Hello, and welcome everyone to our 2025 annual results webinar. We will start today with a presentation from our CEO, Luc Tack, and our CFO, Miguel de Potter. After that, we will give some opportunity to some of our analysts to ask live questions, and after that, we have some time for questions that are in our Q&A. If you have any questions, feel free to put them in the Q&A chat box. Thank you. With this, I hand over to Luc.
Good morning, good afternoon, and welcome everybody to our annual results reporting on the year 2025. Thank you for tuning in. Boy, I must say, you know, it's been a rocky ride lately. You know, sometimes I started working when I was 18, so that's a little while ago. So the way we have today within Europe, you know, sometimes I feel even that we're in South America, where I had the crises in the 1980s and the 1990s, one after the other. Now we're into our third crisis in Europe. In 2020, we had COVID, then we had 2022 Ukraine, and now we have Iran. Each time, quite disruptive to businesses, causing a lot of discomfort.
Having said that, we are always with our feet on the ground, you know, so we don't panic lightly. In light of that, I feel that as a CEO of our company, that we will be able also to navigate this now Middle East storm. Of course, it is affecting us and our company on different fields and in different ways. Sometimes it has a positive effect, sometimes it has a negative effect. Every effect that we have, we have no idea how long it will last and what it will be.
Therefore, I'm sure some of you people ask questions and we understand you ask questions, but you will also understand that we don't have the crystal ball on how long the Suez Canal is gonna be blocked, how long energies are gonna be limited. You know, all of that, we know as much as you know, which means nothing. Having said that, you know, as a company, what do we focus on then? We focus on what we can control. There's no point in us focusing on stuff we do not control. We must focus on what we can control. Yesterday, we had a monthly board meeting, and we debated and a lot of all of this.
At the end of the day, you know, and that will also be the guidance that you will be getting from Miguel, et cetera, we find that last year we improved our EBITDA with EUR 22 million, which is nice. Would we like to do that again this year? Of course. Today, we cannot guide you towards that. We are guiding you more results for this year in line with with last year. Then we will guide you further through the year as we see more clarity and as you will see more clarity and as everybody will see more clarity. Again, you know, in this turbulent world, our company is fit to sail these storms and to come out of it.
Anyway, that's the feeling I have about this. Let me kick off by telling you a little bit what we have been doing and which have been key events. Tessenderlo Group is signing a JV to combine our collagen and gelatin business with Darling. The picture that you see here was the signature in Houston of the binding agreement. Of course, now we are going through the regulatory stuff and we are working with authorities. We are answering questions and we hope that the transaction will close in 2026. Again, that is not in our power.
We need to satisfy every authority and give them the time to answer. Of course, I'm sure you can appreciate that since this is a global business, there are many, many countries involved, and some of them have different time horizons than others. Tessenderlo already opens a new plant in Ohio. I was in the U.S. up to seven days ago. I have also been traveling. I was in Phoenix. I was in Houston. I was at different places. I'm pleased to say that today we get a market confirmation that the Defiance plant is a good investment. Customers are complimenting us on making that investment and are also happy that the product is now locally available.
I think you should never underestimate the logistics that come into our business. By having a plant within the market where people can come and get a product is definitely further supporting our development. This is a minor company, a smaller company that we acquired, which is Osterwalder AG. What is Osterwalder doing? Osterwalder is making powder presses. It's unbelievable if you see the technology, because in our company, Melotte, we do 3D printing, and there you build up a piece layer by layer out of powder. Here, the process is completely the opposite.
You take powder, I'm sorry, and you put a high press on it, and because of very complicated molds, you can get a gear out of it for a car or whatever. It has been a company in difficulties. It has not been an easy journey so far. Again, I'm not gonna bore you too much about it, but we bought a Swiss company, and six weeks later, we were told that we had, I forget now how much, 40% or 50%.
39%.
39% of duties shipping to the U.S., our biggest market. This was again the perfect storm. Because of this, like I said, you know, sometimes this makes me feel like when I was in the 1980s and the 1990s, when I was a lot younger and looking nicer than today. But it still gives me the same sentiment. Anyhow, that's behind us now. We are learning to know more about the company, where the strengths and the weaknesses are, and that will be a continuing story. I'm very happy to announce to you the acquisition of the Metam labels in United States and Canada from Eastman.
I must tell you, the Metam has been the origin of our crop protection business by a first acquisition, which must be 20 years now. We are further strengthening our position there in the United States. We are very pleased that we were able to do this acquisition. Indeed, we did a share repurchase program. Also a lot of you guys suggested us to do that. We believe that this share repurchase program is contributing to the share price for our investors on the long term, as if you buy shares, at the end of the day, future profits will be divided by less shares. At the end, it should support earnings per share going forward.
Events after the balance date. Indeed, here we have the acquisition of the Cinis plant. To give you a little bit background on Cinis. Cinis is a company that was launched on the stock exchange in Stockholm, and that was planned to have a very bright future by taking off sodium sulfate from the multibillion dollar or euro investment of Northvolt in Sweden. Some of you probably followed that event there, and you know how that company got into problems, and then consequently also Cinis got into problems. This is enhancing our potassium, which is a core business. I would like to remind everybody that potassium is the second nutrient.
The first nutrient is nitrogen, the second is potassium, and the third one is phosphates. In potassium, we specialize ourselves. We do not play where the big dogs play. We are more always in specialty. That is what we produce. That is SOP. Most of the potassium in the world used is MOP, and MOP is put straight on the field. That's mainly used in areas where there is a lot of rain. As the rain drops out, the chlorides evaporate, and then the potassium goes to the plant. What is SOP? In SOP, we put we pull the chlorides out of the potassium. SOP is meant for dry areas.
Because if in dry areas people would be using MOP, at the end of the day, the soil would become like concrete because of the chlorides that would remain on top of the soil. Our SOP is a perfect solution for Mediterranean areas, for drip irrigation, et cetera. Having said that, of course, in the potassium world, SOP is probably maximum 10% of the volumes used worldwide, where 90% of the application is MOP. We have been producing SOP for a very long time, and we are producing SOP in Ham on our Mannheim furnaces.
Our Mannheim furnaces are working on the basis of sulfur, high temperature, and then we get the chlorides out, which then we further valorize partially in our group to produce ferric chloride, partially shipping to our neighbor plant, Vynova. This is one way of doing it. Cinis is a different process. Cinis is a process which is the Glaserite process, which is a minority technique in the SOP world where we believe we can create opportunity in producing more green because the SOP from the Cinis project will be produced on lower temperature with green energy, which is available abundant in Sweden.
As a byproduct, we will have then also salts available for the market, mainly the icing market, et cetera. This is a new venture for our company. We had been following Cinis for years. We also had been requested to participate in capital increases and what have you last year, et cetera. We thought that was not a good idea, that it was better to wait. I think we did smartly, because now we are 100% owner of the plant at a good price and can now develop this company.
In strengthening our board, you know, we have changed course the last two years, where we have decided that we must bring more industry knowledge into our board. Before, of course, we have always had a very strong board with very good, strong board members. Nowadays, we are choosing more people with in-depth industry knowledge in our board. The first gentleman that came to our board was Sebastià Pons, who is a true agro specialist. Now we are bringing in Béatrice de Taisne , who has a very long-held career with GEA Group, a DAX 40 company in Germany. She's joining us as a non-executive director.
She's been co-opted in the vacancy of Mr. Kaltenegger, who decided to retire last year. There also, we are further strengthening our board in the respect of industry knowledge. This is then taking us to 2025, where I will hand it over to Miguel now to explain to you the results, 2025.
Thank you very much, Luc, and good afternoon, good morning, everyone on the call. I'm happy to be here and present you our results for 2025. Let's go first to our key figures. Our revenues climbed by 4.4% to EUR 1.7 billion going forward in 2025. Our EBITDA grew as well by 8.5% to EUR 288 million compared to last year. You will see that we have a heavy loss for the period of EUR 80 million. Most of it is related to what we call non-recurring cash items and impairments that we have taken through the course of the year, and especially in the second half of the year. I will come back to that in a moment.
Our CapEx amounted to EUR 135 million, about half of which was maintenance CapEx and half of which was growth CapEx. We are basically finishing a big wave of growth CapEx with new plants. You have heard Luc saying that Defiance was fully operational since August, and we continue on that trend. The CapEx guidance for 2026 is in the same range as 2025, albeit it could be a little lower than 2025. The cash flows generating from operating activities was still strong at EUR 225 million for the year. If we exclude FX differences, the growth in EBITDA, and this is for us the prime measurement of our financial strength, is about 10%, 11% going forward.
The group revenue per segment in terms of the distribution is relatively stable when you compare 2025 to 2024. Our Agro division is definitely still the strongest division of the group and also the most profitable for 2025. All the other entities remain relatively similar. When we go into the group EBITDA per segment, excuse me, we see that Agro has grown its EBITDA for the year to EUR 117-118 million. That in Bio-valorization we had a growth as well, but it's maybe a tale of two stories between PB Leiner and Akiolis. I'll come back to that. Unfortunately, Industrial Solutions was not able to materialize any growth. We've had very challenging times in the construction market, especially in Europe and in France in particular, which is definitely difficult for the growth.
Machines & Technologies in the first half of the year, you remember that Picanol had a very strong first half of the year. That is translated into these figures. For T-Power, we have a full year of revenues of RWE under a tolling agreement. When we go into our Agro segment more in detail, I repeat, our Agro segments, these are our Kerley brands. Tessenderlo Kerley international for the international business, and Inc. for the American business. We have as well Violleau, which is our organic fertilizers. Agro segment has a very strong second half of the year, as you can see. Even without, if you take off the one-offs, like the impact of Cinis, which has been contributing to the figures for the first time this year.
Second-half revenues growth of 13% or nearly 14% on the top line. Adjusted EBITDA, as I mentioned, of just short of EUR 118 million, which is a double-digit margin, as we like to see in the Agro segment. We had to take also some impairments in the Agro segment. One impairment was related to some inventory of crop protection products that we have in the U.S. Our second segment, Bio-valorization segment, we have two companies there, PB Leiner, the gelatin and collagen business, as well as Akiolis, which is more our rendering business in Europe. You see here, actually, a tale of two stories. First of all, the rendering has been more positive, contributing to the Bio-valorization segment this year than the gelatin and the collagen.
The gelatin and the collagen within PB Leiner have gone through restructuring. We closed our plant in the U.K. earlier in the year, which was doing bone gelatin. There you see definitely a drop in revenues with less products being sold. We also had an incident in our plant in Argentina, our collagen plant in Argentina, whereby we had to stop production for quite some weeks, and the plant is still not 100% operational, but only, I would say, 75% operational right now. Not fully contributing to the results as we would expect. Just as a reminder, our PB Leiner business is definitely, as Luc mentioned, now up for the merger with the Rousselot business from Darling Ingredients. Industrial Solutions segments, we have three brands there, Dyka, Kuhlmann Europe, and Moleko. Dyka is our pipes and fittings manufacturing.
While you will remember, we had a very stable first half of the year. There has been a significant decrease in the second half of the year, especially on the EBITDA. You see the EBITDA overall is minus 50%, compared to the year before. Several reasons for that. The slowdown in the construction sector, mainly in France, but also in other parts of Europe, have weighed negatively on the results. Secondly, for Kuhlmann and Moleko, the first half was not great, and it continues like that in the second half with even further deterioration of the volumes, mainly. We were able to maintain our margin in both sectors. Machines & Technologies segments, Picanol, Psicontrol, Proferro, and Osterwalder, as well as Melotte, are part of this segment.
You will remember that we had a very strong first half of the year. The second half is in line with the previous year, so less strong, unfortunately. It's also a tale of several stories here. While the weaving machines are currently suffering from the geopolitical environment and the crisis in textile in general, Psicontrol and Proferro, as well as Osterwalder and Melotte, have been able to grow outside of the Picanol Group, meaning that they are now having much more outside revenues than intercompany revenues, while they were just suppliers of the Picanol Group, which is not the case anymore. Brings us to our last segment, T-Power. T-Power has done relatively well in 2025. Relatively well because of much more start stops and much more availability, which gets some bonus payments under the tolling contract with RWE.
A lot of you will ask the question: What will happen with T-Power after RWE? Well, unfortunately, we cannot disclose anything so far. What we can disclose is that we have several options on the table. None of these options is a binding option so far. In the current volatile environment, we will only communicate when a binding option has been done or has been signed. We do believe that on the first of July, there will be a new contract in place for the future of T-Power. Let me walk you through the adjusted EBIT to profit details. As I already mentioned, we took some large impairments and non-cash items in the second half of the year.
First of all, our Tessenderlo Kerley International SOP plant in Ham, it's a very vintage plant, as we call it, with still a big legacy on the phosphate when the Tessenderlo Group was still doing phosphate fertilizers. This plant needs a lot of maintenance and our maintenance and the CapEx has been building up in the book value of the plant, but doesn't really match the value in use of the plant. We were forced to take a EUR 26 million impairment on that particular plant. You will remember as well that when announcing the merger with PB Leiner and Rousselot, the plant of Vilvoorde was typically excluded from the perimeter of the transaction. We therefore have also impaired a big portions of the machinery and assets on the plant in Vilvoorde, which is.
which has been up for sale since the announcement of the transaction. Then we did some other adjustments in our environmental provisions, and here and there, some smaller impairment losses. These amount to EUR 78 million in total. EUR 59 million, nearly EUR 60 million are finance costs. Finance costs that are related to mainly interco loans, intercompany loans between Europe and the U.S., that we have to take on a mark-to-market basis each time we publish our balance sheet. We started with an euro-dollar rate of 1.03, and we ended up the year at 1.175. So mainly the largest portion of this finance cost, EUR 54.4 million, is related to that, and the rest are cash expenses. If we want to do the bridge of the net financial debt, EUR 288 million of EBITDA, what did we mainly do with that?
135 million of CapEx, half of which growth CapEx, half of which stay in business CapEx. So that's a big portion. We also spent 21 million in two acquisitions, one Osterwalder AG, and the second one of the Metam, Eastman, contract. We distributed about EUR 82 million in shareholder value through dividends or through share buyback. Our outlook, Luc already anticipated our outlook. It is in the current market environment for us very difficult to come with a very precise outlook. Do we prefer to play it safe by saying we will be in line? Remember that as from the first of July, the very strong tolling agreement we have with RWE will not be in place anymore.
Being in line with six months of way lowered T-Power left itself, and we never know what will happen with the Strait of Hormuz, with the front in Ukraine, we believe that saying that our full year outlook will be in line with the current figures is already good for us. PB Leiner is fully incorporated in the 2026 outlook, where we don't know when we will be able to close the transaction exactly with Darling Ingredients. Please note that the transaction might also give a capital gain on the merger, at some point with Darling on the basis of PB Leiner. We would like to bring you to another topic.
We have, and you have seen that we have EUR 158 million of cash on our balance sheet, sitting, as of the thirty-first of December. It has been the intention of the group, together with the board, to do and bring a new division or business units to life. The details are still being worked out as we speak, but more an investment vehicle whereby instead of depositing our, cash at the bank at a relatively stable rate, we believe it is better to utilize it to do some smaller investments.
Not only acquisitive M&As for 100%, as you know, Tessenderlo, but we would be inclined and open to smaller ticket investments, maybe some into the extent, small that can be very liquid, and others where we would take a minority position in some larger companies, whereby we would limit ourselves not to the full management of the company, but to board position maybe within those strategic companies.
We have our financial calendar. The annual report is gonna be published on April 1st. That's next week. The annual general meeting of shareholders is May 12th, and our half year figures will be published at the end of August on the 26th. Luc, and I think, Björn, we're gonna take some questions now from the audience.
That's correct. Let me quickly check. I will give some analysts the possibility. I will put them live, and then they can ask their questions. I will start with Christian Faitz as the first one. I'll bring you on the screen. If you can unmute yourself, Christian, you can ask your questions.
Yes. Hi. Thanks, and good afternoon. Yeah, all the best for these difficult times. I mean, you guys need to manage real businesses. We just look at your shares. A couple of questions, please. First of all, how do you see the development and availability of sulfur impacting your SOP business, because I believe something like 40% of global sulfur volumes are passing the Strait of Hormuz? How do you deal with that, maybe in combination with that also higher energy costs for your Mannheim process? That would be my first question. My second question would be the energy situation in general, and if you could tell us a little bit if your positions are hedged into 2026 and potentially 2027. Thanks very much.
Very good, Christian. Thank you very much for your question. Yes. For sulfur shortage, sulfur shortage has been around for quite a while, to be honest, especially the kind of sulfur we need. Luckily enough, we have several types of contracts with various sulfur suppliers long-term. We don't buy a lot of spot sulfur, and we get a guarantee of supply for our facilities around the world. There are some plants that we have in the U.S. that are directly connected to a refinery, and they get sulfur actually piped directly to the plant. It is an issue. The price is definitely an issue, but the availability for us for the moment is less an issue. Well, we don't know how long the crisis will last.
I was reading this morning that some vessels were still sailing through Hormuz. Maybe they will reopen it by next week. That would be one crisis less. Indeed, we're monitoring the situation actively. The energy cost and the energy situation in general for the group, we have several hedge positions for the coming three years, be it on gas or be it on electricity. All hedges and all companies and all plants have different hedging mechanisms because of the various geographies. We don't hedge the same way in the U.S. as we do in Europe. We don't hedge the same way in France as we do in Germany or Belgium, for instance.
I would say that more than half of our portfolio today is currently hedged for 2026, and about 40% is hedged through 2027.
Okay, great. Thank you.
Christian, to add some flavor to that, to be sure. We do have understanding the pricing is of course monthly determined by the index. We are a victim of the index increases or we benefit if indexes are going down. In respect of the energy costs, indeed energy is an important factor in the chemical industry. Since you are a chemical industry expert, I think it is important to say that we, as chemical plant, do not use gas as raw material. Whereas other fertilizer companies on the nitrogen, gas is their raw material. They take the gas, they make the hydrogen. From the hydrogen, they make the ammonia.
From the ammonia, they go on to the UAN or to the urea, right? That is for them a completely different picture than ours. Having said that, of course, your questions on Ham and on Mannheim, which you did visit when you came for our Capital Markets Day, we were grateful that you were there. It helps to always understand it better. It is a plant where we also have exothermic processes, meaning when we make our sulfuric acid, we have steam that is coming available, which is producing electricity. We also have some hedge there for the consumption on our side.
What is, though, more concerning for our Ham plant is that we are connected through a pipes system to Vynova, and Vynova is taking HCl from our plants, from our Mannheim. We pipe it to Vynova, where they then put it into VCM, which is then going into the plastics. You may be aware or you may not be aware, but currently Vynova is under a daughter company of ICIG in Germany. They are cur-
Currently under court protection. That could influence our business in a way that if they cannot take our HCl, that might have an impact on us. We understand that the management is hard working at Vynova to find solutions, but still we want to highlight a little bit that we not only through the Middle East difficulties, we are also having these difficulties of chemical companies which are interconnected with us facing difficult times and making losses. I'm just sharing public information here, but the losses at Vynova since 2023 have been higher, and so that for sure has an impact. I think you will understand a little bit what has been happening to us.
The impairment. Why do we need to take an impairment? We need to take an impairment because our earnings do not support our capital employed into the business. We do have a problem there in respect of competitiveness of the business. Now, our colleague in the ExCom, Sandra Hoeylaerts, who is our Chief Transformation Officer, has also been there at the plant. We are engaging in constructive discussions also with the unions on what we need to do to increase the competitiveness of our plant in Ham. The plant can for sure have a good future, but having to take such an impairment is, in my mind, I see it as a kind of punishment. Because at the end of the day, your return is not high enough to support your capital employed.
Definitely there is a high degree of urgency there to improve the situation going forward. There we definitely need to call on our unions to make sure that we as a team work together and not against each other to achieve more productivity going forward. It is important to say that our Mannheim process is more labor-intensive than general chemical plants which run on reactors and pumps like we do on our liquid fertilizers. Here it's more bulldozers, it's more movement, it's more people. I have always been an investor in Belgium, me personally, and I have always been fighting for every job in Belgium. But of course, it always takes two to tango, and we need the support of everybody.
I must say, sometimes it has been difficult to bring across that sense of urgency. It looks like now we are in a better momentum. Therefore, we hope that impairment will be a one-off and will not reoccur in the future. Because it has to be said, the business will still need a lot of investments in Ham. Miguel highlighted there that some of the buildings are old and antiquated, et cetera, so we will need to further invest there. These are tough times. Having said that, we make the best SOP in the world. I want to highlight that. We make the best. We are also recognized as such in the market.
The turmoil that we went through, you should not forget that we were sourcing for 50 years everything from Belarus and Russia. Now we are getting it from much further away. We're getting it in Saskatchewan, putting it on unit trains from Saskatchewan to Vancouver. In Vancouver, it goes in big vessels through the Panama Canal. It's coming to Antwerp. I do not need to tell you how much extra logistical cost that brings with it. I'm just trying to inform the market and all of you very directly on the situation and what to expect and also why we are kind of hesitant and giving firmer outlooks with all what's going on. Thank you.
Great.
Okay.
Thanks very much. All the best, and particularly also all the best to Miguel with his sick note. I hope you get better soon.
Thank you.
Thank you, Christian. Let me put the next one. The next one, Wim Hoste from KBC. Wait, let me put you on the screen. Bring on screen. Here we go. Wim, if you unmute yourself, you can ask your question.
Yes. Good afternoon. I have a couple of questions I would like to ask them one by one. Continuing on Agro, how's your pricing power and volumes developing at the moment? We hear that yeah there's quite some shortage. You mentioned that sulfur indexes go up. But how fast can you translate that into your own selling prices? And yeah how are volumes doing? Yeah both for KTS and SOP. Can you comment on that please?
Well, what we are doing, of course, we are following closely all our raw material costs, which are indeed going up, right? We are passing on price increases accordingly. In that respect, the margin is there. We are working with customers, and I think that needs to be said that both on the supplier side and on the customer side, with the exception of our MOP sourcing from Russia and Belarus, which has changed. For all our other suppliers that we have and customers, we have very long relationships.
Through these very long relationships, quite often 20 years and longer, we have been working with each other, and everybody understands the indexes, everybody see what's happening, and everybody understands we need to adapt accordingly. On that front, we are okay. We are also, since we are in these long-term relationships, not there to take advantage and say, "Play the customer." That's not what we do either, you know. We value these long-term relationships, and we want to have these relationships in the good and in the bad times. Things are going as they should be going, we think, I mean.
Okay. Thank you. Next question would be on the capital allocation. Your share buyback program has terminated end of December. You mentioned the vision that you will build regarding investments. What are the priorities for capital allocation going into the future? Is it a possibility to restart buybacks? Or will you fully focus on building out that investment branch? Can you maybe comment a bit on that?
Well, I'll be happy to comment on that. You know, at the end of the day, it all will depend on the opportunity and on the value creation. You as the shareholders, you rightly expect us to maximize the earnings per share, right? It's our duty to deliver that. We will always react in a way that will help us to create that value. So going forward, we have decided to do this investor thing. I must say that is something that I was explained and told to me some 20 years ago. 20 years ago, I bought a company, Artilat, from Brederode, from Mr. Pierre van der Mersch, the CEO at the time.
He explained to me at the time how he was using his shares that he was buying in big multinational companies, which were always liquid, as a little bit as his bank account. Where he said, "If I see a big opportunity to invest into private equity, I sell shares, and I invest in private equity. And then when a private equity fund is coming to end, I have cash coming in, and I buy again shares." We have, as I said, going forward, we prudently should use our balance sheet a little bit more going forward, but always having in mind liquidity. The difference is if you do an M&A transaction, you buy something, and you have no liquidity anymore. You spent the money, and you have to work within it.
Well, it can go wrong, or you may need money for something else, but the money is locked into it. Here, what we are trying to do is build in more flexibility in our balance sheet, where then, through these positions that we take, we are able to increase or to lower according to opportunities that may arise in our core businesses that we can all of a sudden buy something. You know, this, like we were buying this Cinis thing. This was not a strategy and, look, we need to buy that. We said we like the technology, we follow it, and then all of a sudden, if you need the cash, then you could sell some shares, pay for it, and move on.
It is creating more optionality for our company to create more income. I think that's how you should understand it.
Okay. Clear. Two more questions. The first one is on the outlook for Picanol. Given the fluctuations of the yen and rising interest rates, how are order books or what is the outlook for the Picanol business, the weaving machines business?
Well, I must tell you, I have also been traveling. I was in India. I was in different places. Of course, we do feel today, again, the uncertainty which has arisen the last four weeks. I must say, what is encouraging in the textile business is that the mill capacity is running quite well. When you look with our customers, they are running quite well. What we are seeing is that machines are getting older, and I think there will also need to be replacement of machines going forward. Of course, CapEx doesn't require stability and financial stability and, of course, wars are not helping to that.
I must say that despite the short time work that we are experiencing in Ypres, where we unfortunately had to lay off some colleagues last week to align the production capacity more with the demand. We still have, how you call it? If I may say the Flemish stamp of days, we still have days of technical unemployment. We are still doing that. I can tell you that technology-wise, our leadership is still there. It is not just me saying it's even the Chinese saying it in their five-year plan, where they are putting in the five-year plan that the Chinese producers of machines should chase the Picanol technology.
Yes. There we are, technology-wise, we are good. It is a purpose to go through these difficult storms that we are facing.
Okay. A final question from me would be on T-Power. I recall from the past that utilization was very low. Can you maybe, without discussing really the options on the table or potentially on the table, comment on what the current utilization rate of the plant is in 2025, for example?
Well, no, we cannot do that, but I can help you in another way, I believe. We believe that the future of gas power plants is not in the running hours, the future is in the flexibility. You know, we are going through a change in climate and not in climate, I mean in power generation, which is good. You know, I would like to remind everybody when the sun is shining, it's free of charge, and nobody pays for the sun shining, and nobody pays for the wind blowing. When the windmills are running, when the solar panels are producing a lot of power, then T-Power is not running. What do you do? What do you do if there is no wind and there is no sun?
This for a prolonged year, like they say in Germany, die Dunkelflaute. What do you do then? You need the gas plants, right? You may need them a few hours per day, you may need them at peaks in evening, et cetera. Our power plant is very flexible to be able to help in all these situations. This is a little bit what we can tell you about T-Power.
Mm-hmm. Okay. That's it with the questions.
Well, I see we have seven minutes left, so I will put on Frank Claassen. Let me just put you on screen here. There you go, Frank. If you will unmute, you can ask your questions.
Yes. Good afternoon. I've got two questions left. First of all, on Dyka, the PVC prices have also risen because of the crisis recently. Could you elaborate how you're dealing with that and what the impact could be on Dyka? That's first. Secondly, the CapEx, well, flat, in 2026, which means still half of that is growth CapEx. What are the main growth projects where you spent your growth CapEx on in 2026? Thank you.
All right, I'll take the first one. Miguel can take the second one. On Dyka, polymer prices are going up. We're using PVC, polypropylene and polyethylene. As such, we are also adapting our sales prices as we have to. For me, the biggest problem that we have in Europe is that every politician also in Holland and everywhere is talking about the housing shortage and how we should address that. To me, that is a huge opportunity for our economies if we can unleash the construction market. I think that's really what we need.
There is a shortage of hundreds of thousands of housing in every country, yet the release of building permits is still coming down. Figure that one out. Big shortage and building permits coming down. There, of course, is a big appeal towards governments. By the way, unleashing permits and unleashing grounds has no budgetary problems, right? It doesn't cost the government any money. They just make a decision, "Let's free up space. Let's free up permitting. Let's make sure that permitting does not take 6 or 8 years to be granted with endless appeal periods, et cetera, so that we can get the economy moving." To me, that is the most important that we need.
Yes, the PVC prices have been quite low for quite some years right now. Seeing the PVC prices increasing, it's not a shock. It is something that we had foreseen. There is an overcapacity of PVC in Europe in general. We talked about the situation with Vynova earlier. Yes, they gradually increase, but okay, we're also hedging our PVC supply for Dyka. We don't need to pass on those higher prices to the customers yet. Of course, nobody knows how long the situation will last. To come back on your CapEx question, yes, the CapEx guidance is relatively flat, if not lower in 2026.
The main growth project we still have ongoing is the expansion of our ferric chloride capacity in Kuhlmann, with everything that entails, higher voltage, transmission lines, et cetera. The second largest project we have is the gasification plant in Saint-Langis-lès-Mortagne for Akiolis, where we convert biogas into electricity, basically. These are the two main growth projects, and then we have got plenty of small debottlenecking projects around the world, that will make most of the growth, initiative for 2026.
Okay. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you, Frank. If I look at the Q&A box, I think a lot of questions have been covered. In the meantime, maybe we take time for one or two.
Great.
-questions.
Go ahead, John. The first one, does the dividend payment from the available share premium mean that there will be no Belgian dividends withholding tax applied?
Well, it's a very good question. Actually, since the morning, I think a lot of persons have texted us to ask that question. The answer is not no. There will not be any dividend, any withholding tax to be paid. It will depend on the exact date of the dividend payment, but for the portion that is coming out of the share premium, it is in Belgium, indeed, free of withholding tax. A portion will still come from the provisions for which a very small amount normally of withholding tax will be paid. What we can say already is that about 70% of the EUR 0.75 will be coming from share premiums and 30% from provisions. A withholding tax is expected on only 30% of the EUR 0.75.
I think it is good. I think it's good news for the private shareholder, you know, because the net dividend will be higher and so that's, I think, always good for people that bought shares in our company, that a net dividend is higher.
Some people have asked me the question, what does it entail for foreign shareholders with double tax treaty, etcetera? I don't have the answer yet, but we will look into that.
All right. Maybe one final question. If you're expanding the ferric chloride capacity in Kuhlmann Europe, why, if volumes are lowering?
Well, volumes are lowering because we made a strategic choice to keep our margins at a certain level and not to go into a big fight with competition. The volumes are lowering mainly in Germany and in Belgium only so far, which is good, and we kept our margin in the larger French market and U.K. to some extent. This was a decision because we didn't know when the full expansion and the bottlenecking on the plant will be 100% ready. Big portion of it will be ready in the coming months this year. There we will maybe adjust our pricing policy and our volume distribution policy going forward.
All right. Well, thank you all for dialing in today. Be sure that we will do our utmost best to run the company as good as we can. This with a long-term perspective so that we are doing a good job on the long term and not getting carried away with the waan van de dag, of the craziness of the day. Thank you all for joining us.
Thank you.