Good morning everyone, thank you for joining us today. I'm Geoffroy Raskin from Investor Relations. I'm pleased to have with us Laurent Nielly, our CEO, and Geert Peeters, our CFO, to present the results for the first quarter of 2026. Let me remind you of the safe harbor regarding forward-looking statements. I will not read it out loud, I will assume you will have duly noted it. With that cleared up, Laurent, over to you.
Thanks, Geoff. Good afternoon, everyone. I will provide a few introductory comments on the quarter. Geert will cover the financial analysis, and then I will come back to give you a few thoughts on what we see and also on our strategic review progress. Overall, Q1 was a relatively soft quarter. Not a surprise, as we had indicated in February that our results this quarter would be in line with Q4 of last year and thereby down versus a relatively strong first quarter in 2025. Importantly, we delivered on what we expected. Revenue was down like 4% like-for-like compared to a year ago because of weaker market demand in baby and feminine care, even if in retailer brands, we slightly outperformed the market overall, and because of some lower sales in contract manufacturing, especially in the U.S., as we had expected.
The adjusted EBITDA was in line with Q4, but lower than the previous year. Margin came down by two percentage points due to the impact of lower volumes and higher net costs, which we partially mitigated through continued savings efforts in operation and in SG&A. The lower adjusted EBITDA this quarter drove the last 12 months adjusted EBITDA down, which led to a slight increase in the leverage ratio despite the reduction in net financial debt. Now, if one looks at the past five quarters, reported revenue on the left of the slide and adjusted EBITDA on the right of it is fair to say that our performance is still not where we expect it to be. Yet we see a few encouraging sign on our journey to stabilize the business. Adult care, our largest category, continues to grow, and we are ramping up more capacity to fuel future growth.
This quarter, adult care growth was not enough to offset decline in baby and fem care demand. With this lower demand versus Q4 and the geopolitical instability started early March, delivering stable adjusted EBITDA is a good sign of our resilience and an important consideration to face the rest of the year. I'll come back to this later, and we'll pass now over to Geert for more detailed financial analysis.
Thanks a lot, Laurent. Also from my side, good morning to everyone. In the following slides, I will focus on the year-over-year evolution of revenue and adjusted EBITDA, and will, of course, also comment on the debt and leverage evolution over the quarter. First, the revenue on the next slide. The waterfall shows the evolution of revenue from Q1 2025 to Q1 2026. The combined price and mix impact was largely stable, meaning that the 4% like-for-like decrease is entirely linked to lower volumes. Let's then look at baby care, feminine care, and adult care. First, the baby care volumes, they were down 11% versus a strong Q1 2025. You might remember that last year, the Q1 sales were pushed up in the first quarter due to concerns on U.S. tariffs, which then reversed in Q2.
The market demands in baby care also decreased by mid-single digits in Europe and even by high single digits for retailer brands. Also that's the case in North America. Overall, we did somewhat better than the market in this market segment, thanks to growth in baby pants in Europe and also new and previously secured contracts that are ramping up in North America. We could then say in North America that the baby care retailer sales, they were growing year-on-year. On contract manufacturing, you remember from February that the sales in North America came down, this is as we anticipated, and that's due to the mix of market share losses by our customers and some contract exits. We also, in our sales in overseas markets, they were substantially lower, but this is largely because of plant contract exits.
Feminine care, that volume reduced by 4%. This is largely in line with the market evolution. As Laurent said, adult care volumes were positive. They were growing again 2%, reflecting sustained growing demand in the retail channel and stable demand in healthcare in Europe, where we have a very strong position. Forex had a 1% adverse impact, mainly due to the U.S. dollar depreciation of about 10% year on year. Let's now explore the evolution of the adjusted EBITDA as compared to last year. In the next slide, you find the bridge that shows the decrease of adjusted EBITDA from Q1 2025 to Q1 2026, which is a drop of more than 20%. The largest impact comes from the previously discussed lower revenue, which led to a decrease of EUR 8 million.
Including this volume effect, the net costs increased by EUR 5 million with different net of saving initiatives. Let me take each of them step by step. First of all, the index. Although the index evolution had a positive impact on fluff, SAP and nonwoven backsheets and packaging materials were more expensive, and that's on the year end resulting in slightly negative impacts. If we then look to the other operating costs, they increased as well, linked to the continued inflation of salaries and services, but we're making good progress on gradually improving the supply chain efficiencies, which impacted Ontex from Q2 last year onwards, with still some limited leftover impact. Then, of course, the rising oil prices. They have resulted in higher transportation costs, which is a cost category where the cost pass-through occurs almost immediately.
I should say in Q1, the impact was still very limited. We have the operating efficiency programs that we run. They continue with the full year impact of initiatives launched last year and several new ones. Also, this quarter, a large part of the cost increases were offset by initiatives in procurement, manufacturing, logistics, and innovation. We started up a specific saving program to streamline the SG&A organization. The first results already materialize, and they offset the inflationary pressure on salaries and services. You will see in the bridge also the Forex. There is a translational Forex impact, but this is very limited and positive. That results in an adjusted EBITDA of EUR 30 million, which is identical to Q4 2025.
The margin thereby stands at 9.1%, which is 2.2 percentage points lower than last year, reflecting less fixed cost absorption due to lower volumes and net inflation of costs. Let's now move from the P&L to the balance sheet on the next slide. Our net financial debt reduced over the quarter from EUR 577 million to EUR 550 million. We finally managed to repatriate the cash that we held in Algeria following the divestment of our activities there in 2024. You remember at the end of 2025, that cash amount had to be reclassified from cash to financial assets on the balance sheet, they are now back to us and in the cash pool and used to repay part of the RCF.
This allowed us then to significantly reduce the position of RCF below 30% while keeping an amount of cash of a bit more than EUR 70 million. Our liquidity position, and we define it as the sum of the cash and the undrawn parts of the RCF, thereby strengthened further from EUR 240 million to EUR 262 million over the quarter. The leverage ratio ended at 3.36x. This is, of course, within the agreed covenant level, and as Laurent will explain in the outlook, we expect it to gradually decrease in the coming quarters. Laurent, now back to you.
Thanks, Geert. Let me now come back on some of the elements impacting our business and what we expect and will do in the coming months. Demand side, while slightly worse than expected in Q1, the assumptions are largely the continuity of what we discussed in the past few quarters. Adult care remains robust. Growth in the past six months is a bit lower than in recent years in both retail and healthcare institutional channels, which indicates that the economic reality also has an impact on the category, but we do not think it changed the mid to long-term attractiveness of it. On the other hand, demand in baby is to continue to be relatively weak in Europe and North America, the combination of demographics and lower income consumer sentiments.
We also see high activity from branded players in baby, exacerbating the effect on the retailer brands, whether promotional pressure in Europe or new players growing fast in the U.S. It is fair to say that we do not see that worsening, and even in Europe, we see a little bit less pressure as of April. Overall, Ontex market share opportunity, which we had identified and already started to address last year, remain. On the cost side, however, the geopolitical situation is likely to put temporary pressure on margins. The energy crisis drive oil, energy, transport, and raw material prices up, partially from supply pressure on some material, especially for oil derivatives, which are very present in our product. We have strong supply chain and strong procurement teams.
We have protections through strategic supplier relations, long-term contracts, we can count on a broad base of qualified suppliers. Like in 2022, we are taking actions to mitigate the impact of this new disruption. We have several levers, whether volume and mix where we can, cost-out initiatives, also by working with our customers on pass-through pricing actions. We will fully recover the cost impact over time, yet with some timing delay. The situation is relatively fluid, our view can change every day, which changes by the day, by the week. Based on our current assumption, despite the adverse market events, we're maintaining our outlook at this stage as presented on the next slide.
As I just mentioned, we're maintaining our outlook on the basis of our latest projections, which assume a gradual de-escalation of the energy crisis in the following months. Adjusted EBITDA to improve 10% for the full year, with an improvement expected quarter by quarter. We expect to turn free cash flow positive again, and the combination of both is to lead our leverage ratio down from the current about 3.4x at the end of March to a lower level, not to exceed 3x by the end of the year. Before we take your questions, I wanted to spend a moment on our strategic review and some of the initiatives we're accelerating. As you remember, we launched a strategic review last January. The board formed a strategy committee with clear objective to drive sustained value creation.
External advisors have been appointed to help review our businesses in North America and Europe. The diagnostic phase is mostly complete. It is helping solidifying some of the elements we set in our three-year plan. It's also identifying opportunity to accelerate execution, especially in cost improvement areas. We aim to finalize the strategic review in the coming months, and we will share more by our next earnings call. In parallel, we are already moving in execution mode on several work stream. First, we have accelerated the plan to streamline the organization and aligning it with the current scope of our business and the market perspective. We aim to reduce the number of position in SG&A by 15%, and this within the next 12 - 18 months.
Second, we are right-sizing our production capacity faster, adapting it to the new demand reality in both Europe and North America, including investing in training and set up to increase flexibility of the workforce, allowing us to redeploy our staff where capacity is added, namely in adult and in baby pants. The right-sizing includes our decision to cease baby diaper production in Australia by the end of the year. Third, we have launched a new set of initiatives to improve working capital management, aiming to drive the working capital percentage of revenue down by another 50 basis points, while of course, preserving our service level to customers. As you can see, our clear focus is on the short term priorities and challenges. The initiative I just mentioned, our continuous efficiency improvements, the management of our supply and pricing actions.
We're also working to complete our strategic review in order to position our portfolio back to profitable growth in the years to come. You will hear more of that again by our Q2 results call. This closes our prepared remarks. Geert and I are now ready to take your questions.
Thank you, Laurent. Geert for the Q&A session. If you wish to ask a question, please dial the pound key followed by five to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial the pound key followed by six. Please limit your questions two at a time, please. That makes it easier for us to follow. The first question comes from Karine Elias. Karine, your line should be open.
Hi, thanks a lot for the presentation. Thanks for taking my question. I had two, they're kind of, you know, linked in a way. I'm just looking at your guidance for the full year, obviously, the EBITDA growth of 10% is based on a largely stable sales volume. I was wondering whether if you could comment on that for Q2. Is that what you're seeing at the moment? Maybe if you could provide a little bit more color on how you expect Q2 to shape up would be very helpful. Thank you.
Thank you, Karine. This is Laurent here. Obviously, we cannot, and we will not provide guidance for Q2 per se. On your question on the top line, we see relatively stable sales in Europe. We feel pretty confident on this side. You remember as well that because of the phasing of some of the sales we have quarter by quarter, we also see a good opportunity to have higher sales in Q2 in North America versus what we had in Q1. Overall, the statement of full year stable revenue, we feel, is the right basis for the construction of our full year outlook.
That's helpful. Thank you.
All right. Thank you, Karine. The next question comes from Wim Hoste, from KBC. Wim, your line should be open.
Yes. Good morning. Two questions from my side, please. First, on cost savings, I was wondering if you could provide a little bit more granularity on the mentioning of 15% job cuts in SG&A. How much savings does that represent? How many positions will be cut? Will there be other additional savings beyond this SG&A exercise? If you can offer a little bit of clarity on that. Another question would be on the evolution of the raw material basket and energy prices.
If you can provide a bit of granularity on how we should expect that to evolve in Q2, Q3 specifically, and what kind of pricing increases have you announced in the market or implemented in the market, and how fast will these come? If you can talk a little bit around that would be also helpful. Thank you.
Okay. Wim, this is Laurent. I will address your first question on the SG&A. Geert will provide you more granularity on the cost side on the materials. You know, our goal from SG&A, our organization perspective is to adjust our organization to the new scope of our business after all the divestment that we've done, to reflect what we see in the market reality of where we have the growth and where we need to invest and where we have less demand and maybe we have to streamline our organization.
When we presented last December, the ambition to generate a new total cost saving program over the next three years, we had indicated that it will be broadened from just cost of sales to also include SG&A. What you see here more is a little bit more transparency on what we aim at doing. At this stage, you will understand that we are not gonna translate that into a number of people, a number of position or by country, 'cause this is something that we deploy in our organization, and we want to do it in a way that is respectful for all our employees. Now, on the cost, Geert will provide some more.
Yeah. Hello, Wim. On the raw material cost and the overall cost increases, couple of elements. First of all, of course, mainly in the raw materials, we will have quite some impact. We have a lot of the input material that we use are oil derivatives, so that means they're based on polyethylene, polypropylene, that means that the oil price impact the indices. As you know, the indices are the driver of our contracts. Of course, that always comes with a delay. Typically, it's a quarter delay, that means timing is very important in the whole story. I come back to timing immediately, because apart from raw materials, there's of course other categories like mainly transport costs.
Of course, we're talking about much smaller amounts, because the percentage of our cost of goods sold is much more limited as compared to the raw materials. There might be some indirect impacts on salary and, which is not yet not at all clear at this moment. We added up all that, based on the latest visibility we have in the market and made our new projections. Yeah, the timing is very important. As I said, first of all, transport, it kicks in immediately, because you have immediately surcharges on your fuel. Raw materials, it had not yet an impact on Q1.
We expect it will start having an impact from mid Q2, mainly also from having a more full impact in June, July. As you have seen in our outlook, which is important, we noticed that the market in general and we follow that expectation, is that in the crisis will ease, will deescalate during the summer. That means that in Q4, and that's also what we see in the forecast we get on indices, that we see some easing of those indices. Of course, not to the normal level yet, but definitely not to the level of Q3. We took all that together and we mentioned about pricing actions we are going to take.
Yeah, we're not going to mention, of course, any percentages. For us, most important is that we align that increase with the size of the cost, and that means we have to be very agile, because that cost, it's constantly evolving on a weekly basis. We will adapt to that so that we can keep the net impact as low as possible. The net impact will of course mainly be a time delay, which we try to keep as limited as possible. I hope that answers your question, Wim.
Okay. Yes, more or less. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Wim. The next question comes from Rebecca Clements from JP Morgan. Rebecca, your line is open.
Hi there. Thanks for taking my question. Mine are kind of more cash flow related. How committed are you to your CapEx for the year, would you be able to pull back on that if you felt like free cash flow was starting to look weak or pressured a bit around your leverage covenant? That's my first question. The second question is around, you alluded to working capital improvements. I was wondering what levers you're going to be pulling or how you would be improving that working capital, what mechanism you'd be using for that?
Okay. Thanks, Rebecca, for that question. Cash flow is, for us, crucial, as you know. We put also guidance on it that our guidance is set to be above zero. Of course, for the coming years, it should become positive again and create value. Short term, because of the pressure we have, we still believe we will be close to zero with the cash flow. Now, what are the levers we have? Because that's more or less the question you're asking. Of course, in cash, in CapEx, we always have a lever because it's we as a management, we decide what's needed in CapEx or not.
I should say, nevertheless, we, at the same time, we're continue to ramp up capacity in adults, as Laurent explained during the presentation. There's some commitments that we have taken, which are important for the growth of the company that we will continue. There, we might reduce CapEx a little bit. We want to keep it limited. For us, the more important lever is the one of the working capital, as you mentioned, because there we still see that we mainly in inventory, we still have quite some room. Where does it come from? Yeah, different things.
First of all, in North America, of course, we had the business that we ramped up with two big contracts after summer last year that came with quite some inventory, and we are now stabilizing that the inventory level and going to a more normal level. We took already quite some correction in Q1 because we take it as an important action to bring the level of inventory in the U.S. to a target level, which is for us in line with Europe. Now we have structural continuous improvements programs. For example, they're all different type of things on complexity of material, on phasing in of new projects and phasing out of old products.
There's a whole team working on it, and we have quite some working capital focus throughout the organization and a dedicated team to look at all the improvements we can do.
Thank you. Can I just clarify? You had a footnote on your slide about the RCF, your test where the covenant is 3.5x leverage, but you have a note about 3.75x at the bottom of that slide.
Yeah.
What was the 3.75x note referring to, please?
The covenant is 3.5x, we believe in our guidance to be below the 3.5x. From the position we have now, the 3.36x, to gradually decrease further towards the end of the year. Covenants, we're based on the current information comfortable on that. What we mentioned is in our contract, we have semi-annual test of covenants, so at half year and at the end of the year. We have one possibility to breach the covenant until the level of 3.75x. We don't believe we need it, if it would happen, then it can go up one time until 3.75x. That's the meaning.
Was that always in your covenant or was that something that you negotiated for this year, the 3.75x one time?
No, it's not separately negotiated. It was part of the refinancing. The refinancing we did at end of 2024 on the RCF, it was included in that contract. It's not something we specifically negotiated for the current year. It's part of the overall contract.
Okay. Thank you for clarifying.
Thank you, Rebecca. As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial the pound key followed by five. The next person on the line is Maxime Stranart from ING. Maxime, over to you.
Hi. Good morning. Hope you can hear me well. Two questions from my side. First, looking at volume growth, I think it's the fifth quarter in a row now that volume growth is negative. How confident are you that you're now turning the tide? Obviously baby care is still in the doldrums in Q2. You're lacking ear comps, just want to feel your confidence in being back to volume growth in Q2. Secondly, I think echoing some questions already, just coming back on that, how confident are you in the phasing of the EBITDA guidance for the full year? Obviously, if I understand you correctly, you expect full year margin pressure, I guess Q2 will still be pressurized. Just want to understand how back and loaded the guidance is.
That would be all for me. Thank you.
All right. Maxime, Laurent, thank you for your questions. On the volume growth, there was two factors impacting it in the first quarter, right? Versus prior year. There was baby, as you mentioned, and which has been declining for a number of quarters to absolutely correct because of the overall category being in decline in Europe, as well as some lower sales in our contract manufacturing business in North America that more than offset the growth that we had in retail brand, right? We are ending that cycling through the decline, the sharp decline in contract manufacturing in Europe. In the U.S., sorry.
We're gonna be now in a position where it was already in our base, and so therefore, we should not see the same level of decline, sequentially, from a baby perspective. The way we built our perspective is that then after that, the ex- growing exposure to adult care, which is structurally exposed to growth, would, you know, allow us to offset, maybe some structural decline, in baby. In order to not decline in baby, you would have to go and be much more aggressive on share gains, which we have the plan, but we are very careful on how we look at it because obviously, we want to be careful about gaining profitable contract and not contract that don't lead to the good use of, you know, employed assets or capital.
The second factor that impacted our volume specifically for Q1 is on feminine care, we exited some contract in North America on the back half of last year, we still have this year-on-year decline based on contract manufacturing, right? Those are the two ones. We're, you know, based on those where we are confident that as the year progress, the evolution of our volume will become more favorable. That's one of the key factor behind our EBITDA progression as we progress in the year. Obviously, when you can go back and produce more volume and you have the set capacity, then you become more efficient in the way you can absorb fixed cost. You raised a point which is on Q2, which we're not gonna provide any specific guidance because frankly, we, you know, we are the cost evolution evolves.
If you listen to what Geert said, which is there is usually a small gap into our pricing versus cost, then yes, you know, we think that there might be some margin pressure on Q2, and that's what we're working through. I hope I helped on your questions. It does. Thank you.
All right. Thank you, Maxime. The next question comes from Fernand De Boer from Degroof Petercam . Fernand, over to you.
Yes. Good morning, and thank you for taking my questions. I would like to come back on the cost acceleration because you're mentioning 15%, which I think is more than some average around EUR 600 million. If you then look at your cash out for this year, you actually said incremental EUR 10 million, but that's then only for this year. Could you expect much more restructuring charges and then the cash outflow in 2027, 2028? I'm a little bit puzzled about your remark on Australia to cease production because I thought that actually all the production was produced for Australia, was produced in Europe and then exported to Australia. Could you elaborate a little bit on that one?
Yeah. Fernand, let me take your Australia point, then Geert will come back on and clarify the other questions. In Australia, we were producing baby diapers, friend, only this category were produced locally. It was a small operation, we were no longer competitive from a cost side versus some of the alternative sourcing for some of the customers. What we've decided is to cease operation of baby diaper, to continue with the business, absolutely. That business is focused on growing categories where we have a right to win and sourced from our European factories. Your understanding is correct on that front. Now I'm gonna pass it on to Geert on your cost question.
Yeah. On the restructuring charges, I don't know if I fully understood your question, but on restructuring, what I can say, we, last time, we explained that we have another EUR 10 million we expect as restructuring costs in 2026. I can go to 2027, 2028 afterwards, but on 2026, an extra EUR 10 million apart from the cost we still had related to the Belgian footprint, which had already an accrual two years before. In summer of 2024, we took that accrual. That extra EUR 10 million that I already explained a couple of months before, which is in our budgets, in our plans, that we maintain. That also means that the streamlining of the organization, as Laurent said, it's something we were already working on.
For us, it's becoming more concrete, and we give more information about it now. It's part of that restructuring cost. Also, the other elements that Laurent mentioned on right sizing of plants, it's included in that EUR 10 million. For 2027, 2028, we don't give any guidance, what we mentioned before on the restructuring, what we see over a longer period, based on what we know now, we're talking about the same numbers. We will see from the strategic review that on which we give more information after Q2, if there's anything more specific we have to tell about that to clarify. Does it answer your question, Fernand?
Yes, partly, because if I understand correctly, you say at the end of this year, of 2025, you had around 4,900 employees active. Now you say the coming 12 months, 15% will go. Let's say 700.
No, it's a 15%. Fernand, the 15% is on SG&A. That's what we specified, right? It's not on the total population. That's maybe where the misunderstanding is.
Yeah. Okay. Firstly, it says number of SG&A positions. Okay. Fine. Fine then. All right. Thank you.
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Very good. Yeah. Otherwise, it would be another magnitude. You're absolutely correct.
Okay, Fernand?
Yeah. I'm fine. Thank you.
Okay. The last question comes from Charles Eden from UBS. Charles, over to you.
Hi. Thanks for taking my question. It's just a bit of a clarification on the free cash flow and more specifically, the working capital comments. Obviously, there's gonna be a sharp amount of inflation in the oil derivatives already coming through, and obviously, that will sit into the inventories at year end. Are we right to assume what you're saying is you should be able to make improvements sufficient enough to mean that your absolute working capital is lower year on year despite that inflation? Is that not the correct way of interpreting the sort of slide 12 that shows the working capital management sort of contributing to positive free cash flow? I'm just kinda, it seems quite ambitious in the context of the magnitude of oil-based inflation, which we may be seeing if the conflict is sustained. Thank you.
Okay. The 0.5% as compared to sales, you have to see it. You can translate it as in an absolute impact. That means that the current level we have of working capital, it amounts typically around EUR 100 million that we believe, if you take that percentage as compared to sales, that we can reduce it with 0.5%. If you refer to the inflation, we took that assumption into account. If we look at how our working capital is organized, we also believe we can manage that within that percentage.
Yeah. It's quite ambitious, you're right. Remember also that we're deploying pricing actions, and so what you see on inflation from an inventory perspective, you should see it capture into sales uplift as well, right?
Mm-hmm.
Got it. I just from previous cycles, sometimes the pricing is quite difficult and the inflation in the inventories is unavoidable. I'm just trying to sort of get a sense of where you're coming from.
Yeah.
That was clear. Thank you.
Yeah. Thank you.
All right. That ends up the questions. Laurent, over to you.
All right. Well, thank you, everyone for attending our call and for your questions. I want to summarize a couple of key themes that were presented. We had a relatively soft quarter as we expected. Importantly, we were able to deliver on what we had said, and a bit softer demand and some new geopolitical disruptions didn't get in the way of our ability to deliver, which I take it as an encouraging sign. This gives us confidence that we will be able to navigate the coming few months of inflation and pass through pricing with all the uncertainties that it entails, of course. We have demonstrated that we could do it in 2020 to 2023, and I'm confident we will do it again.
The strategic review is progressing with focus on cost, but also on completing our plans to return the portfolio to a profitable growth and to secure sustained value creation. More of that will be shared in our Q2. Finally, I am thankful to our team for their hard work and the commitment that they show to our company. Have a great rest of the day. Thank you.