Arkema S/Adr (ARKAY) Q2 2025 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Welcome to Arkema's first half 2025 results and outlook conference call. For your information, this call is being recorded. It will take place in a listen-only mode and you will have the opportunity to ask questions after the presentation by pressing star and one on your touchtone telephone. I will now hand you over to Terry Lenhoff, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. Sir, please go ahead. Thank you very much. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Arkema's second quarter 2025 results conference call. Joining me today are Marie-Josée D'Ancien, our CFO, and the Investor Relations team that you know well. To support this conference call, we, as usual, posted a set of slides, which are available on our website. As always, I will comment on the highlights of the quarter, and then we'll let Marie-Josée go through the financials. And at the end of the presentation, as was said before, we'll be available to answer your questions. In Q2 2025, as you know, the macroeconomic environment was challenging with an increasing wait and see attitude of customers. This was no doubt reinforced by the uncertainty and lack of visibility around trade tariffs. As a result, the weakness of the demand has persisted through the quarter, impacting notably the U.S. and Europe. Asia, on the other hand, continues to be well-oriented from what we could see. The second quarter was also marked by an unfavorable evolution of exchange rates with the weakening of the U.S. dollar against the euro, as well as other currencies, such as the Korean won. All this is neither specific to Arkema nor something new to you, but it's important to mention this to start with. This context and these headwinds had, of course, an impact on our financial performance, but overall, Arkema reserves ended up relatively well ...