Vidrala SA

Vidrala SA

89.90
EUR
+0.70
(+0.78%)
3.15BMarket Cap
Mar 03Next Earn

Q4 FY2025 · Earnings Call TranscriptFebruary 25, 2026

Operator

Good morning and welcome to the conference call organized by Vidrala to present its 2025 full-year results. Vidrala will be represented in this meeting by Raúl Gómez, CEO, Iñigo Mendieta, Corporate Finance Director, and Unai González, Investor Relations.

The presentation will be held in English. In the Q&A session, questions will be also answered in Spanish.

Nevertheless, it is strongly recommended to post questions in English in order to facilitate understanding of everyone. In the company website, www.vidrala.com, you will find available a presentation that will be used as supporting material to cover this call, as well as a link to access the webcast.

Mr. Álvarez, you now have the floor.

Unai Alvarez

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining today's conference call.

As previously announced, earlier this morning, Vidrala has released its 2025 full-year results, together with a presentation that will be used as a guide throughout this call. Following the structure of the presentation, we will start walking through the key figures released, before moving on to the Q&A session, where we will go deeper into business performance.

I will now pass the floor to Iñigo, who will take you through the key financial highlights.

Iñigo Mendieta

Thanks, Unai. Thank you, everyone, for joining the call.

We know these days are quite busy for you, thank you very much for your time. Let's begin with a quick overview of the key financial figures.

For the full year 2025, Vidrala obtained revenue of almost €1.5 billion, EBITDA of €441 million, and a net income equivalent to an EPS of €6.24. A strong cash generation of €200 million enabled a substantial reduction of debt to €105 million, which is equivalent to 0.2 times our annual EBITDA.

Please note that the right-hand column provides clarity on the variation on comparable scope basis and excluding also FX. Comparable scope means excluding the impact of perimeter changes following the sale of Vidrala Italy back in 2024.

In addition, and to allow comparability, EBITDA and earnings per share are shown excluding €13.7 million and €10.2 million respectively, related to restructuring costs in the UK and Ireland. Let's have a deeper look at revenue evolution.

Sales for the period reached €1,465.2 million. On a like-for-like basis, excluding contribution from Italy and constant exchange rates, sales declined by 5.4%, reflecting the expected combination of soft demand and price moderation in line with cost developments.

Turning now to EBITDA, we apply the same analytical framework to better understand the year-on-year variation. For the full year 2025, EBITDA stood at €441 million, consolidating the profitability of our business model despite challenging market conditions.

Excluding FX effect, EBITDA remains basically stable year on year. These results translated into a resilient EBITDA margin of 30.1%, reflecting a 1.5 percentage point expansion compared to last year.

Now, let's understand sales and EBITDA evolution by market based on the current perimeter. Again, that means fully excluding Italy from the 2024 figures.

As aforementioned, price moderation are visible over all our operating markets. Southern Europe demand remains resilient, while trading conditions in the UK and Ireland continue to be challenging.

In Brazil, Q4 exhibited expected signs of recovery, and we are also constructive for 2026 as we start the year. Anyway, margins remain solid across all regions, thanks to our internal measures, cost discipline, and actions to align industrial capacity with market realities.

Now, let's take a closer look at free cash flow generation, which is our top priority and a fundamental indicator of both our financial strength and the quality of our execution. This chart shows full-year cash conversion performance.

Starting from EBITDA margin of 30.1%, we deliberately allocated almost 13% of sales to investments, reinforcing our operational capabilities and driving future competitiveness. In addition, 3.6% of sales was dedicated to working capital, financial expenses, and taxes.

As a result, free cash flow generation reached almost 14% of sales, equivalent to €200.1 million, highlighting our ability to translate operational performance into cash flow despite investing at record levels. As a consequence, net debt was reduced to €105.3 million, which translates into a leverage ratio of 0.2 times our annual EBITDA.

This solid financial position provides us with the ability to continue investing with ambition, with discipline, while retaining flexibility to seize growth opportunities and return capital to shareholders. Overall, we have largely met the guidance issued in April 2025.

Our results underscore the resilience of our business model in a challenging market environment, and notably, our ability to convert operational performance into cash has proven strong, generating value even in an unfavorable global macroeconomic cycle. Moreover, if we adjust the performance of each of our business units in their local currency to the exchange rates assumed in the guidance, namely 0.84 for the British pound and 6.20 for the Brazilian real, our EBITDA would have reached €445 million, representing only a very limited deviation of 1% versus the guidance.

Now, before we move to the Q&A, I'll hand over to Raúl, who will summarize the key takeaways and share additional insights.

Raúl Gómez

Thank you, Iñigo. Thank you, Unai.

Thank you all for your time in attending this call today. We know it's, and you know we know, it's a busy day for you, we will try to go ahead quick and direct.

Our 2025 results demonstrate the strength of the business we are building. Today, we, Vidrala, are a larger, more diversified, and also a less complex company.

This is the result of mostly our deliberate intentional strategic actions. Let me remind, in the recent years, we have entered the UK, exited Belgium and Italy, and we started to build a long-term platform for future growth in South America through Brazil.

We are now clearly focused on three business divisions, operating across three different geographies, which create clear combinations and synergies at many levels across the business. This structure makes us today more agile, closer to our customers, and surely better positioned to capture future opportunities.

We are also a more efficient industry today. We invest more, and more intentionally, always with our customer in mind.

We are running ambitious projects to improve competitiveness, increase vertical integration, and differentiate our service proposition. Let me say, our goal is quite simple: to become a trusted, reliable partner for every one of our customers.

We are also today a more global company. At the end of the year, after a long process of analysis, we announced our entry into Chile.

This makes us even more attractive to a significant number of strategic customers that will shape our future. Customers that are looking for a reliable, distinctive, challenger, long-term packaging supplier.

In the end, in 2025, we we delivered. We delivered despite a more difficult environment.

It's evident, demand remained negative, but even so, we protected our margins, and we reinforced our industrial competitiveness. The message we want to share today behind our 2025 results is quite clear: margin resilience in a tough environment, driven by mostly internal actions; a stronger industrial platform, supported by the solid execution of an ambitious investment plan; and an expanded geographical diversification.

Above all, we achieved our cash flow targets, something that helped us to reinforce our financial position, increase shareholder remuneration, and be ready, better prepared for what is ahead for us in the future. These achievements frame how we see what lies ahead, and support and reflect our confidence in our future.

Even more important, the trends of the last few months confirm our firm conviction: glass may have more future today than ever. I repeat: glass may have more future today than ever.

Glass is an unparalleled packaging material, the ultimate sustainable packaging material of choice, the preferred package for customers and consumers across the world, 100% recyclable, eternally. It is, in fact, the packaging of the future, if and only if we take the actions we need to take today to protect our industry.

Under this under this basis, under this starting point, we face 2026 with confidence, a year, 2026, in which our results should consolidate, evolve positively, and support the transition we are making toward our future, a future that belongs to us. Thank you.

Iñigo Mendieta

Thanks, Raúl. This completes our initial remarks.

Let's turn to the Q&A session.

Operator

Gracias. Señoras y señores, a continuación daremos paso al turno de preguntas.

Primero se atenderán las preguntas por vía telefónica. Si desean intervenir, por favor pulsen asterisco 5 en el teclado de su teléfono.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Q&A session starts now. Questions by telephone will be answered first.

If you wish to ask a question, please press *5 on your telephone keypad. Our first question comes from the line of Paco Ruiz from BNP Paribas.

Please go ahead.

Francisco Ruiz

Buenos días. I have three questions.

The first one is on volumes. Has been a very pure quarter in terms of volumes for Iberia and UK in this Q4.

How you see the start of the year in this respect and how's your view for the full year? The second question is on the payback and the cash out of this restructuring that you have announced in the UK.

If you could give us more detail on what's the total savings for this plan and if you are thinking further actions in the near future? Last, but not least, you are approaching net cash position, and even with the Chilean acquisition, the leverage is very low.

Should we wait till the end of the year to see an announcement on shareholder remuneration, or this is something that could come earlier than expected? Thank you.

Iñigo Mendieta

Okay. Paco, thank you very much for your questions.

Yes, to give the figures of Q4 and full year in terms of volumes, and then we can make some comments on the start of the year, okay? Yes, to be very clear, Iberia in Q4, our volumes decreased by 4%.

Volumes in the UK in Q4, the figure is -7.9%. In the case of Brazil, we have seen in Q4 the expected recovery following a weak Q3, and in Q4 our volumes have increased plus 5.3%, okay?

Overall, for the full year, just to have also the picture of the 12 months, Iberia is flattish in terms of volumes, -0.1%, with the UK and Ireland -5%, and Brazil, due to this weak Q3, is -0.8% in terms of volumes.

Raúl Gómez

Hi, Paco. We know you are expecting and we deserve some level of clarity on this side.

Let me say quite clear, we expect our sales volumes to move on the positive side in 2026. That should be driven by some external signs of stabilization, even recovery, and also on internal actions to recover market share.

It's only the start of the year, and we understand that you need more clarity. The start of the year is seasonally different in our regions, is more seasonally stronger in South America, seasonally weak in Europe, and we are exactly where we were expected to be, okay?

We are seeing some positive signs that will reflect progressively in our sales volumes across the year.

Iñigo Mendieta

Okay. Taking your second question on the UK restructuring, so as as we have explained throughout the presentation, industry-wide market conditions remain challenging throughout the year.

Despite this, I would say we have acted decisively by accelerating investments to try to optimize our industrial footprint, but also to try to further strengthen cost efficiency across the business, okay? In this sense, we're taking steps to accelerate cost control measures, drive productivity plans, particularly in geographies more exposed to competitive pressures, such as the case of the UK, okay?

Obviously, these initiatives will have a short-term impact on our results, but we truly believe that we are fundamentally reshaping our competitive positioning for the future, okay? Specifically, the UK workforce reduction plan has been recognized in our 2025 figures through a provision for the full amount that we have clearly disclosed, €13.7 million.

Although, you can consider that only 1/3 of the plan has been implemented to date, with the remaining 2/3 scheduled for hopefully completed in 2026, okay? Once fully implemented, trying also to get your point on the payback, the plan is expected to deliver recurring structural savings of at least €12 million per year, okay, which should have an effect, as I was saying before, on enhancing our competitive position.

Just to clarify, this is an effort aimed at improving competitiveness and protecting market share.

Raúl Gómez

Regarding your question on potential further actions, okay, you know us, and our future, we have a firm conviction of this, our future will be based on our cost competitiveness. We will keep on dynamically trying to improve our cost competitiveness and attract our customers.

For sure in the future we will take more actions when needed, I don't know at what magnitude, and you can be sure that we'll do as much as necessary to remain competitive, and we have a firm conviction of what that means in each of our regions. We don't foresee that these cost restructuring actions, whatever it happens in the future, should significantly distort the expectations you all have in your mind in terms of our profits and cash flow.

Your last question, Paco, regarding shareholder remuneration, well, you know that we do consider that our shareholder remuneration policy is more a result or a consequence of our targets. Our financial targets are much more focused on financial or strategic targets, on diversification, right investments, margin protections, and mostly, and at the end our definite target is cash flow.

Should we remain achieving our cash flow targets, we will do as much as necessary to improve our shareholder remuneration. We know what is our level of the strength of our financial position, let me say that we agree with you that is some margin for further improvement in our shareholder remuneration.

Iñigo Mendieta

Thank you very much.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Enrique Yágüez from Bestinver Securities.

Please go ahead.

Enrique Yágüez

Good morning, Raúl, Iñigo, Unai. I have four questions.

The first one is the expected evolution in prices for this year. Secondly, if you could provide some details about Cristalerías Toro acquisition, when the acquisition is expected to be closed, and the size of the restructuring plan, and potential synergies.

Third, about the opex increase coming from natural gas price increases. Then, capex guidance and where will be allocated.

Finally, I don't know if you could provide some details about the impact of the storm Kristin in Marinha Grande. Thank you very much.

Iñigo Mendieta

Okay. Thank you, Kike.

Thank you for your questions. Many questions, I will try to organize them, okay?

Regarding guidance outlook for 2026, in terms of prices, in terms of capex, first of all, as usual, you already know we will announce our official guidance at the Annual General Meeting in April, okay? However, what we can say at this stage in terms of results, free cash flow is that we do not see current levels being at risk, okay?

Anyway, regarding prices, we remind you that approximately 50% of our sales are supported by multi-annual agreements with strategic customers that incorporate price adjustment formulas, and the outcome of these formulas points to a price moderation of around 2%, okay, at a group level. That said, it will be also important to assess potential mix effect associated from our strategy to recover selectively some market shares, okay?

Raúl Gómez

Let me take a little bit this point with more detail, prices, and let me invite you to make a historical analysis, okay? We have the evidence, the strong evidence that our glass prices have been attacked significantly over the last three years.

This is very positive, if we consider how glass was positioned three years ago after the inflationary shock, in comparison with where we are today. Competition is still high.

We will maintain a disciplined approach to our prices, but when we see others' numbers, when we see our cost competitiveness, and we also see at other materials, I have the feeling that we are evolving in the right direction.

Iñigo Mendieta

Okay. Just to complete on 2026, Kike, going back to capex, well, first of all, just to clarify that we believe our cash profile is sustainable.

Obviously, investment levels currently at almost 13% of revenues are expected to ease in the medium term, not in the short term, okay, this easing in this medium term capex over sales should further support improvements in our cash generation profile. For 2026, capex should remain close to the 2025 capex figure, which is €189 million, probably slightly lower than that, but still ambitious, ranging between €170 to €180 million.

Then, regarding the closing of the acquisition of Chile, everything is proceeding as anticipated, okay? There is no news there, and we continue to expect the transaction to close in the first quarter of 2022, 2026.

A few remaining points still need to be finalized, which we expect to resolve in the very short term. In any case, sales, EBITDA, and margin figures remain in line with what we announced in December, okay?

We will take the opportunity of the guidance that we expect to issue with the occasion of the AGM to include Chile and to give more visibility in that sense. Then, regarding the impact of the recent or increasing gas prices in the start of the year, please consider that

Raúl Gómez

at year-end, around 80% of our energy exposure for 2026 and around 40% for 2027 was hedged through derivative instruments. This excludes Vidroporto, where, as almost all our customer contracts are dictated by price adjustment formulas.

Really hedges for 2027 are now slightly above the previously mentioned figure, okay? Then, just to finalize on the impact of the storm Kristin at the beginning of the year, our plants in Portugal were impacted by Storm Kristin.

This severe weather event caused disruptions to electricity supply and resulted in temporary impacts on our operations, and consequently affecting production at both facilities. Although we expect there to be an economic impact, however, this should be largely mitigated through the group's insurance policies, as well as through the support measures made available by the Portuguese government.

We are not worried in that sense. More relevant, let me take the opportunity to sincerely thank the teams for their professionalism, commitment, and outstanding effort in responding to this situation and ensuring a swift and orderly recover of operations.

Enrique Yágüez

Thank you very much.

Raúl Gómez

Just to add on your comments, Iñigo, okay, the limited impact we will suffer under this big climate or external issue proves again the right direction and the strength of our investment plan. Finally, Enrique, on the Chile point, let me please remind that we know that this deal, this step for us will have less impact from a financial view than from the strategic sense.

We know what we want,

Enrique Yágüez

okay?

Raúl Gómez

We will need our time to take decisive actions to deploy our industrial model, and everything is going as expected, okay? What that means?

That means that the results we will publish regarding Chile will be the starting point for what is ahead in the future.

Enrique Yágüez

Thank you, Raúl.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press *5 on your telephone keypad. Our next question comes from the line of Iñigo Egusquiza from Kepler.

Please go ahead.

Iñigo Egusquiza

Buenos días, Raúl and team. Good morning.

Good morning, everybody. Most of my of my questions have been already answered, just two quick follow-ups.

On on Chile, you mentioned that you will give us more information at the time of the of the guidance, if I understood well. My question would be more on further capital allocation.

You mentioned, Raúl, there is obviously room for for increasing shareholder remuneration, considering your limited leverage, but the question is more on on on more M&A, no? I think that that the company has a very clear strategy, in my personal view, of growing and continue consolidating the market, and probably Latin America is the the priority.

If you can share with us if we can expect more M&A in in the near future, 2026 and and 2027, this is the first question. The second one would be on on on on on volumes.

You have mentioned that you expect some stability in in Europe in in 2026. The question is is how do you see the the the industry evolving?

You sounded more positive on glass future compared to other materials, and and what about all the capacity shutdowns announced by the industry? If my numbers are are right, almost I would say close to 9-10% of Western Europe capacity has been shut down, obviously this would be this would be a positive for for the for the for the industry recovery.

If you can share with us with us your thoughts. Thank you.

Raúl Gómez

Thank you, Iñigo. Thank you very much.

First, regarding capital allocation, let me remind that we are, as Iñigo can add, we are today active under a share buyback program. This is an example that we are taking seriously our shareholder remuneration policy with some specific efforts this year.

Regarding your specific question of what is next, well, let us please first finalize our entry into Chile before speaking about the next step. It's too soon, but our approach remains consistent, the same.

We are and we will remain continuously exploring potential opportunities. This year is a year to be a focus and not distracted, okay?

At the end, whatever you see from us, I'm sure that you won't be surprised, okay? Regarding your second question, capacity actions across the industry, capacity rationalization, it's all a matter of cost competitiveness.

Capacity rationalization by each competitor in this industry, in the glass space or in other substrates, will be basically a matter of cost competitiveness. We know how clear we are in our mindset regarding cost.

Cost competitiveness will drive our future, and that's the reason why we are not expecting any capacity rationalization, and we hope the industry to rationalize capacity if needed, and that this will help us to recover some market share.

Unai Alvarez

Thank you.

Operator

There are no further questions by the telephone. I'll now hand it back to the Vidrala team, who will address questions submitted via the webcast.

Thank you.

Iñigo Mendieta

Okay. We have received some additional questions through the webcast.

On the Chilean acquisition, we are asked about EBITDA margins, because the question says that they are substantially lower over the rest of the assets, and if this is structural or we can improve it, okay? As we disclosed at the time of the acquisition, it is true that the figures that we announced back in December showed EBITDA margins in the range of 17%, and part of this is due to factors specific to the asset.

We should consider that a business in Chile with the scale of Cristoro won't have the same metrics as the one in Brazil, just because of a matter of scale, and because of differences between the regions. In any case, we consider that margins should improve.

We recognize that this is a different transaction, in the sense that it includes a process to optimize margins, and this should be through costs, won't be dependent on sales volumes. Please remember that this is a company that we knew pretty good, because we were providing them with technical assistance, similar to the case of Vidroporto.

In any case, in order to give more visibility, as we have said before, we should wait at least until the guidance in April, where we can give more detail here.

Raúl Gómez

Just to add on this, Iñigo, you can be sure that we know what we are buying, okay? Far from a surprise, we do consider current operational margins in Chile as an opportunity, part of our business plan.

Iñigo Mendieta

Good. Then there is a second question on overcapacity in Europe.

As you all know, the capacity closures that have been announced in the last two years have been very significant. We are still seeing some announcements to further close capacity in regions that are structurally uncompetitive, and this means that considering the structural capacity closures, permanent capacity closures, and also the adjustments in terms of production capacity, temporary adjustment that we are all executing, we believe that the industry is reasonably balanced in terms of supply and demand.

Then, there is a final question on savings in the UK due to the restructuring. I would say we have already answered that question through the live questions, but just to be very clear and to avoid any misunderstanding, out of the 13.7 million that we have registered in our numbers, 1/3 has been already executed and in terms of cash flow, and 2/3 of that figure, of the 13.7, will be executed in 2026.

It's not an additional amount on top of the 13.7 million euros, okay? We have now answered all the questions received via webcast, please remember we are always at your disposal for any further questions.

Thank you very much for connecting.

Raúl Gómez

Thank you very much. Please, keep on eating and drinking in glass and see you on April.

Operator

Señoras y señores, la conference call ha terminado. Gracias por su participación.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.