Brenntag SE ($BNR)

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Brenntag SE FY 2025 Results Call and Live Webcast. Please note that this call will be recorded. [Operator Instructions] I'd now like to turn the call over to Andre Simon, Senior Vice President, Corporate Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Michael. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and a warm welcome to our earnings call for the fiscal year '25 from my end as well. On the call with me today are our CEO, Jens Birgersson; and our CFO, Thomas Reisten. They will walk you through today's presentation with a followed by a Q&A session. All relevant documents have been published this morning on our website in the Investor Relations section, and there will be a replay available. Allow me also to point out to our safe harbor statement, which will be found at the end of our slide deck. With that, I will now hand over to our CEO, Jens, please go ahead.

Thank you. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for spending time with us here today. We're busy -- a lot of activity in the market and around the world. And now today, we are mostly talking about 2025, but let's wrap that up and do it properly today. Reflecting on 2025, we had a very difficult year in the chemical industry. I think in 20 years, we haven't had this long period of suppressed market conditions. And we saw it worsen during the year. It was quite stable in Q1 and Q2. And then the volumes and the top line went further south and landed on a Q4 that was on a quite low level. That said, when you look at us and compare it to other industry players, not least the principles, the ones manufacturing, the year proved again that we sit in a very good place in the market in the value chain, and we have a very resilient business model. I'll come back to that soon. I was only with the company four months. I did start to read up during the summer. But in those months, we took a couple of important decisions. One was to really going for being a full-line distributor and not to the hard split in that discussion. We removed the two division management layers and lifted the business units straight up. And we formed a new EC, I'll come back to that soon. But basically, the people running the P&Ls with a couple of functions. We formed a new executive committee team, and I'm happy with the progress. We have just -- we have recruited everyone, and there's only one to start. But let me walk you through the main numbers. If you start in the top left, we came in on EUR 15 billion top line, 4% down versus last year with a trend, maybe not a percentage in Q4, we were down some organic 5%. But versus the beginning Q1 and Q2, that was quite a lot lower. On the operating gross profit, actually, the gross profit margin improved with 0.5 percentage point in both businesses. And we managed to keep it relatively stable. I mean, minus 2% is quite pleasing considering the market conditions and that it was hard to pass on prices because the whole industry has been in the sequence of -- there are segments that don't follow this, maybe energy and pharma. But in all the other segments, we have like a three-year decline of pricing on the principal side. So it's hard for us to reduce -- to increase the prices. And yet we managed to maintain the gross profit level. Then what I'm not so happy with is not too bad. But if you then look at the decline on the bottom line and you could take either one of those measures, you see then a multiplier of 4x to even 6x bigger decline on the bottom line. And still quite a positive result. I mean, we didn't go into losses or anything like that, but I'm not happy with that the multiplier, the fixed cost loaded us down quite as much, and that's something we need to work on. Going to the lowest row here on the left, the cash flow, good collection, good inventory management. And then -- so actually, the free cash flow increased with 5%. And that played a role in the dividend proposal that we are putting forward that we have added back noncash one-off. Thomas will explain the details for that. And the dividend is 10% lower, which it reflects how we see the market, but yet we keep it on an acceptable level because with that cash flow, we can afford it and we want to be a stock that is not too drastic in one step on the dividend. We can go to the next one slide. The priorities that were set when I came in with these ones, sales really stopped the splitting internal focus, go out and sell. And at the moment, of course, that has also in the light of what's happening in the Middle East, we are navigating the current turbulence. And that means all hands are on deck, raising prices, managing supplies and adapting to the new situation. And then we have the clarity and simplification. I'll come back to that on next page, but we really try to make it simpler to be a leader in this group and more focus on the business and less on bureaucracy. I'll come back to that also. And then on execution, we have started to move reducing the number of initiatives and put more force behind them, increasing the follow-up and generally sound management practice and rather focus through the termination of the wide and shallow the organization. Let me briefly walk you through that on the next slide, I give some examples. On the sales side, we can see tangible results in terms of more days in the field, a reduced churn on customers and also quite a lot of dormant small and medium accounts that didn't buy that we have managed to reactivate. So that's really good to see. On the clarity and simplification, and I come to the Easy chart, we have done the structural change. We have also changed the Management Board is under me and Thomas now. And both Thomas and I are seeing our main responsibility to be in the Executive Committee. And one example would be to get an approval if you had certain approvals in the old hierarchy, if you trace it straight through, some of those require 26 inputs and steps. And today, we try to keep that to three. That doesn't mean we want to make sloppy decisions. We want to make better decisions, but we involve the people that really have a stake in the decision, and we make them more accountable for it. And of course, that increases our agility and we have a much bigger probability of taking the right decision at the right time than being on the back foot all the time and to slow. On the executions, I see some savings. Yes, headcount is down. We have made some progress. We are working hard here in Germany. And Germany is not a quick fix, but I'm happy with the progress we are making. I think the organization have realized that we need to change something and become leaner, and we are making progress. But if I had a wish, I would have liked that we could put that behind us even faster, but at least we are making progress, and we are ahead of what I expected. The basic logic for smaller overhead and a leaner center of the business doesn't mean that we want to let the whole business go into anarchy. We want to have small powerful functions. But we don't want to subscribe to this argument that this business is complex. This business is quite simple. What is it we do? What's the core value stream? That is to buy product, to sell it, to deliver it through the network efficiently and collect the cash. And what you see in that top line to bottom line is that we have too much around that core function. We can -- the core value-added flow of the business also need to be optimized, but we simply have too much that have been added around it. And you see it in the numbers when volumes and the top line go down. And you have also seen it previously when the business is growing, but you don't have the full leverage on the bottom line. So we are working very hard on setting that right. And then when we move into this year, we're going to work more and more and more out in the businesses. It's not that we are not working out in the business. We have 25 streams where we are working on these issues that goes across the company. It's not just a German initiative this, but we have started and we are further ahead at the same. If we then look at the new Executive Committee, if you go to the bottom row there, we have the three regional P&Ls, the Essential business, we merged North America and South America under one president. And then we have the global verticals, the businesses that requires domain competence. They are below there. It should also be said that our biggest vertical is the nutrition. Our second biggest vertical is actually oil and gas, but it's a regional one. So it's not represented here, but it's a very substantial and big business that is in North America into the oil and gas market. So we are very proud and happy about that one at this stage. But it's not visible here because it's not a global vertical that we are running. And then on the functions, hinting towards the strategy, what we want to do, the CEO to optimize the supply chain network, 600-plus warehouses to make that really, really efficient and flexible and reliable. So that's one theme. That's the main job of the CEO to drive productivity through that and demonstrate that we can deliver scale effects. Then you have the central HR. And we have a lot of good people, and we have been a little bit thin on that. We have a smaller organization now, but we have increasing the competence, how we manage the HR side of things. Then we have the Chief Commercial Officer. And that basically from the flow of product to the customer here to build a commercial machine would be a big theme going forward. We are pretty good to react quickly, but there is a lot of improvements that can be done in how we go to the market and how the sales force works and how we link that up with customer service from the CEO. So, that is a theme, pricing approach, et cetera, structures to all that, contract management, we need to do quite a bit of that. And then we have the CIO, very happy that we onboarded Markus Sontheimer. He has been in four or five industries. But very importantly, he has been the CIO for a company that moves millions and millions of tonnes of goods. And I think that's quite a big change from where we were. We did a lot of investment into digital and IT, but we didn't put the fact in front that we are moving tonnes. And now we have a CEO with experience from moving tonnes, logistics. And obviously, if you link that up with the supply chain network, with the selling and the business with the transaction every second or every second digitalization, automation, AI is super key to get productivity. So I'm happy with that. We are just now missing the CEO to join on 1st of April. He has already been in and been in some meetings, but to get a read on board. So this was an important milestone for me moving forward. Then the last slide for me before I hand over to Thomas. I'll leave that cost reduction to him. But clear is that we need now to really find -- go from as much gross savings to net savings, and we need to put a substantial number through the P&L this year. I'll leave the details to Thomas, but it's really important that we work with it because I'm not happy with the link of the whole cost mass, the fixed cost mass around the core of the business. Then on the right-hand side, immediate opportunities. With the dividend and our financing approach and cash flow, we have freedom. I'm sure you're going to ask questions on that later, but we have freedom to do M&A. And it's not like we enter this year without wanting to do M&A, but we hope we can pick up some good targets with lower multiples. But -- so I don't think the cash is going to be the limit to what we do. It's more going to be an issue of finding good targets that fit into our strategy. The two acquisitions that we closed Airedale now 28th of February. We closed Chem Tech already in December. They are looking good so far. So we are happy with those, but we need more of that. And then finally, on navigating in the volatile environment, I just want to emphasize that we are incredibly fortunate to not be a big principal with a heavy asset manufacturing plant. We are light and we have a lot of experience in navigating these turbulences. So, at the moment, we have all hands on deck to get the pricing right and make sure we don't get caught between a rock and a hard place. And then obviously, a big role we have is with all these disturbances on transportation to work really, really hard to keep our customers whole. so that they get product from us. Okay. With that, I hand over to Thomas. And during the Q&A, I'll come back a little bit on the impacts, if you ask. But for now, I hand over to Thomas.

Thanks a lot, Jens. And from my side as well, good afternoon to all of you. So, on this Slide 8, I now dive a bit deeper into the financial performance of Brenntag in 2025. So Jens had already outlined our results -- that our results reflect a persistently challenging market environment, as ongoing economic volatility, we end market demand and muted customer activity. Operating gross profit amounted to EUR 3.8 billion in 2025. Our operating gross profit margin reached 25.3%, which is an improvement of 0.5 percentage points versus the prior year. And despite the market headwinds, we expanded our gross profit margin. That demonstrates the robustness of our business model and our strong commercial discipline in managing margins in a subdued economic setting. Operating EBITDA came in at EUR 1.288 billion, which is down 8.6% year-on-year on a constant currency basis. And operating EBITA stood at EUR 929 million, which is a decline of 12.6% versus the prior year as well on a constant currency basis. So the declines in earnings do primarily reflect the ongoing challenges in the chemical sector, and that includes the weak volume development and the muted pricing environment throughout the year. The developments were partially offset by the impacts from our cost containment program, and I'll talk a bit more into the details later on that. Moving on to the building blocks of our bottom line results. So if I start below operating EBITA, the net expenses from special items totaled EUR 106 million compared with EUR 111 million in the prior year. 2025 saw a notable increase in noncash expenses further weighing on our bottom line. So one of that was the amortization of intangible assets, which rose to EUR 205 million. That's an increase of EUR 130 million versus 2024. Also, this reflects impairment losses on goodwill in Brenntag Essentials Latin America of EUR 83 million in Q2 2025 and in Brenntag Essentials APAC of EUR 59 million in Q4 2025. This is driven by reduced earnings expectations in these respective regions. Reflecting these onetime noncash effects, profit after tax attributable to Brenntag shareholders amounted to EUR 265 million, a decline of 52.3% on a constant currency basis compared with the prior year. Notwithstanding these developments, we have delivered a strong free cash flow of EUR 941 million in 2025. This was supported by substantial cash inflows from the release of working capital and lower CapEx. Our ability to generate strong free cash flow remains a core pillar of Brenntag's business model and is a key contributor to the company's resilience, particularly in economically volatile times. So, let me now turn to Page 9, where I'm going to review our Q4 2025 sequential performance a bit more. As in prior years, the fourth quarter is affected by fewer working days and typical seasonality, customer activity usually slowing down towards the holiday period. Beyond the seasonal pattern, Q4 was notably weaker, which was driven by a couple of factors compared with the third quarter 2025. First and most importantly, GP impacted by muted demand, which was particularly in December, while ASP and gross profit per tonne remained basically flat. OpEx reflects significant progress on cost-out efforts. However, the savings were actually compensated by several onetime effects in Q4. Amongst those, the buildup of some provisions and especially environmental provisions, an impairment on receivables and higher insurance costs in the end as well, the portfolio effect from the acquired entities. On the next slide, I'm taking a closer look at our divisional performance. Operating gross profit for Brenntag Essentials amounted to EUR 2.733 billion in 2025, which is a decline of 1.2% year-on-year on a constant currency basis. With the exception of Latin America, which benefited from acquisition-related growth, all regions have recorded negative volume development compared to the previous year. Reflecting these volume trends, operating gross profit decreased across all regions except Latin America. The key drivers of this development were weak end market demand, muted consumer sentiment and lastly, subdued industrial production in many of our core industries. In addition, competition from Chinese products, particularly in EMEA and LatAm continued to weigh on pricing. Despite this fragile macro environment, we expanded our operating gross profit margin from 25.9% in '24 to 26.4% in 2025 which is underscoring the resilience of the Brenntag Essentials business model. We now turn the focus to Brenntag Specialties. We've generated EUR 1.98 billion in operating gross profit in 2025, which is a decrease of 3.6% year-on-year as well on a constant currency basis. So here, the weak macroeconomic backdrop significantly affected our results with lower volumes across both Life Science and Material Science. Despite these demand headwinds, our sales teams effectively managed pricing and margins, which was helping to maintain solid commercial performance. Now looking at the gross profit trends across the business units. Nutrition delivered a positive development in EMEA, while the Americas remained under pressure due to the lower demand for base ingredients in North America. Beauty & Care has recorded a decline in gross profit, which was mainly driven by intensified competition in the Americas and APAC. Pharma post a slight gross profit decline and Materials Science saw gross profit decreases due to a lower market sentiment across all of the sub industries. Amid these challenges, we have expanded our operating gross profit margin from 22.4% in 2024 to 22.9% in 2025. Again, this is a clear reflection of our commercial strength and pricing discipline. Now looking at Page 11. I'd like to elaborate on our cost-out program. So, in 2025, we generated EUR 165 million in gross savings compared to the 2023 baseline. Exceeded our savings target for the year and delivered quite a strong level of underlying savings as indicated during our earnings calls throughout the year. Please note that all savings are measured against the 2023 baseline. In Q4 2025, we generated EUR 54 million in savings. And overall, the trajectory of the program has been highly encouraging, and we remain focused on identifying further levers to manage and optimize our cost base. Additional positive signals are emerging as well. When we look at our personnel cost base, it is trending below prior year levels in early 2026 already. Altogether, these developments underline our cost discipline remains a key priority for us, and it further reinforces Brenntag's ability and potential to execute effective self-help measures in a challenging operating environment. So, looking ahead now, we will conclude the current cost-out program, which is based on a 2023 baseline, and we will recalibrate the baseline for our next cost-out phase towards basically measuring our savings against the 2025 operating expenses. This new approach ensures much greater accountability and comparability throughout the year and follows the rationale of clarity and simplification that we have introduced already with the third quarter results in 2025. On that new baseline, we are now targeting cost savings of EUR 200 million to EUR 250 million by 2027. Again, let me emphasize, that's against the new baseline of 2025. So, now turning to Slide 12. I'd like to walk you through the development of our operating EBITA in 2025. Compare that to 2024, operating EBITA was shaped by the following effects. Firstly, the FX translation effects reduced our operating EBITA by EUR 38 million. Acquisitions have contributed EUR 23 million. And organically, operating EBITA declined by EUR 158 million year-on-year. These developments reflect the market dynamics that we have outlined earlier. Weaker volumes across many of our end markets, pricing pressure, particularly in industrial chemicals and a backdrop of muted consumer confidence and subdued industrial activity. As already underlined, our cost-out measures helped to partly mitigate these impacts. On Slide 12 (sic) [ Slide 13 ], I would like to elaborate on our dividend proposal for 2025. The dividend is a cornerstone of our capital allocation framework. Our ambition is to provide reliable dividends across the economic cycle. At the same time, we have to take into account the current economic environment, the market backdrop and our earnings development. In 2025, profit after tax was significantly impacted by several one-off effects that weighed on our bottom line. Most importantly, the impairments in Brenntag Essentials in APAC and in Latin America. Furthermore, we had expenses relating to the impairment of deferred tax assets and other special items, which were reducing our earnings. Altogether, these one-off effects amounted to EUR 248 million. As a result of that, profit after tax for 2025 stands at EUR 265 million. However, this figure does not reflect the underlying earnings capacity of the company, and therefore, it's not an adequate basis for our dividend proposal. For this reason, we are adjusting the basis for our dividend for the onetime impacts that I've just mentioned. If you exclude these one-off impacts, we arrive at earnings per share of EUR 3.55. And in developing our proposal, we also considered our strong dividend track record. So having consistently paid meaningful dividends even in challenging environments, whilst balancing the current economic reality. Based on these considerations, we propose a dividend of EUR 1.90 per share. Very important overall, this proposal reflects a balanced approach of safeguarding financial stability whilst maintaining a clear commitment to delivering attractive and sustainable returns to shareholders. So let me close with the outlook for 2026. We decided to replace operating EBITA with operating EBITDA as our key performance indicator and guidance figure. This change is driven by the following considerations. The metric provides a more accurate view of the underlying operating performance and cash generation by eliminating noncash charges. And certainly, we believe in our assets as a differentiating factor. But this shift aligns with industry practices and makes us more comparable as well. Last year was characterized by significant macroeconomic volatility, muted consumer confidence and low industrial activity, weak end market demand as well as pricing pressures, particularly in industrial chemicals. If we look forward at this point, we see no reversal of these trends. The market environment, therefore, remains highly challenging, and we are not expecting short-term improvements. Consequently, we have reflected these factors in our guidance for 2026. So, for the full year 2026, we expect our operating EBITDA to be in the range of EUR 1.150 billion to EUR 1.350 billion. So a few notes on what this guidance is actually based on. The forecast includes contributions from acquisitions already closed, and it assumes stable exchange rates at the levels prevailing at the time of this publication. Please note also that any potential impacts from the currently evolving crisis in the Middle East are not reflected in our guidance. As we now look into early 2026, we are seeing a continuation of the trends that we have experienced towards the end of 2025. So notably, it's fragile consumer sentiments as well as ongoing demand and end market weakness across many regions and product categories. Potential effects of the geopolitical escalation in the Middle East remain quite difficult to predict at this stage. As such, prior year comparables in Q1 2026 remain fairly high based on these trends. Against this backdrop, we remain fully focused on the areas within our control. So we will be advancing our cost-out initiatives. We will be continuing to streamline the organization. We maintain a disciplined focus on cash preservation. And lastly, we will certainly as well strengthening our proximity to customers across all markets. And at the same time, we are working on our strategic review, which we intend to present in the second half of 2026. So, with this, I'd like to close the presentation now and look forward to your questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Suhasini Varanasi from Goldman Sachs.

Two from me, please. I appreciate that your guidance is based on the macroeconomic environment that you have laid out in your presentation. But clearly, it excludes what's happening in the Middle East at this point. Just wanted to get a sense, first, how early trading has evolved in Jan, Feb and whether that has changed because of the situation in the Middle East? Are you seeing any disruptions? Are you seeing any upward movement on chemical pricing? Are you making any changes to your inventory working capital? I think that would be good to have some color there. And I think just a second one. If we think about the one-off costs that have -- sorry, the cost saving programs that have been announced, including the new one, how should we think about the one-off costs linked to both of these programs for 2026 and 2027, please?

Okay. So, on the pricing, we are 13 days into this. And the traditional way when you have the hydrocarbon side of things getting under pressure that we have here is that the solvents pricing move up in our -- that will impact the solvents. Those prices move up immediately. And then it moves on to transport cost. There it's starting to happen quickly. And here we have the combination of the people transporting due to fuel prices, but also the challenge of delays and longer routes, et cetera. So that starts to move. And then since all chemicals are made with energy, you will see a pressure up on the other costs. So what we see now is clearly pricing moving up, and we are active to pass on the cost increases and working very intensively with this. It's too early to give overriding numbers, but you can see some of the principals stepping in very quickly and raising their prices, and we do what we normally do in this situation, make sure that we don't get caught between a rock and a hard place.

So on the -- your second question with regards to the cost-out program, obviously, I mean, the first thing that I want to mention here is we are looking at a broadening and an acceleration of the cost-out program. As you will have noticed when we are now rebaselining this on to the 2025 baseline, we are speaking about EUR 200 million to EUR 250 million additional cost out until 2027. In order to achieve that, we will continue to incur some one-off costs, which is the baseline of your question. And I would expect this to be in the range of previous special items actually that we have seen there as well. So we will continue on a similar run rate. When you look at the run rate, please do exclude the other one-offs that you have seen in this current year where we have had impairments. That's not going to be repeated into the future. It's not part of this cost-out program obviously.

I think that was very helpful color. And just a quick follow-up, please. I appreciate the commentary on pricing, but have you seen any changes to volume trends? I mean, are your customers stocking up, anticipating any disruptions?

So, now it's very early day, the 13th day. But if you have a year-end, you would expect a lot of people destocking and make sure they don't cross the end of December with too much stock. So that's normal. And then when you have a situation where most experience player we know that pricing will go up because energy goes up, cost goes up, transport goes out, all the rest. You would expect prebuying. What we have seen so far is -- and it's very short. I mean, it's still early. So it's hard to say it's different. The type of feedback we've gotten so far has been, do you have stock? Can you supply us? We get it that the prices will go up. And that has been the first six, seven days of that. And then whether they are increased buying, I think we are stepping into that stage now. And here, I think the situation is a little bit different compared to a normal case. And that is that there are quite a few users, people that buy from us often manufacture something with the chemicals, there is a worry in the market about the underlying demand. Will this energy crisis or whatever we call it, result in a lower demand in Q2. That's what the mathematics that go through people's mind. So, therefore, I'm also curious to see in one, two weeks what's going to happen to the prebuying if people are moderate or whether they go all in for it. And if I were to compare the regions, if we take the pure energy bill, here in Europe, we're talking 5x at least for a manufacturer on the energy per kilowatt or megawatt hour price compared to China, the 4x versus the U.S. And you could expect that Europe is going to be impacted quite a lot by this energy increase. So you have this balance. Will they shut down production? Will overall demand go down? Will there be uncertainty? Just very difficult to know. And I think -- so the volatility as such, we have -- I see no problem with that. We know how to do it. We were quick out to start working on it. And then I'm more curious to see what happens with overall demand because of this crisis. And obviously, there, we have the whole duration of the crisis that will impact, and I'm not the person to assess how long this will go on. We just do the best on the pricing now and then we see what happens to demand as we move forward.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Nicole Manion from UBS.

I've got two, please. The first is just on the comments in the presentation around some new business wins. There's a few mentions in North America, a decent number of supplier agreements that have been formed over the last year as well. And I think the reference as well to improving lead conversion. Obviously, this is all in a market where volumes are under a fair bit of pressure. Do you think this is a reflection of just the internal sort of changes that you've made? Or are you seeing kind of outsourcing kick up again in what is obviously a very difficult volume environment? That would be the first question. Sorry, I'll pause there.

Okay. So I'm pleased with the progress we've made. We obviously haven't reorganized sales in any massive way. But we removed the split -- we make sure people have incentives where they're also rewarded for the joint success and where we have a good account coverage that we think of all the businesses, all the products we can sell into an account and then sending the people back in the street. So that has led to -- you could look at a 15% to 20% more time out in the field, intensified sales effort. And then working harder with the customer. We can see that customer churn has been reduced. And then we have done campaigns where we take dormant accounts, customers that haven't bought for a year and said, let's go out and work with them. And there was one week effort where we walk up 70 accounts just in one market by doing that. So I see a lot of positive signs of that. But obviously, the market is not great. But doing that hard work, especially on medium and small accounts and getting to agreements and start to get on track and grow with them again or getting a business with them, that has been a little bit neglected because people were too focused on splitting businesses and business definitions. So we are making good progress on reactivating that. Then on the big accounts, here, pricing and everything else is more difficult, tough to deal with, they're very commercially good. I would say with the big, big accounts we have, and I'm talking accounts where we are doing total back and forth, upstream and downstream business, EUR 0.5 billion and up. We have had a lot of activity with them also because they are working strategically in these times with their asset, the players they're going to deal with. We have a lot of discussion about putting more over to us and maybe simplify the distribution structure. We also have some people that want to go the other way. But I would say the trend is with our big accounts that we are making growth plans with all of them.

Great. That's very helpful. I did have just a second quick question, please, on the cost savings. It looks like these are expected to be sort of fairly broad-based in terms of the areas you're targeting. But I did want to ask specifically about the opportunity that might still exist within your kind of other operating expenses. I think these did come down a little bit this year, but maybe not as much as you might have expected, particularly given that focus on sort of duplicate costs. I'm thinking about the expenses for advisory, auditing and so on, also quite elevated miscellaneous operating expenses, too, certainly compared to a couple of years ago. Is there still quite a big part of that to be sort of targeted in this next kind of wave of cost savings? I know you haven't broken it out specifically, but yes, any kind of view on how you view that kind of other operating expenses line and the buckets within it would be really helpful.

So I will hand that question to Thomas. But before we start, there is an operating expense of the whole network and the productivity, the footprint, the flows, the loading of the trucks and the sourcing of material indirect and direct spend. That's a big topic in this business. And we have done some work on it in some region, but we haven't -- hasn't been the primary focus. We will get more into that, and it will help that we have a CEO coming in that has the clear responsibility for the productivity of that whole piece. So that's a very general comment. But over to Thomas to give some flavor.

Yes, absolutely. So I mean, when you look at the cost program that we have started some time ago, this obviously has helped us as well already to get a clear direction in terms of cost savings being incorporated and at least managing actually inflationary trends in that context. So that was a very broad cost program to your question in terms of what are we covering in that context. And in that, we have already reduced quite a few of the other expenses compared to previous years. I mean you've mentioned advisory costs as an example as well. That has been reduced significantly over the last quarters already. And consequently, if you look forward, it continues to be a broad cost program covering all individual lines. But in terms of the potential for the self-help initiatives that we certainly have quite a bit of potential still today and that we will be running and accelerating. It is on the one hand, on all lines, but some of them more pronounced, as Jens has actually been talking about. So, if you go through that, we have had quite a bit of impact already, and we see quite a lot of green shoots on the overhead costs in terms of people-related costs for the central resources. We do see as well that in that line, we continue to have then as well on the other expenses that are in these areas of the business, further reductions, and we will focus on all of that continuously to keep them at a lower level and further reduce. But then we will get as well into transport and warehouse costs where we will see more impact going forward. as these are definitely as well the larger cost blocks in order to continue to optimize the cost base. So making really good progress. And on the other hand, quite a bit of self-help opportunity still into the future.

Our next question comes from Anil Shenoy from Barclays.

Just one, please. I was trying to understand how is the -- how do you see the dynamic from China -- I mean, the competition from China in both your divisions, that is Essentials and Specialties. We have seen -- we have heard your competitors in the specialty distribution saying that they're seeing quite -- I mean, considerable Chinese competition, which has led to a decline in their gross profit and EBITA and especially in the semi-commodity kind of products. So, by that logic, is Essentials seeing a little more competition than Specialties? And this was -- this is before the war. So if you could give us some color on that, please?

So, I will say it hasn't changed. First of all, we have actually seen quite big price increases in China of product. So the Chinese principles, and we have a sourcing center in China have been very quick to raise prices. But the competition from China in APAC or South Asia, et cetera, is still there. And you see it also in Latin America, especially Brazil and some other places, a bit spotty, some market not, but some market very heavy and then less in Mexico and China and U.S. because we have the tariffs. And then we see it coming into Europe. And on the specialty side, sure you have a lot of specialty chemicals are coming up there. And some have been approved, some have been -- you can use in the market, some not. So I would say nothing has really changed on that front, maybe one aspect that I've seen some big price increases from China just in this week on product due to the energy situation and the Iran or the Middle Eastern turbulence.

This concludes the Q&A session. I will now hand back to Andre for closing remarks.

Yes. Thank you, Michael. And this brings us to the end of the conference call. In case there are further questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to our IR team. Our results for the first quarter '26 will be published on the 13th May. And ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for joining us today. We are looking forward to see you on a roadshow or a conference, which we will rejoin in the next couple of weeks. And with that, I give you a good day, and goodbye.

This concludes today's call. Thank you, everyone, for joining. You may now disconnect.