K+S AG

Ladies and gentlemen, also from my side, welcome to our call. We hope you've had a chance to review our posted slides as well as our full year -- as well as our Q1 documents available on the website.

After the opening remarks by Christian, we will jump directly into the Q&A session. Some technical notes: Please refer to our disclaimer on Page 2 of the presentation.

A note on data privacy: Please be aware that the Teams session will be recorded, webcast and available as a audio replay on our homepage afterwards. People who ask a question in the Teams session should be clear that by switching on the camera and microphone they agree to the recording and replay of video and audio sequences.

Now I'd like to hand over to Christian Meyer, our CEO, for the opening remarks.

Thank you, Julia; and welcome from my side as well. We have published the key figures for the quarter and our 2026 outlook already on the 22nd of April, so I will keep this brief.

Starting with the quarter. Q1 EBITDA was almost 40% above the prior year quarter at nearly EUR 280 million.

Firstly, this was due to the successful de-icing salt business because of the strong winter weather. Following the strong start at the beginning of the year, performance continued to exceed expectations in the second half of the quarter.

Secondly, in the Agriculture customer segment, sales volumes and the average prices exceeded expectations, particularly in March. Free cash flow reached EUR 87 million; cash CapEx, EUR [ 126 ] million.

Let's look at our full year guidance. We raised our 2026 EBITDA forecast to range from EUR 630 million to EUR 730 million from EUR 600 million to EUR 700 million before.

This is due to a strong performance in the first quarter and the positive price trend that has continued in the Agriculture customer segment over the past few weeks. This is also driven by the revised U.S.

dollar exchange rate assumption of $1.17 instead of $1.20 for the remainder of the year. However, the rising prices of materials, energy and freight resulting from the conflict in the Middle East since March are having a negative impact compared to the original assumptions.

The midpoint. The midpoint of the EBITDA range assumes current market price levels for gas and logistics, stable potash prices in Brazil, persistent positive spillover effects on other sales markets and product groups of K+S.

Additionally, it assumes that the increase in sulfur prices will continue to benefit the prices of K+S Cyprus specialty products. The price level achieved for the product portfolio in the Agriculture customer segment by midyear will then roughly need to be maintained on average in the second half of the year.

If the prices continue to rise overseas with corresponding persistent spillover effects, the upper end of the range could be achieved. This could, for example, happen if potassium is given greater weight in compound fertilizers, thereby increasing demand.

The lower end of the earnings range could be realized if the conflict in the Middle East persisted for a longer period. Thereby, it could either limit the availability of nitrogen and phosphate fertilizers or the earnings situation of the farmers and therefore, potash application.

This could reduce sales prices and volumes over the course of the second half of the year. Overall, the effects related to the conflict in the Middle East continue to be of limited predictability.

I would like to give you a feeling for the phasing of figures for the rest of the year. Keep in mind that Q1 and Q4 are our strongest quarters due to seasonality in both business segments.

As a maintenance quarter, Q3 typically has the weakest EBITDA contribution. Q2 is normally better than Q3, but significantly below Q1 or Q4 levels.

Last year, Q2 saw a seasonal drop in EBITDA of EUR 90 million versus Q1. This year, the gap between the first 2 quarters is expected to even bigger because of the extraordinary de-icing business in Q1 and the higher cost for energy and logistics.

After this brief introduction, I'm now looking forward to answering your questions together with my colleagues, Jens and Julia. With this, I now hand over to the operator to start the Q&A session.

So 2 questions. I'll ask them one at a time as instructed.

First of all, in your specialties in potash and namely in your sulfur-related products, can you give us an idea of price increases we should expect for Q2 given the strained sulfur supply situation of your SOP peers?

Yes, absolutely. Our SOP products, there we see increasing price levels in overseas, that's already the fact.

In Europe, it's a little bit different due to the fact that the Mannheim producers have high stocks of sulfur, and we have a price list until the end of May. Then in the summertime, there we have a weaker season for SOP, so there, we will see stable prices, and that's finally a good news based on the fact that this will be a weaker season.

So a little bit different Europe versus overseas.

Okay. Great.

Second question and final question for me for now is, we had a strong start to the winter season and we saw this being reflected, obviously, in this solid Q1 results from de-icing. Yet the last part of the quarter saw rather moderate winter conditions in Europe.

Hence, the question, if you see any elevated inventory levels at the municipalities, for example, that could mean lower sales volumes at least in Q3 when preorder typically starts for the upcoming winter season then?

Yes. No, that's -- we see it a little bit different.

Especially in March, we had high demand. And due to the weather conditions, and that's already brought to the street.

And we have a good demand for the next month, so we expect that it should be on a normal level. And then finally, at the end of the year, it depends on the weather conditions in November and December.

But there are no stocks that are built up.

I will also have 2, please. And my first one is a little bit of a follow-up regarding sulfur.

So you have mentioned that for the midpoint of the guidance, you have assumed the higher sulfur prices will still support the sulfur-based specialties. I'm just wondering what exactly you are assuming with regards to sulfur prices?

Do you expect them to increase further from current levels or are you assuming, for the guidance sake, that they stay elevated at these levels? So it would be great to get a bit more color on that.

Yes. That's what's very important.

We have different sulfur products. On the one hand, we have the SOP, but we also have the Kieserit, that's a sulfur and magnesium product; and in addition, the so-called Korn-Kali, that has also included sulfur.

And our expectations is that there are some spillover effects to these products over the next weeks. That's a little bit behind compared to the MOP developments, but there should be some small increases.

And as Christian elaborated, it is also a positive effect that sulfur prices are not seeing the seasonal dip they have seen in earlier years, yes? So after the price list of prices just remained stable, this is already something positive with regards to our original assumptions.

Great. And my second question will be on demand.

Maybe as you go into the second quarter or almost halfway through the second quarter, you could give us a bit more color how you're seeing demand developing by region and maybe as early look into the second half? I'm just trying to understand if you're already seeing any evidence of farmers, maybe in the Southern Hemisphere, starting to change their plans for application and for specific crops in light of the fact that nitrogen fertilizer prices are very high.

So are you seeing any impact there?

Yes. No, we see a real good and strong demand also on our side.

It's pretty close to our competitors. And we are still able to optimize our netbacks by logging in the different contracts.

So we -- what we see finally is a good application globally. You see the high volumes that are finally imported in Brazil and the additional demand in China, where the price levels -- domestic price levels are pretty high -- still pretty high, the acceptance of higher prices from China for cross-border deliveries from Russia, and also, we expect some increases in India.

These are smaller volumes, but also some increases. And what's also very important, we still see a strong demand compared to last year in Southeast Asia based on the fact of the good palm oil prices.

So we -- currently, we don't see a decrease of demand.

It's David Symonds from BNP Paribas. Could I ask about the bridging items quarter-on-quarter between the first quarter and the second quarter?

You mentioned you expect a significant step down and possibly a more significant step down than you saw last year. I remember last year, there was an overproduction impact in Q1, which then sort of reversed in Q2.

And I think you've seen that again this year. But maybe you could help us with the bridge quarter-on-quarter.

Yes. Thank you, David, for that question.

Last year, you are right, that was an inventory buildup in Q1 and inventory drawdown in Q2. And when we had the ad hoc release, we also discussed this.

One of the positive effects that we saw in this year's Q1 was that we did not have a negative inventory development, because we had a good production in Q1 this year again as well, yes? So that old dropdown that we have seen from Q1 to Q2 seasonally will also -- I mean, maybe not exactly in the same magnitude, but ballpark, happen this time because also production in this year's Q1 was good as last year.

Understood. And then if I do some sort of quick math on where you sit on the guidance, it seems to imply like at the midpoint, the second half will be lower year-on-year than it was in 2025.

And I'm struggling to understand why that will be the case given that the midpoint assumption is that prices stabilize from midyear at a higher level than they were last year. I understand there's some freight cost increase, but it seems like the net benefit should be -- second half should be higher year-on-year.

First of all, you have the energy cost increase and you have the logistic cost increase, both low double-digit million amount burdens kind of for the year. And then for sure, it depends on the final ASP that we reach until the end of Q2 and which will then, on average, be stable during H2, yes?

But the -- I mean, last year, the ASPs were quite good in the second half of the year. Yes.

So there's no special effect beyond ASP and then raw materials and energy, et cetera. Okay.

Yes. Just a small technical follow-up.

What was the reason for the rather high interest expense in your P&L of, what was it, almost EUR 60 million-or-so, and what should we consider for Q1 going forward -- for the remainder of the year going forward, sorry?

The rather high interest expense in the P&L should be related. I will check that and maybe come back to you.

Could be related to the -- there are always -- yes, in the financial result, there are always changes with regards to the exchange rate. And as we have seen changing exchange rates that can be the reason.

Within the cash flow statement, the cash interest was actually quite stable.

Yes. Thanks a lot for your participation and your questions.

And as we already published our numbers, that's maybe the reason why a lot of questions are already answered. And yes, maybe tomorrow, we have our AGM, and then we see you for the half year results soon.

Thanks a lot, and see you.