Christoph Ladner: Okay, let's start at time. Good morning, everyone. Ladies and gentlemen here in the room, and also those on the webcast, and welcome to SIG's Capital Markets Day and Q3 trading update. My name is Christoph Ladner, and I am Head of Investor Relations at SIG. We have a pretty tight agenda today. We start with an update on our Q3 performance by our CEO, and then Anne and the team will discuss the strategic priorities and plans for the next couple of years. After the presentation, you will have the opportunity to ask questions, so the Q&A will be at the very end, after all the presentations. After the Q&A, we will be happy to invite the people in the room for a late standing lunch just outside the room. Before I hand over to Anne, I would like to draw your attention to two items.

Christoph Ladner: First is on safety. Safety is important for SIG, and also your safety matters to us. So in the unlikely event of an emergency, please follow the green exit lights and also then follow the instruction of the hotel personnel, and then we will meet outside the building at the meeting point. Second is obviously on our disclaimer, please read slide 2 carefully. Today, we will make forward-looking statements, which can be subject to change, and therefore the actual results can differ materially from statements made today. On these words, now I would like to hand over to Anne for the Q3 trading update. Anne, the floor is yours.

Anne Erkens: Very good. Thank you very much, Christoph, but you need to give me the clicker, please. Merci. Super. Good morning, everybody here in the room and also on the webcast, and thank you very much for making time to see us today. We appreciate your time that, especially during such a wonderful autumn day, you found your way to this airport location. As Christoph already mentioned, I will now guide you through the Q3 update, and I will do that probably a little faster than we normally do that because there is much more interesting stuff to be presented as a capital markets update afterwards. Also, I wanted to invite you to stay with us for lunch because we are not only having the leadership team that you will see presenting today, but we also have a number of senior leaders of SIG joining us for lunch.

Anne Erkens: So in case you are interested to ask them questions, please feel free to do so. With this, I would go directly into the numbers. That is now a little complicated because I need to memorize everything, much more difficult than a normal quarterly trading update. So forgive me if I miss to mention one of the numbers. You see them all on the slides or in the media release. Also forgive me, I will not say all the time that the comparison is against last year's without non-recurring charges. So take this as a given, that is what we compare against. So really operational performance against operational performance. Q3 revenue came in stronger than what we had anticipated going into the quarter. At constant currency and constant resin, the growth rate was 6.5%. Within that 6.5%, we had Aseptic carton achieving almost double-digit growth.

Anne Erkens: We had Bag-in-Box and Spouted Pouch a negative 4.6%, and we had Chilled Carton also at a negative 1.3%. If you try to decompose the 6.5% into volume and into pricing, I would estimate that there is a good portion of pricing in there, but it is definitely less than half. So the quarter really indeed saw some nice volume growth. Of course, that also went against pretty low comparables. You might remember last year's Q3 was the weakest quarter of the year. Nevertheless, it also represents very nice operational progress that we have made throughout the year. The EBIT margin increased to 17.4%. Again, that is a very steep increase compared to last year's Q3. Nevertheless, the very important comparison that you need to make actually is how this compares to the Q2 run rate.

Anne Erkens: The Q3 is very much on par with the margin that we achieved in the Q2, and that is extremely noteworthy because in the Q2, we actually still benefited from lower raw material costs from inventories that we had on stock. While the Q3 has underlying material cost really at the elevated level as stocks have been consumed. Also, the surcharges have ramped up and had a stronger contribution in the Q3 compared to the Q2. Of course, that is what kept the margin basically then stable. It also translated into very nice adjusted net income of EUR 94 million. So that is also a significant increase compared to prior year and same also for free cash flow with EUR 91 million, also significantly up versus last year. I will comment on that in detail when we come to the free cash flow slide.

Anne Erkens: This drives the nine months to a growth rate at constant currency of 3% and constant currency and constant resin of 2.5%. Within this, you see again the different speeds of the businesses reflected with Aseptic carton above 4% growth rate, Bag-in-Box and Spouted Pouch negative 4%, and Chilled Carton negative 2%. Also for the nine months, the EBIT margin has increased considerably compared to last year by 150 basis points, and also EBIT overall in absolute terms naturally increased. Adjusted net income is now at EUR 228 million, up from EUR 197 million last year, and free cash flow for the nine-month period is positive at almost EUR 60 million compared to still a negative number in the prior year. All of this leads us to updating the financial guidance for the year.

Anne Erkens: We keep the revenue growth unchanged in the range of 0% to 2%, and we upgrade the expectations for the EBIT margin from 15.7% to 16.2% to now 16% to 16.5%. Let's take a look at the regions at some detail, and my colleagues, of course, will comment much more on the regional opportunities that we see going forward, but quickly for the nine-month update. Basically, for all regions, the same holds true. Q3 comparables are pretty soft, so that supported performance, but Europe for the quarter came in above 3%, and that is a nice development in a still very difficult market environment in Europe. We can say the topics that we have discussed over the last couple of months haven't changed a lot for Europe. Nevertheless, we see some nice momentum from new line installations supporting the result also.

Anne Erkens: The IMEA region had a stellar quarter with 18%, now taking the total to almost 6% for nine months. As we have said that all the time, I believe since I'm around, we always have quite some fluctuations in the growth rates in that region because life is more volatile in the IMEA region, and that holds, of course, especially true this year. So really this is an outstanding performance in a very difficult market environment with geopolitical challenges, but it's very much also here driven by volume. In Asia Pacific, the growth rate for the quarter was almost 5%, taking the total for nine months to around 3%. The trends are a little different in the Asia region. Here we benefit very much from innovation with new formats that we have put to market and which are appreciated by customers to also conquer new markets.

Anne Erkens: Also we have had significant gains, for example, in projects like school milk expansion in Southeast Asia. In the Americas, we also saw another very strong quarter, with 9% at constant currency. As this is the region that has the highest share of bag-in-box and spouted pouch business, it makes specifically sense to also here look at the number without the resin impact that is then taking the quarter to 7.6%, nine months almost 5%. Also here in the region, the business development was very much driven by aseptic carton across the geography. So, we have seen good developments in the US and Mexico and Brazil in all key locations basically. Bag-in-box, spouted pouch was a little softer.

Anne Erkens: But overall, if I may comment on that business for the quarter or the nine months, if you dissect the growth rate of -4% into really what was core and what was non-core, then it's fair to say that the core business is more or less flat. While we have seen what we defined as non-core or less attractive pockets of business was double-digit negative. Let's take a look at the adjusted EBIT bridge for the development for the nine months. Here I would first like to start with FX, basically, like already in the second quarter, also in the third quarter, FX was a neutral component for the EBIT bridge. Other than that, almost all bars within this bridge have changed quite a bit compared to how the bridge looked in H1. This was expected, so no surprise. But let's look at the details.

Anne Erkens: The top-line bar or top-line contribution is significantly higher than where we stood after 6 months, driven by the volume that was significantly growing against last year's Q3. Of course, also driven by the surcharges that we have implemented even more in the Q3 than the contribution to the Q2 was. In turn, you see also that the sourcing bar has become significantly more negative now at EUR -25 million. Do not forget, the sourcing bar is only reflecting basically the cost increases for the unhedged portion. You remember that per our hedging policy, we try to always hedge a very significant amount of the cost for the next year, and we went with a hedge ratio of around 70% in the year. So basically this reflects 30% of the raw material cost base moving.

Anne Erkens: Production also improved quite a bit compared to the H1, and that is no surprise because better volumes make the plants run more efficiently and help the plants deliver a better performance. Also, waste rates and quality has been better in the quarter. So really an outstanding job done by everybody in the operations in the quarter. Freight costs, on the other hand, continue to trend negatively. So also no surprise, I guess everybody would have expected that. SG&A still reflects the underlying restructuring savings of the initiatives that we have kicked out last year in the Q4. However, the comparison against last year looks a little softer than in the H1, and that is basically driven by a fact relating to STI and LTI provisions. Last year we had quite some release of these provisions, given the weak performance that we had in 2025.

Anne Erkens: This year we were in the fortunate position to slightly increase those provisions, driven by the good performance that we are discussing today. All of this makes the EBIT grow 12% now for the 9 months against last year and even 17% at constant currencies. Here is the two detailed slides with all the reconciliation from reported to adjusted. There is not much that we need to discuss, I believe on this slide. I would just like to draw your attention to a few numbers. So starting with the -17 that you see in the first column. This basically reflects the unrealized gain of hedging positions that we still have for our raw material hedges. Numbers slightly smaller than in the last quarter, as some of this has been consumed throughout the year, but there is still a gain of EUR 17 million.

Anne Erkens: As we have discussed multiple times, the PPA changes, the amortization related to the Onex acquisition is done. Nothing happening there in this year anymore. The PPA for the other acquisitions is also on a lower level compared to prior year, of course, driven by the impairments that we have seen last year. Same for the net income reconciliation slide. We just put this in for completeness. I think there is nothing that needs to be discussed on this slide. It is very unexciting overall. Now let us take a look at free cash flow and CapEx. I already said free cash flow for the 9 months is at EUR 59 million, up compared to the EUR -84 million that we have seen last year. So no surprise, the stronger operational performance of course, has contributed to this.

Anne Erkens: The second topic that we have discussed quite a lot also during this year and last year is the contribution of the customer incentive payments. You know that we have volume agreements with our customers, and you know that if they grow significantly in volume, we pay them a discount in the following year. In 2025, our volume growth has not been very high. Accordingly, we also do not have to pay a lot of incentives this year. That is very different than to a year ago, where we basically had high payouts relating to the high volume growth in the aseptic carton business in 2024. I know this is always a little confusing, but that is exactly also the reason why we do not give a guidance for free cash flow because it is not easy to forecast.

Anne Erkens: If I should quantify the impact for the year, that is around EUR +60 million positive, on that bucket and split between rebates that we did not have to pay and also one portion for volume growth that we have seen this year, which leads to higher cash inflows. Q3 was also supported by the phasing of working capital. So that was a positive for the quarter, which we expect to reverse to some degree in Q4. We have also discussed that the timing of coupon payments is a bit different than in prior years because of the refinancing with the new Eurobond. So that also contributed. Then tax payments were lower by EUR 19 million compared to previous year, and CapEx is also lower by EUR 19 million, as you can see in all the details below. So overall, PP&E, we stand at 6.3% of revenue after nine months.

Anne Erkens: That is at the lower end of the guidance. I believe that also reflects some of the discipline that we have put into the processes. But of course, the big driver here of the reduction compared to last year is that the Indian plant basically is complete and does not require any additional spendings. While the single largest, biggest project that we still have ongoing is the extension of the Mexican plant where Ricardo will talk about later. So this takes me to leverage. The leverage has come down to 2.6x. So that is perfectly in line with the game plan that we have laid out when we were standing here a year ago. Gross debt has reduced by around EUR 300 million and net debt even slightly more than EUR 300 million compared to a year ago.

Anne Erkens: The refinancing is very much on track and completed for the year, and we now look at a very balanced maturity profile. This all leaves us to updating the guidance for 2026. As I mentioned before, on the profit line. So we take up the adjusted EBIT margin guidance to 16% to 16.5%, basically moving it up by 50 basis points. I know that now a question would be, why did you also upgrade the growth guidance? Because at this moment you already stand at 2.5% and here the answer is that Q3 with its very low comps, of course, has influenced the nine-month number positively. We are a little more cautious for Q4 and do not want to extrapolate, and I think it would not be reasonable to extrapolate the Q3 growth rate also into Q4.

Anne Erkens: Considering all the volatility in the world, we felt this was the right thing to do. Everything else is basically unchanged, but I think overall this showcases the nice performance that the business has delivered over the last 12 months. I also know that many of the SIG team are dialing in normally to our quarterly updates, and we also know that they are registered in big numbers for today. I guess it is a very nice opportunity to also say thank you to everybody who has contributed to the good numbers so far. We look all of us together forward to talking to you later when we do our town hall. I think this is all on Q3. I know there will be questions on Q3. We will address all of the questions together in the Q&A session at the end of the presentation.

Anne Erkens: With this, I would then translate into the CMD part. As Christoph has said, we have a couple of different building blocks for the agenda for our update overall. The agenda you see this reflects very much the new segments in which we will report going forward. You have also or most of you will have met most of my colleagues who will be presenting their respective businesses today. But there is one person that you do not know yet, and I would love to introduce you all to Chris Johns, who will be running our global bag-in-box and spouted pouch business in the future. Chris, if you quickly could stand up and make yourself known. Thank you very much. Chris has joined SIG less than a year ago.

Anne Erkens: He is based in the US, and he comes with a very rich experience in the paper and packaging industry, and he has collected experience both in operations-related roles, but also, of course, in commercial roles, which prepares him perfectly for the challenges ahead. Good. Now, let me start first by setting a bit the strategic context and giving you a brief update on SIG's vision. Over the last year, I think it is fair to say that we spent a lot of time and effort on focusing to restore execution discipline within SIG and to making sure that we deliver against the commitments that we have made exactly here a year ago. Today, we want to showcase much more on transparency, how we intend to run the business going forward.

Anne Erkens: Also we want to show you the strength of our competitive positioning, and then how this competitive positioning translates into sustainable value creation overall. At the heart of our strategy stands a very healthy aseptic business, and we have three very clear priorities for the company overall. That is, number one, accelerate the profitable growth. Number two, improve the returns. Number three, you will hear that a couple of times, creating a simpler and more focused company. At the essence, if you split our business into the different product lines, around 80% is the aseptic carton business, around 17% is bag-in-box and spouted pouch, and 4% is the chilled carton business, which we have declared already a year ago as being non-core and for which we are exploring options. You know how our business model as an aseptic system solution provider works.

Anne Erkens: We have basically a self-reinforcing model that starts with filling equipment that we place at customers. A filling equipment that provides customers with industry-leading TCO, so it is highly competitive and is always ready with innovation to match flexibility needs of the customers to make sure that our customers run operations very efficiently at the lowest waste rates in the industry. Also, that positions them super well when it comes to sustainability to make sure that they can always fulfill the latest demands of consumers or also regulatory bodies. We have a recurring revenue stream with packaging solutions in a number of formats, and I think we also have a couple of examples standing out there so that customers, especially in these times, where on-the-go and smaller formats and SKU proliferation play a big role.

Anne Erkens: More protein comes with much more different SKUs, and our equipment basically helps customers to be able to accommodate all of this. We complement it at the end with services, with a very large global field service network, and increasingly also with more and more digital service offerings. Couple of data points here also. For the aseptic carton, we expect an attractive market growth, and Christoph will talk about that in more detail of 2% to 3%. We have outgrown these markets consistently over the past decade by 1 to 2 percentage points a year, and we intend to continue to do so, and we will also explain to you in the later sections why. The market overall is pretty attractive also when it comes to profitability. Couple more KPIs on our offerings.

Anne Erkens: The most flexible machines can do up to nine different formats on one machine. That also helps, of course, customers manage their investments better if they can run different formats on one machine. Lowest TCO is the recurring theme. When we talk later about the Neo launch, you will understand even better also why the output per square meter is also a very important KPI, and the new generation of machines is 20% to 45% more competitive here. On technical service, we have more than 700 people around the globe helping our customers, and also that is seen and acknowledged by customers. So coming out with an NPS net promoter score last year of 42. It is also very important to me to mention that what we have promised last year, we really have put into action and we have delivered on those themes.

Anne Erkens: You might recognize again the three themes that we have talked about last year: portfolio optimization, performance improvement, and capital allocation discipline. On portfolio optimization, let me start by, so we have improved the share of high value-added products in our portfolio, and especially Angela will also talk about this later. We have executed very consistently on the portfolio prioritization. That is always a difficult word, prioritization, on the bag-in-box and spouted pouch portfolio and in the chilled carton business, while we have not yet closed the efforts to find a strategic solution for this. We are super encouraged by the margin improvements that we have achieved during the last 12 months. Performance improvement overall, mentioned in the Q3 update already. We are up 150 basis points in margin, and that is very much driven by the reductions in SG&A that we have kicked off a year ago.

Anne Erkens: Despite the very turbulent year when it comes to raw materials, logistics, and everything, we could hold to this one because also here, very diligently, we have executed the unfortunately needed surcharges. Indirect procurement savings are ahead of plan, and we come to that later. We even believe there are more opportunities also into the next year. Last year, we also said we would close two plants in the bag-in-box/spouted pouch universe. One is completed and the other one is underway and on plan. When it comes to capital discipline, we have implemented a number of new KPIs within the organization that help us to run this more stringently. I would say also the new EBIT perspective is fully institutionalized when we discuss business now internally.

Anne Erkens: We also see net CapEx at the lower end of the range, and all of this contributing also to an uplift in ROCE, so an improvement in the returns of almost 2 points. This is not it. We are far away from declaring success. We are very much encouraged by the progress that we have made so far, but we clearly believe there is more that we can do as a team. Today you will hear us talk about the growth corridor. We are confirming the 3% to 5% that we have put out last year, and we believe that we are well set up to continue to outperform also the markets.

Anne Erkens: While we have made great progress on the margin, we believe there is more to do, and it is important to me to say that there is not one silver bullet when it comes to margin improvement, but it is a number of different measures that are partially self-reinforcing, but really a big agenda that we will be driving. It is also important to say that this is not just about cost reduction, but this is about creating an organization that is well set up to be even more successful in the future.

Anne Erkens: This is not about just short-term improvements, but really optimizing the enterprise as a whole, strengthening accountability on all levels of the organization, continuing to have disciplined resource allocation everywhere, and also to be very clear on the organization when it comes to distribution of roles and responsibilities to avoid duplication, and at the same time ensuring that we do everything super professionally and highly customer-focused. Here, I would like to briefly summarize and let us start at the bottom right. Our vision is to be or to become the number one choice in aseptic solutions. Where we compete today for deals, we are very successful, but we want to enlarge that universe where we play and whenever there is a choice to be made for a new installation, that should be SIG.

Anne Erkens: There are three priorities overall, starting with optimizing structures, then elevating performance. All of this we do because we want to excite our customers. This is about more than just market share gains. We want to really be the preferred partner through innovation, TCO, sustainability, service, and we want to continuously and consistently win where we compete. Quickly talking about optimizing structures. We today basically announced the creation of a separate organization for bag-in-box and spouted pouch so that we can manage the different businesses according to their different needs, also in a very transparent way. We will also address the organization overall in bag-in-box and make sure that we run it with the leanest possible team. At the same time, of course, we are reassessing all internal structures to drive efficiency, but always with customer proximity in mind.

Anne Erkens: When it comes to elevating performance, we have basically two very strong buckets where we want to optimize further. On the one hand, that is procurement, both on the indirect materials, but of course also on the direct materials. Then we all believe there is more to do in manufacturing and in supply chain. We have defined for all plants very structured agendas on how to drive performance and operational excellence, and we are executing this as we speak. All of this is complemented with two enablers, and that is on the one standardization, really making sure that we run professional processes, supported by modern systems and tools, and also make sure that automation plays the role that it should play in a professional organization today.

Anne Erkens: Last but not least, we are also very much focused on culture, the way how we collaborate as a high-performing team and really with a play to win mindset to make sure that we do justice to our product offering and to our teams. Let me quickly touch on the numbers for the different substrates and the different missions. Let us start with aseptic carton at the very left. You see or you have seen that before, growth rate after nine months, 4.2%, margin of the business, adjusted EBIT, 19.1%. The mission here basically is to continue what we have been doing in the past, continue to grow, and do further optimization. On bag-in-box spouted pouch, basically, this business has been slightly declining over the past couple of years and now achieves a margin of around 5% after the nine months.

Anne Erkens: Let me give you a little color on this one. Many of you will probably remember that this business had an EBITDA margin in the high teens at the time of the acquisition. From there, you need to deduct something like 7 percentage points for D&A. That brings you to slightly more than 10% EBIT margin as a starting point. Factor in additional corporate allocation that of course every business in a larger family needs to. Then you are probably somewhere around 10%. What you see is basically a clear decline compared to the situation back then. You also probably remember that we were encouraged by the first successes in the business and the market being very favorable in the first quarters after the acquisition. But then the market downturns clearly have led to lower operating leverage in the end.

Anne Erkens: That wasn't helpful for the margin. Next to that, also some capability and investment gaps needed to be addressed and that, of course, took a toll also on the margin. The mission very much from here is now a turnaround to drive performance up again, while at the same time making sure that clearly defined growth pockets are being served efficiently and innovation is being put to market. Last but not least, under the non-operative segment, other, we will in the future also report the Chilled Carton business. When you look at the numbers there, you see this, and we talked about this a year ago. That's a highly competitive market. Growth rates haven't been stellar also here. But what is very encouraging, you see the margin expansion compared to previous years.

Anne Erkens: While this business is not at the core, we were still able to improve it significantly compared to where it stood a year ago. That very much goes to cost of goods optimization, both in the field of different board structures that we use now and different paper suppliers, but also stepping up the execution in our own manufacturing facility. This change of the segment reporting, we expect will result in the Q4 in a goodwill impairment that is non-cash of around EUR 250 million, going back to the acquisitions of Scholle and of Evergreen. Important to say that this impairment is non-cash and has no implications for our debt capacity or for the underlying economics of the business overall.

Anne Erkens: While the three businesses really have their unique challenges or unique positions to build on at the moment, I would still also like to highlight again that we believe that the Bag-in-Box business, although it looks a little difficult at this moment, we believe is a good business and a business that can look even better in the future. Now, important also is that incentives and shareholder interests are aligned, and we have discussed this a year ago also slightly and said that we would work for the coming year also on adjusting our compensation frameworks a little. What is new? In the long-term incentive, we are changing, the comparison for the relative TSR from an index to a defined peer group. A simple reason here is that the index is not being provided anymore, so we needed to find a solution.

Anne Erkens: An external partner has found us the best correlations and basically this peer group consists of packaging companies, industrial companies, customers, and also equipment suppliers. On the short-term incentive, we have two changes or a couple of changes. First, we introduce ROCE as a KPI, as we have discussed already a year ago also, and we changed the non-financial KPI from the EcoVadis score, where basically it can't get any better also for SIG with a 96 starting point, to different financial targets of CO2 targets, safety targets, and customer intimacy targets, NPS. You will also probably notice that the weight of growth has been increased slightly in this composition, and that for bottom line, we now fully focus on the margin and have removed an absolute EBIT component.

Anne Erkens: All right, so this closes now the introduction and what we will now do, first, we will have Christoph and Gavin talking about market and innovation. Then we do a deep dive into the regions on Aseptic Carton, where our regional leaders will guide you through the most attractive opportunities that we have identified going forward. Then we will have Chris speaking about the turnaround plan for bag-in-box and spouted pouch. Then in the end, I will summarize it all and tell you what this will mean for the numbers. With this, I hand over to Christoph.

Christoph Wegener: Thank you, Anne. A good morning and a warm welcome also from my side. I am Christoph Wegener, the Chief Markets Officer and President Europe at SIG. In this section, we will be focusing on Aseptic Carton, which makes 80% of our revenue and contributes the lion's share of profitability and cash. My colleague, Gavin Steiner, our CTO, and I, we will focus on three topics. Number one, why do we remain confident in the structural growth of Aseptic Carton? Number two, why do we remain confident that SIG will continue to gain market share? Number three, how does our strong innovation pipeline strengthen our competitive position? Let us start with the market first. The long-term growth of Aseptic Carton is supported by four fundamental drivers that drive end market growth and that favor Aseptic Carton as a packaging substrate.

Christoph Wegener: Firstly, dairy demand will continue to grow globally simply by a growing population and by GDP growth. If anything, that is amplified by what we call the worldwide protein wave. What started a couple of years back in the Western world, mostly in sports nutrition, has really proliferated across the world. We see globally and in all consumer segments, an increasing demand for high protein products, which is driven by a trend towards healthier food, but also accelerated by weight loss drugs. As food portions get smaller, protein density simply has to increase. On the packaging side, we see a lot of growth in portion pack, and that is simply a function of growth in the emerging markets, where smaller pack sizes, so 350 milliliters and below, are the prevalent packaging size.

Christoph Wegener: Aseptic carton is the most cost-competitive packaging solution for sensitive products with long shelf life. We will deep dive into that later. Further, we see continued interest in sustainability. Regulators, food and beverage companies, retailers, and consumers are concerned about the environment, and that favors packaging that allows ambient distribution, which is low in energy and lower in CO2 emissions. It favors packaging that is designed for recycling, that is low in CO2, and that is made from either renewable or recycled material. Aseptic carton ticks the boxes of all of those, which is why we say it is the most sustainable packaging substrate for sensitive products. Let us deep dive into these important statements. I said, more consumers, higher protein demand, more milk consumption. That fundamental link is one of the most important growth drivers of aseptic carton going forward.

Christoph Wegener: This is the data to support it. You can see on the Y-axis, milk protein consumption, and on the X-axis, GDP per capita. Now you see structural differences in diets. You have the Western diet, which tends to be richer in milk, so that's the European, the American bubble up there. You see Asian diets that are a little less rich in milk. But all of these markets have one thing in common. As GDP per capita grows, so does protein consumption. What coincides with economic development is typically urbanization. When you have sprawling urban centers in emerging markets, you simply cannot provide milk from dairy farms around the town. Supply chains get longer, and therefore, ambient distribution gets more important. The key question is, which packaging substrate will capture that growth?

Christoph Wegener: I said, aseptic carton is the most cost-effective and the most sustainable packaging substrate to pack sensitive products for long life. You have two dominant technologies in that segment. You have aseptic carton and you have aseptic PET. Here we've chosen our DomeMini, our latest innovation, which we call the carton bottle, and we compare it against an aseptic PET bottle. Both portion pack, where we see most of the growth happening. In shape and convenience, they're very similar. They have a center spout, easy to consume on the go. But in weight, they're very different. DomeMini has 40% less weight than an aseptic PET bottle. Material still is the biggest portion of packaging cost. Respectively, DomeMini is 30% to 50% less expensive than aseptic PET. By the way, here we have just taken average resin prices from 2023 to 2025.

Christoph Wegener: We haven't even factored in the spike in raw material price that we've seen in the Middle East crisis. Less material also means lower CO2. Hence, we do say aseptic carton and portion pack is the most cost-competitive and sustainable solution. The question is, which company will capture all of that growth? SIG, over the last 10 years, has outperformed the market throughout every economic cycle. We had a period of growth from 2016 to 2019, where we over-delivered and outperformed the market, and we certainly also had a period of soft markets driven by a pandemic, the great inflation, trade wars, real wars, but still, we have delivered 2% volume growth through market share gain. Revenue was even higher based on pricing.

Christoph Wegener: Due to the four trends that I mentioned, we believe that aseptic carton will return back to its structural growth of 2% to 3%, and our ambition is clearly to continue outperforming the market. But market growth is not the only factor in our growth model. We have market share gain. We still have attractive white spaces that we can enter. We increasingly see growth opportunities in technical service, and we have value uplift through mix and pricing, as we have executed in the last few years of soft market environment. That's a multi-factor growth model that is really the foundation of the resilience of our growth track record of the last 10 years, and that gives us confidence to continue to deliver to the 3% to 5% top-line growth.

Christoph Wegener: But if we say market share gain and entry into white spaces, that requires that we have a differentiated, superior product offering. So what do we do to ensure we keep that lead in the marketplace? As Anne mentioned, we have a system offering, an integrated system offering. So we have filling systems, we have packaging, the unique sleeve system that is designed for our filling machines, and we offer technical service to keep the whole system running. And we innovate simultaneously in all three elements of the system. On the filling machine side, we are in the process to launch our new Neo series of filling machines. So we are increasing the speed of our filling machines by 25% to 40%. That allows our customers to produce more. It reduces the unit cost, therefore, so higher output on the same asset.

Christoph Wegener: But what is also important, we have designed them in a way that they are faster but still in the same footprint. Because if you want to gain market share, you need to replace filling machines. And we do not want our customers to move walls to increase the space in their filling rooms. We want them to plug and play with our new machines. And even our fastest Neo series comes with the strong points of SIG, volume flexibility, industry-leading waste rate, high technical efficiency. On the packaging side, we are in the process to launch our Terra portfolio of Alu-free full barrier solutions. This allows us to offer the most sustainable aseptic packaging solution as the only player that has really industrialized that and gained share in markets where regulation gets tighter, consumers and retailers get more focused on sustainability. We also have unique shapes.

Christoph Wegener: I mentioned the DomeMini that can play in premium segments and help our customers to bring their premium products and the right packaging to the market. On the service side, we have established a global platform of technical service. Our field service engineers are providing services to filling machines in more than 100 countries in this world. And each year through our customer satisfaction surveys, we hear that our service delivery is superior to competition. But that is the core service. We see quite some growth opportunity in digital solutions for technical service, and Gavin will share more about that shortly. So in a way, our integrated system remains competitive. We heavily invest into all three elements, and the more filling machines we will sell, the more packaging material we will sell, the more service opportunities we will create.

Christoph Wegener: But it is not just a superior offering, it is also the way how we bring it to our customers that creates long-lasting customer relationships and customer loyalty. And here we focus really on joint value creation together with our customers. And that means their success is our success. We help them to identify market opportunities in new beverages, market opportunities in new channels. So every day, our marketing teams that are embedded in our customer organizations are having innovation workshops. They discuss with our customers market trends, market opportunities. Up to September, 344 of such workshops have happened with our customers. And once we have identified the joint opportunity, we can help them in our tech centers in Dubai, in Germany, in China to develop these new beverages.

Christoph Wegener: We can advise them on the right packaging format for a premium product, a premium pack. For a commodity product, a commodity pack.

Christoph Wegener: We do even joint market studies to find the right sizes, the right price positioning. We invest into AI tools to help them to become even more effective in selling our joint products. It is really that joint approach that creates long-lasting customer relationships and loyalty. With that, I would hand over to Gavin, who will talk more about how we deploy our innovations, how they enhance our product offering, how it expands our digital service, and also our cost effectiveness.

Gavin Steiner: Thank you, Christoph. Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, it is a privilege and pleasure to be here with you today and with all of those guests online too. A lot has been said already by Christoph around the area of innovation, but let me steal your attention just for a second. What does the word innovation conjure up in your mind? Is it the next big breakthrough? Is it a product development that substantially changes the world? What does the word innovation mean to you? Does innovation in our area where you are talking about incremental changes across the system warrant such a big change? The answer could be different. Yes, we all look for it. In R&D that is a dream, the Holy Grails. As a system in the enterprise, innovation comes in incremental changes that develop a competitive advantage across the ecosystem.

Gavin Steiner: What I presented to you last year was a roadmap around innovation. Christoph has highlighted one of the really interesting parts around the filler, the sleeves, and the services. If you look there, we have a discover, develop, deploy color coding. On that, the real power of innovation is not the big breakthroughs. It is the incremental knowledge that we bring constantly into this ecosystem that changes the way we behave as an end-to-end business. The SIG Neo platform has gained a lot of momentum, a lot of interest on the deployment of that knowledge that has been created over the past, culminated into the new machine park that we dubbed SIG Neo. That deployment is gaining traction. I am going to cover a little bit more detail on the next slide around what platform upgrade and unification means. You can see 2026 is the start.

Gavin Steiner: I presented this last year and must say that we have traction and speed on all of these initiatives on time in full. The sustainability initiative, which we bring to the sleeves, the Alu-free, that is with the paperization journey that we are on is also gaining a lot of traction, a lot of interest in the markets. You heard, and you will hear from my other colleagues about the deployments that are happening. So really proud about the innovation so far in the SIG promises that we made. Then a little teaser at the bottom there, the service Christoph mentioned about digital. There is something around digital that everyone talks about AI and all the buzzwords, but I want to bring to life something unique that is built on building blocks over the past.

Gavin Steiner: And we, if you can see the timeline there, we are commissioning something called Digital One, and I will bring that to life in a second. Continuous innovation and not isolated breakthroughs is what we are doing. Platform unification and upgrades. Ladies and gentlemen, this is really leveraging what we do to deliver more to the customers and reduce complexity in our ecosystem. The knowledge that SIG has with more than 10 platforms of fillers across the world, reducing that down to a unique set of highly performant, best-in-class fillers, which we brought down to five. Look what it unlocks. This project has been going on, with the teams taking all that knowledge and bringing it in to reduce the efforts once you have only got five platforms. Cost reduction, not only from building of these machines, but also the training, development, and deployment. Enhanced level of IT/OT.

Gavin Steiner: This is the security levels where we have to deploy patches to the world if there is any security issues. When you have a unified platform, that is a lot simpler and a lot more efficient. It also comes back to me. It helps my deployment and innovation because we have got plug-and-play methods now which can fit across the five platforms. Ladies and gentlemen, that is the ecosystem that we are looking at for the platform upgrade and unification project, and it is really a priority for us in the team. Simplify to scale and standardize to accelerate. Moving on. This is what I had the teaser on the first slide for you all around Digital One. What if every filling machine that we connect makes every other connected machine smarter? Digital One is exactly that.

Gavin Steiner: We have been building modules, and you are going to see in Latin America, my colleague will present a couple of these modules that have been in development for years. Digital One has been connecting different parts of the process. Our fillers are fully connected, and with that, a unified AI native platform evolves. This brings with us a single interface to the customer enhancing, getting value from the digital data lakes that we have, and retrofitting that into the customer base. Not only on efficiency, performance, TCO, but also on their quality management, root cause analysis. Imagine all those connected fillers coming back with that data to us to enhance our ecosystem as we grow. Fabulous. This is Digital One, and we have been building this over years. Now you are going to see the rollout as we go forward. Every connected filler makes our digital platform stronger.

Gavin Steiner: All of this culminates in. R&D is normally measured, well, some people like to measure us on the cost. Okay? But the cost of R&D is probably not the right metric. It is how much value we generate. Cost should be irrelevant if you are generating the growth and the value. R&D has many times been thought of as the creative, crazy people who just invent stuff. That is how many people see me. We are very enthusiastic, and we create a lot. But ladies and gentlemen, R&D is very structured. We have in SIG a discover platform, a develop platform, and a deploy. Those three are very structured. We allow the crazy inventions around the discover. We have to test, we have to prove. That then translates into the develop, and then we accelerate in the deploy.

Gavin Steiner: Looking at the scalable model, many people ask me, "How do you see AI, artificial intelligence, the modules?" In R&D, we leverage that significantly, and we have only touched the tip. Let's be honest, this journey every week changes. For us in R&D, we have seen acceleration in lead times, in development, in modules that we can reprogram our coding, our deployment of the coding. It is really a game changer. As digitalization accelerates, and you see it there as a foundation within R&D, we really see the value of this growing. In summary, ladies and gentlemen, this is SIG's innovation model. This is the future proof, and it is not the aha wow breakthrough from my first question on innovation to you all. It is a system of incremental innovation that changes the game. That in a nutshell.

Gavin Steiner: My colleagues are going to bring to life some of the deployments, some of the things we are really proud of. I hand back over to Christoph to summarize. Thank you very much.

Christoph Wegener: Summary, we remain confident in the structural growth of aseptic carton of 2% to 3% in the midterm. We are innovating across all elements of our system to ensure that we will continue to deliver above-market growth. We have key innovations coming to market in all three elements of our system. We are on track to deliver them. The newest series of filling machines, the Terra portfolio of Alu-free full barrier solutions. We are bringing SIG Digital One to the market that allows us to scale service solutions, digital service solutions, and also lays the foundation for further growth. We have innovations focused on cost efficiency, basically slashing the number of equipment platforms from 10 to five with respect to scale effects and cost-effectiveness. We have all building blocks with that in place to continue to deliver top-line growth.

Christoph Wegener: In the next section, we will share with you how we have translated the growth model and our innovation pipeline into regional growth strategies. I will be joined on the stage by my colleagues, the regional presidents, and we will look at each region step by step. I have said aseptic carton market is structurally attractive, but growth opportunities differ region by region. They are different by product, by geography, by channel, by category. That is why we have translated our product portfolio, our growth model, and the opportunities into regional strategies, really targeted at delivering above-market growth and focusing on the most attractive opportunities in the respective markets. We will start with Europe.

Christoph Wegener: As President Europe, I will guide you through the details of that. Then I will hand over to Abdelghany, our President IMEA, followed by Angela, our President APAC, and last but not least, Ricardo Rodriguez, our President Americas. Let's start with Europe. Europe is SIG's home market. It really combines strong profitability with large size. in 2025, it has contributed EUR 933 million of revenue, which makes 30% of the group's aseptic carton revenue. It is the largest geographic segment. Over the last couple of years, we have delivered 6% annual growth in an overall flat market, which is a testimony to the ability to gain market share in Europe based on our offering, our strong customer relationships, but also pricing discipline. If we take a look at the European market, there are three important trends that really shape the market. Number one is packaging regulation.

Christoph Wegener: Over the last couple of years, the European Union has really introduced what I would call the most ambitious regulation to drive transition towards more sustainable packaging. We had the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation, extended producer responsibility, Single-Use Plastics Directive, Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, and I could go on and on and on. Eventually, it is all really targeted at driving a transition in packaging towards packaging that is designed for recycling, that is easy and cost-effective to recycle, that it is lean in weight and low in CO2. Aseptic carton really is perfectly positioned to benefit of that transition. The second really important trend is the power of retail. We see large retailers to increasingly consolidate on national level. We see a lot of growth in private label taking market share from brands.

Christoph Wegener: Retailers, interestingly, have even more ambitious packaging guidelines, even more ambitious requirements to pack their private label brands. Some of them even explicitly express that. We have Lidl, which is one of the largest pan-European retailers, that now in their packaging guidelines specifically says they prefer alu-free aseptic carton as the most sustainable packaging option. Retailers are really a driving force that will also create more pull for sustainable packaging. Last but not least, Europe as a market might be flat, but there are pockets of growth, specifically in liquid food, in value-added dairy, so high protein, fortified milks, but also in plant-based. In summary, Europe remains a large market, an attractive market for SIG with market share gain opportunities and with trends that really play to our strengths.

Christoph Wegener: That is what we have built our growth strategy around, these trends and innovation that allows us to gain market share. Number one, we are, as the leader in the industry with an alu-free solution, we can be really the catalyst of that transition and can gain share in delivering a solution that no other company has industrialized, which is aseptic carton without aluminum. Number two, with our unique filling technology, we can benefit and enable our customers to grow in liquid aseptic food. We have an alu-free solution that can help our customers to grow in plant-based. We all know consumers of plant-based, they are not just concerned about their health, but also about the environment. We have a perfect match of a good pack and a good product.

Christoph Wegener: And we do see opportunities in value-added dairy, where premium formats like DomeMini can really play a significant role. The last growth opportunity that we are really looking at is asset replacements. Europe has an aging asset base. We estimate that about 20% of all aseptic carton filling lines are older than 20 years, so they are clearly at their end of life. Here again, our new platform comes into play. We don't ask customers to move walls, we just ask them to swap machines, preferably with a SIG machine. Let me deep dive into the first two growth opportunities, and let's start with sustainable packaging. We are not new in Alu-free. Most of you know that. We've had this product out for a while, and we have shown 10% growth per annum above-market growth.

Christoph Wegener: But the solution we had didn't have what we call a full barrier. So we could play in white milk, and we could play in moderate climate conditions that were less challenging on the barrier needs. This year we've launched Alu-free full barrier, which really unlocks a lot more categories as well as geographies. It's really the full barrier that now allows us to address the full addressable market for sustainable structures. As you can see, that has been received by our customers with quite some interest. Only in the first six months of this year, we were able to double our growth in Alu-free. So Alu-free really is the answer to a lot of the requirements by retailers, by regulators, by food and beverage companies. It reduces CO2, it reduces material complexity.

Christoph Wegener: So we go from three structures, paper, plastic, and Alu to two, easing the recycling process. Also, and that is really lately a hot topic in the exchange with our customers, it increases strategic supply chain resilience. We've all learned about choke points of global trade. If you look at Alu, the ore comes from one African country, Guinea, and a lot of aluminum that is imported into Europe comes from China. So removing a volatile raw material that also has a very concentrated supply chain increases the resilience of the product supply chain itself. So it really hits the nerve on a lot of topics. I said Europe as such is rather flat, but there are these pockets of growth. I mentioned liquid food, and here aseptic carton really is growing beyond its traditional dairy core, replacing cans and glass.

Christoph Wegener: We have shown quite some good growth, 5% over last year in this category. We will continue to grow so based on our ability to fill highly viscous products, to fill particulates. On the private label side, or on the plant-based side, I've already mentioned that there's a lot of dynamic also in private label. I mentioned that Alu-free is a perfect pack for plant-based products. Now we can also provide the barrier that is needed to pack plant-based in Alu-free. Last but not least, value-added dairy, where we now have an offering of DomeMini, which we are deploying the first time in Europe, that really opens up that category in portion pack also to our product offering. In the last 12 months, we have placed filling machines precisely in these segments with Apys as one example.

Christoph Wegener: It is the largest tomato producer in Spain, and they went for SIG technology for its volume flexibility. As you know, that is exactly our strong point, and a lot of these tomato products are packed in different volume sizes. So here again, we are combining volume flexibility with our ability to fill highly viscous products. SalzburgMilch, a major dairy group from Austria that has a significant export business in value-added dairy. We plan to continue this strong product offering to grow in these segments and as such also diversify our category mix within Europe. So in summary, Europe is not an easy market, it is not a high-growth market, but we have the right product offering to continue to deliver growth even in this market. With the size and our market share, we continue to see headroom to continue our growth trajectory.

Christoph Wegener: With that, I would hand over to Abdelghany to cover IMEA.

Abdelghany Eladib: Thank you, Christoph. So good morning. I represent IMEA, and I think each and everyone in the room is very much aware of the situations there. I do not want to go in details on the stuff that you see on the news, but let me give you some color of what are we facing there. So we have some situations. Ships are rerouted, ports are congested, airports are attacked, civilians are losing their lives. Materials that used to take weeks, today takes months, if arrived. Tough situation. But what really matters is what we, SIG, have been doing over the last nine months. Every single demand, every single sleeve, every single spout that we have received have been delivered on time to each and every customer in our factories.

Abdelghany Eladib: Our service engineers, despite all of these challenges, have been standing in our customer factories making sure that our customer products hit their shelf and there is no missing pack. My name is Abdelghany Eladib. I represent SIG India, Middle East, Africa for the last 10 years. I come with 20 years before in the FMCG world in the same beautiful region. If I say one word, and I want to say this word to my people, I have never been proud or prouder of a team like what I am today. The team is really doing fantastic. So if I want to give you some color about the region, what do we really characterize? Resilience is the name of our game. Passion and passion to win is what we breathe. Customer intimacy is the name of our game. That is us. That is my people.

Abdelghany Eladib: But it is not only that. The region is a phenomenal region. It is the fastest-growing region in aseptic carton in SIG. We are here to win that, and you will see that. It is not only growth that is in pockets of India, Middle East, Africa. You will see that across the whole Middle East, Africa, and India, and we are turbocharging it with the sub-Saharan frontiers. Last but not least, we are proving, and I will show you that in the coming slides, that technology innovation is another success story that we are bringing in India, Middle East, Africa.

Abdelghany Eladib: Let me take you a bit into what is India, Middle East, Africa. Our region is 86 countries. We are currently present in one-third of that. Before I talk about population growth, and actually we represent more than half of the world population, let me give you a bit of a geography.

Abdelghany Eladib: If you put this region in million kilometers, we are 63 million kilometers. What does this mean? You can actually fit the two Americas, you can fit Australia, and you can fit EU in this region. So what a geographically spread. It is not that. This region is a hot climate region. It actually lacks an infrastructure of a cold chain. So what would be the solution? It is SIG aseptic carton. This is what you will hear, what we are actually bringing into this region. So what are the characteristics of our region? I have talked about the geography, but I actually want to tell you some kind of a demographics. It is the fastest population growth region. From an economic point of view, from a GDP point of view also, it is the rising middle-age income. So all of the fundamentals are there. Consumptions are there.

Abdelghany Eladib: You will also hear that per capita consumption of dairy is the lowest. We are talking in some countries, less than 2 liters per capita per person a year. In some countries, it is even less than one glass of milk per year per person. What a number, huh? Huge opportunity. So that is really a fantastic opportunity. Over the last five years, we have really had a CAGR growth of a stunning 9%. Last year, aseptic carton closed at EUR 414 million. If you put the 9%, you will see that over the last five years, we have delivered more than EUR 100 million of aseptic carton revenue growth. If you take our numbers and look into the distribution of our business, you will see 55%, as you see in the graph, of our revenue is mainly dairy-based, 44% is juice, and 1% is food.

Abdelghany Eladib: Fifty-five percent dairy, and that is a fantastic, very affordable, best nutrition that you can offer to this region. So it is our engine of growth, and we are really driving that. You can always challenge me and say, "Hey, hey, 1% food, that is weak." I tell you, that is another opportunity that we are conquering. I have talked about the consumption. I have talked about 2 liters per capita. So that is a huge headroom that we are actually leveraging. I think I talked in the beginning about the volatility of the region. I think each and every one of you knows the region probably more than I do. So you might see some kind of volatility in a quarter over a quarter. But what you really need to take out is that the opportunity is there. The growth potentials over the year is there.

Abdelghany Eladib: My 9% is a clear proof point. If I would like to really double down on our three characteristics profile of this region, I would call it number one, growth that is here, durable, and for long-term. That is number one. I will say number two is that demographics and economics are in our favor. Number three, I will talk about the technology that is really accelerating our growth in this region. Let me take you into the first perspective, our growth. We definitely want to grow in line of market. In reality, as you see in the 9%, we want to outbeat the market growth. How do we do that? Our system, as I said, is the best offering that you can have for a hot climate that lacks a cold chain infrastructure.

Abdelghany Eladib: If you think about what will be the best packed, shelf-stable, sustainable pack, SIG comes into the place. If I would give you some statistics, over the last five years in the frontier Africa, in sub-Saharan Africa, we have tripled our customer winning, our filler deployment in the region. What does this mean? Africa is now on the edge, or sub-Saharan Africa now is on the edge on the scale to really establish investment and build local capacity. We are there to pick the strategic customer, which will be in a strategic hub location to really build the right SIG aseptic capability to cater for the local demand of the country, but also act as a hub of the neighborhood countries. We are very specific to really attack that. Second, technology. In Middle East Africa, our customer factories are full. Lines are really at capacity. They want to grow.

Abdelghany Eladib: Demand is growing. Middle East Africa, getting permits is a bit challenging. It is slow. Investment to build a factory for a next line is also high. What is the solution? Here comes Neo. I am so proud that we have brought into the globe and in Middle East Africa last year, our first slim line, the 15,000 of 1 liter. That is a fantastic thing. Christoph talks about we can place that line without moving the walls of the factory. Suddenly, the factory is producing not four quarters, not 365 days. We have increased the output from 12,000 to 15,000. Automatically, we give back to our customer one free quarter a year. Funny enough, SIG IMEA, in 1 liter, our year is five quarters, or actually our customer production is five quarters a year. That is really phenomenal.

Abdelghany Eladib: I will talk more about that, and I will share much more examples of that on the technology. Third element in the growth, which is also phenomenal, is food security. All of us have lived into the globalization before. I think with the current challenges, with the current turmoils, I think now we are going back into localization. Specifically in my region, lots of factories now are thinking that we cannot rely on imports because of the geopolitical tensions, because of the currency challenges, and so on and so forth. We really need to build our current infrastructure. That is big. This is a decision that comes on a generation. That is a decision where critical customer sits, talks with government, and make this kind of critical once in a lifetime. The great thing, we are sitting on these decisions, and our customer is picking us.

Abdelghany Eladib: I will give you much more examples of that. If you put the 3 together, you will see fantastic things. You will see growth potential, you will see technology that really delivers, and you will see demand is driven by customers, pulled by government, and we are benefiting out of that. That is growth. I will move into the next one, demographic and economics. Proud to say, region of the highest population growth, but it is not only population growth. Our region is young, 26 years old. That is a huge potential. That is the customer that making choices for what they drink, what kind of pack they drink, what kind of product they drink, and that is the decision that they give also to their kids. GDP of 5%.

Abdelghany Eladib: Population growth, GDP growth, and as Christoph said, with the rising income, families move from loose milk into packaged milk and from packaged milk into shelf stable, and the choice is SIG because we offer multi-sizes, multi-shapes on the same line. You will see on that slide 3 clear examples of the frontier Africa entry. Fan Milk in Ghana becomes a hub. 3 lines in Fan Milk, Ghana, and it is actually built to serve all the neighboring countries, Nigeria, Senegal, and so on. You will see Groupe Kirène. Fan Milk in Ghana and Groupe Kirène, you will see that in Senegal is also building their infrastructure to serve all of their countries around. Refriango in DRC. Not only you will see Libya is actually growing, you will see North Africa is growing and so on. Last but not least, technology.

Abdelghany Eladib: As I said, IMEA before, we used to, technology gets to be developed in the, I would say, first world, Europe mainly, because engineers are there, R&D are there, and then we take it for deployment. We are now taking the lead in deploying that, and that is a big deal. When a customer puts his trust in SIG IMEA to put a technology for piloting, for validations, and it delivered 15,000, that is a trust that we have earned. That is a trust that the customer has given us. I am proud to say they have stand up, this big customer last year of Middle East, in Gulfood, proudly praising our great performance delivered by that, and they have signed the second line, which is actually in startup now. I just came back from South Africa, where I actually met, in Durban, another customer of mine proudly.

Abdelghany Eladib: Farmgate started up 2 lines 1 year ago. Both of them is 1 liter, 12,000. Even before I leave, he said, "Abdelghany, please, I want to replace my 12,000 by 15,000 because my factory is congested." I signed an LOI, and before I come back into the flight, I met Fair Cape, and they said, "We need to really move into the capacity into the next level." Neo is really accelerating the growth. Not only, we are bringing the XSlim, our 24,000, putting it into 32,000 in the Middle East. I talked about the 1 liter where we converted the 4 quarters into 5 quarters. Here comes the XSlim, our single serve, where we actually converted the 1 year by adding one-third, 120 days extra in the same year. You can do the math. It is not only a more output.

Abdelghany Eladib: It's the same crews, it's the same energy, and this factory is really on steroids. We're really now on the edge of deploying technology, proving technology, and really anchoring that success in IMEA, which we have done before when we started our digital transformation with asset health monitoring, and we've rolled it out. If I want to leave you with few words about my region, I would say our success stands on our resilience. We don't only think of a plan A. We always have a plan B, C, D, and E, because we know something will happen wrong, and it does happen wrong. We need to be ready for that. Growth is there, and we're ready to take that. Technology is anchoring that, and I think the reward is in the number.

Abdelghany Eladib: I joined SIG 10 years ago, and I would say one word before I give it back to Angela. I'm very much positive now on the future of SIG in IMEA now with what I see, with the customer reception, with the growth that we're potentially, versus 10 years ago. Thank you for all your trust, and I hand over to Angela.

Angela Lu: Thank you, Abdelghany. Okay. Let's move into Asia Pacific. My name is Angela Lu. I'm the Regional President for SIG in Asia Pacific. APAC is our second largest aseptic carton region, and it is a very dynamic market in the world. Following a period of softer market condition, as we all know, we now see that the region is coming back with a more attractive growth trajectory. Why this is happening? Because we see the rising incomes of the middle class families and also the premiumization, the emergence of the new consumption occasions and channels. With this, that we are more positive that the categories is coming back to a better growth trajectory. What is more interesting in this trend for SIG is that the demand is increasingly driven by higher value categories instead of just the volume expansion alone.

Angela Lu: The consumers are seeking for more convenient, functional, and differentiated products, which creates the demand for a wider range of the product that is covering from the different product pack size, formats, and propositions. This is playing exactly into SIG's strengths. Because of our system flexibility and also the innovations such as SIG's DomeMini is able to allow our customers to respond to the consumer trends quickly and also capture the market growth opportunity. This is also enable SIG to continue gain market share in the market while the market retaining back to the growth. Let's look into the details in the region. APAC has a very wide geography coverage, as you can see from here, and also a very dynamic market. Consumers are also changing in the region.

Angela Lu: We see that the consumers are increasingly health conscious and demanding for functional products. Those products with a high protein, lifestyle nutrition, they are rising, and also we see the higher demand in those type of the product. While it coexist for the consumer's demand for indulgence product. Urbanization, the rising incomes, and also we have a lot of the increasing in the single-person households. At the same time, an aging population as well. All of this, they demand a variety of the product covering different price points, different types of proposition.

Angela Lu: All of those trends are very attractive for the category, for our customers, and especially for SIG, because those trends is driving the categories going value up, and also coming back to the growth, while all of this demands for the customers, they demand a product packaging that is able to differentiate in the market, that is able to offer different pack size, capturing different price points in the market. While at the same time, as you can see that, in APAC, we have very broad manufacturing, commercial, and innovation footprint. This enables and position us very well to capture those market opportunities supporting our customer. With all of this, we believe that SIG is positioned very well in APAC to retaining to a stronger growth trajectory when the market is coming back. Let's look into the growth drivers.

Angela Lu: We have three complementary growth drivers that put down here. Number 1, packaging differentiation. As I mentioned, the demand for the premium and value-added products are increasing in the market. These require a differentiated and also distinctive packaging that is able to stand out on the shelf. SIG's DomeMini is a perfect example for that. Because of its unique bottle shape, it is able to support our customer to position it with a premium pricing and positioning and stand out on the shelf. As a result of it, the success for this approach is reflected in Yili's commitment for more than 10 DomeMini lines already, up until now. Second, flexibility. Flexibility remains very, very important for us in the region. As I mentioned, APAC is a very diverse region.

Angela Lu: We have consumers spanning from across different income levels, and also with a different age, different size of the family group. That requires really different product pack size, formats, and also we are now seeing a rising emergence of the new consumption channels and also occasions. The snack shops in China has been rising significantly. The school milk in Indonesia is also increasing dramatically. All of this, we worked with our customers together to co-create new product, capturing those opportunities. Up until just for the H1 2026, we have already launched more than 100 new products leveraging SIG's flexibility across the different pack size and also the formats. This has contributed for more than 5% of total APAC's volume in the H1 of the year. The third, geography expansion.

Angela Lu: Although China remains very important for us as the single largest market in the region, we see our growth strategy is more and more diversified into the Southeast Asia market. While also in addition to that, Philippines and Cambodia are offering very good growth opportunity for us to build in the additional growth because in the Southeast Asia, overall dairy penetration remains low, and we see a significant growth trajectory. Just in Philippines alone, in the last five years, we have seen a 24% growth year-on-year in the market. Let us move into the example of the SIG DomeMini closely and see how our customer leverage this platform to position themselves to create a new segment into the market and driving premiumization. On the left side, this is the example from Yili.

Angela Lu: Yili has launched a totally new segment in the premium dairy market in China and created a new consumption occasion for the consumer. Since its launch, it has been extremely successful. As a result, we have already secured the commitment from Yili for more than 10 filling lines. We are also, at the same time, expanding and also scaling it up in the rest of the region. From the right side, you see the examples. It is ranging from nutritional drinks in Vietnam, to the high protein brain health drinks, and also ready-to-drink coffee in South Korea. We are also seeing that more and more premium value-added dairy product, flavor milk in China as well. What is extremely interesting for this opportunity is that this is creating the value not only for the category growth premiumization, it is also creating value for our customers and for SIG. Flexibility.

Angela Lu: We kept talking about the flexibility again and again, but I just want to show you here that flexibility is not just a technical feature. It is a real powerful growth driver for us, especially for Asia Pacific. In Asia Pacific, majority of our products are in the single-serve format, which is more on-the-go consumption. As you can see here, we have launched more than 100 SKUs in the region in H1, spanning from those products below 125 ml up until to 1,000 ml, and many of them are built on the single platform. With this, our customers are able to launch the product quickly into the market and also reduce their cost of the innovation, increase the speed to the market. As a result of this, we see the asset utilization increasing for our customers.

Angela Lu: We also see that they have increased their return on the invested capital. At the same time, SIG benefits from the increased volume outputs on the install base. With this, we are very confident that we are able to continue driving the growth, leveraging on the system flexibility, and this is going to give us a recurring revenue growth in the future as well. Thank you very much. With this, I will pass to my colleague, Ricardo, to introduce about Americas.

Ricardo Rodriguez: Thank you, Angie. Good morning, everyone. My name is Ricardo Rodriguez. I run the Americas region for SIG since 2015. America is a high-performing region, with significant opportunities for further growth for SIG. This performance is anchored in, first of all, resilient categories. It is a huge aseptic market, where we are deploying differentiated technology, where we have superior TCO, and where we are deploying a lot of innovation as well as we will cover next. These strengths are reflected in numbers. We have strong performance in terms of market share expansion and also growth in general. We have still plenty of firepower to grow further. This is especially thanks to the very nice work we have been doing on expanding the production capacity in the region. That is what I want to share with you today.

Ricardo Rodriguez: Let us have a closer look at the Americas region in numbers. As mentioned, this is a large and diverse aseptic region in the world, with 22 billion liters underpinned by resilient categories such as dairy, complemented by beverages and also food. The region generates over EUR 0.5 billion in revenue, and there we see an amazing track record of 8% CAGR or 8% growth CAGR in the period 2021 to 2025. We have an installed base of 180 filling lines and two production units, important production units, one for the South and one for North America. I would like to highlight two dimensions that are very critical for this success. First, scale and flexibility, they matter. Customers need solutions that combine high productivity, format and size flexibility, and a competitive TCO. Second, innovation.

Ricardo Rodriguez: We are deploying new packaging formats, high-speed filling technology, and very advanced digital services, digital solutions that are enabling SIG to move beyond a traditional supplier role to increasingly become a partner, a very strong partner of our customers in terms of driving growth and driving productivity in their plants. Let us now take a look in the most attractive opportunities and how we are translating our competitive position into additional growth with clear focus on three major priorities. I will start with the one at the middle, with Brazil. Brazil is one of the largest dairy markets worldwide with around 9 billion liters. We are strengthening our position in core categories through our high-speed filling technology. First of all, we start with the family sizes.

Ricardo Rodriguez: This year, we are deploying our latest innovation there, our SIG Neo Midi 15 aseptic carton platform, which allow us to compete and to win in this segment, running at 15,000 packages per hour. In portion packs, we are already succeeding and doing an amazing journey with our high-speed platforms, which combine this superiority in TCO, very competitive TCO. This is very important, with the unique size and viscosity flexibility of our filling lines. In very practical terms, what do I mean? The same filling line can handle very different products with different sizes, ranging from the very liquid, the fluid, chocolate milk, to very viscous product, like sweet condensed milk. Definitely, it makes our position a lot stronger with our customer. It improves their flexibility, operational flexibility, and confirms our superior value proposition and superior TCO.

Ricardo Rodriguez: Then I would like to talk about priority number 2, which are the PACCE markets, and PACCE stands for Peru, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, and Ecuador. It means they are the important markets in South America. Our strategy there is to grow with the national champions and to expand into new markets. Between 2021 and 2025, we achieved amazing annual growth of 30% compared to a market growth of roughly 2%. This demonstrates the potential of combining our superior technology, our superior TCO, with very focused commercial execution. Priority number 3 is growing Mexico and in high-value niches in North America, the US and Canada. Mexico is already a market where we have proven to be very successful, having delivered 5 percentage points share gains in the last 3 years. This is really amazing.

Ricardo Rodriguez: This performance reflects our success with the leading dairy players, where we have present a very attractive value proposition supported by the local manufacturing. In the US and Canada, our approach is different, as we focus on attractive high-value opportunities, particularly with co-packers. We operate with co-packers, and they produce for brand owners as well as for private label companies. Based on that, we are expanding our presence in broth, foods, broth, and in high-value beverages with special focus on food service in general. That said, let's now take a closer look on Mexico and understand how we are executing one of our critical pillars. Mexico is a very clear example of how our strategy is translating into measurable results. In 2023, we started local production in Querétaro, replacing an important base model with local supply platform.

Ricardo Rodriguez: This has fundamentally improved our competitive position, and the results have been significant. Our production volume increased fivefold while our market share rose from 17% to 22.8% to be more precise, in a rather flat market. Our next expansion phase is already undergoing, we will double production capacity to 3 billion packages by 2028, and this will include further vertical integration. Querétaro is a regional hub nowadays, serving not only Mexico, but also customers across the US and Canada. For SIG, this creates an attractive platform for continued growth, with efficient supply, local supply in the region, and also improved scalability. Anyway, that said, we know that manufacturing alone is not enough to create a sustainable competitive advantage. We know that the real value comes when we combine it with innovation, with execution, and with long-term partnerships.

Ricardo Rodriguez: This is what you see in the next chart with Nestlé. We have a long-term partnership with Nestlé, with an excellent illustration of how we create value together. Product innovation, first of all, solutions for iconic brands, and also sustainability. Over the years, we have consistently brought new solutions to Nestlé. In Mexico, we have expanded into new applications, into new categories such as culinary dairies, through the introduction of our high-speed filling lines, in particular the SIG Mini 24. In Brazil, our collaboration includes solutions for iconic brands like Nescau and Moça, where packaging, innovation, and the size flexibility have supported product differentiation and growth. An element that I am particularly proud of, sustainability, and this stays very close to my heart. Our collaboration goes a lot beyond the product itself with Nestlé. It includes paper straw conversion.

Ricardo Rodriguez: We were the first ones to deliver this solution to the market, and also initiatives to strengthen recycling infrastructure in various municipalities, especially in Brazil. We are doing a joint journey with Nestlé on that. Together, these elements show how strategic partnership convert our capabilities into durable value creation to our customers. They also explain how we have conquered 100% share of wallet of the Nestlé operations, carton operations in Mexico. Also, we have conquered 100% in various categories of Nestlé in Brazil, like flavored milk and sweetened condensed milk. Let me now turn to a new frontier of our value proposition that was initially explored by Gavin, with digital services. Digital services strengthen customer relationships, they create loyalty, they differentiate our offering, and they create opportunities for additional value-added services. We have built a modular solution on a common data platform.

Ricardo Rodriguez: Basically, we have an open platform, and we are connected to the complete process, end to end, in our customers' manufacturing area. We help customers improve operational performance, quality assurance, food safety, and this is across the entire manufacturing process, so with end-to-end scope. To give just 2 examples, we can support active OEE management and also to implement end-to-end traceability. It is a very complex and advanced application, including certification of origin. We are proud of the progress we have already achieved. We had 2 customers in 2021. This year, we will finish with 25 active sites of our customers with our digital service solution deployed and in use. At Santa Clara, with the largest enterprise of Coca-Cola in the dairy world, located in Mexico, we are targeting a 10% OEE improvement for the complete plant using these solutions, using our digital solution.

Ricardo Rodriguez: Well, this scalable model combines standardized technology, cloud deployment, and selected technology partners. I would like now to conclude on Americas with 3 messages. First of all, the Americas combine meaningful scale, large scale, with attractive opportunities for SIG. Second, we have demonstrated the ability to execute. That is what we have seen in Mexico, in PACCE, in Brazil. The market share gains in Mexico, the expansion of Querétaro, and the long-term partnerships with Nestlé, for instance, they provide tangible evidence of that. Third, we are strengthening the foundations for future growth as we are deploying high-performance filling technology, we are expanding our production units, and also we are deploying digital services to create additional value for our customers. Our ambition is to translate these advantages into sustainable, profitable, and value creation growth and long-term value creation for SIG. Thank you very much.

Ricardo Rodriguez: With that, I hand over to my friend, Chris. Please, Chris.

Chris Johns: Thank you, Ricardo.

Ricardo Rodriguez: Thank you.

Chris Johns: Good morning, everybody. My name is Chris Johns. I am the President for Global Bag-in-Box and Spouted Pouch. Excuse me. New to the stage this year, so thank you for coming in person, and thank you for being here online. We are going to walk through the turnaround plan for the Global Bag-in-Box and Spouted Pouch business. This represents about 17% of SIG's total earnings. You have seen the data from Ani this morning that was reported and showed that we have under-delivered in this business for the past few years, in both revenue and earnings. That said, we still remain very confident in this business based on the underlying market characteristics, which we are going to walk through today, and then, of course, our position in those markets as well. Here you see the headline across the top.

Chris Johns: Globally, it is about 2,200 employees for Bag-in-Box and Spouted Pouch, about EUR 551 million in 2025 for revenue. You see the slight decline in our CAGR that we have talked about already this morning. If we pivot down to the market characteristics, let us talk about those. What we are seeing in the Bag-in-Box side, and Bag-in-Box is going to be largely food service side. Then we are going to talk about Spouted Pouch, which is more on the retail side. If I start with the Bag-in-Box piece, where we see the growth coming in the market there is in the food service business, both in syrups as well as really in the dairy sector, which is where we see some stronger growth that I am going to talk to you about a little bit later in the presentation.

Chris Johns: You will also see a shift to new beverage formats, largely in the US. Why do we call it the US? It is our largest market for this business, so that is why it is quite relevant to this presentation. You see a shift away from traditional sodas into dirty sodas. You see a shift into refreshers. You see a shift into coffee blended drinks in quick service restaurants. Additionally, there is a huge push for automation on behind-the-counter services. Where is that coming from? I know we have been talking about dispenser technology for a couple of years, but it is really accelerating with online ordering and online apps.

Chris Johns: The food service guys need quicker ways to get the same product out of the store because they have customers come in online, they have customers in the store, so they are looking for ways to speed up service, which is where we play. I am going to pivot over to the spouted pouch side and talk about that from a retail perspective. The spouted pouch, which there are some in the back of the room if you have not looked at them, it is all about convenience, out of home, meal replacement, on-the-go healthy snacking. You think about it, in your backpacks or briefcases today, in your kids' lunchbox, put in a healthy snack. Where it really plays, where we are trying to play is in the aseptic end of this, because then you get the clean label piece.

Chris Johns: You can do that without having preservatives in the product, which is a huge push today. People want a clean label of ingredients in what they eat. Then, of course, you have heard all my colleagues talk about the shift to this healthier focus from GLP-1s and smaller portion size, and also inflation, just having smaller portion sizes as well. Where does SIG fit in this market perspective? We have the market outlook here for the next five years on the bag-in-box side at about 3% growth. That is heavily driven by the food service piece, which you see is about 46% of what we do in that space. That is what I just talked about. It is the QSRs, it is the new beverage trends, the shift to smart dispensing, and the shift from regular to aseptics, specifically in the dairy cycle or the dairy sector, excuse me.

Chris Johns: Where are we positioned in that? We are the number one player globally in it. From a profitability perspective, where we are trying to grow is by offering, differentiate ourselves on our innovation in our films, our innovation in our fitments, our innovation in our filling machines, both aseptic and non-aseptic. We rate the profitability on this business, I would say today at a medium. We see it growing in the aseptic and the dispensing area. There is growing from a smaller base, but that is where we see more profitable growth coming from, and it is an area of expertise for us. If I shift over to the spouted pouch side, the outlook from a market perspective there is 5% growth. This is all that healthy lifestyle I just talked about, and on-the-go snacking, the trends that is out there for nutrition-dense food in smaller portion size.

Chris Johns: Today, we're the number 2 player there. Where we're really trying to differentiate ourselves there is, it's a bit of a crowded field today, in the non-aseptic area. We are in the aseptic. We have a foothold in aseptic in the spouted pouch today. We're trying to accelerate that with our innovation of scale up of speed on the filling machine that will be. We have a prototype now. It will be commercial in 2028. I will talk a little bit more about that, as well as industry first in-line sterilization capability. That means you can sterilize the pouches in line with the filling process, not done via a separate process. That's where we're trying to play, which we see as more of a niche and a high competitive or highly profitable area with extreme growth. We're going to take a minute, just look at the financials.

Chris Johns: We've talked about this this morning. Ani talked about the dip in revenue and earnings, and I think the walk away from this slide from my perspective is, we recognize it, we acknowledge it, we have a plan, and we have a dedicated team in place, and I'm going to talk about that next. We have a dedicated team already in place. We have the midterm ambition to raise our EBIT from 6% to 8% to 10%, and we're going to do it in 3 ways: excite our customers with growth, elevate our performance, and an optimized structure. Let me talk about those 3 for a second. If we talk about exciting our customers, it's all about scaling our innovative solution. On the bag-in-box, I told you it's new film, recycle-ready products, new fitments, new technology in the filling equipment.

Chris Johns: On the spouted pouch, it's all about scaling our new product development there and our innovation roadmap on the higher speed in-line sterilization generation 3 spout filler. From a market perspective, we have a pretty concentrated focus on the dairy market and the food service market. That's where we see the growth opportunity. Then from the team perspective, we're going to leverage this through a global team versus the previous regional structure with global focus on bag-in-box and global focus on spouted pouch each to make sure that we're serving those markets appropriately because they're different from a food service perspective to a retail perspective. From a performance perspective, you heard Ani talk this morning. We've already announced the closure of 2 sites in bag-in-box. One of them is complete. The other one will be complete in 2027.

Chris Johns: We're going to continue to look at that footprint to look for opportunities to optimize it in any way needed to match the business conditions that we're in. We're also going to look at outsourcing. As we go through our manufacturing footprint, if we don't have a competitive advantage by making something ourselves, there's opportunities for us to outsource that and perhaps not have to reinvest capital in that equipment that was making that. Continuous improvement. Again, this is going to be globally coordinated for a best practice sharing to make sure that we're spreading the best practice for improvement on OEEs and whatever it may be across the globe and get the best performance out of our operations.

Chris Johns: Along with that, the disciplined capital management to make sure that we are investing in things that match our innovation roadmap or our growth roadmap, and we dedicated our focus of capital in those areas. The structure piece, as I said, the new leadership team is in place. We have an innovation roadmap, we have a growth roadmap, and we have a cost savings roadmap as well. It is a leaner organization with a global focus versus the regional focus with about 1 or 2 percentage points of advantage. We are going to still share the back office of SIG. I will talk a little bit more of that in a slide coming up as well.

Chris Johns: I wanted to talk a little bit about dairy and our position to grow in dairy, because this is obviously a pretty important sector to us, not only on the aseptic carton side that you have heard my colleagues talk about, but in this area as well. You heard me talk about bag-in-box and the market growth there of about 3%. We see from a market perspective a little higher growth on the dairy side. You see the 45%, and I will call more of our core customers in established markets, but more importantly, you see the 8% CAGR for forward-looking in some of our emerging markets. We are covered globally in this business in the sense of US.

Chris Johns: Europe are our largest markets, but then we have got operations in India, we have got operations in Australia, New Zealand, we have got operations in China, ready to serve the world. I think what is important to point here, too, is when we see this growth in dairy coming, this is where our aseptic expertise comes in play. It is really important to point out that these are not customers we have to go and find. We know these customers. We are doing business with these customers today. So it is about leveraging our relationship with these customers to grow our business. On the spouted pouch side, you see high single-digit CAGR outlook there is what the market is reporting. We are already in this market, as I said.

Chris Johns: We have got footholds in Asia, in the Americas, and Europe, and our plan here is really to leverage our new technology that is coming with the industry-first in-line sterilization and the high-speed filler. The filler that is in prototype form now, be commercial in 2028, is three times faster than the filler we have in the market today. There is a lot of excitement in the industry about this. We were at trade shows talking through this. It has got a great future from our perspective. Let me talk a little about the structure. If you see there on the left, I have talked about the network optimization. We closed one facility in Latin America, one in Europe that is in the process of closing now. I have talked about the fact we will obviously continue to evaluate that footprint.

Chris Johns: Continuous improvement is huge for us to make sure that we are cost competitive and get the best cost advantage out of our facilities. If I pivot over to the structure side, this is just a high-level look at the structure. On the left, you see three commercial areas. We have simplified it a little bit of where we want to put our focus. We are globally leading the effort for sales on bag-in-box and spouted pouch, as I said, each. Folks sitting in those seats over there are going to double hat and have a region, but also make sure there is global oversight for our sales activity. And why that is important is, we are dealing in these core markets with customers.

Chris Johns: We want to make sure we take that knowledge and our approach and how we sell and expand it into these emerging markets in the same way to get the best result. In the middle, you see the functional areas, the supply chain, the manufacturing. I have already talked about the coordinated activities of that to make sure for best practice sharing, we are doing the right thing. We obviously have our global marketing is there as well. That is the start of our sales pipeline to push into the sales regions on the left.

Chris Johns: We have product management and change management, and those are some new things as well. The focus there is to make sure that we have a dedicated team pushing our growth roadmap, pushing our innovation roadmap to make sure we deliver and continue to deliver. And then on the far right, you see the shared resources.

Chris Johns: This is the BSC that we have talked about, the back office things of SIG. If you think about this new structure, it is really focused, dedicated to commercial, marketing, manufacturing, supply chain, project management, while still leveraging the SIG back office for efficiency. In summary, I want to leave you with three things to walk out of this room with. Number one, we are positioned for growth. We have a growth roadmap in place. We have an innovation pipeline in place. We are the number one and number two player here, and we are projecting, based on what the market is saying, 3% to 5% growth in this area. Number two, we have got a team focused on cost and efficiency. That is key to this business to help turn around the earnings that you guys have seen.

Chris Johns: We have got a dedicated team with a lot of experience in this area focused on how do we become more cost competitive? What is the best footprint for us? What are the best assets to invest in? And then third and final, we have a clear ambition for the midterm to raise our EBIT, as I said earlier, from 6% to 8% to 10%. Thank you. I will turn it over to Anne for closing remarks.

Anne Erkens: Very much, Chris. All right. Merci. Now, very easy to summarize everything that you have heard so far. Again, as a reminder, we have 3 priorities. Number 1, exciting our customers, because that's how we make money. How do we do this? In the Aseptic carton business, we continue to outperform the markets. In bag-in-box, spouted pouch, Chris has just summarized the growth opportunities that we see there. We will continue, as Gavin Steiner has described, to front run on innovation. On elevating performance, it's all about driving procurement efficiencies, both on direct and on indirect materials. We will continue to optimize our own manufacturing footprint, but much more how we run our operations ourselves. Of course, we will make sure that we continue to leverage our BSCs and work on automation.

Anne Erkens: Last but not least, we have heard today also that we optimize our structures by separating basically into different teams to run most professionally the different businesses by the different needs. Also, we will continue to streamline our internal structures. All of this, again, supported by standards and standardized processes, more modern tools, and a reignited culture. Let's summarize quickly where the growth will come from, 3% to 5%, where we are confident, and as Christoph Wegener has talked about it, the different pillars will be different in every given year, reflecting the market circumstances. What will contribute is market growth, that's share gains, that's conquering more white spaces, that is driving further our service portfolio, and last but not least, also the value uplift.

Anne Erkens: What is very important with this wonderful business, every additional dollar or euro that we make in revenue translates directly into the bottom line with a drop-through rate of around 30%. So it's an important driver for earnings growth. Summarizing again the performance improvement measures and the structure optimization. We will continue to work under the 3 headlines that we had introduced already. We will continue to further evolve in the measures that we had taken already and where we have additional stuff that we're going to tackle now in the next couple of quarters. We have 2 new topics that we really prominently add to the agenda, that is the organizational set up and that is optimizing the direct procurement. Also, again, as a reminder, the larger contributions will come from procurement optimization and from manufacturing excellence.

Anne Erkens: While there will, of course, also still be additional contributions from SG&A and R&D efficiency improvements. Now, looking at the margin guidance for the midterm, we increase it to above 18% today, starting from the 16% to 16.5% that we have introduced earlier for 2026. There will be a meaningful contribution from growth and mix, as I have described before, with the drop-through rate of 30%, and there will be a meaningful contribution from performance improvements and structure optimization. Important to note, we see margin improvement potential across all substrates. Probably the most intuitive improvements will sit with Chris Johns, as you have seen in his presentation, but also in the aseptic spouted pouch, we see further potential to upgrade. So what does this mean for our capital allocation framework? No change compared to what we have presented last year.

Anne Erkens: We will, in the first place, continue to invest into the business and drive earnings accretive growth. That means we invest into CapEx that we need to accommodate growth. We will invest into CapEx that we will need to improve productivity. Of course, we will also continue to invest into innovation. Second priority is that our commitment to a strong balance sheet and the prioritization of deleveraging in the short term. That is especially important in the current environment with raising interest costs, obviously, but I think we have shown pretty good progress during this year, and we are confident to drive this roadmap further. Last but not least, we are also committed to a shareholder-friendly capital policy with attractive and also growing shareholder distributions over time.

Anne Erkens: We had already summarized the increased guidance for 2026 and the strong development of the business and the effectiveness of the measures that we have taken in the last couple of months. This lead us to also being very comfortable to already say today that we would want to, or we will want to, propose to the AGM in next spring to again have a dividend paid out to shareholders in the range of 30% to 50%. Again, as mentioned before, we believe in attractive and sustainable dividend payments, and we expect that this will grow over time. Now, summarizing all of this in the new midterm financial guidance, we confirm the 3% to 5% revenue growth, organic growth at constant currencies. We also increase the adjusted EBIT margin to above 18%, and we set ourselves a target for aseptic carton to be above 20%.

Anne Erkens: No changes on net CapEx, 6% to 8%, including lease payments. No changes to the leverage outlook, and also no change to the dividend outlook. In summary, we have seen, or I think you have seen a very experienced, very committed, and very ambitious team that is super committed to make this agenda happen. Multiple growth drivers that SIG can leverage going forward, attractive margin profile of the core aseptic business and potential in the other businesses, and a very good return profile, which we will further support with very much discipline in our capital allocation. The transparency by the new substrate reporting will also support us here. You also all remember the business needs low working capital overall, which makes it very attractive business.

Anne Erkens: With this, we are at the end of the prepared remarks, and I would ask all my wonderful colleagues to come back to stage so that we can do the Q&A.

Christoph Ladner: Maybe we start with taking questions from the room, and then we will also have questions from people on the phone. First, question from Jörn, and after. State your name and your company.

[Analyst] (UBS): Okay, thanks. It is Jörn from UBS. If you allow me three quick questions. The first, where are we in the growth path in aseptic carton? Where are we in the cycle? There was a period which was more difficult. This is now bottoming out across the board, and this is also confirmed by your filler pipeline 2026, 2027. If you can comment on this.

Anne Erkens: Yeah. As discussed before, I think it would be too early and too hopeful to extrapolate what we have seen in Q3, because Q3, of course, also benefited specifically from the low comps. But overall, I think as some of the colleagues have mentioned, that we believe that the market is improving sequentially. It is not yet at the 2% to 3% growth rate that we consider being the normal structural growth rate for the market, but it is clearly better than what we have seen last year. In major geographies, I think we are hopeful that we have reached a low, but never praise it too early. When we talk about the filler placements, let us also take a step back here.

Anne Erkens: You have heard quite some talking about the output and an additional quarter in the IMEA region with the higher productivity of some of the assets. The filler placement will continue to be an important leading indicator, of course, for us, but it is more and more, it has been difficult before already, but it is going to be increasingly difficult to predict, just from an outside modeling, what a filler placement number really means, because there is so much variety in value, there is so much variety in output per hour, that it is just not one is the same as another one.

Anne Erkens: For the year, our filler placement, we said all year long that probably this year we are going to be rather in the lower half of the range that we normally give with 60 to 80, and we would still confirm also this outlook for the time being.

[Analyst] (UBS): Thank you. Then two quick follow-ups. Just in aseptic carton in dairy, what is the 1-liter plain vanilla and how is this category doing? What are these specialized nutrition high-end protein drinks in terms of revenue share and growth, if you separate these two things?

Anne Erkens: Yeah. Christoph, you want to take that?

Christoph Wegener: Well, the 1-liter carton plain vanilla is the majority of our dairy business. In Europe, it is for sure the majority, I would say, in all other regions as well. But the premium segment that is emerging, I would say that is again, probably Asia and Europe is leading in that part. I think the DomeMini example speaks to really massive investments also from large players going into that segment. But it is still a small portion.

[Analyst] (UBS): The last question, sorry for this, on the cost initiatives, because it should contribute around 150 basis points on your margins for the midterm. Can you give us the two key initiatives, concrete examples, what you are planning there, what you are doing, and by when you would expect this is executed on? Thank you.

Anne Erkens: Yeah, I think as we have laid out in the slide with the contribution of the building blocks, number one is the procurement initiatives. Here again, we have more potential on the indirect, although indirect has contributed already in 2025 and 2026, but we have another good program for 2027 lined up. Then optimizing also the raw material spend going forward. We are very encouraged by the contribution that you have seen in the chilled carton business, where margin has improved following such actions. We are going to continue to do the same also in the aseptic carton. Then the other big thing is the manufacturing excellence. We think there is stuff for us to do. We have gotten better already this year when it comes to waste in our own production and quality improvements. Definitely there is more that we can do.

Anne Erkens: Overlaying all of this, of course, is the turnaround agenda in bag-in-box with a sizable plan for Chris and the team.

Manuel Lang: Manuel Lang from Vontobel. I have two questions as we are limited to. First, in aseptic carton, I see you are targeting as well market share gains of around 1.5% or even more in the future. That is a little bit of a step up compared to the last 10 years. Just wanted to clarify what makes you so confident on that, even though the market in general is maybe a bit more challenging. Then second one, maybe if I could add this, from the wording on the dividend policy, I see or I just wanted to confirm if you commit to a regular dividend per share increase or if this is really dependent on the payout ratio and could eventually be limited by that?

Anne Erkens: Yeah. What we said on the dividend is that we see a range of 30% to 50% of adjusted net income as a payout ratio. Of course, with earnings growth over time, that number will then also in absolute terms increase. Then on share gains, let Kerry find the numbers and then, yeah.

Christoph Wegener: Exactly. I think I showed on the slide, the last 5 years the market was flat in volume, and we have delivered 2% per annum growth. I would say that is volume, so it eliminates the inflationary, the price adjustments. That is probably more representative of our ability to gain share. We are more saying we will continue on the same track, and I think with all the innovations that we have shared, that is backing up our statement that we are confident to continue gaining share.

Luca Pediconi: Good morning. Luca Pediconi from MOMentum Alternative Investment. Thank you very much for your very straightforward presentation. I have just one question. In China and IMEA, what share of the installed fillers are actually running third-party sleeves? Are these non-system players putting any pressure on your margin? If you can comment on the competitive landscape in this region, which I understand are also the fast-growing for you. Thank you very much.

Anne Erkens: Yeah. Maybe let us start with a broader answer on the competition environment. Yeah.

Christoph Wegener: Okay. There is no industrialized solution for sleeve copies, globally we can say that. Regarding the competitive pressure, I would still say that indirectly, the roll-fed material is of course, it is an alternative. I mean, the customer can decide between two systems, and if there is a lot of price competition on one system, that has an indirect effect on us. That is the more important one, and here we have to, of course, ensure that we stay competitive, within the range of what TCO can deliver. That is more the market dynamic that we have an eye on, at the moment.

Gabriel Simoes: Hello, this is Gabriel Simoes from Goldman Sachs. Thank you very much for taking the questions and for the presentation. My first question would be on the hedging side. This is something we have seen helping the results this year, given the whole volatility we have had in both plastics and aluminum costs. I just wanted to understand how much of that is going to roll over and what is the expected impact for 2027, if you are already hedging a significant portion of what you need for 2027. That is the first question. The second one would be on the sourcing side, especially on the paper, on the LPB. This is one of the initiatives that you mentioned in the past that you were going to conduct going forward.

Gabriel Simoes: I just wanted to understand whether that has changed at all or if you are making progress in that front to add more potential suppliers to that. Thank you.

Anne Erkens: No, that has not changed at all, and yes, we believe that we do nice progress over there. But of course, that will continue to keep us busy also over the next couple of quarters, because this is not just exchanging raw material that very often requires then testing and requalification, but it is well underway and that is why we also call it out so specifically as a contributor to the future margin development. The hedging is a complicated exercise because actually, I mean, we do hedging in order not to gamble, but still this year it felt a bit like don't go in too early because you might lock in too high prices, and that is definitely not what we wanted to do. So we have tightened the pace of execution quite a lot compared to years before.

Anne Erkens: We now basically review every few days how prices have developed and how the spread is developing, to then make our choices and our normal policy, that is between 50% and 80%. That is what we target to achieve. At this moment, we still, for next year, stand significantly lower because we felt it does not make sense to lock in the too high prices for the moment. There are still a couple of weeks to go, but let us see where we end the year. Yeah.

Cole Hathorn: Thank you. Cole Hathorn from Jefferies. Maybe just following up on that point, it might be a little bit too early to look into 2027, but a lot of those hedges have rolled over. What kind of price increases are you thinking about for customers? Have you started that negotiation yet, and just how are you protecting the margin for 2027? Just like your initial thoughts. I know you haven't given the 2027 guidance.

Anne Erkens: Exactly. I would say it's a little early for the 2027 guidance. We would come back with this, of course, in February as always, or early March this year. Indeed, Q4 and Q1 is always the moment when you have these discussions and the things that we need to address is that we need to convert the surcharges of this year into fixed price increases and that we need to basically also discuss with customers the 70% hedge share of this year, what it means for next year. Pricing will be an important element in the growth equation for next year. But it's too early to give a concrete outlook on the numbers there. Although in the first region we are out with price discussions already, and there we would look at the, I would say, mid-single digit, high single digit discussion for the year.

Cole Hathorn: When I think about SIG, in the context of global consumer staples-

Cole Hathorn: keeping 3% to 5% top line growth is an attractive growth driver. I mean, you talked about a 2% to 3% aseptic market, growing 50% of the market, taking share. That is ambitious growth. When I think about your pricing into next year, one of my concerns in the past of SIG is you have a great business model in the sense that you know your costs in many ways ahead of the year and you price just whatever your fixed costs are divided by your number of volumes. What is the risk that you price incorrectly because you're too ambitious of growth and you don't deliver those volumes and you effectively price your cartons incorrectly? How do you manage that going forward?

Anne Erkens: No, I think, of course, you can always be wrong, but what helps you to not be wrong is if you really have great transparency on the different number items that you need. You have good discussions with your customers on prospective volumes, you have good discussions with your suppliers, and you have a feel for the market on where some of the raw materials might go. Then in the end, of course, you have number of self-help initiatives lined up, so that in case things go wrong, you can also react quickly. I feel we are well set up when it comes to transparency. I feel all of you are also very close to customers, so that our long-term partnerships help us also to have constructive discussions. That said, always something can go wrong.

Anne Erkens: But then as Abdelghany said, we have a plan E, even ready.

[Analyst] (Berenberg): Berenberg. I have 2 questions, if I may. The first one is on margins. You finally disclose margin by product, so much appreciated. But could you give us some indication on the EBITDA margin? Because I would like to understand in terms of, if we look at now versus historical levels, is the margin for aseptic carton improving or deteriorating? Then the second question is, you mentioned the benefit of the aseptic carton versus PET. But if we look at the shelves, especially some protein lines are basically in plastic bottles. So what is your discussion with customers looking like? Thank you.

Anne Erkens: Yeah. Let me start with the D&A share that you need to consider. Probably you remember that before last year, we had a guidance for net CapEx, including leases of 7% to 9%. I guess that is a nice proxy that you can use also to figure out the detail between EBIT and EBITDA. As discussed, we have narrowed that corridor to 6% to 8%, I do not know, 18 months ago or so. So of course, over time, that will also come down. I think that should help you on the first one. Then the second one, Christoph, back into you.

Christoph Wegener: Yeah, you are absolutely right. If you walk into a retail store here in Switzerland, you will see a lot of PET. But this is Europe. Let us not forget that. So that PET is typically not aseptic, it is chilled. You will see that also on the shelf life, it is 30 days, on average. But if we look at Asia, there is no chilled chain established as such. So Yili is a good example. They produce in Inner Mongolia, it has got to be shipped to the population centers, which is along the coast, right?

Christoph Wegener: Having said that, still in Europe, we do believe that there is opportunity to bring differentiation because what you see is a shelf full of plastic. It all looks the same. So a carton really stands out, right? So there, of course, the ambition or if chilled chain is already there, it is an infrastructure you can use.

Christoph Wegener: You do not need to invest in, you will use it. But if you want to drive differentiation, if you want to have the bigger pack, some of those customers will consider to change, and that is also what we are driving.

Paco Ruiz: Hi, this is Paco Ruiz from BNPP, in Spain. Two questions. The first one is how we should understand the midterm for you on your guidance, and if the current restructuring that you are doing in some business will have some impact in absolute sales, not in organic sales in the future. The second question is on the daily growth. You talk about aseptic growth and not about what is your assumption on growth of the dairy product itself. Facing some headwinds on GLP-1s, on juices consumption, et cetera. So, if you could give us a light of what you are considering in this 2% to 3% growth in aseptic, what is the underlying growth of dairy?

Anne Erkens: You want that?

Christoph Wegener: Yep. We talk a lot about dairy because two-thirds of the product we pack is actually dairy. It is the majority. Then we have 20% is NCSD, 10% are non-carbonated soft drinks, so juices, and 10% is liquid food. The dairy outlook is quite robust, I would say, and that is what I shared. On liquid food, we also see growth, replacing cartons, sorry, replacing glass and cans. Then there is, of course, also organic growth, simply driven by higher consumption in emerging markets, Middle East, for example, but also Mexico. NCSD indeed is a challenged category. I would say more so in Europe, where health concerns are more prevalent than in other regions, but that is not going to be the growth driver. You have two categories that make up more than 70% of the business where we do see growth.

Anne Erkens: Christoph, you need to go back to Paco, please, because the first question was a bit missing in the beginning. Yep.

Paco Ruiz: Yes. The first part of the first question is how we should understand midterm.

Anne Erkens: Ah, okay.

Paco Ruiz: in order to get the 18% margin.

Anne Erkens: Yep.

Paco Ruiz: And also if the restructuring that you are doing in bag-in-box,

Paco Ruiz: chilled carton, will drive some sales drop in the coming years.

Anne Erkens: Yep. So, should we see a change in the portfolio, for example, like we find a partner for the chilled carton business, then of course we would take that out of the baseline, and that is why we call it organic growth. So that is why we have this guidance. Then on midterm, that is a fair question because last year we gave you a midterm guidance of more than 16.5%. To be fair, we already said last year this is a shorter midterm, and it is good that the shorter midterm was now very short. The new midterm, I would expect, is a normal midterm as you would normally also expect it, three to five years, something like that.

Torsten Sauter: Hi, Torsten Sauter, Kepler Cheuvreux. Thank you for the presentation. I actually am afraid I have two very technical questions.

Anne Erkens: Okay.

Torsten Sauter: First one, can you give us a little bit of a sneak preview, a feeling what IFRS 18 is going to do to your financial presentation and statements? Where is it going to hit you? Maybe give us a qualitative feeling. Secondly, I understand that last year's write-downs have reduced the starting asset base and thereby led to a lower depreciation, which has given EBIT a bigger uplift than EBITDA. In what sense are these Q4 impairments, which are pretty considerable, affecting depreciation in the years to come?

Anne Erkens: Not at all, because that's a goodwill impairment, so that doesn't have any impact on depreciation, amortization or anything. The first question was? Sorry.

Torsten Sauter: IFRS.

Anne Erkens: IFRS. Of course, IFRS 18 is a wonderful project, and the full industry earned a lot of money on this one. Of course, it gives also more transparency, and we have done our simulations also. The major parts that will be moving out of the financial part into the operational part is the interest cost for the securitization. Overall, I would expect that should have a negative impact of 30 to 40 basis points on operating profit.

Miro Zuzak: Thank you. Miro Zuzak, JMS. I have two questions. The first one, could you please give an update on the proceedings with Laurens Last? The second one would be on the nature of this midterm guidance upgrade. We have heard now that maybe the term is a bit longer. We have also heard today about the efficiency measures that you are taking. So this 1.5 percentage points incremental increase in the midterm guidance, what was driving the update? Is it also because you now see a bit more clearly through the stormy waters compared to one year ago? What made the change?

Anne Erkens: No, absolutely. I think we have built a very good pipeline of measures that we are implementing, and we see that this gains traction. Then also as discussed, we see that markets are also improving a little, and of course, that with the drop-through also supports us on the margin. So that on the one hand, and then the litigation or arbitration process is ongoing. Nothing new, no new findings. You see that also reflected in the Q3 financial reporting. Yeah, we all hope that this will at one point come to an end, but it is always difficult to forecast when this exactly happens.

Christian Arnold: Christian Arnold, Oddo BHF. Also two questions from my side. First, again, on the goodwill impairment, this EUR 250 million, could you make a comment on how you divide that between the bag-in-box pouch versus the chilled carton business?

Anne Erkens: Yeah, I think it is very clearly weighted, of course, to the Scholle business, because not only that the business was much bigger, but also the impact on that front is bigger. Very clearly. It is a 90/10% or 80/20, something like that.

Christian Arnold: Okay. Any guesstimate about the divestment process? Are we thinking of likely to have that happen in 2027, or it will be a longer process?

Anne Erkens: Difficult to forecast. We have seen that this is a very competitive and difficult market, but we continue working through different options, and we will update as soon as we have something to say. But in the meantime, we manage the business very professionally, and the team in Asia has done a very good job there, keeping customers happy and making sure that also all of us are happy by the better margin development.

Christian Arnold: And maybe just on Europe, the 6% average growth, that is quite impressive. What do you expect? What can we believe? What is possible going forward? The 6% looks really high, right?

Christoph Wegener: Indeed, it is a very strong result and a testimony to the performance of the European team. I would say there is two things, right? Number 1, there is of course pricing in it, so it is not just volume driven. Number 2, there was an investment cycle that was triggered by the packaging regulations, specifically the Single-Use Plastics Directive. A lot of old lines had to be either upgraded or replaced. Customers opted in a lot of cases for replacement, and we were able to win a lot of these replacements. So that is an investment cycle that we were riding the past years. We do not see that imminent in that magnitude, but as I said, we do see a pipeline of aging assets that have to be replaced, and we will continue to take advantage of that.

Christoph Ladner: Any other questions?

Torsten Sauter: Just a quick follow-up, this time on the debt. How much of your debt is floating, and what are you targeting midterm in term of between floating and fixed rate?

Anne Erkens: Yeah, so it's around 50/50. Slightly, 52/48 or so. That is also our target. At this moment, we do not see that we should change that dramatically. Yeah.

Gabriel Simoes: One follow-up as well for Chris. I just wanted to get your diagnostics on what happened to the bag-in-box business in the US in particular, but globally. How much of the plan for the turnaround also relies on the market actually improving? How much of that is driven by own actions? Thank you.

Chris Johns: I am not going to speak in history since I was not here for all that, but I think what is relative moving forward, where I see the large opportunity. Certainly, you heard me talk about growth and innovation, that is huge. But I think the underpinning piece that is really important for us to execute moving forward is the cost competitiveness, right? That is going to help us not only with that growth plan to perhaps regain some share that we may have lost.

Chris Johns: It is also going to help us as we maybe look at some businesses outside of our core market to help us be cost competitive and grow in that. I am not going to go backwards because I was not here, but I think that the dedicated growth plan and then really the cost competitiveness is going to help us achieve that. That is where the focus is.

Christoph Ladner: Okay. I think we have one question also from the phone, and we will take this question now. Operator, please.

Operator: Thank you. We have a question from Mr. Pallav Mittal from Barclays. Please go ahead.

Pallav Mittal: Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. Can you hear me?

[Analyst] (Berenberg): We can.

Pallav Mittal: In terms of Q3, can you talk about the benefit from surcharges and resin and how we should think about that going into Q4?

Anne Erkens: Yes, sure. We had discussed that Q3's growth rate at constant currency and constant resin was 6.5%. There is, of course, the major component of volume, considering the lower comps of last year in this, but there is also a very clear contribution from the surcharges or from pricing net, I would say between 1% and 2%, probably closer to 2%. I would expect the Q4 trading on a similar level. All good, Pallav, or any other question?

Pallav Mittal: Sorry, I have a bad line. If I can ask one more.

Anne Erkens: Sure.

Pallav Mittal: In terms of your cash and capital allocation, can you talk about the free cash flow generation capability this year? I think last year you were talking about a EUR 200 million number this year. Given a better performance in the first 9 months, how we should think about that? Also, you are reinstating dividends from next year, and it seems you are deleveraging. So how should we think about share repurchases?

Anne Erkens: Okay, Pallav, we couldn't hear everything that you have been saying. So I would say first, free cash flow is not a guided metric for us, and that for a very good reason, because, you have seen the fluctuations that are driven by the customer incentive payments. But overall, last year's free cash flow was EUR 190 million, and we said we are confident that this year's cash flow is going to be higher. Maybe you want to also take a look at where consensus stands, and probably there is room to upgrade that even further, reflecting the performance that we have seen operationally. What shouldn't be extrapolated is just the very good development that we have had here today, because as I said, there is also some favorable working capital phasing in Q3, but for full year, it should be very clearly above the number of last year.

Anne Erkens: The other questions I didn't really hear. So the line was super bad, I'm sorry. Did you? Pallav, maybe we can take the other questions later as a follow-up, because really it's difficult to hear you. Okay. So thank you. Thank you, Alessandro. Yes, dividend reinstatement, we will propose it as said in next year's AGM. We feel very comfortable that we continue to be on a good track for the leverage reduction as we have laid it out, including this reinstatement of the dividend and the share buyback. Share buyback is not on the agenda for the moment.

Cole Hathorn: Cole Hathorn from Jefferies. Thanks for taking a follow-up. Chris, just looking at the bag-in-box business specifically, you've had a chance to come in and look at it properly, and you've talked about the food service business.

Cole Hathorn: I'm just wondering how you're thinking about the other segments, from a strategic standpoint. Is there a way to kind of move out of the non-food service focused bag-in-box segments, and are there any efficiencies on kind of the manufacturing footprint or sales footprint there?

Chris Johns: They are absolutely in play. Today, the presentation we were focused on where we see a lot of the growth in our core markets. That's the, I think, conservative message we want to put out there. But we are absolutely pursuing non-food opportunities. I think everything's on the table because to your point, if we can be cost competitive and then add some more volume to our operations, it obviously helps us everywhere. They're absolutely in play, yes, and important.

Cole Hathorn: I'm not sure who's the right person to ask this question. Probably, Christoph, but I'm thinking about the smaller pack sizes that you're talking about and flexibility for the SIG Group system. Historically, smaller pack sizes and on-the-go consumption has always been at a higher profit point for these businesses. When I think about consumers under pressure, we've seen lower kind of on-the-go consumption. We've seen consumers under pressure. You've talked a lot about smaller pack sizes and on-the-go consumption. So I'm just wondering how you're thinking about that, and is that a key kind of value and mixed lever that is going to be driving profit performance for SIG going forward?

Christoph Wegener: Yep. So I would say in emerging markets, absolutely price points, we call them even magic price points, are key, right? So they are almost set by coinage. So you have 5 INR, 10 INR in India, and similar price points also in other markets. Now, the beauty of the flexibility that we offer is you can actually downsize without investment, right? And that makes the system, the SIG system, unique to Tetra Pak. So a customer can go from, and they are actively using that. They're going from 200 to 180 or from 180 to 160. So they reduce the product to stay within these price points that allow consumers, even when in an inflationary environment, to continue consuming.

Christoph Wegener: I would rather say that we have the right system and solution there, and it has helped us in the last years to actually gain significant share in the emerging markets with that proposition.

Anne Erkens: Maybe Angela to add from an Asian perspective.

Angela Lu: Yes, that is right. As just now Christoph mentioned, on top of it, also the competitions in the market are very strong. The channels actually, they would like to have a differentiated pack size. It is not only the price point itself, it is also the differentiation for the products and the different channels. That is why having the flexibility. In the past, we have never seen the customer using the entire range of our pack size. Now, I think it is more and more different sizes, and every single one the customers are using because the channels are becoming so diversified. Consumer demands and different points are becoming also more and more comparing to before.

[Analyst] (Octavian): Yes, thank you for taking my question. Alessandro from Octavian. On the bag-in-box and spouted pouch, you have a target of 8% to 10%. Can you share with us how you would stand in terms of return on invested capital in that business?

Anne Erkens: Yeah. We will also, of course, when we report 2026 numbers, give some ROCE numbers by segment. But it is very clear and very obvious that the majority of the ROCE that we show today comes out of the aseptic carton business, and that within bag-in-box, spouted pouch and also chilled carton by the way, you will rather see a very single-digit number. But we will disclose that with the full year reporting.

[Analyst] (Octavian): I meant more in future perspective, once you reach the 9%.

Anne Erkens: Yeah, but that does not change a lot, I believe, on the return on capital employed. Yes, you move up with the margin improvement, but it will still be far away from the aseptic carton.

[Analyst] (Octavian): Then I have two, if I may, two quick questions on Mexico and Southeast Asia maybe. In Mexico, you will build a laminator, right?

Anne Erkens: Mm-hmm. Extrusion. Mm-hmm.

Christoph Wegener: Yes.

Anne Erkens: Yep.

[Analyst] (Octavian): Do we have to expect another EUR 100 million investment and then three years of under absorption because that machine has a huge volume that you do not deliver in the first three years?

Anne Erkens: Yeah. I guess the answer is no, because we have learned from mistakes and it is included within the CapEx guidance that we have given. A large part of that money is already out of the door because we are in the construction phase. Ricardo, you want to add on the capacity utilization for the Queretaro plant?

Ricardo Rodriguez: Capacity utilization is very high in Mexico. We are running, in fact, we started the plant, as mentioned, three years ago. We increased production five times. Now we are duplicating again, and by 2028 should be ready. By 2028, we should have extrusion running, right? That is a plant that we run 24/7, very high use of capacity.

Anne Erkens: But then it is also fair to say that we do not need in the next few years additional extrusion capabilities, probably. So we are well set up.

[Analyst] (Octavian): After you have

Anne Erkens: After that one is introduced.

[Analyst] (Octavian): Turned it on.

[Analyst] (Octavian): And the one in India, is it?

Anne Erkens: The one in India hasn't happened actually. After the review last year, we have redirected the order for the one in India to Queretaro, so it's now in Mexico.

[Analyst] (Octavian): All right.

Anne Erkens: Mm-hmm. Yep.

[Analyst] (Octavian): Good news.

[Analyst] (Octavian): I wasn't aware of that.

Christoph Wegener: Yeah.

[Analyst] (Octavian): Then maybe on the Southeast Asia, because you're speaking about India, you were talking about some opportunities, Philippines, I don't remember the country.

Angela Lu: Cambodia.

Anne Erkens: Cambodia.

Angela Lu: Cambodia. Yeah.

[Analyst] (Octavian): How should I frame this? In India it did not go very successfully as far as we can tell.

[Analyst] (Octavian): Why will it be completely different in the Philippines and Cambodia, and be successful?

Angela Lu: Yeah. In Southeast Asia, actually, we have a very, very strong coverage already in many of the countries. We have a strong market share in Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam market already. Indonesia has a very low dairy consumption still. We also see the Indonesian market ramping up significantly, driven by the higher income level and also driven by the country's school milk program. Building on those success, now we also see the additional geographic expansion opportunity in Philippines and Cambodia. In those markets also, we have a very strong manufacturing base that is based in Thailand. That is where we have a very efficient manufacturing efficiencies to cover the entire ASEAN countries.

Angela Lu: That is why I think we are very confident that we are able to continue to grow those stronghold Southeast Asia countries and expand into the new geographies, Philippines and Cambodia.

Anne Erkens: Maybe one comment on India, Abdelghany, if you want to comment on India.

Abdelghany Eladib: I was just going to comment on India. You mentioned it did not go quite well. Actually, we are revising our strategy in India. First of all, the very good news is the plant in India is fully functioning. It is actually a vertical startup, okay? In terms of output, in terms of quality, and there is a lot of great focus that we are actually leveraging from my colleagues in terms of how can we really be the lowest cost among the group. That is point one. Point two is we also change our strategy in terms of the plant in India to be not only India for India, but also leveraging India capacity for the group. We are now leveraging that for export potentials into IMEA and into Asia Pacific, and we are looking for that.

Abdelghany Eladib: Last but not least, I just want to comment on the market in India, which is very important. Just for your perspective, a few years ago, India was going through, exactly like Europe, a very high investment cycle. We were riding that in terms of bringing lines and so on and so forth. We were actually proud to bring almost 50 lines. Then we had all the challenges of the weather, of overcapacity in the market. So we have now redirecting our strategy into we want to grow profitably. We do not want to outgrow the market and burn margins. We would actually pick our choices. Do not forget that India will be the dairy of the world, and we are actually focusing our strategy into the big dairy corporates to win with them and win rationally with them. That is my takeaway on India.

Anne Erkens: Yeah. You have successfully increased the share of dairy in the portfolio in India.

Abdelghany Eladib: Absolutely. Yeah. That is a good point. Thank you.

Anne Erkens: Over the last eight to nine months, right?

Abdelghany Eladib: Yeah. We actually now moved from a 16% dairy participation three years ago into today, almost one-third of our business is dairy, which is phenomenal. Why? Because it also balanced the loading on the factory versus the juice, which is mainly concentrated on a season, which is mainly four or five months a year.

Anne Erkens: Okay.

Christoph Ladner: Okay, we have another question from the call.

Operator: We now have a question from Mr. Detlef Winckelmann from J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.

Detlef Winckelmann: Hi, everyone. Apologies if this question has been asked already. I lost a little bit of time as I was moving from the web phone onto the telephone. Just when we get to bag-in-box and spouted pouch, if I take a look over the last five years or so, obviously we know the margins have been under pressure, and we know the revenue has been under pressure. But if I look at the deltas, it looks as if it is price and volume or maybe even a bit of mix that hurt you, not just volumes. Just curious in terms of your recovery going forward, how much of that is getting the customer mix right, your pricing strategy right, and how much of that is just filling up new capacity through market share wins? That would be my first one. Thanks.

Anne Erkens: Christian, take it.

Chris Johns: Yeah, sure. Looking forward, from a pricing strategy, I do think that is important to make sure that we have a global pricing strategy in place. Yes, I agree with that. I think, as I said earlier, it is about cost recovery to also drive those margins, which will also help us regain some share. Because, yes, we have definitely lost some share. The focus is not only to grow in our core markets, but to regain some of the share that we have lost in our core markets. I think that answers the question.

Anne Erkens: Yep.

Chris Johns: Yeah.

Anne Erkens: Perfect.

Detlef Winckelmann: Cool, thanks. Maybe just one follow-up if I can. I think this might have been asked because I caught the back end of it, but just in terms of competition in the likes of China, we are seeing potentially in India now with ramp-ups, potentially even into parts of Africa. If I look at all these ramp-up and capacity investment pipelines, my sense would be that they want to fill up capacity as quickly as possible. That always creates a little bit of a market share competition issue. I am just curious around there, from your side, is it more about the volume side, pricing side? How do you guys keep against that or push against that competition level? Any color would be great. Thanks.

Anne Erkens: Yeah. Let us start again with first, of course, the segment that is more under pressure from all of these developments is the roll-fed system and not the sleeve-fed system, not ours. But of course, as Christoph said earlier also, it is an indirect competition, and basically there is a couple of things that we need to get right to make sure that we stay ahead of the game. That starts with innovation and continuous differentiation, and that ends, of course, with being competitive so that we can fully play to the strength of our system and making sure that the TCO remains very compelling also in that environment of competition. All in all, I would say, as always, never become complacent, make sure that we do the right things and the right pace fast, and then we will handle this.

Detlef Winckelmann: Thank you.

[Analyst] (Octavian): Can I ask a follow-up?

Anne Erkens: Of course.

[Analyst] (Octavian): On the bag-in-box business? With respect to the changing mix that you are operating, you mentioned in your introduction, I think, maybe referring to the Q3 result, yes, that the non-core part of the bag-in-box was down double digit.

[Analyst] (Octavian): The core part of the bag-in-box, which I assume is the dairy part of the business.

Anne Erkens: Yeah, and syrups. Mm-hmm.

[Analyst] (Octavian): And syrups. So dairy and syrups were kind of flattish.

[Analyst] (Octavian): This obviously drives the negative sales, but how long will this situation last? Are you going to phase out completely this non-core business just by organically not catering to that market? Meaning we

[Analyst] (Octavian): sort of have, I don't know, another couple of years of headwinds, but you are exiting presumably a bad business. So I would just like to understand a little bit better this dynamic.

Chris Johns: Sure. I can take that if it's. Yes. I think we certainly had some managed exits of business that wasn't very profitable for us, right? As we move forward, I don't see us carrying that into 2027. That's going to happen for the most part this year, and then we start fresh going forward. I do see growth, as I said, in some of these other areas, in food service and dairy and the spouted pouch, that's going to take us back positive. We're not projecting a decline, and I don't want to get too forward-looking, so I'm sorry, Ani, on those pieces, but we intend to bounce on that and come back.

Anne Erkens: Yeah.

Chris Johns: I think what I would say with some of those markets is as we change our cost position, some of those may come back into play again. That's possible.

Anne Erkens: Yes. Just to complement this, of course, the portfolio actions that we have discussed now became effective in 2026, and I think that's important that we take note of that. As Chris has said, we should take the corner now pretty soon on this one.

Christoph Ladner: Last one.

[Analyst] (Octavian): Okay. Last one then. On the installed base of fillers.

[Analyst] (Octavian): In Combibloc, my understanding is that you should actually not install any fillers. That would be the best solution for you. You grow on the installed base because those fillers are not utilized or very badly utilized. So your case should not be to come here and tell us that you install 90 fillers every year, but maybe that you install 10 and you grow 3% to 5%.

Anne Erkens: I would say it.

Luca Pediconi: Then I calculate another cash flow.

Anne Erkens: Mm-hmm. No. I would say it depends. Of course, there are occasions when a customer opens up a new facility. Of course, you want to be the one who places the machine there, you want to be the partner for that investment, and you want to gain that share. Would it be the most attractive business case if all of a sudden, volumes across the board would grow 10% and the installed base is utilized even better than what it is today? Of course. But, it is not likely that you will see just this broad step up in the market at one point in time. It will always be a mixture of making our customers more successful and helping them also to gain more volumes.

Anne Erkens: I think Christoph has explained some of this also, how we support customers finding new ways to grow, or Angela also with some formulation support that we give to customers. Of course, that is wonderful. But whenever there is an investment that is to be made, we want this investment to be made with us. Of course. We want to be the partner for the customers, very clearly. Do not forget, a customer does not make such an investment if they do not have a business case behind it also. It costs them also quite some money. Yeah.

[Analyst] (Octavian): I do not know.

Anne Erkens: We agree to that, and we believe that we have room for improvement there also, and it is one of the initiatives also indeed that we are working on in detail to drive the installed base even more than what we do today. Yeah. Cool.

Christoph Ladner: Is there another question in the room? Yes, Tobias.

[Analyst]: Yeah. Maybe one question about the leasing and the financing of the new machine. Is there any thoughts that you can maybe do that more profitable for SIG or reduce the leasing expenses? I was wondering a little bit in the connection to the new machine selling, if you can do anything on the financing side of your clients.

Anne Erkens: Yeah. I think we have optimized the way how we place machines in the market quite a lot. Remember that the net filler CapEx has declined quite substantially over the last couple of years, and in most cases also, by the way, the interest expenses that relate to such a leasing are borne by the customer, so that's not on our books.

[Analyst] (Octavian): I have another follow-up and, sorry, this will probably be not a very nice question. You gave us a 30% drop-through of your supply to EBIT.

[Analyst] (Octavian): but you refrain to give us a free cash flow conversion.

[Analyst] (Octavian): Because you mentioned that the more you sell, then you have to give back premiums or rebates, I do not know how you call them. So these rebates are not in the EBIT? Otherwise you will be also in a difficult position to give us a drop-through ratio.

Anne Erkens: Yeah.

[Analyst] (Octavian): Do you know what I mean? So, why we have a guidance of 30%?

[Analyst] (Octavian): Yeah

[Analyst] (Octavian): drop-through between top line and EBIT.

[Analyst] (Octavian): but you are refraining to give us what would be the free cash flow conversion.

Anne Erkens: Yeah.

[Analyst] (Octavian): These rebates you give a customer that order more are not in the EBIT, are below the EBIT?

Anne Erkens: Yeah. So, I think we have discussed this quite a lot over the last 2 years, especially. Let's take a step back and go back to 2024. In 2024, we had a volume growth in aseptic carton of 6%. In 2025, we had a slightly negative flat volume growth in aseptic carton. So a delta of 6% between 2 years. During 2024, we have collected a lot of cash from customers because they paid basically the list price for the products that we sold to them. And we gave them back their rebates that they were entitled to because they reached the thresholds in 2025. If you also recall the fluctuation of free cash flow, EUR 290 million in 2024, EUR 190 million in 2025. So that's quite a fluctuation, and most of this was driven by these incentive cases.

Anne Erkens: I have mentioned also for this year, that not having to pay these volume discounts for 2025, lower volume, but collecting some money for better volume development this year is again another delta of EUR 60. So if you want to look at free cash flow, it always varies by period. If you would want to give a guidance on a free cash flow for this business, I think you could only do an average over a number of years. But then an average over a number of years can have the luxury or the pity that you have the wrong cutoffs between the years, and you have exactly the same phenomenon. I think we kind of address the challenge not too badly by giving more details on what the fluctuations because of the customer incentives is, so that you understand also better what the underlying free cash flow is.

Anne Erkens: At least I would hope that this is perceived to be an improvement. But really I would refrain from giving a free cash flow guidance. It is an important metric for us. Of course, you have seen it is also a very big building block in our incentives, and we run after every cent. You can take that for sure. But really it wouldn't be serious to give the guidance there. Right. Looks like?

Christoph Ladner: Looks like there's no question anymore. There's no question from the call. No.

Anne Erkens: Very good. No. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for all your presentations. Thank you for listening so intensively and for asking the questions, and we look forward to continue to update you regularly. Now, I would like to invite you all for some standing lunch if you still have time. We're happy to take additional questions in case you have any. Thank you very much.

Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now over. Thank you for choosing Chorus Call, and thank you for participating in the conference. You may now disconnect your lines. Goodbye.

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