Nabaltec AG (NTG) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Okay. And I see that we have 24 participants. I would start with our Q4 figures for 2024. Everybody, a hearty welcome from my side and my colleague, Günther Spitzer. We will leave you to our Q4 figures for 2024 and a short outlook for -- first quarter '25 in the next 35 minutes. Some remarks on the setup. When we are done with our presentation, when we come to the Q&A part, we would like to ask everybody to first call their names and the company they are representing and raise their hands. We are not doing any chats for reasons how to operate and maneuver through the presentation. Then I would start finally with a brief company introduction for the people who do not know us so well. Here, you see the company in brief. Nabaltec is a midsized company in the chemical industry, and we are one of the leading suppliers for especially eco-friendly flame retardants and specialty aluminas based on aluminum hydroxide and aluminum oxide, a chemically non-toxic material. We are headquartered in Schwandorf in the middle of Bavaria. And we have, in addition, 2 production sites in the United States in Corpus Christi and in Tennessee in Chattanooga with our Nashtec and Naprotec, and we have a sales representative in Shanghai, in China. In 20 -- the Group revenue last year amounted to EUR 203.6 million compared to EUR 200.1 million and an operating result and EBIT of EUR 22.3 million versus EUR 18 million of 2023. With our 500 employees, around 500 active worldwide, we had an export ratio of 76% -- 76.6% in last year. Our sales department is supported by sales representatives all over the world to supply our customers around the globe. And we have been operating, as you see, a long time since '37 in Schwandorf and have currently a capacity of 265,000 tonnes in materials production. Coming to our product segments. Now the highlights of our figures in 2024. We had a revenue of EUR 148 million on the Functional Filler side, which is about 2/3 of our total revenue. Our product range is especially ground visco-optimized hydroxides and fine precipitated as well as boehmites. All are about well eco-friendly materials and non-flame retardants, especially. On the alumina side, we have reactive aluminas as well as ceramic bodies, which the properties are mainly consist of wear resistancy, electro insulation and resist corrosion. Our capacities focus certainly in Schwandorf with the fine hydrants and the boehmites and aluminas, especially aluminas, where in the United States, we manufacture solely flame retardants materials made out of aluminum hydroxide. Our raw materials consists mainly from aluminum hydroxide and aluminum oxides, which we feedstock around the globe, but especially for Europe, out of Europe and for the U.S. from Brazil and as well from United States of America. If we look at the segments, it's as well, you see now here a very diversified application fields. Our biggest revenue support is definitely the wire and cable market with 57% in 2024, where we supply majorly, as I said, halogen-free wire and cable market. And behind that are especially data communication and energy cables and other goods where we have focused. In the battery field, which accounts 15%, you'll find our products boehmite and visco-optimized. We still see here a little bit of a differentiated picture as the demand momentarily for boehmite declined significantly last year to the situation in China, various sales on visco-optimized hydroxides continue to raise rapidly. If you look at the specialty aluminas, it's a total different field of application. Here, there is an almost even split between the Refractory Industry and the Technical Ceramics. What's behind there is typically the refractory industry is cyclical and linked to the steel materials whereas the Technical Ceramics is various application fields like you can see in the examples from ballistic ceramics where tear protection, catalysts, polishing material, ignition spark plug, et cetera, et cetera. Of course, the Refractory Industry is momentarily the issue in the market. where we have a lot of problems due to the energy crisis, which was one of the major problems for the declining in this segment. Now we're coming to the Q4 highlights overall. As you can see, at the end of the last 3 months, we had a total revenue in the Group of EUR 45 million, which increased to 2.6% compared to Q4 in 2023. Despite this increase in sales volumes of around 12% compared to the same quarter of the previous year, revenues rose by 2.6% due to the lower sales price and changes in the product mix. The operating EBIT, as you can see, amounted for EUR 5.4 million, which is EUR 3.4 million above last year's figures. The margins as a percentage of our total performance increased by 12.2%, which is quite amazing in the fourth quarter. Good demand, especially for the visco-optimized hydroxides and significant higher other operating income compared to the same quarter of the previous year were the drivers of this earnings performance. Other operating income of EUR 2.6 million includes currency gains of EUR 0.8 million, subsidies of EUR 0.5 million and income of reversal of trade payables of EUR 0.6 million due to the status of limitations. As you can see, the earnings shares per share amounted at the end at EUR 0.36 per share. The net debt status was also very good. At the end of the day, the liabilities came in at EUR 90.9 million, were offset by a cash and cash equivalents of EUR 86.5 million as of the reporting date of December 31. This brings the Group net debt to an amount of EUR 4.3 billion, excluding fixed terms deposit of EUR 50 million, which normally you should add into the cash. Coming to the Segments, especially here, you can see the Functional Fillers. In particular, you see that our Segment revenue increased by 4.7% in the fourth quarter compared to the previous quarter last year. Here, especially the sales increased by amazing 15.6%, while prices in the product mix fell by 9.4%. So you see we had a little bit of pressure on this side. In addition to the continued good demand of especially the fine hydrants in Europe and U.S.A. contributed by the wire and cable market. Here, I can say, especially the data communications, which saw a revamping, also our visco-optimized hydroxides for the battery applications. Here, we're talking about thermal management and gap fillers in '24 saw a good strong increase. The -- boehmite compared recorded a significant drop in revenue by 60% in the fourth quarter compared to the previous year due to the difficult and highly competitive market in China. Looking at the EBIT, absolutely, the Functional Fillers product segment improved EUR 4.6 million in absolute figures from EUR 4.6 million to EUR 6.1 million in the fourth quarter. The EBIT margin incredible rose to 17.8%, up from 14.2% in the same period of last year and up 13.5% in the first 9 months compared to 2024. Strong revenues in the fine hydrants and visco-optimized product areas are the key drivers for the excellent margin development. In addition, significantly higher other operating incomes, we have to mention here of EUR 1.5 million supported our result in the fourth quarter compared to the fourth quarter of last year. Improved cost positions, especially of raw materials, energy and maintenance offset the -- the price reductions, which we had to cope with on the market side in 2024. Due to a weak demand, boehmite sales were only in the last quarter at about 600 tonnes and the sales volumes of the U.S. subsidiaries are further improving. That's good news on this side compared to the last year, but Nabaltec is still posting a negative result. In the fourth quarter of 2024, Nashtec revenues here accounted for around 14% of the Segment revenues, whereas Nabaltec for around 4%. If we look at the CapEx in the Functional Fillers segment, you see quite an increase of -- EUR 8.5 million. This brings -- CapEx in the Functional Fillers product segment up to EUR 25.8 million in '24, where EUR 8.2 million are attributable to the boehmite capacity expansion we have -- we will finish this year and start commissioning by the middle of the year and EUR 12.9 million for the visco-optimized hydroxides where we start now our major -- our major expansion program finishing by mid-2026. Now let's switch to the Specialty Aluminas segments. Here, we have a total different picture. I already anticipated due to especially driven crisis in the steel market. At minus 3.1% -- the Specialty Alumina product segments remained below the previous year revenue in the fourth quarter and with 17.6%, significantly below the previous quarter in 2023 -- 2024. There is still a lack of, as I said, in Pintus, particularly from reactive aluminas, which is a major part for the high value-added products in the area of refractory steel. The high value-added products and also reflects, of course, the impact on the margin in this segment. Sales increase volumes increased 4.3% compared to the same quarter of the previous year. The EBIT margin in the Specialty Aluminas products segment is negative for the first time in this year by minus 0.6%. What was the reason for this is majorly the increased raw material prices and maintenance costs had disproportionately a negative impact on the fourth quarter, especially. There are overcapacities and weak demand in the market, which impact both sales and volumes and the sales price as well. If we look at the CapEx here to wrap it up, the expenditures, of course, are on a much lower level at EUR 2.1 million compared to our Functional Fillers in the fourth quarter and EUR 6.3 million overall in 2024. Here, more than half of that amount attributes or relates to our expenditures for the general overhaul of our kilns, which we had several times announced in certain conferences and one-on-ones in conference calls. Now I would hand over to Günther Spitzer, who will guide you through the profit and loss statement as well as the balance sheet and the cash flow. Günther, you're welcome to take over and for your presentation. Thanks.

Thank you, Johannes. Let's continue with the profit and loss statement of the Group for the 2024 financial year compared to the previous year. Our revenues in 2024 increased slightly by 1.7% to EUR 203.6 million compared to the previous year. In relation to our sales forecast for the whole year '24 with growth in the range of 2% to 4%, we are slightly below this range. Sales volumes increased by 8.8%, but price reductions and the changed product mix led to a 6.5% decline in the average price in the 2024 financial year. The biggest disappointment in the past financial year was boehmite with a drop in revenues of 28% compared to the previous year. By contrast, revenues of fine hydroxides improved by 8% and revenues of viscosity optimized hydroxides by 20% in comparison to the year before. Total performance increased by 2.8% to EUR 206.8 million due to higher inventories of finished goods in the amount of EUR 1.9 million and own work capitalized of EUR 1.3 million. Gross profit improved by 4.9% to EUR 107.1 million, a plus of EUR 5.1 million. Despite sales price decreases and lower boehmite revenues, we achieved a gross profit margin of 51.8%, slightly above previous year. Improved sales volumes for fine hydroxides and visco-optimized hydroxides compared with lower input costs for raw materials, auxiliary materials and energy were the basis for the solid gross profit margin. Furthermore, an increase of EUR 1.5 million in other operating income compared to the previous year improved the result. EBITDA increased by EUR 3.2 million year-on-year to EUR 34.2 million, which corresponds to a good EBITDA margin of 16.5%. Personnel expenses rose from EUR 38.2 million in 2023 to EUR 40.1 million in 2024, mainly due to the tariff increases of 3.25% at the beginning of the year and again in September '24 of 2%. The personnel cost ratio is therefore 19.4% compared to 19.0% in the previous year. The expense ratio for other operating expenses fell from 16.3% to 15.9% due to lower maintenance costs and the depreciation ratio fell from 6.3% to 5.8% of total operating performance. Accordingly, the EBIT margin improved from 9.1% in '23 to 10.8% in '24. In terms of the segments, Functional Fillers recorded an EBIT margin of 14.5% and Specialty Aluminas of 1.4%. Earnings per share increased by 24.6% to EUR 1.62. We propose a dividend for the financial year 2024 of EUR 0.29 per share. Now I come to the balance sheet at the end of the 2024 financial year. Total assets increased by EUR 17.4 million to EUR 298.3 million compared to the end of 2023. This was primarily due to an increase in property, plant, and equipment of EUR 21 million to EUR 140 million, including assets under construction of EUR 41.5 million, which reflect our extensive ongoing investment program. Other non-current assets amounting to EUR 15.6 million include a fixed term deficit of EUR 15 million with a term of 2 years. At the end of '23, there was a fixed term deposit in the same amount, but with a remaining term of 4 months and therefore, reported under other assets. Inventories decreased by EUR 3.2 million to EUR 47.9 million. This is a result of the significant reduction in raw material inventories by EUR 6.6 million. Compared to 2023, cash slightly increased from EUR 86.0 million to EUR 86.5 million. On the liability side, equity increased by EUR 11.4 million to EUR 153.2 million. The equity ratio improved to 51.4% and reflects a solid balance sheet structure. Non-current liabilities of EUR 125.9 million include provisions for pensions of EUR 31.4 million and bank liabilities of EUR 90 million. The average interest rate for liabilities to banks was just over 3% in 2024. Current liabilities increased by EUR 2.7 million and include higher trade payables of EUR 2.2 million and higher accruals for personnel expenses of EUR 0.5 million compared to the end of '23. A short look to the cash flow statement of the Group. Cash flow from operating activity of EUR 35.2 million increased by EUR 18.7 million compared to the previous year. In addition to the improved operating income, this was mainly due to working capital effects such as the reduction in inventories by EUR 3.2 million and the increase in trade payables and other payables of EUR 2.7 million. After deducting payments for investments of EUR 32.1 million, free cash flow amounted to EUR 3.1 million. The investment of EUR 32 million in 1 year are the highest in Nabaltec's history. It should be noted here that these high expenses were financed entirely from the operating cash flow generated. The cash flow from financing activity includes a dividend payment of EUR 2.5 million, interest payments of EUR 3.5 million and interest income of EUR 2.5 million. Cash amounted to EUR 86.5 million at the end of 2024. So far, the figures for 2024.And for the next slide, the outlook for 2025, I will give the word back to Johannes.

Yes. Thanks, Günther, for your good look into the profit and loss statement and balance sheet as well as the cash flows. I would give you now a short and brief outlook on our Q1 -- on our figures for -- sorry, I'm in the wrong slide here for the 2025 as we already have announced it through all the media channels. As you can see, we are cautious in the year -- started in the year 2025 due to the fact that demand continues to be characterized by short-termism and still a high volatility. For our most product -- important product areas in '25, fine hydroxides and visco-optimized hydroxides, we can state that the demand is good to very well in the first few months of 2025. Based on the economy and industrial-specific environment, as you have all experienced, we expect revenue growth in the range of 3% to 5%. On the earnings side, we expect an EBIT margin in the range of 7% to 9% caused by this specific environment. The lower EBIT margin takes into account higher gas prices due to the fact that our long-term gas price contract has expired last year and also the uncertainty of energy prices right now for gas and electricity. As we mainly purchase these 2 components on the spot market, and so we are exposed to a higher volatility as well. We will also see a higher personnel costs. As you have to know, we are unionized and the tariff says by 1st of April this year, we have another increase of 4.85% for the staff in Germany. And by the mid of the year, we will see a high depreciation kicking in due to the capitalization of our investments on the fixed asset side. If we move forward now to the Q1 figures we have reported, and I want to remark here, we just highlight a few figures or as we reported our preliminaries and want to be patient here to give more deep insight you as we will report on the 22nd of May, which is already in 3 weeks from now on, then our Q1 figures in depth. But what we can say, the revenue came in at EUR 54.7 million. So we see a slight improvement compared to the previous year's figures. What we can state here, we still have a very good demand for most of the products in the Segment Functional Fillers. In contrast here, we see a further decline on the Segment of Specialty Aluminas. Revenues in the production -- in the Functional Fillers segment increased by 4.1%, as you can see, while in the Aluminas segment, we still have a decrease of 6.1% compared to the Q1 of the previous year. The EBIT margin overall came in at 7.5% in the first quarter. What was this caused by? We saw quite high or higher cost of energy, particularly on power and gas in the first quarter and that had, of course, a negative impact on the EBIT as well. As I already remarked, we will publish our Q1 figures in depth on the 22nd of May '25. At this point, we are through our presentation. And I would now ask the audience for -- or open the field for Q&A session. Please, if you have questions shortly introduce yourself by name and company or institution and then we would go step by step through your questions. Thank you very much for your attention, also in the name of my colleague, Mr. Spitzer. The podium is yours now. Feel free to have any answers on the Q4 figures as well as the preliminaries on Q1.

Konstantin Wiechert here from Baader-Helvea. Thank you so much for your presentation. A couple of questions maybe from my side. First on maybe the tariffs that we feel about the U.S. Maybe you can touch a bit on what you expect will happen over the midterm in terms of maybe your view, whether there will be an agreement with the EU or if you expect in your view and then your guidance currently that the higher tariffs would become effective after this 90-day pause. And then in addition to that, as far as I'm aware, with your Nashtec, you have already a relatively high utilization or good utilization in the U.S. asset and you are expanding your capacity in Schwandorf for the hydroxides. Is there still enough capacity in the U.S. to grow maybe through the next 2, 3 years? Or do you need to export more from Europe than also to the U.S., which would be then faced with tariffs? Maybe these are the first, and then I come back for another question.

Yes. Thanks, Konstantin. For your first 2 questions, we can make the tariff short. Our industry is -- and this is the good news are completely exempted by the tariffs. So the U.S., as you might be aware, had a long list of also chemicals, which were excluded and aluminum hydroxide as well as of aluminum oxide is from this tariff is fully excluded. So there is no direct impact. So all the goods which we import from Brazil into the U.S., which we would -- if we bring goods from Germany into the U.S., is not levied with any taxes or tariffs. Coming back indirectly, what the tariffs do is harder to explain or to understand momentarily because we are in a long value stream or -- and if you look at our downstream users, consumers, how they are affected again, like the cable and wire manufacturers who might export cables into the U.S., I can momentarily not really give a clear answer. Up to now, we do not see the direct impact. Of course, there is a 90 days exemption now where they negotiate. But if we see something perhaps in the second half. The same with the tariffs is valid for the United States as well, because people ask us always what happens in the United States. I give you or the audience always one simple example. There are a lot of goods which we supply in the U.S. consumer of our goods. He supplies a part for an electric part, which will be shipped into Mexico. The Mexicans make the semi-finished good, a finished good. And this part goes back into the United States because it will be -- it is a part of a car or a truck. So, you can see these things where things go into Mexico coming back might be even double levied with taxes. This, do not have -- we have no vision momentarily what impact that would be having on U.S. industries as well, because these goods cannot be momentarily quickly produced and come back totally into the United States. This will not happen. But as well here in the moment with our Nashtec and Naprotec business, we do not see momentarily this impact I just gave you an example of. Coming back to expansion programs with Nashtec. Nashtec momentarily still has a leverage or of about, I would say, 30% where we can put on more volume in the short term. So we're talking about a few thousand tonnes, 5,000 tonnes where we can still breathe. Then we need to think about further measurements. If there is a quick, rapid ramp-up in the United States for whatever reason, then we have certainly Nabaltec as a backup here, where we can export materials. And here, of course, this would contribute that there are no tariffs in our goods, so we can still have a free trade zone, ship material into the U.S. as a backbone, so to say. In the long run, one has to look at the picture. Of course, I always say we have a blueprint how to expand Nashtec, especially Nashtec has a certain layout. So we already anticipated in case in the future that we can at least take more add-ons in production capacity. But this is a future contemplation here.

Perfect. Just 2 more, if I may. One would be on the energy cost that you mentioned. If you could give some more color on how much energy cost you've seen in the first quarter? What you expect for the full year, or maybe just again, an indication of your rough consumption in Germany? And then the second or last thing that I've seen maybe to Günther, I've seen that your trade receivables came down even more, but more pronouncedly actually already in '23. What's driving this? Are you using factoring in here? Or what has changed here in the invoicing?

Günther should I answer the energy shortly? You are on mute.

Sorry, I'm mute.

Please, you can start with... Very short on the energy. I just give you the audience a bit of an example. Like this power, overall I have to say, our overall energy contributor in our P&L is roughly 12%, something around, Günther, correct me in the overall. Of course, a big impact has the gas, where we lost the tailwind when we had the contract expired. Momentarily, the price is at EUR 44, it came down EUR 45. We were more at the EUR 50 per megawatt. We see in the second quarter now a drop. We looked at certain pricing where we can so-called hedge or secure, which we partly did now for 3 months for 50% at a much lower rate. So we will have a certain cushion here, a smooth out. Electric prices also came down significantly. We were in the first quarter far above the EUR 110 per megawatt line. Now it dropped significantly. And if there is a good window, we also try to at least secure a certain percentage. So if you ask if we can smoothen that off in the next 3 months for a certain part, we will see a little bit of a tailwind, so to say, or a compensation what we had burden on the first quarter, so to say, with the energy. So these are the 2 components. Our third component is the steam. The steam is, in terms of volume, one of the biggest impacts, but we have here a secured price with our neighbor, the gas incinerator -- the waste incinerator plant. So this is settled off. So this is a little bit of an improvement on electricity and gas, hopefully, for the next 3 to 6, 7 consecutive months. On the trade receivables, Günther should say something here.

Yes, of course. Thank you for the question. The trade receivables were nearly at the same level of last year. What you can see here in the presentation in the balance sheet, other receivables, and other assets. And there's a down of nearly here EUR 16 million or EUR 17 million includes the fixed term deposit. In '23-- at the end of '23 here, the fixed-term deposit in the amount of EUR 15 million was included.

Now, I think I was asking about the trade receivables that came down to just EUR 600,000 something from... Yes, which seems very low in terms of sales.

It's very, very low in terms of sales. As you know, I think we do, of course, factoring and the purchase rate of the factor was very high also end of '23 and end of '24. So, around about 95% of our revenues are purchased by the factor.

This is Christian Sandherr from NuWays. We just spoke a bit about the input costs that you haven't really mentioned raw materials, so aluminum hydroxide, alumina. Can you give an idea of what prices have done on that side?

Yes, we see an overall improvement if you look year-to-year from '24 to '25. So that's a good news. What we had in particular, as we had some index pricing carried over from '24 last quarter into the assets as they were judged into '25, especially on the alumina side, here, we had a contract which was partly indexed. And as some people might be aware of, the SGA, the so-called Specialty Smelter Grade Alumina price came in very high in the last 3 months of the year 2024. This has now totally settled. I just give you an idea. The price was at $680 in the spot market for some particular days was really high. It even ran EUR 700 for 1 or 2 days. And now it came down substantially to EUR 350, EUR 360 last -- it was yesterday or 2 days ago. So this is a good news. And as we mostly now have settled our contracts by the whole consecutive year 2025 at a much lower price, we will not see any impact again on the side of raw materials more materially.

Okay. Next question is on the sales mix. Last year, volumes overcompensated for weaker prices. What's your expectation for this year or what's baked into the guidance?

We will see a hopefully certain -- and as I said, I don't want to anticipate too much for the Q1 figures, but -- we certainly push again on the price side, I can say, for the 2025 figures. Of course, as you might be very well aware, sometimes contracts may not -- might not allow because they go over the year. Some contracts are first quarter to first quarter. Some are -- have a strong cut at year-end. And -- but we are optimistic that we see some improvement here throughout the year, which definitely we did not see yet...

And then a third question on the competitive landscape in Europe. At the end of last year, it became public that as I would say, your main competitor in Europe Martinswerk they are undergoing, I think, again, a restructuring phase. They had to let go quite a lot of people. Do you see this as an opportunity to grab some market share? Or do you see any other opportunities in the scenario?

Yes, good. It's always hard to speak about competitors. We know that -- and they announced it publicly that they had launched or commissioned this power plant built on gas. So compared to Nabaltec for the audience who do not also familiar with Nabaltec, we get supplied by a waste incinerator plant. The waste incinerator plant burns, of course, waste. That is the originate objective. And as a byproduct, they give gas. So we give a steam to us, which has a certain advantage if you make steam out of gas. So this is certainly gives Martinswerk a different cost structure. They came from coal, but I cannot talk if this has something to do where they have to work also on their personnel cost structure. What was a good thing last year, Martinswerk as the American mother company announced -- publicly a price increase between 5% and 15% as contracts may allow, which gave us some support that we can also move. Normally, we were always a price first mover this time, we were reluctant. And this gives us certainly a certain room to move also here as the pressure on Martinswerk has risen due to the circumstances I just mentioned. Any further questions, Konstantin? You raised your hand. I don't know. Is there any questions? You are still on mute.

Sorry, my phone locked and quite a mess got an update here and that's not very terrible. Let me see if there's anything open. Maybe you could just also talk a bit more about what I've seen is that particularly the resin and dispersions sales declined notably over '24. It seemed like this business already was kind of in a downturn over the last maybe '22, '23 already. So what is driving this year? And how should we think about maybe all the other segments, except for the wire and cable over '25?

The resin and dispersions, it might fluctuate a little bit. For us, it's -- as I said, it's not a strategic market. It's a market coming out of the product mix. So resin and dispersions is a broad field, sometimes a little bit price-- more price-sensitive than others. And I think it's fluctuating. We cannot really see a trend here. I don't know, this might have been seasonal or there might have been a shift. So I wouldn't highlight too much on that. If you look at the other application fields, of course, the battery market is for us the opportunistic market as well, led by visco-optimized and boehmites. As I mentioned before, the boehmites is momentarily a bit under pressure due to the highly competitive landscape in China and the visco-optimized due to the fact that everything is produced in China with the separator, which is directly linked to our boehmites because we have this coating material on the separator and the separator is again linked to the cell manufacturing. Everybody can understand why this market is in a difficult situation momentarily. We have to export and -- or import or export everything to China in the periphery. Our market in China moment is practically on hold. We will -- we did not unintentionally compete with the price erosions. We just saw one of our competitors has published figures in stone. That's no secret, and they had a loss at the year-end and the loss in the first quarter, even due to higher revenue increases. So you can see the disastrous situation this industry has, and we practically withdraw from that market. So our major supplying field is now Japan and South Korea in the periphery. And of course, we are still lagging behind in Europe. In Europe, we have separator manufacturers existing, they still build up, but we still wait for the cell manufacturers to follow. On the visco-optimized, the situation looks totally different. Visco-optimized linked to thermal stability, thermal management. These are especially the so-called gap fillers and also adhesives where our powder comes into an adhesive glue where the sockets -- where the cells are glued to the socket of a battery. And this market is geographically not so dependent on China. A lot of OEMs who build their batteries who assemble their batteries, they buy the components, assemble the batteries like BMW, Mercedes, whoever you want to name, do it on site here in Europe. And because they have their own technology and of course, we profit from this move as we are here in Europe as, of course, one of the first movers on the one hand. And on the other hand, we are producing it on site in Germany and have a close vicinity to the OEMs. That makes it an advantage compared to China. This is a momentary situation. Cable, I don't need to say anything momentarily. That's fairly good. And the same picture for the boehmites is, of course, and all the battery in the e-mobility is valid for the U.S. momentarily. Everybody knows what the new Trump administration has said, drill baby drill, electric is pushed back. I still we'll see. I'm optimistic that the battery business, the car -- electric car will have a ramping in the next 5 years due to the efficiency of this industry and a lot of industries or car manufacturers have still a certain focus on this e-mobility platform. Christian, I don't know if your hand up again or was it?

Yes, I have a follow-up question on the boehmite topic. You just said that you would expect demand to come back over the next 5 years. So that's still quite a lot of time. I mean you're in the last stages of significantly expanding the production capacity. In the meanwhile, until demand comes back into significant ranges, are you able to use the production facilities for other products? Or is it basically just sitting around and waiting for boehmite demand to come back?

A very valid question here, and I certainly was waiting for that to be asked also out of the audience. Of course, I think one of our strengths, and it shouldn't sound arrogant is that we always come from a technology vision. We know our technology very well. And with this boehmite plant, we have a long-lasting good expertise in this technology. And the good thing is that we can use this technology as well for our fine hybrids for our really cash cow on the cable wire industry. So what we're going to do, and we also have some other products we can use for different applications where we still have some ideas how we can move forward. So we will not sit there drill our thumbs and let this capacity be rotting here. We will use it sensefully and fill it up also with wire cable materials, fine hybrids, especially. So we can switch immediately. We already undergo a certain way how we can fill up now momentarily. And of course, we can alternate then. So we have certain ranges where we produce boehmite and then we switch for a certain period of time to fine hydrants and develop the market there.

Would you have to spend any additional money on switching...

No.

So you can turn on the switch and you produce a different type of...

As you name it. That's a good news here. Any further questions from the audience? I cannot see any hand raising. So if this is not the case, then I would wrap up with a warm thank you for your patience, for the questions. And due to the fact that we were a little bit late in reporting the Q4 and annual report, we will see you shortly on May 22 in shortly 3 weeks again to report more elaborately about our Q1 figures 2025. Thanks again. And I wish everybody who joined our meeting today, our earnings calls for being so patient and attend the meeting. Thanks, and have a good day and a good week. Also in the name of my colleague, Günther Spitzer. Thanks again. See you in 3 weeks. Bye-bye.

Bye.