Venga Carlos. Good morning everyone.

As Carlos said, this has been a very challenging environment, very difficult year, full of geopolitical tension, macro issues, low demand in all the markets that we have. Having said that, we believe in our strategy and we believe we have done well within our strategy.

What we see is a very bright future in the medium term for Acerinox in particular. With that in mind, for '25 we have recorded an increase in net sales of 7%, €5.78 billion, which incorporates Haynes, the acquisition that we had last year.

In the level of adjusted EBITDA, we are 5% below last year at €422 million. One of the key aspects of the results this year has been the cash flow generation.

The operating cash flow you see is €455 million, which is more than 50% higher than last year's. This has allowed us to follow up with our very significant CapEx program, investment program at the low part of the cycle, over €300 million invested.

We have paid taxes, almost €100 million in taxes. Allowed us also to pay our stable dividend policy with €155 million this year paid as well.

With all of that, plus, unfortunately, foreign exchange impact, the depreciation of the dollar versus the euro, that has impacted our net debt and has increased our net debt by €68 million to €1.189 billion net debt. Again, that slight increase in net debt is based on the investments we've made, the dividends, and the FX differences.

We stick to our strategy, as you saw the four pillars of our strategy: the excellence in our operations, in particular Beyond Excellence program that is doing far better than expected. As we had earmarked €100 million savings in three years by 2026.

We're doing better than expected and we have increased our target to €120 million because we believe we can do better. We are investing in the low part of the cycle, €311 million this year, that adds to our increase in value added in the industry and in our strategy, as is HPA, it's a very important part.

We incorporated Haynes into our perimeter and we believe we're going to higher value products for our customers. Sustainability continues to be a key part of our strategy.

As you may know, we have been included in the S&P Sustainability Report for 2026, which is the first time and the only steel producer in the industry that has that recognition. All of this allows us to continue with our financial strength and that provides us the ability to continue with our stable dividend policy, which is, again, €155 million this year, €0.62 per share that we want to keep doing for years to come.

All in all, we believe it's a good year despite the headwinds that we have suffered in Europe in particular with the low prices, in the US with the low demand. With all of that, we have generated a significant amount of cash flow that allows us to continue with our investments and dividend policy.

With that in mind, I leave you to Bernardo, our CEO.

Thank you, Carlos. Good morning everyone.

Yes, as our Chairman said, 2025 has been a challenging year. If there is a word that can define the market situation is uncertainty.

Everybody is speaking about uncertainty. How can you make a budget if you don't know if you are going to have tariffs in your markets or tariffs in the export markets, and how can you define how is going to be your competitors if you don't know anything about tariffs and you have all these geopolitical tensions?

The word that we are using in all the market with other customers is uncertainty, what can happen. This is the third consecutive year under this situation.

We are showing in the stainless steel business in the left part of this slide the parallelism between Europe and United States because the general situation is more or less the same. The PMI has been below 50 in both markets for 10 months of the year.

This is very representative of the market sentiment. Apparent consumption has been flat.

That is a -1.5% in United States, +2.8% in Europe. That is flat for the third consecutive year.

Inventories in both markets are below the historical average. The situation is more or less the same.

Then what makes the difference? In United States, we have a very effective Section 232, that, by the way, nobody is questioning.

Nobody is questioning, even there was some rumors about the end of this tariff, but nobody is questioning. The Vice President of United States said that it was a fake news.

No problem with this. With this effective tariffs, imports have decreased by 17% and we keep very healthy market conditions with stable and reasonable prices.

In the case of Europe, it is very clear, as we are demanding year by year, is that the safeguard measures are not effective. They are not effective and imports are increasing.

Imports increased 25%, the opposite than in United States. Under this situation with a flat market, a depressed market plus increase of imports of 25%, that means especially if this imports are coming from countries that are not playing this game with the same rules, then prices are going down and we are in a critical situation of prices in Europe, probably the lowest in the history.

Fortunately, we have a very clear strategy and we are following this and this helps us to compensate the good places, the bad places. We are in United States, but we are in Europe, but we are also in high-performance alloys.

This is a different market and this diversification is giving us a more stability. I think that our volatility through the cycles is being reduced thanks to this diversification.

In the case of Europe, HPA was also affected because there are not projects or projects have been canceled, it's because under this uncertainty many companies are postponing this investment. This is why oil and gas sector and chemical industry is going down and that is affecting VDM.

On the other side, we have Haynes in United States, and Haynes is more focused in aerospace and is more focused in turbines for the industrial gas power stations. This is also booming now in United States, especially because of the data centers, and these data centers need a lot of electricity, they need to build more power plants, and they are using turbine gas and that turbines are made with our nickel alloys in Haynes.

In a challenging situation, in a difficult environment, we are demonstrating that we have the right strategy, that we are resilient, and that we are ready for what can happen in the future that we think will be better.

Now if we go to the figures. Today we are not only presenting our year-end results, we have also published in our webpage the consolidated and management report audited by PwC.

We are well recognized for the transparency and the detailed financial statements. I strongly recommend you to go through it.

Most of the questions or the basis for understanding the year 2025 are perfectly explained in our financial statements. Having said that, I want just to give three, four ideas.

You have the figures in the chart. Let's start by the EBITDA.

The EBITDA of the year has been €354 million. By itself, it could be considered it's not a remarkable amount, but we need to put the context of what's taking place in the market.

Is probably the worst market condition ever achieved. The demand collapsed 20 20% in America and in Europe, in all the Western World three years ago and still has remained flat.

We are playing in that environment. For putting it on place, you can realize that more or less every time our distance from our competitors is getting bigger, no one is getting even close to the figures we are reporting.

So €350 million in this environment is really relevant, but especially keeping on mind what has been taking place mostly at the year-end with that strong adjustment we have done for €69 million. We have made two very relevant adjustments: one is taking place the rejuvenation plan in Acerinox Europa by €9 million, but the most relevant is the €60 million inventory adjustment.

Why? What's taking place there?

There are two issues, both very relevant in 2025. During the year, we have been experiencing a price decline mostly in Europe, also in South Africa, but especially worse in the fourth quarter.

It could be considered that the prices could not deteriorate more, but what in Europe took place in the fourth quarter is a clear reduction of prices as a consequence also for increase in imports in Europe, anticipating the new measures on place for the year 2026. This has its effect.

Consequently, at the year-end, we have made a huge analysis of the realizable value of our inventories, keeping also on mind that at the starting of the year, the nickel has been moving up, but in the actual market conditions, mostly in Europe, is not so simple to believe that it's going to be a pass-through of the nickel cost. As a consequence of that, in a very prudent exercise, we have preferred to make a strong inventory adjustments by this side.

In the huge strategic exercise of working capital reduction, we have also analyzed which material we were keeping in hands, in our inventories and plants, that in the current market conditions is not easy to sell and has not been rotated and material that for more than one year we have keep it in our books and is not so easy to consider that we are going to probably sell it in the short term in the current market conditions. We have preferred to scrap that.

This shall be, obviously, benefiting our raw material purchases expenses in the beginning of the year because we shall use our own generated scrap. It's not going to be taking place a reversal and higher profits because of that, but we have just adjusted that to put it according to the scrap prices.

These two effects at the end has this €69 million. We prefer, for not making confusion during the year, we never talk about adjusted and so on.

We normally talk about EBITDA. At the year-end, when there are some relevant issues taking place, we normally mention EBITDA and adjusted.

For example, last year, the adjusted corrected the EBITDA we were reporting because it appeared the sale of Bahru, which obviously was not a recurrent part of the business. This year, the effect of the adjustment has been in the contrary because at the end what has been taking place is this fact.

If should not have been by this fact, the fourth quarter EBITDA should have been, as appears in the chart, €101 million and €422 million adjusted EBITDA for the tough environment experienced in the year 2025. We are proud about the figure that we have achieved.

If we analyze also the bottom of the chart, we see the net financial debt. Net financial debt, €1.1 €1.2 billion is also, again, a consequence of our financial strength.

It's a consequence that we have enough financial strength for making strategic acquisitions in the low part of the cycle, for moving forward, for being a aggressive expansion plan. This is showing this figure.

Keep on mind that just in the last year the acquisition of Haynes, the AAA investment decision, America, alloys, and aerospace, increased our net debt almost €900 million. In addition, that four years ago also in our strategy of moving forward to the HPA, we also acquired VDM.

At the end, if not were for our strategy moving to the HPA by acquisitions and integration, we should be in a cash position only by our stainless business. For us, it's relevant that our financial strength allows us to invest in every part of the cycle even in such difficult times as today ones.

We are not getting just comforted with that. In any case, what we are concentrating is also in generating cash and trying to compensate this increase of debt by a strong cash flow generation, which has been also remarkable in the ways of €455 million.

We are keeping our strategy programs, we are keeping our investments, but we are generating cash also for minimizing the effects in our debt. Even though that, as I always remember, keep on mind that we have not a single covenant in our debt since the year 2009 related to results for EBITDA.

For us, it's an indicator, it's a KPI that's an internal indicator for us, but none of our leveraged contracts is related to any specific debt-to-EBITDA ratio. Then, having said that, I also want to remark one issue.

Two, three years two, three years ago, we explained in our investors' day presentations our through-the-cycle and we were more or less explaining, we consider currently after the big investments done in the past, we are in a through-the-cycle EBITDA of about €700 million. If we analyze what has taken place after the COVID, we have two magnificent years and then two years of strong correction, and this year, which has been the worst.

If we consider this to be a cycle, because the valley and the bottom clearly has been achieved in the year '25, what appears is the average EBITDA of this period has been €764 million, the average. The average operating cash flow has been €432 million.

We are generating cash in every part of the cycle and the range from this horrible years to the remarkable year has been a range from €294 to €544. Some years, the cash flow generation is driven by the profits.

Some years, the cash flow generation is driven by the strong exercise of reducing working capital, and we are able to face every water in this condition. So 2025 has been the valley.

We consider that we have reached the bottom. In any case, let me make some quote.

My favorite piece of music is from Handel's Messiah, "Every valley shall be exalted." Exalted in 2025 means we have generated €455 million, we have reduced inventories in €400 million, we have overperformed in sustainability, we have overperformed in the Beyond Excellence plan, we have keeping an strong organic growth plan at the same time that we are keeping a strong inorganic growth plan.

All of these issues shall appear in Esther's presentation now for all the financial details, but keep on mind that this year 2025, this valley shall be exalted.

Okay. Thank you, Miguel.

Let me now explain you the results by divisions, okay? I will start by stainless.

Let me summarize the main drivers of the quarter. Most of them has been mentioned, either by Bernardo, Carlos, or Miguel, but I will centralize what's been the main drivers of the quarter.

The quarter has been marked by the weak demand in both markets, both Europe and the United States. Secondly, the seasonality, especially in our main market, United States, with a decrease in the quarters of around 10% in volumes.

There's been a consolidation price increase in the United States, as we announced, and we have the opposite side in Europe. In Europe, Europe has been affected this quarter by the higher volumes prior to the approval of the CBAM.

I think this was one of the reasons why fourth quarter was affected by higher imports. Consequently, a higher price pressure, which has led us to lower prices in Europe.

With all this, we have had extraordinary adjustments in this quarter that Miguel has already mentioned. In the case of stainless, the extraordinary adjustments have been the restructuring provision of €9 million for Acerinox Europa and also an inventory adjustment of €48 million in the case of this division.

Out of this €48 million, €21 million is what's been the scrapping materials that Miguel has already explained. With all of this, our adjusted EBITDA this division in the quarter has been of €58 million, which compares to the €56 million that we had last year.

We are very proud of our successful working capital reduction plan. This has been launched throughout all the group divisions and this has allowed us to generate €104 million in the stainless division in this quarter.

If I move to the year and if we compare to 2024, we have grown 7% in production, in volumes, okay? That's not only affected by the strike that we had last year in Europe, but we have also grown in United States.

In United States, we have grown around 6%, mostly not because of the demand, but mostly because of the reduction of the imports in that market. In the opposite side, we have Europe.

Europe has been affected by the higher imports this year and, consequently, the lower prices. Also to mention in the year is the negative impact in our results of the devaluation of the US dollar.

As we consolidate in Europe. We have a lot of results in US dollars.

This devaluation in the year has impacted more or less around €20 million. With this, the adjusted EBITDA for the year in the stainless divisions has been €226 million.

Proud of our cash flow generation mainly driven by the working capital plan, we have generated in this division €269 million, which is more or less the figure of EBITDA that we are reporting in the year. Going to HPA.

If we go to HPA, I think the strategy of diversification that has been followed by the group, not only in the diversifying in high value-added products with high-performance alloy, but also diversifying in the regions where we are really having a higher profitability in this time. We have achieved in this division 40% of the EBITDA of the year, okay, with €146 million adjusted EBITDA.

The situation in HPA has been different. On one side, we have had a gradual recovery of the aerospace sector, okay?

On the other side, sectors like oil and gas or chemicals have been progressively going down due to the uncertainties that Bernardo mentioned, okay? That is postponing investments, especially in big projects.

Even in this situation, thanks to our strategy, we have been able to balance these two different positions. In comparison year-over-year, it's worth to mention also that last year, as we mentioned also, we had positive impacts of the nickel.

We have tailwinds on nickel of around €30 million. We are not having this year, okay?

The inventory adjustment, we also are releasing an adjusted inventory. The inventory adjustments in this division have been of €12 million at year-end.

The cash generation is being a constant in both divisions, both stainless and high-performance alloy and mainly driven by working capital reduction. This working capital reduction has been especially focused on reduction on inventories.

The cash generation in this division in the year has been €186 million. If we go to the cash flow, and we start by the fourth quarter, again, okay, the strategy, and you can see it there, even the strategy of reducing working capital has allowed us in this quarter to reduce the net financial debt in €55 million, despite the high payment of taxes and the high investments in this quarter.

The high payments of taxes was already announced. There was an extension in United States because of the floods in the state of Kentucky, and most of the payments of the year have been concentrated in this quarter, okay?

That's the reason for the €97 for the €97 million. Out of the €240 million reduction of working capital that we have had in the quarter, €200 million is coming from inventories, okay?

Really it's been a high success of the working capital reduction, especially on inventories. Then moving to the year, as Miguel mentioned, we generate cash even in the lower part of the cycle, and even increasing activity, okay?

We have generated in the year the same cash flow as in year 2023 when we earned double EBITDA, okay? Even in the low moments of the cycle, and even increasing the activity, we have been controlling our debt and generating cash of €455 million.

Now you have there the year. We are generating €455 million of operating cash flow, almost, again, the reduction coming from reduction of inventories and working capital reduction.

We pay a lot of taxes. Yes, we pay a lot of taxes, mainly in United States because of our profitability in that market.

This year also we are paying taxes in Germany. The taxes that we are paying in Germany come from 2023, from the results we had in 2023, which was the best result of VDM in that year, the most highly profitable.

In the side of the interest payments, you see that even with a debt of $1.4 $2 billion, we are paying €47 million of interest, which shows the competitive cost of our debt. Under the others, which we have €64 million, it's true that we have also conversion difference because of the devaluation of the US dollar.

Part of this conversion difference has had an impact on the reduction of the working capital. The strong CapEx, we are having a CapEx of €311 million, which is €100 million higher than last year.

All the projects that we have for generating higher EBITDA are also invested in our CapEx, okay? We maintain a consistent return to shareholders of €155 million.

With all this, we have increased a bit our debt, but we have also an impact because of the devaluation and the conversion of the US dollar, okay? The conversion of the US dollar exchange rate is being applied to our cash in US dollar, and this has had an impact in the conversion of €126 million, negative impact of €126 million, which has made our debt to slightly increase from last year.

We are controlling our debt even in moments when we are doing investment and having lower EBITDA, which I think is a great success of the year. The thing that we can be more proud of is this cash generation.

The main driver for the operating cash flow has been the strong working capital reduction. We made a very ambitious program for years '25 and '26 of working capital reduction.

We have by far overperformed. What is also relevant to remark is that it has been done through the whole organization.

This working capital reduction of €406 million, for your understanding, €202 million has been taking place in stainless and €204 million in HPA, it's almost equal. Keeping on mind, in any case, that HPA is very few tonnages compared with those of stainless, but in its value is substantially higher and also the maturity of the process is substantially longer.

It has been done through the whole organization, half on stainless and half on HPA. Also what's relevant is that this is not window dressing.

We have not been focusing on making factoring contracts regarding customers, reverse factoring for suppliers. We have mostly focused on inventories and we have been extremely active and aggressive in our inventories in hands.

The driver from this €406 million is the €383 million in inventories. Again, I insist, half in stainless, half in HPA, €194 million in stainless and €189 million in Haynes.

It's a global program and the whole group is absolutely focused and committed on this basis. This, for us, is some of the most remarkable issues we must be proud in this valley year of 2025.

As our Chairman mentioned at the beginning of the presentation, we have a very clear strategy. I think this is something that is remarkable and most of our analysts, most of the people that are following Acerinox realized that we have the clearest strategy in the sector.

This is very important for us. We are keeping since 2020 more or less the same basis.

We are adapting the strategy. We have released this year a new plan, 2026-2030, but following the same four pillars that we always speak about: excellence, because we are a commodity maker.

We are focusing in making new stainless steel grades, new HPA, but we cannot forget that stainless steel is a commodity. In a commodity, you have to be very competitive, and to be competitive today it's not enough being good, you have to be excellence.

This is why we are focusing in this. This is productivity, this is efficiency, and this is the way of doing things aligned and through all the organization.

We are focusing in added value, that is we call added value to the HPA, nickel alloys, and also these special stainless steel grades that we are developing. We have been successful in this.

It's trying to fill the pyramid of materials that we have presented several years so we are making the base of the pyramid that is standard steel commodity and then tailor-made grades for our customers, end users. Then we have the top of the pyramid with HPA very special materials, but we are filling the gap in between with very special stainless steel and grades that are developed tailor-made for our customers, not just a standard grade, but adapted to the necessities, to the machinery of our customers.

This is very very important, and we can say today that we have the widest portfolio of products in our industry. Some of our competitors are following this strategy, but they are late.

We came before and we are playing with the best components of this market. Sustainability, and speaking about sustainability, always from of course, social, environment a point of view, but very related with our efficiency and with our social action.

Being efficient, we are speaking about reducing the emissions of CO2. This is very important.

This is important because we are more clean than before, but it's also important because we are consuming less gas and less electricity than before, and this is cost. This is efficiency and this is excellence as well.

This is what we are doing: focusing in efficiency, reducing water consumption, reducing electricity, reducing natural gas in our furnaces, and trying to put in value what we are doing in our communities because as we have big plants that are normally out of the big cities. We are in rural areas or in other areas where we have to develop the community, we have developed the skills of the people that they don't have when we arrive to these places.

We are cooperating with diversity, with women and minorities inclusion. We are cooperating with developing dual colleges and universities and we are very proud of this.

This is why this is not, as Miguel mentioned for other reasons, but it's not window dressing, this is not greenwashing, this is reality and we are sustainable. Our financial strength that we have spoken a lot about this, but this is the basement of all this strategy.

This is what we are doing: delivering through-the-cycle value creation and this is the base of our strategy.

If we move to sustainability, at the end, because it's public that we have very ambitious targets for 2030, mostly with a continuous effort on reducing 10% the accident rate, but also 45% reduction on carbon emission for 2030, and 90 as much as 90% of recycled waste utilization. When we analyze the parameters of the 2025 has been a great success.

By its relevance, we have reduced the lost time injury frequency rate a 15.2%. In addition, we have reduced the carbon emissions, Scope 1+2, almost more than 13%, 13.4%, and in recycled waste utilization of more than 79%.

We clearly are on the track. We are confident that we are more than fulfilling all these ambitious targets.

Also, what is more relevant, as far as I also mentioned that we are well recognized by the quality of our financial statements, we are also well recognized every day more in the sustainability ratings. Apart of all those that we normally mention, only in last week, we received three new awards.

We can only explain today two by some licenses issues and so on, but last week we have been awarded in two extraordinarily relevant sustainability ratings. One is the Clean200.

Analyzing the largest publicly traded companies in the world of every sector, analyzing 8,300 companies, we are in the list of the 200. We are in the 122 position by the more sustainable revenues.

Then this is revenues sustainable due to our products and our solutions. This is absolutely remarkable.

In addition, last week also we were notified that Standard & Poor's includes in the Sustainability Yearbook of 2026, because of our achievement in 2025, this is an analysis of every sector in all the world of the listed traded companies of 9,200 companies and they are only selecting less than 9%, 850 companies. We are there.

We have obtained the maximum qualification, 100 over 100 in transparency and reporting, and we are above 90 in business ethics, in product management, and in health and safety. Also now all the rating agencies are realizing and putting on value and certifying all the works we are doing in this area.

In addition, if we move to the efficiency plan we are doing on continuous and recurrent savings, we launched last year the Beyond Excellence plan for creating €100 million in savings in 3 years. At the conclusion of the second year, we have overperformed and now we have achieved €83 million.

This, and the more knowledge we have in developing through all our internal benchmarking on the group and the participation of all our teams, we have realized that we can be, again, more ambitious and reaching for the coming year 2026 the new target of the €120 million. You have the split of which is more or less including in that by order of importance or relevance in this split.

Obviously, the first chapter is customer-centric. This obviously means quality.

We are talking mostly about predictive quality, big achievements over there. Big achievements also in efficiency.

Efficiency in our sector is critical, mostly efficiency in raw materials as well as in variable costs. We are also overperforming there, as well as in research and development.

Obviously in this regard, once again, we need to mention the EcoAcerinox. We are launching and with great success the EcoAcerinox, which is produced with 100% renewable energy, which is produced with 90% of recycled material, and with a 50% reduction in emission.

In all these areas, we are clearly overperforming. In regard of the synergies that we are obtaining in the integration of our high-performance alloys in the group, we have achieved the targets slightly above the target.

For year 20 2025, we have obtained in the first year $12 million $12 million. We are confident that we are reaching in 2026 at least the $23 million.

Obviously, this year is more concentrating in cost synergies. Gradually also, the revenue synergies shall appear as a consequence of cross-selling and so on.

The biggest contribution is coming from now and mostly in the years '28 and '29 when, in addition, we shall be running the new equipments in place. If we go now to the projects actually in place, the organic growth, you can realize that at the end currently, in the current years, in this period, we have organic growth investments.

If we aggregate it, all the CapExes appear here, we reach €505 million. Clearly, we are prioritizing for CapExes the areas where there is more guaranteed return.

Obviously, the first thing in this guaranteed return is no other than North American Stainless. The big expansion we are accomplishing there since year 2023.

Actually, it's coming on place in 2026. The crane was installed last year, we announced it, as well as the cold roll that has started its trials in 2026, as well as the AP2, the skin-pass now shall be starting on the month of April.

This is mostly now coming during the year 2026. In addition, in Haynes, apart of the acquisition, we are also investing for taking advantage of the excellent momentum coming not only in the aerospace, but also in the gas turbine.

We are growing also in VDM in Europe with the €67 million. In those companies where still there is no such a guaranteed return, but we are doing our best for improve and transform the business.

We are diversifying even more Columbus with the introduction of electrical steel. Now Columbus is able to cover the necessities of the South African and the African market as well as exporting, but mostly having the most diversified portfolio, which is stainless, it's carbon steel, it's electric, is allow also to transform HPA.

In the case of Acerinox Europa, we also involved in the turning around, and also is a relevant part of our programs actually in place. With this, we are clearly in position for the coming years to increase our EBITDA in more than €300 million.

This is a beautiful summary of what Miguel have been mentioning. We started in 2020 with with this strategy.

We have been, even with the bad years, we suffered COVID, we suffered all the tensions, geopolitical tensions, this disruptions of the supply chain, and all the geopolitical situations that we are facing, the tariffs, whatever uncertainty, everything, but we are going ahead with our strategy. We are going ahead and we are revising the strategy, but insisting in the same simple and and beautiful.

This is this. You can put the the starting point wherever you you want in the average through-the-cycle EBITDA last year, whatever, but we have a potential upside potential of €500 million EBITDA with the organic growth that Miguel has been explaining that is including also the possibility that is exciting, it's a fantastic project, that we are going with the new investments in Haynes with the new forge and the and the new furnace.

We will have an excess of production of that that will be able to process in North American Stainless to to make long products. Focus Haynes is focus in flat products, and in NAS we have both flats and and long, we will start making HPA long products in in North American Stainless, making a very boutique project in a commodity factory.

That's going to be a game-changer. Synergies, $68 million, Beyond Excellence, €120 million, total we believe that we have a potential of €500 million EBITDA in our future.

Our future can only be better than than our present. We have a new environment, and this is other thing that is is going to to change.

That's why we think that we have already touched the the lowest part of the of the cycle. We have a new environment and we are actively participating in the in the creation of this new environment.

We are actively participating in Washington, in Brussels, to explain and and demonstrate the administrations that the industry is totally essential for our future, that we need industry and we need basic industry and we need stainless steel. We are defining this landscape and prioritizing strategic autonomy.

You have seen how the the European Commission is changing the wording now. Until few years ago, was impossible to speak about in these terms.

Now strategic autonomy is is very common and everybody knows what it is and everybody knows what are we referring to. In the last weeks, Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the Commission, is strengthening this this message.

He's not speaking about the strategic autonomy, he's speaking about independency, the the need of independency for for Europe, for the European industry. Something unbelievable before, you know that a a commissioner of the European Community is speaking about a Buy European program, that we need to to local purchases, especially for public purchasing, called responsible purchases, but also for products or projects that are subsidized or or receive any kind of help from the European Commission.

This is very important. Europe is is waking up and Europe is realizing that there's no future without industry.

This is the picture that we have here. We have United States already a protected market with this Section 232 that nobody is questioning.

This is applying to every country, is with a 50% tariff, that is not under consideration, with no exclusions per country, with no exclusions per product, and also extended to downstream products, that is very important. Our best customers are also protected by this Section 232 because tube makers, sinks makers, screws, all these kind of things that are where stainless steel is a big portion of the cost of the product are also included here.

Our customers are also included and of course the melted and poured, that is is avoiding the possibility to do circumvention between countries to avoid the tariffs. The other tariffs, who who knows.

This is the today's uncertainty. We have the reciprocal tariffs that has been canceled by by the Supreme Court in United States.

Now they are applying Section 122, that is 10% duty, and it's a general duty for every country, every product, except what is included in Section 232. Let's see if can be increased to 15% because still there's nothing published officially.

We know that the administration, and we are cooperating with that, is looking for a new tools or new tariffs or reviewing the American law and the American Constitution to to find out where they can put this protection that in some cases we can complain because it's a political weapon or is is are using tariffs as a as a political instrument, but in other products or in other terms are are necessary to keep a healthy industrial production in the country. In the case of Europe, we have CBAM that is already in place since 1st of January.

That is this is not a tax, this is not a protection. This is something that compensates the efforts that we, the European industry, are making in decarbonization.

All we can say until today is that there's a lot of uncertainties yet. This is importers are applying the default values to calculate CBAM.

This is very high. Today is going up to €600 per ton in for several countries.

The average is around €400 per ton. It's a lot.

In the future, this exporters will have to to calculate their own values and they have to evaluate these values and somebody will have to certify that these values are are right. This is part of the uncertainties that we have.

What is true is that already in January imports has been low, have been decreased a lot, and in February looks like it's going to be more or less the same. We hope that CBAM is is going to to compensate the effort that we are doing and will be a kind of filter for unfair or non-sustainable steel coming from other places.

The case of the new trade measures that we are working hard on this, we have we have seen and we have during these years that the safeguard measures have not been effective and we need something stronger. We need a strong support and demonstration of the of the European administration that we we need the industry.

What I can say is that in the case of Spain, the Spanish administration is cooperating with us and is helping us a lot and is supporting all these these activities in in Europe. Of course, the industrialized countries in Europe are supporting are supporting our initiatives, but Europe is is a complex mechanism and there's some other countries with other interests.

Today is clear that we will defend the the industry. With the new system, the the target is reduce imports at the level of 15% market share.

That means, in the case of the stainless steel, that imports will have to reduce by 15%, very helpful. If we have a market where imports are only 15%, of course we will compete because we have enough capacity between the European producers, but having more stability, having no dumping imports, at the end we'll have a more stable market and we'll have a healthier prices that will help us to generate EBITDA in in Europe and will help us to to keep on investing and and paying dividends to our our shareholders, that is necessary to keep the industry alive.

Now the situation is is improving, as I mentioned at the beginning. We have low stocks in all the market.

What is positive, the PMI in the biggest economies are are turning around. United States from December to January, the PMI went from 47.9 to 52.6.

This is a big change. In European Union, from December to February, it moved from 48.8 to 50.8.

We are in in both areas we are in the positive side now. We have a future with measures, a future with more industrial activity, and a future in which we have developed a very strong and and reliable strategy.

That takes us to the end of the presentation. We consider that we have a good results in 2025, a very good EBITDA in the lowest point of of the cycle.

We are delivering our strategy and nobody's confusing us. We are following the way that we have defined for Acerinox.

We have a clear this is clear strategy that is already in place and is being developed and is going to be the base for our our future success. We have a better environment, we have a more positive environment for our future.

At the end can only be better. We will start gradually recovering through the year.

We will start gradually increasing our EBITDA through the year. That's the take us to the especially with the in the second half of the year with the new commercial measures in Europe that will help us, and gradually we will be increasing.

That's why we said prudently that our our outlook for this first quarter 2026, the adjusted EBITDA is going to be slightly higher than than fourth quarter. That's all from the presentation.

Hi everyone and good morning. Óscar Rodríguez, Banco Sabadell.

Congrats on the free cash flow and thank you for taking my question. Just one, you have shown us today your long-term vision, but what should be the levers in terms of regional volumes and pricing that would lead to reach the €500 million figure for EBITDA improvement?

Thanks a lot.

When we calculate the potential of these new investments or this strategy, normally is calculated at historical average or reasonable prices. Still we have to develop this CapEx program, we have to develop this new equipment, we have to do the ramp-up, and we'll have to, of course, to increase our production with this investment.

It's reasonable because have been calculated with the actual prices.

Yes. Good morning.

Francisco Riquel from Alantra. Thank you for taking my questions.

I have two. The first one is on the US, which is your core market.

I want to assess how NAS is holding up in the current environment, whether the short-term weakness in the group earnings applies to NAS or is also mainly related to Europe. If you can comment on volume and margin dynamics in the US, and also on the €60 million of inventory write-downs.

You mentioned €12 million allocated to HPA, anything also for the US or if that is mainly the rest to Europe. My second question is about Europe.

CBAM is already effective, I wonder if you can update on what you are observing in the market since the beginning of the year in terms of import flows, your order book and utilization rates, and pricing dynamics, or whether you are still dealing with excess inventories in the system. Thank you.

This is a short question that deserves a very long answer. Thank you, Paco.

In United States, the situation is as we mentioned, speaking about apparent consumption is still low. It's around 20% below what was normal because it was a accumulated close to 30% reduction since 2022.

The situation of NAS is very healthy. You have visited NAS.

NAS is a great factory, is the best plant in the world, at least in the Western World. It's working more or less at 85% of capacity utilization today, improving because our order book is increasing now in the beginning of the year, partly because of the seasonality of our business, but also because we see a very slight recovery.

Too soon to say that. We are finishing February, still we don't have too much information for this.

NAS is performing very well, making money with stable prices, stable costs, and a stable production at this level that I have mentioned. In the case of CBAM, there's nothing that we can say yet.

As I said, January imports has been low, but we cannot conclude that that's going to happen for the rest of the year. Let's see how it works.

In February looks that is going to be similar than January, and let's see. I think that I read in a magazine in one of our sector that prices were increasing in Europe because of CBAM.

I don't think so. I think that prices are growing in Europe a little bit because nickel price is going up, because market is better and is accepting this price increases, and CBAM maybe is giving this support to this activities, we hope it will work well, but this is an experiment.

There's no experience for this. To speak about inventories, Miguel, do you want to

As we said before, inventory reduction has been taking place everywhere. The adjustment and the write-off has been done mostly in Europe.

Hello. Thanks for taking my question.

I have two questions. If I think about the outlook for 2026 and the guidance you've given us for Q1 on EBITDA to be slightly higher, could you maybe just help us with the bridge about how we think about the cadence of the EBITDA growth coming through in 2026?

Is it in your expectation skewed to the second half? Is that going to be driven by price?

Or can you talk to us maybe about specific volumes in the second half of the year that will drive significant improvement in the EBITDA? That's my first question.

For the year twenty sorry, for the year 2026, I think it should be a gradual recovery. More or less we understand the situation, as Bernardo mentioned, we are in stable much more stable environment in in America, even though obviously there is uncertainty.

The uncertainty was the main driver for year '25, but still there is uncertainty on the on the starting of the 2026 and and we have seen more or less what has been taking place everywhere in the last two months. Still, even for our customers, the situation is a bit unclear, and our customers are not in position of taking any strategy approach of grow or how to grow because still the the rules of the game are not going to be clear.

We see now, for example, in the agreement Europe and America and so on. You all of you know what we are what we are facing.

It's not so simple. Having said that, when we say that gradually it's going to be moving up, the basis of our performance on the North American market is in stainless are are very solid.

We think that the gradual recovery expected in Europe mostly for the second semester, one one since the 1st of July, the the new measures taking by the European Union are on place and this at least should allow us to improve the situations in Europe. The situation in Europe, first of all, the new the new rules of the game appear to be favoring the industry and especially from the second semester.

In our case, in the in in the plan that we are putting on place and the turning around plan in Acerinox Europa, we also preparing everything for taking advantage in the in the coming future. We have done the adjustments that we have done for preparing and and having everything well-prepared, but still was not clear is when it's coming the reactivation of demand.

It's it's unique the situation we are experiencing in the last three years. It must come, but with the uncertainty, the demand still is is is a bit dormant.

This is this is the point which makes difficult to make predictions for the second half of the year. We are doing our best.

We understand that gradually we are going to improve. We understand that we shall be in position for bringing gradually Acerinox Europa on break-even maybe for the second half of the year because still at this level of prices in Europe, it's impossible to be to be profitable for the industry in general.

This is something that must change. We have better rules, we we we are in better condition, but still the demand in Europe has not been reactivated.

In the case of in the case of the HPA, we are at the end benefited by our diversification. Now it's coming a proper tailwind for especially for the aerospace and the gas turbine generation.

This should be clearly benefiting benefiting Haynes. VDM, which is more concentrated in the oil and gas, still that sector appears to be facing a tough challenging year for the 2026.

Our strategy always has been diversification for trying to play the cycles, and sometimes there are regional crises, sometimes there are crises by sector. Fortunately, we can growth in HPA, but the growth is going to be driven gradually from the aerospace that is more or less recovering and also the recovering is coming to the flat products and Haynes shall be there, as well as to the gas turbine.

These are going to be very relevant drivers for the HPA in America in the coming years. We understand that we are probably moving up gradually during the year, but still there is uncertainties on place, we cannot have a much more clear vision.

Hi. Thank you for the presentation and for taking my questions.

First on Europe, is there any kind of indicative guidance you could give in terms of what uplift from the safeguard measures and CBAM that we've discussed on your profitability? Could we assume that at full run rate in maybe 2027, you could reach normalized volumes of around 600 kt and the normalized EBITDA, which I think sits at €100 to €150 million?

Then just second, on the NAS expansion, what proportion of the 200 kt volumes should we expect to see in 2026? Thank you.

Thank you for your question. For the first one, there's not much that we can say.

CBAM is already in place and with the actual situation that the Parliament and the European board plus has accepted what the European Commission proposed, now they have to meet between the three parties, it's called the trilogue, and they are starting meetings. They started 23rd of February with the first meeting and they are supposed to finish by first part of May.

That means that even trying to push and go fast will be in place 1st of July. How is it going to affect to the market and prices?

Will depend on the situation when we start having these measures. Still is difficult to predict.

We don't have the crystal ball for this. I think that you, the analyst, have to make the calculations.

It's not something that we cannot speak about prices. For the NAS expansion, we are already started.

First coil was cold roll last week. Now when you do the first coil, you have to fix many things and do the fine-tuning of the equipment and then we will start with the ramp-up.

Probably this new equipment will be in full production by June. That means that in this year they are going to contribute to the EBITDA of NAS, and of course will depend also in market conditions.

Today we are working at 85% of capacity utilization. If we increase our capacity utilization, then the new equipment will bring the 20%, the potential of 20% production increase that we are planning for this equipment.

Good morning all. Thanks for taking my questions.

I've got two as well. My first one is just coming back on the European business.

I think you mentioned that with current prices, it's impossible to be profitable in the current market. Yet I think I guess some of the European peers have been profitable in Q4.

I guess generally see some uptick in Q1, I just wanted to just get back to that point. Is your view basically that you will not be able to get the business back to break-even just stand-alone with the current market conditions you're seeing?

I guess given that prices have started to trend up a little, probably also taking currently a little bit of market share back from imports. Do you really need the TDI to turn the business around?

Then also, is there actually an earnings level and the return target for the European operations which you basically have set to yourselves to keep allocating capital to the European operations? That is my first question.

I don't know what our competitors are doing or other sectors are doing in general in Europe. We are all complaining that under this situation, even if you are a little bit profitable, this is not sustainable because of the level of prices in carbon steel and in stainless steel.

We are more or less all in the same situation. Some of us are better or worse than others, but the situation is the same for everybody.

We don't disclose results per unit, cannot speak about this. Of course, market share, we will increase our market share coming from imports.

If we reduce import level from 24% that is today to a level of a target of 15%, so that means that will be 9 points of market share that will be distributed between the European players. Acerinox, we can have from 10 to 15% of that market, this is more or less what we will increase in our production if finally we have these measures and finally these measures work as we believe.

Of course, the volumes are very important for our business. With this new volumes, we think that we will be able to be in above break-even point.

This is the target. With all the plans that we have, with the investments that we have, how we're improving with a small, little CapEx in digitalization, in things to debottleneck things and upgrade our lines, update with electronics and best technology.

The factory with these measures, I think, will be in a better position and able to contribute to the profits of the group. We are allocating CapEx to all the plants.

This is compulsory. If you don't invest in a factory like ours, you will have to close the factory very soon because you always need some investments in maintenance and trying to keep the equipment updated with the new technologies.

In this case, we are not facing a big CapEx program in the place because even in a company like Acerinox, even being a Spanish company, we don't have an unlimited amount of money to invest. We have to, according to our strategic plans, according to our budgets and predictions for the future, we have a certain amount of money that we dedicate to CapEx.

Fortunately, we have a lot of ideas and we have more ideas than money. That means that we have to limit our CapEx programs, and to limit this CapEx programs, we have to give priority to the places where the return is faster, the payback is faster.

That is why we are especially investing in United States, in Haynes and NAS, and second in VDM, in HPA in Europe. We never stop investing because we have to.

If I may add to that, with the expectations in Europe with the new trade measures, CBAM, I believe we'll have a problem if we were not to invest a bit on our European plants because the future is there. We believe the European plant with these new measures, with the lowering of imports, demand, who knows, but with that prices should go up a bit, and with that we should be able to capture some of the profitability coming from the European side.

As Bernardo said, we are investing heavily in the US as we keep doing because that's where we believe the demand is there, the already protectionist measures work well and they're improved. We believe that the future is there, but also would be a problem if we were not to capitalize on the turnaround of European business thanks to these new tariffs that hopefully will be put in place in July.

Good morning. Two questions on my side, too.

The first is on CBAM. What's your initial takeaway of CBAM that has been now in place for 2 months?

It seems to be driving a little bit of price uptick. Some default values have also been revised upwards, it seemed to be more efficient that it was originally meant to be.

Any view on that would be helpful, and what are the remaining loopholes that you see need to be addressed for it to be fully effective? The second question is on South Africa, because basically, we've seen some measures taken in countries like Brazil or Mexico where your competitors operate.

Could we hope for similar tariffs to be introduced in South Africa and thus address the risk of deflection of Chinese imports, which cannot make their way now into the US and no sooner into Europe?

Thank you, Maxime. For the first question, as I mentioned before, CBAM is very early yet to speak about the how it's going to affect to our market.

What I said, I don't think that prices are going up because of CBAM. Prices are going up because we have more activity in the market and because these raw materials are normally linked with this more activity.

Also if we have been able to increase our prices to pass of this raw material prices to the customers is because the market is in better conditions. Otherwise, we will not be able to do it.

I don't think that we can say that CBAM is provoking this price increase. I don't think so.

Will support the better market conditions, for sure. In the case of South Africa, even for South Africa, for Columbus, the second major market is Europe.

Still we are exporting to Europe and we have a lot of clients in Europe that need the South African material, especially ferritics. Columbus, South Africa is a big producer of ferrochrome.

We have a very competitive ferrochrome price in South Africa, and that means that we can be very competitive in ferritic grades, and we are exporting to some of the European customers, especially in the auto sector. Having said this, if we think that in the future all these measures are going to be tougher for importers, we are trying to anticipate this in Columbus and trying to diversify in products through the flexibility of the plant.

We think that we have a very strong position in the African market. We have close to 50% market share in the whole continent, and most of that is in South Africa, but in some other countries.

What we're doing is trying to develop the African market because sooner or later it is true that we have been saying this for many years, but sooner or later Africa will have to wake up and we have that strong position there. We are making stainless steel in South Africa, we are making carbon steel, we are already making electrical steel, and with this new line that we are implementing, we'll be able to coat this electrical steel to be able to send it to the market.

It's the only electrical steel plant in Africa, the same that we have the only stainless steel plant in Africa. Situation is there.

South African market is also depressed, but we are also working with the local administration, with the South African government, to increase tariffs. We had a 5% tariff in South Africa that we have incremented to 10%, and now we are negotiating a tariff increase to 50%, that is the magic number that everybody is applying today.

South Africa is the best plant in Africa, it's the only plant there, and it's a very good position, but our market is smaller than Brazil or Mexico, it's not comparable. That's why we are focusing in the whole continent.

Good morning all. Thank you for the presentation and for taking my two questions.

The first one is just a clarification on the regulation. Bernardo, on the US, you mentioned that nobody is questioning the new tariffs approved by the US administration back in summer 2025, but there were some press comments that the US was thinking on the possibility of changing this new system.

Can you confirm with the information that you have that this is not going to be the case? This is the first question on the US regulation.

On Europe regulation, from what you mentioned, Bernardo, the impression is that we are not going to see an anticipation on the new system, new tariffs ahead of July when the existing system expires. This is the first question on regulation.

The second question is just on CapEx, probably Miguel a question for you. What is going to be the CapEx for 2026?

Is going to be similar to the €311 million invested in 2025? Thank you.

Thank you, Iñigo. For the first question, regulation, I don't know, sometimes you are surprised with what you read in the newspapers.

We are not being informed of the regulation, we are actively participating in this regulation, we have first-hand news about this. I can tell you that nobody is questioning the Section 232 in United States.

Even when there was that fake news, there was in a very serious media that was Financial Times, but there was this fake news. We, the American steel industry, we called to the government for to clarify or not, and very soon the Vice President of United States made declarations saying that was fake news, that there's nothing there.

Section 232, nobody is questioning it. In case of Europe, yeah, you're right, everything go slow in Europe, but at least is moving.

We were optimism thinking that maybe measures will be in place in around May or this, but with the new information saying that the final conclusion will be taking in by mid-May, it's going to be very difficult because after it is only that if they take the decision mid-May, they have to publish the law and once it is published, they have to be translated to the 27 languages of the European Union. It's going to be difficult to start before 1st of July.

Regarding the CapEx for 2026, the figure shall not be far away from the figure of 2025, probably slightly below as a combination of the starting up final payments on the expansion in NAS taking place at the same time that we are moving and we have already made the adjudication of the equipments for the expansion also taking place in Kokomo, in Haynes, and so on. The aggregated amount of all these figures shall be slightly below that of 2025.