Good afternoon. Welcome to the Conference Call for the Second Quarter Results of TeraPlast Group. I see that not all have joined. Let's take a couple of minutes before we start to give a chance to other people to join this call. We'll start in two minutes. Thank you very much. Hello, again. Okay. Let's start. We had quite an interesting first half of the year, a little bit above our expectations. Not much has changed in terms of group structure. The only news is that starting with the second quarter, we started to also consolidate Aquatica Experience, a company that we bought at the beginning of this year, and closing took place in April. We have a bit of their financial results in our consolidated statements for this year.
For the second quarter, not much yet, but of course, we hope they will have a decent contribution until the end of this year. Other than that, we have our installation business, which is done by the mother company, TeraPlast , Palplast from the Republic of Moldova, Polytech, and Pro-Moulding in Hungary, Austria, which are all active in the installation segment. Then we have the packaging segment, which comprises TeraBio Pack , also Opal stretch film brand, and Optiplast from Croatia, the first three of them being from Romania. TeraPlast Recycling, which is the recycling company of our group, and their P&L is shown in the installation and compound segments. Last but not least, TeraGlass, which is the largest exporter in the group by share of turnover, but nevertheless, a small business for us.
As I said, we had a very dynamic infrastructure segment in Romania for the first half of this year, which even the macroeconomic data showed this with a growth of close to 14% of engineering works. Although other segments of the construction industry have not performed as well as the infrastructure, we still see a decent growth in construction in Romania. We also see a very positive impact from Hungary and from the Republic of Moldova in our P&L because we start to see the results of the acquisitions that we made last year there. We also strive to increase our market share and to create dedicated sales structures in Germany and to increase the market share in Austria. We invested heavily in people on those markets at the beginning of this year. Of course, that's a little bit longer term. We expect the results to come starting next year.
On the less positive side, we have the packaging segment, which has seen challenges in terms of volumes throughout Eastern Europe. This manifests itself into lower thicknesses in packaging material, which led to lower tonnage, which somehow impacted even the bottom line and delayed this business segment becoming profitable. We are taking active measures both in terms of operation as well as in terms of staffing and especially management staff in this business in order to get it to where it should be, namely in a consistently profitable area. In TeraGlass, we see, on one hand, an increase in sales, especially domestic sales, as it is our policy to reduce dependency on large DIY chains. We still have to work on improving the profitability of this business segment. Last but not least, compounds have a performance somehow in line with last year. We have an increase in exports.
We have a somehow slower domestic market, but still a consistent segment which contributes positively to our bottom line. Another good news, which we see as manifesting the implementation of our strategy to reduce dependency on the Romanian market in general and Romanian infrastructure market in particular, is the increase of external sales, which means both the sales from our subsidiaries as well as exports from the mother company to foreign markets. They almost doubled from RON 100 million to close to RON 200 million, and they reach a percentage of 35% of the total turnover. This was due in part to an increase in volumes of 18%, but also with the adding of the new businesses, which in all contributed to a 30% increase of the turnover. What's more encouraging, a 74% increase of EBITDA, an EBITDA margin of 8.5% overall, including the losses in the packaging sector.
If we look just at the installation segment, we went back into the double-digit profitability margin. We are close to 11%, and we are well on track to reaching, let's say, the usual profitability levels of close to 14% that this business should bring. We have a positive net result as opposed to a loss in the first half of last year, even though we took a significant hit from the forex, which amounted to a cost of close to RON 5 million. We still managed to be in the positive, even considering that forex impact. The reasons why we grew is because we grew volumes and because we purchased the new businesses. The volume increase contributes to 14% of the total increase, and the new business contributes to 16%.
We had also a depreciation of our sales prices, not margins, sales prices, because of the decrease of raw material costs. The polymer market had been suffering from poor demand throughout Europe, especially Western Europe. Therefore, polymer producers have decreased prices in the first half of this year versus last year. We were also forced to take some of this price decrease and get it in the market. Again, the gross margin has actually increased because we saved some of it for ourselves. I would like to point out that we have a tighter situation in the packaging market, especially in the blown film business, TeraBio Pack , and to a lesser extent, Optiplast from Croatia, where we saw decreases in volumes.
One of the reasons being that we also shut down the Năsăud factory, which had its share of volumes, but also because of shrinking demand in the market in this period for this type of packaging. We are trying to switch more and more to biodegradable packaging by going to tenders organized by large retail chains and increasing our geographical footprint. I would say that the packaging segment continues to be the most challenging segment in our business portfolio, and will continue to be so for the next quarters. However, the fact that we are benefiting from the experience of Optiplast from Croatia, which translates into better recipes, into a larger market access, into even personnel, Croatian staff working for the Romanian companies, is creating a plus and is easing our way towards getting this business into the profitable area.
Now, for details in the financial segment and into the other aspects of the financial reporting, I will hand it over to Bogdan, our CFO, who's going to go through the details, and then I will be back for the Q&A.
Hello to everybody. Okay. We started the discussion on the financial performance with the results of the first semester versus the similar period in 2024. The net sales, the consolidated net sales, are reaching RON 552 million with an increase of 29% compared to H1 2024. In terms of the main reasons for the increase in sales and also the increase in expenses is the consolidation of the newly acquired companies in 2024 and 2025. In 2025, we are consolidating for two quarters the results of Freiler Group versus 2024, where we consolidated only in quarter two. We also consolidate two quarters of the results of Optiplast, which was acquired in November 2024. In H1 2024, we didn't have any contributions from Optiplast. In H1 2025, we are consolidating two months of the results of newly acquired Aquatica Experience Group.
All the expenses, as you can see in the table presented, all the expenses are increasing significantly, but we can see the operating cost is only increasing with 27% versus the previous year and versus the increase of 30% in the operating income. This is generating a strong positive EBITDA of almost RON 47 million versus RON 27 million in the same period of 2024, meaning an increase of 74%. In terms of EBITDA margin, we present an increase by 2.2% compared to H1 2024. The net result is a positive and strong one. We have RON 3.4 million versus a loss of RON 6.6 million in 2024. Now, we are presenting the financial performance in the first semester versus the budget. As you can see, we are way above the budget for this period.
We have the RON 552 million versus a budgeted turnover of RON 488 million , meaning an increase of 13%. In terms of EBITDA, we also have a positive evolution. We present this RON 47 million versus RON 42 million budgeted for this period, generating an increase of 12%. The net result is a profit of RON 3.4 million , but we need to detail this. We had in this first semester of 2025, we had a significant impact from the financial result. Here, we have two components. One, the normal interest expense, which is in line with last year, but we also had an impact from forex, from the depreciation of the national currency versus euro, which generated a loss of RON 4.3 million . With all this impact, we are still presenting a profit of RON 3.4 million for this first semester.
In terms of financial performance on segments, we can see that the installation and recycling segment is contributing decisively in the increase in turnover and also in the profitability. RON 402 million turnover versus RON 307 million in the same period of 2024. This is generating an operational result, an operational profit of RON 25 million versus only RON 12 million in 2024, and an EBITDA of RON 23 million versus RON 27 million in 2024. As I said, this is a strong evolution, an increase of 56% versus the similar period in 2024. Also, in terms of EBITDA margin, we are increasing from 8.9% to 10.6%. This evolution is generated mainly by the consolidation of Wolfgang Freiler Group, the consolidation of Aquatica Experience Group, and the normal evolution in the production and sales of the installation segment.
For compounds, we present an increase, but it's a relatively small increase of only 4% compared to last year in terms of turnover and a 24% increase in EBITDA. This is basically showing a stabilized segment with a strong increase and a strong financial position. In terms of the windows segment, the activity was mainly impacted by the reassessment of projects, which generated a delay in collection of receivables and also a delay in launching new products. This affected the financial performance in the first semester. With all this evolution, we are still presenting an increase in terms of turnover of 6%, and we are still presenting a small but positive EBITDA. This, again, is showing a stable segment in terms of sales and in terms of profitability.
For flexible packaging, mainly due to the consolidation of Optiplast Croatia, we present an increase of 51% of the turnover up to RON 75 million versus almost RON 50 million in 2024. The EBITDA, it's an improved one. It's still in the negative area, RON 1.5 million loss, negative EBITDA versus RON 6 million negative EBITDA in the same period of 2024. This is due to the optimization of the expenses, mainly the expenses. Moving forward to the balance sheet, I will approach the significant variation in the balance sheet accounts. As you can see, we have a significant increase in the working capital. This is mainly due to the increase in sales. In order to support the increase in sales, we have higher inventory levels up to RON 244 million , increase in receivables up to RON 293 million, which is partially compensated by the increase in the trade payables.
The net working capital is basically increasing from RON 227 million to RON 294 million. Comparing to the sales, it's an increase of 4% from 25% up to 29%. Obviously, this increase in the working capital, together with the CapEx payments, with the CapEx investments, had to be financed. We are presenting an increase in bank loans up to the level of RON 383 million . In terms of average ratio, although in this moment we are at 5.2, the methodology of computation is taking into account the EBITDA for the second semester in 2024 and the first semester in 2025. It is presenting a decrease from 5.6 up to 5.2, but taking into account the budget and our expectations for the second semester of 2025, we are expecting leverage level below four for the entire year 2025.
Moving forward to the cash flow, this is synchronized with what I have presented earlier in the balance sheet. We can see that we are using the cash flow for the working capital, the impact being RON 90 million , the main component being the net impact of working capital of RON 73 million, which together with the payments for the fixed assets acquisition had to be financed. We are presenting drawings from loans, bank loans of RON 75 million in line with what we have drawn in 2024. As I mentioned, a significant impact is coming from the cash outflow of RON 33 million for the acquisition of capital expenditure investments. This was the cash outflow for the first semester of 2025. For the entire year of 2025, we have budgeted CapEx of RON 65 million .
Another impact that we are expecting in the second semester is the collection of a subsidy of RON 6.5 million for the photovoltaic power plant. This is the financial performance. I hand over to my colleague for the question sections.
Thank you very much. Since we don't have any questions prior to the conference call, I suggest that we go into questions now. Feel free to use the chat or just raise your hand and ask any questions you want. We're getting off the hook that easy. No questions. Okay. In this case, thank you very much. We are in touch via our IR channels, and we'll meet back in three months' time for the third quarter results. Thank you very much. Have a nice afternoon and be in touch. Bye-bye.