographic coverage we now offer across Northern Europe as a consequence of the integration of the Schumacher business last year. In uncoated fine paper, volumes were again stable despite market demand declines estimated at around 3% in Europe, as we continue to gain share at the expense of weaker competitors.

Margin pressure came from a combination of the lower average selling prices across all key paper grades and the significant input cost inflation. Prices came off through the second half of 2025 as Mike explained, and into Q1 2026, on the back of both the sluggish demand and the ongoing overcapacity in some of the bulk grades of recycled containerboard and uncoated fine paper.

In response to the sharp uptick in input costs as a consequence of the Middle East war, we have been successful in implementing a series of price increases across all key grades during the period. Although not sufficient to fully offset the impact of the cost increases in Q2, we do see further benefits from these price increases into the second half.

While largely cost-driven, it is encouraging to see that the price increases are also supported by strong order books going into the second half, particularly in virgin containerboard grades. The focus has rightly been on the continued oversupply in recycled containerboard.

However, I note that the supply-side dynamics in the niche virgin grades, which is our largest exposure, are very different. There is no significant new capacity in Europe, and the large capacity reductions in the U.S.

have served to reduce exports to Europe, traditionally an important export market for the U.S. producers.

With steady demand, this has served to significantly tighten up the virgin containerboard markets. We are currently engaging with our customers on further price increases across our range of containerboard grades, supported by both the tight supply-demand balance in the virgin grades and, of course, the ongoing cost pressures we are seeing in recycled containerboard.

Margins in our corrugated solutions business were pressurized by the lag effect in passing on the rising containerboard prices through the period and the intense competitive pressures in what remains sluggish growth markets. We also saw a weak performance from the small solid board business acquired as part of the Schumacher acquisition, which Mike referred to in the earlier discussion on impairments.

Turning to Flexible Packaging, we delivered a resilient performance with solid results from our converting businesses, mitigating the squeeze in kraft paper margins. Pleasingly, we were able to deliver good volume growth in improving, but still generally low-growth markets.

Kraft paper volume growth was supported by the optimization of recent investments and resilient export demand, while in paper bags, we saw ongoing good growth in e-commerce applications in both Europe and North America and regional strength in industrial bags in Central America. Industry volumes for industrial bags in our core European markets remain relatively flat, and we still haven't seen the marked cyclical recovery of the lows of recent years, impacted of course by the subdued household construction activity.

The business saw significant input cost pressures during the period as higher oil and gas prices filtered through to other inputs, most notably logistics, chemicals, and wood, as highlighted by Mike. Through very proactive management, our commercial teams were able to limit the lag effect in passing on these costs in our converting businesses.

We also implemented paper price increases during the quarter and early into Q3, supported by both the generally higher cost environment and importantly, good demand driven by the increasing use of kraft paper in e-commerce applications and steady demand from traditional industrial uses. I'll come back to developments in the e-commerce market later in more detail.

While these price increases had some effect on the Q2 performance, we expect the full impact again to come through in the third quarter. Similarly though, we do expect a further uptick in the cost base as Central and Eastern European wood costs continue to rise, and recent events in the oil and gas markets point to further general input cost inflation, noting of course that the outlook here is changing on an almost weekly basis depending on events in the Middle East.

We will continue to monitor closely the impact on the cost base and look to respond with pricing actions where appropriate. In the context of the prolonged industry downturn we have been experiencing, I want to spend a few minutes highlighting the various actions we are taking to both ensure resilience in the short term and support long-term value creation for our shareholders.

As a group, we do benefit from operating some of the most productive and lowest-cost pulp and paper mills in Europe. Coupled with our strength in integration and diversified portfolio of packaging solutions serving structurally growing markets, we are well positioned for the future.

However, we are focused on doing more to strengthen performance, cash generation, and competitiveness through a combination of plant network optimization, strong capital discipline, operational excellence, and commercial execution. Our ongoing actions around plant network optimization are tailored to create a stronger, more scalable platform to support growth, drive productivity and cost optimization, and improve returns.

We've announced the closure of six converting plants over the last six months. Of these, two plants are now closed, with the remaining four plants expected to close over the remainder of this year.

I'll remind you that these plants were profitable, the upside comes in successfully transferring the volumes to larger, more efficient sites to improve asset utilization and reduce fixed costs, while of course ensuring we maintain service continuity. To put this challenge into context, it requires the transfer of around 800 customers, supported by careful qualification and transition planning.

We are relocating 30 major items of equipment, and the six closures involve a reduction in head count of around 580 by year-end. We continue to look to optimize our operational footprint to support long-term value creation, and will not hesitate to take further action on our portfolio if required.

As Mike has already alluded to, the major capital expenditure projects we have been developing over the past years, four years, are now largely complete. Our priority is now to drive cash returns from these investments through both operational and commercial optimization.

While we recognize that we are not where we want to be with certain of these projects, as Mike has already discussed in the context of the Duino investment, we are in a position now where we can drive growth from existing, installed capacity without the need for further major expansionary CapEx. We can reduce capital expenditure without prejudicing asset quality or mortgaging future upside.

As Mike mentioned, for 2026, we are now planning for full-year CapEx of around €500 million, reduced from our previous guidance of €550 million. Our investment program is focused on safety, asset integrity, and cost optimization, with only highly selected growth CapEx in core markets.

A large component of the current cash-out is linked to the biomass boiler projects in South Africa, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic, aimed at driving cost optimization, energy efficiencies, and reducing our exposure to volatile fossil fuel markets. Again, I want to emphasize, as Mike did, that the reduction in CapEx guidance is not about pushing out urgently needed maintenance CapEx.

We are confident we can run the business with the lower CapEx levels given the well-invested nature of our asset base. Operational excellence and continuous improvement is part of the DNA of the group.

It's core to how we seek to drive competitive advantage and unlock value from our asset base. At our flagship containerboard mill in Świecie, Poland, for example, paper production has increased by 18% over the past 10 years on the same machine footprint, while in converting, our industrial bags business has achieved a compound annual growth in productivity of 5% over the same period.

Building on this legacy, we are now accelerating the rollout of our Mondi Management System, or MMS as we call it, across our mill network and extending it into our converting operations. This follows successful pilot projects in various of our key mills.

I mentioned this initiative at the full-year results, but just to remind you, it is a multi-year program aimed at taking us to the next level of operational excellence through a zero-loss mindset, embedding standardized processes, and ensuring the sharing of best practice, facilitated by empowering our people and strengthening our leadership teams. It focuses on right-first-time performance, waste reduction, reliability, operator capability, and improved run rates.

This is not about quick wins. It's a long-term program designed to embed consistent execution and strengthen leadership capability across our operations.

Very excited that early adopter sites are already reducing unplanned downtime and improving operating efficiency, reinforcing our confidence that we can drive operational excellence to the next level, improving competitiveness and cash returns. Again, by way of example, the Świecie mill achieved 4.3% productivity gains over the last 12 months, with production output on selected machines up 11%.

While of course not all due to MMS, this is clearly a major contributor. While market growth remains subdued, we are confident that the structural growth drivers for sustainable packaging solutions remain firmly in place.

Customers increasingly need partners who combine broad product choice, innovation, sustainability, secure supply, and reliable execution. We are well positioned in attractive end markets such as FMCG and e-commerce, where customers do remain focused on reducing plastic when not required and improving packaging sustainability.

In this market, achieving growth is not simply about pushing products. It is about customer partnerships, technical collaboration, and innovation.

Some great examples is in our collaboration with a leading Ecuadorian banana exporter to develop a corrugated solution using our SmartGrow, Kraft Brown, and Fresco flute containerboard. While you'll see from the picture it's not immediately obvious, the design is around 10% lighter, while maintaining the strength needed for demanding export supply chain.

Another example you can see in the top left of these images is where we have supported the transition to a recyclable mono-material solution, which is an industry first for a shelf-to-table tuna product. These examples, and the many more we have, show how our product offering, technical expertise, and customer partnerships help us to win customers and capture growth, whatever the market conditions.

We do have a particular strength in the strongly growing segment of e-commerce, and I just want to spend a couple of minutes around this. Here, we can support customers across the complete range of fiber-based packaging.

Traditionally, e-commerce has primarily been a box business, with significant growth seen over the past 20-odd years. It is now a major component of demand, estimated to account for roughly 15% of the European box market.

While demand here continues to grow, it is undoubtedly slowing as the e-commerce market matures, and the major players look to optimize their packaging. We have strongly focused on supporting our customers in this journey, developing products such as the paper protector mailer, which you see in the pictures, in conjunction with a major e-commerce customer.

As the leading incumbent producer of kraft paper and paper bags, we have also been at the forefront of supporting our customers' transition to the use of fully recyclable, lightweight, and flexible paper bag solutions. More recently again, as e-commerce customers looked for increased efficiencies in their packaging processes, we have been working with machine suppliers and customers to develop automated packing lines that use our packaging materials, such as kraft or functional barrier paper.

It is in these kraft paper and bag applications that we are seeing the stronger rates of growth currently, and a key reason why kraft paper demand is positive going into the second half of the year. Last year, as we combined our e-commerce sales teams across corrugated and flexible packaging, creating a simpler, more coordinated proposition for customers across all applications and markets.

Our broad, fiber-based e-commerce range is supported by integrated production, technical expertise, and recent investments in Štětí, Świecie, Kuopio, and our North American bag network, helping us support existing customers and win new business in these fast-growing applications. Mondi is indeed the home of e-commerce packaging.

In summary then, we are well positioned to deliver short-term resilience and sustainable, long-term shareholder value as a leader in sustainable packaging solutions, with exposure to attractive, structurally growing markets. This is supported by a well-invested, cost-advantaged, and integrated asset base.

We remain focused on disciplined capital allocation and retaining a robust balance sheet. Importantly, we are taking decisive actions today to drive performance and strengthen our competitive advantage for long-term value creation.

I'll then just finish with the outlook for the remainder of this year. We have seen trading momentum gradually improving through the first half, and we enter the second half of the year with higher packaging prices, supported by very good order books.

That said, we do see headwinds with volatile energy-related input costs and higher wood costs across Central and Eastern Europe. Of course, we are also mindful of the ongoing geopolitical turbulence in the world.

With that, I would take you back to Q&A, and Mike and I will be happy to answer your questions.

Good morning. Thanks for taking the question.

Mike, I'd just like to follow up on your comments on Central Eastern European wood costs. Would you mind giving us some context of how big the wood costs bucket is, and the headwind maybe from a quantum perspective that you see as today into the second half?

Are you comfortable that the price actions so far are more than offsetting the cost increases?

Thanks, Cole. I think I've described sort of the economics of the situation.

Central Eastern European wood second half on first half, best guess today, and pretty likely to happen because you tend to contract forward a little bit, is probably on its own about a 30, €35 million headwind, half two, half one, if that's what you're after. Again, first half was up probably €25 million on second half last year.

I'd probably expect year-on-year Central Eastern European wood to be sort of €60 million, something like that. Hopefully that's clear.

Second half on first half, about €35 million. Overall a bigger number.

Yes, price actions have been taken, but it does moderate the margin improvement if you like. We will get some Q3 benefit of those prices coming through, but obviously we have got those wood costs coming through before any sort of other energy-related.

Yes, to answer your question.

Thank you. Then Andrew, maybe one from your side on the pricing actions.

Just to confirm, is Mondi out with price increases across containerboard and sack kraft, like further increases to the ones that you've already achieved? I'm just wondering how comfortable do you feel about those price increases, is it nicely supported by order books?

Maybe following up from that with Duino, given the impairments, I realize that recycled containerboard market is very challenged. One of the reasons that you originally did Duino was you were going to export volumes into Turkey.

Turkey had safeguard measures put against Europe, but Europe doesn't have any safeguard measures against Turkey. When is the time that the industry kind of takes the gloves off and pushes back on some of the Turkey volumes that are coming into Europe on recycled containerboard?

Would that be something that you pursue? Yeah.

Firstly, Cole, on the pricing actions, just to be explicit, we are engaged with our customers at the moment on price increases across our containerboard grades. As I said in my comments, clearly in the virgin grades, we are seeing a very tight supply-demand dynamic, driven by a confluence of factors.

As I mentioned, there's reduced supply out of the U.S. for obvious reasons.

There's huge capacity reductions in the U.S. and export business is never been particularly lucrative.

It's more marginal business for the U.S. producers.

It's natural that when they shut capacity in the U.S., the first market that they stop serving is exports. Of course, that's probably exacerbated now by the significant price increases we are seeing being implemented in the U.S.

That's made Europe progressively less attractive. Of course, the marginally stronger dollar over the last quarter or so is probably also supported that.

That hasn't moved particularly much. One also has to recognize that has been a big topic is the sort of weak dollar more generally.

Any strengthening of the dollar does undoubtedly support European pricing dynamics as well. Yes, it's across our grades.

On the recycled side, goes without saying, but it is more cost-driven. Everyone knows about the oversupply issues on the recycled side.

As I think we've said on a number of occasions, there simply isn't the margin to play with in the industry at the moment, particularly given the elevated input costs at the moment. As the recycled cost curve is particularly exposed to external energy, to gas and other forms of external energy.

With these elevated gas prices, the whole cost curve has moved up. Margins are under enormous pressure across the cost curve, and that is simply the main driver there.

As I say, on the virgin side, and across the piece, our order books are very good. You mentioned about kraft paper, we are not out with a price increase on kraft paper at the moment, albeit we are very encouraged by again a strong order position, as I said, stable demand out of, call it, the traditional industrial sources of demand.

Europe is okay, it's still not kicking on from the cyclical lows we've been seeing, but that is not hard to understand given the ongoing geopolitical issues and the impact that has on consumer confidence. If people are not building that extension to their house or investing in a new kitchen or something like that that uses the bags for our products, to the extent they were, it's still okay.

Export markets are decent, and that's encouraging. As I say, we are seeing quite strong demand from non-traditional uses of kraft paper, most notably the e-commerce, which is what I was discussing in terms of some of the movements in the e-commerce market, which is driving demand for our kraft paper applications and our coated products and the like, which is very encouraging.

It's tightening up those markets. We go into the second half with a very strong order position there.

Maybe just your last question on Duino specifically. You're right in that one of the logics behind Duino in the first place was we are short of containerboard in our Turkish operations.

We saw this as an opportunity to have leverage into the Turkish markets because Duino is well placed logistically to supply into Turkey. As you rightly say, there have been significant safeguarding measures put in place that effectively make it prohibitive to export containerboard into the Turkish markets from Europe.

I think it's a bigger political question as to when the gloves might come off. I think it's a topic more broadly for Europe in that, as industry, we often feel like we're fighting with one hand tied behind our back.

Not that we need safeguards per se, but, of course, when others play that game, then it is difficult if Europe doesn't respond. All you really ask for is a level playing field and then we think we can compete very confidently in global markets.

At the moment, you're not seeing it. You see it in other sectors from, for example, Asian volumes into the fine paper markets, and things like that, not, we'd believe, competitive delivered into Europe, but they are bringing some volume in at different times.

I think it's a broader topic, and of course as an industry, we discuss these matters and certainly we would encourage anything that provides something of a more level playing field. To Cole.

Thank you. Yes, thank you.

Right, hi, Mike and Andrew. Can you hear me?

There we go. Just a question on Germany.

You called out that it's still quite weak. Eastern Europe is pretty strong, and you say Germany is pretty weak.

We've recently seen PMIs, manufacturing PMIs, pop above 52 for the first time in years that we've seen manufacturing PMIs pop up that high, and certainly above 50. Are you starting to see that come through in your business yet?

No, it's a good question, Brian. If you look, and you're referring specifically to the comments I made on the corrugated business where obviously you look very much on a regional basis.

In order of magnitude, I think first half industry numbers suggest Germany was still flat to even slightly backwards, whereas CE, Poland for example, is 4-5% type of growth rates. As you rightly say, it does look like some of the macro indicators are turning somewhat more positive, and it is fair to say our order books into sort of June, July did start to show quite an encouraging pick up.

But 2 months doesn't make a summer, especially these days in Europe, and so I think one has to be a bit cautious about interpreting that into a general trend. I would concur that what we're seeing on the ground does seem to reflect a improving environment relative to where we've been, but clearly early days yet, but at least encouraging.

I agree.

Thanks, Andrew. Is it too soon to start thinking about CapEx?

Now you've cut CapEx to maintenance CapEx. Is it too soon to start thinking about the next level of growth?

Yes, in short. We're very conscious we've spent a lot of our shareholders' money in expanding our capacity.

We do have, call it, sufficient capacity to allow us to grow into growing markets and support growth in these markets, through a combination, essentially that when we bought Schumacher, we knew there was a lot of latent capacity there. That was part of that logic, and so we're very confident.

Of course, there's always smaller debottlenecking things that might make some sense, but that's very much in that bigger program that we talk about, and so there's no need for us to make significant investments on the capacity side in order to be able to support the growth that we see going into the market. Where we do spend a bit of, call it, expansionary CapEx at the moment is, for example, we've done some work in our North American bag business, where we essentially consolidated into a single plant a lot of our e-commerce business, because there's a very strong growth in e-commerce demand for paper bags at the moment in the U.S.

market, and we're adjusting to that. These are very selective smaller CapExes.

We are very confident we can work within the kind of CapEx quantum that we spoke about in the commentary and still facilitate the growth that we hopefully can start to see in the markets.

That's cool. Thank you very much.

Morning everyone. Maybe to start, we're hearing a lot of news regarding testliner price increases going ahead.

I fully understand that that is cost driven. I want to get a sense on the kind of supply demand dynamics downstream at the box level and whether we're struggling to implement all those testliner price increases downstream or not.

Then maybe my second question would just be, maybe an update on where we are with Duino right now. If I think about it, Italian electricity or energy price is extremely high in H1, presumably still in the ramp up phase.

Just curious how we should be seeing that progress and if you're willing to share maybe not an EBITDA number, but EBITDA kind of qualitative assessment, I suppose, going forward. Thanks so much.

Sure. Firstly in terms of the box supply-demand, as just for those comments with Brian, we're seeing different rates of growth in different regional markets throughout Europe.

I think if you take Europe as a whole, it's sort of in the 1, 1-1.5% growth year-to-date. If you see the industry numbers, I think they're always a little sort of out of date, but they're in that order.

The very positive thing is it's progressively got better. I think the May numbers were pretty strong.

They just came out the other day. It just reflects what we feel, which is that there has been a bit of a pickup in momentum over the last couple of months.

As Brian rightly pointed out, the economic indicators feel a bit better in some of those very important markets like Germany for us. That does feel like it's picking up through the order situation, but it's been difficult in the first half or first quarter really.

Then it started to improve a bit. Clearly we have the normal lag effect that comes through when you're getting containerboard price increases.

It does take time for that to come through the boxes. It's always that case.

We always say it's kind of 3 to 6-month lag effect, and that holds true. It's a work in progress frankly in terms of implementing the price increases that have been coming through in the containerboard and pushing it through into the box business.

There is a lot of competition out there. That's undoubtedly the case.

It is encouraging that we are starting to see a better demand picture, and of course that all helps in terms of pushing the containerboard prices through, which need to happen because the box market can't absorb these sort of price increases. Maybe then just on your question on Duino.

Obviously Duino is very much still in ramp up, which has a few effects. Clearly every ton you produce, you're getting a lower unit cost of production because you've got an immediate fixed cost base that you then have to leverage off.

We would estimate that this year we probably it's a 420,000-ton nameplate capacity machine. I think we'd probably land up doing around, depending on market conditions etc.

as well, but probably around 300,000 tons this year plus minus out of that machine. Clearly next year, we'll see the further step up and certainly by the second half of next year, you should be at, call it, full run rate, all else being equal from a technical perspective.

Very important, though, when you bring this sort of volume into the market, you do it in a coherent way, and so we're working very hard with our customers to bring it in and supply the right customer base. The mix effect changes over time, and that we're working on continuing to optimize.

Of course, as Mike said in his comments, the ultimate returns here, they're two huge variables at the moment. One is input gas prices, and the other is of course the selling price.

The selling price is something one always knows is volatile. Of course, this gas, it's relatively unprecedented in the European context for obvious reasons why the gas price is particularly volatile.

Of course, Italy is very exposed to that, and this mill in particular is exposed. We had to factor that all in when thinking about kind of the returns profile in the short term.

Nonetheless, our focus there is driving it to full production. That gets you much further down the cost curve, and it'll be a resilient long-term player there, and then at the cost levels when it's optimized, and an important part of the whole integrated system.

Cool, thank you.

Hi, Andrew. Mike, thank you very much for taking my questions.

My first one would be on the fires that we're having in Southern Europe at this point. We've just saw news that Smurfit Westrock was shutting down the kraftliner plant.

I wanted to get your views on the impact that that would have in the supply and demand and in prices for kraftliner. Also the impact that you're seeing on wood costs in that region, and if any impact to Mondi in particular because of these fires.

The second question would be on the capacity that we see coming online for testliner at the end of this year, beginning of next year. Whilst you're still ramping up the sales volumes in Duino, as you've just mentioned.

Just wanted to pick your brains on how you're seeing this additional capacity progressing. If you see more potential for newsprint conversion still, given the recent announcement that we had from one of your competitors now.

I understand that the solutions for this market would be potentially capacity shutdowns, given the amount of capacity that is coming online to the testliner market. We saw Smurfit shutting down a plant in the UK, but just wanted to see if you guys see more moves starting to happen there from a supply adjustment perspective.

Thank you very much.

We can address those. Firstly, on the fires, our first thoughts are obviously with all the people directly impacted by this and, our thoughts and best wishes go to everyone in these regions impacted by these horrific events.

Of course, also to our industry colleagues in Smurfit in the Smurfit Facture mill. That's I think what you're referring to there.

We wish them all the best in managing a extremely difficult situation, no doubt. I think it's first and foremost to remember all the real people involved in managing these situations.

In terms of the impact on the industry, I don't know what the prognosis is right now. Clearly in the short term, it must cause supply-side disruptions.

We'll have to see how long that is for or not. This is a big market and obviously they're different supply-side dynamics taking place all the time.

I wouldn't want to overplay it. We'll have to understand from a market perspective and also from a customer perspective because we all want to look after the customers here, how this might impact them.

Obviously, where we can help, we'll certainly be available. In terms of the impact on wood costs, firstly, obviously it's not a wood basket that we are exposed to at all.

The wood baskets that we operate in is very much Central, Eastern Europe and also Scandinavia and then, of course, South Africa and Canada. We don't have any particular insights, frankly, into the impact or otherwise on the wood supply situations in Southern Europe.

Again, I think there other people who would be better qualified to answer that question for you. I'm afraid I just don't have any particular insights.

Certainly, we're not seeing any direct impact on the wood markets that we serve at the moment. Albeit, frankly, for other reasons, we've seen pressure on wood costs perversely largely as a result of the Middle East wars and the impact on the sawmilling industry as a consequence of that.

In terms of RCB capacity additions, yeah, this market is in oversupply and any new capacity only exacerbates that in the short term. Clearly, everyone's got their own rationale for adding this sort of capacity, and no doubt it makes sense for the player involved, but of course it does exacerbate the market oversupply more broadly if it comes on indeed at the timeframe etc.

as indicated. What we are seeing with a number of these big projects is that they seem to have been pushed out or delayed for a variety of different reasons.

It's obviously the UK market, which will be directly impacted because of course the two big machines coming on in the UK, but of course it has a knock-on effect throughout the European market. We'll have to see how that plays out.

That being said, as I've said already, the reason why there's pricing momentum at the moment is people simply aren't delivering into these sort of price levels. Industry stock levels are actually in pretty good shape at the moment, which you would say is maybe counterintuitive given the supposed oversupply, but it's a reflection of the fact that there is simply no margin to play with at the higher end of the cost curve, you're seeing that play out.

We'll have to obviously watch, what we always do with the supply side, what's happening and how that might impact markets in the medium term. I think to your point, it does highlight the need for probably further capacity rationalization at the higher end of the cost curve, and undoubtedly there's a lot of smaller higher-cost mills which will become under even more pressure if this oversupply continues to lead to, the margin squeeze we're seeing with at the moment.

You asked the question, are there any more newsprint machines? There are other newsprint machines around.

The I don't want to say the uniqueness of this one, but one of the opportunities that this one has, which again, I don't know the machine directly myself, but I know enough about it, is it was obviously a recycled-based newsprint machine, it has recycling capacity already on site, which obviously has to be adapted and the like for a different grade, but you're not starting from square one. A lot of the newsprint machines historically were also based on virgin pulp, which is a totally different setup for the mill and the like, probably not as conducive to conversion as maybe this one was.

Very clear. Thank you very much.

Good.

Yes, thank you very much, and congratulations on very good results in extremely difficult circumstances in Q2. My first question is just on sack paper.

Obviously, this is your biggest business. You're not talking about price increases, but I suppose we can still hope that there will be some later in the quarter because it is a quarterly price increase.

Could you give us some quantification of how much of your sack paper is produced in Eastern Europe, where you've got this wood cost issue, and how much is in Scandinavia, where you don't have that issue? Just trying to understand whether this is a margin pressure issue over the next six months or not.

Secondly, you were very helpful in terms of giving very clear guidance on these wood cost increases in Central and Eastern Europe, and I was wondering whether you might be able to do something similar on energy and freight. Before I go, just very briefly, working capital was up €94 million in the half.

You did call out the fact that you're improving it substantially. Given that it's a seasonal increase normally and you've had these cost increases, where would you see working capital for the year?

Could you get it down for the year given the improvements that you've made? Thank you very much, and well done again.

Thank you, James. We'll take any compliments going.

No, but you are right in the sense that I should again emphasize what a huge effort it's been for our teams to drive these pricing actions that we did need in very short order given the huge input cost inflation we saw in a very short space of time, and also all the other cost control measures that the teams have been working feverishly on throughout the organization. I will pass on your thanks to them.

Thank you. Just on the questions you've just raised.

Firstly, on the kraft paper prices, I would just remind you we have been implementing kraft paper prices. I think the question was, are we currently in the market with a further price increase?

Just to be clear, we implemented some price increases in Q2 and into the beginning of Q3. As you say, there's a lot of kind of contract business, which invariably means you have to wait until a kind of period-end to push it.

We did implement increases. I think the question was, is there a further increase in train?

The answer is no at the moment. As I emphasize, the order situation is tight, and we'll continue to assess what the next step should be.

In terms of that question on the C Scandi split, we have one we have one mill in in in Scandinavia in this particular segment, which is Dynäs in Sweden. All the rest of the production is in that Central European wood basket, essentially, it's primarily Štětí and Frantschach mills.

It's it's the majority. Undoubtedly, yes, this segment is being impacted of course by these wood costs, this wood cost inflation.

We're not going to break it down for you, but it's it's it's, the total wood cost effect is of the order that Mike referred to. If anything on a proportionate basis, probably a little bit more in this business than it is in in in corrugated, given the corrugated also has exposures in other markets.

Of course, we also have Hinton in in in Canada here, but from a from a impact, that's not a kraft paper mill that reports into flexible packaging, but it's it's a it's a market pulp. Maybe Mike, you could comment on the energy, freight, and working capital.

Sure. No, if I take energy, the answer changes if you'd have asked me 2 weeks ago to today.

We tend to look at gas as the indicator. We tend to look at, cost per megawatt hour index, which a couple of weeks ago was at 45.

Today is at 60 and has been probably for the last week. It's spiked up as unfortunately the conflict occurs.

It's pretty volatile. If it's stuck at spot today, at call it 60, half two, half one, just doing some quick maths, is probably 20 to €30 million.

Whilst I'm pretty confident on the wood increase, unfortunately, I would say there's a range on gas. It can drop quite quickly because it's gone up quite quickly.

The range is probably somewhere between a nought to €30 million headwind, half two on half one. Of course, July will have that cost.

Again, I'd be quite quick to caution on people getting too excited about Q3 because the cost base in July is a lot higher than the cost base was in June. As Andrew said, we're agile, we can manage around it.

People that fuss about quarters on quarters, the cost in July will be at the 60-ish number. To answer your question, James, sort of nought to 30 on energy.

It does knock on to other things, things such as fair value valuations. I don't always enjoy talking about it because it's a complicated thing.

Again, we should just be aware that that depends on South African diesel prices. That's linked to oil.

You touched on freight, and I guess that's partly from a competitor's results that talk quite a lot about freight. I think we manage our freight costs very well.

If I can sort of broaden it to oil and oil-related costs, at the moment, we're not seeing those, but they do knock on to things like fair value, put some risk into that number for the second half. They could knock on to other things.

We haven't seen that yet, call it in the month of July forward. Again, that's pretty volatile right now.

Then the last question, I think, was on working capital. Working capital, I always say, if the business is growing and prices are going up, you have more expensive inventory and more expensive trade debtors.

That's a good thing. We would normally have an inflow in the second half.

I'd expect that sat here right now. Of course, if I'm wrong when I sit here in 6 months, it'll be for good reason.

It'll be because the business is growing, there's momentum into 2027, prices are higher, and inventories are therefore more expensive in stock, and therefore you're carrying in absolute terms a higher working capital balance, obviously lower as percentage of revenue. What I will assure, though, is we'll continue to make sure that that percentage of revenue continues to fall as we continue those actions.

It sort of depends on the momentum into '27, James, as I'm sure you'll understand. Absent anything else, normally an inflow in the second half.

If we don't get it in 6 months, it'll be because the momentum's changed and prices and margins are increasing.

Thank you very much.

Very good. I appreciate we've already taken a lot of your morning, but I think there are a couple more questions.

Very happy to take those if everyone bears with us.

Hi, morning. Can you guys hear me?

We can.

Morning, Themba.

Okay. Morning, Mike and Andrew.

Just have two questions, actually. Regarding the capacity reductions in testliner in the U.S.

and the reduced sort of EU imports, I just want to know sort of how many tons of testliner used to come in, cuz I'm just trying to get a gauge of how much of the price increases are due to that, and how much are due to the input cost pressures that you guys are facing. Then the second question would be just regarding the converting plant closures.

How much sort of costs are you taking out, and how much are you saving because of that?

Let me take the second one first, Themba. We've said in the past and it continues to hold, those closures, the sites collectively are profitable.

What we're actually doing is moving volumes to sort of larger-scale, more efficient plants. It's really important to transfer the customers successfully so we continue to service the customer.

These aren't loss-making plants, you don't gain profitability, you gain efficiency and productivity at the new plants. That's something we always do.

We've done a bit more of it recently for obvious reasons, but it really just helps us offset cost inflation elsewhere so that we can continue to invest in things like e-commerce. We can continue to pay our people, which actually are super important to us to retain their skills and knowledge.

It helps us really offset cost inflation is the way to think about it. You actually saw that Q2 as well.

The numbers were good because we made some really good controls around our cost base, but it really contributes to that. What you shouldn't do, for example, is take the number of heads and multiply it by a salary, because of course you have to transfer the gross profit to the other sites too.

It really just helps us keep control and keep our costs flat, which going into this year, I said we could do with those closures. I think we've proven in the first half we've done that.

We'll continue to demonstrate that in the second half. Andrew.

Nothing just on the thing, I was just checking my numbers because I couldn't remember the exact statistics. If you take it historically, the U.S.

was probably 500-600,000 tons into the European market. Now that's been coming down progressively over the last few years.

I think last year was about a 350-400, somewhere around there. We're seeing further quite meaningful reductions this year, and it seems to have accelerated a bit.

The point being, it's relevant, the virgin containerboard market is 6-7 million tons, that sort of order of magnitude, depends how you define it exactly in Europe. That scale is call it one pretty decent-sized machine.

In what is a relatively small niche market. One also has to remember, we sell a bunch of different containerboard grades.

It's not all a homogeneous thing. It's unbleached kraftliner, we have what we call our hybrid products, we have the semi-chem products, we have the white top products, all of which have their own dynamics to some extent.

It's always a bit dangerous to look at it holistically, but in simple terms, yeah, it's relevant volumes which have reduced. I emphasize, that's one component of it.

The demand side is decent, no capacity additions in Europe, if anything, there's been some sort of production interruptions and things which have tightened up the market. As I say, less imports from the U.S.

If anything, probably the export markets from Europe have become a bit more attractive as well. For example, we sell into Latin America and the like, and the U.S.

guys are probably a bit reduced into those markets as well. That's attractive for us, and particularly if the dollar strengthens, it becomes more attractive.

It's a whole confluence of factors, Themba, I wouldn't focus on any one of those. Undoubtedly, this U.S.

exports, and that's a structural thing. Frankly, it never really made sense for them to be so exposed to Europe as an export destination, because the pricing is typically not as attractive as you can receive.

You should always try and sell as close to home as possible. It's logical that this capacity rationalization in the U.S.

has led to probably a disproportionate impact on their export markets. Just to emphasize, they've closed virgin containerboard capacity.

I think you alluded to recycled. It's pretty much all virgin capacity that they've been closing because these are old, underinvested virgin mills that then come to an end of life and they have a big CapEx call, and they choose to close them.

You have to ask others about exactly their rationale for the closures.

Operator, we'll take the last question if we can.

Sure. Thanks, gents.

Just to follow up on that theme about containerboard pricing. To give us some data points, how much do you think costs have gone up per ton of testliner year-to-date as we stand now with gas and OCC where it is?

Cuz I'm trying to contextualize the price hikes in the context of how much cost inflation we've seen. €80 from Smurfit yesterday seems pretty high to me in a market with mid-80s operating rate and a load of capacity coming back end of the year.

How extreme is that cost pressure would be the first question, and then I have a follow up.

It's hard to know where you start and where you finish on these sort of calculations. I guess the question is, from the beginning of the year to Q3, are we seeing some margin expansion?

If you take the both sides of the equation, the price increases versus the cost inflation, yes, we should see some margin expansion. That's off an extremely low basis, I keep reminding, because Q1, we'd seen the worst of these price declines into the first quarter, and then it's been building back off that.

I think it would be wrong of us to kind of throw out a cost per ton number,

because

the other problem is, every mill has different exposures and the like. Clearly, in Świecie, for example, where we make recycled containerboard is a very different exposure to Duino, because Duino is gas, Świecie is an integrated mill producing a lot of biomass energy and the like.

In simple terms, yes, we're seeing a bit of margin expansion right now, but it's off a terribly low base. In my humble opinion, it's not enough to rescue this industry.

We're still seeing massive swathes of loss-making capacity out there.

No, true. Just to follow up to that, the kraftliner spread over testliner is pretty high by historical standards now.

If testliner does go down back end of the year as all this capacity materializes, is that current spread sustainable, does it have to contract further? How much of a headwind do you see from returning U.S.

capacity? I guess back end of the year, some of those export-orientated mills with a bit of production coming back after some maintenance.

I don't know. There's quite a few bearish factors there.

How do you sum those up, and what is a sustainable spread for kraftliner or a test in your view?

I don't think there's a magic number. We've been saying for some time now it's logical that the spread widens simply because the supply-side dynamics on the virgin grades is materially different to on the recycled.

It's simply that much more difficult to bring in cost-competitive virgin, whereas on the recycled side, and that's where all the new capacity has been coming in, both in Europe and the U.S. It's fairly logical.

At the same time, in Europe, the easy wins in using recycled over virgin have pretty much taken place. Of course, if the price premium gets too extreme, you get more and more innovative in using a recycled product and so you're never going to see a decoupling of the two, because on the margin, you can substitute.

There's a clear logic as to why that price premium should be bigger than it was historically. I remind you that if anything over the course of the first half of the year, that premium has narrowed somewhat because the price increases in recycled have been greater than on the virgin side, and so you've seen a narrowing if anything.

In short, I don't know what the magic number is in terms of a sustainable price premium, but I do know that it's very clear why it should be bigger than it was historically. As I say, the easy wins in terms of substitution have taken place, but only too aware that you cannot continue to drive pricing on the virgin side unless you also see the recycled side over time improve.

Okay. That's clear.

Thank you.

Very good. We've taken far more of your time than we had asked for originally.

I do appreciate your patience in staying with us. Appreciate as always the interest.

If there's anything to follow up on, Fiona and team and myself and Mike are available. Please come back to us.

Just in summary, we are encouraged by an improving trading environment. Clearly, we've been pushing price increases.

We see further opportunity in that regard going into the second half. Having said that, as we keep reminding you, there is cost inflation around.

When we say things are volatile, we mean volatile goes up and down and we don't know. Simply put, because I don't think anyone has any great insight in that regard other than, we can point to certain cost items that are going up.

Nonetheless, very encouraging in terms of the improved trading environment. We are certainly well positioned to serve our customers in that environment, to continue to grow with our customers with our fantastic range of products that you see hopefully on the screen behind us.

We'll continue to manage the business extremely tightly in what remains a volatile, but, we believe, improving environment. With that, thank you very much for your interest and we will no doubt keep in touch.

Thank you.