Good afternoon. This is the Chorus Call Conference operator. Welcome. Thank you for joining the Avio first quarter 2026 highlights presentation. All participants are in listen only mode. After the presentation, there will be a Q&A session. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Nevio Quattrin, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.
Good evening. Good evening, everyone, welcome to Q1 2026 results conference call Avio. I'm here with Mr. Giulio Ranzo, newly confirmed outside Chief Executive Officer of Avio, and Mr. Roberto Carassai, Chief Financial Officer of the company. In a moment, we will go through the presentation we just released on our website, which outlines the main highlights and financial results of the quarter. In the end, we will, as usual, welcome your questions. Thank you for your attention, and I hand the conversation over to Giulio.
Thank you, Nevio. Thank you all for joining the first quarter results, the traditional call we have. As Nevio was commenting, I was reappointed, so I'm not a newly appointed CEO.
Confirmed. Confirmed.
Secondhand, probably, nonetheless. Off we go. Another quarter. Overall, this first quarter is in line with expectations, continues to show growth on what we do and numbers in line with expectations. We're ready to go with VV29, the 29th mission of Vega. The SMILE satellite is on the pad and is expected to launch on May 19th. We had a little bit of a delay over the last few weeks, but we're on track to fly on May 19th. We recently had two important successes of Ariane 6. The first flights for Amazon. You may recall, those of you who have followed the stock for a while, that this was an important target for Ariane 6, which we achieved together by improving the performance of Ariane 6 to suit the needs of the Amazon customer.
We were very happy on the last flight. We performed the first mission of A6 with four of our boosters. A very important milestone achieved. It's also important to highlight to you that we are approaching notable milestones on our liquid propulsion technology projects, which we often refer to, but don't talk much about. We are now accelerating a little bit towards the first career milestone. We want to update you a little bit on that as well. On the U.S. project, we are progressing as expected. We recently either the land purchase in Virginia and started to order the plant equipment, which are, you know, with more lead time. We ordered that in advance.
As I said, on the financial side, the revenues continue to grow at a 20% pace versus last year, which is not irrelevant, if I may comment, because this is the fourth year in a row that we continue to deliver on the top line, growth of 20%, which I can guarantee to you that is anything but simple. Based on these aspects here, we obviously confirm the 2026 guidance, which is communicated a few weeks ago. As I said before, Nevio commented we have a new board of directors. five out of nine have been changed in the directors. Myself and the chairman remain to grant management continuity.
We have also some new relevant additions that have broadened a little bit the level of the competencies we have around the board of directors. Now moving on to page five. As I said, the next Vega-C mission is about to be launched on May 19th. It's an important flight for the European Space Agency. The SMILE spacecraft. It's a scientific mission to measure something particularly complex with solar wind. The mission will be the first operated by Avio as a launch operator. What does that mean? That we will essentially replace the former role held by Arianespace for many years, since the beginning of the Vega launcher.
Avio will be overall responsible for the whole launch service, which was, as you know, a target we have pursued for a long time. Everything is ready to go. We should see that next Tuesday night, I believe, between two and three, and Wednesday in Europe. I told you about the first flights of Amazon LEO. I remember very well when we pursued this customer a few years ago. We promised Amazon to deliver a capable launcher to suit their needs in a peculiar configuration. Now we performed the first two flights, the first couple of flights for them.
Later in July, I believe, we will perform the first flight of Ariane 64 with the P160C, with the larger booster that will deliver more performance and therefore more ability to carry more payloads, more satellites in just one flight. Which I think is particularly relevant for Amazon because they have, after their flights across a number of different launchers, Ariane 6 covers a portion of their launching needs, but we are delivering as expected, and I believe the customer is very happy about that. Therefore, this is very important for us as every flight delivers the propulsion systems which are very relevant, as you know, since they grant something like 90% of the thrust of each launch.
The schedule this year for flights looks pretty busy. There might be as many as eight Ariane 6 flights and three Vega-C flights. The schedule for Vega-C in 2026 has been made complex by scheduling of the satellites that wasn't ideal. What we envision is that we might have five flights in 2027, maybe would have been better to do four rather than three and five. Nonetheless, the schedule of the flights was set into this tentative schedule for the time being. We continue to have a robust backlog on both Ariane 6 and Vega-C for the foreseeable future. We are covered all the way to 2030, give or take. I think there's quite some visibility over future flights.
It's all around execution and making sure we deliver on the promise of raising the flight rate. Next year, for sure, for Vega-C will be extremely relevant. For Ariane 6, already will be relevant this year and for us too. We said before, a new board of directors with lots of new additions. In particular, we have two U.S. directors, Steven Wood and Heidi Shyu. I think I want to mention the name of Heidi Shyu. She was a former Secretary of Defense, very experienced in defense technologies. Very important for us to have this addition. Steven Wood is a financial investor himself, with quite some experience on the U.S. market. Considering what we have in our plan, I think these are important.
Ladies and gentlemen.
The combination of these new competencies will add to the sum that we already had. Therefore, we believe that the usual setup with more than 50% of the directors as independent directors will continue to work. Of course, as I said before, chairman and CEO remain the same. As I was saying before, quite some advancements on the liquid oxygen methane technology demonstrator that we are currently integrating to perform the first two tests. This is essentially a prototype of an entirely new next-generation launcher, with using liquid oxygen methane propulsion, which is, in a way, a novelty in Europe. It's also a novelty in the U.S., but, you know, more so in Europe. This is just an experimental vehicle.
It's not meant for the time being to carry any particular payloads, but to improve our technology, hopefully, to a completely different degree of efficiency. This experimental vehicle will perform a number of ground tests, and then next year is supposed to perform a flight test to measure essentially the performance of these new propulsion technologies. Not only that, also a completely new avionics system and some other systems that will work not only on the ascent phase, but also on the descent phase in the attempt to control the descent phase. Essentially making the first steps towards reusability that, as you know, we have embarked on as a development path, also with a separate contract to develop reusability get that done.
To perform these tests, we have put together an infrastructure that will allow us to perform both ground tests and flight tests. It's interesting because it's a removable infrastructure. It's very small but complex and we can mount and dismount this in different locations. It's quite some new experience for us in a completely new technology, but hopefully something that will represent the forefront of our knowledge, adding a lot of intellectual property to our assets. In parallel, we are also reaching a very good level of confidence on our MPGE orbital engine, which is a hydrogen peroxide upper stage, storable engine. This is very important and will continue to be very important for orbital maneuvers.
This may in the future be the engine for the upper stage of Vega-C and for the propulsion system for in-orbit service modules derived from the Vega-C upper stage. We as never developing technologies of the time. We are very happy now that I wouldn't say we are yet mastering the technology, but we are reaching a good level of understanding of a type of technology that I can guarantee to you is absolutely forefront and way more efficient than any other currently used, and also more environmentally friendly. We're quite happy to have performed a number of very relevant tests successfully.
Now, more tests will be done on on an upgraded version of the engine itself, but the whole infrastructure for testing that we have put together has left our team with a lot of new knowledge. In parallel, in the U.S., we have signed new orders in the course of the first quarter with the United States Army in particular. Then, we have agreed with the Commonwealth of Virginia, with the State of Virginia, a whole package of incentives to establish our plant for a maximum amount of up to $97 million in a mixed form of tax incentives and some other types of small grants.
On this basis, we have then secured the purchase of 1,200 acres of land in the southern part of Virginia and in the Pittsylvania County, in the so-called Southern Virginia Multimodal Park. It is an area that is devoted to industrial activities. In parallel to purchasing the land, we have also started to hire some people and to issue the first orders for the process equipment. For the plant equipment, the mixers, the idle blades, the pyrometers, you know, all of the key relevant pieces of machinery that require a long time to procure. That's in a nutshell what happened in the first quarter. I wouldn't spend too much more time on that.
I would leave it to Roberto Carassai, our CFO, to walk you through the details of our first quarter financials, and then we will get together again to comment on the outlook.
Okay. Thank you, Giulio. Good evening, everyone. It's a real pleasure to walk you through our financial performance for the first quarter, which marks a pretty solid start for the year. Moving to the backlog slide, it's worth highlighting that the backlog is still very robust, exceeding EUR 2.1 billion, in line with the last December. This is due to the fact that we have booked EUR 8 million orders in the first quarter, largely thanks to this contract that we have signed with the U.S. Army and for the development, the qualification, and the initial production of solid rocket motors defense application.
Thanks to this order intake, we have achieved on the defense business segment, 31% of the total backlog amounting to EUR 650 million. It is increasing also the stake of production inside our backlog in the 70% versus 30% related to the technical development. If we move to the next slide, we focus a bit on the revenue's performance. As Giulio was saying, we have again achieved an increase of double digits increase compared to last year. Almost 20% more than last year, achieving EUR 128 million. As you can appreciate, this increase has been driven by all the three segments. The space, the launch system, the space propulsion, and the defense.
In particular, in the launch system, we have increased the production activity in line with the Vega-C flight manifest. While on the space propulsion, we are increasing the booster production for Ariane 6. The defense increase is mostly due by increased production cadence for Aster 30 that we manufacture. Moving to the next slide, we focus a bit on the profit and loss. Here, it is important to highlight that this growth on the net revenues has driven the growth of the EBITDA adjusted reported that achieved EUR 5.2 with a significant increase of EUR 1.2 compared to last year.
This result has been possible despite the ramp-up of the USA costs in line with the expectation that have achieved 1.5. In terms of net financial position, we still have a fairly high positive net financial position amounting EUR 560 million. Slightly declining from the amount that we used to have in last December. This is as a result of the partial initial slowdown of the advanced payments that we massively collected in the last Q4 of 2025 to our suppliers. Moving to the next slide, here we can focus a bit on the quarterly evolution of both EBITDA and net financial position.
In terms of EBITDA performance for the year, we expect to follow the same path of the previous year. In terms of seasonality, you know that this company is potential bit of business seasonality. The largest bulk of the EBITDA is generated in the second half of the year, in particular in Q4. In terms of net financial position, we expect this net financial position to partially decline across the year, in order to cover the CapEx spending for the U.S.A. project and for the further flow down to the supplier of the advanced payments we collected last year. Moving to the last slide. Yeah, based on Q1 results, the company confirms the full year guidance, the clear guide. Thank you. Thank you very much. I leave the floor to you again for Q&A.
No. For those of you who are new to following Avio's results, the first quarter is typically soft. It's not particularly indicative of the year, in particular in terms of the profit, because as you can very well see from the distribution of the profit across the quarters, typically the most of the profit gets accumulated on the fourth quarter. The first three quarters are typically soft. We did well according to expectation, maybe even a little bit more than expectation. We're on track. I wouldn't take from that the indication that we'll have 20% more at the end of the year. We don't know.
What is indicative instead, and I want to make a clear statement of that, is that crunching revenues at a 20% increase for the 1st year-over-year is not simple. In my mind, it is telling of the ability to convert all of this market demand growth into backlogs 1st, which is a record high at the end of last year and into net revenue spend. This is requiring a lot of effort, hiring people, mobilizing suppliers, moving a lot of working capital. So far so good. This is moving in the right direction. We will continue to do so, we'll have more data points maybe by the 1st half. Thank you very much for following our presentation. We're open to any questions.
The first question comes from Martino De Ambrogi with Equita. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good evening, everybody. Three general questions. The first one is on the CapEx plan. Everything is progressing in line with your plans so far, but is it conceivable any acceleration considering the environment for the defense propulsion? On CapEx, if you could quantify, remember as the expectation for the full year and what was spent in Q1. The second is on MBDA, because the CEO stated that this year production, there is a 40% production increase. Is there any update on what is the possible news flow in terms of I don't know if it's feasible or not in this call, but any update on the order flow would be appreciated.
Very last, another general question, because if we look around what happened in the past few months, it seems the demand for defense propulsion is only growing more than what you expected at the beginning. Okay. The path is long, so you needed to build up the plant. Am I right in assuming that the final demand is, I don't know, significantly or in any case higher than what you assumed when you launched the rights issue?
Okay. The purchase of land in U.S. was finalized on the very first few days of April. It actually went outside the first quarter, but we expensed a few million EUR there. Therefore, there is a little bit less in the first quarter than we had anticipated, but just because of timing. Acceleration of CapEx, I don't know. We are progressing as we expect. On one side, we look at the CapEx, on the other side, we look at the progress of firm orders on the U.S. end side. Therefore, we try to keep these two things in balance. Not to overcommit on CapEx too early, but at the same time, we need to be able to deliver against customer requests. That's why we have started to purchase the land, order the equipment and so on.
The amount?
The amount for the year you asked for, we have planned something around EUR 90 million overall, out of which two-thirds related to. There are today in backlog more orders than we had anticipated just six months ago or a year ago. Every now and then, more orders are coming, in particular on the ASQ-30 side, from Europe. Maybe less so on GAMIM-ER, which is a bit more long term. The volumes on ASQ are expected to grow. The process by which we get the orders, as I commented to you many times, is very patchy, so very difficult to predict, because it comes from different countries within Europe. We are a supplier, so we don't have visibility over what the finance customers decide.
We may have some on the Italian customer, but Italian customer is comparatively small within Europe. There is no doubt, to answer your question, that there is an expectation for more orders from MBDA exceeding our earlier expectations. In the U.S., if I compare the view of when we presented the plan in September, lots of things changed. When we presented our plan in September, so the war in Ukraine was non-existing. Therefore, you know, we have to take necessarily into account that a substantial consumption of the missile stockpile was actually done in the course of the last few months. This inevitably will further grow demand for the future beyond our expectations.
The difficulty we have is to getting precisely analytical on how much this will be and when, because it's not yet completely factored in. The process is long because it goes in the U.S. from the Congress realizing that they have to invest more in procurement of weapons than the different services, Army, Navy, Air Force, to define exactly what they need. Then the primes to receive orders from the end customers, then we, as suppliers, receive orders from the primes. Taking into account that we will be a second source of production. We will not be the main source of production. Therefore, we are going step by step along this complex path.
To answer your question, there is no doubt that there is an expectation for volume upside with respect to what we envisioned in September, and I believe a significant one. We will try to be more precise as time goes by.
Thank you, Giulio.
You're welcome.
The next question comes from Gabriele Gambarova with Intesa Sanpaolo. Please go ahead.
Yes, sir. Good evening. Thanks for taking my questions. Back in March, you said that there were some clients, let's say, with whom you were holding talks because there was the idea that they could, let's say, exploit the existing capacity in Italy in order to source solid rocket motors even before the opening of the new U.S. facility. I was wondering if you have any, let's say, any update on this front. Second question is on the guidance, sir, for revenues. If I factor in the + 19% you recorded in the first quarter, it comes out that in the next three quarters, revenues should stay flat or grow by 6%.
Any comment, any color on this would be helpful. Last, sorry, but I totally missed the level of CapEx Martino asked for in Q1 because the line is very bad. I am sorry.
First of all, on the story of leveraging Italian capacity, what you are saying is right. In the course of the first quarter, 26, we received a second order for a second product from the U.S. Army for the development of a second product for the U.S. Army, to be manufactured in Italy, not in the U.S. We will also receive requests for raising at some point in the future, the production rates of the 2 products that they have requested us to develop. All of which will be manufactured in Italy. That is definitely something interesting because it allows us to start to do work for U.S. customers from Italy while the plant is being constructed, essentially.
The U.S. Army has also asked if in the future they could leverage both the Italian and the U.S. facility for their needs, and of course, we have made ourselves available for that. On this basis, I cannot exclude that also other customers other than the U.S. Army may want to do the same. Start using European capacity and as soon as the U.S. capacity is available, use that as well. Okay? This is allowing, say, a little bit our advantage. The fact that we can use both the European capacity and future U.S. capacity is an advantage maybe versus other players such as, for example, new startups and so on. Therefore, we will try to leverage this advantage. The guidance. On the guidance. The guidance for the time being will keep the one we have.
We do not have sufficiently precise information other than the sharing of expectations for upside, which are still generic in nature. We have sufficiently precise information for us to raise the guidance 26. Therefore, we are cautiously keeping it as it is. As I already commented, a month ago, it is clear that the scenario calls for a significant upside with respect to what we had foreseen six or seven months ago. Now, when this upside is expected to materialize precisely, how much it's expected to materialize precisely, this is a bit difficult to forecast since, you know, the conflicts are still ongoing. We have the Iran war still unresolved, it's a bit difficult for us to predict it any, in any more precise fashion. CapEx. Q1.
CapEx Q1, we have incurred EUR 4 million overall because as Giulio said, the U.S. project was envisaging the land purchase in March. At the end, we signed the contract in April. It was just a little postponement.
Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much. If I can make a follow on the second contract you got in the Q1, exploiting the Italian capacity. Do you have in mind a time for the start of production even directionally?
I don't have it on top of my mind, but if you think about the fact that with the first products to the U.S. Army, we already are in production. We started in summer 2024. If everything goes well, we should be able to deliver the first item for production within 18 months.
Okay.
24 months max, which is a very fast development cycle. The approach used by U.S. Army is extremely fast, simplified development processes to make sure that they reach production as quickly as possible.
Okay. Very clear. Thank you. Thank you, Giulio.
The next question comes from Andrea Bonfà with Banca Akros. Please go ahead.
Hi, good evening to everybody. Most of my question have been answered. I got a curiosity. When is the new P160C engine being, let's say, utilized in a launch? Because it seems that there is no official deadline for that. If you can comment on that. Thank you very much.
Normally, it should be this summer on Ariane 6. The way we designed P160C is that it's set to fly on Ariane 64 first, and later in time we will introduce it in Vega-C. Okay? It should be this summer on Ariane 64.
Okay. The line if I understand correctly, this summer might be used in the Ariane 64. Is that correct?
Yes. Yes.
Okay.
We have already manufactured something like 25, 26. We have that in stock.
Okay. Thank you very much, Giulio.
The next question comes from Chloé Lemarié with Jefferies. Please go ahead. Miss Lemarié, please click on the continue on the bottom of the pop-up window.
Thank you. Sorry for the technical mishap. Thank you for taking my question. The first one would actually be on MBDA, which announced recently plans to increase production by 40% in 2026. I was wondering if you were seeing orders from them amounting to roughly that level of growth on the Aster and the CAMM-ER programs. The second one, and I'm aware it may be difficult for you to comment, but have you had any recent discussion with Leonardo following the change in management on what they intend to do with the remaining stake in the company? Last one. On the Q1 margin expansion, for the non-Italian for the non-U.S. side of the business, could you maybe share what were the key drivers between growth and defense and I suspect, some volume tailwind in the launcher business, please? Thank you.
Regarding MBDA, we definitely are raising the volumes of deliveries for MBDA this year. Maybe more so on Aster 30s than on CAMM-ER yet. We will do the same next year as well. We are on a path to essentially doubling the volumes for them in a matter of a few years. We are just along this path, and we are committed to them to continue to growing production rates not only this year, but also next year and the following year, and so on. Leonardo. Leonardo yes, of course, we have met. I know the CEO very well. We have met. We know each other. He has just started. Of course, he's not new to the company.
He knows the company extremely well. I don't know what his strategies will be regarding his share and so on. I think he also needs to have sufficient time to make up his mind as to what he wants to do with the strategy of the company. He's obviously well aware of the situation. Keep in mind that he was formerly the chief commercial officer of MBDA, so he knows one part of the business, he knows extremely well. We will see. We have new director from Leonardo who joined the board, and we have started with the first quarter board today. We'll see if the discussion will be ongoing. By the way, on the sale of their shares, I mean, this is not a transaction that takes place with the company.
It's mainly within Leonardo and someone else, not with the company. I may not necessarily be involved. Regarding the margin expansion, we don't report margins on the single business lines because as you know, some of these business lines relate to one or two customers, so we don't want to disclose customer-specific margins for commercial sensitivity. The margin expansion for production activity is a direct function of volumes. As we grow in volumes, we expect to improve the margins. While on the relevant activity, margin is not necessarily linked to the volume of activity. Therefore, we believe that given the mix we have in the business, which is partly production, partly development, it will take some time to see this full margin expansion, but we are on the right path to do it.
As a matter of fact, you already saw some improvements, modest improvements, I have to say, I have to admit, but some improvements on the margins, and we will continue on that path as we committed to in our plans.
Very clear. Thank you.
The next question comes from Alex Cernelli with Sal.Moio & Co. Please go ahead.
Great quarter. Most of my questions have been answered. Just, you know, last one. I think in the past you said part of your strategy is to look at vertical integration. Any call on that? Anything you're doing in, just something there. Thanks.
Yeah. Vertical integration will be yet another step to be taken care of once we have more certainty around the long term orders. We also explained in our previous calls that we link more investment into the vertical integration also as a function of the orders we get, but also as a function of the type of government support we might have. As the government in the U.S. is calling for the urgent need to further consolidate the supply chain at all levels between tier 1, tier 2, tier 3 suppliers, and we are more than happy to do so. If this were to be the case, then we need significant more funding. Okay.
Now, as you know, we had already anticipated for the possibility of having to raise additional capital, and if we will see the opportunity to invest them, with a return, we will. We would also like to have, together with more equity, perhaps more government funding. Vertical integration. As a matter of fact, the U.S. government has put some money available to support vertical integration within the supply chain because they understand very well that the primes and even the tier 1 suppliers like us, we can commit to triple or quadruple the volumes. Why not? We tell you, it's that we will do it, but if there is one supplier who is critical and is not moving, then we all stay with low volumes.
Therefore, it is clear that this topic will be particularly relevant for the future. We also have to have the proper funding to do it. Are there any more questions?
Not on my side. Thank you.
The next question is a follow-up from Gabriele Gambaro with Intesa Sanpaolo. Please go ahead.
Yes, just a couple of question more from my side. I was wondering, if you can tell me on space and launchers, if you saw any movement in pricing, given direction, of course. The last one is on the EUR 90 billion loan that Europe approved to support Ukraine. I know you are not a tier one, you're not MBDA, but your view on this in terms of effectors, in terms of interception missile. Do you think that this could help export of sales of Aster missiles further? Thank you.
Let me start from the story of the space launches. You know, what I've seen in the last few months is that everywhere I go, they come to me, and they ask for more, for more flight rates, right? In particular with the European Space Agency, my question to them was, "Hey, why didn't you invest more at the last ministerial conference to increase the flight rates?" Whereas at the last ministerial conference, a lot of money was invested to attempt to develop so many different rockets around Europe and so on. I think the system in Europe is realizing that developing an entirely new rocket is a lengthy process, and we never solve the problems of the near-term demand.
I think European member states are realizing that they need to invest more in what they have, which is mainly Ariane and Vega, end of story, to secure flight rates to fulfill their demand. Entertaining development projects to create new rockets is an interesting effort. We have reported to you the advancements of our latest technologies. It's all very good, but it doesn't solve the problem of getting stuff to space tomorrow. What I anticipate, and I hope European states will do, they will hopefully converge again into funding more capacity expansion for Ariane and Vega to raise their annual flight rates. This is the only way to respond to undoubtedly an increase in demand within Europe.
On the story of the EUR 90 billion for defense, I was called in a meeting by the European Commissioner for Space and Defense, along with all the industries for missile manufacturing across Europe, essentially to say, "Okay, we have this EUR 90 billion. How do we spend it?" Right. We are still at the point where, you know, you get together in a room, there is all the industry in the world, the institutions, but we still need to decide where to invest the money and on which products. The problem is that all across Europe, as you know, there are different types of products being used by different countries. Some countries procure products from the U.S., some have their own products, some have other products. It's a very complex situation.
I think Europe lacks a central procurement policy versus weaponry that in these cases, we unfortunately delay decision-making on increasing volumes on one platform or the other because there is the money on the table, there is everything, but everyone has a different requirement, has a different product. Moreover, I believe that this EUR 90 billion will likely become debt for many of the countries. I don't know how each country will deal with that. All I can tell you is that it is clear what you say is right. It resonates with what I heard. But it's still in the making.
Thank you, Giulio. Thank you very much.
The next question is a follow-up from Martino De Ambrogi with Equita. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Focusing on the energy costs, which is mentioned as a potential risk, although maybe it's only temporary. I was wondering, number 1, what was the impact in Q1, which is mentioned as a limited impact? If your best estimate today is still for EUR 2 million-EUR 2.5 million for the full year, and if you already started, as a 3rd question, if you already started negotiations to revise the price because of the energy cost increase. Thank you.
The energy price is anything but stable at the moment. It's difficult to forecast what the situation will be for the rest of the year. We have focused our attention to decrease the electricity and steam consumption to the least. In fact, we achieved 1 very important result. We pretty much had the same consumption in megawatt hour we had last year, but we manufactured something like 19% more. In terms of the efficiency in delivering output with the same amount of energy, we did a great job. Of course, the price of natural gas, which we procure for generating steam and so on, has unfortunately increased by more than 20-.
In March, by the way, in March.
In March. Maybe by 30%. Okay? However, on the first quarter you don't see much of an impact because it goes on in March. Now, if this price continues to stay till the end of the year, we might have an impact of about.
EUR 1, EUR 2 million.
EUR 1 or 2 million between now and the year end. God knows what happens between now and year end, you know? It may go down again to reasonable levels. We just don't know. What's happening in the trade of raw materials is at the very core of this issue. I don't know whether the gas price goes up to EUR 100 or what. I have no idea at the moment. We have attempted to see whether we could buy any options to firm the price of the gas. At this point in time, immediately after this crisis, it's impossible to buy an affordable option to do that. If we would do that, but the option would be so expensive that it would offset the benefit.
No. The idea to negotiate or renegotiate with your main customers, is it possible?
it's very difficult?
See, with Martino, because this is hopefully a near-term effect. Hopefully it's not a new normal. They will tell you, "Okay, but we are facing the same situation. Let's see what happens in six months, let's discuss it." Of course, if this trend were to endure for too many months, you are right, we shall go back, discuss, renegotiate. We cannot try to renegotiate a contract every time there is a spike in an energy price. As I told you, we're doing a great job at limiting consumption, which I'm very proud of because, that is, comes at no need for external discussions with customers. It's, by the way, always our duty to try and limit consumption anyway.
Okay. Thank you.
Gentlemen, there are no more questions registered at this time.
Thank you. Thank you, everyone.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining. The conference is now over. You may disconnect your devices. Thank you.