Pierre Gurdjian   Independent Chair of the Board

[Foreign Language] Dear shareholders, ladies and gentlemen, welcome. [Foreign Language] We are now in very strong battle order to face any kind of weather, dark skies, cloudy skies, blue skies.

We are in strong battle order because we are now a simple company, the split of the old Solvay into Syensqo and Solvay has enabled very great visibility. Visibility that helps in terms of our collective attention to focus on what matters, to define the priorities that are similar across all of our strategic business lines, to be clear in cascading those objectives across the organization.

We're in strong battle order, because our colleagues almost 10,000 of them across the world are committed and engaged. We know this because we measure it through regular pulse surveys. We also know it because we feel it. One of the defining experiences I have had over last year, has been a whole evening that I've been able to spend with the top 125 leaders of the company. I have come out of that evening impressed by the quality of the competences and enthusiastic about the fighting spirit of this wonderful group of men and women.

We're in strong battle order because today, we are able to measure data that we had never been able to measure before. We are installing hundreds, soon thousands, of sensors across all of our production processes. Those sensors yield real-time data on the operational performance of all of our assets. New data lead to new insights, new insights lead to new ideas, new ideas lead to better productivity and stronger competitiveness.

We are in strong battle order because in 2024, we specified and confirmed our sustainability ambitions. These sustainability ambitions are about incarnating, expressing the fundamental responsibility, societal responsibility that Solvay has always had, continue to have and will continue to have in the future, and it helps us reinforce our competitiveness. We are a hard-to-abate industry. We have identified, defined a credible and affordable road map to reach carbon neutrality in three steps. From 2021 to 2030, 1/3 of the way, 1/3 reduction of our Scope 1 and 2 emissions. We are already past halfway the reductions in CO2 in this first leg.

Between 2030 and 2040, a second leg that will fundamentally be building on the e.Solvay innovation in soda ash, and the last 1/3 will be between 2040 and 2050.

Beyond CO2, we have expressed a new commitment to biodiversity. We are large landowners around our sites in the world. It is valuable land. It is land that can be transformed in sustainable biodiversity territory. We have committed to transform around 1/3 of those lands to high-quality biodiversity lands.

We have confirmed our very strong will to improve safety. I say this with a realization that we need to be better than what we are today in safety. And that is a fundamental commitment we have towards all of our colleagues.

We have confirmed our diversity, equity and inclusion objectives. I emphasize that in today's world because these are our values. We will reinvigorate our corporate philanthropy using the Ernest Solvay Fund.

2024 has also been the year where we have undergone a form of rebirth and renaissance, and we have spent a lot of time on our identity and our purpose, essential for generations. Each of these three words deeply counts. This is not a slogan that has been invented by an external expert. This is not a result of a brainstorming session amongst the top of the company. These words truly are the result of a participative efforts where more than 3,000 of our colleagues have been thinking about expressing the core of their identity.

That concept of being essential for generations is very rich, is generative. It's, first of all, a guide for what we do and where we play, a strategic guide. We have defined the space, our space in the industry, essential chemistry. Because we have customer intimacy, because we have proprietary processes, and we innovate those processes. But essential is not only about doing, it's about being. Being means that we want to be, that we are industrialists, proud industrialists. We do believe in the value and dignity that making things of essential value represents. We honor history, science, progress, humanity in today's world. These continue to be our beacons.

We are authentic. This word authenticity does not come from an exercise in what we would like to be. This is the expression that has naturally emerged within the executive team, with the Board to express, to communicate how we behave with each other. It's about looking at reality as reality is, not only as reality -- not only the reality that we would like to have. It's about talking about that reality with the same words. It's about having courageous conversations. Courageous conversations lead to meaningful impacts.

Being is fine, becoming is even more important. We do not stand still. We do realize that there are still things we can and should change. We need to share more. We come out of a period of local autonomy, that local autonomy has served the company well. But today, in the new Solvay, we realize that there are a lot of very good practices in all of our activities. But these best practices are not shared. And because we now have data, we can compare, we can benchmark, and benchmarking is a stimulus to share new practices and to develop new practices. So we need to share more.

We also need to run faster. We don't stand still. We are running. But we realize that when we want to run even faster, we're a bit constrained by a cramp, a muscular cramp, a double muscular cramp. It's the perfectionism cramp. Perfectionism is you want to do everything. You want to have 99% of the solution before doing something. We need to learn the discernment and the judgment to also start acting even if we are at 80%. We also need to realize that perfectionism is something to strive for. It's not a state. It is not because we can do new things that we haven't done before that we were guilty in the past. Perfection is a continuous improvement journey.

We are very demanding of each other, of our colleagues. We need to say thank you. We need to say thank you to you, as shareholders, we tremendously value the continuity that you bring for those of you who have been with us for generations, and we welcome new shareholders. And we're looking forward to a long and fruitful journey together. We thank our customers who entrust us every day with their business, mostly in the long term. We thank all of our colleagues. We ask from a lot of people to do exceptional things.

With the Board, I want to thank the executive team, Philippe, Alex, Liza, Lanny, Mark, this is an exceptional team, and it's a real team. I also want to thank those who are leading our GBUs, Etienne, An, Carlos, Daniela. It's a privilege for me to be able to also work with a fine group of directors. These are competent, engaged and warm individuals, and here, again, we're able to have courageous dialogues. I thank Aude, our Vice Chair. I thank Marjan, Wolfgang, Yves, Annette, Thierry, Mel, Thomas, it is a true privilege to travel with you.

So where do we go from here? It's very simple. We are going to accelerate vigorously the transformation of this company. And we are going to spend the resources that we have, financial resources, human resources. We will spend them wisely with discipline. If we can perform in bad weather, imagine how we will thrive in good weather. Essential for generations. Thank you.

Philippe Kehren   CEO, Chairman of Executive Committee & Director

[Foreign Language] These tragedies marked a year that has otherwise seen us achieve some great results. And we can be proud of what we achieved in 2024. Our teams have worked very hard to make that first year of the new Solvay a real success. We delivered on our promises.

The list of projects is much longer than this slide, but I'm particularly happy with the 80% of engagement rate throughout the group. Embarking our people in this new journey is so important. And with the global leadership team, we invested a lot of energy to explain to them where we go and why we need them. This is key to the success of Solvay. And if you allow me, I will do the same with you, our shareholders. We also need you in that journey.

So let me remind you who we are and repeat a few key elements of our strategy. We are essential chemistry, making progress possible for generations. At Solvay, we do not invent new molecules. The ones we have in our portfolio already existed decades ago, and they will still be needed for a very long time. All the products we sell are essential to our daily life.

Take soda ash, one of the major uses of soda ash is to enable the production of glass. There is not a single day when we are not surrounded by glass, right? Without soda ash, window glass would be a luxury. Take silica. Silica is essential to the tire industry. Without our highly dispersible silica, we would still have tires. But those tires wouldn't have the same performance in terms of fuel efficiency, in terms of CO2 emissions and in terms of safety. Take smartphones, without semiconductor chips, there are no smartphones. And with our products like our hydrogen peroxide or our rare earth oxides, there are no chips.

And these are just a few examples. Most of our businesses share those same characteristics. They are critical to our daily lives.

Our ambition is clear. We want to be a leader in essential chemistry. The core value drivers supporting the strategy will make the difference between a leader and a normal company. And those are market leadership, cost leadership and sustainability. Our key enablers of that strategy are the way we need to operate and what we should expect from our teams. This is our operating model and our people and culture.

The strategic priorities we need to focus on to make a difference and deliver the financial results we aim for are sustainable cash flows and attractive returns. Those priorities are the few strategic levers that we have selected. We will come back to them in a moment.

So what is essential? Let's first hear it from our colleagues.

Philippe Kehren   CEO, Chairman of Executive Committee & Director

If anything, it's not boring. Our products are not commodities, but they are not specialties either. Bouchra said it in the video. They have very unique characteristics that make them different. We can define them around the six following dimensions and let me explain a few of them.

So looking solely at the product, essential chemicals would be, in most cases, close to commodity. There may be a few references, but very often, it is sold on specifications and the product is roughly the same for all producers.

If you look at the technology, essential chemicals will be closer to specialty. Our processes are not available off the shelf. A strong expertise and know-how are required to be able to design and operate the plants. That's how we can license some of our technologies, like our mega plant technology for peroxide. Only a few companies own and master the technology.

Similarly, the way we interact with customers is different from commodity players. In all of our businesses, we need to know our customers, understand their needs and build relationships. While we don't sell value, we don't just apply an index that will vary every month. And we tend to have stable long-term supply agreements and strong innovation programs with our customers.

Being essential is also being focused. Our portfolio of product is simple, five mono technologies, soda ash and bicar, peroxide, silica, fluorine and rare earth, and one very strong regional player, coatis, that is more focused on the Latin American market. We can be much more focused and reactive than before, the split with the specialty activities that we made in 2023.

And we serve a large number of customers in a wide range of end markets. Take automotive, construction, health care, or electronics, each account for less than 20% of our overall sales. This brings resilience which is important for our clients, our employees and our shareholders.

Being close to your customers is another key elements when you want to build long-term partnerships. This is why at Solvay, more than 80% of our sales are actually regional or local to local. And it brings other advantages such as competitiveness, when you know that essential products can be expensive to transport. It's also good for security of supply. And it's the best protection against tariffs.

Let's now deep dive into our strategic levers. Those strategic levers are driving our choices for resource allocation and for setting priorities. And you will have the opportunity to discuss them again after the meeting as they are represented in the demo zone on my right, behind the wall. Take your time, in particular during the lunch, we have our people that will be happy to explain to you what they are.

First, operational excellence. This means continuous progress and optimization of operations and systems. Our initial plan was to achieve more than EUR 300 million of savings by 2028. We have increased that target to EUR 350 million, and we expect to reach EUR 200 million already by the end of this year. That will contribute to ensure our business remains competitive and improve their position as benchmarks in their respective industries.

And as you can imagine, digitalization is a key component of those plants. For example, we use more and more devices to monitor the equipment and improve the reliability of our assets. And as a result, our maintenance costs. We also use devices and machine learning to constantly optimize our processes and reduce our consumptions of energy and raw material.

Beyond digitalization, we are also saving on our transportation costs by changing the transport mode, the lot size or the number of rotations.

We optimize our footprint as well. Last year, we closed three plants. Povoa in Portugal and Warrington in the U.K. were closed to adapt to the new reality of the hydrogen peroxide demand in Europe. We also closed our TFA production in Salindres, France. [Foreign Language]

Moving to the next slide, with the energy transition road map and the need to accelerate its execution because really, this is a strategic imperative. It's driven by our commitment to the planet, the clear expectations of our customers and also by the fundamental need to remain competitive. Particularly in Europe, we have the rising cost of energy and of carbon emissions, creates a distinct economic advantage for sustainable businesses. This is critical for our long-term success. We have successfully deployed some of the largest global decarbonization projects. And thanks to this, Solvay in general, has already reduced its CO2 emissions in half -- by half in the last 20 years, cutting by half.

Our road map includes clear milestones. Compared to 2021, a 30% emissions reduction cut by 2030, another 1/3 of reduction by 2040 and Net Zero by 2050. Implementation will involve coal phase out, the rollout of e.Solvay and other technological breakthrough projects. We will invest at Solvay a CapEx of EUR 30 million to EUR 35 million annually, which is affordable, until 2030. This CapEx will increase to EUR 50 million per year by 2040, and this will be complemented by strategic third-party financing for key projects.

Third, strategic lever, process innovation. This is how Solvay started by revolutionizing the soda ash process in the 19th century. This is in our DNA. So we understand well the importance of staying ahead of the curve and continuously improving our processes. It can take many forms from bringing improvements to existing processes like new generations of catalysts for our peroxide plants to finding technologies to offer circular materials. This is for silica with the rice husk ash process in Italy. Or digital tools to transform the way we operate at the level of the shop floor.

Our flagship e.Solvay process where we reinvent a new way to manufacture soda ash. We're making rapid progress. We're reaching technological feasibility, and we can now work on the economical equation.

Finally, production capacity. That's both to sustain our market share in our traditional markets and also to capture growth in high potential opportunities that our products can serve. In our traditional markets, growth is close to GDP. We invest when our customers need it. This can be done by expanding our existing production capacities, building new units or increasing production through partnerships. But it is always done on sites where we have a competitive advantage and where we have a clear road map in terms of sustainability.

Beyond these core end markets, each global business unit has growth applications where we see high potential opportunities and where we want to invest. A few examples.

In our Soda Ash and Derivatives business, we have new bicar applications, such as Solvair Marine. It's an innovative technology used as a dry exhaust gas treatment system for sulfur oxide and particle removal for the shipping industry. In silica, circular high disbursable silica is expected by tire manufacturers to increase the share of circularity in their total sales. In Special Chem, we have inaugurated in April, the first production of rare earth oxides for permanent magnets. In our site of La Rochelle here.

In 2024, we have taken the time to define the sustainability agenda of the company while aligning it with the new Solvay profile. In March of this year, we launched For Generations. For Generations is our new sustainability road map. We have refreshed our ambition, added new commitments, redefined our processes and our governance. But the ultimate goals remain the same. Reduce our impact, create trust and value.

The road map is structured around two pillars: Planet progress focused on climate and nature and better life for people and communities. It will be deployed in all our sites around the world along the Star Factory program, which aims at designing the factories of the future. It is also integrated into the incentives in all layers of management with safety, CO2 emissions and gender parity as the main KPIs.

So this slide summarizes the KPIs we track as part of our For Generations road map. We confirm our main target on climate, carbon neutrality by 2050, with an interim target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 30% by 2030 versus 2021. We are well advanced, minus 17% so far.

In 2024, we maintained our greenhouse gas emissions reduction, Scope 1 and 2, despite increased levels of production in some of our businesses. This was achieved through the strategic execution of our energy transition projects and our successful exit from coal at two of our plants in Rheinberg, Germany and in Wyoming in the U.S.A.

We've had added an additional voluntary commitment regarding biodiversity, which I will explain in a minute. We've made tangible progress in advancing gender diversity within Solvay, putting us on course to reach 30% by 2030. And regarding safety, the overall trend is positive, yet the three tragic accidents we experienced in 2024 serve as a critical reminder, vigilance is nonnegotiable. We must and we will do better.

Finally, I'm proud to announce that we've achieved our commitment to the United Nations living wage initiative a year early with 100% of our workforce now receiving a living wage. This isn't just about a number. It's about ensuring every Solvay employee earns enough to live with dignity and security, covering fundamental family expenses for housing, food, healthcare and education. We are committed to upholding this standard, and we will review it every year.

In this ambitious road map, the coal phase out in our soda ash plants is obviously a key step in our decarbonization journey. It also gives us more visibility on our costs as we have long-term contracts for renewable energies.

In Rosignano, Italy and Bernburg, Germany, we haven't use coal for years already. In early 2024, the coal phase out of Green River U.S.A. was completed by adopting natural gas. In November 2024, Solvay's plant in Rheinberg, Germany completed its coal phase out, and it's now the world's first soda ash plant primarily powered by renewable energy, and that is waste wood.

Another project of coal phase out is underway in Dombasle France, where coal will be substituted with refuse-derived fuel by the end of 2025. And we also announced a new project in Spain to move from coal to biomass by 2027. In Bulgaria, we already burn biomass, but there are not enough resources available locally to fully substitute coal. Therefore, we are investigating other solutions and might complete the coal phase out a bit later than 2030.

Now our 30 x 30 commitment on biodiversity. This is our new commitment. 30% of our land will be dedicated to biodiversity by 2030. We are already recognized for our good practices in several of our sites, such as Paulinia in Brazil, Rosignano in Italy, or Torrelavega in Spain. We are now pledging to allocate 30% of our permeable land located near biodiversity-sensitive areas to support nature conservation and restoration efforts and that by 2030.

To achieve this target, we have partnered with the IUCN, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. Several projects are already underway like the reforestation project on our Paulinia site, the tiny forest in Linne-Herten in the Netherlands or the Mangrove project in Map Ta Phut, Thailand.

Let's now move to the 2024 financial performance. Here you have an overview of our main financial achievements in 2024, which were above market expectations. More specifically, I would like to highlight the EBITDA of EUR 1.052 billion, supported by cost savings that are well above our own forecast, thanks to the acceleration of some initiatives. Our free cash flow of EUR 361 million with the CapEx at EUR 355 million shows that the resilience of our business allows us to generate enough cash to support all our commitments, energy transition, payment of our dividend to shareholders and this investment in future growth. This is a great achievement.

Free cash flow to shareholders from continuing operations amounted to EUR 361 million in 2024, thanks to the solid EBITDA performance and good control over working capital, especially at the end of the year. This represents a 34% free cash flow conversion ratio. As expected, CapEx accelerated in Q4 last year and reached EUR 355 million for the full year. Provisions cash-outs, minus EUR 193 million, where higher than last year, mainly due to higher restructuring and settlements of all litigations. This contributed to the reduction of our long-term provisions in the balance sheet.

On the other side, financing cash-outs were lower due to the timing of coupon payments from the newly issued bonds. Financing costs are projected to rise to approximately EUR 80 million in 2025, reflecting the full year coupon payments on the bonds issued last year. Additionally, provisions cash-out is expected to temporarily increase by EUR 50 million, mainly due to the Dombasle energy transition project.

Now let's step back and see how 2024 compares to the past 7 years. And I draw your attention to the fact that the figures before 2023 are not restated for the phaseout of two businesses in 2023, which accounted for approximately EUR 100 million EBITDA. So this chart confirms once again that our unique profile allow us to be resilient even in times of crisis or challenging conditions. We are essential and we have the flexibility to adapt our investments to the market conditions. This ability, combined with the quality of our individual business and the portfolio effect of all of our businesses, ensure resilient and steady cash generation.

So before moving to the outlook, let me remind you one last element, key in the way we manage the company. This is our capital allocation policy. We generate enough cash, and we are deploying it strategically.