Tessenderlo Group NV (TESB) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, and welcome, everyone, to the annual results webinar of Tessenderlo Group. I'm Bjorn Theijs. I will be the moderator for this session. Before we start with the presentations, I would like to share some practical info with you. We will first start with our CEO, Luc Tack; and our CFO, Miguel Potter, who will give the presentations. After the presentations, there will be an opportunity for our covering analysts from ING, KBC Securities, Kepler Cheuvreux, Banque Degroof Petercam, and AlphaValue to verbally ask questions. [Operator Instructions] So with this, I will hand over to our CEO, Luc Tack.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to our 2024 results highlight and investors call. Indeed, 2024 was quite a challenging year for the company, and I cannot start this meeting before thanking all our 7,000 colleagues within the company who gave the best of themselves during the whole of '24 to navigate this challenging year for us. In January of 2024, we further strengthened the leadership with Miguel de Potter joining us as CFO and Sandra Hoeylaerts taking up the Chief Transformation Officer role. The Chief Transformation Officer role is a new role for the company because we believe that we continuously must transform our businesses and adapt our businesses and preparing them for the future. So now let's go to some key Board decisions and investments. So Kuhlmann, our ferric chloride production company has announced the investment of a EUR 35 million new plant. It is about the construction of a state-of-the-art chlorination installation. This construction began in early 2024 and with an expected completion for early 2026. This is ensuring our continued innovation and growth in Industrial Solutions.

Good morning, everyone. This is Miguel de Potter, the Chief Financial Officer of Tessenderlo Group. And I'm here to give you an update on our share repurchase program. Some of you might have read an update on our press release this morning on that. We started in March '23, our first share repurchase program. In April '24 last year, we entered into a new share repurchase program, which was discontinued early in January '25. But early in January, we decided actually to continue the same share repurchase program with different conditions. In the meantime, we have also in August last year, canceled 23.2 million shares, out of which actually 21.9 million shares were belonging to the Picanol Group and came along with the merger of Picanol within Tessenderlo in 2023. Yesterday, the Board of Directors decided also to cancel a further just short of 1 million shares that we purchased under the program. So in total, we have canceled 24.2 million shares, out of which 21.9 million shares were coming with Picanol. The new share count for the group is 60,159,303 shares. Luc, back to you.

I'm really proud to tell you about the launch of our Supermax new rapier weaving machine at the ITMA ASIA Show in November 2024. Indeed, we were presenting in Shanghai and the machine was received very well during this show, which allowed us also to take orders. We strongly believe that this new platform for the Chinese market will allow us to further support the weaving industry and our many customers. Furthermore, we, on November 21 opened our new liquid fertilizer plant in Geleen in Holland. This new state-of-the-art production facility in Geleen really strengthens our position as a market leader, and embodies our long-term commitment to sustainability, innovation and growth. Following also this, we had the homologation of our Thio-Sul product by the French government. Please allow me to explain you a little bit how important and what this homologation means. Basically, our products, our thiosulfates are being blended with UAN, which is a liquid nitrogen fertilizer. By blending our Thio-Sul into the UAN, we are enhancing the fertilizer. In what way are we enhancing the fertilizer? Well, what we are doing, our products are helping to reduce the volatilization. Today, if UAN has been put on the field or nitrogen or urea also is being put on the field, there is volatilization. Well, the French government now has certified that the addition of our product allows for 15% to 20% less volatilization and to 15% or 20%, up to 15% to 20% less volatilization for the fertilizer and up to 15% to 20% less leaching. So basically, next to these 2 features, we are also bringing sulfur to the plant. The sulfur that we are bringing to the plant is also helping the health of the plant and is also helping the take-up of the phosphate into the plant. In a nutshell, I can tell you the following. With our Thio-Sul product, we are really helping the environment. Our thiosulfates are helping the environment while putting money in the pocket of the farmer. Hence, this is why we built a new plant also in Geleen because we believe we can help the farmer further in the future and help the environment further. This goes within our sustainability goals that we have within our company. Furthermore, we were happy to announce on November 6, the strategic acquisition of Tiger-Sul. Because with this acquisition, we now also have our first production plant in Canada, and we are expanding our regional footprint in North America with a plant in California and one in Alabama. While in the past, we have been focusing on liquid-based fertilizers, with this acquisition, we are now expanding on dry sulfur-based fertilizers. Hence, we are very happy with this acquisition, and this will help us to further develop technology that help farmers growing crops in the future.

End of November last year, we also had to announce our intention to close our plant in Treforest and restructure part of our plant in Vilvoorde for PB Leiner. Those plants and part of the Vilvoorde plants we were focusing on the bone gelatin sector, which is facing significant pressure and challenges due to declining demand and alternative products that are in the market today. This is, of course, not something we do with a light heart. We value all our colleagues working in that environment. And today, we're engaged in an information and consultation phase where we explore viable options and potential solutions for all that might be affected and for this particular segment of niche gelatin going forward, which we still continue to produce in China.

Then we move on to projects under construction in 2025. So the construction works for our Defiance plant in Ohio are progressing very well. and we are now looking at opening the plant in the second quarter of 2025. The plant located in Defiance, Ohio, is located in an ideal agriculture area where there is a good need for our products. That market, we have been servicing in the past from further away. With now having a local plant, we will have better logistics and will be even better placed to service our customers. Furthermore, we opened -- we took in service our first -- our new Picanol headquarter. We are very happy with our new headquarters because it is allowing us to connect better between all the people working within the company and to have good workspace for our colleagues and being able to service our customers even better than in the past. Furthermore, at Akiolis St-Langis, the construction started of new gasification process. This is a plant that will be producing gas, which will then be transformed into electricity production. The start of the line is scheduled for the end of this year. Then we further announced our rebranding of our Agro business. Our Agro business units are now integrated into Crop Nutrition and Vitality and Kerley International and Crop Protection, previously called NovaSource. This new branding will provide more clarity and will streamline better operations with an enhanced customer experience across all of our products. The integration is taking effect as we speak, and the transition is going seamless for our customers.

I will now walk you through the results of the year 2024. As announced last year, December, we were -- and as Luc mentioned at the beginning of this call, we faced a very challenging year. But thanks to our colleagues, we managed to still produce some relatively strong results. Of course, compared to 2023, we have minus 9.6% of revenues, and we end the revenue at EUR 2.6 billion. Our adjusted EBITDA is 16.7% lower than last year and ends up at close to EUR 266 million, which was basically closely in line with what the average of our analyst was announcing earlier to the market, just slightly above. Our adjusted EBIT is EUR 63.8 million. We still have a double-digit EBITDA margin. Profit for the year, EUR 44 million. And on a very positive note, we had a very high cash flow from operating activities during the year, which amounted to EUR 333 million. Our net cash position, which was positive, including IFRS 16 last year of EUR 10 million is now negative by EUR 5 million, meaning that we have taken actually EUR 15, 1-5 million of net debt to the balance sheet of the company. Our capital expenditures amount to EUR 180 million, which is slightly higher than last year. And I will come back to that later on to explain to you that half of this capital expenditure comes from growth projects and the other half comes from regular maintenance projects. Growth projects that are being delivered, Luc mentioned the Defiance plant, the gasification plant, et cetera, and that will contribute to the future of Tessenderlo Group going forward. If we take a look at our group revenue per segment, you will see that Agro is still the biggest contributor with 31% of the total value of the group. In the Bio-valorization business, you see 23%, which is definitely reflecting a large-sized business unit within the group in terms of revenues, but you will see that in terms of contribution, it has suffered last year. And I will come back to the details later in the presentation. And while you see that basically our Agro segment accounts for 40% of the group's EBITDA, our Bio-valorization segment still had 23% of the revenues of the group, but only 3.5% of the EBITDA of the group. You can see that our T-Power unit is [ introducing ] its recurring EBITDA according to its contract with the Machine & Technologies we have suffered through the Picanol Group from the downturn in the textile industries and our Industrial Solutions especially with DYKA Group, or PVC, PP and PE manufacturer has suffered from a lack of dynamism in the construction business in Europe in general. So let's go division for division more in detail. First of all, our Agro segment. Our Agro segment, as Luc mentioned, has been rebranded into 2 main brands under Tessenderlo Kerley, our Crop Nutrition and our Crop Protection activities as well as actually our organic fertilizer, Violleau, which is a separate brand by itself. The Agro revenue actually increased if we compare it to last year 2023. There was an increase of the volume definitely in the first half of 2024, which was slightly offset by lower selling prices. In the second half of 2024, we saw more stabilization there in the overall volume increase and pricing. We end up with an adjusted EBITDA that has increased by nearly 30% to EUR 106.5 million for this Agro division compared to last year and the second half of last year, we can also see, and we must admit that those figures were impacted negatively by inventory write-off that -- and we had a very stable second half of the year. As Luc already mentioned, our Crop Protection remains very stable, and we were very happy to acquire a new dry sulfur fertilizer company called Tiger-Sul end of last year. This company has not yet contributed to the exact financial revenues of the group. It was acquired late last year. And you know that with the seasonality of the Agro business, we have several big seasons and several very low seasons. The big seasons of the first part of the big season in the dry sulfur fertilizer is about to start. The second part of this big season is for the September, October months. But in the meantime, it's relatively quiet. In our Bio-valorization segment, which encompass our 2 brands, PB Leiner for the gelatin and the collagen and Akiolis for the rendering business, we have suffered. We were not the only one to suffer. The market has been suffering worldwide, but we have to recognize that we did suffer. We knew and we have witnessed a very big increase in sales volumes worldwide, but a dramatic collapse of the selling prices for mainly all the different products, be it gelatin, be it collagens, be it fats and proteins. The results of Akiolis were also negatively impacted by the outbreak of some bluetongue epidemic in Europe, also overheat in France, which has led to an overpopulation of animals dying and our acquisition for 2023 in Spain has not yet contributed positively to the results of Akiolis. We have announced, and I just mentioned that again, our intention to restructure our gelatin and collagen business in the bone gelatin on which we have estimated restructuring costs of about EUR 40 million that we took as a provision in the year 2024. And you will see that later in the presentation. It's not only for severance pay, but also for impairment losses on property, plant equipment and some inventory write-off. Our third business unit, our Industrial Solutions segment with our various brands, DYKA, Kuhlmann and Moleko has decreased slightly less in the second half of last year of 2024 compared to 2023. 2023 was already for DYKA, basically a slow second half of the year, but that has not yet picked up, especially in France, where we see that the construction market is still, I wouldn't say in the doldrum, but not far from it. Luckily, our other brands, Kuhlmann and Moleko have known a very much stable environment. We end up the year there with an adjusted EBITDA margin of 10%. Our fourth business unit or Machine & Technologies segments with Picanol weaving machines, Psicontrol and Proferro has definitely suffered from the environment in the textile world in general. We were hurt on the volumes of the machines, but not so much on the price of the machines. And Picanol was not the only weaving machines builder that was hurt to that extent. It's a worldwide phenomenon going on, which we can address more in detail if you have some questions. Proferro and Psicontrol were able to stabilize their revenues and actually in the second half of this year, gained momentum with other customers than the Picanol Group, which was the largest customers in order to diversify their revenues. And we expect that they will continue to do so for the months to come. Thanks to the implementation of cost-saving measures, especially in Belgium, but also in other plants around the world, we were able to still post a positive EBIT and EBITDA margin for the Machine & Technologies segments. T-Power is our power plant located in Tessenderlo, as you know, with a long-term contract with the German utility company, RWE. The long-term contract will last until the end of June 2026, so about 14 months to go and has behaved according to contract, a slightly decrease in adjusted EBITDA and adjusted revenues because of the lack of working hours for the plant last year, but that's -- RWE is actually in the steering wheel here to drive the contract. We are assessing and we have currently several options. Some of them are more advanced than others, what the future of the plant will be post the RWE contract in 2026. We still believe that this plant has tremendous value in the currently energy mix in Belgium and in Europe. If we go into more details on our adjusted EBIT to profit. So as announced, we've got EUR 63.8 million of EBIT, out of which we have EUR 47.3 million of EBIT adjusting items. The largest part of these EBIT adjusting items are provisions that are taken for restructuring of not only our Bio-valorization, we talked earlier about PB Leiner, Treforest and Vilvoorde, but also some restructuring we did in the Machine & Technologies and in the industrial business unit brings us to an EBIT of EUR 16.5 million. Finance costs and income, we end up the year with a finance income of EUR 31.3 million, out of which part of it comes from the sales of shares that we held last year in Rieter Holding, but also from unrecognized interco foreign exchange gains on intercompany loans. The net profit for the company amounts to EUR 44 million. I will show you an overview actually of our net debt cash position reconciliation. As we mentioned, operating cash flow was EUR 333 million for the year. What did we do with this cash flow? We invested massively in the future and in our shareholders. Payments to shareholders throughout the year 2024 amounted to EUR 101 million, out of which parts in dividends and parts in repurchase of our own shares, own shares that we, in the meantime, have canceled, as mentioned earlier in this call. And secondly, we invested in the future. We invested EUR 91.5 million in growth capital, and we invested also in acquisition of businesses, out of which Tiger-Sul is the largest business acquired last year to enter the dry fertilizer market. Yesterday, we had our Board of Directors of the group and the Board of Directors has agreed to propose to the shareholder at the meeting of May, a gross dividend per share of EUR 0.75 per euro that will be put at the agenda of May 14 for voting. The outlook of the group going forward, we understand and we know that we are working in various businesses that are and could be impacted by the geopolitical volatility, uncertainty and sometimes short-sightedness of some politicians. But to the best of our extent, we believe that the group will end up with an EBITDA 2025 that will be somehow between our '23 EBITDA of EUR 318 million and our 2024 EBITDA. So we believe we're cautiously optimistic that the group is up for a rebound in 2024, although we must say that we do not have maybe all the cards at hand, but we will definitely play with the cards we have. The annual report 2024 will be published next week on April 3 and can be downloaded on our website. For the financial calendar going forward is our next Annual General Meeting, which is on May 13 this year and will be held in our Brussels office, where all shareholders are, of course, welcome. The half year results will be published on August 21. And like last year, we will organize an Analyst and Asset Manager Day in the course of the third quarter of 2025, most likely in September, and you will be contacted and invited to participate in this day where Luc and myself will be open to show you one of our facilities and also answer all the questions you may have, and we will contact you closer to the date. Bjorn, I give you back the words.

Okay. Thank you, Luc. Thank you, Miguel. As explained before, we will now take the time and give the opportunity to our covering analysts to ask some questions verbally. I see some hands raised. So I will start with Christian Faitz from Kepler Cheuvreux. I will bring you on the screen.

Yes. I hope you can hear me.

Yes, we can hear you.

Two questions, please. First question, a very simple straightforward question. Can you give us some guidance on your effective tax rate expectations for this year? And my second question would be, I mean, we are now in the third month of '25. Do you see any signs in any of your segments that things are actually improving at least sequentially? If I look at textile markets, for example, for Picanol or agricultural demand, fertilizer affordability is actually not that bad for farmers. Do you see actually underlying demand at least sequentially improving?

Christian, thank you for your question. I will answer you on the machines and Miguel will talk to you about the effective tax rate. Indeed, it is very early on in the year. And I think it is needless to say that the news flow since end of January has been quite volatile, if I may call it like that, which is, of course, not helping people on making big decisions. And therefore, we do not see for now a deterioration of the situation. But today, we cannot highlight an improvement. Hence, our prudent -- hence, our guidance that we put forward to you. So I hope that in the half year, we will be able to give you more highlight. And hopefully, if you can join us on the Capital Day in September, we will understand a little bit better what the impact is of all negotiations worldwide on tariffs and world economy movement so that we can understand the trade flows better in the world going forward, which will give us a better view for ourselves. But I would also say in respect to your question of Picanol, in respect of our customers that they will also have more certainty when making decisions. And with respect of the tax guidance, Miguel, I'm not sure, can you help us?

Definitely, yes. Definitely, Christian. Our guidance, our effective tax rate going forward is around 25% to 26%, relatively conservative guidance, but it will depend definitely on how some tax legislations are evolving and how much deferred tax losses we can carry forward here and there. But that's our guidance is -- sorry, our guidance is 25%, 26%.

Okay, okay. Do you still have any sizable tax loss carryforwards, which you could use this year?

Well, we have some, yes, that we could potentially use at the level of Tessenderlo Group, yes.

Okay. Perfect. Just Luc, I also asked on the agriculture side. And if I may ask also on the, obviously, on the Industrial Solutions side, how demand is going. Again, early days in the year, but at least we are almost a quarter through the year, if there's any signs of pickup?

Well, I would say, again, we are cautiously optimistic. But having said that, trade flows, to give you an example, the corn prices in the U.S. started the year with $5. But then with the news that hit the wires, yes, the corn prices have dropped to $4.5. And of course, higher commodity prices for the farmers is an incentive to use more fertilizer. If they are afraid that crop prices will be low, it works adversely. So again, early days. But like I said, very cautiously optimistic because we do believe that our products are very good.

Okay. Thank you, Christian. We will now move to Wim Hoste from KBC. Just give me a second to bring you on screen.

I also have a couple, and I maybe ask them one by one. So the first one would be on Bio-valorization outlook. Can you quantify the savings you will get this year and the coming years, obviously, also from the restructuring in the gelatin business. Can you quantify that?

Well, Wim, that's a very good question. We still have the intention to restructure the plan and the dialogue and it's very constructive is ongoing with our colleagues and their representatives. As long as we have not closed the case, it's difficult for us to comment on the savings we will be able to achieve. But indeed, the intention to restructure is the intention to save on costs and to have a positive impact on the P&L. I think that we could and hopefully revisit that question once we have a very firm conclusion to the negotiations that are ongoing.

If I may add to this, Miguel, it's Wim, the restructuring that we are doing, it is our bone gelatin capacity that we are reviewing here in Belgium. As Miguel said, conversations are ongoing. I think we all know, the veteran know in Belgium. You know how that works. So it's impossible to give further information on that. But having said that, it is also the consequence of a changing market. And if as a company, if the market is changing, we need to change along with the market. So the capsules, which is the business that we are servicing from our bone gelatin, I would like to remind you that we still make bone gelatin in China. The market has been moving more and more towards Asia. And beyond that, also, there has been changes in the use of raw material for capsules where customers have moved away from gelatin altogether into a cellulose-based product on one hand. And on the other hand, there was also an impact on the blending where customers are using less bone and more hide gelatins. So impossible, like Miguel said, to give you exact numbers until we know at what pace things are moving forward.

Okay. The second question would be on the Agro business and the sourcing situation for MOP. There was obviously previously the sanctioned regime imposed against Russia and Belarus. There is now in the press some indications that a deal between the United States and Russia might involve the scrapping of the sanction regimes. Is there anything yet concrete? Or is there any opening you see in sourcing again MOP this year from Russia or Belarus? Or is that not yet on the table at all?

Wim, thank you for asking that question because indeed, this geopolitical tension did put our company upside down in respect of the sourcing of our MOP for our potash production in Ham. And we have been very grateful to find new supplies in Canada. I just want to remind you where before we were getting products from Belarussia, which was quite a short supply chain. And from Russia, we had to move large supplies to Saskatchewan. In Saskatchewan, the MOP has been put on unit trains, has then been moved to Vancouver to be loaded and shipped then to travel through the Panama Canal into Antwerp. And you can imagine that has been quite challenging. However, we have also learned a lesson that through this crisis that we went through, we should also spread our supplies going forward and not be running from one side of the boat now to the other side of the boat. I think there also, we will be very cautious, and we will also be very respectful to the people that were helping us in the difficult times because really, our company was in a big crisis when the war started, and we have been helped, and we should always be mindful of people that helped us. Thank you.

Okay. Then another question on Agro would be what is the expected contribution from the recent capacity additions and also acquisitions? I'm talking specifically about the Geleen plant, the Defiance plant, which will come on stream in the first half of this year and then the recent Tiger-Sul acquisition. If you take those combined, what could be the both top line and EBITDA contribution this and next years?

Thank you for asking that question, Wim. And there is something that I really would like to tell you that is if you build a new plant, it's not that you say, "Okay, now we open, you push the button and you run the plant flat out." You need to build it up. And that takes years to build up these capacities, whereas in the beginning months, you may even have a negative impact because you're already operating the plant without having the full load of the plant. This needs to build up. Farmers, we are doing further education towards the farmers on the benefits of our product. I would like to remind that the average age of a farmer is 58 years old. And as older farmers tend to change less fast than sometimes younger farmers. Of course, it is our job and duty to promote and to explain the benefit that our products can bring to the farmer. But again, a farmer is usually cautiously. A farmer usually will first try 1 hectare, then he will try 10 hectares before he will switch his whole farm to our products. This is what we have seen in the past, and this is what we still expect to be the future. So it will be step-by-step a marathon and not a sprint win.

Okay. That's clear. Then a question on T-Power, if I may. Yes, what is the -- you said I think utilization rate has been very low in 2024. Taking into account the increased electrification and increased energy demands and electricity demands that will come in Belgium as in most other countries, can you shed some light on the expected capacity utilization going forward once you're fully owner again or operator again, maybe that's a better word of the plant as of the second half of '26? How do you see that evolving? And also, how does the current political landscape make you think about the plans that there were in the past for a second power plant project in Belgium? Can you also maybe elaborate on that?

Thank you. That's also an excellent question. So I think partially, we should also take into account that the industry activity has been quite weak this year. I'm now talking generally of the high consuming industries in Europe. They have all have been under challenge, and that also has had an impact on the consumption. The second thing, which is, of course, it is the green energy, the windmills and the sun. And there are a lot depends on the availability of wind and sun. I would like to remind everybody that a gas plant, a gas power plant is a green investment. In that respect, that the green investment complements what the Germans call the Dunkelflaute. So that meaning that if there is no wind and there is no sun, you still must guarantee the power. Nuclear plants do not have the flexibility of a gas power plant of being able to come online in the shortest period and to be available to the market and also to go offline very fast. In that regard, a gas plant much better than coal plants, which are still out there in Germany and in Poland is a good solution. Indeed, we do have a project to build a new plant, and we do have a permit to build a new plant here in Belgium. We would like to build a new plant in Belgium. However, that is not in our hands. That is rather a political decision because as you know, these plants are not financially viable without a capacity remuneration support or mechanism as the famous CRM. And at the end of the day, it will be to the politics, to the leaders and also the studies that will be made on necessity that will determine whether our plant will be built in the future or not. All I can tell you is that in Germany, they are also planning to build 15 of these plants from what we hear also there to replace the coal power plants on the one hand and on the other hand, to complement the green energy from wind and solar. So I can't give you a better answer because we don't know.

I see one more hand from Frank Claassen from Degroof Petercam. Let me bring you on screen.

Two questions, please. First of all, on your CapEx plans for '25, the CapEx guidance, could you give some rough number there and maybe also the most important projects you expect to spend the CapEx on? So that's the first question. And then the second question, more general question on the trade tariffs, the trade war, which is going on, do you expect or do you already see some direct impact on your own business? Or is it only indirect impact?

Okay. Thank you very much for the question, Frank. This is Miguel. I'll take the CapEx guidance. Our CapEx guidance, total CapEx for the year 2025 will be roughly EUR 150 million, 1-5-0, so slightly below what we have done over the last 2 years, out of which I would say we will have a lower maintenance CapEx. And the growth CapEx will be slightly higher than the maintenance CapEx. However, still below probably last year. Our big growth ambitions are the continuation of some projects that are ongoing. So growth CapEx, the plant of Defiance is still it will be commissioned next week. And we still have to done some end of contractual period payments that we have been doing since January. We have our gasification project in France that is still ongoing, and it is also a growth CapEx. And then we have our chlorination units in Loos that are ongoing and that will require -- and these are the 3 main growth projects CapEx that we will still have in 2025. Most of them will be finished or close to finished by the end of 2025. The rest is maintenance CapEx and the maintenance CapEx will come out lower than last year. That's our guidance. However, in the maintenance CapEx, we have what we call some of those once-in-a-lifetime CapEx. When you build a storage room for sulfuric salts that are eating your infrastructure bit by bit over the last decades, at some point, you need to rebuild it from scratch directly. And these are huge maintenance CapEx. We do not consider those as growth CapEx, but they will last for, hopefully, another lifetime. And Luc, I'll give you the word for the question on tariffs.

So Frank, so directly on tariffs, as you mentioned, we are not so much impacted because also, for instance, if we take the Agro in U.S., we produce mainly for the U.S. market. In Europe, we produce mainly for the U.S. market, except for the potash, which we ship worldwide. But there are other things that kind of are helpful or not helpful. I'll give you an example. Our DYKA, our pipes is, of course, depending on the construction market. If confidence can come back in the construction market, if interest rates can drop a little bit, that could help to revitalize the construction market. Again, all this is very early to see. When we look at the construction market within Europe, as Miguel told you, France is really in a very difficult situation. However, some other countries, we see some green shoots. So again, it is really early to say and to make any bold statement left or right currently because we don't know, Frank.

Okay. Thank you. I see one more hand raised by Wim. I'll quickly give Wim. Wim, you have another final question?

Yes. One final question from my side would be on the capital allocation. You halted the share buyback program and then restarted it, which was a little bit surprising to me. Can you maybe elaborate on what was the reasoning behind those decisions and also how you look at capital allocation and certainly with respect to share buyback activity going forward in light that, yes, the current plan is pretty limited, only EUR 12.5 million? So a bit of color on that would be interesting.

Yes, Wim, this is Miguel. No problem. First of all, we are and we've been since 2023, committed in buying back our own shares as we do believe that this is good investment for us. Here, what happened in our share buyback projects and why we did halt it earlier this year, it's more a technical issue. Those share buybacks are definitely managed by some of our lovely bankers, and they get a mandate from the general assembly through the Board directly to the bank to buy back shares without our interference. This mandate has some technicalities associated with it being some limitations on volumes, on price differences, et cetera. Given that at the end of December, our share price went down drastically and very rapidly, we were outside of those technical buyers, which we decided to actually stop the program for a short period of time. We didn't stop. It stopped automatically actually for a short period of time, where we actually decided to give the bank a new mandate with new technicalities taking into account the reality of the market. And it's actually not a new mandate. It's the continuation of the existing mandate with different technical aspects. That being said, we have our existing mandate, which is still the same actually, that is currently continuing. And it's up to the Board to decide if we would do something else after this one. But it's not on the agenda today.

All right. Thank you. We have 5 minutes left. So we'll take a few questions that are in the Q&A. Let me start with the first one. So will there be an impact of rising raw sulfur prices since the beginning of the year on the group?

Well, of course, sulfur is an indexed price. These indexes are publicly available, and we follow these indexes going forward. Changes in these indexes may also affect then changes in sales prices. So normally, there is little to no effect of the sulfur going up or down as it has kind of a translation mechanism in our price setting.

Okay. Next question. Have you implemented any U.S. dollar-euro currency coverage in 2025?

Well, actually, we are, luckily enough, a worldwide group where we have our revenues and our costs divided amongst the main currencies. And for us, the main currencies are U.S. dollars and euros. Of course, we have some alternative currency to which we are exposed to a lesser extent. And so we have within the group kind of a natural hedge between our U.S. dollar sales and our U.S. dollars cost and our euros cost and sales. And so currently, we do not have long or short hedging positions with third parties. We do manage our hedging ourselves internally, and we use most of it as a natural hedge.

Okay. Do you have ongoing gas supply agreement for any production at the Tessenderlo gas power plant from H2 2026?

Well, it's a good question. But as I said earlier, we will communicate. We have several options on the table, and this is a very detailed question for which we will not answer today, but we will communicate in due time on the options we have for the power plants going forward. But that being said, for other plants where we are also using gas, we have definitely hedging and long-term contracts in place to secure gas supply and a certain gas pricing going forward.

Okay. Do we have time for one final question? Yes. Okay. Has the working capital got back to normalized level? Or is there any opportunity to reduce it again in 2025? If so, to what extent?

Well, that's a good question, and you will be able to read everything about it in our annual report as from the 3rd of April. But yes, no, we did not manage to get our working capital back to a normalized level that quickly over the period of 12 months, but we managed to get it down from historical high a year ago. And we're still working on it, and we will continue working on it in 2025, although I cannot guarantee that it will be all absorbed by the end of the year. It will depend on the market circumstance. Thank you.

Thank you. Well, thank you all for joining us on this call today. Thank you for your interest in our company, and we are looking forward to meet you again on the next event. Thank you all. Bye-bye.

Thank you. Bye-bye.