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Operator: Good afternoon. This is the Chorus Call conference operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Unipol Consolidated Results at September 30, 2025 Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Matteo Laterza, CEO of Unipol. Please go ahead, sir. Matteo Laterza: Good morning to everyone. Thank you for participating to this call. As you have seen this morning, we reported a net profit of EUR 1.12 billion in the first 9 months of the year. Let me say, first of all, that this number incorporate the exceptional contribution coming from the exchange tender offer launched by BPER Banca and Banca Popolare di Sondrio. In particular, there was a positive impact of EUR 240 million gross of tax and EUR 150 million net. On the negative side, in the third quarter, we charged our numbers with a provision of almost EUR 80 million for the revision of the early retirement incentive fund for our employees. Before opening the floor to the question, let me say something on how the business has performed in the quarter. In P&C, we had a very solid trend in the top line, as usual, driven by health business and bancassurance distribution channel. Concerning the technical profitability, the motor business is completely on track compared to our target of the industrial plan, both in terms of average premium, claim frequency and average cost of claim. In non-motor, we decided to be very conservative in our reserving policy, mainly regarding the treatment of nat cat in the quarter. In life, we had a very solid growth in the top line, driven both by the agents and bancassurance. As you have seen in the presentation, we succeeded to increase quite consistently the yield of the assets under management by almost 12 basis points by rebating almost 8 to the policyholder and keeping 4 basis points to remunerate our capital. And this is good part, explain the improvement of the profitability of the life business. Finance department did a very good job, not only in life, but also in non-life. And they gave a substantial contribution to the overall numbers. And finally, concerning solvency, we had a small reduction of a couple of basis points, where the organic capital generation was more than offset by some change in noneconomic variance and in the SCR calculation almost regarding the banking business. Having said that, I am here with Enrico San Pietro, and we are ready to answer to your question. Operator: [Operator Instructions] The first question is from Tommaso Nieddu of Kepler Cheuvreux. Tommaso Nieddu: The first one is a question on the combined ratio and more specifically on the expense ratio, which still looks quite high and maybe overshadows a bit the very good attritional trends. So maybe if you could walk us through what's behind the higher expense ratio, especially I remember first half, you were talking about the agency remuneration mechanism or if this time is also for the early retirement you were talking about? And then if this high expense ratio is something structural or just temporary. And on the positive side, still on the combined ratio, the attritional losses were again very strong this quarter, maybe even stronger than the first 2 quarters. So what's driving that improvement? Is it mainly mix pricing or something more structural in claims management? The second question is on the investment portfolio. I noticed that the cash now represents only 1.5% of total investments. So could you help us understand whether you are comfortable with such a low cash position and if you see room to rebuild some liquidity going forward? And on the broader asset mix, if you can give us a sense of how it split the illiquid part of the portfolio, maybe more specifically the alternative and how it's performing in terms of yield and contribution? And just the last one is on Solvency II, which ended a bit lower, in particular, the insurance group at 265%. So could you elaborate a little bit on what drove the decline? Was it for the banking -- the new banking perimeter or market-related factors? Matteo Laterza: Thank you to you. I will answer to all the questions. I will leave Enrico to elaborate on what you said on the expense ratio. First of all, on the expense ratio, the early retirement provision is not in the expense ratio is in the other income and cost. And so it is not considered in the expense. Then Enrico will elaborate more on that. Concerning the investment portfolio, yes, we reduced the investment in cash, but we are very comfortable on that, consider that we have more than a couple of billion euros of securities whose time to maturity is less than 1 year. And the component of very liquid asset is very consistent. So for us, the investment that we allocate in cash depends on the cash flow analysis that we had going forward in consideration to the very important payment that you have to say like payment of taxes or payment of dividend. And at this time, this percentage -- with this percentage, we are all set. Concerning the alternative asset, we have, as you have seen in the asset allocation investment in alternative assets. They are almost investment in the real asset component. There is a part allocated in private equity. We don't have private credit in our investment scope since the beginning because in our elaboration in setting up the strategic asset allocation, we did not -- we never consider this asset class as a possible target of investment because the risk reward profile of this asset class was not enough to remunerate our need of capital. In other words, the expected yield on this kind of asset class was not worth to remunerate the capital absorption coming from the investment in this kind of investment. Finally, concerning the solvency, let me say more on that. We had reduction for the group from 222% to 220%. And let me explain the bridge from 222% to 220%. We have lost a couple of percentage points in terms of model change. We generated capital for 6 percentage points. We had 2 percentage points of positive economic variance as a consequence of the positive performance of financial market. And then we deducted 3 percentage points as noneconomic variance. That means that there were some items that was not performing in line with our expectation in terms of budget assumption and plan. In particular, considering the surrender rate that was way below the market, but a little bit higher compared to our assumption. We had 3 percentage points less in terms of capital movement because we have to consider the part of organic capital generation that we pay as expected dividend. And finally, we have lost 3 percentage points in terms of SCR change, part due to the insurance perimeter and part to the increase of the risk in the banking business. And it is the update of the risk of the banks from the 31st of March to the 30th of June. And this explains the 2 percentage points that we have lost in the group. Then you have asked also why the insurance group have lost more, and we are at 265%. And the answer is it's quite easy. The rule that we have to follow and calculate the solvency in some cases, are, in some extent, stupid in the sense that we had in the past, a 20% stake in Banca Popolare di Sondrio and 20% stake in BPER. This was the situation at the 30th of June. Today, we have 20% of BPER that owns more than 80% of Banca Popolare di Sondrio. This means that applying this rule of solvency, we have more concentration risk. But as a matter of fact, nothing changed compared to the situation at the 30th of June, but the simply fact that we have one only stake of a bigger bank brings to a higher concentration risk compared to the 30th of June. But the reality is that nothing changed. If something change is positive because we will take advantage of the synergy that hopefully BPER will do on Banca Popolare di Sondrio. But the application of the rule brings to a reduction of solvency of the insurance group to 265% that anyway is a very large number. Then Enrico on the expense. Enrico Pietro: So your question were about expense ratio and also combined ratio, and maybe we can also elaborate on this. Starting with the expense ratio. The main reason of the increase, if you compare the figure with the same figure of the same period of the last year is what we discussed in the last month. So it's about the incentive schemes for our agents that relate to the technical profitability, the amount of incentives we pay. It's something very important for us that align more than any competitor in the market our to the interest of our agents. And there are similar schemes, both in motor and non-motor. So what's happening both in motor and non-motor is since the scheme is related to how profitable is the portfolio of the agency. At the same time, what kind of growth they are delivering to us, since things are going really well, the amount of incentive we are calculating to pay is more relevant, especially because both of those schemes in motor and non-motor are related to a period of 2 years. So this year, we are considering the estimation of 2025 results and the actual results of 2024. Last year, we were considering 2024 that was a very good year and 2023 that was not a good year. So this change is generating the difference in expense ratio. For combined ratio, of course, we can elaborate a lot on this. The overall view is very positive. Everything is going according to our plan. We have a relevant improvement in motor business that is due to the fact that in motor third-party liability, action we took about pricing are working. Loss frequency is decreasing and the average cost of the claim is not suffering like last year, the spike related to the Milan Court Tables. And also, there is a significant improvement in motor outer damages result. Of course, the action in the strategic plan are working, but also the comparison with the previous year need to take into account the fact that we had at the beginning of 2024, a negative evolution of the claim reserve that in summer 2023, the hailstorms in 2023, we were not able to estimate it properly. So we had something negative in the first part of 2024. So basically, this is the situation in motor. We are viewing a market situation in which prices are increasing. The speed of this increase is lowering down in the market. The last figure that I think on the market, we can share is a 3.5% increase year-on-year. We did our increases before the market in 2023, and now we are increasing less than the market. And so this is favorable also for our market position. In non-motor, things are a little bit more complex. The overall attritional loss ratio on the direct business is improving, but this is offset by additional reinsurance cost, reinsurance cost that is due to the new aggregate scheme that protects us on nat cat event even more than before. And of course, the fact that when the direct business is so positive, you have very small recoveries from reinsurance. So this is the first point. The second point is we are more prudent in the prior reserve release than the year before. And this is quite relevant, accounts 1.5 points of combined ratio. And last but not least, what Matteo said about our prudence that we applied also to the nat cat provisions. And so the overall results is positive. The underlying trends are positive. And so we are even more than usual confident to deliver the results we put in our plan. Operator: The next question is from Michael Huttner of Berenberg. Michael Huttner: You've answered the questions. So I'm struggling to find a new, but I do have a few. The first one is on something that Fitch mentioned, and I think general also in the pre-close call, and apologies if I get it completely wrong because it's very new to me. It's the regional tax in Italy, the plan to raise this and how this will affect insurers and who will pay for it? Is it the policyholders, the companies? Beyond that, I know nothing except that there's a raise in some form of indirect product tax. And Fitch seem quite optimistic about this, but I don't know anything. So any indications on that would be super, super helpful. The second would be on more details on the lovely disclosure you've given us. So maybe can you give us a feel for when you say you've been prudent on the nat cat number, which is the same, right, 9 months '24, 9 months '25 is 6.1%. Can you help us think about how we could kind of judge this level of prudence? And then the last question is on motor, which is stunning, seriously stunning particularly since I know you're quite conservative anyway. So you're kind of -- you've achieved the planned target and pricing is still going up. I just wondered whether you can give us a little bit of a feel, a, for the own damage, which is clearly not a compulsory cover. So how come it's so successful? B, what will happen now that you have one less competitor in the market? AXA is buying one of your peers. And c, you discussed the frequency. And I'll give you the answers I've had on frequency from some of your peers. So Zurich said frequency is down, but they didn't give details. AXA said frequency is down due to -- because it didn't rain. So in other words, the cars didn't slide around. And yes, those are the only 2 indications I've had. Matteo Laterza: Okay. I try to answer to the first question concerning tax, then you did a lot of question on combined ratio, nat cat, motor, and I will leave Enrico to elaborate on that. I suppose that your question is regards to the discussion on the financial law, the budget law in our country. As you know, there is still a discussion. It is not a law. So we are in the process to understand which will be the final impact of the budget law on our numbers, of course, starting from 2026. At the moment, with the information that we have, we will have some impact that I don't consider meaningful and material for the delivery of our numbers and target of our industrial plan, above all considering the so-called ERAP increase that is in the proposal, the main component of the tax that will be in charge of insurance company going forward. But I have to say in general that, of course, we will have an impact in perpetuity. But as usual, we will apply the new law, and we did not change the target of our industrial plan because of that. Then I'll leave Enrico to answer to all the questions. Enrico Pietro: Michael, so a lot of questions. The first one, I hope to be able to remind every question. The first one was about the nat cat approach. So as you for sure know, for the Italian season of weather-related events was benign. But of course, we have to take into account the volatility of this kind of business line. And so this resulted in 1 percentage point -- additional percentage points related in non-motor combined ratio related -- compared to the previous year. that was also benign. So I -- more or less, I can give you this kind of size of the issue. So going on, on this, when we talk about motor, results are very good. We are now in a situation in which prices are still going up. The average cost of the claim is back to normal after the spike that we saw last year for the Milan Court Tables adoption. And so also the reserve release is back to normal. The probably -- you asked also something about motor outer damages. Yes, in which, as you mentioned, is not compulsory in Italy, is made of several cover, this kind of business line. And there are also here nat cat covers on hailstorms on cars, for instance, and other kind of covers, so theft, fire, CASCO and so on, we are improving. Our price action on the cover that need this kind of action are working well. And motor outer damage as far as CASCO is concerned, are not that big in our portfolio or in Italian motor portfolio. So basically, it's something that is not -- we are very careful to be good in pricing, but it's not very big as portfolio. Another question about the market is related, if I understood properly, about the acquisition of Prima.it by AXA. Of course, we still have to see what will happen in the future. But my personal view that it could be something positive for the market. And of course, we will have to wait. And if I don't remember badly, AXA announced that in the second half of 2026, they will become the carrier of Prima.it that, as you remember, is an MGA. So in the medium term, I see a positive evolution for the market and also for us of this kind of operation. And about frequency, yes, frequency is slightly decreasing. In our comparison that not -- there are not comparison related to the third quarter of the year. They are not so updated. But we have seen in the last period that our loss frequency is better than the market is improving a little better than the market. So of course, there is a factor that is external, of course, maybe raining, maybe the fact this is a long-term trend about the cars that have every year a little better technology to avoid or reduce the impact of a claim, customer behavior and so on. So there are long-term trends about frequency decreasing, and we think we are adding a little more about, of course, the pricing precision that is driving down loss frequency. We are at the end of a long period of decrease in the loss frequency. So you don't have to expect any other major reduction. But still, we are optimistic about this. I think we cover all the questions you asked. Operator: The next question is from Andrea Lisi of Equita. Andrea Lisi: The first one is on the amount you provisioned for the fund for the staff exit, EUR 80 million. What should we expect going on in the sense that should we expect other amount to be provisioned also in the next years? Or do you feel that with this EUR 80 million you have done for most of the idea that you have about staff reduction? The second question is on the net financial result in life that was quite high. If you can provide us some indication on this. And then if you just read in the newspapers, the platform that was launched with Confindustria in collaboration with Poste-Intesa, our nat cat policies for corporates. If you can provide some color on that and what are your expectations on this segment? Matteo Laterza: Thank you to you, Andrea. As you remember when we met in March for the industrial plan, we discussed about the early retirement solidarity fund. It is a part of our people and technology pillar of the industrial plan because we look forward to have a generational change in our HR component of our investment. And in doing it, we incentivate, of course, this change by applying an early retirement solidarity fund. So the answer is, yes, it will be repeated this number for the next couple of years because this is very important for us in order to accelerate the generational change in our company in order to acquire new skills in terms of the use of new technologies, and it is very important for the application and the implementation of the most important project that we are implementing in the company. So we don't consider any more this number as exceptional. I mentioned it because, of course, it hit the third quarter for this component. And you can expect the same for the next couple of years, at least. Concerning the net financial result in life, yes, as I said in the introduction, the finance department did a very good job overall, both in life and in non-life. In particular, in life, they did a lot of things in terms of change of asset allocation in order to accelerate the yield enhancement of the yield of the segregated portfolios or just [ UniSeparate ], where we succeeded to increase the yield by 12 basis points compared to the same number in September '24. And 12 basis points is a lot because you have to consider that we have almost EUR 40 billion assets under management, and it is a very important number. Of this 12 basis points, 8 was rebated to policyholder and 4 was kept by the company and used to remunerate the capital. And this is the most important contribution to the improvement of the net profitability of the health of the life business. On Confindustria, Enrico managed the project, and so I leave the floor to him. Enrico Pietro: Thank you, Andrea. So we signed a Confindustria agreement on Monday with the partnership also of Poste and Intesa Sanpaolo insurance companies. The innovation in this is that you can -- if you are a company that need to buy the cover that now is compulsory to do it also through the digital properties of Confindustria that can make you enter into our platform. And so this could be good thing to give an additional option to all the small companies, especially that need to comply with the new regulation by the end of the year. What we have seen so far is that the process is quite slow. So of course, large companies are well already covered for the vast majority. Medium-sized are, of course, complying. But as you know, in our country, we have more than 4 million small companies. And I personally do not expect that all the 4 million company will be covered by the end of the year, but this process will take time also in 2026 and maybe even more. Of course, it's an opportunity that we are also considering prudently about pricing, underwriting, geographical concentration that are something in our view, very important to be able to catch this opportunity without increasing the volatility of our results. Operator: The next question is from August Marcan of UBS. August Marcan: I have 2 quick ones. First on combined ratio and second on the investments. On the combined ratio, it seems like the PYD has gone up year-over-year quite a bit. Can you give some guidance what you consider would be a normalized level for your PYD and discounting? And then the second question, a bit more forward-looking on the investment. But since the start of your strategic plan, BTPs and other yields have been down, especially on the shorter term where your non-life business kind of sits. How confident are you in your yield targets? And can you talk a bit more about what levers can you pull to meet your yield targets that you set out in your strategic plan? Matteo Laterza: Thank you to you, I will start from the second question, then I will leave Enrico to answer to the first. Yes, the spread of BTPs versus Bond has consistently decreased. This explained in good part, the positive contribution of economic variance to the solvency ratio. On the other hand, we had also an upward -- smoothly upward trend in the base rate, both in the swap rate and also in the bond yield. And for us, it is very important, of course, the absolute level of the investment yield that remains for the BTPs way above -- whereabout of 3.5% in the 10-year maturity. And for the bond, we are in the area of 2.65%, 70%. That for us is fine. The average of the minimum guarantee in our life book is 70 basis points. And this level of risk-free rate or swap or bond, as you can define at 2.6% is fair enough to fit the minimum guarantee and the level of yield that we have to rebate to the -- our policyholder in order to offer them a decent level of yield for our clients. Of course, at 75 basis points of spread, Italian government bonds are not so cheap as they were when the spread was at hundreds of basis points that we had in the past. That gave us the opportunity to invest and to continue to invest and increase our weight in Italian government bonds. This is not the case today. We have an investment of EUR 17 billion in Italian government bonds. We look forward to maintain this investment going forward and to diversify the other -- in other assets like other European govies like Germany or also France can be an opportunity if there will be a prosecution of the widening of the spread there, we will get more diversification. And at the same time, we will be able to match the target of our industrial plan, where we are not worried at all. The absolute level of yield is more or less a little bit higher than where we were in -- at the beginning of the year when we launched and we discussed about our industrial plan. So there are nothing that worries us in this extent. And I leave Enrico answer to the -- on the combined ratio. Enrico Pietro: Yes. So the first part of the question was about the prior year development. And of course, you can see now an improvement compared to last year, but you have to take into consideration that last year was not a normal year, was a year in which the impact of the Milan Court Tables on permanent disability affected, of course, both the average cost of the claim of the current year, but also the prior year development. So basically, we are going back to normal. So this is a level you can expect maybe even slightly higher than this also for the future. And as far as the discount effect is concerned, of course, it depends on the interest rate environment. So now it is 2.3%. And of course, you can find also in the unwinding amount the same effect with the opposite sign in our accounts. Operator: The next question is a follow-up from Michael Huttner of Berenberg. Michael Huttner: I just wanted to understand, you spoke a little bit about a small rise in lapses still well below the market. Can you explain what is driving this, please? Matteo Laterza: No, Michael, this was to explain the negative contribution to the solvency of the so-called noneconomic variance. Noneconomic variance gave a negative contribution to solvency of 3 percentage points. This come from some change in assumption regarding what we -- what were the assumption at the beginning of the year in terms of surrender rate of life insurance business. And what we had in real numbers at the closing of September '25. Even if Unipol has a surrender rate that is way under the market average of our competitors compared to the assumption of the beginning of the year, the surrender rate was a little bit higher compared to our assumption. And this explains after the, of course, the update of the numbers in our capital model, we had 3 percentage points of decrease coming from what we call the noneconomic variance, but the justification and the explanation is what I said. I don't know if I was clear in the explanation now. Operator: [Operator Instructions] Gentlemen, there are no more questions registered at this time. Matteo Laterza: Okay. Thank you very much for participating to this call, and we will update in February for the final year results. Thank you very much to everyone. Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining. The conference is now over. You may disconnect your telephones. Thank you.
Operator: Good morning, and welcome to the Air France-KLM Third Quarter 2025 Results Presentation. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Benjamin Smith, CEO; and Steven Zaat, CFO. Please go ahead, sir. Benjamin Smith: Okay. Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for the presentation of Air France-KLM's third-quarter results. As usual, I'll start by sharing the key highlights of the quarter, and then I'll hand it over to our CFO, Steven Zaat, who will walk you through the financial results in more detail. I'll return at the end with a few concluding remarks before we open the floor for any questions you might have. This quarter once again demonstrates the resilience of our business model in a challenging environment. In the third quarter, Air France-KLM delivered a stable operating margin of 13.1%, with revenues increasing by 3% year-over-year to EUR 9.2 billion, supported by a 5% increase in passenger traffic, which reached 29.2 million passengers. The passenger network unit revenue was up 0.5% at constant currency, driven by continued strong demand for premium cabins, which I will elaborate on later. Meanwhile, our maintenance business also made a solid contribution. We managed to limit our unit cost increase to 1.3% despite higher airport and air traffic control charges. As a result, operating income improved by EUR 23 million year-over-year to EUR 1.2 billion. Our balance sheet remains robust with leverage at 1.6x. Year-to-date recurring adjusted operating free cash flow reached EUR 700 million, confirming our ability to combine financial discipline with continued investment in our future. Finally, fleet renewal continues to advance with new generation aircraft now representing nearly 1/3 of the fleet, up 8 points compared to a year ago. Now moving to Slide 5. For those of you who are following the deck here. One of this quarter's key highlights is the continued success of our loyalty program, Flying Blue, which has been named the world's best airline loyalty program by point.me for the second year in a row. This distinction reflects the trust of over 30 million members and underscores Flying Blue's growing role in strengthening our connection with customers. Flying Blue remains a powerful driver of loyalty and commercial performance, and its global recognition is a testament to the value and quality of the experience that we deliver. Let's turn now to Slide 5. We're pursuing the implementation of our premiumization road map across the group with concrete improvement throughout the customer journey. On board, we're rolling out our latest long-haul business cabins at both Air France-KLM and KLM's premium comfort class is now featured on more routes. Starting in September, Air France has been introducing high-speed Starlink WiFi on board, available free of charge in every cabin, a first for any major European airline. Almost 30 aircraft have already been equipped, and we expect 30% of the Air France fleet to feature this service by the end of 2025. In addition, we are continuing to enhance the customer experience across multiple touch points. This includes upgraded premium lounges with recent improvements in Chicago and Boston, and an enriched dining offer featuring new signature dishes from Michelin star chefs on U.S. departures and a simplified customer journey from check-in to boarding. A new exclusive ground experience has also been introduced at Los Angeles, for La Prem customers, and I'm also particularly proud to highlight that our fully redesigned La Premal cabin will be available on the Paris City G2 Miami route starting November 10, after following a very, very successful launch on our flights to New York JFK, Singapore, and Los Angeles. Altogether, these initiatives elevate the quality of our product, reinforce our positioning in the premium travel segment, and support our path to higher value revenues. Moving to Slide 6. As you can see from this slide, the mix of our long-haul cabins is gradually shifting toward higher value premium segments. At Air France, the share of La Première and business seats set to increase from 12% in 2022 to 13% by 2028, while premium economy, now rebranded as premium, will rise from 8% to 10%. At KLM, the trend is even more pronounced. Premium comfort introduced in 2022 is expected to expand to 10% of seats by 2028, while the business cabin segment will grow from 10% to 12%. In other words, by 2028, almost 1 in 4 seats across our long-haul fleet will be in premium cabins. This structural shift aligns with our longer-term strategy to strengthen our brand positioning, reflecting evolving customer demand, improving revenue quality, and enhancing the value proposition for long-haul travelers. Turning to our network. We are continuing to expand connectivity across all key markets. This winter, the group will operate a broad network across all regions with balanced capacity growth. In Asia and the Middle East, Air France will serve Phuket, Thailand, while KLM will add Hyderabad, India, to its network. In the Caribbean, Air France will launch services to Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic and KLM will introduce flights to Barbados. Across Europe, KLM is opening Kittilä in Northern Finland, while Transavia is launching new services from Deauville (Normandy) and Madinah Saudi Arabia, and Marsa Alam, Egypt will also be added. And Transavia will increase flights to Morocco, Egypt, and Finland's Lapland region as well. Looking ahead, Air France will launch flights to Las Vegas in summer 2026, further strengthening our North American offering. Altogether, these additions illustrate how Air France-KLM continues to grow strategically, improving connectivity, reinforcing its position in key markets, and maintaining a well-balanced portfolio of routes. With that, I'll now hand it over to Steven, who will walk you through the detailed financial results. Steven Zaat: Yes. Good morning, everybody, and thanks for taking the time to listen to us. I think we can say it was a tough quarter in the third quarter, especially from a revenue perspective. The impact of the situation in the U.S. regarding FISA and immigration rules starts to hurt our lower-yield segment in the long haul. And I think also the warm summer didn't help our European network and Transavia. And then on top, we had ATC strikes in July, we had ground strikes at KLM, and then all the impact from the taxes and charges which we get in France from the TSBA, and at Schiphol, the charges of the lending fees and the increase of our security charges. I think we had last year, we had, let's say, the Olympics. So I think if you look at the tailwinds, which we should have from the Olympics, a big part has been absorbed by these headwinds in this quarter. If we look at the margin, you see a stable margin of around 13%, which is the same as we had last year. On the unit revenue, if you're excluding currency, we are at minus 0.5%. And the unit cost, we had quite well under control. I guided you already that we will be at the lower end of the 1% to 3%. So we are very close now to the 1%. And if you include also the fuel benefit, you will see that actually our unit cost is coming down with 0.2%. So let's say, unit revenues and unit costs are stabilizing each other in this quarter. If you look at the left and you look at the net result, you see that it looks down year-over-year, but it comes that we had an unrealized foreign exchange result last year of more than EUR 100 million. So if you take that out on the net result, we actually improved, and we are now at an equity level above EUR 2 billion. If you go business by business, and I will come back on the 0.5% unit revenue on passenger business on the next slide, you have to see at the cargo that we see a minus 5% in unit revenues. This is related to the fact that we had more freighters in maintenance. So we plan more maintenance for our freighters at Schiphol, and it extended also more than what we expected. So this is quite a big impact on our unit revenue. If you look at the cargo contribution to our P&L, it's more or less flattish. So it's also, let's say, benefiting from a unit cost perspective over there, absorbing actually the unit revenue decline in the cargo. On Transavia, we grew capacity 13.8%, 15% in France, and 12.5% in the Netherlands. In France by taking over the slots of Air France in Orly, and in the Netherlands by upgauging our fleet. That had an impact on our unit revenue, which is down minus 2.8%. And I think also that the warm weather didn't help our local business due to the fact that the appetite to travel probably when it's hot, it's less when it is raining dogs and cats outside. So we have a stable result of Transavia of around EUR 217 million. The maintenance business performed quite well, an increase of 13% of our revenues despite the lower USD, especially on engines and components, we start growing the business. We are now at an order book of EUR 10.4 billion. We increased our order book by EUR 1.7 billion compared to the beginning of the last year. So we are strengthening this business segment. And you see also that the results are improving quarter-over-quarter now with an operating margin of 6.3%. So a very good performance on the maintenance business, where we also start to recover at the components business to drive up our margin. If we then go to Page 11, let's start with Air France. Of course, there was the Olympics last year, but we also had the DSBA impact and the ATC strikes. And all in all, Air France improved the result by EUR 67 million, having now an operating margin of 14%. KLM is especially impacted by the lower yield demand, and this lower yield, especially on the long haul impacts the unit revenues of KLM. And on top of it, we have the increase of the triple tariffs, which is really hurting KLM, including also the security charges, which are going up. So I think these 2 impacts actually explains all the KLM decline despite the fact that we continue with our back on track. And you see later that on the productivity side, the unit costs are getting better under control. And also, we see that we are getting very close to, let's say, the low limit of our guidance, and especially a big contribution coming from the productivity. On Flying Blue, a stable result of around EUR 54 million. We had last year, we -- first of all, Flying Blue is impacted by the dollar because we sell miles in the U.S. And on top of it, we had very cheap seats available for flying routes during the Olympics. So that has a positive impact, let's say, on the miles cost and which we don't have this quarter, but I think it was a very strong quarter. We grew the business again with 10.5% and the business operating margin of 24% is contributing as we expected to our business model. If we then go to Page 12, then you see the big difference, and we took out now also the premium economy. You see that there's a big difference between the premium traffic and the lower-yield economy traffic. So in the first business, we increased our load factor. We increased our capacity. We increased our yield. On the premium economy, we even increased our capacity with 10%, while at the same time, increasing the ticket prices by 5.4%. And then on the economy, there, you see it's starting to hurt. It is minus 1.5% in terms of yield and also a lower load factor. Although the load factor is still 91%, you see that it is more difficult to fill the seats. If you look, for instance, on our traffic on the North Atlantic to the U.S., there is minus 10% lower passengers from India, for instance, which is all related to the immigration rules in the U.S. If you go over the world, you see still that North America on itself is not doing that bad. We have a 2.7% increase in yield, especially driven again by the first and business class and the premium economy and also by the very strong point of sale in the U.S. Latin America is still strong, 2.8% up in yield. And we see also that in the Caribbean and Indian Ocean, we could increase our yields year-over-year. And on the long or the outlayer is a bit Africa, where we see that we have a gap on the load factor, which is especially again related to the, let's say, the political situation in Africa. but also the connecting traffic to the U.S. where there is less traffic from Africa to the U.S. due to all the immigration rules. And on the right, you see a quite positive trend on Asia, up 4.4% in yield. So we are doing quite well in that segment with a limited growth of 1.7%. On the right, you see again Transavia, which I already explained. So this is minus 2.7%. And you see this hot summer had an impact on our short and medium-haul, which was more or less flattish year-over-year. If we then go to Page 10, you see we guided you that we would be at the lower end of the 1 to 3. So we are very close to the 1 now. That will also be the case in the next quarter. We see that the unit costs are coming down as productivity is kicking in. But of course, the premiumization, which contributes 0. 6% to our unit cost, and also this increased ATC charges and the significant increase of the airport charges, especially in Amsterdam that drives actually the cost here still. But our own unit cost, which we can directly influence, you see that the labor price is compensated by 1.3% on unit cost on productivity. And then on the operations, it's still going up 0.8%, mainly driven also that we have expensive ground, and also on the maintenance side, is still quite a difficult environment. So -- but all in all, good to see that the unit cost, excluding the ATC charges and the premiumization are more or less flattish, and we see also a positive trend towards Q4. On Page 14, you see the cash flow. So a big jump positively in terms of operating free cash flow. We had a EUR 1.5 billion, where we were last year at EUR 28 million. Then we still have there in there around EUR 400 million of deferred social charges and Wax. And if you take these exceptionals and you take also the payment of the lease debt, you see that we are now at a recurring adjusted operating free cash flow of more than EUR 700 million, where last year, we were at EUR 23 million. And if you look at the right, you see that the net debt is coming up. Of course, these exceptionals of EUR 400 million are added actually at the end of the day to our net debt. And we had -- let's say, we signed a lease contract on the 787-9, where we extended the leases till the period 2033 and 2035, which had a EUR 300 million impact on our modified lease debt. But of course, that has not an impact in the coming period on our free cash flow because we continue to operate these profitable planes. If we then go to Page 15, you see that the leverage is down now at 1.6. We have EUR 9.5 billion of cash at hand, which is very stable over the year, which is well above the EUR 6 billion to EUR 8 billion target. We launched very successfully a bond of EUR 500 million vanilla for 5 years with a coupon of 3.75%. We had the lowest credit spread ever in our history of Air France-KLM. So we are extremely proud of that. And we continue to simplify our balance sheet. So we redeemed Apollo for EUR 500 million in July. We issued a new hybrid into the market, but we will also pay back the EUR 300 million of our hybrid convertible bond in the market. So in total, we are reducing this hybrid stock with EUR 300 million this year. And that with a net result generation, we see that we have continued to strengthen our balance sheet where we're now above the EUR 2 billion of equity. Let's then go to the outlook, and let's start with the forward bookings. We see that there is a gap of 3% in the long haul, 2% in the medium haul, and 4% at Transact. We have seen this every quarter. At the end of the day, we were always able to almost close completely this gap. So that is also, let's say, that is a little bit the trend that we see now in our industry. To give you a bit of an indication, if we look at the first 28 days of October, we see a unit revenue increase of 2%, excluding currency impact, with a load factor gap of 1%. And we see again a difference between premium traffic, including premium economy and the low-yielding classes in the overall long-haul network, giving confidence on our premiumization strategy. Then also, I will, for one time, also guide you on the cargo because usually, I not do that because I think we don't have a lot of bookings in -- but we had a very exceptional situation last year where we had a positive impact of the front-loading, especially related to the U.S. elections in the fourth quarter. I already indicated in our last call that the Q4 cargo unit revenues would be negative. And for the first 4 weeks of October, we see a decrease in unit revenue of 11%. Although cargo has a very short booking window than the passenger business, and it's difficult to predict the unit revenues. But in our internal forecast, we expect a double-digit decline in unit revenues compared to last year for the fourth quarter. If we then go to Page 18 on the hedge, so you see that we have hedged now 70% of '25 and 50% of '26. We are quite stable in our fuel bill. I think we last time indicated $6.9 billion, and we are now at $6.9 billion. So a very stable fuel price, if you look at it over quarter to quarter. It can go up and down during the weeks, but I think we are now reaching a kind of normal plateau for the fuel price. If we then go to Page 19 on the capacity. So we still aim at a capacity of 3% to 5% on the long haul, 3% to 5% on the short and medium haul and Transavia, especially because we had a very strong operations in the third quarter. We expect to be above 10% for the full year. But overall, we still guide at 4% to 5% versus 2024. On Page 20, you see the outlook, and it is every quarter the same. It becomes a bit boring maybe. So group capacity, 4% to 5%. Unit cost, I'm very confident in the low single-digit increase where we will see in the fourth quarter that we had a very low side of this guidance. So we are comfortable for the full year on this low single-digit increase in unit cost. Net CapEx between EUR 3.2 billion to EUR 3.4 billion, also probably more at the low end of the bandwidth and net debt current EBITDA, we will keep that between 1.5 and [indiscernible]. Then we strengthened further our position in Canada. We have a very strong cooperation with WestJet, which is the second largest airline with a leading market position in Western Canada. We already have since 2009, a codeshare and a loyalty program with them. And it's interesting to see that they are the #6 partner of our Air France-KLM-enabled revenues. So next time when we do all to Chris, I will invite you to tell me who are the #2, 3, 4 and 5. Number one, you can easily guess, but it's interesting to see that they drive really up our revenue. So we were happy that together with Delta and Korean Air, we could lock them in for our business, and we took a stake of 2.3%, solidifying our, let's say, integrated way of working with Delta and securing our position in Canada. With that, I hand over to Ben for the final remarks. Benjamin Smith: Thanks, Steven. And just to summarize and conclude the comments that we just made. So Q3, again, was a mixed quarter, softer leisure demand and operational headwinds, but we're pleased that revenue -- there was revenue growth and a stable margin, which clearly shows that we've got a resilient, well-balanced network, strong cash generation, and the outlook is reconfirmed. So altogether, these results demonstrate Air France-KLM's ability to navigate challenges resiliently while building a stronger position for the future. So thank you for your time and attention. We're now available to answer any of your questions. Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our first question today comes from the line of Jarrod Castle from UBS. Jarrod Castle: I'll ask 3, please. Just quite interested to get any thoughts that you might have at the moment on at least the direction of ex-fuel costs going into 2026. Secondly, any impact from the U.S. shutdown on your North Atlantic? I see they're going to reduce the amount of capacity flying in the U.S. Is this more domestic in your view? Or will it have an impact on international? And then lastly, just the current French economic/political backdrop. If you could just go through some of your thoughts in terms of what these budgetary pressures might mean for your business. Steven Zaat: I will take the first question, and I will take the second and the third question. Yes. So we are currently busy with our budget for 2026. But we -- of course, we -- you know we are back on track. We have the same actually measures also at Air France. So we are driving our productivity further. So let's see where that will end when I come back with the guidance for 2026, but we are, of course, aiming if you look at the full year to be lower than where we were this year. You see every quarter, the unit cost development is coming down, which has strengthened our position also for the next year. But we have to define our full year budget before I will guide you on any number. Benjamin Smith: Jared, so the U.S. shutdown from the information we received this morning, it's only going to impact domestic flights and that international flights as of today should be business as usual. On the political side in the Netherlands and in France, the main focuses for us are will there be any additional taxes or charges imposed on customers, passengers, or us directly or airports. So far, we don't see anything different or new from what we've been -- what we've seen already and what we've been lobbying to change or get rid of. Again, one of the big negatives that impact us in France are the air traffic controller strikes. So far, we don't have any visibility for the rest of the year. So we're hoping that things will stay stable. We have a new head of the government body, which oversees the air traffic controllers. He is quite close to the file. It's the #1 file today. So we're hopeful there will be some improvement because it cost us a lot of money this quarter and a lot of money this year. And the operating -- the operational impact that we're experiencing is much worse. This is in France, much worse than any other country in Europe. And so far in the Netherlands, it's a bit too early to tell whether there will be any change in policy towards aviation. Operator: The next question comes from the line of Stephen Furlong from Davy. Stephen Furlong: Maybe, Steven, you can just talk about what's going on in cargo. Sometimes historically, it's been a leading indicator, but I just like to understand because I haven't seen that level of decline from other airlines. And then Ben, maybe can you talk about Orly how the work is going there? And obviously, as you build up an entirely largely Transavia business there, I'd be interested in that. Steven Zaat: Yes, let's say, the booking window of cargo is very short. So that is always difficult to predict. as I gave you the numbers for October because I think I want to be totally transparent where we are currently. I think we will be in that range also, let's say, for the coming months. But it's very difficult to exactly explain. But we saw last year that there was a lot of upfront loading towards the U.S. in expectations for what would be the outcome of the election. So that has first already before the elections, it started. And then, of course, when Trump came into the White House or at least he was elected to be in the White House. In January, there was a lot of front-loading in that quarter. So Q4, if you still remember, we had a very good unit revenue on the cargo level, and that is going to normalize. So on itself, the demand is not weak. I think it is normal, and it's, of course, better than in the other quarters. But I think the year-over-year difference is quite difficult due to the fact that we have this positive situation in the fourth quarter last year. Benjamin Smith: Stephen, regarding Orly, if you look at the overall Air France Group, so Air France and Transavia and Hub, which is the regional carrier. So excluding the rest of the business units in Air France-KLM. So just Air France Group, we're extremely pleased with the performance of the Air France Group despite all the challenges we're having with the air traffic controllers and the rest of the operations and taxes that are being imposed specifically in France. So with respect to Transavia at Orly, it has to be taken in context with the entire Air France Group performance because we have been progressively shifting slots from Air France to Transavia. So we have half of the capacity, 50% of the slots at Orly, which is about 150 departures. And we operate about 1/3 of those in 2018 were operated by Transavia, and the rest by Air France, our regional operator, Air France Hop. Those slots there are being transferred to Transavia, and the totality of those slots will have been transferred to Transavia by April of next year. On many of those flights, it's a significant upgauge. If you take a hop aircraft, as an example, of 70 seats, and you're going to a 737 or an A320neo above 180 seats, it's a big jump. And we're cutting our domestic capacity by double digits. And so those slots are being redirected to new routes in Europe. And to start up a new route takes some time, but we do have a very, very strong position at Orly, and we do have our loyalty program, and we do have a cost structure that's similar to the competitors that we are going up against at Orly Airport. So the strategy we're quite pleased with. What is difficult to measure or to at least report out on is how the benefits flow between Transavia and Air France. So Air France has been able to shed the bulk of its domestic operation to date, and it will be the entire domestic operation in April. And that, of course, will be transferred to a lower operating unit, which is Transavia, and we will significantly reduce capacity. This being done in a very complex -- this is a project that should have been done 30 years ago. It was very, very difficult to put this into place. It impacts a lot of employees, a lot of unions are involved with this. And to be able to balance this out by saying, okay, Transavia is going to be profitable or not. I think for me, if we can get the overall Air France group along the path that we've committed to the market to get it to an 8% margin, we're on the path. Is it being divided correctly between Transavia and Air France with this transfer? I'll give you an example, whenever there is an air traffic controller strike to protect the long-haul flying, which is our #1 moneymaker, we try to shift the impact of the strikes to or the airport to impact Transavia as an example. So they take that of an example of a negative like a strike. So I think it's unfortunately, we're not able to put all that into our disclosure into our press releases. But I think that that kind of level of detail, I think if we were able to share that or we have the time to share that, it would be -- I think it would be acceptably well understood that the strategy is the right one. But it has to be looked at in context with the rest of the Air France group performance, which, as you know, over the last 2 years, we've been hitting record COI results. Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Harry Gowers from JPMorgan. Harry Gowers: A couple of questions from me. First one, Steven, I think you gave the plus 2% unit revenue remarks for October, which was for the passenger network. So maybe -- the network business, sorry. So maybe you could give us what you saw in Transavia specifically? Second question, I mean, just in terms of the French ticket tax increase, the Schiphol tariff increases, clearly, these are external headwinds, which are impacting passenger demand to a certain extent for Air France specifically. So anything you can do at all to try and offset or minimize those impacts on demand? And then third question, just on the costs. Do we have any idea yet, or any visibility on where like airport tariff increases could go in 2026? Steven Zaat: Harry, let me come back on your questions and maybe Beck will follow up on it. So let's first start on the unit revenues in -- on Transavia, I don't have any number, to be honest, on Transavia yet. So we always wait for the full closing, which we are going to do, and on the passenger business because it's the main part of our business. I get the daily report. So I have those figures actually always up to date. But I didn't hear any negative news for the moment. And probably as we see bigger demand in October, probably related also due to holidays, I expect that also to come from Transavia. On the Schiphol tariff, yes, it is a very terrible situation, what we are seeing there. We know that Sriol was the #9 in terms of cost in Europe. We could develop very strongly our connecting traffic. And of course, the fact that they increased so much the tariff, and we are a connecting airline. So we need to have lower cost than our competition. So we are working on that. So first, we are working on it in what we call back on track. And you see the productivity measures are kicking in now in our unit cost to get that down also to compensate all those increased charges, which we get at Schiphol. But -- and we have to review also what we are going to do with KLM, what is the right model, and we are working on that also close with, let's say, the Schiphol management because we cannot go on like this. The first indication, which you asked what is the airport tariffs are going to do. So at least the good news is that they are not going up, but they went already with more than 40%, but they are not going up in '26. For Schiphol, I don't have the indication for ADP yet, but usually, they are much more modest in the last years. Operator: The next question comes from the line of James Goodall from Rothschild & Co Redburn. James Goodall: So 3 for me, please, as well. So just coming back to the 2% unit revenue increase in October. Is there any color that you can give us in terms of how that's trending by region? Secondly, coming back to that chart on Page 6 on the increasing premium mix, assuming that there's sort of flat yields over the course of the next 3 years, can you give us an indication of what the RASK accretion just in terms of mix would be from that premium cabin growth over the course of the next 3 years? And then finally, with Leverage now sub-2x liquidity is well above target. And I guess with a very positive direction for free cash flow generation as the exceptionals roll through and with EBIT expansion on the back of your medium-term targets. Have you guys started to think about any potential use of that free cash flow? I guess you haven't paid a dividend since, I think, pre-GFC. Is there any potential in that restarting? Steven Zaat: So very good question. Let's first start with the coloring of October. So I think I already indicated that premium was much -- doing much better than, let's say, the lower-yielding segment. We see a very strong unit revenue actually in North America, and actually all over the world on the long haul, it is pretty strong. On, let's say, the European side, it is still going up, but it is not as strong as we are seeing on the long haul. So you could say that it is, let's say, 3% on the long haul and 1% approximately or even -- yes, 1% on the European network. So still the driving force is the long haul and the driving force is the premium traffic. Yes, that's a very good question. We are just building again the budget for that, but I would say it is around 1% increase of unit revenue. That looks modest, but it is directly -- it will bring a margin up with 1%. So I would say you have part which is in the unit revenue, but also part which is in the unit cost. And I would say, if I have to give an indication in arid because I don't have exact numbers here, I would give that it would bring at least 1% in margins on those networks. Then on the cash flow, so yes, we have indeed a very strong cash position, and we are driving up now our cash flow. We will use that to pay off our hybrids because the hybrids are more expensive than, let's say, a normal Fin loan, as you have seen what we did in August. So the first thing for the short term and the short term is for me '26 is to further pay off our hybrid stock. We have EUR 500 million to pay to Apollo next year, and we will pay that from our own cash flow. That's at least if the situation stays where we are today. And then I think the moment of dividend is more when we end actually, the era that we don't have this payback of the social charges in France and the wage tax in the Netherlands. So that's more for that time horizon. But it's not now, let's say, to disclose to the whole world. We need to first discuss that with the Board because we didn't have these discussions with the Board so far. Operator: [Operator Instructions] The next question comes from the line of Antoine Madre from Bernstein. Antoine Madre: Two questions, please. So first one regarding back on track for KLM. You mentioned the productivity is improving. So is it going faster than what you planned? And can we still expect EUR 450 million improvement this year? And second one on maintenance outlook. How do you see the current headwinds impacting tariff, FX, and issue? Steven Zaat: To start with back on track. So we are still see this contribution of back on track. Of course, that is also to offset, let's say, the triple tariffs and all those kind of increases of cost, but we are fully in sync with the back on track target, which we announced at the beginning of the year, and we will come back on it at the full year results where we exactly are. On the maintenance, we don't see any real big impact coming from the new tariffs. Usually, the parts are excluded. We know that some parts where there's a lot of metal can have an impact in terms of tariffs, but we don't see a significant increase. And you've seen the beautiful results in the third quarter from our Engineering and Maintenance business. So, so far, that impact is very, very limited and not noticeable and not material in our results. Operator: The next question comes from the line of Antonio Duart from Goodbody. Antonio Duarte: A question for me just on Transavia, if I may, and mainly in your -- where do you see strength and weakness within Europe, considering such increase in capacity? Any routes that you see special that you would like to highlight, or where you're seeing particular weakness? Benjamin Smith: So what I look at it from a different way, the strength of Paris and the fact that it's the largest inbound tourist market in all of Europe, and that the airport is very close to Paris and has now got a new direct metro line directly into the terminal, a new Line 14. It's a very attractive airport. We've not been able to exploit our position there in the past because the cost structure of Air France and Hop was probably one of the highest in Europe. And we had a limit on the number of Transavia airplanes we could operate because of the collective agreement we had in place with the Air France pilots. So we negotiated in 2019, it was not an easy negotiation to have that limit removed. We can now operate as many Transavia flights as possible. So now with a competitive cost structure, we can really take advantage of the opportunity here in Paris. So I think the Parisian market is very strong. It's showing resilience. It's actually growing. So we are trying to position all the new capacity that we're putting into Europe with a strong focus on inbound. This is new for us. It's traffic we did not have in the past. And of course, we're trying to deploy this traffic where also there's a strong outbound component as well from Paris. So the typical markets, leisure markets in Italy, in Greece, in Spain, in Portugal, are all still quite strong. But where we're seeing very, very good growth is in Northern Africa, in the Maghreb countries, in Morocco, in Algeria, in Tunisia, as well as Beirude, so in Lebanon and Tel Aviv in Israel, as well as a few destinations in Cairo. So it's quite a unique breadth of destinations that we've got. Not typical for a low-cost carrier, but the fact that it's got so many opportunities to serve the Paris market with a very competitive cost structure, plus the benefits of flying blue, not all the benefits. We don't want to bog it down with the costs that Flying Blue can sometimes entail, but there is quite an array of unique benefits that we offer to customers on Transavia. So a loyal Air France customer does have a low-cost carrier option, which is quite unique in Europe from the main base city of the full-service airline that we have. Meanwhile, at Transavia Holland, we've been trying to manage through a situation where we don't have full visibility on the number of slots and the curfew situations at Schiphol. And of course, the bulk of the Transavia aircraft at Schiphol do start their day early in the morning. So we do have, I think, more visibility than we had 3 years ago now that the Dutch government has agreed to go through the European Commission balanced approach process, which is enabling us to take some decisions on the deployment of our fleet at Transavia. And so we'll be refining the network offering at Transavia Holland, and we believe that should improve in the near future. Operator: [Operator Instructions] We have a question coming from Muneeba Kayani from Bank of America Securities. Muneeba Kayani: This is Kate on behalf of Muneeba. I have a question on unit cost, which is tracking at the lower end of FY guide. Just wanted to ask about 4Q outlook. Are you seeing the trend continue at about 1.3% year-on-year growth into 4Q? And any kind of base effect we need to keep in mind when thinking about 4Q? And then just another question on your forward bookings on Slide 17. If I'm reading the numbers right, I'm seeing about 2% to 4% kind of lower loading factor compared to 2024, but the commentary is in line bookings. So just if you could clarify that. Am I reading the slide correctly? Steven Zaat: Let's first start on the unit cost. I'm quite optimistic about the fourth quarter unit cost. I already gave the indication where we would end in the second half year. And I think Q4 will even be a better development than Q3. We see quite some productivity coming in. And with, let's say, the more modest labor cost increase and also having our operations better running, we are quite optimistic on the fourth quarter, but we don't give an exact number. We have a full-year guidance, and you can see where we will end for the full year. For the load factor, yes, I think that what you -- of course, the numbers are right. If you have followed also the previous presentations, you have seen that we have -- every time we had these kind of gaps -- and at the end of the day, we were able to close them. So in the first quarter, we were almost closing the full gap. In the second quarter, we were 0.1%. So in terms of load factor gap, so very close to 0, and we started almost the same. And in the third quarter, we also saw the same, and we closed at minus 0.5%. So I don't say that we will fully close this load factor gap. We saw a small load factor gap in October, but we saw quite some good unit revenues. But it is too soon to tell. These are the numbers. And of course, there's no mistake in it. Operator: We have a question from Axel Stasse from Morgan Stanley. Axel Stasse: I have 2, if I may. The first one is, could you maybe provide any quantitative guidance on the back on track program contribution on EBIT for 2026? Do you still expect to be on track for the medium-term guidance? And the second question is a follow-up actually on the potential French corporate tax proposals. We have heard a lot of things in the press last week, and many legislative lift hurdles before any such proposal is actually passed. But could you just provide any indication on how much of group PBT is related to France? Steven Zaat: Back on track. We will see, of course, an outflow in 2026. I'm not yet there to guide you on the cost. As you know, I say that it's coming down and coming down and coming down if you look at the unit cost increase, but we have not finalized the full guidance on it. But the program on itself is delivering, but we see now that especially the low-yielding traffic is getting worse. So that hurt especially also KLM, plus the triple trailers. And we have to review what are our next steps with our KLM operations. So that is where we are currently working together with the KLM management. The second question, I don't have any figures, but-- Benjamin Smith: Yes, it's Ben. From what we've seen over the last week, we don't have an aggregate -- any aggregate figures on that and how that could impact us. As you know, things are moving all over the place. But the current government that's sitting, I think we have a good feeling that what we had in place last year is going to be very similar to what should be in place this year. But as you know, it's not very stable here, but the big items that could impact us seem to be under control. And comment actually on the guidance. Because it was a question, we will come back on that with the full-year results. But we are still, let's say, aiming at 8% margin in the period '26, '28. Operator: There are no further questions. So I hand back over to you, Sirs, for closing remarks. Benjamin Smith: Okay. Well, thank you, everyone, for joining us today, and we look forward to sharing our results at the end of the year, the end of the fourth quarter. Thank you. Operator: Thank you for joining today's call. You may now disconnect your lines.
Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, good morning, and welcome to the HELLA Investor Call on the results for the 9 months of fiscal year 2025. This call will be hosted by Bernard Schaferbarthold, the CEO; and Philippe Vienney, the CFO of HELLA. [Operator Instructions] Let me now turn the floor over to your host, Bernard Schaferbarthold. Please go ahead. Ulric Schäferbarthold: Good morning to everybody. Very warm welcome to our 9-month results call. And I'm here together with Philippe Vienney, our CFO; and Kerstin Dodel, our Head of IR. So starting off the presentation on Page 4. So if we look at our sales development, we are at end of September in line with what we expected. So positively, our electronics business is continuing to grow. We had a growth now in the first 9 months of 8.3%, specifically our Radar business, but as well our business in our product center, energy management is continuing to grow. On the Lighting side, we are not growing. So we are down 8.4%. We mentioned also earlier mid of the year that the end of some larger projects, but also the reduction on volumes on some programs in our order book is the reason for that. And I will come back to that and actions we have now taken for Lighting. On Lifecycle Solutions, our business is still down in the 9 months. But positively, we have now seen in the third quarter that we are back to growth. We had quite a decent development in that segment in Q3. So overall, sales is quite stable, FX adjusted. So a slight growth of 0.4%. And considering or looking at reported sales, we are at minus 1.1% considering the strong FX headwind we had. On our operating income margin, we are at 5.8% in the first 9 months. Overall, I can state we continue to have a strong cost discipline. We are implementing the structural programs we have initiated in the last 2 years. So overall, considering the environment, we are in line what we planned also in our budget. Net cash flow has improved on a year-on-year comparison is at EUR 68 million to the end of the year, 1.2%. We have reduced CapEx. And within that number, if we look at factoring, the increase in factoring is at EUR 23 million in comparison to last year, EUR 30 million less. If we move on to the order intake, we are good on track. The third quarter was again a good quarter in terms of order intake. We had a strong momentum, especially in the lighting business, 2 areas where we wanted to grow. More broadly in the U.S. and also in Asia and specifically China, we could win important programs. But as well in Europe, we were quite successful. We are now attacking the market as well in the mass market, so in the volume markets, and we were able to win significant program volumes for the European regions in the third quarter. On the electronics side, we continue to be very successful. So we are highlighting here some of the programs. But what I can state overall that within our Electronics business, we continue on a strong growth path, and this should also support our growth trajectory in the upcoming years. And to finish off, our Lifecycle was also quite successful in the last month. We are highlighting here some of the programs. So bus, agriculture remains important business areas and customer segments for us to continue to grow and as well here also to highlight to get broader in terms of our market reach. So we are happy to win also projects outside of Europe and to gain market shares there as well. So overall, we are on track in terms of our order intake achievements after 9 months. Going to Page 6, some highlights. So on the Lighting side, we continue to see that we are differentiating with our lighting technologies. We are present also in different -- on the different shows and fairs. Here, we are highlighting one, and we are advertising and showing our newest technologies also to the different customers. I think from my perspective, feedbacks are quite good. We are getting. So this should support our growth we are envisaging in the upcoming years. In the electronics, one important milestone now we had is the launch of our iPDM, so of our eFuse technology in one large platform. We are engaging ourselves much stronger now into the whole sonar architecture of the car. And this technology, which manages the power in the car and which is embedded in the sonar architecture and in the new E/E architecture overall of the car is a big milestone for us. And this is one very important technology we envisage will give a strong growth potential in the upcoming years, and this is why we are highlighting it here in a strong way. The other thing I want to mention is on the structural changes. So I mentioned we continue to reduce our cost base. In the last month, we announced the structural change in one of our plants in Germany, which now we are going into execution. Other than that, we are now in execution in terms of our new SIMPLIFY program. So this is a global program where we are reducing in all white-collar functions in the upcoming 3 years, around 15% on headcount. And so we are well on track. We already started on that program. The target is to be at least at 20% of reduction to the end of this year and around 50% on the reduction to the end of next year. And I can say that we are ahead of the target as of today, and we are trying to accelerate on that as well. And you can see that as well in the headcount development. If you only look at the last 9 months, we have already reduced close to 5% on headcount as of today in comparison to the start to the year at a quite comparable sales level, and we will continue on these adaptions. If we move to Page 7, let's say, one of the big challenges we are facing actually is the crisis on the shortage on Nexperia. So it's clear that if we look at our portfolio of products, we have a lot of Nexperia parts in our products. So in general, I can say we are strongly impacted. So we have organized our way -- us in a way also with task forces and are managing the situation in the way that we are building up the alternative suppliers. And in the meantime, for sure, we use -- we still use Nexperia parts. So our relationship today with Nexperia China is still stable, and we also managed to buy broker parts, which in the meantime, supports our supply. So far, I can say that the month of October was in line with our plan. So there was little impact. The start into the month of November showed a little more impact in terms of the full coverage against the plan. And the most difficult weeks now from our side will now be the next ones where in the meantime, where before being able really to ramp up the second sources, we are seeing some of the shortages. So we are working intensively also on the application on export licenses and also taking advantage and the support also on the OEM side, which are going for these applications as well. So this could help to support also on parts we have in China who could be exported to the U.S. and Europe and help there on the shortages. So far, China for us is not impacted. We have enough parts. So this is something difficult to quantify overall. But as I said, so far, the impact was very limited, and we have now to see how next weeks will be and specifically if with -- on the Chinese authorities, the customs and MOFCOM, we are able now to get the necessary applications to the exports to support Europe and the U.S., as I said. But as you can imagine, a lot of intensive work we are doing and managing the situation to keep our delivery promises to the customers. So having said that, we will move on with some more details on the financial results. Philippe will take over. Philippe Vienney: Yes. So good morning to all. So looking at the sales, so we are publishing sales at EUR 5.868 billion, so which is representing a decrease of 1.1% versus prior year. And excluding the exchange rate, this would be at plus 0.4% versus last year and versus the market, which is showing a growth of 3.8%. So here again, as I said, we have a good momentum in all region on electronics, whereas we are suffering on the lighting side with lower sales, which are affected by end of production on some programs and mainly in North America and Asia. And Lifecycle was reducing -- showing reducing sales, but which we are also -- where we are also seeing a good momentum in Q3 with some slight recovery. So looking at the sales per region and versus the market. So Europe, where we still have more or less 56% of our sales, we have a growth of 1% versus the market of -- which is showing a decrease of 1.7%. So we are overperforming versus the market for Europe. For Americas, where we have sales which are above the 20% of our sales, we are seeing a decrease of our sales of 1.1%, slightly impacted as well by the FX impact versus the market, which is reducing by 0.5%. So here also, we have the -- again, the impact of lighting, where we have this impact of some end of production series, which are not fully compensated by new launches. And we have Asia, which is also a bit above 20% of our sales. where we have a decrease on our published sales of 6.4%, also slightly impacted by the FX versus a growth in this region of 7.2%. So here again, we have the same topic on end of production of series project in lighting, but not fully compensated by new sales and new launches with local OEMs in Asia. And we still have, again, growth momentum in China on the electronics with radar and battery management. So now looking at the profitability per segment. So lighting, we are at EUR 2.7 billion of sales, which is representing an organic decrease of 7.3%, excluding the exchange rate. So here, I said again, we have the impact of end of production of some series projects in China and North America. We have some increase on the headlamps and rear combination lamps in Europe and Americas, but which are not enough to compensate the drop that we are seeing in Asia and North America on the rundown programs. So the operating income for Lighting is at EUR 73 million or 2.7%. So here, we are impacted by the volume drop, which is clearly impacting the gross margin and the operating margin, which we are partially compensating by lower material costs, also some reduced R&D cost and SG&A costs, but not enough to compensate the volume drop that we are facing where we still have to reduce and continue to reduce our fixed cost to absorb this and face this volume drop. Electronics. So we are publishing sales of EUR 2.5 billion or EUR 2.6 billion, which is representing plus 9.5%, excluding FX rates on an organic basis. So here again, we have growth in all regions and growth -- thanks to the radar business. We have also growth in the car access system in Europe and Asia. And we have also some growth, thanks to the battery management system as well in Asia. So good momentum on the sales in Electronics. And this is leading us to an operating income of EUR 196 million or 7.6% of operating margin. So here, we have the benefit of the volume, which is helping the gross margin and the operating margin. And we have been able to be stable on the R&D spend and also thanks to reduction of external spend and external provider. And we have also been able to maintain or even reduce the SG&A percentage in this segment. So all in all, leading to the 7.6% of operating margin. The Lifecycle, where we have sales of EUR 739 million, which is representing a decrease of 1.5%, excluding FX rates. So yes, as we said, we have a low demand, especially coming from the H1 and especially on the commercial business vehicles. But we see some recovery, a slight recovery in Q3. So especially also on the commercial business with some stable business on the after market. And this is leading us to an operating income of EUR 74 million or 10%. So here, we are impacted also slightly by the volume. And we have been able to maintain or even decrease the R&D expense and with SG&A, which are slightly increasing mainly due to distribution costs. Profit and loss for HELLA? Yes. So we have a gross profit of EUR 1.3 billion, which is 22.8% versus 23.2% last year. So here, we have the weight of the volume decrease in Lighting and Lifecycle, which is impacting us and not fully compensated by the improvement on the Electronic segment. On the R&D side, we are at 9.4% versus 9.8% last year. So here, we continue to see the benefit of our adjustment and structural adjustment on the R&D side and cut on the external provider, as I mentioned, for Electronic. On the SG&A, we are at 7.7%. So here, we see a decrease on the administration costs, where we have a slight increase on the distribution costs. So I think the good trend is the administration costs which are decreasing and showing some effect of the program which have been launched to reduce this cost. On the earnings before tax, so we are reaching EUR 208 million versus EUR 409 million last year. So here, we have the impact -- negative impact of all the restructuring programs, which are booked and are part of the EUR 129 million. To mention that last year, we also had some restructuring costs, but which were more than compensated by the sales of the BHTC business and the net gain that was booked last year. And this is leading us to a net income of EUR 108 million versus EUR 310 million last year. On the net cash flow, we are at EUR 68 million, so versus minus EUR 8 million for the same period last year. So here, we are increasing our net cash flow. So we have higher cash from operations. We are also having a good momentum on the working capital with some negotiated and good payment terms with suppliers. And we are also reducing our tangible CapEx. You can see that we are at minus 23% versus what was cash out last year and spent last year for the same period. So this is benefiting to our cash flow, leading us to have a EUR 68 million cash flow for the 9 first months of the year. With that, I think we are finishing the financial details, and we can go to the outlook. Ulric Schäferbarthold: Thank you, Philippe. So on the outlook, so on Page 17, if we look at volumes, so the actual outlook on S&P is 91.4 million cars. I would expect that specifically on Europe and Americas, we would see some reductions in the fourth quarter due to the shortages on Nexperia parts. China is quite stable in terms of volumes. This is also what we see actually now in the fourth quarter. On Page 18, so we confirm our outlook in terms of sales in the range of EUR 7.6 billion to EUR 8 billion. On the operating income (sic) [ operating income margin ] 5.3% to 6% and the net cash flow of at least EUR 200 million. We are stating that this assumes a sufficient supply situation on -- especially in Nexperia parts. As I said, in terms of -- today, if I look at the month of October and the start into November, the impact were limited, but I also mentioned that the next weeks will be the crucial ones. So summing it up on the key takeaways. So, so far, looking at the 3 quarters, from our point of view, a robust sales development in line in terms of profit and net cash flow, what we expected, strong focus on the structural changes we have done and still a good momentum on the order intake side. So we -- outlook I mentioned, we see us on track for the guidance we have given. And if it comes to the top priorities, so we continue to work on the structural programs. One important new program we have now initiated is in the lighting area. We have started a transformation program now with -- starting into the second half of the year. Mainly, we focus on 3 big topics. One is on the business growth. So we need to come back to growth again for that. We are broadening our reach and focusing significantly also on the regions where we see a strong potential, especially the U.S., but also beside of China, Japan, Korea, India. And we already see now in the third quarter, the first successes and programs we could book in quite a sizable numbers. So first, let's say, proof points are given, but I think this is a very relevant point to come back to growth. And on top of that, we are -- we have initiated the operational transformation. We see significant potentials in terms of reductions on our footprint or on our costs within the operations, including also the supply side and logistics. We have initiated a structured program on that, which is specifically for Europe and also for our Mexican operations. And the third element is the improvement in D&D productivity and efficiency where as well we initiated a program also with a focus on cost reductions on our technology, where we see also a big potential to reduce on the cost side as well here, too. So this should help to bring our Lighting business into a much better profitable situation in the years to come. Having said that, we are happy to take your questions. Operator: [Operator Instructions] And the first question comes from Christoph Laskawi from Deutsche Bank. Christoph Laskawi: The first one, coming back a bit to what you just said on the Lighting performance. Obviously, Q3 margin around 1% is very low. When you've implemented all the measures that you talked about, what do you think is in the midterm a realistic margin potential? Could it be around 5% plus? Or any thoughts on that would be appreciated. And then in contrast to that, electronics is actually quite strong in Q3 with 9% plus margin. Was there any specific one-timers in there or just really capitalizing on growth and showing the margin potential of that business? And then the third question would be on Nexperia. It sounds like you didn't face production shutdowns on your own yet, and you haven't cost any so far. Still you're expecting production cuts to come. Do you already see that in the schedules? Any volatility you can highlight there? And then just on the cost of going to brokers and others, those have been quite high in the semi shortage. Is this something which could be a meaningful impact on earnings in Q4, just the sourcing alternatives? Ulric Schäferbarthold: Thank you for your questions, Mr. Laskawi. So on the Lighting performance, our target is to come back to 6%. But this will not be possible on the short notice. So this is a target we have set ourselves. It will take until '28, '29. So before we are at this 5% level, you said, probably '28, '29 to come closer to the 6%. So we have now seen that, as I said, so we are struggling a lot because, first of all, we are not growing. Secondly, we have also been impacted now in the second half by a warranty topic, which was quite significant as well. So it is partially in the third quarter and will also hit the fourth quarter. So this is a topic which lasts now from the years '22, '23, where now finally, we got to an agreement with -- and the settlement with the customers. So we are close to, but this was an impact as well. And overall, on the full, let's say, second half, it will have an impact of around EUR 25 million, which is quite significant for the Lighting business. But the overall, let's say, if I look at Lighting, we are -- the business is declining. And this is something which will also continue into the next years and will be a headwind also in the next year before now we see with the momentum we have on the order intake, we will be able to grow again in the -- starting from '27. What I have to say positively is that in lighting, we are very strong in China. So the transformation also we need to do for Europe and specifically also our Mexican operations, we already have done in China and also the adaption to competitiveness. So I see us very strong in Asia today. And now we need to do the work we have -- we need to do in Europe and also South America. So we changed also the responsibility. So I have taken over in combination of tasks now from the 1st of July. And so we are now starting on this transformation program, as I said. On Electronics, I'm very pleased about how our business is developing also in terms of performance. So what we now see is basically that we see now the payoff of the business now where we see now the growth coming with the launches and the new programs, which are going into serial production. So the growth supports the profit development. And what we as well see is that the structural changes we have done in terms of -- on the cost side helps as well. So with that, we see immediately a very strong profit development. There was no really specific one-off in the third quarter. So -- but it was quite a good quarter. So I wouldn't say now every quarter will be the same. So also no negative impact, I have to say. But I have to admit also, it's a good development, and we are building on that and trying to continuously to improve on that. On the Nexperia, so I think that -- I stated so far with the coverage or with the stocks we had, with the coverage we had. We also bought some -- quite early on some broker parts. So this helped really to cover the period of time until now. We see now that some shortages on some products, they are already there. On the call offs, basically, you do not see yet that customers are changing anything. But for sure, on the -- in the systems, but for sure, we are in very intensive discussions with all of our customers. And today, the situation is as follows that the weekly -- the decisions are taken now on a weekly base, what can be produced and how much reduction will we see. And I mentioned the next weeks will show reductions. And the magnitude is still not absolutely clear. So what is in the next, let's say, 3 to 4 weeks. And it certainly will now also depend on how -- are we now able really to get exports on Nexperia parts with these exemptions or with export licenses granted now to the OEMs or to us. And we are already trying out the test shipments and working with MOFCOM and the customs, as I said. So there is some hope that now it should work and that certainly will help a lot immediately. But this is the uncertainty we have. If this is not working, I mentioned it, then the reductions on the volumes in the next weeks will be much higher. And on the cost side, on the broker so far, I would say, for sure, it goes fast. The last broker -- broker offers I saw between factor 600, factor 800, also factor 1000 I already have seen. The difference to the semi is that the original price is much lower. So there, we are only talking cents, but sure, if we are talking factor 500, 600 or higher, then you talk immediately some millions. So far, it has not such a big impact. The market today is still -- there are not so many volumes any longer in the broker market. So I would not expect that this should have such a hit, which is comparable to the semi today or to the semi crisis we had some years ago. But it's -- again, still we are talking some money. It's some millions we are discussing. That's for sure. But not comparable, as I said, to the semi crisis. Operator: And the next question comes from Sanjay Bhagwani from Citi. Sanjay Bhagwani: Maybe to begin with, so on the Nexperia situation, this morning, there seems to be several articles suggesting like -- so yes, I mean, on the Nexperia situation, this morning seems to be like several like constructive articles typically like quoting some of these Dutch ministers that things will be okay in the coming weeks and chip supply should resume. Is that providing some comforting messages to you as well? Maybe let's say, if there is a disruption, there can be just 1 week disruption or something like that? Or it's probably too early to look at these headlines or something like that? Ulric Schäferbarthold: So there are 2 things for me. One is does China now allow that Nexperia China -- the parts which are still produced at Nexperia China that we can export these to Europe. And this -- we are still working -- I mentioned it. We are still working on how process-wise, the application and the export needs to be executed. And this is where I said we are now just running now with custom, the discussions we have with MOFCOM doing these test shipments to try out how we have now to handle and practically do it. And there are some signs now. This I can at least also confirm that -- I hope that it will be possible soon. Let's put it like that. Still today, it has not worked out, but we are getting signals that there is hope that it could be possible. So that is one thing. So I would take that as a positive note, but still to be seen if then really it works out. Because just practically, I can tell you the custom were not aware that they are allowed to do. On the other hand side, MOFCOM is allowing it. So I think we are still, let's say, it's an administrational point, but you never know. So that is one thing. The other thing we are also working on, and this is as well, let's say, a critical path, we are still getting a lot of parts from Nexperia China, and they are dependent still on the wafers they get from Europe. And there apparently, they are not coming along. So that these wafers, which are needed for the further production, if they -- if China do not have any longer wafers from Nexperia Europe, they couldn't continue on their production. And they will run out at a certain point of time if there is no agreement. And this is the second path we are working on to get a solution between the 2, Nexperia Europe and China, to stabilize the situation so that Nexperia China is able to continue to deliver. And this is important because, as I said, we are working on the alternative suppliers. And for most of the suppliers, it can be -- we can find, let's say, good agreements and to ramp up quick. But for some of the parts, it will take a little longer, and this is why it's important to have a stability on Nexperia China as well. Sanjay Bhagwani: That's very helpful. And I think on the broker parts, you mentioned that so far, this has not been a major impact. But in terms of the pricing pass-throughs, I understand in the previous like chip crisis, you had to actively go and negotiate the price increases. In this case, is it easy to like kind of have some sort of indexation for these components now? Or this again, will be subject to negotiation if the, let's say, inflation becomes material? Ulric Schäferbarthold: So in the actual situation, because we need to be quick, we take the decision with the customer, so with our customer, with the OEM together. And the agreement is that in terms of who takes which part, we agreed that this will be then discussed later. But it's clear that we will have a comparison as it was in the semi crisis where we agreed on the, I would call it, pain share, who takes which proportion. So you can assume that what we have seen similar in the semi crisis should -- at least from our perspective, should also be true now for this one. Sanjay Bhagwani: And then my final one is on the Q3 margins. Just a kind of follow-up to Christoph's question, but more at the group level. So Q3 group margins have like sequentially gone down to, I think it's 5.3% versus H1 was 6%. So are you able to provide some color in terms of the Q4? Is it sequentially looking better as of now? And in terms of divisions, how the Q4 versus Q3 margins are looking? Ulric Schäferbarthold: So month of October was okay. It was in plan. So -- and normally, the months, October and November are very strong in the industry. So we have seen quite a good month in October so far, even we had this Nexperia situation. So the month of November will certainly be impacted now. And it's difficult to say on the margin -- so really to say now what does it now mean for the full quarter because it will depend on volumes at the end. And we will lose volumes. The question is how much. So I would not feel so comfortable now to say how it will go. I think in terms of our cost savings, all what we are doing there, we are in plan. At the end, it will depend on sales. Operator: [Operator Instructions] So it looks like there are no further questions at this time. So I would like to turn the conference back over to Bernard Schaferbarthold for any closing remarks. Ulric Schäferbarthold: So thank you to all of you who participated, and thank you to showing the interest on HELLA again. And I wish you a pleasant remaining day and after that, a good weekend. Hope to see you and speak to you soon. Bye-bye.
Operator: Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to today's Iveco Group Third Quarter 2025 Results Conference Call and Webcast. We would like to remind you that today's call is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Federico Donati, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir. Federico Donati: Thank you, Razia. Good morning, everyone. I would like to welcome you to this webcast and conference call for Iveco Group Third Quarter Financial Results for the period ending 30th September 2025. This call is being broadcast live on our website and is copyrighted by Iveco Group. I'm sure you appreciate that any other use, recording, or transmission of any portion of this broadcast without the consent of Iveco Group is not allowed. Hosting today's call are Iveco Group CEO, Olof Persson, and me, Federico Donati, Head of Investor Relations, standing in for the financial section usually covered by our CFO, as Anna Tanganelli could not be present today. Please note that any forward-looking statements we make during today's call are subject to the risks and uncertainties mentioned in the safe harbor statement included in the presentation material. Additional information relating to factors that could cause actual results to differ from forecast and expectation is contained in the company's most recent annual report, as well as other recent reports and filings with the authorities in the Netherlands and Italy. The company presentation may include certain non-IFRS financial measures. Additional information, including reconciliation to the most directly comparable IFRS financial measures, is included in the presentation material. Furthermore, on the 30th of July 2025, Iveco Group announced the signing of a definitive agreement to sell its defense business, IDV, and Astra brands to Leonardo S.p.A. The transaction is expected to be completed no later than 31st March 2026, subject to the customary regulatory approvals and carve-out completion. In accordance with IFRS 5, noncurrent assets held for sale and discontinued operations, as the sale became highly probable in July, the Defense business meets the criteria to be classified as a disposal group held for sale. It also meets the criteria to be classified as a discontinued operation. In accordance with applicable accounting standards, the figures in the income statement and the statement of cash flow for the 2024 comparative periods have been recast consistently. Additionally, in 2024, the firefighting business was classified as a discontinued operation. Its sales were completely on the 3rd of January 2025. As a consequence, the 2025 and 2024 financial data shown in this presentation refer to the continuing operation only unless otherwise stated. Finally, please note that, subject to applicable disclosure requirements pending the publication of the final offer document, we will not comment on the tender offer. As per the joint press release on July 30, announcing the entering into the merger agreement and the press release by Tata on August 19, announcing the filing of the document with Conso, anyone interested is invited to refer to the offer notice published on July 30, 2025, which indicates the legal basis, rationale, condition, terms and key elements of the tender offer. All the aforementioned material and announcements are available on the Iveco Group corporate website, where any additional relevant information will be published in due time. We will not comment on the sale of the defense business to Leonardo either. The rationale, terms, and conditions of the sale, with the details as currently available, were disclosed on July 30. As announced, the transaction is expected to be completed in Q1 2026, subject to customary regulatory approvals and carve-out completion. Consistent with the agreement reached with Tata, Iveco Group will distribute the net proceeds of the transaction based on the enterprise value agreed with the purchaser via an extraordinary dividend estimated at EUR 5.56 per common share to be paid out to the company's shareholders before the tender offer is settled. With those points covered, I'd like to turn things over to our CEO, Olof. Olof Persson: Thank you very much, Federico. And let me add my own warm welcome to everyone joining our call today. I'll start with Slide 3, outlining the main highlights from our third quarter performance, excluding defense. Throughout the quarter, we maintained a high focus on our long-term vision and maintained discipline in the execution of measures that will help achieve it. These include tight control on inventory levels, diligent cost management, and the ongoing commitment to our multiyear efficiency program, as well as its acceleration for the current year, which is proceeding as planned. We have also identified additional areas of improvement, which will deliver further full-year savings. In our Truck business unit, we concentrated on balancing pricing and market share. The focus was on protecting our leadership position in the LCV chassis cap subsegment, where pricing dynamics were more challenging and maintaining a very strict pricing discipline in medium and heavy in support of the final phase of the introduction of our model year 2024 across European countries, and thereby ensuring the quality, performance, and the full potential of the product. I'd now like to break down our performance by business units. In the truck industry, demand in Europe remained particularly low in the chassis cab subsegment, which affected profitability in the quarter, which was only partially offset by strict cost control measures. European deliveries in the period were down year-over-year, particularly for light commercial vehicles, which were down 27% versus last year. At the end of the quarter, worldwide book-to-bill for trucks came in at 1.0, up 25 basis points versus the same period last year. In Powertrain, we began to see the first sign of a sustainable recovery in engine volumes as had been expected, supporting profitability improvements. In our bus business unit, profitability was impacted by costs associated with the ramp-up of production in our NNA plant in France. But despite this, our order book remains strong, providing us with a clear long-term visibility. Free cash flow absorption in the third quarter of 2025 was at EUR 513 million, broadly in line with last year's performance, when we exclude from last year the positive effect of the deployment of the higher inventory levels that we registered at the end of June 2024. You will recall that this was linked to the phase-in and phase-out of the new model year in trucks. Going forward, we will continue to remain very focused on quality and operations in line with our long-term pathway, maintaining tight control on production levels and inventory management, and on delivering our efficiency program. Slide 4 outlines our indicative timeline for the first half of 2026, with the sale of our defense business and the tender of the Veeco Group progressing in parallel. Regulatory filings for both transactions, including those required by the European Union, are currently underway and subject to final approvals. Both the sale of the defense business to Leonardo and the subsequent distribution of the net sale proceeds through an external ordinary dividend and the tender of [Bertata] are on track for completion within the first half of 2026, as we stated previously. If we're then moving on to Slide 6 and the Truck segment. We maintained pricing discipline and tight inventory control throughout Q3 in 2025. European industry volumes increased by 5% year-over-year for both light commercial vehicles and medium and heavy trucks. Iveco's third-quarter LCV market share was 11.7%, of which 29.7% was in the Chassis Cab subsegment and 65.8% was in the upper end of the segment. Industry growth overall was largely driven by the camper subsegment, where Iveco has limited exposure. Chassis Cab volumes, on the other hand, remained under pressure, yet we managed to protect our leadership position. In medium and heavy trucks, our market share reached 7.2% with heavy trucks accounting for 6.4%. In this segment, we implemented a selective sales mix strategy throughout the quarter to optimize channel profitability and support the final phase of the introduction of our model year 2024 across European countries and thereby ensuring the quality, performance, and full potential of the product. Our ability to adapt to segment dynamics while preserving pricing integrity and managing inventory effectively reflects the strength of our commercial execution and the strategic clarity of our truck business. Moving on to Slide 7. Our worldwide truck book-to-bill ratio reached 1.0 at the end of the quarter, registering a 25 basis point improvement year-over-year. This reflects balanced commercial performance across geographies and product categories. In light commercial vehicles, our European order intake rose by 17% compared to Q3 2024, supported by a book-to-bill ratio of 1.05. This increase, we believe, is a welcome first sign of a recovery coming on the heels of a prolonged period of production coverage well below last year's level, 7 weeks this year versus 12 weeks last year. And South America experienced even stronger growth with order intake up 37% and a book-to-bill ratio of 1.11. In medium and heavy trucks, European order intake declined by 3% year-over-year with a book-to-bill ratio of 0.82. South America saw a more pronounced contraction of 21% with a book-to-bill ratio of 0.94. While these figures reflect a softer demand environment, the backlog remains stable at 7 weeks of production coverage. Let's move to the next slide, #9, with bus industry volumes and market shares. Iveco Bus during the quarter continued to demonstrate strong competitive positioning across Europe. In the intercity segment, our leadership was reaffirmed with a 55.1% market share in Q3, representing a 5% point increase year-over-year. This gain can be attributed to the successful introduction of electric models, which are contributing positively to both volumes and brand perception. In the European city buses segment, our market share stood at 15.1% in Q3. We expect an acceleration in deliveries during Q4, consistent with the seasonal patterns and supported by backlog conversion. Overall, Iveco Bus maintained its consolidated #2 position in the European market with a 21.3% market share year-to-date. Moving on to Slide 10. In Q3 2025, our bus order intake declined by 17% following the strong momentum we enjoyed in the first half of the year. This front-loaded demand contributed to a 6% year-to-date increase as of September. Deliveries rose 20% compared to Q3 2024, demonstrating robust execution and sustained customer demand. The book-to-bill ratio stood at 0.77 at the quarter's end, a figure impacted by the scheduling of orders early in the year. Importantly, year-to-date order intake remained higher than in 2024 at 1.08, demonstrating the segment's resilience. On the 29th of October, Iveco Bus signed a framework agreement with Ildefrance Mobility, a leading public transport authority managing one of Europe's largest and most complex transit networks. Iveco Bus will supply Ildefrans Mobility with up to 4,000 low and zero-emission buses and coaches between 2026 and 2032. This is in line with the brand's long-term strategy to build on zero-emission and electromobility solutions. In conclusion, we maintained a solid long-term visibility for intercity and city bus with coverage now extending well into the second half of 2026. On Slide 12, we have the delivery performance for our powertrain business unit. And after nearly 2 years of consecutive year-over-year decline, engine volumes increased by 1% compared to Q3 2024. While modest, this improvement reflects the recovery we predicted last quarter. During the period, new third-party customer contracts were signed between Lindner and JCB. Production for these orders will begin in 2026. These contracts position FBT Industrial as one of the main references in the agriculture industry and are in line with our long-term strategy to grow the number of third-party clients. Operational discipline remains central to our approach. We continue to manage costs diligently and remain committed to our efficiency program. These efforts are helping us to protect margins and ensure sustainable delivery as volumes recover. Looking ahead, we expect the recovery in deliveries to third-party customers to continue throughout Q4 and beyond, supporting profitability improvements. Going to Slide 14, look at our electric vehicle portfolio, where year-to-date delivery volumes continue to grow across the business units despite the challenging market demand scenario. This clearly shows the competitiveness of our product lineup and our unique positioning in LCV, where Iveco is the only truck maker to offer a complete fully electric product lineup ranging from 2.5 to 7 tons. With that, I finish my opening remarks, and I will now hand over the call to Federico. Federico Donati: Thank you, Olof. Let's now take a look at the highlights of our third quarter 2025 financial results on Slide 16. Again, all figures provided in the presentation refer to continuing operation only, excluding defense, if not otherwise stated. Q3 2025 closed with EUR 3.1 billion in consolidated net revenues and EUR 3 billion in net revenues of industrial activities. These figures reflect a contraction of 3.6% and 3%, respectively, on a year-over-year basis, mainly due to lower volumes in Europe for trucks and a negative ForEx translation effect, primarily in Brazil and in Turkey. The group adjusted EBIT closed at EUR 111 million with a 3.6% margin, and the adjusted EBIT of industrial activities reached EUR 76 million with a 2.5% margin, both contracted by 210 basis points versus Q3 2024. The net financial expenses amounted to EUR 58 million in the third quarter this year, in line with the same quarter last year. Reported income tax expenses come to EUR 17 million in Q3 2025 with an adjusted effective tax rate of 25%. This resulted in adjusted net income for continuing operations at EUR 40 million, down EUR 54 million versus last year, with an adjusted diluted EPS of EUR 0.15. Moving to our free cash flow performance in the quarter. Q3 2025 closed with a EUR 513 million cash outflow absorption, which was broadly in line with last year's performance, when we excluded from last year the positive effect of the deployment of the higher inventory level that we registered at the end of June 2024, as Olof said in his opening remarks. I will provide more details further in the presentation. Finally, available liquidity, including undrawn committed credit lines, closed solidly at EUR 4 billion on the 30th of September, of which EUR 1.9 billion was in undrawn committed facilities. Let's now focus on the net revenue of industrial activities on Slide 17. As you can see from the chart on the right-hand side of this slide, all regions contracted compared to the prior year, excluding South America, which was flat versus Q3 2024. Looking at our net revenues evolution by business unit, Bus was solidly up versus the prior year at plus 31%. Powertrain was flat, and the truck contracted 11% versus Q3 2024. More in detail, truck net revenues totaled EUR 2 billion in this quarter, down 11% versus the prior year, primarily as a consequence of 2 factors: First, a lower delivery rate in light-duty trucks due to the continuing challenging environment in the chassis subsegment. Second, a selective sales mix strategy throughout the quarter in heavy-duty trucks in order to optimize channel profitability and support the final phase of the introduction of our model year 2024 across European countries. Additionally, the top line was affected by an adverse year-over-year foreign exchange rate trend, mainly in Brazil and Turkey. Our bus net revenues were up 31.4% in Q3 2025, reaching EUR 719 million, thanks to higher volumes. And finally, our Powertrain net revenues were broadly in line year-over-year at EUR 745 million with higher volumes offset by an adverse foreign exchange rate impact. Sales to external customers accounted for 49%, in line with Q3 2024. Turning to Slide 18. Let me briefly comment on the main drivers underlying the year-over-year performance in our adjusted EBIT margin of Industrial activities. Volume and mix contributed negatively, EUR 67 million in the period, mainly due to lower truck volumes in Europe. The decrease in deliveries of light-duty vehicles particularly impacted the overall truck profitability. The year-over-year net pricing contributed positively for EUR 15 million at the Industrial Activities level and was positive across business units. Production costs were negative EUR 7 million year-over-year, with negative performance in Truck and Bus, partially offset by solid positive performance in powertrain. Finally, the year-over-year improvement in SG&A costs totaling EUR 17 million in this quarter and EUR 50 million to date is again a result of the acceleration of the efficiency action announced and launched at the beginning of this year. Let's now take a look at the adjusted EBIT margin performance for each industrial business unit on Slide 19. Truck closed the quarter with a 2.9% adjusted EBIT margin. As already mentioned, this was a result of lower volumes and negative mix, mainly due to the continuing challenging environment in the chassis subsegment, which experienced lower volumes in Europe. The negative absorption due to the lower production level was only partially compensated by the cost containment action implemented in the period. Truck pricing in Europe was positive year-over-year, confirming our tight price discipline. The Q3 2025 adjusted EBIT margin for our bus business unit closed at 4%, down 110 basis points versus the prior year, with higher volumes and positive price realization offset by higher costs associated with the ramp-up of production in our Annonay plant. Finally, the Powertrain adjusted EBIT margin closed at 5.1% in the third quarter, resulting from continued and diligent cost control and operational efficiency as well as a slight increase in engine volumes. Let's now have a look at the performance of our Financial Services business unit during the quarter on Slide 20. The Q3 2025 adjusted EBIT for Financial Services closed at EUR 35 million with a managed portfolio, including unconsolidated joint ventures of EUR 7.5 billion at the end of the period, of which retail accounted for 45% and wholesale 55%. This figure is down EUR 106 million compared to the 30th of September 2024. Stock of receivable past due by more than 30 days as a percentage of the overall own book portfolio was at 2.1%, which is slightly up versus last year. The return on assets remained solid at 2.1%. Let's move to our free cash flow and net industrial cash evolution on Slide 21. As said previously, the Q3 2025 free cash flow absorption came in at EUR 513 million, which is broadly in line with last year's performance when we exclude the positive effect of the initial deployment of the higher inventory level that we registered at the end of June 2024. The lower adjusted EBITDA was offset by positive year-over-year swings in financial charges and taxes, the positive delta in working capital, and lower investments. The negative year-over-year swing in provision was driven by lower sales volume in our truck business unit. Lastly, investment totaled EUR 150 million in Q3 2025, down EUR 39 million versus the same period last year. This is in line with the already disclosed acceleration of our efficiency program and the reprioritization of some of our less strategic investments. Moving now to Slide 22. As of the 30th of September 2025, our available liquidity for continuing operations, excluding defense, stood solidly at EUR 4 billion with EUR 2.3 billion in cash and cash equivalents and EUR 1.9 billion of undrawn committed facilities. Looking at our debt maturity profile, the majority of our debt will mature from 2027 onwards, and our cash and cash equivalent levels will continue to more than cover all the cash maturities foreseen for the coming years. Moving now to my last slide for today, # 24, with the discontinued operational performance of our Defense business unit. The net revenues for Defense came in at EUR 293 million, up 9.7% compared to Q3 2024, driven by higher volumes. The adjusted EBIT was EUR 25 million compared to EUR 23 million in Q3 2024, resulting from production efficiency, partially offset by higher R&D costs. The adjusted EBIT margin was at 8.5%, down 10 basis points compared to Q3 2024. The funded order book level at the end of September 2025 reached almost EUR 5.3 billion, up close to EUR 300 million from the end of June 2025. Thank you. I will now turn the call back to Olof for his final remarks. Olof Persson: Thank you very much, Federico. And I'd like to conclude this presentation by looking at both the outlook for the industry and our own financial guidance. I will also, as usual, provide some takeaway messages from what you have heard today. We confirm our total industry outlook for the current year across the segments and regions. Specifically, we expect demand to remain low in the chassis cab subsegment and South America to continue to be negatively impacted by reduced consumer confidence and less willingness to invest in heavy-duty trucks, given the increase in interest rates in Brazil since the beginning of the year. The next slide has our full-year 2025 updated financial guidance, also expressed as continuing operations, which means excluding defense. Our full-year 2025 financial guidance has been revised across all key performance metrics, except for the industrial activities net revenue, which remains unchanged. This update reflects the year-to-date performance negatively affected by 2 main circumstances. Firstly, a slower-than-expected recovery in light commercial vehicles during the second half of 2025, particularly in the chassis cab subsegment, which has negatively affected our truck business units' year-to-date profitability. Secondly, we have allowed for extra costs associated with the ramp-up of production in our NMA plant, which negatively impacted our bus business unit's profitability in the third quarter. Implied in our updated guidance is increased Q4 profitability year-over-year across business units and an additional positive effect from the acceleration of our efficiency program compared to the initial EUR 150 million CapEx and OpEx. Based on these premises, the updated guidance for our full year 2025 is as follows: at the consolidated level, including Defense, group adjusted EBIT is now between EUR 830 million and EUR 880 million. And for Industrial Activities, net revenues, including currency effect, confirmed to be down between 3% and 5% year-over-year. Adjusted EBIT from industrial activities at between EUR 700 million and EUR 750 million, and industrial free cash flow is between EUR 250 million and EUR 350 million. On the slide, we have also shown what this guidance implies for continuing operations only. The free cash flow forecast, excluding Defense, is not included due to ongoing activities related to the separation that could affect some balance sheet accounts. We will continue to manage production levels for trucks in Europe in line with the retail demand, while at the same time, maintaining diligent cost management and leveraging the benefits of our efficiency program across business units. And now to Slide 28. Let me provide you with some takeaway messages from today's call. First, as I said, implied in our revised guidance is increased Q4 profitability year-over-year across business units. And if we break that down by business unit, in trucks, our LCV and medium and heavy vehicles are sold out, covering the remaining 2 months of the year. This, combined with strict control on pricing and cost management, will positively contribute to higher profitability compared to the fourth quarter of last year. In the bus, ramp-up costs are now behind us, and we expect higher volumes to contribute positively to the year-over-year performance. And lastly, in Powertrain, as mentioned earlier, third-party client volumes are expected to continue their year-over-year growth, supporting progressively profitable improvements. The increase in third-quarter order intake for light commercial vehicles is an encouraging early sign that the worst is behind us. In heavy-duty trucks, we will continue to maintain strict pricing discipline to support our model year 2024, ensuring the quality, performance, and full potential of the product. In Powertrain, new third-party customer contracts were signed, among which are Lindner and JCB, with production for these orders beginning in 2026. Our robust order book remains strong, providing solid visibility well into the second half of 2026, and the funded order book for our Defense business unit reached almost SEK 5.3 billion at the end of September 2025, demonstrating continued momentum in the industry. Thirdly, we are proceeding at pace with the acceleration of our efficiency program and reprioritization of certain investments, confirming the expected EUR 150 million in savings in CapEx and OpEx for the current year, as well as additional areas of improvement, which will deliver further full-year savings. And finally, we are on track to complete the sale of our defense business to Leonardo as per our original combination, and the tender offer by Tata is expected to be completed within the first half of 2026. In conclusion, as always, we are focused on our commitment to operational excellence. Each business unit remains laser-focused on its short- and long-term objectives, working to deliver lasting value for all our stakeholders. With that, I would like to thank you and hand it back to Federico. Federico Donati: That concludes our prepared remarks, and we can now open it up for questions. To be mindful of the time, we kindly ask that you hold off on any detailed modeling and accounting questions. For this, you can follow up directly with me and the Investor Relations team after the call. In addition, as already pointed out, pending the publication of the formal offer document on the tender offer by Tata, we will not comment on the legal basis, rationale, condition, terms, and key elements of the tender offer. In this respect, for the time being, you are kindly invited to refer to the materials already published in the ad hoc section of the company website. As for the sale of the defense business to Leonardo, the activities are ongoing and on track, consistent with the timeline commented during the presentation. The company will strictly comply with applicable disclosure requirements, but for the time being, it has nothing to add vis-Ã -vis what has already been announced. Operator, please go ahead. Operator: [Operator Instructions] We are now going to take our first question, and the questions come from the line of Akshat Kacker from JPMorgan. Akshat Kacker: A couple of questions, please. The first one is on the truck and LCV business. Obviously, the trends this year have been difficult to forecast and understand, given the pre-buy last year and also the changeover in the product family. Could you just help us understand how you're looking at the business going forward, probably into Q4, but also any early signs on how you expect the LCV business to develop going into 2026? And if you could just add some color regionally as well, between Europe and Brazil. We have heard from a few of your peers that inventories are high in the Brazilian and LatAm markets, and overall, there is some pricing pressure. So some details there would be helpful. The second question is on the powertrain business. You talked about a slight increase in engine volumes, the first signs of recovery. Could you just give us some more details in terms of where these green shoots are emerging from? And we now expect volumes to turn positive going into the fourth quarter, please? Olof Persson: Okay. So on the LCV market, I mean, as we said, the indications we're getting now, and also you saw on the book-to-bill and the increase in our order intake, give us confidence, and we believe that the worst is behind us, and we will see a gradual uptake. We see that also in the activity levels in the market. And as we said, we are sold out now for this year and going into next year. So I think it's always difficult to really judge where this is going, coming from such a long period of a lower market. But I feel the LCV side, I think we have the worst behind us. And exactly how that will pan out coming into 2026, we will have to see. We need a couple of more weeks or months to see that coming into it. But I would say so far, so good, and it's really good and encouraging to see that this is opening up. And that is, of course, then moving also in our key segments on the cabover and both in the medium and the upper side of it. On the LatAm, I didn't really -- LatAm pricing. Akshat Kacker: No, I was referring to the inventory level, if I understood correctly. correct? Federico Donati: Yes, that's right. Akshat Kacker: Some of your peers talk about the weakness in that market, specifically in the medium and... Olof Persson: Yes, when it comes to the inventory, both our own inventory, the dealer inventory and the whole chain, we manage that very carefully, as you know, and we do that also in LatAm when we see the order volumes going down we, of course, adjust production, and we do that rather quickly in LatAm because it's a simple one factory system where we can really manage that in a good way. So I don't have any concerns about the inventory levels in LatAm going forward, even though, of course, on the heavy-duty side, there is, as we said, a decline in the market and the order intake. Then the final question was around Engines. So the green shoots for the engine. I would say that there are a couple of things. One is, of course, that we are getting third-party business. The team in Powertrain has done a great job in actually capturing more third-party business, which is good. We also see, of course, and we have said that before, it's around the stock level of engines out there in the market and the time it has taken to destock that given the downturn that we've seen over the last basically 2 years. And that also gives you confidence that this is covering up for the destocking coming to an end, and thereby, the volumes are coming back up again. So it's a combination of that plus the fact that we actually are successful in getting third-party business. That's giving me confidence going forward in the Powertrain side. Operator: We will now proceed with our next question, and the next questions come from the line of Martino De Ambroggi from Equita. Martino De Ambroggi: The first question is still on the LCV. Olof, I understood your qualitative comments on LCV for next year. But could you provide what your feeling is in terms of Europe and South America if in '26, the market overall is able to have at least a small single-digit rebound in terms of volumes? And the second question is specifically on the defense business because you are providing guidance with and without defense. I was wondering if in implying what the defense EBIT and revenues, is it correct to take EUR 150 million of adjusted EBIT and probably close to EUR 1.3 billion sales, or there are intercompanies or other items that could affect these figures? And I clearly understand you are not providing any updated guidance without a defense on free cash flow. But could you comment on what is the normalized free cash flow or cash conversion for this business? What was in the past? Olof Persson: Okay. If I start with the LCV market, I think I need to stay a little bit on top and give you the feeling I have right now because we need a couple of, I would say, weeks or at least a month to really see where the activities are going to start with in 2026. I mean, we now have visibility for the rest of the year, sold out, and then we need to see how the activity is going. But as I said, so far, so good. I mean, the activity levels that we see from our customers, the tender activities we see are coming. We do see, as you've seen, an increase in the order intake coming from very low levels in Q2 and so on and so forth. So the indications are good. But let's see when we have got that all together, and we will come back to that with a more detailed market development on that one. On the other 2 questions, I'll leave it to you. Federico Donati: Yes. On the defense side, I think, Martino, on the EBIT side, yes, you can be rounded to the number you have mentioned, as well as on the top line. And in terms of the free cash flow of defense, as you know, we have never disclosed it by business unit. The only thing I can say is a cash-generative business, but on a full-year basis. I hope this helps. Operator: We are now going to take our next question, and the next questions come from the line of Nicolai Kempf from Deutsche Bank. Nicolai Kempf: It's Nicolai from Deutsche Bank. Also 2. Maybe coming back on your full year guidance, it does imply a significant step-up in Q4 of around EUR 250 million in Q4 earnings versus EUR 300 million in the first 9 months. I mean, you mentioned that all segments will be stronger in Q4, but can you just give a bit more color on which segment should drive that? And it's probably going to be the light trucks, but any help would be appreciated here. And the second one, if I look at the EU heavy truck market share, came in at 6.4%. I think historically, you were closer to 9% or 10%. And that is despite the fact that you have launched a new model here. Should we expect that next year, you will have a higher market share? Or why is it below the historic run rate despite having a rather new product in the market? Olof Persson: So on the Q4, I think I gave the guidance that -- I mean, I can give at this point in time. The basis for the improvements that we see is there in the truck side is, of course, good to see that we sold out. That means that we can improve. If you look at the backup of the slide, you can also see that the inventory with our dealers has gone down. We have managed the dealer inventory together with the dealers and our own dealer very well. So we're having a system set up for an increase on that side, which I think is promising and stable in that respect. Then, as I said, powertrain bus, increased volumes, the profitability, we have the cost behind us on the ramp-up in Annonay. And just a comment on that, it was absolutely necessary to make sure that we create a very stable, efficient Annonay plant in terms of quality, volume, and efficiency, and we have that behind us, and we are pushing forward now. And then, of course, on the powertrain side. On top of that, as I mentioned and has been mentioned a couple of times, an efficiency program. Don't forget the efficiency program, that's never a linear coming in the profit and loss. It's actually an accelerating program. It's always those programs that are very often. And of course, the majority or a big chunk of that program will now start to come in fully with all the activities we have done, not only on the SEK 150 million that we talked about, but also the activities that we have seen. So those are the things that are actually going to drive the Q4 in coming back and making the result up to the guidance we have. On the EU market side, I think we specified we are now entering into the final phase of the launch, and we have been in a market situation that has been really focusing on keeping the price level on this new vehicle, because I truly believe that we're going to live on this product for many, many years. And we need to make sure that it is in the market in the right way. We have had a very stringent price discipline. We will continue to have a price discipline to really ensure, as I said, all the different aspects of the product. So I definitely see this product going forward in the mid and the long term being a product that definitely has a potential for more market share than it has today. That's for sure. Operator: We will now take one final question. And our final question today comes from the line of Alex Jones from Bank of America. Alexander Jones: Two from my side as well, please. Could you talk a little bit about the medium and heavy-duty outlook that you see in terms of order trends also into 2026? I know you talked a bit more positively about LCV, but medium and heavy orders were down 3% year-on-year in Europe. So your thoughts would be interesting. And then the second question on defense. Can you be more specific at all on the mix factors that weighed on margins this quarter, at least sequentially, and whether you expect those to continue going forward, Q4, and into next year? Olof Persson: Well, on the medium and LCV, that was the feeling going forward into the fourth quarter and into next year. And again, I repeat what I said. On the LCV side, I have a good feeling about the activity level. Also, I would say, on the medium-heavy. And as we progress with our final implementation and launch of the model year '24, we're going to see impacts there as well, not only in terms of market, but also in terms of market share over time. And we're going to continue to keep a strict, selective approach, making sure that we get the pricing. So I would say we come back in the beginning next year, as we normally do, to have a view on the market and where the market is going for heavy and medium. But we're well-positioned in both of these markets. And I think, as I said, I feel comfortable that once we are really fully launched this product now, we're going to see the positive impacts coming, full confidence in that. It is a very, very good product in terms of all the different aspects. And I'll leave it to you, Federico, on the... Federico Donati: On the Defense, sorry, you were talking and referring to the mix, if I take your question correctly, correct, Alex? Alexander Jones: Yes, please. Federico Donati: Yes. But I think, in defense is more generally speaking, you need to consider that we have a very long and solid order book that just needs to be deployed. And so, probably looking at the defense just on a quarterly basis, it is much better to look at it on a full-year basis, and the marginality also. So this is just a question of looking at it on a yearly basis, and the mix can also change by region and by country, and by product itself. So as Olof said at the beginning, we are expecting the performance of each single business unit up year-over-year, and that will be the case for the Defense as well in Q4. That is what I can share with you. Operator: Thank you. That concludes the question-and-answer session. I will now turn the call back to Mr. Frederico Donati for any additional or closing remarks. Federico Donati: Thank you all, and have a nice rest of the day. Thank you. Bye. Operator: That concludes today's conference call. Thank you all for your participation. Ladies and gentlemen, you may now disconnect your lines.
Operator: Good afternoon. This is the Chorus Call conference operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Unipol Consolidated Results at September 30, 2025 Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Matteo Laterza, CEO of Unipol. Please go ahead, sir. Matteo Laterza: Good morning to everyone. Thank you for participating to this call. As you have seen this morning, we reported a net profit of EUR 1.12 billion in the first 9 months of the year. Let me say, first of all, that this number incorporate the exceptional contribution coming from the exchange tender offer launched by BPER Banca and Banca Popolare di Sondrio. In particular, there was a positive impact of EUR 240 million gross of tax and EUR 150 million net. On the negative side, in the third quarter, we charged our numbers with a provision of almost EUR 80 million for the revision of the early retirement incentive fund for our employees. Before opening the floor to the question, let me say something on how the business has performed in the quarter. In P&C, we had a very solid trend in the top line, as usual, driven by health business and bancassurance distribution channel. Concerning the technical profitability, the motor business is completely on track compared to our target of the industrial plan, both in terms of average premium, claim frequency and average cost of claim. In non-motor, we decided to be very conservative in our reserving policy, mainly regarding the treatment of nat cat in the quarter. In life, we had a very solid growth in the top line, driven both by the agents and bancassurance. As you have seen in the presentation, we succeeded to increase quite consistently the yield of the assets under management by almost 12 basis points by rebating almost 8 to the policyholder and keeping 4 basis points to remunerate our capital. And this is good part, explain the improvement of the profitability of the life business. Finance department did a very good job, not only in life, but also in non-life. And they gave a substantial contribution to the overall numbers. And finally, concerning solvency, we had a small reduction of a couple of basis points, where the organic capital generation was more than offset by some change in noneconomic variance and in the SCR calculation almost regarding the banking business. Having said that, I am here with Enrico San Pietro, and we are ready to answer to your question. Operator: [Operator Instructions] The first question is from Tommaso Nieddu of Kepler Cheuvreux. Tommaso Nieddu: The first one is a question on the combined ratio and more specifically on the expense ratio, which still looks quite high and maybe overshadows a bit the very good attritional trends. So maybe if you could walk us through what's behind the higher expense ratio, especially I remember first half, you were talking about the agency remuneration mechanism or if this time is also for the early retirement you were talking about? And then if this high expense ratio is something structural or just temporary. And on the positive side, still on the combined ratio, the attritional losses were again very strong this quarter, maybe even stronger than the first 2 quarters. So what's driving that improvement? Is it mainly mix pricing or something more structural in claims management? The second question is on the investment portfolio. I noticed that the cash now represents only 1.5% of total investments. So could you help us understand whether you are comfortable with such a low cash position and if you see room to rebuild some liquidity going forward? And on the broader asset mix, if you can give us a sense of how it split the illiquid part of the portfolio, maybe more specifically the alternative and how it's performing in terms of yield and contribution? And just the last one is on Solvency II, which ended a bit lower, in particular, the insurance group at 265%. So could you elaborate a little bit on what drove the decline? Was it for the banking -- the new banking perimeter or market-related factors? Matteo Laterza: Thank you to you. I will answer to all the questions. I will leave Enrico to elaborate on what you said on the expense ratio. First of all, on the expense ratio, the early retirement provision is not in the expense ratio is in the other income and cost. And so it is not considered in the expense. Then Enrico will elaborate more on that. Concerning the investment portfolio, yes, we reduced the investment in cash, but we are very comfortable on that, consider that we have more than a couple of billion euros of securities whose time to maturity is less than 1 year. And the component of very liquid asset is very consistent. So for us, the investment that we allocate in cash depends on the cash flow analysis that we had going forward in consideration to the very important payment that you have to say like payment of taxes or payment of dividend. And at this time, this percentage -- with this percentage, we are all set. Concerning the alternative asset, we have, as you have seen in the asset allocation investment in alternative assets. They are almost investment in the real asset component. There is a part allocated in private equity. We don't have private credit in our investment scope since the beginning because in our elaboration in setting up the strategic asset allocation, we did not -- we never consider this asset class as a possible target of investment because the risk reward profile of this asset class was not enough to remunerate our need of capital. In other words, the expected yield on this kind of asset class was not worth to remunerate the capital absorption coming from the investment in this kind of investment. Finally, concerning the solvency, let me say more on that. We had reduction for the group from 222% to 220%. And let me explain the bridge from 222% to 220%. We have lost a couple of percentage points in terms of model change. We generated capital for 6 percentage points. We had 2 percentage points of positive economic variance as a consequence of the positive performance of financial market. And then we deducted 3 percentage points as noneconomic variance. That means that there were some items that was not performing in line with our expectation in terms of budget assumption and plan. In particular, considering the surrender rate that was way below the market, but a little bit higher compared to our assumption. We had 3 percentage points less in terms of capital movement because we have to consider the part of organic capital generation that we pay as expected dividend. And finally, we have lost 3 percentage points in terms of SCR change, part due to the insurance perimeter and part to the increase of the risk in the banking business. And it is the update of the risk of the banks from the 31st of March to the 30th of June. And this explains the 2 percentage points that we have lost in the group. Then you have asked also why the insurance group have lost more, and we are at 265%. And the answer is it's quite easy. The rule that we have to follow and calculate the solvency in some cases, are, in some extent, stupid in the sense that we had in the past, a 20% stake in Banca Popolare di Sondrio and 20% stake in BPER. This was the situation at the 30th of June. Today, we have 20% of BPER that owns more than 80% of Banca Popolare di Sondrio. This means that applying this rule of solvency, we have more concentration risk. But as a matter of fact, nothing changed compared to the situation at the 30th of June, but the simply fact that we have one only stake of a bigger bank brings to a higher concentration risk compared to the 30th of June. But the reality is that nothing changed. If something change is positive because we will take advantage of the synergy that hopefully BPER will do on Banca Popolare di Sondrio. But the application of the rule brings to a reduction of solvency of the insurance group to 265% that anyway is a very large number. Then Enrico on the expense. Enrico Pietro: So your question were about expense ratio and also combined ratio, and maybe we can also elaborate on this. Starting with the expense ratio. The main reason of the increase, if you compare the figure with the same figure of the same period of the last year is what we discussed in the last month. So it's about the incentive schemes for our agents that relate to the technical profitability, the amount of incentives we pay. It's something very important for us that align more than any competitor in the market our to the interest of our agents. And there are similar schemes, both in motor and non-motor. So what's happening both in motor and non-motor is since the scheme is related to how profitable is the portfolio of the agency. At the same time, what kind of growth they are delivering to us, since things are going really well, the amount of incentive we are calculating to pay is more relevant, especially because both of those schemes in motor and non-motor are related to a period of 2 years. So this year, we are considering the estimation of 2025 results and the actual results of 2024. Last year, we were considering 2024 that was a very good year and 2023 that was not a good year. So this change is generating the difference in expense ratio. For combined ratio, of course, we can elaborate a lot on this. The overall view is very positive. Everything is going according to our plan. We have a relevant improvement in motor business that is due to the fact that in motor third-party liability, action we took about pricing are working. Loss frequency is decreasing and the average cost of the claim is not suffering like last year, the spike related to the Milan Court Tables. And also, there is a significant improvement in motor outer damages result. Of course, the action in the strategic plan are working, but also the comparison with the previous year need to take into account the fact that we had at the beginning of 2024, a negative evolution of the claim reserve that in summer 2023, the hailstorms in 2023, we were not able to estimate it properly. So we had something negative in the first part of 2024. So basically, this is the situation in motor. We are viewing a market situation in which prices are increasing. The speed of this increase is lowering down in the market. The last figure that I think on the market, we can share is a 3.5% increase year-on-year. We did our increases before the market in 2023, and now we are increasing less than the market. And so this is favorable also for our market position. In non-motor, things are a little bit more complex. The overall attritional loss ratio on the direct business is improving, but this is offset by additional reinsurance cost, reinsurance cost that is due to the new aggregate scheme that protects us on nat cat event even more than before. And of course, the fact that when the direct business is so positive, you have very small recoveries from reinsurance. So this is the first point. The second point is we are more prudent in the prior reserve release than the year before. And this is quite relevant, accounts 1.5 points of combined ratio. And last but not least, what Matteo said about our prudence that we applied also to the nat cat provisions. And so the overall results is positive. The underlying trends are positive. And so we are even more than usual confident to deliver the results we put in our plan. Operator: The next question is from Michael Huttner of Berenberg. Michael Huttner: You've answered the questions. So I'm struggling to find a new, but I do have a few. The first one is on something that Fitch mentioned, and I think general also in the pre-close call, and apologies if I get it completely wrong because it's very new to me. It's the regional tax in Italy, the plan to raise this and how this will affect insurers and who will pay for it? Is it the policyholders, the companies? Beyond that, I know nothing except that there's a raise in some form of indirect product tax. And Fitch seem quite optimistic about this, but I don't know anything. So any indications on that would be super, super helpful. The second would be on more details on the lovely disclosure you've given us. So maybe can you give us a feel for when you say you've been prudent on the nat cat number, which is the same, right, 9 months '24, 9 months '25 is 6.1%. Can you help us think about how we could kind of judge this level of prudence? And then the last question is on motor, which is stunning, seriously stunning particularly since I know you're quite conservative anyway. So you're kind of -- you've achieved the planned target and pricing is still going up. I just wondered whether you can give us a little bit of a feel, a, for the own damage, which is clearly not a compulsory cover. So how come it's so successful? B, what will happen now that you have one less competitor in the market? AXA is buying one of your peers. And c, you discussed the frequency. And I'll give you the answers I've had on frequency from some of your peers. So Zurich said frequency is down, but they didn't give details. AXA said frequency is down due to -- because it didn't rain. So in other words, the cars didn't slide around. And yes, those are the only 2 indications I've had. Matteo Laterza: Okay. I try to answer to the first question concerning tax, then you did a lot of question on combined ratio, nat cat, motor, and I will leave Enrico to elaborate on that. I suppose that your question is regards to the discussion on the financial law, the budget law in our country. As you know, there is still a discussion. It is not a law. So we are in the process to understand which will be the final impact of the budget law on our numbers, of course, starting from 2026. At the moment, with the information that we have, we will have some impact that I don't consider meaningful and material for the delivery of our numbers and target of our industrial plan, above all considering the so-called ERAP increase that is in the proposal, the main component of the tax that will be in charge of insurance company going forward. But I have to say in general that, of course, we will have an impact in perpetuity. But as usual, we will apply the new law, and we did not change the target of our industrial plan because of that. Then I'll leave Enrico to answer to all the questions. Enrico Pietro: Michael, so a lot of questions. The first one, I hope to be able to remind every question. The first one was about the nat cat approach. So as you for sure know, for the Italian season of weather-related events was benign. But of course, we have to take into account the volatility of this kind of business line. And so this resulted in 1 percentage point -- additional percentage points related in non-motor combined ratio related -- compared to the previous year. that was also benign. So I -- more or less, I can give you this kind of size of the issue. So going on, on this, when we talk about motor, results are very good. We are now in a situation in which prices are still going up. The average cost of the claim is back to normal after the spike that we saw last year for the Milan Court Tables adoption. And so also the reserve release is back to normal. The probably -- you asked also something about motor outer damages. Yes, in which, as you mentioned, is not compulsory in Italy, is made of several cover, this kind of business line. And there are also here nat cat covers on hailstorms on cars, for instance, and other kind of covers, so theft, fire, CASCO and so on, we are improving. Our price action on the cover that need this kind of action are working well. And motor outer damage as far as CASCO is concerned, are not that big in our portfolio or in Italian motor portfolio. So basically, it's something that is not -- we are very careful to be good in pricing, but it's not very big as portfolio. Another question about the market is related, if I understood properly, about the acquisition of Prima.it by AXA. Of course, we still have to see what will happen in the future. But my personal view that it could be something positive for the market. And of course, we will have to wait. And if I don't remember badly, AXA announced that in the second half of 2026, they will become the carrier of Prima.it that, as you remember, is an MGA. So in the medium term, I see a positive evolution for the market and also for us of this kind of operation. And about frequency, yes, frequency is slightly decreasing. In our comparison that not -- there are not comparison related to the third quarter of the year. They are not so updated. But we have seen in the last period that our loss frequency is better than the market is improving a little better than the market. So of course, there is a factor that is external, of course, maybe raining, maybe the fact this is a long-term trend about the cars that have every year a little better technology to avoid or reduce the impact of a claim, customer behavior and so on. So there are long-term trends about frequency decreasing, and we think we are adding a little more about, of course, the pricing precision that is driving down loss frequency. We are at the end of a long period of decrease in the loss frequency. So you don't have to expect any other major reduction. But still, we are optimistic about this. I think we cover all the questions you asked. Operator: The next question is from Andrea Lisi of Equita. Andrea Lisi: The first one is on the amount you provisioned for the fund for the staff exit, EUR 80 million. What should we expect going on in the sense that should we expect other amount to be provisioned also in the next years? Or do you feel that with this EUR 80 million you have done for most of the idea that you have about staff reduction? The second question is on the net financial result in life that was quite high. If you can provide us some indication on this. And then if you just read in the newspapers, the platform that was launched with Confindustria in collaboration with Poste-Intesa, our nat cat policies for corporates. If you can provide some color on that and what are your expectations on this segment? Matteo Laterza: Thank you to you, Andrea. As you remember when we met in March for the industrial plan, we discussed about the early retirement solidarity fund. It is a part of our people and technology pillar of the industrial plan because we look forward to have a generational change in our HR component of our investment. And in doing it, we incentivate, of course, this change by applying an early retirement solidarity fund. So the answer is, yes, it will be repeated this number for the next couple of years because this is very important for us in order to accelerate the generational change in our company in order to acquire new skills in terms of the use of new technologies, and it is very important for the application and the implementation of the most important project that we are implementing in the company. So we don't consider any more this number as exceptional. I mentioned it because, of course, it hit the third quarter for this component. And you can expect the same for the next couple of years, at least. Concerning the net financial result in life, yes, as I said in the introduction, the finance department did a very good job overall, both in life and in non-life. In particular, in life, they did a lot of things in terms of change of asset allocation in order to accelerate the yield enhancement of the yield of the segregated portfolios or just [ UniSeparate ], where we succeeded to increase the yield by 12 basis points compared to the same number in September '24. And 12 basis points is a lot because you have to consider that we have almost EUR 40 billion assets under management, and it is a very important number. Of this 12 basis points, 8 was rebated to policyholder and 4 was kept by the company and used to remunerate the capital. And this is the most important contribution to the improvement of the net profitability of the health of the life business. On Confindustria, Enrico managed the project, and so I leave the floor to him. Enrico Pietro: Thank you, Andrea. So we signed a Confindustria agreement on Monday with the partnership also of Poste and Intesa Sanpaolo insurance companies. The innovation in this is that you can -- if you are a company that need to buy the cover that now is compulsory to do it also through the digital properties of Confindustria that can make you enter into our platform. And so this could be good thing to give an additional option to all the small companies, especially that need to comply with the new regulation by the end of the year. What we have seen so far is that the process is quite slow. So of course, large companies are well already covered for the vast majority. Medium-sized are, of course, complying. But as you know, in our country, we have more than 4 million small companies. And I personally do not expect that all the 4 million company will be covered by the end of the year, but this process will take time also in 2026 and maybe even more. Of course, it's an opportunity that we are also considering prudently about pricing, underwriting, geographical concentration that are something in our view, very important to be able to catch this opportunity without increasing the volatility of our results. Operator: The next question is from August Marcan of UBS. August Marcan: I have 2 quick ones. First on combined ratio and second on the investments. On the combined ratio, it seems like the PYD has gone up year-over-year quite a bit. Can you give some guidance what you consider would be a normalized level for your PYD and discounting? And then the second question, a bit more forward-looking on the investment. But since the start of your strategic plan, BTPs and other yields have been down, especially on the shorter term where your non-life business kind of sits. How confident are you in your yield targets? And can you talk a bit more about what levers can you pull to meet your yield targets that you set out in your strategic plan? Matteo Laterza: Thank you to you, I will start from the second question, then I will leave Enrico to answer to the first. Yes, the spread of BTPs versus Bond has consistently decreased. This explained in good part, the positive contribution of economic variance to the solvency ratio. On the other hand, we had also an upward -- smoothly upward trend in the base rate, both in the swap rate and also in the bond yield. And for us, it is very important, of course, the absolute level of the investment yield that remains for the BTPs way above -- whereabout of 3.5% in the 10-year maturity. And for the bond, we are in the area of 2.65%, 70%. That for us is fine. The average of the minimum guarantee in our life book is 70 basis points. And this level of risk-free rate or swap or bond, as you can define at 2.6% is fair enough to fit the minimum guarantee and the level of yield that we have to rebate to the -- our policyholder in order to offer them a decent level of yield for our clients. Of course, at 75 basis points of spread, Italian government bonds are not so cheap as they were when the spread was at hundreds of basis points that we had in the past. That gave us the opportunity to invest and to continue to invest and increase our weight in Italian government bonds. This is not the case today. We have an investment of EUR 17 billion in Italian government bonds. We look forward to maintain this investment going forward and to diversify the other -- in other assets like other European govies like Germany or also France can be an opportunity if there will be a prosecution of the widening of the spread there, we will get more diversification. And at the same time, we will be able to match the target of our industrial plan, where we are not worried at all. The absolute level of yield is more or less a little bit higher than where we were in -- at the beginning of the year when we launched and we discussed about our industrial plan. So there are nothing that worries us in this extent. And I leave Enrico answer to the -- on the combined ratio. Enrico Pietro: Yes. So the first part of the question was about the prior year development. And of course, you can see now an improvement compared to last year, but you have to take into consideration that last year was not a normal year, was a year in which the impact of the Milan Court Tables on permanent disability affected, of course, both the average cost of the claim of the current year, but also the prior year development. So basically, we are going back to normal. So this is a level you can expect maybe even slightly higher than this also for the future. And as far as the discount effect is concerned, of course, it depends on the interest rate environment. So now it is 2.3%. And of course, you can find also in the unwinding amount the same effect with the opposite sign in our accounts. Operator: The next question is a follow-up from Michael Huttner of Berenberg. Michael Huttner: I just wanted to understand, you spoke a little bit about a small rise in lapses still well below the market. Can you explain what is driving this, please? Matteo Laterza: No, Michael, this was to explain the negative contribution to the solvency of the so-called noneconomic variance. Noneconomic variance gave a negative contribution to solvency of 3 percentage points. This come from some change in assumption regarding what we -- what were the assumption at the beginning of the year in terms of surrender rate of life insurance business. And what we had in real numbers at the closing of September '25. Even if Unipol has a surrender rate that is way under the market average of our competitors compared to the assumption of the beginning of the year, the surrender rate was a little bit higher compared to our assumption. And this explains after the, of course, the update of the numbers in our capital model, we had 3 percentage points of decrease coming from what we call the noneconomic variance, but the justification and the explanation is what I said. I don't know if I was clear in the explanation now. Operator: [Operator Instructions] Gentlemen, there are no more questions registered at this time. Matteo Laterza: Okay. Thank you very much for participating to this call, and we will update in February for the final year results. Thank you very much to everyone. Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining. The conference is now over. You may disconnect your telephones. Thank you.
Operator: Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by, and welcome to Zai Lab's Third Quarter 2025 Financial Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to Christine Chiou, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead. Christine Chiou: Thank you, operator. Hello, and welcome, everyone. Today's earnings call will be led by Dr. Samantha Du, Zai Lab's Founder, CEO and Chairperson. She will be joined by Josh Smiley, President and Chief Operating Officer; Dr. Rafael Amado, President and Head of Global Research and Development; and Dr. Yajing Chen, Chief Financial Officer. As a reminder, during today's call, we will be making certain forward-looking statements based on our current expectations. These statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from what we expect due to a variety of factors, including those discussed in our SEC filings. We also refer to adjusted loss from operations, which is a non-GAAP financial measure. Please refer to our earnings release furnished with the SEC on November 6, 2025, for additional information on this non-GAAP financial measure. At this time, it is my pleasure to turn the call over to Dr. Samantha Du. Ying Du: Thank you, Christine. Good morning, and good evening, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. Before we discuss the quarter, I want to take a moment to reflect on who we are, where we are headed. Zai Lab was built on a clear vision to bring the best global innovation to patients in China and to discover and develop new innovations that can compete on the world stage. That vision remains unchanged. Today, our global pipeline is stepping to the forefront, becoming the next key chapter in Zai's growth story. Zoci or ZL-1310 has now entered the pivotal stage less than 2 years from Phase 1/1b, an extraordinary pace at any standard in our industry. And we're on the path for our first global approval by 2027 or early 2028. Beyond Zoci, we're expanding our global portfolio with other highly differentiated programs, including our IL-13xIL-31R bispecific atopic dermatitis, IL-12 PD-1 bispecific and LRRC15 ADC for solid tumors. More importantly, we have built a global R&D organization that combines speed, scientific rigor and quality expected of a global biopharma. On our commercial business in China, we are commercially profitable today and on a steady, profitable growth path. However, the pace has been slower than we expected. The environment is complex and dynamic. But at the same time, there are encouraging signs of progress. Regulatory reviews are faster and NRDL negotiations are more transparent. We have one of the strongest commercial teams in the industry, backed by a portfolio of differentiated, high potential assets, and we remain confident in the long-term potential of this business. This next chapter will take focus and persistence, but we have the right science, the right team and the right vision. Together, we are building a company that will make a lasting difference for patients and create long-term value for our shareholders. With that, I'll now hand the call over to Rafael, who will walk you through the progress of our R&D pipeline. Rafael? Rafael Amado: Thank you, Samantha. I will begin with a few highlights from our global pipeline, starting with ZL-1310 or Zoci. Two weeks ago, at the triple meeting conference, we presented updated Phase I data in previously treated extensive stage small cell lung cancer. This global study enrolled 115 patients across the U.S., Europe and China. At baseline, 90% of patients had received a PD-1 or PD-L1 therapy, nearly 1/3 had brain metastases and several had progressed on a prior DLL3 targeted therapy, including tarlatamab, making this a very difficult to treat heavily pretreated patient population. At the 1.6 milligrams per kilogram dose, we observed an overall response rate of 68% and a disease control rate of 94%, among the strongest efficacy signals reported in the second line setting. Importantly, we also saw robust activity in patients with brain metastases, including an 80% overall response rate in lesions, which had received no prior treatment of any kind, suggesting that Zoci may offer a new way to control both systemic as well as intracranial disease without interrupting therapy, a potential game changer in terms of speed to treatment for these patients whose tumors tend to be growing very fast. Across all doses and lines, the median duration of response was 6.1 months, and the median progression-free survival was 5.4 months, which is highly encouraging for a monotherapy in this refractory population across doses and lines of therapy. Data from the 1.2 and 1.6 milligrams per kilogram cohort continue to mature as enrollment continues and patients remain on treatment. Zoci also continues to demonstrate a best-in-class safety profile. At the 1.6 milligrams per kilogram dose, grade 3 or higher treatment-related adverse events were observed in only 13% of patients, far below the 35% to 50% rate seen with other ADCs in this setting. There were no drug-related discontinuations or deaths and only 2 Grade 1 interstitial lung disease cases across both expansion doses of 1.2 and 1.6 milligrams per kilogram. This combination of deep efficacy and favorable tolerability positions Zoci as an ideal candidate for the first-line combination where safety is paramount. We've now begun enrollment in our registrational Phase III trial in extensive stage small cell lung cancer with the potential for an accelerated approval submission. We're also advancing our first-line strategy with plans to initiate a Phase III study next year following results of our ongoing combination study evaluating Zoci plus PD-L1 with and without chemotherapy. In addition, we see significant opportunity for Zoci as a backbone therapy in novel mechanism combinations. We plan to initiate studies with agents with ethanol and complementary mechanisms of action, and we will share details once the studies are posted on clinicaltrials.gov. Beyond small cell lung cancer, Zoci is being evaluated in Neuroendocrine Carcinomas or NAC, which have poor prognosis and no targeted therapy despite high DLL3 expression. Early data with ZL-1310 are encouraging, and we plan to present results in the first half of next year and to move into a registrational study thereafter. Beyond Zoci, our next wave of innovative global assets continue to advance rapidly. ZL-1503, our internally discovered IL-13/IL-31 bispecific antibody for atopic dermatitis recently entered Phase I. Its dual mechanism targets both itch and inflammation and its extended half-life offers potential for less frequent dosing. A subcutaneous formulation is being developed. Preclinical results support its use in other inflammatory diseases. First-in-human data are expected in 2026. ZL-6201 is an internally discovered LRRC15 targeted antibody with a next-generation payload linker. It remains on track for a U.S. IND submission by year-end and a global Phase I study initiation early next year for patients with cancer that have tumor cell or tumor stroma expressing this target. ZL-1222 is another internally discovered asset. It is a next-generation PD-1 IL-12 immunocytokine designed to deliver cytokine signaling directly into the tumor microenvironment while preserving PD-1 checkpoint blockade. IND-enabling work is underway, and we expect to move quickly towards an IND once data are available. Now turning to our key late-stage regional programs in immunology and neuroscience. The Efgartigimod continues to expand across multiple autoimmune indications. The ADAPT SERON study in seronegative gMG was positive, the first global Phase III trial to show clinically meaningful improvements across all 3 gMG subtypes, MuSK+, LRP4+, and triple seronegative. Three additional Phase III readouts in Ocular myasthenia gravis, Myositis and Thyroid eye disease are expected next year with China contributing to global enrollment. For Povetacicept, our partner, Vertex recently received FDA breakthrough therapy designation for IgAN. Enrollment of the global RAINIER Phase 3 is complete with an interim analysis planned for the first half of 2026, where patients from China are included and potentially supporting an accelerated approval submission next year. The global pivotal Phase II/III study in primary membranous nephropathy was initiated in October, and we're on track to enroll patients in China this quarter. Together, these achievements reflect the depth and quality of our pipeline, one that is advancing with speed and efficiency and with a clear focus on novel mechanisms and clinical differentiation. In summary, over the next 12 months, we expect to reach several important milestones across our global portfolio. For Zoci, we expect a catalyst-rich year with updated intracranial data, first-line small cell lung cancer combination data and results in neuroendocrine carcinoma in the first half. In parallel, we plan to initiate registrational studies in first-line small cell lung cancer and other neuroendocrine carcinomas as well as starting studies with novel combinations across line of therapy. Beyond Zoci, we expect first-in-human data for ZL-1503 or IL-1331 and to advance ZL-6201 or LRRC15 into global Phase I development. We're also progressing ZL-1222 or anti-PD-1/ IL-12 agonist and look forward to sharing additional data in the coming year. And with that, I'll hand it over to Josh. Joshua Smiley: Thank you, Rafael, and hello, everyone. Before we turn to our third quarter results, I'd like to start by welcoming Dr. Yajing Chen, he as our new Chief Business Officer. Chen brings both deep scientific expertise and investment experience and will play a central role in expanding our portfolio and unlocking value through partnerships and out-licensing. I'd also like to sincerely thank Jonathan Wang for his many contributions over the past decade in helping build the strong foundation that now supports our next phase of growth. Now turning to our commercial performance. Total revenues were $116 million, representing 14% growth year-over-year. VYVGART and VYVGART Hytrulo contributed $27.7 million, which includes a $2.4 million reduction following a voluntary price adjustment on Hytrulo to align with NRDL guidelines ahead of national pricing negotiations. While this adjustment affected reported sales, the underlying fundamentals of the launch remain very strong. VYVGART continues to be one of the most successful immunology launches ever in China, ranking as the #1 innovative drug by sales among all new launches in the past 2 years. More importantly, the trends beneath the headline numbers point to durable long-term growth. There are 2 key growth drivers underpinning the trajectory of VYVGART in gMG, patient demand and treatment duration, the latter of which is particularly important given the chronic nature of the disease. First, on demand. We continue to see steady new patient additions each month with nearly 21,000 patients treated to date. VYVGART penetration in gMG remains only around 12%, meaning we are still in the early stages of market development with significant room for expansion. Second, on treatment duration. The updated MG guidelines published in July have been a meaningful catalyst to emphasize both the importance of rapid symptom control, where VYVGART has demonstrated strong efficacy and a minimum of 3 treatment cycles to reduce the risk of relapse and maintain durable disease control. Since publication, we have seen clear signs of positive impact in real-world practice. Physicians are becoming receptive to maintaining patients on therapy even after achieving symptom control, signaling a shift from episodic to maintenance use. As a result of our efforts, the average vials per patient have increased over 30% year-to-date versus last year, with a notable acceleration in Q3. And VYVGART volumes have grown sequentially in the mid-teens. We see this level of growth as realistic and sustainable as we head into 2026. Now admittedly, the pace of market build for this first-in-class therapy for chronic disease has been more measured than we initially anticipated. With VYVGART, we are shaping this new market thoughtfully, focusing not only on driving adoption, but also on redefining how gMG is managed over the long term. Through physician education and real-world experience, we aim to change long-standing treatment patterns. While the ramp is slower than expected, the long-term potential of VYVGART in gMG is substantial. Beyond gMG, we're making progress in CIDP, expanding access across both supplemental and commercial health insurance plans. We will continue to add new layers of growth with new indications and formulations with the most immediate being seronegative gMG and the prefilled syringe. Looking ahead, our next major launch opportunity is KarXT, currently under regulatory review. KarXT has the potential to redefine schizophrenia treatment in China, introducing the first new mechanism of action in more than 70 years. Notably, it has already been included in the China Schizophrenia Prevention and Treatment Guidelines 2025 Edition, the first national guideline globally to do so, underscoring its strong differentiation and anticipated clinical impact. Across the company, we remain disciplined in our operations, scaling efficiently while investing strategically in commercial execution and pipeline innovation. And with that, I will now pass the call over to Yajing to take us through our financial results. Yajing? Yajing Chen: Thank you, Josh. Now I will review highlights from our third quarter 2025 financial results compared to the prior year period. Total revenue grew 14% year-over-year to $116.1 million in the third quarter, primarily driven by higher sales of NUZYRA supported by increasing market coverage and penetration. Demand for XACDURO remains robust, and we aim to normalize supply by year-end. ZEJULA grew sequentially but declined year-over-year amid evolving competitive dynamics within the PARP class. Given this trend as well as VYVGART dynamics discussed earlier, we are updating our full year total revenue guidance to at least $460 million. Our continued focus on financial discipline and efficiency was evident in our cost structure with both R&D and SG&A as a percentage of revenue declining significantly year-over-year. R&D expenses for the third quarter decreased 27% year-over-year, mainly due to a decrease in licensing fees in connection with upfront and milestone payments. SG&A expenses for the third quarter increased 4% year-over-year, mainly due to higher general selling expenses to support the growth of NUZYRA and VYVGART, partially offset by lower selling expenses for ZEJULA. As a result, loss from operations improved 28% in the third quarter to $48.8 million and adjusted loss from operations, which excludes certain noncash items, depreciation, amortization and share-based compensation, was $28 million in the third quarter, a 42% improvement from the prior year. While we expect meaningful quarter-over-quarter improvement in adjusted operating loss, we now expect profitability to shift beyond the fourth quarter, reflecting the lower revenue base this year. Importantly, our fundamentals remain strong. Our China business is already commercially profitable and growing, and we are executing strong financial discipline and investing strategically in R&D. We are on a path to profitability, and we'll provide updated 2026 financial guidance when we report our full year 2025 earnings. Zai Lab is at a major value inflection point with a rapidly advancing global pipeline, a commercially profitable China business and a path to profitability. We also maintain a strong financial foundation, ending the quarter with $817 million in cash, which provides us with the flexibility to invest in both innovation and disciplined execution. And with that, I would now like to turn the call back over to the operator to open up the line for questions. Operator? Operator: [Operator Instructions] We will now take our first question from the line of Jonathan Chang from Leerink Partners. Jonathan Chang: First question, on the revised revenue guidance, how should we be thinking about the key drivers for growth and the path to profitability? And then second question on ZL-1503. Can you help set expectations for the initial data readout expected in 2026? And how are you guys seeing the opportunity in atopic dermatitis? Joshua Smiley: Thanks, Jonathan. It's Josh Smiley. Thanks for the questions. I'll take the first one on revenue drivers, and then Rafael will talk about 1503. I think as we think about revenue headed into the fourth quarter here, drivers will continue to be VYVGART, we expect continued good sequential growth driven by new patient additions and continued growth and durability in terms of the number of doses patients get. We are seeing, as I mentioned in the opening remarks, we're seeing good progress as a result of the national guidelines that were issued in July, which focus on getting patients into at least 3 courses of therapy. So, we'll see, we expect to see continued growth there. ZEJULA, we are seeing a return to growth. As we've mentioned throughout the year, the quarterly numbers, I think, will be a little bit choppy because of the generic entries for Lynparza, but we do expect VBP to kick in, in the fourth quarter here, and that gives us a chance to gain share in this class, and we're confident we will. So, we'd expect to see some growth there. rest of the portfolio continues to do well. We are excited about the progress we're seeing with XACDURO, but still face supply constraints. So, we'll be somewhat limited as we come into the fourth quarter here or there. But overall, good momentum in the portfolio and good growth drivers. We'll give more specific guidance for 2026 as we get into next year. But obviously, we're looking forward to the launch of KarXT, the potential approval of TIVDAK and continued growth in these, in the core part of the portfolio. As it relates to profitability, again, our profitability will be driven by growth in the business in China. The China business, of course, is profitable today. And as we continue to drive top line growth, that profitability will be enough to cover the R&D and corporate costs that we have. So, we're still on that path. It's just, we just need the growth to continue in the portfolio. With that, I'll turn it to Rafael to talk about 1503. Rafael Amado: Thanks, Josh. Thanks, Jonathan. So, 1503, we're really excited about this molecule. As you know, it's both dual IL-13/31 inhibitors. It traps IL-13, and we know that, that is a proven pathway. And 31 is a very potent pathway in initiating pruritus. So, we think the combination plus the long half-life is going to translate into a really brisk effect, which is very fast and sustained. We have initiated the IND already. We plan to do a multi-country study. And obviously, it's a first-in-human study. We will do single ascending dose in normal volunteers and then multiple doses in patients with atopic dermatitis. In the lab, we've been looking at other models of TH2 diseases, and we are very encouraged with what we're seeing on asthma, rhinitis and other disorders that affect [TH2]. So, in addition to this, we're going to be looking at efficacy endpoints given the half-life that is long, we think that we will be able to see effects on EASI scores as well as IgA/ID [Audio Gap] and so this is going to be measured very frequently. We hope to have the data available by the middle of next year, but it will obviously accumulate throughout next year, and we will present when we have sufficient data. It's a placebo-controlled trial. So, we'll be able to have comparisons. And obviously, we know what the landmarks are here with other products. So again, a very large opportunity. This is a very common disease, even a fraction percentage of capturing in AD would be a large opportunity. And also, the possibility of expanding into other TH2 diseases, I think make this a very promising product. Operator: We will now take our next question from the line of Anupam Rama from JPMorgan. Anupam Rama: This is Joyce on for Anupam. The press release today really led with progress on your own internal global development programs. Is this a shift in how you're thinking about the resource allocation in terms of your prior focus on external BD versus now the internal pipeline? Joshua Smiley: Thanks. It's Josh. I'll start. First, we are very excited about the pipeline that we have today with the global emphasis. And of course, that will be a priority to invest in and Rafael outlined our near-term focus in terms of 1310 and getting the registration trial up and running and expanding into first line and into neuroendocrine tumors. So that's going to be a focus. We've got a really exciting global portfolio behind that. We think we have the capacity here to fully invest in those programs. We have a strong balance sheet with plenty of cash to continue to pursue on a targeted basis, the right kind of external opportunities to bring in, both on a global and regional basis. And we have the capacity within the income statement on the R&D side to, I think, fully invest behind these exciting opportunities and still manage, I think, an R&D budget that's within the range of what we've seen the last few years. So, priorities are advance the pipeline, continue to build the pipeline and continue to drive the commercial business in China, which is profitable today and will be increasingly profitable over time. Operator: We will now take our next question from the line of Yigal Nochomovitz from Citi. Yigal Nochomovitz: This is Caroline on for Yigal. We were wondering where you're seeing the greatest opportunity and greatest likelihood for success for your internal global pipeline among LRRC and PD-1, IL-2 and others. I have a second question, if okay. Joshua Smiley: Rafael, jump in on this one, please. Rafael Amado: Sure. Obviously, the most immediate one is 1310. I mean, it clearly is quite active. It is well tolerated, very few related grade 3 and above treatment effects. treatment side effects, strong brisk effect on brain metastases in untreated brain metastases. And again, very high percent of patients responding. We are starting up the Phase III study for second line. We've had recent discussions with FDA, and we're sharpening the design to the point that it's already started. We will continue to do some work on the dose, but I think that is going to finish pretty quickly. With regards to the rest of the products, obviously, 1503, I mean, these are proven pathways. So, the bar for activity is pretty low. And also, the characteristics of the product with FC modification for long half-life makes it very ideal for patients with these chronic diseases. And then with regards to some of the other ones, LRRC15 is particularly interesting because it will be the first time where a tumor is being targeted where the target is not necessarily in the tumor. So, there will be these 2 groups of patients like sarcoma patients where the tumor does express LRRC15, but others in which the tumor only expresses the target in fibroblasts. And if that is the case, if we can actually abrogate tumors where the tumor is negative, but the tumor microenvironment is positive, then it opens a whole host of tumor types. So pretty excited about this. And I think we are with others leading in ADC, which is one of our focus in oncology. And then I'll finish with PD-1 IL-12. It's been very hard to target IL-12 because it's toxic. So, we've been able to engineer an IL-12 stimulated moiety, which actually is attenuated. So, it doesn't really cause side effects of T cell activation. And at the same time, with full blockade of PD-1. So, in animal models, we can see that we can actually restore PD-1 resistant tumors, which would be pretty exciting to see. And we are seeing, as you know, more enhancements on PD-1 as a checkpoint with other molecules. And we think that an IL-12 would be one of them. So, I'll just finish by saying that we can move these things pretty quickly. We'll have 2 INDs this year. One of them will enroll this year. The other one will start enrolling in January. And PD-1 IL-12 is a candidate that will have an IND next year and hopefully, the first patient as well in the second half. So yes, we're excited about all of them. But obviously, our strongest focus right now is making sure that we cover the lives on 1310. Yigal Nochomovitz: Got it. And on my second question, we're wondering what you're doing to set yourself up for a strong KarXT launch? And what more have you learned about the schizophrenia market in China to best position KarXT in the marketplace? Joshua Smiley: It's Josh. Yes, we're quite excited about the opportunity with KarXT. Regulatory reviews are going well. So, we are hopeful for an approval sometime in the near term here. First, I think if you look in China, there's a huge opportunity. Of course, there haven't been any new mechanisms approved in severe melan illness or schizophrenia in more than 70 years. So, the opportunity for a mechanism like KarXT that provides both efficacy on positive symptoms, negative symptoms and cognition is, I think, well anticipated and thought leaders are anxious for this drug to come. So, we'll launch with a targeted sales force. I think the difference in China versus what we see in some of the Western markets, certainly in the U.S. is it's a more concentrated approach. Patients tend to be in bigger institutions. So, with a relatively targeted sales force and education program, we should be able to touch a significant portion of the market at launch. And again, just to remind people that the opportunity here is quite significant with millions of patients today suffering from schizophrenia. Obviously, it's a lifelong disease. So, we're anxious to get the approval first to get up and running in 2026 and then move toward NRDL listing in 2027. Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Li Watsek from Cantor Fitzgerald. Li Wang Watsek: I have one commercial, one pipeline question. I guess just given some of the complex commercial dynamics in China and your revised guidance, can you provide your updated views on the $2 billion revenue target by 2028? And then second is for ZL1310, sounds like you're expanding to neuroendocrine tumors next year. I wonder if you can just talk a little bit about the pathway to approval and what would be the bar? Joshua Smiley: Thanks, Li. It's Josh. I think first on the $2 billion 2028 goal, we will look at all the moves that we had in the portfolio, and we'll provide a more fulsome update next year, maybe starting at JPMorgan. But to comment, we feel really good about the portfolio we have today. As Samantha mentioned upfront, I think the most exciting piece is the opportunity for sales outside of China in 2028. We mentioned that 1310, we see a path for an approval as early as late 2027. So, to have some significant sales in 2028 coming from the U.S. in small cell lung cancer, I think, quite exciting and certainly represents a new inflection point and phase of growth for us. The portfolio in China continues to grow. And we've talked about the dynamics with VYVGART, which we expect over the course of the next number of years to continue to grow at a good and steady rate, supplemented by additional indications. since we have talked about that revenue goal, we've added Pove and Veli, both of which can launch in the 2028-time frame. So, we're quite excited about the long-term growth potential of the portfolio and most excited this year about the progress on 1310 and what it means for sales, not just in China, but outside of China within this time frame. Yes, Rafael, if you can jump in, please. Rafael Amado: Yes. Thanks, Caroline. So, I'll talk a bit about NEC. So, the study that we have has 2 cohorts of carcinoma. So, these are highly proliferative tumors that have a poor prognosis. One is gastroenteropancreatic tumors or GEP, and the others are other NECs that can arise from other sites, other organs. We are seeing responses in both groups. It's still early days, obviously, and we're accumulating more and more evidence of activity. These are patients that have had more than one line of therapy, which tends to be platinum-based therapy. And there really isn't any standard for these patients. The tumors tend to grow fast and actually mortality is quite high. So, in terms of how we want to proceed with this, the idea would be to sort of circumscribe the tumors that have similar natural history like GEP, large cell non-small cell lung cancer and also tumors of a non-primary and do a study, a single-arm trial and try to characterize the response rate. I think anything above 30% to 40% would be of great interest because there really isn't any therapy. Many of these patients go to clinical trials with reasonable durability. So, we would plan to have discussions with regulatory authorities to see whether given the unmet need single-arm trial with these kinds of results could result in an accelerated approval. The alternative is to do a physician choice comparator, which also we will be prepared to launch. And given the activity that we are seeing, if it continues, it wouldn't be a very large study, particularly given the large unmet need and the fact that this is an orphan indication. So pretty excited about what the agency will see and opine once we have sufficient follow-up and sufficient patients to characterize the activity. Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Lai Chen from Goldman Sachs. Ziyi Chen: Two questions. The first one is regarding the guidance. We try to understand a bit more about compared to the expectations set in any guidance previously, in which areas has the company encountered deeper than anticipated challenges in China environment, particularly for VYVGART and ZEJULA. Could you elaborate a bit more? And also, I think beginning of the year, in terms of the guidance, not only about the top line, but also you mentioned about fourth quarter cash breakeven target. Is that still intact? That's my first one. Second is regarding the R&D because Zai Lab is really pivoting towards a global R&D company. So, in terms of the pipeline buildup, particularly for the early-stage pipeline buildup, now we got oncology ADCs, we have 2 different ADCs. We have PD-1, IL-12, and we also have immunology. So we're trying to understand a bit more about the strategy, the portfolio strategy when you're deciding what to go after and what not to do. So, could you provide a bit more color on that? Joshua Smiley: Sure. Thanks. First, on the performance this year, I would say, relative to our initial expectations, VYVGART, while growing well, and we're pleased with the underlying dynamics, as we've mentioned throughout the call, it's just taking longer to get to the rate that we, of treatment that we see in the U.S. market, for example. So, we're focused now on getting patients up to at least 3 cycles of treatment, and we're seeing progress there. It's just slow. So, I would say that's our sort of on the VYVGART piece, that's the piece that has been the slowest relative to our expectations. Again, I think this is what we're realizing is it's a long-term build the market opportunity. We have the long term with this product, and we're seeing good response to things like the national guidelines and our continued promotional and educational efforts. So just a slower ramp to get to the kind of treatment duration that we see in the Western markets. On ZEJULA, we expect to gain share as a function of Lynparza going generic, and we saw some delays there in terms of, relative to our initial expectations relative to VBP. Again, we expect that to kick in beginning in the fourth quarter and set us up well for next year. Certainly, again, there are dynamics related to affordability and hospital purchasing and otherwise that may make that a bit choppy. But I think the underlying opportunity for ZEJULA is to gain share from what had been Lynparza as it goes to generic. The third piece for us is then just we've talked about this through the year. It's a great product and our partner, Pfizer, is seeing really great response and demand in the hospital setting for this drug. And we've had more supply constraints than we anticipated at the beginning of the year. We're working through those, and we're hopeful that as we come into 2026, those will be resolved, and we'll be able to fully meet the demand that we're seeing in the marketplace. Those things together, of course, will help and drive profitability. I think if you look at our path to profitability and focus on the noncash, I mean, on the cash sort of earnings, which is our non-GAAP number, you see continued good progress in that regard. And that progress should continue. We'll give you an update for 2026. But really, it's just going to be a function of continued growth on the top line. And I think at the numbers that we're suggesting here for the fourth quarter, we probably won't quite get there, but we'll still show good improvement, and we'll be on that path as we head into 2026. Rafael, if you can talk about how we think about the portfolio and the next opportunities. Rafael Amado: Sure. So, the portfolio will continue to grow as a blend of both internal as well as external opportunities. I'm really proud of the fact that many of the products that are now in development came from our protein science laboratories, which have been very productive. But in terms of strategy in oncology, we will continue with antibody drug conjugates, and we will continue to innovate there. There are other antibodies that we haven't mentioned that are in the pipeline at the moment, and we spend a lot of time trying to characterize the antibody vis-a-vis the target. and then use the right payload linker. So that's going to continue to grow. We also have an interest in immunocytokines, which I mentioned before. We have other immunocytokines that will come after the PD-1 IL-12. And then T cell engagers, we've made an effort in T cell engagers, and we will be reporting with time some of these candidates entering the clinic. Outside of oncology, you are right. I mean, we have been focusing on autoimmunity, neuroscience and immunology. In autoimmunity, we are focusing on cytokines, both antibodies or bispecifics perhaps cell depletion as well and then signal transduction of some of these cytokine pathways, which involve small molecules as well. And so overall, we will remain opportunistic, obviously, for either regional or global opportunities that have novel mechanisms of action, have differentiation and really make a big difference for patients. But the guardrails, if you will, are the ones that I just described to you. So, thanks for the question. Ying Du: Yes. I think, Joe, just like Rafael was saying, we, even though our pipeline in China, regional pipeline has oncology, autoimmune and neuro and anti-infectious. But for our global pipeline, we are focusing on oncology and autoimmune and anti-inflammatory specifically that Rafael was saying. So internally for global development pipelines, we are only focused on those 2 areas. Operator: Our last question today comes from the line of Clara Dong from Jefferies. Yuxi Dong: This is Jenna on for Clara. We have 2 questions, if we may. First, on VYVGART. I think previously, we were under the impression that sales will be back half loaded. So, I was just curious what kind of visibility or leading indicators you may have for Q4 and 2026? And more specifically, can you comment on, for example, pace, number of cycles on average patients are getting today? What does the pace look like over the next few years to reach the 3 average doses? And then our second question is on Bema in the context of the Amgen announcement. I was just curious if it's still possible to have a path forward for just China based on the trials you're running or the data you have in hand? Joshua Smiley: I'll start with VYVGART and then Rafael can talk about Bema. I think on VYVGART, what we're seeing is good underlying growth in terms of duration or number of vials or cycles patients get. I think as we started the year, on average, we were probably close to 1 cycle per year or per patient per year, and that represented the fact that at launch, we were getting lots of the acute patients and VYVGART, of course, works really well in an acute setting, but to get the full benefit for patients with gMG that allows them to work and live their lives fully, you need to get the maintenance benefits, which kick in at least 3 cycles. Through this year, we're seeing progress towards an average of 2 cycles per year. And as you mentioned in your question, the goal is to get to at least 3 and over time, aspirations toward 5, where we see the full benefits in clinical trial and real-world setting, so I think as we look into next year, we'd expect the underlying growth to continue probably at this, what we're seeing in terms of volume, so sort of number of vials in total is sequential quarterly growth in the sort of low teens. And I think that's reasonable to expect as we head into next year and continue to sort of climb towards that on average, 3 cycles of use; again, supplemented by, or accelerated by the national guidelines that were issued in July and our efforts to educate physicians in that regard. So, we're looking forward to the continued underlying growth here, and I think expect that to continue on a good basis as we head into 2026. Rafael, do you want to talk about Bema? Rafael Amado: Sure. So, we're still digesting the data. You saw the data at ESMO that was presented with the primary analysis of 096 and then the final analysis with this attenuated treatment effect. And then Amgen announced that 098 was a negative study in terms of not meeting statistical significance. So, we're looking at with Amgen and our partner at translational markers and subgroups, and we will be doing this in the upcoming weeks and make a decision. But our opinion is that it will be very challenging to get an approval in China with this data set. So as such, we're thinking about how to deploy these resources to the rich pipeline that we've been discussing today and try to capitalize on the fact that we will have this opportunity of time, people, resources and effort to advance the current pipeline. Operator: Thank you, we have come to the end of the question-and-answer session. Thank you all very much for your questions. I'll now turn the conference back to Dr. Samantha Du for her closing comments. Ying Du: Thank you, operator. I want to thank everyone for taking the time to join us on the call today. We appreciate your support and look forward to updating you again after the fourth quarter of 2025. Operator, you may now disconnect this call. Operator: Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect your lines.
Operator: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Slate Grocery REIT Third Quarter 2025 Financial Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] This call is being recorded on Thursday, November 6, 2025. I would now like to turn the conference over to Shivi Agarwal, Manager of Finance at Slate Grocery REIT. Please go ahead. Shivi Agarwal: Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Q3 2025 Conference Call for Slate Grocery REIT. I'm joined this morning by Blair Welch, Chief Executive Officer; Joe Pleckaitis, Chief Financial Officer; Connor O'Brien, Managing Director; Allen Gordon, Senior Vice President; Braden Lyons, Vice President. Before getting started, I would like to remind participants that our discussion today may contain forward-looking statements. And therefore, we ask you to review the disclaimers regarding forward-looking statements as well as non-IFRS measures, both of which can be found in Management's Discussion and Analysis. You can visit Slate Grocery REIT's website to access all of the REIT's financial disclosure, including our Q3 2025 investor update, which is available now. I will now hand over the call to Blair Welch for opening remarks. Blair Welch: Thank you, Shivi, and hello, everyone. We are pleased to report another quarter of strong financial and operating results for Slate Grocery REIT. Our team continues to convert resilient demand for grocery-anchored retail spaces into robust leasing at attractive rental spreads. The REIT completed over 417,000 square feet of total leasing throughout the quarter. Renewal spreads were completed at 15% above expiring rents and new deals were completed at 35% above comparable average in-place rent. Adjusting for completed redevelopments, same-property net operating income increased by $4.3 million or 2.7% on a trailing 12-month basis. Portfolio occupancy remained stable at 94%. And our portfolio's average in-place rent of $12.82 per square foot remains well below the market average of $24.09 per square foot, providing significant runway for continued rent increases. The REIT has a weighted average interest rate of 5%, with over 90% of its debt having a fixed interest rate on a proportionate basis. This provides a stable outlook for the REIT's near-term financing costs. The REIT's weighted average capitalization rate remains well above the REIT's weighted average interest rate for outstanding debt allowing the REIT to maintain positive leverage. The REIT's attract evaluation combined with continued net operating income growth, is expected to continue increasing the value of our portfolio over time. We continue to have strong conviction in the outlook for grocery-anchored real estate and the ability of this asset class to perform in today's economic environment. Recent consumer spending data shows that the essential goods are expected to remain a top priority for shoppers over the next 3 months, underscoring the stability and resilience of the grocery sector and grocery-anchored real estate. At the same time, fundamentals remain favorable with elevated construction costs and tight lending conditions continuing to constrain new retail development and overall availability. This dynamic creates a favorable environment for landlords to retain existing tenants and achieved meaningful increases in rents as leases expire. Against this backdrop, we are seeing focus on operational execution, prudent management of our balance sheet and strong relationships with our tenants to position the REIT to deliver sustained growth and lasting value for all unitholders. On behalf of the Slate Grocery team and the Board, I would like to thank the investor community for all their continued confidence and support. I will now hand it over for questions. Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Brad Sturges at Raymond James. Bradley Sturges: Good quarter. Obviously, the organic growth number has been trending where you expected. I think your trailing 12 months, I think you said you were 3% to 4%. Is that a level that you expect to continue -- to see continue over the course of 2026? Blair Welch: Yes, it is. I think that the moves into it are really due to expiring leases when they come on, but that sort of 3% to 4% is what we expect going forward. Bradley Sturges: Okay. And what are you seeing from like a market rent perspective? Obviously, you continue to highlight and showcase the mark-to-market available as you're able to bring in-place rents to market. But I guess what's happening from a market rent perspective? Blair Welch: Yes. Great question. I think the easiest way to point to something is we quote the -- it's just over $24 per square foot now the CBRE market average. That is increasing at the same or maybe above our in-place rents. So I would say our rental growth is very strong and the market is also growing. So I think that's -- those are both positive things. Bradley Sturges: Okay. And last question for me. Just maybe switching gears towards the investment or transaction market, any read-throughs in terms of pricing you're seeing as it relates to Slate Grocery's underlying NAV or valuation? Are there more trades starting to percolate or -- how should we think about that? Blair Welch: Yes. I would say we feel very comfortable with our IFRS cap rates, and I think we've been prudent on that. And then I think the rest of the market is kind of coming to a place where the execution where you have to do deals has moved up. I think that's what that transaction volume has been needed. So I think it's really more situational. We are looking at the pipeline of new acquisition opportunities in the billions, and that could be a platform, that could be one-off deals. But I think it really speaks to positive leverage. And if you think of Slate Grocery REIT's balance sheet, we're around 200 basis points of positive leverage from our IFRS cap rate to our weighted average cost of financing. And I think that's pretty attractive. So I think if we continue to see that with our peers and where transactions are, I think you'll see that volume pick up. And I think the U.S. market is getting -- I think if you look at other international jurisdictions, Europe is also a positive leverage situation. I think Canada is getting there, but maybe not there yet, but that's really how we look at the market. And the fundamentals of grocery-anchored real estate are extremely strong. So if you can buy an asset that's performing well and finance it well, I think that will show more volume in transactions. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Golden Nguyen-Halfyard, at TD Cowen. Golden Nguyen-Halfyard: Just 1 question from my end. Nice to see occupancy move up a little bit in Q3. Can you talk a little bit about your progress on some of the vacancies that you had earlier in the year? Blair Welch: Yes, Golden, I'll pass it over to the team to talk about specific occupancy. But thanks for the questions. Allen Gordon: Yes. This is Allen. We continue to see a strong pipeline of new deals throughout the portfolio, both on junior anchor leasing and small shop leasing. And continue -- as you've seen, continue to do deals in both. Operator: [Operator Instructions] And at this time, we have no further questions. I'd like to turn it back over to Shivi Agarwal for closing remarks. Shivi Agarwal: Thank you, everyone, for joining the Q3 2025 Conference Call for Slate Grocery REIT. Have a great day. Operator: Thank you, everyone, for attending. This does conclude today's presentation. You may now disconnect.
Operator: Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to today's Iveco Group Third Quarter 2025 Results Conference Call and Webcast. We would like to remind you that today's call is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Federico Donati, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir. Federico Donati: Thank you, Razia. Good morning, everyone. I would like to welcome you to this webcast and conference call for Iveco Group Third Quarter Financial Results for the period ending 30th September 2025. This call is being broadcast live on our website and is copyrighted by Iveco Group. I'm sure you appreciate that any other use, recording, or transmission of any portion of this broadcast without the consent of Iveco Group is not allowed. Hosting today's call are Iveco Group CEO, Olof Persson, and me, Federico Donati, Head of Investor Relations, standing in for the financial section usually covered by our CFO, as Anna Tanganelli could not be present today. Please note that any forward-looking statements we make during today's call are subject to the risks and uncertainties mentioned in the safe harbor statement included in the presentation material. Additional information relating to factors that could cause actual results to differ from forecast and expectation is contained in the company's most recent annual report, as well as other recent reports and filings with the authorities in the Netherlands and Italy. The company presentation may include certain non-IFRS financial measures. Additional information, including reconciliation to the most directly comparable IFRS financial measures, is included in the presentation material. Furthermore, on the 30th of July 2025, Iveco Group announced the signing of a definitive agreement to sell its defense business, IDV, and Astra brands to Leonardo S.p.A. The transaction is expected to be completed no later than 31st March 2026, subject to the customary regulatory approvals and carve-out completion. In accordance with IFRS 5, noncurrent assets held for sale and discontinued operations, as the sale became highly probable in July, the Defense business meets the criteria to be classified as a disposal group held for sale. It also meets the criteria to be classified as a discontinued operation. In accordance with applicable accounting standards, the figures in the income statement and the statement of cash flow for the 2024 comparative periods have been recast consistently. Additionally, in 2024, the firefighting business was classified as a discontinued operation. Its sales were completely on the 3rd of January 2025. As a consequence, the 2025 and 2024 financial data shown in this presentation refer to the continuing operation only unless otherwise stated. Finally, please note that, subject to applicable disclosure requirements pending the publication of the final offer document, we will not comment on the tender offer. As per the joint press release on July 30, announcing the entering into the merger agreement and the press release by Tata on August 19, announcing the filing of the document with Conso, anyone interested is invited to refer to the offer notice published on July 30, 2025, which indicates the legal basis, rationale, condition, terms and key elements of the tender offer. All the aforementioned material and announcements are available on the Iveco Group corporate website, where any additional relevant information will be published in due time. We will not comment on the sale of the defense business to Leonardo either. The rationale, terms, and conditions of the sale, with the details as currently available, were disclosed on July 30. As announced, the transaction is expected to be completed in Q1 2026, subject to customary regulatory approvals and carve-out completion. Consistent with the agreement reached with Tata, Iveco Group will distribute the net proceeds of the transaction based on the enterprise value agreed with the purchaser via an extraordinary dividend estimated at EUR 5.56 per common share to be paid out to the company's shareholders before the tender offer is settled. With those points covered, I'd like to turn things over to our CEO, Olof. Olof Persson: Thank you very much, Federico. And let me add my own warm welcome to everyone joining our call today. I'll start with Slide 3, outlining the main highlights from our third quarter performance, excluding defense. Throughout the quarter, we maintained a high focus on our long-term vision and maintained discipline in the execution of measures that will help achieve it. These include tight control on inventory levels, diligent cost management, and the ongoing commitment to our multiyear efficiency program, as well as its acceleration for the current year, which is proceeding as planned. We have also identified additional areas of improvement, which will deliver further full-year savings. In our Truck business unit, we concentrated on balancing pricing and market share. The focus was on protecting our leadership position in the LCV chassis cap subsegment, where pricing dynamics were more challenging and maintaining a very strict pricing discipline in medium and heavy in support of the final phase of the introduction of our model year 2024 across European countries, and thereby ensuring the quality, performance, and the full potential of the product. I'd now like to break down our performance by business units. In the truck industry, demand in Europe remained particularly low in the chassis cab subsegment, which affected profitability in the quarter, which was only partially offset by strict cost control measures. European deliveries in the period were down year-over-year, particularly for light commercial vehicles, which were down 27% versus last year. At the end of the quarter, worldwide book-to-bill for trucks came in at 1.0, up 25 basis points versus the same period last year. In Powertrain, we began to see the first sign of a sustainable recovery in engine volumes as had been expected, supporting profitability improvements. In our bus business unit, profitability was impacted by costs associated with the ramp-up of production in our NNA plant in France. But despite this, our order book remains strong, providing us with a clear long-term visibility. Free cash flow absorption in the third quarter of 2025 was at EUR 513 million, broadly in line with last year's performance, when we exclude from last year the positive effect of the deployment of the higher inventory levels that we registered at the end of June 2024. You will recall that this was linked to the phase-in and phase-out of the new model year in trucks. Going forward, we will continue to remain very focused on quality and operations in line with our long-term pathway, maintaining tight control on production levels and inventory management, and on delivering our efficiency program. Slide 4 outlines our indicative timeline for the first half of 2026, with the sale of our defense business and the tender of the Veeco Group progressing in parallel. Regulatory filings for both transactions, including those required by the European Union, are currently underway and subject to final approvals. Both the sale of the defense business to Leonardo and the subsequent distribution of the net sale proceeds through an external ordinary dividend and the tender of [Bertata] are on track for completion within the first half of 2026, as we stated previously. If we're then moving on to Slide 6 and the Truck segment. We maintained pricing discipline and tight inventory control throughout Q3 in 2025. European industry volumes increased by 5% year-over-year for both light commercial vehicles and medium and heavy trucks. Iveco's third-quarter LCV market share was 11.7%, of which 29.7% was in the Chassis Cab subsegment and 65.8% was in the upper end of the segment. Industry growth overall was largely driven by the camper subsegment, where Iveco has limited exposure. Chassis Cab volumes, on the other hand, remained under pressure, yet we managed to protect our leadership position. In medium and heavy trucks, our market share reached 7.2% with heavy trucks accounting for 6.4%. In this segment, we implemented a selective sales mix strategy throughout the quarter to optimize channel profitability and support the final phase of the introduction of our model year 2024 across European countries and thereby ensuring the quality, performance, and full potential of the product. Our ability to adapt to segment dynamics while preserving pricing integrity and managing inventory effectively reflects the strength of our commercial execution and the strategic clarity of our truck business. Moving on to Slide 7. Our worldwide truck book-to-bill ratio reached 1.0 at the end of the quarter, registering a 25 basis point improvement year-over-year. This reflects balanced commercial performance across geographies and product categories. In light commercial vehicles, our European order intake rose by 17% compared to Q3 2024, supported by a book-to-bill ratio of 1.05. This increase, we believe, is a welcome first sign of a recovery coming on the heels of a prolonged period of production coverage well below last year's level, 7 weeks this year versus 12 weeks last year. And South America experienced even stronger growth with order intake up 37% and a book-to-bill ratio of 1.11. In medium and heavy trucks, European order intake declined by 3% year-over-year with a book-to-bill ratio of 0.82. South America saw a more pronounced contraction of 21% with a book-to-bill ratio of 0.94. While these figures reflect a softer demand environment, the backlog remains stable at 7 weeks of production coverage. Let's move to the next slide, #9, with bus industry volumes and market shares. Iveco Bus during the quarter continued to demonstrate strong competitive positioning across Europe. In the intercity segment, our leadership was reaffirmed with a 55.1% market share in Q3, representing a 5% point increase year-over-year. This gain can be attributed to the successful introduction of electric models, which are contributing positively to both volumes and brand perception. In the European city buses segment, our market share stood at 15.1% in Q3. We expect an acceleration in deliveries during Q4, consistent with the seasonal patterns and supported by backlog conversion. Overall, Iveco Bus maintained its consolidated #2 position in the European market with a 21.3% market share year-to-date. Moving on to Slide 10. In Q3 2025, our bus order intake declined by 17% following the strong momentum we enjoyed in the first half of the year. This front-loaded demand contributed to a 6% year-to-date increase as of September. Deliveries rose 20% compared to Q3 2024, demonstrating robust execution and sustained customer demand. The book-to-bill ratio stood at 0.77 at the quarter's end, a figure impacted by the scheduling of orders early in the year. Importantly, year-to-date order intake remained higher than in 2024 at 1.08, demonstrating the segment's resilience. On the 29th of October, Iveco Bus signed a framework agreement with Ildefrance Mobility, a leading public transport authority managing one of Europe's largest and most complex transit networks. Iveco Bus will supply Ildefrans Mobility with up to 4,000 low and zero-emission buses and coaches between 2026 and 2032. This is in line with the brand's long-term strategy to build on zero-emission and electromobility solutions. In conclusion, we maintained a solid long-term visibility for intercity and city bus with coverage now extending well into the second half of 2026. On Slide 12, we have the delivery performance for our powertrain business unit. And after nearly 2 years of consecutive year-over-year decline, engine volumes increased by 1% compared to Q3 2024. While modest, this improvement reflects the recovery we predicted last quarter. During the period, new third-party customer contracts were signed between Lindner and JCB. Production for these orders will begin in 2026. These contracts position FBT Industrial as one of the main references in the agriculture industry and are in line with our long-term strategy to grow the number of third-party clients. Operational discipline remains central to our approach. We continue to manage costs diligently and remain committed to our efficiency program. These efforts are helping us to protect margins and ensure sustainable delivery as volumes recover. Looking ahead, we expect the recovery in deliveries to third-party customers to continue throughout Q4 and beyond, supporting profitability improvements. Going to Slide 14, look at our electric vehicle portfolio, where year-to-date delivery volumes continue to grow across the business units despite the challenging market demand scenario. This clearly shows the competitiveness of our product lineup and our unique positioning in LCV, where Iveco is the only truck maker to offer a complete fully electric product lineup ranging from 2.5 to 7 tons. With that, I finish my opening remarks, and I will now hand over the call to Federico. Federico Donati: Thank you, Olof. Let's now take a look at the highlights of our third quarter 2025 financial results on Slide 16. Again, all figures provided in the presentation refer to continuing operation only, excluding defense, if not otherwise stated. Q3 2025 closed with EUR 3.1 billion in consolidated net revenues and EUR 3 billion in net revenues of industrial activities. These figures reflect a contraction of 3.6% and 3%, respectively, on a year-over-year basis, mainly due to lower volumes in Europe for trucks and a negative ForEx translation effect, primarily in Brazil and in Turkey. The group adjusted EBIT closed at EUR 111 million with a 3.6% margin, and the adjusted EBIT of industrial activities reached EUR 76 million with a 2.5% margin, both contracted by 210 basis points versus Q3 2024. The net financial expenses amounted to EUR 58 million in the third quarter this year, in line with the same quarter last year. Reported income tax expenses come to EUR 17 million in Q3 2025 with an adjusted effective tax rate of 25%. This resulted in adjusted net income for continuing operations at EUR 40 million, down EUR 54 million versus last year, with an adjusted diluted EPS of EUR 0.15. Moving to our free cash flow performance in the quarter. Q3 2025 closed with a EUR 513 million cash outflow absorption, which was broadly in line with last year's performance, when we excluded from last year the positive effect of the deployment of the higher inventory level that we registered at the end of June 2024, as Olof said in his opening remarks. I will provide more details further in the presentation. Finally, available liquidity, including undrawn committed credit lines, closed solidly at EUR 4 billion on the 30th of September, of which EUR 1.9 billion was in undrawn committed facilities. Let's now focus on the net revenue of industrial activities on Slide 17. As you can see from the chart on the right-hand side of this slide, all regions contracted compared to the prior year, excluding South America, which was flat versus Q3 2024. Looking at our net revenues evolution by business unit, Bus was solidly up versus the prior year at plus 31%. Powertrain was flat, and the truck contracted 11% versus Q3 2024. More in detail, truck net revenues totaled EUR 2 billion in this quarter, down 11% versus the prior year, primarily as a consequence of 2 factors: First, a lower delivery rate in light-duty trucks due to the continuing challenging environment in the chassis subsegment. Second, a selective sales mix strategy throughout the quarter in heavy-duty trucks in order to optimize channel profitability and support the final phase of the introduction of our model year 2024 across European countries. Additionally, the top line was affected by an adverse year-over-year foreign exchange rate trend, mainly in Brazil and Turkey. Our bus net revenues were up 31.4% in Q3 2025, reaching EUR 719 million, thanks to higher volumes. And finally, our Powertrain net revenues were broadly in line year-over-year at EUR 745 million with higher volumes offset by an adverse foreign exchange rate impact. Sales to external customers accounted for 49%, in line with Q3 2024. Turning to Slide 18. Let me briefly comment on the main drivers underlying the year-over-year performance in our adjusted EBIT margin of Industrial activities. Volume and mix contributed negatively, EUR 67 million in the period, mainly due to lower truck volumes in Europe. The decrease in deliveries of light-duty vehicles particularly impacted the overall truck profitability. The year-over-year net pricing contributed positively for EUR 15 million at the Industrial Activities level and was positive across business units. Production costs were negative EUR 7 million year-over-year, with negative performance in Truck and Bus, partially offset by solid positive performance in powertrain. Finally, the year-over-year improvement in SG&A costs totaling EUR 17 million in this quarter and EUR 50 million to date is again a result of the acceleration of the efficiency action announced and launched at the beginning of this year. Let's now take a look at the adjusted EBIT margin performance for each industrial business unit on Slide 19. Truck closed the quarter with a 2.9% adjusted EBIT margin. As already mentioned, this was a result of lower volumes and negative mix, mainly due to the continuing challenging environment in the chassis subsegment, which experienced lower volumes in Europe. The negative absorption due to the lower production level was only partially compensated by the cost containment action implemented in the period. Truck pricing in Europe was positive year-over-year, confirming our tight price discipline. The Q3 2025 adjusted EBIT margin for our bus business unit closed at 4%, down 110 basis points versus the prior year, with higher volumes and positive price realization offset by higher costs associated with the ramp-up of production in our Annonay plant. Finally, the Powertrain adjusted EBIT margin closed at 5.1% in the third quarter, resulting from continued and diligent cost control and operational efficiency as well as a slight increase in engine volumes. Let's now have a look at the performance of our Financial Services business unit during the quarter on Slide 20. The Q3 2025 adjusted EBIT for Financial Services closed at EUR 35 million with a managed portfolio, including unconsolidated joint ventures of EUR 7.5 billion at the end of the period, of which retail accounted for 45% and wholesale 55%. This figure is down EUR 106 million compared to the 30th of September 2024. Stock of receivable past due by more than 30 days as a percentage of the overall own book portfolio was at 2.1%, which is slightly up versus last year. The return on assets remained solid at 2.1%. Let's move to our free cash flow and net industrial cash evolution on Slide 21. As said previously, the Q3 2025 free cash flow absorption came in at EUR 513 million, which is broadly in line with last year's performance when we exclude the positive effect of the initial deployment of the higher inventory level that we registered at the end of June 2024. The lower adjusted EBITDA was offset by positive year-over-year swings in financial charges and taxes, the positive delta in working capital, and lower investments. The negative year-over-year swing in provision was driven by lower sales volume in our truck business unit. Lastly, investment totaled EUR 150 million in Q3 2025, down EUR 39 million versus the same period last year. This is in line with the already disclosed acceleration of our efficiency program and the reprioritization of some of our less strategic investments. Moving now to Slide 22. As of the 30th of September 2025, our available liquidity for continuing operations, excluding defense, stood solidly at EUR 4 billion with EUR 2.3 billion in cash and cash equivalents and EUR 1.9 billion of undrawn committed facilities. Looking at our debt maturity profile, the majority of our debt will mature from 2027 onwards, and our cash and cash equivalent levels will continue to more than cover all the cash maturities foreseen for the coming years. Moving now to my last slide for today, # 24, with the discontinued operational performance of our Defense business unit. The net revenues for Defense came in at EUR 293 million, up 9.7% compared to Q3 2024, driven by higher volumes. The adjusted EBIT was EUR 25 million compared to EUR 23 million in Q3 2024, resulting from production efficiency, partially offset by higher R&D costs. The adjusted EBIT margin was at 8.5%, down 10 basis points compared to Q3 2024. The funded order book level at the end of September 2025 reached almost EUR 5.3 billion, up close to EUR 300 million from the end of June 2025. Thank you. I will now turn the call back to Olof for his final remarks. Olof Persson: Thank you very much, Federico. And I'd like to conclude this presentation by looking at both the outlook for the industry and our own financial guidance. I will also, as usual, provide some takeaway messages from what you have heard today. We confirm our total industry outlook for the current year across the segments and regions. Specifically, we expect demand to remain low in the chassis cab subsegment and South America to continue to be negatively impacted by reduced consumer confidence and less willingness to invest in heavy-duty trucks, given the increase in interest rates in Brazil since the beginning of the year. The next slide has our full-year 2025 updated financial guidance, also expressed as continuing operations, which means excluding defense. Our full-year 2025 financial guidance has been revised across all key performance metrics, except for the industrial activities net revenue, which remains unchanged. This update reflects the year-to-date performance negatively affected by 2 main circumstances. Firstly, a slower-than-expected recovery in light commercial vehicles during the second half of 2025, particularly in the chassis cab subsegment, which has negatively affected our truck business units' year-to-date profitability. Secondly, we have allowed for extra costs associated with the ramp-up of production in our NMA plant, which negatively impacted our bus business unit's profitability in the third quarter. Implied in our updated guidance is increased Q4 profitability year-over-year across business units and an additional positive effect from the acceleration of our efficiency program compared to the initial EUR 150 million CapEx and OpEx. Based on these premises, the updated guidance for our full year 2025 is as follows: at the consolidated level, including Defense, group adjusted EBIT is now between EUR 830 million and EUR 880 million. And for Industrial Activities, net revenues, including currency effect, confirmed to be down between 3% and 5% year-over-year. Adjusted EBIT from industrial activities at between EUR 700 million and EUR 750 million, and industrial free cash flow is between EUR 250 million and EUR 350 million. On the slide, we have also shown what this guidance implies for continuing operations only. The free cash flow forecast, excluding Defense, is not included due to ongoing activities related to the separation that could affect some balance sheet accounts. We will continue to manage production levels for trucks in Europe in line with the retail demand, while at the same time, maintaining diligent cost management and leveraging the benefits of our efficiency program across business units. And now to Slide 28. Let me provide you with some takeaway messages from today's call. First, as I said, implied in our revised guidance is increased Q4 profitability year-over-year across business units. And if we break that down by business unit, in trucks, our LCV and medium and heavy vehicles are sold out, covering the remaining 2 months of the year. This, combined with strict control on pricing and cost management, will positively contribute to higher profitability compared to the fourth quarter of last year. In the bus, ramp-up costs are now behind us, and we expect higher volumes to contribute positively to the year-over-year performance. And lastly, in Powertrain, as mentioned earlier, third-party client volumes are expected to continue their year-over-year growth, supporting progressively profitable improvements. The increase in third-quarter order intake for light commercial vehicles is an encouraging early sign that the worst is behind us. In heavy-duty trucks, we will continue to maintain strict pricing discipline to support our model year 2024, ensuring the quality, performance, and full potential of the product. In Powertrain, new third-party customer contracts were signed, among which are Lindner and JCB, with production for these orders beginning in 2026. Our robust order book remains strong, providing solid visibility well into the second half of 2026, and the funded order book for our Defense business unit reached almost SEK 5.3 billion at the end of September 2025, demonstrating continued momentum in the industry. Thirdly, we are proceeding at pace with the acceleration of our efficiency program and reprioritization of certain investments, confirming the expected EUR 150 million in savings in CapEx and OpEx for the current year, as well as additional areas of improvement, which will deliver further full-year savings. And finally, we are on track to complete the sale of our defense business to Leonardo as per our original combination, and the tender offer by Tata is expected to be completed within the first half of 2026. In conclusion, as always, we are focused on our commitment to operational excellence. Each business unit remains laser-focused on its short- and long-term objectives, working to deliver lasting value for all our stakeholders. With that, I would like to thank you and hand it back to Federico. Federico Donati: That concludes our prepared remarks, and we can now open it up for questions. To be mindful of the time, we kindly ask that you hold off on any detailed modeling and accounting questions. For this, you can follow up directly with me and the Investor Relations team after the call. In addition, as already pointed out, pending the publication of the formal offer document on the tender offer by Tata, we will not comment on the legal basis, rationale, condition, terms, and key elements of the tender offer. In this respect, for the time being, you are kindly invited to refer to the materials already published in the ad hoc section of the company website. As for the sale of the defense business to Leonardo, the activities are ongoing and on track, consistent with the timeline commented during the presentation. The company will strictly comply with applicable disclosure requirements, but for the time being, it has nothing to add vis-Ã -vis what has already been announced. Operator, please go ahead. Operator: [Operator Instructions] We are now going to take our first question, and the questions come from the line of Akshat Kacker from JPMorgan. Akshat Kacker: A couple of questions, please. The first one is on the truck and LCV business. Obviously, the trends this year have been difficult to forecast and understand, given the pre-buy last year and also the changeover in the product family. Could you just help us understand how you're looking at the business going forward, probably into Q4, but also any early signs on how you expect the LCV business to develop going into 2026? And if you could just add some color regionally as well, between Europe and Brazil. We have heard from a few of your peers that inventories are high in the Brazilian and LatAm markets, and overall, there is some pricing pressure. So some details there would be helpful. The second question is on the powertrain business. You talked about a slight increase in engine volumes, the first signs of recovery. Could you just give us some more details in terms of where these green shoots are emerging from? And we now expect volumes to turn positive going into the fourth quarter, please? Olof Persson: Okay. So on the LCV market, I mean, as we said, the indications we're getting now, and also you saw on the book-to-bill and the increase in our order intake, give us confidence, and we believe that the worst is behind us, and we will see a gradual uptake. We see that also in the activity levels in the market. And as we said, we are sold out now for this year and going into next year. So I think it's always difficult to really judge where this is going, coming from such a long period of a lower market. But I feel the LCV side, I think we have the worst behind us. And exactly how that will pan out coming into 2026, we will have to see. We need a couple of more weeks or months to see that coming into it. But I would say so far, so good, and it's really good and encouraging to see that this is opening up. And that is, of course, then moving also in our key segments on the cabover and both in the medium and the upper side of it. On the LatAm, I didn't really -- LatAm pricing. Akshat Kacker: No, I was referring to the inventory level, if I understood correctly. correct? Federico Donati: Yes, that's right. Akshat Kacker: Some of your peers talk about the weakness in that market, specifically in the medium and... Olof Persson: Yes, when it comes to the inventory, both our own inventory, the dealer inventory and the whole chain, we manage that very carefully, as you know, and we do that also in LatAm when we see the order volumes going down we, of course, adjust production, and we do that rather quickly in LatAm because it's a simple one factory system where we can really manage that in a good way. So I don't have any concerns about the inventory levels in LatAm going forward, even though, of course, on the heavy-duty side, there is, as we said, a decline in the market and the order intake. Then the final question was around Engines. So the green shoots for the engine. I would say that there are a couple of things. One is, of course, that we are getting third-party business. The team in Powertrain has done a great job in actually capturing more third-party business, which is good. We also see, of course, and we have said that before, it's around the stock level of engines out there in the market and the time it has taken to destock that given the downturn that we've seen over the last basically 2 years. And that also gives you confidence that this is covering up for the destocking coming to an end, and thereby, the volumes are coming back up again. So it's a combination of that plus the fact that we actually are successful in getting third-party business. That's giving me confidence going forward in the Powertrain side. Operator: We will now proceed with our next question, and the next questions come from the line of Martino De Ambroggi from Equita. Martino De Ambroggi: The first question is still on the LCV. Olof, I understood your qualitative comments on LCV for next year. But could you provide what your feeling is in terms of Europe and South America if in '26, the market overall is able to have at least a small single-digit rebound in terms of volumes? And the second question is specifically on the defense business because you are providing guidance with and without defense. I was wondering if in implying what the defense EBIT and revenues, is it correct to take EUR 150 million of adjusted EBIT and probably close to EUR 1.3 billion sales, or there are intercompanies or other items that could affect these figures? And I clearly understand you are not providing any updated guidance without a defense on free cash flow. But could you comment on what is the normalized free cash flow or cash conversion for this business? What was in the past? Olof Persson: Okay. If I start with the LCV market, I think I need to stay a little bit on top and give you the feeling I have right now because we need a couple of, I would say, weeks or at least a month to really see where the activities are going to start with in 2026. I mean, we now have visibility for the rest of the year, sold out, and then we need to see how the activity is going. But as I said, so far, so good. I mean, the activity levels that we see from our customers, the tender activities we see are coming. We do see, as you've seen, an increase in the order intake coming from very low levels in Q2 and so on and so forth. So the indications are good. But let's see when we have got that all together, and we will come back to that with a more detailed market development on that one. On the other 2 questions, I'll leave it to you. Federico Donati: Yes. On the defense side, I think, Martino, on the EBIT side, yes, you can be rounded to the number you have mentioned, as well as on the top line. And in terms of the free cash flow of defense, as you know, we have never disclosed it by business unit. The only thing I can say is a cash-generative business, but on a full-year basis. I hope this helps. Operator: We are now going to take our next question, and the next questions come from the line of Nicolai Kempf from Deutsche Bank. Nicolai Kempf: It's Nicolai from Deutsche Bank. Also 2. Maybe coming back on your full year guidance, it does imply a significant step-up in Q4 of around EUR 250 million in Q4 earnings versus EUR 300 million in the first 9 months. I mean, you mentioned that all segments will be stronger in Q4, but can you just give a bit more color on which segment should drive that? And it's probably going to be the light trucks, but any help would be appreciated here. And the second one, if I look at the EU heavy truck market share, came in at 6.4%. I think historically, you were closer to 9% or 10%. And that is despite the fact that you have launched a new model here. Should we expect that next year, you will have a higher market share? Or why is it below the historic run rate despite having a rather new product in the market? Olof Persson: So on the Q4, I think I gave the guidance that -- I mean, I can give at this point in time. The basis for the improvements that we see is there in the truck side is, of course, good to see that we sold out. That means that we can improve. If you look at the backup of the slide, you can also see that the inventory with our dealers has gone down. We have managed the dealer inventory together with the dealers and our own dealer very well. So we're having a system set up for an increase on that side, which I think is promising and stable in that respect. Then, as I said, powertrain bus, increased volumes, the profitability, we have the cost behind us on the ramp-up in Annonay. And just a comment on that, it was absolutely necessary to make sure that we create a very stable, efficient Annonay plant in terms of quality, volume, and efficiency, and we have that behind us, and we are pushing forward now. And then, of course, on the powertrain side. On top of that, as I mentioned and has been mentioned a couple of times, an efficiency program. Don't forget the efficiency program, that's never a linear coming in the profit and loss. It's actually an accelerating program. It's always those programs that are very often. And of course, the majority or a big chunk of that program will now start to come in fully with all the activities we have done, not only on the SEK 150 million that we talked about, but also the activities that we have seen. So those are the things that are actually going to drive the Q4 in coming back and making the result up to the guidance we have. On the EU market side, I think we specified we are now entering into the final phase of the launch, and we have been in a market situation that has been really focusing on keeping the price level on this new vehicle, because I truly believe that we're going to live on this product for many, many years. And we need to make sure that it is in the market in the right way. We have had a very stringent price discipline. We will continue to have a price discipline to really ensure, as I said, all the different aspects of the product. So I definitely see this product going forward in the mid and the long term being a product that definitely has a potential for more market share than it has today. That's for sure. Operator: We will now take one final question. And our final question today comes from the line of Alex Jones from Bank of America. Alexander Jones: Two from my side as well, please. Could you talk a little bit about the medium and heavy-duty outlook that you see in terms of order trends also into 2026? I know you talked a bit more positively about LCV, but medium and heavy orders were down 3% year-on-year in Europe. So your thoughts would be interesting. And then the second question on defense. Can you be more specific at all on the mix factors that weighed on margins this quarter, at least sequentially, and whether you expect those to continue going forward, Q4, and into next year? Olof Persson: Well, on the medium and LCV, that was the feeling going forward into the fourth quarter and into next year. And again, I repeat what I said. On the LCV side, I have a good feeling about the activity level. Also, I would say, on the medium-heavy. And as we progress with our final implementation and launch of the model year '24, we're going to see impacts there as well, not only in terms of market, but also in terms of market share over time. And we're going to continue to keep a strict, selective approach, making sure that we get the pricing. So I would say we come back in the beginning next year, as we normally do, to have a view on the market and where the market is going for heavy and medium. But we're well-positioned in both of these markets. And I think, as I said, I feel comfortable that once we are really fully launched this product now, we're going to see the positive impacts coming, full confidence in that. It is a very, very good product in terms of all the different aspects. And I'll leave it to you, Federico, on the... Federico Donati: On the Defense, sorry, you were talking and referring to the mix, if I take your question correctly, correct, Alex? Alexander Jones: Yes, please. Federico Donati: Yes. But I think, in defense is more generally speaking, you need to consider that we have a very long and solid order book that just needs to be deployed. And so, probably looking at the defense just on a quarterly basis, it is much better to look at it on a full-year basis, and the marginality also. So this is just a question of looking at it on a yearly basis, and the mix can also change by region and by country, and by product itself. So as Olof said at the beginning, we are expecting the performance of each single business unit up year-over-year, and that will be the case for the Defense as well in Q4. That is what I can share with you. Operator: Thank you. That concludes the question-and-answer session. I will now turn the call back to Mr. Frederico Donati for any additional or closing remarks. Federico Donati: Thank you all, and have a nice rest of the day. Thank you. Bye. Operator: That concludes today's conference call. Thank you all for your participation. Ladies and gentlemen, you may now disconnect your lines.
Operator: Good morning. My name is Dustin, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Oscar Health's Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I will now turn the conference over to Chris Potochar, Vice President of Treasury and Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir. Chris Potochar: Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us for our third quarter 2025 earnings call. Mark Bertolini, Oscar Health's Chief Executive Officer; and Scott Blackley, Oscar's Chief Financial Officer, will host this morning's call. This call can also be accessed through our Investor Relations website at ir.hioscar.com. Full details of our results and additional management commentary are available in our earnings release, which can be found on our Investor Relations website at ir.hioscar.com. Any remarks that Oscar makes about the future constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by those forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, including those discussed in our annual report on Form 10-K for the period ended December 31, 2024, and the quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the period ended June 30, 2025, each as filed with the SEC and other filings with the SEC, including our quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarterly period ended September 30, 2025, to be filed with the SEC. Such forward-looking statements are based on current expectations as of today. Oscar anticipates that subsequent events and developments may cause estimates to change. While the company may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in the future, we specifically disclaim any obligation to do so. The call will also refer to certain non-GAAP measures. A reconciliation of these measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures can be found in the third quarter earnings press release available on the company's Investor Relations website at ir.hioscar.com. We have not provided a quantitative reconciliation of estimated full year 2025 adjusted EBITDA as described on this call to GAAP net income because Oscar is unable without making unreasonable efforts to calculate certain reconciling items with confidence. With that, I will turn the call over to our CEO, Mark Bertolini. Mark Bertolini: Good morning. Thank you, Chris, and thank you all for joining us. Today, Oscar announced third quarter results and reaffirmed updated 2025 guidance. We reported total revenue of approximately $3 billion, a 23% increase year-over-year. MLR increased approximately 380 basis points to 88.5% due to higher market morbidity, partially offset by favorable prior period development. Our SG&A expense ratio of 17.5% meaningfully improved by approximately 150 basis points year-over-year. Overall, Oscar reported a $129 million loss from operations and adjusted EBITDA loss of $101 million. Net loss for the third quarter was $137 million. We remain confident in our ability to expand margins and return to profitability in 2026. Scott will walk through our financials in details in a few moments. Before I get into our results, I want to underscore the long-term importance of the individual market. The individual market is the only source of affordable health coverage to 22 million Americans who power our economy. The majority of members are from the small businesses, service and farming sectors, which together generate nearly half of U.S. GDP. These hard-working people do not have access to employer coverage and rely on enhanced premium tax credits to fill the gap. For example, the average farmer making $60,000 a year now pays $75 a month for health insurance compared to $300 a month before the enhanced premium tax credits. That $225 is the difference between paying for health care or paying the bills. Limiting access to affordable coverage in the individual market undermines Main Street and rural America. This market is critical regardless of policy changes, and we are engaged with policymakers on both sides of the aisle to ensure Americans have access to the coverage they need. Now I will update you on current market dynamics. As we said last quarter, 2025 is a reset moment for the individual market. Overall risk adjustment data from Wakely in the third quarter show continued higher market morbidity, which we attribute to Medicaid lives entering the market and the initial impacts of program integrity efforts. Looking ahead, we see rational pricing in the 2026 open enrollment period. We also see the overall market to contract due to the expiration of enhanced premium tax credits and program integrity efforts. However, we remain optimistic Congress will reach a compromise on tax credits to address affordability issues many Americans will face without them. The Oscar team is well positioned to profitably grow share and improve margins. Our 2026 pricing strategy remained disciplined, balancing membership and profitability. For 2026, we resubmitted rate filings in states covering close to 99% of current membership. And our weighted average rate increase is approximately 28%. Our rate filings reflect elevated trend, significantly higher market morbidity in 2025, the expiration of enhanced premium tax credits and program integrity initiatives. Our teams are actively directing members to plans at affordable price points to ease this transition. We have a strong opportunity to capture share profitably as other carriers retreat or price themselves out of the market. Oscar ended the first nine months of 2025 with more than 2 million members, a 28% increase over last year. We are now in the first week of the 2026 enrollment period. The Oscar experience will be available in 20 states, including 2 new states, Alabama and Mississippi. We are also entering new markets and expect to grow share in existing markets in core states next year. Our total addressable market for plan year 2026 is approximately $12 million, up 500,000 year-over-year. Oscar offers consumers more choice in the individual market. We continue to diversify our product mix, evolving from condition-specific plans to plans tailored to meet different phases of life. Our long-standing clinical plans for members with diabetes, asthma, COPD and multiple chronic conditions remain strong performers in the book. Now our new product, HelloMeno, helps women take control of the menopause experience. Today, nearly 5.4 million women over the age of 45 are enrolled in the ACA, a rapidly growing demographic with limited support. Oscar is the first individual market carrier to offer this type of product in partnership with leading women's health clinics and menopause-certified clinicians across the U.S. We help members save up to $900 per year by getting them into the right plans with $0 benefits, early intervention programs and high-value treatments that improve outcomes at lower costs. Oscar also continues to shape the future of employer coverage through ICRA. Our pricing is competitive across our major markets compared to group plans. We expect to see continued conversion from small and midsized employers who are suffering from double-digit group rate increases. Our Hy-Vee Health with Oscar product is now live in Des Moines, Iowa for plan year 2026. This innovative plan is the first of its kind. The plan offers $0 concierge-type care at an affordable fixed price and in-store rewards for buying healthy food. We plan to expand this partnership in additional markets. Our momentum in ICRA reflects the growing demand among employers for a wider range of affordable and innovative benefits. Finally, Oscar is infusing an industry-first health AI agent, Oswell, into our entire product portfolio. Oswell is powered by OpenAI and helps members manage their health on demand. Unlike other AI tools, Oswell is connected to Oscar's cloud-native tech platform. It draws from claims, medical records, care guide notes and other member data for a personal experience. Members can better understand symptoms, common test results, medications and preapprovals tied to plan benefits. Owell also provides doctors with data to improve care paths and members with questions to ask their doctors so they are informed on their care. This is just the beginning of what we will do with leading AI models to redefine the health care experience. In summary, Oscar's highly innovative products, superior member experience and disciplined pricing set us up to grow market share. We remain front-footed and know how to run a successful company in dynamic markets. Oscar will continue to lead the individual market regardless of the outcome on enhanced premium tax credits. All of our attention and resources are focused on executing against our strategic plan. We are well positioned to expand margins and return to profitability in 2026. The ACA and ICRA have the potential to meet the health care needs of approximately 120 million working people. The individual market aligns with major macroeconomic workforce and consumer trends. More Americans work in the service economy than ever before. More businesses want affordable benefit options. More people want greater choice. Oscar is ahead of the demand, and we are creating the future of individual health care for all Americans. I want to thank the entire Oscar team for their hard work during our busiest time of the year. I am proud of how we consistently show up for our members, partners and the business community. I will now turn the call over to Scott. Scott? Richard Blackley: Thank you, Mark, and good morning, everyone. This morning, we reported our third quarter financial results and reaffirmed our full year guidance. 2025 has been a dynamic year for the ACA marketplace. We've observed higher average market morbidity attributable to strong ACA growth from Medicaid redeterminations and ACA program integrity efforts that were implemented after the completion of 2025 pricing. We have taken disciplined actions to manage costs this year and to position us to ensure we return to profitability next year. Turning now to third quarter results. Total revenue increased 23% year-over-year to approximately $3 billion, driven by higher membership. We ended the quarter with 2.1 million members, an increase of 28% year-over-year. Membership growth was driven by solid retention, above-market growth during open enrollment and SEP member additions. The third quarter medical loss ratio was 88.5%, an increase of approximately 380 basis points year-over-year. We received a risk adjustment report in the third quarter for claims through July, which showed a further increase in market morbidity across several states. The third quarter MLR was impacted by a $130 million increase to our risk adjustment payable for 2025, partially offset by $84 million of favorable prior period development, primarily related to claims run out from the prior year. As discussed during our second quarter earnings call, we observed a sequential decrease in utilization each month throughout the second quarter. This trend persisted into early 3Q before stabilizing to be more in line with our expectations. Overall year-to-date utilization is modestly above our expectations. By category, inpatient utilization remained elevated but moderated meaningfully throughout the first 9 months of the year. Outpatient and professional were slightly elevated, while pharmacy remained favorable. Switching to administrative costs. We continue to deliver strong improvements in the SG&A expense ratio. The third quarter SG&A expense ratio improved by approximately 150 basis points year-over-year to 17.5%. The year-over-year improvement was driven by fixed cost leverage, lower exchange fee rates and disciplined cost management, partially offset by the impact of higher risk adjustment payable as a percentage of premium. In the third quarter, the loss from operations was $129 million, a change of $81 million year-over-year, and the net loss was $137 million, an $83 million change year-over-year. The adjusted EBITDA loss was $101 million in the quarter, a change of $90 million year-over-year. Shifting to the balance sheet. We have taken opportunistic steps to strengthen our capital position and optimize our capital structure. During the third quarter, we completed a $410 million convertible notes offering due 2030. Net proceeds were $360 million, inclusive of the cost of a capped call transaction, which increased the effective conversion price to $37.46. In addition, subsequent to quarter end, we entered into an agreement to redeem the vast majority of our outstanding $305 million convertible senior notes for shares. We ended the third quarter with approximately $4.8 billion of cash and investments, including $541 million of cash and investments at the parent. As of September 30, 2025, our insurance subsidiaries had approximately $1.2 billion of capital and surplus, including $564 million of excess capital. Turning now to 2025 full year guidance. Based on our results through the first nine months of the year, we are reaffirming all of our guidance metrics. For total revenue, we now expect to be towards the low end of our guidance range of $12 billion to $12.2 billion, driven by the third quarter ACA Marketplace morbidity that increased by more than our prior estimates. Membership growth has been strong through the first nine months of 2026.For the fourth quarter, our outlook contemplates a sequential decline in membership, driven by more historical churn patterns as the continuous monthly SEP for those at or below 150% of federal property level ended in the beginning of September. Our outlook also assumes risk adjustment as a percentage of direct and assumed policy premiums is in the high mid-teens range. Shifting to the medical loss ratio. We continue to expect a full year MLR in the range of 86.0% to 87.0%. The full year MLR guidance reflects higher average market morbidity, year-to-date utilization patterns and continues to assume a modest increase in utilization in the fourth quarter as members may seek additional care ahead of anticipated coverage changes next year. On administrative expenses, we continue to expect an SG&A expense ratio in the range of 17.1% to 17.6%, driven by greater operating leverage and variable cost efficiencies. We expect a loss from operations in the range of $200 million to $300 million and an adjusted EBITDA loss of approximately $120 million less than the loss from operations. While the third quarter risk adjustment true-up is expected to drive total revenues towards the low end of our full year guidance range, favorable prior period and in-year claims development and administrative expense efficiencies substantially offset the impact. So net-net, our outlook for the loss from operations remains unchanged. Now I'll spend a moment on our planning assumptions for 2026. While it is too early to provide formal guidance, we have taken appropriate actions to ensure we can deliver meaningful margin expansion and return to profitability next year. Our 2026 pricing strategy balanced growing market share and improving profitability. As Mark mentioned, our weighted average rate increase is approximately 28% for 2026. This increase anticipates above-average trend and is significantly higher market morbidity driven by increased market morbidity in 2025, the expiration of enhanced premium tax credits and the current ACA program integrity initiatives. We believe our disciplined pricing strategy captures the changing market conditions we've observed this year and the expected changes next year. Based on a review of final rates, our competitive positioning is in line with our expectations, and we are confident in our ability to profitably grow market share next year. As previously mentioned, we also took actions to eliminate approximately $60 million in administrative costs for 2026. In closing, we remain committed to bringing consumers affordable, innovative products and building an even larger ACA market over the long term. 2025 is a reset for the ACA marketplace. We've taken necessary pricing and cost actions and are confident in our ability to meaningfully expand margins and return to profitability in 2026. With that, I will turn the call over to the operator for the Q&A portion of the call. Operator: [Operator Instructions] And we will take our first question from Michael Ha from Baird. Hua Ha: Regarding the September weekly report, I understand there's worsening market morbidity shifts. But curious, is there any indication in that report how much of that might have been from things like FTR rechecks and removal of duplicative members heading into fourth quarter? I'm curious to hear how you view the potential risk of there being maybe more market morbidity shifts in the December weekly report. So thoughts there would be great. Richard Blackley: Michael, thanks for the question. So the Wakely report that we received had market morbidity increases by about 1.5 points to 2 points across several of our markets. We think that the drivers of that increase are the same types of things that we discussed last quarter, obviously, to a lesser magnitude. As you think about that report captures claims through July. And so it wouldn't capture the impacts of FTR or dual enrollment churn that really happened in the third quarter. On those two topics, I would say that we've seen about 45% of the people who were part of CMS' list to us on FTR or dual enrollments with 45% of that list has churned. When we look at the nature of those members, they actually have higher risk than our average book. So if we -- if the whole industry had similar types of characteristics in their populations, that actually would be a tailwind to market morbidity. So we don't see any reason to change our expectations that market morbidity will stay consistent through the end of the year. Hua Ha: Great. And just one more question. So G&A, if I take a step back, has been such a bright spot in your fundamental story. I think it's shined a really powerful light on +Oscar as well. So I'm thinking ahead regarding your longer-term G&A target for '27, 16% I wanted to ask if you still feel confident on achieving this target even with the magnitude of expected member attrition over the next couple of years. So I'm curious on the target. And I guess, more broadly as well, how to think about decremental margins. Mark Bertolini: Thanks, Michael, Mark here. We actually believe we have more room in our SG&A as we go forward. The AI models we're creating, we've got well over two dozen models on the back end. We've just launched our first agentic. We have another one coming out of the lab. We have a lot of really good opportunity with AI to streamline our operating costs. And of course, the discipline we have on making sure that our variable costs, first and foremost, are fit to the size of our business. So if there is market shrinkage, then we believe that we have plenty of time to be able to adapt our variable costs to fit our cost structure going forward. Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Josh Raskin from Nephron Research Joshua Raskin: I was wondering, Scott, if you could just elaborate a little bit more on the underlying cost trends in the quarter and maybe any changes you saw from the first half? And within that, what areas drove that favorable development and seemed like a pretty sizable number for the prior year? And then I guess, I know it's super early, but any sense of that expected increase in utilization that you mentioned as we're entering fourth quarter? Are you seeing any of that as members get their new rates? Richard Blackley: Josh, let me go through those questions. So I'll start with the PPD, which was $84 million in the quarter. And that was -- about half of that was related actually to risk adjustment where we had some favorable development around some of our estimates for rebates. I know you wouldn't expect that we have rebates because we're a large payer, but we do have some markets where we do pay rebates, and we got some clarity on a few topics that allowed us to true that up. So that was about half of it. The remainder was favorable development from claims, and that just is, I think, encouraging for us that we continue to see both prior year development that's favorable and in-year development. So we feel like those are positives in terms of that we're appropriately reserving for the risk that we're seeing. And if I shift then to what's going on in utilization and trend, I would say that utilization continues to moderate year-over-year. it's still modestly elevated versus our pricing expectations. Inpatient remains elevated, continued to moderate into the third quarter. Outpatient professional, slightly elevated. I would say that we believe that some of the changes we're seeing in terms of shifts between categories is a result of some of the total cost of care initiatives that we're running, where we're really focused on driving appropriate site of care transitions. So not much there that we're seeing that gives us pause. And generally speaking, I think that we look at utilization softening throughout the year and approaching kind of where we expected in pricing to be a good thing. Joshua Raskin: Perfect. Perfect. That's helpful. And then is there some -- if there is some sort of compromise that extends the enhanced subsidies, what should we be looking for that would create a more stable reenrollment process? What mechanisms do you think would be helpful for consumers in getting their insurance for 2026? Mark Bertolini: Josh, I think a couple of points I would make. First, we have been very careful with our plan design and their strategies to create $0 goal plans, $0 bronze plans and have spent a lot of time with the broker community helping educate them on the types of products that they can move people to. And we're seeing good activity on that in the early innings of the open enrollment period. Secondly, if enhanced tax credits are extended, we don't think there will be any real meaningful way to change prices the longer it goes. And I think we're probably beyond that now, but we shall see. But I think there are a couple of things that could happen. One is that we have this minimum MLR in the ACA market. And then a minimum MLR would require us to rebate if the plans made "too much money" based on having lower MLRs. And we would see that as a positive thing for the community and for our members to get a rebate back from their plan as a result of having these enhanced tax credits continue. We don't know what the price effect is until we know what the plan is and quite frankly, how it's going to fit. But that's how we think about enhanced premium tax credits. Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Jessica Tassan from Piper Sandler. Jessica Tassan: I was wondering maybe if you could talk about the enrollment in 2025 in diabetes, asthma, COPD specific plans. Maybe just remind us of the increased risk adjustment visibility and favorability of MLR in these plans, if any, and then the extent to which these plans were expanded for 2026 and whether they've got better retention or different metal mix. Richard Blackley: Jess, thanks for the question. So the thing about these plans is that we create them to draw into the plans, people who are interested in managing their conditions, and it allows us to have really better-than-average engagement with those members, which helps us to manage costs for them and for us. So that's why we really think that these are both creative to help people manage their specific conditions. We continue to roll out new ones because we do see success with retention when we have people with these conditions. They have a high NPS on these plans. So it's still not a large portion of our membership, but it's an important part of our membership in terms of our ability to attract and retain members. Jessica Tassan: Got it. And then just maybe do you have any early thoughts on how Oscar's morbidity in 20 -- I know it's five days in, but how Oscar's morbidity in '26 might evolve relative to the market? Or maybe just anything in your pricing or product design or commercial strategy that you'd call out that would give you maybe more control over your morbidity relative to the market? Mark Bertolini: Well, on the first point, we have priced as if premium tax credits are gone. '25 impact of morbidity, '26 potential impacts on morbidity given the shrinkage of the market, which we think is anywhere between 20% and 30%. 20% is the lower end without a number of these things, 30% being the highest, but that has an impact on our morbidity and program integrity efforts as if they were implemented. And we stack those in our pricing. We did not look for any duplication. And so we believe we're well covered depending on whatever happens next year relative to the morbidity in the market. Anything to add on that, Scott? Richard Blackley: No. And I think it's too early to say much about '26 morbidity. I think that when I look at the core performance of the company this year and I strip out kind of what happened with the impacts of market morbidity shifting higher this year, we're really pleased with the underlying trends, right? We're seeing an MLR when I strip out kind of the impact of what was happening with market morbidity, the MLR -- underlying MLR is pretty consistent with the guidance that we gave at the beginning of the year in the low 81% range. And so when I step back from that and look at the dynamics in the company, our ability to influence what's going on with our medical expenses, we feel like we're really well positioned to continue to navigate this marketplace. And as Mark talked about, we feel like our pricing captures the risk. We feel like the company is getting ever better at delivering our services. So we feel really well positioned for '26. Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Scott Fidel from Goldman Sachs. Scott Fidel: First question, and I understand it's still very early into the OEP here. But could you maybe just sort of walk us through the initial intelligence and feedback that you're getting from all your channels? What -- how that may inform the -- how sort of enrollment may be or sign-ups may be tracking relative to the industry expectations and then the expectations, Mark, that you just mentioned around that down 20% to 30%. Obviously, very early here, but just curious on sort of the initial indicators that you're getting from the OEP. Mark Bertolini: Thanks, Scott. We have seen a lot of activity more than we thought we would see at this point in time. However, you have to look at the structure of bonus programs and the broker network and all the education we did, and we are not banking on anything based on what we've seen in the first five days, quite frankly, that we'll be willing to leverage off of and say we expect our enrollment to be x for 2026. And so we're pleased with the progress so far, but we're not banking any of it as a future perspective on what our enrollment will be -- in the beginning of the year. Richard Blackley: And Scott, I'd just add, Mark talked about this, but I think it's an important thing. We did a significant amount of preparation with our brokers, training, mapping members. So we went into open enrollment with a pretty sophisticated game plan about where do members who are going to lose subsidies map to. We've got -- brokers have all of the information about people who may lose subsidies. So should the enhanced premium tax credits get extended. We know who the members today are who would be impacted by that. The brokers know who they are. We would certainly be able to quickly outreach to them and try to bring them also into the marketplace. So the early days are certainly showing that the preparation and the work we did is proving successful. Mark Bertolini: And also, I would add that we had in November or late October, it was auto mapping on the plans that are leaving the market, and we received the share that we thought we would receive. Scott Fidel: Okay. Got it. And then for my follow-up question, curious to what extent just as you've gotten the latest Wakely data and has shown variation in morbidity and sort of your positioning around risk adjustment in different states. How much were you able to, I guess, sort of factor or inform your pricing and your positioning strategy for 2026? Just curious around how much that may have sort of fed into your go-to-market strategy for '26 to try to sort of operate against some of those changing morbidity dynamics? Richard Blackley: Yes. Well, as Mark said, we're expecting the market is going to contract by 20%, 30%. We actually -- our best estimate is towards the lower end of that range in terms of impact, but we price towards the high end of that range. So we think we've got some -- the potential for some buffer already in there. Based on the way that we built the pricing for '26, Mark went through that we didn't attempt to look for overlaps in the way we measure. We think that creates some natural cushion in terms of the ability to absorb the change that we've seen. So net-net, I think that we continue to believe that our '26 pricing is resilient against what we've seen so far and it positions us well to return to profitability and see margin expansion next year. Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Stephen Baxter from Wells Fargo. Stephen Baxter: I guess the first question would just be trying to dive into the competitive dynamics a little bit more for next year. It seems like maybe some of your large peers have rate increases that are at or maybe above your 28%, but then maybe some of the not-for-profits could be a little bit lower. Just to kind of boil it down, like is there any kind of metric you have where you kind of have an analysis of what percentage of your markets you're going to be in a low-cost position, either just in the silver market or maybe across all your markets and how that compares to 2025? And then I have a follow-up. Richard Blackley: Steve, so when we think about competitive position relative to last year, first of all, all these increases in prices, you've got to start with last year's price position where last year, we were only, I think, in 15% of our markets, we were the lowest or second lowest silver price plan. This year, that's moving up to 30%. We still think that, that's less than some of the other large competitors that we see in the marketplace. So while we're competitive, we're not as competitive as some others. When I think about that relative price position, we think we can grab share in several of these markets. We think that the average price increase nationally is around 26% based on research by the Kaiser Family Foundation. So we think that we've done a nice job of putting our pricing into the market in a way which is competitive, allows us to grow margin, but also is disciplined and allows us to protect ourselves as well. Mark Bertolini: And one more point, Steve, because we believe the enhanced tax -- we priced without the enhanced tax credits being in place. Our metal strategy is fundamentally different than where we were last year. While we still think we'll have a lot more -- we'll still have the majority of our people in silver plans, we have priced gold and bronze plans that fit certain profiles in certain markets based on our underlying provider networks that allow us to have differential pricing from our competitors that are hard to compare by looking at average rate increases. Stephen Baxter: Got it. That's very helpful. And then just two quick numbers follow-ups. I guess, first, the risk adjustment, as you spoke to, is now 17% of direct premiums year-to-date, just making sure that's the right way to think about the full year at this point. And then what is cost trend running at this year? And what are you assuming cost trend is next year? Richard Blackley: Yes. So Steve, I think that the 17% risk adjustment year-to-date is probably a reasonable estimate for the full year, plus or minus. And with respect to cost trend, I won't go further than to -- than I did in terms of my discussion of utilization and what we're seeing in that and kind of it's slightly above our pricing expectations for last year. We have for 2026, assumed a trend increase that is higher than what we've seen historically. And so we are expecting, at least in our pricing to see trend, and this is excluding the impacts of all the market morbidity shifts, but just core cost trend that would be higher than what we've seen in the past. Mark Bertolini: I think that last point is an important one because we stack these things and our morbidity includes a lot of these program efforts and the impact on the population as a result of how risk adjustment came out. So that's separate than the pure underlying trend of our relationships with providers. Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Jonathan Yong from UBS. Jonathan Yong: I guess under the premise of a possible extension of the enhanced subsidies and whatever it may or may not include, how are you thinking about operationalizing this? And what may or may not be included in G&A at this moment, if anything? And what kind of step-up would you need if it were to occur? Mark Bertolini: I think the SG&A piece is not relevant to the enhanced premium tax credits, it's really around growth. So we look at both our fixed cost leverage and our variable cost leverage. We manage the variable cost leverage very close to membership, and then we impact fixed cost leverage, we actually already have going into '26 and expectations for '27. And that's part of what we're doing with our AI capabilities. In the end result, how we're going to operationalize it, we think we're in a good place I mean we look at this every day. We actually met on it yesterday to go over how do we have to think about growth up or down based on our projections. And I think we have the right tools in place with BPOs, for example, and other capabilities that we can use to meet the needs of the people we have on board or to pull back if we need to. Jonathan Yong: Okay. Great. And then I know, again, it's early on the enrollment period. But in terms of the members that are kind of showing up, are these kind of the typical members that would naturally have a 0 -- effectively not be paying anything and kind of for the members that are losing their enhanced subsidies, are they trying to downgrade? Or are they just kind of leaving the market altogether? What are you kind of seeing and hearing with respect to that? Mark Bertolini: Way too early to tell. We don't have that level of detail yet. We will get it, but it's going to be long. Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Andrew Mok from Barclays. Andrew Mok: You mentioned that your competitive pricing was in line with expectations and that you expect to take market share next year. Can you help us understand that strategy a bit more? Why is taking market share the right strategy in 2026? And do you think that is more likely or less likely to hurt from an adverse selection standpoint? Mark Bertolini: Taking market share really means taking advantage of people who priced way out of the market. And I think there's a subtle difference here between the group market that I hope you all understand. Given the risk adjustment mechanism and the way it works, it's almost impossible or just not -- it's not worth underwriting the members in the network. It's about the network itself and underwriting that provider network. And so some of our competitors who have priced way out of the market or left the market, we're using commercial networks at commercial prices where we have been using narrow networks in every market. And in the individual purchasing decision, people at the local market have the opportunity to buy their network and the plan design that works for them versus having an employer offer them a broad area of network, which costs more and a benefit plan that doesn't meet anyone's needs specifically. And so for that reason, we believe that looking at taking share from people that are pricing at 30%, 40% higher, we have an opportunity to take that share, put them into our networks and our underwriting and make it work better and effectively for us. And that's how we price. We're pricing off of the underlying cost of the network because we get covered on the risk adjustment side. Richard Blackley: And I'd just reiterate something that Mark said earlier. We think this is -- what we see is evidence of a very rational marketplace, right? So it's -- we don't think that there's been anyone who's tried to do a land grab and price dramatically lower. We feel like we're right in the pack. So from an adverse selection perspective, that's not something that is at the top of our list of worries. Andrew Mok: Great. And if I could just follow up on membership. I think last quarter, you said that you expected membership to trend down in the back half of the year. It looks like 3Q membership was up about 90,000 members or 4.5% sequentially. So I just wanted to get more color on what's driving that change versus your expectation and the implications of that higher membership on 4Q MLR. Richard Blackley: Yes. I appreciate that question. So membership was stronger than what we had expected in the third quarter. A good portion of that was driven just by lower churn. And so that is a positive that helps, obviously, with the MLR dynamics. We did have SEP member additions as well, but that ended as of September in terms of the continuous SEP, as I said in my comments. So overall, we continue to expect MLR to drift up in the fourth quarter. You can obviously do the math. We give you the full year guidance of MLR, so you can figure out what the point estimate is there. But we build -- when we reviewed our guidance for the year, we looked at all of the trends that we're seeing. We're looking at the details of is there anything that caused us to believe that we needed to increase the full year guidance of MLR, including the SEP performance. And we just haven't seen anything in the details that makes us concerned and we're able to reaffirm our guidance. Mark Bertolini: And one more thing I'll add is that we are very supportive of the program integrity efforts and the things that happened this year in program integrity had less and less impact on us as an organization than others because we spend a lot of time validating as much as we can the membership that comes into our plan. And if we see what we see as potential fraud, we sideline those brokers and those members and evaluate whether or not it's appropriate to bring them on board. So given that, when we received our dual eligible information, it was low double-digit thousands, very low double-digit thousands versus the headline report put out by certain people in the press of 2.4 million people. And so the obvious impact to us was a lot less than we thought it was going to be because we had done the homework upfront. We think this is a key part of making sure risk adjustment works well is that everybody uses these same tools to make sure that the people we're bringing on board belong on board, not because somebody else was able to get commission. Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Craig Jones from Bank of America. Craig Jones: So a follow-up on the fraud comments there. There's been a lot of talk about the -- out of the current administration around the various ways to root it out. So if you were advising Congress on maybe what they could do with a negotiated deal on the enhanced subsidy extension, what would be some of the most effective tools that could be implemented for 2026, maybe during a special enrollment period alongside enhanced subsidy extension to help root out some of that fraud? Mark Bertolini: Again, we support all the program integrity efforts that were put forward this year. We were prepared and we have priced as if those were in place. We have kept that pricing in place because we expect some of them may come along through regulatory action by CMS throughout the year. We want to be prepared to handle that. Of course, we would prefer that the industry get the opportunity to work with CMS to do this within the pricing cycle so that we're having all of these impacts fit and that we aren't disadvantaging our members as a result, disadvantaging working Americans as a result of having to have these huge morbidity jumps because we did it in the middle of pricing. So if we could do it before we price and work together on it, we're more than happy to support the program integrity efforts put forward by CMS. Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Steven Couche from Jefferies. Steven Couche: Is there any way you can quantify what you believe your cost advantage is from your narrow network strategy versus peers? Mark Bertolini: Yes. Richard Blackley: Look, I think, obviously, we're not going to get into the details of our competitive positioning on that. And we think that many of the -- of our competitors do have particularly the more successful competitors have similar strategies around narrow networks. What's most important is really making sure that you have the right network, you have the right providers, you have the right systems in the markets where you're trying to grow. And we think that's one of the important reasons why we can have similar cost, but grow above the market average because we do spend a ton of time in making sure that we curate our markets and that we have the right set of doctors, the right set of hospital systems that are attractive in those markets. Steven Couche: Great. And then is there any way you can help us or share what your assumptions were for the impact of the program integrity measures because we've seen estimates anywhere from sort of a de minimis impact to something quite meaningful. And then are there specific program integrity measures that you think are going to have the most impact? Richard Blackley: Well, look, I don't think that we'll get into the specifics of that. We do think that the state program integrity provisions would have been in place, had an adverse market or an adverse impact on the total size of the market. So we built that into our expectations, as Mark talked about, for pricing, but we'll have to see how those things play out, but we are prepared in terms of the pricing and for '26 that they may come back into practice at some point during the year. Operator: There are no further questions. That concludes our question-and-answer session. That also concludes this call for today. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.
Adriana Wagner: Good morning, and welcome to the ENGIE Brasil Energia's Third Quarter '25 Earnings Results Video Conference. I'm Adriana Wagner, Investor Relations Analyst at ENGIE Brasil, and I would like to make a few announcements. [Operator Instructions] It is worth remembering that this video conference is being recorded at our site, www.engie.com.br/investors, we have made available the results presentation and earnings release filed at the CVM, which analyzes financial statements, operational results, ESG indicators and progress in the implementation of new projects in detail. Before proceeding, I would like to clarify that all statements that may be made during this video conference regarding the company's business outlook should be treated as forecast depending on the country's macroeconomic conditions of the performance regulation of the electric sector besides other variables. They are, therefore, subject to change. We remind the journalists who wish to ask questions that they can do it through e-mail sending it to the company's press conference to present the results. We have with us today, Mr. Pierre Gratien Leblanc, the CFO and IRO; Guilherme Ferrari, Renewable Energy and Storage Officer; Marcos Keller, Director of Energy Trading; and Leonardo Depine, Manager for Investor Relationships. I would like to give the floor to Pierre to begin the presentation. Pierre Gratien Leblanc: So good morning, everyone. I will do it in English. So I hope it will be fine for everyone. So thanks for joining us in this -- during this hour. Always a very, very important moment for us to meet you and to explain you the financial results and the main highlights for the last quarter '25. So if we start with the highlights, it can be the main achievement we realized during this quarter are the following. First of all, regarding our project Assuruá and Assu Sol, we now almost complete the physical phases, and we are starting the operational commercial operations. So we are on time, and it's a very, very great achievement for us. Then we complete also the acquisition and the integration in our portfolio of the 2 hydro power plant, Santo Antonio do Jari and Cachoeira. So now there are -- the 2 assets are fully embedded in our portfolio management and since mid of August, and they are starting to contribute in our EBITDA. We won for the 15th time the trophy of transparency in accounting, Anefac, which recognize the transparency and the quality of our financial statements. And it's a very, very great job from teams and our accounting team. We also be certified as the Best Place to Work according to the GPTW, Great Place to Work Brazil. So good company and good achievement from our HR team. Then I have to mention that there is a subsequent event post from Q3. This is an increase of our social capital. So we decided because we need to comply with the law and our profit reserve was above our social capital in late '24. So we need to increase our capital through the profit reserve incorporation. So we will do it during November months, and we will do it through bonus shares. Then Q3 results in terms of finance is a very, very -- next slide, please. is a very, very good, robust and solid results. As you can see on the slide, our EBITDA grew by almost 12.54% compared to last quarter '24, which is good results. And if we look at year-end -- year-to-date EBITDA, of course, on a recurring basis, we increased our EBITDA in '25 by 6.4%. It's a little bit less true regarding the net recurring results because you can see that we decreased by -- in year-to-date by 8.4% our net income due to the -- mainly 3 factors. First of all, we see an increase of our depreciation of assets because we do have compared to last year, 3 big assets now in operation like Caldeirao Cachoeira. We also have an increase of our financial expenses linked to the high interest rate in Brazil in '25 much higher than in '24. And we do have an increase in our tax expenses also. But overall, very good results, robust. We deliver what we say. So ENGIE is a healthy company on that. Then regarding the ESG KPIs, well oriented to be fair, all of them, except maybe -- and unfortunately, we have to -- 4 accidents during the last quarter '25, 4 accidents with work stop days, some days. So we are still paying a lot of attention, a lot of focus on that. And we also support a lot the increase of the women in our leadership team. So we are on track. We are on the good way to achieve our results. We increased the percentage of women in our leadership team. And we continue to invest in innovation and in our responsibility, social responsibility even if we decrease a little bit our contribution on that. Now time to leave the floor to Guilherme in order for him to present the operation in renewables. Guilherme Ferrari: Very well, I'm going to explain what underlies these figures. Here, we have the availability of our wind, solar and electric assets. Our performance continues to improve, especially in wind and photovoltaic. We have a team that works closely with our suppliers so that we can have greater availability in our equipment. This is the effort of our team, of course, with the help of investment, always seeking good performance of our assets. Now the performance has been significant in these 2 technologies. In energy, we are subject to seasonality, but we're also following a very good availability standard. In transmission, also a very high availability. And of course, these are assets that are more predictable in terms of operations, except for unforeseen things, but we're doing well in transmission as well. Now regarding curtailment, the hot topic in the sector of renewable energy, it has been significantly impacting our generation. The impact is on wind, solar assets and very much aligned with what is happening in the system. We attempt, of course, to minimize this, optimize everything with maintenance, management of these curtailments. We hope that a solution for curtailment will come in the fourth quarter with operational adjustments that should come from ANEEL and the National Integration System. Now another important point that has already been mentioned by Pierre is the acquisition of Cachoeira Caldeirao and Santo Antonio do Jari. And I think you can go on to the next slide. No, perhaps not. If you could go back. Therefore, the organic growth in this quarter, where we added 680 megas additionally from [ Cerrado ] and additionally, the 2 hydroelectric plants mentioned by Cachoeira Caldeirao and Santo Antonio do Jari with 612 megawatts. Next slide, please. As has already been mentioned, we see a growth in generation. This comes from our organic growth and from the M&A operation we have just carried out. Once again, it's organic growth and an enhancement in performance. This year, the wind situation was above what we had expected, helping us to minimize the issue of curtailment. Operational enhancement, better natural resources, both solar and wind, all of these are helping us have an increase in power generation. Next slide. Keller, you have the floor. Marcos Amboni: Good morning to everybody. And I think this slide summarizes our trading activity for the quarter. It was an excellent quarter. And in the graph to the right, you can observe that we had very good sales during the quarter. Now this is a comment we made in the call of last quarter that some operations that were under negotiation are still not reflected in our balance. And this is the case of this quarter, where they are reflected, the variation is due to the accounting of new productions with high production levels, and we're showing the availability, new contracts for all the years until 2029. So we have good volumes, as you can see. And besides these good production volumes, you can see the number of our consumers. We have a good evolution in that figure of consumers when compared with the same quarter last year. 17.6% increase of consumers. We have 2,056 at the close of the quarter and a growth of 24% in consumer units served in the third quarter of '25 until the end. Once again, very positive figures in energy sold, volumes sold as well as in our consumer portfolio with a lower ticket perhaps, but with higher margin. We can see the position of our resources available until 2030 going forward. This means that we continue with that strategy of contracting through time, fine-tuning tactical adjustments, gradual growth, guaranteeing revenues and the predictability of our results. I think this is what I wanted to say regarding that slide, and I am at your disposal during Q&A. Well, to go back to the projects that are under implementation, the Assuruá Wind Complex, as Pierre mentioned, the physical progress has been concluded. It is 100% operational. We're waiting for ANEEL dispatch to enter commercial operations of 100% of this complex. And we're waiting for the decision of ONS that has created new procedures to obtain, well, the license and to test these assets. It's worth highlighting that the Assuruá Wind Complex, as you already know, has quite a bit of supply and the performance has been much above what is expected. It surprises us in terms of its performance. It's the largest wind complex in Brazil and also the part with the best performance throughout Brazil. This project was delivered within the forcing budget within the right time line with health and security fully complied with. And we're in the final stage of execution, the environmental part, the recovery of degraded areas and investment in social areas surrounding the assets location. Next slide, please. Assu Sol, we have concluded it. We are progressing in installation activities. And because of this new procedure of the ONS, we're waiting to signal all of the procedures to be able to enter commercial activity. This is an asset with very good performance, top line performance. Now in terms of CapEx, it's all according to what has been scheduled. It was -- it is in accordance to our scheduling. And the same holds true for health and security. We have a recovery plan for the degraded areas. These are activities that tend to take longer, but within what is foreseen and as part of the social work that we carry out. Next slide, please. Our first transmission project in this presentation is Asa Branca. The first stretch is between [ Shaffield 2 and Corso 3]. It's about to be concluded. This should happen in the fourth quarter. Now at the end of this year, we will have 33% of the project RAP, a relevant amount compared to what we expected in the auction. Now the second stretch is awaiting the license for the continuation. This should take a few weeks, and this should begin the coming year. The final stretch of the project will only come into operation at the end of 2027. Well, in Grauna, this comes from a recent auction at the end of 2024. It's still in the environmental phase, but going according to plan. Now that red line that you see, the brownfield on the map. At the beginning of July, we began to operate that line. We have 5% of the total RAP, not that much, but an important framework for us. It's the first brownfield that we take on with our own operation, not with third parties. And of course, this is important for ENGIE. Regarding Grauna, now if anybody would like to add something, please do. No great updates compared to the last quarter. We -- Well, we are fully mapping everything out in the graph that you see. And regarding the transfer, which is a frequent question that we receive, we're still awaiting the stance of the controller, and there's nothing new this quarter regarding that topic. And the last one, Guilherme, who will speak about expansion where there is nothing that novel. Guilherme Ferrari: Nothing new here. We continue to maintain our project pipeline. And we are awaiting and the market is reacting, of course. There are real demands. We hope this will not be impacted by curtailment. We continue to keep these in our portfolio, especially the wind assets so that we can follow on with their development. Expansions are always marginal, but highly welcome. And as part of this context, we have the possibility of the auction for capacity in the coming year. We have 2 of our assets, Santiago and others that will participate, but well, we will be able to take part in this auction. And another important point refers to the batteries. We're beginning to look at these with greater attention, the development of batteries to also take part in the auction that will take place in the coming year. Marcos Amboni: Well, thank you, Guilherme. We'll go to see our financial performance, return on equity and return on invested capital at satisfactory levels, showing how resilient we are. We invested more than BRL 38 million in the last years, which means that our asset base has increased. And of course, it is updated. The prices in the past were old. It seemed to be greater with this new updated base, the prices have dropped a bit. And some of these projects are not delivering 100% of their EBITDA. This will become more clear in 2026, Assuruá and others delivering their full performance. And so the levels will be more recurrent. Now for the 9 months of '25, we have a slightly higher share of transmission vis-a-vis 2024 as part of our strategy of diversification. 1/4 comes from transmission, gas transportation, 75% from generation. Here, we see our revenue changes at 31.8%. Most of this due to IFRS, BRL 22 million in transmission, but we do have an important organic effect in growth of revenue and volumes, inflation and new assets coming into operation vis-a-vis the same period last year. And if we look at EBITDA, this will become more clear. Now to go to the results of TAG that continues to deliver a very consistent performance, BRL 2.3 billion, and BRL 1 billion -- almost BRL 1 billion of profit this quarter of net income, very similar to the first quarter, somewhat below the second quarter where we had a nonrecurrent effect and doing very well. Here, we have a more complex graph for this presentation referring to EBITDA at one end, the accounting EBITDA that is published. Then we have the intermediate bar that is adjusted EBITDA. This quarter, there were very few adjustments, as you can see and in the middle, adjusted EBITDA and the effect of IFRS, all have a similar growth between 10% and 13%. Transmission, very stable, equity income of tax somewhat lower. So we're left with generation with an increase of BRL 287 million that we have called performance is price, volume and expansion and reduction due to costs associated to expansion, connection cables, material service and sundry costs. This is a positive result coming from generation. Now in the middle, we have a growth of 10.5%. Net income change, a very similar panorama in the center, an increase of 10% from BRL 666 million to BRL 738 million, most comes from adjusted EBITDA, income taxes, negative variations due to depreciation, new assets and partly due to financial results. Our indebtedness has increased a bit. And we have, of course, the interest rates that are higher than the third quarter last year, leading to a 10% increase. We'll speak about our indebtedness, balance debt. It's increasing, which is expected BRL 3 million for the acquisition of Jari and Cachoeira. We have BRL 600 million in debt, BRL 3 million impact on our debt. Only this acquisition changed the EBITDA. It was 2.7x last year. It has now reached 3.2x. This is still a satisfactory level that guarantees a AAA, which we would like to maintain in gross debt, 3.8x, a well-balanced debt, as you can see. Of course, as of now, we need to be more cautious in our coming steps, but a healthy indebtedness. Now in this slide, we show you the debt profile and maturity, a very smooth schedule after 2030. Therefore, this profile is BRL 2 billion a year in terms of debt payment, fully under control. We continue to be AAA, 1/3 in CDI and the rest in IPCA. The cost of the debt evidently has increased a bit, 6.4% on average compared to 5.6% in the same period last year. Of course, there is pressure from the financial conditions throughout the country. Regarding our CapEx, no significant changes, a detachment year-on-year, almost BRL 10 billion year-on-year. This year, BRL 6 billion, which means the BRL 3 billion from Jari and Cachoeira and the rest for the conclusion of Jari, the transmission companies, that is where our CapEx is going to. And in '26, '27, everything at lower levels. We will be left with maintenance and the 2 transmission companies. Grauna that extends to 2028 and Asa Branca until 2027. And finally, well, this slide, I believe, is the same as that of last quarter to show you our payment of dividend 2021, 100%. And since '23, we maintain this at 55% without significant changes. And that is it. Adri will now lead the Q&A session for us. Adriana Wagner: [Operator Instructions] Our first question is from Daniel Travitzky from Safra. He has 2 questions. I will pose the first question and put it together with another question from [ Huang ], an individual investor about the share of bonuses. Could you explain the rationale to do that now? And we have the question from Ruan on the bonus and other models for the payout of dividends and shareholder capital. Pierre Gratien Leblanc: I can take it, this one. You complement if you want. So why we are doing that? It's just because ahead of '24, our profit reserve was above the capital. And to be compliant with the law, we need to increase our capital -- social capital. This is the first point. The second point is we do have -- we had space until -- to increase our social capital until the authorized capital we do have. And this authorized capital was -- is today at BRL 7 billion. So we take the opportunity to go up to the limit or close to the limit. And we proposed to the Board yesterday, and it was approved to increase the social capital up to BRL 6.9 billion, and it will be done through a bonus action. Why? Just because we wanted to -- also to have a better liquidity of our shares in the stocks. And through these mechanisms, we will increase the liquidity of our shares without any financial impact at short term for our minority interest shareholders. Guilherme, if you want to complement or not, up to you. Guilherme Ferrari: No, that was perfect, Pierre, simply to complement the remuneration model besides the shareholder equity payment. In the future, we can alter the company's stock. I don't think this will be done in the short term. This is a model that will be analyzed to see if there's any advantage in doing that. Adriana Wagner: The second part of the question refers to your vision on the solution proposed for the curtailment in provisional measure 384. This is also part of Juan's question, who asks about curtailment and how to deal with it in the medium term? Pierre Gratien Leblanc: I would like to begin the answer, then I will give the floor to Guilherme or Keller. This provisional measure 304 was approved, but not sanctioned. We have to wait for it to be sanctioned. And we need to understand the regulation better. Perhaps Guilherme would like to comment on what is included in this provisional measure. Guilherme Ferrari: Well, this is simply to add information. We're faced with several uncertainties in terms of the real impact, which will be the reimbursement. We still have doubts if there will be reimbursement regarding power or if there will not be reimbursement. And there is an issue that we already mentioned, regulatory issues that could make investments in generation have a different technical condition to the ones we have presently, creating another obstacle to the incredible growth of generation companies. Now all of this strongly impacts our curtailment projections going forward. Marcos Amboni: Well, I don't have very much to add. Everything has been said. We would have to see the final version of provisional measure 304. There are 2 articles that we need to analyze before we can estimate what will be subject to reimbursement and those articles that refer to us and the impact, the effect that this causes on physical distribution and distributed distribution. These are points that need to be further assessed at the end of this legislation. Now there is a positive point in the midterm, and it is interesting for the long term better conditions to insert batteries into the system. This will help us overcome several difficulties that we face at present and physical curtailment can be mitigated if we make good use of these batteries. Now in the coming months and years, we will see how this plays out. To complete that topic and others, we're going to approach this in great detail in ENGIE Day that will be held in Sao Paulo at the end of November. If you can't be with us, we will record the session. Adriana Wagner: Our next question is from Joaquin. The question is will the company think of similar acquisitions compared to the assets recently acquired? Will this go in detriment of new assets in the renewable sector? Guilherme Ferrari: I will begin and then Depine and Keller, please feel at ease to add your comments. Now evidently, the market with this oversupply ended up thinking greenfield made no sense. And with curtailment massively impacting the results, greenfield has been put aside. Now this is a factor that will make us postpone our decision to invest in greenfields. And when we look at M&A for wind and solar operations, the curtailment factor is a fundamental assumption. Of course, the seller will try to insist on curtailment. The buyer will insist on a more realistic curtailment, and this leads to a great difference in values. Potential M&As for renewable wind and solar energy will have to wait until we have a clear vision of the impact of provisional measure 304 and the regulation that will come about to work with distributed generation. Now M&As in hydro plants, well, this is not only our desire, but that of other players, but it is scarce in the market. There are a few opportunities. Whenever an opportunity arises, we will look at it, of course, following the line that we followed for Cachoeira and Jari. We will see the quality of the assets, labor -- I think, labor qualification is fundamental, and that was a positive point in these 2 assets. We were able to maintain all of the employees that were already working there, bringing in the knowledge since the phase of conception until the beginning of operation. And we're adding ENGIE's knowledge to enhance the quality of these assets. We have to carry out an in-house analysis. And as I said, these assets are scarce in the market. There are not very many opportunities. Adriana Wagner: Thank you, Guilherme. The next question comes from Bruno Oliveira, sell-side analyst. Two questions. Any planning on TAG, a possible partial sale in the horizon? And as part of your investment projects, any outlook for a dividend payout of 100%? Or is it too early for this discussion? Pierre Gratien Leblanc: The answer is quite easy is no. Nothing planned in the very, very short term or short term or medium term for TAG. Depine, maybe you can take the second one. Leonardo Depine: Well, regarding the dividends, for the time being, no, our indebtedness continues to grow somewhat above 3 at present and will further increase because of the 2 projects under construction until mid-2026. I think Bruno asked about this. It doesn't make sense for the time being to go back to 100% of payout with indebtedness above 3%. I think we had already referred to this in the second quarter as well. Adriana Wagner: Very good. Thank you. To continue with the next question from Victor Brug, a sell-side analyst for JPMorgan. Any update in the revision of tariffs in the Northeast, TAG? Leonardo Depine: Well, from TAG and the regulator itself, we have heard that this tariff revision should happen in the first half of the coming year. The last information is that this review will be carried out in 2 stages. They're going to work on work and the asset base. So this process will be displaced through June, perhaps will be concluded in June. This is the last statement we heard from the regulator. We shouldn't expect anything very concrete in the short term. Adriana Wagner: Our next question comes from Bruno Vidal, sell-side analyst from XP Investments. Does the company have an outlook on participation in BP and which would be the modality, capital stock increase or increase of indebtedness? Pierre Gratien Leblanc: So we are still studying this opportunity to prepay our UBP topic. We are waiting for the ANEEL calculation. And then we will have until beginning of December to discuss with ANEEL. And then ANEEL will give us if we are interested to prepay the deadline to do the cash out. How we will do it? So it will be probably now in '26, not in '25, is still under discussion inside EBE. We do have a lot of different options. Increase of capital may be one, but it's not the only one. So we will take and choose the best option for EBE to finance the prepayment if we decide to do it. I hope that as Depine said earlier, I hope that end of December during our Investor Day in Sao Paulo, we could give you more and more detail on that. Leonardo Depine: Thank you very much. Our calculation in the time line, the payment should be until the end of March or the beginning of April. So we have the first quarter of 2026 to discuss these options. Adriana Wagner: Our next question is from Lorena, sell-side analyst from Itaú BBA. Our trading strategy, which is the outlook of maintaining part of the portfolio uncontracted considering the price of energy in the coming years. Leonardo Depine: I can answer that. If you could tell me the first part. Adriana Wagner: Our trading strategy, which is the outlook of maintaining part of the portfolio uncontracted, considering our viewpoint on energy in coming years. Leonardo Depine: We continue with that vision, with that strategy of having gradual uncontracting and we make tactical adjustments in terms of sales. This is the best for a company that is capital intensive and works with generation. We give ourselves the opportunity to make the most of higher prices in that long arm. Now we're thinking of year plus 1, year plus 2. We have future prices that are higher than years further ahead. So there is space for that long arm, while the market prices react in the upward position. It's important to make the most of contracting and not move away from this now. There's also a limit in liquidity in the market. So we can't contract everything on the spot with this very volatile price model, we know there are scenarios where the price will be much too low and spot prices will be low and we have to counterbalance our vision that there is room for future prices to improve vis-a-vis the risk in the short term, not allowing huge volume for the short term because we'll end up in the spot market. This is a bet, of course. Our profile is to have an appropriate management between results, our revenues and the risks that we take on. To summarize, we're going to continue following our broader strategy of gradually contracting future energy. Adriana Wagner: Thank you very much. At this point, we would like to end the question-and-answer session. I will return the floor to our officers and Mr. Depine for their closing remarks. Leonardo Depine: I would like to thank all of you for your attendance, and we hope to see you at our next events. We will meet at our event at the end of November, and we hope to have a better vision of the impacts of PM304. Thank you all very much. Have a good day, and we hope to see you in our next event. Pierre Gratien Leblanc: Thank you all. See you in late November in Sao Paulo. Adriana Wagner: We thank all of you for your attendance, the energy video conference and have a very good afternoon.
Operator: Good afternoon, and welcome to the Kits Eyecare Third Quarter 2025 Financial Results Conference Call. This call is being recorded and available later today for replay. Your hosts today are Roger Hardy, Chief Executive Officer; Joseph Thompson, Chief Operating Officer; and Zhe Choo, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I'm required to provide the following statements respecting forward-looking information, which is made on behalf of Kits and all of its representatives on this call. Certain statements made on this call will contain forward-looking information. These forward-looking statements generally can be identified by the use of words such as intend, believe, could, expect, estimate, forecast, may, would, and other similar meaning. This forward-looking information is based on management's opinions, estimates and assumptions in light of their experience and perception of historical trends, current conditions and expected future developments as well as the factors that they currently believe are appropriate and reasonable in the circumstances. Actual results could differ materially from a conclusion, forecast, expectation, belief or projection in the forward-looking information, and certain material factors and assumptions were applied in drawing a conclusion or making a forecast or projection as reflected in the forward-looking information. Management cautions investors not to rely on forward-looking information. Additional information about the material factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the conclusion, forecast or projection in the forward-looking information and material factors or assumptions that were applied in drawing conclusion or making a forecast or projection as reflected in the forward-looking information are contained in Kits' filings with the Canadian provincial security regulators. During today's call, all figures are in Canadian dollars, unless otherwise stated. And with that, I'd like to turn the call over to Mr. Roger Hardy. Please go ahead. Roger Hardy: Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. When we started Kits, it was with deep conviction and enthusiasm. We've explored several categories and potential ventures, all with intriguing possibilities, but one clearly rose above the rest. We envisioned building a new breed of technology company, one that would serve billions of people around the world who rely on vision correction to function every day. Through countless conversations with vision-corrected customers, we uncovered a critical insight. The optical industry had grown complacent. It had forgotten the people it was meant to serve. At its core, the sector relied on a century-old model, overly complex, expensive and opaque. Duopoly dominating the space had lost sight of its purpose, enabling people to see, work and live fully. The addressable market was already immense, estimated north of $100 billion globally, but the true potential was even greater because nearly everyone everywhere will eventually need vision correction of some form. Prospect of transforming such a vital category was profoundly motivating. This was a chance to create something enduring to build a company that improves people's daily lives in a way that enriches how they live, work and connect. That ambition inspired our mission to make eye care easy. Today, we set out to serve the modern consumer digital-first, informed and empowered, someone who grew up with a phone in hand and expected frictionless experiences. We imagined an end-to-end platform controlling every essential component through vertical integration from customer acquisition and retention to manufacturing and fulfillment. It was an ambitious vision, especially starting from 0 back in 2018. From time to time, I find it valuable to revisit those original ideals and ask, do they still hold true? Are we executing in line with our mission to reinvent a century-old category? One of the things I love most about leading Kits, a public company, is the rhythm, the relentless 90-day sprint. After more than 2 decades of running public businesses, it's a cadence I and my family know well and deeply value. At Kits, we operate on a nimble operating system. Every quarter, the metaphorical cannon fires and the sprint begins anew, 90 calendar days, 60 business days to deliver results. Each quarter starts with a clear list of 5 priorities that our management team aligns on. Of course, there are many other initiatives, but these 5 are the nonnegotiables. Call me traditional, but I like to keep revenue and EBITDA at the top of that list. From there, our focus turns to the customer, how we can strengthen emotional connection, personalize engagement and listen authentically to feedback. We examine our product to ensure it delights because our customers have no patience for mediocrity. They want authenticity anchored in quality, selection and affordability. And finally, we set clear technology objectives to ensure we're operating on a premium stack at the leading edge of innovation. This quarterly cadence gives us a mirror, a moment to reflect, measure and hold ourselves accountable as we strive to deliver on the bigger, longer-term mission. I'm pleased today to update shareholders and our team on another strong quarter of performance. During our last earnings call, we guided Q3 revenue between $52 million and $54 million with a targeted adjusted EBITDA margin of 5% to 7%. Proud to report that we delivered record revenue of $52.4 million, up 25% year-over-year and 6% sequentially. This marks our 12th consecutive quarter of positive adjusted EBITDA, which rose to $2.9 million or 5.5% of revenue, up 79% year-over-year, and our net income reached $1.9 million or $0.06 per share. Gross margins expanded to 34.6%, up 170 basis points from last year, a seasonally strong performance. And we welcomed 99,000 new customers in the quarter. This quarter also marked a major milestone, surpassing 1 million active customers, a testament to both our reach and the trust we've earned. It's now our third consecutive quarter averaging 100,000 new customer additions. Year-to-date, new customer growth is up 37%, reflecting accelerated awareness and adoption. The Kits flywheel is spinning faster. New customers are driving growth today and recurring value tomorrow, returning at higher rates and expanding lifetime values. We have an exceptional product, unmatched selection, a beautiful website powered by state-of-the-art technology and the fastest fulfillment in optical, all underpinned by a culture committed to purposeful execution. We're now one of the fastest-growing eyewear brands or brands in North America, $200 million business with brand awareness concentrated in just one city, Vancouver. Candidly, that underscores the magnitude of the potential ahead, a uniquely attractive growth profile with asymmetric upside as we begin to replicate our Vancouver success in other cities across North America. A particular standout this quarter was the strength of our Canadian business, up more than 38% year-over-year, powered by strong repeat purchases and a robust new customer acquisition as we tempered our investment in the U.S. this quarter. Our Kits branded contact lenses grew an astounding 380% year-over-year with gross margins exceeding 50%. Other segments of our 50-50 clubs such as our Progressive and designer collections also posted impressive gains, each with margins near or above 50%. These categories are scaling rapidly and will become increasingly influential contributors to growth and profitability over the coming years. Our glasses segment remains a cornerstone growth engine. Glasses revenue increased 25% year-over-year, driven by both new customer additions and continued premium lens adoption. Our vertically integrated model gives us a structural advantage controlling quality, speed and cost to deliver premium products at accessible prices. This translates into higher customer satisfaction and superior margins over the long term. Repeat customers accounted for 62.4% of total revenue, contributing more than $32 million in the quarter, evidence of a deepening loyalty and growing engagement. And premium lenses grew 55% year-over-year and now represent 44% of revenue, reinforcing the power of our recurring compounding revenue model. We also continued our rhythm of innovation, launching 9 new collections and 77 models across 240 color ways, reinforcing our pillars of quality, selection and affordability. The standout was the oval edit, a strategic expansion capitalizing on the surging oval trend validated by the exceptional performance of our Soren frame, our top seller. We responded with agility, introducing 15 new styles across new colors, sunglasses and shape variations, including rectangular and sport additions. We also showcased the brand through our Gran Fondo activation, a proud moment seeing Kits on the podium and across the course, worn by individuals who, like us, are motivated by purpose and progress as they race to whistler on their bikes along the beautiful Sea to Sky Highway. True to our DNA, we kept testing and learning. As a nimble vertical retailer, we can pilot new ideas with minimal risk and remarkable speed. A small 4-frame capsule for children quickly demonstrated strong traction, validating another future expansion path. That speed of iteration powered by real-time customer data is what defines Kits as a forward-thinking brand. These capsules outperformed through organic and influencer channels, driving incremental traffic, engagement and repeat purchases. Looking ahead to Q4, we expect continued momentum with revenue in the range of $52 million to $54 million and adjusted EBITDA margins between 4% and 6%. We also look forward to introducing our new Chief Marketing Officer early in the new year. With that, I'll hand the call over to Joe and to Zhe. Joe? Joseph Thompson: Thanks, Roger. The Kits team has been hard at work in the quarter, building infrastructure to deliver results for years to come. Infrastructure that tracks carrier and delivery performance and allows us to systemically shift orders to the best carrier, providing faster delivery for customers. Our systems that optimize every layer of the customer journey from how customers move through the site to how orders move through our system, increasing convenience to customers and reducing bounce rates. As we invent, large language models are helping the team build these systems even faster and with less G&A investment required. And of course, building infrastructure around our 50-50 initiatives, our top-performing innovation delivering approximately 50% growth year-on-year and approximately 50% gross margin or higher. We were delighted to recently welcome Kits contact lenses to the 50-50 club that already includes initiatives like digital progressives, premium lens upgrades and more. And the team now feels we are building what may be the biggest of these initiatives yet with the beta launch of OpticianAI. As AI is moving commerce from search to conversation within agentic commerce, Kits is helping to lead the way in eye care. OpticianAI is our digital optician designed to make buying glasses easier and faster, replicate the guidance of an in-store optician and be accessible anywhere. Still in beta, the team has rapidly iterated the technology now on version 10. The most recent release, AI vision introduced major user experience improvements. Based on customers' unique attributes, they can now receive interactive and personalized recommendations as they explore new frames. Further optimizations to our virtual try-on are creating a step change in the consumer experience with the introduction of a dual try-on view that lets shoppers compare 2 frames side-by-side and the ability to adjust color ways within seconds. It's an experience that removes the friction of in-store shopping and offers a level of confidence and convenience unmatched in traditional brick-and-mortar retail. Still in early days of adoption, these enhancements are increasing conversion, lowering drop-off rates and delivering a shopping experience that feels both intelligent and human. Consumers are the heart and soul of Kits. And as customers use OpticianAI, they help shape an even better shopping experience for millions more customers in the future. We believe there's a lot more to come from this initiative as OpticianAI continues to evolve. That's a great segue to Zhe, our CFO, to share details on our Q3 financial performance. Zhe? Zhe Choo: Thanks, Joe. Following a strong first half, Q3 results reflect our continued ability to deliver consistent growth, supported by steady execution and meaningful contributions from both new and loyal customers. In Q3, we continued to see meaningful operating efficiencies. Fulfillment expense as a percentage of revenue improved to 10.2%, down 60 basis points year-over-year as our vertically integrated lab and distribution network deliver greater productivity at higher volumes. We fulfilled approximately 266,000 orders this quarter, highlighting the operational discipline and consistency of our team. Customer acquisition continued to drive our performance in the third quarter. We welcomed more than 99,000 new customers, contributing over 37% of revenue for the period. Even with this strong growth, we reduced marketing spend by 110 basis points quarter-over-quarter, bringing it down to 14.1% of revenue. This improvement reflects the growing strength of our omnichannel platform and increased recognition of the Kits brand. Importantly, despite a higher mix of new customers, average order value rose to $197, up from $190 last year, showing continued demand for higher basket sizes and premium lenses. As these new customers return for repeat purchases, we expect to see further gains in both average order value and lifetime value. General and admin expense also improved to 5.7% of revenue compared to 6.2% last year, reflecting disciplined overhead management even as the business scales. We achieved a gross margin of 34.6%, a 170 basis point improvement from 32.9% last year, while gross profit increased 32% to $18.1 million. These results show the strength of our integrated model and our ability to fine-tune pricing, product mix and promotions to attract new customers and keep them coming back. Turning to profitability. Adjusted EBITDA was $2.9 million, representing a 5.5% margin, an improvement of 170 basis points from last year. This marks our 12th consecutive quarter of positive adjusted EBITDA, highlighting our consistent execution and focus on profitable growth. Net income increased to $1.9 million compared to $0.1 million last year, a strong improvement year-over-year. We ended the quarter well capitalized with $19.7 million in cash, giving us a strong foundation to continue investing in growth while maintaining financial discipline. We have built a strong foundation for long-term growth, supported by continued innovation in digital eye care and disciplined execution across the business. As we move into the fourth quarter, we remain confident in our ability to deliver sustained profitable growth and create long-term value for our shareholders. I'll now turn the call over for questions. Operator: [Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Martin Landry from Stifel. Martin Landry: Congrats on your results. My first question, I'd like to -- if you could discuss how the quarter evolved. Some retailers have seen a strong start of the quarter in July, and they've seen the momentum abating a little bit in September. And I was wondering if you've seen a pattern like that evolve during the quarter. Roger Hardy: Yes. Thanks, Marty. For us, it was a fairly consistent quarter on the demand side. And I think we talked a bit about it at the prerelease, but we saw in September a number of others be highly promotional. In our own case, it was fairly business as usual. So we saw heavy promotion all around us, particularly in September. As you can see from the results, our margins improved. And it was fairly consistent. Probably the one side note would be that for us, the postal strike did come in late in the Q and did have some, although nominal effect, and we don't want to really make an excuse of it, but the post office shut down for the last couple of days of the quarter, and it obviously has some effect. But no real change in full demand on that side. Martin Landry: Okay. And then I heard in your prepared remarks that you talked about -- you've tempered your customer acquisition in the U.S. this quarter. Can you expand a little bit on that? What prompted you to do that? Roger Hardy: Yes. Sure, Marty. Candidly, we've been cautious with the U.S. throughout the last quarter. Lots of moving parts there, as we know, with the border and other, I'd just say, general some uncertainties. But we're -- our view is now kind of we're returning to a bullish outlook. We feel like it's stabilized, and we're getting ready to turn back on our efforts in the U.S. We were, I'd say, basically on the sidelines for a lot of the Q waiting to see how some of the regulatory and other things might develop. And fortunately, it's not in a position to have a material or an effect on us at this point. So we're looking forward to reigniting, I would say, the U.S. And as you know, wherever we invest and focus our attentions, we tend to see results. So maybe I'll see if Joe has anything else to comment there. Joseph Thompson: And I guess maybe last thing to note is we were really fortunate as we looked at the market. We now have 2 markets, 2 business lines, both doing -- all doing very well. And we felt we had plenty of room for growth in the Canadian market. And our glasses business continued to perform spectacularly well in Canada, growth north of -- well north of 50% on glasses in Canada in the quarter. And so I guess that's part of the reason why you're hearing so much confidence that we delivered a 25% growth in spite of a reduction of glasses investment in the U.S. market. Martin Landry: Okay. Okay. So I guess that explains a little bit. That's a good segue to my last question. I mean your contact lenses grew faster than glasses this quarter. It's, I think, a first in 2 years. And I think you probably have answered that question saying that you've slowed down the marketing on your acquisition -- customer acquisition for glasses in the U.S. Would that be the explanation? Joseph Thompson: That's the key driver, correct, Martin. I think Roger pointed this out very well a few minutes ago. But where we invested, we saw strong performance. So we focus on high LTV areas like Kits contact lenses, digital progressives was, again, a big driver, well, well over 50% growth quarter-on-quarter there and the overall Canadian market with revenue up 38%. And so that was really the driver. You've diagnosed it correctly. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Luke Hannan from Canaccord. Luke Hannan: I wanted to dig in a little bit more to the Q4 outlook, and I think you've partly answered it in your responses already. But the growth -- revenue growth this quarter is around 25%. It's a little bit lighter than that, what you expect at the midpoint for Q4. I'm sure part of that is you're facing a strong comp. It likely also has to do with the marketing efforts. But specifically, what I wanted to ask about is there was a peer of yours that mentioned earlier today that they were seeing a slowdown in spending specifically amongst the younger cohorts. So I was just looking to confirm that, that's not what you're seeing in your business right now. Joseph Thompson: [Audio Gap] the Q4 guide and then the behavior that we're seeing from consumers. I think what you're hearing from us is continued high confidence in growth on both new customers and repeat, balanced with a strong dose of conservatism. Some of this conservatism, I think, comes from the fact that Q4 is increasingly backloaded with Black Friday, Cyber Monday. It's now such a dynamic period combined with year-end, which is always very strong for us and the ramp-up of returning to more glasses investment in the U.S. So we're as confident as ever in the business, but just maybe a little conservative. Why don't I just pause there. I'll come back to -- or maybe just to address the consumer question. Correct. We are seeing consistent strength on customer acquisition. We are not seeing some of the patterns that we have been hearing about in the market. On the key inputs, new customer growth strong, up 37% year-to-date, traffic up, average order value up about 4%, now just under $200. And I guess maybe one point on that, an observation over the last 6 to 9 months in this sector and others have really -- what we've been seeing is an increase in market retail pricing in the neighborhood of 10%, 20%, sometimes more and maybe a pullback on conversion or order levels for those that have. And as we look back on our business over the last year, we've really chosen to keep pricing consistent, in some cases, even lowering a few price points. And that's really proven unique and perhaps prevented us from seeing some impact. Roger Hardy: Yes. And Luke, I'd probably just echoing Joe's comments. I mean, the way we think about our business, consumer spending is about 70% of GDP in Canada and the U.S. We're in the nondiscretionary part of where consumers play. We show up with great value, as we said, affordability. And so the risk reward in our Kits business, we think, is compelling. And we're focused on driving a compelling return. So yes, we're heads down, continuing to execute on the opportunity, not seeing that softness that you referenced. Luke Hannan: Great. Roger, I also wanted to follow up. You did talk about the Canada Post strike as well. I think it impacted you for basically the last week of the quarter. Can you quantify, if at all? It sounds like it was immaterial, but is there, call it, $1 million, $2 million that you would have lost in revenue or that got shifted from Q3 into Q4? Roger Hardy: Yes. As I said, we're not -- we don't want to pull out a specific value. We -- it's a highly complex thing we do at Kits on most days. And so that just added one more component to it. But it definitely got our team activated and finding alternative ways to get the product out into customers' hands in a timely way. So it's not -- it obviously doesn't help when the post office goes on strike or when Trump announces a new regulation at the border that even the border agents aren't familiar with. And so that also takes a couple of days to trickle down. So there's always many moving parts. Our job here is to solve problems, not make excuses. So I was kind of pointing it out to say, hey, it was a factor. It blends into that quarter. And as Joe said, from our standpoint, we're going to keep being conservative as we look out into the next coming quarters. We're confident in growth in our business right now and going forward. The business has grown 29% so far this year. Canada growing 38%. So we're optimistic. When we look at investing time and energy in different markets in different sectors, we're getting returns. So our expectation is that will continue. And we're definitely not quarter-to-quarter as focused as you are, my apologies, Luke. But we're thinking -- we take the long view, and we're kind of thinking out about next year and the next 2 to 3 years and just building consistent, great, great business. So yes, no excuses. That's a long way of saying we're not making excuses, but we'd appreciate if the post office didn't go on any more strikes, we'll put it that way. Luke Hannan: Fair enough. Fair enough. I wanted to ask also about just Black Friday, Cyber Monday expectations. I was looking around on your site earlier. It looks like there's some promotions that you already have in place right now. Can you remind us, did you -- was it this early last year that you started your Black Friday, Cyber Monday promotions? And then what's your overall expectation on the levels of promotion in the channel? You did mention some other peers, it seems like have been more promotional towards the end of Q3. Has that persisted also thus far into Q4? Joseph Thompson: Yes. Thanks, Luke, for asking about it. This Black Friday, Cyber Monday period has really kind of become a whole season in itself. And so to answer your question, yes, it's consistent with last year. We do see more customers coming into the market earlier than ever. Here we are a couple of weeks before Black Friday. And so we've seen just an incredible start to the event that the team launched on Monday, and we're just -- we're super excited for these next 2 months are just so fun. You see more customers in the market, insurance kind of -- insurance premiums for a lot of customers run out at the end of December. Folks are looking for -- to refill before they go away on holidays. So it's a really fun time for our team and for our business. Luke Hannan: That's great. Last one, and then I'll pass the line, a quick one. The OpticianAI, what's the rough expectation when you expect to roll that out more broadly? Joseph Thompson: Yes. Sure, Luke. Yes. So Phase 1 was just testing the early engagement has been very strong. So it's -- the rollout begins and continues, I would say, it's in real time. Now on version 10, the team is moving into what I would say -- the way we capture it is Phase 2, which is extending the reach into more categories, including contact lenses and in more parts of the site, including search and a full checkout integration. And then maybe even post-order experience. Longer term, maybe Phase 3, you could envision this product to be a stand-alone experience. And really, we can hardly contain our excitement on the opportunity ahead of us here. We've got over 1 million active customers, vision-corrected active customers, and we have the opportunity to offer every one of them a personalized experience with this product in addition to the millions and millions more that will come onto the platform. So we're very excited. We shared a few initial data points, which were encouraging on conversion and satisfaction with the product. Really, this product is a trust builder for customers over the long term. So it's really an LTV enabler where customers can come in, ingest their prescription, have their face shape measured and have faster navigation through thousands and thousands of frames and a more personalized experience. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Douglas Cooper from Beacon Securities. Doug Cooper: Just a couple of ones for me. Just on the glasses side of the business -- can you guys hear me okay? Roger Hardy: Yes, we've got you, Doug. Thank you. Doug Cooper: Just on the glasses side, revenue was -- where is my -- $7.1 million, I think it was just under $7.1 million. The quarter before was $7.186 million. So it was down a little bit sequentially. So I just wanted to dig in some of your thoughts there. Roger Hardy: Yes, sure, Doug. And candidly, as we discussed, we really were cautious in the quarter given some of the rumblings coming from south of the border. We did not want to make big investments in net new U.S. customers with some uncertainty around what would happen at the border, would there be changes, additional impacts, no impact and so on. And so I think, like I said, we were cautious. We're happy to see that the growth continued in Canada that as we invest, we see customers coming. And so I think that's essentially where it is. Our expectation is that as we invest in kind of the back half of this year or this Q and into next year, we'll have lots of different opportunities to continue to grow that business. Anything I missed there, Joe? Joseph Thompson: Maybe, Doug, just to emphasize, every quarter is a bit different. We had a very strong Q2 in terms of new customer adds. Q3 revenue was still up 25% year-on-year. And we saw significant growth on unit volume up over 40%. So within the Canadian business, growth was as strong as ever, actually, I think, amongst one of the strongest quarters we've ever had on glasses, both quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year. So where we invested, we saw returns, and now we're excited to lean back into the U.S. market. Doug Cooper: Okay. So of the 99,000 new customers, what percentage of those were Canadian? Roger Hardy: It's not something we break out, but -- so yes, we're not kind of at that level of detail at this point. Doug Cooper: Just... Roger Hardy: Go ahead, Doug. Doug Cooper: I was just going to say just moving on to the Q4 guidance, 4% to 6%, the midpoint would actually be a decline in EBITDA margin sequentially. Maybe just thoughts there. Joseph Thompson: Sure, Doug. I think just to emphasize, confidence has never been higher from us in our business, both -- and we're just -- we're balancing -- what we saw in Q3 was an opportunity to onboard more new customers than we anticipated. And so with a long-term view and incredible repeat rates, we took it. And so as opposed to kind of a quarter in, quarter out look at the business, we've just said, on a long-term basis, growing new customers by 37% year-to-date is going to bode very well for 2026, 2027 and beyond. And so -- and then combined with, as we talked earlier, just a really strong dose of conservatism, knowing so much of the quarter is still ahead of us with Black Friday, Cyber Monday and the end of year peak. So just know that we're just being conservative and -- but optimism is strong, particularly on our ability to add more new customers, which does come in at a slightly lower adjusted EBITDA impact driven by slightly higher marketing. Doug Cooper: Okay. So just a final one for me then just to continue on the profitability margins. We've talked in the past about target of double-digit EBITDA margin. What is your expectation now of the timing of that? Roger Hardy: Yes. It's like it's always been, Doug, slow and steady, consistent quarter-on-quarter, year-on-year progress. And as these high-margin pillars become larger parts of our business, as we continue to gain operating efficiency as word of mouth continues to fuel our growth, that's where we see ourselves getting to. We're just steady as the business goes. We're still looking out kind of a couple of years. Like I said, we've grown 29% so far this year. We're optimistic that we'll maintain that level of growth going forward, 25% to 30% is our internal target for next year. And there's a little seasonality. So we obviously pulled forward a few orders in early Q1 last year. There's lots of 1-year people who were able to buy and take advantage of annual orders. And I think that's a good learning. But our sense is that those people will be back early in this coming year, and we've learned a lot from that. So we're looking forward to continue that growth curve. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Matt Koranda from ROTH Capital Partners. Joseph Gonzalez: It's Joseph on for Matt. Just want to see if you guys can answer. It's good to see the good -- great contact sales here year-over-year. Anything to unpack there just in terms of the consumer? Are you guys seeing any different buyer habits such as like shortened time windows instead of -- instead of customers going for those year packs going for like the 90-day or 30-day packs, anything on there to like attribute to the strength you see in 3Q? Joseph Thompson: Joseph, thanks for the question. We're not seeing a lot of deviation from historical patterns. We track average order value. That's continued to be strong and growing on contact lenses, and that was true again Q3 and year-to-date. We also track number of units per, and again, no change there, strong and growing. In terms of where have we seen some shifts within this very big and productive contact lens business, we mentioned our own brand of Kits contact lenses, which has performed very well, well ahead of our expectations and continues to grow. So I guess that would be one. And then just what we've probably -- you've heard us talk about in previous quarters is really a continued migration to high LTV opportunities like daily modality contact lenses, and that continues to perform very well. So no real shift. Joseph Gonzalez: And kind of just -- go ahead, Roger. Roger Hardy: Yes. I mean I think just to highlight Joe's point and our previous discussion around our Kits branded contacts, it's become an interesting little pillar like we like to say, a 50% growth and -- greater than 50% growth and 50% margins. And it's one of these things that could really -- in a business like ours where the contact lens business itself continues to be, as you said, it's loyal, it's recurring. It's a very healthy annuity stream. And if we can take those margins and start to blend them with our own product at 50% gross margin or higher, it makes a compelling case for the future of that contact lens business. So -- and it also gives us a little bit of brand lock-in. The reports from our customers when they switch out of one of the other products that's a legacy product into our own is that it's a very, very comfortable lens. The initial wear reports are excellent. And so people like the lens. They stay in the lens, they come back for the lens. We often see other people get into the contact lens business, not really understanding how important the initial wear comfort can be. And if you haven't spent the right amount of time or otherwise, you're going to have those customers coming back. So it can be challenging. But fortunately, the team here did all the work upfront, and it's growing at an impressive rate. So for me, that's kind of the key -- or one of the key parts of the contact lens business. And there remain lots of other interesting opportunities as we think about colors and other value adds that Kits can do from its own platform. Joseph Gonzalez: Got it. It's impressive to see and great to hear. And then just kind of my last question here. As you guys talked about the border procedural shifts in terms of the systems and everything that goes around there. Is that all behind us now in 3Q? Or should we expect that to continue into 4Q? Just what are your thoughts there? Roger Hardy: Yes, Joseph, I mean, great question. I think if anybody knows the answer to that, it's sometimes -- there have been a number of moving parts. I think the most important thing is that the Kits team here does complex things and does complex things pretty much on a daily basis, including taking an order for something with as many possibilities as our last calculation was 192 million possible variance when we make a pair of glasses. We start making it for the customer that orders minutes after they order, finish that order 30 minutes later and get it in the box to them the next day or 3 to 5 days. So the border is generally the least of our worries. So yes, we're not anticipating any changes, but the world is a dynamic place today. And so when facing a dynamic place, you're excited to come to work with a great group of people like we work with at Kits that love solving complex problems, that love serving customers, that get up fired up to make it happen every day. So that's the best way you can hope to address the unknowns, and that's kind of how I would think about it. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Frederic Tremblay from Desjardins Capital Markets. Frederic Tremblay: Just maybe following up on that last question on the U.S. Just curious to get your thoughts on what specifically made you more comfortable to start reinvesting more heavily in the U.S. following the Q3 pause. Is there anything logistically or internally that evolved to spark that change? Joseph Thompson: Fred, thanks for the question. We -- I think maybe a couple of comments from our side. Every day, we get -- as -- I think as Roger said very well a few minutes ago, this team just gets better every day, every week on execution, and we learn more and more. And so what you see from us and you'll continue to see from us is a cautious start and then a relatively rapid scale up on everything that we do once we have confidence and once the data supports the decision. I think this is just another example of that for us. On one hand, we saw ample growth opportunities in the Canadian market, and we took it in the quarter from new customer acquisition, from a glasses growth, from an overall market growth at 38%. And we wanted to also learn more, which we did. And so the team now has that confidence. With regards to tariffs in general, no change to our thinking here. Every quarter, every month, the situation evolves, but it evolves for the whole category. And our view continues to be that if we have a lightweight infrastructure, if we stay lean, if we keep the layers out between raw material to customer, that offers us the ability to move fast and increase the value delta that we have to the market and offer customers continuous great value. Roger Hardy: Yes. And I'd probably just say last point on this is that over the last number of months, we -- I'm kind of reminded of Elon Musk in that kitchen sink or that sink, it's like everything in the kitchen sink has been thrown at kind of Canadian -- Canadian trade policy, and we've developed so many different contingency plans. At this point, we're quite comfortable that we can handle including the kitchen sink coming flying at us. We're quite ready. So it's really just a comfort that so many things have happened. We've handled them. And then we've got a contingency plan in place with the group here to tackle just about any problem. So yes, we look forward to reporting on that progress at the end of Q4. Frederic Tremblay: Yes. Great. No, that's great to hear. Maybe last one for me. We noticed in October that you had introduced a Canadian vision credit for Canadian customers, both new and existing, which was a bit of a change from the usual first pair free approach. So I just wanted maybe to get your thoughts on that promotion and any learnings or interesting feedback from that. Joseph Thompson: Sure, Fred. Yes. No, the toolkit continues to grow for the marketing team as they continue to lead with the product and the product experience. That's really where we're excited is more customers coming in, trying more frames and having more frames with Kits on them out in the market. And you've seen all kinds of initiatives that focus on emphasizing the product, the product experience, including the value, and this was another one that was productive in October. Roger Hardy: Yes. I mean I think you point out -- you make a great point that in terms of awareness, a company at our size is always really looking to get above the noise and find ways to reach new customers in an authentic way and form a connection with them. And that's part of what I talked about upfront is that we are trying to find out what resonates best for our customer, how can we create an emotional connection with them. We care about their vision. We want them to know it. And that's really what that campaign was designed around is bringing to life a compelling offering that -- for customers to give Kits a try. Who's Kits? Well, 99% of Canadians don't even know who Kits is. There's a small cohort in Vancouver that do. And like I touched on, we're -- north of $200 million business growing the way we are with word of mouth helping, but really only known well in Vancouver. So that's what that campaign was about, trying to share with others that our mission is to help improve their vision and improve their access to vision. And so yes, we tried to bring it to life there. And I'd say, like Joe said, the team is probably still evaluating how productive it was and whether it did resonate completely. And please feel free to ask next Q, and we'll have more feedback on it given that was a Q4 activity. Thank you. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Gianluca Tucci from Haywood Securities. Gianluca Tucci: Just one question here. Could you walk us through how you're thinking about your marketing spend into next year, just given all the moving parts out there and at the business, what -- how should we be thinking about spend as a percentage of revenue next year, guys? Joseph Thompson: Gianluca, great to hear from you. Yes. So just probably, as you expect, more of the same from us, like with the product and product experience, maintain in the 13% to 15% range as we've done this year on a fiscal year basis and continuing to see strong traction, 37% new customer growth this year. We see no fade in that opportunity as we go into 2026. But let me just see, Roger, anything to add? Roger Hardy: No, I think that's it. Just consistent. That's one of the metrics we stay -- keep tightly controlled. And yes, we'll stick to Joe's guidance there of about 13% to 15% in that range. Operator: There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Roger Hardy for closing remarks. Please go ahead. Roger Hardy: As we close out another record quarter, I want to recognize the incredible team behind these results. Every milestone from passing 1 million active customers to delivering our 12th consecutive quarter of profitability. These moments reflect the relentless focus and execution of our team. And while we're proud of what we've accomplished this quarter, what matters most is that we're setting up Kits to perform not just for the next few quarters, but for the years to come. We continue to build a business that's proving what's possible in technology, manufacturing and customer experience all come together. That integration is what sets Kits apart. Thank you to all our shareholders and customers for your continued confidence and support. Your belief in Kits allows us to keep investing in innovation and growth, allowing us to strive towards our mission of making eye care easy for everyone. Best chapters for Kits are still ahead. Thanks, everyone, for joining us today. We look forward to reporting on future quarters very soon. Thank you. Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.
Operator: Thank you for joining us today. Certain statements made during the course of this conference call that are not historical facts, including those regarding the future financial performance and cash position of the company, expected improvements in financial and related metrics, expected ARR from certain customers, certain expected revenue mix shifts, expectations regarding seasonality, customer growth, anticipated customer benefit from our solution, including from AI, the extent of the anticipated TAM expansion and our ability to take advantage of any such expansion, our AI and our CCaaS revenue opportunities and current estimations regarding same, including the ability to leverage data in support of AI revenue opportunities, company growth, enhancements to and development of our solution, statements regarding our share purchase program, market size and trends, our expectations regarding macroeconomic conditions, company market and leadership positions, initiatives, pipeline, technology and product initiatives, including investment in R&D and AI and other future events or results are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such statements are simply predictions, should not be unduly relied upon by investors. Actual events or results may differ materially, and the company undertakes no obligation to update the information in such statements. These statements are subject to substantial risks and uncertainties that could adversely affect Five9's future results and cause these forward-looking statements to be inaccurate, including the impact of adverse economic conditions, including the impact of macroeconomic challenges, including continuing inflation, uncertainty regarding consumer spending, high interest rates, fluctuations in currency exchange rates, lower growth rates within our installed base of customers and the other risks discussed under the caption Risk Factors and elsewhere in Five9's annual and quarterly reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In addition, management will make reference to non-GAAP financial measures during this call. A discussion of why we use non-GAAP financial measures and information regarding reconciliation of our GAAP versus non-GAAP results and guidance is currently available in our press release issued earlier this afternoon as well as in the appendix of our Investor Relations deck that can be found in the Investor Relations section of Five9's website at investors.five9.com. Also, please note that the information provided on this call speaks only to management's views as of today and may no longer be accurate at the time of a replay. Lastly, a reminder that unless otherwise indicated, financial figures discussed are non-GAAP. And now I'd like to turn the call over to Five9's Chairman and CEO, Mike Burkland. Michael Burkland: Thanks, Tony, and thanks, everyone, for joining our call this afternoon. We're pleased to report a solid Q3 with continued momentum in bookings, highlighted by enterprise AI bookings growing more than 80% year-over-year, contributing to healthy improvements in backlog. Subscription revenue, which makes up 81% of total revenue, grew 10% year-over-year, primarily driven by enterprise AI revenue growing 41% year-over-year in the third quarter. In terms of profitability, adjusted EBITDA grew 37% year-over-year to a margin of 25%. We also generated record free cash flow, which grew 84% year-over-year to a margin of 13%. The meaningful increase in profitability and cash flow is driven by the transformation initiatives we announced earlier this year. We continue to take action to drive operational improvements while investing in AI and go-to-market initiatives, maintaining a line of sight to our 2027 medium-term targets as we work toward the Rule of 40 and beyond. Turning now to our business updates. Today, I'd like to focus my commentary on 3 key areas. First, our significant and evolving market opportunity ahead. Second, how we believe we're uniquely positioned to win in this new market of AI-powered CX; and third, our momentum with strategic partners. We are in the early innings of an industry shift in CX, where our market opportunity is being driven by multiple growth vectors. For instance, Gartner forecasts the market for traditional CCaaS to grow at a 9% CAGR and the GenAI customer service market to grow at a 34% CAGR through 2029 to a combined annual spend of $48 billion. We believe this growth will create a powerful tailwind for category leaders like Five9 as we continue to execute against this durable multiyear opportunity. Furthermore, we believe Five9 is uniquely positioned to be the platform for orchestrating end-to-end customer experience across both AI agents and human agents. At the heart of our advantage is data. The contact center holds a brand's richest customer data, the full conversation history across every channel and every interaction. Our platform essentially remembers everything a customer has said, whether they spoke with a live agent or an AI agent through voice or digital. This creates what we call a relationship-based experience like when your favorite app [ reaches ] you by name, remembers your preferences and picks up exactly where you left off. Every engagement feels personal, contextual and connected. AI point solutions can't replicate that because they only see isolated transactions, not the full relationship. At its core, our platform is a real-time orchestration engine for every interaction across all channels, whether handled by a human agent or an AI agent. In addition to our suite of AI products, which you're all familiar with, we also infuse AI within our core platform. For example, we now have AI-based routing, which leverages AI to dynamically manage and route every interaction with context to the best human agent or AI agent regardless of channel. Additionally, our platform is uniquely positioned to deliver experiences that will allow human agents and AI agents to collaborate in real time. This can include experiences such as in queue self-service, where during a time a customer waits in queue for a live agent, an AI agent can proactively help resolve the issue, turning hold time into resolution time. Also, agent sidebar, where AI agents can quietly consult a human agent mid conversation to get help without interrupting the customer and AI barge-in, where a human can seamlessly step into an AI interaction to ensure the issue is resolved and the experience remains positive. These experiences showcase what only an end-to-end AI-powered CX platform can deliver. A continuous collaboration between human agents and AI agents, where each interaction enriches the next. That feedback loop compounds over time, creating a powerful data flywheel that strengthens performance, accuracy and personalization. In addition, we're being recognized by industry analysts for our platform-driven approach. For example, Five9 was named a leader in the 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant for CCaaS for the eighth year, and we were also named a leader in IDC's inaugural MarketScape for European CCaaS. Analysts are recognizing us for strengths in our AI capabilities, cloud-native architecture, global scalability and strong European market presence. This dual recognition validates our strong market position, innovation and consistent customer satisfaction. These platform advantages are also driving momentum with our strategic partner ecosystem, including a major milestone we achieved in the third quarter. In September, we launched Five9 Fusion for ServiceNow, a turnkey AI-powered integration that unifies voice and digital interactions through real-time transcription and intelligent routing. This launch delivers 2 key capabilities. First, our transcript stream integrates directly with ServiceNow Workspace, enabling Now Assist to generate AI-powered summaries and resolution notes that dramatically reduce handle times. And second, our routing engine now directs ServiceNow digital channels and cases alongside Five9 channels for true omnichannel orchestration. This represents a significant milestone in our 8-year partnership with ServiceNow, and they're leaning in stronger than ever, demonstrated by our year-to-date ACV bookings with ServiceNow quadrupling with even greater acceleration in this third quarter. We are also seeing strong traction with other key technology partners, including Salesforce, where year-to-date ACV bookings grew more than 60% and Google Marketplace, where our pipeline has tripled since the announcement of that partnership in Q1. Our strategy of building meaningful partnerships remains a key strength as our long-standing alliances with key partners continue to differentiate us in the market. Additionally, we're seeing ongoing momentum, particularly upmarket, where enterprises are looking to create holistic customer experience strategies that seamlessly integrate with their core business systems. In conclusion, we're optimistic about the foundation we are building for the next decade. At our upcoming CX Summit, we will be announcing new innovations that we believe will set the stage for the next wave of growth as we continue to lead the AI-powered CX revolution with our end-to-end platform to orchestrate interactions across the continuum of AI agents and human agents to deliver what we call the New CX. Importantly, we're doing so with a balanced approach by driving operating leverage and investing in what we believe are the highest return opportunities to drive innovation and durable growth for our business. I want to thank our team of Five9ers for their unwavering dedication to strengthening our leadership position. I'm extremely excited about the future of Five9 and confident we have the platform and the expertise to drive long-term growth. Before turning it over to Andy, I'd like to provide a quick update on our CEO search. As you know, we're focused on identifying a leader with experience and a proven track record in product innovation, a commitment to operational excellence at scale and a growth mindset to further capture market share in this expanding TAM driven by AI. I'm pleased to report that the search is progressing well with our ongoing goal of announcing a successor by year-end. And with that, I'll turn it over to our President, Andy Dignan. Andy, go ahead. Andy Dignan: Thank you, Mike, and good afternoon, everyone. We were pleased to deliver another solid bookings quarter in Q3. We won the highest number of $1 million-plus ARR new logos in 2 years, and our installed base bookings hit another all-time high, driven by ongoing strength in upsell and cross-sell activities. For example, a major U.S. card servicer chose Five9 in a $3.7 million ARR deal. A multistate hospital system selected Five9 in a $2.7 million ARR deal. A leading European mobile and broadband provider partnered with Five9 in a $1.3 million ARR deal. And a global parcel delivery leader expanded their relationship with Five9 in a $3.5 million ARR deal. Looking ahead, we remain encouraged by the momentum of our business, fueled by pipeline and RFP activities sustaining elevated levels. In addition, we are increasingly winning competitive evaluation against AI point solution providers as enterprises recognize the value of our unified platform where AI is natively embedded across the entire customer journey. I'd like to talk about 4 examples of customers experiencing AI elevated CX because of the Five9 platform advantages. The first example is the global parcel delivery leader already on our core platform who is moving off an AI point solution in order to take advantage of our contextual data for hyper-personalization plus our deep integrations to their third-party systems. In addition, the efficiency gain for being able to have real-time insights across human agents and AI agents was another key reason they selected our AI-powered platform. The second example is a commercial vehicle financing provider who uses Five9 AI to support multilingual F&I servicing across North America, orchestrating seamless journeys from AI agents to human agents with deep CRM integration and omnichannel visibility. The third example is a regional digital bank who monetized their services with Five9 AI-powered routing, Agent Assist for banking integrations, enabling real-time orchestration of financial interactions while preserving full customer context across channels. And the last example is a major academic health system who replaced legacy IVRs with Five9 AI to improve patient access and scheduling, using our end-to-end platform to orchestrate voice and digital journeys with shared context between AI agents and human agents. And with that, I'd like to turn it over to Bryan to take you through the financials. Bryan? Bryan Lee: Thank you, Andy. Before we dive into our quarterly results, I'm excited to announce our inaugural $150 million share repurchase program, which is an important milestone that reflects a deep conviction in our long-term growth opportunity. We believe Five9's current valuation does not reflect our intrinsic value, particularly when considering the total platform opportunity for both our core CCaaS and AI-driven growth. The structure of the program includes an allocation of $50 million through an accelerated repurchase program, which we expect to complete before the end of Q1 2026 and the remaining $100 million balance open for up to 2 years. This program underscores our commitment to a disciplined and balanced approach to capital allocation and delivering strong returns to shareholders. Now turning to our financial update for the third quarter. Q3 revenue came in at $286 million, representing 8% growth year-over-year. Subscription revenue grew above total revenue at 10% year-over-year, driven by enterprise AI revenue growing 41% year-over-year, now making up 11% of enterprise subscription revenue. As anticipated, revenue growth was negatively impacted by approximately 5 percentage points due to a tough compare from our largest customer completing its multiyear ramp throughout 2024 and from minimal seasonal uptick compared to Q3 '24. As a reminder, subscription revenue reflects both customer growth and product expansion, including our AI solutions. Subscription revenue represented 81% of total revenue, up from 79% a year ago. And we expect this mix shift to continue as we focus on high-margin subscription dollars increasingly led by our AI solutions. Telecom usage represented 12% of revenue and professional services made up the remaining 7%. By design, these 2 categories are not growth drivers and steadily becoming a smaller percentage of total revenue. On an LTM basis, enterprise contributed approximately 91% of total revenue with the subscription portion growing 18% year-over-year. Our commercial business represented the remaining 9% and declined in the teens year-over-year as we continue to focus upmarket, which has better unit economics. The year-over-year decline in commercial is more pronounced than anticipated, but we're in the process of recalibrating and expect to get to historical year-over-year trends within the next couple of quarters. LTM dollar-based retention rate came in at 107% in the third quarter, down sequentially from 108% in Q2, which is within the small band we spoke about last quarter. This was driven by the tough compare I mentioned a moment ago regarding subscription revenue growth. In Q4, we anticipate DBRR to continue to be range bound, but expect upside in 2026. Turning now to profitability. Q3 adjusted gross margin was 63%, up approximately 100 basis points year-over-year, while adjusted EBITDA margin reached a record of 25%, up approximately 530 basis points year-over-year. This marks our fifth consecutive quarter of year-over-year expansion in both metrics. The consistent improvement is driven by our revenue mix shift toward higher-margin subscription revenue, combined with operating leverage as we scale and achieve cost efficiencies from our transformation initiatives. Additionally, we continue to boost productivity as demonstrated by our revenue per employee increasing 12% year-over-year. Q3 GAAP EPS was $0.21 per diluted share, representing 4 consecutive quarters of positive GAAP earnings, while non-GAAP EPS came in at $0.78 per diluted share. In terms of cash, both operating and free cash flow reached record highs. We generated $59 million or 21% of revenue in operating cash flow and $38 million or 13% of revenue in free cash flow. Turning now to guidance for the fourth quarter and full year 2025. For Q4 revenue, we're guiding to a midpoint of $297.7 million, which represents sequential growth of 4%. Despite our ongoing expectations of minimal seasonality, the 4% sequential growth is higher than our typical guidance pattern for Q4 due to revenue contributions from the backlog driven by both new logo and installed base bookings from past quarters that are starting to ramp. For full year 2025 revenue, we're maintaining our guidance at $1.146.5 billion, which represents double-digit growth for the full year. For Q4 non-GAAP EPS, we're guiding to a midpoint of $0.78 per diluted share, which reflects our ongoing disciplined cost management and an estimated 1.7 million shares being retired through our accelerated share repurchase, offset by lower interest income. For full year 2025 non-GAAP EPS, we're raising the midpoint by $0.06 to $2.94 per diluted share. Additionally, we're raising our full year 2025 adjusted EBITDA margin expectations to approximately 23% compared to our prior outlook of 22%. In summary, 2025 has been a year of transition, shaped by multiple financial and operational dynamics. However, I'd like to provide some perspectives on how we expect the business to inflect as we progress throughout 2026. It's important to understand the evolution we are seeing in how bookings convert to revenue, particularly for our recent installed base expansions, including more AI products. Deployment of these AI solutions and expansions into additional departments within existing customers have longer implementation cycles, typically converting to revenue over multiple quarters. This translates to a meaningful portion of the strong installed base bookings we've been achieving layering into revenue progressively throughout 2026 with the most significant impact in the second half of the year. And this is in addition to our new logos in the backlog ramping throughout 2026. Given these factors, we expect the sequential change in Q1 '26 revenue to be relatively flat, followed by momentum building quarter-over-quarter throughout the year. From a year-over-year perspective, we expect revenue to return to double-digit growth in the second half of 2026. As a result, we're comfortable with the current Street consensus revenue of $1.254 billion for 2026. On the bottom line, our historical pattern is for Q1 to step down sequentially, representing our lowest quarterly EPS of the year. And we expect that same pattern to continue in 2026. We anticipate sequential improvement in Q2 with more meaningful acceleration in the second half, particularly Q4. For the full year 2026, we expect to exceed the current Street consensus non-GAAP EPS of $3.14 per diluted share. Also, we expect annual adjusted EBITDA margin to expand by at least 100 basis points year-over-year to 24% plus in 2026. Lastly, we expect annual free cash flow to be approximately $175 million in 2026. In closing, Q3 reflects strong execution on our transformation initiatives, which are driving bookings momentum and meaningful operating leverage. We remain laser-focused on achieving the Rule of 40 in 2027 with a return to double-digit total revenue growth, driven by bookings strength in both core CCaaS and AI, coupled with ongoing margin expansion. The share repurchase program we announced today demonstrates our confidence in the team's ability to execute and create long-term shareholder value. Operator, please open the line for questions. Operator: [Operator Instructions] We will begin with DJ Hynes from Canaccord. David Hynes: Bryan, I'm going to start with you and just what happened in the quarter. I mean, look, Five9 has generally been known for being pretty measured with its guidance. I look at Q1 of this year, you beat the high end by $7.2 million. Q2, you beat it by $7.8 million. This quarter, we're only at the high end of the guidance range. So I guess it begs the question like what changed? What happened in the quarter? Bryan Lee: Yes, DJ, thanks for the question. So just a couple of points I want to make there. First of all, we're in the current growth environment that we're transitioning through. We do not expect big beats, number one. And then if you think about the quarter, I'm going to stick with subscription revenue that represents 81% of our revenue. There are 2 components. So it grew 10% year-over-year in Q3 versus 16% in the quarter before. So that 6 percentage point differential, 5 of those 6 is made up by the tough compares that we've been talking about all year long, right? We have the headwind from our largest customer who is finishing its multiyear ramp throughout 2024, making a tough comparison as well as our seasonal uptick that was very strong last year, that was very minimal at this time in Q3. And then there's a third component that was unanticipated in the sense that earlier, I mentioned the commercial revenue declining year-over-year in the teens. So that was more than what we anticipated. And there are really 2 key drivers there. One was we underallocated demand gen spend toward commercial during the quarter. And the other piece is that we had a gap in sales capacity as we promoted more commercial reps to enterprise than normal. So we're in the process of recalibrating that, and we anticipate over the next couple of quarters to kind of return the commercial revenue growth -- revenue year-over-year trends back to the historical norms. But those are kind of the puts and takes that went through the quarter. Michael Burkland: And DJ, I'll just add, promoting those reps from our commercial team to our enterprise team, that happens naturally. That's our farm system for talent internally. So again, from time to time, we get a lot of promotions that happen. And then what you have is in commercial, you've got reps that are ramping, right? So that was part of it. Operator: Our next question will come from Siti Panigrahi from Mizuho. Sitikantha Panigrahi: I just wanted to ask about this -- your installed base booking. Last quarter, it was record bookings. Again, another quarter of record bookings. Why it's taking so long to translate that to revenue? I understand it takes maybe a couple of quarters. But Bryan, based on your guidance, it appears now a little bit more like a year, like Q2 when we'll start seeing that. Can you help us understand and what can you do to further accelerate that? Bryan Lee: Yes, absolutely. So Siti, the installed base bookings, as you've heard in the last 2 quarters, have hit all-time highs, which is great. And a lot of that is through upsell, cross-sell of software, including AI and new business units that we're discovering within our existing customer base. So these kind of bookings, and we're having more and more of those each quarter, they have a ramp converting from bookings to revenue, very similar to new logos essentially. So that's why our Q4 guide, if you look at it, the sequential growth there is rounding up to 4%, which is higher than the typical guidance that we give for Q4. And that reflects the backlog of not just new logos, but installed base bookings that are starting to convert into revenue. And then not just Q4, but into 2026 as well. So this is a new dynamic, but one that we have taken into consideration for our guidance. Operator: Our next question will come from Ryan MacWilliams from Wells Fargo. Ryan MacWilliams: And look, we'd love to hear about what the bookings environment in the third quarter was like and how that's evolved with all the attention on AI now. And I know this is less a part of your business at this point, but I still have to check in just on the holiday season usage in terms of how we could see seasonal hiring for seats there, both for open enrollment and retail customers. Michael Burkland: I'll start, Andy, feel free to chime in and Bryan, too. But good to see you, Ryan. Look, some highlights for the quarter. AI bookings up 80% year-over-year. We're really, really pleased with that. And again, the momentum in AI is continuing. But I'll add that our non-AI bookings in enterprise was actually a Q3 record as well. And again, as these worlds come together over time, we're still breaking out kind of our AI products from our non-AI products for you all in terms of revenue and bookings commentary. But look, it's a good bookings environment. As we just talked about, there's a little lag in the engine given the character of the bookings. But look, highest number of $1 million-plus logos in 2 years, that's great and an all-time record for installed base bookings. So all in all, we're really pleased with the bookings momentum, but didn't mean to steal your thunder. Ryan MacWilliams: No, no, that's fully... Bryan Lee: Let me touch on seasonality real quick, Ryan. So -- it was actually quite a few interesting dynamics that we saw. And I'm going to focus -- if you recall, we surveyed our top seasonal customers back in July, and I'm going to stick with the consumer vertical with those customers because it's a good proxy. So on the subscription side, we saw that it was minimal seasonality as they had anticipated. But on the telecom usage side, we did see a slight uptick. And so we went back to those customers, and they actually observed the same in terms of volume of interactions coming into their contact center where they saw a small uptick. So they're in the process of monitoring that really closely to see if in the back part of November and December, we see a much stronger uptick then, in which case, they will, to the extent possible, expand their seasonal business with us. So right now, the way the guide is set up, we're still expecting minimal seasonality, but there is -- if there is that uptick, then that would be potentially a small upside for us. Operator: Our next question will come from Catharine Trebnick from Rosenblatt. Andrew King: Andrew King here on for Catharine Trebnick. Just wanted to double-click on the international really quickly. Good to see that IDC report out. Just wanted to hear what you see your differentiator as over in that market? And how is that BT relationship helping you progress over there? Andy Dignan: Yes. The BT relationship continues to be strong for us. I mean, obviously, they bring to bear sort of the reseller type market. They bring their services to bear. And so we continue to have a lot of success there. And look, we've been saying it, international has a lot of upside for us, and we continue to lean heavily on the partner go-to-market. We still have direct business. And so we feel good about how that's tracking and again, continue to invest in that space, both obviously, in our core business, but then AI and digital as well. As many of you might know, in the international space, digital is sort of a key technology area. So if we continue to expand that business, it's going to pay off for us. Operator: Our next question is from Terry Tillman from Truist. Connor Passarella: This is Connor Passarella on for Terry. Just wanted to kind of follow up on the Salesforce relationship, particularly on the drivers of the booking strength that you called out there. Is there a way to maybe frame the performance across the 2 opportunities that you have within that ecosystem being Agentforce and Service Cloud? Andy Dignan: Yes. What I would say would be -- so Service Cloud is obviously a key focus for Salesforce and us. We have over 1,000 joint customers, and we partner in every opportunity together with Salesforce to make sure that we're moving that forward. That's really why we came up with sort of the Fusion framework, which that Fusion framework is just sort of our framework for how we integrate the CRM, whether that's Salesforce, ServiceNow or others. And so we're having a lot of success in that route to market sort of the self-service arena. sorry, the Agentforce is the second opportunity. Look, I think it's still early days for Agentforce. And when we go into an opportunity, we want to win the core CCaaS. Obviously, Salesforce has CRM and like the best solution for the customers where we align on. And again, back to that Fusion, it's really about customers wanting to understand what they get, what's the benefit out of us coming together. And I think that's been -- has helped drive opportunity because our sales teams and Salesforce sales teams are all essentially saying the same thing in terms of the benefits to the customer. Michael Burkland: And I'll just add that the momentum with Salesforce and our joint customers is very, very strong. I talked about the 60% year-over-year growth in bookings year-to-date. Operator: Our next question will come from Raimo Lenschow from Barclays. Raimo Lenschow: A question from me. If I look into the data -- the call center space, sorry, there's a lot of -- there seems to be -- especially on the higher end, there seems to be still a lot of like on-premise old technology stuff. And I know everyone is focused on AI at the moment, but it does feel almost like we're doing step 2 before we do step 1. Can you see a little bit what you see in your conversations? Does that kind of -- are people realizing they actually need to move and you guys obviously have been moving kind of higher, you were a cloud vendor from the very beginning. Can you see that in the conversation and in the pipeline? Michael Burkland: Yes, for sure, Raimo. And again, I'll let Andy kind of chime in after me. But look, at a high level, you're right on. I mean, look, we're still 40-plus percent cloud, and that means 60%-ish on-premise. You're right on. There's still a ton of kind of core contact center that's on-premise that has to move to the cloud. But as you know, I mean, AI has become so front and center for every CEO. And therefore, all their CIOs are out looking at AI and sometimes AI first is the way they're making decisions. And we're -- we've now adjusted our go-to-market motions to actually be part of those discussions with an AI-first go-to-market motion where we may start a sales cycle with AI and then pull the CCaaS through as a second decision. It's just an evolving market. But in the end of the day, look, these enterprise brands know that they've got to go to the cloud to get all the benefits of AI, right? And so they go hand-in-hand. But in some cases, the order of the decisions might change. And it's playing out just pretty much as we expected and very favorable for us. Andy Dignan: Yes. I mean I think if you look at -- it's kind of like there's customers in 3 camps. You've got the ones who are already made the shift to cloud and they're looking at AI, then you have the customers that are -- they have an RFP from prem to cloud, looking at doing both, AI and CCaaS. And then some of the customers that we're seeing is they know they have to move to the cloud. But if they're looking to get that immediate benefit, to Mike's point, we do have an AI-first sort of strategy for those customers. Sometimes those customers go down that path and ultimately, they go, "Hey, look, it's just better to do this all at once." But again, we're starting to see more customers kind of lean in to say, "hey, let's do AI first" and we support that motion with a fast follow with CCaaS. And I think that's an exciting time for us because, again, we can support all 3 of those routes to market. Michael Burkland: And I'll add one more thing. We're winning because of that end-to-end platform. It's not like these are 2 separate things. We talk about them separately as AI and core CCaaS. But look, we've got one platform that orchestrates interactions, whether they're handled across -- it's across the continuum of AI agents and human agents, for example, right? So it's not a separate thing. It's really one platform that most enterprise brands are looking for. And that's why we're winning. That's why we're winning in this market right now, and it's why we believe we'll continue to win in AI. Andy Dignan: And sorry, to add one more. It's just like that parcel delivery company, right, that we -- they're a core CCaaS customer of ours, right? They chose a couple of years ago to go with an AI point solution. Here we are 3 years from now, replacing that solution. And that's again because they've got to the point where they see the value of, obviously, our AI kind of stand-alone. But to Mike's point, having that continuum of AI agents and human agents is the end-to-end platform that they're looking for. Operator: Our next question will come from Elizabeth Porter from Morgan Stanley. Elizabeth Elliott: I was hoping to get an update on just the competitive environment. I think we've seen Zoom up a little bit more in our mid-market checks and Amazon Connect reportedly just crossed $1 billion of ARR. We've seen several splashy headlines around AI native companies. So curious if you're seeing any sort of change in behavior or win rates or buyer dynamics as these players start to get more headlines? Andy Dignan: Yes. I mean in terms of the competitive dynamic, I mean, just pure CCaaS, it still continues to be us and our 2 biggest competitors. You mentioned the hyperscaler. We do see them. We like to say sometimes if we're in the same deal, one of us is probably in the wrong deal. Just 2 different kind of solutions customers are looking for. So not a huge change there. We do see Zoom in the mid-market, but our win rates continue to be strong, and we feel really good about where we're at in the core CCaaS platform. And obviously, when you look at both CCaaS and AI together and certainly our AI-first go-to-market, I think, we continue to have success. So not -- I wouldn't say any major changes in the competitive dynamic. Operator: Next question will come from Jackson Ader from KeyBanc. Jackson Ader: I had a question on the layering in, in of some of these -- of some of the -- either the enterprise deals or the AI deals. Is there anything that you can do? Is there anything within either your control or maybe partners' controls that you would say, all right, can we accelerate the time to actually get some of these products implemented and generating not just bookings, but revenue ahead of what's happening right now? Andy Dignan: Yes. So as Bryan mentioned and Mike, we have this situation where a lot of the changes we've made in our installed base, we're selling 2 quarters in a row of record bookings. There is still that lag, right? And I think we've -- and we talked about this previously, we've added some new functionality certainly within our AI products where you're leveraging generative AI to deliver faster, right? It's less about the work -- building the workflows and more about just doing essentially prompt engineering. And so we can move faster, and we're certainly doing that. We're seeing that within our customer base. A lot of times, though, we're part of kind of an overall AI transformation across the company. A lot of times they're doing -- they have to get their data to a good spot. And again, companies have gotten much better there. But we still see some of that dynamic where it is kind of like a new implementation. But I do think that as we get further into this, more and more customers are going to be more comfortable leaning further into that true GenAI agent versus some of the markets like health care and financial services that are still a little bit behind. But the good thing is we can service -- we talk about our trust and governance that the dial of trust. Some customers want to do just purely sort of workflow driven. We are seeing companies go faster towards the, let's go all in with generative AI. So I think we're well positioned for it, but that's going to be the #1 thing is sort of adoption of customers wanting to go faster and have trust in the platform. And we've done a lot of things within the platform sort of reducing hallucinations and things like that. The team has done a great job. And so that will demonstrate customers starting to move faster in terms of deployments. But we always hit those challenges and customers just aren't ready to fully ramp yet. Operator: Our next question is from Samad Samana from Jefferies. William Fitzsimmons: This is Billy Fitzsimmons on for Samad. Obviously, the business is still growing at a good clip. You're adding revenue. You called out record enterprise bookings. If we go back a handful of quarters ago, there was a period where you had a string of kind of several quarters where you announced a variety of mega deals. There's the health care one, the logistics one. And correct me if I'm wrong, but now it's been kind of another handful of quarters since that $50 million ARR financial services deal. And just wanted to get your view on why you think that is. Is there any impact at all from maybe like slower on-prem conversions or maybe even like decision fatigue because of AI? Or is this more just a function? I know there were some sales org changes about a year ago where -- and I'm paraphrasing here, there was more incentivization. You were incentivizing kind of dolphin sized deals over, call it, like the whales. And is it a function of, hey, we're just going after more dolphins now? Michael Burkland: Yes. Billy, I'll start. Look, the pipeline for megas is still very, very good. These take time. I mean that's the answer. They just -- the sales cycles are long, and it's really a function of that. We've said this all along that it's going to be lumpy. And therefore, let's make sure that we have this flywheel of dolphins that are coming through our sales funnel. And we talked about it. It was the record -- not record, but highest in 2 years number of $1 million-plus new logo wins. So again, the dolphins continue to be the more important metric, I guess, is the way for us to think about it. But look, there's a nice pipeline of megas out there, and we're very well positioned, in some cases, with very, very strategic partners of ours, too. Andy Dignan: And in terms of the sales changes, we didn't make any -- we put focus back on to the dolphins, but we kept a dedicated team. It's actually even bigger than it was before with not just salespeople, but solution consultants and experts and services team. So we continue to double down on the market. But to Mike's point, it's just lumpy and takes time. But we feel good about that space. Operator: Our next question will come from Will Power from Baird. Ioannis Samoilis: Yanni Samoilis for Will Power. So I noticed that Q4 revenue guidance is a $6 million range top to bottom, which is a bit wider than the range that you normally give or guide to for a given quarter. And I was just curious if there's anything that might be driving the wider range of outcomes that you're forecasting there. And then on the flip side, I appreciate the color on your early expectations for 2026. But what's giving you the confidence to comment on next year with that level of precision giving the wider guidance range for Q4? If you could just help juxtapose that for us. Bryan Lee: Yes, absolutely, Yanni. So the $6 million range for Q4 is mainly based on the fact that we beat Q3 by $1.3 million, and we actually held that back because of the commercial revenue decline that was bigger than what we anticipated. And so that was for prudent reasons. And while we're recalibrating and we expect the normalcy to happen over the next couple of quarters, and we're expecting some partial recovery in Q4, we just wanted to have a little bit of a wider range there to allow for that. Now going into 2026, we have built contingencies into our outlook there. But if you think about 2025, there's -- it's been a year of transitions and a lot of operational and financial changes, a lot of tough compares that we were going through, which we expect to lap fully by the end of the year. But then we're starting out with a strong backlog of not just new logos, but installed base bookings that Mike and Andy talked about as well. So with those ramping starting in Q4, but mostly in 2026, that gives us that comfort around that Street consensus of $1.254 billion. But we'll provide more details next quarter when we give formal guidance for next year. Operator: Our next question is from Rishi Jaluria from RBC. Rishi Jaluria: Nice to see continued AI adoption. Maybe I want to think a little bit one step deeper and think about kind of the current state of enterprise adoption. Look, I get that you have a lot of the tools to be the trusted AI partner in terms of governance and security and data privacy, and you've been a trusted partner with critical data over the years. So I totally understand your positioning. What we've been seeing, and I'd be curious to hear what you're seeing is a lot of enterprises are maybe slowing down the rate of AI adoption as they try to figure out the right use cases and one of those being customer support. But maybe just any color you can give in terms of what you're seeing broadly within your base of kind of the state of enterprise AI demand today versus how it had been maybe, call it, 6 months ago. And as we think going forward, right, getting that greater uptick in AI throughout your customer base, what are things that you have in your power and your control to work with those customers to just kind of get over a lot of those hurdles that are holding back AI demand in the enterprise? Michael Burkland: Yes, I'll start, Rishi. Look, the AI demand is so strong. I think what we're seeing is just a continued improvement, quite frankly, in appetite and demand and willingness by the larger brands out there to do more than proof of concepts to actually deploy AI. It's being proven. And there -- again, their appetite is also shifting toward the platform players like Five9 for that AI. I think they're realizing the limitations of these point solutions in some respects, right? So that's the flip side. But what they're seeing, and it's why Andy talked about that one case where one of our largest customers that had a point solution for AI basically is replacing it with our AI because it's all part of our platform. So I think there are 2 very different things happening here. I think the demand is very high across the brands for AI. They're getting more comfortable with it, but they're getting more comfortable with it from platform players like Five9, and that is a good thing for us. Andy Dignan: And in terms of what's in our control, we've talked about in the past our AI blueprint strategy. So we have the ability to go into our installed base, right? We're having a ton of success, right, as you see in the numbers in terms of installed base. We know the types of calls they have. They have their recordings, right? We're working with the customers. Obviously, they have access to all of this. So our teams can come in and take a very data-driven approach on, hey, here's the use cases that we see that would have high ROI upside. And we've done a lot of work on the back end to have essentially prebuilt type both go-to-market and implementations to deliver on those quickly, right? So I think that's an area where we continue to double down on. And we're -- the other thing is our product team and engineering team in terms of AI, they work closely with our services teams and our sellers and our customers to say, "Hey, like what are you seeing out of these blueprints? What are the things that we could build into the product to even accelerate some of that demand." So it kind of gets that flywheel going on the opportunity that we have the customers' data, right? Obviously, their data is their data, but we have the knowledge and working with them to be able to deliver that. So that's what we can control. Operator: Next question will come from Peter Levine from Evercore. Peter Levine: Maybe to piggyback off of an earlier question around the competitive landscape is, I mean, are you seeing any pricing pressure on your core live agent seats at renewal, meaning as you see some of these competitors come in, trying to gain share, are your customers at renewal perhaps maybe fighting or pushing back for higher discounts? So maybe the question is just like what's your discipline on pricing for core agent seats given just the escalation in terms of the competitive landscape? And then second, can you just remind us how you charge for AI and the revenue recognition behind that? Andy Dignan: Yes. So I'll take the front part of that. So what we're seeing at renewal time is we aren't seeing pricing pressure on our core business. What we are seeing with customers is they want to make sure that they -- that we have pricing models built in for them to take advantage of AI. Last quarter, we talked about a couple of big expansions to health care companies. And that was that renewal time where they said, "Hey, look, we've been leveraging our platform for multiple years, and we were able to renew at a higher level and then build into that renewal both AI and agents." So we don't see that kind of pricing pressure. But I don't know, Bryan, if you want to comment on the revenue side. Bryan Lee: Yes. Definitely on the revenue side, the pricing model for our AI products is either capacity or consumption-based. And whichever model it is, it's usually a block of units that you're getting and then overage if you go beyond that. So it works pretty much like a commitment model plus overage charges. Operator: Our next question will come from Arjun Bhatia from William Blair. Arjun Bhatia: Okay. Perfect. Just took some time. Can we just go back to the commercial business for a second? Obviously, it seems like that caught you off guard a bit. What is sort of the remedy? Is it just allocating more sales and marketing spend? And then how do you think that might evolve next year? Like can that get back to growth? Or is that a little bit too ambitious for 2026? Michael Burkland: Yes, Arjun, I'll start. Look, we did over rotate in terms of demand gen allocation to enterprise and majors, which, again, we're always trying to crack the code there because, look, it's 91% of our revenue is enterprise, and it's the bigger market opportunity and so forth. But I've encouraged the team to just be careful not to over rotate. We've already corrected some of that allocation of demand gen spend back to commercial. And the good news about commercial is it's kind of a real-time indicator, right? I mean it's -- things move -- deals move through the funnel quickly and they turn to revenue quickly. So while we had the impact of that in Q3, we've rectified that, and I believe we'll be right back to where we have been in commercial within the next quarter or 2. Now at the same time, just keep in mind, that is not a growth vector overall for the business. But at the same time, we don't want it to become a headwind like it was in the quarter. And this sales capacity that we talked about earlier in commercial is also something that we've got to just anticipate. Again, sometimes it's going to be a little lumpy. In this case, it was lumpy where we had several promotions. We just got to manage that a little bit better. So in our control. Operator: Our next question will come from Tom Blakey from Cantor. Thomas Blakey: Just wanted to maybe talk a little bit more about competition. I think there was a question earlier. Just looking at the dynamic growth of some of these conversational names like Sierra and Decagon. I mean, are you seeing these guys currently in the market? Are they disrupting in any way? I think just given the dynamic growth there, I think, we should address that. And just maybe a housekeeping item for Bryan. Was the 5-point headwind from the large customer from 3Q '24 like different from where you implied in the guide? Was it more of a surprise or kind of in line, that will be great? Bryan Lee: No, the 5 points, that was in line. So that was exactly expected. But I'll turn it over to Mike. Michael Burkland: Yes. And you can talk to Sierra and Decagon. I mean they're getting a lot of limelight these days, right? And limelight, they're not very large companies yet. But look, they're getting a lot of press. And this gets back to what I said earlier about kind of point solutions versus platforms. And most of these large brands, they want to look at the hot stuff, so to speak. They want to take a look. But in the end of the day, a lot of these decisions are made based on the end-to-end platform capabilities because providing that connected contextual personalized experience between AI agents and human agents is only possible. It's only possible if you have an end-to-end platform like ours. So again, I'll let Andy chime in, you want to talk about... Andy Dignan: I mean we see them, I wouldn't say consistently, but we come across them. A lot of times, there's pilots. And certainly, we're in there, like it could be in one of our own customers, right? They've just made their way in. Obviously, they're getting a lot of publicity in the market. But this is where we lean into what we've been talking about, right? It's that sort of continuum of being able to deliver to both AI agents and human agents. And if you look at where they've started, and again, I'm sure they'll comment on they're going to go down the voice path. It's largely been digital, right? That's been the focus of a lot of these point solutions. Voice, as we've talked about, is a strength for us, right, and a very big strength for us that's hard to replicate. So you add those things together, we feel strong about where we're competing on those use cases, and we're going to continue to get better. Operator: This concludes the Q&A portion of our call. I will now hand the call back over to CEO, Mike Burkland, for closing remarks. Michael Burkland: Thanks, everyone, for joining us. We look forward to keeping you updated as we close out the year and enter into 2026. Exciting times. Thank you very much for joining us.
Operator: Good morning, and welcome to the Air France-KLM Third Quarter 2025 Results Presentation. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Benjamin Smith, CEO; and Steven Zaat, CFO. Please go ahead, sir. Benjamin Smith: Okay. Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for the presentation of Air France-KLM's third-quarter results. As usual, I'll start by sharing the key highlights of the quarter, and then I'll hand it over to our CFO, Steven Zaat, who will walk you through the financial results in more detail. I'll return at the end with a few concluding remarks before we open the floor for any questions you might have. This quarter once again demonstrates the resilience of our business model in a challenging environment. In the third quarter, Air France-KLM delivered a stable operating margin of 13.1%, with revenues increasing by 3% year-over-year to EUR 9.2 billion, supported by a 5% increase in passenger traffic, which reached 29.2 million passengers. The passenger network unit revenue was up 0.5% at constant currency, driven by continued strong demand for premium cabins, which I will elaborate on later. Meanwhile, our maintenance business also made a solid contribution. We managed to limit our unit cost increase to 1.3% despite higher airport and air traffic control charges. As a result, operating income improved by EUR 23 million year-over-year to EUR 1.2 billion. Our balance sheet remains robust with leverage at 1.6x. Year-to-date recurring adjusted operating free cash flow reached EUR 700 million, confirming our ability to combine financial discipline with continued investment in our future. Finally, fleet renewal continues to advance with new generation aircraft now representing nearly 1/3 of the fleet, up 8 points compared to a year ago. Now moving to Slide 5. For those of you who are following the deck here. One of this quarter's key highlights is the continued success of our loyalty program, Flying Blue, which has been named the world's best airline loyalty program by point.me for the second year in a row. This distinction reflects the trust of over 30 million members and underscores Flying Blue's growing role in strengthening our connection with customers. Flying Blue remains a powerful driver of loyalty and commercial performance, and its global recognition is a testament to the value and quality of the experience that we deliver. Let's turn now to Slide 5. We're pursuing the implementation of our premiumization road map across the group with concrete improvement throughout the customer journey. On board, we're rolling out our latest long-haul business cabins at both Air France-KLM and KLM's premium comfort class is now featured on more routes. Starting in September, Air France has been introducing high-speed Starlink WiFi on board, available free of charge in every cabin, a first for any major European airline. Almost 30 aircraft have already been equipped, and we expect 30% of the Air France fleet to feature this service by the end of 2025. In addition, we are continuing to enhance the customer experience across multiple touch points. This includes upgraded premium lounges with recent improvements in Chicago and Boston, and an enriched dining offer featuring new signature dishes from Michelin star chefs on U.S. departures and a simplified customer journey from check-in to boarding. A new exclusive ground experience has also been introduced at Los Angeles, for La Prem customers, and I'm also particularly proud to highlight that our fully redesigned La Premal cabin will be available on the Paris City G2 Miami route starting November 10, after following a very, very successful launch on our flights to New York JFK, Singapore, and Los Angeles. Altogether, these initiatives elevate the quality of our product, reinforce our positioning in the premium travel segment, and support our path to higher value revenues. Moving to Slide 6. As you can see from this slide, the mix of our long-haul cabins is gradually shifting toward higher value premium segments. At Air France, the share of La Première and business seats set to increase from 12% in 2022 to 13% by 2028, while premium economy, now rebranded as premium, will rise from 8% to 10%. At KLM, the trend is even more pronounced. Premium comfort introduced in 2022 is expected to expand to 10% of seats by 2028, while the business cabin segment will grow from 10% to 12%. In other words, by 2028, almost 1 in 4 seats across our long-haul fleet will be in premium cabins. This structural shift aligns with our longer-term strategy to strengthen our brand positioning, reflecting evolving customer demand, improving revenue quality, and enhancing the value proposition for long-haul travelers. Turning to our network. We are continuing to expand connectivity across all key markets. This winter, the group will operate a broad network across all regions with balanced capacity growth. In Asia and the Middle East, Air France will serve Phuket, Thailand, while KLM will add Hyderabad, India, to its network. In the Caribbean, Air France will launch services to Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic and KLM will introduce flights to Barbados. Across Europe, KLM is opening Kittilä in Northern Finland, while Transavia is launching new services from Deauville (Normandy) and Madinah Saudi Arabia, and Marsa Alam, Egypt will also be added. And Transavia will increase flights to Morocco, Egypt, and Finland's Lapland region as well. Looking ahead, Air France will launch flights to Las Vegas in summer 2026, further strengthening our North American offering. Altogether, these additions illustrate how Air France-KLM continues to grow strategically, improving connectivity, reinforcing its position in key markets, and maintaining a well-balanced portfolio of routes. With that, I'll now hand it over to Steven, who will walk you through the detailed financial results. Steven Zaat: Yes. Good morning, everybody, and thanks for taking the time to listen to us. I think we can say it was a tough quarter in the third quarter, especially from a revenue perspective. The impact of the situation in the U.S. regarding FISA and immigration rules starts to hurt our lower-yield segment in the long haul. And I think also the warm summer didn't help our European network and Transavia. And then on top, we had ATC strikes in July, we had ground strikes at KLM, and then all the impact from the taxes and charges which we get in France from the TSBA, and at Schiphol, the charges of the lending fees and the increase of our security charges. I think we had last year, we had, let's say, the Olympics. So I think if you look at the tailwinds, which we should have from the Olympics, a big part has been absorbed by these headwinds in this quarter. If we look at the margin, you see a stable margin of around 13%, which is the same as we had last year. On the unit revenue, if you're excluding currency, we are at minus 0.5%. And the unit cost, we had quite well under control. I guided you already that we will be at the lower end of the 1% to 3%. So we are very close now to the 1%. And if you include also the fuel benefit, you will see that actually our unit cost is coming down with 0.2%. So let's say, unit revenues and unit costs are stabilizing each other in this quarter. If you look at the left and you look at the net result, you see that it looks down year-over-year, but it comes that we had an unrealized foreign exchange result last year of more than EUR 100 million. So if you take that out on the net result, we actually improved, and we are now at an equity level above EUR 2 billion. If you go business by business, and I will come back on the 0.5% unit revenue on passenger business on the next slide, you have to see at the cargo that we see a minus 5% in unit revenues. This is related to the fact that we had more freighters in maintenance. So we plan more maintenance for our freighters at Schiphol, and it extended also more than what we expected. So this is quite a big impact on our unit revenue. If you look at the cargo contribution to our P&L, it's more or less flattish. So it's also, let's say, benefiting from a unit cost perspective over there, absorbing actually the unit revenue decline in the cargo. On Transavia, we grew capacity 13.8%, 15% in France, and 12.5% in the Netherlands. In France by taking over the slots of Air France in Orly, and in the Netherlands by upgauging our fleet. That had an impact on our unit revenue, which is down minus 2.8%. And I think also that the warm weather didn't help our local business due to the fact that the appetite to travel probably when it's hot, it's less when it is raining dogs and cats outside. So we have a stable result of Transavia of around EUR 217 million. The maintenance business performed quite well, an increase of 13% of our revenues despite the lower USD, especially on engines and components, we start growing the business. We are now at an order book of EUR 10.4 billion. We increased our order book by EUR 1.7 billion compared to the beginning of the last year. So we are strengthening this business segment. And you see also that the results are improving quarter-over-quarter now with an operating margin of 6.3%. So a very good performance on the maintenance business, where we also start to recover at the components business to drive up our margin. If we then go to Page 11, let's start with Air France. Of course, there was the Olympics last year, but we also had the DSBA impact and the ATC strikes. And all in all, Air France improved the result by EUR 67 million, having now an operating margin of 14%. KLM is especially impacted by the lower yield demand, and this lower yield, especially on the long haul impacts the unit revenues of KLM. And on top of it, we have the increase of the triple tariffs, which is really hurting KLM, including also the security charges, which are going up. So I think these 2 impacts actually explains all the KLM decline despite the fact that we continue with our back on track. And you see later that on the productivity side, the unit costs are getting better under control. And also, we see that we are getting very close to, let's say, the low limit of our guidance, and especially a big contribution coming from the productivity. On Flying Blue, a stable result of around EUR 54 million. We had last year, we -- first of all, Flying Blue is impacted by the dollar because we sell miles in the U.S. And on top of it, we had very cheap seats available for flying routes during the Olympics. So that has a positive impact, let's say, on the miles cost and which we don't have this quarter, but I think it was a very strong quarter. We grew the business again with 10.5% and the business operating margin of 24% is contributing as we expected to our business model. If we then go to Page 12, then you see the big difference, and we took out now also the premium economy. You see that there's a big difference between the premium traffic and the lower-yield economy traffic. So in the first business, we increased our load factor. We increased our capacity. We increased our yield. On the premium economy, we even increased our capacity with 10%, while at the same time, increasing the ticket prices by 5.4%. And then on the economy, there, you see it's starting to hurt. It is minus 1.5% in terms of yield and also a lower load factor. Although the load factor is still 91%, you see that it is more difficult to fill the seats. If you look, for instance, on our traffic on the North Atlantic to the U.S., there is minus 10% lower passengers from India, for instance, which is all related to the immigration rules in the U.S. If you go over the world, you see still that North America on itself is not doing that bad. We have a 2.7% increase in yield, especially driven again by the first and business class and the premium economy and also by the very strong point of sale in the U.S. Latin America is still strong, 2.8% up in yield. And we see also that in the Caribbean and Indian Ocean, we could increase our yields year-over-year. And on the long or the outlayer is a bit Africa, where we see that we have a gap on the load factor, which is especially again related to the, let's say, the political situation in Africa. but also the connecting traffic to the U.S. where there is less traffic from Africa to the U.S. due to all the immigration rules. And on the right, you see a quite positive trend on Asia, up 4.4% in yield. So we are doing quite well in that segment with a limited growth of 1.7%. On the right, you see again Transavia, which I already explained. So this is minus 2.7%. And you see this hot summer had an impact on our short and medium-haul, which was more or less flattish year-over-year. If we then go to Page 10, you see we guided you that we would be at the lower end of the 1 to 3. So we are very close to the 1 now. That will also be the case in the next quarter. We see that the unit costs are coming down as productivity is kicking in. But of course, the premiumization, which contributes 0. 6% to our unit cost, and also this increased ATC charges and the significant increase of the airport charges, especially in Amsterdam that drives actually the cost here still. But our own unit cost, which we can directly influence, you see that the labor price is compensated by 1.3% on unit cost on productivity. And then on the operations, it's still going up 0.8%, mainly driven also that we have expensive ground, and also on the maintenance side, is still quite a difficult environment. So -- but all in all, good to see that the unit cost, excluding the ATC charges and the premiumization are more or less flattish, and we see also a positive trend towards Q4. On Page 14, you see the cash flow. So a big jump positively in terms of operating free cash flow. We had a EUR 1.5 billion, where we were last year at EUR 28 million. Then we still have there in there around EUR 400 million of deferred social charges and Wax. And if you take these exceptionals and you take also the payment of the lease debt, you see that we are now at a recurring adjusted operating free cash flow of more than EUR 700 million, where last year, we were at EUR 23 million. And if you look at the right, you see that the net debt is coming up. Of course, these exceptionals of EUR 400 million are added actually at the end of the day to our net debt. And we had -- let's say, we signed a lease contract on the 787-9, where we extended the leases till the period 2033 and 2035, which had a EUR 300 million impact on our modified lease debt. But of course, that has not an impact in the coming period on our free cash flow because we continue to operate these profitable planes. If we then go to Page 15, you see that the leverage is down now at 1.6. We have EUR 9.5 billion of cash at hand, which is very stable over the year, which is well above the EUR 6 billion to EUR 8 billion target. We launched very successfully a bond of EUR 500 million vanilla for 5 years with a coupon of 3.75%. We had the lowest credit spread ever in our history of Air France-KLM. So we are extremely proud of that. And we continue to simplify our balance sheet. So we redeemed Apollo for EUR 500 million in July. We issued a new hybrid into the market, but we will also pay back the EUR 300 million of our hybrid convertible bond in the market. So in total, we are reducing this hybrid stock with EUR 300 million this year. And that with a net result generation, we see that we have continued to strengthen our balance sheet where we're now above the EUR 2 billion of equity. Let's then go to the outlook, and let's start with the forward bookings. We see that there is a gap of 3% in the long haul, 2% in the medium haul, and 4% at Transact. We have seen this every quarter. At the end of the day, we were always able to almost close completely this gap. So that is also, let's say, that is a little bit the trend that we see now in our industry. To give you a bit of an indication, if we look at the first 28 days of October, we see a unit revenue increase of 2%, excluding currency impact, with a load factor gap of 1%. And we see again a difference between premium traffic, including premium economy and the low-yielding classes in the overall long-haul network, giving confidence on our premiumization strategy. Then also, I will, for one time, also guide you on the cargo because usually, I not do that because I think we don't have a lot of bookings in -- but we had a very exceptional situation last year where we had a positive impact of the front-loading, especially related to the U.S. elections in the fourth quarter. I already indicated in our last call that the Q4 cargo unit revenues would be negative. And for the first 4 weeks of October, we see a decrease in unit revenue of 11%. Although cargo has a very short booking window than the passenger business, and it's difficult to predict the unit revenues. But in our internal forecast, we expect a double-digit decline in unit revenues compared to last year for the fourth quarter. If we then go to Page 18 on the hedge, so you see that we have hedged now 70% of '25 and 50% of '26. We are quite stable in our fuel bill. I think we last time indicated $6.9 billion, and we are now at $6.9 billion. So a very stable fuel price, if you look at it over quarter to quarter. It can go up and down during the weeks, but I think we are now reaching a kind of normal plateau for the fuel price. If we then go to Page 19 on the capacity. So we still aim at a capacity of 3% to 5% on the long haul, 3% to 5% on the short and medium haul and Transavia, especially because we had a very strong operations in the third quarter. We expect to be above 10% for the full year. But overall, we still guide at 4% to 5% versus 2024. On Page 20, you see the outlook, and it is every quarter the same. It becomes a bit boring maybe. So group capacity, 4% to 5%. Unit cost, I'm very confident in the low single-digit increase where we will see in the fourth quarter that we had a very low side of this guidance. So we are comfortable for the full year on this low single-digit increase in unit cost. Net CapEx between EUR 3.2 billion to EUR 3.4 billion, also probably more at the low end of the bandwidth and net debt current EBITDA, we will keep that between 1.5 and [indiscernible]. Then we strengthened further our position in Canada. We have a very strong cooperation with WestJet, which is the second largest airline with a leading market position in Western Canada. We already have since 2009, a codeshare and a loyalty program with them. And it's interesting to see that they are the #6 partner of our Air France-KLM-enabled revenues. So next time when we do all to Chris, I will invite you to tell me who are the #2, 3, 4 and 5. Number one, you can easily guess, but it's interesting to see that they drive really up our revenue. So we were happy that together with Delta and Korean Air, we could lock them in for our business, and we took a stake of 2.3%, solidifying our, let's say, integrated way of working with Delta and securing our position in Canada. With that, I hand over to Ben for the final remarks. Benjamin Smith: Thanks, Steven. And just to summarize and conclude the comments that we just made. So Q3, again, was a mixed quarter, softer leisure demand and operational headwinds, but we're pleased that revenue -- there was revenue growth and a stable margin, which clearly shows that we've got a resilient, well-balanced network, strong cash generation, and the outlook is reconfirmed. So altogether, these results demonstrate Air France-KLM's ability to navigate challenges resiliently while building a stronger position for the future. So thank you for your time and attention. We're now available to answer any of your questions. Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our first question today comes from the line of Jarrod Castle from UBS. Jarrod Castle: I'll ask 3, please. Just quite interested to get any thoughts that you might have at the moment on at least the direction of ex-fuel costs going into 2026. Secondly, any impact from the U.S. shutdown on your North Atlantic? I see they're going to reduce the amount of capacity flying in the U.S. Is this more domestic in your view? Or will it have an impact on international? And then lastly, just the current French economic/political backdrop. If you could just go through some of your thoughts in terms of what these budgetary pressures might mean for your business. Steven Zaat: I will take the first question, and I will take the second and the third question. Yes. So we are currently busy with our budget for 2026. But we -- of course, we -- you know we are back on track. We have the same actually measures also at Air France. So we are driving our productivity further. So let's see where that will end when I come back with the guidance for 2026, but we are, of course, aiming if you look at the full year to be lower than where we were this year. You see every quarter, the unit cost development is coming down, which has strengthened our position also for the next year. But we have to define our full year budget before I will guide you on any number. Benjamin Smith: Jared, so the U.S. shutdown from the information we received this morning, it's only going to impact domestic flights and that international flights as of today should be business as usual. On the political side in the Netherlands and in France, the main focuses for us are will there be any additional taxes or charges imposed on customers, passengers, or us directly or airports. So far, we don't see anything different or new from what we've been -- what we've seen already and what we've been lobbying to change or get rid of. Again, one of the big negatives that impact us in France are the air traffic controller strikes. So far, we don't have any visibility for the rest of the year. So we're hoping that things will stay stable. We have a new head of the government body, which oversees the air traffic controllers. He is quite close to the file. It's the #1 file today. So we're hopeful there will be some improvement because it cost us a lot of money this quarter and a lot of money this year. And the operating -- the operational impact that we're experiencing is much worse. This is in France, much worse than any other country in Europe. And so far in the Netherlands, it's a bit too early to tell whether there will be any change in policy towards aviation. Operator: The next question comes from the line of Stephen Furlong from Davy. Stephen Furlong: Maybe, Steven, you can just talk about what's going on in cargo. Sometimes historically, it's been a leading indicator, but I just like to understand because I haven't seen that level of decline from other airlines. And then Ben, maybe can you talk about Orly how the work is going there? And obviously, as you build up an entirely largely Transavia business there, I'd be interested in that. Steven Zaat: Yes, let's say, the booking window of cargo is very short. So that is always difficult to predict. as I gave you the numbers for October because I think I want to be totally transparent where we are currently. I think we will be in that range also, let's say, for the coming months. But it's very difficult to exactly explain. But we saw last year that there was a lot of upfront loading towards the U.S. in expectations for what would be the outcome of the election. So that has first already before the elections, it started. And then, of course, when Trump came into the White House or at least he was elected to be in the White House. In January, there was a lot of front-loading in that quarter. So Q4, if you still remember, we had a very good unit revenue on the cargo level, and that is going to normalize. So on itself, the demand is not weak. I think it is normal, and it's, of course, better than in the other quarters. But I think the year-over-year difference is quite difficult due to the fact that we have this positive situation in the fourth quarter last year. Benjamin Smith: Stephen, regarding Orly, if you look at the overall Air France Group, so Air France and Transavia and Hub, which is the regional carrier. So excluding the rest of the business units in Air France-KLM. So just Air France Group, we're extremely pleased with the performance of the Air France Group despite all the challenges we're having with the air traffic controllers and the rest of the operations and taxes that are being imposed specifically in France. So with respect to Transavia at Orly, it has to be taken in context with the entire Air France Group performance because we have been progressively shifting slots from Air France to Transavia. So we have half of the capacity, 50% of the slots at Orly, which is about 150 departures. And we operate about 1/3 of those in 2018 were operated by Transavia, and the rest by Air France, our regional operator, Air France Hop. Those slots there are being transferred to Transavia, and the totality of those slots will have been transferred to Transavia by April of next year. On many of those flights, it's a significant upgauge. If you take a hop aircraft, as an example, of 70 seats, and you're going to a 737 or an A320neo above 180 seats, it's a big jump. And we're cutting our domestic capacity by double digits. And so those slots are being redirected to new routes in Europe. And to start up a new route takes some time, but we do have a very, very strong position at Orly, and we do have our loyalty program, and we do have a cost structure that's similar to the competitors that we are going up against at Orly Airport. So the strategy we're quite pleased with. What is difficult to measure or to at least report out on is how the benefits flow between Transavia and Air France. So Air France has been able to shed the bulk of its domestic operation to date, and it will be the entire domestic operation in April. And that, of course, will be transferred to a lower operating unit, which is Transavia, and we will significantly reduce capacity. This being done in a very complex -- this is a project that should have been done 30 years ago. It was very, very difficult to put this into place. It impacts a lot of employees, a lot of unions are involved with this. And to be able to balance this out by saying, okay, Transavia is going to be profitable or not. I think for me, if we can get the overall Air France group along the path that we've committed to the market to get it to an 8% margin, we're on the path. Is it being divided correctly between Transavia and Air France with this transfer? I'll give you an example, whenever there is an air traffic controller strike to protect the long-haul flying, which is our #1 moneymaker, we try to shift the impact of the strikes to or the airport to impact Transavia as an example. So they take that of an example of a negative like a strike. So I think it's unfortunately, we're not able to put all that into our disclosure into our press releases. But I think that that kind of level of detail, I think if we were able to share that or we have the time to share that, it would be -- I think it would be acceptably well understood that the strategy is the right one. But it has to be looked at in context with the rest of the Air France group performance, which, as you know, over the last 2 years, we've been hitting record COI results. Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Harry Gowers from JPMorgan. Harry Gowers: A couple of questions from me. First one, Steven, I think you gave the plus 2% unit revenue remarks for October, which was for the passenger network. So maybe -- the network business, sorry. So maybe you could give us what you saw in Transavia specifically? Second question, I mean, just in terms of the French ticket tax increase, the Schiphol tariff increases, clearly, these are external headwinds, which are impacting passenger demand to a certain extent for Air France specifically. So anything you can do at all to try and offset or minimize those impacts on demand? And then third question, just on the costs. Do we have any idea yet, or any visibility on where like airport tariff increases could go in 2026? Steven Zaat: Harry, let me come back on your questions and maybe Beck will follow up on it. So let's first start on the unit revenues in -- on Transavia, I don't have any number, to be honest, on Transavia yet. So we always wait for the full closing, which we are going to do, and on the passenger business because it's the main part of our business. I get the daily report. So I have those figures actually always up to date. But I didn't hear any negative news for the moment. And probably as we see bigger demand in October, probably related also due to holidays, I expect that also to come from Transavia. On the Schiphol tariff, yes, it is a very terrible situation, what we are seeing there. We know that Sriol was the #9 in terms of cost in Europe. We could develop very strongly our connecting traffic. And of course, the fact that they increased so much the tariff, and we are a connecting airline. So we need to have lower cost than our competition. So we are working on that. So first, we are working on it in what we call back on track. And you see the productivity measures are kicking in now in our unit cost to get that down also to compensate all those increased charges, which we get at Schiphol. But -- and we have to review also what we are going to do with KLM, what is the right model, and we are working on that also close with, let's say, the Schiphol management because we cannot go on like this. The first indication, which you asked what is the airport tariffs are going to do. So at least the good news is that they are not going up, but they went already with more than 40%, but they are not going up in '26. For Schiphol, I don't have the indication for ADP yet, but usually, they are much more modest in the last years. Operator: The next question comes from the line of James Goodall from Rothschild & Co Redburn. James Goodall: So 3 for me, please, as well. So just coming back to the 2% unit revenue increase in October. Is there any color that you can give us in terms of how that's trending by region? Secondly, coming back to that chart on Page 6 on the increasing premium mix, assuming that there's sort of flat yields over the course of the next 3 years, can you give us an indication of what the RASK accretion just in terms of mix would be from that premium cabin growth over the course of the next 3 years? And then finally, with Leverage now sub-2x liquidity is well above target. And I guess with a very positive direction for free cash flow generation as the exceptionals roll through and with EBIT expansion on the back of your medium-term targets. Have you guys started to think about any potential use of that free cash flow? I guess you haven't paid a dividend since, I think, pre-GFC. Is there any potential in that restarting? Steven Zaat: So very good question. Let's first start with the coloring of October. So I think I already indicated that premium was much -- doing much better than, let's say, the lower-yielding segment. We see a very strong unit revenue actually in North America, and actually all over the world on the long haul, it is pretty strong. On, let's say, the European side, it is still going up, but it is not as strong as we are seeing on the long haul. So you could say that it is, let's say, 3% on the long haul and 1% approximately or even -- yes, 1% on the European network. So still the driving force is the long haul and the driving force is the premium traffic. Yes, that's a very good question. We are just building again the budget for that, but I would say it is around 1% increase of unit revenue. That looks modest, but it is directly -- it will bring a margin up with 1%. So I would say you have part which is in the unit revenue, but also part which is in the unit cost. And I would say, if I have to give an indication in arid because I don't have exact numbers here, I would give that it would bring at least 1% in margins on those networks. Then on the cash flow, so yes, we have indeed a very strong cash position, and we are driving up now our cash flow. We will use that to pay off our hybrids because the hybrids are more expensive than, let's say, a normal Fin loan, as you have seen what we did in August. So the first thing for the short term and the short term is for me '26 is to further pay off our hybrid stock. We have EUR 500 million to pay to Apollo next year, and we will pay that from our own cash flow. That's at least if the situation stays where we are today. And then I think the moment of dividend is more when we end actually, the era that we don't have this payback of the social charges in France and the wage tax in the Netherlands. So that's more for that time horizon. But it's not now, let's say, to disclose to the whole world. We need to first discuss that with the Board because we didn't have these discussions with the Board so far. Operator: [Operator Instructions] The next question comes from the line of Antoine Madre from Bernstein. Antoine Madre: Two questions, please. So first one regarding back on track for KLM. You mentioned the productivity is improving. So is it going faster than what you planned? And can we still expect EUR 450 million improvement this year? And second one on maintenance outlook. How do you see the current headwinds impacting tariff, FX, and issue? Steven Zaat: To start with back on track. So we are still see this contribution of back on track. Of course, that is also to offset, let's say, the triple tariffs and all those kind of increases of cost, but we are fully in sync with the back on track target, which we announced at the beginning of the year, and we will come back on it at the full year results where we exactly are. On the maintenance, we don't see any real big impact coming from the new tariffs. Usually, the parts are excluded. We know that some parts where there's a lot of metal can have an impact in terms of tariffs, but we don't see a significant increase. And you've seen the beautiful results in the third quarter from our Engineering and Maintenance business. So, so far, that impact is very, very limited and not noticeable and not material in our results. Operator: The next question comes from the line of Antonio Duart from Goodbody. Antonio Duarte: A question for me just on Transavia, if I may, and mainly in your -- where do you see strength and weakness within Europe, considering such increase in capacity? Any routes that you see special that you would like to highlight, or where you're seeing particular weakness? Benjamin Smith: So what I look at it from a different way, the strength of Paris and the fact that it's the largest inbound tourist market in all of Europe, and that the airport is very close to Paris and has now got a new direct metro line directly into the terminal, a new Line 14. It's a very attractive airport. We've not been able to exploit our position there in the past because the cost structure of Air France and Hop was probably one of the highest in Europe. And we had a limit on the number of Transavia airplanes we could operate because of the collective agreement we had in place with the Air France pilots. So we negotiated in 2019, it was not an easy negotiation to have that limit removed. We can now operate as many Transavia flights as possible. So now with a competitive cost structure, we can really take advantage of the opportunity here in Paris. So I think the Parisian market is very strong. It's showing resilience. It's actually growing. So we are trying to position all the new capacity that we're putting into Europe with a strong focus on inbound. This is new for us. It's traffic we did not have in the past. And of course, we're trying to deploy this traffic where also there's a strong outbound component as well from Paris. So the typical markets, leisure markets in Italy, in Greece, in Spain, in Portugal, are all still quite strong. But where we're seeing very, very good growth is in Northern Africa, in the Maghreb countries, in Morocco, in Algeria, in Tunisia, as well as Beirude, so in Lebanon and Tel Aviv in Israel, as well as a few destinations in Cairo. So it's quite a unique breadth of destinations that we've got. Not typical for a low-cost carrier, but the fact that it's got so many opportunities to serve the Paris market with a very competitive cost structure, plus the benefits of flying blue, not all the benefits. We don't want to bog it down with the costs that Flying Blue can sometimes entail, but there is quite an array of unique benefits that we offer to customers on Transavia. So a loyal Air France customer does have a low-cost carrier option, which is quite unique in Europe from the main base city of the full-service airline that we have. Meanwhile, at Transavia Holland, we've been trying to manage through a situation where we don't have full visibility on the number of slots and the curfew situations at Schiphol. And of course, the bulk of the Transavia aircraft at Schiphol do start their day early in the morning. So we do have, I think, more visibility than we had 3 years ago now that the Dutch government has agreed to go through the European Commission balanced approach process, which is enabling us to take some decisions on the deployment of our fleet at Transavia. And so we'll be refining the network offering at Transavia Holland, and we believe that should improve in the near future. Operator: [Operator Instructions] We have a question coming from Muneeba Kayani from Bank of America Securities. Muneeba Kayani: This is Kate on behalf of Muneeba. I have a question on unit cost, which is tracking at the lower end of FY guide. Just wanted to ask about 4Q outlook. Are you seeing the trend continue at about 1.3% year-on-year growth into 4Q? And any kind of base effect we need to keep in mind when thinking about 4Q? And then just another question on your forward bookings on Slide 17. If I'm reading the numbers right, I'm seeing about 2% to 4% kind of lower loading factor compared to 2024, but the commentary is in line bookings. So just if you could clarify that. Am I reading the slide correctly? Steven Zaat: Let's first start on the unit cost. I'm quite optimistic about the fourth quarter unit cost. I already gave the indication where we would end in the second half year. And I think Q4 will even be a better development than Q3. We see quite some productivity coming in. And with, let's say, the more modest labor cost increase and also having our operations better running, we are quite optimistic on the fourth quarter, but we don't give an exact number. We have a full-year guidance, and you can see where we will end for the full year. For the load factor, yes, I think that what you -- of course, the numbers are right. If you have followed also the previous presentations, you have seen that we have -- every time we had these kind of gaps -- and at the end of the day, we were able to close them. So in the first quarter, we were almost closing the full gap. In the second quarter, we were 0.1%. So in terms of load factor gap, so very close to 0, and we started almost the same. And in the third quarter, we also saw the same, and we closed at minus 0.5%. So I don't say that we will fully close this load factor gap. We saw a small load factor gap in October, but we saw quite some good unit revenues. But it is too soon to tell. These are the numbers. And of course, there's no mistake in it. Operator: We have a question from Axel Stasse from Morgan Stanley. Axel Stasse: I have 2, if I may. The first one is, could you maybe provide any quantitative guidance on the back on track program contribution on EBIT for 2026? Do you still expect to be on track for the medium-term guidance? And the second question is a follow-up actually on the potential French corporate tax proposals. We have heard a lot of things in the press last week, and many legislative lift hurdles before any such proposal is actually passed. But could you just provide any indication on how much of group PBT is related to France? Steven Zaat: Back on track. We will see, of course, an outflow in 2026. I'm not yet there to guide you on the cost. As you know, I say that it's coming down and coming down and coming down if you look at the unit cost increase, but we have not finalized the full guidance on it. But the program on itself is delivering, but we see now that especially the low-yielding traffic is getting worse. So that hurt especially also KLM, plus the triple trailers. And we have to review what are our next steps with our KLM operations. So that is where we are currently working together with the KLM management. The second question, I don't have any figures, but-- Benjamin Smith: Yes, it's Ben. From what we've seen over the last week, we don't have an aggregate -- any aggregate figures on that and how that could impact us. As you know, things are moving all over the place. But the current government that's sitting, I think we have a good feeling that what we had in place last year is going to be very similar to what should be in place this year. But as you know, it's not very stable here, but the big items that could impact us seem to be under control. And comment actually on the guidance. Because it was a question, we will come back on that with the full-year results. But we are still, let's say, aiming at 8% margin in the period '26, '28. Operator: There are no further questions. So I hand back over to you, Sirs, for closing remarks. Benjamin Smith: Okay. Well, thank you, everyone, for joining us today, and we look forward to sharing our results at the end of the year, the end of the fourth quarter. Thank you. Operator: Thank you for joining today's call. You may now disconnect your lines.
Operator: Hello, everyone, and welcome to the International Seaways Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. My name is Carla, and I will be coordinating your call today. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to hand you over to your host, the General Counsel, James Small, to begin. Please go ahead when you're ready. James Small: Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to International Seaways Earnings Call for the Third Quarter of 2025. Before we begin, I would like to start off by advising everyone with us on the call today of the following. During this call and in the accompanying presentation, management may make forward-looking statements regarding the company or the industry in which it operates, which may address, without limitation, the following topics: outlooks for the crude and product tanker markets; changes in trading patterns; forecasts of world and regional economic activity; forecasts of the demand for and production of oil and petroleum products; the company's strategy and business prospects; expectations about revenues and expenses, including vessel, charter hire and G&A expenses; estimated future bookings, TCE rates and capital expenditures; projected dry dock and off-hire days; new build vessel construction; vessel purchases and sales; anticipated and recent financing transactions and plans to issue dividends; the effects of ongoing and threatened conflicts around the world; economic, regulatory and political developments in the United States and globally, including the impact of protectionist trade regulations; the company's ability to achieve its financing and other objectives, and its consideration of strategic alternatives; and the company's relationships with its stakeholders. Any such forward-looking statements take into account various assumptions made by management based on a number of factors, including experience and perception of historical trends, current conditions, expected and future developments and other factors that management believes are appropriate to consider in the circumstances. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions, many of which are beyond the company's control that could cause actual results to differ materially from those implied or expressed by the statements. Factors, risks and uncertainties that could cause the company's actual results to differ from expectations, include those described in our annual report on Form 10-K for 2024 and our quarterly reports on Form 10-Q for the first 3 quarters of 2025 as well as in other filings that we have made or in the future may make with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Now let me turn the call over to our President and Chief Executive Officer, Lois Zabrocky. Lois? Lois Zabrocky: Thank you so much, James. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining International Seaways earnings call for the third quarter of 2025. On Slide 4 of the presentation, which you can find in the Investor Relations section of our website, net income for the third quarter was $71 million or $1.42 per diluted share. Excluding gains on vessel sales, adjusted net income for the third quarter was $57 million, or $1.15 per diluted share with adjusted EBITDA $108 million. Today, we also announced a combined dividend of $0.86 per share to be paid in December, as you can see in the upper right section of the slide. This is our fifth consecutive quarter with a payout ratio of at least 75%. We continue to believe in building on our track record of returning to shareholders as part of our consistent and balanced capital allocation strategy. We also announced the extension of our $50 million share repurchase program to the end of 2026, as we believe repurchasing shares is an option as an addition to our payout ratio. On the lower left part of the page, we took delivery of 2 of our 6 LR1 vessels. The Suez Alacran delivered in the second half of September and the Seaways Balboa delivered on October 30. In connection with the deliveries, we borrowed $82 million, or $41 million per vessel on our new Korean export agency-backed financing that we put in place during the quarter. On our last call, we announced the ECA financing for up to $240 million with a blended 20-year amortization profile and a margin of 125 basis points with a 12-year maturity. The balance of the financing will be drawn upon delivery of each new building vessel in 2026, and the company has only $30 million of additional liquidity required to complete the program. During the third quarter, we sold 5 vessels with an average age above 17.5 years old for proceeds of $67 million. Another 3 of our oldest MRs with an average age close to 19 years old have been agreed to be sold in the fourth quarter for proceeds of about $37 million. When these transactions close, we expect to record a gain on the sale. Also in the fourth quarter, we expect to date delivery of our 2020-built scrubber-fitted VLCC, which we will utilize our available liquidity to pay the remaining $107 million due since making a deposit of $12 million in the third quarter. Overall, in 2025 through the end of October, we sold 8 vessels for proceeds of around $100 million, and we'll be purchasing this eco, modern VLCC in the fourth quarter for close to the same amount. Fleet renewal is always part of our strategy, and we expect to execute sales and purchases throughout the tanker cycle. We continue to work through our time charter book as well. While we did not execute any fresh charters this quarter, and even though some have rolled off, we will have over $230 million in future contracted revenue with an average duration of about 1.5 years. We continue to work with the market for opportunities as we believe generally a portion of the fleet will remain on fixed chart. On to the balance sheet in the lower right part of the page. We continue to explore and execute options to enhance our capital stack. After executing the ECA facility documents to fund our LR1 new building, the team went back to work on a knock bond opportunity as an option to pay for our upcoming purchase option that we declared on some of our sale leasebacks. I'm very pleased with the execution to secure a coupon as one of the lowest for first-time issuers in the tanker space. Due to the strength in demand, we increased the size of the bond to $250 million, which is nearly equal to the amount needed to repay the leases. We're very grateful to welcome in our new credit investors, and quite proud of the success in the execution of the bond. Due to the timing of the settlement of the bonds in the third quarter and repayment of the leases in the fourth quarter, we ended the third quarter with $985 million in total liquidity with $413 million in cash and $572 million in undrawn revolver capacity. Net debt at the end of the quarter was under $400 million, which on over $3 billion in fleet value, our net loan-to-value is a very low 13%. Turning over to Slide 5. We've updated our standard set of bullets on tanker demand drivers with the subtle green up arrow next to the bullets representing positive for tankers, the black dash representing a neutral impact, and a red down arrow meaning the topic is not good for tanker demand. Without reading each bullet individually, we believe demand fundamentals are solid and continue to support a constructive outlook for seaborne transportation. Oil demand growth remains healthy at 1 million barrels per day of growth for this year and next. OPEC+ is supplementing 1 million barrels per day of production growth from outside the group with their own production increases that we have not seen the full scope of what could be on the water soon. Some countries in the cartel had penalties for overproduction during the cuts and others were using some production increase in country for power generation. The fourth quarter looks to be the environment where the increased production is hitting the water. For now, it's much needed after the inventory levels have been near their historic lows, as you can see in the chart on the lower left. We are still monitoring how these increased barrels on the water can affect the tanker markets in the longer term. The geopolitical intensity on tankers remains strong with port fee discussions altering trade routes and working through a multitude of scenarios that could impact our business. On the lower right-hand chart, sanctioned barrels out of Russia and Iran have historically been transported to India and China. Lately, we've been seeing more pressure on those exports on those 2 specific countries, in particular, along with more sanctions put on the tanker fleet. Both effects could be positive for international tanker markets, and we expect more development in time, as we have had over the last few years. Moving on to the supply side on Slide 6 of the presentation. It remains one of the most compelling cases for tanker shipping. Orders have slowed in 2025 following a surge in 2024, as you can see on the lower left-hand chart. Tankers on order represent 14% of the fleet that deliver over the next 4 to 5 years. Over a 25-year life of a vessel, we would expect as much with a 4% increase per year of removal candidates multiplied by the 3 to 4 years it takes to deliver a new ship. In practicality, based on actual ship deliveries, there is a significant number of removal candidates that were built in the golden age from '04 to 2010. By the time the order book delivers fully in 2029, nearly 50% of the fleet will be over 20 years old and likely excluded from the commercial trade. There is simply not enough tankers to replace the current aging fleet, as we show in the graph on the lower right-hand side, less than 800 ships are delivering over the next 4 years, representing 1/3 of ships likely to face challenges in securing tonnage for the global trade, not to mention further sanctions or environmental regulations. We also highlighted in dark blue as sanctioned vessels in the chart, which currently tops the number of vessels on order. We believe these fundamentals should translate into a continued up cycle over the next few years and Seaways remains well positioned to capitalize on these market conditions. We will continue to execute our balanced capital allocation approach to renew our fleet and to adapt to industry conditions with a strong balance sheet while returning to shareholders. I'm now going to turn it over to our CFO, Jeff Pribor, to provide the financial review. Jeff? Jeffrey Pribor: Thanks, Lois, and good morning, everyone. On Slide 8, net income for the third quarter was $71 million or $1.42 per diluted share. Excluding gains on vessel sales, our net income was $57 million or $1.15 per diluted share. On the upper right chart, adjusted EBITDA for the third quarter was $108 million. In the appendix, we provided a reconciliation from reported earnings to adjusted earnings. On the lower left chart, I would like to point out that our TCE revenues from crude and products have been evenly balanced over the past year. Our revenue and expenses were largely within expectations for the third quarter. We're pleased with our cost management, particularly with vessel expenses. The lightering business generated approximately $9 million in revenue in the third quarter and contributed nearly $1 million in EBITDA after $3 million in vessel expenses, less than $4 million in charter hire, just over $1 million in G&A. During the summer, the number of jobs decreased, but we're pleased that since September, activity has picked back up again. Turning to our cash bridge on Slide 9. We began the quarter with total liquidity of $790 million, composed of $149 million in cash, $560 million in undrawn revolving capacity. Following along the chart from left to right on the cash bridge, we first had $108 million in adjusted EBITDA for the third quarter, plus $22 million of debt service and another $22 million of dry dock and capital expenditures. We therefore achieved our definition of free cash flow of about $63 million for the third quarter. This represents an annualized cash flow yield of nearly 10% on today's share price. We received $67 million proceeds from the sale of the 5 vessels Lois mentioned earlier. We also paid a $12 million deposit for a 2020-built VLCC, which delivers in the fourth quarter. We paid about $36 million in LR1 newbuilding installments, net of the $41 million drawn down from our new ECA facility. We repaid $27 million on our revolver during the third quarter, of which $15 million offset our capacity reduction, increasing our undrawn revolver capacity to $572 million. Net of fees, we received $247 million of proceeds from our issuance of senior unsecured NOK bonds. The remaining $38 million represents our $0.77 per share dividend that we paid in September. The latter few bars on the chart reflect our balanced capital allocation approach, where we utilize all the pillars, fleet renewal, balance sheet optimization and returns to shareholders. In summary, the result of our activity this quarter yielded a net increase in cash of $264 million. This equates to ending cash of $413 million with $572 million in undrawn revolvers for total liquidity of nearly $1 billion. Naturally, this is impacted by the timing of the settlement of the NOK bond proceeds and the $258 million of purchase options that we will execute on the Ocean Yield leases during the fourth quarter. Now moving to Slide 10. We have a strong financial position detailed by the balance sheet on the left-hand side of the page. Pro forma cash and liquidity remained strong at $727 million when including the impact of payment in the Ocean Yield purchase options. We have invested about $2 billion in vessels at cost on the books currently valued at about $3 billion. And with under $400 million in net debt at the end of the third quarter, our net loan-to-value is approximately 13%. Shown on the lower right-hand table of the page, we have included the pro forma impact of our debt till the end of 2026. Gross debt at the end of September was $804 million. We'll repay the Ocean Yield leases in November and add another $200 million of debt in connection with the LR1 newbuildings in the K-SURE ECO facility. Mandatory debt repayments through the end of 2026 are $33 million, giving us a little over $700 million in debt by the end of 2026 based on our latest balance sheet initiatives. We continue to enhance our balance sheet to maintain the financial flexibility necessary to facilitate growth as well as returns to shareholders. Our nearest maturity in the portfolio isn't until the next decade. We have 31 unencumber vessels on a fully delivered basis, and we have ample undrawn RCF capacity. We continue to explore ways to lower our breakeven cost even more and share in the upside with substantial returns to shareholders. On the last slide that I'll cover, Slide 11 reflects our forward-looking guidance and book-to-date TCE aligned with our spot cash breakeven rate. Starting with TCE pictures for the fourth quarter of 2025, I'll remind you that actual TCE during our next earnings call may be different. But in the fourth quarter, we are now seeing the impact of the elevated rate environment we began to see in late Q3. We currently have a blended average spot TCE of about $40,400 per day fleet-wide, 47% of our fourth quarter expected revenue days. On the right-hand side, our expected 2026 breakeven rate is about $14,500 per day compared with roughly $13,100 per day when we last presented a next 12-month view. On a comparable next 12-month basis, the breakeven remained about $13,500 per day with that difference primarily reflecting higher operating costs and the roll-off of time charter volume. The higher -- full year 2026 figure is mainly driven by timing, specifically higher dry dock costs in the fourth quarter of 2026 compared with the fourth quarter of 2020. Based on our spot TCE book to date and our spot breakeven, it looks like Seaways can continue to generate significant free cash flows during the fourth quarter, and build on our track record of returning significant cash to shareholders. In the bottom left-hand chart, we provide some updated guidance for our expenses for the fourth quarter and our preliminary estimates for 2026. We also included in the appendix our quarterly expected off-hire and CapEx. I don't plan to read each item line by line, but encourage you to use these for modeling purposes. That concludes my remarks. I'd now like to turn the call back to Lois for her closing comments. Lois Zabrocky: Thank you, Jeff. On Slide 12, we have provided you with Seaways' investment highlights, which I encourage you to read in its entirety and summarizing briefly here, over the last 9 years, International Seaways has built a track record of returning cash to shareholders, maintaining a healthy balance sheet and growing the company. Our total shareholder return represents over 20% compounded annual return. We continue to renew our fleet so that our average age is about 10 years old in what we see as the sweet spot for tanker investments and returns. We've invested in a range of tanker-class to cast a wider net for growth opportunities and to supplement our scale in each class by operating in larger pools. We aim to keep our balance sheet fortified for any down cycle. We have nearly $600 million in undrawn credit capacity to support our growth. Our net debt is under 15% of the fleet's current value, and we have 31 vessels that are unencumbered. Lastly, we only have our spot ships earned under $15,000 per day to breakeven in 2026. At this point in the cycle, we expect to continue generating cash that we will put to work to create value for the company and for our shareholders. We want to thank you very much. And with that said, operator, we'd like to open the lines for questions. Operator: [Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from Omar Nokta with Jefferies. Omar Nokta: Obviously, it looks like things are continuing to work out quite nicely for you guys, and you're doing a bit of everything. You're growing, rejuvenating the fleet, strengthened balance sheet, lowering your breakevens and obviously paying out capital. I wanted to just ask a couple of questions, more market-related, just based on what we've been seeing here recently. And I like your slide, on Slide 4, you showed the table of your achieved rates so far in the fourth quarter. There's quite a bit of a step-up, you'd say, across all the different segments from what you've earned during the prior 4 quarters. And I think in general, when people have been thinking about this market with OPEC and all that, it's been viewed that the VLCCs are going to lead the way, and certainly, we're seeing that. But we're also seeing some strength in the other classes, especially the Suezes and the Afras. And just wanted to get a sense from you, given your vantage point, is the midsized tankers, are they benefiting from what's going on with the VLCC? Are they getting pulled into those trades? Or is this a shift in cargo flows for those vessels that maybe has to do with Russia? Lois Zabrocky: So I'm going to have Derek Solon, our Chief Commercial Officer, attempt to tackle that one. Derek Solon: Great. Thanks, Lois. Omar, this is Derek. Thanks for the question. I mean you're, of course, right. The fourth quarter has been a lot stronger than the prior quarters. And a lot of that is OPEC+ sort of removing some of their voluntary cuts and kind of returning to a tanker market, a more normal tanker market where the VLCCs would lead the way on the big crude. So when the Vs are strengthening, what we see is they're doing a lot less of the business that they have done since post Russia, meaning fewer transatlantic cargoes that were really cannibalizing off the Suez and the Aframax. So now that we've got the VLCCs with healthy rates back in more of their normal trades, that naturally benefits the Suez and the Afras. To the point now where we're seeing, the Suezmaxes try to start to cannibalize back on the VLCC trade, right? So with that healthy V market, you're going to have a healthy midsized crude sector. Omar Nokta: Okay. So it's a bit more -- it's a pull basically upwards by the VLCCs, which is the old-fashioned way as you're kind of hinting at. And, I guess, maybe as we've seen this big move up in crude spot rates, products seem to have lagged and been held back. Is this normal? Do you think crude is leading the way, eventually products will get there? But here, obviously, I'm looking at your MR performance, and it's at 29,000, still fairly strong, quite a bit stronger than, say, indexes. But I guess maybe the indexes have lagged the crude. Do you think that's a lag? Or is this one of those things where maybe product fits this one out, and it's really more of a crude trade here in the next few months? Lois Zabrocky: So, yes, Omar, imagine that we earned just shy of 26 a day in the third quarter on MR and earning 29 a day in the fourth quarter for days booked, and that we think that's lagging. So that is just stunning stellar outperformance continued, I think, on the MR sector. Derek, could you add on that? Derek Solon: On that. Sure. Look, I mean, obviously, the MR rates are very healthy. I think our third quarter is strong. Our fourth quarter to date is very strong. A lot of that has to do with where we trade here in the Americas with a substantial portion of our MR fleet. But Omar, I think it's also -- it's certainly not that the MRs are sitting it out because the market is strong, but there's just different geopolitical factors impacting the MRs on the positive side. So you kind of talked about Russia in the bigger crude, but I talked about Russia more here on the clean sector, because a combination of things happening between stronger newer sanctions on Russian oil companies and Ukraine upping its attack on Russian oil infrastructure, we see a lot less diesel exports from Russia. So that void is being filled by the U.S., by some Latin American stuff. And the benefit to us, and a lot of our peers, is also that those are barrels that the compliant fleet can move, not the dark fleet, not the gray fleet, but the combined fleet. So that's part of why you see -- where we see the MRs pretty helped. Omar Nokta: Okay. Yes. And certainly, you can see from your results, definitely a fairly strong, I would say, outperformance in that segment. Operator: The next question comes from Chris Robertson with Deutsche Bank. Christopher Robertson: Just wanted to turn to the current crude inventory levels and get your thoughts around how that inventory building cycle will play out here? And do you think given the current forward oil curve, will this incentivize any offshore storage opportunities in the coming quarters? Or is the curve not steep enough yet to kind of incentivize that? Lois Zabrocky: It's interesting for sure. What we're seeing at the moment is that there's a lot of oil on the water. We don't really see heightened inventories yet onshore. So we speculate that some of these barrels that are on the water are not sure where they're going to land yet as a home. So it may be somewhat sanctions-impacted. And we're watching the forward oil curve very carefully. It's pretty flat. So this is definitely not a steep contango situation that we are involved in right now. So it seems a little bit more, you've got a lot of oil on the water, disagreements between IEA and OPEC and on just how much production is out there. So it's really interesting times for us. Christopher Robertson: Just turning to the S&P market, given the recent momentum in rates and things, as part of your normal fleet renewal strategy, are you seeing an increase in opportunities here to potentially divest further older assets? Or are rates sufficiently high at the moment that you might want to slow down on divesting assets at the moment? Lois Zabrocky: Well, on those older MRs, we've had a high degree of success, and we are starting to see asset values pick up, reflecting increased rates. We will continue to judiciously upgrade the fleet going forward. So in 2026, it will be more of the same of some disposals of the older vessels, and then we want to high-grade the fleet so that we really improve our earnings capability. Operator: [Operator Instructions] And as we have no further questions, I will hand back over to Lois for any final comments. Lois Zabrocky: Thank you very much. We appreciate it, Carla, and I want to thank everyone for tuning into International Seaways' quarterly conference call as we continue strong rates into the winter. Thank you. Operator: Thank you, everyone. This concludes today's call. You may now disconnect. Have a great rest of your day.
Operator: Good day, and welcome to the Air Products Fourth Quarter Earnings Release Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded at the request of Air Products. Please note that this presentation and the comments made on behalf of Air Products are subject to copyright by Air Products and all rights are reserved. Beginning today's call is Megan Britt. Please go ahead. Megan Britt: Hello, and welcome to the Fourth Quarter and Full Year Fiscal 2025 Earnings Conference Call for Air Products. Our prepared remarks today will be led by Eduardo Menezes, Chief Executive Officer; and Melissa Schaeffer, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. We have prepared presentation slides to supplement our remarks during the call, which are posted on the Investor Relations section of the Air Products website. During this call, we'll make forward-looking statements, which are our expectations about the future. These statements are based on current expectations and assumptions that are subject to various risks and uncertainties. Our actual results could materially differ from these statements due to these risks and uncertainties, including, but not limited to, those discussed on this call and in the forward-looking statements and Risk Factors sections of our reports filed with the SEC. We do not undertake any duty to update any forward-looking statements. Please note in today's presentation, we will refer to various financial measures including earnings per share, capital expenditures, operating income, operating income margin, the effective tax rate and ROCE, either on a total company or a segment basis. Unless we specifically state otherwise, statements regarding these measures refer to our adjusted non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations of these measures to our most directly comparable GAAP financial measures can be found on our investor website in the relevant earnings release section. It's now my pleasure to turn the call over to Eduardo. Eduardo Menezes: Thank you, Megan. Hello, and thank you for joining our call today. Please turn to Slide 3. Earlier today, we reported our fourth quarter and full fiscal year 2025 results. Our numbers show consistent progress related to commitments we shared earlier this year. We delivered earnings per share of $12.03, which is above the midpoint of our full year fiscal guidance range. Our operating income margin of 23.7% and return on capital of 10.1% were also in line with our commitments for these metrics. Also, this year marks the 43rd consecutive year of increasing our dividend. In total, we returned $1.6 billion to our shareholders in fiscal 2025. I'm encouraged we are setting challenging but achievable targets and delivering on those commitments. We have taken several key actions starting in the second quarter to focus on the core industrial gas business and expect to unlock earnings growth through productivity, pricing, operational excellence and disciplined capital allocation. The last 3 quarters demonstrate that we are already making progress. Moving to Slide 4. We have 3 key priorities for 2026 that were part of the strategy we shared earlier this year. First, we expect to deliver high single-digit annual EPS growth. To be clear, our 2026 guidance anticipates additional helium headwinds in a sluggish macroeconomic environment. On our second priority, we will continue to make strides to optimize our large projects portfolio. We are working diligently to finalize our NEOM project and expect to improve our underperforming project portfolio with a goal of generating positive cash returns. On our third priority, we continue to take actions to balance our capital allocation and improve our balance sheet. We expect to reduce our capital expenditures to roughly $2.5 billion per year following the completion of several large projects. At this level of CapEx, we believe we can support our ongoing maintenance and invest in the traditional industrial gas projects while growing our dividend and longer term, returning additional cash to shareholders via share buybacks. In 2026, we expect our capital expenditures to be about $4 billion. In summary, we expect fiscal 2026 to demonstrate our commitment to continuously drive improvement in our core industrial gas business and growing alongside our customers. Please turn to Slide 5. We highlighted earlier this year that a portion of our productivity improvement will come from returning to an organizational headcount similar to what we had before we started several large clean energy projects. This slide offers a progress report on our actions in the savings that are being created. Since 2022, we have identified a total of 3,600 headcount reductions, which translates to [ 16% ] of our peak workforce. We expect these reductions to contribute approximately $250 million in annual cost savings or $0.90 per share in earnings once the reductions are complete. These cuts are not something we do lightly, but they are critical to offset inflation and adapt the organization to a lower level of CapEx spend. Our objective remains to return to staffing levels of 2018 adjusted for employee growth to support new assets, minus any other productivity we can find with new initiatives like AI. Moving to Slide 6. We have a summary of our expected CapEx expenditures after 2026. As we have previously said, we are also moving forward with several underperforming projects, giving our commercial obligations and project steps. We have roughly $2.5 billion remaining to be spent on these projects from 2026 to 2028. Though these products are not expected to contribute materially to operating income, we continue to work to improve their results through commercial negotiations, operational improvement and productivity. For our NEOM project, this slide reflects the CapEx related to our equity contribution to the overall project, which will be completed in 2027. Any further investments for ammonia dissociation in Europe will need to be approved separately. After we bring these projects on stream, we expect capital expenditures of roughly $2.5 billion per year, which can sustain both our future growth and ongoing maintenance. For our blue hydrogen project in Louisiana, we have halted making new commitments until an offtake agreement is reached. In this slide, our capital investment for this project in '26 reflects only prior commitments on the project and we have excluded any spending beyond 2026. Like in the case of NEOM downstream investments, they would need to be justified and approved based on firm offtake commitments. I'll talk more about the Louisiana and NEOM projects in our next slide. On traditional core growth, we expect to invest approximately $1.5 billion per year going forward. These are air separation hydrogen projects that we normally execute in 18 to 30 months, so there are always new products being added and completed products being removed from the list. The CapEx figures for fiscal year 2027 and beyond represents our expected average spend. Our focus will be, as always, on opportunities that meet our return thresholds with quality customers and contractual uptake. Moving to Slide 7. I wanted to close with a brief update on NEOM and Louisiana. Start with NEOM, the project is progressing well and is about 90% complete. Solar and wind power generation will be completed by early 2026, and we will start commissioning the electrolyzers and ammonia production. We expect to have ammonia production on stream with full product availability in 2027. We are, of course, following the regulatory developments in Europe. It is important to highlight that the scale of the energy transition is such that the volumes required to meet even the smaller mandates such as the Red III EU mandate to convert 1% of fuel sold to RFNBO fuels would create a green hydrogen demand equal to approximately 7x the total production of our NEOM project by 2030. Obviously, a significant part of the volume is expected to be supplied by local electrolyzers using renewable power, but it's important to highlight that our solution to bring green ammonia from Saudi Arabia for dissociation in Europe is competitive in terms of pricing and requires 0 public subsidies. As mentioned before, the market for green ammonia is also being developed, and that will be our main target for -- from the time the NEOM project starts. Additional feedback on the market development will be provided during 2026. Regarding our blue hydrogen project in Louisiana, we are evaluating proposals to divest the carbon sequestration, and ammonia production assets. We will only go forward with this project if we can sign firm offtake agreements for hydrogen and nitrogen from the facilities that will be owned and operated by Air Products. And of course, these agreements will need to comply with our return expectations with one or more high-quality counterparts. As previously committed, we expect to provide further updates related to this project prior to the end of 2025, so in less than 2 months from today. Let me finish by saying that I'm excited to launch my first full operating year with Air Products team. We have been working hard to right the ship and bring the company back to a position where we can deliver maximum value to our shareholders, customers and employees. Now I'll turn the call over to Melissa to discuss our financial results in greater depth and discuss our 2026 outlook. Melissa? Melissa Schaeffer: Thank you, Eduardo, and welcome and hello to those joining us on the call today. Please move to Slide 8 for a high-level summary of our financial results. We ended the fiscal year with earnings per share of $12.03, delivering our commitment to our shareholders and above market consensus. With respect to sales, favorable volume for on-site and non-helium merchant were more than offset by a 2% headwind from the prior year LNG divestiture as well as project exits. Volume was also lower due to the reduced global helium demand. Partially was favorable for non-helium merchant products across all regions. Operating income was down on volume and higher cost, partially offset by non-helium price. The higher costs were driven by depreciation, largely offset by productivity improvements, net of fixed cost inflation. Operating income margin of approximately 24% declined 70 basis points compared to the prior year, largely driven by higher energy cost pass-through. Return on capital of 10.1% was lower versus prior year as we continue to exit on our project backlog. Moving now to Slide 9. Our fiscal year earnings per share of $12.03 decreased $0.40 or 3% from prior year, driven by a 4% headwind from LNG divestiture and a 2% headwind from project exits. Without these discrete items, EPS would be up 3%. Additionally, we continue to see headwinds from helium, including unfavorable comparable volume and pricing across regions. Despite these headwinds, we continue to deliver on our base business with stronger non-helium pricing actions, ongoing productivity across our segments and favorable on-site and merchant contributions. Moving now to Slide 10. I will provide an overview of our results by segment for the full fiscal year. You can find additional details of the quarterly segment results in the appendix. For the fiscal year, America's results were down 3%. As a reminder, we reported a onetime asset sale associated with an early contract termination at the request of a customer in the prior year fourth quarter, which alone resulted in a 3% headwind in the Americas. Additional drivers include headwinds from project exits and helium and higher maintenance-related costs. These were partially offset by strong non-helium pricing actions, productivity improvement and favorable on-site contributions from our HyCO business. Asia fiscal year results were relatively flat, as lower helium was offset by favorable on-site, non-helium price and productivity. During the quarter, we made the decision to sell 2 coal gasification projects within Asia, which are now within assets held for sale. Europe's FY '25 results improved 4% as non-helium merchant pricing, productivity and favorable on-site contribution was partially offset by lower helium and higher costs associated with 2 depreciation and fixed cost inflation. The full year, Middle East and India equity affiliates income decreased 2% from prior year, primarily due to lower contributions from our Jazan joint venture. The full year results for the Corporate and Other segment were primarily impacted by the headwind from the prior year sale of LNG, partially offset by lower changes to the sale of equipment project estimates and lower costs with our continued focus on productivity improvements. Moving now to Slide 11. We continue to generate strong cash flows from our base business, supporting investments in both energy transition and traditional industrial gas projects. Additionally, we returned $1.6 billion in cash to our shareholders. We remain committed to disciplined cost control, a reduction in capital expenditures and strategic asset actions aimed at unlocking value and generating cash. Moving now to Slide 12. We will review our outlook for fiscal 2026. For the full year, we expect to deliver earnings per share in the range of $12.85 to $13.15, an improvement of 7% to 9% from the prior year. Despite a helium headwind comparable to FY '25, this growth is expected to be achieved through new asset contribution and continued focus on pricing actions and productivity. We also expect a 1% benefit from the rationalization of projects in large part due to the 2 Asia gasification assets we wrote down in fiscal 2025. We are focused on delivering these results in line with the 5-year road map we introduced earlier this year. For the first quarter of 2026, we expect to deliver earnings per share in the range of $2.95 to $3.10, representing a 3% to 8% improvement from the prior year. Our outlook assumes growth from continued pricing actions and productivity as well as a benefit from the rationalization of projects and lower planned maintenance, partially offset by lower helium. As a reminder, we expect our first quarter to be lower sequentially due to normal seasonality. With respect to capital, we expect to spend approximately $4 billion as we execute on our project backlog, including approximately $1 billion on traditional industrial gas projects and invest in ongoing maintenance. As we look to derisk our Louisiana projects and optimize our portfolio, we expect to be modestly cash flow positive in fiscal year 2026 and are committed to staying cash flow neutral through 2028 as we close out on several projects. Now we'll open the call up for questions. Operator? Operator: [Operator Instructions] We'll go first to Jeff Zekauskas with JPMorgan. Jeffrey Zekauskas: In your opening remarks, I think you said that you were evaluating proposals to divest the carbon capture piece of the Louisiana project, but you're still evaluating whether you would proceed with the project. So could it be that those 2 events would be linked, that is you would sell the carbon capture piece to a party, and then work with them to provide them hydrogen or hydrogen and ammonia? Eduardo Menezes: Jeff. Yes, let me try to explain that. The idea of this project is basically to transform into a regular hydrogen and air separation project where we supply hydrogen and nitrogen to someone that will produce the ammonia. The CO2 that is being produced by the facility has to be sequestered in order to -- for you to capture the 45Q credit, right? So what we're basically saying is that Air Products was developing by itself its own pore space to do that. And what we are trying to do at this point, we're evaluating proposals for someone to buy the pore spaces from us and provide the service of the CO2 sequestration or to just buy the pore space from us and provide the service from another location that this company may have. So that's the picture in terms of the CO2 sequestration. And yes, this is connected to the overall project, although if we decided not to go forward, of course, we still have this asset that is the pore space that we can try to monetize in the market. Jeffrey Zekauskas: And as for the Alberta project, because the cost overruns have been so high, why don't you simply stop the project? Or what impedes you from stopping it? And would that project have to be money losing on an EPS basis because the depreciation charges will just be so high from the cost overruns when it comes -- if it comes on? Eduardo Menezes: Yes, Jeff. This project, as I explained before, we have a long-term commitment for almost 50% of the volume with a major customer that depends on us. So we have a contractual commitment that we take very seriously. So we need to finish the project and supply the hydrogen to this customer. And we have some additional volume that we are working hard to find other ways to place in the market. As you probably know, we already have infrastructure in place in Edmonton. We have 2 other sites that are connected to a pipeline. And this third site will also be connected there. So we can move the product from these 3 sites to basically all the refineries that are located in that area. So that's the work we're doing with the additional volume, but our commitment to go forward is basically what we need to have in order to fulfill our contractual obligations. Operator: We will go next to David Begleiter with Deutsche Bank. David Begleiter: Eduardo, on the cost savings and the employee headcount, is the 20,000 headcount you're targeting a new base? Or could it go lower from there? Eduardo Menezes: Yes. This is what we are expecting to have at the end of this year. We continue to find ways to rationalize our workforce to make sure that we use all the technologies available. I think we demonstrate that we are reducing our SG&A year-by-year. And if I'm -- my recollection is correct, I think we said that our original number when we were in 2018 was close to 18,500 people. And our objective is to go back to that number plus the people that we absolutely need to operate some assets that we added since that date. So I would say that we still have some room to go, but it's an ongoing process to always optimize and make sure that you are as competitive as possible. David Begleiter: Very good. And just back on Louisiana. If you do move forward with that project with these offtaker partners you suggested, what would be the CapEx remaining to Air Products? Eduardo Menezes: Yes. We will provide that data, Dave, when we update the project. I think it's -- I hope everybody understands that what we are saying is trying to summarize that no offtake deals, no FID. So Air Products started this project without having an offtake deal. We paused the project. We're working hard to find solutions for that. The economics of the project, when you look at the natural gas price, the infrastructure that we have in place and the 45Q it is the right place to install green -- blue hydrogen and blue ammonia projects. I think both other ammonia producers and even our competitors that are doing similar projects in Texas and Louisiana saying exactly the same thing that you can be competitive even against gray ammonia in Europe. So we're working on that, trying to find a solution. I understand we are basically 45 days away from the end of the year. And if I really didn't think that we have a chance to have something, it would be much easier for me to say that today. But we still believe that we can find an interesting solution for this project, and we'll provide a full update before the end of this year. Operator: We'll go next to Duffy Fischer with Goldman Sachs. Patrick Fischer: Just want to get some insights into the growth into next year. So at the midpoint of your guide, you're up 8%, but there's a negative 4% from helium. So that's really 12%. Melissa called out one from the shutdown of the sale of the Chinese assets, which gets you to 11%. So of that 11% growth underlying, can you break that out kind of new projects, price, efficiencies, how you deliver that? And is that smooth throughout the year? Or are the oncoming projects back-end loaded? Eduardo Menezes: Yes. We expect contribution from new assets in -- both in Asia and the Americas. That can give us around 2%, 3% growth. And then the balance will come from price and productivity. I would say, half and half there. We are working very hard on the productivity side, as we mentioned on our headcount slide and on the pricing is a continuous work for us. The helium headwind that we have is very similar to what we had this year. I would say that when we say that this is the headwind for 2026 is basically agreements that we are reviewing and we're signing this year in 2025 or the previous year, now the fiscal year. Air Products, most of our volume comes from large liquid customers. As you know, our packaged gas business is basically limited to Europe. So we pretty much know where these agreements are going to be next year, and that's where they are at the fourth quarter of this year. So we're pretty comfortable that we understand well the headwind that we have in helium and in the base business, as I said, 3% of new assets and the balance coming from productivity and price. Patrick Fischer: Great. And I'm sure it's not your favorite subject, but helium was mentioned 29 times in your slide deck this quarter. What is your view on the helium industry going forward? Do you think we've stabilized at this point? So '26 will be the last year of headwind? Or do you think we continue to see headwinds in the '27 and '28 for that product? Eduardo Menezes: I didn't count the number of times, Duffy, but thank you for pointing that. Yes, it's -- we have a lot of debates on that. If we have a structural change in the market or just part of the cyclicality that you always had in helium, right? I would say that there were some significant changes in the way the market operates because of the disappearance of the BLM as a major source of helium globally and in the United States. And that took away a little bit of the inventory that you had that were able to regulate the market a little bit. I think most of the major players now, they are now installing their own storage. So we have our own cavern, our 2 competitors, they have their own caverns as well. So I hope that this will help regulate the market a little bit. And from what I see today, I see still some decline in '27, but not at the same level that we had this year. And the best guess that we have is that, that will be the lowest point and the market will stabilize. But we need to see how the sources develop and how the effect of this storage of helium will have in the overall marketplace. Operator: We'll go next to Patrick Cunningham with Citi. Patrick Cunningham: If you decide to forgo downstream investment in NEOM maybe based on unfavorable regulatory environment, whatever it may be, what do the commercial options look like? And would you expect to see any positive EPS contribution in 2027 under a scenario where you have to sell ammonia exclusively? Eduardo Menezes: Yes. We are still talking about the guidance for 2026, right? So we're going to work -- we are working on this issue. We're going to work during the year. And by the end of 2026, we'll be able to give you more guidance on that. Now, there is no question that in the beginning of this project, we'll need to commercialize the product as ammonia. The market for green and blue ammonia or low-carbon ammonia, whatever you want to call, it's developing. So I expect that we're going to have the ability to sell some of our production in the beginning of the operation as green, and that percentage will grow with time. What is exactly the numbers? As you know, ammonia, it's own market. It has different pricing dynamics. So we're going to need to wait a little bit more to give you a forecast for 2027. Patrick Cunningham: Understood. And then maybe just a quick one on equity affiliate income. We saw meaningful growth in the Americas this quarter. Can you provide some color on what was driving that and what we should sort of expect for step up or step down across all of the regions and equity income next year? Eduardo Menezes: Yes, I can ask Melissa to answer, but it's basically Mexico for us and they have been -- had a very strong second half of the year. Melissa Schaeffer: Yes. Thanks, Eduardo. So -- absolutely, so our Mexican joint venture did see improvements year-over-year. We do expect about a flat going into FY '26. However, we did see a slight decline in our Jazan joint venture in '25, and we actually look for that to be a pickup in '26. And obviously, interest rates do impact that. So as interest rates do decline, we will see improvement on the equity affiliate contributions from our Jazan joint venture. Operator: We'll go next to Josh Spector with UBS. Joshua Spector: Eduardo, I wanted to just ask you about the decision on Louisiana. I mean I think based on investor expectations, you might have had some license to maybe push out a decision there a little bit beyond year-end, but you're having the tax commitment to communicate something here in the next couple of months. So I'm just curious if you could talk about the range of scenarios there. Is that a go or no-go, meaning cancel decision? Or do you see a scenario where kind of some decision gets pushed out beyond the year-end time frame? Eduardo Menezes: Yes. I understand the curiosity, Josh. And I -- we would like to be able to communicate more at this point, but we really need to wait until the end of the year. Again, this -- I would say that if we are telling you that we believe that we have a reasonable chance to communicate something by the end of this year, it means that we have very advanced negotiations with counterparts on that, right? It is the largest project or would be the largest projects ever built or probably any other industrial gas company. So it's a very complex negotiation, and we have been working on that for several months now. I would say that from that perspective, it's going well. My main concern on this project really is on the capital estimate for the project. When you look at the slide, you can see a picture of coal box that we manufacture for this project. So we have all the major equipment done. We have all the engineering done, but we still need to do the construction. And the construction market in the United States is very hot at this point. A lot of competition from data centers and other people trying to build other structures and coming from different industries and able to pay different prices. I think this is affecting projects for the entire chemical industry. So we are looking at that very carefully, trying to understand what is real, what is not and what is a bubble with the point that if you look at our slides, you can see that we made a point about applying for a major air permit source -- air source permit there in Louisiana. And we did that because our potential counterparts asked us to have the flexibility of running the plant on a gray mold if something happens with the CO2 sequestration that we didn't expect to do or we still don't expect to do because the CO2 is a big contributor for the project. But -- it's something that the other projects are doing, and we decided to apply for that major permit. And that will take several months. It will probably take up to mid-2026. And from there, you need to do civil construction. So really, the peak of the mechanical and electrical construction would be like mid-2027. And the judgment that we need to make is how hot or not hot the U.S. construction market will be at that point. So that's where we have been working a lot of details behind that decision, and we will communicate clearly where we are in the project before the end of this year. Joshua Spector: Okay. And just a quick follow-up just with the guide for '26. Your comments are minimal volume growth to something to that extent. Just wonder if you could quantify minimal. Are we talking about near 0 growth. And basically, if we end up having a macro environment that looks like where we've been at the last couple of quarters, is that a risk to your guidance? Or is that largely baked in? Melissa Schaeffer: Yes, sure. Thanks for the question. So let's be clear. So again, as we stated, we do see several new assets coming on stream, both in the Americas and in Asia. Those will be ramping towards the back half of this fiscal year. So there is growth in volume associated to new assets. From a market volume perspective, we're not forecasting significant market growth at this time given the macroeconomic headwinds. However, if we see that improve, obviously, our results will improve. So definitely volume from new assets, but at this time, not forecasting significant market volume due to those headwinds. Operator: We will move next to Vincent Andrews with Morgan Stanley. Vincent Andrews: Just trying to reconcile the CapEx slide in this deck versus the one in the last one. It looks to us like your CapEx forecast for fiscal '26 has gone from about $3.1 billion to $4 billion. So first of all, is that correct? And secondarily, if it is, what's changed in that slide that's causing that? Melissa Schaeffer: Yes. Thanks, Vincent, for the question, and I'll take this one. So the CapEx guide that we gave in the second quarter, obviously was an estimate, right? So as we go through the year, we sit with all the regional presidents and really do a bottom-up forecast on the capital that we're going to spend over the next couple of years. So we've refined that -- we've adjusted based on new wins in all the different regions and are estimating around a $4 billion CapEx. Obviously, maintenance is a component of that CapEx. We're looking to improve on maintenance and take that down. So this could improve that CapEx number. But again, that's really a bottoms-up review that we do as part of our plan. So there was a small variance between the Q2 time frame CapEx forecast and what we're projecting right now. Vincent Andrews: Okay. And then just as a follow-up, separately in the corporate segment, which came in certainly better than what we had and I believe better than where consensus was. The slide -- and I apologize if you already spoke to this. The slide speaks to lower changes of sale of equipment project estimates. What does that mean? Melissa Schaeffer: Yes. Thank you. So we do have certain sales. It's a very small part of our business, but what we would call a sale of equipment. When we sell a project to a company that's not going to be a long-term sale of gas project. We have had some cost increases associated to certain projects that are sale of equipment that are again accounted on a percentage of completion accounting perspective. So as cost increases there, we show that in the P&L. We did have some smaller cost increases this year compared to last year, and that's really what you're seeing flow through there. Operator: We'll move next to Chris Parkinson with Wolfe Research. Christopher Parkinson: So let's talk about your base business a little bit, particularly electronics. Can you just go over kind of how we should be thinking about the intermediate to long-term growth algorithm that you have in your portfolio and how that exposure evolves with [ M.2 HBM ] growth and everything else. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that as well as where you think Air Products just broadly stands relative to peers in terms of what's embedded in, let's say, your non-large project outlook as it relates to your backlog? Eduardo Menezes: Thank you, Chris. Yes, electronics represents roughly 17% of our total sales in Air Products. It's a very important segment for us. We were really the pioneers in the area, initially with Intel, now with the other players. It's a market that is expanding very quickly. We have plants that we are commissioning right now. We have investments on other plants in Asia that we're doing, and we are in the process of participating bids for several others, right? As you know, the investment in this area has been very, very strong. So it's probably the brightest area we have for our traditional business, and it's an area that we have been focused a lot. I really -- on your point on the other products, I really would like to get a little more clarification exactly what you're asking other than the portfolio of new projects. Christopher Parkinson: Are you happy with where your existing electronics backlog exists relative to peers, given everybody has been wrong over the last few years? Or is that something you'd like to focus on as CEO? Eduardo Menezes: Yes. No, no. I will never be happy with that because I always want to have more than that. We're working very hard to get some new opportunities. We believe that there are some new projects that we will be able to announce in 2026. And I -- but I still believe that we have a very, very strong position in this market. And I have no other way to make comparisons with our competitors. I think our position on that market is stronger than it is in most markets. Melissa Schaeffer: And if I could add one point. So one of the assets that we spoke about is coming on stream this year is in the electronic space in Taiwan. So that's the starting of the ramp of that project. So that's one good example. But in the near term, where we're going to see improvements in the electronics space for Air Products. Eduardo Menezes: Yes. And the reality is in these places, it's like a continuous project because they have so many expansions and we are always building new plants in Asia, and hopefully, we will be able to move that to other regions as well as these customers, they start to invest outside of Asia. Christopher Parkinson: Got it. And just as a quick follow-up. To the extent that you can, can you talk about just kind of how we should be thinking about the run rates from Uzbekistan as well as like GCA and some of these other projects which have had some maintenance or kind of been more start and go. Could you just perhaps just give us a little framework on how we should be thinking about those as well. Eduardo Menezes: Yes. Uzbekistan is a very large syngas facility. It's operating well. We had a maintenance this year, but it was scheduled maintenance, this kind of plants you have to do that every few years. So no real issues there and the plant is running at very high rates at this point. And GCA is a project that we are still working on to basically bring to completion, and it's one of the projects that we expect to contribute this year in 2026. Operator: We'll go next to John Roberts with Mizuho Securities. John Ezekiel Roberts: Are you still anticipating doing ammonia cracking in Europe and building an ammonia cracker there? Eduardo Menezes: We are still waiting to see what the final regulation will be in Europe. As you know, they have this regulation to convert 1% of the fuels to RFNBO. This is for 2030 now. This has to be transposed by each country. There is other regulations that are probably not going to move. But this one, everything indicates that what you see in most countries, they are even proposing higher percentage than that. So I think Spain is 4%, Germany 1.5%. But all this has to be ratified and the expectation now is that we'll see this transposition of the regulations by March of 2026. So when the regulation comes out, then we're going to understand the size of the market with the best information we have today, it's not a huge percentage of the fuels. But when you think about green hydrogen volumes that are really, really small, that will generate a market. I think in our slides, we said that if the number is 1% is like 7x the volume of NEOM. At the current regulation levels that we see, that number is more like 20x. Again, these volumes, they can be supplied by local production using electrolyzers with renewable power or they can be supplied by cracking ammonia coming from a place like Saudi Arabia. So it's really a way to do some arbitrage on power prices and so forth. So we need to see how these ends. We need to see how the market develops and what opportunities we have. If the project makes sense, again, and if we have an offtake agreement, then we can do an FID and move forward with these projects. If not, will need to go in a different direction. But at this point, indications are that there will be a market, not a huge market, but very significant compared to the existing volumes in terms of green hydrogen and green ammonia. Operator: We'll go next to Laurence Alexander with Jefferies. Laurence Alexander: Earlier this year, when you put out the target of 6% to 9% growth through '29, what was your assumption around NEOM? Was it your predecessors' framework of realized prices will be roughly double the market price? Was it just a placeholder, 10% IRR? Was it -- can you give us some sense of what was embedded in that framework from the NEOM asset. Eduardo Menezes: No, we didn't add any kind of very large contribution from NEOM. At this point, we have the contribution from the JV point of view. The contribution from the product that we'll need to sell from there is something that, as I said before, we need to continue to work on to get a better understanding of what the numbers will be. But on our guidance for that high single digits between now and the '29, we count with a minimum contribution from that project. Operator: We'll go next to Matthew DeYoe with Bank of America. Matthew DeYoe: Two questions for you. I apologize, the first one is going to be a little long. So if I look at your performance versus Linde, Europe really shows the biggest opportunity for improvement. And notably, I think price there has kind of underperformed materially if you go back or look even to COVID or pre-COVID. I know helium is probably in there, but I think fundamentally, when electricity prices rolled over in '22 and '23, it looks like Air Products just like handed price back to customers and Linde didn't. And so net, you have a pretty wide margin differential between the two. I mean when -- do you kind of agree with that view, but is there an opportunity to catch up on the price differential? Or is raising price unilaterally like too difficult? And then, as my second, is there a world where you can just like monetize the $2 billion so cost in Darrow to another company that's looking to do a project along the Gulf Coast that might have maybe different strategic goals from Air Products. So I don't know, maybe you can get like 50% of that, right? Is there a way we can walk away with $1 billion and just say that's better than just a full project walk? Eduardo Menezes: Yes. On the -- we starting with the last question first, yes, absolutely. As I said, we have a lot of the critical equipment done for the project. the project has good economics. So that's definitely what would happen if we decide to cancel. We would try to monetize as much as we can. And I don't think your estimate of 50% is a bad estimate at this point. But again, this is something that you need to go and understand and see how much you can recover from that. On your first question, and I've seen your report on the prices in Europe and I think we're still trying to understand exactly the comparisons there because when you do comparisons quarter-by-quarter, not in an average for the year, you get to different results. And I think we can talk offline and explain a little bit of that to you. But when you look at performance in Europe. Yes, I understand our competitor improved a lot of their performance. I have a personal understanding for what exactly happened there. You always need to understand that Europe is -- it's easy to talk about as one market, but there are several different markets in Europe. It's easy to see that when you think about an island like the U.K. But the reality is, when you talk about industrial gases, Iberia is an Ireland, Italy is an island. And really the only large common market we have in Europe is the space between France and the Benelux in Germany. Eastern Europe also doesn't have the same geographical barriers, but the density also leads to the point that you have several different markets here. So when you think about that, and you forgot about Scandinavia, it's also a separate market. If you look at the positions that we have and the positions that our competitors have, the margins are little -- you can understand a little bit the differences in margin. I'd not say that we cannot improve our business in Europe. We're working to do that, to make it better on every line of business that we have. But I think the difference in performance is a little smaller than what you are -- you were calculating there just because of the positions that we may have or not in places like Scandinavia or Eastern Europe. But -- so that's the point I can guarantee you we're not giving -- we're not giving price back and we're working on our pricing day by day in Europe. And I look forward to have our group here reaching to you and talk about the difference on how you calculate that when you look at quarter results and annual cumulative results on pricing. Operator: We'll move next Arun Viswanathan with RBC Capital Markets. Arun Viswanathan: Just a clarification on the helium headwind. So I think maybe this year came in just slightly below your expectations. I think you're guiding at $0.55 to $0.60, maybe that's $0.49, so maybe that was a little bit better. Maybe you can just clarify that. And then on the helium headwind for next year, it looks like Q1 is maybe a negative 6%, but then the full year is negative 4%. So that appears to be projected to get better as you move through the year. What's your confidence in that, I guess? And is there a possibility that it could get worse? And then for my second question, just on CapEx, is there a possibility that maybe -- what kind of flex do you have there? Would you go down to maybe $3.5 billion if necessary for fiscal '26? And how soon you make those decisions? What kind of freedom are you giving yourselves to or time to make some more difficult decisions, I guess, if you need to? Melissa Schaeffer: Great. Thanks. I'll take this question. So let's start on helium. So you are right. We had forecasted between $0.50 and $0.55 headwind on helium for the full year. We came in at $0.49. So a little bit better than we had forecasted, but not significantly off. For FY '26, we're looking about the same run rate as what we saw in FY '25. Obviously, there are areas that we're going to continue to look to be able to push volume and price, but this is a difficult market. One of the things that I do want to remind everybody is that in Q1 last -- or this year, we had a bulk helium sale that we disclosed. That is causing a significant headwind as we lead into FY '26. So that is the difference in Q1 that you're seeing as a year-on-year comp that is giving us a little bit of a tough headwind. But again, full year, about 4% is what we're forecasting, 4% headwind coming into FY '26. Now on CapEx. So for CapEx, it's really a component of execution against our projects, right? So as long as we're continuing to execute against the projects that we have in our backlog, we will see that $3.5 billion to $4 billion. That is not something that would significantly change or that we need to make a decision on. Now as for Darrow, we obviously have commitments on purchase orders that were continuing to progress, but no new commitments are being made. So I don't see a significant variance or decision point that would change the FY '26 CapEx forecast. So between $3.5 billion and $4 billion is a number that I am pretty confident on. Operator: We'll go next to Kevin McCarthy with Vertical Research Partners. Kevin McCarthy: Can you elaborate on the decision to sell to coal gasification projects in Asia curious about what exactly you're divesting, whether you have any firm deals in hand today? If so, cash proceeds and any impact on your sales in Asia? Eduardo Menezes: Yes, Kevin. We -- as we explained, I think, 2 quarters ago, we have 3 major coal gasification in China -- projects in China where we own and operate the coal gasification part of the project. We have several others that we have the oxygen plant, but that's a different story. Out of these 3 projects, Lu'An is the largest one, and we have absolutely no issues with this project. It's operating. It's probably one of the largest coal gasification sites in the world, and this is continuing normally. We have 2 other sites that -- those are the sites we're taking actions that we have no operating issues, but we have customer issues. And we have been trying to work these issues for some time. These projects really -- they have been a drag for us in terms of operating profit. We have been booking only the sales that they have been able to pay. So the impact on sales is not exactly very large for us. And we decided to -- after several months of negotiation we decided to set these assets aside for sale. And we are in the middle of that process. I cannot give you specific data and value of when we can close this sale and the amount of money that we're going to be able to collect. But of course, we're trying to maximize the valuation. And we believe that the entire asset may have a better owner than us and the current owner of the syngas to methanol to olefins plant. So we hope that we'll be able to find that and monetize this asset better than what we would have if we keep running these plants. Kevin McCarthy: Eduardo. My second question is a bit of an unusual one. Would you comment on the market for rare gases, like crypton, xenon, neon, are you seeing any escalation of competitive intensity in Asia? And if so, is it meaningful? Or is it simply too small to matter given the small size of those markets. Eduardo Menezes: Yes. Air Products, unfortunately, is not a big player in this market, traditionally. So it's not something that we focus a lot. We have seen some degradation in pricing and increasing in the competition level from other players. But really, it's not something that affects us that much. So I don't think I would be the right person to give you a feedback on that. Operator: We will take our final question from Mike Sison with Wells Fargo. Michael Sison: One quick one on Louisiana. If you get to partners for sequestration pneumonia who want a similar return that you would want, is there still a good return on the hydrogen that you would do longer term? I suspect that -- that's kind of what the board of partner is looking for. So maybe just flesh that out as a scenario. Eduardo Menezes: Every -- we are looking at this, Mike, as a normal hydrogen project for us. So we have our criteria. The customer has its own criteria. And it needs to work for both sides for the product to move forward. That is all I can tell you. If it doesn't work for them, it's not going to work for us. And I believe there is a room today to get to the right returns. As I said, to get the right returns, you need to have a commercial negotiation on pricing, but we also need to have a firm estimate on the capital cost, and that's also part of the equation here. Operator: And that will conclude the Q&A portion of today's call. I would now like to turn the call back to Eduardo Menezes for any additional or closing remarks. Eduardo Menezes: I would like to thank everyone again for joining our call today. We appreciate your interest in Air Products, and we look forward to discuss our results with you in the next few quarters. Thank you, and have a great day. Bye. Operator: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that will conclude today's call. We thank you for your participation. You may disconnect at this time.
Operator: Good afternoon. This is the Chorus Call conference operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Azimut Group 9 Months 2025 Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Giorgio Medda, CEO of Azimut. Please go ahead, sir. Medda Giorgio: Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for the Azimut's 9 Months 2025 Results Presentation. I'm Giorgio Medda, CEO of the Group, and I'm very pleased to be here with Alessandro Zambotti, our CEO and Group CFO; and Alex Soppera, Head of Investor Relations. This period marks another important step in our growth journey, reflecting both the strength of our business model and the consistency of our strategies across markets. This year, in 2025, we continue seeing a great execution and delivery in terms of objectives, translating into tangible results and exciting corporate development that we will certainly elaborate in detail later. So moving on to Slide 3, please. So let me start with the key highlights for the period. So the first 9 months of 2025 represent the best on record for Azimut in terms of managed net inflows, reaching EUR 13 billion, together with a strong 17% growth in recurring net profit. These results confirm the strength of our diversified business model and certainly the quality of our recurring revenue base. We also made very significant progress on the TNB transaction, which continues to advance and represent a transformational step for the group. Alessandro will discuss about this in more detail later. But now we certainly -- I can say we operate with greater clarity and visibility over the next regulatory steps related to the TNB project whose authorization is expected by the second quarter of 2026. Building on the strong commercial momentum to date, we are raising our core group net profit guidance for 2025. And today, we are projecting the core group net profit to exceed EUR 500 million in 2025, while we see 2026 net profit, including the expected contribution from the TNB transaction to surpass EUR 1 billion. As a result of the updated time line regarding the TNB authorization, we have decided to anticipate selected key guidelines from our Elevate 2030 strategic plan, in particular relating to our global business. The new strategic plan will outline an even more ambitious growth trajectory, further cementing Azimut's leadership position among global independent players. And -- but certainly, I mean, I will be able to elaborate on that in greater detail later in the presentation. So moving to Slide 4 and turning to the highlights for the first 9 months of the year. Let me mention that total assets have reached EUR 123 billion, marking a new record for the group. Net inflows were equally strong at EUR 15 billion, of which 43% came from our global operations. This demonstrates and shows the continued diversification of our growth and the relevance of our global platform, which once again outperformed other players in the Italian asset management industry. Revenues in the 9 months exceeded EUR 1 billion, supported by a 9% increase in recurring revenues, confirming the quality and resilience of our business mix. EBIT stood at EUR 471 million with recurring EBIT up 12% year-on-year, and group net profit reached EUR 386 million, representing a 17% growth compared to the same period last year. That is essentially driven by the steady expansion of our recurring profit base. And finally, let me stress what is the contribution from our global operations, reaching EUR 60 million, corresponding to EUR 43 million in the same period of 2024. So this is almost 50% growth versus the 9 months last year. This consistent growth across regions confirms the effectiveness of our international strategy and the scalability of our global business model. And let me say as a general comment that these figures put us in a strong position to continue executing our long-term growth agenda while we continue creating value for our shareholders. So looking at the bridge between 9 months 2024 and 9 months 2025, I'm looking actually at Slide #5. Our group net profit reached EUR 386 million compared with EUR 439 million in the same period last year. And the difference here mainly reflects lower performance fees and capital gains below the operating profit line, while recurring profitability continues to grow very strongly. So recurring EBIT increased by 12% after costs, confirming the solid momentum of our core operations, while performance fees were lower by about EUR 19 million, mainly due to insurance-related products. However, I would like to highlight our strong 3Q results and a solid start into Q4. Strategic affiliates in GP stakes have contributed slightly less than last year, with dividends from our GP stake in activities offset by lower net results from Sanctuary Wealth and AZ NGA. Under other items below EBIT, the comparison is significantly affected by nonrecurring items, most notably the capital gain from the sale of our stake in Kennedy Lewis. And as such, it's important that throughout this call and for the broader analysis in general, I would rather focus solely on recurring growth, which posted a 17% growth year-on-year as a result of our continued expansion across the globe. So on Page 6, you will see how our total assets have evolved since the start of the year under the new reporting method. I won't go too much into the detail of this analysis as these are figures that have been already published and commented on press releases. But the thing I would like to mention here that what is remarkable is the fact that growth was essentially coming from organic flows, which have totaled almost EUR 12 billion during the period and represents the best results on record in Azimut's history. And while we don't have all the final numbers as of yet, let me anticipate that October is poised to be another month with very strong inflows across the board. Turning to Page 7. Again, here, I wouldn't go too much into the details of this, which will be also commented by Alessandro more in detail. But let me certainly mention in Slide 7, the breakdown based on our 4 distribution lines. Integrated Solutions is our core line of engagements with clients, including Italy, Brazil, Egypt, Mexico, Taiwan and Turkey. This continues to be a powerhouse and command superior margins that are driven by the vertically integrated business model and market-leading positions that we have in these geographies. We have then the Global Wealth division, which brings together the group's hubs in Monaco, Dubai, Singapore, Switzerland and the United States that is becoming an increasingly important growth driver, serving high net worth and ultra net worth clients worldwide. And then we have the institutional and wholesale effort that is gaining traction and saw a very strong increase in profitability. Let me remind you that this segment brings together our global institutional initiatives across LatAm, Asia and EMEA and certainly Italy. The strategic importance of this business is rising and will continue to do so. It's a source of innovation, distribution diversity and partnerships such as the contribution for Nova. And also, let me mention that strategic affiliates remain in a phase of growth and consolidation, and we still have investments ramping up to expand the respective aggregating platforms of financial advisers in the U.S. and Australia. And very important also to mention that as we keep growing, the group is able to maintain a very healthy recurring net profit margin at 43 basis points. So moving to Slide #8 and zooming in on the performance by region. The results confirm the strength and the diversification of our global platform. Again, here, I won't go into details too much as numbers and the notes speak for themselves. But let me tell you that something that is very, very important to highlight here, Azimut has evolved from a successful Italian player into a global platform with very strong local routes and international breadth that spans 20 countries. Every region is contributing to growth, guided by unified culture, consistent governance and the shared vision for the long-term value creation. We're going to talk about Elevate 2030 later, but these results set a very solid foundation for the ambitious growth targets that we are setting for ourselves in the years to come. So let me now hand over to Alessandro for a more detailed commentary on the figures. Alessandro Zambotti: Thank you, Giorgio, and good afternoon to everybody. So we can now move to Slide 9. Total revenue in the first 9 months 2025 go up to EUR 1 billion, so marking an overall increase of 6%, EUR 61 million year-on-year. This is the result of an increase in recurring fees, plus EUR 58 million, thanks to the strong growth recorded in terms of total assets. And in particular, EUR 31 million came from the Italian perimeter with a strong contribution from all business lines from mutual funds, alternative funds and pension funds and also to Nova. Some numbers, at the level of the alternative funds, we have a positive contribution of EUR 12.5 million to the growth. Mutual funds around EUR 7 million and discretionary advisory services and pension funds contributed for EUR 9 million. With regards to our global operation, we have a contribution of about EUR 27 million, thanks in this case as well to the asset growth, mainly driven by U.S., Brazil, Singapore and Monaco. We should also factor in the change in perimeter due to the consolidation of Kennedy Capital and HighPost, which occurred for EUR 17 million. So moving to the performance fees were EUR 4 million lower year-on-year, mainly reflecting softer results in the first half of the year, but partially offset by strong third quarter performance, thanks to Brazil, Turkey and Monaco. Then at the level of the insurance revenue, we have a decrease by EUR 80 million compared to the first 9 months of last year. But however, in this case as well, despite market volatility, we have a positive contribution from performance fees of about EUR 27 million in these 9 months and in particular, strong contribution in the third quarter. We also grew our recurring revenue by about EUR 8 million compared to last year. And these 2 components largely compensated for the lower performance contribution resulting in an overall variance of EUR 16 million compared with last year. And to conclude this first part of the revenues at the level of the other revenue were up to about EUR 15 million compared to last year. And I mean, in general, we continue to see good consistency across all the areas that contribute to this line. But I would like particularly to highlight the contribution from a structuring fee related to our Brazilian private infrastructure business. These fees are not recurring on a quarterly basis since they depend on deployment activity. But however, given the size and the ongoing growth of our infrastructure platform, we do expect them to recur on an hourly basis, although with varying amount depending on timing and at the level of the single transaction. So then now moving to Slide 10. We are going to focus on cost trend. Compared to revenue growth of about EUR 61 million, cost increased by a total of about EUR 33 million. Distribution costs increased by EUR 24 million. This change is explained by the general increase in distribution costs, mainly within the Italian perimeter directly correlated to the growth of our assets and revenues and EUR 8 million as well from the growth of the variable and dispensing component, so an increase in marketing costs is also directly connected to the TNB project operation. And finally, EUR 4 million stemming from the increase in costs directly linked to the growth of our foreign business. The administrative costs were up by about EUR 11 million, and this is largely explained by the change in perimeter, meaning the line-by-line consolidation of Kennedy Capital and HighPost that contributed about EUR 4 million with offsetting effect from the FX. And we also would like to highlight anyway the cost discipline, especially concerning the Italian perimeter. And then D&A on the other hand, we see that it is substantially in line with the previous year. Moving to Slide 11. As you can see, considering the revenues and cost, the dynamic just explained, we're recording a strong EBIT growth of 12% or EUR 47 million year-on-year. Equally important, we recorded a growth in the recurring net profit of about 17%, EUR 44 million versus the first 9 months of last year. Before moving to the next slide, let's highlight also the significant contribution from the finance income item, which shows an increase of about EUR 62 million, driven by EUR 37 million from assets and portfolio performance, EUR 19 million from the fair value option and equity participation, EUR 9 million from interest and EUR 8 million from GP stakes & affiliates. And then also, we had a negative, in this case, negative impact of the IFRS for EUR 11 million. Now moving to Slide 12. We have the classic picture of our net financial position, which is a positive balance at the end of September of EUR 765 million, substantially the same value of last year compared to June, we have an increase of around EUR 120 million. That can be reconciled considering the pretax results of EUR 198 million less the tax advance of EUR 7 million, EUR 8 million, its M&A for EUR 8.5 million, the proceeds from the sale of RoundShield that contributed to the cash for EUR 38 million and then a technical adjustment of EUR 27 million from UCI units moved out from the net financial position. Moving to Slide 13. Let me share a key update on the TNB project. During the past month, we secured the antitrust approval to acquire the banking license. And I am delighted to announce today that we have signed yesterday a binding agreement with the Banca di Sconto. Our negotiation with FSI continued following the press release published to date. We have updated the project finalization time line to Q2 '26. This timetable establishes a clear and orderly process, providing Azimut and its shareholders with greater visibility on the final stages of the transaction. The schedule is fully aligned with the operational work already underway for the launch of TNB. And then I remind you, once again, the extraordinary long-term value of this transaction. So again, the EUR 1.2 billion potential total consideration plus the EUR 2.4 billion revenue guarantee plus the 20% stake that we will maintain in TNB. Turning to Slide 14. We have here shared the '25 targets. We confirm our net inflow target for the full year of EUR 28 billion to EUR 31 billion. We have already achieved more than EUR 15 billion of net inflows at the end of September. We saw preliminary figures for October and an expected contribution of about EUR 14 billion from the NSI integration could lead us to reach up the guidance. And then moving to Slide 15. Given the strong results achieved in the first 9 months, we are pleased to announce an upgrade to our '25 core group net profit target. We now expect to exceed EUR 500 million in '25 compared to our previous lower end guidance of EUR 400 million. Looking ahead to 2026, including the expected contribution from TNB in this year, as a result of the updated time line, we estimate group net profit to amount above EUR 1 billion. Finally, reflecting both the strength of our results and our solid capital position, the Board of Directors intend to propose announced the dividend policy for the 2025 financial year. This will be above last year EUR 1.75 per share, which represented a 61% payout on recurring net profit, further demonstrating our commitment to rewarding shareholders through sustainable and growing returns. We will share the final details with our full year '25 results presentation that will be happening at the beginning of March '26. Thank you for your time and your attention. Now I hand over to Giorgio, again. Medda Giorgio: Thank you, Alessandro, and I will move to Slide 16. So following the completion of the ordinary supervisory review by the Bank of Italy on part of our Italian business, we can say that we have full clarity and greater visibility on the regulatory time lines ahead. This gives us a very solid foundation to move forward with confidence towards the launch of TNB that is a key milestone in Azimut's evolution. The group strategic plan, Elevate 2030, which will include targets for all business lines and both the Italian and global platforms will be presented in full as previously announced to the market following the authorization of the TNB transaction. However, global expansion continues to be a cornerstone of Azimut's strategy, and we continue building on our presence in 20 markets. And we are very determined to continue strengthening our leadership among the world's leading independent players. And that is why, in the meantime, we have decided to share a few key guidelines focused on our global business that is a part not impacted by the supervisory review. This plan emphasize growth, diversification and sustainable value creation for shareholders. With Elevate 2030, we are certainly defining an even more ambitious growth trajectory, one that will showcase the full potential of our diversified global platform and reinforce Azimut's position as a truly global success story. But let us now take a closer look at what lies ahead, and I will move to Slide 17. So first of all, to help everyone to better understand the potential of our global operations, we started with a bottom-up analysis of the expected contribution in terms of net inflows from each region. This has historically been an area where the market underestimated our potential, and we believe these figures better illustrate the scalability of our platform. What we're showing here are the expected yearly net inflows from our global operations only, and we are excluding Italy. These targets are indeed very ambitious, but we see them as incredibly realistic. They are consistent with our historical growth trajectory, which also reflects a clear step-up as we continue to scale, broaden our investment solution base and bring innovation to our markets. And indeed, we believe a strong potential for Azimut to replicate the success that we have achieved in Italy. We expect total net inflows from our global platform between EUR 5 billion and EUR 8 billion per year, with the Americas region remaining a major growth driver, contributing EUR 2 billion to EUR 3 billion annually, supported by the integration of NSI in the United States, which will add approximately $16 billion or EUR 14 billion upon closing of the transaction at the end of the year. Our strategic affiliates led by Sanctuary Wealth in the U.S., AZ NGA in Australia, also very well positioned now to capture powerful structural trends and the shift of top financial advisers away from bank-owned networks towards independent platforms continues to accelerate and the ongoing intergenerational wealth transfer in both markets is expanding every day the addressable client base for advisory-driven models like ours. For the strategic affiliates, we are expecting to add between EUR 1.5 billion and EUR 2.5 billion of annual inflows, confirming the strength of our partnership model in high potential markets. The EMEA and Asia Pacific regions will also contribute steadily, driven by our ongoing expansion in markets such as Egypt, Taiwan and Singapore. And overall, this figure illustrates the depth and balance of our global business. In general, what I would like to stress here that the international component of Azimut is becoming an increasingly powerful engine of growth and value creation under the new strategic plan. So moving to Slide 18. Here, we are really converting the inflows into the overall asset base at the end of the period. And we are now projecting our global average total assets to grow from around EUR 54 billion to between EUR 95 billion and EUR 110 billion by 2030. This is a very exciting plan. We are essentially showing here our ambition to double our asset base. But certainly, it demonstrates the strength and maturity of our global platform. Achieving these goals will require certainly focus and determination, but I believe we have all the right elements in place. We have now a robust and diversified product offering across public and private markets. We have the ability to tailor solution to the specific needs of each client, and we have a unique entrepreneurial model and mindset that will allow us to move quickly and seize opportunities. This combination gives Azimut a unique and clear competitive advantage and positions us among the very few independent global players able to grow at scale while preserving quality and agility. And now moving to Slide 19. I want to really focus on margin. This is a very important element to help the market better understand what lies ahead and the true earnings power of our global business. Here, we show where our current net profit margins stand today by region and where we expect them to evolve by 2030. We have provided what is a wide enough range to capture different market conditions, but also we want to illustrate what is the significant operating leverage and the economies of scale that our global platform can deliver as it continues to grow. The Americas are expected to see margins rising from around 27 basis points today to between 25 and 35 basis points by 2030. And this will be our largest region by total assets, supported by the NSI integration and the planned launch of active ETFs, which will bring Azimut's global product capabilities to the world's largest market. EMEA remains our most profitable region with margins expanding towards 50 to 60 basis points, while we see the potential for the Asia Pacific region to gradually improve its contribution as the region scales and matures. Looking at these figures on a consolidated level, we expect the global business, excluding Italy and the strategic affiliates, to reach a net profit margin between 30 and 40 basis points by 2030, corresponding to an annual profit of approximately EUR 180 million to EUR 280 million. This compares with a margin of around 35 basis points and a net profit of EUR 70 million generated in the first 9 months of this year. Also, I think it's important here to put into perspective that since 2019, our global net profit has grown at a compound annual growth rate well above 35%. And this gives us a very strong base and clear visibility on the profitability path we are building towards 2030. I would move to Slide 19, 20 and 21. And on the next 3 slides, you see the same breakdown as before, but this time by business line rather than geography. And that should help everyone to cross check our assumptions and better understand the contribution of each vertical to the overall growth plan. I will not spend too much time here, but it's important to highlight the strength and balance across our global platform. And let me tell you that the Elevate 2030 plan will bring greater transparency to the market by showing our strategic and financial objectives through these 4 verticals that we have already introduced this year with the new reporting structure. This structure certainly enhances clarity, ensures consistency in how we represent value creation and makes it easier to appreciate the growth and profitability potential for each business line. And obviously, 4 verticals provide a diversified and complementary growth platform that is underpinning our market leadership, operational integration and long-term strategic partnerships. I would move now to Slide 23, where there is essentially highlighted what is a key pillar for Elevate 2030, that is strategic capital management. This is a framework designed to enhance our valuation to strengthen financial flexibility and deliver consistent and attractive returns to our shareholders. Our focus is on improving transparency and disclosure to help close the valuation gap that we continue to believe the market is still applying to the stock and not really truly appreciating the potential of Azimut. We are also proactively managing regulatory risk by simplifying our structure and ensuring greater operational clarity across jurisdictions. And we furthermore plan to unlock value from our global operations through a series of operations that could potentially include targeted demergers, dual listings and/or strategic partnerships. We're also very pleased today to announce a new share buyback program with a commitment to cancel up to EUR 500 million of repurchased shares over the next 18 to 24 months, equivalent to around 10% of our share capital. This initiative aims to maximize shareholder remuneration and reflects the constructive feedback that we have received from our investors over the last few months. And it's a clear signal of our confidence in the strength of the group, the resilience of our cash generation and our commitment to delivering tangible value to shareholders. Beyond this, we remain committed to maintaining a debt-free position given the strong cash flow generation of our business. However, we will preserve the optionality for future value-accretive M&A opportunities to be financed via debt. And as Alessandro has already highlighted, we will propose a new enhanced ordinary dividend for the full year 2025 versus the prior year. And certainly, we will give you more insight with our full year results in March 2026 when it comes to a broader and more comprehensive dividend policy as part of the Elevated 2030 plan. I mean, I think we can already anticipate that when it comes to shareholder remuneration, one key principle will be that any policy that we will announce to the market will be aligned with cash flow generation to ensure an attractive and sustainable payout over time. So let me move to the last slide, really to wrap up everything that we discussed and shared with you today. So first of all, we are upgrading our 2025 core net profit target to above EUR 500 million, and we project now net income to exceed EUR 1 billion in 2026. This reflects the solid momentum we have built throughout the year and continued strength of our recurring earnings. Second, we have made meaningful progress on the TNB transaction, gaining enhanced clarity on the time line for the next steps. And this gives us a clear regulatory and strategic pathway to move forward. Third, with Elevate 2030, we are releasing ambitious yet achievable targets for our global operations, and we project between EUR 5 billion and EUR 8 billion of annual net inflows over the next 5 years and total assets between EUR 95 billion and EUR 110 billion by 2030, with an expected net profit margin in the region of 30 to 40 basis points. And last point, our strategic capital management remains a key driver of value creation, supported by a EUR 500 million share buyback program with full cancellation of repurchased shares and the new dividend policy to be presented in 2026 after the completion of the TNB transaction. But as we mentioned, already we are providing an announced dividend payout for 2025, obviously applying on a payment in 2026. Together, we believe these initiatives position Azimut for a new chapter of profitable discipline and sustainable growth. With this, we are done and we certainly open the floor to any questions. Operator: [Operator Instructions] The first question is from Gian Luca Ferrari of Mediobanca. Gian Ferrari: Three for me, please. The first one is on the foreign business. I think what you are telling us today, Giorgio, is that the foreign operations are closing this year very close to the cost of capital you put in that development outside Italy. And given the trajectory you are disclosing today, is it fair to assume that by 2027, the IRR of this will reach 20% or something very close to that level? The second is on Nova. Last week, Amundi and then UniCredit, they have been pretty vocal in what is the relationship among them. I will not ask you the level of AUM you are expecting from UniCredit given the acceleration of the divorce, let's say, from Amundi. But I'm more curious to understand what is the level of margins after 2028? So after UniCredit will have exercised the call option. Is it fair to assume that your 20% in Nova will represent something like 15, 20 basis points on the AUM that UniCredit will have transferred at that point? The third question is, I don't know if I can ask this question, but are you eventually considering a dual listing of Azimut even in other stock exchange like in the U.S., for example? And sorry, if I may, the last one. I saw in the press release, you -- after the Bank of Italy inspection, you have some, let's say, adjustments to the business to be compliant with what Bank of Italy is asking to you. Are the costs related to that material or we are talking about a few million euros? Medda Giorgio: Gian Luca, I'll pick your first and second question. So regarding the foreign business or the global business, as we call it [indiscernible], you look at this year and you look at what we have delivered for the first 9 months, I think it would be fair to assume that we will generate a return on invested capital of between 13% to 15% that I think is above our cost of capital. So I think we are already proving value creation. And yes, indeed, when you look at the earnings trajectory over the next couple of years, certainly, I see as very realistic, a return on invested capital in the region of 20% within this time frame. When it comes to Nova, as you know, and I think it's important for me to stress it again, we will never, never disclose any confidential information regarding the activity of clients with our platform. We have never done that with any client. We will never do with Nova. But let me guide you towards some generic principles that govern our partnership with Nova. Certainly, the moment that UniCredit will exercise the call option to buy 80% of Nova, that should not have a material impact on earnings contribution. As already today, we have an agreement under which we are working like UniCredit was already an 80% shareholder. And when it comes to basis points, I think we've guided in the past a range between 40 to 50 basis points. I would assume that we are ballpark again in line with that level in the second stage of this partnership if we get to the second stage after the exercise of the call option. You were also asking about dual listing. Yes, indeed, the U.S. stock exchange remains a very viable option for us. Certainly, we see today a very significant valuation differential for players in our industry being listed there as opposed to be listed in European markets, but we will retain obviously full optionality in deciding which exchange will be eventually decided for our alternative listing. Alessandro Zambotti: I take the Bank of Italy side. So in general, as you said and as you probably read on the press, the report is focused on increase our strength in terms of [indiscernible] strategic planning. So nothing let's say, that cause us an impact on the business and therefore, on the P&L of the group. Therefore, it's just a matter to focus on paperwork and fix what, let's say, they found missing. But as you said also during the question, it's just a few, let's say, a few euros to spend to fix quickly the gap and then looking forward, focusing on our business. Operator: The next question is from Giovanni Razzoli of Deutsche Bank. Giovanni Razzoli: Two set of questions. The first one is on the target for the international operation contribution. You are targeting EUR 5 billion to EUR 8 billion of inflows, half of that are from the states. But if I look at the 9 months run rate, you are already at close to EUR 4 billion, EUR 4.5 billion with U.S. at EUR 2.5 billion. So I was wondering if we can consider the low end of the range, this EUR 5.8 billion contribution of inflows from the international operation as a quite conservative target. The second question relates to the announcement of the share buyback. I was wondering how shall we look at the 10% share buyback that you have announced in the context of the 3% treasury shares that you have already owned. So shall we assume that the 10% is on top of the 3% or you will proceed with the cancellation of the 3% and then on top of that, in 2 years' time, you will buy another 10% with the cancellation? And then as you have mentioned medium, long-term targets, given that your net financial position is very strong, actually, you are cash positive with a capital-light business, shall we assume that apart from this EUR 500 million share buyback, if I move forward, I don't know, 3, 4 years down the road, the share buyback becomes a kind of recurring component of your distribution strategy, let's say, EUR 500 million of share buyback in 2 years' time as a kind, as I said, of recurring contribution of your remuneration policy? Medda Giorgio: Yes, Giovanni. So let me start with the question regarding the EUR 5 billion to EUR 8 billion expected net new money from our non-Italian operations. Indeed, we have provided you a target. This is a target applied for a 5-year period. Certainly, we always work with the ambition of beating the targets that we set for ourselves. And indeed, I would say that the bottom end of that range assumes a deterioration in market conditions and things changing as opposed to what we are leaving now. But the range is a range, is a long period of time, and I would certainly with everyone in Azimut to make sure that our real objective is to beat that range. When it comes to the share buyback, I don't know which figure you are looking at, but I would say that probably today, treasury shares amount to 1% of our outstanding capital. And you should assume that the 10% is on top of this 1%. And for the question regarding what will happen in the next 3 to 4 years, I would certainly be thinking what we have announced today. And time will tell. I think we are making a very strong statement in terms of committing to ensure that our shareholder remuneration policy is inclusive and makes all our shareholders to benefit from the value that we create every day in our business around the world. What is important to say here is that after the TNB transaction, we'll be able to provide a more comprehensive shareholder remuneration policy, including also the ordinary payout policy when it comes to dividends. Operator: The next question is from Hubert Lam of Bank of America. Hubert Lam: [indiscernible] in the global business. Just wondering how much of that would you expect it to be coming from organic in your plans? And how much is it M&A? Do you need M&A to kind of get there? Or are you confident that organic, you can still achieve your targets? Second question is on the share buyback, the EUR 500 million. I'm just wondering in terms of timing when it could start, do you need the approval for the new bank first before you can start the share buyback? Or can it come before that? And lastly, any questions on the new bank. Any update in terms of expected profits you expect from this, both in '26 and maybe beyond that? Medda Giorgio: Hubert, I'll reply to your first 2 questions. I'm not sure I got right your first one. But let me start with the first one regarding organic growth from our global operations, the guidance we provided, you should assume it's mostly organic. And by the way, when you look at what we have done this year, again, the figure that we mentioned earlier is essentially mostly organic. So you should really consider any M&A contributing to this level. When it comes to the share buyback, as a matter of fact, the share buyback is live in the market because we had already approved the share buyback with our AGM in the first quarter this year. What the AGM will approve next year will be the renewal of the plan and the cancellation of the repurchased shares. But the share buyback is, as a matter of fact, right now live in the market. And as far as your first question is concerned, we missed it. Hubert Lam: Yes. Sorry about that. Yes, so the answer to the first 2 are very clear. The third question -- yes, sorry, on the new bank. Just wondering how much in terms of profit contribution we can expect from it in terms of delivering profits in '26. I know that's just the first year and also like beyond, any update in terms of guidance around that? Alessandro Zambotti: Well, nowadays, it's running around -- with the projection at the end of the year, it's around EUR 60 million for '25. Therefore, I would say we are going to be the 20% of this range less a few costs that obviously has to be incurred through the fact that it has no spending banks. Therefore, I would say that we are in this range. Operator: The next question is from Alberto Villa of Intermonte SIM. Alberto Villa: A few left. One is on the acquisition side. I read that your Chairman also indicated that there might be opportunities for future acquisitions, especially in LatAm. So I was wondering if you can give us an idea what is, let's say, of interest for the group in terms of completing the setup of the global operations you have. And broadly speaking, what is the leverage that you would consider as a good setup for the group if you find an interesting opportunity also inorganic in the framework of the -- also the capital remuneration and shareholder remuneration that you have in mind? Medda Giorgio: Okay. Thank you, Alberto. So your first question referring to the interview of our Chairman a couple of weeks ago in Italy. Indeed, we will continue to explore and to seek acquisition opportunities on a bolt-on basis and acquisitions that will never be material in terms of cash outlay and certainly will carry a strong strategic sense in terms of adding and complementing our existing businesses around the world. I think during the interview, it was mentioned our interest in Latin America. Let me tell you that there are a few situations we are looking at in Brazil, but that would be negligible in terms of cash investment for the firm, but certainly we will strengthen our distribution business in the country. And when it comes to the leverage, we often said that we certainly recognize the merits of having an optimal capital structure policy. And in general, we would guide the market when it comes to what we would envisage in the case of a transformative or material M&A transaction in terms of leverage, probably in a situation where we have a net debt to EBIT in the region of 1 to 1.5x ratio. Operator: The next question is from Elena Perini of Intesa Sanpaolo. Elena Perini: I have some left. The first one is about your new net profit target for '25 and 2026. So basically, you move the more than EUR 1 billion target to next year due to the timing of the conclusion of the TNB transaction, if I understand correctly. And while you have for 2025, a target about EUR 500 million. In terms of targets, just to refer to your global business. The wide range that you set for 2030 is EUR 180 million to EUR 280 million is only due to the different range of annual flows and due to the different potential margins on the assets? Or are there any other factors that could explain this wide range? And then a clarification about other income and tax rate. About other income, you mentioned structuring fees. Are there any recurring items for next quarters too? Or do they represent a one-off item? While for the tax rate, I think that there are some one-offs for this quarter as you confirm your guidance of 25% for the full year, but I'm asking you about this. Alessandro Zambotti: Yes. Thank you, Elena. I'm going to take a few of your questions, and then Giorgio will conclude. So starting from your first part relating to the net profit, the new target and as well the moving of the EUR 1 billion to the '26, it's clearly -- your understanding is correct. I mean the contribution of TNB that we plan -- I mean, we're planning at the end of the year is not going to happen. Therefore, obviously, the contribution and the equity transaction is going to happen in '26 and therefore, as well the P&L impact from this transaction is going to be booked next year. And at the same time, following the good results and the good trend of the group, we were updating the guidance for the, let's say, the simple reason that the projection that we see, the trajectory that we see for the last few months of the year is if nothing happens, let's say, complicate, we will be able to get the target. Then you refer to the other income. As you were saying, there is a one-off effect that is linked to the structuring fees. But at the same time, as I was saying at the beginning, it has not to be considered one-off for the yearly basis because it's quarterly basis, for sure, we cannot say that every quarter, we will have this contribution. But looking on a yearly basis, this amount I mean could happen that following this type of services that we are providing, they came up -- I mean, a contribution as well on the other income on the future years. And then at the level of the tax, I think it's more close to the constant of seasonability. I mean, this quarter, it's always lower than in December, considering also the provision of all the dividends coming from the other countries, we will probably get higher impact of tax for that, we kept the guidance stable as per the previous. Medda Giorgio: And yes, when it comes to the 2030 margin targets, the EUR 180 million to EUR 280 million net profit from global operations. Look, this range is admittedly very large. It reflects simply the addition of the lower bound targets for each division or geography and the upper bound. There is nothing else there. It certainly is a basic assumption that the business mix going forward will essentially remain unchanged or not dramatically different from what it is today. But as I said, we work every day to beat the target that we give ourselves, and we certainly do our best to even do better than what we are disclosing today. It's 5 years, it's a pretty long period of time, but we are starting off a very strong base, and I see us capable of doing very, very well. Operator: The next question is from Ian White of Autonomous Research. Ian White: Just a couple from me, please. First of all, can you call out some of the most important drivers of the improved organic net inflow performance this year, please? I'm particularly interested in where you think you've seen the strongest growth in your market share, thinking about the organic flows specifically. That's question one. And question two, in terms of the Bank of Italy's inspection, can you say a bit more about the specific findings there and the remediations that you're going to introduce? Am I right to read into the statement today that the delay to TNB approval is linked to the regulators' findings? And if so, what's your view as to why the regulator has connected those things, please? Medda Giorgio: Okay. Let me take your questions. So I'll start with the first regarding the underlying drivers of our terrific net new money performance this year. I think we -- if you look at the presentation that we have shown earlier, Slide 6, you find what is a pretty accurate detailed breakdown in terms of net new money to different product lines as opposed to different geographies. Let me tell you from a qualitative standpoint that fund solutions have been doing very well in Italy. Certainly, we have the contribution of Nova here, but let me mention what also we have done in Turkey, in Egypt, in the U.S., that is certainly our key product, our bread and butter, and we are proving now to be able to grow both catering to individual clients and institutional as well in terms of wholesale agreement. Let me mention that our Wealth Management business has been this year delivering incredible growth out of Asia, out of the Middle East. Switzerland, Monaco as well doing better than the previous years. And we see now what is a very sustained momentum that is a testament of our ability of building now a cross-border platform and being able to deal with high net worth, ultra net worth individuals that are recognizing Azimut's the ability and the capability to deliver performance vis-a-vis even larger players. Then when it comes to your question regarding the ordinary inspection from Bank of Italy, yes, again, I would refer to the press release, you should assume that we are subject to inspections every week. As you can imagine, we operate across 20 countries. We are subject to the supervision of 20 regulators, sometimes in certain markets like in the U.S. by 2 regulators in the same country. That is also the case for Italy, by the way. And there are routine inspections. So you can say that every day, we are subject to an inspection. So I do not see the Bank of Italy inspection in Italy has been particularly different from others that we have been subject to. And also, let me stress you that the -- let's say, the topic of the inspection was not the announced transaction with TNB. The inspection was very much covering for our, let's say, asset management product factory activities and has been very much referring to this aspect of the business that is not related to the announced transaction with FSI. One of the outcomes of the transaction was that we need to put in place some very ordinary remedial actions. And as you can imagine, although these actions are not related to the TNB transaction and considering the time line is relatively short, we will work on this remediation plan with some very close deadlines, also suggesting that there's nothing dramatic there, maintaining what is an achievable target for the transaction to close within Q2. By the way, this inspection started even before the binding agreement was signed with FSI, and it's really to be seen as completely unrelated. Maybe unfortunate in terms of timing, but to be honest, not really a reason of concern for us. Ian White: Okay. If I can just clarify, I'm not sure if I missed this. In terms of the -- is the delay to TNB approval a direct consequence of things that the regulator has found on its -- during its ordinary inspection? Or am I reading that incorrectly? Medda Giorgio: Not at all. It's procedural, if you want. And as we said very often, the 2 things are separate. There is no really -- we should not see the TNB transaction as the inspection that could be related to each other. As a matter of fact, the transaction occurs in a way where the company that is spinning off half of our network is the one that was subject to the inspection, but nothing of the activities that will be spun off has been subject to the inspection itself. It was mostly related to funds management to discretion portfolio management, really nothing at all that was related to the asset base that will be spun off. Operator: [Operator Instructions] Mr. Medda, there are no more questions registered at this time. Medda Giorgio: Okay. Let's close the call here, and let me wish everyone a good end of the year. And obviously, we keep looking forward to seeing you soon. Thank you. Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining. The conference is now over. You may disconnect your telephones.
Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Badger Infrastructure Solutions Limited Third Quarter 2025 Results Call. [Operator Instructions]. As a reminder, this event is being recorded today, November 6, 2025, and will be made available in the Investors section of Badger's website. I would now like to turn the call over to Anne Plaster, Director of Investor Relations. Anne Plaster: Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our third quarter 2025 earnings call. Joining me on the call this morning are Badger's President and CEO, Rob Blackadar; and our CFO, Rob Dawson. Badger's 2025 third quarter earnings release, MD&A and financial statements were released after market close, Wednesday, and are available on the Investors section of Badger's website and on SEDAR+. We are required to note that some of the statements made today may contain forward-looking information. In fact, all statements made today, which are not statements of historical facts are considered to be forward-looking statements. We make these forward-looking statements based on certain assumptions that we consider to be reasonable. However, forward-looking statements are always subject to certain risks and uncertainties, and undue reliance should not be placed on them as actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied. For more information about material, assumptions, risks and uncertainties that may be relevant to such forward-looking statements, please refer to Badger's 2024 MD&A along with the 2024 AIF. I will now turn the call over to Rob Blackadar. Robert Blackadar: Thank you, Anne. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining Badger's 2025 Third Quarter Earnings Call. Before we get into the results, I'd like to take a moment to talk about safety, which is how we start all of our meetings here at Badger. As we move into the colder weather months, it is essential that our teams remain prepared for unexpected situations, including severe winter weather, equipment issues and any emergencies. We encourage all of our team members to review emergency response plans and ensure vehicles are equipped with winter safety kits. Staying informed about local conditions and having accessible, well-maintained safety gear can make a critical difference. We appreciate everyone's continued commitment to safety and the teamwork -- and teamwork as we prepare to enter into the winter season. Now on to the quarter's results. Building on the positive momentum from Q2, the team delivered another strong quarter of double-digit growth in revenue, gross profit and adjusted EBITDA. Our record Q3 top line revenue of $237.3 million grew by 13% company-wide over the prior year. We continue to see solid demand in our end markets in both local customer and project-based work. I will provide more detail and context on our broad and diverse end markets later in the call. Our positive results reflect the team's work to increase utilization while continuing to grow the fleet. Ongoing investments in sales and marketing initiatives, including consistent performance to capture pricing opportunities are also reflected in the results. Adjusted EBITDA grew at a faster pace than revenue, up 15% year-over-year. These results highlight Badger's continued strong operational efficiencies and the optimization of our overhead support functions. Accordingly, adjusted EBITDA margin increased by 40 basis points, to 28.2%. We achieved RPT or revenue per truck per month of $47,921 in Q3, up 8% compared to last year. This improvement reflects our fleet utilization and pricing efforts. Our Red Deer manufacturing plant delivered 57 hydrovacs this quarter versus 48 units in Q3 of last year. We are updating guidance for our full year fleet plan, mainly due to increased demand from our end markets. As Badger's growth in revenue and business volumes have risen, we have increased our rate of manufacturing to ensure we have the right capacity to meet our customers' needs. Accordingly, we expect 2025 hydrovac production at the upper end of our original 180 to 210 unit range. We also successfully consolidated a Badger franchise in Denver, one of our core markets and have accelerated the planned refresh of its fleet. As a result, we expect our 2025 retirements to be at the upper end of our original 90 to 130 unit range. We are excited to gain full control of the Denver market and bring Badger's size and scale advantage to accelerate market share. We retired 36 units in the quarter, bringing us to 98 hydrovac units retired year-to-date. We refurbished 5 units in the third quarter and have completed 23 so far in 2025. The refurbished program has lagged our expectations this year, mainly due to third-party facility capacity. We are reducing the 2025 refurbishment range from the original 50 to 60 units down now to 30 to 40 units for the full year. We plan to develop our own refurbishment facility in the Central U.S. to better control the pace and the cost of this program. This new facility is anticipated to be online and operational in 2026. The company ended the quarter with 1,703 hydrovacs in our fleet, growing the fleet by 5% since Q3 of last year. Revenue and profitability grew at more than double the rate of fleet growth, exemplifying Badger's operating leverage and capital efficiencies. With the increase in hydrovac production, the consolidation of the Denver franchise as well as targeted growth in strategic market branches, we expect our range of 2025 capital spend to increase from the original $95 million to $115 million range to now between $115 million to $130 million. I'll now turn the call over to Rob Dawson to discuss our Q3 financial results in more detail. Robert Dawson: Thanks, Rob. Our solid financial results this quarter reflect the strength of our business model and the continued disciplined focus of our team. As Rob noted, we have continued to grow our bottom line at a higher rate than revenue, reflecting the ongoing execution of our road map to build scalability. In addition to the continued advancement of our commercial and pricing strategies, steady improvements in the utilization of our fleet have contributed to our performance this year. The trend in our adjusted EBITDA margins continued to rise in the third quarter, up 40 basis points to 28.2%. In particular, the addition of our fleet module and our universal data platform are showing value in the management of both our fleet and labor force. We have also continued to scale our support functions and G&A spending. This margin expansion remains on track with Badger's long-term objectives. G&A expenses were $10.6 million or 4% of revenue compared to the $9.8 million or 5% of revenue last year. Finally, adjusted earnings per share was $0.91 per share, up 25% compared to last year. As Rob has already noted, revenues and adjusted EBITDA are growing at a faster rate than our fleet, adding to the bottom line profitability and longer term, continuing to drive higher returns on capital. With year-to-date revenue up 11%, adjusted EBITDA up 16% and adjusted EPS up 29%, we are encouraged by the continued scalability and growth in margins here at Badger. Turning to the balance sheet. Our compliance leverage ended the quarter at 1.3x debt to EBITDA, down from 1.5x in the same quarter last year. It is notable that we have the financial capacity to continue advancing our organic growth strategy and maintain a stable, strong balance sheet. We renewed our NCIB program in the third quarter, maintaining our ability to make opportunistic share purchases in addition to returning capital to our shareholders through dividends. During the third quarter, we did not purchase any shares under our NCIB. I will now turn things back over to Rob Blackadar for some final comments. Rob? Robert Blackadar: Thanks, Rob. So before we open up for questions, I'd like to share a few last comments regarding our market outlook. Badger's end markets have largely recovered following the slower activity we experienced in the back half of 2024 and early '25. As we move through the remainder of 2025 and into '26, we're seeing positive indicators of sustained growth, particularly in key U.S. regions and large metropolitan areas where demand remains robust. Our strategic focus remains unchanged. We continue to leverage our deep customer relationships, both locally and through our national accounts teams to drive market density and capture operational efficiency in our core geographies. The execution of our commercial strategy continues to help Badger capitalize on large infrastructure projects such as airports, light rail transportation, expansion of petrochemical and LNG facilities as well as data centers. Supporting all of these trends is the increased demand for power generation and transmission, particularly nuclear, natural gas and solar. These projects are in addition to the continued maintenance and renewal of existing aged infrastructure in many of our more mature markets. Overall, we expect to continue to benefit from these favorable tailwinds driven by significant and sustained growth in infrastructure and construction spending in our major markets. With one of the most capable fleets in the industry and a broad operational footprint spanning 44 U.S. states, 6 Canadian provinces, we were best positioned to capture long-term growth opportunities. As end market demand continues to strengthen, we remain committed to the disciplined execution of our strategy and to delivering sustainable value for our shareholders. So with those comments, let's turn it back to the operator for questions. Operator? Operator: [Operator Instructions] And our first caller is Krista Friesen from CIBC. Krista Friesen: I was just wondering if you could give us a little bit more color on the amount of work that you're doing around data centers and if you're willing to share kind of what percentage that makes up of your work right now? Robert Blackadar: Krista, so we -- and we've shared this at some recent investor conferences because we get asked this. Obviously, data centers are kind of the big buzz right now. It's been trending in that 5% to 8% range, direct work on the data centers themselves and then some of the support functions around the data centers, I think in terms of the subcontractors, et cetera, is probably another 3% to 4%. So I would say all in, including the ancillary support around the data centers, I'd say, in that 10% to 11% range, something like that. But directly on the data centers themselves, I'd say 6% to 8% right there. Krista Friesen: Okay. And then maybe just on a different topic. Do you have any update on how tariffs are impacting your business? And just given the announcement a little while ago on heavy trucks, if that's impacting your business? Robert Blackadar: Do you want to cover that, Rob? Robert Dawson: Yes, sure thing, Rob. Thanks for the question, Krista. We continue to monitor, obviously, the tariff situation very closely. I think a couple of things just overall with regards to tariffs. 100% of our business results are entirely unaffected by the tariffs, and that's mainly to deliver excavation services to our customers. And so it really only affects the supply of trucks to our business from our manufacturing facility in Red Deer and specifically to our businesses in the United States. We continue to monitor it very carefully. There has been no real clarity on the situation with heavy trucks right now. And so we don't really have a lot to say specifically about what the impact may or may not be. We continue to be fully CUSMA compliant, and we have not paid any tariffs to date on our truck builds. And I should also point out, I think we talked about this at Q1 that when we think about a worst possible case scenario where we would have, say, a 25% tariff on our entire manufacturing production for the year, it still would increase our CapEx for 200 trucks in the neighborhood of $10 million to $20 million. We'd still continue to be showing the same kind of balance sheet flexibility we have today, and the net impact on our earnings per share would be in that 1% to 3% range. So while we are closely monitoring the situation, we continue to believe that it's an issue that doesn't impact us to the degree of [indiscernible] third-party manufacturers and sellers of equipment across the borders. Operator: And our next caller is [ Joshua Bains ] from TD Cowen. Tim James: Yes. Actually, it's Tim James here from TD Cowen. Congratulations on the good results. My first question, I'm just wondering if you could comment on any findings that you've got or that you're seeing in terms of the longevity of the refurbished units that you're doing and putting back out in the field. I believe you expect an additional 5 years typically from those. Anything you're observing that would give you a reason to believe that, that could be actually extended or shortened? Robert Blackadar: Yes. Great question, Tim. We -- we're very pleased. Obviously, we're pleased enough that we're going to build our own facility to help even fast track even more units. Very pleased with the first 18 months of the program. And the thing that we're displeased with is the ability to get more through our current third-party facilities. But to frame it up, Tim, and some people on the call may not be aware of the context, we take a thoroughly inspected 9-, 10-, 11-year-old hydrovac that we've owned its entire life. We make sure that it has really strong frame rails, and the underbody components are very, very strong on it. And we replace four large components of the unit, which is the engine; the transmission; the transfer case, which is how you transfer the power from the engine to the hydrovac on the back; and then the blower, which provides the suction on that. To do that whole exercise, then we do repaint or touch up, put on new tires, new seats and cabs for our operators, so they have a good experience in a truck. We put it back on the road, and that's anywhere from 175,000 roughly to around 185,000. It gives us an additional, we believe, 5 years. So far, Tim, in our first 18 months of doing this, we've had wonderful success. And in fact, a few of our employees have said that the truck is running better than it did when it was new. And again, these are mostly our Gen 4 trucks, the previous generation of trucks. We are very pleased with their performance so far, very little maintenance or breakdowns on them other than just routine preventative maintenance, PMs. And then the last thing I'll share is, each one of those trucks on those new components -- and those are the most expensive components on the chassis. Those components come with a 3-year warranty unlimited miles. So there really is no downside to the investment we're making. As far as do we think it can go beyond 5 years and maybe it's 6 or many, many of our chassis are run on the same model chassis we use for dump trucks and flatbeds and various other over-the-road type environments, and trucks have around a 20-year life. We do believe, though, in certain applications, our trucks are run in a little bit higher duty. So we're not sure if it's going to be 5, 6, 7 because it's still early on, and we're through our first batch right now, but we're very encouraged right now. But we're going to stick with the 5-year life at this point. I don't know if you want to add anything on that. Robert Dawson: No, I've got nothing else to add. Robert Blackadar: So hopefully, that answers your question, Tim. Tim James: That's very helpful. I'll just have one more quick one, if I could. And I realize Canada is a relatively small portion of your business in North America. But I'm curious if Canada's budget released this week, if there's anything in there that caught your attention as surprisingly positive or negative in terms of opportunities for Badger in Canada over the coming years. Robert Dawson: Tim, it's Rob Dawson here. Thanks for the question. I don't think we would point out any one thing from that Canadian budget, but I would say that we are very encouraged by this government's support for the return of large project, an infrastructure project renewal in Canada that has slowed down so much over the past, say, 5 or 6 years. And we are already starting to see the benefit of some of those, just a change in tone. In particular, our Western Canadian business is back to growing. Our Central Canadian as in Ontario is also starting to show some signs of really solid performance. So overall, quite encouraged by the change in tone and the return to large project resource spending that has made Canada what it is. Robert Blackadar: And I'm going to add one thing, Tim. We have several of our larger construction customers there in Canada that, in a weird way, they're also kind of our peers, but they're our customers. I don't want to name them because the moment I start naming some customers, you always leave one or two out and make some crabby, so I don't want to do that. But we're very encouraged that several of our publicly traded customers are press releasing these large project wins, and we love supporting those customers and partnering with them. So just as Rob suggested, it seems like Canada is really making an effort to reinvest in some of the infrastructure and a lot of projects that we were seeing regarding -- around power as well as hospitals and some airports and stuff. So very encouraged what we're seeing coming out of Canada. Operator: Thank you. And that seems to be all of our callers. So I will turn it back over to you, Rob. Robert Blackadar: Thank you, operator. So on behalf of all of us at Badger, we want to say thank you to our customers, our employees, our suppliers and shareholders for your ongoing support that drives Badger's success. Operator, you may now end the call. Operator: Thank you. This concludes today's event. Thank you for participating.
Operator: Good afternoon. This is the Chorus Call conference operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Azimut Group 9 Months 2025 Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Giorgio Medda, CEO of Azimut. Please go ahead, sir. Medda Giorgio: Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for the Azimut's 9 Months 2025 Results Presentation. I'm Giorgio Medda, CEO of the Group, and I'm very pleased to be here with Alessandro Zambotti, our CEO and Group CFO; and Alex Soppera, Head of Investor Relations. This period marks another important step in our growth journey, reflecting both the strength of our business model and the consistency of our strategies across markets. This year, in 2025, we continue seeing a great execution and delivery in terms of objectives, translating into tangible results and exciting corporate development that we will certainly elaborate in detail later. So moving on to Slide 3, please. So let me start with the key highlights for the period. So the first 9 months of 2025 represent the best on record for Azimut in terms of managed net inflows, reaching EUR 13 billion, together with a strong 17% growth in recurring net profit. These results confirm the strength of our diversified business model and certainly the quality of our recurring revenue base. We also made very significant progress on the TNB transaction, which continues to advance and represent a transformational step for the group. Alessandro will discuss about this in more detail later. But now we certainly -- I can say we operate with greater clarity and visibility over the next regulatory steps related to the TNB project whose authorization is expected by the second quarter of 2026. Building on the strong commercial momentum to date, we are raising our core group net profit guidance for 2025. And today, we are projecting the core group net profit to exceed EUR 500 million in 2025, while we see 2026 net profit, including the expected contribution from the TNB transaction to surpass EUR 1 billion. As a result of the updated time line regarding the TNB authorization, we have decided to anticipate selected key guidelines from our Elevate 2030 strategic plan, in particular relating to our global business. The new strategic plan will outline an even more ambitious growth trajectory, further cementing Azimut's leadership position among global independent players. And -- but certainly, I mean, I will be able to elaborate on that in greater detail later in the presentation. So moving to Slide 4 and turning to the highlights for the first 9 months of the year. Let me mention that total assets have reached EUR 123 billion, marking a new record for the group. Net inflows were equally strong at EUR 15 billion, of which 43% came from our global operations. This demonstrates and shows the continued diversification of our growth and the relevance of our global platform, which once again outperformed other players in the Italian asset management industry. Revenues in the 9 months exceeded EUR 1 billion, supported by a 9% increase in recurring revenues, confirming the quality and resilience of our business mix. EBIT stood at EUR 471 million with recurring EBIT up 12% year-on-year, and group net profit reached EUR 386 million, representing a 17% growth compared to the same period last year. That is essentially driven by the steady expansion of our recurring profit base. And finally, let me stress what is the contribution from our global operations, reaching EUR 60 million, corresponding to EUR 43 million in the same period of 2024. So this is almost 50% growth versus the 9 months last year. This consistent growth across regions confirms the effectiveness of our international strategy and the scalability of our global business model. And let me say as a general comment that these figures put us in a strong position to continue executing our long-term growth agenda while we continue creating value for our shareholders. So looking at the bridge between 9 months 2024 and 9 months 2025, I'm looking actually at Slide #5. Our group net profit reached EUR 386 million compared with EUR 439 million in the same period last year. And the difference here mainly reflects lower performance fees and capital gains below the operating profit line, while recurring profitability continues to grow very strongly. So recurring EBIT increased by 12% after costs, confirming the solid momentum of our core operations, while performance fees were lower by about EUR 19 million, mainly due to insurance-related products. However, I would like to highlight our strong 3Q results and a solid start into Q4. Strategic affiliates in GP stakes have contributed slightly less than last year, with dividends from our GP stake in activities offset by lower net results from Sanctuary Wealth and AZ NGA. Under other items below EBIT, the comparison is significantly affected by nonrecurring items, most notably the capital gain from the sale of our stake in Kennedy Lewis. And as such, it's important that throughout this call and for the broader analysis in general, I would rather focus solely on recurring growth, which posted a 17% growth year-on-year as a result of our continued expansion across the globe. So on Page 6, you will see how our total assets have evolved since the start of the year under the new reporting method. I won't go too much into the detail of this analysis as these are figures that have been already published and commented on press releases. But the thing I would like to mention here that what is remarkable is the fact that growth was essentially coming from organic flows, which have totaled almost EUR 12 billion during the period and represents the best results on record in Azimut's history. And while we don't have all the final numbers as of yet, let me anticipate that October is poised to be another month with very strong inflows across the board. Turning to Page 7. Again, here, I wouldn't go too much into the details of this, which will be also commented by Alessandro more in detail. But let me certainly mention in Slide 7, the breakdown based on our 4 distribution lines. Integrated Solutions is our core line of engagements with clients, including Italy, Brazil, Egypt, Mexico, Taiwan and Turkey. This continues to be a powerhouse and command superior margins that are driven by the vertically integrated business model and market-leading positions that we have in these geographies. We have then the Global Wealth division, which brings together the group's hubs in Monaco, Dubai, Singapore, Switzerland and the United States that is becoming an increasingly important growth driver, serving high net worth and ultra net worth clients worldwide. And then we have the institutional and wholesale effort that is gaining traction and saw a very strong increase in profitability. Let me remind you that this segment brings together our global institutional initiatives across LatAm, Asia and EMEA and certainly Italy. The strategic importance of this business is rising and will continue to do so. It's a source of innovation, distribution diversity and partnerships such as the contribution for Nova. And also, let me mention that strategic affiliates remain in a phase of growth and consolidation, and we still have investments ramping up to expand the respective aggregating platforms of financial advisers in the U.S. and Australia. And very important also to mention that as we keep growing, the group is able to maintain a very healthy recurring net profit margin at 43 basis points. So moving to Slide #8 and zooming in on the performance by region. The results confirm the strength and the diversification of our global platform. Again, here, I won't go into details too much as numbers and the notes speak for themselves. But let me tell you that something that is very, very important to highlight here, Azimut has evolved from a successful Italian player into a global platform with very strong local routes and international breadth that spans 20 countries. Every region is contributing to growth, guided by unified culture, consistent governance and the shared vision for the long-term value creation. We're going to talk about Elevate 2030 later, but these results set a very solid foundation for the ambitious growth targets that we are setting for ourselves in the years to come. So let me now hand over to Alessandro for a more detailed commentary on the figures. Alessandro Zambotti: Thank you, Giorgio, and good afternoon to everybody. So we can now move to Slide 9. Total revenue in the first 9 months 2025 go up to EUR 1 billion, so marking an overall increase of 6%, EUR 61 million year-on-year. This is the result of an increase in recurring fees, plus EUR 58 million, thanks to the strong growth recorded in terms of total assets. And in particular, EUR 31 million came from the Italian perimeter with a strong contribution from all business lines from mutual funds, alternative funds and pension funds and also to Nova. Some numbers, at the level of the alternative funds, we have a positive contribution of EUR 12.5 million to the growth. Mutual funds around EUR 7 million and discretionary advisory services and pension funds contributed for EUR 9 million. With regards to our global operation, we have a contribution of about EUR 27 million, thanks in this case as well to the asset growth, mainly driven by U.S., Brazil, Singapore and Monaco. We should also factor in the change in perimeter due to the consolidation of Kennedy Capital and HighPost, which occurred for EUR 17 million. So moving to the performance fees were EUR 4 million lower year-on-year, mainly reflecting softer results in the first half of the year, but partially offset by strong third quarter performance, thanks to Brazil, Turkey and Monaco. Then at the level of the insurance revenue, we have a decrease by EUR 80 million compared to the first 9 months of last year. But however, in this case as well, despite market volatility, we have a positive contribution from performance fees of about EUR 27 million in these 9 months and in particular, strong contribution in the third quarter. We also grew our recurring revenue by about EUR 8 million compared to last year. And these 2 components largely compensated for the lower performance contribution resulting in an overall variance of EUR 16 million compared with last year. And to conclude this first part of the revenues at the level of the other revenue were up to about EUR 15 million compared to last year. And I mean, in general, we continue to see good consistency across all the areas that contribute to this line. But I would like particularly to highlight the contribution from a structuring fee related to our Brazilian private infrastructure business. These fees are not recurring on a quarterly basis since they depend on deployment activity. But however, given the size and the ongoing growth of our infrastructure platform, we do expect them to recur on an hourly basis, although with varying amount depending on timing and at the level of the single transaction. So then now moving to Slide 10. We are going to focus on cost trend. Compared to revenue growth of about EUR 61 million, cost increased by a total of about EUR 33 million. Distribution costs increased by EUR 24 million. This change is explained by the general increase in distribution costs, mainly within the Italian perimeter directly correlated to the growth of our assets and revenues and EUR 8 million as well from the growth of the variable and dispensing component, so an increase in marketing costs is also directly connected to the TNB project operation. And finally, EUR 4 million stemming from the increase in costs directly linked to the growth of our foreign business. The administrative costs were up by about EUR 11 million, and this is largely explained by the change in perimeter, meaning the line-by-line consolidation of Kennedy Capital and HighPost that contributed about EUR 4 million with offsetting effect from the FX. And we also would like to highlight anyway the cost discipline, especially concerning the Italian perimeter. And then D&A on the other hand, we see that it is substantially in line with the previous year. Moving to Slide 11. As you can see, considering the revenues and cost, the dynamic just explained, we're recording a strong EBIT growth of 12% or EUR 47 million year-on-year. Equally important, we recorded a growth in the recurring net profit of about 17%, EUR 44 million versus the first 9 months of last year. Before moving to the next slide, let's highlight also the significant contribution from the finance income item, which shows an increase of about EUR 62 million, driven by EUR 37 million from assets and portfolio performance, EUR 19 million from the fair value option and equity participation, EUR 9 million from interest and EUR 8 million from GP stakes & affiliates. And then also, we had a negative, in this case, negative impact of the IFRS for EUR 11 million. Now moving to Slide 12. We have the classic picture of our net financial position, which is a positive balance at the end of September of EUR 765 million, substantially the same value of last year compared to June, we have an increase of around EUR 120 million. That can be reconciled considering the pretax results of EUR 198 million less the tax advance of EUR 7 million, EUR 8 million, its M&A for EUR 8.5 million, the proceeds from the sale of RoundShield that contributed to the cash for EUR 38 million and then a technical adjustment of EUR 27 million from UCI units moved out from the net financial position. Moving to Slide 13. Let me share a key update on the TNB project. During the past month, we secured the antitrust approval to acquire the banking license. And I am delighted to announce today that we have signed yesterday a binding agreement with the Banca di Sconto. Our negotiation with FSI continued following the press release published to date. We have updated the project finalization time line to Q2 '26. This timetable establishes a clear and orderly process, providing Azimut and its shareholders with greater visibility on the final stages of the transaction. The schedule is fully aligned with the operational work already underway for the launch of TNB. And then I remind you, once again, the extraordinary long-term value of this transaction. So again, the EUR 1.2 billion potential total consideration plus the EUR 2.4 billion revenue guarantee plus the 20% stake that we will maintain in TNB. Turning to Slide 14. We have here shared the '25 targets. We confirm our net inflow target for the full year of EUR 28 billion to EUR 31 billion. We have already achieved more than EUR 15 billion of net inflows at the end of September. We saw preliminary figures for October and an expected contribution of about EUR 14 billion from the NSI integration could lead us to reach up the guidance. And then moving to Slide 15. Given the strong results achieved in the first 9 months, we are pleased to announce an upgrade to our '25 core group net profit target. We now expect to exceed EUR 500 million in '25 compared to our previous lower end guidance of EUR 400 million. Looking ahead to 2026, including the expected contribution from TNB in this year, as a result of the updated time line, we estimate group net profit to amount above EUR 1 billion. Finally, reflecting both the strength of our results and our solid capital position, the Board of Directors intend to propose announced the dividend policy for the 2025 financial year. This will be above last year EUR 1.75 per share, which represented a 61% payout on recurring net profit, further demonstrating our commitment to rewarding shareholders through sustainable and growing returns. We will share the final details with our full year '25 results presentation that will be happening at the beginning of March '26. Thank you for your time and your attention. Now I hand over to Giorgio, again. Medda Giorgio: Thank you, Alessandro, and I will move to Slide 16. So following the completion of the ordinary supervisory review by the Bank of Italy on part of our Italian business, we can say that we have full clarity and greater visibility on the regulatory time lines ahead. This gives us a very solid foundation to move forward with confidence towards the launch of TNB that is a key milestone in Azimut's evolution. The group strategic plan, Elevate 2030, which will include targets for all business lines and both the Italian and global platforms will be presented in full as previously announced to the market following the authorization of the TNB transaction. However, global expansion continues to be a cornerstone of Azimut's strategy, and we continue building on our presence in 20 markets. And we are very determined to continue strengthening our leadership among the world's leading independent players. And that is why, in the meantime, we have decided to share a few key guidelines focused on our global business that is a part not impacted by the supervisory review. This plan emphasize growth, diversification and sustainable value creation for shareholders. With Elevate 2030, we are certainly defining an even more ambitious growth trajectory, one that will showcase the full potential of our diversified global platform and reinforce Azimut's position as a truly global success story. But let us now take a closer look at what lies ahead, and I will move to Slide 17. So first of all, to help everyone to better understand the potential of our global operations, we started with a bottom-up analysis of the expected contribution in terms of net inflows from each region. This has historically been an area where the market underestimated our potential, and we believe these figures better illustrate the scalability of our platform. What we're showing here are the expected yearly net inflows from our global operations only, and we are excluding Italy. These targets are indeed very ambitious, but we see them as incredibly realistic. They are consistent with our historical growth trajectory, which also reflects a clear step-up as we continue to scale, broaden our investment solution base and bring innovation to our markets. And indeed, we believe a strong potential for Azimut to replicate the success that we have achieved in Italy. We expect total net inflows from our global platform between EUR 5 billion and EUR 8 billion per year, with the Americas region remaining a major growth driver, contributing EUR 2 billion to EUR 3 billion annually, supported by the integration of NSI in the United States, which will add approximately $16 billion or EUR 14 billion upon closing of the transaction at the end of the year. Our strategic affiliates led by Sanctuary Wealth in the U.S., AZ NGA in Australia, also very well positioned now to capture powerful structural trends and the shift of top financial advisers away from bank-owned networks towards independent platforms continues to accelerate and the ongoing intergenerational wealth transfer in both markets is expanding every day the addressable client base for advisory-driven models like ours. For the strategic affiliates, we are expecting to add between EUR 1.5 billion and EUR 2.5 billion of annual inflows, confirming the strength of our partnership model in high potential markets. The EMEA and Asia Pacific regions will also contribute steadily, driven by our ongoing expansion in markets such as Egypt, Taiwan and Singapore. And overall, this figure illustrates the depth and balance of our global business. In general, what I would like to stress here that the international component of Azimut is becoming an increasingly powerful engine of growth and value creation under the new strategic plan. So moving to Slide 18. Here, we are really converting the inflows into the overall asset base at the end of the period. And we are now projecting our global average total assets to grow from around EUR 54 billion to between EUR 95 billion and EUR 110 billion by 2030. This is a very exciting plan. We are essentially showing here our ambition to double our asset base. But certainly, it demonstrates the strength and maturity of our global platform. Achieving these goals will require certainly focus and determination, but I believe we have all the right elements in place. We have now a robust and diversified product offering across public and private markets. We have the ability to tailor solution to the specific needs of each client, and we have a unique entrepreneurial model and mindset that will allow us to move quickly and seize opportunities. This combination gives Azimut a unique and clear competitive advantage and positions us among the very few independent global players able to grow at scale while preserving quality and agility. And now moving to Slide 19. I want to really focus on margin. This is a very important element to help the market better understand what lies ahead and the true earnings power of our global business. Here, we show where our current net profit margins stand today by region and where we expect them to evolve by 2030. We have provided what is a wide enough range to capture different market conditions, but also we want to illustrate what is the significant operating leverage and the economies of scale that our global platform can deliver as it continues to grow. The Americas are expected to see margins rising from around 27 basis points today to between 25 and 35 basis points by 2030. And this will be our largest region by total assets, supported by the NSI integration and the planned launch of active ETFs, which will bring Azimut's global product capabilities to the world's largest market. EMEA remains our most profitable region with margins expanding towards 50 to 60 basis points, while we see the potential for the Asia Pacific region to gradually improve its contribution as the region scales and matures. Looking at these figures on a consolidated level, we expect the global business, excluding Italy and the strategic affiliates, to reach a net profit margin between 30 and 40 basis points by 2030, corresponding to an annual profit of approximately EUR 180 million to EUR 280 million. This compares with a margin of around 35 basis points and a net profit of EUR 70 million generated in the first 9 months of this year. Also, I think it's important here to put into perspective that since 2019, our global net profit has grown at a compound annual growth rate well above 35%. And this gives us a very strong base and clear visibility on the profitability path we are building towards 2030. I would move to Slide 19, 20 and 21. And on the next 3 slides, you see the same breakdown as before, but this time by business line rather than geography. And that should help everyone to cross check our assumptions and better understand the contribution of each vertical to the overall growth plan. I will not spend too much time here, but it's important to highlight the strength and balance across our global platform. And let me tell you that the Elevate 2030 plan will bring greater transparency to the market by showing our strategic and financial objectives through these 4 verticals that we have already introduced this year with the new reporting structure. This structure certainly enhances clarity, ensures consistency in how we represent value creation and makes it easier to appreciate the growth and profitability potential for each business line. And obviously, 4 verticals provide a diversified and complementary growth platform that is underpinning our market leadership, operational integration and long-term strategic partnerships. I would move now to Slide 23, where there is essentially highlighted what is a key pillar for Elevate 2030, that is strategic capital management. This is a framework designed to enhance our valuation to strengthen financial flexibility and deliver consistent and attractive returns to our shareholders. Our focus is on improving transparency and disclosure to help close the valuation gap that we continue to believe the market is still applying to the stock and not really truly appreciating the potential of Azimut. We are also proactively managing regulatory risk by simplifying our structure and ensuring greater operational clarity across jurisdictions. And we furthermore plan to unlock value from our global operations through a series of operations that could potentially include targeted demergers, dual listings and/or strategic partnerships. We're also very pleased today to announce a new share buyback program with a commitment to cancel up to EUR 500 million of repurchased shares over the next 18 to 24 months, equivalent to around 10% of our share capital. This initiative aims to maximize shareholder remuneration and reflects the constructive feedback that we have received from our investors over the last few months. And it's a clear signal of our confidence in the strength of the group, the resilience of our cash generation and our commitment to delivering tangible value to shareholders. Beyond this, we remain committed to maintaining a debt-free position given the strong cash flow generation of our business. However, we will preserve the optionality for future value-accretive M&A opportunities to be financed via debt. And as Alessandro has already highlighted, we will propose a new enhanced ordinary dividend for the full year 2025 versus the prior year. And certainly, we will give you more insight with our full year results in March 2026 when it comes to a broader and more comprehensive dividend policy as part of the Elevated 2030 plan. I mean, I think we can already anticipate that when it comes to shareholder remuneration, one key principle will be that any policy that we will announce to the market will be aligned with cash flow generation to ensure an attractive and sustainable payout over time. So let me move to the last slide, really to wrap up everything that we discussed and shared with you today. So first of all, we are upgrading our 2025 core net profit target to above EUR 500 million, and we project now net income to exceed EUR 1 billion in 2026. This reflects the solid momentum we have built throughout the year and continued strength of our recurring earnings. Second, we have made meaningful progress on the TNB transaction, gaining enhanced clarity on the time line for the next steps. And this gives us a clear regulatory and strategic pathway to move forward. Third, with Elevate 2030, we are releasing ambitious yet achievable targets for our global operations, and we project between EUR 5 billion and EUR 8 billion of annual net inflows over the next 5 years and total assets between EUR 95 billion and EUR 110 billion by 2030, with an expected net profit margin in the region of 30 to 40 basis points. And last point, our strategic capital management remains a key driver of value creation, supported by a EUR 500 million share buyback program with full cancellation of repurchased shares and the new dividend policy to be presented in 2026 after the completion of the TNB transaction. But as we mentioned, already we are providing an announced dividend payout for 2025, obviously applying on a payment in 2026. Together, we believe these initiatives position Azimut for a new chapter of profitable discipline and sustainable growth. With this, we are done and we certainly open the floor to any questions. Operator: [Operator Instructions] The first question is from Gian Luca Ferrari of Mediobanca. Gian Ferrari: Three for me, please. The first one is on the foreign business. I think what you are telling us today, Giorgio, is that the foreign operations are closing this year very close to the cost of capital you put in that development outside Italy. And given the trajectory you are disclosing today, is it fair to assume that by 2027, the IRR of this will reach 20% or something very close to that level? The second is on Nova. Last week, Amundi and then UniCredit, they have been pretty vocal in what is the relationship among them. I will not ask you the level of AUM you are expecting from UniCredit given the acceleration of the divorce, let's say, from Amundi. But I'm more curious to understand what is the level of margins after 2028? So after UniCredit will have exercised the call option. Is it fair to assume that your 20% in Nova will represent something like 15, 20 basis points on the AUM that UniCredit will have transferred at that point? The third question is, I don't know if I can ask this question, but are you eventually considering a dual listing of Azimut even in other stock exchange like in the U.S., for example? And sorry, if I may, the last one. I saw in the press release, you -- after the Bank of Italy inspection, you have some, let's say, adjustments to the business to be compliant with what Bank of Italy is asking to you. Are the costs related to that material or we are talking about a few million euros? Medda Giorgio: Gian Luca, I'll pick your first and second question. So regarding the foreign business or the global business, as we call it [indiscernible], you look at this year and you look at what we have delivered for the first 9 months, I think it would be fair to assume that we will generate a return on invested capital of between 13% to 15% that I think is above our cost of capital. So I think we are already proving value creation. And yes, indeed, when you look at the earnings trajectory over the next couple of years, certainly, I see as very realistic, a return on invested capital in the region of 20% within this time frame. When it comes to Nova, as you know, and I think it's important for me to stress it again, we will never, never disclose any confidential information regarding the activity of clients with our platform. We have never done that with any client. We will never do with Nova. But let me guide you towards some generic principles that govern our partnership with Nova. Certainly, the moment that UniCredit will exercise the call option to buy 80% of Nova, that should not have a material impact on earnings contribution. As already today, we have an agreement under which we are working like UniCredit was already an 80% shareholder. And when it comes to basis points, I think we've guided in the past a range between 40 to 50 basis points. I would assume that we are ballpark again in line with that level in the second stage of this partnership if we get to the second stage after the exercise of the call option. You were also asking about dual listing. Yes, indeed, the U.S. stock exchange remains a very viable option for us. Certainly, we see today a very significant valuation differential for players in our industry being listed there as opposed to be listed in European markets, but we will retain obviously full optionality in deciding which exchange will be eventually decided for our alternative listing. Alessandro Zambotti: I take the Bank of Italy side. So in general, as you said and as you probably read on the press, the report is focused on increase our strength in terms of [indiscernible] strategic planning. So nothing let's say, that cause us an impact on the business and therefore, on the P&L of the group. Therefore, it's just a matter to focus on paperwork and fix what, let's say, they found missing. But as you said also during the question, it's just a few, let's say, a few euros to spend to fix quickly the gap and then looking forward, focusing on our business. Operator: The next question is from Giovanni Razzoli of Deutsche Bank. Giovanni Razzoli: Two set of questions. The first one is on the target for the international operation contribution. You are targeting EUR 5 billion to EUR 8 billion of inflows, half of that are from the states. But if I look at the 9 months run rate, you are already at close to EUR 4 billion, EUR 4.5 billion with U.S. at EUR 2.5 billion. So I was wondering if we can consider the low end of the range, this EUR 5.8 billion contribution of inflows from the international operation as a quite conservative target. The second question relates to the announcement of the share buyback. I was wondering how shall we look at the 10% share buyback that you have announced in the context of the 3% treasury shares that you have already owned. So shall we assume that the 10% is on top of the 3% or you will proceed with the cancellation of the 3% and then on top of that, in 2 years' time, you will buy another 10% with the cancellation? And then as you have mentioned medium, long-term targets, given that your net financial position is very strong, actually, you are cash positive with a capital-light business, shall we assume that apart from this EUR 500 million share buyback, if I move forward, I don't know, 3, 4 years down the road, the share buyback becomes a kind of recurring component of your distribution strategy, let's say, EUR 500 million of share buyback in 2 years' time as a kind, as I said, of recurring contribution of your remuneration policy? Medda Giorgio: Yes, Giovanni. So let me start with the question regarding the EUR 5 billion to EUR 8 billion expected net new money from our non-Italian operations. Indeed, we have provided you a target. This is a target applied for a 5-year period. Certainly, we always work with the ambition of beating the targets that we set for ourselves. And indeed, I would say that the bottom end of that range assumes a deterioration in market conditions and things changing as opposed to what we are leaving now. But the range is a range, is a long period of time, and I would certainly with everyone in Azimut to make sure that our real objective is to beat that range. When it comes to the share buyback, I don't know which figure you are looking at, but I would say that probably today, treasury shares amount to 1% of our outstanding capital. And you should assume that the 10% is on top of this 1%. And for the question regarding what will happen in the next 3 to 4 years, I would certainly be thinking what we have announced today. And time will tell. I think we are making a very strong statement in terms of committing to ensure that our shareholder remuneration policy is inclusive and makes all our shareholders to benefit from the value that we create every day in our business around the world. What is important to say here is that after the TNB transaction, we'll be able to provide a more comprehensive shareholder remuneration policy, including also the ordinary payout policy when it comes to dividends. Operator: The next question is from Hubert Lam of Bank of America. Hubert Lam: [indiscernible] in the global business. Just wondering how much of that would you expect it to be coming from organic in your plans? And how much is it M&A? Do you need M&A to kind of get there? Or are you confident that organic, you can still achieve your targets? Second question is on the share buyback, the EUR 500 million. I'm just wondering in terms of timing when it could start, do you need the approval for the new bank first before you can start the share buyback? Or can it come before that? And lastly, any questions on the new bank. Any update in terms of expected profits you expect from this, both in '26 and maybe beyond that? Medda Giorgio: Hubert, I'll reply to your first 2 questions. I'm not sure I got right your first one. But let me start with the first one regarding organic growth from our global operations, the guidance we provided, you should assume it's mostly organic. And by the way, when you look at what we have done this year, again, the figure that we mentioned earlier is essentially mostly organic. So you should really consider any M&A contributing to this level. When it comes to the share buyback, as a matter of fact, the share buyback is live in the market because we had already approved the share buyback with our AGM in the first quarter this year. What the AGM will approve next year will be the renewal of the plan and the cancellation of the repurchased shares. But the share buyback is, as a matter of fact, right now live in the market. And as far as your first question is concerned, we missed it. Hubert Lam: Yes. Sorry about that. Yes, so the answer to the first 2 are very clear. The third question -- yes, sorry, on the new bank. Just wondering how much in terms of profit contribution we can expect from it in terms of delivering profits in '26. I know that's just the first year and also like beyond, any update in terms of guidance around that? Alessandro Zambotti: Well, nowadays, it's running around -- with the projection at the end of the year, it's around EUR 60 million for '25. Therefore, I would say we are going to be the 20% of this range less a few costs that obviously has to be incurred through the fact that it has no spending banks. Therefore, I would say that we are in this range. Operator: The next question is from Alberto Villa of Intermonte SIM. Alberto Villa: A few left. One is on the acquisition side. I read that your Chairman also indicated that there might be opportunities for future acquisitions, especially in LatAm. So I was wondering if you can give us an idea what is, let's say, of interest for the group in terms of completing the setup of the global operations you have. And broadly speaking, what is the leverage that you would consider as a good setup for the group if you find an interesting opportunity also inorganic in the framework of the -- also the capital remuneration and shareholder remuneration that you have in mind? Medda Giorgio: Okay. Thank you, Alberto. So your first question referring to the interview of our Chairman a couple of weeks ago in Italy. Indeed, we will continue to explore and to seek acquisition opportunities on a bolt-on basis and acquisitions that will never be material in terms of cash outlay and certainly will carry a strong strategic sense in terms of adding and complementing our existing businesses around the world. I think during the interview, it was mentioned our interest in Latin America. Let me tell you that there are a few situations we are looking at in Brazil, but that would be negligible in terms of cash investment for the firm, but certainly we will strengthen our distribution business in the country. And when it comes to the leverage, we often said that we certainly recognize the merits of having an optimal capital structure policy. And in general, we would guide the market when it comes to what we would envisage in the case of a transformative or material M&A transaction in terms of leverage, probably in a situation where we have a net debt to EBIT in the region of 1 to 1.5x ratio. Operator: The next question is from Elena Perini of Intesa Sanpaolo. Elena Perini: I have some left. The first one is about your new net profit target for '25 and 2026. So basically, you move the more than EUR 1 billion target to next year due to the timing of the conclusion of the TNB transaction, if I understand correctly. And while you have for 2025, a target about EUR 500 million. In terms of targets, just to refer to your global business. The wide range that you set for 2030 is EUR 180 million to EUR 280 million is only due to the different range of annual flows and due to the different potential margins on the assets? Or are there any other factors that could explain this wide range? And then a clarification about other income and tax rate. About other income, you mentioned structuring fees. Are there any recurring items for next quarters too? Or do they represent a one-off item? While for the tax rate, I think that there are some one-offs for this quarter as you confirm your guidance of 25% for the full year, but I'm asking you about this. Alessandro Zambotti: Yes. Thank you, Elena. I'm going to take a few of your questions, and then Giorgio will conclude. So starting from your first part relating to the net profit, the new target and as well the moving of the EUR 1 billion to the '26, it's clearly -- your understanding is correct. I mean the contribution of TNB that we plan -- I mean, we're planning at the end of the year is not going to happen. Therefore, obviously, the contribution and the equity transaction is going to happen in '26 and therefore, as well the P&L impact from this transaction is going to be booked next year. And at the same time, following the good results and the good trend of the group, we were updating the guidance for the, let's say, the simple reason that the projection that we see, the trajectory that we see for the last few months of the year is if nothing happens, let's say, complicate, we will be able to get the target. Then you refer to the other income. As you were saying, there is a one-off effect that is linked to the structuring fees. But at the same time, as I was saying at the beginning, it has not to be considered one-off for the yearly basis because it's quarterly basis, for sure, we cannot say that every quarter, we will have this contribution. But looking on a yearly basis, this amount I mean could happen that following this type of services that we are providing, they came up -- I mean, a contribution as well on the other income on the future years. And then at the level of the tax, I think it's more close to the constant of seasonability. I mean, this quarter, it's always lower than in December, considering also the provision of all the dividends coming from the other countries, we will probably get higher impact of tax for that, we kept the guidance stable as per the previous. Medda Giorgio: And yes, when it comes to the 2030 margin targets, the EUR 180 million to EUR 280 million net profit from global operations. Look, this range is admittedly very large. It reflects simply the addition of the lower bound targets for each division or geography and the upper bound. There is nothing else there. It certainly is a basic assumption that the business mix going forward will essentially remain unchanged or not dramatically different from what it is today. But as I said, we work every day to beat the target that we give ourselves, and we certainly do our best to even do better than what we are disclosing today. It's 5 years, it's a pretty long period of time, but we are starting off a very strong base, and I see us capable of doing very, very well. Operator: The next question is from Ian White of Autonomous Research. Ian White: Just a couple from me, please. First of all, can you call out some of the most important drivers of the improved organic net inflow performance this year, please? I'm particularly interested in where you think you've seen the strongest growth in your market share, thinking about the organic flows specifically. That's question one. And question two, in terms of the Bank of Italy's inspection, can you say a bit more about the specific findings there and the remediations that you're going to introduce? Am I right to read into the statement today that the delay to TNB approval is linked to the regulators' findings? And if so, what's your view as to why the regulator has connected those things, please? Medda Giorgio: Okay. Let me take your questions. So I'll start with the first regarding the underlying drivers of our terrific net new money performance this year. I think we -- if you look at the presentation that we have shown earlier, Slide 6, you find what is a pretty accurate detailed breakdown in terms of net new money to different product lines as opposed to different geographies. Let me tell you from a qualitative standpoint that fund solutions have been doing very well in Italy. Certainly, we have the contribution of Nova here, but let me mention what also we have done in Turkey, in Egypt, in the U.S., that is certainly our key product, our bread and butter, and we are proving now to be able to grow both catering to individual clients and institutional as well in terms of wholesale agreement. Let me mention that our Wealth Management business has been this year delivering incredible growth out of Asia, out of the Middle East. Switzerland, Monaco as well doing better than the previous years. And we see now what is a very sustained momentum that is a testament of our ability of building now a cross-border platform and being able to deal with high net worth, ultra net worth individuals that are recognizing Azimut's the ability and the capability to deliver performance vis-a-vis even larger players. Then when it comes to your question regarding the ordinary inspection from Bank of Italy, yes, again, I would refer to the press release, you should assume that we are subject to inspections every week. As you can imagine, we operate across 20 countries. We are subject to the supervision of 20 regulators, sometimes in certain markets like in the U.S. by 2 regulators in the same country. That is also the case for Italy, by the way. And there are routine inspections. So you can say that every day, we are subject to an inspection. So I do not see the Bank of Italy inspection in Italy has been particularly different from others that we have been subject to. And also, let me stress you that the -- let's say, the topic of the inspection was not the announced transaction with TNB. The inspection was very much covering for our, let's say, asset management product factory activities and has been very much referring to this aspect of the business that is not related to the announced transaction with FSI. One of the outcomes of the transaction was that we need to put in place some very ordinary remedial actions. And as you can imagine, although these actions are not related to the TNB transaction and considering the time line is relatively short, we will work on this remediation plan with some very close deadlines, also suggesting that there's nothing dramatic there, maintaining what is an achievable target for the transaction to close within Q2. By the way, this inspection started even before the binding agreement was signed with FSI, and it's really to be seen as completely unrelated. Maybe unfortunate in terms of timing, but to be honest, not really a reason of concern for us. Ian White: Okay. If I can just clarify, I'm not sure if I missed this. In terms of the -- is the delay to TNB approval a direct consequence of things that the regulator has found on its -- during its ordinary inspection? Or am I reading that incorrectly? Medda Giorgio: Not at all. It's procedural, if you want. And as we said very often, the 2 things are separate. There is no really -- we should not see the TNB transaction as the inspection that could be related to each other. As a matter of fact, the transaction occurs in a way where the company that is spinning off half of our network is the one that was subject to the inspection, but nothing of the activities that will be spun off has been subject to the inspection itself. It was mostly related to funds management to discretion portfolio management, really nothing at all that was related to the asset base that will be spun off. Operator: [Operator Instructions] Mr. Medda, there are no more questions registered at this time. Medda Giorgio: Okay. Let's close the call here, and let me wish everyone a good end of the year. And obviously, we keep looking forward to seeing you soon. Thank you. Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining. The conference is now over. You may disconnect your telephones.
Operator: Good day, and welcome to CoreCivic's Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this call may be recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Jeb Bachmann, Managing Director, Investor Relations. Jeb Bachmann: Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to CoreCivic's third quarter 2025 earnings call. Participating on today's call are Damon Hininger, CoreCivic's Chief Executive Officer; Patrick Swindle, CoreCivic's President and Chief Operating Officer; and David Garfinkle, our Chief Financial Officer. We are also joined here in the room by our Vice President of Finance, Brian Hammonds. On this call, we will discuss financial results for the third quarter of 2025 as well as updated financial guidance for the 2025 year. We will also discuss developments with our government partners and provide you with other general business updates. During today's call, our remarks, including our answers to your questions, will include forward-looking statements pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities and Litigation Reform Act. Our actual results or trends may differ materially as a result of a variety of factors, including those identified in our third quarter 2025 earnings release issued after market yesterday as well as in our Securities and Exchange Commission filings, including Forms 10-K, 10-Q and also 8-K reports. You are cautioned that any forward-looking statements reflect management's current views only and that the company undertakes no obligation to revise or update such statements in the future. Management will discuss certain non-GAAP metrics. A reconciliation of the most comparable GAAP measurement is provided in the corresponding earnings release and included in the company's quarterly supplemental financial data report posted on the Investors page of the company's website at corecivic.com. With that, it is my pleasure to turn the call over to our CEO, Damon Hininger. Damon T. Hininger: Thank you, Jeb. Good afternoon and thank you for joining us for CoreCivic's third quarter 2025 earnings call. On this afternoon's call, I will discuss our near-term and long-term outlook and recent contracting activity. Following my opening remarks, I will hand the call over to Patrick Swindle, our President and Chief Operating Officer. Patrick will review the performance of our core portfolio, discuss in further detail our operational activities relating to facility activations during the quarter and how we are preparing for additional demand from our government partners. We will then turn the call over to our CFO, Dave Garfinkle, who will provide detail on our third quarter financial results as well as our updated 2025 financial guidance and provide an update on our capital allocation strategy. I will then conclude with some closing remarks before we open up the call for Q&A. First up, an update on our activation activities, where we've made substantial progress on contracting several idle facilities. Since our last earnings call, we announced new awards at the 600-bed West Tennessee Detention Facility, the 2,560-bed California City Immigration Processing Center, the 1,033-bed Midwest Regional Reception Center and the 2,160-bed Diamondback Correctional Facility. In aggregate, these 4 new contract awards are expected to generate annual revenue of approximately $320 million once we reach stabilized occupancy. Our updated full year 2025 financial guidance reflects significant earnings growth from 2024. Although these recently announced new contract awards negatively impact our financial guidance for the fourth quarter for start-up related activities, which Dave will review in detail, these new awards set us up nicely for an even stronger 2026. Once we reach stabilized occupancy for these new awards, which we expect to occur during the first half of 2026, we expect our annual run rate revenue to be approximately $2.5 billion and annual run rate EBITDA to increase by $100 million to over $450 million, and this is not counting any additional contract awards. While staffing ramp continues at each of these facilities with some already accepting detainees, the intake process at our Midwest facility has been delayed by a lawsuit filed by the City of Leavenworth. And although we are optimistic, we cannot predict if or when a favorable resolution will be achieved. Patrick will provide further details on the progress of these activations. Moving to a discussion of the business climate. At the end of September 2025, nationwide ICE detention populations were at historical highs of around 60,000, an increase of a couple of thousand from the end of the second quarter. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement or ICE, has been our largest customer for over a decade. From the end of 2024 through the third quarter, ICE populations in our facilities increased 3,700 to almost 14,000 or 37%. We believe that enforcement activity could gain additional momentum in the coming months as more agents are hired to meet ICE's 100,000-bed detention target. Nationwide populations from the United States Marshals Service, our second largest customer, have remained relatively flat, although we expect Marshals populations to increase in 2026 due to an anticipated increase in enforcement activities and as more U.S. attorneys are put in place. Our Marshals populations have declined slightly to just over 6,300 at the end of September. Many of our state partners continue to face complex correctional challenges either because of staffing shortages, overcrowding or outdated infrastructure. Our year-over-year state populations were up about 600 people driven most notably from new contracts with the State of Montana and increased populations in Georgia. We are in conversations with numerous existing and potential state partners to accommodate their additional demand. As we continue to look for additional ways to meet our government partners' needs, we believe that we can make available substantial capacity to meet future demand. Even after the earlier mentioned activations, we own 5 idle corrections and detention facilities containing approximately 7,000 beds. Along with surge capacity we have made available at certain facilities, partial capacity we have in facilities that are currently in operation and capacity we can make available through third-party leases like our great partnership with Target Hospitality I previously mentioned, we have close to 24,000 beds that we have informed ICE could be available. We continue to believe that detention beds like these represent the best value and are the most humane, most efficient logistically, have the highest audit compliance scores in their system, are more secure, weather-proof and are readily available. One final comment before I pass the call over to Patrick. As you all know, the company has a authorization for a share repurchase program for up to $500 million in the aggregate. During the 9 months ended September 30, 2025, we purchased 5.9 million shares of common stock under the share repurchase program at an aggregate cost of $121 million or $20.60 per share. Since the share repurchase program was authorized in May of 2022, through September 30, 2025, we have purchased a total of 20.4 million shares of our common stock at an aggregate cost of $302 million or $14.81 per share, excluding fees, commissions and other costs related to the repurchases. As of September 30, 2025, we had approximately $198 million of repurchase authorization available under the share repurchase program. Looking at the current stock price and our historical EBITDA trading multiples, the market is assuming a $300 million EBITDA run rate for the company, which is clearly a misalignment with our recent operating performance and anticipated forecast for 2026. With that, we expect to be executing an aggressive buyback plan this quarter, likely to be more than double the amount we have done in previous quarters. With that, I will pass the call over to Patrick Swindle for further review of our operations activities during the third quarter. Patrick Swindle: Thanks, Damon. I'll start with a high-level overview of our top line revenue and third quarter operational performance. Federal partners, primarily Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. Marshals Service comprised 55% of CoreCivic's total revenue in the third quarter. Revenue from our federal partners increased 28% during the third quarter of 2025 compared with the prior year quarter. Further breaking down our federal revenue, revenue from ICE increased $76.2 million or 54.6%, while revenue from the U.S. Marshals Service decreased by 5% versus the prior year quarter. Some of this decline is simply a shift mix where ICE and Marshals share a contract. As Damon mentioned, we expect increases in U.S. Marshals populations later in 2026. Revenue from our state partners increased 3.6% from the prior year quarter. This increase includes additional revenue from the State of Montana, resulting from the 2 new contracts we signed with the state since the second quarter of 2024 and population increases in Georgia. Total occupancy for our Safety and Community segments for the quarter was 76.7%, up 1.5 points since the year ago quarter. As we noted on our last quarter earnings call, total occupancy reflects the transfer of our 2,560-bed California City Immigration Processing Center from our Property segment, which isn't included in these occupancy statistics to our Safety segment. Although this facility recently transitioned from a letter contract to a definitized contract, we have not yet begun receiving any detainees until late in the third quarter. Therefore, if we exclude this additional capacity from the calculation, making a more apples-to-apples comparison with prior periods, our reported occupancy would have been 79.3%. The average daily population across all of the facilities we manage was 55,236 during the third quarter of 2025 compared with 50,757 in the year ago quarter. This increase was driven by more demand for our services and new contracting activity. Our teams continue to be successful in working with our government partners and managing the additional people in our care, which we are focused on every day. Our third quarter results exceeded our internal projections for adjusted EPS and normalized FFO per share by $0.03 and $0.04, respectively, and adjusted EBITDA by $4.8 million. As Damon alluded, the third quarter was a very busy quarter with reactivation activities at several previously idle facilities. We resumed operations in March at the 2,400-bed Dilley Immigration Processing Center under a new 5-year agreement and reached full operational capacity in September. Shortly after the second quarter earnings release, we announced a new IGSA contract for our 600-bed West Tennessee Detention Facility. This contract has a 5-year term and is expected to generate $30 million of annual revenue once fully activated. Full ramp is expected to be completed by the end of the first quarter of 2026. Effective September 1, 2025, we transitioned from a letter contract with ICE to a definitized contract at our 2,560-bed California City Immigration Processing Center. The new contract is for a 2-year period and is expected to generate annual revenue of approximately $130 million once fully activated. We began receiving detainees at the facility on August 27 and expect the activation to be completed in the first quarter of 2026. Effective September 7, 2025, we transitioned from a letter contract with ICE to a definitized contract at our 1,033-bed Midwest Regional Reception Center. This new contract is for a 2-year period and is expected to generate annual revenue of approximately $60 million once fully activated. However, the intake process continues to be delayed by the lawsuit with the City of Leavenworth that Damon mentioned earlier. Given the facility's centralized location, ICE is eager to begin fully utilizing this facility, and we're optimistic about successfully resolving the dispute. The recent entrance into the lawsuit by the Department of Justice could help expedite a favorable outcome. Effective September 30, 2025, we entered into a new IGSA between the Oklahoma Department of Corrections and ICE to resume operations at our 2,160-bed Diamondback Correctional Facility. This new contract has a 5-year term and is expected to generate approximately $100 million in annual revenues once fully activated, which we currently forecast to occur in the second quarter of 2026. In aggregate, these 4 recently announced contract awards are expected to generate annual revenue of $320 million. Despite visibility into annual run rate EBITDA, we do not believe the current stock valuation reflects the cash flows of our business, particularly considering these new contracts and our growth potential. Therefore, we plan to accelerate the pace of our share repurchases in future quarters, taking into consideration stock price and alternative opportunities to deploy capital, among other factors, as Dave will discuss further. The substantial progress made during the quarter in reactivating previously idle facilities couldn't have been accomplished without the hard work of our employees and the strong relationship with our government partners. However, we know there's more work to be done. Activations are complex and activating 4 idle facilities simultaneously is particularly complex. But I'm confident we have the right plan and the right teams in place to be successful both in these and future activations. In the meantime, we continue to remain focused on effectively managing our core portfolio and ensuring we meet our high operational standards as well as those of our government partners. Without this focus and performance, these additional opportunities may not exist. And so as I turn it over to Dave to discuss our third quarter financial results in more detail, our capital allocation activities and assumptions included in our updated 2025 financial guidance, I'd like to again express my appreciation to our 13,000 employees for their focus and commitment to our mission. Dave? David Garfinkle: Thank you, Patrick, and good afternoon, everyone. In the third quarter of 2025, we generated GAAP EPS of $0.24 per share and FFO per share of $0.48. Special items in the third quarter of 2025 included a $2.5 million gain on the sale of assets, a $1.5 million asset impairment and $0.8 million of M&A charges, including our acquisition of the Farmville Detention Center on July 1, reported in G&A expenses. Excluding special items, adjusted EPS in the third quarter was $0.24 compared with $0.20 in the third quarter of 2024, an increase of 20%. And normalized FFO per share was $0.48 per share compared with $0.43 per share in the prior year quarter, an increase of 11.6%. Adjusted EBITDA was $88.8 million compared with $83.3 million in the third quarter of 2024, an increase of 6.6%. Adjusted EPS and normalized FFO per share exceeded our internal forecast by $0.03 and $0.04 per share, respectively, and adjusted EBITDA exceeded our internal forecast by $4.8 million. The increase in adjusted EBITDA from the prior year quarter of $5.5 million resulted from higher federal and state populations as well as higher average per diem rates across much of our portfolio, partially offset by start-up activities in the third quarter of 2025 and some one-time benefits in the prior year quarter. The number of ICE detainees in our care followed national trends, which remained at or near record highs throughout the third quarter of 2025. As Damon and Patrick both mentioned, the third quarter was a very busy quarter for idle facility activations. We completed our reactivation of the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in September and are now generating revenue under a fixed monthly payment for the full 2,400-bed facility. During the third quarter, however, this facility accounted for a net decrease in facility net operating income of $3.4 million or $0.02 per share compared with the third quarter of 2024 as the facility was fully operational during the third quarter of 2024 until the contract with ICE was terminated effective August 9, 2024. As we previously disclosed last year, we also accelerated recognition of deferred revenue of $5.7 million in the third quarter of 2024 due to the contract termination. Shortly after last quarter's earnings release, we announced a new contract under an IGSA between the City of Mason, Tennessee and ICE to activate our previously idled 600-bed West Tennessee Detention Center, where we began receiving detainees on September 8. In September, we announced that we transitioned from short-term letter contracts at our 1,033-bed Midwest Regional Reception Center and our 2,560-bed California Immigration Processing Center into newly signed longer-term contract structures. We began receiving detainees at the California City facility on August 27. While obviously good news, we did incur facility operating losses at these 3 facilities during the third quarter of $3.4 million or $0.02 per share for start-up related activities. Although not impacting the third quarter, on October 1, we announced a new contract award under an IGSA between the Oklahoma Department of Corrections and ICE to activate our 2,160-bed Diamondback Correctional Facility, which commenced September 30. Other factors affecting EBITDA and per share results included higher G&A expenses, the favorable impact of our share repurchase program and the acquisition of the Farmville Detention Center on July 1, 2025. Operating margin on our Safety and Community facilities combined was 22.7% in the third quarter of 2025 compared to 24.9% in the prior year quarter. Excluding the aforementioned operating losses at the 3 facilities in various stages of activation, operating margin was 24% for Q3 2025. Again, margin in the prior year quarter was favorably impacted by the accelerated recognition of deferred revenue at the Dilley facility and a ramp down of populations at the facility in July 2024 despite generating a fixed revenue payment for the full facility through the August 9 termination date. Turning next to the balance sheet. During the third quarter, we repurchased 1.9 million shares of our common stock at an aggregate cost of $40 million, increasing our year-to-date repurchases to 5.9 million shares at an aggregate cost of $121 million. As of September 30, we had $197.9 million available under our $500 million Board authorization. As mentioned last quarter, on July 1, 2025, we acquired the Farmville Detention Center, a 736-bed facility located in Virginia for a total purchase price of approximately $71 million, including the acquisition of working capital accounts at an attractive return. After taking into consideration these share repurchases and this acquisition, our leverage measured by net debt to adjusted EBITDA was 2.5x using the trailing 12 months ended September 30, 2025. At September 30, we had $56.6 million of cash on hand and an additional $191.4 million of borrowing capacity on our revolving credit facility, which had a balance of $65 million outstanding, providing us with total liquidity of $248 million. Moving lastly to a discussion of our updated 2025 financial guidance. We expect to generate adjusted diluted EPS of $1 to $1.06 compared with $1.07 to $1.14 in our previous guidance and normalized FFO per share of $1.94 to $2 compared with $1.99 to $2.07 in our previous guidance. We expect adjusted EBITDA of $355 million to $359 million compared with $365 million to $371 million in our previous guidance. Our updated guidance reflects the favorable results for the third quarter, updated occupancy projections consistent with current trends as well as updated assumptions for start-up activities related to new contracts signed during the third quarter at our West Tennessee Detention Facility, our California Immigration Processing Center, our Midwest Regional Reception Center and our Diamondback Correctional Facility. Our revised guidance reflects a reduction in EBITDA at these 4 facilities of $10 million to $11 million compared with our prior guidance. In other words, the reduction in our guidance is essentially attributable to the updated assumptions for the start-up activities at these 4 facilities. These start-up activities will also negatively impact Q4 margins. We are currently preparing our 2026 budget and expect to provide financial guidance for 2026 in conjunction with our fourth quarter earnings release in February. However, as Damon mentioned, upon reaching stabilized occupancy at these 4 facilities, we currently expect our run rate EBITDA to be no less than $450 million. We currently expect to reach stabilized occupancy of the last activation of these 4 facilities in the second quarter of 2026, so we will not reach a full year run rate in 2026. Also keep in mind, activating facilities is a complex and challenging process with certain factors like the pace of intake and resolution of the legal dispute at our Midwest facility, to name a couple, not always within our control. We still have 5 remaining idle facilities containing 7,066 beds. And we believe incremental demand for more idle facilities will likely be needed once ICE absorbs the recently contracted beds. With historic funding levels for border security and immigration detention obtained under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, ICE's publicly stated intention to reach 100,000 detention beds nationwide as well as growing demand from existing and potential new state government partners, we believe there are numerous opportunities to activate additional idle facilities we own. We also believe there could be opportunities to manage additional bed capacity not currently in our portfolio. These opportunities would be incremental to the aforementioned run rate EBITDA levels after considering any start-up expenses. We plan to spend $60 million to $65 million on maintenance capital expenditures during 2025, unchanged from our prior guidance, and $14 million to $15 million for other capital expenditures increased primarily for preplanned investments at the newly acquired Farmville Detention Center. Our 2025 forecast also includes $97.5 million to $99.5 million of capital expenditures associated with potential facility activations and additional transportation vehicles, up from our prior guidance for requests from ICE in connection with the new contracts at the California City and Diamondback facilities. During the first 3 quarters of the year, we spent $51.6 million on potential idle facility activations and additional transportation vehicles. Finally, with respect to our capital allocation strategy, we do not believe the price of our common stock reflects the value of the cash flows of our business, particularly considering recent contract wins, and therefore, expect to accelerate the pace of our share repurchases in future quarters. Our Q4 guidance contemplates double the space of the previous quarter. Our share repurchases will take into consideration our stock price, liquidity, earnings trajectory and alternative opportunities to deploy capital. We expect adjusted funds from operations or AFFO, which we consider a proxy for our cash flow available for capital allocation decisions such as share repurchases and growth CapEx such as facility activations to range from $210 million to $219 million for 2025. We expect our normalized annual effective tax rate to be 25% to 30%, unchanged from our prior guidance. The full year EBITDA guidance in our press release provides you with our estimate of total depreciation and interest expense. We are forecasting G&A expenses in 2025 to be approximately $167 million, excluding expenses associated with M&A transactions. Before we turn the call back to the operator for Q&A, I'd like to turn the call back to Damon for his closing remarks. Damon T. Hininger: Thank you, Dave. Well, as you all know, in August, we announced that Patrick will succeed me as CEO effective on January 1, 2026. I've had the great honor and the privilege of holding the CEO title for over 16 years, and I'm humbled by the opportunity to have served this great company since I started my career as a correctional officer in the summer of 1992. I still clearly remember working my first post, which seems like yesterday. And I never would have, in my wildest dream, think that I would be someday the CEO of this great company. It has truly been an amazing ride. And so as I close out my prepared remarks for my 65th and last quarterly earnings call, I want to express my gratitude to you, our investors, both new and long term for your confidence, support and ideas. Also to our government partners, to my fellow Board members, mentors and colleagues, both current and retired and all the other people with whom I have had the honor and privilege to work with, many of whom I call very dear friends. My sincere thanks to each and every one of you. I am tremendously excited and very proud of Patrick, and I know he will steer our company to new heights and tremendous success. Beyond my transition agreement, I do not know yet what the next chapter in my life will bring. But I do know it will be shaped by my experiences at CoreCivic, which has ingrained in me a call to continuous public service and improving people's lives. Best of luck to each and every one of you. And with that, I turn the call over to operator for questions. Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Joe Gomez with NOBLE Capital. Joseph Gomes: Before I start, let me just say, Damon, it's been a pleasure working with you, and good luck on your future endeavors. And Patrick, I'm looking forward to seeing you fill Damon's shoes going forward. Damon T. Hininger: Thank you, Joe. It means a lot. You've been a tremendous friend and always grateful for your advice and support perspective. So I'm going to miss you my friend. Joseph Gomes: So to the questions. We obviously, in the news is the government shut down ICE looking to hire 10,000 people. And I think there's some concern out there that the level and pace of ICE detentions has slowed significantly from where originally people were thinking they would be. I think at one point, 3,000 a day they were talking about. And I just wanted to kind of get your thoughts, Damon, on where the pace of ICE population detentions are for you guys? Is it meeting your goals or how far below has it been your expectations? And how you see that maybe playing out the rest of this year? Damon T. Hininger: Great question, and I'll probably tag team with Patrick a little bit on this. But the shorter answer is that, as you know, we're a 24/7 essential service for the government. And so on our side, on the contractor side, I mean, we're seeing the pace, admissions, discharges and activity in our facilities pretty much status quo, I mean, pretty much what we expected. In fact, I'd say, it's increased a little bit not just on the detention side, but we're also being asked to do a lot more transportation. We are expecting that with the demands and expectations and the priorities for this administration after the inauguration. But I'd say, even that's picked up a little bit more than what we expected. And not quite to your question, but I would say also on the contracting side. So again, we've had probably the fastest clip of 4 contracts in a period of time that I've ever seen in the company history with the 4 that we've announced here in the last 90 days. And so all the activation activities around those 4 facilities, obviously, a lot of that's on our shoulders. But I'd say, on the government side, clearances, helping people getting situated that are obviously going to be monitors and other support staff that are going to help the mission of these facilities, I'd say none of that has slowed down at all. But Patrick, add and amplify to that, if you don't mind. Patrick Swindle: Sure. The only thing that I would add, Joe, is that really 2 things. One of them is the scale of increase in enforcement activity that has been implemented is really unprecedented and it's of a level that we really have not seen previously. And the consequence of that is you're going to see, I'll call it, an uneven or non-linear growth path. And so I wouldn't expect that you're going to see steady increases progressively. But what we do know is our Department of Homeland Security has been very committed to hiring additional officers to help them implement the mission. We've seen no indication that there's been any change in terms of policy or policy approach that would cause us to believe that what we've experienced more recently is anything other than the natural ebb and flow of ramping up to a scale that, again, we haven't seen previously. And so as a consequence of that, I think it's really difficult to predict exact timing. But to Damon's point, we've signed 4 contracts. We're executing those and ramping them very quickly. We're going to be bringing those online but certainly wouldn't interpret pace as being an indication of any indicator of a lessening of long-term demand potential. Joseph Gomes: Okay. And then just -- I don't know if you can provide a little more color on when you talk about the guidance and updated occupancy projections, we talk about those are less than what you originally were projecting. And same with the assumptions for start-up costs, assuming they might be higher than what you were originally projecting. And I'm just trying to get a little more color on those comments and how they relate to the updated guidance. David Garfinkle: Yes, Joe, I'll take the second part of that question. Our updated guidance really reflects the start-up activities in Q4 relative to our last guidance. So last guidance, remember, we hadn't signed the West Tennessee contract. We didn't sign the Diamondback contract. So neither of those 2 contracts were in our guidance for the year, the fourth quarter. So incorporating those new contracts into our guidance does result in some operating losses at those facilities as well hire staff, continue to ramp up staff before we start receiving detainees. Now we have started receiving detainees at the West Tennessee facility, but the Diamondback facility is really just beginning its ramp-up. So that did take the guidance down in Q4, which I don't take as bad news. I mean, I'd rather have the contracts with start-up activities than leaving the guidance where it was without those contracts. And what was the first part of your question, Joe? Joseph Gomes: Just we talked about some of the updated occupancy projections... David Garfinkle: Yes, occupancy, we expect that to increase because we are ramping up California City, our West Tennessee facilities, as I mentioned, are both taking on detainees. I would say that the rest of the core portfolio is at or near capacity. So I wouldn't expect a large increase from existing facilities. So as we ramp up additional idle capacity, the only opportunity is really to bring on new capacity and activate additional facilities with higher populations. Joseph Gomes: And Dave, maybe I can follow it up with the increased CapEx spend for ICE ask. What is ICE asking for that is going to increase the CapEx that you weren't originally anticipating? David Garfinkle: Yes. So Diamondback and Cal City, both asked for renovations to parts of the facility. That was really the increase in our CapEx guidance. I think it was intake areas. They want to expand the intake areas because ICE is a transient population. So typically, you have a higher volume of activity compared with a state population, which is what we had previously at both of those facilities. Joseph Gomes: Okay. And then one more for me, if I may, on the buyback. You have your leverage goal of 2.25 to 2.75. I think you said 2.5 at the end of the quarter. We see where the stock price is. You already said you're looking at getting more aggressive. Would you consider exceeding your leverage goals given where the stock price is on that -- to even acquire additional shares? How aggressive would you be? David Garfinkle: My short answer is yes, but I see we've got a couple of other people anxious to answer that question. So I'll flip it over to Damon and Patrick. Damon T. Hininger: Joe, we're all nodding yes. Yes, yes, yes. I mean, if you think about it this way, and this is a pretty sweet way to end as a CEO. I mean, we look at our forecast next year, as I said in my script, $2.5 billion forecast in revenue, over $450 million in forecasted run rate EBITDA. And you look at the stock price, and that's ridiculous. I mean, so I think absolutely, we are looking at this quarter and then going into next year. If the price is going to sit around this level, this is a tremendous opportunity to buy back shares. And so I'm saying it obviously as CEO, we've got obviously the management team here, but I know I'm very confident our Board feels the same way, and this will be a conversation we'll have in the coming days and weeks, not just the aggressiveness of the plan, but also if we need potentially more authorization. But anything to add to that, Patrick. Patrick Swindle: The only thing that I would add is our leverage target has been based on a trailing leverage basis. And so when you look at the growth that we're expecting for 2026, it's one of the fastest growth years year-over-year that we've experienced in a very long time as a company. And so when you think about that scale, we have to consider trailing leverage, but we can also look at it already identified cash flows. And so it's awarded contracts that would drive us to a $450 million or greater run rate. So it's not speculative in terms of our ability to achieve that level of cash flow. And so certainly, we have to consider trailing leverage. We're not going to not think about that. But we also do have to compare that with an expectation of rapid known and cash flow growth that gives us the ability to be more aggressive on the margin. Operator: Our next question comes from M. Marin with Zacks. Marla Marin: I want to follow-up on something you touched upon in the script -- in your scripted remarks. We're all hearing a lot with the government shutdown about how payments to various entities are not being processed or not being processed as quickly as they were prior to the shutdown. Can you just give us some color on what that means for you in terms of when you finally do collect the cash in that you're expecting? Will it be a flat lump sum? Will you get interest on that? How will that work for you guys? David Garfinkle: Yes, I'll take that one, M. Thanks for the question. Yes, we expect when the government resumes operations that we will get paid in full for all the services that we've provided in the past. I don't exactly know the mechanics of how they process those. I imagine it goes into a queue. As we submitted our invoices, there'll be in a queue at ICE and Department of Homeland Security and they'll process those invoices according to due date. But I don't have visibility into exactly how they process them. But when they do process them, they do pay with interest. I think that interest is in the low-4% today. So that's not something we have to ask for. It's automatic under the Federal Acquisition Regulations of the Prompt Payment Act. So we will collect interest with the payments when they resume operations and make their payments to us. Marla Marin: Okay, great. And you have a lot going on and there's a lot of noise in the third quarter numbers, as you indicated, with start-up costs, reactivating idled facilities. So you still have a handful of idled facilities after you reactivate the ones that are currently in the process of reopening. And in the earlier comments, you did say something about future activations and that you wouldn't be surprised if there were demands that warranted reactivating additional facilities. Is it right to think that there have been any kind of -- not negotiations, not at that point yet, but any kind of like early, early, early discussions about some of these other facilities? Damon T. Hininger: Absolutely. Yes, this is Damon. I'll take that question. And the short answer is absolutely. So if you rewind the last quarter, we were looking at the rest of this year, there was a couple of facilities we didn't talk about on the call, but we were having conversations. One of those is Diamondback, the one in Oklahoma. So obviously, those things happen discretely with the partner based on kind of what their needs and expectations and timing and how much capacity and whatnot. So we're having similar conversations today. So I think that's one question that's important to answer right now because you got the government shutdown, and I think there's probably assumption that all that activity is shut down. That's not the case. We're still seeing active requests for information on facilities where we could expand, where we've got maybe a small allotment of vacant beds that they may want to contract for and then vacant facilities. We still have people or still have customers indicating interest not only about those facilities, but actively going out, touring, inspecting the facilities, determining how we can meet their mission. So all that activity is still very active even though with the government shutdown. Operator: Our next question comes from Kirk Ludtke with Imperial Capital. Kirk Ludtke: Damon, congratulations on a great run. Damon T. Hininger: Thank you, Kirk. It's been a real blessing. I appreciate that. Kirk Ludtke: And best of luck. I guess with respect to the 100,000 beds, I'm hearing less -- we're hearing less about fewer alternative sites being opened by ICE. But can you just maybe comment on -- are you competing with those alternative sites of military bases, et cetera? And if so, how many beds are available at those locations that you think you might be competing with? Damon T. Hininger: Yes. Great question. And I think we've indicated or have alluded to anyway in the last couple of quarters, we think it's kind of the all of the above approach. So clearly, there's been some activity of both DHS leadership and ICE leadership to look at some of these alternatives for various different reasons. But indicating our value proposition here last 90 days, again, we signed 4 contracts with facilities where we had vacant capacity. So the value proposition and the location of our facility is obviously very attractive with these new contract awards. And so I think to get to 100,000, I think, as I said earlier, I think it's going to be a little bit of all of the above approach. And I think it's also going to be a case of as they look at our capacity being more secure, but I think also maybe a little longer-term solution and then these alternatives, especially the soft side of ones where they're more short term in nature, again, I think it will just be determined on the mission and the location. But anything to add there, Patrick? Patrick Swindle: The only thing I would add is 100,000 beds is really a guidepost more than a hard target. And so it's going to be really somewhat dependent also on enforcement. And so if you were to look at all of the beds available in the sector today and you look at the potential demand opportunity that can result from the higher enforcement rate activity, all of our beds could be used and you could still have a scenario where many more beds are needed. And so we've talked on past calls about our having thought about how we might provide capacity in addition to our existing facilities of the 7,000 beds that we talked about being available. And again, we want to be flexible and nimble and help our partner meet the need that they have at any moment in time. And I certainly wouldn't interpret all of our facilities not having been contracted for as an indication that, that may not be coming, because again, growth isn't going to be linear. And as the number of officers are put in place and out in our communities enforcing the law, you would expect you're going to see an ebb and flow in demand that will ultimately result in more bed need. And so I would say, from our perspective, we think that it is a both end solution. Kirk Ludtke: Got it. That's very helpful. And have you staffing issues, any issues there finding people to work at your facilities you're ramping up? Patrick Swindle: No, we're having a very strong experience from a hiring perspective. As you can see in the broader economy, there has been some broader economic weakness, and we're certainly experiencing that as we hire. And so the backdrop that we've encountered as we've gone out to activate these facilities has helped us activate very efficiently approaching our staffing targets ahead of schedule in most all cases and really don't see ourselves inhibited by our ability to hire. Kirk Ludtke: Got it. Great. And then last one. Are there any limitations on share repurchases in your credit agreements? David Garfinkle: No. Operator: Our next question comes from Raj Sharma with Texas Capital. Raj Sharma: My first question is around how much -- your guide -- your sort of soft guide that you just gave on fiscal '26. How much of the revenue embedded in 2026? What is the reactivated of the 5 facilities? How much are they contributing in revenues and in EBITDA to that fiscal '26 guidance? David Garfinkle: Well, the -- if you're talking about the 4 we just announced in the third quarter is about $321 million in -- yes, that's about $320 million in revenue. I would say, if you look at '26 versus '25, that's probably about $250 million of incremental revenue because we are generating some revenue at these facilities and did generate some revenue at Midwest Regional Reception Center and Cal City under the letter contracts earlier in the year. So yes, I'd say the increment in revenue is about $250 million. It'd be hard to estimate. I don't think we're ready to put out a number on EBITDA of those facilities. But I think it's fair to say the margins would be comparable to other margins we have for other contracts that we've announced, taking into consideration both the geography and size of the facility. Raj Sharma: Right. Is it also fair to say that those margins on the reactivated facilities are higher than the overall company EBITDA margins? David Garfinkle: Well, I'd say, we've got some state contracts that we've had for a long time and perhaps haven't kept up with per diems. In a portfolio of our size, you don't have all contracts that are as profitable as they would be if you're entering into a new contract. So I'd say, on average, across the whole portfolio, when you're taking into consideration state contracts, local contracts and so forth, they're probably slightly higher. Raj Sharma: Great. And then -- so we're assuming that these reactivated facilities are definitely all fully functional and normalized mid of 2026. What occupancy levels would you be -- are you targeting for mid-'26? David Garfinkle: Well, I'd say -- yes, we're still in the process of preparing our 2026 budget. So I wouldn't put a number out there just yet. I mean, the frame of reference, we were at what, -- I'm sorry, Q4 occupancy combined safety at 76.7%. So that includes all of our idle capacity, including the facilities that we're activating. So I could easily see getting in the low-80s and perhaps mid-80s in 2026 on average. Raj Sharma: Great. That's super helpful. And then just the idle facilities, your 7,000 idle facilities, what level of ICE demand do you see there or is it only going to be ICE to reactivate those remaining 7,000 or would there -- you think there could be some state demand, especially given the federal -- the shutdown impacting operational matters? Patrick Swindle: So this is Patrick. Much of the focus in this conversation so far has been ICE because ICE contracted for the 4 additional facilities that we're presently ramping. But our pipeline is much broader than just ICE. And so we're having ongoing conversations with state customers and other federal partners around potential bed utilization. And so we are not a single customer story. And again, going back to the outlook that we talked about in terms of our run rate, that's only reflective of contracts that have already been awarded. And so when you look at the discussion around EBITDA run rate in excess of $450 million, utilization of any additional capacity would certainly be in excess of that. And so again, we think we have opportunities with ICE. I don't want to diminish that, but we do also have a much broader pipeline than conversations that we're having with non-ICE partners. David Garfinkle: And looping back, Raj, on the question you asked regarding revenue, I was talking about the contracts that we announced in the third quarter. Don't forget, we also have the Dilley Immigration Processing Center. That one became fully ramped as of September. So there's probably another, I don't know, $70 million, $60 million in incremental revenue in 2026 versus '25 since it will be on a full run rate basis here beginning in Q4. But Damon, back to... Damon T. Hininger: Patrick makes an excellent point. I just want to underline one of his comments. On the state side, we've got probably about half a dozen states that are engaging us. Some of them are existing, some of them are potentially new ones that are looking for capacity. And that's probably the strongest kind of engagement we've had from our state partners or at least state portfolio in probably 12 or 24 months. So absolutely, it's a story that touches both federal and state opportunities. Raj Sharma: Great. That's very helpful. I had a question on the -- any indication of rising -- given rising labor costs, how are your wage trends tracking across activated facilities? Do you have rate escalators with ICE or state contracts? Patrick Swindle: We do have rate escalators in many of our contracts, but the wage environment is very much moderating across our markets. And so if you were to look at the staffing environment that we're experiencing today, I would say, it's the most favorable that we've experienced since before COVID. And so it's not something that we take for granted, and we're out actively working to hire additional employees. So we're very actively in the market. But at this point, we do not see either market pressure or wage pressure that causes us concern. Raj Sharma: Great. And just lastly, on any cash collection delays. I know that you addressed this question a little earlier due to the government shutdown. I know you mentioned credit line availability. Could you comment on that again, please, how long you're good for and what the working capital impact? David Garfinkle: Yes. We're probably -- yes. So it's -- given a revenue from the federal government, it's probably about $40 million per month. So who knows how long the government shutdown is going to last. Lord help us. We hope it doesn't go through all of November. But if it does, I know we've got a very supportive bank group. We do have an accordion feature on our bank credit facility. So we could always exercise that. I've been in contact with banks as I always have been in contact with our banking group, and I know they would be very supportive. Operator: Our next question comes from Greg Gibas with Northland Securities. Gregory Gibas: Damon, I wanted to wish you luck on your future endeavors. Damon T. Hininger: Yes, sir. Thank you very much for that. Let me know if you know anybody is hiring. Gregory Gibas: Well, I was going to ask about capital allocation but really appreciate your commentary on accelerating share repurchases given the stock's valuation. I had a few kind of modeling-related questions. And I guess, first, maybe, Dave, like to what degree do you expect start-up costs from the ramping up facilities to carry into the first half of 2026, if at all? David Garfinkle: Well, there definitely would be some carried over into '26 because we don't have -- like Diamondback is I think the last facility expected to complete stabilized occupancy, and that's in Q2. Now our Midwest Regional Reception Center, we're kind of on hold pending the resolution of the legal matter. So don't know how long that will extend. We're optimistic that we can get that favorably resolved in the fourth quarter, but don't really know and don't have complete control over the timing of that. So there'll be a little bit of start-up in Q1. As I think about start-up, when I talk about start-up, I'm also talking about an operating loss at the facility. So we will be generating revenue, because like at Cal City, we're already accepting detainees and West Tennessee as well. So that will flip to profitability. I would imagine at least at those 3, Midwest aside, sometime during Q1 -- yes, probably during Q1. Gregory Gibas: Okay. That's fair. And probably fair to say the majority of the, I guess, impact of these start-up costs for those 4 awards in Q4? David Garfinkle: I'm sorry, what was the question? How much is it in Q4? Gregory Gibas: Well, I guess, I was just kind of curious like the majority, I guess, of the impact from those start-up costs is recognized in Q4? David Garfinkle: Yes, more so -- yes, exactly right. Gregory Gibas: Yes, makes sense. Great. And then I guess I would just ask, what is a fair EBITDA run rate exiting the year, excluding those one-time and start-up costs? I think last quarter, you previously spoke to expectations of close to $100 million run rate ending the year. And wondering if any assumptions have changed around that. David Garfinkle: No assumptions have changed other than adding a couple of new contracts because the $400 million did not include our West Tennessee facility and did not include our Diamondback facility. Diamondback facility is a 2,160-bed facility, so a large facility. So yes, I mean, I don't -- I would -- it's going to be -- again, we gave the soft guidance of no less than $450 million once they reach stabilized occupancy. That's probably the best number I could give you at this point. Gregory Gibas: Yes, makes sense. And yes, that's what I was asking kind of prior to those awards. So great. And I guess, just to clarify from your previous commentary, you were saying that about $250 million or so of the $320 million expected to be recognized in 2026, excluding Dilley? David Garfinkle: No, no. That was the increment in '26 over '25 because we recognized some revenue from those activations in 2025. So I was talking about the 4 facilities that we announced in the third quarter. So that revenue is probably $250 million 2026 over 2025 and then another $60 million if you include the Dilley facility, incremental revenue 2026 over 2025. Operator: Our next question comes from Ben Briggs with StoneX Financial. Ben Briggs: Damon, congratulations on a very successful career. And I hope you enjoy a well-deserved time off before whatever it is you decide to do next. Damon T. Hininger: Thank you, sir. I appreciate that. Yes, sir. Ben Briggs: Great. So the vast majority of mine have been asked and answered. I think one that I would get in here is, I know you referenced kind of a longer-term $450 million adjusted EBITDA, call it, run rate. Obviously, as you guys have discussed on the call, there are CapEx investments that are required upfront as you sign contracts that result in that longer-term increased EBITDA. Do you know -- I mean, I know you may not have an exact number, but any kind of range or just the best way to think about what the CapEx costs kind of all in, in aggregate to get there are going to be or is it just too much of an unknown with not all the contracts finalized and just too many moving pieces? David Garfinkle: Yes, that's a really good question. Again, let me just through a little bit. So our guidance for 2025 was $97.5 million to $99.5 million. There'll probably be a carryover of another $20 million or so in 2026. That does include CapEx associated with some facilities that we have not announced new contracts on. So if you recall at the beginning of 2025, we began -- we leaned forward on CapEx because we wanted to prepare all of our facilities to accept detainees as quickly as possible. So that number that I just gave you all in would -- I won't say it will cover every one of our facilities. And then whenever we activate a facility, there's always some stocking of equipment that we have to add to the -- in addition to the hard infrastructure renovation type assets. So I'm not sure if that answers your question, but it's probably $150 million-ish all in for all facilities. Operator: Our next question comes from Daniel Furtado with PhillyFin. Unknown Analyst: I was a little bit late on the beginning, but did you give any -- are you willing to give any update on PECOS? Damon T. Hininger: We did not say anything about that, and there's really no update today. Again, we always continue to have a dialogue with not only as our partner with ICE, but also with Target about what the needs are there in the Southwest, notably in Texas. So no real update to share today. Unknown Analyst: Okay, great. And then my follow-up is simply this discussion about the share repurchases. And I know this -- clearly not trying to put you on the spot, but have you given any thought to potentially a tender considering what the stock price has done and your desire to repurchase shares? Damon T. Hininger: Yes. Probably it wouldn't be appropriate to go into kind of the weeds of what we discussed with the management team with the Board. But I guess the message is that we clearly think the stock is undervalued based on the forecast. So we'll be looking at every opportunity to deploy capital and buy back shares. And so always looking at potentially different ways to do it and maybe more efficient ways, but I wouldn't say anything more than that. We clearly see the opportunity. Operator: Our next question comes from Edwin Groshans with Compass Point Research & Trading. Edwin Groshans: Damon, congratulations and enjoy your retirement. I just have -- I guess my question kind of focuses on -- you saw a lot in the press changes at ICE management. This seems to be the third swing at it. You've mentioned on the call the hiring of new agents, which appears that that's going to take some time. Can you just discuss like as ICE appears to get more aggressive or gets more agents, how much impact that has on your facilities and how quickly it improves activation or even if you can give some sense of bed count? Damon T. Hininger: Yes, great question, and I'll probably tag team with Patrick a little bit on this. But as Patrick alluded to earlier, it's been -- and I shouldn't say just this year, it's really kind of our business. It's a little lumpy. And I think that's probably the case in this situation with ICE. So on their side, they're looking at additional 10,000 agents. They're looking also at lawyers, judges, other support staff to help with the mission. And obviously, that's going to impact the enforcement operations, both on the interior and on the Southwest border. And then in turn, obviously, that's going to impact the tension. So I would say, as you look at kind of last 60, 90 days, I think they have been going very aggressive on hiring, but it does take some time because -- and we appreciate it on our side to get them through training, get them through the screening process and get them to where they're able to go out and affect the mission of ICE. And so I think as that continue to kind of ramps up -- and again, I'd describe it as lumpy. As they got kind of more bandwidth on their side to do more enforcement operations, then obviously, that's going to impact the need for detention capacity. So the conversation is just real time. It's been like that for basically the last year. They're telling us kind of what the needs are, where the priorities are, where the capacity potentially is going to be needed as they kind of ramp up operations. And then obviously, we'll move on a parallel path to meet the need if we've been given the opportunity to provide a solution. But anything to add to that, Patrick. Patrick Swindle: The only thing that I would add is that I think it's important to note that as we open a facility during activation, all beds aren't immediately available on day 1. And so we have ramp schedules that we have built into our contracts at a pace at which we believe we can safely accommodate ramps in population. And so as we continue to open new facilities, we're seeing those beds utilized at a pace that's consistent with what we initially expected. And so I think to the point that Damon just made, I think what you're going to see is a little bit of ebb and flow. And so more beds have been contracted for both with us and with others. Those beds are progressively being utilized, and absorption is occurring, but there are beds available. As you see a further step-up in enforcement, you would see further bed need manifest. And so again, it's not a linear growth path either for populations or for enforcement or for contracting, but the direction it appears to be very much intact. And again, as we provide beds on schedule, they're being utilized. Edwin Groshans: Great. I appreciate that. And I know you mentioned earlier in the call, a surge capacity. Is that surge capacity available as activation is occurring? And then once activation is up and running, the surge can then leak into the new facilities or is that separate? Patrick Swindle: That capacity generally is consistent in terms of the ebb and flow of what we might see on a surge basis versus inactivation. And so new beds being brought online are going to be utilized. There are still going to be times at our facilities, particularly depending on the field office where surge beds may be needed. And so it's going to be somewhat geography dependent and it's going to be somewhat facility dependent in terms of whether surge capacity would be used, when it would be used. But it is still available and in addition to the new beds that we would be bringing online. Edwin Groshans: And then just my last one on this is, there's been a lot of discussions about deportations. You mentioned the judges, which I appreciate. There's going to be work to do mass deportation. Are you seeing in your model yet, are deportations having an impact on detentions or is detention still running ahead of deportations, i.e., intake is greater than outflow? Patrick Swindle: Well, we see -- there is variation as enforcement occurs. And it really is very dependent on the field office, the country of origin that the individual is being transported to. And so I would say there's not really a universal answer to that because it really is dependent on, again, where the enforcement action occurs, where the individual is placed, the agreement that we have in place with the country of origin, all of those are going to impact the amount of time that someone would spend in detention. We do see a strong motivation for speed of deportation. But certainly, we see a lot of variation as individuals manage their way through the court process. Edwin Groshans: And last one -- I promise, this is my last one. I guess there was a lot of talk about ICE was tending to move people to different regions because of legal actions that's happening. Have you seen that or is most of the business still happening in the region where the people are picked up? Patrick Swindle: Well, I guess what I would say is -- and this has historically been the case. ICE -- so some customers have very tight geographic footprints. And so for many states, what you find is they want to stay within the border of that state. For some federal agencies, they want to stay within a particular district. In the case of ICE, we see -- we've always seen movement across the country. And so I've not seen broadly what I would describe as purposeful intent to move folks around the country for that reason. But we do see lots of movement around the country, which is really driven by the staging aspects of managing populations and aggregating individuals in certain locations in advance of deportation. Operator: Our next question comes from Jason Weaver with JonesTrading. Jason Weaver: At this point, just a couple for me. I'll try to be quick. Looking past your idle capacity and the facilities that are in various stages of reactivation now, can you update us a bit on what you're seeing or looking for in the long end of the pipeline to add ICE beds? That is, if we're trying to move to 100,000 capacity or greater? Damon T. Hininger: Yes. I'll tag team with Patrick on this. This is Damon. Part of that conversation has been ongoing where they'll say, ICE will say, hey, we've got a certain need for capacity today in a certain region. But in the next, say, year or 2 years, we might have a need for more capacity. So the way we look at it, and obviously it's the most efficient way to do it is to look if we've got a base of operations in a certain location, can we add capacity both short-term and long-term. So it's a 2-way conversation. ICE says, hey, we may have a little bit of a higher population for a period of time, for 12, 24 months. So that would lend us to say we probably don't want to do a very large capital investment to meet that need. So we'll look at more kind of short-term solutions that we can maybe add to a facility and kind of leverage the base operations. So those conversations are ongoing. It's kind of alluded back to my earlier comments and what I said in my script, which is where we can either expand capacity in existing facilities or and/or go to a third-party like Target where they could meet the need either with a standalone or again maybe add capacity to an existing operation. So it's kind of all of the above approach. Jason Weaver: Okay. That's helpful. And then just as it pertains to Midwest Regional, do you have any upcoming hearing dates or events scheduled where we might see some developments there? Damon T. Hininger: Yes. There's a couple of hearings. I don't have the exact dates in front of me, but there's a couple of hearings here in the next probably 30 -- I think, 30 to 45 days. I think there's at least a couple before Christmas. Operator: There are no further questions at this time. I'd like to turn the call back over to Damon Hininger for closing remarks. Damon T. Hininger: Thank you so much. Well, this has been a really fun call. Thank you for all the well wishes. And again, as I kind of wrap up, 16 years of service as CEO, almost 33 years as a member of this great company. I'm deeply grateful for all of you on the call and also previous investors that have given me a lot of support and guidance over the years. I also want to say to every single employee in our company, 14,000 strong and also the ones that have worked with us previously, I'm deeply honored and grateful to work alongside you all during these 33 years. You all have inspired me in so many different ways and it has made me a better person and have made this a better company. And really going into this year has given us a very strong 2025. I mean, this year, it is really breathtaking the amount of activity we've seen in the organization to meet the needs of not just one customer, also we've talked a lot about ICE, but also other federal partners and a lot of activity on the state side. So 2025 has been a great year. But boy, as I said earlier, next year with a forecast of $2.5 billion in revenue, over $450 million in annual run rate and EBITDA. Those would be 2 record numbers for us as an organization. So again, thank you for the organization, for the company, employees and also for our customers to give us that trust and confidence to provide that type of service to have these type of milestones. So with that, we adjourn. Enjoy the rest of your day. Thank you for calling in today. Operator: This concludes the program. You may now disconnect.
Operator: Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Teknova Third Quarter 2025 Financial Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Senior Vice President of Marketing, Jennifer Henry. Please go ahead. Jennifer Henry: Thank you, operator. Welcome to Teknova's Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. With me on today's call are Stephen Gunstream, Teknova's President and Chief Executive Officer; and Matt Lowell, Teknova's Chief Financial Officer, who will make prepared remarks and then take your questions. As a reminder, the forward-looking statements that we make during this call, including those regarding business goals and expectations for the financial performance of the company, are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual events or results to differ. Additional information concerning these risk factors is included in the press release the company issued earlier today, and they are more fully described in the company's various filings with the SEC. Today's comments reflect the company's current views, which could change as a result of new information, future events or other factors, and the company does not obligate or commit itself to update its forward-looking statements, except as required by law. The company's management believes that in addition to GAAP results, non-GAAP financial measures can provide meaningful insight when evaluating the company's financial performance and the effectiveness of its business strategies. We will therefore use non-GAAP financial measures of certain of our results during this call. Reconciliations of GAAP to non-GAAP financial measures are included in the press release that we issued this afternoon, which is posted on both Teknova's and the SEC's website. Non-GAAP financial measures should always be considered only as a supplement to and not as a substitute for or as superior to financial measures prepared in accordance with GAAP. The non-GAAP financial measures in this presentation may differ from similarly named non-GAAP financial measures used by other companies. Please also be advised that the company has posted a supplemental slide deck to accompany today's prepared remarks. It can be accessed on the Investor Relations section of Teknova's website. And now I will turn the call over to Stephen. Stephen Gunstream: Thank you, Jen. Good afternoon, and thank you, everyone, for joining us for our third quarter 2025 earnings call. We were encouraged by our third quarter results. Revenue increased by 9% compared to the same period last year, making it the fifth consecutive quarter of year-over-year growth. That growth was driven by strength in sales of our Lab Essentials products, revenue from which grew 16%. We also executed extremely well operationally. I'm pleased with the progress we have made to prepare Teknova for long-term sustainable above-market growth. Through investments we've made in distributor management, purchasing integration and price optimization, we have succeeded once again in growing revenue double digits in catalog products, which represents the majority of our Lab Essentials revenue compared to the same period last year. We have also increased and diversified our Clinical Solutions customer base, which we believe will translate to significant revenue growth as these therapies and diagnostics move towards commercialization in the next 2 to 3 years. Operationally, we continue to execute extremely well. Key projects to drive operating efficiency and reduce costs such as moving to electronic batch records, automating high-throughput dispensing lines and adding larger batch size capabilities are on track and expected to be operational in 2026. We are already seeing the results from previous investments through improved operational metrics such as on-time delivery, which allow us to further differentiate Teknova from other reagent suppliers in the marketplace. The progress made operationally over the past couple of years has given us more confidence in our ability to scale Teknova to more than $200 million in annualized revenue without significant additional capital investments. We also remain active in pursuing potential tuck-in acquisitions and collaborations to bolster our capabilities, reduce our time to profitability and accelerate top line growth. Now I'd like to turn my attention to the broader market. As a reminder, we do not have material exposure to the geopolitical environment given that our sales are predominantly in the United States. only about $1 million annually of our raw materials we estimate are imported and less than 4% of 2024 revenue was directly attributable to government research institutes and academic institutions. Nonetheless, we do have exposure to changes in biotech funding levels because approximately 25% of our total revenue is derived from purchases of custom products by biopharma customers, most of which are supporting therapies in preclinical or early-stage clinical trials. While the value of catalog products purchased by customers in this segment remains steady and growing in 2025, we have seen continued delays in larger purchases of custom products. Though we observed a sequential uptick in biotech funding in the third quarter, unless we see sustained improvement in the biotech funding environment or advancement through clinical trials of the therapies we already support, we expect only modest improvement in this end market in 2026. Fortunately, the other 75% of our revenue from sales of catalog products and custom products across all other market segments has grown in the low double digits for the year-to-date period, and we are seeing an uptick in demand for custom reagents in these other segments of the market, such as animal health, life science tools and diagnostics. Taken together, we remain very confident in our strategy and are optimistic for the long term. First, we have a foundational business that is predictable and growing that can support the company until the biopharma market returns to historical growth rates. Second, we have demonstrated our ability to execute operationally and commercially. And finally, we continue to attract and onboard new Clinical Solutions customers, which we believe, in combination with our Lab Essentials products will allow us to achieve a sustainable 20% to 25% top line growth as therapies and diagnostics migrate from research to commercialization. I will now hand the call over to Matt to talk through the financials. Matthew Lowell: Thanks, Stephen, and good afternoon, everyone. Overall, we delivered great financial results for the third quarter of 2025. As Stephen noted, revenue was $10.5 million, a 9% increase from $9.6 million in the third quarter of 2024. Once again, strong sales from the catalog portion of our Lab Essentials products drove our revenue growth in the quarter. Lab Essentials products are targeted at the research use only or RUO market and include both catalog and custom products. Lab Essentials revenue was $8.3 million in the third quarter of 2025, a 16% increase from $7.2 million in the third quarter of 2024. The increase in Lab Essentials revenue was attributable to higher average revenue per customer and to a lesser extent, a larger number of customers. Clinical Solutions products are made according to -- Good Manufacturing Practices, or GMP, quality standards and are primarily used by our customers as components or inputs in the development and manufacture of diagnostic and therapeutic products. Clinical Solutions revenue was $1.7 million in the third quarter of 2025, a 13% decrease from $2.0 million in the third quarter of 2024. The decrease in Clinical Solutions revenue was attributable to lower average revenue per customer, partially offset by an increased number of customers. We expect revenue per customer to increase over time as a subset of these customers ramp up their purchase volumes as they move through the phases of clinical trials. However, this metric can be affected by the addition of newer clinical solutions or GMP catalog customers who typically order less. Just as a reminder, due to the larger average order size in Clinical Solutions compared to Lab Essentials, there can be more quarter-to-quarter revenue lumpiness in this category. On to income statement highlights. Gross profit for the third quarter of 2025 was $3.2 million compared to $0.1 million in the third quarter of 2024. Gross margin for the third quarter of 2025 was 30.7%, which is up from 0.9% in the third quarter of 2024. The increase was primarily driven by $2.8 million of nonrecurring and noncash charges during the third quarter of 2024 related to the disposal of expired inventory and write-down of excess inventory. Excluding those nonrecurring and noncash charges, the gross profit would have been $2.9 million and gross margin would have been 29.8%, respectively, in the third quarter of 2024. The improvement in gross margin from 29.8% to 30.7% was driven primarily by higher revenue. Operating expenses for the third quarter of 2025 were $7.2 million compared to $7.5 million for the third quarter of 2024. The decrease was driven by an overall net reduction in general and administrative spending. At the end of the third quarter of 2025, we had 161 total associates compared to 165 a year earlier. Net loss for the third quarter of 2025 was $4.3 million or negative $0.08 per diluted share compared to a net loss of $7.6 million or negative $0.15 per diluted share for the third quarter of 2024. Adjusted EBITDA, a non-GAAP measure, was negative $1.6 million for the third quarter of 2025 compared to negative $2.2 million for the third quarter of 2024, excluding the impact of the $2.8 million charge related to inventory. Now for cash flow and balance sheet highlights. Capital expenditures for the third quarter of 2025 were $0.4 million compared to $0.3 million in the third quarter of 2024. Free cash outflow, a non-GAAP measure, which we report as cash used in operating activities plus purchases of property, plant and equipment was $2.4 million for the third quarter of 2025, which was the same as the third quarter of 2024. Turning to the balance sheet. As of September 30, 2025, we had $22.1 million in cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments and $13.2 million in total borrowings. Now for our outlook. We are reiterating 2025 total revenue guidance of $39 million to $42 million. Based on persistent softness in demand for our Clinical Solutions products from biopharma customers, in particular, we now expect to finish slightly below the midpoint of that range. Revenue from sales of our catalog products, which represents the majority of our Lab Essentials and a small portion of Clinical Solutions revenue was up at a mid-teens growth rate in the third quarter of 2025 as spending on discovery work continues to be robust in certain pockets of the market. On the other hand, growth was minimal from custom products, which represents a modest portion of Lab Essentials and the large majority of Clinical Solutions revenue as the macro environment remains favorable for early-stage small to midsized biopharma customers and for their clinical work in particular. As we look ahead to next year, we expect modest growth in custom biopharma products, representing about 25% of our total revenue and low double-digit growth in the remaining 75% of total revenue, which is not as impacted by the weak biotech funding environment. Gross margin was up over the prior year quarter and down sequentially. As we explained at the time, during the second quarter, several cost categories that normally fluctuate skewed favorably, whereas this quarter, the effect was more balanced. Our gross margins are very sensitive to the effect of these fluctuations due to the size of our business. We still believe that over longer periods of time, approximately 70% of incremental revenue will flow through to gross profit. Our gross margin target for fiscal year 2025 remains in the low 30s. Although we ended the third quarter below target spending levels, partly due to timing considerations, we continue to expect operating expenses of at least $8 million in the fourth quarter, allowing us to moderately increase our investment in sales and marketing compared to last year, positioning ourselves for the market's broader recovery. At these spending levels, we continue to believe we will become adjusted EBITDA positive in the range of $50 million to $55 million in annualized revenue. The company continues to expect free cash outflow of less than $12 million for the full year 2025. As we have communicated previously, based on reasonable assumptions about future growth and spending plus current liquidity, we believe that we do not need to raise additional capital to execute on our organic growth strategy. With that, I will turn the call back to Stephen. Stephen Gunstream: Thanks, Matt. We believe the long-term outlook for our end markets remains positive, and we are committed to helping our customers accelerate the introduction of novel therapies, diagnostics and other products that improve human health. We will now take your questions. Operator: [Operator Instructions] The first question comes from the line of [ Mac Etoch ] of Stephens Inc. Steven Etoch: Maybe just to start, just given the recent rhetoric around MFN pharma tariffs and just the subsequent announcements around onshoring capacity and pharma production, how have customer conversations trended thus far into the second half of this year? Stephen Gunstream: Yes. Thanks, Mac. So I would say we like the idea of these leading indicators, whether it's biotech funding or the MFN results, but we're not yet seeing the impact from the customers. So I think there's optimism across the board, but the actual actions of maybe purchasing more ramping up purchases, we have not yet seen, which is why we've been here before, and we want to make sure that we're cautious and seeing that when these things start to happen, if they're sustained for an extended period of time, we believe it will impact the sort of the emerging therapy side. At this point in time, I would say we're seeing some nice growth in the large pharma. We're actually seeing some nice growth in some of the emerging therapeutic companies that have been purchased by larger companies, but those that are still constrained by capital are operating in a way that they're rationalizing the pipeline or slowing things down at the moment. So at this point in time, Mac, there's been pretty limited conversations about ramp-up there. Steven Etoch: Okay. Fair enough. I'd also like to get a little bit of an update on the RUO+ initiative. It's been, call it, a little over a year since that's been put into place. Is there any update on how the efforts are trending there? Stephen Gunstream: Yes. It's an important part of our portfolio, and it filled a really nice gap for us and that we put a lot of effort and investment into this new facility. We have a lot of customers that want to use the new facility but are not quite ready for GMP, and it's a great landing spot for them, where they can get their products made in the facility. They get a lot more flexibility in their formulations. They get sort of improved quality that is very similar to GMP, but not quite all the way to GMP at a price that's not the exact same as GMP, right? So for us, it allows us to get a little bit of a price premium for using that facility, but not actually committing them to some more controls around the changes they want to make and get their products to them sooner. So this is a really nice landing spot. We're seeing customers come in there. Those will sit in that Lab Essentials business because it's part of their research use only. And the goal there is obviously to migrate them to GMP, and we see a lot of customers actually sitting in that pathway right now. Operator: Our next call comes from the line of Brendan Smith of TD Cowen. Brendan Smith: I appreciate all the color on actually the funding environment impact or potential impact into next year. Actually, just wondering if you could maybe give really any more color there on actually the expected product mix that could kind of come in some of these different scenarios that might help drive that compensation you're talking about the possibility of a more protracted biotech slowdown. I guess really just wondering if there are any specific products within that custom portfolio that you're seeing particular interest in and what maybe your expectations are for those into next year? Stephen Gunstream: Yes. So Brendan, if you're asking about like what type of product mix we typically sell into the custom biopharma, is that correct? And how we see that changing over time? Brendan Smith: Yes, more specifically like into next year, if you're confident that the rev mix that you're seeing now could kind of compensate for any potentially protracted biotech funding slowdown, just kind of wondering if there are specific products within there that you're kind of seeing special interest into next year that could help drive that. Stephen Gunstream: Yes. Maybe I'll -- I think what you're after is sort of, obviously, there could be -- and we expect some continued conservation of capital in the biotech environment, particularly around emerging markets over the next, I don't know, say, 6 to 12 months. We're very fortunate that 75% of our business is growing double digits. And we're actually seeing it almost entirely across the board, across every market segment and actually all 3 of our primary product lines of agar plates, cell culture media and buffers. So we're pretty excited about actually that side of the business and how well we're performing there. We do see an increase in interest on actually the tools and diagnostics side, where we supply a number of products, both for the discovery, but also in that custom into clinical trials. And so, the combination of having this sort of increased number of clinical customers right now as we go through this period with this predictable baseline growth that is in the double digits. And I will say that -- that is very similar to the business that was here before we made a lot of these investments that grew between 2009 and 2019, 12%. We're back to that level, if not higher at times. So we feel like we're in a really good spot to let the rest of our strategy play out on the therapeutic side, and we're working on bringing on more of these customers in these other market segments. Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Matthew Larew with William Blair. Matthew Larew: Matt, your comments on 2026, if you've got 75% of revenue growing low double digits and modest growth of 25%, that seems to suggest something around 10% as a starting point. So I guess, is that math right? And then on the Clinical Solutions side, you've called out a couple of times this year the growth in the number of customers. I know that's a metric you update annually, but maybe just if you can help us how that is tracking new customer acquisition relative to perhaps years past and your own expectations this year. Matthew Lowell: Yes. Thanks, Matt. Yes, obviously, it's a little bit early to be really commenting with precision on 2026, and we'll certainly do that in our next call when we report year-end earnings. But I thought it might be useful to provide some high-level thoughts about where we see things today. And you're right, kind of in the -- we've kind of focused on these 2 components of the business, the 25% we've been talking about in custom biopharma and the 75% of the rest basically. And as Stephen outlined in his comments, we have -- the market environment has been relatively stable the last couple of quarters in that custom biopharma or also known as bioprocessing in our business. And we are not seeing any strong indicators yet that, that's going to be changing in the near term, but we'll be, of course, updating that view every quarter, and we will have some more data points here by the time of our next call, obviously. But on the other hand, we -- as Stephen just highlighted, the rest of the business is performing really well. And then similarly, don't see that changing in the near term. And that's a great thing to have the diversity in the portfolio to have these 2 pieces even though they're working in different directions at the moment. But yes, I think in general, that's kind of the math that we see at the moment. And in terms of the overall development of the Clinical Solutions business, we have been adding customers there, and we will be reporting at the end of the year kind of where those numbers land for the year once we're done. We continue to see increases of the larger-sized customers, although the mix can sometimes change between the end markets, as Stephen was pointing out, could be some differences in life sciences and tools and DX, of course, versus biopharma, for example. But in either case, we're happy to onboard those customers and have them as customers with significant revenue potential going forward. So yes, it's looking good and the makeup of it is maybe changing a little bit, but we'll see how we finish the year. Stephen Gunstream: Yes. I'd just add, Matt, that on that particular thing, when we talk about increasing, I think it's particularly a positive statement that we're increasing despite companies that we supported last year are really no longer in existence in many ways, right? So we have to overcome that barrier and then add new ones. So I feel like the team is executing really well there. Of course, there's always more we can do. And at the end of the year, we'll give you guys a better update on that. Matthew Larew: Within kind of the new modality world, cell and gene therapy, there's been, I'd call like a, kind of a grab bag of clinical updates throughout the year, some quite positive, particularly in some recent gene therapy indications, some perhaps more negative. And obviously, we're now a bit a year or so into some of the fast-track efforts, whether it's Fast Track or RMAT, whatever it might be. Just within your customer group, what's your exposure like to those various type subgroups? And do you have customers that have an opportunity to participate in these programs? And how has that affected either their demand or how they're working with you? Stephen Gunstream: Yes. I think it's also fair to say it's been a grab bag for us where we have some that have done quite well and have participated in some of those programs and some that are really constrained recently. I know at the end of 2024, we did talk about the number of clinical customers we have was 48, of which 39 were biopharma related. Of those 39 that were biopharma, 23 were cell and gene therapy, right? So that kind of gives you the idea of the exposure that we had at the end of 2024. I don't think it's changed drastically, Matt, but I think there are some there that are later stage that are actually executing to plan. There are some that have been acquired and the new party is actually running those and executing those. And there are some there that I would say they are more sensitive that are more in mRNA or some of the sort of sensitive gene therapy areas that have been both positive and good -- positive and negative over the past year. So we're kind of -- as a company, because our specialty is making these custom small batches of reagents that are not specifically tied to a therapeutic, we're kind of participating in all sides of the market, if that makes sense. Matthew Larew: Just the last one for me. Gross margins year-to-date are up about 600 basis points, and that's despite Clinical Solutions being flattish, slightly down year-to-date, so largely scale driven. You referenced, Matt, a number of, I guess, both completed in process and planned projects to continue to improve efficiency. I know scale is a big piece. Is that kind of the right gross margin improvement trajectory to think about? Or are some of the projects you referenced more or less impactful in terms of go forward? Matthew Lowell: Yes. I think -- thank you for highlighting those initiatives, Matt. We are working on a lot of things we already completed and things we're still working on for next year. I would say the key driver for margin performance over multiple quarters, not just in a single quarter, is this high fixed cost, low variable cost mix in our cost profile that we have, where again, we've talked about this 70% of incremental revenue flowing through. The projects will change that a little bit. But I would say, overall, that is going to be still thematically the strongest piece. So as you can see, though, from quarter-to-quarter, there is variation against that 70%. I would say that the 70% is most realizable in the -- when we talk about cash, 70% of cash dropping through, sometimes due to other types of accounting for inventory and production, we can see some of the variations that we've seen this quarter and the last quarter as 2 examples in each way. But I think overall, we still have a very high fixed cost makeup, and that is going to allow us to continue driving strong performance into next year, commensurate with the growth that we're expecting. Operator: Our next call comes from the line of Tollef Kohrman with Craig-Hallum. Tollef Kohrman: You talked about process improvements taking effect in '26. Are there any other areas you're looking to drive more efficiencies? Stephen Gunstream: Yes, of course. I mean, this is a constant theme here. Since we started on this journey about 5 years ago, we mapped out a lot of these processes that we felt like are inefficient. And now we put the IT infrastructure and the systems in place that we can really track and identify those areas. So we're always looking at efficiencies. Now there's a couple of different kinds, right? So on the operational side, you can look at labor and direct labor savings. But of course, if we can get more output with the same fixed cost, right, that drives a lot to the bottom line and will allow us to keep the same number of, say, headcount as we ramp up in revenue. And in fact, you heard in the transcript, we have 161 employees at the end of Q3. Now there was a time where we were actually over 300 with a similar revenue amount. So significant work has gone into driving efficiency across the board, and we won't stop that as we go forward. So there's efficiency in the operations, but then there's efficiency in all the other supporting functions as well. So a lot of IT infrastructure here, a lot of processes being optimized around metrics and then even rolls all the way to the commercial side, right? How do we do more with the same number of people. And so it's just a mantra here more than anything else and probably -- it would take us a long time to go into all the details here, but I think you can kind of see that from a company, we have like 2 major focuses. One is how do we drive top line and continue that going forward as we wait for these customers to come all the way through the therapeutic pipeline as well as then how do we continue to optimize our processes, whether it's operations, commercial, HR, you name it. Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Mark Massaro of BTIG. Vidyun Bais: This is Vivian on for Mark. I'll actually just keep it to one. So I think you touched on briefly maybe some incremental spend on the sales force, just trying to get ahead of a recovery in funding. Could you just remind us where your sales force sits today and kind of at what levels you might feel rightsized? Stephen Gunstream: Yes. And we will often talk to us about how many people you have in the field, and we think about it much more broadly as a commercial organization. So -- we're talking about modest increases here, as we said, since the beginning of the year, where we're talking maybe a couple of headcount here and there. But again, back to the last comment, a lot of these are process improvements that we're driving efficiency. So I think what you'll see over the course of the next year is less than 10 headcount increases overall for the entire commercial organization, including customer support and marketing and field sales. Operator: I'm showing no further questions at this time. Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect.