Thank you, Anna. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to SCHOTT Pharma's earnings call for the first quarter financial year 2026.

My name is Tobias Erfurth, Head of Investor Relations, and I will be guiding you through today's call and webcast. I'm joined by our CEO, Andreas Reisse, and our CFO, Reinhard Mayer.

Andreas will start by sharing strategic and business updates, followed by Reinhard, who will present our financial performance in detail. Afterwards, we open the floor for your questions.

Please take a moment to review our disclaimer. As a quick note, our financial year 2026 has started on October the 1st, 2025.

The Q1 results we are presenting today cover the period from October 1st to December 31st, 2025. With that, I will hand over to our CEO, Andreas Reisse.

Thanks, Tobias. Warm welcome to everyone joining us for today's call.

I'm pleased to present an overview of our strategy and recent business developments. We had a good start to the financial year 2026.

The first quarter performed better than expected in terms of both revenue and earnings. Revenue for Q1 2026 increased by 4.8% at constant currencies to €240 million.

The stronger demand was broad-based across our portfolio, with continued high demand for our high-margin, high-value solutions, short HVS. Our EBITDA grew significantly by 11% to €65 million, resulting in a strong margin of 27.1%.

This profitability improvement was mainly driven by our HVS, especially in drug containment solutions. Overall, demand for HVS remains strong, enabling us to reach a revenue share of 57%, and marks an increase of 2 percentage points compared to the last year, and it is consistent with the high level we achieved in financial year 2025.

The key factor behind the success of our high-value solutions is our growth strategy, which is built on innovation, expansion, and trustful partnerships. We are seeing a continuous increase in the share of HVS, and within our total revenues, reaching 57% in the first quarter, 2 percentage points higher than last year.

We are well on track to reach our midterm goal of exceeding 60%. HVS products are essential for further profitable growth.

They are developed to address evolving industry trends and regulatory needs, allowing us to achieve higher prices and stronger margins. Now let me highlight some of the recent innovations, partnerships, and expansion projects.

We have just launched everic® lyo in amber vials, an innovative solution for the safe storage of light-sensitive antibody-drug conjugates, or ADCs, that need lyophilization. Amber vials are essential for today's light-sensitive biologics and some ADCs because they provide reliable protection against light-induced degradation, something clear glass simply cannot deliver.

ADCs, for example, belong to the most complex and most expensive medicines on the market, which makes protection from the very first fill-and-finish step critical. Also, we just pre-validated our new TOPPAC® polymer cartridge in 3 ml and 5 ml with SHL's Maggie® large-volume autoinjectors.

With our new polymer cartridge, we are again setting an industry benchmark. It is the first ISO-compliant, sterile polymer cartridge on the market, and this unlocks new possibilities for pharma companies working with sensitive biologics.

With highest dimensional precision, optimized geometry, and ready-to-use, it ensures maximum device compatibility while reducing process risk. This lays the foundation for the next generation of large-volume subcutaneous therapies, a genuine innovation step that brings together efficiency, safety, and future readiness.

Subcutaneous delivery via autoinjectors is transformative because it allows patients to self-administer treatments at home instead of spending hours in clinics. We also expand our capacities for HVS with a particular focus on large-volume solutions: glass syringes and ready-to-use cartridges at our sites in Switzerland and Hungary.

With that, I'll hand over to Reinhard, who will provide you with an update on our financials for the first quarter.

Thank you, Andreas, and good morning, everyone. I'm pleased to walk you through our financials for the first quarter of financial year 2026 in more detail.

As Andreas outlined, we had a positive start to the financial year. We generated revenues of €240.2 million, representing growth of 3.8% year-over-year, or 4.8% at constant currencies.

Our Drug Containment Solutions segment, represented by the grey bar, was the main driver of the positive overall revenue development, achieving elevated growth of 9.4% at constant currencies, reaching €137.2 million. This was propelled by continued strong demand for HVS products, especially for sterile cartridges and specialty vials.

Drug Delivery Systems, represented by the blue bar, remained at the level of the prior-year quarter at €103.1 million. At constant currencies, the development was slightly negative at -0.8%.

While we saw strong demand for prefillable glass syringes, particularly for GLP-1 applications, the reduced use of mRNA vaccines continued to have a negative effect on polymer syringes. Now let's take a closer look at our bottom-line performance.

The group EBITDA grew 11.1% to €65.2 million, with margin expanding from 24. from 25.4% to 27.1%.

Looking at the segments, DCS delivered remarkable EBITDA growth of 18.9% to €33.4 million, with margins improving significantly from 21.9% to 24.3%. This was driven by volume and product mix effects.

In DDS, EBITDA declined by 7.3% to €32.6 million, in line with our expectations. The margin decreased from 34.1% in Q1 2025 to 31.6% in Q1 2026, primarily due to product mix effects, lower production utilization for polymer syringes, and ramp-up costs for our new glass syringe capacities in Hungary.

Despite this decline, the DDS segment continues to deliver strong profitability. EBIT grew by 9% to €43.8 million, up from last year's €40.2 million, driven by volume growth, contributions by at-equity participations, and positive foreign exchange effects.

The financial result improved by €1.6 million compared with Q1 2025 to -€1.8 million. This was mainly driven by lower interest expenses from cash pool financing as a result of an intragroup refinancing carried out in the first quarter of 2026.

Income taxes increased to €8.8 million, which results in an effective tax rate of 20.8%, up from 19.1% in the prior year. The rise in the tax rate is mainly driven by a change in country mix.

Overall, net income reached €33.3 million, up €3.5 million from last year. This represents an increase of 12% year-on-year.

Earnings per share amounted to 22 euro cents. Now let me take you through our cash flow and investments on the next slide.

In the first quarter of 2026, our cash flow from operating activities came in at €3.4 million, significantly below prior year. This change was primarily driven by working capital, largely due to a deferred payment by a major customer at the end of the quarter.

Adjusting for this effect, operating cash flow would have remained at the prior-year level. The deferred payment was realized in January.

Cash flow from investing activities reflected our continued strategic investments in capacity expansion, particularly for high-value solutions in Switzerland and Hungary. Capital expenditure was €23.4 million, slightly above the prior-year level.

Our free cash flow amounted to -€20 million in the first quarter, mainly impacted by the deferred payment, as already mentioned. Despite ongoing uncertainties, we remain optimistic about the current financial year for 2026 and continue to expect revenue growth of 2% to 5% at constant currencies.

We are also confirming our EBITDA margin guidance of around 27%. In addition to our guidance, I would like to mention two further key metrics for the financial year 2026.

We expect our planned capital expenditure to range between €140 million to €160 million. We are confident in achieving an HVS revenue share at the robust 57% level, and we assume a tax rate as in the previous year, which was around 22%.

This concludes now our financial update. I will now hand it back to Tobias before we start with the Q&A session.

Thank you very much, Andreas. Thank you very much, Reinhard.

We are now open to the Q&A session. Anna, our operator, will assist with the registration.

Anna, please go ahead.

Thank you, Anna. The first question comes from Giang Nguyen from Citibank.

Please go ahead.

Thanks for taking my question. Hope you can hear me.

I have two, please, and I'll just ask one at a time. The first question is, you called out Q1 as better than expected both on revenues and earnings.

Can you talk to the level of confidence in the full-year outlook now following the very positive start to the year, and how do you expect revenues and margins to trend through the remaining three quarters considering that the comps for organic growth ticked in in Q2, but will ease again in the second half? Then I'll ask my second question after.

Of course we have confirmed our guidance. Because the volatility in the market is still high, yeah, and therefore I would say we keep it as is.

It's a good start, definitely, but now let's see how the rest of the year will develop. As Reinhard has already mentioned during his speech is we are confident to achieve our guidance.

Let me just add, as we are not guiding quarter by quarter, we will not issue let's say specific let's say guidances around that. That is, to say, the conclusion on your question.

Thank you. Then my second question is more specifically on the DCS.

Very strong performance in the HVS segment again. Can you talk about your expectations for the rest of the year and whether you can say that this portion of DCS is getting maybe less lumpy or you're having better visibility on it considering that it's now grown to nearly 25% of your DCS rather than in the teens like a couple of years ago?

My expectation is that in DCS that HVS remains strong, yeah, because it's really following our strategy which we have defined a couple of years back, yeah, and and now we have the payback because the the market is having that demand for for these products, also mainly sterile solutions, which is sterile vials and and cartridges, but as well as special vials, for example, for the ADCs which I mentioned already in my my speech. We expect a higher value share a higher share of high-value solutions in in DCS for the rest of the year, definitely.

The next question comes from Olivier Calvet from UBS. Please go ahead.

Hi. Good morning.

I have one question for you, Andreas, and one for Reinhard. Maybe, Andreas, have there been any changes to demand in core DCS?

I think it was up probably low-single-digit organically in the quarter. Also curious if the growth in the quarter in HVS DCS was more in cartridges or vials.

Then maybe for you, Reinhard, glass syringes, I think we were pretty positively surprised given your comments in December at the performance in the quarter. Just given the newsflow from peers today and the deferred payment in your cash flow from operations, could you maybe comment on A, maybe bill-and-hold revenue, how much does that account in your sales, and B, controls in place to avoid the kind of issues we've seen elsewhere with revenue recognition?

Olivier, as in DCS the core segment of course we don't disclose precise numbers, but as always, we are expecting something like that we are growing with the market, as in the low-single-digit amount, yeah, and that is, yeah, as you say, it's our base business, if you want to say so, yeah. It's okay, and then it differs a lot from region to region.

That is what is always the same. That is something which we had also the past years.

This year EMEA is strong, yeah, and North America is weaker. That is more or less in line with expectations.

The main growth driver is definitely the HVS solutions, yeah.

Yeah. Within HVS, can you break out maybe if the growth was more cartridges or vials?

Cartridges, you can imagine, is of course one of the growth drivers at the moment due to GLP-1. There's high demand, yeah, and that is of course pushing the growth.

On the other end side, it's also the smallest product group within DCS. Yeah.

Of course it's growing faster. That's true.

Olivier, to your point, can you repeat the question regarding glass syringes? I didn't fully capture that.

What was that?

Sure. It's more just on accounting, if you could give us a sense of the share of your revenue that might be bill-and-hold and given the deferred payment in your cash flow, right, just wanted to get a bit of comfort on the controls you have in place to avoid early revenue recognition, if you see what I mean.

Understand the question. Obviously, let me start first to say, we do not have bill-and-hold arrangements at all.

That is the first part. The second part, we obviously have according to IFRS 15.35 some contractual assets, and we have intensively reviewed those processes back in 2025, and we have verified that together with the auditors.

I'm feeling very confident that we have a strong setup here.

Yeah. Thanks.

I'll go back in the queue.

Thank you very much. The next question comes from Odysseas Manesiotis from BNP Paribas.

Please go ahead.

Hi. Thanks for taking my questions.

I understand you don't guide by quarter, but in Q4 you made it quite clear that Q1 would be the worst quarter of the year and we're already at the top end of your growth guide. Could you please explain why we could see a deceleration for growth from here or at least what your guidance implies, or whether there was a particular area of weakness you were expecting in Q1 which has been postponed to another quarter?

Thank you, Odysseas. True, we had expectation at the Q4 level that Q1 will be somewhat the weakest, and most likely it is in revenue level, absolute numbers, the weakest, and that's one thing.

The other thing is, as we have highlighted, we have seen a broad-based growth in most of the segments apart from the polymer side, and that was truly better than expected, carried by GLP-1, but also carried by vaccination. That is a driver.

The other side is the larger impact from the in Q4 mentioned glass syringe client will be seen more in Q2, Q3, and Q1, as it was not really visible yet in the Q1 side. We're still in negotiations.

At the time, this was a risk which we had reflected.

Very clear. Thank you.

Welcome.

The next question comes from Charles Weston, RBC, Royal Bank of Canada. Please go ahead.

Hello. Just to clarify something you just said.

You've mentioned GLP as a key driver, but you also mentioned vaccinations in your last comment. Has that sort of not declined as much as expected or is still growing?

Then I wanted to ask just in terms of Q1 performance, as you said in Q4 you expect Q1 to be weaker. Clearly you were guiding this relatively late in the quarter.

Can you just explain, were there some very quick-turn orders that sort of came in in, I don't know, December that had to be actually delivered by the end of December? It seems like a very quick improvement versus what you were expecting.

I have one follow-up as well, but maybe I'll stop there for a second.

Thank you, Charles, for the questions. On the first one, well, GLP-1 continues to be a growth driver for us and even very much visible in the Q1.

Vaccination was also a growth driver, clearly visible, in the glass syringe business, while so to say the mRNA side and polymer sees the expected decline, which we also had highlighted. That is one topic.

The second topic, why was now at a let's say December communication for the Q4 the strong turn on the Q1 not visible? We had actually good orders coming in, which we worked through also with additional shifts between Christmas and New Year, and those were let's say supplemental volumes which we didn't see at that point in time.

It's a better momentum in the market, but not necessarily a momentum which can sustain. That's why we remain with the framing of there's still uncertainty in the market.

Okay. Great.

Congratulations on delivering on that. I wanted to ask on the guide as well, please.

You guided to 2% to 5%. You guided therefore on a range on revenue, but not on margin.

Can we assume that that 27%, I think you may have clarified this earlier, but can you just confirm that 27% would be at the low end and it would therefore be exceeding 27% potentially at the higher end, depending on I guess product mix?

Obviously, Charles, this is a question where you will let's say have a political answer. In the end, we have a perspective of that the margin sustains.

That's why we confirmed the margin. We also say, when we are at the lower end of the revenue level, we assume to reach a 27% EBITDA margin.

A lot of it depends on the share of HVS, which we are continuously working on, and with that, I will leave my answer towards your question.

Okay. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Charles. Oh, Olivier comes with a second question.

Olivier Calvet, UBS, please go ahead.

Just one follow-up on polymer syringe, particularly in non-mRNA. Do you see any changes to the outlook for that business for you in the quarter, or for the full year, to be more precise?

Olivier, I don't think so because we said when we had this down turn from mRNA, we said it will take us one, two no, two, three years to start refilling and to see growth. That is what's happening today with polymer is from my point of view, it's really okay or positive.

Significant changes we will see from my point of view not this year, that will come the years after because we are working on opportunities at the moment, yeah, to fill the lines and you heard just one example which was the polymer cartridge, yeah, which we have just introduced to the market. These things will happen, but they will not happen immediately.

Yeah. Maybe just to be more precise, you were saying at the full year that you were expecting basically if I recall correctly polymer flattish in the year, with mRNA down so the non-mRNA business offsetting that, so that was the question I was asking is sort of the non-mRNA part you still expect it up or to offset the losses in mRNA in '26, right?

That's what we said. Now it's polymer this year will be flattish, né?

At constant currencies. That is something which is happening.

Of course, we are a little bit more positive now also with the latest news about flu vaccinations and also combined flu-COVID, yeah. I cannot comment on that because that is not completely clear and transparent to us what that means.

We will have to wait for that, and then as said, we are working on other applications to increase polymer sales in future.

Okay. Actually, yeah.

Actually, maybe on that specifically, there was newsflow on that recently. Can you just also make clear if your guidance of declining mRNA revenue in '26 does not reflect any new products coming to the market?

Or you do incorporate something there?

No, that's correct. The declining mRNA doesn't assume let's say new vaccination products uplift, but what we say is that there is underlying growth in the other segments, whether it's long-acting injectables, surgery, mental health, aesthetics, animal health.

Those are the drivers which will bring the polymer syringe business to a let's say flattish business performance for the full year.

Okay. Thank you, and all the best, Andreas.

Thank you. Was it already the hand over to me?

No. We have more people online here.

Thanks, Olivier. Next question comes from Stephan Wulf, ODDO BHF.

Please go ahead.

Yes, thanks. Good morning, everybody.

Firstly, on the ramp-up process you are in, my understanding is that you are currently still in a ramp-up process, Switzerland and Hungary. Could you please share your expectations with us on the incremental yield from this additional capacity in the current fiscal year?

This would be my first one. A second one goes to a statement you did earlier, Andreas, when you mentioned the volatility in the market, which is still pretty high, and for that reason you are not touching your guidance for the full fiscal year, which I totally understand after only the first quarter.

Where is this volatility coming from? Destocking is over for already quite a while.

We know that mRNA is weak, GLP-1 is stronger. What are the main challenges the market currently?

As I said, where is the volatility you are mentioning coming from predominantly?

I will start with the first part, also with the ramp-up processes in Switzerland and Hungary. Switzerland, it's mainly sterile cartridges, where the demand is high and definitely demand is exceeding capacity at the moment.

That is very positive, it's really on us what we can realize. Yeah.

Hungary, it's basically two things. On the one hand side, we are still having lines in validation, for example, for glass syringes, and then of course the next big step is sterile cartridges, where we have had the groundbreaking past financial year.

These two things, they have definitely an influence on our sales. Far, good, I would say, yeah, the project's on plan.

Then I would hand over the volatility to Reinhard, yeah?

Yeah. Stefan, thank you for that question.

Volatility on one side obviously sits together with a better than expected let's say drive within the vaccination side. A part of it sits together that this one account which has addressed syringes to reduce has not seen the effect.

We still expect that to come in the coming three quarters. That's one element.

The other element is we had a better overall vaccination glass syringe business from various different accounts across the globe, and that has obviously a momentum effect which might be seasonal. This needs to be confirmed.

We cannot rule out that this maintains. Then the other element is we actually see good demand, even slightly better demand in Q1 on GLP-1.

Is that sustainable in a competitive environment, we need to see. Those are the three main drivers, but obviously a good start to the year, and too early to speak about more.

Perfect. Thanks.

Welcome. Another question comes from Giang Nguyen from Citi.

Please go ahead.

Yes, one follow-up to Reinhard, please. Earlier, you talked about a larger order having come through towards the back end of last year.

Could I just confirm whether this is incrementally new order, or did you mean an order coming through faster that would have come later on in this fiscal year? Then my second follow-up question is, do you have any update for us on the plan for the US manufacturing facility at this stage?

Thank you.

Thank you, Giang. Yes, the large order was incremental to our expectations, but obviously to be seen in the overall context, and sometimes, and that's why we also spoke about that in Q4, things change with larger accounts.

It was incremental in this specific one. Then to your second question, we are still in discussions internally about our capacity plans for the United States.

We cannot today give an update there. We expect soon, though, but this is an ongoing discussion, and obviously, as we are capital-sensitive and mindful about returns, many considerations need to be taken into account, especially in a volatile market.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Another follow-up coming from Charles Weston, Royal Bank of Canada. Please go ahead.

Hi, just a couple of modeling follow-ups, if I can. Should we be using the financial result and the tax rate from Q1 as a guide for the full year?

Do you expect any sort of changes in working capital movements through the year? Thank you.

Thank you, Charles. Tax rate, I think I have outlined that we assume a full-year tax rate on the same level as in previous year, which is around 22%.

We had a more positive start, which was more a country mix effect, slightly below the 22%, but assume the 22% for your modeling topic. The topic around financing, well, yes, assume that we'll have overall lower financing costs, but can you run-rate exactly the financing costs of Q1 Q1, I would not say so, but we are constantly working on optimizing our internal financing within the group.

It will be a better so to say result than last year, but we're not guiding on how much better. What was the third question?

It was on working capital and changes we should expect.

In working capital, obviously we had a peak in Q1 for the aforementioned, and I call it cut-off topic in the accounts receivable side, which was paid in January, as mentioned. We expect working capital to come down over the course of the year with a slightly positive contribution overall to cash flow, and that means below a double-digit.

Let's say mid-single-digit contribution from working capital to be assumed for cash flow.

Thank you.

Thank you, Charles. I do not see any more people in the queue here, I think that's it for the moment.

Thank you, everyone, for your questions and for the good discussion, of course. Before we come to the end of this call, I would like to hand over to Andreas.

Famous last words. As you all know, Christian Mias will take over as a new CEO in May.

While I will be with the company for another couple of weeks, this definitely my last analyst call before I go into retirement after some 40 years within the SCHOTT groups. I've been managing the pharma systems business unit, which is now SCHOTT Pharma, since 2010.

I have always enjoyed working in and for this business a lot. We're operating in a growth market where there's much scope for shaping and building things.

We are world leader in our business, and over the past 5 years, we have grown our sales by an average of around 10% per year and improved our profitability by almost 7 percentage points to 28.4% past year. However, maybe even more importantly, we are contributing to the health of billions of people around the world, and this has always been a great motivation for me to drive things forward together with the SCHOTT Pharma team.

I'm also very much convinced that the positive development of our company will continue under the strong leadership of Christian Mias and Reinhard Mayer, and I will definitely stay tuned from the outside. Thanks a lot for your trust, and take care.

Thank you, Andreas. Thank you, Reinhard.

Many thanks to all the participants for taking part in our today's conference call. We look forward to seeing you at the upcoming conferences.

Our half-year results will be published on May 13. Thank you very much, and goodbye.

Have a good day.