K+S Aktiengesellschaft (KPLUY) Q1 2026 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Welcome to the KMS first quarter 2026 earnings call. I will now hand over to Julia from KMS for some technical notes. Ladies and gentlemen, also from my side, welcome to our call. We hope you've had a chance to review our posted slides as well as our Q1 documents available on the website. After the opening remarks by Christian, we will jump directly into the Q&A session. Some technical notes. please refer to our disclaimer on page 2 of the presentation. A note on data privacy. Please be aware that the team session will be recorded, webcast, and available as an audio replay on our homepage afterwards. People who ask the question in the team session should be clear that by switching on their camera and microphone, they agree to the recording and replay of video and audio sequences. Now, I'd like to hand over to Christian Meyer, our CEO, for the opening remarks. Thank you, Julia, and welcome from my side as well. We have published the key figures for the quarter in our 2026 outlook already on the 22nd of April, so I will keep this brief. Starting with the quarter, Q1 every day was almost 40% above the prior year quarter at nearly 280 million euros. Firstly, this was due to the successful de-icing sort business because of the strong winter weather. Following the strong start at the beginning of the year, performance continued to exceed expectations in the second half of the quarter. Secondly, in the agriculture customer segment, sales volumes and the average prices exceeded expectations, particularly in March. Free cash flow reached 87 million euros, cash capex 126 million euros. Let's look at our full year guidance. We raised our 2026 EBITDA forecast to range from 630 to 730 million euros from 600 to 700 million euros before. This is due to a strong performance in the f...