Umicore Sa Ord New (UMICF) Q2 2026 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Hello and welcome. My name is Gail and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Unicore 2026 Half-Year Results Call. Please note that this call is being recorded. After the introduction by management, there will be a question and answer session. Thank you. I would now like to hand over the call to Bart Sap, Unicore's CEO, and Wannes Peferoen, Unicore's CFO. You may now go ahead please. Okay, now it's my turn. Good morning to all and welcome to our H1 2026 earnings call. Let's open this presentation with a personal note for our CFO Wannes Peferoen, for whom this is the last set of numbers. Wannes, on behalf of Umicore, I'd like to express my sincere thanks for all your investment and dedication over many years at Umicore. We've worked together in different moments throughout our career. I've always valued our collaboration. I wish you the very best in what is to come. And first of all, some well-deserved with your close ones. Thank you, Bart. As also announced in April, Lilly Liu will succeed Wannes as of August 1st. Lilly is leaving this call in Wannes' capable hands. She's of course following this very closely, and those who participate in our roadshow next week will get to meet her. So once again, also a very warm welcome to you, Lilly. Now let's have a look at our H1 performance and where we stand today. I'm really pleased with the broad-based earnings uplift that we delivered in H1 2026, primarily driven by strong business execution and efficiency. Underlying earnings were up strongly in the double digits. Earnings growth also benefited from a metal price tailwind, particularly pronounced in Q1 2026. This tailwind came from a broad basket of metals. In addition to that, our drive for efficiency had an even gr...