LANXESS Aktiengesellschaft (LNXSY) Q2 2026 Press Conference Call Transcript

A wonderful good morning, ladies and gentlemen, dear colleagues, cordial welcome on the occasion of our press conference for the second quarter. My name is Claus Zemke, and I would like to send you the most cordial greetings from LANXESS Tower in Cologne during the holiday season. With us is CEO, Matthias Zachert; and Oliver Stratmann, our CFO. Both of them will give you a compact overview over the results of the second quarter and the outlook on the full year results, and they will also be available to answer your questions on the strategic development of LANXESS. Let me make a couple of technical remarks. This conference call is conducted in German, but simultaneously interpreted into English, and you will have the opportunity to ask questions, and there will be some technical comments that I will be giving you later on. And this entire conference and your questions will be recorded. So let me give the floor to our CEO, Matthias Zachert. Matthias Zachert Chairman of the Board of Management Cordial welcome also from me on the second quarter 2026 results of LANXESS. I'm on Slide 3, and I would like to start with the overview of the second quarter. And we can say without much ado that as compared to the first quarter, we can see a very positive momentum as compared to the first quarter. Sales and earnings increased, and we also had a positive demand effect attributable to the Middle East conflict. But price-wise, we also made some