加载中...
共找到 18,598 条相关资讯
Operator: Good morning, and welcome to the PAVmed's Fourth Quarter 2025 Business Update Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] This call is being recorded on Monday, March 30, 2026. I would now like to turn the conference over to Matt Riley, PAVmed's Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead. Matthew Riley: Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for participating in today's business update call. Joining me today on the call are Dr. Lishan Aklog, Chairman and CEO of PAVmed; along with Dennis McGrath, Chief Financial Officer. The press release announcing our business update and financial results is available on PAVmed's website. Please take a moment to read the disclaimers about forward-looking statements in the press release. The business update press release and the conference call all include forward-looking statements, and these forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from statements made. Factors that could cause actual results to differ are described in the disclaimer and in our filings with the SEC. For a list and description of these and other important risks and uncertainties that may affect future operations, see Part 1, Item 1A entitled Risk Factors in PAVmed's most recent annual report on Form 10-K filed with the SEC and any subsequent updates filed in quarterly reports on Forms 10-Q and subsequent Forms 8-K. Except as required by law, PAVmed disclaims any intentions or obligations to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect changes in expectations or events, conditions or circumstances on which the expectations may be based or that may affect the likelihood that actual results will differ from those contained in the forward-looking statements. I would now like to turn the call over to Dr. Lishan Aklog, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of PAVmed. Lishan? Lishan Aklog: Thank you, Matt, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our quarterly update call. Before we get into our recent operational highlights, I'd like to kind of frame where PAVmed is today. On our last quarterly call, I described how over the past now 2 years, we've undertaken a series of very deliberate and systematic actions to effectively permanently fix PAVmed's legacy capital structure and ultimately strengthen its balance sheet and improve our ability to execute on our strategic plan. I had mentioned that time, we have one more step to go, and that step was completed in February with the completion of a restructuring recapitalization and financing. The toxic convertible securities that had held down -- have held us down for a while were removed. And we -- upon completion of this financing exercise, we'll have a very clean cap table. So with PAVmed now fixed, we believe we are now very well positioned -- exceptionally well positioned to execute on our founding mission. What's that mission? It's to operate as a high-growth, diversified commercial life sciences company with multiple independently financed subsidiaries that are operating under a shared services model. With that work now complete, we're executing that model across our core businesses, which you can see here in 3 different buckets. The most prominent one, of course, is Lucid, which is a publicly traded diagnostic company. Lucid continues to succeed at raising its own capital. It's obviously our strongest and most advanced asset. As we discussed in the Lucid earnings call, and we'll highlight later today, Lucid is on the cusp of transformative milestones, which include a very important recent VA win and a pending Medicare coverage. A reminder that PAVmed remains Lucid's largest shareholder, holding approximately 31 million shares of Lucid common stock. And as such, it's positioned now under this new capital structure to benefit from Lucid's upcoming major value inflection points. Moving on to Veris. Veris is our majority-owned digital health company that's advancing a cancer care platform that's designed to enhance personalized cancer care along with an implantable physiologic monitor. As again, we'll discuss in more detail, we are continuing to see early commercial traction with our major strategic partner and are advancing the implantable towards FDA submission planned for later this year. We're poised to accelerate the execution of that strategic -- of an expanded strategic plan as we'll discuss in a bit. Having completed the steps to fix PAVmed with the new capital structure and resources available, a very important part of our future plan is to relaunch our MedTech portfolio. For those of you who've been with us for a long time, we started in medical devices, and we've always intended to reengage in that sector. So we've taken a couple of steps towards doing that. The most important of which is that we've engaged a new leader, Chief Business Officer that will have oversight over this portfolio, and that will involve bringing in the technology that we've licensed from Duke, an endoscopic imaging technology, reinvigorating PortIO and looking at an exciting pipeline of opportunities in the medical device space that we really do believe will enhance long-term shareholder value. Again, more on this in a bit. So let's start with Lucid's operational highlights from the fourth quarter and recent weeks. As always, I encourage you to listen to Lucid's business update call for greater detail on each of these areas, and I'll keep these comments high level. Lucid reported fourth quarter 2025 EsoGuard revenue of approximately $1.5 million and EsoGuard test volume of 3,664 EsoGuard tests. The volume has increased by 29% from the third quarter and revenue has increased by 24% over the third quarter. The volume exceeded our target range of approximately 2,500 to 3,000 tests per quarter, and we're entering 2026 with really solid momentum on that front. A very important highlight that we're incredibly excited about at Lucid is that Lucid was awarded a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs contract for EsoGuard that expands our access across the nation's largest integrated health care system, that gives Lucid the opportunity to engage with numerous medical centers across the country and target the 9 million enrolled veterans who have a particularly high elevated risk of GERD and esophageal cancer. Another exciting development that we discussed is the announcement of positive data for the largest real-world experience of esophageal precancer detection that evaluated EsoGuard and EsoCheck. And as we discussed in these 12,000 patients, we were able to show excellent performance across multiple metrics, technical success, the procedural times, safety, et cetera, and also the appropriateness of physician use. And we contrasted that with other technologies that purport to be capable of operating in this space. So now let's discuss Veris. So Veris is now well -- the commercial phase of our engagement with Ohio State University is well underway, and it just initiated when we -- during our last call. An important -- very important step of that in recent weeks, we completed the full Epic integration with OSU. The feedback in this early phase has been extremely positive, starting from the senior leadership all the way down to the clinician leaders and the clinicians in the individual departments within OSU. The integration with Epic is really a critical part of this. This is a bidirectional flow of information. So Veris data is available to the clinicians within Epic. But as importantly and perhaps more importantly, the patient -- the clinician and the patients can access their record within the workflow that we offer within our platform. And so that's been really helpful in improving engagement with the clinical team, and we expect to really leverage that and show increasing growth and increasing adoption across an increasing number of departments within the OSU cancer center. In addition, as we discussed at the last earnings call, we're making really solid progress with the implantable physiologic monitor and expect to have a launch date in late submission in the latter part of this year to the FDA under the 510(k) designation. Right around the time of our last call, we had engaged with a new vendor that was capable of not just the design and development of all aspects of the electronics and the structure of the device itself of the implantable device, but is also the entity that will be the early manufacturer of this device. That work is going extremely well. It's under budget, and it's focused on completing all of the success -- all of the design work to capture the physiologic signal. We are -- and put us in a position to enter design freeze, completion of the development process and submission to FDA for clearance and subsequent commercial launch. Veris is sufficiently capitalized to fund that development as Veris raised capital last year to do so. In addition, to highlight, again, the topic we've discussed before, as we're gearing up to, on the commercial phase with our strategic engagement with OSU and as we're making solid progress on the development of the implantable device, we're developing and looking forward to executing on an expanded strategic vision for Veris. Really fundamentally, this is a transformation of Veris from a pure-play remote patient monitoring company to one that's more broadly focused on AI and AI-based tools, clinical decision tools. We have a project that we're launching on developing a risk stratification tool for cancer patients to identify those at risk of developing complications and readmissions. And in addition, we're expanding the offering to include clinical support services so that will -- our own clinical team will be able to provide the ability to offer triage services for alerts as they come into the system. We've learned that, that's an important part of adoption as physicians -- sorry, the clinicians are already somewhat overwhelmed with data. That activity as well as the learnings and our experience with OSU will put us in a position later this year to begin leveraging that commercial success to additional systems, initially additional large cancer centers in the form of OSU, we're also looking to explore engagements with PE-backed networks of smaller oncology practices. So that work is ongoing. And again, we're really excited both on the development of the implantable on expanding our activities with OSU and putting us in a position to execute on this expanded strategic vision as we enter the latter half of the year. Now let's talk about some details of our relaunching of our MedTech portfolio. As I mentioned, we feel like a key aspect of this, a key element of this has been hiring the right leader for this. And so we're excited and we'll announce this in more detail in the coming days that Joe Virgilio is joining us as Senior Vice President and Chief Business Officer for Medical Devices for PAVmed, and he will lead as Chief Executive Officer, the Medical Device subsidiaries under PAVmed. That will start with 2 companies, PortIO, which we've talked about before. We've made some effort to raise capital there, but we clearly realized that in order to do so, in order to reboot PortIO and reengage on the IDE study that will lead to FDA submission, clearance and commercial launch that we need a dedicated leadership for that. And with Joe, we now have that. We have previously announced that we had engaged with Duke University to license exciting technology in the endoscopic space, in the GI endoscopy space that allows the operator to diagnose late-stage precancer stages without the need for biopsy. That license agreement has now been fully executed, and it's now resides within a new subsidiary called [ Arcteris ], and we'll be providing additional details on that. And Joe Virgilio will be running that project as well, which is now proceeding along a sponsored research agreement with the laboratory at Duke that's been developing this technology. And our vision here is goes beyond these 2 entities. So we have an active and expanding pipeline. I do have to say upon completion of the restructuring that we immediately started getting inbound inquiries from bankers, from other companies that have sought to partner with us on various medical technologies, and we are actively evaluating those and looking for ones that fit nicely within our pipeline, and those will enter our pipeline and our portfolio under Joe Virgilio's leadership. And with that, I'll hand the call over to Dennis for an update on the financials. Dennis McGrath: Thanks, Lishan, and good morning, everyone. Our summary financial results for the fourth quarter and the year were reported in our press release that has been distributed. On the next 4 slides, I'll emphasize a few key highlights from the fourth quarter and the year, but I encourage you to consider those remarks in the context of the full disclosures covered in our annual report on Form 10-K as filed with the SEC. A couple of reminders as our financials, particularly the income statement with year-over-year comparisons will for this last annual report, illustrate periods before September 10, 2024, with Lucid's operating results being consolidated into the presented PAVmed results versus the 2025 periods without Lucid's operating results being consolidated into the PAVmed financials. We do present some supplementary information in Footnote 4 of the 10-K that will provide some help in the comparisons. So with regard to the balance sheet, you'll recall from our investor update call since this time last year that the company has engaged in a multistep process to regain compliance with the NASDAQ listing standard for minimum equity, which it did in February of last year and again this year in January for compliance with the minimum bid price standard. Our focus throughout was to position the company for longer-term financial stability. This was a multistep process that Lishan highlighted that spanned nearly 18 months with 3 key recapitalization steps landing PAVmed on firm financial footing with its recent financing that closed on February 3rd. The steps included deconsolidating Lucid from PAVmed's consolidated financial statements in September 2024 and an interim phase of restructuring our convertible debt in January 2025 whereby we exchanged about 80% of our outstanding convertible debt for a new Series C preferred equity. And lastly, just recently in February, redeeming the convertible debt and the Series C with an infusion of equity capital plus some long-term debt. This slide reflects the balance sheets for year-end 2025 and 2024, both after deconsolidation, which occurred on September 10, 2024. So a couple of key things to point out on each of these balance sheets. Cash burn rate of $1.5 million for the fourth quarter reflects the Veris operating costs, including approximately $600,000 of outside contractor development costs associated with the implantable device, which has been funded by the two Veris-related financings, namely $2.3 million in the first quarter of '25 and $2.5 million in the second quarter of '25 to support the development toward the FDA submission of Veris' implantable device. Additionally, there was approximately $200,000 in Delaware franchise taxes and $300,000 of annual compensation expenses that were paid. The equity method investment balance of $34 million at the end of last year reflects the 31.3 million Lucid shares mark-to-market and shows an $8.5 million year-over-year increase consistent with the 33% increase in Lucid's stock during 2025. At present, PAVmed continues to be the single largest shareholder of Lucid Diagnostics with ownership of approximately 18% of the common shares outstanding. Although PAVmed no longer has voting control of Lucid, PAVmed, together with its Board and management still have significant influence over Lucid with approximately 25% voting interest. Shares outstanding today, including unvested RSAs are approximately 6.4 million shares, including approximately 4.6 million shares issued upon the conversion of the Series D upon the approval from the shareholders this past Friday. The GAAP year-ending outstanding shares of 900,000 are reflected on the slide as well as on the face of the balance sheet in the 10-K. GAAP shares do not reflect unvested RSA amounts. Approximately 433 shares were issued, reflecting conversions of the Series C preferred prior to the redemption on February 3rd. Next slide, please. We thought it might be helpful to walk you through how the recent financing changes the financial strength of the company. So we put this non-GAAP pro forma balance sheet together to illustrate the changes. What you see in the first column is a condensed balance sheet derived directly from the published 10-K without change. Next, we highlight the 2 securities and their balances that were redeemed and replaced with $30 million of equity in the form of short-term preferred security that has been converted into common concurrent with the shareholder approval. Additionally, $15 million of long-term 15% interest-only 3-year debt was put in place to complete the redemption of the convertible securities. Accompanying the Series D preferred security is a $30 million warrant with an exercise price of $6.50 per common share. The warrants are callable 30 days after the CMS publication of the draft EsoGuard coverage policy. Additionally, Veris has about $2.5 million of warrants that are exercisable after the implantable device is FDA cleared. We added a Veris column to show the recent pre-money value of $35 million, reflecting the valuation at the time of the direct financing into the subsidiary. Comparatively, the GAAP financials in the 10-K reflect $38 million of assets, which are completely offset by the sum total of the convertible debt and the Series C preferred. After the financing in February, the far right column now illustrates a company with total assets over $100 million and $15 million of long-term debt. There were 6 key investment themes that were attractive to the investors in this transaction, including valuation disconnect, which presented an opportunity, PAVmed's market cap did not reflect the sum of the parts of the underlying assets. Second, there was an overhang from legacy securities driving mispricing. The structure of these legacy securities no longer aligned with the company's future development plans. Investors also saw that with recapitalization, they believe that it would unlock value. A clean cap table would align market cap and enterprise value combined with a limited supply of stock in the market. Fourth, inexpensive leverage to Lucid Diagnostics. This is a pure arbitrage opportunity in advance of the Medicare announcement. Fifth, additional optionality across high potential health care assets was a driving interest, Veris, [ Arcteris ], PortIO and others. And lastly, a balanced capital structure to maximize strategic flexibility. The right mix of equity, $60 million in this case for the exercise of the warrants and debt $15 million, was a key premise in financially engineering for future success while extending the cash runway of the company to be opportunistic while also developing and commercializing the non-Lucid asset portfolio. Next slide on the P&L. Similar to past presentations, this P&L slide provides some GAAP and non-GAAP year-over-year and quarterly and annual comparisons. As cautioned earlier in my comments, there are some significant differences in how the information is compared between the comparative periods, given the changes in PAVmed's financial control of Lucid and importantly, the GAAP construct for deconsolidating Lucid on September 10, 2024, which somehow somewhat blurs the historical understanding of the information for PAVmed as a stand-alone entity. GAAP does not allow the presentation for prior periods on the face of financial statements to be similarly adjusted. Although as mentioned, there are some supplemental information in the footnotes of the financials in the 10-K. So on a pro forma basis and purely for illustrative purposes on this slide only, the Veris revenue and the Lucid management fee are combined, collectively more than $3 million per quarter. It visually aligns PAVmed's income sources versus its operating expenses. For SEC reporting purposes, the MSA income is below the line item. Furthermore, for the fourth quarter, you see on the slide a GAAP net loss of $2.8 million before NCI, noncontrolling interest and preferred dividends. This includes noncash charges of about $1 million, which then reconciles to a non-GAAP loss of $942,000. That loss is comprised of about $500,000 of Veris contractor development costs for the implantable device and about $200,000 of annual Delaware franchise taxes that occurs once a year. Happy to answer any detailed questions on the slide in the Q&A, but I think it's more informative to look at the fourth quarter stand-alone information presented not only in the slide, but in the full fourth quarter information presented in our press release that shows the company baseline bias of operating at near cash flow breakeven and incurring incremental PAVmed expenses for development activities that are offset by dedicated financing or funding. Next slide. With regard to the non-GAAP operating expenses. On this slide, you see a graphic illustration of our operating expenses over time as presented in more detail in our press release. Total non-GAAP OpEx since the Lucid deconsolidation in 2024 has been nearly flat for the 4 previous quarters. The fourth quarter OpEx were offset by approximately $1.2 million in a onetime reimbursement for Lucid for annual compensation expenses allocable to Lucid with the balance reflecting the franchise taxes and the Veris R&D costs just mentioned. OpEx increases moving forward are likely to simply be tied to the R&D efforts to get the Veris implantable device submitted and cleared by the FDA for which the 2025 Veris-related financings are supporting. With that, operator, let's open it up for questions. Operator: [Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Jeremy Pearlman with Maxim Group. Jeremy Pearlman: So just first, I wanted to focus on the commercial relationship with OSU. You said you're well underway. What are some of the key metrics you're trying to keep track of and learn before you feel comfortable rolling this out to other large institutions? Is there a time frame for that? Maybe help us understand how -- what you hope the current commercial relationship to become before you roll it out to other institutions. Lishan Aklog: Yes. That's great. Thanks for the question. Happy to elaborate on that a bit. So in terms of the clinical value of the Veris platform, we established that during a pilot that occurred, and that's actually last year, and that was what led to the commercial engagement. The commercial engagement has fairly high expectations. It involves a target of 1,000 -- a minimum of 1,000 patients within the first year. And we are in a very structured plan on rolling out the platform across various departments, starting with the 3 departments that were under the pilot program and then expanding to new departments along the way. So our internal engagement with OSU as to how that's proceeding as it really relates to executing on that project plan, bringing on the new departments and according to that plan and also the trajectory towards that goal of 1,000 patients during the first year. We call this a strategic partnership because beyond just simply utilizing the platform in a commercial setting, it's also -- we've also developed a registry. So those patients will be enrolled and data will be collected, and we'll be able to provide future target -- commercial targets data on this adoption during the commercial phase beyond the pilot phase. So that's -- we're not -- we haven't been reporting sort of month-to-month numbers with regard to that, but I can tell you at a high level that we're on track and on schedule to do so. The planning on that was, in fact, based on when we completed EHR integration. So it should be clear to everybody being integrated, EHR is really a central depot for the flow of information within -- particularly within large medical centers. And so now that we are on the platform, there's a full visibility of the Veris data on Epic as well as our preferences for the clinicians to use our platform as a primary portal to the patient's care because it provides the real-time physiologic data that comes through our platform and it does so in a cancer-specific way beyond what they can get using Epic. And so that's -- that launched fairly recently, and we expect with that launch that they'll be able to now start accelerating the trajectory towards that target 1,000 and again, their goal -- that's a minimum, the goal and expectation is that we will exceed that. I would just -- to your second point about how that relates to expanding our commercial team, we have the information that we need. We have the data -- initial data from the pilot program in terms of the clinical benefit that we would need to expand to other sites. What's holding us back on that is really, we're focusing our limited capital resources at this point to getting the implantable across the finish line to FDA submission and clearance. And that's what we -- the capital that we raised last year was really targeting that. And we will -- although we have some legacy engagements with some other -- a dozen or so other academic cancer centers, we're not deploying kind of the commercial resources and hiring the commercial resources that would be necessary to really do a broader commercial launch, and we would expect to do that in full force after the clearance of the implantable, although we're not ruling out some limited expansion of that over the interval of time between now and then now that things are well off the ground. One aspect of that, that we think will be important, and I've mentioned this in engagement with other centers and will require some capital resources, although we believe we can charge for this service is the clinical support side of things. OSU has a very sophisticated call center mechanism. So they already have resources in place that can triage and screen alerts and information so that the individual care and clinicians are not overwhelmed. And many other centers, including major other cancer centers don't necessarily have that full-fledged system. So one of the things that we've concluded and we've learned from our experience with OSU and in previous discussions with other cancer centers is to have that functionality available so that we can offer our -- members of our own clinical team to provide sublevel to various levels depending on what's desired by the center, various levels of triage. And so that's something we have -- we do have a clinician already on our team that's helping us build that. That's learning from the -- from her engagements with interacting with OSU as to how to develop that. But that's something that would be really a predicate to a broader expansion, and that's something we intend to develop over time. So a bit of a long-winded answer, but hopefully gives you some perspective on what -- how we're viewing our future commercial expansion. Jeremy Pearlman: Yes. That was really helpful. Great information. Then maybe just one more question related to the -- you said you mentioned there's new risk stratification tools and other tools that you could integrate into the system to the Veris platform. Is that -- are those -- I don't know, whenever they -- whenever these tools -- when they're ready, are they -- as part of the contract with OSU to allow them you to integrate them into already the patients that are using the device? Or do you have to amend or you're planning on finalizing those and then rolling those out maybe further down the line? Lishan Aklog: Yes. So there's -- I think there's two aspects to your question. One is kind of the development work, and that's not trivial. So I don't want to give the impression that we have these tools ready to go and to implement and to integrate within our platform. Those AI-based tools require data -- extensive data, and we are in discussions with OSU on how exactly to utilize the data that we're collecting as well as legacy data they have to inform the development of these technologies. And part of our strategic engagement with them contemplated a partnership on the development of these kinds of tools. So the way I would view this perspective is really a broader kind of strategic vision to evolve Veris from its original vision of being primarily focused on remote patient monitoring, which is really just serving as a conduit for important physiologic and symptomatic data from the patient to the clinicians to do so in a very timely way to bring up -- to highlight potential risks that may arise. And we know from our experience to date that Veris works extraordinarily well at doing that. But we believe that in this era, the value added from going beyond just as being a conduit for information, but to provide truly sophisticated AI-based clinical decision support tools are really becoming standard practice when it comes to digital health offerings, and that's what we're seeking to do. That requires time and that does require resources and capital. And so we're in the early stages of that. So I would view that as articulating sort of a near-term and medium-term vision, partnership with OSU on the development of that. Certainly, at the time we would launch that, whether it's in a preliminary phase on the research side, any patient that was already on the platform would be obviously -- we would integrate it within the platform, and they would have -- their care could be impacted by those additional support tools. Jeremy Pearlman: Okay. Understood. Great. And then just maybe just last question, jumping to the new imaging technology that you licensed from Duke. I know you mentioned you're going to provide some more information shortly, but maybe you could just right now on the call, is there anything clinically that needs to be done with that technology? And then what -- before you could roll it out? And then maybe what type of commercial plans you might have for that? Lishan Aklog: Yes. That's still in the early phases. So let's be clear about that. That's a technology as we described in the sort of the press release when we entered into the letter of intent, we will provide a full press release announcing the full license agreement that was executed and Joe Virgilio's role in overseeing [ Arcteris ] falls under that. But just as a reminder, that's a little bit more detail on our technology. The technology is an optical technology that combines well-established technology called OSC with newer technology called a/LCI. And the combination of the two implemented at the end of an endoscope, a tool that can be deployed through an endoscope can at the time of an endoscopy of the lower esophagus can image abnormal tissue, tissue that has -- that appears to be -- to have Barrett's esophagus, the precancerous condition in order to discriminate between early and late precancer. So non-dysplastic Barrett's esophagus, which is the earliest precancer to dysplastic Barrett's esophagus, which is the later precancer that requires intervention to prevent cancer. Obviously, those of you who follow along on Lucid understand how an important part of the paradigm of the management of esophageal precancer that distinction is that when someone has this precancerous condition. So it's critical to distinguish in early and late because late is where we intervene. Right now, that distinction is made purely on a biopsy. And so the patient gets a biopsy and then they come back. If the biopsy comes back for dysplasia for the late-stage precancer, they undergo a definitive ablation or eradication therapy to prevent cancer. The promise of this technology is that it's capable with a very, very high sensitivity in their early clinical experience as a part of a partnership between Duke and UNC at detecting using these optical techniques, dysplasia. It does that by measuring the diameter of the nuclei in a very clever and sophisticated way with incredibly excellent performance that, frankly, will likely outperform any molecular diagnostic test based on the initial data. And the advantage of that is that if you can diagnose it on the spot, on endoscopy then you can, in the future, prove that you can bypass biopsies and do an ablation on the spot. So that would be very transformational for how esophageal precancer is managed. You would look, you would have visible evidence of precancer. You would use this technology, the [ Arcteris ] technology to image and determine whether that patient had a high likelihood of that area being dysplastic and then right off the -- right there, do the ablation procedure on the spot. So that would be transformational. So this work is still in the early phases. It was used in the clinical setting that documented in real patients with real precancer, its efficacy. That data is published now. And so there is work to be done to modify the technology to be more where the form factor size and form factor can be more applicable to a broad commercial launch. So that was the first step, and that's happening under a sponsored research agreement in the laboratory, Dr. Wax's Laboratory at Duke, where those revisions and that redesign of the probe is underway. Once that's done, then the probe will be deployed in another round of patients in partnership with Dr. Shaheen at UNC. And once we have design freeze and have demonstrated that, then we'll complete the product development process, secure what we believe is a 510(k) FDA pathway for clearance and then subsequent commercialization. So that's a bit down the road. Operator: [Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from Ed Woo with Ascendiant Capital. Edward Woo: Yes. Congratulations on all the progress. I had a quick question. You mentioned that you guys are now ready to kind of engage in expanding your medical device portfolio with new technology. Is there any particular areas or products that you might be interested in? Lishan Aklog: Yes. Thanks, Ed. Glad you gave me a chance to kind of maybe flesh out my previous comment about that. It's been -- it was really quite remarkable, honestly, after we closed the last restructuring and financing frankly, within days, we were getting calls. And I'll actually highlight something that wasn't clear in my prepared remarks. It's not just in the medical device side, it's actually across the board. We've gotten inquiries on really interesting diagnostic companies, molecular diagnostic companies, medical devices as well as pharma assets. So a good number. And just -- I believe it's just been a month since we completed that transaction. And it's really because this really goes back to the roots of PAVmed where we were also in a position where people contacted us as possible partners. That's what led to Lucid and Veris of us having access to those technologies. And it's really exciting that folks now view us in a position to be able to continue that legacy that brought those other assets into the fold. I would say on the medical device side, we are -- there's obviously interest in technologies that align with the GI space, right? So our interest in [ Arcteris ] and the interest of the folks at Duke in inquiring about that obviously has to do with the fact that we have in Lucid extensive experience with esophageal disease, with Barrett's esophagus and otherwise. And so I would say we're open for inquiries across the board. PortIO is in the vascular access space. There's been activity in a broader sense. So we're not limiting ourselves to any particular specialty, but certainly, GI things related to gastroesophageal reflux to Barrett's esophagus and so forth, obviously capture our attention because we have obviously a substantial amount of internal expertise there. Operator: There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call over to Dr. Lishan Aklog for closing remarks. Lishan Aklog: Great. Thanks, operator, and thank you all for taking the time and for your attention this morning. We appreciate, as always, the thoughtful and informed comments and questions from our covering analysts. And hopefully, you found those -- that discussion useful as well. Really, I hope my goal and our hope is that you leave today with a pretty clear set of takeaways here that PAVmed's corporate structure and balance sheet is now fixed. It was a long and somewhat painful process to get here, but we're here. It's two subsidiaries, commercial subsidiaries are both making strong commercial progress and approaching key milestones. Obviously, they're at different points in their corporate life cycles, but really good progress on both of those. Both of them have been also capable of showing their ability to raise capital independent of PAVmed over time. The new -- obviously, news that we're focused on today is that our medical device portfolio is relaunching. We're really excited to have Joe on board and his leadership not only to move [ Arcteris ] and PortIO forward, but also puts us in a really good position to evaluate the inflow of opportunities that have been brought to us already in hardly a month after we've been in a position to do so. And so the fact that we're getting those inquiries both from banks and from innovators and from academic medical centers, I think, is a testament to the hard work that's gone into fixing the structure and the balance sheet and the sort of sense of confidence that we're in a good position to go back to our roots there. So all I can say is that we believe PAVmed the back that our founding mission and our structure of subsidiaries and our shared services model and the economies of scale that go with that, that we really feel like we're now in a really good position to take advantage of that structure of that history and of the opportunities that are coming before us. So with that, as always, we encourage you to continue to keep abreast of our progress. And please follow our news releases, our quarterly updates and calls in the future as well as through our website and social media. And of course, always feel free to reach out to us if you have any specific questions. So with that, I hope everyone has a great day. Thank you very much. Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference call for today. We thank you for participating and ask that you please disconnect your lines.
Xia Yangfang: Dear investors, analysts, friends from the media, good morning. CMB 2025 Annual Result announcement will now begin. I am Head of the Office of the Board of Directors of China Merchants Bank, Xia Yangfang. We have released the 2025 annual results last Friday. And this conference will be carried out both offline and online webcasting. Now please allow me to introduce the attendee of today's on-site meeting. Sitting on the podium, they are Mr. Miao Jianmin, Chairman; Mr. Wang Liang, President; Mr. Peng Jiawen, Executive Vice President, CFO and Secretary of the Board of Directors; Mr. Xu Mingjie, Executive Vice President and Chief Risk Officer; Mr. Zhou Tianhong, Chief Information Officer. Joining on-site and online, we also have Non-Executive Director, Mr. Zhu Liwei; Independent Director, Mr. Tian Hongqi, Mr. Li Chaoxian, Ms. Li Jian, Mr. Wong Yuk Shan, and Mr. Lu Liping, and also relevant Heads of Department of CMB. On behalf of CMB, I would like to extend a warm welcome to your participation, and thank you for your long attention, support and investment in CMB. Today's meeting will have 2 sessions. One, we will invite Mr. Miao, Mr. Wang to introduce the bank's 2025 result, which takes around 30 minutes. And the second part is the Q&A session, which takes around 1 hour and 30 minutes. The meeting will be provided with Chinese to English simultaneous interpretation. Now we will have the floor to Chairman, Miao; and President Wang on CMB's 2025 performance. Jianmin Miao: Dear investors, analysts, friends from the media, good morning. Welcome to CMB's 2025 Annual Results Announcement. Today's results announcement will be introducing contents of 3 parts. First, I will introduce group's 2025 annual results. And then I'll give the floor to President Wang to introduce the operational information and then I will briefly introduce our outlook and strategy for the year 2026. In 2025, we seek to quality, efficiency and scale, coordinated development and strive to build a world-class value creation bank and speed up our transformation towards the full initiative development and promote high-quality development, maintain good operations amid stability and strong resilience and innovation vitality, which was reflected in 5 parts. First, we remain steady in terms of our operation, and we cope with the downward trend of the interest rate in sufficient demand and growth pressure. Our revenue and profit realized both dual growth ROAA and ROAE maintain a leading in the industry. Net operating income RMB 337.2 billion, up by 0.05%. Net profit attributable to the bank's shareholder RMB 150.2 billion, up by 1.21%. ROAA, 1.19%; ROAE, 13.44%, down by 0.09 ppt and 1.05 ppt year-on-year. Net interest income, RMB 215.6 billion, up by 2.04%. NIM was 1.87%, down by 11 bps year-on-year, with a narrower reduction and maintain a leading level in the industry, influenced by the fluctuation in the bond market. Non-interest net income, RMB 121.7 billion, down by 3.31% year-on-year, among which net fee and commission income increased by 4.39% year-on-year, which is recording the first positive growth since the year 2022. We seek to refine management and continue to promote reduction in cost and maintain a cost-to-income ratio of 32.01%. Secondly, we maintained growth in asset and liability and maintain our advantages in low funding cost. Assets exceeding RMB 13 trillion; total loans and advances, RMB 7.26 trillion, up by 5.37%. General loan RMB 6.94 trillion, up by 6.57%. Total liability, RMB 11.79 trillion, up by 7.98%. Total customer deposit RMB 9.84 trillion, up by 8.13%. Demand deposits daily average balance account for 49.4% remain at a high level. Interest-bearing liabilities average cost ratio 1.26%, down by 38 bps year-on-year, and we maintain our advantages in low funding costs. Thirdly, we consolidate our structural advantages and have strong capital strength. Non-interest income accounts for 36.08%, maintained leading in the industry. Net fee and commission income accounts for 61.85% of the total non-interest income. Retail finance makes over half of the contribution. Its net operating income and pretax profit account for 56% and 50% of the total. And we also maintained quite good level of CAR under the advanced measurement approach. Core Tier 1 CAR, Tier 1 CAR and CAR were 14.16%, 16.51% and 18.27%, down by 0.7, 0.97 and 0.81 percentage points compared with the end of last year. Under the weighted approach, the core Tier 1 CAR, Tier 1 CAR and CAR were 11.92%, 13.9% and 15% down by 0.51, 0.73 and 0.73 percentage points compared with the end of last year. All levels of CAR's decrease was mainly influenced by the interim dividend payout and the reduction of OCI. Fourth, asset quality remained stable and risk compensation capability remained to be robust. NPL balance, RMB 68.2 billion, up by RMB 2.6 billion. NPL ratio, 0.94%, down by 0.01 percentage point. Credit cost 0.6%, down by 0.05 percentage points. Allowance coverage ratio 391.79%, down by 20.19 percentage points. Loan loss reserve 3.68%, down by 0.24 percentage points, maintaining a high level of risk compensation capability. Fifthly, we strive to build a digital and intelligent CMB and actively practice ESG philosophy. We focus on AI, increased IT input and talent reserve. In 2025, our IT input was RMB 12.9 billion, accounting for 4.31% of the bank's net operating income. R&D personnel exceeded 11,000 people accounting for over 9% of our total employees. We have an open mindset and embrace cutting-edge technology rollout and implement application and strive to build up our AI systematic advantage. We construct a leading, intelligent, computing infrastructure, model performance and computation efficiency continue to increase. Our core computing rate, our token cost has reached an industry-leading level. Our average token throughput has increased by 10.1x compared with that of 2024. Our bank-wise large model developers exceed 10,000 people, and we continue to introduce the cutting-edge model and implement domain-specific model as many as 183. Our average iteration cycle significantly shortened as well. We deeply implement this technology into our business ecosystem and implement over 800 applications and realize both tech and business value. We build our intelligent era, organizations and teams and construct talent pipeline that are cross functional. We promote deep integration of technology and business and build such intelligent organizational ecosystem. We incorporate ESG philosophy into the bank's development strategy and decision-making and promote sustainable development. We promote the development of green finance and enhance our green operation capability. Green loan, green leasing balance grew by 21% and 23.89%. We assist enterprises to issue nearly 100 ESG bonds and raise their firms to support energy conservation, clean production, clean transportation and other industries. We attach great importance to green investment. Our companies and subsidiaries are holding more and more balance of green loans, green bonds and ESG products. We continue to strengthen our green operation and deepen the carbon emission reduction and enhance our own carbon management refined level. We continue to enhance the quality and efficiency of serving real economy, tech, green, inclusive and manufacturing loan balance have taken up more and more proportion. And mentioned, MSCI ESG rating has received the highest level of AAA rating for 2 consecutive years. This is my brief overview of the 2025 result. Now I'll give the floor to President Wang on the bank's operational information. Ying Wang: Thank you, Chairman Miao. Now I'll introduce the bank's 2025 operational information. The year 2025 is an extraordinary year facing multiple challenges under the leadership of the Board Directors, we have with good pressure, maintain determination and promote the international comprehensive, differentiated and intelligent transformation and maintain a good trend of operational results and our business are moving towards new and better direction and building up our own strength and competitiveness, which were mainly reflected in the following 5 parts. We continue to consolidate our customer base and our business development are both directing towards good volume and quality. We remain customer-centric and strengthen high-quality customer acquisition and strive to build our -- build ourselves into clients' principal bank and first bank to approach. Retail customers totaled 224 million, up by 6.7%, among which Golden Sunflower and above clients, 5.93 million, up by 13.29%. Customers holding wealth products amount to 64 million, up by 10.15%. For corporate customers, it was totaled 3.62 million, which was up by 14.4%, among which corporate customers newly acquired reached 657,000 serving tech clients as many as 350,000. And for corporate withholding customers, their amount was 1.53 million. We also optimized category asset allocation. Total loans and advances account for 55% of the total asset. Retail loan accounts for 51% of the total loans and advances and investment assets accounts for 31.77% of the total assets. Interbank assets account for around 7.36%, down by 0.02 percentage points. Bill discounting account for 4.43%, down by 1.09 percentage points. We continue to strengthen liability management and enhance the proportion of high-quality liability. Total deposits account for 83.43% of the liability, up by 0.12 percentage points. Core deposits daily average balance account for 87% of the total customer deposits daily average balance, up by 1.17 percentage points. Interbank deposits grew rapidly. Its demand deposit account for 93.77%. Customer deposit cost ratio 1.17%, down by 37 bps. Interbank deposit cost ratio, 1.02%, down by 29 bps. Secondly, our 4 major segments are developing in a balanced and coordinated manner, and we are showing stronger development resilience. First, we secured a dominant position of retail finance and our leading advantage were further consolidated. Retail AUM balance exceeded RMB 17 trillion, up by 14.44%. Year-round increment reached RMB 2.16 trillion, hitting a record high. Retail customer deposits totaled RMB 4.5 trillion, up by 11%. Retail demand deposits, daily average balance accounts for 47% of the total. Retail loan, RMB 3.72 trillion, up by 2.07% market share growing steadily. We strive to overcome adverse factors such as weak demand and consumption, our credit card business continued to grow in their market share. Active credit card users surpassed 70 million, developed against the trend. The transaction value was RMB 4.08 trillion, down by 7.62%. Credit card loan amounted to RMB 939.1 billion, down by 0.92%. The credit card transaction value and loan balance remain leading in the industry. And secondly, we speed up to build our characteristic in corporate finance and build up our strength in specialized segments. The FPA balance was RMB 6.73 trillion, up by 11.08%. Corporate loan balance, RMB 3.22 trillion, up by 12.29%. We focus on modern industrial system. We prioritize our loan granting in tech, green, inclusive manufacturing and other industries and increase our competitiveness. Corporate deposit balance RMB 5.34 trillion, up by 5.46%. Corporate deposits are accounting for 50% of the total. And retirement finance improve in both quality and efficiency. Annuity and trust surpassed RMB 300 billion pension fund under custody RMB 1.55 trillion. Private pension accounts exceeded RMB 15 million and contribution was among the top in the industry. Transaction banking focused on the trade finance and treasury management needs of the corporate customers. The number of customers using treasury management cloud further specialized. Third, Investment Banking and Global Market business further specialize and innovate. FPA contributed by IB business grew by 10.38%. The bank, as lead underwriter that instrument was RMB 579.16 billion. Number of clients in GM business of client flow trading and transaction volume both grew. RMB bond investment transaction value grew by 1.96x. Bill discounting business grew by 12.89% ranking second in the market. Fourth, wealth management and asset management continue to expand. We enhanced asset allocation capability grasp opportunities arising from the capital market and the wealth management business experienced robust growth. Three asset allocation clients was amounted to RMB 11.76 million, up by 13.31%. Retail wealth management product balance grew by 12%. Agency distribution of non-money market fund, trust scheme and premium -- insurance premium grew by 18.13%, 150.65% (sic) [ 155.65% ] and 25.93%. (sic) [ 25.96%. ] Corporate wealth management product balance reached RMB 524.9 billion, up by 31.28%. Asset Management business totaled RMB 4.71 trillion, up by 5.13% as a custody scale, it ranks among the top in the industry, reaching RMB 26.09 trillion. Extensive wealth management income grew by 16.91%, top for the past 3 years and accounting for 52% of the total fee and commission income and increased by 5.78 percentage point. Fifth, we speed up the business development in key regions and enhanced the contribution brought by the branches in these areas. We have 16 branches in key areas and their customer base, AUM, core deposits and other key indicators are having higher level of growth than the average level of other branches. And retail AUMs proportion increased by 0.79 percentage points, and the corporate loan balance account as proportion was up by 0.12 percentage points. Third, for international and comprehensive development, we actively build up our new strength. We actively serve Chinese enterprises going global and resident needs of making global allocation of their assets enhance our service capability. The overseas contributions are making more and more contribution. Their total asset grew by 12.88%, and the net operating income grew by 33.78%. Institutions in Hong Kong grasp opportunities and make good performance. Their total assets grew by 13.84%. Net operating income grew by 36%. Net income grew by -- net profit grew by 63% and CMB Wing Lung Bank's retail AUM grew by 22.14% for CMBI. The number of Hong Kong IPO underwritten and sponsored actually ranked #2 and #4 respectively. For cross-border business, it shows strong momentum. Number of corporate customers in respect of international BOP exceeded 100,000 and the volume of international BOP grew by 12%. We deepened our comprehensive development and subsidiaries delivered various performing highlights. Their total asset was RMB 952.8 billion, up by 11%. Their operating income accounted for 12.26% of the group's total, up by 1.96 percentage points. Net profit, RMB 16.38 billion, up by 41%. CMB leasing focused on new energy, new infrastructure, new tech, new mobility, and new intelligent manufacturing and new material, aka to 6 new industries to build their service mechanism. Their total asset was RMB 325.3 billion, up by 5%. CMB Wealth Management's product scale, RMB 2.64 trillion, up by 6.88%, maintained the top in the industry and equity-related products actually increased in their market share. CMB Fund has managed a total scale of RMB 961.5 billion, up by 9.29%. CIGNA & CMAM insurance found under Fiduciary Management RMB 223.3 billion, up by 23%. CMB Investment commence operations, and we make new breakthrough in the layout of our comprehensive development. Fourth, we upheld bottom line of risk and compliance, enhance risk management capability and have an even stronger solid foundation for development. We strictly classify assets and fully expose risks, actively resolve risk assets and maintain a good management of credit, market, operational liquidity and compliant risks and other type of risks. Our asset quality remains stable. Special mention loan ratio 1.43%, up by 0.14 percentage points. Overdue loan ratio, 1.25% down by 0.08 percentage points. NPL to loans overdue for 60 days ratio was 1.18%. NPL formation ratio, 1.03%, down by 0.02 percentage point. As we are facing with the profound adjustment of the real estate market and rising individual risk, some mismatch in supply and demand in some industries, we seek to risk-oriented approach and dynamically adjust risk strategy and resolve risk in key indicators. Corporate NPL ratio, 0.89%, down by 0.17 percentage points. Property NPL ratio 4.78%, down by 0.16 percentage points. Manufacturing NPL ratio, 0.43%, down by 0.06 percentage points. Retail NPL ratio 1.06%, up by 0.1 percentage point. Residential NPL ratio was -- residential mortgage NPL ratio 0.51%. Retail SME NPL ratio 1.22% and credit card loan NPL ratio, 1.74% and consumption loan NPL ratio, 1.02% all remain at a relatively low level in the industry. Fifth, we strengthen the management and innovation to promote a high-quality development and we have strong core momentum for future growth. First, on one hand, we consolidate our foundation and conduct refined management. We consolidate our management to strengthen asset liability, forecast, operations, service and team management so as to guarantee our high-quality development. On the other hand, we continue to promote our innovation capability and maintain a leading technological capability. We consolidate our technological foundation. The overall accessibility or availability of the cloud has surpassed 99.99%. We use hybrid deployment, elastic scaling and other technologies to increase the input/output ratio of cloud. Big data service has covered over 76% of the business personnel. We have been implemented large model in 4 business scenarios and saving 15.56 million men working hours and effectively enhance our efficiency. We upgrade retail Xiao Zhao, intelligent service and construct AI Xiao Zhao service for the corporate clients. We speed up to build our AI organization. Over 98% of the personnel has already passed the preliminary level of competency certificates and adapt to the change of the technological risk condition in the AI era. The above mentioned is the major operational information of the year 2025. Now I'll give the floor to Chairman, Miao, on the 2026 outlook and operational strategy. Jianmin Miao: Now I will briefly introduce the company's outlook and strategy of 2026. Looking into 2026, for the banking industry, challenges and opportunities coexist. On the one hand, the external environment are exerting greater impact. And we see a pricing risk and in geopolitical condition, the world economy are sluggish, multilateralism, free trade are under severe threat. The new and growth driver continue to switch, and there are strong imbalance between supply and demand. The market expectations tend to be weak, and the bank are continuing to face with the 3 lows: low interest rate, low interest spread and low fee rate, and they are taking pressures in their profitability. On the other hand, for Chinese economy, the supporting condition and the future condition has not changed, that the economy will continue to be developing in a good momentum, along with more proactive fiscal policies and monetary policies, we seek to make domestic demand in the dominant position, build up strong domestic market, and we believe that there will be more favorable factors for the operation of commercial bank. In the year 2026, we will stick to our value creation bank strategy and continue to promote our 3 capabilities of wealth management, digital and intelligent technology and risk, expand our moat and explore a new layout of high-quality development. Firstly, we will maintain our strategic determination and follow the developing principle of the banking industry focusing on high-quality tech self-reliance, strengthening the domestic market and high level of opening up and other key areas to seize opportunities and seize the customer need, strengthen the capability of innovation and promote professional differentiated, comprehensive financial service to clients and maximize our value that we can bring to customers, employees, shareholders, partners and the society. Secondly, we will focus and sell through the cycle and maintain our competitive edge. In the low interest rate cycle, we will make sure that we will pay more attention to stabilizing the NIM and maintain industry-leading level. Secondly, we will build up our strength and make up for what we are not good at and strengthen our asset allocation capability, maintain our strength in wealth management business. Third, we pay special attention to the pricing and risk management of credit assets and maintain good asset quality. Fourth, we will promote the reasonable growth of RWA, optimize the capital allocation and maintain high level of CAR. Thirdly, we will seize opportunity to speed up the transformation of the 4 initiatives and build up the new strength, speed up international development and promote overseas institutions to achieve high-quality development, build up our cross-border business and help enterprises going global, promote the comprehensive development of our subsidiaries and increase their contribution to the bank. So to build up our differentiated competitive edge, consolidate our systematic advantages in retail finance and speed up to form a new growth pool in key areas. And we will also speed up our digital and intelligent transformation, stick to AI-first philosophy and build up an intelligent bank, realize the model upgrade and construct our new mode in the new era of AI. Fourth, we will build up our resilience to promote the balanced and coordinated development of the 4 business segments. We'll consolidate the dominant position of retail finance, build up our strengths in corporate finance and promote a stronger and better IB and Global Markets business and speed up the development of Wealth Management and Asset Management business and promote these 4 segments to promote each other and support each other in a higher level and construct a more resilient and competitive business development layout. Fifthly, we will guard our bottom line to consolidate a fortress-style risk and compliance management system. We will stick to prudent and steady risk culture, enhance our capability to judge -- to understand the market, prevent credit risk, market risk, operational risk, liquidity risk and other risks and strengthen AML and internal control management to make sure that CMB could remain steady and resilient in the path of high-quality development. Thank you. Xia Yangfang: Thank you, Chairman and President. Now we will enter into the Q&A session. We will have the questions from the investors and analysts first and then from the media. As we have many participants today, please follow the instruction given by the operator to raise your question, and please limit your question to 1 only. Please raise your name and the agency you represent before having the question. Operator: Now we'll have the first question. [Operator Instructions] The first question, please, from this gentleman. Richard Xu: I'm Richard Xu from Morgan Stanley. And congratulations first for the brilliant results that you have achieved in 2025. And also you have achieved very good results in retail even within this very turbulent external environment. So my question is for the Chairman first. So this year is the start year of the 15th 5-year plan. And what is the plan or strategic vision or expectation from the Board to China Merchants Bank. And nowadays, we have seen very same very fierce competition among the banking sector. So against this backdrop, how can Board ensure the market-oriented mechanism of China Merchants Bank so as to expand its advantage -- competitive advantage? Jianmin Miao: Currently, I think the banking sector is still in a downward cycle. So banks are facing very down mounting challenge. And during the 15th 5-year plan, our requirement from the Board to China Merchants Bank is to stick to the high-quality development and accelerate innovation. It means the high-quality development and stay to the true course. It means to be professional to be market-oriented road. And this is a key to the high-quality development. And also, at the same time, need to have innovation so as to consolidate our strength and also to be differentiated from the peers, and also to accelerate the transformation so as to responding to the challenges, which has been brought out by the downward cycle of the market. And also, what we have seen is to be internationalized and to be more comprehensive operation and also digitalization intelligent banking and also to be differentiated from the peers. These are very 4 key elements of the banks. In terms of internalization, we have achieved quite obvious results in the past 2 years. In terms of the comprehensive operating management, the subsidiaries of the banks are contributing more to the bank's operating income. So this is a very good advantage of CMB as well. And differentiated positioning is also CMB's advantage. From the Board, the business model for CMB will be, that we have advanced business model and also innovation driven and also to have the distinctive feature and also to be the first-class bank, which can create value for -- create value. So this is very important also the moat for CMB. Finally, there will be the digitalization and an intelligent bank. In the past, we have been advanced and also better than peers in terms of technology. Now our -- we want to build up the first digitalization bank among the industry. And later on, we will have our Chief Information Officer, who can supply more. So, market-oriented mechanism is the backbone of CMB. And I think that the reforms of the remuneration system will not affect CMB's market-oriented system. So for CMB, the gene or internet is the corporate culture of CMB. So this is the moat of CMB. And in the past, some of our analysts and also customers are expecting or thinking that different -- have CMB has different moats such as the low cost income -- low-cost funding source, some say that is the retail. But I think the very basic one of our moat is the customer-centric culture, and this has been our corporate culture and is the key our foundation of our business, because we are customer-centered and customers have good experience with the bank. That is why they want to bank with CMB, also deposit with CMB. And the deposit with CMB doesn't mean that they only want to put some money in CMB, but they want to do the financial trading and financial asset management with the CMB. That is why we have the lowest funding cost among the banks. We have the highest demand deposit ratio among the banking peers. So the Board's requirement is to deepen reformation and accelerate internalization and also differentiation. And these are to be intelligent and to be comprehensive operation. So this is very important for CMB. And then I would like to invite Mr. Zhou to supply more for the intelligent banking. Tianhong Zhou: So for the past years, we -- one of the very key issue strategy for CMB is to have technology leading bank. And from last year, we also have made a plan for the next 5 years technology development. So -- and we have fully arrangement plan for the next 5 years. And I think in the next 5 years, the key is to be technology-leading is one of our key strategy. And we all know that AI has been a very important trend. And from -- at the end of 2022, the Chairman has a requirement for CMB is to build ourselves into one of the first intelligent bank among the industry. So we have made quite a lot of efforts on that front. Now in terms of large model, we have made quite good achievement in 2024. We have more explorations and have experience -- has gathered experiences. And Mr. Wang Liang put out the idea of the AI-first strategy, saying that among the whole bank to expand the application and also the mindset of the AI-first strategy. So firstly, we have upgraded our organization and team, which are more applicable to the AI era. And especially large model is a very big breakthrough in the technology history. But it cannot substitute fully the human intelligent. And to some extent, it can be replaced. So we have a kind of analyze about what people are more good at and what AI models are better at and how AI can assist or to be separately work together with our human staff. We have analyzed around 1,580 projects and to analyze how AI can assist on how AI can help with the work. And we have quantitative data on that and some are, say, high-value projects and some are mid-value and some are low value. So, for those high-value projects, which AI can assist more, then we will have more resources to put on. So 69% of them have been already implemented. Altogether, there will be 856 projects that have been implemented or we can call it a scenario that have already been applied among the whole bank. And just now we have in the results announcement brief, the Chairman said we have already implemented this AI application in 856 scenarios. And now we are accelerating the place, so as to analyze and improve the important business procedures. And secondly, I think that AI development is very -- have a very big difference to the traditional software engineer software. So it means that there will be high uncertainties where we are upgrading AI model. So for CMB's experience that we think that 6x of upgrading before we can really put the large model into practice into real work or into real practice. So last year, we have made quite good results in the application of the large model. The upgrading period has been shortened to around 8 days of this model. So -- which means that it's faster for us to apply this large model. And for 2025, so we have achieved quite results in 2024, which shows that for the large model application in CMB, the depth and the width of the application of AI has been expanded in a very fast manner. And I also would like to share with you why important data in this regard. In 2024, the daily throughput of the token is around 10.1x of what we have in 2024. So it's a very fast speed. And daily average token throughput is RMB 25.6 billion. And in important areas, the AI large -- the application of the large model has already exerting -- have taken effect is serving around 10,000 Sunflower customers. And we have over 10,000 assistants for our Sunflower relationship manager and also for how our corporate manager help them to improve the customer recharge ratio by around 14%. And and also for corporate credit loan business and also the AI model is also helping them before loan granting and during the loan lending and also after that, especially for micro loans, around 82% of the micro loan, loan submission and also credit approval is done by AI and large model. So -- and they also -- and also accelerated the approval process of the micro loans, which is 44% faster than what we have last year. And also in the past, for the -- how we can implement the credit approval, approval conclusion in the past that has been done by human beings by the human staff, but now it's assisted by the AI at large model and the system will kind of follow how the credit approval conclusion has been really implemented. And also, it has speed up of our early warning system that is also better than our human staff. And I think the early warning is 42 days faster than what we have in the past. So which you can see that it's both helping us in all fronts, improving business development quality and also improving efficiency. In terms of improving efficiency that for the whole year, it has saved around 15.56 million human -- working hour, has saved that. So this is efficiency improvement of the efficiency. But we all know that AI is improving or is kind of upgrading in a very fast manner, but there is illusion. There's forge that the models are doing. So banks are the area that is highly regulated and need very prudent risk management. So we are fully kind of alert to the illusion of the AI. So and controlling risk is a very important aspect of AI. So, very importantly, we need to be very prudent in developing AI models, which can be reliable and also we have achieved quite good results in 2025. In 2026, I think we will move on and doing more efforts in this regard, better to implement our digitalization and intelligent banking strategy. Xia Yangfang: Thank you. The second question, please. Meizhi Yan: Yan Meizhi from UBS. First of all, congratulations on the very good results in 2025, especially against this very complex environment. And last year, our operating income and profit are both have recorded positive growth is very good. My question is, if we look into 2026 or even forward, how we can expect the growth rate of the operating income and the profit growth such as to be accelerated to around 3% to 5%? And also another question is about our ROE. I know, CMB's ROE has been higher than other banks. Last year, it's around 13.44%. The average banking level is around 9% to 10%. So in the past years, for the ROE side, we are seeing the ROE has been declining for CMB as well. So if we look ahead for the next 2 or 3 years, how will you expect the ROEs bottom? So will be the bottom be around 10% to 11%? So my question is for Mr. Wang -- Mr. Wang Liang. Thank you. Liang Wang: Thank you for your confirmation in our -- of our 2024 results. Before going into your question, I think this year is the 20th year when we first IPO-ed in H-share. We have financed around RMB 31.3 billion in our H-share market raised fast fund. And our total dividend payout is around 2.6x of the fund financing that we have got in the H-share market. And the total CAR ratio of the share pricing is around 15.07%. So I think that even though there is volatilities of our share price, especially during the financial crisis, I think for long-term investors, I think you can make quite a good return from CMB and also we continue to be very firm in creating value for our customer and also to have the return for the investors. And thank you for the long-term trust and long-term investment for our -- for the shareholders in CMB. And that is why we can see our H-share's PB is higher than our A-share's PB. Thank you very much for the overseas investors, especially for our H-share investors. And just now your question was about how we expect the operating and profit growth of our -- in 2026. I think that for the past years for operating income, we have been facing very big pressure over the past years. And this year is 0.01% growth rate. It's kind of the first time that we have recorded a positive income from 2023 and 2024. Finally, it's a positive growth, even though it's a very small growth, but it's a very hard earned one. The small growth can also illustrate or demonstrate that we have been very resilient in our business growth. And this year, why we are facing such a big challenge or pressure? I think, one of that is that, while our traditional advantage lies in retail, but retail business has been affected -- highly affected by the policy side and also highly affected by the external environment. So we try to make up the shortfall from the retail sector by moving up or have more growth on the other business sectors. And this year, we have a slight positive growth this year. But whether we can continue to have the 3% or 5% growth in the next years, I think from the business indicators, we will be very proactive and to make efforts to achieve growth and also such as for the customer base growth and also asset and liability growth as well as especially AUM growth. So these are the preconditions for how we can make growth on the financial data. And in terms of the financial data for this year, our expectation is that -- we think that stable -- we will have stable growth. And also, we want to make improvement. We will try to make improvement in the stable growth, whether we can achieve that goal. It's hard to tell, but we will make efforts to own that, such as in the NIM sector, last year, we stood at 1.87%, 11 bps year-on-year decline. And this year, I think that the year-on-year decline of the NIM will be stably -- will be stably declined, but the magnitude of the decline will be smaller than last year. Last year was a year-on-year decline of 11 bps. This will -- the decline will be smaller than that. The main reason is that from the policy side, I think that we are expecting more rate cuts and also the RRR cut this year. If there will be more rate cut, it means that it will affect our asset yield as well. And the second reason is that when we are looking on the credit side, we are seeing that quite weak credit demand. There is very fierce challenge or competition for the credit. So people are trying to grow more volume. Banks are trying to grow more volume to make up the shortfall from the decline in interest rate. That is why we cannot see the end to a rebound of the interest rates. So this will also pose a challenge to our NIM to our interest income. And the other sector is on the -- factor is on the liability side. On the liability side, last year, the funding cost has been down by 38 bps. Last year funding cost is already one of the lowest among banks. But among the peers, the room for us to further decline will be smaller, and that is why we are still facing pressure on the NIM side. And in terms of the non-interest income, last year, we have seen fast growth on the wealth management fee income so as to make up the shortfall from other non-interest income. But this year, we'll continue to see other fee rate cut policies on such as a mutual fund. So this will also affect our fee income from the agency sales of mutual funds and challenge, that is also a challenge on the fee-based income. And also the third uncertainty comes from risk sector. For the corporate sector is under control and also stably declining. But still, we are facing mounting pressure on the retail side, especially for micro loan consumption loan. So we try to control the risk so as to reduce the credit cost and to maintain a stable profit growth. These are the negative factors that we are facing. And why I say that growth on the operating income and also profit side, we are still under pressure. But last year, we are trending into a better direction. It's more kind of contributed by our active -- where we have active believe we tackled the challenges, how we have responded to that. So we have quite good results last year, which is -- you are seeing it stably turning to a better trend. And as for the question about -- you also asked about the ROE, like this year, we have slower profit growth, but the growth rate for our equity and after the dividend payout, we still have quite a big volume of the equity, which is supplemented to the existing one. That is why equity is -- growth rate is faster than the profit growth rate, which lead to a decline on our ROE side. And ROE this year is 13.44%. And from the Board and also from the senior management, we highly emphasize the level of the ROE. As long as we have high ROE, we can have a relatively stable return to our shareholder. We are strengthening the management on our ROE to improve the return on our capital. But my judgment is that, still we are facing the pressure on ROE decline or the trend will continue. Whether it will bottom out at around 10% or 11%, I think we will control the speed of ROE. I think 10% will be depending on the future external circumstances and also interest rate, I think the 10% will be a bottom for us to have a better control of our ROE because I think a bank if can maintain ROE of 10%, it means a good return for the shareholder. But we also compare that our bank's ROE and also the advanced banks in the world, we think that CMB is still in a leading position. So I think that we will try hard to maintain a sustainable ROE. Jianmin Miao: And for 2026 and for the next few years, I would like to conclude what we have Mr. Wang has just said. The first one is that the cycle is the same, namely the CMB's business cycle is the same, in line with the sector cycle, but we are -- the marginal performance of CMB is better than peers. No matter it's in a downward cycle or upward cycle, I think we are trending toward a more a better trend. And thirdly, we still have our existing advantage during this cycle, even though our business cycle is in the same trend with the sector trend. But marginally, we can see we are improving and also, we have a very obvious advantage. This is a conclusion of our performance. This is my conclusion for CMB's performance in 2026 and continue forward. Xia Yangfang: We'll have another question from the on-site participant. Jia Wei Lam: I am Gary from HSBC. I have a question about NIM outlook. We noticed that in the fourth quarter, your NIM was experiencing quarter-on-quarter growth, which is for the first time for the past 3 years, I would like to learn from the senior management. Do you expect the trend to be continuing in 2026? And when do you expect the turning point of NIM to be up here? How do we understand that? Jiawen Peng: Thank you for your question. So just now President Wang has mentioned a bit about the judgment about NIM. I fully commit that the direction is correct. In 2025, our NIM was 1.87%, down by 11 bps. To see from quarter-on-quarter change, quarter 1 -- 1.91%, 1.86% and 1.83% and 1.83% in quarter 1, 2, 3, 4. There are some characteristics of our NIM. The declining trend continue, but the magnitude actually shortened. In 2025 the reduction was 70 bps. In the annual operation of our NIM, we see some rebounds in the fourth quarter. But there are 3 bps up on quarter-on-quarter change. And for the group-wise, that was 2 bps. You can also see from our external change of the interest rate environment, there are some contribution given by these factors about our NIM. So there are quarter-on-quarter increase for the bank wise in terms of the NIM in the fourth quarter, in asset and liability management of the bank, we have made great achievement. In pricing, we have been quite following the self managing mechanism, and we have strictly followed the principle to give the loan pricing. So generally, we have improving the loan pricing condition. The second perspective is that we have made achievement in improving our structure. We have increased the proportion of assets that are earning higher asset yields. Even though in the demand side, we are experiencing some pressure, but we strive our best to promote the growth in assets, and it has also contributed to the final results. In the fourth quarter, for instance, for some low earning assets, for instance, like bills, we have been reducing its proportion. So all-in-all, that factors contribute to the rebounds of our NIM in the fourth quarter. You just asked about us whether this trend will be continued in the year 2026. So generally, I think my -- our judgment of the development of 2026, we believe that NIM will still decline, but we are having this wish. And we are having this judgment that the magnitude of decline will be smaller. I think this is a trend for the past several years as well. You may expect to see the first quarter data that also was the beginning of the year. But when it comes to our judgment, generally speaking, the NIM will be somewhat lower than that of the quarter 4 indicator. The mainly influencing factors are still those external factors such as weak demand in assets, and it further leads to the declining in the loan pricing. And there are also some technical reasons behind. Last May, there are some LBR cut, and we have some floating pricing loans that will be repriced in the first quarter. That accounts for around 78%. There are around 78% of the loans that are to be repriced in the first quarter. So in the first quarter, it will be a concentrated period of time when we see the most amount of loans to experience repricing. The other part is that deposits. The deposit repricing has not yet complete for the past year. But just now, President Wang also mentioned that deposit repricing for CMB, we should not neglect that CMB has quite a high proportion of demand deposit. We have not that much room to further decline in our deposit cost. So that in the liability side, the cost reduction will attribute less comparatively speaking. In 2026, NIM will continue to reduce, decline, but the magnitude of decline will be better than that of the past year. We will take further measures of liability and asset management. We have made a very accurate and very comprehensive management. We have been asked by our Board to maintain a leading level in NIM and we aim to achieve these goals in the year 2026. The first is to realize the magnitude of decline of NIM to be smaller than that of the past year. And the second is to achieve the stability of NIM as soon as possible. We wish that we could achieve this goal in the second half of the year. And third, we can maintain a leading level in the industry about our NIM. Thank you. Xia Yangfang: Thank you. President, Peng. Let's just wait a second, and we have also got some questions from online. And I think the next question will be given to an online participant from Guotai Haitong Security, Zhu Chenxi. Zhu Chenxi: Can you hear me? I have a question for President Wang. You have just mentioned that CMB has been listed for over 20 years. And you have taken us go through the history, for the past 20 years, such a long period of time, CMB is actually begin to develop -- think about its development model ever since the financial crisis in 2006. I think by that time, you actually penetratedly choose Retail and Wealth management as your development priority. And as we take a look back, this choice has made CMB a leading position ahead of our peers around 1 decade. We have deeply plotted our choice to deeply develop retail finance. And we have experienced a glory brought by the retail strategy in the year 2017 to '21, which was also shown in the evaluation in the capital market. We have also experienced some pressure due to the change in the external environment. Standing in this time point and looking into the future, we are now in a new phase of economic development. How do you consider -- how does CMB consider a new competitive edge for yours in the future? Liang Wang: Thank you for your question. As you say, CMB has been listed -- has been adopting the retail strategy since the year 2004. We have forge our systematic strengths. And this strategy has bring us a lot of contribution in our overall development and retail finance has made over half of the contribution for us in terms of net operating income, in terms of profit and et cetera. And of course, we have overcome some difficulties and experienced some pressure. The retail credit and the credit card business, they are all under external environment pressure and Wealth Management business, the agency distribution of fund management and about insurance policies, we are also experiencing challenges brought by the fee reduction. So this year for CMB, how to adjust ourselves, how to adapt to this new environment and maintain sustainable development, we need to have some new mindset. So on one hand, we have been developing a coordinated and balanced development of the 4 major segments. The 4 major segments are Retail, Corporate, Investment Banking and Global Markets and also Wealth Management and Asset Management. So by consolidating the systematic advantages brought by retail finance, we will consolidate its contribution to CMB and speed up to build up our strength in corporate finance and corporate finance, especially for cross-border finance, manufacturing finance, tech finance and et cetera. They have all made good achievements. For IB and Global Markets business, they are becoming our new growth pole. Asset Management and Wealth Management business, they are all showing good growth momentum. So these 4 major segments, they are coordinated and balanced and supporting each other. And for the second aspect, we will speed up our four initiative development, especially for the international development. For CMB, we propose to develop cross-border business overseas business, FX business. These 3 businesses will be the pillar of our cross-border finance development, our international development. In comprehensive development, we will give full play of our full licensed characteristic and enlarged our subsidiaries development and to make sure that these subsidiaries are the top players in their areas. We have also made good results in these fields. Fourth, we will -- we are also sticking to our differentiated regional development philosophy. Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen used to be the 3 core cities that makes the most contribution to us. We will be driven by these 3 core cities and to and transform into the 3 major regions: Yangtze River Delta, Greater Bay, and the Bohai Rim, the 3 key regions will serve to be the new 3 core regions of our business development so as to make us more sustainable in development. We can make sure that by developing these 3 regions, the business in these 3 regions, we can maintain a good momentum in the future development. I think by leveraging on these several aspects, we can transform from the previous retail-driven strategy to a multi-segment balanced and coordinated development of our new development model so that they can support each other, promote each other. For the past 2 years, all our domestic and overseas branches, our subsidiary branches have both -- have all realized product making and our business tend to be more balanced, more sustainable, and we are walking towards an era with multiple contribution given by different sources of revenue. And to answer your question, I think -- these are the measures that we have been taken and what are the positive results that we have achieved. Xia Yangfang: We have a question from on-site participants. Shuo Yang: I am Yang Shuo from Goldman Sachs. I noticed that you have been experiencing fast in retail finance. I noticed some risk in the retail finance -- retail loan business. For the second half of 2024, you have quite a fast growth rate of the non-mortgage loan. And I would like to understand the risk about this part of loans? And could you further elaborate? And could you also provide more details about the provision in these part of loans? Xu Mingjie: Thank you for your question. So just now President Wang have mentioned that the retail credit asset quality. Since 2019 after the pandemic happened, credit card risk begin to arise. And then until the year 2022, we observed that the corporate property loan risk begin to expose and then it continues to rise in terms of its risk. Excluding the credit card loan, the rest of the retail loan, for instance, the mortgage, the consumption, the micro loan, ever since the year 2024, we also see their risk begin to rise. Until now, the rising pace of their risk tend to be slower. So for some specific number, I think I will leave it behind. But for special mention, NPL and overdue loan, their balance and the ratio both increased in terms of micro loan. For consumption loan, its NPL ratio, it decreased a bit compared with the end of last year. Special mention loan ratio rise a little bit. Well, in terms of the future outlook, in the short run, property market is still under a deep adjustment so that the residents income, whether or not it could be improved for consumption, for micro finance loan, they are still under pressure. Well, along with the path that the government are playing a bigger role in terms of their proactive fiscal policy and monetary policy and with the external environment tend to be trending towards a good direction ever since this year, micro finance loan and consumption loans, this NPL balance increment are now tend to be slower marginally. In the low interest rate environment, some profit-making products, they're actually experiencing some slowdown in the profit-making level in their risk variance level. So in the following pace, we will further optimize our structure and stick to a collateral-based business, especially for consumption loan. And consumption loan, we will strictly got our bottom line of onboarding these clients and further optimize our customer structure, which will have early warning, early risk exposure and take proactive measure to lower the risk of arising from retail credit and to guarantee that the retail assets tend to be good -- maintain good in its asset quality. For allowance -- for allowance and provision for the past year, the allowance coverage ratio was down by 20 ppts compared with that of last year. The main reason is the NPL balance increased. The NPL balance increased by RMB 2.5 billion, a growth rate of 4%. The provision balance tend to be lower. So the numerator decreased and the denominator increase so that the allowance coverage ratio decreased for personal credit, but for personal loan, in classification, we tend to follow our strict manner. In the overdue days, entering into the doubtful level into the subdue level, we still keep our very strict classification management. In provision, we are making the provision one case by one case. The main reason is that the overall balance of the personal loan continue to increase, and the allowance, the provision tend to decrease. That is the major reason. So looking into the future, the major reason is that the NPL balance need to decrease, so that our allowance coverage ratio could be better. So actually, this indicator is quite sensitive to its numerator. If CMB under this external environment, if we can control our balance of retail NPL, we could maintain a good condition of this allowance coverage ratio. We are still under challenges in the year 2026. Retail credit risks are a market problem or an industry challenge that every banking peers are facing. The retail assets are under pressure so that it's not just CMB are facing this question. By responding to this challenges, we will maintain and take proactive measures to guarantee the retail asset quality to be stable. We will conduct very strict asset classification and make very adequate and accurate provision. Our allowance coverage ratio is now 391%, which is 20 percentage points lower than that of the previous year, but the absolute level of this indicator is still higher than that of our peers. We will maintain a very steady and prudent provision strategy and make sure that we have abundant coverage of our NPL to guarantee that we are having a good provision level compared with our peers. Xia Yangfang: Next question, please. Shuaishuai Zhang: I'm from CICC, Zhang Shuaishuai. My question is about the intelligent -- follow-up question. Just now I think Chairman and also President and also Mr. Zhou has already have very specific answers on that. And I see that we have more disclosures on the intelligent part. So my question is, from the financial data, how we can evaluate the effect from the application of the investment into AI because you have put a lot of resources in AI? And another question is that you want to build up into the first intelligent bank. So how we can evaluate that, how we can compare you with other Chinese banks? Now CMB want to do more, AI want to be best among the banking industry. How we can -- we evaluate the advantage of CMB in this spectrum? Tianhong Zhou: As for the large model from its birth to now it's 3 years. So it's not a long period. The application of this technology and every day, we are -- we can see news from the media that is improving. And I think the real impact of the technology on the society is still in the process. Currently, the very -- the industry, which have been deepened reform by the AI technology don't have much. We don't have much industries on that. But overall, we can say there's not many industry that have been deeply reformed by the AI technology and banking sector is quite a different sector and the regulator's attitude towards the application of AI in banks, not only the Chinese regulator, but the overseas regulators such as Singapore regulators, they are quite prudent on that front. And as well as -- such as the Singapore authority, they have also made very strict regulations on the application of AI. So for the Chinese regulator, the requirement is that the apply of the AI technology should be taken account from the human staff. So it means that the application of the AI among the banks should be human staff plus AI application is a requirement from the regulator as well. And from CMBs, we think that in the width and depth of the application of AI, we are faster than peers. But currently, for 45 kind of the areas, we have analyzed what human staffs are doing. For the projects that human staffs are doing is around 3,400 done by human staff, but amounted around 1,500 could be assisted by AI. So it's a dynamic process that we are kind of analyzing and also improving. And from a very macro perspective, we see that AI is taking effect in many areas. But I know that the question you have raised is also something that I'm thinking about. And what changes or big changes that the AI application has been done to CMB. I think there are some changes but still in the process. There's changes in the macro side, such as for the Sunflower customer, the customer reaching out ratio has been improved by 14% for our relationship manager. So it's taking effect. And for customer transaction volume has been increased by 20%. So it's also quite a good number. So overly, I think it's taking effect. But from this kind of up -- so we think that the technology is still improving and moving forward, there's great potential on that. And we are firm in this AI-first strategy. This is to your first question. Second question is, well, how can we say that -- how can we evaluate intelligent back? This is something we are done. And I think that we are starting what are the indicators that can evaluate -- how we can evaluate digital intelligent bank? The first intelligent bank in terms of -- I think that from these aspects such as for the application of the large model like the research technology and research capability in terms of the application, we can -- we are ahead of the peers. And also, we need to improve the efficiency of the usage of chips. And in China, we are more use the domestic chips and how we can better improve the efficiency and how we can improve the computing efficiency. We're still improving, but it's not very mature yet. And it relies on the entity that is using the chips. We are very strong in terms of cloud, and we have around a team of 300 people, who are engaging in the cloud technology. And also, we have a reasoning platform as well. And for the computing around 35% are done by ourself is quite the level of the top Internet companies is like 19% of us to make use of a cluster of chips and responding very fast and do not have much delay. There are many difficulties in technology, but we have done quite well. And the width of the application, we have already applied large model to 859 scenarios and more of them are contributed -- concentrated in the high-value scenarios. So we have a very big width on that. And for CMB, we have a special area even compared with advanced banks in the world, we have a very good fusion of technology and business. And technology could be better applied to business. So CMB has done quite well in the fusion integration of business and technology. And there are some concerns that maybe AI can substitute human being. So I think the people who will be phased out in the future are the ones who cannot use AI. So, we are encouraging our staff to use AI. So that is why we can see a very fast speed of the usage of token. And people are -- staff in our bank have very -- have been very open-minded, and they're trying to use the new technology. So we are ahead of the peers in this regard. But what can we say about the, what is -- what is intelligent bank. I think we are still studying how we can evaluate that. And just now, I mentioned about the illusion elution and these are also challenges where kind of input more -- to put more investment on that. And what we are trying to do is to reduce the illusion and to build a more reliable agent. And for CMB, we think there are some top companies like the AI, OpenAI and Anthropic. They are not open sourcing and they do not say anything about that. So how we can limit the illusion of AI application, and there's -- let's talk on that. It means that we need to input by ourselves, and we have made quite good progress on that, especially in the past 6 months. And also, we have made quite a good target on that. Thank you. Liang Wang: From the investment and output perspective, because if you want to build an intelligent bank, there will be much impact for CMB. Our investment into the -- investment is to optimize the resources allocation. It's not the same as other companies. Other banks may have not invested in this regard and need to increase a lot of CapEx in this regard. But for CMB, we have been continuously increased resources into that. So we are optimizing resources. It doesn't mean to increase much capital investment into that. So it doesn't have much impact on the cost side. So banks, IT -- I can see that we are -- in terms of business perspective, we have already built up our advantage. So next phase, we are building our advantage and our moat in the technology area, so that CMB can have a long-term and sustainable competitive edge. Jianmin Miao: And I have one more -- one more point, point to that. I think a good question is better than a good answer. This is the same question that I asked Mr. Zhou. So today, I think that he has answered my question before, but it's not a very, very good point and doesn't satisfy me. Today, I think he made quite a good point today. Feifei Xiao: Just now, for the retail -- my question is about the retail business for this year, both for asset size and also for asset quality. And CMB is regarded as the best retail bank among the industry. How you can continue to grow your retail business and also consider the change of the environment to upgrade your retail business. Could you please explain from the perspective of retail credit and also for the retail credit business, how you can -- what is your short-term and mid- and long-term change and also how you can arrange that? Jianmin Miao: Thank you for your question. And as you mentioned, that just now I mentioned that CMB's retail business is facing quite big challenge, and we have made -- we have tried to be more comprehensive operating as to make up the shortfall. But even though we are growing our other business, we didn't forget the retail. Retail continue to be our strength and can be our advantage. So everyone in the CMB talks about retail and knows about retail and trusts retail business. So this is a culture has been embedded into CMB -- embedded in the mind of everyone of CMB. So we will continue to expand our advantage on the retail front. So for this year, the retail contribution to our income has been quite stable. It's not growing very fast, like in the past. But the business actually have changed. In terms of structure, such as you can see the customer base, like that we have a very big retail base to 224 million, especially the high-end customer growing faster. Secondly, our AUM is growing very fast last year, reaching around RMB 17 trillion and up by RMB 2.6 trillion. So the growth rate is a high ratio. In the past years, annually increment is around over RMB 1 trillion, but last year, it's over RMB 2 trillion. And thirdly, even though we have seen a quite a big decline in the growth rate of our retail credit growth. But last year, we are continuing to see more market share in the market share in terms of the retail credit. So this shows that the strength of our CMB's retail business is actually expanding. In order to consolidate our strength of our retail business, we continue to expand the customer base; secondly, to improve the product system; thirdly, to upgrade the service system like we are combining online and offline service channels, so as to improve the customers' experience with us; and also fourthly, distribute our ecosystem, such as we work with the mutual funds and also trust companies as well as asset management companies to build up our friendship with the ecosystem. So we have more better products that we can provide to our customer and create value for the customer. And fourthly, very important, is to prevent risk to improve our system kind of strength in the retail side so that we can see the contribution from the retail side is still around 50% to our operating income and also profit. Just you also mentioned about the retail credit and also the Wealth Management business. For retail credit, we have the credit card, we have a mortgage. We have consumption loan and micro loan, the 4 major projects -- products. So last year, we have negative growth on credit card. But our strategy is that we maintain a stable and low volatility trend to prevent the risk. So we think that some of the decline in our revenue or the business growth in order to maintain a stable asset quality last year, the credit card's NPL ratio is around 1.74%. It has been stable over the past years and be better than the peers. In terms of mortgage, we continue to grow the secondary housing facing the decline in the demand side. And so that is why we have slight growth on the mortgage side. The growth rate cannot be compared with a fast growth rate in the past. So for micro loan, we are doing inclusive financing. And -- so inclusive financings and also micro loan, 80% of them have collateral with the property as a collateral. So the risk -- overall risk is under control. And consumption loan, we think that we are centered on the retail customer that we have already salary payout and also AUM. And this kind of short-term demand for us. So it's -- the asset quality is also stable. So for our total retail credit, quality totaling around RMB 3.6 trillion and around 50% of our total asset. So it's continued to be an important area that we allocate our credit resources for. We will continue to namely to kindly to take advantage of the -- advantage of retail credit and its small ticket size and also the risk is more diversified. These are the advantage of the retail credit card -- retail credit business. In terms of Wealth Management business, I think that we will seize the opportunity brought by the capital market, especially people's demand for -- to allocate more of their assets to the financial products. And so for product side, we need to be more advanced, and we have mutual private fund and also for precious metal and also overseas investment, and as said and also Wealth Management products, we have different product lines. And also, we need to upgrade our product system to better satisfy our customers' needs. And secondly, very important is how we can improve the service -- so how we service our customer. Online together with the offline is combining them together, very important. This year, we are more allocating our offline relationship manager service the high-end customer, and this is a better resources allocation of the relationship manager. So in terms of Wealth Management, we will continue to maintain our fast growth strength. So the total income of the Wealth Management can also continue to grow. And I have a goal for CMB, namely for a restart of the retail business and also faster growth of the corporate business. So for Retail, it means that Wealth Management should be strong and also continue to build, maintain the -- one is to improve the asset quality and secondly is to maintain the solid advantage of the funding source and also to strengthen our advantage in Wealth Management. Xia Yangfang: We'll have next question from an on-site participant. Lincoln Yu: I am Yu Lihan from JPMorgan. I have a question regarding the capital. We have noticed that in 2025, CMB's RWA growth rate was 10%, which was faster than the 8% asset growth rate. I would like to understand the underlying reason behind. Is that a one-off reason? Or is a normalized influencing factor that will continue? Looking ahead, how do we look at the RWA growth rates as a loan growth rate for the future 1 to 2 years? And what is the trend of the CAR? Will we continue to face downward pressure? What's the influence to return of the shareholder and also the cash dividend payout? Liang Wang: Thank you for your question. I will answer first on RWA. So every year, when we are discussing about RWA, we have been emphasizing that we aim to lower the volatility and maintain stability. So for many years, our RWA, the level of it was around 9% to 8%. And it's overall stable, but we will adjust it a little bit according to the external environment. It's more or less around 9%. So just now you mentioned that in the year 2025, the RWA growth rate, 8.8% under the weighted approach, 9.5% under the advanced approach. Generally, it's following our philosophy. Compared -- but compared with our asset growth, you might think that it would be a little bit higher. So I would like to explain more a little bit. So I think the influencing factors are, in the year 2024, the swift from the new capital regulation is actually conserving some capital for us. So that, that will be having a low base effect comparing the year '24 and '25. And the second reason is that when the credit loans are under pressure, the corporate loans are taking higher proportion and these type of loans are having higher risk weights. So to some extent, it will enhance the RWA. And then the 3 influencing factor is that as we have quite strong capital strength, we could use it to support some off-sheet business, for instance, the bill discounting business and et cetera. And the fourth reason is that, in bond investment, we have enhanced our bond investment and enhanced the market risk assets. So these 4 reasons above mentioned, generally contribute to our higher growth rate of RWA. But I once again want to emphasize our philosophy. We would like to lower the volatility of our asset allocation. And I think it's also a capability to help us to sell through the cycle. We will maintain our mid-level of RWA growth to 9% to 10%. And there will be some slight changes according to the external environment. We have also noticed that our CAR experienced some slight decrease, but the reason is mostly about some one-off reasons. For instance, we have had 1 interim dividend payout in the year 2025. And last year, due to the market volatility, we have experienced some volatile influence in our OCI account. This is also another factor influencing our capital strength. But excluding this factor, our CAR continued to be stable. But when our CAR tend to be more and more abundant and when we are facing more and more pressure from the capital, it's quite difficult for us to see a continuous increase in the CAR. But even though I still wish that we can leverage our own efforts to achieve a balance in business development, capital growth and et cetera. So I think that for the dividend payout question, I have also just answered that we tend to be stable. I think it's a triangle balance that we aim to achieve that is business development, dividend payout and capital strength. Xia Yangfang: We will have another question. Leon Qi: I am Qi Leon from CLSA. I have an asset quality question. We noticed that in the fourth quarter, CMB's NPL formation has been increased. I would like to understand the reason behind. Is it because of the micro or consumption loan you mentioned before? Is it about some quarterly reasons? And we also noticed that President Xu, you have mentioned about the decrease of the allowance coverage ratio and our principal to manage this indicator. I would like to understand that how do we balance the product growth and allowance coverage ratio? How to achieve the balance between them two? Xu Mingjie: So for the fourth quarter, our NPL formation was RMB 21.1 billion. There are some slight increase compared with the third quarter, an increment of RMB 5.9 billion, mostly from corporate loan, that is RMB 4.6 billion. So corporate loan NPL formation saw an increment of RMB 4.3 billion compared with that of the third quarter. And for retail loans, the NPL formation was around RMB 6.3 billion. And for credit card, the new formation is RMB 10 billion. So generally, the fourth quarter, the increase in the fourth quarter in terms of NPL formation are mostly from corporate loan. So the corporate loan -- so these NPL formation loans are mostly from corporate property industry. Some existing risk identified risks. And there are some exposure of individual cases and individual clients. And some individual event cases or clients risk exposure, they will cast influence on the NPL formation for a single quarter. So there will be some fluctuation during quarter-on-quarter indicator. But overall speaking, if you take a look at our corporate NPL loan, we are experiencing some improvement. So for us, since the year 2022, we begin to expose risk in the real estate sector. Ever since the year 2022, the real estate NPL, NPL formation tend to decrease. And in the year 2025, our real estate NPL formation continue to decrease. And it's also at the lowest point for the past 5 years. To see from the first quarter of 2026, the corporate loan and asset quality remains stable and they are in order. For those risks that have already been exposed, especially for those real estate groups, we have made quite adequate and abundant provision. So the average level of LRR was 3x higher than the average level of those of the general corporate loan. You have mentioned about the allowance coverage ratio. In the year 2025, the figure is 391%, which is 20 percentage points lower than that of the previous year. The fourth quarter NPL, we have made some provision, 14.14% higher than that of the previous quarter. But you can still see that the absolute level of our allowance coverage ratio is still quite leading in the industry. So making provision is being influenced by many factors. We would make provision case by case, and we should take several factors into consideration. First, scale, the product structure, the corporate loan and the retail loan were different in terms of their weighted risk and customer quality and customers' internal ratings are still factors that will influence the provision we made, including how do we take a look at the external macro environment. If we consider the external environment tend to be stable or do we expect there are more uncertainties in the future, we will also consider this factor into consider -- make this consideration and then to make a relevant provision. One very important factor is that during the phase of the post-pandemic era and the deep adjustment of real estate property, these 2 periods of time are the major reason why we have been making abundant provision. So generally speaking, these 2 adverse factors, they are fading out. The real estate market are hitting the bottom -- are in the process of hitting the bottom. So we don't see the necessity to make even more provision for this industry. You can also take a look at our absolute level of the provision. It's quite abundant. In the year 2021, the figure was RMB 37 billion. And for the last year, the level was RMB 42.6 billion. But compared with our loan scale, the ratio experienced a slight decrease. The allowance coverage ratio is not a figure that we used to balance profit. It is calculated based on our expected credit loss, based on our loan scale, based on our internal credit rating. So we will still make very abundant provision. But if the NPL balance increase, it will cash influence on our provision. If one day, our NPL balance stop to increase, I think we will see some uptick in our provision and in our allowance coverage ratio. Xia Yangfang: In order to ensure the rights of the individual participant, we have collected beforehand through e-mail about their questions. And as most of the questions actually overlap with what we have also discussed previously, so we will have 1 representative questions read out by our staff. The question is CMB last year have received approval to establish AIC. I would like to understand what is the major business of this company. And except for debt-to-equity transfer business, do you consider to make equity investment? What is the function of this company's role in CMB's comprehensive development? Jianmin Miao: Thank you for the question. Last year, approved by the regulator, now we have set up our investment company, namely the AIC. And last year, we have opened the AIC successfully. And this is a very important milestone of our comprehensive operation in order to have a better integration of investment banking, and also commercial banking to better service those start-up companies. And now we have a more -- we can provide more comprehensive service and have coordinated business in terms of investment banking and also commercial banking. According to the regulator that want this to -- in 2018, there is a policy that -- in 2018, there was a batch of the AIC company that have been set up to do the business, namely to convert the debt into equity. And nowadays, business are also changing. So more are doing toward the equity investment directly. So CMB's AIC will be both for the debt conversion to equity business and also at the same time, equity investment services. So for Commercial Banking doing equity investment is kind of a very big transition of the business model. So we need to have the right person and right business model in place and right purpose in place. So from the regulators' perspective, they are For newly opened AIC, the regulator need to have new approval for the business qualification on that. And we are also have a conversation with the regulator and communicating with the regulator because we have very good foundation in terms of equity investments, like we have the CMB International and also CMB International Capital. We have done equity investment in the past. We have around a team of 200 people. We have many successful investments in the past. And many of the enterprises have been successfully IPOed. So -- and have done quite good results. So for equity investment, if we can get the approval from the regulator, then means that AIC together with CMB Leasing can have a better integration of the business and to -- based on the business foundation that we have and the team that we have to better have a development of our AIC. Xia Yangfang: And now for second section for a question from the media. Yes, please. Unknown Attendee: I'm from the Security Times. My question is for the Chairman. Just now you mentioned about the moat. You have mentioned that for many times. And also in your speech, in our annual report, you also said we need to have a differentiated moat. So a follow-up question about the moat is that, in the past, people are talking about retail service and brand name. These are the moat also funding source of CMB. So entering into the new era, what will be the difference of the new moat for CMB. Will that be technology, talent or ecosystem? If you have some key words to conclude CMB's next 5 years core competitiveness, what would you quote, which keywords will you use? Jianmin Miao: So the so-called moat is the core competitiveness. What we are -- in which area that we are stronger than other people and which we are far ahead of other people. So just now I mentioned in the past, the moat for CMB, many people are saying, is retail is the moat and fintech was the moat. But I think the real moat is that our philosophy, namely customer-centric, which has been integrated already internalized into our corporate culture and has become a routine of our staff. This is the biggest difference between CMB and other enterprises. If you go to the other branches of CMB, after the working hour, if you -- after working hours, you go to the branches there. You see -- you can see the difference between CMB and other people. Our staff never off work on time. Just now before the results, I asked the office of the -- office of the Board. So after the results announcement, they have passed the information to me about the information they get for the communication between them and the investors. So I think this is the culture, and this is the biggest moat that we have. And no matter is the concept, no matter is the philosophy of all technology. So by -- it's all done by human beings even without this culture, without this dedication spirit to work, other moat is nothing that will be fall down. This is a keystone that support our moat that CMB is customer-centric is the most that we have built up. No matter it's talent, no matter it's technology or other co-committees. I think the keystone is the culture. As long as culture is there, then we have moat. So one day, we changed our culture, customer-centric culture, then I think the other moat will also be diminished. So in the past, in the downward cycle of the banking industry, why we also have seen some downturn, but still, we are better -- continue to have a better performance than the peers. This relies on the culture of CMB. Xia Yangfang: The next question. Unknown Attendee: I'm from the 21st Century. My question is about -- for the deposit movement. Many -- there are many institutions saying that in 2029, there will be around RMB 5 billion to RMB 7 billion deposits mature in 2026. Some may go to Wealth Management, fixed income and other products. So from the liability perspective, whether you are facing some pressure. So when this kind of term deposits mature, what is your observation? Whether they will be go to other aspects? Just now you mentioned about your subsidiaries and how you can get the deposits which are mature in 2026? Jianmin Miao: Thank you for your question. Recently, there's a lot of talks and discussions on that. My understanding on that is currently for the matured term deposit, the outflow of the matured term deposits, there will be 2 key elements, how much will mature and second, whether there will be an outflow. For the media have calculated an amount. And for CMB, for the amount that will be mature, the term deposits this year will be a little bit higher than what we have in the last year, but it's not an extraordinary number. I think it's still in a normal range. And I think more people are more caring about in this low interest rate environment, if the deposit rate cannot satisfy customers' demand on the asset yield, so how -- where the deposit will go. And some say, it may go to the capital markets, some say it may go to Wealth Management and also mutual fund products. There are many discussions on that. So for the outflow of deposits, I think from a different angle is that, from the customers' perspective, if the deposit outflow, where it will go. If it goes to the wealth management or mutual fund products, then we think that we can provide service to maintain the AUM with CMB. Maybe it may not be shown as a liability, but it's still the customer funds is with us. So we can see an outflow of deposits based not an outflow of customer. And that is why we emphasize the definition of AUM. So that is why you see last year, our AUM is up to RMB 17 trillion and a growth rate of 14%. So this is also a way of retention of the deposit and we are not worried about that. And the second angle that can provide is from the funding perspective. Some funding are going from the deposits go to capital market as the stock, which in return can be deposit as a third-party deposit with us. So these are recorded as interbank deposit for us. So from a funding perspective, if we can provide a service and then can continue to have an inflow from the interbank market, it means that outflow of deposits, but funding is not outflowing. So from this perspective, we think from these 2 perspectives, outflow or maturing of the term deposit is not a terrible thing. The first one what we are trying to do is not to prevent an outflow of deposits, namely to have abundant products in place and also to prevent the deposit outflow. Secondly if deposit really outflows, then we have product in place to retain the customers' AUM with us. Just now you mentioned about the subsidiary of CMB, we have Wealth Management subsidiary. This is also a test of the professionalism of our subsidiary and it means that taking the funding to continue to be within the bank. And secondly we will service our financial institution customer, namely the fund can return inflow into CMB from the capital market. And fourthly, very important. And I think the outflow of the deposit is also a reshuffle of the banking sector for -- if we can use our advantage and service and product to retain or regain the market share with us to have more funding from our -- from the market. This is something that we are working for. Xia Yangfang: Next question? Unknown Attendee: I'm from [ Xinda ] report. My -- the first one is for cross-border business in 2025 for CMB has actually has the funding between the CMB and also the overseas margin can have a connection on that. So what is the plan for CMB's plan for the Bay Area? In 2026, how you can use the platform in Hong Kong to have a better cooperation with the institution in Hong Kong? Secondly, is for Wealth Management. My question is for Mr. Peng. Wealth Management is regarded as an area of the growth of CMB. So how do you expect the fee income from Wealth Management and also that overall fee income for 2026. Jiawen Peng: I will answer your first question. Just now I mentioned that CMB is highly emphasized on the cross-border business and highly emphasized in the Bay Area busines -- economic integration of the Bay Area, and we want to have a bigger play in the Bay Area. So CMB's headquarter is in Shenzhen. And for the mid- and large-sized enterprises, we are the very few banks that have headquartered in Shenzhen. And secondly, in Hong Kong, we have Wing Lung Bank. We have CMB International. We have CMB branch. And also in Macau, we also have our branch. So we have covered major cities in the Bay Area. This is our geographical advantage. And thirdly, we -- from the national policy also support the growth of the Bay Area and to improve the influence of the Bay Area and to have a better connection between the 3 cities in the Bay Area, especially the funding connection between the cities. And it means that we can have more business in this area, such as for the Wealth Connect and our market share of the Wealth Connect of CMB is leading. And also, we are promoting the capital market and to strengthen such as Hong Kong is improving, stance and positioning as a financial center. So we are strengthening our cooperation with the financial institutions in Hong Kong. So there are many Hong Kong -- many China domestic enterprises are going IPO in H-share. So our CMB International is playing a bigger role on that, such as for IPO and IPO underwriting, and IPO sponsor, they are leading the market. And also for commercial banks, we have Wing Lung bank. And also Wing Lung Bank can also be a collection bank for the IPO. So this -- the comprehensive service that we can provide to the enterprises that go into the overseas market. And also domestic residents are having more investments, investment in Hong Kong because Hong Kong, the overseas products have a better yield for customers. Some of the customers would like to allocate, have some overseas allocation, and we are strengthening our capability in this regard. And I think that these are also paying off and taking quite good results. So -- these are the advantage that we have taken from the external environment and also from what we have our own institution, I do think that in the future, there will be a very big opportunity, especially in our major Bay areas in the world that will be tough in financial institutions, which will merge. In Bay Area, there are already some very leading financial institutions among the Bay areas. CMB even though have only a history of 39 years old, but I think we have the advantage in terms of geographical advantage and we have a coordination between the domestic and also overseas platforms. So we will have a better play in this regard to support the integration of the Bay Area to support the prosperity of Hong Kong. A brief answer to your second question. Last year, fee income was up by 4 -- or over 4%. This is mainly driven by wealth management products. which is up by 21%. The contribution is from the agency sales of the wealth management, up by 19% and 40% for mutual funds. And also, we have seen growth on other agency sales of the trust products. There's a small decline on the agency sales fee of the insurance products is mainly because of the change of our product structure. If you look at the premium, it's up by 27% up. But due to the structural change, the realization of the fee income that we get from -- of insurance products is changing namely from -- we are -- that is what have led to a decline on that front. So I think the external environment has been quite beneficial to the fee income of wealth management. So in 2026, we are more optimistic on that, especially the -- from the national policy also regarded regarding consumption is very important, have played a key role in the future. So these are the positive factors for fee income, but there are also challenges as well as you can see geographical conflicts having quite a posting risk to the economy. And also secondly, there's a policy side for fee rate card for mutual fund as well. And also thirdly, from the consumption side, even though there are major policies, but still depending on the real effect, whether you can drive -- whether you can drive our credit card fee income or not. So we think that the fee income from the -- we hope that it will be better than last year, but there are also structural problems like the credit card is so facing great pressure on that. We hope that the decline of our credit card magnitude will be better than last year. And also for fee-based income, we hope that it can continue to have a good growth. Thank you. Xia Yangfang: Due to the time constraint, I think the last question from the media. Unknown Attendee: Dear senior management, I am Shanghai Securities. [indiscernible] I have a question for Mr. Wang. In such a backdrop of narrowing NIM, you proposed a value creation bank strategy and deepened 4 initiative transformation, I would like to understand these strategies, what changes have it brought for CMB in specific business development? Liang Wang: Thank you for your question. So in the interest rate declining environment, fee reduction and narrower NIM, these challenges have brought pressure for our development. We proposed a value creation bank strategy and that is our philosophy to create value for customer, shareholder, partners and the society and to realize common prosperity of all. This is a philosophy. It's also a guiding principle for us, to serve as an underlying principle to create value instead of expanding scale separately. It requires us to provide better service to our clients to increase volume, increase value to make a good judgment of what business is good business and how to cash our business development into return to the society. So this will contribute to the bank's sustainable development. So value creation bank strategy is bringing changes for us in our methodology, in our philosophy of operation. We are more reasonable, and we tend to respect the principle of banking operation. In international development, in comprehensive development, we all see contribution brought by these initiatives. In financial indicators, the full initiatives have also contributed to our capability of making sustainable development. I think digital and intelligent development and comprehensive development, these will help us to find our strength and to make up for what we are not good at. So the full initiative bring us business returns, but also enhance our capability. Xia Yangfang: Thank you, President Wang. Due to time limit, we have now conclude today's meeting. For more information and details, you may refer to the annual report we released online. If you have more questions or comment, you are more than welcome to contact the CMB IR team. Thank you again. Goodbye. [Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]
Operator: Thank you for standing by and welcome to the MediPharm Labs conference call to discuss its 2025 full year and fourth quarter results. Our speaker on today's call is Greg Hunter, Chief Financial Officer and Interim Chief Executive Officer. [Operator Instructions] The conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] The information during this call should be considered together with the more detailed information disclosure, financial data and statements available on the company's website and on its SEDAR+ at sedar+.ca. As set out on the webcast slide, I would like to note that remarks during this earnings call may contain forward-looking information and forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities laws. This includes, without limitation, statements about MediPharm Labs and its current and future plans, expectations, intentions, financial results, operations, levels of activity, performance, goals or achievements and other future events, trends, probability, business growth or development. All statements other than statements of historical fact are forward-looking statements. The statements made are based on the company's current expectations, estimates and beliefs as of today's date. The company's remarks may also contain reference to non-IFRS financial measures, including adjusted EBITDA. These measures do not have any standardized meaning according to International Financial Reporting Standards or IFRS and therefore, may not be comparable or similar measures presented by other companies. Please review the company's most recent disclosure materials filed on SEDAR+ for the risks associated with forward-looking information and the use of non-IFRS financial measures including the section titled Reconciliation of non-IFRS measures in the company's most recent MD&A available on SEDAR+. Please note that all dollar amounts mentioned on today's call are in Canadian dollars unless otherwise noted. And now I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Greg Hunter. Please go ahead. Greg Hunter: Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. This morning, I'll provide context on the CEO transition, cover the fourth quarter and full year 2025 results, spend time on what differentiates MediPharm Labs and how that was executed during 2025, and then walk through the financial performance and our 2026 priorities. As announced earlier this year, David Pidduck stepped down from the CEO role, and I've assumed the role of Interim CEO while continuing as CFO. Our Board of Directors is actively engaged in determining the next CEO for MediPharm Labs, and we will keep you informed once the decision has been made. I want to sincerely thank Dave for his contributions to MediPharm over the past several years. Under his leadership, the company strengthened its international footprint, improved financial discipline and built the regulatory and operational foundation that supports the business today. Dave remains on the MediPharm Labs' Board of Directors, providing continuity of governance, institutional knowledge and strategic alignment. In 2025, MediPharm generated full year revenue of $45 million, representing 8% growth year-over-year despite a Canadian market that remained under sustained pressure from pricing, competition and shifting reimbursement dynamics. The growth was driven primarily by our international medical cannabis business, which grew 43% year-over-year and accounted for the majority of our revenue mix. This international medical mix did not happen because of a single contract, a onetime shipment or a short-term market opportunity. It reflects years of investment in regulatory capability, quality systems, international partnerships and pharmaceutical grade manufacturing. At the same time, we were very deliberate about what not to do in 2025. In Canada, where pricing pressure and competitive behavior remain aggressive, we chose not to chase volume at the expense of margin, cash or long-term viability. Instead, we focused on discipline, simplification and capital preservation. As a result, we exited 2025 with a more resilient and diversified revenue mix, a simplified operating footprint, a balance sheet that remains stronger than many of our peers in the sector and no material debt and a cash position of over $10 million. Let me take a moment to remind you what differentiates MediPharm Labs. MediPharm is not a single market, single product cannabis company. We operate across 4 distinct verticals, supported by a regulatory and licensing foundation that is difficult, time-consuming and expensive to replicate. From a regulatory standpoint, MediPharm Labs holds a unique combination of licenses, including a Health Canada Drug Establishment license, EU-GMP certification, ANVISA GMP certification from Brazil, TGA compliance in Australia, and FDA-inspected facility with prior shipments of pharmaceutical-grade APIs into the United States for research and use in clinical studies and we maintain licenses and registrations that support natural health product development should that pathway evolve in Canada. These are not nice to have credentials. They are operational enablers that determine where you can sell, what you can sell and who you can partner with. As a result, MediPharm Labs is often selected because we are a trusted, compliant and dependable partner, not because we are the lowest cost option. In regulated medical and pharmaceutical channels, that distinction matters and it underpins both our commercial relationships and our long-term strategy. Strategically, MediPharm competes across 4 verticals. International medical cannabis, now our largest revenue stream, supplying both branded and white label products in key regulated markets such as Germany, Australia, the United Kingdom and other global jurisdictions, including France. Canadian medical cannabis, including direct-to-patient platforms and clinic infrastructure where continuity of care and product reliability are critical to our patients. Pharmaceutical and B2B, including APIs, clinical trial materials, contract manufacturing and advanced delivery technologies, areas where regulatory capability and consistency are nonnegotiable. Adult use and wellness, where we remain disciplined and margin focused rather than competing in loss-leading volume segments. Very few companies in this sector have the licensing depth, manufacturing quality, balance sheet and operational discipline to compete meaningfully across all 4 at the same time. That diversification is intentional. It gives us optionality, resilience and the ability to allocate capital where returns are most attractive. In 2025, International Medical cannabis represented greater than 50% of total revenue through Q1 to Q3, and this trend continued in Q4 with it representing 55% of total revenue. The execution was evident throughout the year. In Q1, Q2 and Q3, we reported double-digit year-over-year revenue growth. This performance was driven by repeat demand from existing partners and new market entries, rather than one-off transactions. Importantly, this growth was supported by disciplined operating decisions, continued development of key partnerships and sustainable pricing, not chasing volume at the expense of profitability. In Q2, we completed the $4.5 million sale of our noncore Hope British Columbia facility to strengthen our balance sheet and reduce expenses. We invested capital into our EU GMP Napanee facility to expand growth capacity by roughly 30%, which is now operational. Internationally, we executed on new market pathways, completing first commercial shipments into France, delivered first purchase orders in Brazil under sanitary authorization with an ANVISA licensed pharmaceutical partner and securing approvals with a partner in New Zealand, positioning entry into another tightly regulated medical market. These market entries were complemented by continued validation from partners and regulators. During the year, we strengthened our position as a reliable pharmaceutical grade supplier by consistently meeting quality, delivery and regulatory requirements across multiple jurisdictions, a factor that continues to differentiate MediPharm Labs in highly regulated medical markets. Globally, regulatory standards continue to rise, particularly in Europe and Australia. This environment tends to favor companies with established pharmaceutical grade systems and licenses, and we believe MediPharm is well positioned as those standards continue to tighten. On the product side, we continue to commercialize differentiated pharmaceutical grade formats, including the expansion of our metered dose inhaler platform globally and the launch of a CBN THC nighttime inhaler in Canada, responding directly to demand for smoke-free, precisely dosed delivery format. During Q4, we expanded our Australian product portfolio with the launch of 4 metered dose inhaler products and introduced a high CBD inhalation cartridge designed to provide a non-THC alternative for patients. These were not isolated announcements. They reflect steady, repeatable execution aligned with our regulatory and operational strengths. I also want to briefly acknowledge the upcoming changes to Veteran Affairs Canada medical cannabis reimbursement program. Effective April 1, 2026, Veteran Affairs Canada will reduce the maximum reimbursable price for medical cannabis from $8.50 per gram to $6 per gram. We were made aware of these changes as part of the 2025 federal budget and have incorporated them into our planning and operating assumptions. Our focus remains on continuity of care and supporting patients with a particular focus on veterans within the framework established by regulators and payers. We expect this change to negatively impact direct-to-patient revenue beginning in the second quarter of 2026. However, we do not view this change as altering our overall strategy. It may also create opportunities for further consolidation within the direct-to-patient channel. We will continue to work constructively with all stakeholders while remaining focused on disciplined revenue growth and profitability while maintaining the highest level of patient care. Turning to the P&L performance for the fourth quarter. Revenue for Q4 was $11.1 million compared to $12 million in Q4 of 2024, reflecting timing and mix differences largely in the International medical business. International medical cannabis revenue was $6.1 million and represented 55% of total revenue in the quarter. Canadian medical cannabis revenue was $3.2 million for the quarter and increased 8% sequentially versus Q3 2025. Canadian adult-use and wellness revenue was $1.4 million for the quarter. Gross profit for the quarter was $3.9 million or 35%, which increased from Q4 2024 gross profit of $3.6 million or 30%, driven by product mix and cost reductions. We remain focused on optimizing product mix and production efficiency to improve margins. A key part of this strategy is the introduction of innovative products, such as our metered dose inhalers, which represent a novel pharmaceutical grade delivery technology that offers patients a precise smoke-free option. Total operating expenses, which include G&A, marketing and selling and R&D was $5.4 million in Q4 and increased $0.3 million versus prior year. Q4 2025 included a severance expense of approximately $1 million. When adjusting for severance and other discrete items, Q4 operating expenses were $4.2 million and declined $0.3 million or 8% versus prior year. Management continues to focus on further expense reduction opportunities. Adjusted EBITDA loss of $0.1 million improved $0.9 million versus Q3 2025, driven by improved gross margin from product mix. Net loss for the quarter was $2 million versus $1.7 million from prior year. As previously discussed, Q4 2025 includes a $1 million severance expense. For the full year 2025, revenue was $45.1 million, which increased 8% versus prior year, largely driven by a 43% growth in International medical. Gross profit for 2025 was $14 million, representing a 31% margin, an increase versus 2024 gross profit of $12.8 million or 31%. Gross profit margin improvement was driven by product mix and expense reductions. Total operating expenses for 2025 was $20.9 million and decreased $0.7 million versus prior year. When adjusting for severance, costs related to the proxy contest and other discrete items, year-to-date operating expenses were $16.8 million, which decreased $2.7 million or 14% versus prior year. Adjusted EBITDA loss for 2025 improved to $1.6 million from $1.9 million in 2024. Net loss for 2025 was $8.3 million versus $10.7 million in 2024. 2025 was impacted by $2.5 million in expense related to the proxy contest and $1.3 million in severance expense. Turning to our balance sheet and liquidity. We ended the year with $10.8 million in cash, up $0.2 million from Q3 2025. Trade and other receivables were $7.5 million with 85% age 60 days or less. Trade and other payables were $9.2 million and unlike many other cannabis companies, we are up-to-date on cannabis excise duties, sales taxes and trade payable obligations. The company has virtually no debt and owns two production facilities with an appraised value exceeding $15 million. Before concluding, I want to briefly summarize the key financial takeaways for the year. First, we delivered full year revenue of $45 million, the highest in 5 years despite a challenging market with International medical now representing over 50% of our business. Second, we maintained a 31% gross margin even as our mix shifted further towards regulated international medical markets, reflecting product quality and operating discipline. Third, we continue to make progress on profitability. Adjusted EBITDA improved year-over-year to a loss of $1.6 million and net loss narrowed to $8.3 million, driven by revenue growth and meaningful cost reductions. Finally, we exited the year with a strong balance sheet, including $10.8 million in cash, virtually no debt and being current on excise taxes, sales taxes and trade payables. With a strong balance sheet and improved operating discipline, we continue to evaluate opportunities that would enhance our platform. Any such opportunities would be approached selectively with a clear focus on strategic fit, regulatory alignment and shareholder value. It is also important to highlight that these results were achieved without sacrificing balance sheet integrity. During 2025, we monetized noncore assets, reduced operating complexity and continued to fund growth internally, reinforcing the sustainability of our financial model. Taken together, these results reflect a business that is more focused, more resilient and better positioned than it was a year ago. Looking ahead, while we don't provide formal guidance, our priorities for 2026 are clear. We will continue to grow international medical revenue in markets such as Germany, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Brazil, France and Australia. Build our brands internationally to accelerate organic growth, expand pharmaceutical and B2B opportunities where returns justify the investment, maintain strict cost discipline while protecting quality, compliance and reliability and drive disciplined execution and financial performance to enhance long-term shareholder value. Our focus remains on profitable sustainable revenue, prudent capital allocation and preserving optionality as the industry continues to mature. In closing, 2025 was a year of steady, deliberate progress from MediPharm Labs. We strengthened our international footprint, executed on key commercial milestones, improved profitability metrics and maintain the balance sheet that provides flexibility in a volatile industry. I'd like to thank our employees for their continued commitment and our shareholders for their ongoing support. Operator, we'll now open the line for questions. Operator: Our first question comes from the line of Aaron Grey with Alliance Global Partners. Unknown Analyst: This is John on for Aaron. So on the gross margin improvement, could you provide more detail on the specific mix of products that help drive the expansion and how you expect the gross margin to trend going forward? Greg Hunter: John, thanks for the question. So I think you're probably referring to the sequential improvement of our gross margin from as I indicated in Q3, I think I termed it as the low watermark. And so we saw a significant improvement in Q4, and there's a couple of reasons for that. One, as we talked about in Q3, we did have our traditional summer shutdown in Q3, which impacts margin. And then from a product mix perspective, there are a couple of things that helped our margin in Q4 is one with international oil where we enjoy higher margin. Two, with our inhalers, our metered-dose inhalers that we've talked about a fair bit that we enjoy higher margin with it. And then we saw some mix shift where we had a little bit -- we've exited some lower flower segments in International. And picked up some tolling business. So the combination of those different items helped with the margin. And again, we expect to continue to focus on margin improvement as we go forward here. Unknown Analyst: Okay. Great. And how should we think about the ability to position yourself to capitalize on the International growth trends? Do you feel the company has the right pieces and partnerships in place today? Greg Hunter: Yes. So on the International front, we feel quite good about it. I mean, as I talked about in the prepared remarks with the suite of licenses that we have, whether you talk about our drug establishment license, EU GMP, Brazilian ANVISA. So the suite of licenses, I think, is one that separates us. I think as well, we have a strong foothold in Germany with key partners such as STADA. Obviously, as well, Australia, a key market for us. We're one of the top brands with our Beacon brand. And then as I talked in the prepared remarks, as we look to expand into markets like France, which is a very large market and in the early stages, where we expect some additional shipments here in 2026. And then with our new entry into New Zealand, although New Zealand being a smaller market, still expansion opportunities where, in fact, we did ship product into Q1. And that will be available to patients starting in Q2 and expect to do some more. And then finally, as well with Brazil, where we're expecting more shipments into Brazil this year with two of our pharmaceutical partners. So I think [Technical Difficulty] Germany and Australia as well. Within those markets, we're also launching or have launched our own branded products. As I said, in Australia, we have the Beacon brand, but we're also [Technical Difficulty] value segment. And then in Germany, we're also launching some branded products. So I think the combination of all those additional markets, additional products will help continue to strengthen our international presence. Unknown Analyst: Great. And then finally, in anticipation of the potential rescheduling of cannabis to Schedule III drug, are there any steps or conversations that you could be taking to ensure you're positioned for opportunities that could open up as an API provider or otherwise? Greg Hunter: Yes. I think of the Schedule III is still obviously early days. And I mean the biggest impact there is obviously the tax relief, which doesn't impact MediPharm. That's for the MSOs. The biggest impact for us is really around the ability for expanded research access, whether it be universities and pharma companies accelerating clinical research and drug development. [Technical Difficulty] I think cannabis accepted in medical use and [Technical Difficulty] in 11 clinical trials today. So that's really the opportunity for MediPharm in the near term is additional participation in clinical studies. Operator: Your next question comes from the website. It is from Troy Larson, and he asks, we've seen more Canadian and international cannabis companies move into the regulated medical and pharma adjacent space. How has increased competition in medical cannabis, including EU-GMP and clinical trial supply, changing the market landscape and what durable advantages does MediPharm have to defend or expand its position in that environment? Greg Hunter: Yes, great. Thanks for the question, Troy. I think I touched on some of that with John, but let me elaborate a little bit. So in Germany, we are certainly seeing increased competition and that is resulting in some pricing compression that we are seeing. And as I touched on, some of the things that we're doing is one launching our branded products deeper with our Beacon brand and our Wildlife brand. And the other piece is with our flagship partners, as I've talked about, with STADA. The other piece that we're seeing in Germany is some regulatory changes where they're looking at moving to less dependence on telehealth and mandatory in-person physician consults and restriction on mail order. And that can also help -- can benefit MediPharm because of the partners that we have like STADA, which rely on your traditional more bricks-and-mortar pharmacy. So I think that ultimately benefits MediPharm in the long term as well and again, with the suite of licenses. The other market as well where we're seeing changes is in Australia as well, where we are seeing some pricing compression and the development of a value segment, which, as I touched on earlier, MediPharma, we're launching products into the value segment as well. And then there is some tighter regulatory enforcement being looked at in Australia as well, which is creating some price compression, as I mentioned, on the value segment. As well as looking for more oversight of products coming into Australia which, again, our view is that ultimately benefits providers like MediPharm with the suite of licenses, GMP compliance and pharmaceutical operators like ourselves. So we think all these regulatory changes will also benefit MediPharm. Operator: That concludes our question-and-answer session. I will now turn the call back over to Greg Hunter for closing remarks. Greg Hunter: Great. Thank you. And thank you, everybody, for joining the call today, and we look forward to seeing you again at our Q1 earnings call, and we'll talk then. Thank you. Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.
Operator: Good afternoon. My name is Desiree, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Virgin Galactic Holdings, Inc.'s Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star 1 again. Thank you. I will now turn the call over to Eric Cerny, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead. Eric Cerny: Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Virgin Galactic Holdings, Inc.'s Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Earnings Conference Call. On the call with me today are Michael Colglazier, Chief Executive Officer, and Douglas Ahrens, Chief Financial Officer. Following our prepared remarks, we will open the call for questions. Our press release and slide presentation that will accompany today's remarks are available on our Investor Relations website. Please see Slide 2 of the presentation for our safe harbor disclaimer. During today's call, we may make certain forward-looking statements. These statements are based on current expectations and assumptions, and, as a result, are subject to risks and uncertainties. Many factors could cause actual events to differ materially from the forward-looking statements made on this call. For more information about these risks and uncertainties, refer to the risk factors in the company's SEC filings made from time to time. You are cautioned not to put undue reliance on forward-looking statements and the company specifically disclaims any obligation to update the forward-looking statements that may be discussed during this call whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Please also note that we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial information on today's call. Please refer to our earnings release for a reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial metrics. I would now like to turn the call over to our CEO, Michael Colglazier. Go ahead, Michael. Michael Colglazier: Hello, everyone. We have had a tremendously productive start to 2026 and the buildup to commercial space line operations is in full swing. Three massive milestones to call out at the start. First, we have completed structural assembly of all three major components of our ship, the wing, the fuselage, and the feather. Second, the weight-on-wheels milestone for this first ship is expected in the next few weeks as the process of joining the wing, fuselage, and feather has been moving along even better than expected. This allows the ground test phase to begin in April, with commencement of the flight test phase on track for Q3 as planned. And third, with the launch of our first spaceflight on track for Q4, we have opened the sales window for Virgin Galactic Holdings, Inc. spaceflight expeditions, and we are now adding people to our spacefarer community at new price points. We are very excited to share the progress made since our last earnings call, and I will start by calling your attention to the fantastic image on page 3 of our presentation. As you can see, we have wrapped up final assembly of all three of our major subassemblies: the wing, the fuselage, and the feather, and the process of joining these into our first complete spaceship has begun. A structural assembly set to finish over the next week or two we expect to bring this ship into ground testing in April, which has it on track for our first spaceflight in Q4 2026. Amazing progress by our entire company. With our first ship moving full steam ahead, we have released a limited tranche of Virgin Galactic Holdings, Inc. spaceflight expeditions, each priced at $750,000. Our new website is now live and will support the information application process for those interested in joining the Virgin Galactic Holdings, Inc. spacefarer community. We have hired our new Chief Growth Officer, Megan Pritchard, and she is joining at one of the most exciting times in our company's history. Looking at the agenda on page 4, today I will offer insight into our sales plans for the year ahead, share expectations for ramping the cadence of spaceflight during the first month of operation, hit highlights on progress of future spaceports, and provide a road map of expected milestones and catalysts as our first spaceship is ready for its maiden spaceflight. Doug will discuss our plans for cash management, capital structure support, and revenue planning over the next twelve months as we place our ships in the commercial service, drive meaningful revenue from spaceflight operations, protect our balance sheet, and target quarterly positive cash flows as early as 2027. He will also review our fourth quarter and fiscal year 2025 results. Let us get started on page 5. With the outstanding progress the Virgin Galactic Holdings, Inc. team has delivered with our first spaceship, we have included a series of images on pages 5 through 7 of our new ship, as structural assembly nears completion. We are incredibly excited at how well the ship is coming together. During our last call, we highlighted some specific challenges we were having with elements of our fuselage, and the fuselage remained on the critical path for us throughout the build phase for this first ship. With that said, finished the fuselage assembly last week, and joined it to the wing assembly shortly thereafter. Our feather assembly from Bell Textron has made its way across country to our factory and we expect to connect the feather to the wing and fuselage over the next week or two and then move this ship into its ground testing phase. I would like to take a minute to call out why this enormous milestone is so important to Virgin Galactic Holdings, Inc.'s future. We invested years designing this next generation ship and the result is spectacular. That heavy lift is behind us. We then spent significant time and capital developing tools both to build the carbon parts and also to assemble those parts into the final structure of the ship. These tools were built to exacting standards, designed to last, and they will support the efficient production of many spaceships going forward. Next, we spent time refining the process to produce a wide variety of carbon composite parts for our ships. As I mentioned with our fuselage, some components required a few iterations to get right, which is fairly typical of first-yield parts, but we have adapted our processes and techniques and we can now repeatedly produce high-quality parts. All these efforts came together and are enabling us to assemble the ship's structure in the span of just a few weeks. This final assembly time shaved months off our historical process, and we expect this efficient assembly process to be replicated as we expand our fleet over time. In sum, we now have the infrastructure and capability to build and assemble spaceships efficiently, reliably, and at scale. This provides an enormous competitive advantage we grow our business. Turning to exciting news on page 8. Sales have begun. With our first new spaceship preparing for its ground test phase, it is time to welcome more people into the Virgin Galactic Holdings, Inc. spacefarer community, which already contains over 650 founding astronauts. To support the process, we have reimagined and rebuilt our entire digital presence to focus on informing and engaging aspiring astronauts, with a streamlined and purposeful approach to our new public website at virgingalactic.com. I hope everyone listening will take time to explore this new site, as the life-changing aspects of our spaceflight experience really come through. We have opened a limited tranche of 50 spaceflight expeditions, each priced at $750,000. These space flights will be slotted in our manifest immediately after we fly the current members of our founding astronaut community, many of whom have been anticipating their spaceflight for several years. As I have shared before, we expect our prices will rise in steps over the near to medium term, and once this initial tranche of spaceflight reservations is concluded, we plan to retire sales at the $750,000 level to focus on welcoming this new group into our spacefarer community in trademark Virgin Galactic Holdings, Inc. fashion. We will then open our next tranche of availability which we expect will be priced higher than $750,000. We will also be offering a very limited number of reservations to join our earliest space flights on our new spaceship. To date, slightly less than 800 people have flown to space throughout history, and we expect flights from government agencies will leave fewer than 200 remaining slots to be one of the first 1,000 humans in space. We will be pricing these very limited opportunities substantially higher than our regular reservations. With sales beginning and commercial operations on the horizon, I am extremely pleased to welcome our first Chief Growth Officer, Megan Pritchard, to Virgin Galactic Holdings, Inc. Megan joins us from Uber, where she most recently led the U.S. mobility portfolio, including the luxury segment Uber Elite. Megan's career has been spent building commercial success in groundbreaking industries from eVTOL to autonomous vehicles to expansive growth and category expansion in the rideshare industry. Her charter is to drive growth and scale across the company, with an immediate focus on our initial sales efforts and a broad remit that includes scaling our business at Spaceport America, establishing additional revenue streams for our existing and emerging technology, building brand partnerships, and accelerating the development of new spaceports. Moving to page 9. I would like to share how we are planning to ramp our flight cadence during the early months of operation. We expect to begin commercial spaceflight operations with a cadence of approximately four spaceflights per month. We plan to have our space missions and maintenance teams trained and ready to turn the ships at a higher pace, but we want to take the time necessary to dial in our astronaut experience and incorporate any learnings and feedback we receive during our initial flights. Once we have the missions, maintenance, astronaut experience dialed in, we plan to progress to an average of eight space flights per month. We will then ensure all parts of our operation are scaling appropriately before moving to 10 flights per month or more. Actual flight cadence will be influenced by weather and other factors, of course, but our planning efforts are built with these flight rates in mind. Safety and operation, and dedication to an unparalleled astronaut experience will drive the actual pace of this progression and we will only proceed a step up in flight cadence when everything is fully ready. At this early planning stage, our goal is to move into a cadence of 10-plus flights per month sometime in 2027, subject to vehicle and operational readiness. On page 10, we have recently been flying our launch vehicle, Eve, as part of our pilot proficiency training. This ship was given a very meaningful upgrade over the last year while we have been building our new spaceships, and the improvements have readied Eve to target a launch support capability of up to 12 to 15 space flights per month, which is higher than our expected average commercial cadence. This additional capacity from Eve should be extremely helpful allowing us to respond to weather-related flight delays, so we can generally stay on track with our flight dates and customer commitments on a week-to-week basis. Our engineering and maintenance teams along with our pilot corps have done an incredible job with this launch vehicle. We expect the substantial upgrades we have made to Eve over the last few years will support a service life into 2032 or beyond. But we also plan to expand our spaceflight capacity beyond what Eve can support. That will require additional launch vehicles to support the next set of spaceships coming off the line. Our new launch vehicle development program, internally known as the LVX program, has been advancing modestly as we have kept most of our engineers focused on the delivery of our new spaceships. We expect the majority of our engineers will pivot to the LVX program as our spaceships move into flight test, and we currently are targeting commercial deployment of new LVX vehicles along with additional spaceships in 2030, which should coincide nicely with opportunities for a second spaceport in addition to expanding operations at Spaceport America. Speaking of future spaceports, on page 11, I would like to touch on progress with plans for our next spaceport. We are nearing conclusion of our initial study for Virgin Galactic Holdings, Inc. baseline operations in Italy. We have had a very successful engagement with our partners in the Italian government, and we jointly sorted important efforts necessary to fly from a location within the Puglia region in Southern Italy. Key achievements include understanding how airspace will be deconflicted, identification of probable flight paths and spaceflight trajectories, definition of infrastructure requirements of the spaceport, robust assessment of weather patterns across the year, and positive investigations into both supply chain and hospitality availability within the local area. Next steps will include specifics around licensing, timetables, and business arrangements, and we are looking forward to continuing this effort with our Italian partners this year. In addition to the exciting opportunity in Italy, we also progressed discussions for a Virgin Galactic Holdings, Inc. spaceport with additional governments during the last quarter. I have been very encouraged by the interest and opportunity within each of these locations, and I look forward to sharing more around international expansion opportunities in addition to the substantial growth we expect from Spaceport America. Starting on page 12, I would like to outline several upcoming milestones and expected catalyst opportunities, as our first spaceship moves through ground testing, advances to flight testing, and prepares to launch into commercial operation. First step, in April our first spaceship will begin a series of ground testing efforts, specifically known as production acceptance testing, or PAT, and integrated vehicle ground testing, or IVGT. Production acceptance testing will be done on every spaceship we produce and is conducted to ensure that all systems, including electrical, pneumatic, and hydraulic, are properly installed and function correctly in an integrated configuration. After that is done, we plan to begin the IVGT process, a deep systems-level integration test done on the first vehicle, which is conducted to validate and verify the overall system design and confirm that it meets all performance and safety requirements. This thorough ground testing period should wrap up in July, when we expect to open the hangar doors in Phoenix, christen this first ship with its new livery installed, and transport it to Spaceport America in New Mexico. It will begin flight testing shortly thereafter. Moving to page 13. Next up in May will be some excitement at our operating base in New Mexico. With flight testing on our horizon, it is time to expand our team of pilots and accelerate proficiency training. To do that, we have been interviewing some of the world's best test pilots to join our elite spaceship pilot corps. Commencing in May, our pilots are scheduled to begin flying our original spaceship, Unity, on a series of glide flights above Spaceport America. Our new spaceships share the same outer mold line and energy management characteristics as our original ship, which makes Unity an outstanding training vehicle in advance of our first glide flight with our new spaceship. This series of glide flights with Unity also gives our mission control and maintenance teams excellent preparation ahead of the new spaceship test flights. And it is going to be a majestic sight when Unity delivers these encore performances in the New Mexico skies. Advancing to page 14. The next milestone following ground testing and the Unity glide flight series will be the start of our flight test program, which we expect to commence in the third quarter. The flight test program will include a series of glide and rocket-powered test flights. We plan to have a partial burn test flight where we will ignite the rocket motor but purposely stop short of a full-duration burn. This will be followed by a full-duration burn spaceflight. The full flight test program is expected to extend into the fourth quarter. The main objective of our glide flights is to incrementally expand the flight envelope and evaluate overall vehicle performance, including tuning, and validating the tuning of the fly-by-wire flight control system. Rocket-powered flights focus on validating the performance of the ship during key stages of flight and validating predictive thermal models. Other test points will include the evaluation of the cabin experience, training and customer operations procedures, and maintenance and turnaround processes. The test program is ultimately designed to validate all systems, operating procedures, and the astronaut experience before entering commercial service. Throughout this phase, our timeline is driven by disciplined data collection, analysis, and model refinement. We will be posting and publishing images from all these flights along the way. It will be an exciting spring, summer, and fall as anticipation builds with the start of commercial operations. On page 15, a quick note on two additional milestones coming later this year. First, with production of spaceships well underway, we are gearing up to begin rocket motor assembly within our Phoenix factory, with production expected to begin in Q4 2026. We have a solid inventory of motors already on hand, but the new rocket motor assembly line is planned to keep pace with rocket motor production needs as we scale flight at Spaceport America, and the line is designed to support rocket production needs for a second spaceport as well. Next, with our first spaceship entering the test phase, fabrication efforts are pivoting to support both static testing efforts and also production of our second spaceship, which we expect will enter service between late Q4 2026 and early Q1 2027, in line with our planned ramp in spaceflight cadence. Turning to page 16. We often receive questions from our retail shareholder base regarding production schedule, commercial service launch dates and cadence, and cash management, including how we consider the benefits of cash inflows from our ATM program relative to its dilutive effects. I believe we touched on schedule and launch cadence already, but before I hand the call over to Doug, I would like to spend a little time on our cash management and capital market strategy as we conclude our pre-revenue phase and prepare to drive meaningful cash inflows with the launch of commercial space line operations. First and foremost, we will be using cash to complete our first two spaceships and place them into service, as those two ships enable the start of high-margin revenue operations and begin to unlock the tremendous value of our business model. As we bring these ships into service, we expect to generate significant cash from the current backlog of customers as their final payments become due in advance of their spaceflight. To enhance our cash flows as we start commercial operations, we will be offering a limited number of higher-priced space expeditions on our earliest flights for those who wish to be part of the first 1,000 people in space. We plan to manage our flight manifest in a fashion that will allow modestly positive quarterly cash flow within 2027, with positive cash flow forecasted to scale in 2028 and beyond as we fly astronauts and researchers who have reserved their spaceflight at higher price points. We entered into a series of capital realignment transactions last December and moved most of our debt maturity into 2028, in alignment with our planned ramp in price and profitability. Doug will share more about the many benefits of these capital realignment transactions, including flexibility in payment terms. We expect to leverage opportunities with the $138 million remaining within our existing ATM program to support corporate objectives in the upcoming year. Utilizing an ATM program is dilutive. However, we expect the value created from the assets that are being put into service with support from this ATM use will substantially outstrip the potential dilutive impact. We are excited to move into cash-generating operations as we place our new spaceships into service, expand our book of business with the addition of new astronauts, and prepare for high growth in the years ahead. I will now turn the call over to Douglas Ahrens for the full financial update including detail on our plans to leverage these aforementioned strategies to transition the company from a pre-revenue state to a profit-creating enterprise. Douglas T. Ahrens: Thanks, Michael. Good afternoon, everyone. I will start with the highlights of the capital realignment transactions we completed in December, and I will share how this forms the landscape for us to realize the economic potential of our business. I will follow with a recap of our recent financial results before providing an outlook for 2026 as we transition to commercial service. Starting with our capital realignment transactions on page 17, in December we successfully executed an exchange with several of the holders of our 2027 convertible bonds addressing $355 million of the $425 million convertible bonds originally due in February 2027. These transactions were done very intentionally and with capital preservation in mind. There were several key benefits to our business from executing these transactions. First, we extended the final maturity date of the new notes to December 2028, which better aligns with our planned ramp in cash flow from commercial operations with the two new spaceships in service. Second, we eliminated $142 million of contractual debt payments, representing a very substantial reduction in future indebtedness. Third, we built flexibility into the new structure, giving us the option to settle portions of the debt obligations with either cash or equity depending on future conditions. As part of the exchange, we also issued warrants, which are intended to align with shareholder interests given the warrant exercise price is more than double our recent stock price. Additionally, the warrants require cash payment to the company when exercised, further enhancing our balance sheet. These transactions were thoughtfully executed and are expected to support our ability to deliver shareholder value over the long term. To recap, we have substantially extended the maturity of our debt, materially reduced the principal amount due, added flexibility for method of payment, and with the inclusion of warrants, we have further aligned all stakeholders' interests with meaningful share price appreciation. Through the successful completion of these capital realignment transactions, we believe we have built a financial runway to launch and grow commercial space line operations. I think it is important for us to take a moment and reflect on Virgin Galactic Holdings, Inc.'s financial life cycle and call out the extraordinary place we have now reached. The first phase of our financial life cycle was the development phase, when we spent many years on research and development to optimize the performance of our unique spaceflight system. Not only did we create an amazing human spaceflight experience, but we also built significant barriers to entry with our technology. The next phase was the investment phase, when we put the infrastructure in place that enables us to build incredible spaceships. We have the factory capacity and tooling needed to repeatedly produce space vehicles that are designed for manufacturability and maintainability. With the first new spaceship nearing completion and the second ship in line, we are wrapping up the initial investment phase. We are set up for cost-efficient scaling of the fleet going forward. We have effectively converted cash into valuable assets on the balance sheet in the form of both factory capacity and new spaceships. As this initial investment phase concludes and we head into commercial service, we expect to see further improvement in free cash flow each quarter of this calendar year. This brings us to the next and particularly exciting phase, the commercial phase. With our first spaceship nearing completion and preparing to head into ground testing, we are now gearing up for the start of commercial service in the fourth quarter of this calendar year. Further emphasizing this incredible moment, we are welcoming our new Chief Growth Officer and opening up sales to new customers. With the start of the commercial phase, we plan to accelerate our flight rate and open the doors for sustained profitable growth. We are thrilled to have reached this extraordinary place on our journey. Let us now shift to our recent financial results on page 18. Starting with Q4 2025, we generated revenue of $300,000 from access fees related to future astronauts. Total operating expenses for the fourth quarter were reduced by 26% to $61 million compared to $82 million in the prior-year period as we reduced expenses and also continued to see the shift from R&D to capital investments in new spaceships. Similarly, net loss improved by 18% to $63 million in the fourth quarter compared to $76 million in the prior-year period. Adjusted EBITDA improved by 23% to negative $49 million in the fourth quarter compared to negative $63 million in the prior-year period. Free cash flow was negative $95 million in the fourth quarter, at the midpoint of our prior guidance and a 19% improvement compared to the prior-year period. Turning to page 19. For the full fiscal year 2025, we generated revenue of $2 million from future astronaut access fees. Total operating expenses were $287 million in 2025, reflecting a 25% reduction from $384 million in 2024. We reported a net loss of $279 million in 2025, representing a 20% improvement compared to a net loss of $347 million in the prior year. Adjusted EBITDA for the year was negative $226 million, a 22% improvement compared to negative $289 million in the prior year. Free cash flow was negative $438 million in 2025. Moving to page 20. We ended the year with $338 million in cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities. In 2025, we generated $122 million in gross proceeds through an aftermarket, or ATM, equity offering program. For 2025, capital expenditures were $198 million, up from $122 million in the prior year. That growth in CapEx is reflected in property, plant, and equipment, or PP&E, on the balance sheet. We reported $389 million in PP&E at the end of 2025, an increase of 86% from $209 million at the end of 2024. This represents our significant investment in assets such as manufacturing capacity and spaceships that we expect to yield tremendous future economic returns. Spending trends in 2025 played out as expected. Peak spending occurred back in 2025. We have reduced our cash spending each quarter since then. Looking ahead, we expect continued reductions in cash spending each quarter this year. Although we plan to add resources in our space line operations and customer operations teams in anticipation of commercial service in 2026, these operating costs are expected to be more than offset by the reductions in manufacturing costs as we finalize the build of our initial spaceship fleet. Continuing with our projections, revenue for 2026 is expected to be $200,000 for astronaut access fees. Forecasted free cash flow for 2026 is expected to be in the range of negative $90 million to $95 million. We expect free cash flow to show sequential improvement following Q1. By Q4 2026, we expect to receive significant new cash inflows from customers as we initiate commercial service. Commercial service is obviously the pathway to delivering the economic model that we first laid out for you in August 2024, and that model is shown again here on page 21. We continue to see the economics of the model holding true. We plan to communicate two key metrics that drive the economics: flights per month and revenue per flight. The first metric, flights per month, is a powerful indicator of the success of our spaceflight system and is a key differentiator for us relative to a traditional vertical launch approach. Michael talked about our expectation of attaining a targeted flight rate of 10 or more flights per month sometime in 2027. This translates to approximately the annual flight rate of 125 flights per year as shown in the first column on this page. The second metric, revenue per flight, is a function of ticket pricing. Michael also mentioned that our current price for a spaceflight expedition has increased to $750,000 per seat. Plus, we will offer a limited number of tickets at a higher price to fly on the earlier flights. Given we currently have approximately 650 future astronauts tickets at various prices, revenue per flight will vary depending on how these tickets flow through the flight manifest. Currently, we expect to achieve modest quarterly positive cash flow within 2027 as we fly a large percentage of astronauts with tickets that were historically sold at lower prices. We forecast that we will achieve the adjusted EBITDA shown in the first column of this business model on an annualized basis sometime during 2028. We are pursuing a high growth trajectory. We are very excited to be approaching the growth phase of our business with the anticipated start of commercial service. In the 10-K to be filed, we included a going concern disclosure and management's plans to resolve it. The assessment leading to this disclosure looks at cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities on the balance sheet as of the date of the filing of the 10-K and compares those amounts to our spending projections for the next twelve months. It also takes into account all contractual debt payments due within the next twelve months, which are assumed to be settled in cash. According to generally accepted accounting principles, this assessment does not yet allow inclusion of our expected future cash inflows from space flights, such as those we have highlighted today. It also does not include the potential of any additional capital inflows such as the $138 million remaining on the ATM. Given this methodology, the going concern disclosure is to be expected. We are at this stage in our financial life cycle where we are successfully converting cash into valuable assets in the form of manufacturing capacity and new spaceships that can drive our economic model. We forecast the start of commercial service in the fourth quarter of this year, and we expect significant cash inflows in connection with that milestone. Throughout the year, we plan to maintain appropriate strength in our balance sheet, and we are thrilled to be on the cusp of ramping commercial space line operations. With that, I will turn the call back over to Michael. Michael Colglazier: Thanks, Doug. I will close on page 22, which again shows the image of our new spaceship finishing final assembly in our Phoenix factory. What an accomplishment. It is a shared success that was only possible with enormous effort and dedication from our partners at Bell Textron and Carbon Aerospace, as well as a lengthy list of key suppliers who stepped up to deliver a very lengthy bill of material that enabled fabrication of the ship. Most of all, this ship coming together so well is a testament to the talent, genius, grit, and tenacity of our teammates at Virgin Galactic Holdings, Inc. We are on a bold endeavor and this team is delivering day in and day out. I am proud and inspired to see our team and our partners come together, and we cannot wait to show this ship off to the world when it is formally christened in just a few months. We have reached pivotal milestones this quarter, with the upcoming conclusion of our first spaceship assembly phase, the launch of sales, the impending start of ground testing of our spaceship program. We will be opening our factory to visits from our founding astronaut community in the next month, and I think this group is going to be over the moon with excitement as they see their spaceship coming to life so beautifully. Let us open the call for questions. Thank you. Operator: We will now begin the question and answer session. If you have dialed in and would like to ask a question, please press 1 on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and join the queue. If you would like to withdraw your question, simply press 1 again. If you are called upon to ask your question and are listening via speakerphone in your device, please pick up your handset to ensure that your phone is not on mute when asking your question. Again, press 1 to join the queue. Our first question comes from the line of Oliver Chen with TD Cowen. Your line is open. Oliver Chen: Hi. Thanks a lot, Michael and Doug. Regarding the chief growth and what you see ahead with the consumer, what are your thoughts on our hypothesis on the opportunities and the workflow with much happening there. Also, as we think about the model going forward, what should we know about CapEx more quarterly? And then more broadly, the new spaceport sounds like a big opportunity. What is on the road map for that investment cost and how that may manifest? I know there is a lot of economic benefits you will bring to a region, and then lastly, more specifically, the commercial spaceflight in fourth quarter is very exciting. Any parameters on that? What is embedded in your guidance for the revenue that quarter? Michael Colglazier: Hey, Oliver. It is Michael. Why don’t I take, I think, the first and third and let Doug take the second and fourth? But if you would do me a favor, Oliver, just a little more clarity on your first question. Oliver Chen: Yeah. As we look ahead, I guess, Megan, the announcement of Megan Pritchard, what is on the road map for what you see as the growth framework and thinking about the luxury and consumer side, the strategy. Michael Colglazier: Got it. Incredibly excited to have Megan joining us. She is an amazing executive. She starts Monday. And as we kind of mentioned in the prepared remarks, there is, I will call it, tactical, and then there is strategic. So tactically, Megan will lead our team that is driving growth in sales during this year. That all that growth will be flowing through at Spaceport America. So that is a focus on our suborbital space business with both private citizens and researchers. Megan's remit is much broader, and the team and processes she will build will be much broader. So that includes, I will say, expansions of our suborbital business model. I will jump ahead a little bit, Oliver, to number four. You talked about new spaceport. So Megan will be heavily involved in the identification and kind of partnership development we do on new spaceports. You ask about economics. Each deal will be different, and each partnership will be different depending. But broadly, these are likely to be joint, joint agreements, you know, joint venture agreements in the countries at hand. Broadly, we will look to bring from Virgin Galactic Holdings, Inc. our spaceflight system, our space vehicles, and all the technology around that. And we would look for our partner countries to bring the physical infrastructure in those areas. So the spaceport runway, airspace, of course, is from a government standpoint. And we would look to the community around for, I will call it, the astronaut experiences outside of flight. So hotels, food and dining, beverages, activities to do, both for the astronauts and for all the friends and family who come. So that is kind of who is bringing what to the table. Then a sharing of the economics through that. So, hopefully, that gives you a little bit of clarity there. And I said each country has different things to bring to the table, and so I imagine things would be unique depending upon each country's specific interest. In addition then to growing our initial book of business further and managing the price, we think it will be price growth in the near term for that on Megan's plate, and then looking to expand through additional spaceports and get that underway because those are, you know, a number of years in development. We will be looking to additional business models that we can leverage both with our existing and, you know, emerging technologies that we create. So nothing more to share about that one broadly. But I think bringing someone in of Megan's caliber, like I said, with a wide remit to help us grow and accelerate the growth of our company. Doug, you want to talk the couple questions Oliver had, number two and four? Douglas T. Ahrens: Yes. So regarding the CapEx, we guided the free cash flow to be between $90 million to $95 million for Q1. That is million dollars negative. And then we said it would continue to improve each quarter sequentially through the year. That is what we are expecting. So to put the CapEx in perspective, around half of the projections for the first quarter and into the second quarter are CapEx as we finish up the work on primarily, you know, Delta One, and we have got the Delta Two coming in, the stack test article, all of that. So you will see CapEx be around half. And then as the total spending comes down, the CapEx comes down even faster in the second half because now we are moving into more of an operating phase and our spending shifts to the commercial operations, you know, with the spaceport and all of that. So that is really more front-end loaded in the first half of the year and then tapers off the CapEx side in the second half. Regarding the revenue, it is a little early to be giving revenue guidance four quarters out. But just to put it in perspective, we did say that we expect to start commercial service in that quarter, and we gave kind of a cadence to expect that in the beginning we would be expecting about one flight a week, and so four flights a month. And then when we are ready, we will ramp up to eight flights a month, and we give a timeline getting to 10 or so flights per month by 2027. So, you know, again, it depends a little bit on exactly when we start in the fourth quarter, and then the other variable, of course, is the mix of ticket pricing. We talked about quite a variety of prices, and those will weave their way into the early manifest. As we discussed today, you have got the legacy customers, and you have got some new opportunities here for people who want to be in the first 1,000 astronauts ever to go to space. Again, it varies on a few things there, Oliver, but I hope that gives you a little more color. Oliver Chen: Okay. Last and a follow-up. On the four-times monthly flight to the eight to the 10-times, what are the variables in terms of, you know, reaching 10 sooner or reaching 10 later that we should consider in the sensitivities as we model that monthly flight cadence ramp? Michael Colglazier: Sure. It is Michael. Think about it as almost balancing the line a little bit. We are super excited at the work that has happened with our launch vehicle, Eve. And talked about Eve, we expect has capacity to support 12 to 15, you know, launches, so, you know, better than, you know, three to four a week, if you want to think of it that way. And that is higher than what we expect we will average across the year, and that is important. That will help us, you know, do some catch up if we have a string of bad weather and other things. But let us say Eve is running three a week for conservative assumptions here. We have built each of these spaceships with an expectation that they can fly twice a week. So having one spaceship would theoretically let us fly twice a week. Eve has the capacity to fly twice a week, and that would get you to the eight flights per month capability with one spaceship and one mothership, one launch vehicle Eve. Now we have a second spaceship coming and we expect that to arrive 2026 into 2027. And that also we expect will be able to fly twice a week. So at that point, Eve, depending upon how it does between 12 to 15 a month, Eve starts to become the bottleneck of our system. That is, of course, why we have our LVX program to expand our capacity overall. So to go from greater than eight, we will need both Eve, obviously, but we will need our second ship to be able to move past eight per month and into 10-plus per month. Hopefully, that gives you a good sense of how to think about that math. Oliver Chen: Very helpful. Thanks, gentlemen. Best regards. Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Gregory Arnold Konrad with Jefferies. Your line is open. Gregory Arnold Konrad: Good evening. Hi. Good evening, continuing with the last question. Just to verify, I think you talked about the next mothership. Did you say 2030, and then I think in the past, you had talked about an expanded fleet scenario. Should we think about the third spaceship not coming online or kind of reaching that model to that 2030 timeframe, or how do you think about what is next after the two spaceships? Michael Colglazier: Yes. I think 2030 is the right timing for a next launch vehicle. And it is not a perfect match, but, broadly, we want two spaceships coming out for every launch vehicle that we bring out. That kind of brings a balanced set. So if the launch vehicle, which is the longer lead item for us, is what is coming 2030. As we mentioned on the call, we now have the infrastructure to build spaceships efficiently, quickly, and cost effectively. If you have not seen it, or if anybody on the call has not seen the Galactic 10 video that released shortly after market close, you will see in there just kind of a quick time-lapse of how we take a completed fuselage, completed wing, and bring the joining of those together. And we expect, you know, over the next week or two at most, you will see us into combining that with the feather that is already there. So we are able to build spaceships in a very effective and efficient fashion. And we would want at least one of those spaceships, if not two, ready to go by the time we bring the launch vehicle in 2030. And that is a fairly straightforward process for us to do now. Gregory Arnold Konrad: And then maybe just to follow up on the reopening of ticket sales. I mean, I think you are doing a limited first tranche and then, you know, talked about the other limited tranche and eventually a second tranche. Can you maybe just talk about timing, how you are thinking about, like, the metrics and balancing backlog, and then I think also since last time we talked, there have been some changes to, like, the competitive backdrop. I think there has been some discontinuation from competitors. I mean, how has that maybe materialized in terms of demand? Michael Colglazier: So let us see where to start with that. The competitive piece just to ask, Greg. The Blue Origin made an announcement that they are trying to focus on lunar program. It is very exciting and important to the country. We wish them the best. I think their stated piece was that they were out for no less than two years. So I think it is probably right for people who wish to take a spaceflight expedition and not go to the space station for $50,000,000, but do so at a more manageable price point, we believe we are well-positioned to be their company of choice in that regard. And I think that will help from a demand standpoint for us for sure. So that is one. Two, the kind of amount of availability we are putting out is more for price strategy, pricing strategy, than it is for picking a specific number. We think it is important to be clear that we are going to step our pricing up as we go, at least in the short and medium terms. And so that is why you see us with a fairly limited number of 50 at a $750,000 price point. I think everybody knows this, but just for context, in case anyone is new, we currently have 650 or so, a little more, founding astronauts, and that is a meaningful group that will carry us, you know, from 2027 into early 2028. So it is not that there is necessarily pressure on us to fill the backlog, but we do want to build our book of business at higher price points. So that is why we are going to start at 50 spaceflight expeditions at $750,000. We will retire that price point. We will take a beat and bring those 50 people into our community, as we want to do that in a world-class way. And then we will open up again. We will pick the number. We do expect the price point will be above $750,000. We have not picked that yet. And I think we will repeat that process a couple times until we hit steady-state price point, and build our book of business going forward. Now I may have missed one other part of your question, Greg. Gregory Arnold Konrad: No. No. No. That was perfect. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Michael Colglazier: You are welcome. Operator: Next question comes from the line of Myles Alexander Walton with Wolfe Research. Your line is open. Myles Alexander Walton: Thanks. Good evening. So I was hoping you could touch on the post-glide flight of the new spaceship to commercial service. I think you mentioned, Michael, that there is a partial burn, then there is one full powered burn. Is that all there is prior to the first commercial operation being presumably the third power burn? Michael Colglazier: That is correct, Myles. In fact, the second piece will be carrying research experiments on the second flight. We will technically be our first. And we do have Mike Moses in town today. He is in from, he is in back and forth in New Mexico and our factory in Phoenix much, but he is here. And, you know, Mike, of course, is our expert in everything to do with flight test. So, Mike, if you do not mind, you know, expanding upon that. Mike Moses: Yeah. Sure. Myles, happy to. So, and maybe just to clarify so that we do not talk past each other. One rocket-powered flight that is not full duration will not take us to space, just to get us supersonic and see how things behave in the Mach 1–1.5 region. And then two space flights before we enter commercial service, the first with just pilots on board and research in the back, so through the NASA Flight Opportunities program, we have got a manifest of payloads to bring in revenue on that first test flight to space. Then another one with two pilots and six mission specialists in back. Those will be internal folks, to validate the cabin experience and mostly our procedures and processes, like Michael said, and then we will be ready for commercial service. The reason that we are able to only have a couple of rocket-powered flights, unlike the Unity flight test program, is we are not learning that envelope for the first time. Our control system is different. We have some systems that are different. We certainly need to verify and validate the performance of the vehicle. We are not learning exactly what stresses are put on the vehicle, exactly how hot it will get, or exactly what happens in zero gravity as the ship maneuvers. So we know all of that from the Unity flights. So we are able to very rapidly move through that program. Of course, we will always operate with safety in mind and prudence. We will take our time to analyze the data, sure that the ship is actually behaving the way we thought it did, and then we will be ready to move. So a combination of not needing to do as many flights as Unity and a Delta spaceship that is designed to fly faster, so the turnarounds between test flights should be able to go a little faster, means that will be a fairly expeditious program as we move through test spaceflight. You will see us focusing more on the glide flights. That is where the new handling flight control systems are different. We want to spend the most time looking at that on both. Myles Alexander Walton: Got it. Makes a lot of sense. There was this, so I am just looking at the 10-K relative to the going concern, and there is a comment in there about the management's plan for addressing, mitigating the condition. And one of those points is partnering with third parties to fund and accelerate the pace of future space vehicle development. Can you elaborate on that, Michael? What exactly is meant by the partnering with third party? Is this different than your current organization? Is this something you are already doing, or is this something that is looked at as being incremental? Michael Colglazier: We have efforts that I would say we are exploring, Myles, both with governments for spaceports as well as the opportunities perhaps with the U.S. government and opportunities we may have with our launch vehicle and things we can do with our launch vehicle in those regards. I think there is nothing to share at this point in either of those places. But as it pertains to our plans, which, you know, the way, you know, this accounting is done is over the next twelve months, I think both of those categories become relevant in how we might partner with governments, be it the U.S. government or an international government, around the new spaceport. The partnership model one could conceive would bring in economics to allow us to accelerate the development of the vehicles for those uses. Myles Alexander Walton: Okay. That makes sense. And, Doug, just one quick one just to clarify for me. The cash flow commentary about the quarterly positive cash flow in 2027, we are talking about cash flow, right? Not operating cash flow. Douglas T. Ahrens: Specifically, I was using just the generic term cash flow for a reason. But let me just explain why. So we have all intents here to build our cash balance through 2027. So we would be spending less than we bring in from all sources. So the reason I chose the words cash flow instead of free cash flow is there is a scenario where if we brought in further investment, like we were just talking about with Michael, you know, say it came in through the capital markets, then we plowed that back into R&D. You do not get credit for those financing cash flows, and so free cash flow in that scenario, you know, you could get a negative number even though, you know, we are building for the future and, you know, not spending more than what we bring in. So when I just say cash flow, that accommodates that. So, again, the intent there is to say that we spend less than we generate, and we are targeting, you know, individual quarters to cross that threshold in 2027. Myles Alexander Walton: Okay. Alright. Thank you. Operator: And, again, if you would like to ask a question, press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. We do have our last question. It comes from the line of Michael David Leshock with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Michael David Leshock: Hey. Good afternoon. Just following up on the 2026 free cash flow guidance and your expectations for the burn rate to improve sequentially through the year? Is there any one quarter where you would expect the biggest step up? Is that kind of a 2Q event when you shift more from production into testing? But just curious if there are any milestones that you could talk about that might drive more of a step change in cash burn versus the more gradual improvement. Douglas T. Ahrens: It is really a gradual improvement until the fourth quarter. So we are expecting, you know, just quarter on quarter lower than the one before, and then by the fourth quarter we see a big change because that is when we get cash coming in from customers as they pay for the rest of their flight reservation. That is the main driver in that quarter. So think of it as a continuous reduction in spending each quarter until the fourth quarter when you get a big shift in the other direction. Michael David Leshock: Great. And then is there any update you can provide on the potential use case of your technology for defense initiatives like Golden Dome? You have talked about that in the past, and you mentioned the need to potentially carry heavy payloads at high altitudes. Just curious if that is still a focus, if there has been any update on that front that you can share. Thanks. Michael Colglazier: Nothing specific to share, Mike. We are, I would say, accepted into the IDIQ for the Golden Dome initiative. We are, you know, qualified as a supplier for that effort. And, yeah, we are spending our time being clear on what are both immediate things, immediate-term opportunities that we may be able to support with both our existing launch vehicle, Eve, and with our new spaceships as they come up, as well as things that are, I will call it, more developmental in nature, which are usually a little bit further in lead times. So but nothing specific to share in that regard. Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes the question and answer session. Thank you all for joining in. You may now disconnect.
Operator: Good afternoon, and welcome to Fathom Holdings Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Conference Call. Joining us today are the company's CEO, Marco Fregenal; and Senior Vice President of Finance, Daniel Weinmann. [Operator Instructions] Please note this conference is being recorded. Before I turn it over to management, I want to remind listeners that today's call may include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements are subject to numerous conditions, many of which are beyond the company's control, including those outlined in the Risk Factors section of the company's Form 10-K year ended December 31, 2025, and other company filings made with the SEC. Copies of which are available on the SEC's website at www.sec.gov. As a result of those forward-looking statements, actual results could differ materially. Fathom undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statement after today's call, except as required by law. Please note that during this call, management will be discussing adjusted EBITDA, which is non-GAAP financial measure as defined by the SEC Regulation G. A reconciliation of this non-GAAP financial measure to the most directly comparable GAAP measure is included in today's press release, which is now posted on Fathom's website. With that, I will turn the call over to Fathom's President and CEO, Marco Fregenal. Please go ahead, sir. Marco Fregenal: Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Before Daniel walks us through the financial results, I want to take a few minutes to step back and talk about the progress we made during the fourth quarter and throughout 2025. This past several years have been challenging for the housing market. Higher interest rates and affordability constraints have significantly reduced transaction activity across the industry. Despite those headwinds, we continue to execute on our long-term strategy and strengthen the foundation of the Fathom platform. That progress is reflected in our results. For the full year 2025, we generated $420 million in revenue, representing a 25% year-over-year growth, and our total transactions increased nearly 15%, driven in part by the addition of My Home Group and the continued addition of strong agents to our network. For the full year 2025, gross profit increased 20.8% to $34.2 million compared to $28.3 million in 2024. And adjusted EBITDA improved by $1.7 million or a loss of $4 million compared to a loss of $5.7 million in 2024. Beyond the financials, we made meaningful strategic progress. We expanded our ancillary businesses, launch new programs and partnerships, strengthen our leadership team and sharpen our focus on the core Fathom ecosystem. It also merits noting that in our fourth quarter, transaction volumes continue to reflect broader market trends. In December, for example, the industry saw a significant number of contract cancellations in some markets, including Atlanta, Jacksonville, and San Antonio, cancellation rates exceeded 20%. Even in this environment, we are encouraged by the strengthening quality of our business. These conditions reinforce why we proactively restructure our economics to reduce reliance on transaction volume and build a more durable, diversified profit model across our platform, positioning us well for our long-term growth and meaningful acceleration when conditions improve. With that context, let me shift to the 4 areas that are central to where we're going as a company, margin expansion, agent experience, customer experience and AI-driven technology. Let me start with margin expansion. In the fourth quarter of 2025, we continue to build Elevate, our concierge level offering by adding more than 100 agents and implemented START, our first-time buyer concierge program through an acquisition. So far in 2026, we have expanded START into 5 states, and we expect by operating 10 states by the end of the year. Looking ahead, our goal is for these 2 programs to represent at least 10% of our total transaction volume by year-end and increase to over 15% by the end of 2027. That's important because both Elevate and START carry significantly higher gross profit margins, typically ranging from 20% to 50%. As these programs scale, we expect them to have a meaningful positive impact on overall margins and further improve the profitability profile of the business. In addition, we are seeing continued progress across our ancillary businesses. Our mortgage business delivered strong performance with revenues increasing 70% in the fourth quarter of 2025 compared to the fourth quarter 2024 while maintaining gross profit margins of approximately 35%. Momentum has continued into the first quarter of 2026, where we have seen file starts increased by over 150% compared to the first quarter of 2025. Our title business also performed well, with revenue growing 38% in the fourth quarter compared to the fourth quarter of 2024, and it continues to be a strong contributor to gross profit margins of approximately 58%. Taken together, both our mortgage and title businesses are scaling nicely and expected to be meaningful contributors to improved margins and overall profitability in 2026. We're also implementing several initiatives to improve profitability and strengthen unit economics across the platform. Let me take a minute to explain our new commission plan named Edge and why matters. Under Edge, new agents will pay a $75 monthly fee. Previously, we charged a $700 annual fee collected on the agent's first transaction of each anniversary year. The challenge was that approximately 35% of our agents never closed the transaction, which made it more difficult to collect the annual fee. By moving to a monthly fee of $75, the total annual amount increases from $700 to $900, a 28.6% increase, which we should now be able to collect from the significant majority of our agents who join Fathom. Moving to our monthly structure increases consistency and predictability in our revenue align us with our industry standards and supports a more engaged agent base, which we believe will drive higher transaction activity over time. To put this in perspective, we believe this change could add to over $1 million in additional gross profit over a full year. With Edge, we are moving away from a flat fee transaction fee and introducing a 7% split while maintaining our $9,000 annual cap, which we set at the agent's anniversary. This is a strategic evolution. The flat fee model works well in a static environment, but a split model allow our economics to scale with home prices. As values increase, our gross profit per transaction increases as well. In other words, we participate more directly in the upside of the market. And even with that change, we expect to remain extremely competitive. A 7% split is well below brokerages, which typically charge from 20% to 30% or even more. While this change will increase our average gross profit per transaction by more than $200, we remain firmly positioned as a value leader. We are not repositioning as the traditional brokerage. We are strengthening our position as the highest value brokers in the industry. In addition, we have introduced a new transaction fee of $250, applied to every transaction in Fathom Realty. On our previous Fathom One and Fathom Max plan, this fee alone will increase our per transaction gross profit by between 45% and 54% on transactions that have not yet reached the annual cap. To put that in perspective, on just 10,000 transactions, that represents an additional $2.5 million in gross profit. On our new Edge plan, which includes both a higher commission split of 7% and the separate $250 fee, the combined effect represents on average a 116% increase in gross profit on a pre-cap transaction over our Fathom One plan, which is the plan under which the majority of our agents operate. It is important to understand our identity has never been tied up to a specific pricing structure. Whether it's flat fee or split, those are simply tools. Our identity is and always has been delivering the greatest value to our agents. Even with these changes, including the additional commission split under Edge and now the new $250 transaction fee, we believe we remain among the most competitively priced brokerages in the country. We continue to deliver significantly more in tools, technology, training and operational support than virtually any competitor while still pricing well below the vast majority of brokerages nationwide. This is something which we're very proud. Taken together, these structural changes are significant as these changes could add a significant incremental gross profit before any benefit from a market recovery. And finally, on implementation. All existing agents are being grandfathered into their current plan. Edge applies to new agents joining the platform. Over time, as natural attrition occurs and new agents join, the mix will shift towards Edge organically. We view this as a controlled low disruption transition that allows us to improve unit economics while maintaining stability across our existing agent base. In addition, we are now applying a monthly fee to agents who have historically closed 0 transactions with Fathom. We fully expect some of these agents to leave the platform, and we are comfortable with that outcome. These agents do not generate revenue or contribute to EBITDA. To date, we have already removed approximately 1,100 of these agents, and we expect a similar number to follow as we implement the monthly fees. Removing these agents will have 0 negative impact on our net income or EBITDA. As these initiatives scale, we believe they will play a meaningful role in driving overall margin expansion. Now to agent experience. Agent success is at the core of our platform. We recognize that agents have different goals and operate at different stages of their careers, and we are committed to delivering a seamless experience that supports them at every step. That includes enhancing training, stronger lead generation and new tools like our marketing platform, [ MAXA ]. Across our Elevate and START programs, we're now generating more than 4,000 leads per month, creating over 200 active customer opportunities for our agents. We expect that number to scale to more than 20,000 leads per month by year-end as we continue expanding these programs and roll out additional initiatives, including our partnership with ByOwner.com. We're also seeing encouraging traction with Fathom Business Services, our coaching program designed to improve collaboration between agents and ELG loan officers. While still early, more than 500 agents have completed the training and over 10 million in mortgage transactions are currently in process. Taken together, these initiatives are strengthening our value proposition, helping us attract and retain high-quality agents, increasing attachment across services and driving incremental margin improvement while reinforcing our position as a technology-first platform. The customer experience is just as important to our platform. We focus on delivering a simple and transparent process that builds trust and confidence from search through closing and beyond. In Q2, we plan to launch an integrated consumer portal that will provide buyers and sellers with greater visibility throughout and after the transaction. We're also investing in programs like HOMESTAR, which helps consumers improve their credit. Although we are in the early stages of the rollout, over 600 potential buyers have enrolled, and we have seen approximately 40% of the participants graduating towards beginning the homeownership process. In addition, partnerships such as Move Concierge help streamline decisions around Internet, cable and utilities while our START Concierge program supports first-time buyers as they navigate the complexity of home-buying process. These efforts not only drive satisfaction, repeat business and referrals but also strengthen our network to contribute to greater efficiency and improved unit economics over time. Finally, we continue to enhance intelliAgent, our proprietary technology platform as we lean further into AI-driven initiatives to modernize our offering and to improve overall efficiency. As a technology-first real estate platform, innovation is central to how we operate. We are leveraging AI and automation to streamline agent workflows, enhance the customer experience and scale the business more efficiently than traditional models. These investments are already enabling smarter automation, better insights and more efficient operations across recruiting, training, lead management and transaction support. Over time, we believe this will help us attract and retain high-quality agents, further differentiate the platform and stay ahead of our competitors that are slower to adopt to these technologies. Ultimately, each of these initiatives is designed to improve productivity across the platform, increase revenue per transaction and drive stronger profitability. Taken together, they reflect how we are evolving the model, expanding margins, increasing agent productivity, enhancing customer experience and building a more scalable technology-driven platform. Now let me take a few minutes to discuss some of the leadership changes of the past few months. Samantha Giuggio, who has been with the company for more than 14 years, made a decision to step down as President of Fathom Realty. I have had the privilege of working with Samantha for many years through both the challenges and opportunities our industry has faced. I am deeply grateful for her leadership and the many contributions she made to the growth and success of Fathom. We wish her nothing but the best moving forward. At the same time, I'm excited to welcome Lori Muller, who joined us in February as the new President of Fathom Realty. Lori brings more than 30 years of industry experience, most recently serving as President of EXIT Realty, where she oversaw a network of more than 25,000 agents. She is a proven leader with deep operational expertise, and I'm confident she will play a key role in driving the next phase of growth for Fathom Realty. I have already had the opportunity to work closely with Lori, and I'm excited about the energy, perspective and leadership she brings to the organization. With that, let me turn the call over to Daniel to review the financial results for the fourth quarter and full year. Daniel? Daniel Weinmann: Thank you, Marco. I'll begin reviewing our financial results for the fourth quarter and full year 2025 and then provide a breakdown of performance across our business segments, starting with revenue. Fourth quarter revenue totaled $90.6 million, a 1.2% decrease year-over-year compared to $91.7 million in the prior year period. The modest decline was primarily driven by a 3.2% decrease in brokerage revenue, reflecting softer real estate transaction activity during the quarter. This was partially offset by strong performance in our ancillary businesses, which grew an average of 54.2% year-over-year, driven by increased attach rates and continued expansions of our mortgage and title operations. For the full year 2025, total revenue increased 25.4% to $420.5 million compared to $335.2 million in 2024. The growth was primarily driven by the addition of My Home Group in November 2024 as well as continued momentum in our ancillary businesses, which increased an average of 27.6% year-over-year. This reflects our ongoing focus on driving higher attach rates across our integrated platform and expanding revenue per transaction. Gross profit for the fourth quarter of 2025 increased to $7.1 million compared to $6.7 million in the fourth quarter of 2024. The increase was primarily driven by stronger contributions from higher-margin ancillary businesses, including mortgage and title. The continued expansion of our Elevate program also contributed to improved revenue per transaction and stronger unit economics. Gross profit margin for the fourth quarter of 2025 increased to 8.1% compared to 7.2% in the fourth quarter of 2024. The improvement was primarily driven by a more favorable revenue mix with greater contribution from higher-margin ancillary services as well as improved operating efficiency. For the full year 2025, gross profit increased 20.8% to $34.2 million compared to $28.3 million in 2024. The increase was primarily driven by growth in mortgage and title and the continued expansion of the Elevate program, which helped increase revenue per transaction and overall gross profit contribution. Gross profit margin for the full year 2025 decreased moderately to 8.1% compared to 8.4% in 2024 as the benefits from growth in higher-margin ancillary businesses were offset by revenue mix changes, including the addition of My Home Group and continued investments in growth initiatives. Our technology and development expenses were approximately $1.7 million for the fourth quarter of 2025 compared to $1.8 million in the prior year period. For the full year 2025, technology and development expenses increased to $7.3 million from $6.6 million in 2024. The approximately $700,000 increase was primarily driven by continued investments in our technology platforms, including the expansion of new features within intelliAgent. General and administrative expenses totaled $8.2 million for the fourth quarter of 2025 compared to $8.4 million in the prior year period. For the full year 2025, general and administrative expenses decreased to $33.1 million from $33.6 million in 2024, primarily reflecting the impact of cost reduction initiatives implemented throughout the year. Our marketing expenses totaled $1.4 million for the fourth quarter of 2025 compared to $1.9 million in the prior year period. For the full year 2025 marketing expenses decreased to $5.2 million from $5.8 million in 2024. The decrease was primarily driven by continued expense discipline and increased efficiency across marketing initiatives. Our GAAP net loss for the fourth quarter of 2025 totaled $6.7 million or $0.21 per share compared with a net loss of $6.2 million or $0.29 per share for the fourth quarter of 2024. The year-over-year increase in net loss was primarily driven by a lower income tax benefit of approximately $20,000 in 2025 compared to $1.1 million in the prior year period as well as the recognition of approximately $900,000 loss on the sale of business. For the full year 2025, GAAP net loss was $20.3 million or $0.72 per share compared with a GAAP net loss of $21.6 million or $1.07 per share for 2024. The year-over-year improvement was primarily driven by higher revenue and expense reduction initiatives. These improvements were partially offset by the recognition of a $900,000 loss on the sale of a business and approximately $2 million in accrued legal expenses. Our adjusted EBITDA loss, a non-GAAP measure for the fourth quarter of 2025 improved to $2.6 million compared to $2.9 million in the fourth quarter of 2024. For the full year 2025, adjusted EBITDA loss was $4 million compared to $5.7 million for 2024, representing an improvement of approximately 29.8% year-over-year. The improvement was primarily driven by higher revenue, particularly from the addition of My Home Group and growth in our ancillary businesses as well as continued expense reduction initiatives, including lower marketing and general administrative expenses. These improvements were partially offset by increased investment in technology and development to support long-term platform growth. I will now provide a more detailed review of performance across our individual business segments. Starting with our brokerage segment. We closed approximately 8,501 real estate transactions during the fourth quarter, a decrease of 14.2% compared to 9,903 transactions in the fourth quarter of 2024. The decline was primarily driven by continued softness in the residential real estate market, including elevated mortgage interest rates, affordability constraints and limited housing inventory, which impacted overall transaction volumes. Notably, U.S. home purchase agreements canceled in December represented approximately 16.3% of homes that went under contract during the month, the highest December level recorded since tracking again in 2017, highlighting the ongoing volatility and pressure in the housing market. For the full year, we closed approximately 42,405 real estate transactions, representing a 14.6% increase compared to the prior year, primarily driven by the addition of My Home Group in November 2024. We ended the fourth quarter with approximately 14,135 agent licenses, a decrease of 1.2% compared to 14,300 agent licenses at the end of the prior year. The modest decline was primarily driven by continued softness in the real estate market, which impacted agent recruiting and retention as well as a continued focus on improving agent productivity and overall network quality. Revenue for the real estate division was approximately $84.9 million in the fourth quarter compared to $87.7 million in the prior year period, representing a 3.2% decrease. The decline was primarily attributable to softer housing market conditions, including reduced transaction volumes during the quarter. For the full year 2025, revenue increased 26.8% to $399 million compared to $314.7 million in 2024. The increase was primarily driven by the addition of My Home Group in November 2024. Gross profit margin for our real estate division remained consistent at 5.4% for the fourth quarter of 2025 compared to the fourth quarter of 2024 as improvements from higher agent productivity and increased contribution from Elevate were largely offset by softer transaction volumes and revenue mix during the period. For the full year 2025, gross profit margin improved to 6.1% compared to 5.8% in the prior year. The increase was primarily driven by the continued expansion of our Elevate program, which enhances revenue per transaction as well as a broader initiative focused on improving unit economics, including pricing discipline and increased contribution from higher-margin transactions. Adjusted EBITDA loss in the brokerage division was approximately $200,000 in the fourth quarter of 2025 compared to adjusted EBITDA income of $40,000 in the fourth quarter of 2024. The year-over-year decline was primarily driven by lower transaction volumes in the softer housing market, which reduced revenue and operating leverage in the quarter, partially offset by continued expense discipline. For the full year 2025 adjusted EBITDA income in the brokerage division increased to $5 million compared to $3.2 million in 2024. The improvement was primarily driven by higher transaction volumes from the addition of My Home Group as well as improved unit economics, including increased revenue per transaction and ongoing cost optimization initiatives. Next, I will turn to our mortgage segment. Our mortgage business generated revenue of $3.4 million in the fourth quarter of 2025 compared to $2 million in the fourth quarter of 2024, representing an increase of approximately 70%. The growth was primarily driven by higher loan origination volumes and improved attach rates from our brokerage channel. Mortgage adjusted EBITDA loss for the fourth quarter of 2025 improved to approximately $200,000 compared to a loss of $600,000 in the prior year period, reflecting improved operating leverage on higher volume as well as continued expense discipline. For the full year 2025, revenue increased 17.4% to $12.8 million compared to $10.9 million in 2024. Adjusted EBITDA loss improved to approximately $500,000 compared to a loss of $1.5 million in the prior year, representing an improvement of approximately 67%. The improvement was primarily driven by higher revenue, improved attach rates and continued strategic cost reduction initiatives as well as increased efficiency across the platform. Turning now to our title segment. Our title business generated revenue of $1.8 million in the fourth quarter of 2025 compared to $1.3 million in the fourth quarter of 2024, representing an increase of approximately 38.5%. The growth was primarily driven by organic expansion and increased transaction volume from internal referrals. Those title adjusted EBITDA loss for the fourth quarter of 2025 was approximately $300,000, consistent with the prior year period as higher revenue was offset by continued investment in personnel and infrastructure to support future growth. For the full year 2025, revenue increased 37.8% to $6.2 million compared to $4.5 million in 2024. Adjusted EBITDA loss for 2025 increased to approximately $1.2 million compared to a loss of $500,000 in the prior year. The increase in loss was primarily driven by continued investment in scaling the title platform, including hiring, market expansion and infrastructure build-out, which outpaced revenue growth during the year. These investments are intended to support increased attach rates and improve profitability over time. That concludes our segment review. Turning to our balance sheet and liquidity. We continue to maintain a disciplined focus on our balance sheet given the dynamic real estate market environment. We ended the quarter with a cash position of $5.7 million, reflecting our ongoing focus on liquidity management, expense control and operational efficiency. We did not repurchase any shares during the fourth quarter under our existing stock repurchase program. On March 18, 2026, the company entered into a $2 million financing arrangement, which provides additional liquidity and financial flexibility as we continue to execute our strategic initiatives and navigate current market conditions. That concludes my remarks on the financial results. I'll now hand it back to Marco to share more on our strategic initiatives and outlook. Marco Fregenal: Thank you, Daniel. Before we open the call for questions, I want to spend a few minutes talking about how we see the opportunity ahead as we move to 2026. What I want to emphasize is that the structural changes we have made to our business are designed to deliver meaningfully stronger results regardless of what the broader housing market does. We are not counting on a market recovery to drive our improvement. The pricing and fee changes I described a few minutes ago are already going into effect, and they fundamentally improve our unit economics at any level of transaction volume. At the same time, the long-term fundamentals for housing demand in the U.S. remain very strong. Regardless of when transaction volumes recover, Fathom is well positioned. And more importantly, we are entering the next phase of the business, which we believe will be very positive. Over the past several years, we have invested in building a scalable platform, expanding our agent network and developing our technology and building our ancillary services across mortgage, title and lead generation. During 2025, we took important steps to improve the economics of the model, including changes to our commission structure, the introduction of recurring fees and the continued expansion of higher-margin services. As a result, we believe our business today is stronger, more efficient and more diversified than it has been in the past. So even without a market recovery, we expect to deliver better margins and greater operating leverage. And if the housing market does begin to normalize or improve, which we believe they will, over time, that becomes more meaningful additional upside. And that brings me back to our four priorities we outlined earlier, which will guide our execution in 2026. We are focused on pursuing margin expansion, seeking to improve revenue per transaction and looking to increase the contribution from our higher-margin businesses. We intend to continue enhancing the agent experience with the goal of helping our agents close more transactions and grow their businesses. We also expect to explore new tools, new services and partnerships aimed at improving the customer experience and simplifying the transaction process. And we anticipate continuing to invest in technologies and AI, which we believe will be a key driver of efficiency and scalability across the platform. Together, these initiatives position Fathom to capture growth opportunities as the housing market recovers and to deliver stronger financial performance over time. Before we conclude, I want to take a moment to thank our employees, our agents and our leadership team across the organization. The past several years have been a challenging period for the real estate industry, and I'm incredibly proud of how our team has continued to execute, innovate and support our agents and clients throughout that time. Their work has positioned Fathom for what we believe is the next phase of growth. As we move to 2026, our focus remains on executing these initiatives because we believe they'll deliver materially improved financial results with or without a market recovery. To summarize, there are three points I would highlight from today's call. First, we made meaningful progress from strengthening the foundation of the business during 2025, growing revenue and expanding the platform despite a difficult market. Second, the structural pricing changes we have made, including the new $250 transaction fee and the shift to a monthly recurring fee and more than 100% increase in gross profit for pre-cap Edge transaction are designed to meaningfully improve our unit economics and any transaction volume. And third, our business is more scalable and more profitable per transaction than it has ever been. When the housing market recovers, we are positioned to capture the upside with significantly better margins. Operator, we're now ready to open the line for questions. Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our first question is from Tom Hayes with ROTH Capital Partners. Thomas Hayes: Marco, I guess a couple of things. And again, I appreciate all the details. Really two things. One on the Elevate program, could you just reiterate what you said as far as your target to bring on new Elevate partners in '26? Marco Fregenal: Sure. So Elevate, think of Elevate as a platform, right? And there'll be different kinds of agents to use Elevate in different ways. So you have our regular starting program those Elevate, then we created the START program that leverages some of it, the functionality and the benefits into lead generation that Elevate offer. So Elevate, it will evolve into 2 or 3 different kinds of offerings under the Elevate platform. Our goal by the end of the year is to have about 1,000 agents on Elevate. And I think combined right now, we're about 260, 275. We think that by the end of the year, will be at around 1,000 agents on the entire Elevate platform, which, again, is going to consist of agents on just the basic Elevate program on START, Elevate and a couple of other versions of Elevate that will create over the year. Thomas Hayes: Okay. I appreciate that. And then on the new Edge program, just wondering what some of the feedback from the agents has been. That went into effect Jan 1, and can you just remind me that should be a margin contributor for the START, correct? Marco Fregenal: Yes. So actually that went live -- it's going to go live on April 1 this week. We'll be working on it for several months. I think a lot of our agents like the program in a sense that it compares this team incredibly well against other companies that charging 20% and 30%. Again, keep in mind that our current base is grandfathered, so they can continue to stay on our previous plans, whether it was Fathom Max or Fathom Share. They don't have to move to Fathom Edge. Having said that, we already heard from a variety of agents saying they want to move to Fathom Edge for a variety of reasons in terms of the cap and some of the benefits of Fathom Edge. So I think there'll be a percentage of our regular agents that move to Fathom Edge, but all new agents starting on April 1 will go into Fathom Edge. And again, over time, as we have regular attrition in the business, right, the percentage of Fathom Edge agents will continue to grow and be a bigger percentage of the total agent base. But the new program, Fathom Edge starts on April 1 as well as the $250 brokerage fee. Thomas Hayes: I appreciate that. And maybe just lastly, I know you and I spoke about it last time, but certainly, the agents are key to the Fathom story. But I was just wondering about your strategic partner with ByOwner because I think certainly, the for-sale ByOwner is a significant market piece as well. So just maybe any updates on that partnership as well. Marco Fregenal: Yes, absolutely. So our goal is to leverage a significant percent of individuals who want to sell their house by themselves. Actually, at some point, do hire a real estate agent and the number is over 90%, right? So our partnership with ByOwner is really focused on that, right? It's how do we introduce the agent network to those sellers who want to take advantage of really working with an agent and getting the benefits of everything an agent can do that, right? And so our partnership is really focused on that. Our partnership is not focused -- they have another partner that handles -- when a seller wants to sell the house by themselves, again, the focus of our partnership is that. And we already are in the beginning of the partnership. We already are connected with them. We're already getting leads from them. They are about to announce several partnerships that will be announced soon, which will be the real estate partner for them. And so the ByOwner platform is going to be a meaningful platform for us as we get into Q2 and beyond this year. And the positive thing about that relationship is that's focused on listings, right? And so we're going to get a lot of listings from that relationship. I think I mentioned this before that they currently get about 500,000 visitors a month, right? And so they have a significant audience, and we're certainly going to be able to help ByOwner and our agents monetize and help those clients who want to get the benefit of the full service or agent. Operator: There are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the conference back over to Marco for closing remarks. Marco Fregenal: Well, I just want to thank everybody for joining us today. I know this is a long call, but there was a lot to update about our business and some of the key initiatives that we are already implementing for 2026. We look forward to a great year. We're very excited about the changes that we're implementing to our business that we believe are going to have meaningful results to our profitability and our growth for 2026. I want to thank everybody for joining us and look forward to talking to you soon. Have a great week. Operator: Thank you. This will conclude today's conference. You may disconnect at this time and thank you for your participation.
Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Helen Rubinstein, Vice President of Investor Relations and Corporate Strategy at Neumora. Please go ahead. Helen Rubinstein: Good afternoon, and thank you for joining Neumora Therapeutics Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Financial Results Conference Call. Before we begin, I encourage everyone to visit the Investors and Media section of our website at neumoratx.com, where you can find the press release related to today's call. With me on the call today are Chief Executive Officer, Paul Berns; President, Josh Pinto; Chief Operating and Development Officer, Bill Aurora; Chief Scientific Officer, Nick Brandon; and Chief Financial Officer, Mike Milligan. I'd like to point out that we will be making forward-looking statements during today's call, which are based on our current expectations and beliefs. These statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties, and our actual results may differ materially. Please review the risk factors discussed in today's press release and in our SEC filings for additional detail. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Paul. Paul Berns: Thanks, Helen. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. 2025 marked a year of important clinical progress and execution for Neumora. We made meaningful strides in advancing our diverse pipeline of novel mechanism therapies, reported compelling data for NMRA-511, our oral highly potent brain-penetrant and selective vasopressin 1a receptor antagonist, progressed our Phase III program for navacaprant with optimizations based on key learnings from prior studies, expanded our M4 PAM franchise with 2 new programs in clinical development and prioritized obesity as the lead indication for our brain-penetrant NLRP3 inhibitor, NMRA-215 and reported class-leading DIO data, all while continuing to strengthen our financial foundation. Our mission at Neumora remains clear: to advance the next generation of novel therapies that offer improved treatment outcomes and quality of life for patients living with brain diseases. We believe through our differentiated approach centered on advancing programs with best-in-class pharmacology and brain-penetrant chemistry targeting novel mechanisms of action, we have the potential to deliver transformative therapies to millions of patients in need of better options. Now as we move into 2026, Neumora is well positioned to achieve multiple potentially value-creating milestones within the next 12 months. As we approach these near-term catalysts, I am confident in the strength of our science, the focus of our strategy and the dedication of our distinguished Neumora team to deliver revolutionized therapies for patients living with brain diseases. I will now turn the call over to Josh to review our pipeline updates. Josh? Joshua Pinto: Thank you, Paul. We are poised to build on the strong momentum from 2025 as we enter a catalyst-rich period with multiple clinical data readouts expected this year. Leading with NMRA-511, our oral highly potent brain-penetrant and selective antagonist of the vasopressin 1a receptor in Alzheimer's disease agitation. In January, we announced positive results from the Phase Ib signal-seeking study of NMRA-511. NMRA-511 demonstrated a clinically meaningful effect size in people with Alzheimer's disease and a favorable safety and tolerability profile with no reports of somnolence or sedation. Today, we built upon those positive findings with new data from a prespecified analysis of the Phase Ib study in patients with a neuropsychiatric inventory agitation aggression or NPI-AA score of 4 or greater, which aligns with the enrollment criteria from the Rexulti and Auvelity pivotal studies. These data further reinforce the potential for an unsurpassed profile of NMRA-511 in AD agitation, an area with significant unmet need for new treatments. As a next step, we are exploring higher doses of NMRA-511 in a MAD extension cohort from which we expect to report data in the second half of 2026. From there, we plan to initiate a Phase II study with NMRA-511 in the first quarter of 2027. Turning to navacaprant, our kappa opioid receptor antagonist for the monotherapy treatment of major depressive disorder. The KOASTAL-2 and 3 studies are now fully enrolled with more than 400 patients enrolled in each study. We look forward to reporting data from these studies in the second quarter. Additionally, on our M4 PAM franchise, we announced today that we have selected NMRA-898 as our lead program. We believe that NMRA-898 is well suited for continued development in schizophrenia based on promising clinical results from an ongoing Phase I study. We are currently conducting a multiple ascending dose study of NMRA-898 in healthy volunteers and patients with stable schizophrenia, and we expect to report data in the second half of 2026. Turning to our metabolic franchise. We announced 2 key updates today regarding NMRA-215, our highly brain-penetrant oral NLRP3 inhibitor for the treatment of obesity. The first update and a very exciting one for us is new positive data from a 12-week diet-induced obesity or DIO mouse study that reinforces the potential of NMRA-215 for the treatment of obesity in both the mechanism of action switch and the weight loss maintenance paradigm. These encouraging results further validate what we reported previously, class-leading weight loss as a monotherapy, additive weight loss in combination settings, potential for an incretin-sparing and/or switch treatment paradigm and weight loss maintenance that matches semaglutide. We are eager to advance next steps for NMRA-215. However, as we shared this morning, there were unexpected adverse findings from a separate 13-week rat tox study in a small number of animals. We have opened a for-cause audit of this study and expect to bring NMRA-215 into the clinic in the first quarter of 2027. Nick will go into more detail on both of these updates shortly. But first, I will turn the call over to Bill to provide additional detail on our clinical programs. Bill? Daljit Aurora: Thank you, Josh. We are excited about the data from NMRA-511, which demonstrated a differentiated profile for the treatment of agitation in Alzheimer's disease. In January, we shared top line results from our Phase Ib signal-seeking study of 511. This was a 2-part signal-seeking study that was not powered to detect statistical significance. Instead, we evaluated the effect size of 511 on a variety of clinical measures to inform additional development in AD agitation. In the Phase Ib study, 511 demonstrated an unsurpassed clinical effect size on CMAI total score and a range of other endpoints in a prespecified population with elevated anxiety at baseline. Today, we announced new data from a prespecified analysis from the Phase Ib in 53 patients with an NPI-AA score of greater than or equal to 4 at baseline. This population is similar to the group studied in pivotal trials with Rexulti and Auvelity. 511 treated patients demonstrated a clinical benefit and had a Cohen's d effect size of 0.32 to 0.34 on CMAI total score, a similar magnitude to Rexulti. Additionally, in this population, 511 showed an unsurpassed effect size across the CMAI aggressive behavior subfactor score and CGI-S agitation score. Notably, 511 demonstrated a favorable tolerability and safety profile in Phase Ib, which we believe provides an opportunity for us to test higher doses. We are advancing a MAD extension study this year with data expected in the second half of the year before moving to a Phase II study in the first quarter of 2027. Transitioning to navacaprant, we are pleased with the significant progress we have made with the navacaprant KOASTAL program for the treatment of major depressive disorder. Today, we announced that KOASTAL-2 and KOASTAL-3 studies are fully enrolled with more than 400 patients enrolled in each study. We expect to report a joint top line data readout for KOASTAL-2 and KOASTAL-3 in the second quarter of 2026. As a reminder, KOASTAL-2 and KOASTAL-3 are Phase III studies being run both in the U.S. and in ex-U.S. territories. The design for these studies incorporated key learnings that we implemented in early 2025 following the KOASTAL-1 readout. This included enhanced medical monitoring to verify inclusion of appropriate patients, screening tools to rule out professional patients and site selection that focused on sites with expertise in conducting MDD studies. We believe that these optimizations facilitated appropriate patient enrollment in these trials. For example, we saw an approximately 10% higher screen fail rate in the KOASTAL-2 and KOASTAL-3 studies compared to KOASTAL 1. Overall, we are confident that these changes will result in a stronger data set and look forward to the results. In the joint top line readout, we expect to include top line results for each individual study as well as prespecified analyses with more than 450 patients enrolled after study optimizations occurred in early 2025. We believe this approach will provide a comprehensive view of the data and help us better assess navacaprant's clinical profile. We will assess next steps regarding regulatory submission once we have the data in hand, but we believe that with the FDA's recent commentary, one positive study plus supportive evidence may be sufficient for approval. With one positive study, we would request a pre-NDA meeting with the FDA. Lastly, on our M4 positive allosteric modulator franchise, today, we announced that we have designated NMRA-898 as the lead program in the franchise and plan to advance it for development in schizophrenia. This decision is supported by the encouraging data we have seen to date from our ongoing Phase I study. In that study, NMRA-898 demonstrated an approximately 80 to 100-hour half-life in humans, which confirms the potential for once-daily dosing and is within a similar range to the half-lives of highly successful neuropsychiatry medications like Vraylar, Abilify and Rexulti. We also observed dose proportional exposures with low variability as well as predicted free brain exposure significantly above the in vitro M4 EC50 levels. In addition, we saw on-target changes in heart rate that were similar to those demonstrated by Cobenfy, which we believe provide pharmacodynamic evidence of target engagement. Taken together, these findings strengthen our confidence in NMRA-898 and support our view that it has a potential best-in-class pharmacologic profile. We are conducting a multiple ascending dose study of 898 in healthy volunteers and patients with stable schizophrenia. The goals of this study are to identify a maximum tolerated dose and to confirm CNS penetration through CSF exposure. We expect to report data from this MAD study in the second half of 2026. While we have paused development of our other M4 PAM, NMRA-861, we believe it has a profile that could support development in the future. We are pleased to have this optionality in our portfolio. As you can see, we are making significant progress across our clinical pipeline that I believe has the potential to translate to meaningful medicines for patients. With that, I'll now turn it over to Nick to walk through our NLRP3 update in more detail. Nick? Nicholas Brandon: Thanks, Bill. I'll begin with our 12-week DIO data with our NLRP3 inhibitor, NMRA-215. As Josh noted, the results from this study further highlight our CNS penetrant pharmacology that translated to class-leading weight loss in these models. In earlier DIO studies, NMRA-215 drove dose-dependent class-leading weight loss as a monotherapy and in the combination setting with semaglutide. The 12-week DIO data we announced today provides supportive evidence for potential use of NMRA-215 in both the mechanism of action switch and maintenance treatment paradigms. DIO mice that was switched from a combination of NMRA-215 plus semaglutide to NMRA-215 monotherapy at week 8 maintained weight loss similar to mice who received semaglutide monotherapy for the entire study duration. NMRA-215 also demonstrated sustained semaglutide-like weight loss at 12 weeks following the switch from semaglutide monotherapy to NMRA-215 monotherapy at week 8. These findings, along with our previously reported data are very encouraging and supports our view that central NLRP3 inhibition may offer an important new mechanism for weight loss. Additionally, with data from multiple sponsors in the space showing reductions in hsCRP, it's become clear that NLRP3 inhibitors offer potentially compelling cardioprotective benefits. We believe that this is a class effect, and we are likely to see hsCRP reductions with NMRA-215 when it enters the clinic. Now as Josh mentioned, we also shared that unexpected adverse findings were observed in a very small number of animals in a 13-week rat toxicology study. A few details to highlight. The observations were not dose dependent and not associated with a known molecule-related or on-target effect, but did occur in conjunction with documented study conduct issues. We have opened a for-cause audit into the study. We have also completed 28-day rat and dog and 13-week dog toxicology studies with no similar findings and sufficient margins to achieve IC90 concentrations in the brain, which we believe are needed for weight loss. We remain confident in the potential of NLRP3 inhibition for the treatment of obesity and have started dosing in a repeat 13-week rat toxicology study. We now expect to bring NMRA-215 into the clinic in the first quarter of 2027. From here, I will turn it over to Mike to review the financials. Mike? Michael Milligan: Thanks, Nick, and good afternoon, everyone. As of December 31, 2025, we ended the year with $182.5 million in cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities. We expect our current cash position to support operations into the third quarter of 2027. Additional financial results are available for review in the press release that we issued this morning, including detailed information on our fourth quarter and full year 2025 operating expenses. Our total net loss for 2025 was comparable to the same period in 2024. With that, I'll now hand the call over to Helen to manage Q&A with the operator. Helen? Michael Milligan: Thanks, Mike. Before I turn it over to the operator, I'll ask that you limit yourself to 1 question. If you have an additional question, please feel free to return to the queue. With that, I'll turn it over to the operator to handle Q&A. Operator? Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our first question today comes from the line of Myles Minter from William Blair. Myles Minter: Congrats on the progress. I'll keep it to one. Just wanted to follow up on comments that potentially 1 study and supportive evidence would be sufficient for the navacaprant filing in MDD. Did want to confirm that just means that a positive KOASTAL-2 or 3 would be that one study. And then the source of supportive evidence, maybe that comes from the combined trial analysis of those more than 450 patients enrolled post protocol amendment? Or is that coming from something like the Phase II you've already got in hand or even external data like from the [indiscernible] that supports the core antagonist mechanism here? Daljit Aurora: Myles, this is Bill. Thank you for your question. Yes, we do believe that with 1 positive study, either KOASTAL-2 or plus supportive data, we'd be in a strong position to proceed in requesting a pre-NDA meeting. Supportive data could take a variety of forms, whether that's an improvement on anhedonia as measured by SHAPS, whether it is tolerability safety profile that's quite compelling in an untreated large population. So there are a variety of ways by which we believe supportive data could play an important role, but 1 of the 2 studies being positive puts us in that position to move ahead of the meeting. Operator: And the next question comes from the line of Brian Abrahams from RBC Capital Markets. Brian Abrahams: Congrats on the continued progress. Maybe just on 215, can you give us any color around these conduct issues that you mentioned, like what these were, why you suspect them and how these might relate to the toxicity findings? And I guess I'm curious, would the onus be on you to prove that the findings here were spurious? Or historically, has the FDA been fine with progressing a program if a redo of a 13-week tox study comes up clean? Nicholas Brandon: Brian, it's Nick here. So because we do have an ongoing audit into the initial 13-week rat study, we can't really provide too many more details. Clearly, we have stated today that we do believe they are procedure-related and we are now completing -- well, we've now started a second repeat study with a different CRO. And that -- in that second study, we have made some changes. I think importantly, these types of findings in top studies are very common in the industry. They're well documented in the literature. And we know that other sponsors have repeated studies and have been able to move their programs forward. So we're obviously looking forward to completing this second study and progressing 215. Operator: Your next question today comes from the line of Douglas Tsao from H.C. Wainwright. Douglas Tsao: Just on the M4 program, I'm curious if you could provide a little bit more in terms of what sort of put 898 in the lead. And also, I think Bill mentioned that you continue to see opportunity potentially for 861. I'm just curious, do you see that largely as a backup molecule right now? Or do you potentially envision development in alternative indications? Joshua Pinto: Yes. Doug, it's Josh here. And so as we mentioned, we're prioritizing NMRA-898 this morning as our lead in schizophrenia. And really, it's not because of anything that we saw with 861. Really, it's because 898 looks so compelling based on the data that we put out today, and both compounds are structurally distinct. So with our focus being on schizophrenia, we're going to progress 898 as the lead in that indication. But we do view 861 as a viable compound for future indications. And so as we think about indication expansion in LCM within this franchise, we could look to bring another compound like 861 forward in that. But for the time being, Doug, 898 is -- will be the lead for schizophrenia. And based on the data that we've published today, the compound is behaving exceedingly well in early clinical studies. Operator: Your next question today comes from the line of Marc Goodman from Leerink. Alyssa Larios: This is Alyssa on for Marc. I was just wondering if you could give a little bit more details on the prespecified analysis for the KOASTAL-2 and 3 readouts. What exactly are we going to see? And how do you imagine interpreting those results compared to kind of the entire top line analysis? Joshua Pinto: Yes. Alyssa, it's Josh here. And so in terms of the KOASTAL studies for the prespecified analysis, what you can really expect is that we will be putting out top line data for the KOASTAL-2 study, top line data for the KOASTAL-3 study. And then we will be looking at those patients that were in a post-pause pooled population, so those that have gone through the SAFER process since the KOASTAL-1 study read out. Bill, maybe you want to just add a bit more in terms of what we'll see from the prespecified top line and what we're really going to be looking for in the KOASTAL results in the second quarter. Daljit Aurora: Sure. Thanks for the question, Alyssa. So with respect to the KOASTAL-2 and 3 study, just as a quick reminder, when we paused those studies, we did implement a series of measures that were designed to enhance the quality of the patients coming in. And those included things such as working with MGH and implementing the SAFER process. It included implementing VCT as a screening database and paring back the number of sites overall. We're pleased with the measures that we had taken, and we've seen higher rates of screen failure as a consequence, for example, approximately 10% higher than in KOASTAL-1. These would have otherwise been patients that would have been randomized into the study. So it gives us confidence that, in fact, we've done a better job in making sure that we get the quality of patients consistent with what the protocol and our expectations were. With respect to the post-pause population, we'll have an opportunity in each of the individual studies to take a look at how those patients performed as well as taking a look at the pooled population post pause. So those will be added measures on top of looking, of course, at the individual study results for K2 and K3. Operator: And the next question comes from the line of Paul Matteis from Stifel. Julian Pino: Congrats on the progress. This is Julian on for Paul. Do you mind just walking us through really quickly the update that you shared with respect to the maintenance data for 215? I guess, was this your expectation? And how did you get to sort of modeling that target dose where you're showing an estimated 23% reduction in weight loss in the DIO model? And then really quickly, if I may, just how does the delay on the sort of tox-related issue for the program factor into your capital allocation strategy? Joshua Pinto: Yes. Thanks, Julian. And so -- this is Josh here. Maybe I'll answer the second part of your question first. So obviously, our spend this year for 215 will be reduced as we're not going to be moving the program into the clinic until the first quarter of 2027. So it will free up capital as we think about allocation to other areas. In terms of the maintenance data, I think the data is exactly what we would expect, and it built on what we think was the best-in-class monotherapy and combination DIO data that we presented in October at our R&D Day. In terms of what we showed in this DIO study, it was completely focused on longer-term combination paradigms. And so we demonstrated that you could switch from being on a GLP-1 to NMRA-215 and maintain the same level of weight loss, which commercially could be very important. We also looked at a paradigm where if you were on a combination of the 2 products, and you took one off, could you maintain weight loss? We absolutely validated there that, yes, if you're on a combo and you take away semaglutide, you can maintain monotherapy level weight loss with 215. And so in terms of how we selected the target dose, it was really around achieving IC90 concentrations in the brain, as we've highlighted previously. And so Julian, as you look at what we achieved in the 12-week DIO study, the combination of semaglutide and 215 alone, highly consistent with the 28-day data we previously put out, where you saw about a 20% to 25% reduction in combination therapy over the study. So Julian, I would say very validating, hits exactly what we'd expect to see out of the study and exceedingly consistent with what we have shown previously for 215 and DIO studies. Operator: Your next question today comes from the line of Yatin Suneja from Guggenheim. Maddalena Delma Caiati: This is Delma for Yatin. So a clarification on the 215 tox study. So have you received any specific guidance from the FDA on what would be required to clear the IND? Or are you proactively rerunning the studies based on your own assessment? Nicholas Brandon: Yes. Nick here again. Yes. So we haven't discussed the studies with the FDA, but we have consulted multiple consultants and KOLs around what was the appropriate path forward. So repeating the study was clearly the clear guidance we were given. And I would say, based on the experience of our internal team, including myself and our consultants, we're confident that this repeat study could -- will allow us to get the FDA to approve the IND. Yes, there's a lot of precedent for it. And first, I can look back on my own prior experiences at other companies where we've done similar things. So we're confident that this repeat study would allow us to get the IND cleared. Operator: Your next question today comes from the line of Ami Fadia from Needham & Company. Poorna Kannan: This is Poorna on for Ami. On NMRA-511, could you help us understand how the effect size changed at the different time points, week 4 and 6 in the subpopulation? And how are you envisioning the Phase II study design in terms of the patient population and trial duration? Daljit Aurora: Sure. With respect to the effect size that we have seen in the trial overall, we're really pleased with the consistency of the results and looking at the effect size. The effect size, whether it be at week 4 or 8 depending on the various measures was quite consistent, and we're pleased with what we've been seeing here. With respect to the next steps of the program, we've communicated that we'll be moving forward with another MAD cohort where we believe we've got room to push the dose given the favorable tolerability seen. And then from there, we'll describe in further detail what our plans are for Phase II, including the design, inclusion criteria and the alike. But suffice it to say, the data that we put out today showing the NPI-AA of 4 or greater is consistent with what other sponsors have used as a part of their inclusion criteria and been able to maintain a broad label. So that is one where one could expect to follow the path of other sponsors and where there's a regulatory path that's been well defined. Joshua Pinto: Yes. And Bill, I would just add, I think the data today that we put out is really quite compelling for NMRA-511. I think it shows that in the total population, our data is consistent and just as compelling as what we've seen in patients with elevated anxiety. And Bill, to your point, this new data that we've highlighted today shows that we can develop NMRA-511 down a well-established regulatory pathway while still preserving the ability for a broad label in patients with AD agitation. So we actually view this data as the most compelling data set we've put out thus far for 511 and are really excited about this being the launching point for the program going forward. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Graig Suvannavejh from Mizuho. Graig Suvannavejh: I wanted to ask about 898 and the M4 PAM space. Could you just remind us how you're thinking about its differentiation versus, say, the Neurosterix's program? And if you could provide what you think the latest is with emraclidine, just as we think about the M4 PAM class and again, vis-a-vis the broader muscarinic space and any kind of thoughts you have on the Cobenfy launch and what that means about how doctors are thinking about muscarinics in the schizophrenia landscape? Nicholas Brandon: Greg, it's Nick here. Thanks for the question on the M4. In terms of the differentiation of 898 in particular, compared to some of the other competitors, even including emerging companies like Neurosterix. I think I'd point to a number of key bits of data which we've put out, knowing that we don't know a lot about a Neurosterix's compound. 898 and 861 have a very, very potent and equipotent across assays, which is critical. Those compounds are also optimized for CNS penetration. And we've put out some data around that, which is in our corporate deck. We really -- the more data comes out there, it really holds up. And now critically, we've got early clinical data and particularly with 898, it's really showed its hands [indiscernible] in the initial cohorts. Clearly, the half-life allows us for once-a-day dosing, which is critical. And I may hand over to Bill in a second to talk about some of the other elements that may drive -- we see really nice dose-dependent exposure. Variability is really, really low. And that's important. Other compounds in this class haven't had that quality. We also see really nice pharmacodynamic effects, and this is by the surrogate heart rate increases we see. So overall now, the profile of 898 just looks really good as we compare to what we know about other sponsors in the field. But maybe, Bill, do you want to add? Daljit Aurora: Sure, Nick. I would just simply add, Graig, that the half-life for 898 is within a similar range of half-lives of highly successful neuropsych meds like Vraylar, Abilify and Rexulti. We conducted market research with community prescribers that also has underscored some of the potential advantages of the profile that they've seen. And as an example, we know we have the ability to maintain steady state in the situations where a patient may miss dose of medication, which we know is a common phenomenon in schizophrenia. The half-life also has the potential to reduce withdrawal symptoms if patients discontinue medication. And so we're really pleased with the profile and the excitement is certainly one that's been underscored through some of the work we've done with physicians treating schizophrenia patients and the profile they've seen with 898. Joshua Pinto: Yes. And Graig, this is Josh. I would just add, we're really compelled by the data that's been put out this morning. I think as we look at it in the SAD study, we have not hit an MTD yet, so continue to move forward. And we're already seeing across the pharmacodynamic measures, activity elevated from what we've seen with emraclidine and even at levels relative to Cobenfy. If you look at what we've seen at the 15-milligram level in terms of heart rate elevation and beats per minute, that's comparable to what we've seen from Cobenfy at its highest doses. And so we feel like we are absolutely getting into a really good pharmacodynamic range while also having a compound that is behaving very well from a safety and tolerability perspective. Operator: Our next question today is from the line of Myles Minter from William Blair. Myles Minter: For the quick follow-up on Graig's question as well. On 898, did you also see any sort of transient increases in blood pressure in that single ascending dose study? Daljit Aurora: The changes that we've seen in blood pressure are consistent with what we have expected, nothing that is different from what's been seen with the class. So it underscores that in the Phase Ib, we plan to move forward as other muscarinics have with routine monitoring. We do anticipate as the molecule progresses in development, like other muscarinics have done, we would look to do an ambulatory blood pressure monitoring study as others have in the space. Joshua Pinto: Yes. But just to be clear, Myles, in the single ascending dose study, we have not seen blood pressure changes thus far. So we are seeing the positive changes in heart rate as we believe the pharmacodynamic measure is as it's related to a measure of target engagement for M4 in the class. But in these doses, we have not seen the elevated blood pressure yet. So we'll continue to monitor and move forward. But to Bill's point, we -- our assumption is that blood pressure could be a class effect, and we baked into our plans having to run an ambulatory blood pressure monitoring study if needed. Operator: And our final question comes from the line of Douglas Tsao from H.C. Wainwright. Douglas Tsao: I was just curious in terms of the combination -- or for 215, sorry, for the combination to 215 maintenance study, I'm just curious about the dosing that was utilized and are things that you think you might be able to do to sort of further optimize the maintaining of the weight loss that was seen when it was used in combination with semaglutide? Joshua Pinto: Yes. Doug, this is Josh here. As I mentioned before, I think in the 12-week DIO study, it's validated the hypothesis that we absolutely wanted. And the combo data, I think, is consistent where we saw over 12 weeks about a 23% reduction in weight loss on the combo. That's consistent with the roughly 25-ish percent we've seen in the earlier studies. And as we know in these DIO studies, as you continue to feed mice high fat diet over time, the weight does tend to rebound, whereas that's not necessarily the case in the clinic. I think as we're looking at ways to optimize the molecule, Doug, moving forward, really, the next step is to get it into the clinic, start to understand how it's behaving in humans from a PK perspective, and then we can look to move it forward there. But what I would say is the data we put out today continues to validate that NMRA-215 does have a best-in-class weight loss potential, at least as it relates to the DIO data we've put out between the R&D Day [indiscernible]. Douglas Tsao: And if I can, Josh, just as a follow-up. I mean, obviously, you've sort of outlined in the DIO models a number of different use cases. How many do you anticipate ultimately bringing forward? Or do you think that this is more of a situation where you'll just sort of validate the 215's ability to drive weight loss and maintain weight loss and then kind of leave it up to clinicians to figure out their own particular dosing regimens and sort of ways of using the molecule? Joshua Pinto: Yes, Doug. And so there's obviously -- our view is there's going to be a lot of different things and paradigms that can be tested out with this molecule in combination potential. I think in terms of what you can expect from us moving forward, what you can expect from us is consistent with what we've highlighted before, which is we're going to now be moving the program into the clinic in the first quarter of 2027. And initially at weight loss, you can expect data to come out from us in a standard monotherapy as well as combination approach. We'll talk about future paradigms downstream after we validated the hypothesis of weight loss clinically. Operator: That will conclude the Q&A portion of today's call. I will now hand the call back to Paul Berns, CEO, for closing remarks. Paul Berns: Okay. Thank you, operator, and thanks to all who joined us for this morning's call. We appreciate your interest and support. Have a lovely day. Operator: Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.
Operator: Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us, and welcome to the Standard Lithium Fourth Quarter 2025 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] I will now hand the call over to Daniel Rosen Vice President of Investor Relations and Strategy for Standard Lithium. Please go ahead. Daniel Rosen: Thank you, and welcome, everyone. I'm joined today by David Park, our CEO and Director; Andy Robinson, President, COO and Director; Salah Gamoudi, Chief Financial Officer; and Mike Barman, Chief Development Officer. Before we begin, I would like to start with a reminder that some of the statements made during our call today, including any related to company performance, expectations and timing of projects may constitute forward-looking statements. Please note the cautionary language about forward-looking statements contained in our press release, which also applies to this call. I will now turn the call over to David. David Park: Thanks, Dan, and I appreciate everyone joining us today. We had a busy and productive fourth quarter as we advanced and completed multiple important milestones and deliverables for the company. We filed a positive definitive feasibility study for the SWA project in a maiden inferred resource report for our first project in East Texas, the Franklin project. The DFS for SWA demonstrates the attractiveness and cost competitiveness of our first commercial project being developed alongside our SMAC over lithium JV partner, Equinor, which is expected to have production capacity of 22,500 tonnes per year of battery-quality lithium carbonate in its initial phase. The maiden resource estimate for the JV's Franklin project in East Texas highlights the size and quality of its brine position with some of the highest reported lithium in brine grades in all of North America. It provides a strong foundation for future scalable production and is a key step towards the ultimate goal of reaching production of over 100,000 tonnes of lithium chemicals per year in Texas through multiple projects. We obtained the final regulatory approval required for SWA from the Arkansas Oil and Gas Commission for integration receiving unanimous support for our application for the Reynolds Brine Unit, where the initial phase of the project is planned to be developed. And we continued to strengthen our own financial position while also progressing the export credit agency led project financing for the SWA project. In October, Standard Lithium closed and upsized $130 million underwritten public offering. We saw strong support from institutional investors in an oversubscribed order book, underscoring the belief in our strategy and the quality of our assets. Additionally, Smackover lithium received indications of interest for over $1 billion in project financing, for the SWA project, led by 3 major export credit agencies, including the Export-Import Bank of the United States and Export Finance Norway and supported by a strong group of commercial banks. Interest came in at competitive indicative terms and exceeds the targeted debt alone. To begin 2026, we've been working diligently to advance the remaining work streams needed to reach a final investment decision for the SWA project. We've made meaningful progress on all fronts, including the signing of our first binding commercial offtake agreement with Trafigura, a global commodities market leader with an established presence across battery metals, including lithium. Spec over lithium will supply Trafigura with 8,000 metric tons per year of battery quality lithium carbonate for over a 10-year period beginning at the start of commercial production. We'll address the status of each of the remaining work streams and how it supports our plan to take FID and begin construction in 2026. To provide an update on the key project-related developments and deliverables ahead I'll pass it over to Andy. J. Robinson: Thanks, David. The 4 primary deliverables to be completed prior to taking FID a contract execution with key construction vendors receiving National Environmental Policy Act or NEPA approval from the federal regulators, finalizing customer offtake agreements and closing the project financing. We're pursuing an engineering, procurement, construction and commissioning or EPCC model for the downstream portion of the project, which contains a central processing facility and includes a direct lithium extraction and battery-quality lithium carbonate conversion process. We're pursuing an engineering, procurement and construction management or EPCM model for the upstream or well field and pipeline portion of the project. We are close to finalizing agreements with our preferred partners in these roles and expect for both of these to be completed in the second quarter. Each contract will contain a limited notice to proceed upon signing in order to immediately progress key work items and optimize the construction schedule. The full notice to proceed will immediately follow a positive final investment decision. On the regulatory front, the project is required to undergo an environmental assessment on the NEPA triggered by our $225 million grant from the Department of Energy. The DOE is leading the environmental assessment process, which is progressing well. The project completed all necessary field work and baseline environmental studies for input into the EA in 2025. DOE has completed all necessary consultation with other federal agencies and travel nations and has completed the draft EA report for public comment. We expect NEPA process to be completed in the second quarter as per the Federal Permitting dashboard. Overall, we've received strong government support throughout this process for our project which received a fast 41 transparency project designation. Turning to our dual track customer offtake and project financing processes, Smackover lithium, alongside our experienced financial advisers continues to make progress as reflected by our first binding commercial offtake agreement and the indications of interest received to support the project debt, which Salah will touch on in more detail. Of our planned 22,500 tonnes of annual nameplate lithium carbonate capacity, we're targeting for approximately 80% of that production to be under long-term offtake contracts. Our first offtake agreement with Trafigura for 8,000 tonnes represents over 40% of targeted offtake for the initial phase of the SWA project. Joint venture is in advanced commercial negotiations with multiple additional parties with the aim to complete this process as soon as practical. We remain focused on securing the best possible terms under these agreements in order to support our project financing efforts and to help mitigate risk from negative price fluctuations while maintaining attractive price upside for our stakeholders. Of the remaining pre-FID deliverables, we believe completing the customer offtakes has the most potential timing variability given the nature of these negotiations. All material offtake terms must be agreed upon before the final sizing and structure of the project finance package can be determined. With that said, we continue to advance project financing due diligence, documentation, credit and other approvals in parallel such that we're in a position to reach financial close and draw down shortly thereafter. The joint venture remains confident in its ability to reach a satisfactory outcome in these customer offtake negotiations, thus allowing for FID to be taken and for construction to begin in 2026. Assuming we begin construction on this time line, we would expect to achieve first commercial production in 2029. I also want to touch on our priorities for East Texas in 2026. For the Franklin project and the region more broadly, we intend to continue to improve the definition of our resource positions through additional drilling and process test work. We're aiming to release a preliminary feasibility study for the Franklin project within the next 12 months, demonstrating the project economics of that world-class resource and hopefully achieving further recognition for this important and underappreciated part of our asset portfolio. We'll continue to work on maiden inferred resource reports for our 2 other potential projects in the area, all the while continuing to expand our leasehold footprint in East Texas. And now I'll turn it over to Salah to discuss our financial results. Salah Gamoudi: Thank you, Andy. For reference, all numerical references that I will be making today are in U.S. dollars. For the fourth quarter ended December 31, 2025, the company reported a net loss of $35.7 million as compared to a $24.7 million loss during the quarter ended December 31, 2024. The biggest drivers of this year-over-year increase in our net loss are onetime in nature and not reflective of underlying business trends, namely, we incurred a $6.8 million increase in impairment expense a noncash charge related to the LANXESS property project and a noncash $3.4 million increase in foreign exchange loss. The LANXESS property project impairment is a result of the termination of our previous memorandum of understanding with LANXESS, a cessation of discussions with LANXESS on further advancement of the project, the execution of a new site services agreement, which defines our go-forward relationship with LANXESS in regards to our demonstration facility but does not contemplate further commercial development. And finally, a refocus of our efforts and capital allocation towards our Southwest Arkansas and East Texas projects. As a result, we recognized a full $26.5 million impairment expense of our exploration and evaluation assets associated with the LANXESS property project in the fourth quarter. Independent of this, Standard Lithium will continue to run and operate its industrial scale DLE and carbonation demonstration plant at LANXESS existing bromine site as it has been doing successfully for roughly the last 6 years. The foreign exchange loss was due to having significantly higher average cash balances during the fourth quarter as a result of our $130 million follow-on offering in October and the resultant noncash accounting impact of changes in exchange rates on those cash balances. For the quarter, as compared to the quarter ended December 31, 2024, G&A of $2.9 million increased by $0.2 million, driven primarily by increases in employee-related expenses associated with expanding our team as we continue to mature and transition from early-stage project development towards construction and eventual production. Demonstration plant costs of $1.4 million increased by $0.6 million as a result of higher personnel costs and indirect allocations associated with process refinement and testing as well as operator training in support of future potential commercial production. Share-based compensation expense of $1.5 million increased by $0.3 million due to increased long-term incentive compensation for our management employees as we expanded our team as noted above, and to better align compensation and shareholder value creation. Below operating expenses on the income statement, we recorded a higher investment loss from joint ventures of $3.2 million for the quarter versus $0.3 million in the prior period. This increase reflects expanded operational activity and related expenses at the Smackover Lithium JV level in 2025 as we advance to releasing our 2 technical reports at SWA and East Texas. We also recorded a $0.4 million gain on the fair value of our contingent FID payments to be received by Standard Lithium from our JV partner, Equinor, should we reach a positive FID at our SWA and/or East Texas projects by certain dates. As we continue to achieve milestones and get closer, the value of our contingent FID payment assets have increased as reflected by the gain. We also recognized $0.9 million in additional interest income for the quarter, driven by our higher average cash balances for part of the period. For the full year 2025, the company reported a net loss of $48.4 million. Full year results are compared to our last audited period, a shorter 6-month fiscal stub period ended December 31, 2024, in our reported financials. This is due to changing the company's fiscal year-end from a June 30 fiscal year-end to a December 31 calendar year-end in the fourth quarter of 2024 to better align our reporting cycle with how we manage the business and align with our peers. Therefore, we have kept our focus today on fourth quarter comparables instead of the full year 2025. Moving on to our balance sheet. We ended the quarter with strong cash and working capital positions of $152.3 million and $147.6 million, respectively, as compared to cash and working capital positions of $31.2 million and $27.5 million in the prior year, respectively. This higher cash position is primarily reflective of the follow-on offering we completed in October, which generated net proceeds of $122.2 million and continued use of our ATM facility, partially offset by our capital contributions made to the SWA and East Texas projects and general operating expenses. The follow-on offering will help to support our expected required equity contribution into the SWA project at FID as well as continuing to progress development work in East Texas. The sole project funding requirements by Equinor into the JVs as part of the original agreement were exhausted during the second quarter of 2025, with Standard Lithium and Equinor subsequently making their own respective capital contributions based on a 55-45% ownership split. Standard Lithium made JV capital contributions of $9.6 million during the fourth quarter, bringing the 2025 total to $29.1 million as reflected on our cash flow statement. For the full year, $16.1 million and $12.9 million went towards SWA and East Texas, respectively. Securing an attractive and comprehensive project finance package is a critical component of the final investment decision for SWA. The approximate $1.5 billion of base project CapEx per our DFS in addition to potential cost overrun facilities, reserve accounts or other incremental capital requirements are expected to be financed by a combination of senior secured project debt, our $225 million grant from the DOE as well as respective funding contributions from Standard Lithium and Equinor. The joint venture is targeting approximately $1.1 billion total in senior secured limited recourse project debt supported by leading export credit agencies and commercial banks. Last year, we conducted a market sounding of global commercial banks that are active in the project financing debt market. The responses included indicative terms that were consistent with the expectations of the JV and validated certain assumptions regarding the cost, term, structure and conditions that are customary for project debt facilities of this nature. The commercial bank expressions of interest, combined with those of the ECAs exceeded our total targeted project debt. The remaining 55% pro rata equity contribution required by Standard Lithium will be supported by the proceeds from our recent equity raise. Any cost overrun facilities or reserve accounts over and above base project CapEx requirements remain subject to negotiation with the lenders with quantums to be determined. I will now turn it back over to David for closing remarks. David Park: Thanks, Salah. Standard Lithium continues to be extremely well positioned with a portfolio of high-quality and scalable assets and as a domestic champion for securing critical minerals production in the United States. Our SWA project is well engineered, well defined, and we have an exciting and important year ahead of us as we approach a final investment decision. We delivered critical project milestones in the fourth quarter and to begin this year, and we intend to provide multiple updates in the coming weeks and months as we conclude our pre-FID work streams and push to approve FID at SWA before moving quickly to construction in 2026. Thanks again for joining us today. Operator, I'll turn it back to you. Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Anthony Taglieri from Canaccord Genuity. Anthony Taglieri: David and team. So just curious maybe on the offtake discussions and how those might have changed over the last 6 to 12 months. The rising price environment we've seen, has it changed the number of parties and level of interest? Is there more caution given the price volatility? Have we seen changes to pricing mechanisms? Maybe some color there would be great. David Park: Yes. Great. Thanks for the question. I'll take this one. I would say the market clearly has evolved in a positive direction in the last 6 months. Lithium pricing has moved to levels that are more consistent with reinvestment support -- as a result, I think it's fair to say there are more counterparties that have reemerged in as interested parties in discussions that are willing to enter into agreements with us that would be supportive of the financing that we're looking to put in place. So I would say the last 6 months has been a positive and has helped us move forward. That said, as you'll note, these agreements have taken longer to put in place than we would have thought. They're quite complex agreements, need to survive through multiple cycles. They're multiyear agreements, multi-hundred million dollar agreements. So making sure that these transactions work for not just us, but our lenders, our shareholders and our partners is extremely important. So long story short, we're moving in the right direction. The market environment is supportive of what we're trying to do. And if anything, it's brought more potential counterparties to the table. Anthony Taglieri: Great. That's helpful. Maybe just as a follow-up. So should we expect to see another offtake agreement, for example, prior to the financing concluding? Or would we expect sort of the next wave of offtake agreements sort of happen at the same time? David Park: No. It's been our plan since day 1 to have over 80% of our volumes contracted prior to FID with multiple counterparties. So I think you should expect to see some announcements with respect to 1 or 2 potential counterparties that will -- in the coming quarter that should be supportive of the financings we're looking to put in place. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Max Yerrill from BMO Capital Markets. Max Yerrill: Just understanding that the project debt sounds like it's contingent upon finalizing the offtake agreements. Are there any clauses or caveats that the project debt lenders are looking for in those offtake contracts? And then maybe a follow-up is, is that 80% target an internal standard strategic decision? Or is that one that the project debt lenders are looking for? David Park: Thanks, Max. What I'd say is the 80% is an internal target. But as a whole, what percentage we contract will be a function of the terms we have in place across a portfolio of different agreements. So long story short, we're looking for take-or-pay contracts with creditworthy counterparties that as a portfolio, provide sufficient price support that our lenders can get comfortable with the quantum of debt we're looking at putting in place. So it's really a portfolio approach. It is not any one specific deal has to meet certain specific terms. Max Yerrill: Got it. That's helpful. And then are we still looking at a roughly 2-year construction period? And I assume if all goes to plan this year, the bulk of the CapEx will still be 2027, 2028 for Phase 1? David Park: Sure. Why don't I turn that one over to Andy. J. Robinson: Yes, sure. Thanks, Max. Yes, the construction period, I think we're guiding towards commercial production in '29. As we are concluding our discussions with the contracting counterparties, we're refining the construction schedule and importantly, the pre-commissioning, commissioning and start-up schedules as well, Max, so that we are getting ourselves set up for success during the commissioning and start-up process so that we can pick commercial operation to align well with the offtake contracts that David was just talking about. So it is a fully integrated process so that the -- not only the construction, but the full commissioning and start-up period is fully aligned with the offtake contracts. that we're negotiating and signing at the moment. So yes, we're looking towards commercial production 2029, assuming FID and construction this year. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Theo Genzebu Great. Theophilos Genzebu: Thanks, everyone, I appreciate the color around the path towards FID. But out of the things that you've disclosed in the press release, is there any one single gating item to FID that stands out amongst them that you would consider? David Park: I'll go first, and then Andy, maybe you can round it out. There are a number of different things which we need to accomplish prior to FID. Andy already hit on EPC agreements, finalization of the NEPA process, finalization of offtake agreement and then closing the project debt financing. I would say that the -- more than likely, it is the offtake agreements that are the hardest to predict the exact timing of when they come in place and get finalized. But everything is -- we're working all these streams in parallel, but they all have to work with each other. I don't know, Andy, if you had anything else you wanted to say there? J. Robinson: I mean, not really. I mean, Theo, there are several things, obviously, which are very tightly under our control, and we're moving those forward as quickly as possible. As we mentioned, we guided to concluding the NEPA process, that federal permitting process this Q2 period. Similarly, for the EPCM and the EPCC contracts, we obviously have a tight grip on those and getting those to conclusion. We've talked about the offtake process and sort of that is less under our immediate control to fully and tightly direct the time lines. But as we mentioned before, that's going extremely well. And everything concludes with the debt piece at the final stage. So we have a full team. I think as we mentioned before, Theo, we've got a fully integrated team across the Standard Lithium and the Equinor partners, driving this towards an FID conclusion this year. And yes, we're excited to get this one into construction and moving it forward as quickly as we can. David Park: Sure. Let me just add on that there is a healthy market for domestic lithium in the 2029 and beyond time frame. And we are -- and we remain in advanced commercial negotiations with multiple parties. And we're committed to providing you updates as time goes by on the progress we're making on these initiatives. Theophilos Genzebu: Great. And I guess just picking backing off of the off-taker conversation. Is there any specific sector of counterparties where we're seeing the most like constructive discussions or more, I guess, advanced discussions currently? David Park: From day 1, we're always looking at multiple counterparties across trading house battery manufacturers and auto OEMs, and we remain in discussions with all 3 of those. We didn't want to put all our eggs in 1 basket. We wanted a diverse portfolio of customers, and that's still what we're heading towards. Theophilos Genzebu: Got you. Okay. And then maybe just last one for me. Just on the ATM program, how do you think about that, I guess, usage from here? I assume it still remains purely opportunistic? Or could it be used more actively if the stock stays supportive ahead of FID? David Park: And I turn that one to you, Salah? Salah Gamoudi: Thanks, David. Yes. So what I would say there is that we do have approximately $25.5 million left on our current ATM program. We plan to use that going forward prudently and in a paced way. It is one of the tools that we can use to fund our expansion in East Texas as well as fund a portion of our needs at Southwest Arkansas, especially pre-FID. And it helps to cover corporate overhead expenses as we go along. So I think the ATM will continue to be used as a prudent tool, but it will not be most likely used in a way that it will be our primary source of funding our projects in the future. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Joseph Reagor from ROTH Capital Partners. Joseph Reagor: One follow-up and then one other different question. So you talked a lot about FID already, but is there any opportunity given that you've got a decent balance sheet right now to get started on any early earthwork stuff in order to maybe even push up the time line to first production? Or is there permitting stuff and other things going on that prevents you from really getting started or the capital is just not enough? Anything like that? David Park: Great question. Andy... J. Robinson: Yes. I'll pick up initially and hand it back. Thanks, Joe. Yes, look, I mean, we've got a construction schedule which is being integrated right now with both of our key contracting parties. Like I said, we've got the EPCM and the EPCC. We're refining the schedule to try and optimize it as best as we can. I think the biggest time saving, what we're focused on right now, Joe, we're not genuinely constrained by earthmoving, Earthworks kind of enabling works type activities. Really kind of what's on the critical path for us is honestly additional engineering, early vendor outreach, procurement type activities. Those are the things, and that's really the focus of why we're going to be issuing a limited notice to proceed to the main contracting team so that we can kind of maintain that construction schedule by doing that early stage kind of more kind of the EP parts of the various packages to keep the schedule moving along. So that's really where our focus is rather than earthworks because the amount of earthworks that we have are relatively minimal and don't sit on the critical path of the construction schedule. Joseph Reagor: Okay. That's helpful. And then I don't think anybody touched on it yet. So with the LANXESS write-off, should we look at that as the company focusing on the JV, expect lithium JV and just simply the grade is higher in all of those areas. So there's no logical reason to return to the LANXES project? Or is there anything else to read into that? David Park: No, Joe, I think you nailed it. This is all about prioritizing, focusing and executing and prioritizing where we have the best grade. So our future is Southwest Arkansas and then growing into East Texas. I don't know, Andy, if you want to comment on the quarter.. J. Robinson: Yes. No, I mean, you're exactly right. And Joe, like our future, we want to build bigger projects. That's -- this first one, the 22,500 at Southwest Arkansas Phase 1, it's the right-sized project for us in the to build the first one. But really, the true scale comes in East Texas, where we can build some really pretty sizable projects there, given the extent of the resource, the grade of the resource and then our continued understanding as we move through the engineering and construction of this first one, making the subsequent projects larger, cheaper to build, et cetera. So we're looking to grow out into that much larger project portfolio in East Texas where we can see some really substantial scale. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Noel Parks from Tuohy Brothers Investment Research. Noel Parks: Just had a few. In the discussion of expenses before, it was mentioned that sort of process refinement and testing was a component of the expense growth. And I was just wondering, that sort of work, is that more or less unique to Southwest Arkansas? Or is that something that once it's accomplished and you turn more towards East Texas that it will be roughly replicable. So that's work that will be more or less done onetime only essentially? Salah Gamoudi: Andy, do you want to take that one? J. Robinson: Yes, sure. No, Yes. I mean, look, these are direct project learnings that can be applied across the whole portfolio of projects, Noel. We're in this unique situation that we have the demo plant running now. Salah mentioned, it's 6 years now that's been operating. That's now certainly one of the largest fully continuous DLE demo plants in North America. We continue to get just excellent data out of that plant. We continue -- so not only do we get process learnings, optimizations in terms of how we can make the process easier to run, potentially cheaper to build. But right now, that plant also forms a really crucial function as we effectively are developing the core team of operators who during that commissioning process that I talked about a little earlier on, they will be taking over eventually from the commissioning team from the contractor side and running the plant. And so the demo plant continues to be this truly unique sort of training tool to get the core team of operators fully used to processing smackover brine into battery quality lithium carbonate material. That's what we do every day at the demo plant, and it's truly a unique opportunity. We see the industry in general has struggled, I think, a little bit with commissioning and start-up activities on many projects across many different kind of asset and processing types. Because what we do at the demo plant is such an excellent kind of mini corollary of what we do at the first commercial plant, it really is this kind of unique -- this unique training tool. And so yes, we continue to be pretty comfortable kind of incurring expenses there because it's going to pay off sort of large scale over the next sequence of projects. Noel Parks: Great. And I mean just directionally, do you have a sense of sort of over the next few years, where you might sort of peak and then plateau out as far as that expense category? J. Robinson: I can let Salah can talk about actual costs. I think we intend to keep that demo plant running for kind of the foreseeable future, Noel, until the point that team members are fully transferred. It served its purpose. And then there may be some other application for it elsewhere at some point in the future. But that's not been determined to date. It really is intended to be kept running for certainly the foreseeable future to be this critical training tool to allow us to move into a smooth commissioning and ramp-up as we can expect to achieve. Noel Parks: Got it. And any thoughts on sort of the cost would be great? Salah Gamoudi: No, happy to opine on that, Noel. So I would expect that in the future, our demo plan expenses will be very consistent with the expenses that you saw come through during the fourth quarter of this past year. Noel Parks: Great. Okay. That's definitely helpful. And I guess my only other one was maybe just again, thinking about East Texas. Can you just sort of maybe characterize where you are in the process of the required drilling to gather data in East Texas. I'm assuming that still the focus is very much on delineation. And so just kind of wondering maybe what inning you think you are for establishing, I guess, the baseline for, say, a PFS going forward? David Park: Andy, why don't you take that? J. Robinson: Yes, sure. Yes. So we've got several project areas in East Texas, No. The only one which is sort of public, if you like, is the Franklin project, which is sort of centered on Franklin County. So that's the best defined project within our portfolio of projects in East Texas to date, and it's the one that we issued a maiden inferred resource on. So that particular project, the Franklin project, where we are right now is we've been engaging in well reentry work for the last quarter or so, actually 2 quarters now, Noel, gaining additional reservoir data, resampling the wells, retesting and starting to get a much more complete understanding of the subsurface. At the same time, we have been doing some additional process testing work on the East Texas brines. That work will continue certainly for the next quarter or 2. There is some additional drilling planned within the Franklin project area. That's currently targeted to be later on this year. And we're going to be integrating both that additional process testing work with that additional subsurface exploration work and delineation, along with quite a lot of additional leasing in the Franklin project area with a view to producing kind of the first economic study, so a PFS I think as we're guiding within the next 12 months, we want to be as soon as is feasible, Noel. We think it's going to be a very important report for kind of the investors in Standard to truly get a sense of the real value that's present within our East Texas portfolio. Remember it's only one of the projects, but there's a lot of huge unrealized value in our existing portfolio that we really want to kind of get that out and show it to the market. Noel Parks: Great. And actually, you mentioned leasing. Are there any new entrants on the scene in East Texas? J. Robinson: I think we see more or less the same suite of other companies working in the East Texas area. No, we've not seen anything change substantially in the last sort of 3 to 6 months basically. So I would say leasing activity in general is moving along at a brisk pace. There is competition within the area. But it's maintaining, I would say, it's fairly stable as we're seeing it currently. Operator: Your next question and final question comes from the line of Eric Boyes from Evercore. Eric Boyes: And just one for me. Can you speak to where you may be seeing any inflationary pressures for Southwest Arkansas CapEx items and how you're going about mitigating those? David Park: Andy, that one is for you as well. J. Robinson: You should be taking [indiscernible] Eric, yes, look, the FEED study is obviously pretty fresh still. And we feel pretty comfortable with where the vendor pricing kind of is relative to what we integrated into that FEED study. As we conclude the EPCC and the EPC contracts. Obviously, we have allowed for some price growth and inflationary effects in the final contract amount. So you will see some of that when those are finally announced. But because we did a very wide and extensive vendor outreach over a very conservative set of kind of engineering assumptions when we did the FEED work, we're not seeing a lot of actual real price growth in the key vendor packages to date. Operator: At this time, there are no further questions. This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending, and you may now disconnect.
Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to Fermi America's Earnings Conference Call. Today's call will be conducted by Rodrigo Acuna, Fermi America's Director of Investor Relations. Before I turn the call over to Mr. Acuna, I'd like to read the company's abbreviated safe harbor statements. I'd like to remind you that statements made in this conference call concerning future revenues, results from operations, financial positions, markets, economic conditions, product releases, partnerships and any other statements that may be construed as predictions of future performance or events are forward-looking statements, which may involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such statements. Any non-GAAP measures that may be discussed on the call are supplemental to GAAP results and are intended to provide additional perspective on the company's ongoing operations. With that said, Mr. Acuna, the floor is yours. Rodrigo Acuna: Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to Fermi America's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Earnings Call. Joining me today are Toby Neugebauer, our Co-Founder and CEO; and Miles Everson, our CFO. Before we begin, I want to remind you that this call will contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are based on management's current expectations and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. For a detailed discussion of these risks, please refer to our annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2025, which will be filed with the SEC later today. Today's call will be structured in 2 parts. First, Toby and Miles will walk you through an operational update on Project Matador. Then Miles will cover our financial results. We will open it for questions after that. And with that, I'll hand it over to Toby. Toby Neugebauer: Good morning. Thank you for taking the time to join us. This past Saturday, we had our Board meeting where we reviewed all of the accomplishments of the team over the past 100 days. And it's the first time in 30 years of business that I witnessed multiple rounds of applause. In my opinion, the response to the team's accomplishments were well deserved. Obviously, Fermi heard loud and clear from the market, go get a tenant. Unfortunately, getting the tenant is the easy part. As our shareholders, what you need Fermi to do is to earn the trust of investment-grade counterparties and the investors that provide the financing to fund multibillion dollars per gigawatt construction projects. That requires excellence from engineering to accounting. At Fermi, we're creating a private community powered by a private grid to be the leader in powering artificial intelligence that will shape tomorrow. But it all starts and ends with our tenants trusting us with their business, but just as importantly, their balance sheet to execute on the enormous undertaking in an environment where many are failing. At Fermi, we believe the best way to earn this trust is to do, to execute. I invite and almost plead with you all to come to the site. When tenants come to our site, they are blown away with the scale and the speed of which we are executing, 450 million cubic feet of gas pipeline in, 10 million gallons of water pipeline in, grid connect in, substation for an 800-megawatt, 60% to 70% completed, foundations for our gensets either completed or on the verge of completions. But what really turned our shoppers into buyers was the air permit. When we got the air permit is when the C-suites of our customers got very, very serious about buying. As you know now, we have the 6 gigawatt air permit. On Friday, we filed for an additional 5, which we qualify for and that I have a high expectation for us executing. But first, I just want you all to understand the expectation at Fermi is tenants. We need multiple tenants to maximize the use of our power gensets. I think you have to have multiple tenants because we need diversity of demand to achieve the proper efficiency of what we're creating with this private grid. Second, the Board is very concerned about disclosure that in any way impacts the negotiations on transactions that are multiparty and involve tens of billions of dollars. So while we are signing new LOIs, we are in the mode of coffee as for closers. We are not serving coffee until we have a complete close. It's clear that there have been issues with the stock. And as many of my friends and family and all of you all entrusted your capital and being a steward for your capital, I can't overstate how seriously I take it. I also can't be too focused on the day-to-day fluctuations. We are building a consequential company to solve a critical need for our customers to protect consumers and to serve our country. I'm now going to hand it off to Miles Everson, our Chief Financial Officer. Miles Everson: Thanks, Toby. This is our first Form 10-K as a public company, covering the period from our inception on January 10, 2025, through December 31, 2025. It's approximately 11.5 months. In that time, we moved from formation to IPO and substantially completed the initial phase of Project Matador. I want to frame the financials the way we manage the business internally. A traditional income statement does not fully capture the economics of this company at this stage. We are pre-revenue and in full-scale construction. While our GAAP net loss is significant, it is overwhelmingly noncash. The more meaningful story is reflected in the balance sheet and cash flow statement, specifically how nearly $570 million of investor capital has been deployed into physical infrastructure at Matador. Let's talk about the balance sheet. As of December 31, 2025, total assets were approximately $1.4 billion. Property, plant and equipment totaled $935 million, nearly all of which is construction in progress as no assets have been yet placed into service. Cash and cash equivalents were $409 million at the end of the year. On the liability side, accounts payable and accrued liabilities were $177 million, reflecting the pace of construction and vendor activity. Total stockholders' equity was $1.1 billion. As of March 2026, we had approximately 630 million common shares outstanding. If we turn our eye to the income statement and operating activities, for the full year, the net loss was $486 million. Importantly, approximately $445 million of that was noncash. General and administrative expenses totaled $178 million, of which $133 million was noncash share-based compensation tied to equity incentive arrangements established at formation and in connection with the IPO. Cash used for G&A was approximately $45 million, including $12 million in personnel costs for a lean team of roughly 35 employees, $22 million in professional services and $11 million in other corporate expenses such as recruiting, travel and marketing. Other expenses net was $312 million was almost entirely noncash. The primary components were $174 million related to charitable contribution of Class B units prior to the IPO, $61 million of fair value losses on Series B convertible notes $46 million of losses on embedded derivatives associated with preferred unit financing; and finally, $24 million related to preferred unit issuances. From a cash perspective, operating cash use for the year was $34 million. That represents our true operating cash burn while executing formation, completing the IPO, securing a 99-year ground lease, building the organization and advancing Phase 0 construction, we view this as strong demonstration of capital discipline. When we look at investing activities, which is the core of our financial story and the deployment of our investors' capital, what we see is net cash used in these activities was $570 million, with virtually all of that invested directly into property, plant and equipment at Project Matador and recorded as construction in progress. More than half of this capital was deployed to natural gas power generation, including turbine procurement across Siemens F-Class and SGT-800s as well as GE6B fleets, along with mobile generation and balance of plant equipment. The remainder was deployed across data center infrastructure, substation and electrical interconnection, general construction, land and water development and early-stage nuclear predevelopment. Now let's look at our financing activities. Cash provided by financing activities totaled approximately $1 billion. This included $746 million of net proceeds from our IPO, $108 million of preferred units, $100 million from a Macquarie term loan, $76 million from Series A convertible notes and $26 million from seed convertible notes. Subsequent to year-end, we executed 3 equipment financing facilities, a $500 million MUFG nonrecourse turbine warehouse to support Siemens F-Class procurement, which also fully refinanced a Macquarie term loan and a $120 million facility with Keystone National Group expandable to $220 million for high-voltage equipment, including transformers and switchgear. And finally, the third one this week for $165 million with Yellowstone to finance additional Siemens SGT-800s. Those facilities, combined with our existing cash, give us the liquidity to satisfy our financial obligations for at least 12 months, but we are being deliberate about what comes next. The next phase of capital deployment at Project Matador will be timed to 2 milestones: First, the execution of a definitive tenant agreement; and second, the closing of project financing. Those are the gates. Until both are in place, we will not commit significant capital to the next phase of construction. That is how we deliver shareholder value. We are advancing both work streams in parallel. On the tenant side, we have potential tenants competing for initial power. We are in active negotiations with multiple counterparties. But as of today, we've not executed a definitive lease agreement. Tenant revenues are expected to commence in 2027, but even when they do, they will not be sufficient to fund our full operating capital requirements until Matador is built out and operating at scale. On the financing side, we are in active discussions with multiple lenders and progressing technical diligence now so that we are positioned to move quickly once definitive lease agreements are executed. The project level financing is underwritten to the future cash flows that a tenant commitment unlocks. We expect both Phase 0 and Phase 1 of Project Matador will exceed $3 billion in total aggregate capital deployment. The path forward depends on our ability to execute tenant leases, raise project level debt and bring in strategic equity where necessary. We believe this is achievable. However, these financings are not certain to occur. If capital is not available in the amounts, timing or terms we need, we could be forced to delay investments, amend purchase commitments or potentially surrender collateral to preserve liquidity. We're telling you that directly because it's the reality of building a multibillion-dollar infrastructure platform from a standing start. And because we believe investors deserve to hear it, not just read it in a risk factor. The bottom line, we have the liquidity to meet our obligations. We are being strategic in how and when we deploy capital. The next phase of capital deployment at Project Matador will be sequenced with the execution of definitive tenant agreements and the related project financing that follows. There is more work to do, and we are doing it every day. I want to touch on the REIT election. As we've previously disclosed, we intend to elect REIT status for U.S. federal income tax purposes beginning with our short taxable year ended December 31, 2025. We believe this structure aligns well with the long-duration infrastructure-oriented real estate assets we are developing. Given the level of expected noncash depreciation, we do not anticipate generating material REIT taxable income in the near term. And therefore, we do not expect to pay dividends until such time as taxable income requires it. Finally, I want to highlight for those pre-IPO investors that were subject to a lockup agreement that lockup agreement expires today. Thanks. Rodrigo Acuna: Operator, we're ready for questions. Operator: Our first question is coming from Paul Golding with Macquarie. Paul Golding: Congrats on all the progress on the site. I wanted to ask 2 near-term questions. One being what the key discussion points are with prospective tenants that are being negotiated as you try to work to a definitive agreement. And secondly, more specifically on the near-term energization milestones. As you look to the SGT-800 frames that you've received in Houston, now that you have the equipment on hand, how is the time line coming together for deployment of those assets and how that might relate to your negotiations with prospects? Toby Neugebauer: Thanks, Paul. The #1 issue, the #2 issue and the #3 issue with our tenants is they want all of our power, and they want it all forever. But for our model to work, we need to have multiple tenants so that you deal with the differences in loads. So that really is the issue. And so from -- when they get out there to the site, they're blown away by the site and they realize this is a place you can generate a significant amount of power, and they want it all. In terms of the SGT-800s, we've had quite a bit of luck. So when -- and I'm going to come back to tenant. The units came, as you're aware of, to Houston. We kept them in a free trade zone in hoping maybe we could get a break while we were waiting for our environmental permit. And literally, the second, the Supreme Court had a ruling on the tariffs. We checked them into the country. We saved ourselves probably $27 million to $30 million. And we make -- I'll have them put the pictures. You can see the SGT-800 foundations are ready to pour. But on the tenant side, because I know that's what everybody is focused on. What we can share is that we're in the contracting phase with multiple new potential tenants. But everyone needs to understand these transactions are complex. They're multiparty. And Macquarie, as you know better than anybody, they involve billions of dollars. Miles Everson: Yes, hey Paul, it's Miles here. I would just add that -- and we've said this all along, the other thing is it's not a tension point, but it's one of our things we're holding firm on is we want investment-grade wraps. That's why Toby earlier referred to the fact that this is really companies saying, are they going to put their balance sheet up? And when we say companies, we're talking about investment-grade companies that wrap these things. So then the second thing I would add is that it's not just what we do and what we control, but the ultimate offtakers also or development partners need to look at this and say, can they get their side of the equation up? In other words, all their MEP and the racks, et cetera. And so we're doing more, I'll say, reverse due diligence than I expected we were going to have to do to make sure that they can have their stuff up in time to take our power because our power is ahead of most people's ability to get the other stuff in place. That has been one of the bigger surprises is if you'd say, bear me in the fall was worried whether, yes, convincing people that we could have the power. We now want to be convinced they have the MEP because we do have the power and we need to put it to work. Paul Golding: Miles, if I could just sneak one more in then on the back of the discussion seeming to be pretty robust around demand. Is pricing -- are you able to give any color on pricing directionally relative to where you expect it to be when you first started considering sort of the financial approach to the first gigawatt of power? Miles Everson: We're at the same. And we'll try to bid for more, but we're definitely ready to say we're at the same. Operator: Our next question is coming from Vikram Malhotra with Mizuho. Vikram Malhotra: Congrats on your full fiscal year. I guess I just want to dig deeper, if you can, on kind of the tenant discussions. And I'm wondering if there are different sticking points for sort of Fermi as a landlord versus your potential tenants and kind of how those sticking points may result in, I guess, delays in signings. I think you cited 12 months in your share -- over the next 12 months. And I just want to get a better understanding on the sticking points from either side. And from a time line perspective, should we think over 12 months? Or could it be sooner? Toby Neugebauer: Again, I know it comes across [indiscernible]. Once they get to the site, it really is they want the power and they're trying to lock in all of our power at a price today because I think our tenants really appreciate the scarcity of the gensets and that the price of energy for them will be increasing. So they are rightfully focused on locking in as much power at today's prices as possible. That really is it. And it's -- like I said, we're in the contracting phase of this process. In terms of providing guidance on the time, the Board, the coaching, I've got a really great -- Fermi has a really great Board [indiscernible] look at it. Their point is we'll -- when we provide guidance on timing or expectations, that changes the dynamics of the negotiations to Fermi's disadvantage. And so the Board was pretty firm with me on Saturday that we're not going to discuss the timing because what we're doing is it changes the dynamics of -- these aren't $1 billion transactions. These are multibillion-dollar transactions, and I just want to keep the dynamics as flat as possible. Vikram Malhotra: Okay. And then just 2 things to clarify. One, the -- I guess, the shareholder letter mentioned sort of term sheets and various agreements. I just want to clarify, one, is there an actual LOI in place with any of these 5, 6, 7 tenants that you're negotiating? Or is that sort of the next step? And number two, if you could just clarify any of the near-term financings like from MUFG. Is there a stipulation in any of these financings that you must have a lease signed by XYZ period? I think our comment on -- that we're comfortable with is signing new LOIs, it will be a normal course of our business, and we won't be commenting on them. Post that, I think it's kind of one of the lessons that we've learned so far is we do not want to change the negotiating dynamics. I'm -- each one of these financings is separate. And I'm sure we've disclosed it. Miles, I just don't want to comment on the... Miles Everson: Yes. We don't have any tenant signing covenants, if you will, Vikram, on our financing arrangements. And the other thing to remember that these financings are nonrecourse to parent which I think is really important when you think of the overall public company. And then the thing that hasn't changed is that we do have an agreement with Texas Tech that will have a tenant by the end of 2026. That remains the same, and we're working collaboratively with them to advance that. So that's probably what's most important right now is to understand that we're still full on, and we feel really good about where we're at, to be candid. Toby Neugebauer: Yes, that's only a 200-megawatt tenant. I don't want to call that -- I don't want to demean it, but that should be [indiscernible]. That's not close to expectation. We look at it this way. We don't have a tenant that wants 200 megawatts. That's not our problem. Vikram Malhotra: They want more. Toby Neugebauer: Yes. If we had to have a call, you only could have a 200-megawatt tenant, we would -- that would be a problem for us. The problem is they want gigawatts. Operator: Our next question is coming from Ryan Gravett with UBS. Ryan Gravett: Miles, you touched on this earlier, but what additional development at the site are you planning at this point before a first tenant lease is signed and you secure project financing? Is there anything you can share in terms of more precise CapEx spending or cash burn that you're expecting this year? Miles Everson: Yes. So we are going to be very diligent about matching our development with the signing of a project financing as well and our tenant leases. The -- but as far as we'll go -- and look, these things change. This is a long-term project, not a 30-day project. But what we'll do is have the site ready to receive our power generation equipment. It's largely there today. There's a little incremental work that needs to be done so that we can place those generation assets into service as soon as we see that we've got tenant agreements to line up with the timing of that installation. Toby Neugebauer: Yes. I think what we were talking about, Fermi become not skeptical, but we definitely want to see that the timing of our development matches the MEP that our tenants can acquire. And if you say, is there a change in how we as a company have viewed it as we've become -- where I would say, last year, we were focused on people being able to do great due diligence on us. We have pivoted and actually made hires. We picked up a really great person from Meta that helps us do diligence on the pace of execution of our potential tenants. Operator: Our next question is coming from Stephen Gengaro with Stifel. Stephen Gengaro: I apologize if there's any noise, I'm in an airport. So when we think about like your tenants need for power and sort of the various tenants and the timing of kind of when their data centers are up and running and when they need power, what's -- like when you're talking to the customers, how far out are they thinking about securing power relative to when the data center becomes fully operational? Toby Neugebauer: First of all, that differs between each tenant. And it's the #1 -- not the #1, but it's in the top 3 diligence items we have or how we prioritize tenants is obviously, are you financeable, i.e., are you investment grade is number one. But the #2 thing is we actually, unlike most companies in the world are sitting on a whole heck of a lot of power generation that we are very anxious to put to work. And so it is -- that is -- there's no one answer to it. But when you think about how we're running the business and prioritizing people that we would contract, that's probably our #2 thing. How fast we're not -- we can have the power because of all the work we did in at the site to date. We can have the power, what we now realize probably faster than some of them can have the MEP. So that becomes how we prioritize who we contract with. Stephen Gengaro: And the follow-up is like -- just kind of going back to the first potential tenant and the negotiations that were terminated or at least maybe terminated but delayed at least, like when did they actually need power? Because I'm just sort of thinking if there's a lack of power, what are they doing for power if they're not doing it with you? Toby Neugebauer: What I look back, and again, I don't believe that I hope that the first tenant is a tenant. So I just want to convey that. When we look at when they need power, it definitely brought to our attention is we have to really make sure that these tenants have the MEP. I think it's a bigger bottleneck than we originally anticipated. Stephen Gengaro: Miles, I mean, you were involved in that... Miles Everson: Yes. Look, so they originally were looking at they would have power that they could deploy and make revenue themselves off of in 2027, okay? But I think there's 2 parts to your overall question, which is when do off-takers need power. And if you look at their planned portfolios, most of them are into '27, '28 where they need to consume the power. However, and this is an important point, -- you can read it in the newspapers. There's other sites that are not capable of delivering on the power that they've committed to these. So we do expect and we've seen some potential reallocations of where they're going to get their power that they thought they already had and they actually don't have. Toby Neugebauer: We are in a special spot because we have a lot of power and the world recognizes it. Operator: Our next question is coming from Nick Amicucci with Evercore ISI. Nicholas Amicucci: Just wanted to touch upon something. So I guess just given kind of multiple new LOIs in process in addition to the original one, I just wanted to kind of get some sense, has there been any kind of potential -- has the potential scope of those tenants increased, meaning like different types of tenants? Or is it still more or less those hyperscalers? Obviously, investment grade, but just kind of trying to see if those horizons broadened a little bit. Toby Neugebauer: I think the only thing that I would say is significant engagement by chip makers, not some directly, not directly, I think they are getting really concerned that they -- those chips are only worth the power behind them. So in terms of scope, that would be the only change I would highlight. Miles? Miles Everson: That's how I would describe it as well. The chip makers are more directly engaged in where is the power going to come from? And frankly, where the whole consumption of their chips going to come from is really what they're focused on. Toby Neugebauer: I think you all are off the markets where that the leading chip makers are now realizing they're getting behind a number of companies. And so that changes the dynamic so it does broaden it. For us, it's -- the key thing is, and you know this as well as anybody, we do need a diversity of load to maximize the efficiency of our gensets. So I think what you're seeing us do is a little more math, not a little more, a lot more math. We are better off with a more diversified load base to maximize the efficiency of this private grid that we're building. Miles Everson: Yes. Nick, the other thing I would just add in terms of market dynamics, what's happening is increasingly on the MEP side, the emergence, if you will, of modular MEP, which if you think of it as a chip maker, what you're really concerned about is speed to token. And so you look through the whole value chain and you say, where do I have places to speed up? There's opportunities to speed up the timing of MEP. And so you see more modular players coming in to help make that happen, which is a huge positive for us because we got the power. Toby Neugebauer: Yes. That is another thing that we've become hyper focused on. And one of the great things that we've had exposure to from the oil and gas business is modularization. And again, in terms of hiring, we are bringing people in that can help us diligence and engage on our clients' supply chain for MEP. That have been a real focus for us the last month. Nicholas Amicucci: Great. And then, Miles, you had mentioned, obviously, today, kind of the locked -- IPO lockup expires and the intention is still to file as a REIT for 2025. Just want to see, are there any specific management sales that either need to occur that we should be on the lookout for to satisfy that status? Miles Everson: Yes. So there's not a management sale necessarily required for the -- at the time of this expiration of the lockup. However, to meet the REIT 550 rules, there will be, what I would say, an orderly sell-down that we're working to make that happen. And then that we have a few months to make that happen. And we're in -- we got an adviser we've retained to help with that. And so I fully expect that, that will be done in an orderly fashion, Nick. But that's been there from day 1. And now is the time that we're focusing on getting that executed. Toby Neugebauer: Obviously, I'm the -- my family is the problem. Today, we own about 38% of the company. What I would hope to achieve, can't promise, that if our family has to sell down, it needs to be to an accretive buyer. And what I mean by that is I want 1 plus 1 on the sell-down to equal 3 or 4. And that's why we've hired an adviser to help us find which acquirer of a block. And frankly, I don't want to sell down hardly anything at all, especially at these levels. But if we're going to do it, I want it to be something that adds something to the brand of Fermi. So that is our goal there. And we did -- I don't know if that we signed it, but we definitely verbally agreed to hire an adviser to run a process that, again, becomes an accretive transaction that you all are all excited about versus a dilutive sell-down of my family's position. Operator: Our next question is coming from Skye Landon with Rothschild & Company. Skye Landon: Coming back to the tenant questions. Clearly, a few months ago, we were talking about kind of one client taking the full first gigawatt. It now seems like you're potentially balancing trying to keep multiple parties happy. So just wondering if that first gigawatt maybe splits into multiple tenants taking smaller kind of megawatt numbers or not or kind of what you see the base case from here? And then secondly, you mentioned that pricing was remaining in the same ballpark as previously, but just wondering if the structure of rental revenues kind of ahead of operational shells is still going to be the same structure as previously or if various different conversations with new potential tenants is potentially changing this? Toby Neugebauer: My strong -- first of all, there's no one that wants less than 200 megawatts. I mean we're trying to talk them down. We'd rather do 5 200-megawatt deals if you ask us when we run our calculations, that is the right -- that's great -- and the problem -- not problem, the opportunity we've got is we've got 2.3 gigawatts with the F-Class units on their way. Our team was in Germany the other day, and they were -- 2 of them were in the loading dock. So hey, our goal is -- I don't think we get away with 3 tenants for the first 2 would be victory, and I think we only get away with 2. But... Miles Everson: Yes. I would say -- Skye, it's Miles. I would just -- I would put it this way. We will likely only do deals 500 plus, and we can do that. So it's allocation -- if we can allocate the initial commitments, right, over that 2-plus gigawatts that Toby referred to. The real question for me in these discussions is -- they all want ROFRs on future quantum of energy. And you got to not just look at the initial allocation, but also how are you allocating the ROFR so that you comply with any ROFR that we will commit to. Toby Neugebauer: And in terms of the pricing, it's the same as we said. I think we're getting more involved in the MEP -- I'm not saying we're getting into MEP business, but we are wanting to make sure we're solving all of our clients' problems. So not a change in strategy, but enhancing the services that we provide to our customer. Operator: Our next question is coming from Eric Whitfield with Texas Capital. Derrick Whitfield: Congrats on your progress to date. With respect to your prospective tenant list, could you -- could you perhaps add color on how this list has evolved since your air permit was finalized? Toby Neugebauer: I didn't hear the last part. I heard airport permit. That's my favorite word. [ I didn't interest at all ]. Derrick Whitfield: Yes. No, just could you speak to how the tenant list has evolved since your air permit has been finalized? Toby Neugebauer: The tenant list didn't change. The engagement changed dramatically. And basically, the best way I can describe it is shoppers became buyers. I mean it is one of the largest air permits ever. I think the largest gas gen project is in Florida. It's only 3.5 gigs. We're at 6. I think, as you all know, we filed for an additional 5. I mean we're looking at being the place where you can have the largest gas generation set on the planet. And I think the C-suites across all of our customers immediately got concerned is, hey, we better get while they're getting is good to use our West Texas freight. Derrick Whitfield: Great. And then for my follow-up, with regard to the emergence of modular MEP development, what is the base unit in general on this modular operations? And to what degree can they accelerate time to power? Toby Neugebauer: I went to the Schlumberger factory in Shreveport, gosh, Fermi. 6 weeks doesn't sound like that long ago, but at Fermi it's 6 weeks, it's 6 years at most companies. But I think it's game changing. And I think it's going to dramatically dramatic -- I don't believe we're going to be talking stick building MEP in a year. I really, really don't. It's just such a transformational way and a much more cost-effective way to build MEP. We're going to plug and play MEP into powered shells. That's what the business is going to go to. I encourage you all, I'm sure to let you go see their factory, and I know there's a couple of other companies. But I mean it took us 1 minute to realize, wow. We're trying to get Schlumberger to build a factory next to us. Operator: Our next question is coming from Joe Brent with Liberum. Joe Brent: Two questions, if I may. Firstly, you talked earlier about cash burn, and I understand there are different scenarios. But can you just give us the parameters of what the cash burn might be in FY '26? And secondly, related to that, I think you've got $885 million of equipment financing facility, which I understand is currently nonrecourse. Could you indicate at what point, if ever, that comes on to the balance sheet? And then related to both those, remind us of the funding structure. Toby Neugebauer: Well, first of all, on the cash burn, I like to tell people that I'm an aggressive personality but a financial [ CISI ]. And I -- we do have a standing call every day at 4:00 Eastern 3:00 Central where we review the cash position on a daily basis on the recourse. And I focus on it pre-tenant, meaning I'm, again, aggressive personality, financial [ CISI ]. Miles, I don't -- I'm not aware that any of it comes on to the balance sheet. Miles Everson: It doesn't come on to the holdco balance sheet. And then on the cash burn, we're running what does it look like cash burn from a pre-tenant signing perspective, and we got plenty of cash from that perspective. And then once we have the tenant, we'll do the project financing. And obviously, at that point, there's plenty of cash to finance the first tenant contract and finish out the deployment and commissioning of the gensets. Operator: Our next question is coming from Rich Anderson with Cantor Fitzgerald. Richard Anderson: So Miles, on the -- early on in the call, you addressed potential for asset relinquishment to preserve cash flow. Can you provide a little bit more color on how that might play out, assets that are sort of on that list? Anything more you can add to that topic? Toby Neugebauer: Yes. Let's be clear, Rich. That is not our intention whatsoever, and we don't see that happening. But when you think through all potential scenarios, right, you say, well, what are the levers I have to pull, that would be one lever if we had to. But right now, we don't have any plans to do it. But it would -- if you had to do it, you would do it with a genset or 2 because there's plenty of demand. I mean we get lots of inbound calls as to whether or not we would move our equipment to somebody else. We have no interest in doing that. I only mentioned it because -- well, and it's only prudent to say what are the levers if you got to pull levers, what do I have? So I would not want anyone to think that, that's on our list of things to do at this juncture given what we see on the tenant front and the timing of everything. But I don't even like talking about it. These gensets are incredibly valuable. And I would auction off my 2 boys first before I would let one of these gensets go. And probably the dumbest thing I've ever done is even before we got the tech lease, my family basically committed to buy those SGT-800s. So I did basically auction off my children's future for that. So it's a worst thing -- like I said, my boys will be auctioned off first, and then we'll look at the gensets. Richard Anderson: Well, that's love. Okay, and then... Toby Neugebauer: Please check where they stand. Richard Anderson: Okay. Second question is on the land lease -- ground lease. What must be in place by this date or that date from a power resource perspective or tenant or whatever it is that satisfies any sort of requirements around maintaining your position? Toby Neugebauer: Is a notice to proceed to begin construction. So we don't have to have anything built, which means we're further ahead. But yes, we don't have to have an actual data center. We have to have a tenant and an agreement with that tenant, and it has to be 200 megawatts. And I'm not going to diminish that. It would be hard to get 200-megawatt deal because no one wants that little of power. Miles Everson: And to be clear, that's by 12/31/26. Toby Neugebauer: Yes. Operator: Our final question today is coming from Andrew Fisher with Berenberg. Andrew Fisher: A few has already been answered, but I just had one follow-up just on the sort of pre-tenant cash or investment requirements. Could you maybe just give a little bit more color of, let's say, the turbines that you already have in your possession where you've already got the foundation being installed. Could you give us a rough idea about what remaining CapEx is needed just to get those installed to sort of get you there ready for the first tenant? Or if you can't give an absolute number, maybe an idea of the sort of percentage of the overall capital cost of those projects? I assume most of the heavy lifting has already been done, but it would just be good to get an idea, please. Toby Neugebauer: Okay. We're working on the actual calculations on the foundations for the F-Class units. Again, 2 of them is a wonderful picture. I hope -- let's put it on the website so people can see the F-Class units. I want to get those foundations installed. The site is cleared, the geotech is done. There are only 1,300 square feet per generator. I don't have the numbers for those. We have those out for bid literally right now. And if you're over here after this call, we're going to be debating how much money those -- the foundation we need to complete is the SGT-800s. And let me be clear, I don't think it should cost more than $10 million. But I would put that one in a source of consternation and debate at Fermi America. I'd like to get those SGT-800s instead of having them sitting in Houston, they need to come home to Amarillo, and it makes no sense to have those class units sitting in an expensive storage facility. I'm really zoned in on the foundations. We've got an additional extension on our deal with Excel that I think is kind of $8 million or $10 million-ish. I think it should cost $4 million. I think you're going to get a theme that the CEO says everything should cost half of what is currently being quoted. Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's Q&A session and will also conclude today's call. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and we thank you for your participation.
Operator: Hello, and thank you for participating in today's conference call to discuss zSpace's Financial Results for the Fourth Quarter and Full Year Ended December 31, 2025. Joining us today are zSpace Chief Executive Officer, Paul Kellenberger; Chief Financial Officer, Erick DeOliveira; and Greg Robles from Investor Relations. Following their remarks, we'll open the call for analyst questions. Before we go further, I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Robles as he reads the company's safe harbor statement. Greg, please go ahead. Greg Robles: Thanks, operator. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining our conference call to discuss our Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Financial Results. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that certain statements made on this call may be considered forward-looking statements. These statements are based on our current expectations and beliefs and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. Additionally, we may discuss certain key business metrics, which are non-GAAP financial measures. A description of these non-GAAP measures and any comparisons to the most directly comparable GAAP measures can be found in our earnings release on the Investor Relations section of our website. Now I would like to turn the call over to the CEO of zSpace, Paul Kellenberger. Paul? Paul Kellenberger: Thank you, Greg, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us for our Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Earnings Call. I'm Paul Kellenberger, CEO of zSpace and with me is Erick DeOliveira, our Chief Financial Officer. We're excited to share zSpace's performance and the progress we've made advancing our strategic priorities. Our fourth quarter results reflect our continued focus on advancing our strategy and controlling what we can control. During the quarter, our software and services revenue continued to comprise over 50% of total revenue, contributing to gross margin expansion of nearly 850 basis points. This performance was driven by strong customer renewals and the continued adoption of our software offerings, which is a key part of our strategy and a testament to our execution and disciplined focus on delivering value to our customers despite ongoing macroeconomic and funding uncertainty. As we formally announced in late Q4 2025, we made structural changes in the business to align to the macro headwinds in the business we saw throughout 2025. We continue to look for ways to improve our business, both top line and bottom line as we get close to finalizing Q1. In addition, in January and more recently, we have announced additional capital via Planet One and [ 3i ] as well as announcing last week the additional restructuring of our [ Itria and PISA ] debt. During the quarter, we continued to advance our strategy by expanding both the capabilities of our platform and the breadth of our customer engagements across K-12, CTE and workforce pathways. We also strengthened our product portfolio with the launch of zStylus One, our next-generation AI-enabled stylist designed to simplify AR deployment and enhance precision across our Inspire and Imagine system. The new zStylus One showcases breakthrough embedded sensors powered by machine learning algorithms that eliminates the need for an external sensor module or embedded tracking in the laptop. Early feedback from customers and partners has been very positive, and we expect this product to support broader adoption of our next-generation platforms as our customers upgrade their hardware. We also achieved meaningful customer wins across several regions and program areas. In Pennsylvania, the Greater Altoona Career & Technology Center strengthened its Dental Assistant Program through the use of zSpace AR/VR technology, leveraging zSpace Inspire 2 and the zSpace Dental Anatomy Application to improve students' understanding of dental structures, support diverse learners and enhance preparation for hands-on clinical skills. In California, Mayfair High School has established a 36-station zSpace Inspire AR/VR laptop lab, where students interact with immersive simulations, applications and guided lessons aligned to CPE and core academic subjects. The lab serves as a central hub where teachers across the campus can bring classes to explore career pathways through interactive 3D experiences, demonstrating how dedicated immersive learning can drive cross-departmental adoption and provide students with early exposure to high-demand career pathways. And more recently, zSpace highlighted the long-standing success of its immersive augmented and virtual reality learning platform across Atlanta Public Schools, or APS, where students have used AR/VR technology since 2020 -- sorry, since 2015 to deepen STEM learning and explore career pathways. Over nearly a decade, Atlanta Public Schools has integrated zSpace immersive learning experiences across elementary, middle and high school classrooms, giving students hands-on opportunities to explore complex science, scientific concepts and practice real-world career skills in safe, simulated environments. Their long-term success underscores the durability of our platform and the impact we can achieve as districts expand diversive learning from early grade through workforce preparation. Finally, our Career Explorer powered by Career Coach AI was formally recognized with Tech & Learning's Best of 2025 Award of Excellence. This recognition reinforces the value our customers are seeing as they adopt immersive career exploration tools that engage students through real-world simulations and align directly to emerging skill trades and technical careers. Collectively, these wins highlight continued demand we see in immersive AI-enabled tools that simplify adoption for educators, deepen engagement for students and help districts strengthen both academic and workforce outcomes. In addition to support our global expansion and ensure accessibility across various educational geographies, we're strategically leveraging artificial intelligence to eliminate language barriers. AI is enabling quick and efficient translation across our platform, including website content and application interfaces and providing tools that can understand and interact in over 50 languages. This initiative not only expands our global reach, but ensures students and educators regardless of their native language, can fully utilize zSpace's award-winning educational experiences, significantly broadening our global reach. In closing, we remain confident in the long-term growth potential of zSpace and our ability to deliver on our vision. That said, we approach 2026 with continued cautious optimism given the ongoing uncertainty and the macro environment in the education market in the U.S. In addition, due to the war in Iran, we are seeing opportunities in the Middle East being delayed. We continue to believe that as the Federal Education Policy continues to take shape and funding mechanisms become more predictable, the longer-term outlook for our business will strengthen. With that, I will turn the call over to Erick to walk you through our financial results in more detail. Erick? Erick DeOliveira: Thank you, Paul. As you consider our results, a reminder that our revenues are substantially recognized upon shipment of laptop units or fulfillment of software license fees. This includes recognizing the full value of multiyear software licenses in the period in which they are fulfilled. Only a small portion of our revenue is rapidly recognized. As a result of this revenue recognition treatment, our financial results can exhibit quarter-to-quarter and year-over-year variability that exaggerates the underlying seasonality of the business. Throughout 2025, we saw dual themes of internal execution success, driving product innovation, quality of revenues and spend management, opposed by external headwinds from tariff policy, freezes and education funding and the longest federal government shutdown in U.S. history to close out the year. Both internal and external themes played familiar roles in our financial performance through the period ending December 31. And now diving into our full year performance. Revenues were $27.9 million, down 27%. As noted throughout the year, software and services revenues outperformed, down only 15% in comparison to total revenues and making up 49% of the revenue portfolio, up from 42% in 2024, a 7 percentage point improvement. This was an important driver of gross margin expansion. As previously discussed, our P&L reflects multiyear software license revenue in period. To help better characterize the run rate health of the business, we offer 2 non-GAAP software operating metrics. As of December 31, 2025, the annualized contract value of renewable software was $9.9 million, down 12% compared with 12 months ago. Also as of December 31, 2025, the net dollar revenue retention of customers with at least $50,000 of ACV was 71% for those customers present as of December 31, 2024. Unfavorable performance on these 2 metrics is attributable to 2 large customers who collectively expanded their zSpace footprint in 2024, but for whom macro factors prevented full renewal of their expanded commitments. Normalizing for these 2 customers, ACV would have been $11.1 million or down 2% and NDRR would have been 88%, pointing to wider stability across the customer base. Bookings for the 12-month period ending December 31 were $26.1 million, down 34% year-over-year. Gross profit was $13.3 million, down 15% against the same period last year. This includes a onetime charge for discontinued software license inventory, which is at once related to our exit of China and also our continued efforts to bring previously resold third-party titles in-house for both acquisition of applications and internal development. Gross profit was also affected by applicable tariffs and duties. 2025 gross margins were 47.6%, up 6.7 percentage points versus 2024. Factors driving improved quality of revenue were sustained throughout the year and highlighted in our quarterly results. Firstly, favorable growth in the mix of software content of our revenues drove 2.5 percentage points of margin. Secondly, product line refreshes in our hardware ecosystem led by the Inspire 2 platform reduced our bill of materials costs. Thirdly, increased first-party zSpace software content, combined with those hardware improvements for a total of 4.2 percentage points of margin, delivering the total 6.7 percentage points of gross margin expansion across the 12-month period. 2025 operating expenses of $28.3 million, excluding stock-based compensation, were up 11%. People-related costs, which make up 66% of 2025 OpEx were up 6% year-over-year, again, excluding stock-based compensation. As a result of corporate restructuring efforts in December 2025, management believes that our current OpEx run rate is closer to $19 million, still excluding stock-based comp, assuming stability of the current external environment. And now for the fourth quarter. Q4 revenues of $4.8 million were down 43% year-over-year, reflecting what amounted to a freeze in both orders and shipments during the U.S. federal government shutdown. For business secured during the effectively truncated quarter, revenue mix trends continue to be in evidence. Software and services represented 57% of total revenues, a 10 percentage point mix shift with significant gross margin implications, with hardware revenues falling below 50% for the second quarter in a row. Bookings for the 3-month period ending December 31 were $3.4 million, down 21% year-over-year. CTE customers drove 56% of bookings value, down from 58% in Q4 '24. Gross profit was $2.4 million and gross margins were 49.1%, up 8.4 percentage points versus Q4 '24. This laps the 6 percentage point margin expansion in that quarter and continues the improvements in profitability we have been delivering. Within the quarter, the 10 percentage point mix shift in revenues was responsible for 2.8 percentage points of margin gain and rate-based factors drove 5.6 percentage points of improvement. Operating expenses of $6.5 million for the quarter, excluding stock-based compensation, were up 9% year-over-year. Our Q4 reported results include $2 million in stock-based compensation expense attributable to grants made as part of our employee equity incentive program. Relative to the 22.8 million shares issued and outstanding at the start of the year, we managed issuance of RSUs to a target burn rate of 6.2% or 1.4 million RSUs, well below our 7% target. As of December 31, 2025, zSpace had approximately $1 million in cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash compared to $4.9 million in cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash as of December 31, 2024. Our path to profitability continues to run through revenue growth via operating leverage, our ongoing expansion of gross margins and tight stewardship of operating expenses. While overall revenues are challenged by headwinds in the U.S. K-12 market, our success in driving more of the revenue portfolio from software is bearing fruit. The gross margin expansions from revenue mix shift into software from additional first-party software and from new hardware product releases are now part of our track record in delivering results. As part of our ongoing attention to operating expenses, we undertook a significant restructuring in December 2025 that resulted in eliminating approximately half the FTE positions of zSpace across all levels and 1/3 of the people costs. We further reduced the size of our Board of Directors from 7 seats to 5 and abolished the executive bonus plan for 2026. Our consideration of these factors was made with the intention of aligning revenues and costs and putting a breakeven EBITDA performance in reach for 2026. Now moving on to our outlook for 2026. Familiar obstacles such as trade and tariff policies remain steadfastly unresolved, although promising developments have materialized. And the macroeconomic picture remains persistently volatile. These external factors present the same challenges to forecasting that we identified last year. Management's approach to 2026 was to consider the scenario in which we see a repeat of 2025's revenue performance and what it would take to weather such an environment. If 2026 presents a second year of top line volume similar to 2025, we believe the cost reductions made in December will allow us to deliver an adjusted EBITDA performance at or close to breakeven. We further believe that the company retains sufficient resources to scale back up to historical revenue highs. And in the event that opportunities for outperformance beyond that should appear, we will consider responsible reinvestment in the business at that time. We do not yet feel strongly enough about our ability to restore guidance on a sustained basis and want to avoid offering guidance in one quarter only to rescind the practice in the subsequent quarter. We will continue to manage the quality and mix of revenues for continued gross margin expansion as we've demonstrated over the past year as well as tight control of operating expenses as these are our 2 best levers for positioning the company to capture upside until our K-12 markets in the U.S. stabilize. Now I will turn the time back to the operator for Q&A. Operator: [Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from the line of Alex Paris with Barrington Research. Alexander Paris: To start off with the macro, maybe 2025 was obviously a tough year for K-12, the industry in general due to perceived funding disruptions, including Department of Education layoffs and inter-agency transfers of responsibilities, not to mention tariffs and the government shutdown. And as I recall, about 10% of your K through 12 STEM revenue comes from federal sources, if I'm not mistaken. So despite what was going on in 2025, most federal dollars came through. I know there was uncertainty, which probably made school districts hesitant to order or renew and things like that, but most of those dollars came through. And the government shutdown is essentially over with the exception of DHS currently. What does the funding outlook look like for 2026? I know you expressed some cautious optimism. And then how has Q1 gone so far? I know a lot of the revenue comes in the last 10 days of the quarter, but maybe talk about January, February. Paul Kellenberger: Sure. Alex, this is Paul here. By the way, about 10% of the funding in K-12 in our market does come from the federal side of things. So you're correct. That being said, particularly in the middle part of last year, Q2, Q3, we saw some very peculiar things. And I can't recall whether we had this conversation previously, but there was one specific state in the middle part of the country that actually sent money back to the federal government because of the uncertainty, and I'll just say their discomfort given all the headwinds and all the stopping and starting of funding. So you're correct with the 10% number. However, was, I would say, the ramifications and implications to our specific buyers, both in the K-12 STEM as well as in Career and Technical Education made them really hesitant and hesitate -- to hesitate to move things forward. So I think that was a big part of the middle of last year, Q2, Q3. Then I think in the fourth quarter, and we had business that in -- towards the end of the year that was impacted by the government shutdown. And maybe it was an excuse, but those facts were pretty -- it was pretty straightforward. That's what we were being told by a number of different school districts. So I know it's sounding like I'm making excuses here, but it was not the year that we wanted by any means, no surprise there. Although I do believe things -- and again, cautious optimism, things are starting to settle. And that's the best answer I can give you kind of looking -- I'll say, looking back at last year and the funding. And then this year, I'll maybe let Erick talk a little bit about the outlook. And here we are, it's March 30. We're not quite done the quarter, but we're pretty close to it and you asked about January, February. Erick DeOliveira: Yes, happy to pick up from there, Paul. What I'd say about the outlook for Q1 firstly requires an understanding that our Q1 is ridiculously back-end loaded, both in terms of bookings and shipments. And some of those on this call will recall Q1 of last year when with only a few days left in the quarter, we ultimately wound up outperforming our guidance by something like 30%. Now that said, we -- earlier in this quarter, the year started out, and we were observing some encouraging year-on-year strength through January and February. In March, the picture has become more mixed in large part because a number of our significant customer opportunities were customers that had previously started their zSpace relationship and are based in the Middle East and are therefore, in the midst of the current conflict there. So it remains an open question even with 48 hours left in the quarter, how much of that volume will actually ship and be accepted to capture revenue in the quarter. What I think I would say is the experience earlier in the year has given us some sense that the market has resumed its willingness to open their wallet, so to speak, and actually take possession and book new zSpace content. But our progress clearly has not been linear for much of the last 12 or 15 months. Alexander Paris: Okay. Understood. And then just a point of clarification, Erick, one of your last comments in the prepared comments, if revenues were roughly equal to what they were in 2025, so say, around $28 million, you're saying that the hope or target is to get close to adjusted EBITDA profitability or breakeven, at least [indiscernible] versus the current consensus of negative $12.5 million for 2026 adjusted EBITDA? Erick DeOliveira: Correct. And the 2 big levers there. So we -- in the absence of being able to forecast in the current environment, we engaged in some scenario planning and said, you know what, there are a lot of factors driving revenue that have proven themselves to be out of management's control. But if we saw a repeat of a $27 million, $28 million year what are the factors in our hands. And to that end, our ability to expand gross margins by approximately 7 percentage points year-on-year and to sustain the underlying business drivers that delivered that margin expansion, coupled with the cost reductions we took in December, we believe, put something close to a breakeven EBITDA performance within reach for 2026. Now obviously, as we move through the year, the revenue performance and the operating leverage we see on that will be the biggest driver. But we feel pretty good around our improvements around quality of revenue that delivered that margin expansion. Again, it all comes back to our ability to retain and renew existing software agreements, our ability to continue delivering hardware improvements that reduce that cost of initial deployment and also to roll out more zSpace-owned software where we just control more of the margin. Alexander Paris: Okay. In the absence of formal guidance, that's pretty helpful and reasonable sort of conversation regarding what 2026 might look like. My last question for now, and I'll get back in the queue is I just wanted to talk a little bit about that strategic investment from Planet One in late January, $3 million convertible preferred. But the really exciting thing there was the potential to expand international sales perhaps through cooperation or a joint venture based on what your press release said. What are you thinking there? And is that a potential opportunity in 2026? Paul Kellenberger: Let me take that, Alex. The answer is we hope so. And the war in Iran just really put everything kind of on the back burner for obvious reasons. Erick alluded -- so the answer is we think so. It's something that we're still pursuing. There are some other opportunities, Erick alluded to in his commentary in the Middle East, even some bigger ones. And we're hoping those come back. Operator: [Operator Instructions]. Our next question is from Rohit Kulkarni with ROTH Capital Partners. Rohit Kulkarni: A couple of questions to kick this off. Can you frame kind of size, scale, scope of these kind of recent announcements in the PR, Greater Altoona, Bellflower Mayfair High School and Atlanta Public School. Just talk about how they came about and how significant do you feel they could be for 2026 just from direct contribution as well as incremental on top of the base of '25. Paul Kellenberger: Yes. Let me take that, Rohit. This is Paul. Every one of those deals was -- I'll put it in the significant category. They're in the 6 figures. They have the potential, Atlanta being a very large school district APS [ length of ] schools, which, as I mentioned, we've been -- they've been our customer for 10 years. And we see some other -- I don't want to jinx us, but we see some other opportunities within that specific district late this year. So all of them, I'll put them in the category of substantial. Greater Altoona was in the CTE segment in a very specific in the dental component of it. I would again say strategic, Mayfair out here, again, a school system here in California that is newer customer. And so we have a combination of both newer customers and existing customers purchasing more. And I'm going to go back to something else. Erick kind of touched on it. I touched on it on my opening remarks. Over 50% of our revenue in the fourth quarter was software and services. And the way we look at the business and the way I look at the business is any time we're over 50% in that category, it's a really good thing. Now by the way, we also had a bunch of other changes we made in the fourth quarter. So that's the best summary I can give you. The other thing that, Rohit, I'm going to reemphasize is the zStylus One, which I mentioned, which is the new -- doesn't require the little device on the side. There's clearly a lower [ bond ] because we have one less device and the implications for it, including how we're using AI in the process. We're super bullish on. We're early in the shipments of it still, but we feel really, really positive about it. Rohit Kulkarni: Okay. Great. I guess you mentioned CTE, Paul. How is the mix today versus previous periods? And is CTE growing as compared to the shrinking on the other side of the business? Maybe comment on that. Paul Kellenberger: Yes. So CTE is more than 50%. I think the exact number is 56% versus 48%, Erick, in the previous year. Sorry? Yes. So it continues to grow. And some of that, Rohit, had to do with the funding. And again, Alex was asking the questions about the funding. Perkins is a big part of money in the CTE world that is a federal funding that has continued to expand and it's an annuity. But the CTE side of the business -- and by the way, along with the applications that we own and control has continued to grow for us. Rohit Kulkarni: Okay. Great. And in terms of -- I think just drawing out what the previous question was around kind of run rate OpEx and kind of run rate revenues that may lead us to a point not too far out in the future that you could have breakeven operating cash flows or even kind of positive EBITDA. Is that something that you feel reasonable to expect in '26, assuming modest shrinkage in revenues, but pretty significant drop in your expenses? Erick DeOliveira: Rohit, this is Erick. I'll take that one. That's our current outlook through the combination of continued margin expansion and the expense cuts we took in December. We think that our run rate OpEx is closer to $19 million, again, excluding stock-based compensation and with continued margin gains and a top line that looks relatively like last year, that could put a breakeven adjusted EBITDA performance in front of us. Operator: And at this time, this concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the call back to Mr. Kellenberger for closing remarks. Paul Kellenberger: Thank you, Carmen. We'd like to thank everyone for listening into today's call, and we look forward to speaking with you when we report our first quarter 2026 results. Thanks again for joining us. Operator: And ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.
Steven Brown: Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining. I hope everyone is doing well and looking forward to a fantastic presentation today. I'm joined here by our esteemed CFO, Matt Boyle, and we're going to walk you through our full year results. We do have a longer presentation than we've had in the past. And so we won't have time, obviously, to cover every slide. So you're going to find I'm going to kind of do an abbreviated presentation today, and the full presentation is available -- will be available on our website. But just for the sake of hitting the key points, I am going to move around a bit for the sake of speed. So I'm going to start off actually on Page 8 because I think you all know who we are, what we do, what markets we serve. You all have heard that plenty of times and are very familiar with the business overall. But I want to point out that we have a history of sort of evolution. That's really what the whole company is about. And as we'll talk about more later, we're in that same position today. And we're kind of built for that. We're geared for change, all the way back from the very beginning when Leonard Sim had the idea to start a virtual queuing product because he got tired of waiting in line at Universal Studios in Florida from the fact that we started out with accesso Passport as a SaaS product when people thought we were crazy, that no one would rely on the Internet for their ticketing. Then we pioneered online ticketing. We were the first to market with mobile ticketing for theme parks and attractions. And so we're always evolving, always inventing. And while we're doing that with the products that we have, we've also been expanding our verticals and our capabilities with a whole range of acquisitions in what is now built, I would call it a global powerhouse across the attractions industry in terms of technology. So we're very familiar with change. And as we all know, the market is quite disrupted right now, SaaS Mageddon, if you will. And we'll talk more about that as we go through in terms of where our -- where we think our position is in that space. So I'm going to -- obviously, Matt will talk about the numbers. You can see the headlines here on Slide 10. Top line revenue, $155 million, cash EBITDA, $23 million. We have lots of cash and a great balance sheet at the end of the year and some great progress on our EPS and Matt will get into all this in more detail. But overall, a solid year. Obviously, we'd like to have more growth. But in a year that was a bit challenging for a variety of factors, we held our own quite well, and I am pleased to be end with the result given all the overall circumstances. So one of the things we've seen in our, I guess, our market updates is just the environment and how we responded to that. And we're a pretty nimble company. If you were around during COVID, you saw that in full play. And we adjust and not only in our technology, but also in how we operate our business. So we had some uneven demand across the geographies. There were some travel disruptions, people not wanting to travel to certain regions for social or political reasons. We had some summer softness with operators. And I think the operators are always struggling to respond. Is it this happening for a week? Or is it a trend? Should we change our pricing? Should we change our promotions? And then also, we were dealing with the overall backdrop in terms of our trading, I guess, you could say, our share price with the sort of indiscriminate, as someone called it, indiscriminate software sell-off despite the fact that we feel our position related to AI is actually very strong. So what we've done is our commercial team has done very well. You can see our wins. We've had a great focus on cost discipline. We've lowered our headcount from just to about 600 now, 605 or so where we stand today and focusing a lot on productivity and efficiency, some of that powered by AI, some of that powered by just rethinking how we're structured. Our margin, our transactional revenue was flat. It's important to note here. We didn't go backwards. And I think in hindsight, some of the conversations or updates we had about transactional revenue softness could have implied that we were going backwards. And really, what I meant was that we weren't seeing the growth that we had hoped for. So I just wanted to point that out because I think some translated the fact that, although, market was soft and transactional revenue went backwards for access, but that's not the case. Actually, it held flat even in a difficult market backdrop. And importantly, as we announced today, we laid out and have facilitated a structured transition plan between myself and Lee, having hired him at the beginning of last year. He is now ready to take the helm on May 1. So a lot of information here on the slide on Slide 12. A fantastic new Chief Commercial Officer in place. We've really refreshed our go-to-market approach. We've thought about our look and feel. You may notice today, our presentation looks a little different than it has in the past. We've gone to a sort of crisper look, more modern look. We have a fully a brand-new website, which actually is quite a project with all the products and markets that we serve. And as a result, our pipeline looks really good. It's continuing to strengthen as the year has progressed. And the quality of our wins has improved. We're seeing more customers from our legacy product moving into SaaS solutions or new customers coming in looking for SaaS product and also continuing to expand our relationships with existing clients. So overall, our win rate has dramatically improved. The new business that we signed compared to 2024 was roughly double in terms of annual value. So we're really happy with the traction we're seeing on the commercial side and with the new focus that our team has. 13 and 14 really are a bit of just an update on how things are going with both accesso Freedom and accesso Paradox, 2 acquisitions that we've made in recent years. And just highlighting the fact that we've thought about these acquisitions and these different products very carefully. And sometimes it takes a little patience, but our strategy is intact, and it's really paying off. We're seeing great momentum with Freedom. We now have 63 venues that are contracted and continuing to grow. That's more than double than we had in the prior year. And it's proving to be a really important part as prospects consider their overall operation and the benefit accesso can bring to them by having that integrated platform between ticketing, food, retail and all kinds of things. Same thing with ski, accesso Paradox, which is really an acquisition we made is to give us a path forward for our clients that are on Siriusware, which is an installed application. Customers looking to move to SaaS needed an alternative is particularly in the ski market. And accesso Paradox is doing exactly that. So we're seeing great move to -- from the clients in that Siriusware product moving over to our transactional model or SaaS model. And overall, just in terms of ski, remember, we have 160-plus resorts as clients that's double the nearest competitor in this sector. So we are very strong in ski and continue to grow. And I believe it's a very important vertical for us to continue to stay focused on and to continue to innovate with. So I want to take a moment on this one because if you're on Slide 15, about virtual queuing. And I think this is really important because context does matter. And as the headline says, one decision is not a verdict on the product. And we sort of had a lot of focus around this, a lot of chatter around what's going on with accesso and queuing. And I think it's important to point out that we have 25 years of fine-tuning a really robust application that works at scale and handles a wide range of scenarios. And as I called out on the slide, this is not something you can vide code over the weekend. And it's not just about the base idea of, okay, who's next in the queue, what's happening? It's all the multitude of scenarios that go on in an environment, when you have 10,000, 15,000, 20,000, 30,000, 40,000 people in a park and 15, 20 attractions, all the different variables that are going on, helping guests with accessibility, accessibility needs, the whole range. And importantly, we do still have IP. I know that our core patent expired some years ago, but we've continued to file patents for specific functionality that is very critical to how the application works when you're running at scale. Again, someone can make a very simple [ lo-Q ] type product. But our application and queuing is much more robust and much more significant than that. And we had a successful defense of one of those patents in 2025 that we're very happy about. So I just want folks to think about this product as something that's obviously the foundation of the business. but it's not a legacy product. It's not a tired product. It is a fantastic product that not only proves itself functionally, but also from a revenue perspective. And as we noted midyear last year, one of the major customers indicated they were not going to continue using the product. Near the end of the year, they changed their mind on that. They've extended through this year and actually have a pilot going at 2 additional locations and very, very pleased with those initial results from those pilots. So I just wanted to sort of put a pin in this because I think it's super important that we realize that LoQueue is a very great product, and it will still be a centerpiece for us from a product strategy. A couple of pages here, sort of 16 and 17. I won't go through those in detail. I think it goes without saying that every organization is looking at AI enablement in terms of how they work. We are certainly do that -- certainly doing that across every single area, including myself. Much of this presentation has been designed by AI as a matter of fact. And we are looking at everything from engineering, product design, sales and marketing, operations, so many tasks that can be expedited with the use of AI tooling, all in different scenarios. And we are seeing some great efficiencies coming from that, improved work product, improved time to market with everything across the board, whether it's an application, whether it's meeting notes, whether it's marketing content, we are -- we have embraced AI across the organization. And it's also allowing us to find some efficiencies, but also to be a better business to operate more efficiently and more effectively and be faster at bringing things to market. So we're going to talk more about AI in a minute as a product and how that as a strategy. But I think it kind of goes without saying that we're embracing AI in the organization. We're a technology company for goodness sake. And it's at the core of what we do. I have multiple AI applications on my own desktop. And I can only imagine how many our developers and our operations teams are using in their work every day. And so it's important just to call that out. I don't think it's something that you need to hear about every presentation because it's sort of, as I said, goes without saying that this would be a fundamental part of how we operate. So with that in mind, I want to save as much time as possible for the strategic inflections that is coming up later in the presentation. But I'm going to turn it over now to Matt to cover the financial highlights for you all. Matthew Boyle: Thank you, Steve. So key financial highlights on this page to call out. So you see at the top there is cash EBITDA was $23 million, so plus 0.8% up on the prior year, a margin of 14.8%, again, consistent with the close to 15% that we had in the prior year. So cash EBITDA for those that aren't familiar with it, is our principal operating metric. It is an adjusted EBITDA number less capitalized development spend. So our revenue was GBP 155.1 million. That was plus 1.8% up on the prior year on a reported basis. On a like-for-like basis, it was up just under 4%. So there were a few like-for-like adjustments to strip out there being the disposal of a Brazilian subsidiary that we made in January 2025 and a couple of -- well, a B2C business that we disposed of in 2024 and a onetime hardware sale that we also had in 2024. So stripping those out, we were just shy of 4% growth on a like-for-like basis. You'll see gross margin there, up slightly on the prior year, up to 78.5%, up from 78.1% in the prior year. That really is just due to the margin mix or the revenue mix -- so the hardware is typically a lower margin, and we didn't have it in 2025, so up slightly. You'll see there a notable increase in statutory profit before tax, which is very strong as well as a notable increase in adjusted earnings per share. And again, a very strong -- Steve mentioned it, strong balance sheet, so GBP 30.5 million of cash at the year-end. And that is after significant share repurchase activity that we've had over the 15 months -- past 15 months that I'll cover in a later slide. On the right-hand side, you'll see a mix of our revenue on a -- by type basis. So 84.6% is repeatable. And just as a reminder, the majority of our revenue is about just shy of 3/4 is coming from transactional arrangements, whether that's on a revenue share basis or a cents per transaction basis. That's the major component of repeatable revenue. And then we also have some support and maintenance agreements as well over term periods. Next slide, please, Steve. And then this slide, again, for those of you that have followed us for a while now, this is our breakdown of that revenue by type into the more granular buckets that we have. So at the top there, you'll see repeat the breakdown of repeatable revenue. So within transactional revenue itself, you've got virtual queuing. So we highlighted that had quite a choppy peak seasonal period in that summer. So we were down 6% compared to the prior year, but relatively flat ticketing and e-commerce. So flat attendances equates to flat ticketing revenue, but resilient despite that. And then offsetting that, you've got growth in distribution of 4.5%. So we mentioned this at the half year, where there are flatter attendances, operators will tend to lean on those distribution channels for promotions and discounting to fill the gaps that they have, and you see that reflected in the numbers there, sort of the 4.5% increase. So there are other components contributing to the repeatable bucket are recurring license fees that were up 30.8% and maintenance and support agreements are both up 16.8% and they're being driven really by the new Horizon venues that we've had going live throughout the back end of '24 and throughout '25 and predominantly in the Middle East, which operates a license and support model and less so of a transactional model. And then beneath that, you'll see the contributors to our non-repeatable bucket. Again, I think this is really highlighting the resilience of our business model. So whether there is flatness or less lower growth in transactional, you do have this service-based nonrepeatable business that we can turn to. So you'll see increases there in implementation change request and billable services and the professional services line that we've broken out on a more granular level this year to make it easier to follow. So the increases in implementation and change request really customers wanting advanced change requests or advanced road map items to align with their own projects or desires that they may have. And then we have a very willing and able professional services team that perform adhoc customer requests. And typically it fluctuates year-over-year, but really is another boat another string to our bow. And then the final item to call out there is the hardware line. So again, touched on it earlier, you'll see a drop of about $1 million, and that's really because of the onetime accesso Prism sale that we had in 2024 that we wouldn't expect to repeat in '25 or going forward. Next slide, please, Steve. And then this is the income statement. So a couple of call-outs on this slide. Really, we've covered revenue and cost of goods sold is the admin expenses. So flat there, which really goes to show the robust cost control we've had throughout the period. So reported admin expenses up 0.2% and the underlying admin expenses up to GBP 99.5 million, which is up 2.5%. The underlying expenses we have majority being a SaaS-based business, mostly payroll and headcount-related costs. And you'll see on Steve's earlier slide that we ended 2024 on 682 heads. We ended 2025 on 655 heads, and we're now down at 600 -- roughly around 605 heads, really having robust cost discipline and making sure that we're rightsizing the cost base to reflect the revenues that we have. And then the final piece to call out here is the net finance expense, I will call it. So that is a net number of GBP 0.1 million expense for the current year, which is significantly lower than the prior year. And then that's reflective really of the fact that we had lower drawings throughout the year. So we were drawn roughly about GBP 10 million average on the facility throughout the period compared to double that in 2024 as well as having some positive FX revaluations. We have a USD facility set in a GBP entity, so we benefit from the positive gains in that facility, and that's reflected in the finance income line. The next slide, so cash EBITDA. So this is bridging from the previous slide where you saw operating profit to how we get to our cash EBITDA numbers and the adjustments that we're making. You see the pretty limited exceptional expenditure during the year. Really, that's only related to our acquisition -- the disposal, sorry, of the Brazilian subsidiary. And then you'll see the amortization line dropping down quite dramatically during the year. That's really assets becoming fully amortized. So there's a 20% -- 20% drop in the number there year-over-year, assets becoming fully amortized and the cost dropping off. You'll see the share-based payments there dropped to about 14.9%. So we run equity programs for all of our staff, but the vesting assumptions changed slightly during the year, which is reflected in the cost decrease that we have there. And then the last one to call out on this slide is the capitalized development spend. Again, we're very prudent on this number. So you'll see a slight increase from GBP 2.6 million to GBP 3.1 billion, but that's still only representing about 2% of revenue year-over-year. And that's all really to call out on that slide. And then this slide is showing cash flow. So I think the thing to call out here really is the strong, stable, sticky nature of our cash flow. So you can see year-over-year, very, very consistent and strong free cash flow generation. So you can see the top there, GBP 1.8 million up on cash flow before working capital movements. And just to touch on those working capital movements, you'll see a large swing there from negative GBP 11 million almost in the prior year to plus GBP 6 million in the current year. So that really reflects the seasonality, particularly of our distribution business, depending -- it has a seasonal peak in December and depending on whether it's collected at the cutoff of December or whether it hasn't, it makes a significant difference on a December basis throughout a 3- to 5-year average, you'll see it normalizes quite dramatically. So that's driving that movement. Back to previous slide, Steve. Yes, sorry. And then the other things to call out on the cash flow are -- you'll see there the GBP 4 million acquisition, just over GBP 4 million acquisition of intangible assets. So that's the OneRisk intellectual property that we purchased in the midyear. And then you've got GBP 15.9 million on share buybacks and a further GBP 4.1 million on shares for our Employee Benefit Trust. So we ended the year on GBP 30.5 million, which is gross cash of GBP 41.4 million and borrowings of GBP 10.9 million. So again, very, very strong healthy balance sheet that we've got. Just touching on the outlook before we move on. So we have made movements, I think, it's fair to say, since the year-end. So we've had the tender offer of GBP 20 million as well as the acquisition. We expect to end the half year, so H1 in a relatively very modest net debt position, which is consistent with our normal seasonal cash profile. And then we collect cash significantly through H2, and we'll end the year -- end 2026 back in a very strong net cash position. And then final slide for me, really touching on capital allocation that we mentioned at our interim, but bringing to the fore again here. So we've operated quite a number of schemes over the past 12 months really at this point. So first buyback started in April 2025. So we purchased 1.7 million shares for just shy of $11 million a further program extended that for another 1.2 million shares for $5.3 million back in October through January '26. And then on the 18th of March, we completed a tender offer that you will all have seen for $20 million returning or purchasing and canceling 4.8 million shares and just shy of a total of 20% of the shares in issue being canceled over that period and a total of $36 million return to shareholders. So we still hold a very strong balance sheet post all of the movement post year-end, which gives us leverage to continue to providing shareholders -- shareholder returns through meaningful capital allocation in the period going forward. And that's everything for me. Back over to you, Steve. Steven Brown: Sorry, Matt, I'll practice your slide turning better than next time. All right. So on to some very exciting things. And there's a lot to unpack here, and we've tried to make sure we have plenty of time for this. And then obviously, we have a lot of time for questions at the end as well for those of you that have questions. We spent a lot of time thinking about AI, obviously, not only internally, but also what it means from a product perspective. And importantly, what are our customers looking for. But I want to start with just kind of highlighting what the overall AI space looks like. And as I said before, there's been a sort of indiscriminate sell-off of software companies. And it feels like everyone sort of said, run from software, and we'll figure it out later in terms of which ones are viable, which ones are at risk. And we obviously have an opinion about where we sit in that, based upon the facts of AI and the different categories of businesses that are at risk. And obviously, on the left-hand side, you see companies mainly that have per seat pricing. That's the big underlying issue. Think about all the applications we use in our daily lives, our e-mail, things like our word editing tools, all those applications that we use every day are seat licenses. And so companies that are running on seat licenses are looking obviously at a declining workforce, lower seats. And not only that has a onetime effect, but a continued drip of lower seat licenses being needed. And so those sort of are the big core types of products that are in the highest risk category. In the middle, you've got some companies that are systems of record. They have a lot of integrations, but the data is sticky, but AI really just become an interface layer, sort of translation layer. And then on the right-hand side, you see categories 4 and 5, and I think we sort of sit in the range of those depending upon the product that we're talking about. But vertical systems of record, deep domain expertise, which is certainly accesso, proprietary data, proprietary logic, obviously, there's a lot of that in our business, transactional pricing, not seat license pricing. And AI -- the jump -- the business in these categories really AI enhances them versus replaces them. And we clearly believe that AI enhances everything we do. As one headline we have, it says it makes us more valuable, not more vulnerable. And I believe that is absolutely true. And you can sort of digest this and think about, okay, where does accesso sit, but I do believe we've been caught in a wave of the sort of everyone running from software -- and when folks start peeling back and really categorizing the companies in the space, they're going to realize that, well, accesso was in a really strong position and not only in a strong position today, but also where we're going is going to further secure that position. And so I just kind of thought this slide was really helpful in terms of putting some context around that because we get a lot of questions about, oh, what's going to happen to accesso with AI. And I think it's going to make us a lot better. So as I said before, we have embedded customer data. Our systems are mission-critical. They're not a nice-to-have system. There's not an easy alternative to maybe work processing like you may have today or e-mail systems. We have 20-plus, probably almost 30 years of accumulated tech logic. And that's hard to come by in our space and not just across ticketing, but across a range of solutions that our operators are using. We have a whole ecosystem. We're not just one sort of a one-trick pony. You can come to us whether you need 1 solution, 2 solutions or 9 solutions. And we can help you out with that in an integrated and coordinated manner, and that's something that absolutely no one else has. And importantly, just our structure of our transaction-based revenue. And we've certainly had the jabs about that over the years about all being transaction-based, but I think it puts us in a really great position, and we are thankful we are in that situation versus having sold our products on a seat license basis, for example, we are well positioned and not under threat of -- from a revenue perspective that a lot of the other companies are going to be facing in a pretty strong way. So as I said, we have a strong position in what is an otherwise noisy market. And from an offense perspective, there's nobody else that has everything we have to offer to operators of these venues. And what we've stepped back and looked at is clearly, we're going to innovate within our products. Passport will get AI. Paradox will get AI. Horizon will get AI. Freedom will get AI. All of our products will get AI, where it benefits the product, where it benefits the user. But importantly, that overall view is really where AI is going to be at its strongest. The ability to take different components, different silos of data and make sense out of that and turn it into insights is invaluable. And it's not just about our systems, it's about all the systems the operators use. That is the opportunity. So I'll talk more about that in a minute, but we sort of have 4 things we've been working on in the past year, and they are accelerants of our growth going forward and at the core of our innovation history. Number one is we've expanded our view on payments. This is something that's been well considered because when you embark upon a journey on payments, it's rather permanent. You're installing hardware with the venue, the terminals you check out with, you're doing lots of internal plumbing. And importantly, you're relying on this partner for service, which is an important part of our customers' business. And so when you're going to connect yourself to a partner, you need to make sure you're connecting to the right partner because you don't want to sort of get -- have issues with your payment process that then sort of backwashes on your overall relationship. And so we spent quite a bit of time, the majority of last year and even part of the year before, evaluating all the different providers that are out there, and we're very happy to say we've secured a partnership with Adyen, and I'll talk more about what that looks like in a moment. Composable commerce, we've mentioned that before. At the core, as I reflect on accesso overall, e-commerce is at the core. It is our absolute powerhouse. And not just for ticketing across everything we do, leveraging that expertise for transaction optimization is absolutely foundational to this business. And we have to always evolve. And so right now, we are well underway with what we call composable commerce, and it's our next evolution of e-commerce and how customers will buy when they go to their computer, when they go to their phone. Alongside that is conversational commerce, which is there will obviously be people going to their computer, will go to our phones for a very long time, but there's a big wave coming, and that is conversational commerce. That is going to ChatGPT. That is going to Meta AI and saying, "Hey, I would like tickets to LEGO land this weekend. What are the options? I'm looking for a 6 flags annual pass. Can you give me my choices and have all that on the chat, never typing a thing on your keyboard or on your phone. And we have really made great progress on this. And in fact, we're ready for our first customer pilot here coming up in the next coming weeks, actually, allowing guests to browse, order and pay everything via conversation. And that is an example of, again, another level of innovation, just like mobile ticketing, just like being a SaaS company, this level of innovation and getting in there early, when you can be an early adopter, you can learn from those smaller sample sizes and perfect your process. So when it becomes larger, you're the leader. And last but not least is our AI evolution from a product perspective. And as we shared today, we have acquired DeXibBit. We identified that as a target. rightfully so, Lee brought this to our attention early on after joining accesso. And after getting to know them and realizing what they've built, it was clearly an opportunity for us to leapfrog to use the term to accelerate our capabilities. And we certainly looked at alternatives and hands down determined that acquiring DexibBid and bringing that into our ecosystem was going to be a game changer for us. So I'll unpack these a bit more as we go through. Payments are at our core. start with payments. We move billions of dollars a year. Passport alone moves something like $4 billion of revenue. That's just Passport. Think about all of our other products in total, we are moving a tremendous amount of money. And what that does is it allows us to get scale pricing. Our individual operators, maybe they sell $20 million a year across their whole resort or $200 million, they can't access the pricing that we can access when we look at the billions of dollars that we process. So what we're doing now is we moved from being a payment gateway, which is what we've had forever, which is where we hand off the transaction to the processor. We're now going into actually being a processor with a partnership with Adyen. And what that does is it allows us to, a, bring much better pricing to operators that can't negotiate anywhere near that level of rate. And it allows us to integrate our system in a more comprehensive way to become less disjointed, if you will, because we can then end-to-end offer the package that is plug-and-play more so than, please go here for your payments, go here for this, go here for that. We can bring you the whole package. And so within that, on the payment gateway, yes, you get a fee for every transaction that goes through. But on the processor side, you get a portion of the margin as well. So in addition to giving the clients a much better rate, access to much better rates, we also are rewarded with that for bringing those clients into the Adyen platform. And so it expands a new revenue line for us in a way that is scalable, not just across ski or theme parks or live entertainment, but across our whole business. And so that is a very scalable opportunity that over the sort of midterm, long term, is going to be a very valuable line item for accesso in terms of margin. And if you think about other operators that are out there in different areas like Shopify or Toast point of sale here in the U.S., they actually make most of their money on the processing side, and they don't make a whole lot from software, if you look at their financials. And so this is an area that we have not really explored until now. And we've made a big move with the partnership with Adyen, which was by far our top choice. Their global footprint is phenomenal. And they're going to give us that end-to-end relationship that we're looking for, for our customers. So our clients will get better rate. It's less complicated. And by the way, it doesn't take much capital for us to do this. So we're off and running. We'll start bringing customers on here mid-2026. Obviously, it will take time to scale, but we'll be moving on this very promptly to make it a core part of our offering. So I talked about composable and conversational. There's more details on this page. If you think about e-commerce and maybe true to my heart, if you think about excessive Passport, e-commerce is -- was the lifeblood, is the lifeblood of that product. And we've taken that learning across our whole product set in increments. And products all have their own e-commerce I guess, you could say module, right? But what we're doing with composable commerce is we're separating that from Passport, and we're making a commerce layer, an e-commerce layer that can work across any of our products. So it's adaptable and scalable across our product set. So taking that transactional revenue and that incredible optimization we bring to our clients for optimizing their revenue and opening that up to work for Paradox, to work for Horizon, to work across our whole product set is a very big move, and it's an effort we've been working on for about 2 years. We completed our first pilot over last summer. And now this year, we'll start the rollout to access of Paradox. It will be the first of our products to adapt composable commerce. And then clearly, we'll work across the portfolio to bring that to life. But if you look at the revenue profile this brings in, if you look at Horizon, for example, Horizon doesn't have a transactional-based e-commerce product. And why would we rebuild something only for Horizon, when we should build something that works across all of our products. And that's what we're doing. So you might imagine Horizon will be next. And then clearly, Passport will get a major upgrade with composable. So it's not just separate. It's also a different architecture. So if you think about e-commerce as a flow, A, B, C, D, then you check out, that's kind of what we have today. But composable is what it says, it's composable. Think about being able to drag and drop and design your own screens. Think about being able to go in as a user and change your colors, change the shape of the squares and rounding the corners and changing the fonts and changing the pictures and the images, that's what's composable. So we end up with a much more adaptable platform. And it's one of the things that our clients often ask for is the ability to customize the flow and the site to work for their branding, but it has all the optimization within that. So they can't mess with that essentially. We've determined which modules work the best, and we make those modules available to them to drag and drop on their screen. So this is a fundamental part of transactional revenue growth for accessory going forward. A sub to that, I guess, you could say, is conversational commerce. And that is, like I said, you just talk to it, right? And it helps you out with your order, helps you out with your choices. And this is where everything is going. And going to a venues owned website will certainly happen for many years to come. But there's going to be a convergence of shopping within things like ChatGPT, where everything we do will be -- we'll go to Claud, we'll go to ChatGPT for everything. And it will shift from being a Google search. Google is already doing that today. It will shift from going to a venue's prime website to just using ChatGPT for everything we use or whatever your platform of choice at the time. So conversational commerce allows us to plug in to those chat-based channels very smart and have a dialogue with our product set, have a dialogue with our customers' information and give the user back exactly what they're looking for in a way that we are managing the messaging. We're giving them those options, and we're still controlling the transaction. And again, something operators can't bring to the table themselves, and we're making sure we are -- our plumbing is there. We're making sure that this is available. And like I said, it will be rolling out in a few weeks of the trial at a very significant theme park. So we're looking forward to that. Stay tuned. So shifting now to the fourth box, which is how we think about AI. So my favorite headline here is data everywhere, inside nowhere. I'm going to say it in my sleep. But that's really what we were looking at. And on the left-hand side, you can see an operator all the things she's thinking about, right? Oh my gosh, I have all this information. Everything is in a different folder, right? It's all in a different data silo, guest surveys, social media, ticket sales, weather, accidents, incidents, you should say, their loyalty program, their point-of-sale data from the restaurants, from their retail stores. What do you do with all this data when it's not connected, and that is the problem. And the opportunity is to help them leverage that. So if you want to know how to optimize your labor, you have your labor scheduling system and you have your food sales, 2 different buckets. How do you leverage those 2 together to help the operators create optimized labor schedules, for example? How do you leverage weather, prebookings, social media feedback, marketing calendar, all those to drive dynamic pricing. Connecting all that is something that a human brain simply cannot do that AI now opens as a new opportunity. And so we are absolutely the best prepared in the market to bring this to our customers and to the end markets that we serve. We can see everything across the guest journey. We're embedded in their core systems. We have the foundation for AI insights. And we obviously have a huge customer base. We know how to execute at scale. And importantly, we know the business really well. That's something that's lacking. When you go to ChatGPT or to Claude or to whatever your choice of AI tooling is, it doesn't understand the attractions sector. It doesn't know what a per cap means. It doesn't know what seasonality means in terms of that context. And that's what we bring to the table, right? And that's what the tooling we need to do because that's different than just loading all the data into a random AI tool and hoping it can give you the proper answer, it needs context. So with Dexibit, we acquired that context. We acquired that intelligence. And what we're looking at is embedding the intelligence at the core. And like I said earlier, not just putting AI into our products, of course, we're going to do that, but thinking about it more broadly in terms of what will really make a difference to the industry, which is what matters, and that's what will drive our business. So on Saturday, Matt may be a little tired still. On Saturday, we completed the acquisition of Dexibit -- and we're bringing that into accesso and into the market as accesso Intelligence, which happens to stand for AI, by the way. And it's an AI analytics, demand forecasting, capacity planning. It's a big data management platform. And what's interesting is it gives you a single view across everything, not just the accesso systems. Clearly, we're important to that equation, but it gives you systems from other vendors. Maybe you're using a different food system, maybe you're using a different scheduling system. You need weather data. You need event data. You need local event data. You need school calendar access. You need all of that. And what it does is it unifies all that into one layer of intelligence. And the -- what Dexibit has done over several years now has accumulated the context, if you will. So the models are trained, the AI models are trained on specific context, like what does seasonality mean? What does an event do? What is an event -- what event in town has an impact on my attendance this coming weekend. When it rains, what happens to my attendance. When the sun is out, what happens to my attendance. All of that off-the-shelf AI absolutely does not bring to the table. So for us, this is clearly a leapfrog move. I did enjoy the frog icon, I have to admit. And we certainly evaluated whether this is a build versus buy -- and we determined that buying this was going to catapult us ahead of the industry and give us something that would take us years to build on our own. So there are already 75 venues using Dexibit. They include things like the Smithsonian. So a very good, strong blue-chip customer base. They have 1,000 prebuilt visualizations or dashboards, if you will, and they're already integrated to 100 systems. That alone would have taken years for us to do, just the integrations. So what it does, it brings all these things together on the left, right, food sales, wait times, whatever it may be the venue has and their different data forward or data silos. First of all, it gives you reporting, okay? Reporting is really important. And we struggle ourselves to bring all of our different applications if someone is using more than one of them into a single view. We get that immediately, just add water and you're going to have dashboards across all the accessory applications that you're using. And that will give you -- will give us a significant advantage in the marketplace and a big advantage for our clients to have a single view across the business. There's also an important part, which is called Voice of the visitor, which is looking out across the Internet at all the things customers are saying about your venue and bringing that all into a consolidated perspective and also providing you insights around things you can do to improve any concerns that visitors might be expressing. So what we do in Phase 2 is we move into predictive operations. So things like demand forecasting, what should I expect for attendance this Saturday? What should I expect for attendance across next year, dynamic pricing, things like staffing, as I mentioned before, as well as capacity planning. That's sort of Phase 2. And in fact, I think Dexibits already pretty far into this. What we'll be doing is looking at bringing that into our product set as capabilities. So imagine accesso intelligence taking all these different variables and creating dynamic pricing and then feeding it back into Passport, feeding it back into Verizon, feeding it back into Paradox. So it becomes a loop of not just putting data out about what happened, but helping you predict the future and operationalize that into something that maximizes revenue. And then Phase 3, that is sort of, okay, Star Trek here, but this is not far away, by the way, which is allowing things to automatically happen, right? Self-healing operations. So when you see something happening, you have the system respond to take care of it versus opening a trouble ticket, for example. So that is the next level. I think where we're going to see accesso out of the [ issue ] is going to be Phase 1. We're going to be largely there probably in a matter of weeks, honestly. Phase 2 will then be a process that will happen over -- starting this year, over the next couple of years and getting better and better every single day. So just the intelligent reporting alone is a significant advantage to the industry and the elements of the predictive operations that will come to market very soon and the ones that are already there are something that no one else is offering. So what you end up is a little bit of a complicated graphic that shows, I think, in one view, accesso in the middle, our applications, whichever ones you're using, wrapped around a payments platform. And then the internal systems, other systems you're using, your CRM system, your financial reporting system, Google Analytics is looking at your website traffic, your hotel management system, which we don't offer today, your visitor survey data and then external data like weather, school calendars, social sentiment, industry data, economic data, all of that can be combined to give you through accesso intelligence, applying sector context, all the data, all the dashboards that are there, being able to interact with a conversational engagement to do this and give you all the things you see across the bottom, forecasting, revenue optimization, dynamic pricing, ops planning. And I think an important part here I want to highlight because I didn't cover it before is that third green box, conversational. So having grown up in the theme park industry, my early days was deep in spreadsheets and a lot of manual data work. And what would happen is everybody comes to you asking you, can you run this query for you? Can you build a spreadsheet for me? Can you give me this report? The operator, the operators don't have the ability or the access to that kind of data or the skills to mine the data. And what Dexibbit accesso Intelligence brings to the table is conversational insight. So anyone with any skill level could ask a question, what was my #1 guest satisfier yesterday? What food items sold the most on Saturday? Which food items didn't sell on Saturday? What should I expect next week because there's a big concert in town? Will it affect my attendance? You can ask those questions and it can take all this information and come back to you with an intelligent answer, insight and predictions. And that's really what unlocks the power here is not that you've got to be a master in database queries, you can be anyone, you can be the CEO, you can be the Head of Marketing, you can be the store manager, and you can use this by simply asking a question and getting back the data you need, whether it's an answer, whether it gets you back a spreadsheet, whether it gives you back a report, that is conversational insight that absolutely does not exist today, and it's across all of these squares on the page, not just one system. This is an absolute game changer for accesso and importantly, for our customers. So Matt, you're going to cover the outlook, I believe, -- or am I going to cover the outlook? I'm going to cover the outlook. So the outlook is coming up, I think the slide is actually out of order. So #1, we're unrivaled in our position, cover all that ad nauseam. We're engineered to evolve. One of the things that we've gotten on the right side, you'll see, we've gotten beat up a little bit in the past about the amount of money we spend on R&D. Well, what that has done is kept us current, kept us flexible, kept us adaptable, and we are ready for AI. And if you scrim on the R&D, you find yourself in a position when something changes, you're not able to respond because you now have to go and spend the next couple of years on significant deficit of technology. Accesso is not in that position. And if I've ever been thankful for our commitment and our continued investment in our products, it's never been stronger than today and the fact that we are literally AI ready. And I can say that our competitors by the large, are not in that same position. This is an absolute strength for us, and it will -- and the ability to layer AI on to what we have immediately is going to have a significant impact on this business going forward. So I think, Matt, you now you've got the outlook part. Matthew Boyle: Yes, I'll cover this, Steve. Thank you. So at the top there, you've seen the 2 black boxes, with the guidance we're giving is in line with the current consensus, so revenue of $146 million approximately and approximately $20 million of cash EBITDA. As a trading update, January and February traded in line with our expectations, particularly on transactional volume, that's pleasing given the choppy end that we've had from June through December at the end of '25. Being mindful though that it is still early in the year. We are a seasonal base business and our peaks are in late May, late June through early September and then again in Halloween at the end of October. So mindful that there's still a lot of the year left to play out. Just really highlighting the Middle East piece in there that's in our numbers. So we expect this year somewhere between GBP 4.5 million and GBP 5 million of milestone-related revenue from that Middle East region. Half of that, so approximately GBP 2.5 million, we've delivered already. It's just pending customer acceptance, which is great. The remaining GBP 2.5 million is to be delivered from April through the year-end. So some level of risk there. We -- so far, it has been business as usual for us as best it can be given the circumstances, but it could change in a moment's notice. We did have a positive signal that Aqua Arabia, a large park there in the Qiddiya attraction opened on the 20th of March despite the conflict. So we are happy, but we are mindful of it. The last piece on this slide is just to highlight really the strength in the balance sheet, which I mentioned on my earlier slides with regard to capital allocation. So we have purchased 20% of shares back over the last 12, 15 months and completed, as Steve says a game changer of an acquisition. And we have predictable steady-state free cash flows, and we expect to continue supporting future shareholder capital returns. Steven Brown: Okay. Last slide, I have to leave it up there. Our new tagline, powering the business of fun. I'm going to close with that, and then I'm going to stop a share, so we can take questions from the group. I know we moved through a lot quickly. We have a lot to unpack. It's also been a very busy week or 2 here between finishing up results, finishing an acquisition of a company based in New Zealand, nonetheless. And so we're obviously very excited about all the things that are to come. We're very excited about -- I'm very excited about Lee, having I guess, you could say handpicked my successor and having him here since the beginning of last year, he's fully embedded in the business and having such a planned transition smoothly with such a qualified person, who was not only intelligent and great at what he does, he's a great person as well. So I'm super excited and to have a running start on the next wave of accesso with all the things that are to come. I think the Dexibit acquisition is just -- is going to really make a huge difference in this business on top of everything we already have that's working great. So I'm super excited. And Matt and I are happy to take your questions. So let's go. Operator: [Operator Instructions] We'll take our first question from Katie Cousins with Shore Capital. Hopefully, you can hear me okay. Katie Cousins: Two, please. On the Dexibit -- struggling with the name of Dexibit have you got any examples of their existing customers, who are already using it and anything tangible you can kind of point to how it's improved trading? That's the first one. Steven Brown: Yes. I mean the [indiscernible] is one that is -- that has a notable customer. I mean, Matt, you probably can blame name a few others on the list you have in front of you. I think it's -- the customers often request that they're not being quoted as a customer just for confidentiality reasons, so we can't provide the whole customer list. But there are a few notable ones that I think are important to highlight. And what we see is a very high retention rate for the customers. They see -- there was even one customer example where they said, oh, maybe we don't need this, and then they quickly came back realizing they didn't need it. The power of what it brings to them in terms of being able to operationalize the amount of savings just in report generation alone aside from the revenue and business optimization is very significant. And I can tell you that on the accesso side, we've been working with Dexibit now for, I guess, a year as a partner while this was happening on an underlying basis. And we're 2 for 2. We showed the product to 2 customers and both bought it. So in the first meeting, by the way, they bought it quickly, they bought it without question, and they're loving -- that's on its way. So I think it speaks for itself. And as I told someone yesterday, it's almost hard to explain it until you see the demo and see how it works because it's really mind-boggling. And the operators are getting a lot of value from it. And I don't have exact numbers on what the improvement to them is. I think some of the capabilities we're going to bring into our product like dynamic pricing, for example, will have a material impact on their top line revenue. Katie Cousins: It's good to hear the 100% success rate so far. Yes. The second question is just on -- in terms of new wins, and it was encouraging to see that actually, I think it was 11 out of 43 new wins took multiple products for you guys. So could you provide a bit more color on what products that they've taken? And is there a bit of a pattern between a combination of products? Steven Brown: We're basically seeing any product plus Freedom. That's kind of what the equation would be. Obviously, a lot of Paradox plus Freedom, and Passport plus Freedom. Freedom is gaining traction as there are more customers using it, our referral base increases and it sort of starts to snowball, but it's generally plus Freedom. Operator: Our next question comes from James Lockyer with Peel Hunt. James Lockyer: Firstly, just on the guidance for the year. I think within the GBP 146 million, you've got some milestone payments from the Middle East within that. And obviously, you have some of that in 2025. Am I right in thinking that on the current guidance, it sort of implies a decline year-over-year? And if that is the case, what's the major driver for that? And if not, how should we see some upside from current guidance from that perspective? Matthew Boyle: I'm not sure where you're getting the decline from, James. But the last year, we did roughly about GBP 3.5 million to GBP 4 million of milestone-related revenue from Saudi Arabia. James Lockyer: I meant the group revenue. Sorry, I meant the group revenue. I think it was 155 last year... Steven Brown: [indiscernible] Customer. Matthew Boyle: Yes, that one customer. I mean we do have the loss of a major queuing customer in the current year. And so transactional revenue would be below where it was in 2025 for 2026. And so that is reflected in that guidance. But the Middle East alone, if you're looking at it, will be slightly up where it was for '26 compared to '25. James Lockyer: And what's the implied underlying organic growth from the core business in the guidance? Matthew Boyle: For transactional revenue, you mean? James Lockyer: Yes. Matthew Boyle: Yes. Well, it's -- so it's reflected in our commercial wins really. So if you look at the commercial outperformance that we had, so we have moved from 30 wins in 2024 to 43 in the current year in 2025, and that will be reflected in the growth rate that we have underlying outside of the major milestones and non-repeatable revenue and ignoring the major customer queuing loss. So there will be growth in there. James Lockyer: Excellent -- and on the AI point, I think you flagged some operational efficiencies, their productivity gains throughout that. And obviously, we're early days with where that technology is coming through. Where do you see the benefits over the next few years in terms of time saved product releases quicker in terms of if you able to quantify that in terms of where you think margin might get to because of the AIs you're implementing? Steven Brown: Yes. So we've had enough time now with the tooling and understanding kind of where we see the most efficiencies the quickest. Clearly, any kind of operational or product area, operational area are seeing the most gains. We are not seeing the gains in engineering, which is not unusual, especially when there's so much context required. The tool doesn't quite understand the context in order to just write an e-commerce application for a theme park, for example. It doesn't have experience with that. And so we're seeing -- not seeing the gains in engineering, which I think is not unusual for a lot of companies. It is helping us move faster in certain areas. And certainly, refactoring code is quicker, things where we need to update something, we're seeing some gains there, but not large gains. The bigger gains are coming in sort of our -- like I said, our operations, product and marketing areas. Think about even just sales proposals, the speed with which and the quality with which we can create sales proposals. Those are the areas that I think are going to make the biggest underlying difference in terms of efficiency, both in being able to operate over time with fewer people, but also importantly, being able to move faster, getting quotes out faster, getting product design faster and handling customer queries either automatically through automated processes or more quickly with AI tooling. So I think we're going to see the biggest benefit in the areas outside of engineering, which is more than half our group. And engineering will be a little bit slower on the uptake, and we'll see those -- there will be a decent amount still, but it's not going to be the same level we're going to see in those other areas. James Lockyer: Okay. Maybe just a final one. I think historically, you've talked about a 20% margin. Do you think as the medium-term, longer-term guidance, do you think that this could see the AI investments, the acquisitions you've made recently, the pricing, the weight because your consumption versus per seat, do you think your -- the margin could be higher than 20% over the mid- to longer term? Steven Brown: Yes. I think where we get there is we need to increase our revenue growth rate. And one of the -- there is sort of 2 sides to that. One is attrition. So making sure we stick our customers right, we stick the landing with our customers for the long term, right? They're not seeing some better things across the street, so to speak. And this progress with AI will differentiate us in a way that competitors can't get to for years. And so I think on any attrition basis, this will really help a lot. Although we don't have much, if we allow the competition to continue growing, our attrition could start to grow. On the new wins, this is something that no one else can bring to the table. And sometimes we find ourselves competing on price maybe or customers sort of past history with an application they're considering. This is something that is going to be a differentiator for us that again is unmatchable. And I think our competitors are going to be showing a feature within their own system. They're not looking at the overall client ecosystem the way we can come into the room, already ready to do with the integrations that are in hand. And the conversational AI is really going to be unprecedented. So I think that will help the revenue growth rate. And if the revenue growth rate picks up 7%, 8%, 9%, which is probably about where this company can be given our scale. And at the same time, the cost base is not growing. It's continuing to shrink even by the amounts that we did this year, you get there pretty quickly. And so it's really about not solving -- we can't cost cut our way to 20%. That is certainly not the goal. And I think a lot of our savings, we will reinvest in things like accelerating AI capabilities even further. But at the same time, continuing to lower that cost base and propelling the growth rate is obviously the combination of higher margin. James Lockyer: I'm sure we'll catch up before you go, but I wish you good luck unless we don't. Steven Brown: Thank you, James. Operator: Our next question comes from Jon Byrne with Berenberg. Jonathan Byrne: Two questions from me, if I can, I take them in turn. So firstly, on Dexibit, I guess from a commercial perspective in terms of monetizing, what should we expect in terms of contribution from accesso intelligence going forward? And do you think about it as a stand-alone kind of product to monetize? Or is it kind of primarily a good foot in the door for cross-sell opportunities and sort of supplementing existing solutions? How should we think about it? Steven Brown: Yes. I think it's strategic for us, #1, around our product set and increasing our win rate, which is more powerful than just selling accesso Intelligence on its own because the value of selling intelligence along with Passport, along with Paradox, along with Freedom, that's a much bigger opportunity than Dexibit would have had on their own. And that really is going to amplify both the value that they their product rates, but also the overall results. And so I expect that the commercial model is still a bit of a discussion around that, and we will obviously be managing that going forward. But there will obviously be customers that are out there that can benefit from the technology that don't necessarily even maybe work in our space or they don't use our -- one of our applications. We see that as a lead opportunity. Let's bring them in. Even if they're using a competitor system, let's enable them with some elements of the product. And that brings them closer to accessory and allows us to talk to them more about our actual solutions and maybe switching over. So we see it as a conversion tool. We see it as a strategy to improve our overall portfolio. But I can say we've not sort of said, oh, is this line item today is going to grow in a trackable manner for its own revenue category. It's going to become more of an overall benefit to the business. Jonathan Byrne: Great. And then just secondly, on outlook, you mentioned seasonality. Can you just remind me or give us a steer in terms of concentration in those summer months, say, June to August, particularly given the growth of the ski product. What should we expect for this year? Steven Brown: Yes. It's -- so the majority of our revenue, Jon, comes from that June through September period. So -- and October, a little bit in December, but we think of it as pivotal really for our year. And we had that last year, right, when there was softer and weaker transactional volumes through the back end of June and early July, we revised guidance accordingly at that point in time. So it reflects the importance of it to our business, and that will continue going forward. I mean ski has seen some level of growth. It was certainly our strongest performer in terms of commercial new wins last year, but it will take some going in some way to offset the size and the impact of the attraction space that we have Operator: Our final question comes from Jasmine Rand with Deutsche Bank. Jasmine Rand: Hope you can hear me. Just chiming in for Tintin today. Jasmine Rand, Deutsche Numis. On the customer base, I appreciate you mentioned can be named. But can you talk at all about any joint customers you may have? And then again, I think you just touched on it slightly, but what do you expect kind of pricing for the solution to be looking ahead? And then secondly, on capital allocation, at this level, how are you thinking looking ahead in terms of share buybacks compared to kind of further bolt-on acquisitions? Steven Brown: So the interesting thing -- sorry, we can echo there. Yes, there we go. So interestingly when Dexibit is Angie and her team's focus have primarily been around cultural attractions, museums, if you will. And so our overlap, that's not one of our bigger markets. Similar operations, similar concept to a theme park, but it's just a different space. We certainly have museums in our portfolio, but it's not a primary sector for us. And so our overlap or sort of bumping into each other have been fairly limited. We obviously had gotten to know them before joining accesso. We got to know them as a group much more closely over the last year, year plus. In terms of customer overlap, I think that's what we're going to build going forward. And we see their customer list is additive as new commercial opportunities for us. Some of them are certainly customers we would like to move over to an accesso platform. And so it's really about taking what they've built, where they've learned the context of a venue operator, primarily in the cultural space and now enabling that across the broader leisure and attraction sector. That's really our goal. It's a bit -- obviously, they have a great customer base, but it's really focused on what the potential is for the product within our ecosystem. In terms of capital, Matt, you hold the money. Matthew Boyle: Yes, I'll just touch on the capital allocation piece. So thanks, Jasmine Rand. I think the key point to highlight there really is the nature and the stable, sticky nature of our cash flows, which I hope has been reflected in the last couple of years when you look at the cash flow that accesso generally see, consistent free cash flow, which we've used accordingly to provide shareholder returns over that same period. There's no reason that, that shouldn't continue. So whilst spending $20 million on a tender and making an acquisition over the weekend, we still hold a strong balance sheet, which we would continue to leverage to provide shareholder returns in whichever form that may take, we'll make the best use of our available options at the time that comes, but there's certainly no reason it shouldn't continue. Steven Brown: I'll add on to that, Matt, they wouldn't let me write in the annual report that our share price is frustrating. And so I'll say it now. They thought it was a little too direct. But it is very frustrating, obviously. If you look at our underlying business, it is strong. It's strong. We've got a very good position related to AI. And we have a really great customer set. And we've sort of been caught in a wave of either disproportionate focus on one client, one product some of the AI pressure, maybe some end market pressure as well, a whole variety of factors. And our view, I think, along with many probably of you is that our share price is tremendously undervalued. Our company valuation is much lower than it should be. And I'm confident that this too shall pass. We just got to keep our head down, continue to build great product, provide great service. And at this share price, obviously, buy back shares to the extent that it is reasonable for us from a balance sheet perspective. Operator: That's the end of our Q&A session. I'll now hand over to Steve Brown, CEO, for closing remarks. Steven Brown: Thank you very much. And it seems like this may be my last investor presentation. So I thank you all for sticking with us and staying so tuned into our business over time. It's clearly an exciting business. And I've been through many waves of change in this business since 2007, which turned into excessive in 2012 and then what it is today. I had 12 employees in the very beginning. There's 605 now. We worked, I think, 3 countries. We're working in 31 countries now. And this business is built on changing and innovating and not just sort of building something and letting it run, but it's always being ready for whatever is next. And I think the move we've made here is our big step into what's next and not just adding features and calling it a strategy, as we say in our report, but thinking about it more comprehensively. And importantly, if we always put the operators first, the clients first in terms of what will help their business, then we will win in the end. And I think that's exactly what Dexibit and accesso Intelligence will do for the business is put the client first, help them run their business much better than they can without it. And in turn, we'll continue to be the trusted partner and the market leader for many, many years to come. So I thank you all very much. And I'm sure Lee will do a fantastic job. I have all the confidence in the world, and he's obviously supported by Matt, who probably can use a good rest of out now. So thank you all very much, and we'll talk to you later. Operator: Thank you for joining today's call. We are no longer live. Have a nice day.
Operator: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Sigma Lithium's 2025 Fourth Quarter Earnings Conference Call. We would like to inform you that this event is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] There will be a replay for this call on the company's website. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the conference over to Anna Hartley, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead. Anna Hartley: I'd like to welcome you to our 2025 earnings conference call. Joining me on the call today is Ana Cabral, Co-Chair and CEO of Sigma Lithium. Our earnings press release, presentation and corresponding documents are available on our website. I'd like to remind you that some of the statements made during this call, including any production guidance, expected company performance, update on mining operations, the timing of our projects and market conditions may be considered forward-looking statements. Please note the cautionary language about forward-looking statements in our presentation, MD&A and press release. Before turning the call to Ana Cabral, we will be showing you a short corporate video as we think the pictures will paint a thousand words about what's happening at Sigma. [Presentation] Ana Cabral Gardner: Hi, everyone. Well, thank you, Anna, for showing us this video of our operations. As you can all tell, we're very, very proud of what we built here in Vale do Jequitinhonha. So without further ado, I'll go straight into the fourth quarter 2025 earnings release presentation, which covers the entire full year 2025 annual financial results. We're going to make quite a lot of forward-looking statements, and we would like to encourage you to read the disclaimer of this presentation that's going to be posted on our video. Sigma is the largest industrial mineral producer in the Americas. We've delivered operational excellence. We are a low-cost operation, and we are executing a high-growth strategy for 2026, 2027 and 2028. This is because we are a management operator company where our interests are fully aligned with the interest of our shareholders, which are to build long-term value. Our main competitive advantage is our resilience, which comes from operational efficiency. Our efficiency is, again, driven by the fact that the management is owner of the company. More importantly, we are located in a country in Brazil, which is a politically stable traditional mining jurisdiction, where we have a very low-cost operating environment. On sustainability, we are 100% sustainable. We have the Quintuple Zero lithium, which starts with 5 points. We do not have tailing dams, so 0. We do not use drinking water, 100% of the water is reused and recycled from sewage, 0. We use 0 hazardous chemicals in our operation. DMS is basically a physics-based process, so third zero. We use 100% clean energy, so 0 dirty energy. And we have had 0 accidents with lost time for almost 3 years. Again, a picture is a thousand words. Here's a picture of our waste tailings before and after the artificial germination program. It's blended into the landscape. It's basically stacked up rock, fully geotechnically stable. And we went through the sustainability initiative of actually planting the rock into a green mountain. So what you see now is essentially the picture below. We are 100% sustainable. We produce the Quintuple Zero lithium. We have zero tailing dams. We have 0 drinking water. We have zero hazardous chemicals. We have 0 dirty power. 100% of our power comes from clean electricity. We have had 0 accidents for 2 years and 7 months, 5 zeros. At the bottom, a picture is a thousand words. You see the before and after of our waste tailing piles, which are basically the rocks removed from the pits. Rocks, very stable, geotechnically stable. But more so, we have planted the face of those rocks with artificial germination. We basically did what we call proactive regeneration and the picture shows how it looks like now just a year after those piles were created. So geotechnically safe, sustainable, blended into the landscape, which further enhance the environment. We have built the fifth largest industrial mineral lithium producing complex in the world. So in the picture, you can see that we have a state-of-the-art industrial plant, integrated into a mine. But the plant is not just an industrial plant, is a state-of-the-art clean technology lithium processing facility where we achieved 70% recovery of the lithium, which is amongst the highest in the sector, and it compares with processing methods, which are a lot less sustainable. Sigma is the economic engine for developing the valley of Jequitinhonha. We lifted the valley towards prosperity. That is a key region of Minas Gerais, which is the second richest state in the Republic. We created 1,000 jobs, 11,000 indirect jobs and 21,000 beneficiaries from our social programs of microcredit and small-scale agriculture. We also have granted drinking water access to 18,000 people. 85% of our workforce is regional. 50% of the economically active population has benefited from our social programs. We have renovated, created and built schools that put over 500 children in after-schools or school programs. We have been instrumental in delivering 6.8% of GDP growth for the whole state of Minas Gerais. And still, every year, we serve 3 million meals so that the new waves of people keep coming to help build this lithium valley. So we have a built to last company. It's a resilient business that's been thriving throughout lithium cycles. That's what we have achieved in 2025, and that's what we will continue to deliver in 2026, large scale, low production costs and traceability. We have had 0 accidents for 2.7 years. We uphold the highest health and safety standards in the world, top ranking amongst all companies in metals and mining. But more importantly, we have demonstrated speed of execution, low CapEx to build and to restructure operations, such as what we've done with mining. And we are in a low-cost operating country, which supports us to achieve all of that. So now I'm going to go through the operational and financial highlights of 2025, and I'm going to give you a preview of the first quarter 2026 estimated. We have had unparalleled resilience throughout the last year to date. We have generated cash flows across 2025 lithium volatility. Our business was built to last and to endure the cycles. Four key examples, we signed $146 million in offtake agreements with very robust intrinsic values. Intrinsic value is the advancement we receive from clients for the right to have deliveries of tonnage throughout periods. First offtake agreement was basically to fund working capital. It was signed in '25 for deliveries throughout 2026. The total is $96 million for 70,000 tonnes of deliveries. The second was a $50 million typical offtake prepayment that was signed for 40,000 tons of annual deliveries throughout the next 3 years commencing in 2026. Second, we have been the demonstrators that a commercial strategy well executed can actually yield actual results even in this market, even throughout volatility. We have been tracking seasonality, and we have achieved $67 million in net sales in the fourth quarter of '25 and the first quarter of '26, solely a result as this sound commercial policy. First, we monetized lithium seasonality to by basically receiving price adjustments in the fourth quarter, working with our clients to time the deliveries and the final sales, resales of their products throughout the contract season of 2025. That has resulted in the revenues for the fourth quarter. More importantly, we have generated cash flow from a whole new line of business, which is selling the lithium fines, high-purity lithium oxide fines that we have reprocessed through our industrial plant out of our dry stack tailings. That happened initiated in 2025 and then throughout 2026. We've deleveraged our balance sheet and we repaid debt. That was our third highlight. 60% of our short-term debt has been repaid. 35% of our total debt has been repaid in the years such as 2025. On top of that, number four, we have upgraded and restructured our mining operations completely for safety, for efficiency, for low cost, for cadence and for better delivery. We transitioned from an outside contractor to full operational control, and we are poised to demonstrate those efficiency gains and cost optimizations throughout the next quarters. Here are pictures that, again, a thousand words. It just shows the lithium fines piles being moved across to the shipping halls already at the port. The result of those sales have actually monetized what we used to call green premium, which doesn't really exist. But the fact that we actually created this new line of product out of the dry stack tailings definitely delivered to our investors what we call a sustainability premium, meaning actual financial results from the investment we made on a dry stack unit for the Greentech Plant. This is a page with our offtake agreements. The offtake agreements single-handedly enabled our mining upgrade, our long debt repayment and the capacity expansions. We have an announcement. We signed a 40,000 tonne a year typical offtake agreement that is going to net us $50 million in a true prepayment to be closed within the next 3 months. That amount is equivalent to 120,000 tonnes to be delivered over the next 3 years. The use of proceeds will be for our growth strategy. We also announced and signed the 70,500 tonne 1-year offtake agreement for a total of $96 million. That offtake agreement is for deliveries throughout 2026 and the purpose of it is for working capital. That's the working capital that enabled the mining upgrade and some of the debt repayments. Now in 2026, we have two more offtakes to conclude. First, we're going to amend our contract for the equipment leases of the mining upgrade large-scale machines that have been backed by an offtake for 3 years. Initially, it was for 11,000 tonnes. The number probably will increase depending on the scale of machinery that we are able to secure in the second quarter. So again, the continuity of the mining upgrade to better, more efficient, more cost-efficient and safer operation. The second offtake that we're about to close is the 80,000 tonne a year for 3 years that is going to net us $100 million in a typical prepayment. That conventional offtake will have used proceeds to pay down the long-term debt that currently is sitting in our balance sheet as short-term debt because it matures in December of 2026. That was a 4-year shareholder that has been gracefully given us by our shareholders in late 2022 to enable us to have working capital to commission our plant. So that debt will be replaced by an offtake, which is a very sound and very logic operational move for Sigma. On this page, we again demonstrate how the competitive advantage of low costs create resilience from the price pressures that lithium has undergone this year, especially coming from new regions, sometimes not necessarily compliant or traceable product, but more importantly, from the constant refining innovation that the main markets have demonstrated by bringing the ceiling of this industry constantly lower. The ceiling for, for instance, lepidolite that once was $20,000 to $25,000 per tonne is now around $17,000 to $18,000 per ton, but going lower to a target of probably $15,000 per ton. It doesn't matter. Irrespectively, we are actually working below the floor of the industry, which is product coming from the African new supply regions. So long as we are sitting exactly where we are in the cost curve, we have the resilience of operations that allow us to, for instance, sign offtakes without floors and continue to deliver excess returns every time prices are in the current levels. On the left, we demonstrate the resilience with our total cash cost, which are all-in sustaining costs plus interest. On the left in green, we show the full year achieved all-in sustaining costs plus interest and the guidance. So we're pretty much in the same ballpark. And as a result, we felt comfortable to put in the guidance of $532 for all-in sustaining costs plus $60 for interest for 2026. In the next slide, we show the numbers of how we are able to bring our people safe to their families every single day, day after day. And this is what we work for. We have never had a fatality in 13 years of operations. We have been producing for almost 3 years. We have never had a fatality. But more importantly, we're getting to almost 2.7 years with 0 accidents with lost time. So our people go home every day and come back to work the following day. That is the highest operational global safety standard in the entire battery materials industry, but more so, we sit at the top of the ranking across all metals and mining companies. We have had 1,600 employees here. We now have 1,000 employees. It's a large operation, and we still achieved that, 966 days consecutively without accidents. We're very, very proud of it. So here is to the numeric operational excellence. A number is a thousand words. The unique resilience and robust cash flows can be demonstrated by each and every one of the main items of our 2025 and first quarter '26 estimated operational performance. First, offtakes. We had signed a $96 million offtake prepayment in '25 that enable us to receive working capital by having our production paid in advance. Then we just signed a $50 million traditional offtake for 3 years of 40,000 tonne deliveries totaling 120,000 tonnes to be delivered over the next 3 years. But in advance, up until June this year, we're going to receive $50 million, traditional typical offtake. Irrespectively, we have managed to repay debt to a magnitude that is significant considering the volatility in low points lithium prices reached in 2025. We paid 60% of our short-term debt and 35% of our total debt. That was basically because of cash flow generation. This company was built for cash flow generation. We are a cash machine. In the fourth quarter of '25, we generated $31 million of cash from operations. In the third quarter of '25, the previous quarter, we generated $23 million. So we increased our cash flow generation in 35% from third quarter to fourth quarter of 2025. More importantly, the lithium materials production has had a decrease in volumes because of the full restructure we conducted in mining. But given that we are an industrial operation, we delivered another source of revenues. In fact, we built another business, which was reprocessing the dry stack tailings into what we call low-grade lithium fines. So ultimately, we had equivalent of 70,000 tonnes of the main high-grade product in revenues sitting as inventory accumulated throughout the last years. And that material became this new line of business of what we call high-purity lithium fines. So for the full year of 2025, we produced 183,000 tonnes of high-grade premium lithium oxide. For the full year of 2024, we produced 240,000 tonnes of high-grade premium lithium oxide. So our annual production decreased in 24%. However, how did we generate so much cash flow? How did we accomplish so much repaying debt? By basically creating a new line of business, which is what we call the sustainability monetization, the green premium in numbers. We reprocessed the lithium contained in our lithium fines in our dry stack piles, and we created a whole new business, which is selling high-purity lithium fines, which have a lower grade, but in monetary value, it's equivalent to 70,000 tonnes of the high-grade premium lithium oxide. So all in all, we're not even solving for volumes. We're solving for cash flow and cash flows were delivered, and debt was repaid. And here are the numbers, which speak for a thousand words and do not have an opinion, numbers are numbers. What we want to show on this slide is, again, the quantification and a pictorial of how commercial successful strategy actually helped us to deliver revenues in the third quarter of '25 and in the fourth quarter of '25. We have fantastic clients who are commercial partners. So we sell them the material. We do a final sale and they take the risk. That sale takes place using a provisional price. So we take some of the risk, but we also gain some of the upside. In other words, when our clients resell their product, resell to their clients, we have a profit sharing gain or a profit sharing loss. Last year, we had a loss. This year, we had a substantial gain. Again, this was achieved by mapping seasonality and seasonality in this industry is pretty clear. It happens in the restocking period that takes place after September. It's called contract season. So our commercial partners worked with us to basically execute their final resales mostly after October of 2025, which allowed us to reap the benefits of a much better pricing environment than what was experienced throughout the whole year because of the tariff volatility in the metals market. So when you look at the greens, you can see the resales by our clients. When you look at the red, you can see the sales from Sigma to the client. And you look at the line, you see the lithium prices and the tremendous volatility that happened throughout the year. In partnership with our clients, we captured not only the first peak of volatility, which happened in August, but also the subsequent curve of price increases that happened throughout contract season beginning in October 2025. That helped us book over $20 million in final price adjustments in the third quarter of 2025, and it helped us book over $14 million in final price adjustments in the fourth quarter of 2025. These are substantial revenues, so that's a quantification of what a sound commercial strategy is. On this slide, I'll go very slowly because we have quite a lot of information to unpack. But again, it's the financial discipline that generated the high operating cash margins. High operating cash margins are the source of the cash flow we posted. In 2025, if you compare the fourth quarter of '24 with the fourth quarter of '25, we have substantially increased our operating cash margin. If you compare the full year 2024 full year and 2025 full year, our gross margins have decreased, yes, because the pricing environment in '25 was very challenging. But what is interesting is that the cash margins and the cash flow generation came from one thing and one thing only, we were able to reduce our costs faster than the decrease in our revenues. So despite the mining restructuring, despite price volatility, we were focused on what we could control and what we can control and on what we always control, which are our costs. So if you look at the bottom of the page, you can see that the quarterly comparison between fourth quarter '24 and fourth quarter '25 shown a 77% reduction in costs. That's way more than just variable costs. When you look at the annual cost reduction, you can see that full year '24 to full year '25, we've had a 21% decrease in costs. So when we talk about these operating costs, we had operating costs, SG&A, ESG plus all others. So it's truly an achievement of financial discipline. We're always cutting what we control. We're always optimizing costs. So with that, we can go back to revenues. In other words, when you look at net sales revenues on a quarterly basis, we've had fluctuations, which again just demonstrate how volatile lithium prices were. More notably, from the third quarter to the fourth quarter, when we restructured mining operations, we had a 41% decrease in net sales revenues. However, when we look at the first quarter 2026 estimate, we more than compensated for that decrease. Why is that? Because we not only opened this new line of lithium fines, which were the low-grade high-purity business that we created out of our dry stack tailings, but also all the work we've done in mine restructuring began to show results. So on an annual basis, the revenues decreased 27%. And so when you look at the bigger picture here, what is actually visible that, yes, revenues decreased 27% on an annual basis. Cost decreased 21% on an annual basis. So costs decreased less than revenues on an annual basis, but we were very quick to compensate that and to fix it in the fourth quarter, where we cut costs and we decreased costs in 77%. So this is how financial discipline is demonstrated with numbers. In this slide, we show the quantification of the financial discipline, but now on balance sheet optimization. We have significantly deleveraged despite all the price volatility, despite all that happened with revenues. From fourth quarter '24 to the fourth quarter '25, we lowered our short-term debt in 60%. From the fourth quarter '24 to the estimate of first quarter '26, which is actually the numbers that we have closing, we lowered it by 68%. So the work continued. We didn't stop. Then when you look at the third quarter '25 against current, we lowered the debt in 49%. That's a complete restructuring in the way we fund ourselves, in the short term, in a way we look at working capital even, meaning clients are now funding our operation because of our successful commercial partnerships with our clients. We make it win-win so that it cost us less in working capital and we deleverage our balance sheet. This slide, I'll go very slowly on it because it shows our cash flow generation outlook. It's quite simple. It's quite straightforward. And again, it just demonstrates how Sigma is a cash machine. Why? Because we have high margins. We are built for cash flow generation. We have estimated that in the next 12-month period for Phase 1, we're going to probably have 240,000 tonnes of production. As we've shown before, for the year, we're going to deliver 200,000 tonnes. Now because of our optimum cost efficiencies, we are going to be yielding an all-in sustaining cost, including interest of $592. That's our estimation for the next 12 months, as we've shown you in guidance. That creates cash flows no matter what. If lithium retrocedes to $1,500 a tonne, we're going to be generating about $158 million in free cash flow after interest, free cash flow. If lithium stays around where it is now between $1,800 and $2,000 a tonne, we can generate anything between $218 million to $260 6 million of free cash flow just with one phase. As we double capacity, which will be in place by the end of next year, capacity and we prorate production as we commission, you can sharpen your pencils and you can do the math of how much cash flow we're going to have with two plants. More importantly, as we calculate all-in sustaining costs and all-in cash costs, the only optimization we've done were on G&A and ESG. You don't need 2 of me or 2 of most of our personnel to run these businesses on the administrative side and interest because we're going to cut interest in half, given that the interest is on the total debt that we are going to contract precisely to build plant 2. So we have not factored in the actual operational scale gains that come from running 2 plants using infrastructure that is built and utilized now for 1 plant. So the infrastructure sharing of 2 plants are probably going to bring more cost gains, which are not here in these cash flows. But just with this conservative analysis of doubling operations and having some synergies on G&A and interest, we're bound to generate basically $600 million in free cash flow if prices stay where they are. If prices retroceded to about $1,500, that's okay, too. We'll generate $384 million in free cash flow, meaning after interest at those levels. What becomes really interesting is when we build a third line, which could be done concomitant with the second line. That means that at 770,000 tonnes of production, and again, we're just calculating efficiencies here on G&A, ESG and interest. And we flattened the interest. We haven't cut interest further. We just cut G&A further because, again, to be a commercial person or to be an administrative person, you don't need to triple your numbers when you have triple plants. So interest is flat, but G&A and ESG was the only number that was reduced. What does that mean? Our all-in cash sustaining costs, including interest, goes down to $495 per tonne with 3 lines. So if prices retroceded to $1,500 by the end of '28, when we plan to have this capacity in place, we could be generating $581 million in free cash flow. If the prices stay where they are, we could be generating $900 million in free cash flow. That's a significant amount. And it just shows how building long-term value means building a company that is geared to generate operating efficiency, operational excellence and quite a lot of free cash flow to shareholders. As management operators, our interests are 100% aligned. We're building a business to last. We're building a business to create shareholder value for all of us, management and outside shareholders. So this slide shows the cash flow bridge, the cash bridge with its respective explanation. So again, more numeric demonstration that the disciplined execution that we have delivered in '25 and continue to deliver throughout '26 has created this operational resilience despite the very volatile market conditions. We have had operating cash generation. This is why we didn't raise capital because we were able to generate the amount of cash to deliver and to execute on plan, on target. So let's start at the end of the third quarter of '25. We had $6 million in cash. As forecasted and as discussed in those materials, and I encourage you to go back to them, we continued on the trend to deliver cash flow from operations. So on a net basis, we delivered $31 million in cash from operations, mainly final price adjustments from transactions from sales that had taken place on a provisional price basis as we discussed earlier. Then we had our cash operating costs. We have executed CapEx towards the mining upgrade, and we had $26 million of debt repayment and interest repayment as we've shown in #1 and #2. Debt repayment was just debt repayment, amortization of principal. Interest expense was the annual cash expense for the $100 million of long-term debt we've had in our balance sheet. So we had a flat cash position between the third quarter '25 and the fourth quarter of '25. This is financial discipline. We conserve cash. We burned 0 cash. So with the knowledge that there was a whole new business of lithium fines coming on stream, which, again, we flagged during our third quarter presentation, we had inflows in the first quarter '26, which were the cash sales of those lithium fines that we affected and closed on the beginning of the year. So we achieved $30 million on the sales of the lithium fines, and we achieved $5 million on the sales of the premium high grade. That was the beginning of sales resulting from our mining restructuring. Then we had a $24 million CapEx bill for the mining upgrade, mining restructuring and all that we had to do. But as we conserve cash and as we generate cash from that new line of business, which was reprocessing dry stack tailings, we were able to not only pay our CapEx for mining restructuring and upgrade, but also to continue to do debt principal repayment. So we paid down another $5 million in debt, which means we increased our cash position in the first quarter of 2026 by 100%. So we doubled the cash position. So this is, again, numbers. Numbers don't have an opinion. And it's very much in line with the strategy for cash flow discipline that we have laid out in the third quarter '25. We're giving you an advancement here or a preview as we call it. We have another $14 million of cash sales from the -- we call lithium fines business, the reprocessed dry stacking tailings. Then we have another $50 million of a true long-term offtake agreement prepayment that is poised to close by the end of the second quarter. And then we have about $32 million of the first installment of the $96 million offtake that we signed just in 2025 for the high-grade premium lithium, which is the 70,000 tonnes that we are planning to deliver in 2026. So again, we closed the first quarter '26 with $12 million in cash, and we have a significant amount of cash coming our way in the second quarter of '26, having executed pretty much most of the mining upgrade, as you can see in the CapEx bill for $24 million we paid in the first quarter of '26 plus the $4 million we initiated in the fourth quarter of 2025. Now we're going to do a bit about the operational work we have done to restructure our mining operations. This was done for, again, the construction of long-term value for shareholders. We had to do this. We had to take control of our mine because without that, we would not be ready to deliver the cadence that was necessary to affect the capacity expansions of the second and third industrial plants. Just to recap, we are a fully integrated industrial mining operation. We have this proprietary cleantech technology that produces what we call the clean lithium. That means we have a mine that's integrated into an industrial facility. And again, stopping the mine doesn't mean the industry stops. Obviously, what we want is having a mine at full tilt and then the plant receiving fresh rock. But the plant can do many things given that we have dry stack materials. But once we think about doubling capacity and tripling capacity, we mean that our mines need to operate at full tilt and in perfect cadence so that our plant can deliver on the 70% recovery levels it actually is -- it has demonstrated it can achieve in the fourth quarter of 2024. Think of it as a blast furnace. If we turn it on and off, it will not maintain those levels of efficiency. So if the same amount of material is not fed into that dense media separators per hour, it won't achieve 70% recovery. And for that, we need mine planning, mine execution that delivers piles or delivers fresh rock to the ROM pad on the same quantities regularly, at least on a weekly schedule. So this is kind of the overall concept of 100% vertically-integrated operation. Here is a picture of a Greentech Plant at night, unquestionably a beautiful, beautiful industrial installation. This is what we've done with the Greentech plant that allow us to get to the 70% recovery. We had a 2.0 version of the plant, which was the version we operated from July '23 until November 2024. That was not recovering 70%. It was recovering anything between 50%, low 60s, almost 60%. The dry stack tailing units was not working as we wanted anyway. We actually invested a significant amount of CapEx to get the plant to what we call the current stage, which is the 3.0 version that we plan to double and triple, meaning we're building another one of this and then we're building a second one of this. But in order for that to happen, as we said earlier, we need mine and plant to work in cadence. How did we get to the 70% recoveries? We automated industrial operations. We have software, we have scatter, we have algorithms. We have detection of anomalies automatically. We have correction recommendations automatically. It's self-learning metallurgy, self-learning for mineralogy. It's a bot that basically keeps on getting better and better and better when it's fed the same mineralogy. This is a picture of our fully automated control room. Then we have the mine. The mine had quite a lot of work to be done. It was using less than efficient small equipment. It was using too many pieces of equipment. At one point, there were 48 small 40-tonne trucks trafficking through the mine. So a lot had to be done there. First, we had to fix geometry. It had to be widened. And here on the picture, you already see the result of widening the geometry. So we've done intermediary strip with the objective of widen geometry and increase the mine life and increase access and open other areas with ore that were closer to surface. So what we've done, we basically open additional mine fronts now to accelerate the ramp-up. How did we do this? By using larger equipment, larger fleet to remove strip faster. So larger equipment increases efficiency on the excavators, on trucks across the board. In parallel, while we did that mostly in the fourth quarter, the Greentech Plant continued to operate. So we reprocessed the lithium materials from the dry stack tailings during the fourth quarter '25 and the first quarter '26 with superior recovery, not the 70% recovery, but it enriched it enough to create decent cash flow to create a decent sale value, a decent value added so that it could generate the cash flow and the revenues we achieved both in the later fourth quarter, but also throughout the first quarter. So what we're hoping to happen, and we've seen happening already now in March was that recoveries get closer to 70% as we resume delivering fresh rock to the plant. Now this is how we're going to bring all that software knowledge to the plant. We started and we continue. So we have fast mining implemented in process for mine planning. We have the same software implemented for fuel control. We have fatigue automatic software detection. We have a cost control app sitting on iPads and iPhones for all the mine operators. So we have loading and blasting simulations for optimal results with minimum loads, minimum vibrations. So we're bringing the same software technologies, the same intelligence to the mining operation. And that is starting in the control room for mining, which is here, as you can see in the picture. This is a picture of the first wave of larger equipment. The equipment is going to get bigger and bigger. This is the kind of the small large equipment. So -- but more important than that, we own production control. We drive production control. Mine planning is ours, blasting control is ours. We hired a third-party driller for blasting. So we're managing different contractors with our own in-house mining team. That allow us to gain confidence on deploying larger equipment, on investing in larger equipment and on basically doing the calculated analysis of where should we be blasting for safety, for optimal geometry, but also for efficient ore recovery. Now I'm going to talk about how we're going to continue to expand. We are resuming the construction of Plant 2 this year. So we're going to double industrial capacity for the high-grade premium lithium oxide. And we're not that far. In other words, once we get to it, we're going to go from the 240,000 tonnes that we're guiding to 520,000 tonnes, and that is not that far away. More importantly, there's the potential that we may build 2 and 3 sequentially. So we are never going to decommission the construction crews, given that the CapEx involved here is actually very little and the CapEx efficiency is very high, meaning it's going to cost us $80 million to conclude the second plant, and it's going to cost us $100 million to build a third plant. So with $180 million we are able to take our production from 240,000 tonnes a year to 770,000 tonnes a year. That's a substantial increase, and that's one of the most efficient CapEx ratios in the whole industry. So this demonstrates what can happen when we double and then triple production. We run the fifth largest industrial mineral complex in the world. We are the largest lithium mineral producer in the Americas. But here, we have all of our peers. We have the lithium producers in the Americas that produce from the lakes in Argentina, and that includes the Chilean and the American producers. We also have the producers from Australia, and we have the producers from Africa. So although we are the fifth largest industrial mineral complex in the world, and we're the largest industrial mineral producer in the Americas, we are the eighth ranked producer in the world as a whole. Now look what happens when we double and we triple. When we double, we go from #8 to #6 or #5. Then when we triple, we go to # 4. All of these companies have valuations substantially higher than ours. In fact, we're valued as a nonproducing company. So the effect of doubling production and tripling production is not just numeric, it's also a clear demonstration that we can be up there in the rankings with a concomitant valuation. And that is what it means for us to build long-term shareholder value. And this is what we're planning to do. This is a slide that shows how close we are to getting there. We have made a decision in the fourth quarter '24 and in the first quarter '25 of accelerating the construction of Plant 2. And unfortunately, because of tariff volatility, lithium prices collapsed in more than 50%. So we deployed CapEx and we deployed our liquidity in the fourth quarter '24 and in the first quarter '25 towards the construction. Well, that is not the so good news. We managed, we delivered throughout '25 as we've shown. We overcame because the business was structured to generate cash flows and live through organic cash flow generation. But here's the good news. We're almost there. We've almost finished civil foundations. So what is missing really? Ordering equipment and assembling equipment, and that can be done quite rapidly. In the first plant, we were able to order equipment and assemble equipment in much less than 12 months. So this is how finishing building the second plant is actually a very expedited exercise in construction, managing procurement of equipment and managing assembly of equipment. And that's it. This is a fully licensed construction, fully licensed operation is just within our control to do this. So Sigma is very well positioned to deliver substantial returns to shareholders in 2026. And here, we're going to show why. This slide demonstrates how Sigma continued cash flow generation, production cadence in '26 and growth by building Phase 2 that will yield 520,000 tonnes of lithium will certainly position us for a re-rating of our stock. Why is that? When you look at our peers that produce lithium industrialized oxide from minerals in Australia, they have a larger nameplate production and a significantly larger cash flow. However, as we increase production, that means our cash flow will much more than increase because we have this competitive advantage of high margins, low cost and operational resilience. So our increase in nameplate production will bring a disproportionately larger increase in cash flow generation. More so, that happens irrespectively of pricing environment because of our low-cost operational resilience. The next slide just shows how we're going to get there. We've demonstrated operational discipline. We delivered on all fronts in '25. That's what we've seen on the right. We deleverage and repaid debt, we increased operating cash margins. We built a new line of revenues. We're now selling lithium fines high purity from our dry stack tailings. We increased mineral reserves by 40%, which shows we can operate for 66 years with 1 line for over 25 years with 2 lines and most likely for over 25 years with 3 lines. We strengthened commercial strategy by basically capturing seasonality. We monetized final prices in line with contract seasonality in the fourth quarter. And we closed 2 significant offtakes, almost $150 million in offtakes, $96 million to fund our working capital throughout 96 (sic) [ '26 ] to fund our upgrade and restructuring of mining operations and then a $50 million typical offtake that will basically be invested in building Phase 2. So how are we going to continue to deliver in all fronts in 2026? We're going to resume steady-state production from the mining operations, that integration mine plant cadence that we've shown before that will resume the cadence of what we call the premium high-grade lithium. We're going to close financially on the offtakes transaction signed, and we're going to close on 2 more offtakes as we disclosed when we discussed offtakes here. We're going to receive the development bank disbursement for the funding we already spent on Phase 2, and we are in discussions with several other banks for Phase 3. We're going to repay $100 million of shareholder debt funded by one of the offtakes that are in negotiation, 80,000 tonnes per year for 3 years. And we're planning to commission the Plant 2, the Greentech 2 by the end of 2026. So with that, I close -- very proudly close the full year results of 2025, where we crossed the Rubicon of probably one of the most volatile lithium environments this industry has seen. And we're entering 2026, awash in significant cash generation coming from numerically delivering operational efficiency. So with that, I close this presentation for the full year of 2025. We're very, very proud of our team. We're incredibly proud of how we work, how hard we work to cross the Rubicon of one of the most volatile lithium pricing environments I have ever seen, and I've been here for 10 years as a C-level executive. We've done it without raising capital. We've done it without a hiccup in our operations. We're entering 2026 in a much strengthened position. Why? We have the resilience that's basically quantify. We already earned our revenues by building a completely different product line. We resumed production cadence at the end of the first quarter, and we're entering '26 with roughly $48 million of quarterly revenues, which is a significant accomplishment considering we're just coming out of a volatile 2025. All of that without raising any dollars of new capital, pure organic, disciplined cash generation. And that is the quintessential competitive advantage of this company. This operations efficiency delivered and quantified in the numbers we've shown you. We're very proud of our team, and I want to thank all of our clients and stakeholders who have been there with us, holding hands and helping us cross '25 and enter '26 in this very strengthened position. Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Fortune Era. The company has indicated a production target of 520 kt in 2027. Does this imply that Plant 2 is expected to reach full capacity by the end of 2026? More specifically, when do you currently expect Plant 2 to begin commissioning? And how long do you expect the ramp-up to full capacity to take? Ana Cabral Gardner: We are going to have another presentation on plant construction, but we'll tell you what we're planning to do now. As we've shown in the slide previously, what there is between us and new production is essentially resuming ordering equipment, assembling equipment and commissioning that plant. That can be done quite rapidly. If we use the timetable from the previous plant, it could be easily done in under a year. We are going to order equipment in the summer after the close of the second quarter. The reason being the offtake we just signed will be the main driver for us to deposit and prepay the equipment that we need to build Plant 2. We believe that it will take us anything between 8 to 12 months to actually build and commission that line. So Plant 2 will be fully commissioned early 2027. And as a result, the guidance for '27 is not a guidance for production, it's a guidance for installed production capacity, and we will be further updating the market as that unfolds. But what we can say is we're almost there with three-fifths of our timetable accomplished in the construction of Plant 2. And what stands between us and that level of production is purchasing, building and commissioning, which we've shown we can do quite rapidly. Operator: A follow-up question. In the guidance section titled cash flow forecast at various realized lithium prices, could you please clarify whether the price assumptions of $1,500 and $1,700 refer to Sigma's expected average realized selling price for its concentrate or the benchmark SC6 China FOB price. For Sigma's concentrate grade of approximately 5.2% to 5.5% lithium oxide, what is the typical realized price as a percentage of the SC6 benchmark price? Ana Cabral Gardner: So we are using -- we're not using the gross prices. We're using adjusted prices. So when you think about the nameplate price, we take nameplate price from SMM. And then we typically ship 5.2, 5.3 lithium oxide grade product. So the adjustment is done dividing that level of oxide by SC6 in older contracts. In the newer contracts, we divide by 5.5. The results are kind of the same. So when you look at the prices on that table, they are net prices. As you probably are all aware, gross prices have reached $2,400 just 2 days ago. So $1,800 and $1,500 are far below the current level of nameplate prices at Shanghai Metals Market. Operator: Our next question comes from Lamartine Gomes. Question for Ana Cabral. Can you give us your directional sense of how much each plus USD 10 per barrel increase in oil prices impacts the demand for lithium? Ana Cabral Gardner: Unfortunately, I don't have that number, and I am not really an oil expert. What we can say, though, is 15% to almost 20% of the fossil fuels we use here are just the fuels that power the trucks that run around our operations. In other words, every liter of diesel in Brazil has mandatorily 15% of biodiesel. Now that percentage is slated to increase. So we actually are, let's put it that way, 20% less impacted by the increase in diesel prices than any other country in the world because we have this fantastic, we call, biofuels program in the country, which was actually created 30 years ago during the last oil crisis for this exact reason for energy security of Brazil. And we are the beneficiary of that when it comes to our emissions. So our trucks generate 20% less emissions because the fuel by law has 15% and we're putting 20-ish percent biofuels for every liter of diesel. Operator: Our next question comes from Robert Cook. Please detail the timing of Phase 2 and 3 to completion both 2028. Anything more specific? Ana Cabral Gardner: Well, I was mentioning what we're going to do on Phase 2. And again, we're going to keep giving the market updates pretty regularly on that. Phase 2, by the summer, we're going to be ordering equipment. So close second quarter order equipment. As we demonstrated, that will be funded by the growth offtake we signed, $50 million or more than enough to prepay or deposit towards the equipment we need. To be specific, now what's between that order equipment and production is essentially assembly. In the previous plan, we had 1,000 man on site assembling that plant, that line. That was done in 8 months. We use what we call air procurement for some of the parts that were delayed so that we could cut short delivery times. We use a lot of what we call acceleration techniques, which in this budget are factored in. If we use the accelerated timetable, it means we're going to spend another $7 million for extra man, extra shifts and air freight for some of the equipment. What does that mean? It means that we could have a built plant by the first quarter of 2027, assuming we start in the summer. And then there's commissioning. What is the advantage of doing a plant that is a carbon copy of a plant we've been operating by then for almost 4 years. That is the plant we really know. And as a result, we believe we can cut commissioning times significantly. And more importantly, start benefiting from the get-go, begin with the same levels of recoveries instead of going through the curve of going -- starting with 50% recoveries up to 70% recoveries we underwent from the 2.0 version of the plant to the 3.0 version of the plant. So without being more specific, we're quite confident that we're going to have Plant 2 by any time in the first half of next year. But that's the reason why we're making a clear distinction between installed production capacity and production. Production is dependent on the commissioning, and we're going to keep the market vastly updated as we go along. Now Plant 3. Plant 3 is what we're very proud of actually because given our operational success, given our cost resilience and given our strength as a business throughout cycles, what we've shown basically in 2025 has not gone unnoticed by the main development banks throughout the world, by the main players throughout the world, by the main financiers throughout the world. So we do have dialogues going on for building Plant 3. Building Plant 2 and 3 together is not new. In fact, in December '22, when we filed our DFS for expansion, that was the plan. So much so that we invested in building infrastructure for 3 lines. The goal was to do 1, 2 and 3 sequentially and maximize what we call construction synergies. Unfortunately, lithium took a tumble in '24, and we quickly aborted that plant, and we stuck to just the first plant. By the end of '24, we resumed Plant 2, and we went all in, again, with the volatility of tariffs in '25, we aborted that plant and we stuck to Plant 1. But doing 1, 2, 3 is actually what we have been designing this industrial complex for. Why? We spent the money in the infrastructure, and that was not a small feat, meaning we have the water to feed 3 lines. We licensed to feed 3 lines. We have the sewage inbound treatment station to feed 3 lines. We have the power substation to build -- to feed 3 lines. So from an infrastructure point of view, we are ready for 3 lines. And this is why we're delighted to actually say that, that has not gone unnoticed. And we have, let's say, no shortage of choices from where to get funded with the appropriate kind of debt, development financing debt to build these 3 lines. Operator: Our next question comes from David Feng with CICC. Can we have some color on how Sigma would mitigate any potential fluctuations in fuel costs and power costs? What percentage does diesel costs account for in your cash cost or AISC? Ana Cabral Gardner: I don't have the number by heart, but I can talk about power. It will have 0 effect in power. In other words, when you think about power, our power is fixed at $2 per kilo -- $0.02 of $1, meaning $0.02, $0.02 of $1 per kilowatt hour. This is fixed. One important point, power is renewable here in Brazil. So it's coming from a hydroelectricity dam. And we have a 5-year agreement, which is set to expire 2.5 years from now. So we're going to be good with power. Diesel is the element that is a little bit less straightforward to explain. First, because we got biofuels on the mix, and that is mandatory by law. Secondly, because our oil company is state-owned, and they have what we call a diesel compensation account, which works like a shock absorber during oil crisis. In other words, the diesel costs don't go straight to the consumer as they increase globally. Petrobras absorbs some of that shock initially using what we call the oil compensation account and then it releases in the market. And that was created because all transport in the country mostly is done by trucks so that -- and trucks are individual entrepreneurs so that they have time to plan to actually send that cost into their customers. So we're going to revert back to you on the percentage of diesel in our costs with that knowledge. Operator: This concludes the question-and-answer section. I am returning to our CEO, Ana Cabral, for her final remarks. Ana Cabral Gardner: Well, I want to thank you all of you. And in fact, everyone watching us for the trust. We have gone through 2025, which was one of the most volatile years in lithium, delivering exactly as we said we were delivering resilience, demonstrating operational excellence and executing to plan. We already started '26 on a fantastic note because of what we've learned in 2025 as far as becoming more and more and more resilient. So that's the effort, the collective effort of our management team, of our workers, of the team here in Vale do Jequitinhonha, essentially working like what we call racing horses. We lowered the flap, we focus on our lane and we raised our own race without looking to the sides, focusing on the target. And that's how we've been running this business, and this is why we achieved these results. So once again, I want to thank on behalf of our management-operated shareholders here that work at the company and control the company, we want to thank all of our outside shareholders and reiterate our interest cannot be further aligned. There isn't another company in the sector that's management-owned, management-operated, where employees are shareholders. So for all of you watching, we're in this together. And I want to thank you for staying our shareholders because we crossed 2025, and we are incredibly well positioned to deliver stellar 2026. Operator: Thank you. Thus, we conclude the fourth quarter of 2025 conference call of Sigma Lithium. For further information and details of the company, please visit the company's website, www.sigmalithiumresources.com. You can disconnect now.
Unknown Executive: Good morning, and welcome to the Capricorn Energy PLC Full Year Results Investor Presentation. [Operator Instructions] Before we begin, I would like to submit the following poll. And I would now like to hand you over to CEO, Randy Neely. Good morning to you, sir. Randall Neely: Good morning, and good morning to everyone, and thank you for joining us for Capricorn's 2025 Full Year Results Presentation. I'm joined today by our CFO, Eddie Ok; and our COO, Geoff Probert. First, let me take a moment to address the evolving situation in the Middle East, particularly the conflict involving the U.S., Israel and Iran. We are closely monitoring the developments, but our operations remain stable and unaffected. It is very much business as usual for us on the ground. But before we also dive into the presentation, I want to briefly address the recent speculation regarding a potential offer for Capricorn. I understand there may be considerable interest, but due to the takeover code, I'm unable to provide any specific information beyond what was in our statement earlier this month. To reiterate, Alamadiyaf al-Masiyyah, also known as the Cafani Group, has made multiple unsolicited nonbinding proposals for potential all-cash offer for Capricorn. Discussions are ongoing, and the Capricorn Board is actively seeking further clarity regarding Cafani's funding arrangements. Under the U.K. takeover code, they have until the 8th of April 2026 to make a firm offer. At this stage, there is no certainty that a firm offer will be made nor clarity on the terms of any such offer should one materialize. So let's get into the presentation. 2025 was a significant year operationally, strategically and the financial progress made for the company, and a number of milestones were met across our Egyptian operations. 2025 marked a pivotal year for Capricorn. I believe we may have made the turn from a turnaround story to a serious growth opportunity in the Egypt and hopefully shortly, the U.K. North Sea arena. Over the past year, accounts receivable outstanding has come down materially, which allowed a significant reduction in accounts payable as well as retiring the company's senior debt. We also received the approval from the EGPC Board for the consolidation and amendment of the 8 jointly held production sharing contracts with Cheiron, our operating partner in the Western Desert. We are now only awaiting ratification, which we expect in the near term. Following EGPC Board approval, jointly with our partner, we were able to begin increasing our development activities to arrest the production declines. This, combined, of course, with the very solid technical work of our team resulted in our achieving the higher end of our production guidance. We put this graphic into our materials over a year ago to represent our base intentions and where we're going to take the company. Hopefully, our results are showing that we meant it. We now have an almost debt-free balance sheet. We have a disciplined and rigorous approach that we operate within and project on to our partner. And to be very clear, our partner has been receptive to this and has worked very collaboratively with us over the past year plus to allow a very -- sorry, to follow a very similar approach. We are now set to take advantage of all the hard work accomplished over this past 3 years, rebuilding Capricorn. In the near term, we will look to build on our base in Egypt, both organically and through acquisitions and also look to capitalize on our geographic location and capabilities in the U.K. North Sea. I'll now turn it over to Eddie, who will walk through some of our results and guidance for 2026. Eddie Ok: Thanks, Randy, and good morning, everyone. 2025 was a solid year as we not only achieved some key structural milestones in the Egypt business, but also really cleaned up our balance sheet. Production was just over 20,000 BOEs on a working interest basis, and we preserved a 40% liquids weighting in that production base. OpEx increased slightly over the prior year at $540 per BOE, driven by our fixed cost base and the currency devaluation from the prior year, having largely worked its way through the system. We're guiding to an OpEx range of $5 to $7 a BOE for 2026. A successful capital program in 2025 of $77 million invested, drove production performance in the year and set a sustainable foundation for '26's program. We had material collections in 2025 of $217 million, resulting in us ending the year with an $86 million receivables balance on $81 million in Egypt net cash flow. With only $30 million outstanding on a ring-fenced junior facility and having repaid the senior facility early, we entered '26 with a significantly improved balance sheet. The business ended 2025 with $103 million in cash, net of facility debt, which represents a year-over-year cash increase of $80 million, and we continue lobbying efforts with EGPC to return our receivables to a reasonable level. We are encouraged by the recent press from EGPC and the minister about receivables balances for IOCs and remain confident in the ultimate collection of our outstanding revenues. For 2026, the drilling activity completed in '25 and planned '26 activity will shift overall production to a slightly higher liquids weighting at about 43%, though 2 turnarounds planned for the year will impact full year production estimates as we guide to 18,000 to 22,000 BOEs per day. Capital of $85 million to $95 million this year will prioritize liquids and ratification will be critical to unlock acreage perspective for additional exploitation and development activity. Next up, Geoff is going to take you through our operational plans for the year. Geoffrey Probert: Thanks, Eddie, and good morning, everyone. Next slide. 2025 Egypt operational activity was a year of 2 halves, with the first half primarily fulfilling legacy exploration obligations and the second, pivoting the 4 rigs to development drilling. It's worth noting here that without the EGPC agreement to merge our 50-50 concessions and improvements on the payment side, we would not have been able to support much further development drilling there post the first half exploration commitments. So the timing was excellent for all parties. Development drilling was effectively reopened on BED, which supported by the ongoing reservoir management program contributed to improved production performance and a solid year-end exit rate. The legacy exploration yields success in NUMB and encouragement in Southeast Horus with the latter sufficient to move into the next exploration phase. Next slide, please. Much of this is a reiteration of what we've said on the merged concession before with improvements in concession longevity and fiscal terms a catalyst to increase Capricorn's reserves and production with value and cash flow enhanced through increased investment self-funded from Egypt. Two bullets I'd like to highlight are first, the example, approximately $5 per BOE improvement in netbacks at $80 a barrel Brent; and second, replacement of more than 250% of our 2025 production through reserve adds with the merged concession being a major contributor to that. For EGPC, our increased and more importantly, sustained investment delivers greater production over the long term for Egypt, having the potential to be a true win-win for all stakeholders. We continue to expect customer ratification in the near future with our investments since mid-2025, consistent with the application of the new terms. Next slide. This final operational slide demonstrates the impact of the new merged concession agreement on reserves and resources underlying our business. We previously highlighted the potential to convert up to 20 million barrels approximately working interest resources and reserves into reserves with the merged concession. We've achieved that as the 277% reserves replacement ratio shows. We've already identified a resource maturation runway with a further 332 million barrels of oil equivalent unrisked working interest 2C, of which around 80 million barrels of oil equivalent has been evaluated by GLJ. With some prospective resources to chase and discussions underway to improve the ASW concession, these are a bonus. All in all, the new merged concession supported by operational excellence and regular EGPC payments has helped transform the outlook for Capricorn Energy. Thanks for your time and attention. I'm now passing it back to Randy to wrap up. Randall Neely: Thanks, Geoff. So in closing, I would like to emphasize that we are now positioned to take advantage of all the hard work undertaken over the past 3 years. We are near debt-free with net cash of over $100 million at the end of 2025, thanks in part to regular robust collections of our revenues over the past 15 months and in particular, the last 6 months of 2025. We have new terms to the bulk of our concession agreements now just awaiting ratification, which we expect to happen shortly. We have a strong and collaborative working relationship with our joint venture partner, Cheiron. Our technical team has identified significant contingent resources for the JV to mature and exploit. We continue to be laser-focused on building cash flow and shareholder value. And our plan is to do that by continuing to employ technical rigor, be focused on costs and details and by seeking out opportunities to expand our operations in Egypt and realizing on our advantaged position in the U.K. North Sea. I want to thank everyone for attending. We're going to open the floor for questions, but I'll remind you that we will not be able to make any comments on the potential offer for Capricorn as mentioned in the opening. Unknown Executive: That's great, Randy, Eddie, Geoff. Thank you very much indeed for your presentation. [Operator Instructions] I would like to remind you that a recording of this presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A can be accessed via investor dashboard. And Diana, at this point, if I may hand back to you to take us through the Q&A session, and I'll pick up from you at the end. Thank you. Unknown Executive: Thanks very much, Alex. So we have 2 questions that have been submitted. Thank you very much for submitting them. Just to say any that aren't answered on the call will be followed up via the Investor Meet platform with a written response from the company. So to our presenters, first of all, we have the question, you mentioned M&A in Egypt and the broader MENA region. What valuation thresholds or return hurdles are you applying in the current oil price environment? Randall Neely: Well, given the recent changes in oil prices, we haven't factored any change -- long-term changes into our analysis at this stage. We do, however, always look for a reasonable rate of return on any investments. And for us, that typically means kind of starting with a 25% rate of return given just generally the business itself and, of course, the region. Unknown Executive: And then we have another question asking what production and cash flow uplift do you expect from the merged concession over the next 2 to 3 years? And what key risks could delay or reduce those benefits? Geoffrey Probert: Okay. I'll take that. In terms of the cash flow at the start, at first we don't really forecast cash flow, although we do put the CPR out there. So that's a place you can go and do your own calculations, I guess. Similar, I guess, on production as well. In terms of production, the new concession agreement is focused on giving us running room and the opportunity to grow. And I mentioned the -- not just the reserve side, but the continued resources side, which is a significant underlay to that GLJ evaluated CPR. I think in 2 to 3 years -- over the next 2 to 3 years, key risks, obviously, they're geological, but that's mitigated to a large extent by some of the improvement in the runway we have land-wise. There is the new development leases, which about our small BED concession area, apart from those concession. [indiscernible] North area, too. Plus over [indiscernible], we have with an improved gas price for incremental investments, some additional running room there. So there's a lot of broader, if I say, opportunity there to allow us to mitigate any risk from a geoscience point of view. Really, the thing that drives our investment is respect we get and we increasingly and continue to get from EGPC, our operating partner in Cairo, there in terms of being paid by EGPC is critical. So we've been very fortunate that we've been prioritized along with others in the IOC space for payments, and that really drives right into this investment we see. So that's what underpins our production. Unknown Executive: And we've got just one final question here asking what's the biggest financial risk that investors may be overlooking from Rob? Eddie Ok: Yes, Rob, I think that our annual report and the section that we publish on principal risks and uncertainties adequately captures our risk management process. And as always, within the operational jurisdiction of Egypt, receivables collections with us having one customer for our oil and gas is a sort of principal risk. But given the recent press out of the ministry as well as the minister in the past 48 hours, there's been a real commitment on the part of Egypt to ensure that IOCs are getting paid and continue to get paid. And so we look forward to continuing to invest in this jurisdiction. Unknown Executive: That's great, Randy, Eddie, Geoff. Thank you for addressing those questions for investors today. But Randy, before we direct investors to provide you with a feedback, which is particularly important to you and the company, could I please just ask you for a few closing comments? Randall Neely: Well, I think I'll just reiterate, I think the company has done a lot of heavy lifting over the past few years, and I'll spare going through the storybook, but a huge amount of work has been done over the last 3 years to put the company in this position, terrific balance sheet, great working relationships with our partners, not only Cheiron, but also the government and a great future with respect to the contract renegotiation that's taken place over the past 1.5 years. And so we're now in that position to take advantage in Egypt, and we're just sort of in the beginning to try to as I said, capitalize on our geographic and capabilities in the U.K. North Sea. So we're looking forward to expanding our operations and more to come in future months. Thank you very much for attending. Unknown Executive: Perfect. Thank you very much indeed to you all for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close this session as you'll now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback, which will help the company better understand your views and expectations. On behalf of the management team, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good morning to you all.
Peer Schlinkmann: Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to the 2025 full year earnings call of the Wacker Neuson Group. My name is Peer Schlinkmann, Head of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications. Thank you for joining today on the occasion of the release of our 2025 full year results. As usual, we will first start with the operational and financial results of the fiscal year 2025 and give additional insights on the recent developments as well as our outlook for 2026. Following this, we are happy to answer your questions in a Q&A session. If you are not able to follow today's call via the webcast, the presentation slides are also available for download at wackerneusongroup.com/investor-relations. Please note that the entire call, including the Q&A session, will be recorded and a replay will be made available on our corporate website by the end of the day. And now I would like to hand over to our executives, Karl Tragl and Christoph Burkhard, who will, as usual, lead you through this call. Christoph Burkhard: Thank you, Peer. This is Christoph Burkhard, CFO of the Wacker Neuson Group. Welcome, everybody, to our earnings call, and thank you for joining. Thank you. Karl Tragl: Dear all, a warm welcome from my side, too. And thanks again for joining today's conference call. I'm Karl Tragl, the CEO of the Wacker Neuson Group. I would like to start the presentation with a brief overview of our key financials for the fiscal year 2025. Our revenue stood at EUR 2.2 billion, which is essentially on par with the previous year's level. After a weak start in the first quarter, characterized by low capacity utilization following the downturn in 2024, we saw a gradual operational recovery as the year progressed. Throughout the year 2025, our order intake level has been slightly above revenue, resulting in a book-to-bill ratio of above 1. Our earnings before interest and taxes amounted to EUR 132 million, resulting in an EBIT margin of 6.0%. While this represents an improvement of 0.5 percentage points compared to 2024, the margin was impacted by onetime effects in the fourth quarter. These included legal and advisory costs related to takeover talks, adjustments to our virtual stock option plan and certain asset impairments. Without these effects, the recovery in earnings quality would have been even more visible, especially following the improving momentum, which we gained since the second quarter. At year-end, we saw a very successful development of our net working capital ratio. We managed to reduce it faster than originally forecasted, reaching about 29%, which is below our strategic target of 30%. This is, amongst others, a result of disciplined inventory management and the efficiency agenda, which we continued throughout 2025. The significant reduction of net working capital led to another increase in our free cash flow, which reached EUR 202 million by the end of the year. Christoph will explain the financial details in more depth. Now let's take a closer look at our performance across business segments and regions. In 2025, we continued to navigate a challenging market environment. Also, we saw a recovery starting in the second quarter of 2025. Starting with the business segments, light equipment and compact equipment, we had a powerful presence and stood out visibly at the Bauma Trade Fair in April, which led to higher revenue and increased profitability in the second quarter. However, development remained on that level in the following quarters as geopolitical instability, high interest rates and rising costs continued to weigh on construction industry. In detail, light equipment grew by 2% to EUR 460 million, while compact equipment declined by 2% to EUR 1.26 billion. On the one hand, demand for tele handlers, especially in Europe and skid steers in the U.S. was below previous year. On the other hand, we saw continued growth in demand for dumpers and excavators in Europe. Our services business showed further growth, increasing to EUR 521 million and accounting for 23% of total revenue. Strong demand for spare parts and used machines, combined with structural improvement of our service levels out of the new logistics hub in Mulheim-Karlich supported this positive trend. Revenues in Europe, representing 79% of group revenues rose by 1% to EUR 1.75 billion. While Germany and France were weaker, we saw growth in the U.K. and Switzerland. Our brands, Kramer and Weidemann with focus on the agriculture industry also regained momentum late in the year. In the Americas, revenue declined by 7% to EUR 422 million, heavily impacted by customer reluctance and U.S. tariffs. In Asia Pacific, revenue fell by 16% to EUR 44 million, primarily driven by a slowdown in Australia. In summary, despite regional headwinds and the weak start into the year 2025, the recovery in Europe and our stabilizing order intake provide a solid foundation for this year 2026. I will come back to our outlook at the end of the presentation. I will now hand over to you, Christoph, for more insights into our financials. Christoph Burkhard: Thank you, Karl. I will talk now about working capital. With 29.2%, we were able to stay with our working capital ratio below our target ratio of 30%, which clearly exceeded our expectations. This decrease of working capital was primarily driven by the following reasons. Firstly, we increased our trade payables preparing for 2026. Secondly, we maintained our discipline around inventory management and this despite the complexities around the U.S. tariff situation. Thirdly, a reduction of receivables also supported the overall result. As an overriding feature, I would like to mention our ongoing and successful efforts to systematically improve our integrated system-based planning processes across the entire group. This concretely enhances our planning quality end-to-end, starting with the sales forecast all the way through logistics, the production planning and supplier management. Eventually, all this has a sustainably positive impact on all working capital levers. Looking ahead to 2026, our expectations towards moderate growth will certainly influence net working capital throughout the year. However, we remain fully committed to our target ratio of below 30%. Now let's have a look at our cash flow performance. A good cash conversion into operating cash flow, plus the mentioned positive working capital momentum led to a strong cash contribution of EUR 86 million in the fourth quarter. This again generated an overall free cash flow of EUR 202 million in 2025, even exceeding previous year's EUR 185 million. As a consequence, we could reduce our net debt to EUR 185 million, reaching the lowest level since the first quarter in 2022. Compared to the previous year, net debt decreased by over 40%, and this translated into a further reduced leverage ratio of 0.6. And to complete the picture, an equity ratio of 62% underscores the robustness of our balance sheet. Now let's have a look at our dividend payout. The Wacker Neuson Group is known for its continuity in delivering attractive shareholder dividends, one of the main pillars of our financial policy. Despite the challenging market environment in the past year, our focus remains clear: to successfully increase profitability while simultaneously improving operational efficiency and therefore, preparing ourselves for the next growth phase in times of higher geopolitical uncertainty. Against this background, we want our shareholders to participate in our results again. Therefore, we will propose a dividend of EUR 0.70 per share for the past fiscal year at the Annual General Meeting, which will be held on May 13 here in Munich. And this corresponds to a payout ratio of around 61% of our earnings per share and marks again an attractive dividend yield of 2.9% based on the 2025 year-end share price. And with this, back to you, Karl. Karl Tragl: Thank you. In the following, we would like to highlight a couple of operational milestones, which we completed in 2025. Kramer celebrated its 100th anniversary. To mark this milestone, a completely revised machine design was introduced. Moreover, new wheel loaders and a new tele handlers were launched. We also attended numerous construction and agriculture trade fairs like Bauma and Agritechnica. The trade fairs will not only provide additional sales stimulus, but also enable us to meet our sales partners and our end users and understand their needs in personal discussions. The strong customer interest was also reflected by significant order intake at the trade fairs. And for the first time in September, we exclusively presented new products to key customers as part of a prelaunch 2026 event. We already announced that we have successfully started the delivery of first excavators for John Deere from Linz in 2025. And very important, in fall, we completed the production line for further models at our U.S. plant, which enables us to start manufacturing there in 2026. Last but not least, we successfully launched numerous new Wacker Neuson, Weidemann and Kramer, light and compact equipment machines. Our zero emission portfolio was expanded as well, adding further fully electric excavators, battery-powered wheel loaders as well as different light equipment solutions to our portfolio. Additionally, we introduced new digital solutions such as a Wacker Neuson and Weidemann app to provide our customers an even deeper insight into our products and to consistently support them during machine operation life cycle. Finally, I would like to conclude now with our outlook for 2026 and key topics, which are currently shaping our industry. The global economic and geopolitical environment remains volatile and characterized by significant uncertainty. Factors such as subdued investment momentum, trade conflicts and increasing protectionism continue to impact planning certainty. This is further intensified by ongoing geopolitical tensions, including the war in Middle East since beginning of March. This adds another layer of complexity to energy markets and global supply chains. At the same time, current market indicators point towards a moderate recovery, albeit at a slower pace than previously expected. Against this backdrop, we view the 2026 fiscal year with cautiously positive expectations. In Europe, we anticipate an environment that remains challenging, yet stabilizing, supported by public modernization investments. In North America, we expect solid demand from building of data centers and further infrastructure projects despite ongoing U.S. tariffs. Overall, we anticipate a slight market upturn in 2026. With great trust in our customers, employees, investors and in our strategic plan, this should enable us to achieve a moderate increase in revenue and a higher EBIT margin. So this is our guidance for 2026. We anticipate a revenue between EUR 2.2 billion and EUR 2.4 billion and an EBIT margin in a range of 6.5% to 7.5%. We plan to invest another EUR 70 million to EUR 90 million in the course of the year. And we aim to keep our net working capital ratio below the strategic target of 30% by the end of 2026. In 2026, we will consistently pursue our operational agenda. However, the market environment remains dynamic, shaped by realities of the past 2 years, low market volumes and ongoing geopolitical uncertainties, ranging from U.S. tariff policy to the most recent war in Middle East. Furthermore, we must acknowledge that electrification in construction and agriculture is progressing slower than originally expected. Despite these headwinds, we remain fully committed to our Strategy 2030. It remains our North Star with profitability now moving even more into our focus. During the course of 2026, we will reevaluate both the underlying market scenarios and the 10 strategic levers. Regarding our revenue up until 2030, we now rather anticipate a level of EUR 3.5 billion. However, what stands unchanged is our commitment to sustainable, profitable growth and continuous improvement of operational performance. Our profitability target an EBIT margin of more than 11% remains the core objective of our Strategy 2030. Let me summarize the key takeaways of today's presentation. First of all, we have taken action, and we improved our working capital management as well as operational efficiency. So we are well prepared to benefit from this in the expected economic upswing. As for the outlook 2026, we expect moderate revenue increase and EBIT margin improvement, while markets will still be influenced by U.S. tariff policy and geopolitical uncertainties. We focus on innovation, and we have new machines already in the pipeline. And moreover, we constantly enhance our solutions. Our strong balance sheet is a foundation to execute our plans and drive future growth. And we will reassess underlying market scenarios of our Strategy 2030, and we stay committed to our profitability target of more than 11% EBIT margin. Thank you for your continued trust and for joining our earnings call today. As we move into 2026, we are energized by the opportunities captured in our motto, driving progress, building success. We look forward to sharing our journey with you throughout the year. If you would like to connect, our Investor Relations team is available to provide further insights. Before we open the floor now to your questions, I want to express my sincere gratitude to all our employees of the Wacker Neuson Group. Their dedication and their hard work remain the true engine behind our value for customers and shareholders. Nobody is perfect, but a team can be. Thank you for listening. Operator, we are now ready to start the Q&A session, and we are very much looking forward to answering your questions. Operator: [Operator Instructions] The first question comes from the line of Stefan Augustin from Warburg Research. Stefan Augustin: The first one is actually on the current order intake trend. And what has -- what have you seen actually on the -- in the very short term, is there anything that you can tell us over the last 4 weeks since the war in Iran started? And did this in any way impact so far order intake behavior at your customers? That would be the one to start with, I think. Christoph Burkhard: Thank you for your question, Stefan. This is Christoph. Let me take your question. We do see -- now starting into the new year, we do see in January and in February kind of very first tender trend for a better book-to-bill ratio above 1. So currently, we do stand at around 1.2, 1.3 within the group. And that ratio is allocated across our landscape with a fairly strong order intake momentum in the U.S. after very weak months towards the end of previous year, as you recall. But we had a good start into the new year in the Americas, I should say. And Europe is also okay. It's above 1. The only exception still being Germany, where it's kind of sluggish. I think that somehow represents still the overall sentiment in Germany. We are all waiting for a kickstarting the German economy. But overall, we are moderately optimistic also with respect to order intake. Stefan Augustin: One follow-up here directly. Is that good development in the U.S. in any way connected to the next model ramp-up by Deere? Or is that something that should come on top later in the year? Christoph Burkhard: That's independent from the John Deere collaboration. Looking deeper into root causes there, the feedback we receive is around -- we have been frequently talking about this famous dealer inventories, which have come down. The second thing is we have been looking at quite some months of reluctance, particularly of the big rental companies to place new orders that eventually seems to have come to an end. I mean, anyway, they couldn't stay away from investments from forever. So that's also probably what is gaining momentum here. Stefan Augustin: Also. I also like your statement that you will focus on the 2030 targets in the longer term on the margin more than on the growth. Maybe as a first step in '26, how much of that you expect in the margin improvement is actually intrinsic and rather on costs and processes and is -- what part is actually on the higher volume based? Christoph Burkhard: It's rather on cost and processes in 2026, definitely. And that also does explain already, let's say, the building blocks then moving into 2027, where we would expect then more to benefit also from growth. But the growth aspect is not the key in 2026. Stefan Augustin: Yes. So would it be fair to say if the sales would be at the higher end, there would be an additional probability to also be better on the margin side. Is that an implication of your statement? Christoph Burkhard: I can buy into this logic without going into specific amount, but I follow your logic, Stefan, definitely. Operator: The next question comes from the line of Lukas Spang from Tigris Capital. Lukas Spang: I would like to start with the topic you just mentioned in your presentation. It's the data center area. And I think that's a very interesting part in the building segment in general. Also, it's probably a very small portion in general. But is it quantifiable for you as a group, how many machines or equipment you are delivering to this specific area? So is it possible to quantify how big the revenue you are making with all stuff regarding data center? And what could be the potential in the future for you? That would be my first question. Karl Tragl: Thank you for the question, Karl speaking here. I mean I was -- just a week ago, I visited U.S. talked also to partners and customers. And that was a topic throughout all the discussions as a positive momentum in U.S. in time, and it should be sustainable because it's driven by artificial intelligence, and that's something which will go on for more time and into the future. And it's -- the data center is driving a lot of infrastructure around because you need fiber cables to connect them, you need roads to come to them, you need other topics to people bring them over there. But this is not quantifiable. We cannot quantify such a specific topic in the U.S. But as I said, it's for me, it's a sustainable topic driven by artificial intelligence, and it is driving more investments around just to connect it. Lukas Spang: Okay. But you would say that it's more driven from the U.S. than Europe currently? Karl Tragl: Yes. Obviously, I mean, just reading through the papers and talking to people, there's only a few data centers currently as projects in Germany as far as I know at least. There's a lot in the U.S. So yes, I fully agree with what you said. Christoph Burkhard: I think we're talking about 20 or something like that more in the U.S. Lukas Spang: And then on the guidance, it's a very broad range in terms of revenue, again, like last year. So what kind of scenarios did you bake in for the lower and the higher end on the revenue guidance? Christoph Burkhard: Yes. Lukas, I guess we were a bit burned by last year and to be very frank, and by last year's -- particularly by last year's first quarter. And we lost a little bit trust in short-term recovery with significant numbers. So let me put it this way. The lower end is certainly conservative, and we wanted to really have a gradual approach here in a sense that we -- by May, when we will talk again about Q1, our picture will certainly be much clearer around the lower end of the guidance. We first want to -- we want now to accomplish a successful first quarter, and then we'll see further. Lukas Spang: Yes. But the higher order intake you mentioned now on the -- yes, I would say, very nice book-to-bill ratio in Q1 will be then mostly revenue in Q2. Is that right? Christoph Burkhard: That's probably right. However, I need a little bit to tone the enthusiasm down in a sense compared to last year, this is really -- this is good in terms of order intake. However, there are 2 qualifications to it. Firstly, of course, we are looking at a book-to-bill ratio in connection with 2 months with relatively lower absolute revenues because January and February are months with lower revenues, winter months plus months with relatively fewer working days. The heavy months are coming now. So March, of course, is supposed to be a strong sales month. And here, we need to see again also the higher book-to-bill ratios. That still remains to be seen. Secondly, of course, again, we went through this kind of depressing period partly in 2025 with low order intake. So for the time being, I would not go beyond the statement that this is now according to what we need also. So we are not yet talking about upside or higher-end guidance. That's basically the calibration you need to understand behind our statements. Lukas Spang: Yes. But for Q1, after the strong Q3 and Q4, and I think also order momentum in the second half, and also book-to-bill was good. So there should be an improvement Q1 versus Q1 in terms of revenue. Christoph Burkhard: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely right. Operator: [Operator Instructions] Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Peer Schlinkmann for any closing remarks. Peer Schlinkmann: Yes, ladies and gentlemen, as we can see, there are no further questions in line. This brings us to the end of our conference call. As usual, if you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact me or the entire Investor Relations team via phone or e-mail. If you would like to meet in person, please let us know or check our website and financial calendar for all relevant roadshow dates in the coming weeks and months. Thank you again for joining our call, and we wish all of you a pleasant Easter holidays. Thank you. Christoph Burkhard: Thank you, everybody. Karl Tragl: Thank you. See you. Bye-bye.
Operator: Good afternoon. Welcome to Oxbridge's Fiscal 2025 Earnings Call. My name is Shamali, and I will be your conference operator this afternoon. [Operator Instructions] Joining us for today's presentation is Oxbridge's Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, Jay Madhu; and Chief Financial Officer and Corporate Secretary, Wrendon Timothy. Following their remarks, we will open up the call for your questions. I would like to remind everyone that this call will be available via telephone replay until April 13, 2026. Details for the telephone replay are included in the press release issued today. Now I would like to turn the call over to Wrendon Timothy, Chief Financial Officer of Oxbridge, who will provide the necessary cautions regarding the forward-looking statements that will be made by management during this call. Wrendon Timothy: Thank you, operator. During today's call, there will be forward-looking statements made regarding future events, including Oxbridge's future financial performance. These forward-looking statements are made pursuant to the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words such as anticipates, estimates, expects, intends, plans, projects and other similar words and expressions are intended to signify forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future results and conditions, but rather are subject to various risks and uncertainties. A detailed discussion of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results and events to differ materially from forward-looking statements is included in the section entitled Risk Factors contained in our Form 10-K filed today, March 30, 2026, with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The occurrence of any of these risks and uncertainties could have a material adverse effect on the company's business, financial condition and the volatility of our earnings, which in turn could cause significant market price and trade volume fluctuations for our securities. Any forward-looking statements made on this conference call speak only as of the date of this conference call. And except as required by law, the company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements contained on this call or in any company presentation, even if the company's expectations or any related events, conditions or circumstances change. Now I'd like to turn the call over to our Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, Jay Madhu. Jay? Sanjay Madhu: Thank you, Wrendon, and welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. Let me start by saying we are proud of the significant steps we have taken to fortify and innovate our business by bringing reinsurance on chain and broadening investor access. At our core, we are a disciplined reinsurance business, writing fully collateralized policies covering property catastrophe risk. We compete through selective data-driven underwriting with a focus on generating attractive risk-adjusted returns and long-term growth in book value per share. Our strategy centers on low frequency, high severity risk where significant data exists to rigorously evaluate the risk return profile. We emphasize disciplined risk selection, appropriate pricing and thoughtful structuring, supported by our fully collateralization to ensure transparency and alignment. Building on this foundation, SurancePlus continues to expand our ability to bring reinsurance on chain in a compliant and scalable manner, broadening access to an asset class that has historically been limited to institutional partnerships. We believe this combination of underwriting discipline and evolving platform capabilities positions Oxbridge well as we continue to execute our strategy and pursue opportunities within the growing real estate asset market -- pardon me, growing real-world asset market. We now turn things over to Wrendon to take us through our financial results. Wrendon? Wrendon Timothy: Thank you, Jay. I would like to remind you that our typical contract period is from June 1 to May 31 of the following year. Net premiums earned for the 3 months ended December 31, 2025, decreased to $555,000 from $595,000 for the quarter ended December 31, 2024. The decrease is due to lower weighted average rate on reinsurance contracts in force during the quarter ended December 31, 2025, when compared with the prior period. Net premiums earned for the years ended December 31, 2025 and 2024 was approximately $2.3 million. Our net investment income for the 3 months ended December 31, 2025, increased to $63,000 from $68,000 from prior comparable period. There was a decrease in the fair value of equity securities during this period. And along with net premiums, our total revenue amounted to $576,000 for the 3 months ended December 31, 2025, compared to $422,000 in the prior year comparable period. Our net investment and other income for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2025, increased to $314,000 from $248,000 from the prior year comparable period. Along with net premiums, change in fair value of equity securities and other investments resulted in total revenues of $2.58 million for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2025, compared to $546,000 in the prior year comparable period. Regarding total expenses for the 3 months ended December 31, 2025, total expenses, including policy acquisition costs and general and admin expenses and underwriting costs increased to $1.04 million from $497,000 for the quarter ended December 31, 2024. The increase is primarily due to the recording of underwriting losses incurred on Hurricane Milton, which occurred in 2024 as a result of adverse loss development as well as increased general and admin expenses when compared with the prior period. For the year ended December 31, 2025, total expenses, which includes policy acquisition costs, loss and loss adjustment expenses and general and admin expenses increased to $6.04 million from $2.17 million for the year ended December 31, 2024. Again, the increase is due primarily to the recording of losses on reinsurance contracts affected by Hurricane Milton in 2024, increased professional costs relating to investor relations, our web3 subsidiary tokenization costs, S-3 related costs, increased human resources and personnel and legal expenditures. Net income for the quarter ended December 31, 2025, was $120,000 or $0.02 per basic and diluted income per share compared to a net loss of $460,000 or $0.05 basic and diluted loss per share for the quarter ended December 31, 2024. The decrease in net loss is primarily due to the allocation of underwriting losses to token holders coupled with a decrease in negative change in fair value of equity securities and unrealized loss on other investments, an increase in investment income and other income during the quarter ended December 31, 2025, when compared with the prior period. Net loss for the year December 31, 2025, was $2.08 million or $0.28 basic and diluted loss per share compared to a net loss of $2.73 million or $0.45 basic and diluted loss per share for the year ended December 31, 2024. The change is primarily due to higher overall revenues driven by a significant decrease in unrealized loss on investments, partially offset by higher expenses and higher underwriting losses borne by token holders during the year ended December 31, 2025, when compared with the prior period. As we have discussed before on our investor calls, we use various measures to analyze the growth and profitability of our business operations. For our reinsurance business, we measure underwriting profitability by examining our loss ratio, acquisition ratio, expense ratio and combined ratio. The loss ratio is the ratio of loss and loss adjusted expenses incurred to premiums earned and measures the underwriting profitability of our reinsurance business. The loss ratio increased to 80.9% for the 3-month period ended December 2025 when compared with the prior comparative period. The loss ratio increased 119.9% for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2025, when compared with the prior comparative period. These increases were due to losses recognized on reinsurance contracts affected by Hurricane Milton, which was a loss event occurring in 2024. Our acquisition cost ratio, which measures operational efficiency, compares policy acquisition costs and net premiums earned. The acquisition cost ratio remained consistent at 11% for the quarter and year ended December 31, 2025, when compared with the prior comparative period. Our expense ratio measures operating performance compares policy acquisition costs and general and admin expenses with net premiums earned. For the 3 months ended December 31, 2025, the expense ratio increased to 106.7% from 83.5% for the 3-month period ended December 31, 2024. For the year ended December 31, 2025, the expense ratio increased to 144.2% from 94.3% for the year ended December 31, 2024. The increase are primarily due to increased professional costs relating to our Investor Relations and marketing, our web3 subsidiary costs, renewed S-3 related costs, increased human resources and personnel and legal costs during the quarter and year ended December 31, 2025, when compared with the prior comparable periods. Our combined ratio, which is used to measure underwriting performance, is the sum of the loss ratio and expense ratio. For the 3-month period ended December 31, 2025, the combined ratio increased to 187.6% from 83.5% for the 3-month period ended December 31, 2024. For the year ended December 31, 2025, the combined ratio increased to 264% from 94.3% for the year ended December 31, 2024. Again, the increase is due to higher general and admin expenses and losses incurred due to Hurricane Milton that have been recorded during the quarter and the year ended December 31, 2025, when compared with prior comparable periods. Now turning to the balance sheet. Our investment portfolio decreased to 0 at December 31, 2025, from $113,000 at the prior year-end, primarily due to the sale of our 2 equity securities during the year ended December 31, 2025. Cash and cash equivalents and restricted cash and cash equivalents increased by $1.08 million to approximately $7 million from $5.89 million as of December 31, 2024. The increase is due primarily to new collateral deposits for the current treaty year ended May 31, 2026, more than offset in fund being released from the underlying trust or loss payments during 2025 relating to Hurricane Milton. I'll now turn the call back over to Jay to wrap up before we take your questions. Jay? Sanjay Madhu: Thank you, Wrendon. We are encouraged by the performance of our 2025 and 2026 tokenized reinsurance contracts. The balance yield token is tracking 25% ahead of its 20% target, and the high-yield token is tracking its 42% target. These results reflect our disciplined underwriting approach and demonstrate the ability of our platform to deliver attractive uncorrelated returns within the global reinsurance market. We have also made meaningful progress expanding our platform through strategic relationships, including our entry into the Solana ecosystem and expanded distribution across more than 160 blockchain networks enabled by Layer 0 through the Alphaledger platform. These developments significantly broaden access to our offering and position SurancePlus within one of the leading blockchain ecosystems for real-world asset adoption. As we look ahead to the 2026, 2027 contract cycle, we are targeting returns of 20% and 42% for our T20 and T42 offerings. Industry commentary, including reports from Artemis include -- indicate that El Nino conditions may support a favorable risk environment, and we are optimistic about the opportunities these presents. In parallel, we are exploring opportunities to extend our model into additional high-quality cash-generating assets such as the tokenization of data center revenue streams, particularly as it relates to the growth of artificial intelligence, AI. We also believe our current market valuation does not fully reflect the strength of our balance sheet, including our cash and restricted cash positions nor the opportunities we are actively evaluating to significantly drive shareholder value. Overall, we remain focused on our disciplined execution, expanding distribution and scaling our platform as we continue to build long-term shareholder value. With that, we are ready to open the call for questions. Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Peter Roy with Bloomberg. Peter are you on the line? And it appears that Peter, there's no one on the line of Peter. [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Kent Engelke with Capitol Securities. Kent Engelke: Jay, in the press release, you mentioned this 2 different times, and you also said it in your comments as well. Can you expand a little bit more about when you're talking about the tokenization of artificial intelligence infrastructure. Can you expand on that at all? That sounds really, really intriguing. On top of that, it sounds like you got a bunch of stuff going on. And some of the stuff is -- looks like it's just about to hit. But first off, can you expand on the tokenization of data center revenue? Sanjay Madhu: Yes, absolutely. Thanks, Ken, for that question. So the data center revenue, let me kind of back -- take it back a little further, right? So SurancePlus, the reinsurance tokenization, that's moving along. But reinsurance cycles, as you guys are well aware, are June 1 to May 31 of the following year. So once we get through this next month, 1.5 months, 2 months, we look for new and additional things to go forward to, right? So the data center revenue streams, what we're considering doing is we're evaluating entering into strategic relationships with partners, developers, customers, operators. But the interesting thing over here is not only would that be significant for our shareholder valuation for Oxbridge, but also significant value proposition for SurancePlus. So while we are working on the other endeavors that we've already talked about, we're evaluating some extremely interesting endeavors that will be -- that could be very interesting. Kent Engelke: Look forward to following that as you go along. Also, it appears as though you have plenty of cash to go forward and the like. Am I reading that correctly in regards to your cash balances and your restricted cash? Sanjay Madhu: Yes. Yes. We have about $6.9 million in cash and restricted cash. That puts us in great position not only to do things with the reinsurance tokenization, but also to evaluate other opportunities. So great position, great opportunities ahead. Kent Engelke: I look forward to following you -- have been following you for a long time and it looks like there's just a bunch of things that is about to come to fruition and look forward to seeing it. Operator: At this time, this concludes our question-and-answer session. I would now like to turn the call back over to Mr. Madhu for his closing remarks. Sanjay Madhu: Thank you for joining us on today's call. Before we conclude, I would like to extend my gratitude to our employees, business partners and investors for their unwavering support. I particularly want to acknowledge our dedicated Oxbridge team whose extensive expertise has been instrumental in navigating and advancing our business. We anticipate providing you with further updates to our progress during the next call. And should you have any additional questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to us any time. Once again, thank you for your time and attention today and for your ongoing interest in Oxbridge. Operator? Operator: Before we conclude today's call, I would like to remind everyone that a recording of today's call will be available for replay via a link available in the Investors section of the company's website. Thank you for joining us today for our presentation. You may now disconnect.
Steven Brown: Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining. I hope everyone is doing well and looking forward to a fantastic presentation today. I'm joined here by our esteemed CFO, Matt Boyle, and we're going to walk you through our full year results. We do have a longer presentation than we've had in the past. And so we won't have time, obviously, to cover every slide. So you're going to find I'm going to kind of do an abbreviated presentation today, and the full presentation is available -- will be available on our website. But just for the sake of hitting the key points, I am going to move around a bit for the sake of speed. So I'm going to start off actually on Page 8 because I think you all know who we are, what we do, what markets we serve. You all have heard that plenty of times and are very familiar with the business overall. But I want to point out that we have a history of sort of evolution. That's really what the whole company is about. And as we'll talk about more later, we're in that same position today. And we're kind of built for that. We're geared for change, all the way back from the very beginning when Leonard Sim had the idea to start a virtual queuing product because he got tired of waiting in line at Universal Studios in Florida from the fact that we started out with accesso Passport as a SaaS product when people thought we were crazy, that no one would rely on the Internet for their ticketing. Then we pioneered online ticketing. We were the first to market with mobile ticketing for theme parks and attractions. And so we're always evolving, always inventing. And while we're doing that with the products that we have, we've also been expanding our verticals and our capabilities with a whole range of acquisitions in what is now built, I would call it a global powerhouse across the attractions industry in terms of technology. So we're very familiar with change. And as we all know, the market is quite disrupted right now, SaaS Mageddon, if you will. And we'll talk more about that as we go through in terms of where our -- where we think our position is in that space. So I'm going to -- obviously, Matt will talk about the numbers. You can see the headlines here on Slide 10. Top line revenue, $155 million, cash EBITDA, $23 million. We have lots of cash and a great balance sheet at the end of the year and some great progress on our EPS and Matt will get into all this in more detail. But overall, a solid year. Obviously, we'd like to have more growth. But in a year that was a bit challenging for a variety of factors, we held our own quite well, and I am pleased to be end with the result given all the overall circumstances. So one of the things we've seen in our, I guess, our market updates is just the environment and how we responded to that. And we're a pretty nimble company. If you were around during COVID, you saw that in full play. And we adjust and not only in our technology, but also in how we operate our business. So we had some uneven demand across the geographies. There were some travel disruptions, people not wanting to travel to certain regions for social or political reasons. We had some summer softness with operators. And I think the operators are always struggling to respond. Is it this happening for a week? Or is it a trend? Should we change our pricing? Should we change our promotions? And then also, we were dealing with the overall backdrop in terms of our trading, I guess, you could say, our share price with the sort of indiscriminate, as someone called it, indiscriminate software sell-off despite the fact that we feel our position related to AI is actually very strong. So what we've done is our commercial team has done very well. You can see our wins. We've had a great focus on cost discipline. We've lowered our headcount from just to about 600 now, 605 or so where we stand today and focusing a lot on productivity and efficiency, some of that powered by AI, some of that powered by just rethinking how we're structured. Our margin, our transactional revenue was flat. It's important to note here. We didn't go backwards. And I think in hindsight, some of the conversations or updates we had about transactional revenue softness could have implied that we were going backwards. And really, what I meant was that we weren't seeing the growth that we had hoped for. So I just wanted to point that out because I think some translated the fact that, although, market was soft and transactional revenue went backwards for access, but that's not the case. Actually, it held flat even in a difficult market backdrop. And importantly, as we announced today, we laid out and have facilitated a structured transition plan between myself and Lee, having hired him at the beginning of last year. He is now ready to take the helm on May 1. So a lot of information here on the slide on Slide 12. A fantastic new Chief Commercial Officer in place. We've really refreshed our go-to-market approach. We've thought about our look and feel. You may notice today, our presentation looks a little different than it has in the past. We've gone to a sort of crisper look, more modern look. We have a fully a brand-new website, which actually is quite a project with all the products and markets that we serve. And as a result, our pipeline looks really good. It's continuing to strengthen as the year has progressed. And the quality of our wins has improved. We're seeing more customers from our legacy product moving into SaaS solutions or new customers coming in looking for SaaS product and also continuing to expand our relationships with existing clients. So overall, our win rate has dramatically improved. The new business that we signed compared to 2024 was roughly double in terms of annual value. So we're really happy with the traction we're seeing on the commercial side and with the new focus that our team has. 13 and 14 really are a bit of just an update on how things are going with both accesso Freedom and accesso Paradox, 2 acquisitions that we've made in recent years. And just highlighting the fact that we've thought about these acquisitions and these different products very carefully. And sometimes it takes a little patience, but our strategy is intact, and it's really paying off. We're seeing great momentum with Freedom. We now have 63 venues that are contracted and continuing to grow. That's more than double than we had in the prior year. And it's proving to be a really important part as prospects consider their overall operation and the benefit accesso can bring to them by having that integrated platform between ticketing, food, retail and all kinds of things. Same thing with ski, accesso Paradox, which is really an acquisition we made is to give us a path forward for our clients that are on Siriusware, which is an installed application. Customers looking to move to SaaS needed an alternative is particularly in the ski market. And accesso Paradox is doing exactly that. So we're seeing great move to -- from the clients in that Siriusware product moving over to our transactional model or SaaS model. And overall, just in terms of ski, remember, we have 160-plus resorts as clients that's double the nearest competitor in this sector. So we are very strong in ski and continue to grow. And I believe it's a very important vertical for us to continue to stay focused on and to continue to innovate with. So I want to take a moment on this one because if you're on Slide 15, about virtual queuing. And I think this is really important because context does matter. And as the headline says, one decision is not a verdict on the product. And we sort of had a lot of focus around this, a lot of chatter around what's going on with accesso and queuing. And I think it's important to point out that we have 25 years of fine-tuning a really robust application that works at scale and handles a wide range of scenarios. And as I called out on the slide, this is not something you can vide code over the weekend. And it's not just about the base idea of, okay, who's next in the queue, what's happening? It's all the multitude of scenarios that go on in an environment, when you have 10,000, 15,000, 20,000, 30,000, 40,000 people in a park and 15, 20 attractions, all the different variables that are going on, helping guests with accessibility, accessibility needs, the whole range. And importantly, we do still have IP. I know that our core patent expired some years ago, but we've continued to file patents for specific functionality that is very critical to how the application works when you're running at scale. Again, someone can make a very simple [ lo-Q ] type product. But our application and queuing is much more robust and much more significant than that. And we had a successful defense of one of those patents in 2025 that we're very happy about. So I just want folks to think about this product as something that's obviously the foundation of the business. but it's not a legacy product. It's not a tired product. It is a fantastic product that not only proves itself functionally, but also from a revenue perspective. And as we noted midyear last year, one of the major customers indicated they were not going to continue using the product. Near the end of the year, they changed their mind on that. They've extended through this year and actually have a pilot going at 2 additional locations and very, very pleased with those initial results from those pilots. So I just wanted to sort of put a pin in this because I think it's super important that we realize that LoQueue is a very great product, and it will still be a centerpiece for us from a product strategy. A couple of pages here, sort of 16 and 17. I won't go through those in detail. I think it goes without saying that every organization is looking at AI enablement in terms of how they work. We are certainly do that -- certainly doing that across every single area, including myself. Much of this presentation has been designed by AI as a matter of fact. And we are looking at everything from engineering, product design, sales and marketing, operations, so many tasks that can be expedited with the use of AI tooling, all in different scenarios. And we are seeing some great efficiencies coming from that, improved work product, improved time to market with everything across the board, whether it's an application, whether it's meeting notes, whether it's marketing content, we are -- we have embraced AI across the organization. And it's also allowing us to find some efficiencies, but also to be a better business to operate more efficiently and more effectively and be faster at bringing things to market. So we're going to talk more about AI in a minute as a product and how that as a strategy. But I think it kind of goes without saying that we're embracing AI in the organization. We're a technology company for goodness sake. And it's at the core of what we do. I have multiple AI applications on my own desktop. And I can only imagine how many our developers and our operations teams are using in their work every day. And so it's important just to call that out. I don't think it's something that you need to hear about every presentation because it's sort of, as I said, goes without saying that this would be a fundamental part of how we operate. So with that in mind, I want to save as much time as possible for the strategic inflections that is coming up later in the presentation. But I'm going to turn it over now to Matt to cover the financial highlights for you all. Matthew Boyle: Thank you, Steve. So key financial highlights on this page to call out. So you see at the top there is cash EBITDA was $23 million, so plus 0.8% up on the prior year, a margin of 14.8%, again, consistent with the close to 15% that we had in the prior year. So cash EBITDA for those that aren't familiar with it, is our principal operating metric. It is an adjusted EBITDA number less capitalized development spend. So our revenue was GBP 155.1 million. That was plus 1.8% up on the prior year on a reported basis. On a like-for-like basis, it was up just under 4%. So there were a few like-for-like adjustments to strip out there being the disposal of a Brazilian subsidiary that we made in January 2025 and a couple of -- well, a B2C business that we disposed of in 2024 and a onetime hardware sale that we also had in 2024. So stripping those out, we were just shy of 4% growth on a like-for-like basis. You'll see gross margin there, up slightly on the prior year, up to 78.5%, up from 78.1% in the prior year. That really is just due to the margin mix or the revenue mix -- so the hardware is typically a lower margin, and we didn't have it in 2025, so up slightly. You'll see there a notable increase in statutory profit before tax, which is very strong as well as a notable increase in adjusted earnings per share. And again, a very strong -- Steve mentioned it, strong balance sheet, so GBP 30.5 million of cash at the year-end. And that is after significant share repurchase activity that we've had over the 15 months -- past 15 months that I'll cover in a later slide. On the right-hand side, you'll see a mix of our revenue on a -- by type basis. So 84.6% is repeatable. And just as a reminder, the majority of our revenue is about just shy of 3/4 is coming from transactional arrangements, whether that's on a revenue share basis or a cents per transaction basis. That's the major component of repeatable revenue. And then we also have some support and maintenance agreements as well over term periods. Next slide, please, Steve. And then this slide, again, for those of you that have followed us for a while now, this is our breakdown of that revenue by type into the more granular buckets that we have. So at the top there, you'll see repeat the breakdown of repeatable revenue. So within transactional revenue itself, you've got virtual queuing. So we highlighted that had quite a choppy peak seasonal period in that summer. So we were down 6% compared to the prior year, but relatively flat ticketing and e-commerce. So flat attendances equates to flat ticketing revenue, but resilient despite that. And then offsetting that, you've got growth in distribution of 4.5%. So we mentioned this at the half year, where there are flatter attendances, operators will tend to lean on those distribution channels for promotions and discounting to fill the gaps that they have, and you see that reflected in the numbers there, sort of the 4.5% increase. So there are other components contributing to the repeatable bucket are recurring license fees that were up 30.8% and maintenance and support agreements are both up 16.8% and they're being driven really by the new Horizon venues that we've had going live throughout the back end of '24 and throughout '25 and predominantly in the Middle East, which operates a license and support model and less so of a transactional model. And then beneath that, you'll see the contributors to our non-repeatable bucket. Again, I think this is really highlighting the resilience of our business model. So whether there is flatness or less lower growth in transactional, you do have this service-based nonrepeatable business that we can turn to. So you'll see increases there in implementation change request and billable services and the professional services line that we've broken out on a more granular level this year to make it easier to follow. So the increases in implementation and change request really customers wanting advanced change requests or advanced road map items to align with their own projects or desires that they may have. And then we have a very willing and able professional services team that perform adhoc customer requests. And typically it fluctuates year-over-year, but really is another boat another string to our bow. And then the final item to call out there is the hardware line. So again, touched on it earlier, you'll see a drop of about $1 million, and that's really because of the onetime accesso Prism sale that we had in 2024 that we wouldn't expect to repeat in '25 or going forward. Next slide, please, Steve. And then this is the income statement. So a couple of call-outs on this slide. Really, we've covered revenue and cost of goods sold is the admin expenses. So flat there, which really goes to show the robust cost control we've had throughout the period. So reported admin expenses up 0.2% and the underlying admin expenses up to GBP 99.5 million, which is up 2.5%. The underlying expenses we have majority being a SaaS-based business, mostly payroll and headcount-related costs. And you'll see on Steve's earlier slide that we ended 2024 on 682 heads. We ended 2025 on 655 heads, and we're now down at 600 -- roughly around 605 heads, really having robust cost discipline and making sure that we're rightsizing the cost base to reflect the revenues that we have. And then the final piece to call out here is the net finance expense, I will call it. So that is a net number of GBP 0.1 million expense for the current year, which is significantly lower than the prior year. And then that's reflective really of the fact that we had lower drawings throughout the year. So we were drawn roughly about GBP 10 million average on the facility throughout the period compared to double that in 2024 as well as having some positive FX revaluations. We have a USD facility set in a GBP entity, so we benefit from the positive gains in that facility, and that's reflected in the finance income line. The next slide, so cash EBITDA. So this is bridging from the previous slide where you saw operating profit to how we get to our cash EBITDA numbers and the adjustments that we're making. You see the pretty limited exceptional expenditure during the year. Really, that's only related to our acquisition -- the disposal, sorry, of the Brazilian subsidiary. And then you'll see the amortization line dropping down quite dramatically during the year. That's really assets becoming fully amortized. So there's a 20% -- 20% drop in the number there year-over-year, assets becoming fully amortized and the cost dropping off. You'll see the share-based payments there dropped to about 14.9%. So we run equity programs for all of our staff, but the vesting assumptions changed slightly during the year, which is reflected in the cost decrease that we have there. And then the last one to call out on this slide is the capitalized development spend. Again, we're very prudent on this number. So you'll see a slight increase from GBP 2.6 million to GBP 3.1 billion, but that's still only representing about 2% of revenue year-over-year. And that's all really to call out on that slide. And then this slide is showing cash flow. So I think the thing to call out here really is the strong, stable, sticky nature of our cash flow. So you can see year-over-year, very, very consistent and strong free cash flow generation. So you can see the top there, GBP 1.8 million up on cash flow before working capital movements. And just to touch on those working capital movements, you'll see a large swing there from negative GBP 11 million almost in the prior year to plus GBP 6 million in the current year. So that really reflects the seasonality, particularly of our distribution business, depending -- it has a seasonal peak in December and depending on whether it's collected at the cutoff of December or whether it hasn't, it makes a significant difference on a December basis throughout a 3- to 5-year average, you'll see it normalizes quite dramatically. So that's driving that movement. Back to previous slide, Steve. Yes, sorry. And then the other things to call out on the cash flow are -- you'll see there the GBP 4 million acquisition, just over GBP 4 million acquisition of intangible assets. So that's the OneRisk intellectual property that we purchased in the midyear. And then you've got GBP 15.9 million on share buybacks and a further GBP 4.1 million on shares for our Employee Benefit Trust. So we ended the year on GBP 30.5 million, which is gross cash of GBP 41.4 million and borrowings of GBP 10.9 million. So again, very, very strong healthy balance sheet that we've got. Just touching on the outlook before we move on. So we have made movements, I think, it's fair to say, since the year-end. So we've had the tender offer of GBP 20 million as well as the acquisition. We expect to end the half year, so H1 in a relatively very modest net debt position, which is consistent with our normal seasonal cash profile. And then we collect cash significantly through H2, and we'll end the year -- end 2026 back in a very strong net cash position. And then final slide for me, really touching on capital allocation that we mentioned at our interim, but bringing to the fore again here. So we've operated quite a number of schemes over the past 12 months really at this point. So first buyback started in April 2025. So we purchased 1.7 million shares for just shy of $11 million a further program extended that for another 1.2 million shares for $5.3 million back in October through January '26. And then on the 18th of March, we completed a tender offer that you will all have seen for $20 million returning or purchasing and canceling 4.8 million shares and just shy of a total of 20% of the shares in issue being canceled over that period and a total of $36 million return to shareholders. So we still hold a very strong balance sheet post all of the movement post year-end, which gives us leverage to continue to providing shareholders -- shareholder returns through meaningful capital allocation in the period going forward. And that's everything for me. Back over to you, Steve. Steven Brown: Sorry, Matt, I'll practice your slide turning better than next time. All right. So on to some very exciting things. And there's a lot to unpack here, and we've tried to make sure we have plenty of time for this. And then obviously, we have a lot of time for questions at the end as well for those of you that have questions. We spent a lot of time thinking about AI, obviously, not only internally, but also what it means from a product perspective. And importantly, what are our customers looking for. But I want to start with just kind of highlighting what the overall AI space looks like. And as I said before, there's been a sort of indiscriminate sell-off of software companies. And it feels like everyone sort of said, run from software, and we'll figure it out later in terms of which ones are viable, which ones are at risk. And we obviously have an opinion about where we sit in that, based upon the facts of AI and the different categories of businesses that are at risk. And obviously, on the left-hand side, you see companies mainly that have per seat pricing. That's the big underlying issue. Think about all the applications we use in our daily lives, our e-mail, things like our word editing tools, all those applications that we use every day are seat licenses. And so companies that are running on seat licenses are looking obviously at a declining workforce, lower seats. And not only that has a onetime effect, but a continued drip of lower seat licenses being needed. And so those sort of are the big core types of products that are in the highest risk category. In the middle, you've got some companies that are systems of record. They have a lot of integrations, but the data is sticky, but AI really just become an interface layer, sort of translation layer. And then on the right-hand side, you see categories 4 and 5, and I think we sort of sit in the range of those depending upon the product that we're talking about. But vertical systems of record, deep domain expertise, which is certainly accesso, proprietary data, proprietary logic, obviously, there's a lot of that in our business, transactional pricing, not seat license pricing. And AI -- the jump -- the business in these categories really AI enhances them versus replaces them. And we clearly believe that AI enhances everything we do. As one headline we have, it says it makes us more valuable, not more vulnerable. And I believe that is absolutely true. And you can sort of digest this and think about, okay, where does accesso sit, but I do believe we've been caught in a wave of the sort of everyone running from software -- and when folks start peeling back and really categorizing the companies in the space, they're going to realize that, well, accesso was in a really strong position and not only in a strong position today, but also where we're going is going to further secure that position. And so I just kind of thought this slide was really helpful in terms of putting some context around that because we get a lot of questions about, oh, what's going to happen to accesso with AI. And I think it's going to make us a lot better. So as I said before, we have embedded customer data. Our systems are mission-critical. They're not a nice-to-have system. There's not an easy alternative to maybe work processing like you may have today or e-mail systems. We have 20-plus, probably almost 30 years of accumulated tech logic. And that's hard to come by in our space and not just across ticketing, but across a range of solutions that our operators are using. We have a whole ecosystem. We're not just one sort of a one-trick pony. You can come to us whether you need 1 solution, 2 solutions or 9 solutions. And we can help you out with that in an integrated and coordinated manner, and that's something that absolutely no one else has. And importantly, just our structure of our transaction-based revenue. And we've certainly had the jabs about that over the years about all being transaction-based, but I think it puts us in a really great position, and we are thankful we are in that situation versus having sold our products on a seat license basis, for example, we are well positioned and not under threat of -- from a revenue perspective that a lot of the other companies are going to be facing in a pretty strong way. So as I said, we have a strong position in what is an otherwise noisy market. And from an offense perspective, there's nobody else that has everything we have to offer to operators of these venues. And what we've stepped back and looked at is clearly, we're going to innovate within our products. Passport will get AI. Paradox will get AI. Horizon will get AI. Freedom will get AI. All of our products will get AI, where it benefits the product, where it benefits the user. But importantly, that overall view is really where AI is going to be at its strongest. The ability to take different components, different silos of data and make sense out of that and turn it into insights is invaluable. And it's not just about our systems, it's about all the systems the operators use. That is the opportunity. So I'll talk more about that in a minute, but we sort of have 4 things we've been working on in the past year, and they are accelerants of our growth going forward and at the core of our innovation history. Number one is we've expanded our view on payments. This is something that's been well considered because when you embark upon a journey on payments, it's rather permanent. You're installing hardware with the venue, the terminals you check out with, you're doing lots of internal plumbing. And importantly, you're relying on this partner for service, which is an important part of our customers' business. And so when you're going to connect yourself to a partner, you need to make sure you're connecting to the right partner because you don't want to sort of get -- have issues with your payment process that then sort of backwashes on your overall relationship. And so we spent quite a bit of time, the majority of last year and even part of the year before, evaluating all the different providers that are out there, and we're very happy to say we've secured a partnership with Adyen, and I'll talk more about what that looks like in a moment. Composable commerce, we've mentioned that before. At the core, as I reflect on accesso overall, e-commerce is at the core. It is our absolute powerhouse. And not just for ticketing across everything we do, leveraging that expertise for transaction optimization is absolutely foundational to this business. And we have to always evolve. And so right now, we are well underway with what we call composable commerce, and it's our next evolution of e-commerce and how customers will buy when they go to their computer, when they go to their phone. Alongside that is conversational commerce, which is there will obviously be people going to their computer, will go to our phones for a very long time, but there's a big wave coming, and that is conversational commerce. That is going to ChatGPT. That is going to Meta AI and saying, "Hey, I would like tickets to LEGO land this weekend. What are the options? I'm looking for a 6 flags annual pass. Can you give me my choices and have all that on the chat, never typing a thing on your keyboard or on your phone. And we have really made great progress on this. And in fact, we're ready for our first customer pilot here coming up in the next coming weeks, actually, allowing guests to browse, order and pay everything via conversation. And that is an example of, again, another level of innovation, just like mobile ticketing, just like being a SaaS company, this level of innovation and getting in there early, when you can be an early adopter, you can learn from those smaller sample sizes and perfect your process. So when it becomes larger, you're the leader. And last but not least is our AI evolution from a product perspective. And as we shared today, we have acquired DeXibBit. We identified that as a target. rightfully so, Lee brought this to our attention early on after joining accesso. And after getting to know them and realizing what they've built, it was clearly an opportunity for us to leapfrog to use the term to accelerate our capabilities. And we certainly looked at alternatives and hands down determined that acquiring DexibBid and bringing that into our ecosystem was going to be a game changer for us. So I'll unpack these a bit more as we go through. Payments are at our core. start with payments. We move billions of dollars a year. Passport alone moves something like $4 billion of revenue. That's just Passport. Think about all of our other products in total, we are moving a tremendous amount of money. And what that does is it allows us to get scale pricing. Our individual operators, maybe they sell $20 million a year across their whole resort or $200 million, they can't access the pricing that we can access when we look at the billions of dollars that we process. So what we're doing now is we moved from being a payment gateway, which is what we've had forever, which is where we hand off the transaction to the processor. We're now going into actually being a processor with a partnership with Adyen. And what that does is it allows us to, a, bring much better pricing to operators that can't negotiate anywhere near that level of rate. And it allows us to integrate our system in a more comprehensive way to become less disjointed, if you will, because we can then end-to-end offer the package that is plug-and-play more so than, please go here for your payments, go here for this, go here for that. We can bring you the whole package. And so within that, on the payment gateway, yes, you get a fee for every transaction that goes through. But on the processor side, you get a portion of the margin as well. So in addition to giving the clients a much better rate, access to much better rates, we also are rewarded with that for bringing those clients into the Adyen platform. And so it expands a new revenue line for us in a way that is scalable, not just across ski or theme parks or live entertainment, but across our whole business. And so that is a very scalable opportunity that over the sort of midterm, long term, is going to be a very valuable line item for accesso in terms of margin. And if you think about other operators that are out there in different areas like Shopify or Toast point of sale here in the U.S., they actually make most of their money on the processing side, and they don't make a whole lot from software, if you look at their financials. And so this is an area that we have not really explored until now. And we've made a big move with the partnership with Adyen, which was by far our top choice. Their global footprint is phenomenal. And they're going to give us that end-to-end relationship that we're looking for, for our customers. So our clients will get better rate. It's less complicated. And by the way, it doesn't take much capital for us to do this. So we're off and running. We'll start bringing customers on here mid-2026. Obviously, it will take time to scale, but we'll be moving on this very promptly to make it a core part of our offering. So I talked about composable and conversational. There's more details on this page. If you think about e-commerce and maybe true to my heart, if you think about excessive Passport, e-commerce is -- was the lifeblood, is the lifeblood of that product. And we've taken that learning across our whole product set in increments. And products all have their own e-commerce I guess, you could say module, right? But what we're doing with composable commerce is we're separating that from Passport, and we're making a commerce layer, an e-commerce layer that can work across any of our products. So it's adaptable and scalable across our product set. So taking that transactional revenue and that incredible optimization we bring to our clients for optimizing their revenue and opening that up to work for Paradox, to work for Horizon, to work across our whole product set is a very big move, and it's an effort we've been working on for about 2 years. We completed our first pilot over last summer. And now this year, we'll start the rollout to access of Paradox. It will be the first of our products to adapt composable commerce. And then clearly, we'll work across the portfolio to bring that to life. But if you look at the revenue profile this brings in, if you look at Horizon, for example, Horizon doesn't have a transactional-based e-commerce product. And why would we rebuild something only for Horizon, when we should build something that works across all of our products. And that's what we're doing. So you might imagine Horizon will be next. And then clearly, Passport will get a major upgrade with composable. So it's not just separate. It's also a different architecture. So if you think about e-commerce as a flow, A, B, C, D, then you check out, that's kind of what we have today. But composable is what it says, it's composable. Think about being able to drag and drop and design your own screens. Think about being able to go in as a user and change your colors, change the shape of the squares and rounding the corners and changing the fonts and changing the pictures and the images, that's what's composable. So we end up with a much more adaptable platform. And it's one of the things that our clients often ask for is the ability to customize the flow and the site to work for their branding, but it has all the optimization within that. So they can't mess with that essentially. We've determined which modules work the best, and we make those modules available to them to drag and drop on their screen. So this is a fundamental part of transactional revenue growth for accessory going forward. A sub to that, I guess, you could say, is conversational commerce. And that is, like I said, you just talk to it, right? And it helps you out with your order, helps you out with your choices. And this is where everything is going. And going to a venues owned website will certainly happen for many years to come. But there's going to be a convergence of shopping within things like ChatGPT, where everything we do will be -- we'll go to Claud, we'll go to ChatGPT for everything. And it will shift from being a Google search. Google is already doing that today. It will shift from going to a venue's prime website to just using ChatGPT for everything we use or whatever your platform of choice at the time. So conversational commerce allows us to plug in to those chat-based channels very smart and have a dialogue with our product set, have a dialogue with our customers' information and give the user back exactly what they're looking for in a way that we are managing the messaging. We're giving them those options, and we're still controlling the transaction. And again, something operators can't bring to the table themselves, and we're making sure we are -- our plumbing is there. We're making sure that this is available. And like I said, it will be rolling out in a few weeks of the trial at a very significant theme park. So we're looking forward to that. Stay tuned. So shifting now to the fourth box, which is how we think about AI. So my favorite headline here is data everywhere, inside nowhere. I'm going to say it in my sleep. But that's really what we were looking at. And on the left-hand side, you can see an operator all the things she's thinking about, right? Oh my gosh, I have all this information. Everything is in a different folder, right? It's all in a different data silo, guest surveys, social media, ticket sales, weather, accidents, incidents, you should say, their loyalty program, their point-of-sale data from the restaurants, from their retail stores. What do you do with all this data when it's not connected, and that is the problem. And the opportunity is to help them leverage that. So if you want to know how to optimize your labor, you have your labor scheduling system and you have your food sales, 2 different buckets. How do you leverage those 2 together to help the operators create optimized labor schedules, for example? How do you leverage weather, prebookings, social media feedback, marketing calendar, all those to drive dynamic pricing. Connecting all that is something that a human brain simply cannot do that AI now opens as a new opportunity. And so we are absolutely the best prepared in the market to bring this to our customers and to the end markets that we serve. We can see everything across the guest journey. We're embedded in their core systems. We have the foundation for AI insights. And we obviously have a huge customer base. We know how to execute at scale. And importantly, we know the business really well. That's something that's lacking. When you go to ChatGPT or to Claude or to whatever your choice of AI tooling is, it doesn't understand the attractions sector. It doesn't know what a per cap means. It doesn't know what seasonality means in terms of that context. And that's what we bring to the table, right? And that's what the tooling we need to do because that's different than just loading all the data into a random AI tool and hoping it can give you the proper answer, it needs context. So with Dexibit, we acquired that context. We acquired that intelligence. And what we're looking at is embedding the intelligence at the core. And like I said earlier, not just putting AI into our products, of course, we're going to do that, but thinking about it more broadly in terms of what will really make a difference to the industry, which is what matters, and that's what will drive our business. So on Saturday, Matt may be a little tired still. On Saturday, we completed the acquisition of Dexibit -- and we're bringing that into accesso and into the market as accesso Intelligence, which happens to stand for AI, by the way. And it's an AI analytics, demand forecasting, capacity planning. It's a big data management platform. And what's interesting is it gives you a single view across everything, not just the accesso systems. Clearly, we're important to that equation, but it gives you systems from other vendors. Maybe you're using a different food system, maybe you're using a different scheduling system. You need weather data. You need event data. You need local event data. You need school calendar access. You need all of that. And what it does is it unifies all that into one layer of intelligence. And the -- what Dexibit has done over several years now has accumulated the context, if you will. So the models are trained, the AI models are trained on specific context, like what does seasonality mean? What does an event do? What is an event -- what event in town has an impact on my attendance this coming weekend. When it rains, what happens to my attendance. When the sun is out, what happens to my attendance. All of that off-the-shelf AI absolutely does not bring to the table. So for us, this is clearly a leapfrog move. I did enjoy the frog icon, I have to admit. And we certainly evaluated whether this is a build versus buy -- and we determined that buying this was going to catapult us ahead of the industry and give us something that would take us years to build on our own. So there are already 75 venues using Dexibit. They include things like the Smithsonian. So a very good, strong blue-chip customer base. They have 1,000 prebuilt visualizations or dashboards, if you will, and they're already integrated to 100 systems. That alone would have taken years for us to do, just the integrations. So what it does, it brings all these things together on the left, right, food sales, wait times, whatever it may be the venue has and their different data forward or data silos. First of all, it gives you reporting, okay? Reporting is really important. And we struggle ourselves to bring all of our different applications if someone is using more than one of them into a single view. We get that immediately, just add water and you're going to have dashboards across all the accessory applications that you're using. And that will give you -- will give us a significant advantage in the marketplace and a big advantage for our clients to have a single view across the business. There's also an important part, which is called Voice of the visitor, which is looking out across the Internet at all the things customers are saying about your venue and bringing that all into a consolidated perspective and also providing you insights around things you can do to improve any concerns that visitors might be expressing. So what we do in Phase 2 is we move into predictive operations. So things like demand forecasting, what should I expect for attendance this Saturday? What should I expect for attendance across next year, dynamic pricing, things like staffing, as I mentioned before, as well as capacity planning. That's sort of Phase 2. And in fact, I think Dexibits already pretty far into this. What we'll be doing is looking at bringing that into our product set as capabilities. So imagine accesso intelligence taking all these different variables and creating dynamic pricing and then feeding it back into Passport, feeding it back into Verizon, feeding it back into Paradox. So it becomes a loop of not just putting data out about what happened, but helping you predict the future and operationalize that into something that maximizes revenue. And then Phase 3, that is sort of, okay, Star Trek here, but this is not far away, by the way, which is allowing things to automatically happen, right? Self-healing operations. So when you see something happening, you have the system respond to take care of it versus opening a trouble ticket, for example. So that is the next level. I think where we're going to see accesso out of the [ issue ] is going to be Phase 1. We're going to be largely there probably in a matter of weeks, honestly. Phase 2 will then be a process that will happen over -- starting this year, over the next couple of years and getting better and better every single day. So just the intelligent reporting alone is a significant advantage to the industry and the elements of the predictive operations that will come to market very soon and the ones that are already there are something that no one else is offering. So what you end up is a little bit of a complicated graphic that shows, I think, in one view, accesso in the middle, our applications, whichever ones you're using, wrapped around a payments platform. And then the internal systems, other systems you're using, your CRM system, your financial reporting system, Google Analytics is looking at your website traffic, your hotel management system, which we don't offer today, your visitor survey data and then external data like weather, school calendars, social sentiment, industry data, economic data, all of that can be combined to give you through accesso intelligence, applying sector context, all the data, all the dashboards that are there, being able to interact with a conversational engagement to do this and give you all the things you see across the bottom, forecasting, revenue optimization, dynamic pricing, ops planning. And I think an important part here I want to highlight because I didn't cover it before is that third green box, conversational. So having grown up in the theme park industry, my early days was deep in spreadsheets and a lot of manual data work. And what would happen is everybody comes to you asking you, can you run this query for you? Can you build a spreadsheet for me? Can you give me this report? The operator, the operators don't have the ability or the access to that kind of data or the skills to mine the data. And what Dexibbit accesso Intelligence brings to the table is conversational insight. So anyone with any skill level could ask a question, what was my #1 guest satisfier yesterday? What food items sold the most on Saturday? Which food items didn't sell on Saturday? What should I expect next week because there's a big concert in town? Will it affect my attendance? You can ask those questions and it can take all this information and come back to you with an intelligent answer, insight and predictions. And that's really what unlocks the power here is not that you've got to be a master in database queries, you can be anyone, you can be the CEO, you can be the Head of Marketing, you can be the store manager, and you can use this by simply asking a question and getting back the data you need, whether it's an answer, whether it gets you back a spreadsheet, whether it gives you back a report, that is conversational insight that absolutely does not exist today, and it's across all of these squares on the page, not just one system. This is an absolute game changer for accesso and importantly, for our customers. So Matt, you're going to cover the outlook, I believe, -- or am I going to cover the outlook? I'm going to cover the outlook. So the outlook is coming up, I think the slide is actually out of order. So #1, we're unrivaled in our position, cover all that ad nauseam. We're engineered to evolve. One of the things that we've gotten on the right side, you'll see, we've gotten beat up a little bit in the past about the amount of money we spend on R&D. Well, what that has done is kept us current, kept us flexible, kept us adaptable, and we are ready for AI. And if you scrim on the R&D, you find yourself in a position when something changes, you're not able to respond because you now have to go and spend the next couple of years on significant deficit of technology. Accesso is not in that position. And if I've ever been thankful for our commitment and our continued investment in our products, it's never been stronger than today and the fact that we are literally AI ready. And I can say that our competitors by the large, are not in that same position. This is an absolute strength for us, and it will -- and the ability to layer AI on to what we have immediately is going to have a significant impact on this business going forward. So I think, Matt, you now you've got the outlook part. Matthew Boyle: Yes, I'll cover this, Steve. Thank you. So at the top there, you've seen the 2 black boxes, with the guidance we're giving is in line with the current consensus, so revenue of $146 million approximately and approximately $20 million of cash EBITDA. As a trading update, January and February traded in line with our expectations, particularly on transactional volume, that's pleasing given the choppy end that we've had from June through December at the end of '25. Being mindful though that it is still early in the year. We are a seasonal base business and our peaks are in late May, late June through early September and then again in Halloween at the end of October. So mindful that there's still a lot of the year left to play out. Just really highlighting the Middle East piece in there that's in our numbers. So we expect this year somewhere between GBP 4.5 million and GBP 5 million of milestone-related revenue from that Middle East region. Half of that, so approximately GBP 2.5 million, we've delivered already. It's just pending customer acceptance, which is great. The remaining GBP 2.5 million is to be delivered from April through the year-end. So some level of risk there. We -- so far, it has been business as usual for us as best it can be given the circumstances, but it could change in a moment's notice. We did have a positive signal that Aqua Arabia, a large park there in the Qiddiya attraction opened on the 20th of March despite the conflict. So we are happy, but we are mindful of it. The last piece on this slide is just to highlight really the strength in the balance sheet, which I mentioned on my earlier slides with regard to capital allocation. So we have purchased 20% of shares back over the last 12, 15 months and completed, as Steve says a game changer of an acquisition. And we have predictable steady-state free cash flows, and we expect to continue supporting future shareholder capital returns. Steven Brown: Okay. Last slide, I have to leave it up there. Our new tagline, powering the business of fun. I'm going to close with that, and then I'm going to stop a share, so we can take questions from the group. I know we moved through a lot quickly. We have a lot to unpack. It's also been a very busy week or 2 here between finishing up results, finishing an acquisition of a company based in New Zealand, nonetheless. And so we're obviously very excited about all the things that are to come. We're very excited about -- I'm very excited about Lee, having I guess, you could say handpicked my successor and having him here since the beginning of last year, he's fully embedded in the business and having such a planned transition smoothly with such a qualified person, who was not only intelligent and great at what he does, he's a great person as well. So I'm super excited and to have a running start on the next wave of accesso with all the things that are to come. I think the Dexibit acquisition is just -- is going to really make a huge difference in this business on top of everything we already have that's working great. So I'm super excited. And Matt and I are happy to take your questions. So let's go. Operator: [Operator Instructions] We'll take our first question from Katie Cousins with Shore Capital. Hopefully, you can hear me okay. Katie Cousins: Two, please. On the Dexibit -- struggling with the name of Dexibit have you got any examples of their existing customers, who are already using it and anything tangible you can kind of point to how it's improved trading? That's the first one. Steven Brown: Yes. I mean the [indiscernible] is one that is -- that has a notable customer. I mean, Matt, you probably can blame name a few others on the list you have in front of you. I think it's -- the customers often request that they're not being quoted as a customer just for confidentiality reasons, so we can't provide the whole customer list. But there are a few notable ones that I think are important to highlight. And what we see is a very high retention rate for the customers. They see -- there was even one customer example where they said, oh, maybe we don't need this, and then they quickly came back realizing they didn't need it. The power of what it brings to them in terms of being able to operationalize the amount of savings just in report generation alone aside from the revenue and business optimization is very significant. And I can tell you that on the accesso side, we've been working with Dexibit now for, I guess, a year as a partner while this was happening on an underlying basis. And we're 2 for 2. We showed the product to 2 customers and both bought it. So in the first meeting, by the way, they bought it quickly, they bought it without question, and they're loving -- that's on its way. So I think it speaks for itself. And as I told someone yesterday, it's almost hard to explain it until you see the demo and see how it works because it's really mind-boggling. And the operators are getting a lot of value from it. And I don't have exact numbers on what the improvement to them is. I think some of the capabilities we're going to bring into our product like dynamic pricing, for example, will have a material impact on their top line revenue. Katie Cousins: It's good to hear the 100% success rate so far. Yes. The second question is just on -- in terms of new wins, and it was encouraging to see that actually, I think it was 11 out of 43 new wins took multiple products for you guys. So could you provide a bit more color on what products that they've taken? And is there a bit of a pattern between a combination of products? Steven Brown: We're basically seeing any product plus Freedom. That's kind of what the equation would be. Obviously, a lot of Paradox plus Freedom, and Passport plus Freedom. Freedom is gaining traction as there are more customers using it, our referral base increases and it sort of starts to snowball, but it's generally plus Freedom. Operator: Our next question comes from James Lockyer with Peel Hunt. James Lockyer: Firstly, just on the guidance for the year. I think within the GBP 146 million, you've got some milestone payments from the Middle East within that. And obviously, you have some of that in 2025. Am I right in thinking that on the current guidance, it sort of implies a decline year-over-year? And if that is the case, what's the major driver for that? And if not, how should we see some upside from current guidance from that perspective? Matthew Boyle: I'm not sure where you're getting the decline from, James. But the last year, we did roughly about GBP 3.5 million to GBP 4 million of milestone-related revenue from Saudi Arabia. James Lockyer: I meant the group revenue. Sorry, I meant the group revenue. I think it was 155 last year... Steven Brown: [indiscernible] Customer. Matthew Boyle: Yes, that one customer. I mean we do have the loss of a major queuing customer in the current year. And so transactional revenue would be below where it was in 2025 for 2026. And so that is reflected in that guidance. But the Middle East alone, if you're looking at it, will be slightly up where it was for '26 compared to '25. James Lockyer: And what's the implied underlying organic growth from the core business in the guidance? Matthew Boyle: For transactional revenue, you mean? James Lockyer: Yes. Matthew Boyle: Yes. Well, it's -- so it's reflected in our commercial wins really. So if you look at the commercial outperformance that we had, so we have moved from 30 wins in 2024 to 43 in the current year in 2025, and that will be reflected in the growth rate that we have underlying outside of the major milestones and non-repeatable revenue and ignoring the major customer queuing loss. So there will be growth in there. James Lockyer: Excellent -- and on the AI point, I think you flagged some operational efficiencies, their productivity gains throughout that. And obviously, we're early days with where that technology is coming through. Where do you see the benefits over the next few years in terms of time saved product releases quicker in terms of if you able to quantify that in terms of where you think margin might get to because of the AIs you're implementing? Steven Brown: Yes. So we've had enough time now with the tooling and understanding kind of where we see the most efficiencies the quickest. Clearly, any kind of operational or product area, operational area are seeing the most gains. We are not seeing the gains in engineering, which is not unusual, especially when there's so much context required. The tool doesn't quite understand the context in order to just write an e-commerce application for a theme park, for example. It doesn't have experience with that. And so we're seeing -- not seeing the gains in engineering, which I think is not unusual for a lot of companies. It is helping us move faster in certain areas. And certainly, refactoring code is quicker, things where we need to update something, we're seeing some gains there, but not large gains. The bigger gains are coming in sort of our -- like I said, our operations, product and marketing areas. Think about even just sales proposals, the speed with which and the quality with which we can create sales proposals. Those are the areas that I think are going to make the biggest underlying difference in terms of efficiency, both in being able to operate over time with fewer people, but also importantly, being able to move faster, getting quotes out faster, getting product design faster and handling customer queries either automatically through automated processes or more quickly with AI tooling. So I think we're going to see the biggest benefit in the areas outside of engineering, which is more than half our group. And engineering will be a little bit slower on the uptake, and we'll see those -- there will be a decent amount still, but it's not going to be the same level we're going to see in those other areas. James Lockyer: Okay. Maybe just a final one. I think historically, you've talked about a 20% margin. Do you think as the medium-term, longer-term guidance, do you think that this could see the AI investments, the acquisitions you've made recently, the pricing, the weight because your consumption versus per seat, do you think your -- the margin could be higher than 20% over the mid- to longer term? Steven Brown: Yes. I think where we get there is we need to increase our revenue growth rate. And one of the -- there is sort of 2 sides to that. One is attrition. So making sure we stick our customers right, we stick the landing with our customers for the long term, right? They're not seeing some better things across the street, so to speak. And this progress with AI will differentiate us in a way that competitors can't get to for years. And so I think on any attrition basis, this will really help a lot. Although we don't have much, if we allow the competition to continue growing, our attrition could start to grow. On the new wins, this is something that no one else can bring to the table. And sometimes we find ourselves competing on price maybe or customers sort of past history with an application they're considering. This is something that is going to be a differentiator for us that again is unmatchable. And I think our competitors are going to be showing a feature within their own system. They're not looking at the overall client ecosystem the way we can come into the room, already ready to do with the integrations that are in hand. And the conversational AI is really going to be unprecedented. So I think that will help the revenue growth rate. And if the revenue growth rate picks up 7%, 8%, 9%, which is probably about where this company can be given our scale. And at the same time, the cost base is not growing. It's continuing to shrink even by the amounts that we did this year, you get there pretty quickly. And so it's really about not solving -- we can't cost cut our way to 20%. That is certainly not the goal. And I think a lot of our savings, we will reinvest in things like accelerating AI capabilities even further. But at the same time, continuing to lower that cost base and propelling the growth rate is obviously the combination of higher margin. James Lockyer: I'm sure we'll catch up before you go, but I wish you good luck unless we don't. Steven Brown: Thank you, James. Operator: Our next question comes from Jon Byrne with Berenberg. Jonathan Byrne: Two questions from me, if I can, I take them in turn. So firstly, on Dexibit, I guess from a commercial perspective in terms of monetizing, what should we expect in terms of contribution from accesso intelligence going forward? And do you think about it as a stand-alone kind of product to monetize? Or is it kind of primarily a good foot in the door for cross-sell opportunities and sort of supplementing existing solutions? How should we think about it? Steven Brown: Yes. I think it's strategic for us, #1, around our product set and increasing our win rate, which is more powerful than just selling accesso Intelligence on its own because the value of selling intelligence along with Passport, along with Paradox, along with Freedom, that's a much bigger opportunity than Dexibit would have had on their own. And that really is going to amplify both the value that they their product rates, but also the overall results. And so I expect that the commercial model is still a bit of a discussion around that, and we will obviously be managing that going forward. But there will obviously be customers that are out there that can benefit from the technology that don't necessarily even maybe work in our space or they don't use our -- one of our applications. We see that as a lead opportunity. Let's bring them in. Even if they're using a competitor system, let's enable them with some elements of the product. And that brings them closer to accessory and allows us to talk to them more about our actual solutions and maybe switching over. So we see it as a conversion tool. We see it as a strategy to improve our overall portfolio. But I can say we've not sort of said, oh, is this line item today is going to grow in a trackable manner for its own revenue category. It's going to become more of an overall benefit to the business. Jonathan Byrne: Great. And then just secondly, on outlook, you mentioned seasonality. Can you just remind me or give us a steer in terms of concentration in those summer months, say, June to August, particularly given the growth of the ski product. What should we expect for this year? Steven Brown: Yes. It's -- so the majority of our revenue, Jon, comes from that June through September period. So -- and October, a little bit in December, but we think of it as pivotal really for our year. And we had that last year, right, when there was softer and weaker transactional volumes through the back end of June and early July, we revised guidance accordingly at that point in time. So it reflects the importance of it to our business, and that will continue going forward. I mean ski has seen some level of growth. It was certainly our strongest performer in terms of commercial new wins last year, but it will take some going in some way to offset the size and the impact of the attraction space that we have Operator: Our final question comes from Jasmine Rand with Deutsche Bank. Jasmine Rand: Hope you can hear me. Just chiming in for Tintin today. Jasmine Rand, Deutsche Numis. On the customer base, I appreciate you mentioned can be named. But can you talk at all about any joint customers you may have? And then again, I think you just touched on it slightly, but what do you expect kind of pricing for the solution to be looking ahead? And then secondly, on capital allocation, at this level, how are you thinking looking ahead in terms of share buybacks compared to kind of further bolt-on acquisitions? Steven Brown: So the interesting thing -- sorry, we can echo there. Yes, there we go. So interestingly when Dexibit is Angie and her team's focus have primarily been around cultural attractions, museums, if you will. And so our overlap, that's not one of our bigger markets. Similar operations, similar concept to a theme park, but it's just a different space. We certainly have museums in our portfolio, but it's not a primary sector for us. And so our overlap or sort of bumping into each other have been fairly limited. We obviously had gotten to know them before joining accesso. We got to know them as a group much more closely over the last year, year plus. In terms of customer overlap, I think that's what we're going to build going forward. And we see their customer list is additive as new commercial opportunities for us. Some of them are certainly customers we would like to move over to an accesso platform. And so it's really about taking what they've built, where they've learned the context of a venue operator, primarily in the cultural space and now enabling that across the broader leisure and attraction sector. That's really our goal. It's a bit -- obviously, they have a great customer base, but it's really focused on what the potential is for the product within our ecosystem. In terms of capital, Matt, you hold the money. Matthew Boyle: Yes, I'll just touch on the capital allocation piece. So thanks, Jasmine Rand. I think the key point to highlight there really is the nature and the stable, sticky nature of our cash flows, which I hope has been reflected in the last couple of years when you look at the cash flow that accesso generally see, consistent free cash flow, which we've used accordingly to provide shareholder returns over that same period. There's no reason that, that shouldn't continue. So whilst spending $20 million on a tender and making an acquisition over the weekend, we still hold a strong balance sheet, which we would continue to leverage to provide shareholder returns in whichever form that may take, we'll make the best use of our available options at the time that comes, but there's certainly no reason it shouldn't continue. Steven Brown: I'll add on to that, Matt, they wouldn't let me write in the annual report that our share price is frustrating. And so I'll say it now. They thought it was a little too direct. But it is very frustrating, obviously. If you look at our underlying business, it is strong. It's strong. We've got a very good position related to AI. And we have a really great customer set. And we've sort of been caught in a wave of either disproportionate focus on one client, one product some of the AI pressure, maybe some end market pressure as well, a whole variety of factors. And our view, I think, along with many probably of you is that our share price is tremendously undervalued. Our company valuation is much lower than it should be. And I'm confident that this too shall pass. We just got to keep our head down, continue to build great product, provide great service. And at this share price, obviously, buy back shares to the extent that it is reasonable for us from a balance sheet perspective. Operator: That's the end of our Q&A session. I'll now hand over to Steve Brown, CEO, for closing remarks. Steven Brown: Thank you very much. And it seems like this may be my last investor presentation. So I thank you all for sticking with us and staying so tuned into our business over time. It's clearly an exciting business. And I've been through many waves of change in this business since 2007, which turned into excessive in 2012 and then what it is today. I had 12 employees in the very beginning. There's 605 now. We worked, I think, 3 countries. We're working in 31 countries now. And this business is built on changing and innovating and not just sort of building something and letting it run, but it's always being ready for whatever is next. And I think the move we've made here is our big step into what's next and not just adding features and calling it a strategy, as we say in our report, but thinking about it more comprehensively. And importantly, if we always put the operators first, the clients first in terms of what will help their business, then we will win in the end. And I think that's exactly what Dexibit and accesso Intelligence will do for the business is put the client first, help them run their business much better than they can without it. And in turn, we'll continue to be the trusted partner and the market leader for many, many years to come. So I thank you all very much. And I'm sure Lee will do a fantastic job. I have all the confidence in the world, and he's obviously supported by Matt, who probably can use a good rest of out now. So thank you all very much, and we'll talk to you later. Operator: Thank you for joining today's call. We are no longer live. Have a nice day.
Operator: Good afternoon, and welcome to the CVD Equipment Corporation Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Earnings Conference Call. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded. We will begin with prepared remarks, followed by a question-and-answer session. Presenting on today's call are Emmanuel Lakios, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Richard Catalano, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Our earnings press release and information about today's call replay are available in the Investor Relations section of our website at cvdequipment.com. Before we begin, please note that comments made during this call may include forward-looking statements, including statements regarding our future financial performance, market growth, product demand, business outlook and strategic initiatives. These statements are based on current expectations and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. For a discussion of these risks, please refer to our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission including the Risk Factors section of our annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2025. We undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statements except as required by law. With that, I will now turn the call over to Emmanuel Lakios, President and Chief Executive Officer. Emmanuel Lakios: Thank you, Diego, and good afternoon, everyone. We appreciate you joining us today to review our fourth quarter and full year 2025 financial results and to provide you an update on our business and strategic initiatives. Following our prepared remarks, we will be happy to take your questions. As previously disclosed, in response to continued volatility in order rates and recent decline in bookings within our CVD Equipment division, we have initiated a transformation strategy during the fourth quarter designed to significantly reduce fixed operating costs, create a more agile organization and better position the company to maximize shareholder value. Key elements of this plan included: transitioning the CVD Equipment business from a vertically integrated fabrication model to outsource fabrication for certain components, which we expect will reduce fixed costs and improve scalability; completing a workforce reduction in the CVD Equipment division during the fourth quarter, which was to rightsize the organization, and is expected to reduce annual operating costs by approximately $1.8 million in 2026; revising our sales approach by leveraging distributors and external representatives to complement our internal sales organization; and exploring strategic alternatives for certain businesses and product lines, including potential asset sales or divestitures. As part of our strategic review on March 23, 2026, we announced that we had entered into a definitive agreement under which our SDC business will be sold to Atlas Copco Group. The purchase price is approximately $16.9 million in cash, subject to certain purchase price adjustments. The transaction is expected to close during the second quarter of 2026, subject to customary closing conditions. This transaction will allow us to sharpen our focus on our core CVD Equipment business in Central Islip, New York. It is also expected to strengthen our balance sheet and provide additional financial flexibility as we continue to evaluate opportunities across the CVD Equipment business, its product lines and our facilities. We expect net cash proceeds after transaction expenses and taxes to be approximately $15 million, of which $900,000 will be held in escrow for post-closing adjustments and indemnification obligations under the agreement. We retain ownership of our Saugerties, New York facility, which will be leased to Atlas Copco Group for the initial term of 2 years following the closing. I also want to express our appreciation to our SDC employees for their contribution to the company over the years. Turning to our financial results. Fourth quarter 2025 revenue was $5 million, down 33% from prior year period and down 33% sequentially from the third quarter. For our full year 2025, revenue was $25.8 million, a decrease of 4.1% from fiscal year 2024. Orders in the fourth quarter totaled $3.5 million, driven primarily by the demand in our SDC segment for gas delivery equipment and the receipt of two orders from Stony Brook University for two PVT150 units. For the full year, orders totaled $13 million compared to $28 million in 2024, primarily driven by demand in our SDC business for gas delivery equipment and order for spare parts and service for our CVD Equipment division. At December 31, 2025, backlog was $6.6 million compared with $8 million at the end of September 30, 2025, and $19.4 million at the end of December 31, 2024. Our bookings continued to be pressured by several factors, including softer demand for our products in our CVD Equipment division, tariff-related uncertainties, reduced U.S. government spending for universities and a slower pace of adoption of our solutions in certain end markets. We continue to market -- to monitor our customer demand, the general uncertainty of the geopolitical environment and potential tariff impacts as we are -- and we are planning accordingly. Even against this backdrop, we remain focused on delivering solutions across our key targeted markets of aerospace, defense, industrial applications, including silicon carbide on graphite and silicon carbide use in high-power electronics and other emerging applications. With that, I will turn the call over to our CFO, Richard Catalano, to review the financial results in more detail. Richard Catalano: Thank you, Manny, and good afternoon, everyone. Fourth quarter 2025 revenues were $5 million. This compares to $7.4 million in the fourth quarter of 2024. This year-over-year decline was primarily driven by lower CVD systems revenue. Revenue in our CVD Equipment segment was concentrated among two key customers, which together represented approximately 53% of total fourth quarter revenue. Our SDC segment reported revenue of $2.2 million in the quarter compared to $1.9 million in the fourth quarter of fiscal '24 and $1.7 million in the third quarter of 2025. Consolidated gross profit for the quarter was $1.1 million, resulting in a gross margin of 22.2%. This compares with a gross profit of $2 million and a gross margin of 26.4% in the prior year quarter. The decrease was primarily due to lower CVD revenue, which resulted in higher unabsorbed overhead as well as a less favorable contract mix. Our operating loss for the fourth quarter of 2025 was $1.3 million compared to operating income of $34,000 in the fourth quarter of 2024. Included in the fourth quarter 2025 results was a noncash impairment charge of $163,000. This was related to certain equipment and capitalized software associated with our transition to outsourced fabrication of certain components in our CVD business. After interest income, the net loss for the quarter was $1.3 million or $0.18 per diluted share compared with net income of $132,000 or $0.02 per diluted share in the prior year quarter. For the full fiscal year, revenue was $25.8 million. This compares to $26.9 million in fiscal 2024. The year-over-year decline was primarily due to lower SDC revenue and lower MesoScribe revenue as we ceased that business. MesoScribe ceased operations in 2024. Revenue in our CVD Equipment segment was again concentrated among two key customers, which together represent 41% of total revenue for the year. Our SDC segment reported full year revenue of $7.6 million as compared to $7.8 million in fiscal 2024. Consolidated gross profit in fiscal '25 was $7.3 million or 28.3% of revenue compared to $6.1 million or 22.5% of revenue in fiscal '24. The increase in gross profit was primarily due to improved gross margins in our CVD Equipment segment. This was primarily due to a prior year charge of $1.6 million that we took last year to write down certain inventory to net realizable value. We did not incur a similar charge in fiscal '25. This improvement, not having the charge was partially offset by lower gross profit in the current year in our SDC and MesoScribe segments due principally to lower revenues. Operating loss for fiscal '25 was $1.9 million. This compares to an operating loss of $2.4 million in fiscal '24. Interest income, net loss for the year was $1.6 million or $0.23 per diluted share compared to a net loss of $1.9 million or $0.28 per diluted share in fiscal '24. At December 31, '25, we had cash and cash equivalents of $8.7 million. This compares to $12.6 million at December 31, '24. Net cash used in operating activities during fiscal '25 was $3.7 million. This was largely driven by changes in working capital and contract timing as far as milestone billings. Working capital improved to $14.1 million at year-end '25. This compares to $13.8 million at the end of '24. This was due in part to the classification of approximately $0.5 million of fixed assets that we had held for sale and for which we sold in the early part of 2026. Looking ahead, our return to consistent profitability will depend on improved equipment order flow, disciplined cost management, successful execution of our transformation plan and continued control of capital expenditures. While our quarterly results might continue to fluctuate based on order timing, we believe our current cash position and projected cash flows will be sufficient to support our working capital and capital expenditure requirements for at least the next 12 months. In addition, upon the closing of the transaction to sell SDC, we expect net cash proceeds, excluding the $900,000 escrow amount to approximate $14 million and we currently intend to initially invest those proceeds in U.S. treasury securities. With that, I'll now turn it back to Manny. Emmanuel Lakios: Thank you, Rich. Our priorities are clear: serving our customers, supporting our employees and creating value for our shareholders and returning the business to sustained profitability. Operator, we are now ready to open the line for questions. Operator: [Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from Brett Reiss with Janney Montgomery Scott. Brett Reiss: Can you hear me? Emmanuel Lakios: We can hear you, Brett. Good to hear you again. Brett Reiss: Great. Great. Great. You're sitting on $23 million, $24 million in cash. Could you describe to us the skill sets of your existing engineers? And what I'm trying to get at is what are -- their skill sets would be complementary and enhance what type of acquisition you might be contemplating with the $23 million? Emmanuel Lakios: Yes. Well -- so Brett, we -- the number, I'll let Rich speak to the actual number on the cash -- any cash on hand plus what will net from the transaction. But as far as the talent pool, you asked, there are a couple of questions in your one question. The first is talent pool is consistent with what the talent pool was essentially from a capabilities perspective a year ago. We have a full complement of resources in the engineering and technology group for CVD equipment or CVI equipment, basically the main product line from Central Islip. So we retain that skill set. As far as the subsequent question, which is what are we going to do with cash and the proceeds, the Board is looking at opportunities and strategic alternatives for increasing shareholder value, and we'll continue to do that. At this point in time, we do not have something that is material or a [ path ] yet. This was a fair transaction for all parties, the SDC transaction. So we took advantage of that. So time will tell, but we don't have something to highlight today. Brett Reiss: Yes. Fair enough. Can you give us some sense, though, of what the pipeline of opportunities you're looking at? Are you looking at 3, 4, 5 different things? And how long have you been kicking the tires on some of these opportunities? Emmanuel Lakios: Well, we -- as a Board, we've been looking at strategic alternatives for quite several quarters, as you can imagine. You don't do a transaction in a quarter or two. And so -- but again, at this point in time, I'd be speaking out of turn -- I think in the next few quarters, we'll be able to identify and share with you certain -- some additional information. But right now, again, Brett, I don't have anything to speak of. Brett Reiss: Okay. And are you guardedly optimistic, though, you'll be able to find something that will have a less lumpy or more recurring revenue stream, perhaps with service revenue, which has always been what the company would like to have had, but just the nature of the type of businesses we're in, it's always been a kind of lumpy revenue cadence. Emmanuel Lakios: Well, the equipment business, Brett, is lumpy in itself, especially when you're a couple of hundred million dollars of revenue as we are, of course. The -- I think you've outlined nicely the objective for any strategic activity, which we want to have is have a smooth non-lumpy revenue stream, good customer value in spares and service. Those are all the attributes of entities we would like to entertain. But again, I can't speak to that at this point. Brett Reiss: Okay. I'll drop back. I don't know if there are any other people... Emmanuel Lakios: Thank you, again, Brett. Good hearing your voice. Operator: [Operator Instructions] And your next question comes from Frank Giordano, Private Investor. Unknown Shareholder: I just wanted to ask a question, of course, the money. It's something continuing on with Brett before. Regarding that, have you ever considered paying a special dividend in situations like this? Or it's something that the company doesn't pay? Emmanuel Lakios: I do not believe that in the history of the company, a special dividend was paid, at least in the period of time that I've been with the company, which is 9 years that has not been the case. But I could be corrected, but I think I'm accurate. Clearly, we believe shareholder value is based on growing the business, and utilization of our funds in a respectful manner, and we are conservative. So at this point in time, that is not actively on the table. Unknown Shareholder: Okay. And something else regarding the business itself. Are you concentrating a little bit with the military right now, let's say, in the drone companies or anything dealing with the military due to the situation that we are in? Emmanuel Lakios: Yes. Frank, thank you. Yes, we do serve aerospace and defense. That's one of our key markets. About 78% of our revenue over the last several years of our orders has come from military and defense, whether it's gas turbine engines, the use of CMCs or other ceramics, which we create -- we build the equipment that creates the material, and that goes into both commercial and also military gas turbine engines. As well as last year, we received an order, we shipped it this year. Actually, we shipped it in 2025 was for a research system that will be used for especially the ceramic materials for hypersonics. So we are in the next generation, I would say, materials. So -- and it will continue -- I foresee that it will continue to be our revenue and previously that orders will be driven by aerospace, defense for the foreseeable future. That's where these advanced materials are primarily utilized. Unknown Shareholder: Okay. I just wanted to tell you just my opinion here. You remind me of a company based out of Milan, it's called SAES Getters, was founded during Mussolini's time, the dictator Mussolini. And it survived through World War II. And then it became a company was taken over, I believe, a couple of years ago, at a much higher price than what it was in 2000. It was the only Italian company trading on the NASDAQ back in 2000, and it was around your price around $3 or $4 a share. And they used to pay a dividend every 3 months. I couldn't believe it, but it wasn't with the vapor, the decision, they do a lot of stuff, maybe different from your kind of company. But again, it was similar. It was similar. If you could research that and give you some ideas, interesting company out of Milan. Emmanuel Lakios: Yes. Drop us a line on the -- I didn't catch the name entirely, but drop us a line on that... Unknown Shareholder: All right. I repeat it again. SAES Getters. And there was a takeover, but the name is still there. There's a website. Of course, you could research it. But again, I don't know if they do have a division here still in the United States, out of Denver or something like that. But I remember that 20 years ago, when I used to deal with them. Emmanuel Lakios: We'll do. Thank you, sir. Appreciate it. Operator: And there appears to be no additional questions at this time. So I'll hand the floor back to Emmanuel Lakios for closing remarks. Thank you. Emmanuel Lakios: Thank you, Diego, and thanks to everyone for joining us today. We appreciate your continued interest and support of CVD Equipment Corporation. If you have any additional questions, as I said earlier, please reach out to myself or Rich directly. And this concludes our today's conference call. Operator: Thank you. And all parties may now disconnect. Have a good day.
Operator: Hello, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Progress Software Corp. First Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to hand the call over to Michael Micciche, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. You may begin. Michael Micciche: Okay. Thank you, Twanda. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining us for Progress Software's First Fiscal Quarter 2026 Financial Results Conference Call. Joining me on the call are Yogesh Gupta, President and CEO; and Anthony Folger, our Chief Financial Officer. Before we get started, please consider our safe harbor statement as follows. During this call, we will discuss our outlook for future financial and operating performance, corporate strategies, product plans, cost initiatives and other information that might be considered forward-looking. Such forward-looking information represents Progress Software's outlook and guidance only as of today and is subject to risks and uncertainties, and our actual results may vary materially. For a description of the factors that may affect our future results and operations, please refer to the risk factors in our SEC filings, particularly the Risk Factors section of our most recent Form 10-Q and the latest 10-Q being filed in conjunction with this announcement. Progress assumes no obligation to update forward-looking statements included in this call. Additionally, please note that all the financial figures referenced on this call are non-GAAP measures unless otherwise indicated. You can find a reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP figures in our earnings press release, which was issued after the market closed today. This document contains additional information related to our financial results for the first quarter of fiscal '26, and I recommend that you reference it for specific details. We've also provided a slide presentation that contains supplemental data for our first quarter and provides additional highlights and financial metrics. Both the earnings release and the supplemental presentation are available on the Investor Relations section of our website at investors.progress.com. Today's call is being recorded in its entirety and will be available for replay on the Investor Relations section of our website shortly after we finish. Yogesh, let me turn it over to you. Yogesh Gupta: Thanks, Mike. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us. We're very pleased to share our first quarter results with you today, so let's get right to it. We had another very good quarter. Revenue was $248 million, up 4% from last year's Q1. ARR grew 2% in constant currency over the same period and NRR remained strong at 99%. EPS for the quarter was $1.60, up 22% year-over-year as operating margins finished above 41%. We saw record cash flows as a result of strong focus on collections. Adjusted free cash flow was $99 million and unlevered free cash flow was $111 million. The balance sheet remains in great shape as we continue to aggressively pay down debt while also repurchasing shares. This strong performance is driven by AI and other innovations across our portfolio that are resonating with our customers. Now more than ever, our products remain mission-critical, our customers remain loyal, and our team continues to execute at a high level. These are also the reasons why we remain positive about our outlook. As always, the foundation underpinning our success is our total growth strategy. We continue to run the business with discipline as we innovate across the product portfolio and provide increasing value to our shareholders -- to our customers. That formula has worked for us through multiple technology shifts and industry transformations, and it continues to work today. On M&A, our corporate development team is betting deals aggressively and we further fine-tuned ShareFile operations, which continues to perform very well as one of our best acquisitions. Lastly, customer success remains our key focus. Now let me address the 3 topics that we know are top of mind. First, our business remains strong. We see solid retention and good performance across our products. Our product portfolio is broad and continues to power our customers' businesses, resulting in solid year-over-year growth and -- both in ARR and in revenue. As we previously said, our goal for NRR is 100%, and over the past few years, our NRR has consistently ranged between 99% and 101%. This quarter, NRR was 99% and ARR growth was solid, driven by the strength in our new customer acquisition as well as existing customer expansions, both of which were positively influenced by our AI investments and innovation. And this leads to the second topic, AI. We continue to see AI as an exciting opportunity for our business. We've discussed for several quarters how we're using AI internally to be better, more efficient operators, which we can demonstrate through improved productivity in every department. Our savings from these efforts are enabling us to continue to invest in our AI-related product efforts while delivering exceptional operating margins. Speaking of our product efforts, AI has enabled us to accelerate our innovation cycles as well as helped us transform our product capabilities to be more relevant for the future. We have been building AI into our products, and that is delivering meaningful business value to our customers today. It is our belief that trusted software companies like ourselves with excellent customer relationships, who leverage AI effectively will be the winners of this AI opportunity. Our customers are eager to understand how they can benefit from AI, while ensuring that their businesses remain secure and trustworthy. They continue to look to us to deliver AI capabilities that increase their competitiveness and improve their efficiency, so that they can thrive in this new world. One such example is a global beverage company that wanted to dramatically improve the way they serve their more than 20,000 employees worldwide. By leveraging our Progress agentic RAG product, they streamlined their HR operations, resulting in improved employee satisfaction at a significantly lower cost. Similarly, the tax authority and finance ministry of an overseas government is using the same product. So that all employees and citizens can get trusted verifiable answers from a host of data across that organization. And a state government in the U.S. is using the Progress data platform to harmonize and synthesize large volumes of data from different sources to identify and eliminate waste, fraud and abuse. They first became a Progress customer less than 18 months ago, and they continue to identify new use cases for the data platform, targeting efficiencies and elimination of fraud in the range of tens of millions of dollars annually. Today, they are a 7-figure ARR customer of ours. Progress data platform and Progress agentic RAG transform business data, unstructured files, archives, websites, knowledge bases and multimedia into an information system that instantly and securely delivers stack-based, trusted and verifiable answers. Our AI-powered infrastructure management products are also being used to manage and secure modern tech infrastructure. For example, a leading financial payment company that annually processes over $100 billion of transactions is using Progress WhatsUp Gold, Loadmaster and Flowmon to improve the availability and security of their infrastructure and to reduce the time to detect, analyze and prevent security threats. And ShareFile customers are doing work in minutes that used to take hours with its AI document summarization and Q&A capabilities. Additionally, ShareFile AI-powered security capabilities proactively detect sensitive information and recommend actions to significantly reduce security risk. Our customers rely on Progress to support their journeys because they trust us to focus on practical business outcomes. Across our product, AI is contributing to measurable customer value from workflow automation and productivity gains to monetization. Every product at Progress is now an active participant in our customers' AI efforts, and we have embedded AI into our products with attention to governance, observability, cost and LLM flexibility. The third topic, capital allocation and M&A. It's worth noting that in Q1, we paid down $60 million in debt and repurchased $20 million of stock. Our balance sheet remains in good shape, and our cash generation gives us significant flexibility. Our capital allocation priorities remain very clear. We will continue to, number one, invest in our business and innovate. Number two, aggressively reduce debt and be opportunistic on buybacks. And number three, maintain our commitment to generate excess returns through disciplined M&A, followed by rapid synergistic integrations. We will use the same M&A lens. We have always used to acquire good companies with strong infrastructure technology products, loyal customers, high recurring revenue and customer retention and a compatible culture. It's also worth expanding on how ShareFile continues to create additional value. While it was our largest and most complex acquisition and integration to date, ShareFile has strengthened and scaled our recurring revenue mix, expanded our SaaS capabilities and contributed meaningfully to the bottom line and cash flow. Just as important, it has enhanced our ability to evaluate and integrate future SaaS opportunities while keeping the same discipline we've always had around returns and fit. I'm also excited to share that Progress recently opened a new innovation hub in Bangalore. This consolidates the office space for our former Progress and ShareFile offices and also demonstrates our long-term commitment to the region, as we continue to scale our engineering, product development, sales, and customer success teams. Our people in India are critical to our global growth and our innovation strategy, and this logical next step will enable us to efficiently deliver greater value to our customers worldwide. Finally, we continue to be positive as we look ahead, and Anthony will give you all the details in a minute. From my perspective, what we're seeing in our own business supports our confidence for the rest of this year. We're also maintaining a close watch on the macro environment and geopolitical events. So to summarize, the business is performing well. The model remains durable. AI is making our products and operations stronger. ShareFile is delivering, and our top line, margins and cash flow reflect solid execution across the company. As always, I want to thank our employees around the world for their hard work and commitment, and I want to thank our customers and partners for their continued trust. With that, I'll turn it over to Anthony. Anthony Folger: All right. Thanks, Yogesh, and good afternoon, everyone. As you heard Yogesh's remarks, we're very pleased with our Q1 results, and we're excited to share a strong start to our fiscal year. So let's get right into the numbers, starting with ARR, which, as we've discussed, provides the best view into our top line performance. We closed Q1 with ARR of approximately $863 million, representing 2% pro forma year-over-year growth. For clarity, our pro forma results include ARR from acquired businesses in all periods presented. This growth in ARR reflects a broad-based contribution from across our portfolio, including OpenEdge, ShareFile, Loadmaster, WhatsUp Gold, MOVEit and our DevTools products. Consistent with prior quarters, our net retention rate remains strong, coming in at 99%, underscoring the resilience of our customer base and the mission-critical nature of our products. We did see some isolated churn in the quarter, which we expect to work through quickly, and we still delivered solid growth, thanks to strength in new customer wins and expansion in the installed base. Two areas positively influenced by our investments in AI and innovation. As a reminder, we calculate ARR in constant currency with all periods presented at current year budgeted exchange rates. Consistent with past practice, we've updated ARR using 2026 budgeted exchange rates. And as a result, ARR reported in prior periods has changed. The change is not material and doesn't alter the trend in ARR growth, although the previously reported ARR and NRR numbers changed slightly. The details of this update are included in the supplemental financial presentation filed with our press release. In addition to solid ARR growth, Q1 revenue of $248 million came in ahead of our expectations and reflects 4% growth on a year-over-year basis, led by strong performance in OpenEdge. As we've mentioned on previous earnings calls, the renewal timing of subscription contracts, especially multiyear subscriptions can have a meaningful impact on our revenue in any given quarter. And for this reason, we continue to focus on ARR as the best barometer of top line performance. Turning to expenses. Our total costs and operating expenses were approximately $146 million which was favorable to our internal forecast and largely flat compared to the year ago quarter as we continue to demonstrate disciplined cost management across the business. Operating income of $102 million was also better than our internal forecast, resulting in an operating margin of 41%, solid year-over-year margin expansion. Earnings per share of $1.60 for the quarter came in better than our internal expectations, the result of solid execution on the top line, coupled with strong cost management. Turning now to a few balance sheet and cash flow metrics. We ended the quarter with cash and cash equivalents of $113 million and total debt of $1.35 billion for a net debt position of approximately $1.24 billion. As a reminder, our total debt includes our revolving credit facility with $540 million drawn a $360 million convertible note maturing this April and a $450 million convertible note maturing in 2030. At the end of this quarter, our net leverage ratio was 3.1x and down meaningfully from when we acquired ShareFile a little over a year ago. DSO for the quarter was 52 days, a significant improvement from 73 days reported in Q4. Deferred revenue was approximately $425 million at the end of the first quarter, up roughly $25 million year-over-year. Adjusted free cash flow was $99 million for the quarter, a significant increase compared to the $73 million in the prior year quarter. The improvement is primarily the result of increased collections. During the quarter, we paid down $60 million against our revolving line of credit and repurchased $20 million of Progress stock. We ended the quarter with $540 million drawn on our revolving line of credit and $182 million remaining under our current share repurchase authorization. Okay. Now I'd like to turn to our outlook for Q2 and the full year 2026. Before I get into the numbers, I'll highlight a few items. First, we continue to focus on ARR as a key metric and expect ARR growth to be generally in line with revenue growth for the full year. Second, we plan to roll our 2026 convertible notes into our revolving credit facility when they mature in April. At the end of Q1, we had approximately $960 million of unused revolver capacity, positioning us well to absorb the convert maturity and continue executing our strategy. Our updated EPS outlook reflects higher interest expense associated with the expected refinancing of the 2026 converts. Finally, on capital allocation. We remain focused on deploying capital where we see the strongest returns. At current levels, that means repaying debt and remaining disciplined in pursuit of accretive acquisitions against a high return threshold. It also includes opportunistic share repurchases. We continue to forecast debt repayment of $250 million for the full year, bringing our net leverage ratio to approximately 2.7x by year-end. With that, for the second quarter of 2026, we expect revenue between $240 million and $246 million and earnings per share of between $1.47 and $1.53. For the full year 2026, we expect revenue of between $988 million and $1 billion, approximately 1% to 2% growth over 2025. And an operating margin for the year of approximately 39%, adjusted free cash flow of between $263 million and $275 million, and unlevered free cash flow of between $315 million and $326 million; and finally, earnings per share between $5.91 and $6.03. Our guidance for the full year EPS assumes a tax rate of 20%, the repurchase of approximately $30 million in Progress shares, total debt repayment of $250 million and approximately 43 million weighted shares outstanding. In closing, we are very pleased to deliver a strong Q1 to start fiscal '26. Our diversified product portfolio continues to demonstrate resilience. Our cost discipline remains strong, and we continue to focus our capital allocation strategy on generating the highest returns through a combination of aggressive debt repayment and opportunistic share repurchases. In short, we believe we're very well positioned to execute our total growth strategy throughout 2026 and beyond. With that, I'd like to open the call for Q&A. Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Ittai Kidron with Oppenheimer & Company. Ittai Kidron: Numbers. I have a couple of questions. Yogesh, maybe starting with you on the M&A front, I mean 1 would think that in this current environment, it'll be even easier for you to buy companies. I'm kind of wondering -- I know you've always been very disciplined, of course, on the metrics that you're looking for, but why is it still taking you this long to find the next one. Yogesh Gupta: So Ittai, 2-part answer to that question. One is that, as Anthony just mentioned, right, there is a clearly a higher bar today given where our own company stock is and our valuation is compared to what it historically was, right? So we are trading now at an EBITDA multiple that we would need to pay less to generate additional incremental value for our shareholders. So I think that creates a constraint on what we can pay. So that's part A. And I'm not saying that, that's why we haven't bought companies, but that's an important consideration in terms of the filter we can apply to the companies we can look at. The second one is we want to make sure that we find the right assets. And we are truly very active at this point looking at those. But again, as I said, that combination creates a challenge. And the flip side is that even though the public markets are where they are, the private markets Ittai, are still, let's just say, disconnected from reality, if what the public markets are is the reality, right? So at least they're disconnected from the public markets on the valuation side. So I think those two things are really it. We actually see tremendous activity in the market. We are seeing all kinds of companies come around. And obviously, everybody on this call will be the first to know when we do one. Ittai Kidron: Got it. And then Anthony, for you, can you talk about your SaaS revenue. It's kind of -- it's actually down quite substantially on a quarter-over-quarter basis. You guys talked about ShareFile actually doing well for you. But you did mention on the call some elevated churn, isolated churn, I think you called it. So we'd love to get a little bit more color on what isolated churn means and why is the SaaS revenue declining quarter-over-quarter. Anthony Folger: Yes, sure, Ittai. And maybe I'll take the isolated churn comment first because I do think they're a little bit different in terms of the isolated churn and the SaaS revenue. But in terms of isolated churn, yes, we had a couple of, I'd say, customer-specific events that weren't really related to product value or competitive dynamics or really a broader trend in the business. And to give you an example, we had a 7-figure government contract in Eastern Europe for data retention services and a European court ruled, the government had to cease retaining the data. And so as a result, contract churned out, right? So not because of any dissatisfaction with our product or competitive loss, but the underlying use case effectively gets eliminated by a court rule. And so occasionally, we see issues like that. We've seen them in the past. We've talked about it. M&A sometimes can be something that may cause a little bit of churn in our business. So like in times past, not material overall and really specific to a particular situation. And I think something will probably work through pretty quickly. And despite that, having put up 2% ARR growth for the quarter was a pretty good testament to new customer acquisition and some of the expansion that we got out of the base. So that was the -- what I was referring to in terms of the any sort of isolated churn. In terms of the SaaS dynamics on revenue, if you'll recall, back in Q4, we were asked about a big sequential increase in our SaaS revenue. And I think I said at the time that it was a little bit of an upside surprise. And we expected things to normalize in 2026 and sort of come back in line with the maybe closer to the annual number for 2025. So the Q4 number wasn't something we expected to sustain if you look at it sequentially. On a year-over-year basis, obviously, the SaaS revenue number is still growing. And the reason for it, what's underlying it is just a lot of the cleanup that we have been doing on the ShareFile business, right? We mentioned, I think, on the Q2 call last year that CSG was doing -- still doing the billings for us up until April of 2025. And then we have to stand up a billing system internally. And it probably took us until the back half of last year to get our arms around that completely. And so there's a lot of data that goes on. Some of it in Q4, some of it in Q1, and there'll be a little bit of it that continues throughout 2026. Again, not material in total, but it may bump numbers around a little bit from time to time. And I guess, from the other side of it is as we get our arms around the data and as we sort of get more and more control around the ShareFile business, the positive aspects that we saw, especially this quarter were enhanced collections, right? And the free cash flow of almost $100 million for the quarter. I think the significant improvement we saw was largely the result of improved collections in ShareFile. So on the one hand, there's a lot of data to clean up. But as we get that data cleaned and as we get our arms around the systems, we certainly make up for lost time on the collections front, which was nice. Operator: Our next question comes from the line of John DiFucci with Guggenheim Securities. John DiFucci: My first question is for Yogesh. So Yogesh, it was interesting that you mentioned Chef's doing really well and one of your best acquisitions performance-wise. As you know, the developer seat count, I'm glad you said that because there's a lot of concern out there with the developer seat count, and it's -- there's a huge debate out there. I guess you're doing well here, but are you seeing -- take Chef out of it. I mean -- when you talk to your customers, when you see what they're doing, are you seeing any change in developer numbers at your customer base? And whether that could be like they're not hiring as much as they used to be or they're actually declining or they're not declining. Whatever you're seeing? And then secondly, why is it regardless of what that answer is, why is it that Chef's doing so well? Yogesh Gupta: So I think, by the way, just I think -- I don't know whether it was the audio or whether it would mean or which end but John, the product I mentioned that's doing really well with ShareFile, not Chef. A misunderstanding. But anyway, let me talk about the developer scenario, though, because our developer products are doing well, right? And so the reason I think -- so there are two parts. So I think first, talking about our customers, what we are seeing, I believe that there is a change in trend, but I wouldn't say that the absolute developer numbers overall appear to be dropping. The absolute numbers have dropped in what I would call a small number of customers. But by and large, I think the trend is less growth than historic. And so I think that the developer seats and seat-based developer businesses which primarily is DevTools for us, which is a relatively small business. It's about -- it's a single digit -- mid-single-digit percentage business for us, right? That business is where if we didn't do the right things, we would see challenges. So what we have done is we've actually done significant AI investments there to make our developer tools, which are primarily libraries for developing great UI and so on, be more relevant in the agentic age, help with developers who are building agentic apps and provide them with the right tooling for that. So we are effectively doing a significant amount of change in that, what I call, the value proposition for the developer. And so we feel good about how that business continues to perform. But it is a business that has the greatest potential risk, which is why it has also had the greatest acceleration on our part in terms of the AI work that we have done with it. And so we're seeing good business there, and we continue to see good business there. I think that the products like Chef continue to do well because infrastructure needs to be managed, infrastructure needs to be configured, infrastructure needs to be set up so that things run well. And so that product is a workhorse for many large enterprises, including the largest credit -- pretty much every credit card company pretty much many of the Silicon Valley tech companies, et cetera. I mean, literally, 2 of the MAX 7 have been customers forever. So it is a very, very strong and solid product. And we continue to see basically the need for that product, and we win some new customers as well, which -- but I think the ShareFile product, on the other hand, is doing well from a customer perspective as well because of the AI efforts there. So I'm sorry about the confusion about my voice. I'm sorry about that. John DiFucci: No. Yogesh, it wasn't you. I'm sure it's me. I can't hear that well sometimes. But thank you for answering the second question, which was, I think, more important anyway. And I guess just a follow-up for Anthony. I want to follow up to Ittai's question on the SaaS business because it does sound like ShareFile is doing really well. And it's a big acquisition, and it's your first big SaaS acquisition, Big SaaS acquisition. But the SaaS revenue didn't just decline sequentially. It declined to less than it was the last 3 quarters. And so that like -- I mean it's not like just the fourth quarter was stronger. It's like the last 3 quarters were stronger. So can you help us a little bit because something odd happened. And it sounds like the business is doing really well. You guys have said it several times, even if I heard it wrong. But what is it that what happened this quarter, like it wouldn't have been just like recognition. Sometimes I can imagine you don't get the renewal and you're not recognizing it and then you recognize it like -- but it's not just the fourth quarter that was stronger than this quarter. Sorry. Anthony Folger: Yes. I got it, John. And yes, I think, the range of SaaS revenue for the business overall has been -- if I were to normalize for the cleanup issues that I sort of referred to, it's between $72 million and $73 million, going back to, I don't know, Q1 of last year. So that's if I sort of normalize each of these quarters. And all that's happening is we talked about it a little bit last year that taking over the billing system from CSG was a pretty significant milestone in terms of integration. And in the back half of the year, as we started to get our arms around the data, there was a lot of cleanup that needed to be done. In some cases, we had customers that haven't been billed and needed to get invoiced, they required some catch-up invoicing and there were some that needed to be written out of ARR or reserved against revenue for whatever reason. And there was just a lot of data that we really didn't have access to pre-acquisition and even with CSG doing a lot of the billings under the TSA. In the back half of last year as we started to clean that up. Again, not material overall. But if it's a few million dollars here and there as we go quarter-to-quarter, it may move that number around a little bit. And that's really all it was. I mean, otherwise, you're right. The ShareFile business, if I were to sort of normalize these things out, like I said, $72 million to $73 million for total SaaS revenue on a quarterly basis is where it's been. John DiFucci: Okay. And that's helpful. But should -- is it cleaned up now, Anthony, should we assume that this should behave like a listen, we didn't expect a lot of growth out of it, but just even if it's solid or steady or will -- or could we potentially see some declines going forward too? Anthony Folger: No, I think it is largely cleaned up in any of these cleanup issues that we need to do will get smaller and smaller as we go forward. So I don't expect significant issues with it. I mean, as Yogesh said, the business fundamentally from an operational perspective has been incredibly solid. Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Lucky Schreiner with D.A. Davidson. Lucky Schreiner: Great. Maybe and apologies to follow up again on the line of questioning here. But on that isolated churn event. If I remember last quarter, I believe you guys talked to not seeing an impact of multiyear contracts for this year. And so it sounds like maybe visibility there changed. Is that related to the isolated churn event? Or is that something different? Yogesh Gupta: Lucky, not really. When the EU court puts out a statement saying, "Thou shall stop immediately." This was an Eastern European government. They basically instantly told that they were going to stop paying. And so this was actually -- the customers were local telephone customers, local -- and this was call records of phone calls that people make. And when that became -- that was deemed illegal, the country immediately, government immediately said to all those call record companies and all the telephone companies saying, "Hey, can't retain this anymore, delete it all, and we will not pay you anymore starting right now." So it was what I would call a surprise churn, right? It was one of those things where they just happened to say, sorry, we can't pay you anymore because we've got -- we're not getting paid anymore. So it's a weird thing, right? I mean we could go and tell them, hey, you have a contract, it doesn't expire for a little bit. But at the same time, we really -- when governments do those kind of things, I think it's tough to get folks to comply. So we wanted to basically take the churn, and we'll take them the churn. Lucky Schreiner: Got you. So yes, it sounds like visibility hasn't changed then. Yogesh Gupta: Maybe not at all. This was unusual. This was truly unusual. It was -- the decision came out, the government acted and the service providers had to act. I mean it was within a matter of 2 weeks and completely from left field. Lucky Schreiner: Got you. That's helpful. Maybe then on NRR. I know you guys are within your target framework. But what's going to take to get that above the 100% target? Is that a function of just working through the recent churn event? And you mentioned maintaining a close watch on the macro. Is that at all playing a factor here? Yogesh Gupta: So I don't feel that today macro is playing a factor for our business. I can't speak for the rest of the world. But for Progress, I believe, this is purely because of the isolated churn that we saw. And as you know, Lucky, because our NRR is a trailing 4-quarter number, it moves rather slowly and so it will take us a little bit to get us back. Our target continues to be being at or above 100%. I mean our goal says 100% NRR is our goal. And -- but we've actually fluctuated between 99% and 101%, by and large, for the last few years. I think occasionally, we've touched 102%, but by and large, it's been between 99% and 101%. So we actually feel good about our business. And we also feel good, Lucky, that we were able to grow ARR by 2% year-over-year, which is another point because -- when you think about it, when NRR is somewhat light, it doesn't take much for first few tens of basis points of things to move. The fact that we were able to grow our ARR 2% year-over-year means that obviously, new customers are embracing us and our expansions continue to be good, et cetera. So we continue to be confident we are not concerned about the way the business is going at this stage. And the reason why caveat at this stage is the macro and the geopolitical events going on, which I think -- I mean the uncertainty around those, I don't have to sort of share with anyone that we all know that basically, some days, people think in the morning, it's going to be okay and the evening is going to be not okay. So with that kind of uncertainty, unclear as to what will happen in the market. We will continue to monitor that very, very closely. But so far, we have not seen any instance or any example or any anecdotal evidence, anything at all to say that macro is having an impact on us. Operator: [Operator Instructions] I'm showing no further questions in the queue. I would now like to turn the call back over to Yogesh for closing remarks. Yogesh Gupta: Well, thank you, everyone, for joining. It's a pleasure to speak with you all, and we look forward to speaking with you again next quarter. Bye-bye. Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.
Zhiheng Wang: Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. I'm the President of ABC. Welcome to the annual results announcement of ABC. It's a great pleasure to meet with the friends, online, offline investors and analysts and friends from the media. I'd like to take this opportunity to express my appreciation for your support, trust and interest in the development of ABC. With that, I'd like to present to you the management of ABC. Mr. Lin Li, [indiscernible] Vice President of ABC and Mr. [indiscernible] Vice President of ABC and the Board Secretary, Mr. [indiscernible]. And some of the senior management are participating from a meeting online. With that, I'd like to present to you the business performance, business strategies and the outlook for 2026 of ABC. In terms of the business highlights, which you are interested in, 2025 is the last year of the 14th 5-year plan. It is a year for the new progress for ABC. In the past year, we guided by the thought on socialism with the Chinese characteristics and strengthen overall leadership of third party and implement the relevant decisions, arrangement of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council, deeply practiced the political and people-oriented nature of financial work and firmly grab main line of preventing risks, promoting high-quality. Development, made overall efforts in our aspects, providing more powerful and effective service to the real economy, achieving steady progress in business, achieving steady progress in business operations with the high effective service, main characteristics of our business, our steady improvement and steady progress in the business operations. First, stable profits, ABC's net profit and operating income continue to maintain a double-digit growth, reaching RMB 292 billion and RMB 725 billion, respectively, a growth rate of 3.3% and 2.1%, respectively. Compared to first -- 3 quarters, growth rates increased by 2 bps and 0.1 points, respectively. Net NIM, 1.28% among topping the peers and average return on total assets, 0.63%. Weighted average return on net assets at 10.16% with a capital adequacy ratio of 17.39% with excellence of our business. Total assets reached RMB 48.8 trillion with a growth rate of 12.8%. New loans and financial investment in local foreign currencies totaled RMB 4.7 trillion. In sensitive of economy is a leading industry and the loan growth rate was 8.9% liability, business continued to maintain a good development with a deposit growth rate of 7.7%. An average daily increase in RMB deposits ranked first among the comparable peers. Daily deposits is consistently improving and duration of local foreign currency deposits in the end of last year was 0.58%, best among the comparable peers. We are the only bank to achieve a positive growth in RMB loans for 7 consecutive years with high-quality loans. NPL ratio of domestic banks declined for 5 consecutive years and further decreased by 3 basis points in 2025, remains a relatively low level of 1.7% -- 1.27% industry. And provision -- the special mention loan ratio, 1.39% and overdue loan ratio 1.25%. The difference between the NPL and overdue loan ratio was registered a negative growth and which was also the only bank in comparable peers with exhibited a loan ratio lower than the nonperforming loan ratios. ABC loan balance is continued to above RMB 1 trillion, an increase of RMB 39.6 billion over the previous year. Provision coverage ratio was 292.5% with both indicators of the balance of loan provision and provision coverage ratio ranked among the first among the comparable peers. The fourth return is very high. Since its listing in 2010, considering the comprehensive return of stock price increase and the dividend, the annualized average returns of investors in A shares and H shares reached 12% and 10%, respectively. In the next 3 years, that is from 2023 to 2025, and it reached to 48% and 41%, respectively. In terms of dividends, the Board of Directors proposed a distribution in final dividend for 2025 with a rate of RMB 1.3 per share and tax included. Inclusive together with the dividend already distributed in the range the total dividend of the whole year amounts to HKD 2.495 per share and RMB [indiscernible] per share tax included. Dividend payout ratio was 30%. We'll have a more resilient and more sustainable development. Last year, we did the work in the last following 5 aspects. First, we stick to our main businesses that is providing service for the agriculture, that is agricultural rural areas and farmers. We consolidated the foundation for business development and improve the quality and efficiency of providing service rural-related areas and build a differentiated competitive advantages and the loans from the country level regions balance reached RMB 1 trillion for 4 consecutive years and the balance reached RMB 10.9 trillion, and the balance accounted for more than 40% of the total loans. And the balance in the county levels has doubled during the 14th 5-year plan period. And deposit balance was 14.3 trillion, an increase of RMB 1.23 trillion over the end of the previous year and contributed more than [indiscernible] to the increase of deposits of the whole bank. Specifically, our channels for serving clients have been further improved among the 22,800 branches of the bank, 56% are located in county-level cities and rural towns or townships. ABC is only a large state-owned bank with a full coverage of county-level outlets. In recent years, we have further shifted the focus of our service to the grassroots levels existing the reach of our services continuously improving, completing them. And we have [indiscernible] 61 services, namely our physical outlets, self-service machines, mobile banking, rural service stations, mobile service, [indiscernible] and remote banks to form them into one, which continuously enhance our service capabilities to provide service to every villages and household. And last year, we moved another 179 outlets to townships built 1,742 rural service stations enrich our product shelves. And also, we have also made great efforts to build a product and service system to 10 major financial areas, including green finance and targeted property, alleviation finance, innovated and promoted inclusive products such as agric park loans, technology loans and professional farmer loans specifically serving the differentiated diversified financing needs of agricultural areas and farmers. And we can develop -- we have developed 43 products across all industries and 208 regional characteristic products and dedicated products to cover key areas of rural revitalization. By leveraging technological means, we have continuously optimized the loan application process for farmers, actively promoting on-site and remote work mode, further enhancing the convenience and accessibility of rural financial services with the balance of the reaching RMB 1.84 trillion. Fourfold increase during the 14th 5-year plan period. And grain and important agricultural products have been increased. Long industries [indiscernible] road development and related fields grew by 20.3%, 19.5% and 9.6%, respectively, and 832 property stricten counties and 160 key counties for rural revitalization have seen faster loan growth than the average growth rate of the entire bank. Second, we sticked to the essence of finance and building new advantages in business development by implementing national strategies and serving the rural economy. We insist on serving the real economy as our fundamental purpose sees the trend of new and old driving forces transformation and industrial upgrading, continues to optimize allocation of financial resources while serving the high-quality development of the rural economy also strive to promote our own high-quality development. In 2025, the loan balance of ABC reached RMB 27.13 trillion, an increase of RMB 2.23 trillion over the end of the previous year. Among them, personal loans, inclusive loans and private enterprise loans took the lead exceeding RMB 9 trillion, RMB 4 trillion and RMB 7 trillion, respectively. Our financial investment was RMB 16.3 trillion, an increase of RMB 2.47 trillion over the previous year. We made every effort to serve the stable investment and consumption with the supporting of financing were too heavy, that is implementation of national strategy and the key areas in ensuring national strategy projects. We also are going in the front and the projects are ranked among the best in the comparable industry, increase of growth rate of the consumer loans were also ahead of the peers. Personal consumption loans, including credit cards, have a growth rate of 9% and the balance reached RMB 1.45 trillion. We continue to strive the Five Priorities of finance, promote more financial resources, invest in the productivity, green development, inclusive finance and provide loans to the SMEs. Other key areas was strength in the key areas and weak claims. The balance of the technology finance loan, green finance loan, inclusive finance loan reached RMB 4.7 trillion, RMB 5.93 trillion, RMB 4.35 trillion, respectively, growth rate of 20.1%, 18.7% and 20.9%, respectively. A number of inclusive known clients ranked the first among comparable peers. Total supply of inclusive finance is the largest with the widest service coverage, further consolidating the leading bank's position with the strongest sustainable development capability. In the field of pension finance, the number of physical and electronic social security card users ranked first among peers and the number of clients and the amount of individual pension service are also among the best in the comparable peers. The loan with the pension industry reached RMB 23.16 billion and were 108.5%. We actively serve higher level of opening up, introduce a work plan to stabilize foreign trade and investment active supports the cross-border use of RMB and helps to diversify the trade markets and integrate domestic and foreign trade. Third is to focus and put the client first, expand the new space for business development while enhancing client service capabilities. Clients are the foundation of our bank. We always take client development as a fundamental and strategic task. We will press ahead with the project to expand the client base, improve service for corporate clients with a group and tiered management personal loans, improve the service model driven by digital plus model and continuously enhance refined and comprehensive client service. Client base has been expanding, reaching 896 million for personal clients and remaining the largest in the industry. Nonbanking -- nonbank financial assets on AUM for personal clients amounted to RMB 24.7 trillion, an increase of RMB 2.4 trillion and end of previous year with 13.29 million corporate clients, an increase of 1.16 million clients from the end of previous year and ranked among the top in the peers. We had 609 million personal mobile banking clients with over 276 million monthly active users and over 292 million monthly active users. Our mobile devices maintained industry-leading growth rates on both metrics. The quality and efficiency of customer service continue to improve with a focus on better meeting customers' financial needs. We continuously enrich and expand our product offerings and portfolios in areas such as deposit credit, wealth management, strengthen service, synergy between commercial banks and investment banks and domestic foreign currencies, financial and nonfinancial service and advancing rural service project, we have been steadfast in promoting customers' rights and interest, making our customer service more diverse and personalized. We have strengthened our professional service capabilities. We have improved our employee training system, provided classified professional training to strengthen the team on wealth management and providing solid support for client service. Our total number of wealth management advisers have reached 119,000 increase of 6,000 from the end of last year. Fourth, we have deepened the reforming and innovation by deeply integrating business technology data. We have created a new impetus for business development. We have actively embraced the new round of technological revolution, deeply advanced construction and smart banks, intensified data empowerment and AI applications striving to transform technological innovation, a key variable into the greatest increment for high-quality development, making the application base for technological innovation more solid, accelerating the building of AI plus capability systems such as data technology, security, providing strong support for the large-scale and inclusive application of AI, making the approach of digital operations more mature, effective reducing the burden and workload empowering grassroots outlets become more significant. First, strengthen bottom line thinking and thickening and strengthen the safety cushion and buffer for business development. We also take risk management and control as our longstop task and continuously enhance professional capability in building risk management serve the ballast for maintaining financial stability. We continue to improve the comprehensive risk management system, strengthen forward-looking risk identification and enhanced risk disposal response in key areas and consolidating foundation of internal control and compliance management. And third, an outlook for 2026. We have confidence from 2 sources or aspects. First, the economic performance -- macroeconomic performance is stable and growing, creating a favorable macro environment for the development of ABC. The outline of our 15th Five-Year Plan have provided a guideline for our development. And in China's economy is has a solid foundation with many advantages and a strong resilience and long-term positive support conditions and basic trends with great potential have not changed. With the implementation of the supporting measures of the 15th Five-Year plan are gradually implemented, the economic growth rate will continue to maintain within a high reasonable rate. And we will continue to have the strong foundation. This has led a solid foundation for us to make further breakthroughs. Over the past 5 years, we have thoroughly studied and implemented General Secretary Xi Jinping's important expositions on the financial work, and we have actively pursued this path of financial development with Chinese characteristics. And we have also expanded our product and service quality and also optimized our team building capacities and also cemented our risk control efforts. This has given us a very good starting point. Dear friends, ABC's defining feature is agriculture. This year marks our 75th anniversary. During the past 75 years of ups and downs, we have always been resonating with our national strategy and also standing in unity with billions of customers and sharing value with broad investors. 2026 is the first year of the 15th plan. And the new era calls for new responsibilities and also the new journey requires new actions. ABC will continue to strengthen our party leadership and uphold a correct view of achievements. We will continue to lay a solid foundation and contribute to the starting chapter of the 15th Five-Year plan and create more value for shareholders, customers and investors in all sectors of society. Next, let's head into the Q&A session. I would like to invite the Secretary of BOD, Ms. Liu to be the moderator. Qing Liu: Now the first question, please, on site. lady on my left, first row, please. Unknown Attendee: I'm from Xinhua News Agency. After hearing the introduction, we can see that even though the overall external environment has been quite complicated, but ABC has reaped very good operating outcome and especially in the capital market, I'm just wondering what is the outlook of ABC in next year, such as in NIM and also in the net profit? What are the main driving forces? Li Lin: Well, I will take that question. I have just shared with you in 2025, even though we have a very complex business environment, our revenue growth has remained resilient and also operating income has maintained positive growth for 2 years running. Our net profit has also been maintaining positive growth as well. And also, it is now on an upward trajectory for better growth. If we look this over the long term, the performance or the financial performance of ABC is quite good and also remarkable. Our net profit growth has been leading the industry for 6 years and operating income has also been leading among our peers, creating new historical highs. And this has shown the growth and the bonus of the market. And we believe that the 15th Five-Year plan has given us even more confidence. I have just shared with you that the senior management is quite confident about better operating performance in 2026. So from the performance of the first 2 months of 2026, where operating income or overall operations have maintained stable growth and also positive trend. Our physical loans increased by RMB 1.1 trillion, achieving a year-on-year growth and NIM has -- or say net interest income has also turned positive year-on-year, which is an inflection point in the first quarter. This has further confirmed that our operating income will continue to be put on an upward trend, laying a solid foundation for the profitability across the entire bank. In the next phase, we will keep our strategic focus while providing better financial services. We'll continue to coordinate our pricing strategies while deepening our efforts to drive down cost and improve efficiency and continue the current solid momentum, and we will focus on the following 3 aspects. First of all, we will continue to drive the positive growth of net interest income, and we also strengthen our efforts to make sure that we have a positive growth in net interest income. In terms of scale, we will continue to issue more loans and also contribute to the real economy, and we will also optimize the structure of our assets and also strengthen refined management and improve the marginal returns of the assets. We will continue to consolidate our customer base and flexibly arrange our next efforts in driving down cost of deposits. And secondly, we'll continue to expand the growth space of net interest income. We will leverage the consumption policies and try our best to satisfy the diverse demands of our customers and seize the opportunities of the capital market and amplify the service supply for wealth management products. On the other hand, we will also strengthen our analysis of the market and flexibly determine on our trading or transaction strategies as well as the allocation of different categories of assets. And thirdly, we will better control risks and cost to better coordinate development and security and ensure that we put credit risks under control and try our best to drive down risks and cost. We will also strengthen our intensive and refined management model to reduce nonessential expenses. Anyway, we will try to achieve higher profits at better cost. So we are fully confident about the performance in 2026. So much from me. Qing Liu: Thank you so much, President Wang. Next question, please, on the right, please. Unknown Analyst: Thank you so much senior management members. I would like to ask a question about loans. In 2025, the credit loans has increased pretty fast. And in retail and country level loans, we have seen very good growth. Could you walk us through the plans or, say, the growth target for credit loans in 2026? And what are the key areas that you will focus on? Zhiheng Wang: I will continue to take your question. In 2025, we have actively implemented important major strategies at the national level. We have aligned ourselves with demands of the real economy and the overall volume of loans has shown better structure and also bigger volume. In terms of the total amount, I've shared with you that we have a total of RMB 2.23 trillion newly added loans. And in terms of structure, we have invested more in agriculture-related loans as well as rural revitalization services. And we have also injected greater momentum into 5 priorities and improving quality and efficiency. This year is the starting year of the 15th Five-Year plan. And in the government work report, we have a GDP growth target of 4.5% to 5%. And we also want to build a strong domestic market to achieve technological self-reliance and also [indiscernible]. There are a series of supporting projects as well as measures for rural revitalization. I believe that these are opportunities for commercial banks in credit placement. We will maintain our current intensity of credit to support the real economy and the average growth rate would be roughly the same as last year in the first 2 months of 2026, where economy is now rebounding. So we will seize the opportunity to focus on our national major strategies and credit deployment or credit placement has also achieved a very good start. By the end of February, our bank-wide physical loan growth has achieved year-on-year positive growth. And also, this is a sign of good momentum for sure. Our green technology where agriculture-related loans have registered positive growth, maintaining at average levels for comparable peers. And -- in the future, we will continue to highlight the agriculture and rural areas and also farmers-related fields. We will focus on improving the large area grain yield improvement and also ensure that we produce new quality productive forces and strengthen financial services for links across the whole [indiscernible] field chain, focus on specialty industry and key sectors and also big customers and important projects. We will make it bigger and better, especially in financial services, such as the issuance of farmer loans to ensure that we have stable growth in loans in 2026. And secondly, we will focus on 2 different areas such as domestic demand. We will continue to lend more support to major projects on transportation and energy, ensure that we have supporting financing services for a new round of policy, financial tools or instruments. We will also align our efforts with traditional consumption models and also emerging new consumption models such as green consumption. And we will implement the physical policies to maintain a leading growth momentum for consumer loans. And thirdly, we will support the construction of a modern industrial system such as we will sort out the customer list and then cultivate new quality productive forces, step up or speed up our technological innovation to support or contribute to emerging industries development. We will also focus on industry green transformation, green development, low carbon and green transition of energy and other key sectors. This will mean that we will improve the credit placement in green sectors and also the proportion of green loans. And fourthly, we will focus on inclusive SME loans and establish a work coordination mechanism. We'll continue to increase the support for SMEs and coordinate development and security, consolidate our leading advantages in inclusive finance and make sure that we cater to the demands of our residents in education, health care and so many others. Qing Liu: Thank you so much, President Wang. Next, I would like to ask for the gentleman on the right, the lady on the right for a question. Unknown Analyst: I know that commercial banks are under pressure, but ABC has maintained very stable asset quality. What measures have you taken in order to manage and prevent risks? And I would like to know about the NPL formation rate as well as your key focus in both retail and also corporate sectors. Qing Liu: So Vice President Lin, please take the question. Li Lin: Thank you for that question. From the perspective of a commercial bank, in the future 2 to 3 years, I think that the watershed should lie in the ability of risk management because the products can be very homogeneous and also the services can also be quite similar. And even AI models can be pretty much the same in the future, but there will be definitely differences between commercial banks in risk management and provision efforts. So that's why we think that we should do a good job in risk provision and management. For ABC, what did we do in that regard? Well, I think that it can be summarized in the following points. Generally speaking, it can be summarized as really doing hard work and getting our feet on the ground. ABC has placed risk prevention and management as an internal theme of our financial work. And we have been building our strong foundation and also cementing the current base for risk management. We have been quite prudent in our operations. We think that we can't say that the commercial banks are too careful or too much careful in their operations. And also, firstly, we have highlighted the role of quality and efficiency. And fourthly, we have to be problem oriented. And fifthly, we have to uphold our bottom lines. By integrated risk management and control and also with a forward-looking reflection capabilities, we can proactively control our risks and ensure good asset quality overall. And just now President Wang has shared with us the overall business or the overall situation at ABC. In 2025, our NPL ratio stood at 1.27%, down by 0.03% compared with the end of last year. The NPL ratio for 5 years running has been on a downward trend. Well, the special mention loan ratio was 1.39%, down by 1 bp from the beginning of the year. Overdue loan ratio, 1.25%, maintained the lowest among the comparable peers. And the difference between the NPL and overdue loan was always at negative. And also, we our credit balance of RMB 1.057 trillion, and we believe ABC is the only bank with a credit balance exceeding RMB 1 trillion. And from a prudent perspective, our credit provision increased by RMB 39.6 billion. The provision for loan loss ratio reached 292.55%, maintaining ABC at a strong risk resilient position. And in terms of the nonperforming loan formation, the formation ratio of corporate loans decreased compared to last year and the NPL ratio of inclusive retail loans has increased, compared to last year. NPL ratio of the whole bank for the whole year was 0.89%. We do believe the asset quality is well under control and similar of last year. And also the formation ratio of NPL has been maintained below 1%, which is relatively quite low. For the loans for the SMEs balance reached RMB 3.93 trillion, an increase of RMB 700 billion from the year beginning and NPL formation ratio, 1.54%. For the inclusive finance or the credit cards, including rural households, which is at the key of our risk control. So if we also incorporate them, our -- the balance of our retail loan balance loan was RMB 9.26 trillion, an increase of RMB 448.5 billion from the year beginning with NPL ratio of [indiscernible]. The main indicators of inclusive retail loans maintain leading position among the peers. It is worth notable that credit card business in terms of serving consumption, boosting development and advancing quality and quantity has performed quite well. And also our credit card loan incremental increase and asset quality are the best among our peers. And also, we apply the innovation and also the systematic thinking and relative philosophies to build a new management measures for the credit businesses and also further build a comprehensive risk management system for the inclusive retail business, we have done in the following 6 aspects for inclusive retail business. The first one is to build a stratified marketing system and also to promote or roll out the new business models and also have the top-level design of the head office from the provincial branch, and we have the sandbox operation at the city level branches, and we have the template of marketing for our outlets and branches focus on local conditions, industrial clusters and professional markets and also have a county-specific system. And also we draw a financial ecosystem map or road map adapting to the needs of different areas, adapting to the local conditions and also the formulating credit plans. We screen high-quality customers, and we have SOP so as to change the [indiscernible] , inefficient and a passive customer acquisition model. And we built an active batch based and a source customer acquisition business development model. And second, we adhere to the idea of minimization or focus on the [indiscernible] long accounts and also match the credit line with the customers' demands and also expand our business while also have system control so as to enhance our serviceability or quality to the small- and medium-sized customers to enhance the accessibility and coverage of our financial service. While at the same time, we give up using a simple model to measure or calculate the credit line so as to put our risk within our risk tolerance. And we take the households at our center or as a priority and also build a new vision of management. We have a unified credit approval and also credit management -- to be more specific, for the same family business for the SME legal persons and business owners and the relatives or friends or in the personal or individual business, consumption and credit card businesses are putting under the same umbrella of management. We have a cross-line and cross-product coordination so as to effectively prevent the under-standard eligibility of the customers for certain products because for some of the products, we have the differentiated threshold for the eligibility of the customers. So we also prevent the overlap of the credit granting, but also prevent the risk of excessive credit granting. Fourth, we integrated online and offline businesses. We leverage on the models or the digital tools, but we are not over relying on the digital tools. We insist on the principle of enhancing people's awareness, understanding and also have on the spot investigations for due diligence, while at the same time, we enhance businesses, tax, credit history, private fund as well as other third-party data to do the customer or KYC business. We have a cross check of the authenticity of our customers, so as to ensure that the fund they use is for the real purpose for business. And we are not just following the trend. We also used open cloud to process and analyze the data in an automized way and to generate the KYC report so as to make our credit approval and more efficient and also have a process and procedure constraints and build a business mechanism. What is key here is to separate the approval from the credit granting. And also we separate the roles because impressive for some of the inclusive retail loan granting, the approval and the lending are put together. But in our practice, we insist for the online SME inclusive loan, we separate the amount of the business and also we separate the roles in the -- between the approval and the loan or disbursement, so as to form checks and balances in the process of credit granting and we also make up for the shortcomings of the decisions for the models. And also, we prevent the one people have to save for everything. And we say no to any form of intermediary person participating in the marketing or doing the -- handling the business. If some of the illegal or inappropriate intermediaries or agencies participate in that they will bring a lot of shock to the business of the bank. Sixth, we empower on the technology and also to enhance our risk management capabilities empowered by technologies, meaning on the model process identification and system real-time early warning, we use UCR recognition and GPS positioning and also cash flow clearing and AI intelligence and other technologies to do the improved ability of anti-fraud and -- and also rely on the big data or large language model, we focus on new loans, professional debtors or the intermediary loan companions and other risk characteristics, consistently optimizing the risk control model and during -- before, during and after the lending to improve the accuracy of our early alerting, so as to ensure the stability of our asset quality, and we will further enhance our risk management and mitigation in a more systematic way in inclusive retail business. Moving forward, we firmly establish appropriate attitude to our performance and do our own job well for the right purpose. We will stick to a prudent and steady risk appetite and also put the risk prevention and management as a priority. It is very promising that asset quality will be -- continue to be stable and maintain a relatively leading position among our peers. Why we are so confident? First, we have a more profound and comprehensive full-fledged risk management control system, to be more specific, we'll have credit management. We have online/offline coordination and separate the credit approval and credit branding business. And we also have a unified credit management and also to enhance accountability, we use the smart tools and to have a unified monitoring and supervising. In Chongqing, ACB set up a head office level digital risk management center for the purpose of enhance our monitoring of the early warning identification and also early check and dispose of the credit risk of inclusive retail business and also to enhance our management overdue loans and enhance the disposal of NPAs and also enhance the notification of the overdue or when the loans come due. Here, we enhanced the smart disposal platform 2.0 version and also to enhance the dispatched transfer or disposal of NPA, enhance the efficiency of the diversified NPA disposal channels. Please rest assured, the inclusive retail loan are small, scattered or there are a lot of amount of them, but we will further make a health check so as to clarify and also have an order well-organized management of this type of business. And also for the risk management of the key areas that has been further improved in terms of efficiency. In terms of the real estate loan by the end of -- as at the end of 2025, NPL ratio in the industry remain unchanged from the previous year. And newly NPL has been decreased year-on-year. We'll continue to adhere to a household-specific policy and approach, project-specific plan and step up risk control for large clients focus on key links such as funds, assets, equity strictly managing the account presale funds and separating the operation from project funds. And we'll use the 16 financial policies for rules and whitelist loan continuation. And also, we will enhance or we will provide our credit support for the high-quality or better housing projects and also will enhance the credit measures. We will not expand our business or lendings in this area in a blend way and also use the policies to replace the implicit debts. And also we have to optimize the structure of the existing debt to lower down our risk exposure and also have a market-oriented rule-based and appropriate finance approach to increase our financing in these areas so as to safeguard the bottom line of not increasing the implicit debt. And also, we will enhance our structures in a preventive way that is very important. And also, we will reduce the low-quality or inefficient customers, but at the same time, support the building of the modernized industrial system. We'll focus on the structural risks, and we will take preemptive measures for the overcapacity. We will not do the evolution so as to ensure the credit quality. Qing Liu: The next question, please. Unknown Analyst: From Economic Daily. My question about wealth management, the personal customer is around RMB 896 million, which is leading among the peers and over the several -- past several years, customers have high demands on wealth management with the fluctuations in the capital fluctuation and also people have a demand of the capital allocation. As Mr. Wang said, ABC rolled out a lot of innovative measures in wealth management. Could you please elaborate more on the innovative measures on wealth management? And what are the plans moving forward. Qing Liu: Thank you for the question. Mr. Lin, please. Li Lin: Thank you for the question. So as an entity or a bond in connecting people's saving or household savings to the circulation of economy, there is a lot of room for us to -- or potential for us to tap into in wealth management. This is an important measure to serve to boost China's strength in finance. Wealth management is an important part for the modern financial system. By developing strengthen wealth management will help to cultivate potential capital increase the direct financing and also to enhance the efficiency and quality of the financial service to the real economy and the high-quality development. It also projected for people's well-being. Next, it can also improve the residence income. Wealth management can expand their income generation channels and it can also get the public to participate more broadly in the capital market and then share in the fruits of economic development. And thirdly, it is an intrinsic requirement for high quality development of commercial banks, wealth management features light capital, stable returns, and sustainability. It is an important path for commercial banks to transition from scale expansion to value creation. ABC has been people oriented in recent years, and we placed wealth management business development as a very important priority, and we have deepened our strategy for integrated and 2-wing approach of retail development. And basically, it's all about customer development. So the 2-wing refers to wealth management and digital transformation or transition. And with our forward-looking layout, we have a driven financial development system to cement the development for operating income. First of all, we have upheld value-driven approach and also a people-oriented model. The nature of our management approach is to have an asset allocation with customer at the center. We want to create value and also provide allocation service strategies. We hope that we want to strive to become a reliable planner or say, family, financial adviser for our clients. And another one is comprehensive service capability. By the end of 2025, the personal financial assets across the entire bank has reached RMB 24.7 trillion. During the 14th Five-Year plan period, the number has increased by nearly RMB 10 trillion, ranking ourselves at the forefront of the industry. If we look at the latest figures, we can see that is now exceeding RMB 25.4 trillion. In terms of assets and liabilities, ABC's personal asset, deposits and also personal loan scale, all ranked first in the industry. So we have the most deposits, loans and also the largest number of customers. So we should be a very big and preferred bank for a large number of customers. And secondly, we have optimized the asset allocation of customers and integrate that with advancing 5 priorities. In that regard, we have created an agricultural pension financial service platform. And in ESG, we have made comprehensive breakthroughs crossing the RMB 100 billion threshold across different product lines. And thirdly, we have achieved the breakthroughs on multiple fronts. In the past 5 years, we have seen that our LBM has currently reached RMB 3.65 trillion. And also during the 14th Five-Year period, the total customer volume has increased by nearly 2 trillion. So all of this has put us also at the forefront of the entire banking industry. The wealth management products in agriculture sector has also exceeded RMB 2.2 trillion, leading comparable peers. And more importantly, we have created over RMB 340 billion for investors. We are also doing very best to satisfy our consumer demands and also insurance demands. In terms of premiums under agency, we have ranked the first among our peers. ABC Life Insurance and also other institutions under ABC, have all maintained a leading position among comparable peers. We have also adhered to a reform-driven progress approach. Wealth management and resource integration and innovation have all followed a similar path. So we have 896 million individual customers and also 22,800 outlets, and we also have very big advantages in channels and customers. All of these have turned into the driving forces for ABC. First, we are dedicated to create a full spectrum of product portfolios to leverage the advantages of integrated operations. We need to build a multifunctional portfolio or is a matrix that covers different diversified strategies, wealth management products such as trust funds, precious metal investments and more. Secondly, we have upgraded the market open platform. We have to keep ourselves open to work with third-party institutions and improve our coordination and step-up management in scientific evaluation mechanisms, introduce quality resources from the market and satisfy diversified and customized demands of the customers. Thirdly, we have to provide full life cycle customer companionship at different stages. We can ensure that we provide the right services such as wealth management and also family protection. Throughout the life cycle, we have to focus on developing comprehensive services for private businesses and in this way, we can also have cross-border wealth management and also so many other options to satisfy our customers diversified demands at multiple levels and also improve the accessibility and inclusiveness of our financial management services. And thirdly, we have been persisting in organizational-driven efforts to forge wealth management service capabilities. We ensure that professionals under professional matters. A professional team can improve our efficiency and core competitiveness, which is in investment research and customer service. First of all, we have created an open integrated professional research system. We have also strengthened the group's investments source integration mechanism built a multidisciplinary expert team and gained market insights. With the forward-looking and culture of study progress forward, we have implemented a very sound strategy for research, product introduction, marketing support and asset allocation, evaluation and final review. And we have also been insisting in reasonable expectations and qualified interactions. We know that for our wealth management subsidiaries, we require them to have a realistic pricing expectations. We also worked with these joint venture financial companies, I would check their figures to ensure that we have the best delivery with our customers. This can help us to ensure that we have a sound interaction between customer and the market. And on the other hand, we also need to ensure that our team is also customer oriented. There are many things involved in ABC's business and our unique advantage is, of course, Sannong or agriculture-related services, but internally, we want to really interpret this service brand as improving results every day. It's not that we want to just do easy work or just shut out [indiscernible], but it is that we want to see improvements every day. And next, we insist on precision management and strengthen our structural optimization and capacity development. We have -- already have professional compromising 119,000 customer manager and 6,000 wealth advisers. We have also focused on the Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta and emerging potential areas. We have implemented differentiated strategies according to local conditions, build benchmark. And also in a total of 500 branches, we have done so in private banks. And also in some wealth management centers, we have definitely ensure that there is a tiered system for training to empower their training system and also service or professional service capabilities on the ground. Sometimes we can go at bottom up. But other times, we think that top-down approach is also a very effective channel. Now we have 120,000 customer managers and 6,000 financial advisers. They should be working like seeds and they are providing services across the bank and serving our customers with their expertise. And fourthly, we have to uphold a digitalization-driven approach and let wealth management be one of our growth engines. By using digital means and intelligent approaches, we can ensure that we have online and offline wealth management coordination efforts and a multidimensional service network. On one hand, we can improve our online and off-line service efficiency and these digital means can also empower our business, and we will continue to advance this all channel convenient and intelligent platform building. And we will also make sure that we improve our capacity for all whether around the clock responsiveness. We are also actively using AI. We're applying in different scenarios. We have an employee, who is an AI model, and we will strengthen customer insights and intelligent layout as well as post investment companionship throughout the entire life cycle. From the performance in 2025, we can see the great wealth management income has reached RMB 35.7 billion and financial management fee income reaches RMB 251 billion, and we should say that this is a very big resilience market. Basically, we have shown strong resilience in our business and also high market recognition and also, our business has maintained very stable growth with little fluctuations. And many of our joint venture wealth management companies have proper expectations for their products. So we have talked so much about what work we have done and data and statistics. At the end of the day, high-quality development should be an all-hands-on-deck effort, which involves not only counter managers and also customer managers and wealth management managers and consultants and advisers and even sci-tech personnel. Here, I would like to take this opportunity to -- on behalf of the senior management, express our heartfelt gratitude to our staff, who have weathered through many hardships and difficulties. And with their expertise and hard work, you have been fighting right at the forefront. Thank you so much for your diligence and hard work. Qing Liu: Okay. Thank you so much, Mr. Lin, for that very encouraging words. And next, I would like to invite next question. Unknown Analyst: [indiscernible], a financial analysist. I'm wondering about the situation in international business. We are now paying attention to business going global and also foreign trade, especially the growth structure and also the overall layout with a new market environment and also new customer demand, ABC -- how will ABC support key foreign trade enterprises to go global? And how will this contribute to your operating revenue and also your efforts for high-level opening up? Qing Liu: Thank you so much for that question. I would like to invite President Dr. Wang for a response. Zhiheng Wang: Thank you so much for your interest in international business. ABC has been earnestly implementing the decisions and arrangements of the [ Party Central Committee]. And with that, we have been cementing the interplay between domestic and overseas market and optimize our cross-border financial comprehensive service system, the international settlement business volume has reached about USD 16,400, an increase of 8% year-on-year. And the international trade financing business volume has increased by 30% year-on-year. The growth rate is still very impressive. So I think that, first of all, we have been helping or supporting businesses to go global. In ABC, we have a presence in 18 countries and 21 overseas institutions, and we also have 1 joint venture bank. More than half of them are in building road countries and regions. So this has aligned with our efforts to help businesses to go global. In 2025, we have continued to ensure that the interplay between domestic and overseas institutions is well underway. Our interplay business has reached USD 118 billion, an increase of 13%, and we have seen the financing business of BRI countries has reached USD 340 billion. We will continue to focus on Sannong areas and ensure that this leading business in this area can go global, and we will also lend support to international corporation projects. Across the year, the agricultural-related financing business has been handled for RMB 69 billion. And second, we strengthened our product innovation to support the development of our new forms and new models of trade. It is safe to say that in recent years, the scale of the main players in the new forms and models for trade has been accelerated, becoming an important support for foreign trade. And in response to the new characteristics of many players in new forms and new models of trade, ABC has empowered with technology to innovate cross-border payment products and many branches have completed the registration with SAFE and obtained the qualification for direct cross-border e-commerce collection. Scale of our direct cross-border e-commerce collection business ranks among the top in the -- among the peers. And third, we have strengthened implementation of our regulation or regulatory policies, and we have enhanced the level of cross-border financial service, the reform of foreign exchange business development is an important measure for the institutional opening up of financial sector of China. ABCs continuously promoted the reform and foreign exchange business development, expanded its scope business volume and a customer base accounted for a large proportion of the whole bank approaching to 40%. The ability of promoting facilities and prevent risks has been further enhanced -- and also, we have supported the international use of RMB. Cross-border RMB settlement volume reached RMB 3.82 trillion, an increase of 8.7% year-on-year. ABC will combine the relevant arrangements for expanding high-level in the 15th Five-Year plan period continue to enhance our support for the real economy on foreign trade and build a closed loop for cross-border financial service. And to serve the high-quality joint development of the Belt and Road Initiative, and we will optimize the linkage mechanism at home and abroad, enhanced supply of cross-border linked products and strengthen financial support for key overseas investment projects and introduce a special work plan to support the development of the new land and sea passage in the West. We will also strengthen the service capability for settlement and exchange of small currencies with neighboring countries and we'll optimize the cross-border financial system service system, and support stable skill and optimal structure of foreign trade, improve the service mechanism for our customers' high-end certified enterprises and strengthen support for cross-border financial business and high-quality agricultural and rural entities continue to support foreign trade enterprise under the financing coordination mechanism for SMEs and carry out innovation and application cross-border e-commerce financing products, building diversified payment channels. And third, strengthen the supply of cross-border financial services enhance the level of cross-border trade investment and financing. And we will further enrich the system of exchange rate risk management, products support SMEs expanding foreign trade market, and we will support the cross-border use of RMB in the rural economy will play a more active role. So we will also provide a strong support for high-quality development of the entire bank. Unknown Analyst: And from [indiscernible] Asset Management, I'm [indiscernible]. My question is about inclusive finance. In the presentation, you mentioned inclusive finance, inclusive finance as one of the Five Priorities of finance about China. It is also a highlight of the business performance of ABC. Looking forward to 2026, how ABC will maintain the good momentum in inclusive finance for sustainable development . Qing Liu: Thank you very much for the question. I'd like to invite Mr. Wang Dajun, Vice President of ABC to take this question. Wang Dajun: Thank you very much for the question. Inclusive finance covering a lot of industries, covering a lot of households. One of the Five Priorities of finance of China is also an important aspect of practicing or maintaining the political nature and people oriented nature of the financial work. By 2025, ABC has thoroughly implemented decisions, arrangements of the CPC Central Committee and the central government, deepened coordination mechanisms for supporting the financing of SMEs and also enhance the ability of our inclusive financial service in a comprehensive way. We have promoted the increase of expansion and improvement of our inclusive finance. And we also achieved high-quality development and the quality and efficiency of providing inclusive financial service, mainly reflected on 3 aspects. First, we are -- we have the largest supply of inclusive credit supply. As at the end of 2025, the balance of inclusive finance loan registered RMB 4.35 trillion increase. And also, we have -- compared with the beginning of this year, the inclusive finance loan to SME RMB 3.93 trillion. And also this year, we reached or exceeded RMB 4 trillion. The balance of -- the balance and also increase of inclusive finance loan are the first among the peers. And also, we have the widest customer service coverage -- as at the end of 2025, ABC's inclusive SME customer with the loan from the bank, we have RMB 5.24 million, an increase of [indiscernible] from the year beginning. The total number and increase of the customers has been the first among the peers for 3 consecutive years. So we are providing the truly inclusive finance service. Third, we excel in sustainable development capabilities, and we shifted from the digitalization. We are leading among the peers to do so. The asset quality of inclusive finance loans are also leading among the peers. The evaluation from the regulators leading among the peers. For 2026, as in the first year of the 15th Five-Year plan period, we will work on the following 3 fronts so as to ensure the inclusive finance business to maintain our good business momentum. To be more specific, first, we will make a good use of the policy tools of the country. In the beginning of this year, relevant ministries of China rolled out the one package policy to support the coordination between fiscal and monetary finance, in particular, the fiscal subsidy for the SMEs and also the private investment guarantee plan that has brought new opportunities for the inclusive finance development. We will enhance the cooperation between the banks and governments, between the banks and the guarantee agencies, focus on new policy tools, optimize our business process and rolled out featured products and offers so as to lower down the cost of financing our SMEs and increase the convenience, so as to transform the policy benefits into the growth drivers for inclusive finance. Second, we'll make a good use of the institutions and mechanisms. ABC will continue to give our role of the 3 Sannong or the rural business departments and inclusive finance department and taking advantage of the dual-wheel drive organized structure. It is -- we are the only bank that has such kind of dual-wheel drive that is the cooperation between the inclusive finance department and the rural business department. And we will continue to leverage our advantages across urban rural areas with a large number of branches, outlets and extensive outlets coverages at the county level cities. And also, that is also the uniqueness or the feature of ABC. We will continue to demonstrate or the mechanism advantage that provide us with the willingness, ability and also expertise and also the courage of provide credit service to rural areas or related businesses. And also, we will promote digitalization in our inclusive finance. We have the iteration upgrading and further enrich and improve our -- the Huinong or agricultural bank E-Loan platform and also build [indiscernible] outlets and the inclusive finance E-Loan to build an ecosystem on inclusive finance and also roll out AI intelligent credit-related business and also consistently improve the digital risk control system. And ABC on [indiscernible] is for this purpose. And also, we will solve with the problems of the asymmetric information in inclusive finance and also for the -- further enhance our risk control and management, provide a high-quality service with a lower cost. And in 2026, ABC will continue to adhere to the general key of seeking progress for maintaining stability and coordinate risk prevention development and to serve people's well-being focused on major strategies, key areas, weakness, so as to ensure the high-quality development of inclusive finance business. I'll stop here. Qing Liu: Next question, please. Unknown Attendee: I'm [indiscernible] from the The 21st Century Business News, serving the rural revitalization is the positioning of ABC and also that is what ABC is good at, how ABC will enhance your competitive edge in providing service to the county level areas. Unknown Executive: Thank you very much for the question. Yes, provide rural revitalization is our main business, and it is also our highlights. And by the same time, it is a key focus area in our strategic development. In the past year, we stick to our main business and also to seize opportunity of the integrated development of the urban and rural areas provide financial supply or credit supply and also enhance our the quality and efficiency of providing service to the agricultural areas and country economy. And also in the several aspects, first, with the contribution of county level for our average daily deposit and loan increment has been exceeded RMB 1 trillion. Proportion of increase increased by the 10.5% and 1.4 percentage points, respectively, compared with the previously with this better structure, balance of household loan exceeded RMB 1.8 trillion with an increase of RMB 337.7 billion or 22.4% and loans for key areas, green production rural industries, the growth rate of loans in these key areas is higher than the growth rate of all loans. Third, better quality and better efficiency. NPL ratio in county level regions was very low with stable asset quality moving forward. We will have the document from the 15th Five-Year plan and there are systematic arrangement for the rural revitalization by aligning our development to the national strategy. We rolled out 2026, 2 consolidations and 2 insurance of providing service to rural-related businesses. One is to consolidate the proportion of the county level loan in our overall loan portfolio and also consolidate our advantage of providing service to the county levels. And also we ensure that we'll maintain the same intensity and also the over stable asset quality. In the new year, our 2026 will continue to enhance the policy resource investment, enhance our ability of providing financial service. To be more specific, we'll do a good job well in the following 5 aspects. The first, we will provide service to the major projects and county levels. The net growth of the country level loan growth will continue to exceed RMB 1 trillion. In our businesses, in the agricultural-related business, we'll work with the improve the agriculture-related projects and national water networks and also comprehensive agricultural production capability and also taking the counties as a major vertical, we will provide service to the major projects and also have list-based service and supporting financing. In terms of the agricultural enterprises, we'll focus on the leading agricultural industries and also leading agricultural technology companies, providing full cycle financial service. In terms of the farmers or farming households, we thoroughly carry out information finding or information collection for the farmers to expand the toolbox of farmers loans, try to have more than RMB 2 trillion of farmer -- RMB 2 trillion of balance of loans providing to farmers this year. And second, we'll further enhance our financial service capabilities, and we'll have 6-in-1 service systems, and we will also further promote relocation of inefficient outlets to townships, accelerating sinking financial service to more rural areas. And this year, we'll strive to relocate 180 outlets to townships and also further increasing the development of agricultural assistance service stations throughout the combination of service stations, mobile service, further enhance our base financial service. And this year, we will build around 3,000 -- last year, we have already built around 1,700. This year, we hope to have around 3,000 agricultural assistance service stations. And we'll innovate the innovative financial products and models for agricultural businesses, and we will roll out some new and diversified products and also use the smart bank tools in providing service to the rural areas for rural businesses and build have promoted the application of smart bank tools in the field of agricultural areas, farmers promote on-site plus remote investigations and build a system covering satellite, UAV and ground IoT and other agricultural data, enhance our support data supply capabilities for agricultural businesses. And fourthly, we will ensure that this normalized financial assistance will be put at a prominent position, and we have already formulated a package of differentiated policies, and we will try to ensure that we lend targeted support or especially policy support to people who have just been lifted out of poverty and to ensure they will not return to their previous state. We will focus on national and provincial level rural revitalization strategies and projects support underdeveloped areas in carrying out initiatives and form internal motivation for these assistance projects. And fifthly, we will ensure the compliance and risk management work of the country-level regions and ensure that we manage or prevent risks at the source and ensure that the loans will have a very strict risk identification and monitoring process and also a series of risk monitoring models. Qing Liu: Next question please. You may ask your question. Unknown Analyst: I'm from JPMorgan Chase and banking analysis. My question is about the bond market. We have noticed that last year, the contribution of bond investment is actually pretty prominent. So what is your plans for this year's bond investment? And also what is your judgment on the bond interest rate for 2026? Qing Liu: President Lin, please. Li Lin: Thank you for the question. From the perspective of the overall operation and management, we attach great importance to the financial market. And with our understanding about inherent loss of the financial market, basically 3 positioning. First of all, the level of the market and the level of the professionalism and also the level of talent that's 3 positioning. And if we want to summarize this or the characteristics of ABC's financial market business, I think that it can be summarized in 3 key words. First, big; second, stable; and thirdly, good. So first, large or big, it means that we are big in scale and stable means that we have been upholding prudent operations. So we are also very unwavering on that. And the third point is good or good quality. That means that we have a pretty good outcomes. And it is also sustainable in the long term. You are interested in bond investment business. Here at ABC, we have been committed to serving the real economy. We focus on improving our capabilities and optimizing asset allocations and better promoting and controlling risks to achieve high-quality development. You have mentioned bond investment has contributed a lot to the performance of ABC last year. I think that's inseparable from the external environment and also at the head office, the investment decision-making committee as well as the overall investment team have made a very good analysis on the market, and they have a very targeted and precise investment strategy. Looking back in 2025. At ABC, we have done 3 things right. First of all, with our strategic focus, we have cemented our investment foundation. While serving the real economy, we have improved our ability to make evaluations of the entire market as a core participator of the bond market. The financial market managers of ABC has over RMB 10 trillion in bond assets. Therefore, we really value our ability to make macro assessment of the financial market. And we have been adhering to national policies as the guiding principle and also the economic loss as our guidance. And we have been making proper evaluations of the macro policy curves as well as the dynamics of the economic environment, so that in the ups and downs or fluctuations of the market, we can identify opportunities and effectively address up to the place to manage and prevent risks. We have to seize the opportunity of interest rate fluctuations and to really understand its reference. And this ups and downs and range fluctuations. Take, for example, before the interest rate rebound window, we proactively compressed or duration and to cushion against the risk of rising interest rates. With our professional capabilities in practice, we can effectively stabilize market expectations. And secondly, in our work, we have been serving strategic situation with more precise allocation. In dynamic balance, we have achieved a new increase in scale and efficiency, facing international economic and trade landscape adjustment in 2025, the global financial market has been facing increasingly complex environment. So we have to focus our strategic focus and the strive to proactively or more proactively use a sophisticated and refined management strategies and approaches to prevent and control risks. In particular, with our comprehensive income target as the goal, the RMB bond scale has increased by RMB 2.4 trillion, compared with the beginning of last year, and we have achieved a due growth in revenue and profit and also we have a better revenue structure or duration allocation has been more balanced. This has given us an edge and cushion against the cyclical fluctuations of the market. Here, I think that it is important to highlight flexible or dynamic management and optimization of duration as well as the duration structure. We have to constantly strengthen the monitoring of potential risks coming from interest rate and exchange rates, so as to improve the forward-looking analysis and prevention of bond investment or credit risks. Thirdly, as a major bank in China, we have been acting on national strategies and serving the real economy, we have advanced the Five Priorities. In the year 2025, ABC has taken a lead in underwriting national bonds and local government bonds and credit bonds and altogether, more than RMB 3.7 trillion, a year-on-year increase of 20 percentage points roughly. So it is fair to say that we have supported implementation of active physical policy and the real economy. We have also been focusing on 5 major priorities. We have been continuing increasing our investment in industrial bond in green and low-carbon areas and technology innovation. These directions represent our top priorities. And by the end of last year, the green financing [indiscernible] balance has maintained a leading position, and we have also anchored our efforts in rural revitalization strategy. Our investment in that regard has increased by 300% and/or underwriting share ranked first in the market for this year. And especially in the Sannong, where agriculture-related sectors, we have precisely allocated or investment portfolios. And you're also interested in the bond strategy for 2026. We deeply feel that 2026 because it is the starting year for the 15th Five-Year plan, it is a pivotal year for us to build momentum and step into high-quality development as China's economy transforms itself. Here at ABC, we have served the real economy and we have coordinated development and security and ensure we have a better coordination at a macro level. We have been maintaining stability while seeking progress in our financial market operations. But all at the same time, we emphasize that we have to really delve into structural opportunities in these cycles. First of all, we have to improve our ability to assess different situations and support proper investment decision-making. So I think that you are also an expert in that regard. So I will not go into any details here. I believe that logic of global asset pricing has been undergoing profound changes. I should say that all of you might feel it to some extent. And internally, we say domestically, our economy is now building momentum and the pricing signals are expected to recover and the monetory policy remains not really accommodative. The government bonds has increased and supply has increased, and the issuance has been also significantly front loaded. And since the beginning of this year, the curve of the bond market yield has been more steeper. So we estimate that the bond market will take on a volatile trend. Credit bond as well as green and sci-tech bond will be even more active. The fluctuations were volatile or transaction or trading opportunities will coexist with those low volatility assets. And also in foreign markets, there will be increasing interplay between exchange rates, bond stock and commodity markets, so we have to have the overall picture in mind. One important part of our work is to integrate all platforms at ABC and pull together the research power to conduct research across different markets, cycles, sectors and asset categories so that even in complex fluctuating scenarios, we can really lend ourselves our certainty. And secondly, we focus on national strategies to accurately empower the real economy. First of all, we have used -- or adopted a proactive physical policy. We have been deeply integrated into modern industrial system. So here, we're focused on some of the modern and strategic emerging industries and also, we will intensify efforts to allocate more resources to high-quality industries. And thirdly, we will advance Five Priorities, especially in pension finance, inclusive finance and green finance and so on. And next, we will continue to optimize our investment portfolio while controlling and preventing risks will ensure prudent growth. Thirdly, we will give full play to our advantage as a major bank in China. We will deepen services for domestic and overseas investors, and we will continue to cement our core commercial functions, piggybacked on a full range of bond varities and pricing capabilities. We will continue to improve bond market liquidity and stability and improve our cross-market allocation capabilities. On the other hand, piggybacked on the Bond Connect, Swap Connect and so many others or other mechanisms, we will ensure we provide better services for cross-border investors and leverage the advantages of domestic and international linkage and supports high-quality Chinese businesses to go global and expand their development channels. And fourthly, we will empower or digital transformation with science and technologies. So we have to uphold the leading role of science and technology and digital means and risk control and prevention, bond and research and also so many other areas we have to have whole chain integration, and we ensure that AI is applied in different application scenarios, such as position management and pricing and trading so that we can improve for quantitative analysis and also intelligent investment decision-making and empower development or high quality development of ABC. Qing Liu: Thank you so much, Mr. [indiscernible]. Next question, please. Unknown Analyst: I am a financial analysist from [ CICC ]. What ABC has done in supporting the development of sci-tech businesses what are your best practices? And how will better develop the sci-tech finance business or the fintech business? Unknown Executive: I think that I would like to take this question. We know that the technological finance is a very important part of our self-reliance and also the construction of a technological strong nation, and it also involves the construction of a modern industrial system and new quality predictive forces here at ABC. As of the end of 2025, we have already provided services to over 350,000 technology-based businesses and the balance for loans is RMB 47,000. The annual growth rate is more than 20%. The coverage and overall loan volume has been at the forefront at this industry. To be more specific, enhanceability of technology and financial service at ABC continued to carry the special actions to enhance the capability of technology and financial service in the whole bank, focus on Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei area, Yangtze River Delta area, Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, Chengdu-Chongqing other high lines of technological innovation establishing 25 provincial and municipal level technology and financial service centers and building more than 300 specialized technology and financial branches established professional talent pool for technology and finance. We have allocated professional equity investment personnel to each subsidiary and build a large number of financial technological and industrial professionals in the ABC Group. Second, we expanded the coverage of products and the services we have taken the lead, introducing guidelines for our technology and finance credit policies, promote the 5 [indiscernible] capabilities and 7 abilities on credit evaluation model inclusive to technology and enterprise -- technology enterprises in a build of full life cycle credit service system covering the institutes and the sci-tech parks and also the technology workers in total around 50 specific products and customers. For example, in providing service to the agricultural technologies, we rolled out in the agricultural park science enterprise loan, especially also have the agricultural or machinery loan, effectively providing service to the leading agricultural technology enterprises. And also, we provide the seed industry revitalization and also make good use of various policy tools. We know that in 2025, digital bank and other 7 departments issued a series of policy tools to support technology finance. And ABC actively connected and implemented those policies. We support the creation of a technology innovation on board in the bond market. The first batch of RMB 20 billion of commercial banking technology innovation bonds were issued while we increased the underwriting and investment in various market entities in science and technology, innovation bonds also underwrite an investment are at the forefront of the industry. And also we implemented the policy -- monetary policy tools. And also, we signed a contract amount of loans and technology innovation, technological transformation has been achieved. And also, we participate in the policy and pilot projects -- we were the first to sign a RMB 50 billion of Social Security Science and Technology Innovation Fund in Zhejiang and Yangtze River Delta and also established 30 various types of science and technology innovation funds, including establishment of 18 AIC equity investment policy, city funds, and we have a full coverage of investment. The cumulative lending [indiscernible] technology-based enterprise exceeded RMB 25 billion. Those measures have supported the development of technology innovation. 2026 is the first year of the 15th Five-Year plan period while fully focus and will get [indiscernible] in terms of the technology finance and to empower the new productive forces and provide service for the economy so as to contribute to accelerate the strength of China -- China's strength in science and technology. First, we will provide service to the modernized industrial system, promote innovation technology to combine what were integrated with the industrial innovation, focus on the upgrading of traditional industries, focused on the new and future industries, focused on the modernized infrastructure, focused on the major national scien-tech projects to seize our targeted industries and customers, enhance our policy and resource support and enhance our professional service capabilities so as to accelerate the formation of new product forces. And second, we have a full chain, full life cycle comprehensive or one-stop service by adapting to the laws and patterns of the innovation and also the growth pattern of the enterprises. We will invest early, invest in small and investing in the long term and invest in the hard technologies and also continue to enhance our policy and support system. And also, we upgrade entire chain and entire cycle, the technology finance or financial service solution of ABC. We have the -- based on the advantage of ABC full license investment, lending bonds and leasing, consulting, [indiscernible] play to the role of AIC in serving technological innovation and equity investment. We work with government agencies and also to research institutes and VC firms and other financial institutions to meet the comprehensive financial service demands of the enterprise to our customers. We accelerated the promotion and application of our data tools to adapt to the trend of digital and intelligent development, we deepened the AI+ empowerment of technology and financial service. We coordinated the deployment of our large language models and development of intelligent agents, optimize the service platform for industrial finance, which has registered now 5 million high-quality technology enterprises, enabling precise service capabilities and also make in-depth use of innovation, external data, such as innovation points, intellectual property and investment and loan linkages optimizing the precise evaluation model for technology enterprises and also use AI agent system that enhance our quality in providing service. Qing Liu: Thank you Mr. Wang. A question online, please take a common question that we haven't touched upon. Well, this year is the first year for mandatory sustainability information disclosure. And the investors in the capital market are very interested in the sustainability of listed companies. Also, ABC is performing very well in ESG work. So what is progress of the sustainable development -- sustainable development and what are the next steps? Unknown Executive: Thank you for the question. Well, we will disclose 2025 sustainability development in line with our annual report, in line with the new regulators and benchmarking to the international initiatives, demonstrating the performance of ABC in our sustainable development. We actively implement a national strategy in sustainable development and incorporate the targets in responding to climate change in our day-to-day work management and business operations, enhance resilience through sustainable development, enabling the benefits to all stakeholders. To be more specific, first, we focus on improving our governance and implement Chinese characterized financial governance. We incorporate the party leadership into our work and also enhance our sustainable topics, scope of the disclosure of sustainable development. And the BOD is supervising, senior management is implementing and also the executive level effectively implementing the policies forming a connected governance chain and enabling the concept of sustainable development into the top-level design of business operations in the 15th Five-Year plan and further stimulating the quality and momentum of high-quality development. Second, we'll fully implement the green finance strategy. We steadily promote our own energy conservation and carbon emission reduction, actively practice the concept and take carbon peaking and carbon neutrality as our guide and actively guide capital to towards key areas such as carbon reduction, pollution reduction, green expansion and growth in terms of green finance, balance of green loan is nearly RMB 6 trillion and equivalent to an annual reduction of RMB [indiscernible] million tons of CO2 and RMB 66 billion of green financial bonds have been issued in China ranking first in the industry. The balance of green bond investment has increased by 37%. In terms of ESG risk management, we have built ESG evaluation indicator, matrix system for our clients, launched ESG evaluation function for corporate clients. We also explored and conducted climate, risk stress test for agricultural, personal housing and wind power enterprise loans, applying the result of climate risk analysis investment and financing management. And also in terms of our operations, we actively practiced green office green procurement and in green travel and the total carbon emission per capita of the whole group in 2025 have decreased compared with the previous year. We always put people at the first place, enhance our -- to improve our people, employees well being. ABC will have a wide range of stakeholders. We take customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction at our core or at our priority, strive to give back to our shareholders, give back to the society, contribute to the society, continuously expand the accessibility of financial service mentioned and ABC will provide service outlets to cover all more than 2,800 country-level areas and making it the only bank to achieve a full coverage of country-level institutions or outlets. In 2025, ABC has relocated and built 179 new outlets in rural areas or towns, further fulfilling the rural areas with insufficient financial service. And also in regular provision for mobile financial service has cumulative served 120,000 rural households. Agricultural service projects significantly enhanced service capabilities. We built 3,308 elderly friendly service outlets with remote banking hotline providing service to senior customers throughout the year. We have 22,000 warm-hearted union service stations providing considerate service for outdoor workers and new citizens. More than 9,900 public welfare activities were held -- were launched. ABC has also thoroughly implemented the talent empowerment strategy for professionals and frontline young employees. We have implemented major talent projects for key groups, selecting over 2,200 young talents and adding 47,000 talents to talent pools of different levels and types, building 6,115 facilities for workers strive to create -- realize greater value for our shareholders. We also enhanced a 2-way interaction in the capital market for 3 consecutive years, ABC has led its peers in terms of total market capitalization growth. We have maintained a high dividend payout ratio. We continue to shine the brand ABC philanthropy with full employment -- incremental 4 major actions of rural revitalization, protection care fulfillment and through donation volunteer service, mutual assistance and other means to provide a generation or benefit to the general public. And also, we have volunteer service hours exceeding 850,000 hours, and that has also given a recognition and a branding for ABC. Moving forward, we'll continue to follow [indiscernible] strategy of national system of development, deepening the development of the management system and provide a better service to our customers and to our employees as well as respond to the concerns of stakeholders to ensure high-quality development through the sustainability practices to create a better value to our shareholders through the good sustainable practices. Qing Liu: We have a very thorough discussion today. For the sake of time, we will have one last question from the Beijing venue. Unknown Attendee: And from [indiscernible], I have a question on AI. Now AI is applied widely in banking sector in the management and business expansions and a lot of results have been achieved. And Mr. Wang also said ABC will vigorously promote application of smart AI in smart banks. So what achievements has been made and what measures have been taken? Unknown Executive: Thank you for the question. My colleagues just now in their presentation also touched upon a little bit on the application of AI in smart banking development. AI is buzz for now, ABC also seized the opportunities of AI development. We set up the specific office for smart banking development and also in [indiscernible] coordination. Also, we will focus on the AI agent application, focused on the project and also, we will build AI+ capability system to ensure the smart inclusive or wide-range use of AI. Past year achievements are reflecting the following aspects. First, the accelerated our service, innovation and product innovation, we keep the accelerating the research and development of digital products. We have launched a fly handbag in way to provide the loans for drone operators, we also have a farmer e-loan. Also at the same time, we innovated technology finance credit products. We call that tech loan. And also scale of online credit business has increased. As at the end of last year, the balance of agriculture e-loan was RMB 6.8 trillion, an increase of 18.7% over the end of previous year, also improve the quality of efficiency of online service. The monthly active users of personal mobile banking have been leading among their peers. We also rolled out the new version -- 5.0 version of the inclusive finance [indiscernible] build an online inclusive business covering multiple channels. And also, we have increased in the efficiency and effectiveness of smart risk control. In terms of credit risk management, we have the on-site and off-site prelending due diligence, also deepened automatic identification and comparison of GPS positioning, image information, applied advanced technologies such as generative AI, strengthening multidimensional verification of real people, real events and real scenarios. We also continue to strengthen a centralized monitoring for the 5 group of customers in terms of the group customers and large medium-sized customers, small SME customer, personal loans and agricultural loans and also enhance our smart disposal platforms. We have also achieved batch handlement or disposal of these cases so that we have promoted NPL disposal. AI can also empower anti-fraud efforts as well as anti-money laundering. The quality and efficiency have both been improved. And -- this can also help us to reduce our business burdens. For example, in terms of intelligent customer service, we can deepen application of AI models to fill in the forms, for example, and effectively reduce the burdens of frontline agents. The average time required has been shortened to 176 seconds from more than 200 seconds. We have also speed up the construction or the development of intelligent investigation review report templates. The automatic generation ratio of this report data exceeds over 70% for small enterprises, credit recipients and group credit. This has reduced the manual workload of credit personnel in drafting -- and just now our AI model mentioned by our senior management can also fulfill the smart or intelligent Q&A session. And this function can also empower the consumer protection or compliance and other processes. And this AI model, [indiscernible] has also won many awards, for example, in the recent Consumer Protection Day, the 15th of March has also announced that it has won the Financial Consumer Protection Golden Award for 10 outstanding cases in financial technology innovation services. So it is quite popular within our bank. And fourthly, AI is a systematic work. especially in terms of application in ABC, we have been systematically promoting the application of AI. We already painted we mapped out a blueprint for AI application and compelled the AI capability map. And with a platform dedicated to AI application, we can promote it capacity building of computer power to successfully deploy multi-industry leading-edge models. And this will also help us to develop even more model metrics regarding AI. Next step, with intelligent platform building, we will continue to improve the accuracy and convenience of financial services and also its inclusiveness. Qing Liu: Thank you so much, ladies and gentlemen, very big thanks from my bottom of heart for all of you in participating in this 2025 annual result announcement of ABC. We have implemented regulatory requirements and implemented an investor-oriented management approach and also clarified our mechanisms, targets and approaches for market capitalization management. We have appealed high-quality development and highlighted our features as well as serve the real economy as one of the major banks in China and strive to create more value for investors and shareholders and disclose the information in a timely manner. Our stock prices and also valuation have all achieved improvement. Thank you again, all investors, analysts and friends from the media for your continued interest and support in ABC. And I would also like to thank the senior management for your sincere sharing of the operating performance of ABC today. If you have any questions in the future, you are the most welcome to contact ABC's team. So that's all for today's result announcement conference. Thank you so much. [Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]
Operator: Greetings, and welcome to the INmune Bio's 2025 Fourth Quarter and Year-End Earnings Call. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. A transcript will follow within 24 hours of this conference call. At this time, it is now my pleasure to introduce Mr. Daniel Carlson, Head of Investor Relations of INmune Bio. Daniel? Daniel Carlson: Thank you, Cloey, and good afternoon, everyone. We thank you for joining us on the call for INmune Bio's 2025 Fourth Quarter and Year-end Financial Results. Presenting on today's call are David Moss, CEO and Co-Founder of INmune Bio; Dr. Mark Lowdell, Chief Scientific Officer and Co-Founder of INmune Bio; Dr. CJ Barnum, Head of Neuroscience; and Cory Ellspermann, INmune Bio's CFO. Before we begin, I remind everyone that except for statements of historical facts, the statements made by management and responses to questions on this conference call are forward-looking statements under the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements involve risks and uncertainties that can cause actual results to differ materially from those such as forward-looking statements. Please see the forward-looking statements disclaimer on the company's earnings press release as well as risk factors in the company's SEC filings, including our most recent And quarterly filings with the SEC. There is no assurance of any specific outcome. Undue reliance should not be placed on forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date they are made as the facts and circumstances underlying these forward-looking statements may change. Except as required by law, INmune Bio disclaims any obligation to update these forward-looking statements to reflect future information, events or circumstances. Now my pleasure to turn the call over to INmune Bio's CEO, David Moss. David Moss: Thank you, Dan, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us for INmune Bio's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Earnings Call. Today, I'll begin with an overview of our progress and strategic priorities across the business. Mark will then provide an update on our CORDStrom platform with a focus on our RDEB program. CJ will follow with an update on XPro and our Alzheimer's disease development efforts. Cory will then review our financial results. After that, I'll return to highlight our key upcoming milestones before we open the call to questions. 2025 was a pivotal year for INmune Bio. We completed our MINDFuL Alzheimer's trial, advanced CORDStrom towards registration, and continue to position each of our platform programs for the next stage of development. As we move into '26, our focus is very clear. Execute against the most important regulatory clinical and strategic milestones across the portfolio. Starting with CORDStrom, this remains our most advanced program and a major value driver for the company. We recently presented additional patient data that further reinforces the therapeutic profile of CORDStrom in Recessive Dystrophic Epidermolysis Bullosa, or RDEB. These data showed clinical meaningful wound healing, reductions in itch and improvements in quality of life, all with a favorable safety profile. Based on this progress, we're in the final stages of preparing our regulatory submissions in both the U.K. and the United States, and we remain on track to file the MAA in the U.K. by the end of summer of '26. As Mark will tell you shortly, CORDStrom has a clear batch-to-batch manufacturing consistency, which makes the product reproducible ensuring commercial grade uniformity. Further, the clinical mechanism of action of CORDStrom for RDEB has been worked out along with the potency assays, which is an important step for regulators. The repeatable reliability -- the repeatable manufacturing reliability with the worked out MOA along with CMC readiness, safety and clinical results is what gives us confidence in the -- in CORDStrom for RDEB. Importantly, we want to highlight that CORDStrom is not simply a single asset opportunity, but as a platform with broader potential. Beyond RDEB, we believe the biology underlying the program may support development in additional inflammatory and degenerative conditions and over time, may also enable genetically modified applications in oncology and rare disease settings. Our immediate priority is to bring this therapy to patients with RDEB while also building the foundation for long-term platform expansion. Personally, there is no greater mission in my career than delivering CORDStrom to the children and families living with RDEB. Behind every trial result is a story that I've read and a face that I've seen in the video shared by these incredibly brave families. These images serve as a constant reminder of why we do what we do. Our team is deeply motivated by the human element of this condition, and we are working with an absolute urgency to bring this therapy to patients who need it most. Further, in our mission to develop medicines to unmet needs, I now turn to XPro for Alzheimer's disease. We believe this program is in the strongest position it has ever been. We completed MINDFuL, we've aligned with the FDA on the development path, and we're now preparing for a Phase III. This alignment effectively creates a preapproved blueprint for a partner to execute. CJ will give you the full picture shortly. On INKmune we completed our Phase II trial in metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer ahead of schedule and under budget. The study met its primary endpoint and 2 of its 3 secondary endpoints. Mark will explain more on this later. Before I hand the call over, I want to thank patients and families who participated in the clinical studies, the investigators and trial sites, who supported this work, and our employees for their continued commitment and execution throughout the years. I also want to thank our shareholders for their continued support. Our strategy of advancing multiple differentiated platforms in parallel continues to create meaningful opportunities for value creation. We now have 1 platform approaching the regulatory stage, another with a completed Phase II study, an important translational data and 1/3 that has also generated encouraging clinical results. We believe '26 will be an important year for INmune Bios to work to advance CORDStrom towards approval, further clarifying the next steps for the Phase IIb trial for XPro and continue to build the partnerships and resources we need to move our programs forward. With that, I'll turn the call over to Mark Lowdell for an update on CORDStrom. Mark? Mark Lowdell: Thank you, David, and thank you to everyone who's joined the call today. Welcome. So as David said, CORDStrom showed great promise in the randomized placebo-controlled trial in RDEB, but it potentially extends way beyond RDEB to other forms of Epidermolysis Bullosa, and indeed to other conditions and indications. CORDStrom remains truly revolutionary in the MSC field. And last year, we reported on the fact that since it's created from mesenchymal stromal cell banks from 4 or more pooled donors, it really has unrivaled stability and reproducibility to compare to all of the other mesenchymal stromal or stem-cell products that are being developed or are on the market. Moreover, what we found is that the pooling allows us to select the individual mesenchymal stromal cell donor seedstocks, and we can choose those that have the appropriate potency characteristic for each disease indication, which allows us to tailor the final product to target different disease indications and thus have different drugs. As you know, RDEB is our first disease indication, and over the past 6 months, we've been able to dissect the precise mechanism of action of CORDStrom in RDEB. That's pretty unique for mesenchymal stromal cell product, while the diversity of the product means that working out quite how it delivers its effect is actually very challenging, but we now know that CORDStrom works by secreting an array of chemical messengers called cytokines, which are used by the body to control inflammation. We know that RDEB is predominantly a disease of inflammation, and it's driven by cells in the skin, which are called Type 1 macrophages or M1 cells. These M1 cells secrete inflammatory cytokines, which drive the itch and lead to the scratching, which causes the skin wounds so prevalent in RDEB patients, in which you'll be familiar with. M1 cells in normal skin also induce itch when provoked, but in RDEB patients, the absence of the protein which binds the skin layers together means that itch scratch cycle causes those very severe lesions that are so famous. One of the cytokines secreted by CORDStrom drives the M1 cells in the skin to mature into an M2 noninflammatory wound healing cells. We all have these and these M2 cells secrete a cytokine called IL-10, which switches off other INmune cells driving the itch-inducing cytokines. In parallel, the M2 cells also secrete other chemical messages cytokines, which enhance wound repair. And when we looked at the serum samples from the patients who were treated with CORDStrom on the U.K. trial and compared those to those treated with placebo. The CORDStrom recipients all had in their blood, cytokines that our mechanism of action predicted. And those patients that had the highest concentration reported much less pain, less itch and had better skin scores. They scored better in all measures of well-being and increased ability to eat. So this is the first RDBE treatment to have such diverse whole body clinical benefits, over and above those, which we see from the skin treatments that are already licensed. The patients, their caregivers and their doctors, all want to continue to have access to CORDStrom, and as David said, we're working tirelessly at present to submit the applications for marketing authorizations in the U.K., and then the European Union, and finally the U.S. before the end of the year. We are driving forward and they're all completed by the end of this year, and we hope to be supplying CORDStrom to RDEB patients in 2027. As I said earlier, the fact that CORDStrom is manufactured from a pool of 4 or more donor cell banks means that we can select the best donor cells for specific clinical indications. So while we are progressing with CORDStrom for RDEB and the marketing authorizations, my group of R&D scientists here in the U.K. are working on other broader indications and we're seeking business partnerships to develop those through clinical trials and bring those to market accordingly. So as a company, we're laser-focused on preparing the marketing authorization application for the U.K. and then the EU and the Biologics License Application, or BLA, for the U.S. by the end of 2026. These are highly aggressive time lines, but so far, we've met all of the deadlines that have been set, and I'm incredibly proud of our team in the U.K. for working so diligently to keep to these time lines to remain on track and to use all the resources that we have in the U.S. office to support. So I'm happy to take questions that you have, but meanwhile, I'll hand over to CJ for the latest update on XPro. CJ, floor is yours. Christopher Barnum: Thank you, Mark. I'll give you an update on XPro and where we're headed. MINDFuL was our Phase II trial in Alzheimer's disease. We designed it around a simple question. If we pick patients who have both Alzheimer's pathology, and signs of inflammation in their body, and we treat the inflammation, do they do better? What we saw was very encouraging. The results consistently favored XPro across clinical, behavioral patient-reported and blood and imaging biomarkers. The Phase I identified what works, who it works for and resolved the open questions so that Phase III can be successful. These results directly inform how we designed the Phase III program. We identified the patient population, those with both Alzheimer's pathology and biomarkers of inflammation. Decades of Alzheimer's research show that cognitive changes come first and functional changes follow with time. That's why the Phase III trial runs 18 months, long enough for the cognitive effects we saw at 6 months to show up on the functional measures the FDA requires for approval. The program is built as an adaptive trial with 2 stages. Phase IIb gives us a decision point at 9 months. a clear go or no go before we commit to the full Phase III investment. If the data hold, the trial continues seamlessly into the registrational stage with the CDR sum of boxes, the same primary endpoint used to approve lecanemab, and donanemab at 18 months. We presented this program to the FDA at the end of Phase II meeting earlier this year. The agency reviewed our data, our enrichment strategy, and our trial design and aligned with our approach. We are now moving forward on several fronts. On the development side, we continue to analyze the MINDFul data set to fully understand the impact of XPro treatment. At the same time, we are preparing the Phase III program for initiation, which includes finalizing the protocol based on the FDA's feedback and pursuing the partnerships and funding needed to execute it. There's a lot of work ahead, but the foundation is solid. I'll hand it back to David. I look forward to your questions. David? David Moss: Thanks, CJ. Before I hand the call to Cory to go through our financial results, I want to emphasize from a capital perspective, we remain committed to capital efficiency. Our strategy is built on hitting clear data-driven milestones that allow us to maximize shareholder value while minimizing unnecessary burn. We're focused on maintaining the lean execution-oriented culture that has brought us to this stage. With that, let me pass the call to Cory to go through our financial results. Cory? Cory Ellspermann: Thank you, David. Net loss attributable to common stockholders for the year ended December 31, 2025, was approximately $45.9 million compared to approximately $42.1 million for 2024. Research and development expenses totaled approximately $20.7 million for the year ended December 31, 2025, compared with approximately $33.2 million for 2024, with the decrease due to incurring lower expenses in connection with the Alzheimer's trial in 2025. G&A expenses was approximately $10.3 million for the year ended December 31, 2025, compared with approximately $9.5 million for 2024. We also recorded a full impairment of our intangible asset of $16.5 million in 2025 following the release of the Phase II results of the Alzheimer's trial, in which the trial did not meet the clinical endpoint. During 2025, the company sold 3 million shares of common stock for net proceeds of approximately $17.4 million in a registered direct offering. In addition, the company sold approximately 1.3 million shares of common stock for net proceeds of approximately $10.1 million under at-the-market offerings. At December 31, 2025, the company had cash and cash equivalents of approximately $24.8 million. And as of March 30, 2026, the company had approximately 26.6 million shares of common stock outstanding. Based on the current operating plan, we believe our cash is sufficient to fund our operations through Q1 2027. And now, I'll hand the call back to David. David Moss: Thanks, Cory. Now I'd like to present upcoming milestones for the company, and then we can start with the Q&A. For CORDStrom program, we have several significant milestones ahead, which will really set our track for 2027. As Mark mentioned, we're on track to file the MAA in the U.K. by mid-summer 2026. A few months after the MAA filing, we expect to submit the MAA to the EMA and then the BLA to the FDA towards the end of the year. We should have feedback from all 3 geographies in '27, if not, approvals by then. I mind investors that it's our belief that a successful BLA application would likely result in the company obtaining a priority review voucher from the FDA, given that the program already has orphan drug designation and rare pediatric disease designation. For XPro, we continue to make strong progress. We've now received the minutes from our end of Phase II meeting with the FDA, as CJ had mentioned, and we obtained positive initial feedback on the accelerated approval pathways or we're active preparing for next steps. We're advancing partnership and funding discussions to support late-stage development of XPro. Stepping back, we entered 2026 with a focused set of objectives and multiple meaningful opportunities to create value, while MINDFuL trial did not achieve its top line primary endpoint due to powering the patient population properly, the totality of XPro data set continues to support our conviction in the program's potential in Alzheimer's disease and other neuroinflammatory disorders. At the same time, we believe CORDStrom is advancing towards a potentially transformative regulatory and commercial inflection point with the broader platform still not fully reflected in the market. We appreciate the continued support of our shareholders and the commitment of our team as we work towards these goals. At this point, Cloey, I'd like you to tell people how they can ask questions and poll for questions. Operator: [Operator Instructions] And we'll take a question from Elmer Piros with Lucid Capital Markets. Elemer Piros: David, what I'd like to ask, and maybe Mark can help us out here. If there is any anticipated differences between an MAA and an FDA submission. Have you had interactions with the FDA, what might be their requirements different from the European or from the U.K. agency? Mark Lowdell: Yes, I'll -- that's a very good question. Yes. So we -- the last time we spoke to the FDA specifically was a little bit about 13 months ago? And what they came back with was some -- one of the things that's been at the top of my mindset is, -- all of the work we've done so far in RDEB, the products being made from umbilical cord donors from the U.K. and there is a sensitivity about using U.K. donor materials in the U.S. And so we asked the FDA specifically whether we would be allowed to use U.K. donor cords for the U.S. submission. And they came back and said, absolutely, yes, but we would have to screen the U.K. donors for the standard globally agreed infectious disease markers, but they'd have to be tested in U.S. labs in clear accredited labs. And so what we're doing at the moment is creating new master seedstock and from donors that we can ethically test in the U.S. So that's the biggest difference. We have to create a new master seedstock, which is ongoing at the moment. But because we -- as I said earlier on, we've worked out the mechanism of action. We now have potency assays. We've been able to demonstrate that we've made 4 different master seedstocks experimentally from U.K. donors, and they've all been consistent. So the next point is that we make for the FDA filing, which you're going through at the moment, will be those that we take through for commercialization globally. So that was the principal question that we had, and it was the principal answer that they came back with The rest of the questions they came back with were identical to those from the MHRA. So yes, we will present exactly the same data set. David Moss: Elmer, let me -- if you don't -- Elmer, if you don't mind, let me just add to that. So the plan is what's -- if you -- a few months -- a few weeks ago, we submitted essentially a pre-MAA package to the MHRA, which will -- which really effectively is like a Type B meeting and it kind of -- it kind of smooths the process of the full MAA application speeds the process up that we intend to file midsummer. Once we get the feedback from the MHRA, and as Mark will tell you, they've already set a face-to-face meeting with us. Once we get that, we'll put that together with the answers to whatever questions they have or whatever feedback they give us, and then we'll submit that as a Type B meeting to the FDA in preparation really like a pre-BLA in preparation of the BLA with the FDA. And so that will be the steps that will take place. I think that might have been a little bit of what you're asking, if I'm correct? Elemer Piros: Yes, yes, yes. And just maybe one more detail around this. So would you have to have the samples tested in U.S. labs before you submit or you can have that during the submission or during the evaluation and submit it when you have the results? Mark Lowdell: So what they will ask is for a confirmation that we will only supply drug into the U.S. from U.S. tested donors. But in point of fact, we're making the master cell batch now. So we will have products that have been made from U.S. tested donors before we submit the BLA. Elemer Piros: Yes. And maybe one question about the course -- the XPro program. David, have you had interest, any interactions with potential former partners at ABPD? upon feedback, you get . David Moss: No, good question, Elmer. We have ongoing discussions with some groups. And one of the things that now you have to realize, we've just got the end of Phase II minutes a few weeks ago, 3, 4 weeks ago now. And -- so everything is being factored out. But 1 of the things we intend on doing this is finding a group to help us on the BD perspective because there's just a lot of not just large pharma but midsized companies, that we think the program is very appropriate for because if you think about it, it's a relatively small investment to see the Phase IIb portion for obviously a very large market, potentially one of the largest markets. The Phase IIb portion reads out as we expect with the right patient population from what we've learned from the MINDFuL trial, then it's a very clear path to the registration program as CJ had talked about linking the cognitive aspects of EMAC to the cognitive aspects of CDR and then getting the functional scale of CDR, which comes after cognitive changes over time. So the link is very logical. The correlation between EMAC and CDR is very logical. And so we think that this package had explained appropriately to the midsized EBITDA biotech companies that have an interest in neurology, all the way up to the large pharma. I think it's going to be a very attractive program. Operator: And it does appear that there are no further questions at this time. I would like to hand it back to David Moss for any additional or closing remarks. David Moss: Thank you, Cloey. 2025 was a year of significant progress for INmune Bio. We completed and analyzed the MINDFuL Alzheimer's trial, advanced CORDStrom towards registration in RDEB and positioning commute for its next stage of development in prostate cancer. As we move toward through 2026, our priorities are very clear: advance CORDStrom's towards marketing approval in the U.K., EU and the U.S., secure regulatory clarity on the path forward for XPro and build the partnerships and financial support necessary to bring these programs to patients. On behalf of the entire INmune Bio team, thank you for your continued support and confidence in our mission. We look forward to updating you on our progress in the months ahead. Have a great evening, everybody. Operator: Thank you. This brings us to the end of today's meeting. We appreciate your time and participation. You may now disconnect.
Peer Schlinkmann: Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to the 2025 full year earnings call of the Wacker Neuson Group. My name is Peer Schlinkmann, Head of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications. Thank you for joining today on the occasion of the release of our 2025 full year results. As usual, we will first start with the operational and financial results of the fiscal year 2025 and give additional insights on the recent developments as well as our outlook for 2026. Following this, we are happy to answer your questions in a Q&A session. If you are not able to follow today's call via the webcast, the presentation slides are also available for download at wackerneusongroup.com/investor-relations. Please note that the entire call, including the Q&A session, will be recorded and a replay will be made available on our corporate website by the end of the day. And now I would like to hand over to our executives, Karl Tragl and Christoph Burkhard, who will, as usual, lead you through this call. Christoph Burkhard: Thank you, Peer. This is Christoph Burkhard, CFO of the Wacker Neuson Group. Welcome, everybody, to our earnings call, and thank you for joining. Thank you. Karl Tragl: Dear all, a warm welcome from my side, too. And thanks again for joining today's conference call. I'm Karl Tragl, the CEO of the Wacker Neuson Group. I would like to start the presentation with a brief overview of our key financials for the fiscal year 2025. Our revenue stood at EUR 2.2 billion, which is essentially on par with the previous year's level. After a weak start in the first quarter, characterized by low capacity utilization following the downturn in 2024, we saw a gradual operational recovery as the year progressed. Throughout the year 2025, our order intake level has been slightly above revenue, resulting in a book-to-bill ratio of above 1. Our earnings before interest and taxes amounted to EUR 132 million, resulting in an EBIT margin of 6.0%. While this represents an improvement of 0.5 percentage points compared to 2024, the margin was impacted by onetime effects in the fourth quarter. These included legal and advisory costs related to takeover talks, adjustments to our virtual stock option plan and certain asset impairments. Without these effects, the recovery in earnings quality would have been even more visible, especially following the improving momentum, which we gained since the second quarter. At year-end, we saw a very successful development of our net working capital ratio. We managed to reduce it faster than originally forecasted, reaching about 29%, which is below our strategic target of 30%. This is, amongst others, a result of disciplined inventory management and the efficiency agenda, which we continued throughout 2025. The significant reduction of net working capital led to another increase in our free cash flow, which reached EUR 202 million by the end of the year. Christoph will explain the financial details in more depth. Now let's take a closer look at our performance across business segments and regions. In 2025, we continued to navigate a challenging market environment. Also, we saw a recovery starting in the second quarter of 2025. Starting with the business segments, light equipment and compact equipment, we had a powerful presence and stood out visibly at the Bauma Trade Fair in April, which led to higher revenue and increased profitability in the second quarter. However, development remained on that level in the following quarters as geopolitical instability, high interest rates and rising costs continued to weigh on construction industry. In detail, light equipment grew by 2% to EUR 460 million, while compact equipment declined by 2% to EUR 1.26 billion. On the one hand, demand for tele handlers, especially in Europe and skid steers in the U.S. was below previous year. On the other hand, we saw continued growth in demand for dumpers and excavators in Europe. Our services business showed further growth, increasing to EUR 521 million and accounting for 23% of total revenue. Strong demand for spare parts and used machines, combined with structural improvement of our service levels out of the new logistics hub in Mulheim-Karlich supported this positive trend. Revenues in Europe, representing 79% of group revenues rose by 1% to EUR 1.75 billion. While Germany and France were weaker, we saw growth in the U.K. and Switzerland. Our brands, Kramer and Weidemann with focus on the agriculture industry also regained momentum late in the year. In the Americas, revenue declined by 7% to EUR 422 million, heavily impacted by customer reluctance and U.S. tariffs. In Asia Pacific, revenue fell by 16% to EUR 44 million, primarily driven by a slowdown in Australia. In summary, despite regional headwinds and the weak start into the year 2025, the recovery in Europe and our stabilizing order intake provide a solid foundation for this year 2026. I will come back to our outlook at the end of the presentation. I will now hand over to you, Christoph, for more insights into our financials. Christoph Burkhard: Thank you, Karl. I will talk now about working capital. With 29.2%, we were able to stay with our working capital ratio below our target ratio of 30%, which clearly exceeded our expectations. This decrease of working capital was primarily driven by the following reasons. Firstly, we increased our trade payables preparing for 2026. Secondly, we maintained our discipline around inventory management and this despite the complexities around the U.S. tariff situation. Thirdly, a reduction of receivables also supported the overall result. As an overriding feature, I would like to mention our ongoing and successful efforts to systematically improve our integrated system-based planning processes across the entire group. This concretely enhances our planning quality end-to-end, starting with the sales forecast all the way through logistics, the production planning and supplier management. Eventually, all this has a sustainably positive impact on all working capital levers. Looking ahead to 2026, our expectations towards moderate growth will certainly influence net working capital throughout the year. However, we remain fully committed to our target ratio of below 30%. Now let's have a look at our cash flow performance. A good cash conversion into operating cash flow, plus the mentioned positive working capital momentum led to a strong cash contribution of EUR 86 million in the fourth quarter. This again generated an overall free cash flow of EUR 202 million in 2025, even exceeding previous year's EUR 185 million. As a consequence, we could reduce our net debt to EUR 185 million, reaching the lowest level since the first quarter in 2022. Compared to the previous year, net debt decreased by over 40%, and this translated into a further reduced leverage ratio of 0.6. And to complete the picture, an equity ratio of 62% underscores the robustness of our balance sheet. Now let's have a look at our dividend payout. The Wacker Neuson Group is known for its continuity in delivering attractive shareholder dividends, one of the main pillars of our financial policy. Despite the challenging market environment in the past year, our focus remains clear: to successfully increase profitability while simultaneously improving operational efficiency and therefore, preparing ourselves for the next growth phase in times of higher geopolitical uncertainty. Against this background, we want our shareholders to participate in our results again. Therefore, we will propose a dividend of EUR 0.70 per share for the past fiscal year at the Annual General Meeting, which will be held on May 13 here in Munich. And this corresponds to a payout ratio of around 61% of our earnings per share and marks again an attractive dividend yield of 2.9% based on the 2025 year-end share price. And with this, back to you, Karl. Karl Tragl: Thank you. In the following, we would like to highlight a couple of operational milestones, which we completed in 2025. Kramer celebrated its 100th anniversary. To mark this milestone, a completely revised machine design was introduced. Moreover, new wheel loaders and a new tele handlers were launched. We also attended numerous construction and agriculture trade fairs like Bauma and Agritechnica. The trade fairs will not only provide additional sales stimulus, but also enable us to meet our sales partners and our end users and understand their needs in personal discussions. The strong customer interest was also reflected by significant order intake at the trade fairs. And for the first time in September, we exclusively presented new products to key customers as part of a prelaunch 2026 event. We already announced that we have successfully started the delivery of first excavators for John Deere from Linz in 2025. And very important, in fall, we completed the production line for further models at our U.S. plant, which enables us to start manufacturing there in 2026. Last but not least, we successfully launched numerous new Wacker Neuson, Weidemann and Kramer, light and compact equipment machines. Our zero emission portfolio was expanded as well, adding further fully electric excavators, battery-powered wheel loaders as well as different light equipment solutions to our portfolio. Additionally, we introduced new digital solutions such as a Wacker Neuson and Weidemann app to provide our customers an even deeper insight into our products and to consistently support them during machine operation life cycle. Finally, I would like to conclude now with our outlook for 2026 and key topics, which are currently shaping our industry. The global economic and geopolitical environment remains volatile and characterized by significant uncertainty. Factors such as subdued investment momentum, trade conflicts and increasing protectionism continue to impact planning certainty. This is further intensified by ongoing geopolitical tensions, including the war in Middle East since beginning of March. This adds another layer of complexity to energy markets and global supply chains. At the same time, current market indicators point towards a moderate recovery, albeit at a slower pace than previously expected. Against this backdrop, we view the 2026 fiscal year with cautiously positive expectations. In Europe, we anticipate an environment that remains challenging, yet stabilizing, supported by public modernization investments. In North America, we expect solid demand from building of data centers and further infrastructure projects despite ongoing U.S. tariffs. Overall, we anticipate a slight market upturn in 2026. With great trust in our customers, employees, investors and in our strategic plan, this should enable us to achieve a moderate increase in revenue and a higher EBIT margin. So this is our guidance for 2026. We anticipate a revenue between EUR 2.2 billion and EUR 2.4 billion and an EBIT margin in a range of 6.5% to 7.5%. We plan to invest another EUR 70 million to EUR 90 million in the course of the year. And we aim to keep our net working capital ratio below the strategic target of 30% by the end of 2026. In 2026, we will consistently pursue our operational agenda. However, the market environment remains dynamic, shaped by realities of the past 2 years, low market volumes and ongoing geopolitical uncertainties, ranging from U.S. tariff policy to the most recent war in Middle East. Furthermore, we must acknowledge that electrification in construction and agriculture is progressing slower than originally expected. Despite these headwinds, we remain fully committed to our Strategy 2030. It remains our North Star with profitability now moving even more into our focus. During the course of 2026, we will reevaluate both the underlying market scenarios and the 10 strategic levers. Regarding our revenue up until 2030, we now rather anticipate a level of EUR 3.5 billion. However, what stands unchanged is our commitment to sustainable, profitable growth and continuous improvement of operational performance. Our profitability target an EBIT margin of more than 11% remains the core objective of our Strategy 2030. Let me summarize the key takeaways of today's presentation. First of all, we have taken action, and we improved our working capital management as well as operational efficiency. So we are well prepared to benefit from this in the expected economic upswing. As for the outlook 2026, we expect moderate revenue increase and EBIT margin improvement, while markets will still be influenced by U.S. tariff policy and geopolitical uncertainties. We focus on innovation, and we have new machines already in the pipeline. And moreover, we constantly enhance our solutions. Our strong balance sheet is a foundation to execute our plans and drive future growth. And we will reassess underlying market scenarios of our Strategy 2030, and we stay committed to our profitability target of more than 11% EBIT margin. Thank you for your continued trust and for joining our earnings call today. As we move into 2026, we are energized by the opportunities captured in our motto, driving progress, building success. We look forward to sharing our journey with you throughout the year. If you would like to connect, our Investor Relations team is available to provide further insights. Before we open the floor now to your questions, I want to express my sincere gratitude to all our employees of the Wacker Neuson Group. Their dedication and their hard work remain the true engine behind our value for customers and shareholders. Nobody is perfect, but a team can be. Thank you for listening. Operator, we are now ready to start the Q&A session, and we are very much looking forward to answering your questions. Operator: [Operator Instructions] The first question comes from the line of Stefan Augustin from Warburg Research. Stefan Augustin: The first one is actually on the current order intake trend. And what has -- what have you seen actually on the -- in the very short term, is there anything that you can tell us over the last 4 weeks since the war in Iran started? And did this in any way impact so far order intake behavior at your customers? That would be the one to start with, I think. Christoph Burkhard: Thank you for your question, Stefan. This is Christoph. Let me take your question. We do see -- now starting into the new year, we do see in January and in February kind of very first tender trend for a better book-to-bill ratio above 1. So currently, we do stand at around 1.2, 1.3 within the group. And that ratio is allocated across our landscape with a fairly strong order intake momentum in the U.S. after very weak months towards the end of previous year, as you recall. But we had a good start into the new year in the Americas, I should say. And Europe is also okay. It's above 1. The only exception still being Germany, where it's kind of sluggish. I think that somehow represents still the overall sentiment in Germany. We are all waiting for a kickstarting the German economy. But overall, we are moderately optimistic also with respect to order intake. Stefan Augustin: One follow-up here directly. Is that good development in the U.S. in any way connected to the next model ramp-up by Deere? Or is that something that should come on top later in the year? Christoph Burkhard: That's independent from the John Deere collaboration. Looking deeper into root causes there, the feedback we receive is around -- we have been frequently talking about this famous dealer inventories, which have come down. The second thing is we have been looking at quite some months of reluctance, particularly of the big rental companies to place new orders that eventually seems to have come to an end. I mean, anyway, they couldn't stay away from investments from forever. So that's also probably what is gaining momentum here. Stefan Augustin: Also. I also like your statement that you will focus on the 2030 targets in the longer term on the margin more than on the growth. Maybe as a first step in '26, how much of that you expect in the margin improvement is actually intrinsic and rather on costs and processes and is -- what part is actually on the higher volume based? Christoph Burkhard: It's rather on cost and processes in 2026, definitely. And that also does explain already, let's say, the building blocks then moving into 2027, where we would expect then more to benefit also from growth. But the growth aspect is not the key in 2026. Stefan Augustin: Yes. So would it be fair to say if the sales would be at the higher end, there would be an additional probability to also be better on the margin side. Is that an implication of your statement? Christoph Burkhard: I can buy into this logic without going into specific amount, but I follow your logic, Stefan, definitely. Operator: The next question comes from the line of Lukas Spang from Tigris Capital. Lukas Spang: I would like to start with the topic you just mentioned in your presentation. It's the data center area. And I think that's a very interesting part in the building segment in general. Also, it's probably a very small portion in general. But is it quantifiable for you as a group, how many machines or equipment you are delivering to this specific area? So is it possible to quantify how big the revenue you are making with all stuff regarding data center? And what could be the potential in the future for you? That would be my first question. Karl Tragl: Thank you for the question, Karl speaking here. I mean I was -- just a week ago, I visited U.S. talked also to partners and customers. And that was a topic throughout all the discussions as a positive momentum in U.S. in time, and it should be sustainable because it's driven by artificial intelligence, and that's something which will go on for more time and into the future. And it's -- the data center is driving a lot of infrastructure around because you need fiber cables to connect them, you need roads to come to them, you need other topics to people bring them over there. But this is not quantifiable. We cannot quantify such a specific topic in the U.S. But as I said, it's for me, it's a sustainable topic driven by artificial intelligence, and it is driving more investments around just to connect it. Lukas Spang: Okay. But you would say that it's more driven from the U.S. than Europe currently? Karl Tragl: Yes. Obviously, I mean, just reading through the papers and talking to people, there's only a few data centers currently as projects in Germany as far as I know at least. There's a lot in the U.S. So yes, I fully agree with what you said. Christoph Burkhard: I think we're talking about 20 or something like that more in the U.S. Lukas Spang: And then on the guidance, it's a very broad range in terms of revenue, again, like last year. So what kind of scenarios did you bake in for the lower and the higher end on the revenue guidance? Christoph Burkhard: Yes. Lukas, I guess we were a bit burned by last year and to be very frank, and by last year's -- particularly by last year's first quarter. And we lost a little bit trust in short-term recovery with significant numbers. So let me put it this way. The lower end is certainly conservative, and we wanted to really have a gradual approach here in a sense that we -- by May, when we will talk again about Q1, our picture will certainly be much clearer around the lower end of the guidance. We first want to -- we want now to accomplish a successful first quarter, and then we'll see further. Lukas Spang: Yes. But the higher order intake you mentioned now on the -- yes, I would say, very nice book-to-bill ratio in Q1 will be then mostly revenue in Q2. Is that right? Christoph Burkhard: That's probably right. However, I need a little bit to tone the enthusiasm down in a sense compared to last year, this is really -- this is good in terms of order intake. However, there are 2 qualifications to it. Firstly, of course, we are looking at a book-to-bill ratio in connection with 2 months with relatively lower absolute revenues because January and February are months with lower revenues, winter months plus months with relatively fewer working days. The heavy months are coming now. So March, of course, is supposed to be a strong sales month. And here, we need to see again also the higher book-to-bill ratios. That still remains to be seen. Secondly, of course, again, we went through this kind of depressing period partly in 2025 with low order intake. So for the time being, I would not go beyond the statement that this is now according to what we need also. So we are not yet talking about upside or higher-end guidance. That's basically the calibration you need to understand behind our statements. Lukas Spang: Yes. But for Q1, after the strong Q3 and Q4, and I think also order momentum in the second half, and also book-to-bill was good. So there should be an improvement Q1 versus Q1 in terms of revenue. Christoph Burkhard: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely right. Operator: [Operator Instructions] Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Peer Schlinkmann for any closing remarks. Peer Schlinkmann: Yes, ladies and gentlemen, as we can see, there are no further questions in line. This brings us to the end of our conference call. As usual, if you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact me or the entire Investor Relations team via phone or e-mail. If you would like to meet in person, please let us know or check our website and financial calendar for all relevant roadshow dates in the coming weeks and months. Thank you again for joining our call, and we wish all of you a pleasant Easter holidays. Thank you. Christoph Burkhard: Thank you, everybody. Karl Tragl: Thank you. See you. Bye-bye.