Good morning. Welcome to Virši investor webinar.

We will start with the presentation, after which we will be addressing your questions. Please submit them in writing through the Q&A window.

Questions can be submitted either anonymously or with your name. In case you'd like to rewatch this session, the recording will be available shortly after the call.

Let me now introduce you to our hosts: Virši Chairman of the Management Board and the CEO, Jānis Vība; and Member of the Management Board and CFO, Vita Čirjevska. Please, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Ieva. Good morning, our partners, investors, employees also.

We are happy to greet you in this webinar, and I guess it's no secret that six months were very intensive in our company. We will, together with Vita obviously, today tell you much more about what exactly has happened.

Before we jump into our company's events, let's look at the broader picture on energy markets. As usual, we are looking at fuel, natural gas, and electricity segments.

In terms of what is happening in the world, obviously it's no secret that the name which is Strait of Hormuz is, I guess, the name which is very often now spoken each, I guess, day or week among many people. Of course, with regards to fuel segment, this partial blockade of Strait of Hormuz has led to huge fluctuations in oil prices, mainly because roughly 20% of world's fuel flow was going through Strait of Hormuz.

As a result, we see that these prices for oil, they were fluctuating very aggressively, starting from $60 per barrel in January up to more than $100 in March. Actually, most of economists mentioned that this expected price increase would be even higher.

I guess the factors which actually softened this price shock was namely lower consumption of oil in China, and also quite extensive use of global strategic oil reserves in the USA, also China, other countries, and, of course, also the creation of some alternative oil logistic ways in the region. That was on fuel.

On natural gas, situation is very similar because roughly 20% of LNG volumes are coming through Strait of Hormuz, and mainly, of course, Europe together with Asia is, let's say, fighting for this volume, which is driving up the price. We see that this price increase is more than two times in, let's say, last couple of days.

We are now closing TTF index of roughly €60 per megawatt-hour, which is obviously very high number. I guess the thing which is a bit worrying is that currently storage levels of natural gas in Europe is actually around 50-60%, which is actually significantly lower than usually such storage levels should be in August.

Let's see how it develops. The final segment is electricity segment, where in Latvia we saw that in the first half of '26, the price of electricity was close to 20% higher than a year ago.

This was mainly influenced by the very cold winter, January and February months, which obviously increased this electricity consumption. At the same time, more specifically in Latvia, we see that there is quite, let's say, active development of battery energy storage systems.

We see that this has also helped to reduce these, let's say, balancing costs in energy markets, and probably this trend will continue in the future. That was a quick run through the energy markets.

Now let's go to our company more specific items. Just to remind you, we have seven main, let's say, strategic goals which we want to achieve.

We will today, together with Vita, walk you through each of those goals and try to explain where we are standing in terms of progress against each of those goals. I guess some good thing is that some of those goals are already achieved almost or even we can say that they are achieved.

Probably it means that in next webinar we will come up maybe with even, let's say, more ambitious goals for future. That's what we will discuss, I guess, in next webinar.

In terms of strategic goals, one other goal is sustainability, which is currently not in this slide, but which is obviously quite important for us. Vita will walk you through this sustainability.

Sustainability actually has become big part of our daily routine and also for the budgeting process. Management team-wise, we have split the 17 goals we have appointed for the 2026 between the management team, and everyone is responsible for his own area.

In this year, in first six months, actually the biggest significant changes, or biggest significant impact, has been on environment, or environment sustainability in the future. We will discuss it also through on later slides, but the main goals that we have reached is that from the January 1st, actually, all CNG stations in Virši are now giving the CBG product, which is biomethane.

If there were some questions about the greenness of CNG, CBG is no longer question, yes, because this is the best alternative for the trucks and best alternative for the green energy in the fuel market. The second topic we have been talking about also past two years, and the last year we discussed a lot of construction of the biomethane plant Livland in Naukšēni in Latvia.

This year, we have already started biomethane production in the test mode, and we see that this project is in running up phase, and we'll soon give the results in the future. Biomethane production also tick.

The third topic is waste management, which is very crucial actually for our fuel station network, because the fuel station network is growing, the waste is growing, and as the client base is growing. It's very crucial to understand the waste flows, waste types, and give them to the recycling very correctly.

This is also a big cost topic, and the costs for the waste management are growing over the past years, we see that all the impact made on the waste management also gives positive results in the cost side. The fourth topic, which is about the client and the customer and the employee, is customer value creation over our new 17 fuel stations.

This is a big topic, and we will discuss it more in the later slides from different perspectives. Actually, it's crucial to give the clients experience from Virši also in a new fields, by new employees, and by our products.

This has been a lot of time-consuming, effort-consuming work over this first half of the year. We'll see how we end up this year.

Yep. Let's let's go to the strategic goals section.

As already mentioned, the first one was development of station network. Very intensive first six months of the year, and we are very proud of our team, because during these first six months, we actually have started trading in in those 17 acquired Astreja service stations.

Just to remind you, Astreja deal was the one which we got approval from Competition Council by end of May. We have this long-term lease contract about renting these stations.

In six-week time, actually, we were able to kind of take over those stations and start trading, which is super, let's say, great speed, and thanks a lot to the team for doing that. What is happening next on Astreja stations is that we are now currently devoting quite a big CapEx in terms of making these stations very close to Virši usual network in terms of how they look externally and also internally.

We see that by the end of the year, all those stations will be completely the same as our existing Virši stations, and nobody probably will even be able to say who was, let's say, previous Astreja station and who was not. Also quite interesting news is that on Wednesday, we submitted a new request to Competition Council where we want to extend this lease to four new Astreja stations.

We see that existing 17, the deal was quite good and already showing nice results, we want to expand this to additional four, and probably it will take several months before we get some, let's say, decision on this on this offer. We also have one station which we are building from, let's say, greenfield in Riga in a very beautiful, let's say, traffic-wise place, and we think that this station will start operations by late September, which will obviously also have a good impact on our market share's growth.

That's on station. Let's go to employer's offer.

About the employees, as I mentioned, the team is growing rapidly, and what's interesting about this particular half of the year is that team has been increasing over two months, two months that we have been engaging new fuel stations in our network. We took the employees from the existing stations, also engaged new employees, and also we gave the opportunity, or we gave this trust in our own fuel station managers to mentor the new fuel station managers.

This is a big impact, and this is very important impact as they're saying that culture eats strategy in in the breakfast. We can draw whatever numbers we want, but if the people will do different ways than we expect them or give a different kind of level of service to our clients, we will not be able to reach the results we plan.

This is very important topic, and this will be also ongoing topic for the next few months, how we engage and how we build team as one. That's on the team growth.

For the existing employees over the past year, and over the last past years, and when we went to the IPO, we set actually the benchmark or we set the mark that we want to be a top 10 employer in Latvia, and at that time, it seemed unrealistic. If we look at the results from 2025 that have been announced over these past six months, from CV-Online market ranking, we are the best employer in Latvia, and in CV-Online top, which is also a big significant top for us, is a top five mark.

I think this strategic goal is is in a good shape, and we just need to continue doing our best. The third topic that actually touches a lot of employees in our, and actually all employees in our organization, is a system reorganization, where we have been changing ERP system and also changing the roles of the various IT systems in in our company.

The change is still in progress, it's still happening, and there is a lot of things to do. We see that with more efficient processes and more efficient systems, we can we are we will be able to onboard new employees, take on new responsibilities and new businesses in the future.

Yep.

Yeah.

Next goal is where we want to be a leader in alternative fuel offering in the market. Here, I guess, I have to repeat what Vita already mentioned is that it's important milestone that, starting from January, we are already able to offer CBG product at 11 of our stations.

This is very important because we are also using this CBG product to fulfill our green obligations for diesel product, which is required by law. Very strategic product for us, and we are happy that it is growing.

It is growing around almost 20% in first half of the year, and this is exactly what is our plan for heavy trucks segment. Biomethane is the one product which we want to see in heavy trucks, and we see good development.

On light transport segment, obviously, this alternative fuel we see electricity, and this electricity currently market share is only around 2% in Latvia. It's still quite early developing, but at the same time, we see that at least in our stations, this electricity charging points, which we have around 30 in our network, we see that this service is actually giving a good, let's say, profitability overall, simply because those customers are not only charging their cars, but they are also going into the shop and using our shop products where we have good margins.

In the end, we are quite happy also about this, let's say, development of our charging network. Final point, which is probably from, let's say, investment side, the most important one, is that we have completed construction of biomethane plant in Naukšēni.

Good thing is that we are already producing biomethane in test phase. We are making some technological, let's say, fine-tunings, and most probably somewhere in September, we will reach the point where this project is completely up and running.

Then, starting from '27, most probably we should be able to see quite a good financial return on this investment going further. Next one is on business diversification.

I guess here it's quite interesting topic simply because over last several years, we constantly saw that gross profit coming from convenience stores was increasing, and, let's say, fuel gross profit was already below 50% in last couple of years. Now the situation has changed somewhat in first half of '26.

We see that we had very good growth in fuel liters sold. We see that also there is, despite that segment of convenience stores is still growing above market average, we still see that this, let's say, geopolitical tensions have influenced purchasing power of our private individuals in shop segment, and therefore, let's say, fuel has been able to again move into the number one position in terms of gross profit.

Again, I guess, here it's important to stress that we are only six months yet. We don't know what the second half will bring, but it's very very possible that shop or convenience store segment will fight back, and we will see again interesting picture.

Next one is on numbers.

EBITDA dynamics. As Jānis presented, actually, there is a huge growth in gross profits, and this gross profits dynamics are mainly in this period on fuel.

I'd say all of the business segments actually in this particular period were like a fight between external factors and internal factors. In fuel, that has been a good drive, and also for the convenience stores, from the projects we had in year 2024.

We opened up nine fuel stations, and compared to the first half of the 2025 where these stations were still brand new in brand new locations and were still trying to find their own clients, but they already had the costs in place, at this particular period, these stations, most of them has already found the very good profit levels, and these impacts are there. Also, in this period, we mentioned 17 new stations for the convenience stores and fuel side, it's quite different story, because you can trade fuel from the first minute you overtake the station, and we also have our mobapp working.

In case of convenience stores, this overtake of the stores is quite gradual, depending on the store, I'd say, level, interior at that particular time of overtake. We see that there is a growth, and there have been the first month of the performance in the stores, but the growth is still in the future, because some of them we are rebuilding from scratch, some of them we are upgrading, and this is happening in the second part of the 2026.

In the fuel market, we must say that externally there is also factors from the fuel prices. The high fuel prices affect the private segment consumption.

At the same time, it also affects the store sales, because the prices have increased, and there's not that much money to spend on the stores. There is quite a fight also we see internally, but the fuel is the base and the core for the fuel stations now.

Also from the fuel perspective, there is big fight between competitors in the market in Latvia, because there is quite a intense sale activities during the past months to fight for the client. We have been up in this fight right now with the results, with the new projects, with the new stations, and we see the result is positive.

In the energy segment, the story is quite independent from what's happening in the fuel stations, because we're trading energy to our customers also outside the fuel stations, and there has been quite different story to 2025 when we had this desynchronization in balancing market, which happened in February. Then we had the high costs for the balancing over the next year, and we finished the first half of the year with a minus.

That was just the beginning of this, let's say, nightmare for the energy, because the losses still continued in the second part of the year. We decided to change our client portfolio or suppliers' portfolio, and that happened in the second part of the 2025.

We get into 2026 in a very good shape. We have finished this period with the profits, with a good plus, and a stable results, and we see that there is perspective also for the next periods to come.

That has brought us the gross profit increase, which has also actually been triple or even four times bigger than the past years, as you saw also in the previous slide, which is 23.2% bigger than the last year. On the other hand, we also have this selling expense and administration cost increase that is mainly related to the employees in the stores, and also supervising the business processes.

We must understand also from the 2024 story that this employee costs and also maintenance costs in the fuel stores, they come even before opening the store, because we need to train the employees, then when the store is opened, it should find their own client, but the employees are there, and the costs are there already from the minute one. There has been increase in the costs.

We see that there has been a big increase in the gross profits from the business segments, and we see that this gross profit base is good also for the next half of the year, and where we can bear the cost increase for this year as well. That results in a very significant rise in EBITDA.

We have a growth by 3.8 million in this six-month period compared to 2025, and it's actually 60.6%, which is super high increase compared year-on-year base. That draws us to the net profits, which is our next section.

In the net profits side, we see two quite different profit levels: 2025, 1.5 million; and 2026, when we see 4.2 million, which is almost 200% increase, or rise by 2.7 millions. This rise have been driven by EBITDA, and we must understand and admit that in 2025 first half, as we presented, we had these nine new fuel stations from 2024 which were still in the run-up phase.

They had their costs. They had their EBITDA just running up, depreciation quite high, but these revenues growth or revenues reach have been good in 2026.

Actually, that's the switch from level one to the next level in this year. We have increased depreciation in this year already by now, because also in 2025, we have revaluated our fuel station portfolio according to our accounting policies.

This rising value of the fuel stations give us higher depreciation. We see that also in the next half of the year, there will be depreciation, amortization from the new stations, but we see also that it's bearable from the EBITDA side.

In the income and expense side, we have two effects. One is the interest expenses from the financing side from the financing institutions.

These interests have been quite at the same level as we have not increased this loan base significantly to past year. The other expense type is coming from the investments in our associated party, which results from the energy market fluctuations haven't been that well over the past years, and we have accrued this provision on the investment on this period.

I think this has been an excellent half of the year, and let's hope for the best for the next half. Yeah.

Yep. Now we have to look at each of those business segments separately.

Let's start with fuel. In fuel segment, very intensive six months, obviously because there is a big competition within the market, because obviously the fuel consumption is not increasing, but costs for fuel traders are increasing, there is a quite aggressive fight for each of the fuel liter sold.

Still we see that margins are more or less staying at, let's say, satisfactory level. In terms of Virši market share, we are happy that we are growing faster, much faster than the market.

We're growing around 6% in terms of liters sold. It's important to note that those 17 stations only started appearing in June.

The impact on market share from Astreja stations will only start fully, let's say, happening in this and next quarter. Also without Astreja, we were growing quite good.

Another quite an innovative thing in the market which we already started discussing is that because we are able to sell biomethane to our customers, we are also able, according to the new legislation, to fulfill our bio requirements for diesel with this biomethane. Therefore, we are able to sell completely, let's call it clean diesel without any bio in the market, and we see that actually our B2B sector is actually loving this product and which obviously is also helping for us to gain additional market share.

Then there is quite, what we would call, holistic discussion in the media over last couple of months about putting some price caps for fuel. At the same time, we see that actually our Competition Council has done quite extensive research, which is actually proving that the margins which fuel traders were charging before Middle East conflict and after Middle East conflict, they are actually not moving significantly.

Therefore, we are still communicating with politicians that this initiative is really a bad idea, because it will simply not solve anything. At the same time, it is giving very negative signal to international investors about putting money in Latvia, because obviously if you put the money, you kind of think that you are clear on rules of the game, but you don't have to change the rules of the game when the game has been started.

Let's see how it develops. That's pretty much on fuel.

The convenience stores, a short note on the external effects, as I already discussed, there has been effect on the consumptions from the private sector. If we compare to 2025, and we also Jānis mentioned the restrictions in the fuel side, which we're still fighting against, then in 2025, these restrictions were actually implied in tobacco segment and in alcohol segment in fuel stores.

Fuel station stores and this effect or this particular type of customers group and products have been decreased significantly in 2026. We are still fighting and changing this, let's say, product portfolio to give the best and still continue rising our sales.

We see the dynamics are good compared to the market. They are also quite quite high, 10.1% for Virši, whilst the market together with Virši is only 5.3%.

The main focus actually for the convenience stores over this past six months, and especially specifically with the focus on the past three months, is preparing and onboarding and changing the new stores, which will be one of the key drivers also in the profit increase and the turnover increase in the next periods. That has been quite tricky tricky project from the technical side, IT side, design project side.

Also, if we look at the store assortment, there are different phases how we take over the stores. It's like a basic plain store that we take over only from the IT side and technical side, and then we start rebuilding or upgrading the stores to the new assortment and training the people to be able to create the products in place at the same quality and the same level as it as it is in the existing fuel stations in Virši.

This is also new markets, and new attraction of new customers, as we see from the example in 2024, when you enter new city, you need to attract new customer and introduce them to the Virši. That's that's the fight in front of us, and that's also the solid base for the future growth in convenience stores.

Yep. We close business segments with energy segment.

Here, I guess, some good thing is that we are continuing to increase our number of customers in B2C segment. There is a healthy growth over six months of 17%.

Also we see actually an increase quite healthy in terms of attracting new B2B customers. What is interesting is probably this graph, which you can see that Virši has been selling less energy in first half of the year than market.

The simple explanation for that is not because our B2C segment would be lower. It's opposite.

We are actually selling much more to B2C. We had couple of very big B2B customers where the margins were super low, which after the end of the contract, we kind of exited, and therefore there is a drop in this, let's say, electricity sold.

I would think that's a, let's say, rational approach simply because we are really willing to get more profitability of this segment rather than simply to sell electricity at break-even. Another very interesting and important point is that last year, we had some difficulties in managing this electricity portfolio in terms of balancing costs.

We saw that those solar parks with whom we have cooperation, they were actually loss-making in our portfolio. We have almost completely exited solar park segment from our energy segment, and we currently see that this profitability of the segment is becoming much, let's say, predictable and also more profitable than before, about which we are quite happy about.

Okay.

Here's the summary on the key performance indicators and our performance over the past years. We see quite well the dynamics of the fuel station network extension.

We see how the employees have grown and the turnovers and gross profits that we have discussed already. CapEx-wise, we have been investing 5.3 millions in this first half of the year, and there are still investments in front of us in the second part of the year.

The new fuel station Jānis has already mentioned in Vienības gatve and also investments into Astreja fuel stations that we are rebuilding shop-wise. We see that these margins and return on equity have been growing over the past years and also over the past periods, which is driven by the good results in this first half of the year and also very good second half of the past year.

Whilst we are having increased fuel prices, increased stock, as there are so many more locations to be holding our working capital on, we see that the current ratio is still strong, it's above one in this half of the year. If we look at the net debt-to-EBITDA measure, then in this first half of the year, we have onboarded this 17 new stations, and we need to take on the liabilities according to IFRS 16 that drives our net debt up, but it also has driven up the EBITDA.

This, let's say, loan level or debtedness level also in our company at this point is quite strong, and we see the potential also for that one to shift down with the growing EBITDA. We see that this base and financial measures are still growing strong.

Let's hope that they also affect the share prices in the future, and drives us up as much as the results have gone up. Yeah.

Where we actually see that in last week, the share price is quite positively impacted by these numbers, so that's a good, let's say, signal. We close with a couple of summary points from this presentation.

Again, very much about geopolicy. The first six months, we see a huge turbulence in energy markets in terms of pricing changes, and obviously it's not something very good which is happening simply because that is affecting negatively the purchasing power of our B2C segment.

If we look at, let's say, market shares, we still see that last six months of the year were actually the historically highest market shares for our two key segments, namely fuel and shop. Obviously, that was also the main reason why the company was delivering in my mind exceptional financial results in six months period.

Also important to remind that we have started trading in all of those 17 of acquired Astreja stations, and by end of the year, all those stations will be up and ready completely according to the concept of Virši. To add to that, we are now waiting approval from Competition Council with regards to additional long-term lease for additional four Astreja stations.

Here also important to stress that if Competition Council would approve this deal, then Virši would become the largest fuel station network in Latvia with 105 stations. Final two things on biomethane, obviously, starting from January, we are already selling biomethane in our stations in 11 stations where we sold CNG before, now it is CBG.

We have also completed the construction of biomethane plant in Naukšēni, which is a small city in Latvia, and already started producing biomethane in test mode. Again, I want to stress that the full, let's say, financial benefit of this project will mostly come in '27, because obviously these, let's say, months this year will be the ones where we are still, let's say, fine-tuning this manufacturing before the plant is completely up and running.

I guess quite impressive six months. Again, I want to say thank you to all of our employees.

It has been quite a tough journey, but as only when the journey is tough, also results are excellent, I guess that's exactly the story about us in last six months. Thank you.

Thank you for the presentation. Participants, we will be now taking your questions.

Please submit them in writing through the Q&A window that you see below on the bottom of your screen. The first question that we've received: What is Virši strategic development plan for the coming years?

Does Virši plans to become a regional Baltic player by continuing its expansion in Lithuania and potentially entering the Estonian market as well?

Maybe I will take it. Strategic development plan, I guess, at least we think that we are super clear on this.

If you look at our long-term goals, we very specifically are saying that we want to be a diversified player in energy markets, meaning that we will not only sell fuel and shop products, but we will also expand our operations in energy markets with electricity sale, natural gas sale, and also operating in biomethane production segments. I guess we will see, but there is a big potentials that maybe up to some even 20% of operations in, let's say, five years of gross profit would be coming from the segments which are not fuel and not convenience stores, but we will see how it develops.

In terms of foreign markets, yes, we currently are operating in Lithuania with only one station. I completely understand that it is totally, let's say, not enough yet.

We have several scenarios what to do. I'm very honest.

Either we expand, either we stay as is, but it's not a very good option, or we exit the market. That's scenarios, but we are hoping that, let's say, in next, let's say, six months, we will be able to kind of clarify the strategy on our Lithuanian market, and of course, we will let all investors know this.

As regards to Estonian market, the answer is very simple: currently, we are not looking at entering Estonian market.

Thank you. Our next question is specifically about the Lithuanian market, but we have addressed it.

In addition, the question asks, how is your only fuel station in Lithuania performing? Is there anything you'd like to add?

We can just add that obviously the return on capital is not, let's say, at the level we would like to have, but at the same time, we completely understand that you need to scale up these operations. Otherwise, this profitability will never reach acceptable level, and therefore in Lithuania, again as I mentioned, we have several scenarios, and let's look what we will decide in next six months.

Thank you. Let's wait a couple of seconds longer to see if anyone has additional questions.

If not, we'll be soon wrapping the call up. None have come in.

Participants, I'd like to thank you for your participation today, and we will be looking forward seeing you in the next call.