[Non-English content ]. Welcome to the 2026 Ordinary and Extraordinary Annual Shareholders' Meeting of Sartorius Stedim Biotech S.A. My name is Michael Grosse, and as Chairman of the Board, I will chair the meeting. With me are today Mr. René Fáber, Member of the Board and CEO of the company, Mrs. Pascale Boissel, Member of the Board and Chairwoman of the Audit and Sustainability Committee, and Mr. Olivier Guitard, Head of Controlling of the Sartorius Stedim Biotech Group and Secretary of the Board. I would like to thank all of the shareholders who either are personally attending or participating in our webcast, as well as our shareholders who cast their vote remotely ahead of the shareholders' meeting. As in previous years, we are providing a live webcast covering the entire meeting. I now need to appoint the members of the Bureau of Shareholders' Meeting.
Is there any shareholder who would like to volunteer as a scrutineer of the meeting? If so, please be reminded that scrutineers will have to stay after the closing of the meeting to sign the minutes of the shareholder meeting. That is not the case, a s we do not have any volunteers, I would like to appoint Mrs. Pascale Boissel and Mr. René Fáber to act as scrutineers, which they accepted, and Mr. Olivier Guitard as Secretary of the shareholder meeting. Thank you. French and English interpreters are also present. I will now continue with the formalities of the shareholder meeting. The quorum that allows us to hold this combined shareholder meeting is 93.8%. The final percentage of the quorum will be available after the final counting by the bank.
With regards to the convening of the annual combined shareholder meeting, the agenda and the resolutions are available here at the desk. They also have been published in the Bulletin No. 18 of the BALO, February 11, 2026, in the Bulletin No. 27 of the BALO of March 4, 2026, and in the legal newspaper La Provence of March 4, 2026. No draft resolutions or new items on the agenda were requested. All documents required by law, which you may have received from the Uptevia or your financial intermediary, are available here during the meeting and on our website. Please also refer to the universal registration document for any further information. The attendance list has been signed at the beginning of the meeting.
It includes the number of shares and numbers of voting rights of the shareholders present, as well as the number of shares and voting rights presented by proxies, which we received before the meeting. After reading the agenda, we will proceed to the vote, and I will present the preliminary results of the votes for the shareholder meeting. Agenda. The agenda of the annual combined shareholders' meeting is divided into two parts. We will start by the ordinary part, and then we will continue through a short, extraordinary general meeting. Before I go through the agenda in detail, I would also like to introduce myself as the new Chairman of the Board of SSBSA, subject to your ratification as board members of SSBSA. Further details about me are available in the universal registration document or in our shareholders' guide. They are both available on our webpage.
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First of all, allow me a few words on my own history. I'm an engineer. I'm a doctor. I've been working for 20 years in international companies, always working in areas where technology, quality, and reliability are key for success. Before joining Sartorius, I was a CEO of Syntegon, a worldwide provider of solutions and processes and packaging for pharmaceuticals. Over those years, I worked closely with pharmaceutical customers, and I have acquired in-depth knowledge of regulated processes, GMP requirements, and responsibilities in connection with manufacturing sensitive items. Before that, I had many positions within boards in Tetra Pak in areas such as product development, engineering, and service activities worldwide.
The first few years in my career, I occupied a number of positions in BMW and Ford, always being at the interface between technology, product development, and industrial implementation. This experience is most useful for me today and helps me to understand technological expectation, customers' expectations, and I have the capacity to drive organizations through change. All these competencies are very important for a company like Sartorius that work in a stringently regulated environment. I started here with humility, bearing in mind that bioprocess industry is very particular and particularly complex. This is exactly why in the first few months I listened, asked questions, and learned, especially from all our staff members, and they all impressed me ever since I got here nine months ago.
Everywhere I go, I feel very proud to contribute to a mission, to a company, and to a purpose, to be part of this process to improve health for many people. We have the common quest of simplifying processes for our clients. I feel a high level of energy. I want to deeply contribute to improving the company. Having a number of backgrounds helps us to bring new ideas and reflect differently as to how we can create better solutions for our clients. I am very happy to be able to define the future of Sartorius with this very strong team. Thank you.
Under the competence of the ordinary shareholder meetings, we have reading of the three reports of the Board of Directors, namely: reading of the Board of Directors Management Report on the Financial Statements, including the Group Management Report; r eading of the Board of Directors Report on Proposed Resolutions of the Shareholders' Meeting; r eading of the Board of Directors Corporate Governance Report. Reading of the three reports of the Statutory Auditors, respectively; reading of the Statutory Auditor's Report on the Company's Financial Statement for the financial year ended 31st of December 2025; r eading of the Statutory Auditor's Report on the Consolidated Financial Statements for the financial year ended 31st December 2025; r eading of the Statutory Auditor's Report on the Regulated agreements covered by the Article L.225-38 of the French Commercial Code. We will look at the first financial resolutions.
First, approval of the Financial Statements for the financial year ended on 31st of December 2025 and Discharge to all Directors- R esolution 1. Approval of the consolidated Financial Statements for the financial year ended on 31st of December 2025- R esolution 2. Allocation of the Financial Result for the financial year ended on 31st of December 2025-R esolution 3. We will reach the resolutions concerning the say on pay topic. Fourth, Approval of the Remuneration Policy and Determination of the Amount of the Total Maximum Annual Remuneration to be Allocated to the Board of Directors for the 2026 Financial Year-R esolution 4. Fifth, Approval of the Information Mentioned under Article L. 22-10-9 of the French Commercial Code Concerning the Remuneration Paid or Awarded to the Corporate Officers for the 2025 Financial Year-R esolution 5.
Sixth, Approval of the Fixed, Variable, and Extraordinary Components of the Remuneration and the Benefits of all kinds paid or awarded to Mr. Joachim Kreuzburg, Chairman of the Board of Directors for the 2025 financial year from January 1st, 2025 to June 30th, 2025-R esolution 6. Seventh, Approval of the Fixed, Variable, and Extraordinary Components of the Remuneration and the Benefits of all kinds paid or awarded to Mr. Michael Grosse, Chairman of the Board of Directors for the 2025 Financial Year from July 1st, 2025 to December 31st, 2025- R esolution 7. Eight, Approval of the Fixed, Variable, and Extraordinary Components of the Remuneration and Benefits of all kinds paid or awarded to the Chief Executive Officer for the 2025 Financial Year- R esolution 8.
Ninth, Approval of the Remuneration Policy of the Chairman of the Board of Directors for the 2026 Financial Year- R esolution 9. Tenth, Approval of the Remuneration Policy of the Chief Executive Officer for the 2026 Financial Year-R esolution 10. To finally reach the final topics of the ordinary shareholder meeting. Eleven, Ratification of the Cooptation of Mr. Michael Grosse as Director- R esolution 11. Twelve, Authorization Granted to the Board of Directors to Enable the Company to Trade in its own shares-Re solution 12. Now, when this is over, we'll reach the second part of this combined shareholder meeting. Under the competence of the Extraordinary Shareholder Meeting, reading of the Board of Directors Report on the Resolutions and the Special Reports from the auditors, namely; the reports on the two Financial Delegations Granted to the Board.
Next, we will proceed to the vote of the resolutions. 13. Amendment to Article number 17 of the Company's Article of Association- R esolution 13. 14. Delegation of Authority Granted to the Board of Directors to Issue Shares Without Preferential Subscription Rights of the Shareholders to Named Beneficiaries- R esolution 14. 15. Delegation of Authority Granted to the Board of Directors to Reduce the Capital in Accordance with Article L. 22-10-62 of the French Commercial Code- R esolution 15. Before proceeding with the voting process of the combined shareholder meeting, I would like to ask the Chief Executive Officer, Mr. René Fáber, to present the 2025 annual financial statements as well as the development of the company, including information about our sustainability strategy. René.
Thank you very much, Michael, and dear shareholders, ladies and gentlemen. Also from my side, welcome to today's annual shareholder meeting. I will today walk you through first, the financial results of 2025, and then talk about our company, Sartorius Stedim Biotech, what makes us successful. We will look back on our fundamentals, and look at outlook of how we see the market evolving, the challenges and opportunities we see. We'll talk about our strategy, how we're gonna shape the future, and deliver attractive financial profile moving forward. Starting with 2025. Last year, Sartorius Stedim achieved considerable profitable growth driven by improving demand, particularly with consumables and operating leverage. This allowed us not only to achieve our October 2025 guidance, but also to exceed our top line expectations.
Overall, we are very pleased with the results to which the colleagues across the globe at Sartorius Stedim Biotech contributed with their commitment, hard work, and dedication. In 2025, sales revenue increased by nearly 10% in constant currencies, reaching around EUR 3 billion. Our high-margin recurring consumable business remained very strong, delivering mid-teens growth, more than offsetting the increasingly stabilizing equipment business. Underlying EBITDA increased by 17% to EUR 914 million, driven by volume, product mix, and economies of scale. Consequently, the underlying EBITDA margin improved significantly to 30.8%, an increase of 2.8 percentage points compared to the previous year. These results translated into a strong year-on-year earnings growth. Underlying earnings per share increased from EUR 3.49 in 2024 to EUR 4.40 in 2025.
Based on underlying net profit of EUR 427 million, we propose a dividend of 0.71 EUR per share. In 2025, we continued to invest into our global infrastructure, expanding the manufacturing capacities, investing in new automation and technologies in manufacturing, and also in our customer-facing facilities as well as R&D facilities. Investment last year around EUR 393 million. Songdo in South Korea has been in 2025, and will remain in 2026, our largest investment project, where we build our position closer to our customers, not only in Korea, where we see a major hub of biopharma manufacturing facilities being built, but also for the broader Asia Pacific region. Further capacity expansions in France, Germany are also well on track to provide and support future demand and innovation across different parts of our portfolio.
Sustainability remains our important priority. In 2025, we made a strong progress in reducing the portion of fossil-based plastic materials in our products. By now, we have four sites ISCC certified, International Sustainability and Carbon Certification, which allows us to include more of the renewable or recycled materials into our products. The ISCC Plus is a global standard for renewable materials to be used in products and ensures a transparent and traceable sourcing and compliance across the value chain based on the mass balance system. Last but not least, these results would not be possible without a strong, ambitious team meanwhile of more than 10,000 people across the globe.
A team who is recognizing the industry as the top team in helping customers to develop the medicines faster, to develop the manufacturing processes faster, and in the most efficient way. Sartorius Stedim is a highly attractive place to work. We were able and are able to fill roughly three-quarters of the management positions internally with internal talents, and more than a third of leadership positions are run by a woman. Moving now to the next part of my presentation and talking about the fundamentals and strong position of Sartorius that we're building on, I will talk about who we are as a company, what we do, what we offer to customers, our track record of a strong double-digit profitable growth over the last decade, our offering, and also a business model.
Sartorius Stedim Biotech's purpose, why we are here, why our 10-plus thousand employees come to work every day, is a simple and very motivating better health for more people. We are living in the industry and active in the industry where the access to medicines, access to innovative medicines like biologics is still limited. These medicines take too much time, a long time to develop and are extremely expensive and not affordable for the majority of the world population. Our mission is to empower our customers, the scientists and engineers, to do their work better, to develop these medicines faster and produce them in more efficient way.
Our promise, not only to our employees, but our partners and customers, is simplifying progress to make the life of everybody involved in this very complex industry much easier and easier to work. Sartorius Stedim Biotech is the largest pure play player in the biopharma tools industry. We built on a strong focus over the decade. We have built a deep know-how and scientific knowledge about what our customers do, understanding their workflows, understanding their problems, capabilities to help with regulatory topics, well, help with providing novel innovative tools to help in their work. We have built a global footprint in our manufacturing and customer-facing facilities.
Last but not least, build on long-term partnerships where we rely not only on internal innovation, but also on the innovation coming from research institutes, universities, startups, and customers. Looking back on a 10-year scale, I think we can show a very compelling business profile with more or around 13% on average, double-digit growth, increase in revenues more than factor three, and increase in the profitability by more than 4 percentage points. On the right side here, you see the increasing focus and the pure play of Sartorius Stedim Biotech now, making around 90% of the revenues with the customers in the life science market, particularly there with the customers in biopharma who either develop and produce biopharmaceutical drugs. Our ambition is more efficient biomanufacturing.
This is what customers know us for. We do it by, again, understanding the problems of our customers, understanding their workflows, helping them to increase the efficiencies, the productivity in manufacturing, making more drug with less tools, with less footprint, making investment less heavy, and overall manufacturing less costly. Over the decade plus, we have built a portfolio of tools which help with achieve these goals, tools which are easy to use early when customers develop the process, are easy to scale, to bring them into the scale when customers manufacture drugs for commercial supply. Sartorius Stedim Biotech is the leader in single-use technologies, particularly in upstream in single-use bioreactors. We are after closing the gap in our portfolio in downstream, a challenger in chromatography.
We have built a portfolio and strong starting position for the new future modalities like cell and gene therapies, mostly reagents and critical raw materials used in development and manufacturing of such therapies, and are more and more equipped with modern AI-supported digital tools software for monitoring control, predictive control of manufacturing processes. Our business model is highly attractive. It relies on high portion of recurring, repeating consumables revenues made out of consumables which are used in manufacturing of such drugs, but also software and related services we provide to our customers, who are using our equipment and products across their manufacturing workflow. Let's move now and talk briefly about the market, how we see the market evolving, where we see opportunities for Sartorius growth, but also where we see some challenges moving forward.
Let me start with a high-level overview about what we call market growth fundamentals. Looking at the growing and altering population in the world and accessibility of that population to these modern biologics drugs, I think one can say that population is growing. It's older and older. The demand for treatments and drugs is increasing, which provides a fundamental structural growth driver for the pharma industry as such. If we look at the pharma industry, pharma industry overall is growing with around 5%. Part of the pharma industry, which is the focus of Sartorius, the biopharma or biologics, is growing twice the speed with around 10% growth.
In 2025, the biologics for the first time already more than half of the pharma industry revenues, and we expect that by 2030, it will further increase up to around 57%. Biologics, the focus of Sartorius, is growing above and stronger than the broader pharma industry. When we look at what our customers are doing today, which drugs they develop to be, you know, to feed the pipeline and drugs coming to be manufactured later, we see that the pipeline is continuously growing. There's a continued supply of new drug approvals and the mix of that pipeline, the innovation which is happening is also increasing, which requires an innovator and innovative companies like Sartorius to support that development.
So taking all together a very robust and durable growth backdrop for our industry supporting rising R&D activity, increasing production volumes, and sustained demand for efficient and scalable and reliable life science and bioprocessing solutions from Sartorius. Now, when we look at our Sartorius market. If we look at the Sartorius market, so means the tools which customers use to make, develop, and manufacture the drugs, our addressable market, we see it's growing and will be growing at around 8%-10%.
Again, the drivers are on one side is the strong market fundamentals, the volume, the drug approvals, the increasing complexity in the drug pipelines of our customers, but also fueled by novel AI tools in drug discovery, in drug development, which will provide even more candidates entering process development and manufacturing. Of course, we also see challenges in front of us, pressure on the healthcare system, pressure on the drug pricing, more and more customers asking for more cost-efficient manufacturing solutions and opportunity, another opportunity for Sartorius, but also geopolitical dynamics we see and policy shifts, complexity which it creates and frictions in the industry.
However, overall, our internal analysis confirm that the market we address is structurally growing, with particularly attractive growth in the areas where Sartorius Stedim is focused, biologics, biopharma manufacturing, and we are well-positioned to tackle that market. How we shape the future now? Looking at Sartorius strategic priorities, which we have developed last few months with the team, we can structure and cluster these priorities in three buckets. First, portfolio innovation. Something which has been the growth driver and success factor for Sartorius in the past. We will continue to listen to customers.
We will continue to work with customers to address their needs, their issues with innovative products, addressing our core portfolio, but also looking into the future growth, emerging growth areas. Plus, in addition, we want to be a company which is easy to work with. We want to be reliable partner to our clients, improve our flexibility and speed, how we service our clients. Of course, that can be achieved only with a highly efficient way of working, efficient processes, excellence in how we work, excellence in manufacturing, so that you know, we build a platform for future growth in efficient way.
That all is enabled by people first, empowered people, competent people, a culture of customer orientation, culture of empowerment, culture of dynamic, flexible way of working and supported by AI, by data which are in shape and automation across the whole company. All that to provide profitable growth above market, as we have shown and delivered in the past as well. Let me look first at the first pillar, innovation and portfolio. We will be looking and continue developing our core businesses and core portfolio, of course. In addition, make sure that we prepare our portfolio for three-five years plus future growth as well.
Looking at the core first, our portfolio of single-use technologies, which are used to manufacture drugs in a flexible way, the next step in innovation is so-called process intensification. We are going to make single-use manufacturing easier to implement and better to implement in more commercial manufacturing, where today customers are using it as an industry standard to make a clinical material. We want them to use it also more and more in manufacturing commercial drugs. Taking care of our core businesses and core portfolio, few examples, filtration or fluid management systems, our large volume portfolio today.
Here we keep with the trends in the industry, addressing new regulatory requirements like a PFAS materials ban potentially coming into industry with new filters which don't contain these materials, but also expanding our fluid management products and applications more in critical use in freeze and thaw or final fill. Looking at the future business, emerging businesses, cell and gene therapies is a topic where customers today already 1/3 of the drugs they develop are these type of modalities. Here we have a good starting and strong starting position with critical materials. Recently, we have launched and announced a new innovative system, manufacturing systems for cell therapies, Eveo coming to the market with significant value proposition and improvement on the cost and the quality and reliability in manufacturing of these innovative drugs.
Last but not least, we will invest in innovation in the area of so-called process analytical technologies. We want to make customers' life easier to ultimately release the drug based on the monitoring of the critical quality attributes of the manufacturing process directly during the manufacturing and not later in the quality control labs. I mentioned our second pillar of the strategy being customer experience, improving customers the way we work with customers. Our industry is more and more relying on flexibility, speed, Sartorius being the you know perceived leader and premium supplier of high-quality products. We have a strong position to build on.
Where we want to invest is, again, across utilizing AI and automation across the processes to provide our products quicker to customers, customize what they need, and adjust the products much faster, increase the reliability of the supply, last but not least, also ease the way how customers interact with Sartorius via digital self-service tools as well. That will be enabled by efficiencies. Our operations transformation program addresses several points. We are looking into next generation factory of the future, much higher level of automation in our manufacturing facilities. We'll optimize our already broad global manufacturing network to be even closer and more efficient with our customers. Simplify operations, simplify the way of working on the shop floor, but also across the company.
Also strengthen our relationship with suppliers. They are key to our success. Improve the reliability of their supply to us, and of course, also the cost positions. Summarizing that, the strong position Sartorius has, the attractive market we operate in, and the strategic initiatives we have triggered, along the innovation, customer experience, and efficiencies will deliver and drive our growth in the future. I will start with the financial outlook first. Looking at the 2026, as we have communicated the guidance for this year already in the beginning of February, I only want to do a short recap here. We expect to stay on our profitable growth path, and for 2026 sales revenue growth in the range of 6%-10% in constant currencies.
Growth will be mainly driven by our consumables business, while the equipment business should remain at least stable. The underlying EBITDA margin should increase to slightly above 31%, and our CapEx ratio is expected to stay at around the previous year level of 13%. Our commitment to deleveraging remains unchanged. We anticipate the leverage ratio in the net debt to underlying EBITDA to decrease to slightly above 2 by year-end. We see 2026 as a transition year, bridging the normalization phase we have just come through, and the next phase of sustainable growth midterm. Midterm, our ambition is to grow above market. We talked about market addressable market growing 8%-10%.
Our ambition is to grow above that market by 100 to 200 base points, resulting in a growth of around 9%-12%. We also expect the profitability increase by roughly 60 to 85 base points per year. We expect to achieve these ambitious targets by leveraging our strong position, our leadership in single-use, our leadership in innovation, in process intensification, and a unique and strong position in advanced therapy solutions portfolio. Summarizing the presentation. First, I think we can say that the proven strengths of Sartorius in the market continue to matter. We build on a strong market position. We are addressing attractive biopharma markets with high entry barriers.
We are a biologics pure play with a focus on single-use technologies, the new future way of drug manufacturing, uniquely positioned to capture above market growth. We have a strong focus on innovation leadership and relevant applications. Our business model is sticky, with a high share of recurring revenues and significant operating leverage potential. Our strategic focus is on one side relying on continued innovation in both core businesses and preparing for in emerging areas for future growth. We target to improve the customer experience significantly, and also our manufacturing and operations efficiencies. We remain to focus on delivering above market growth in the midterm based on the strong market fundamentals alongside continuous margin expansion. Thank you very much for your attention.
Thank you so much, René, for your presentation and your detailed explanations. We will now move on to a question and answer section. I would like to ask you to summarize your questions. As the time which is allocated to that section is maximum 30 minutes. Is there any question with regard to particular topics of the agenda of the shareholders meeting that you would like to ask Mr. Fáber, CEO of the Sartorius Stedim Biotech Group, please? D oes not so be the case so m any thanks. It was very clear, René. Many thanks for that. With this, I would like as well to make sure just in case there are other questions that may come up in the meantime or afterwards, please don't hesitate to contact our investor relations department, which will be happy to assist you.
As no other questions are raised, I would like now to close the question and answer session and move into the formal voting part. Now we are continuing with our today's agenda and will start the ordinary shareholders meeting. We start with the three reports of the board of directors. I won't read out those reports as you can find them in full wording in our universal registration document and on our webpage. The Management Report of the Board of Directors and the Group Company Management Report, which are disclosed in pages 22 to 207 of the French 2025 universal registration document.
The Board of Directors report on resolutions submitted to the Ordinary Shareholders' Meeting, which is available on our webpage, and the Corporate Governance Report drafted to comply with Article L.225-37 of the French Commercial Code, and which is published on pages 214-276 of the 2025 universal registration document. Our agenda relates to the three reports of the Statutory Auditors, which are published on our website. The report on the Financial Statements for the year ended 31st December 2025. The report on the Consolidated Financial Statements for the year ended 31st December 2025. The report of the Regulated Agreements Covered by Article L.225-38 and subsequent of the French Commercial Code. I would now like to invite Mr. Minarro and Mr. Assada, our auditors from PwC and KPMG, to read and comment on these reports, please.
Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Cédric Minarro, and I'm partner at PwC. I'm here today with François Assada, who is a partner at KPMG. PwC and KPMG are acting as statutory joint auditor of the company. Our work today is to explain what our audit covers, how we performed our audit procedures, and what our opinion means for you as shareholders. To begin, what is our opinion? We have audited the consolidated financial statements of Sartorius Stedim Biotech for the year ended December 2025. They were prepared in accordance with the International Financial Reporting Standards as adopted by the European Union.
In our opinion, the consolidated financial statements give a true and fair view of the assets and liabilities in the financial position, and they also give a fair presentation of the results of the operation in the statement of income for the fiscal year 2025. What is our audit framework? First, we confirm that we are independent of the group and we comply with the French Code of Ethics. We have conducted our audit in accordance with the professional standards applicable in France. In practice, this means that we identified the areas of the financial statements that involve the most significant risks and estimates. We tested key controls where relevant. We performed detailed audit procedures on significant balances in the balance sheet and on significant transactions in the statement of income, and we assessed the overall presentation and consistency of the financial statements.
What are the key audit matters? Our audit report highlights one key audit matter that is related to the impairment testing of goodwill. We consider the determination of the recoverable value of goodwill to be a key audit matter, given its significance in the group's consolidated financial statements and given the use of significant estimates from the management. In our report, we have described what are the audit procedures we have implemented to address this key audit matter, and our work was focused in particular on the methodology used by management, the reasonableness of key assumptions and estimates, and the sensitivity analysis performed by management. Based on this audit work, no impairment was identified.
In terms of specific verifications, in addition to the audit of the financial statements, we have also reported on the consistency between the Financial Statements and Management Report and the information provided to shareholders, and we have no matters to report. For the presentation of the financial information in compliance with the European electronic format, we have no matters to report as well. To conclude on the audit opinion, in our report, we remind that we have submitted to the audit committee a description of the scope of the audit and the audit program implemented, as well as the results of our audit procedures. In addition to our report on the Consolidated Financial Information, we draw your attention to the fact that the Management Report presented to the shareholders includes the Sustainability Statement prepared in compliance with the CSRD and based on the EU Taxonomy Regulation.
PwC as one of the statutory auditors, has also issued an unqualified limited assurance opinion on this sustainability statement. We have now finished with the consolidated financial information. I let KPMG and François continue with the annual accounts and the special reports as well.
Thank you. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is François Assada, and I'm an audit partner with KPMG S.A. I'm now going to provide you with a summary of our audit, our joint audit report on the individual financial statements of SSB for the year ended December 31, 2025, and of the Special Joint Report on related party agreements. As it relates to the audit report on the Individual Financial Statements of SSB for the year ended December 31, 2025, it is dated February 10, 2026. In our opinion, the Financial Statements give a true and fair view of the assets and liabilities and of the financial positions of SSB as of December 31, 2025, and of the results of its operations for the year then ended in accordance with French accounting principles.
We performed our audit under French auditing standards of the financial statements prepared by SSB under French accounting standards. In our professional judgment, we determined that there were no key audit matters, and we performed the specific verification required by laws and regulations. We also had no matters to report as to the fair presentation and the consistency with the Financial Statements of the information given in the Management Report of the Board of Directors and in the other documents with respect to the financial position and the financial statements provided to the shareholders. We also attested to the fair presentation and the consistency with the financial statements of the information relating to payment deadlines. As it relates to the Special Audit Report on related party agreements, our report is also dated February 10, 2026.
We were not advised of any agreements authorized and concluded during the financial year to be submitted to the general meeting of shareholders for their approval. In addition, we have also not been advised of any such agreements already approved by the general meeting of shareholders which continued during the financial year.
Mr. Minarro and Mr. Assada, thank you much for your reports. We will now continue with the vote. Oh, sorry. That will probably work better with the microphone. We will now continue with the vote for the shareholders present in the room for each resolution, starting with the ordinary part of the meeting. The final quorum is 93.82%. Concerning the voting procedure, I ask the shareholders present to write your vote for each resolution on the certified paper form handed over to you at the time of the signing in, either by ticking for, against, or abstain. The paper form will be considered as proof. You do not need to raise your hand to express your vote. The voting form will be collected after the voting session. We'll share the results for each resolution at the end of the shareholder meeting.
I will now go through the resolutions one by one. After each resolution, I will make a pause, and you will have to fill in the certified voting form in accordance with the explanations received at the entrance of the meeting. Tick the box for, against, or abstain. Let's start. We'll proceed with the ordinary shareholder meeting and go through the vote with the shareholder present in the room for the first resolution relating to our financial reporting. We will now vote for the First Resolution. Approval of the Company's Financial Statements for the financial year ended 31st of December, 2025 and Discharge to all Directors. Please vote. We will now vote for the Second Resolution. Approval of the Consolidated Financial Statements for the financial year ended on 31st of December, 2025. Please vote.
We will now continue with the Third resolution: Allocation of the Financial Result for the financial year ended 31st of December, 2025. Please vote. We'll continue with the next topic of the resolutions, which comprises seven resolutions clearly linked from one to another about the remuneration of directors in compliance with the say on pay doctrine. Resolution number 4: Approval of the Remuneration Policy and Determination of the Amount of the total Annual Remuneration to be Allocated to the Board of Directors for the 2026 Financial Year. Please vote. Resolution number 5: Approval of the Information mentioned in Article L. 22-10-9 of the French Commercial Code concerning the remuneration paid or awarded to the Corporate Officers for the 2025 financial year. Please vote.
Resolution number six: approval of the fixed, variable, and extraordinary components of the remuneration and the benefits of all kinds paid or awarded to Mr. Joachim Kreuzburg, Chairman of the Board of Directors for the 2025 financial year, from January first, 2025 to June thirtieth, 2025. Please vote. Resolution number seven: approval of the fixed, variable, and extraordinary components of the remuneration and the benefits of all kinds paid or awarded to Mr. Michael Grosse, Chairman of the Board of Directors for the 2025 financial year from July 1st, 2025 to December 31st, 2025. Please vote. Resolution number eight: approval of the fixed, variable, and extraordinary components of the remuneration and benefits of all kinds paid or awarded to the Chief Executive Officer for the 2025 financial year. Please vote.
Resolution number 9: approval of the Remuneration Policy of the Chairman of the Board of Directors for the 2026 financial year. Please vote. Resolution number 10: approval of the remuneration policy of the Chief Executive Officer for the 2026 financial year. Please vote. Resolution number 12: authorization granted to the Board of Directors to enable the company to trade in its own shares. Please vote. This was the last resolutions vote for the ordinary part of the shareholder meeting. Thank you. We will now continue with the extraordinary shareholders meeting part. First topic refers to the reading of the report of the Board of Directors on the proposed resolutions and the special reports of the auditors.
The Board of Directors report on resolutions and the special reports of the auditors submitted to this extraordinary shareholders' meeting have been made available as per the conditions prescribed by law and are disclosed in their entirety on our website. Therefore, I will not read them out loud today. We now continue with the vote of the three resolutions 13, 14, and 15. The voting process is the same as before. Resolution number 13: Amendments to Article 17 of the company's articles of association. Please vote. Resolution number 14: Delegation of authority granted to the Board of Directors to issue shares without preemptive preferential subscription rights of the shareholders to named beneficiaries. Please vote. Resolution number 15: Delegation of authority granted to the Board of Directors to reduce the capital in accordance with Article L. 22-10-62 of the French Commercial Code. Please vote.
I thank you for having casted your votes. This was the last resolution vote for the extraordinary part of the shareholders' meeting. We will now collect your voting forms. Please make sure that they are completed. Thank you. Thank you so much for that. As all resolutions have already been presented in detail during this meeting, I will abstain from reading them out loud and will only inform you if the resolutions have been accepted or rejected, taking into account the votes received by correspondence, the proxies granted to the chairman, and the number of shares held by the shareholders present in the meeting room. The detailed voting percentages for each resolution of the extraordinary and the ordinary shareholders' meeting parts will be available after final counting by the bank. They will be available at the end of this meeting and also be published on our website. Okay. Good.
I will now announce the respective voting results of the resolutions of the ordinary shareholders meeting and corresponding to resolutions one to 12. The first resolution is accepted. The second resolution is accepted. The third resolution is accepted. The fourth resolution is accepted. The fifth resolution is accepted. The sixth resolution is accepted. The seventh resolution is accepted. The eighth resolution is accepted. The ninth resolution is accepted. The 10th resolution is accepted. The 11th resolution is accepted. The 12th resolution is accepted. I will now announce the respective voting results for the resolutions of the extraordinary shareholders meeting corresponding to resolution 13 to 15. The vote results are as follows. The 13th resolution is accepted. The 14th resolution is accepted. The 15th resolution is accepted.
Therefore, after having heard the results, I conclude with the closing of the 2026 Annual Combined Shareholders Meeting of Sartorius Stedim Biotech S.A. Again, thank you all for your participation and for the speakers today and for all the people who had been basically preparing for the event. [Non-English content].