Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and a warm welcome to today's earnings call of Pyrum Innovations AG, due to the publication of the results of the financial year 2024. I'm delighted to welcome CEO Pascal Klein and CFO Kai Winkelmann, who will start their presentation shortly. Kindly note that every participant is in a listen-only mode, but after the presentation, we will move on to a Q&A session in which you will be allowed to place your question in the chat box. With this, I hand over to you, Mr. Klein.
Good morning, everybody, and also a warm welcome from my side. I will start with the presentation, which should be shared already. Is that confirmed? Is it shared?
That is shared.
Okay, thank you. We tried this time to make a presentation that is more or less a mix of the history of Pyrum and what is new. As we do not know from the participants who is very new to Pyrum and needs to catch up on basics, and many other of our investors have seen the basics many times, we are not focusing this presentation so much on the history and what we have already done, but a little bit more on what has been new recently. For those who do not know it, we recycle tires. One important fact starting from the beginning: this was the market we started with. Why? Because the ELT, so end-of-life tire market, is quite big, and it is a solid and clean waste stream.
With almost 3.4 million tons in Europe, it is a very good resource for a recycling process, and which is very important if you want to produce high-quality end products like we do it, it needs to be a stable waste stream. We see now something that we have already announced several years ago, that the end-of-life tire market is changing. You can say that almost in the last 20 years, it was divided the same way, so about 50% of used tires were burned, mainly in cement plants, and 30% approximately of the market went to granulate. That is what everybody has already seen: children's playgrounds, soccer fields, and all that stuff. About 10% were exported to the third world, mainly India or China or Africa, and about 10% unknown.
That was the more or less available part of the market that nobody did really take note of. What we saw extremely in 2024 is that it changed a lot for the first time. The granulate business went down. I can only say here around 30 to around 25, and the burning went down from 50% market share to around 35% because there are a lot of different studies in the market, from the ETRA, from the Kautschuk administration in Germany. They are all quite similar, but they found out all the same, yeah, feedback that the burning volume is going down and the granulate volume is going down, and the only part of the market that is really increasing is the export, which went up to almost 30%, or some studies even say 33%. What is happening now?
The burning reduces the use on children's playgrounds and soccer fields i t has been forbidden by the European Union in 2023, with a grace period of eight years. That will be possible until 2031. Already today, as there is more and more demand from outside Europe, and as the market is shrinking in Europe, more and more is exported, and that cannot be the goal for all of us because a tire is an important resource for us in the future. That is why we still stick with our predictions that the available tires in 2030 will be much higher than today. I will also recap quickly on the process itself. Since the last presentation, not much has changed on the process itself.
There are no new findings, for example, that there's more or less oil or more or less carbon. We are still at one ton of tires in one line. As you all know, we have now three lines at Pyrum in Dillingen. The tires are coming from the partners we have since a long time, like Schwalbe, Michelin, Conti, Remondis, etc. We're still getting money for the tires. For one ton of tires, we get approximately 15%-25% of steel, which is sold to the market as it is, and 0-100 kg of textile, which is also sold to the market for a small amount. These Euro signs show you a little bit what is the revenue, and the bigger the Euro sign or the more Euro signs you see, the bigger is the revenue share in our business model.
The variation in steel and in textile fibers comes mainly from the input. Truck tires have more steel than car tires, and bike tires have more textile than car and truck tires. Truck tires even have almost no textile. To sum that up, we have 700 kg of rubber out of one ton of tires approximately, and out of that same one ton of tires, we create then 250 kg of oil. One quarter of a tire becomes oil approximately, and about 31%, so 310 kg, becomes coke. We call that internally TC, thermolysis carbon unmilled, or TCU. That is then milled to about 10 microns, goes into a pin mixer to create small pearls. These small pellets or pearls are the standard in the industry, in the rubber and in the, yeah, plastics industry.
It goes into a dryer, and we get out the pellets, and that is sold today to Continental and Schwalbe, our two main off-takers for that, and we present our biggest revenue stream, one from the volume because it is 31% of the input, and also from the price per ton. The oil is slightly modified by taking out oil and floating particles. That goes today mainly to BASF, who sells it to a lot of customers, but more on that later. For the gas, we are happy to tell that our old, combined heat and power plant is running, or we have that developed. We have two systems today, combined heat and power plants, working on engines to use our gas to generate electricity and heat for the dryer.
But we also have now, since eight weeks in, constant operation without technical issues. We have now also the turbines stable up and running, which is an alternative treatment system for the gas, which has the advantage to generate more heat. The dryer from the pelletizing system is autonomous, so self-sustaining, and we still create enough energy for the Pyrum process. We have to say turbines create less energy than a generator. After that, we have a gas washer, and at the end, you have vaporized water coming out. Now, when you drive along the Pyrum site and you see white smoke coming up, it's not that we found a new pope, but we still found one, but that's also good. White smoke over the Pyrum plant is vaporized water and shows that we are nicely running.
History that is in the presentation because you can download the presentation. I do not want to bother you with things from the beginning, just that you remember we started in 2008. Since 2021, we work with Michelin. Since 2019, we have an off-take agreement with BASF. Since 2021, we work with Continental. We had our IPO in Oslo in 2021, in Frankfurt in 2022. I skipped that quickly. Very important was also with Schwalbe. We bought out in 2023 the first 100% recycled tire, or the tire itself contains 72% of recycling content, but 100% recovered Carbon Black from Pyrum. An important thing that we underestimated, I can say, in our company history was the auditing called VDA 6.3.
As we wanted to bring our recovered Carbon Black in the automotive industry, you need to have an automotive auditing, and that was something that took almost two years and completely changed the structure of the company. There has been a Pyrum before VDA 6.3 and after VDA 6.3, but, luckily we can say that we passed it and that today we are allowed to deliver security-relevant raw materials into the automotive industry, which is a big, big, big milestone for us. In 2024, we had the ramp-up of line two and three, the two new lines. We started with the work for our new plant in Perl-Besch. We received the RCS certificate, which is the green label for the textile industry. Important if you want to sell recycled polymers to brands like VD, who is using polymers from BASF made with our oil.
Schwalbe has announced that they convert 70% of their production to Pyrum recovered Carbon Black , which is a big milestone, and we're very happy for that. More about Schwalbe a bit later. Yeah, we had a capital increase end of last year, and I would say the biggest milestone last year was that we finally got the first long-term off-take agreement for recovered Carbon Black from Continental for a 10-year, 10-year guaranteed bankable off-take agreement for the recovered Carbon Black quantity of the next plants, of the next two plants. What does that say? Now we finally have green light to sell all our oil and all our recovered Carbon Black. The two biggest revenue streams for Pyrum are secured and sold for the next 10 years, and not just of the existing plant, but also for the plants to come.
In 2024, we made two new, we declared two new patents, one for, we call it golden RCB, together with Continental. So, recovered Carbon Black that can be used in bigger volumes in tires, together with Conti, and, we expand our technology to carbon fiber reinforced plastics. You know that from wind turbines, for example, or from planes. Twenty twenty-four, so, the year is now five months old, and we have already some good announcements this year. Our partner in Greece, our joint venture plant in Greece, has received the permit beginning of this year. It was the first joint venture plant receiving a permit outside of Germany. In February, we signed an agreement with VTTI, the biggest LNG terminal operator on Earth, and owned by, for example, Vitol and ADNOC. We built together with them a thermolysis plant in Antwerp.
The goal here is very big, but more about that later. And our, then also in February, our first JV partner received FID, so final investment decision. Here, things are moving on very quickly. There will be a lot of new things to announce this summer. In February, in April, we received two announcements from the authorities. In February, we have been told that our permit is completed and that they are happy with all documents. In April, mid of April, we received the feedback that the environmental impact audit has been passed. Very important milestone to get the final permit. As of now, we hope every day to get the permit, but you know, authorities, you cannot push them. They are really nice to us. We have really a very good relationship with the authorities, but you cannot push them hard.
We really hope that soon we get the permit there. Very recently, we finished a big technical due diligence together with a bank, and that one has confirmed us also now in Witten that we have technical readiness level 9, 9 out of 9, meaning that, more you cannot get. That is to say, technical readiness level 9 means you have an industrial process that has run for more than one year or two years, I do not remember exactly, but for a long time in a stable process and that it is a serial-ready process. More you cannot get. That is also a big milestone to open discussion with project financing banks, which is expected from them to start discussions. Now that is the latest picture from the new plant in Dillingen. Our core plant, our, yeah, showcase.
As you can see here, the asphalt is now done. Those who have seen the last presentation, it was all sandy. It looked like a little bit desert around the plant. The plant was in ramp-up, and already running poorly. Asphalt was not done. That is done. The plant is running also. You see here a little bit the white smoke coming out of the chimney. That is what I told you before. That is the vaporized water that is coming out. To walk you through the plant, the orange part, what became orange here, is the shredder. That one has a capacity of 6 tons per hour. That is approximately 600 tires per hour. Here are the two new reactors, line two and three. Then you have here the yellow part. That is the new power plant.
As you can see, giant footprint. For those who have already visited the old plant, know that the old plant, the power plant, was just a container. Now it has a footprint as big as the Pyrum unit itself. The blue part here in the back, that is the new mill and pelletizer that is almost finished. The assembling of the mill is done and the commissioning of the mill has started. The pelletizer is soon finished and starts also commissioning soon. Here you have the oil tanks, which are underground, so you don't see them. Right here is the control room. That new control room controls the new factory and the old one, which is on the right, but you don't see it here on the picture because otherwise the picture would have been too big.
And here what becomes anthracite or gray here, that has been done last month. It's a new area that we acquired to store more tires. If I would share a photo of right now, you would see that this place is full with tires, but that picture is two weeks old. What you see here in the background in darker green, that is our new maintenance and spare part workshop. There are two new areas here, the new tire storage area and the maintenance and spare parts workshop. It's very important now for the expansion of the new plants and also for quality control of parts that we deliver for the new plants. You can see here that our footprint is getting really huge. About status quo in Dillingen, I said that is new.
Before we all, we just spoke about what Pyrum is and what we can do, but now it's more a bit of status update where we are. You can see here that the lights are all on green, so we are happy about that. TID two and three, one stable at 600 kilo. That means that we requested now the authorization to go in the next phase with Continental. We had a good finding. The last test run was only stopped after seven weeks. Usually, there is a cleaning after four weeks, but this time we were running seven weeks nonstop without a cleaning stop.
That has the result that, I don't know if I can say too much about that, but that gives us a clear idea that we may have found the sweet spot of operation now in line number two, so that there will be fewer maintenance stops in the future, and that could potentially increase the throughput of the plant. I don't want to tell too much about that already now, but we keep the word innovation and Pyrum Innovations, and our goal is to reduce the maintenance stops as much as possible. Yeah, I said not every four weeks now, but now every eight weeks, and we even have now the actual one is planned for 10 weeks. Line number two is now in its eight weeks, eight weeks of operation, and line number two is in the third week of operation since the last cleaning stop.
That looks more than good. Both combustion and the combustion chambers are also running again after, and that was in our, yeah, not press release, in our newsletter, in the first quarter that we had an issue with the burning chamber in the power plant. That is repaired. That was sadly a misconstruction or a miscalculation on how much heat the wall inside can resist to. Good info is that our gas has more energy than predicted. The chamber was hotter than predicted, and that was adapted now, and there should be nothing, nothing happened, not nothing happened anymore.
From the shredder, we have put a new shredder team together, and now we started with overnight maintenance to increase the throughput of the shredder, and that helps us now to finally get more material to the shredding so that the whopper hunger of the two new lines of Pyrum can be, yeah, accomplished. That is also good. The power plant, I said the combustion chamber is now almost since eight weeks in error-free operation. The changing in the bricks, which are inside the burning chambers, the ceramic bricks was the right one. There are just some software problems that people need to, yeah, accept some things quite often on the computer, but that is, yeah, if that is the last things to solve, that is easy game.
Now coming to the most important part of the plant, which is the status quo on the new mill and pelletizer. Here you see some pictures on the right, and all I can tell you is the pictures do not show at all the size of that mill and pelletizer. It is the biggest mill and pelletizer for recovered Carbon Black worldwide. If you visit it in real life, everybody who has seen it was shocked about the size and the technical finesses that are in it. The earthwork foundations are all done. The mill is mechanically and electrically fully assembled. The first ramp-up started last week on the 5th of May, and the handover of the keys of the plant is still planned by Hosokawa Alpine in July 2025, with a maximum test, of course.
Currently, we have four weeks delayed in the construction of the pelletizer, due to delayed parts from the supplier, but they are doing all the best to catch that up now in the ramp-up. Four weeks delay on such a big plant is very, very little. Yeah, so about that, it looks all good. Now, coming to the new Pyrum plant in Perl-Besch, which is the name Green Factory Two. Since the last presentation, what has happened on the left side, you see the building site, a drawing of the building site. You see the green part was already prepared in 2024. In the first part now in Q1 of 2025, the blue parts here were already prepared. The land was prepared so that we could start.
You can also do this preparation in January, February, when you cut trees and prepare the site. That was done. The whole site is now prepared so that we can start working there once the permit is there. It is still 25,000 sq m, maximum building height 25 m, 20,000 tons. Here we have a changing, everything that changed since the last public presentation is wet or green. Wet, why? Because the price went a little bit up of the investment volume, but not the plant became more expensive, with the investors we have behind and the banks we are talking to, mainly the project financing bank. They asked us to add an investment price, a 10% contingency though t hat is a security adder, and the financial cost during building and the OPEX costs during ramp-up. That includes now everything, not just the building price of the plant itself.
We changed the shredder and the mill and pelletizer to 24/7 operation because that makes the product much better, mainly in the mill and pelletizer from a quality perspective. Here you see a picture on what the building site looks like today. You see it is a flat site now that can be started. I said we prepared the site. Next steps can only be done at site itself once the permit is there. Middle of February, we had the Vollständigkeit Anzeige of the authorities, meaning that they have everything they are asking from us. Middle of April was the official publication that the environmental impact assessment, so [Foreign language], has passed. Now important on the new project. Here you see the map of Europe on the left side with all our running projects.
This is a mix of our own projects like in Perl- Besch or joint venture projects or external projects like VTTI or Zohar's. We have over 20 projects in the pipeline. Ten projects have started. Officially started means there are contracts and we are generating turnover because we work for these projects in six countries. Seven are in the permitting process. Two have a granted permit. That is Greece and partly Czech. One project is not yet in the permitting process, but soon to be. We are speaking here of an investment volume for all these plants of over EUR 600 million and a market share of the European end-of-life tire market of about 5.2%.
This is a very important slide according to me because it shows a little bit the speed in which all these projects are going forward. All the black ticks are 12 months old. All the green ticks are new in the last 12 months. You can see in the last year all these projects most have secured their capital since or big parts of the capital. All of the green ticks are the permitting process has really started. Here the first permits are received. We have the first FIDs and yeah, blue means in progress. It is very soon that we hopefully can announce that we get the permit in Perl- Besch and also that we sign soon the engineering contract with UNITANK. Those are things that are in progress and look very well.
You can see that the advancement of the projects are very good and that we even had to add two new columns with permit granted and FID of the projects because these columns did not even exist in the last presentation. You see that the quality of the partners is perfect. ČEZ is the biggest private energy producer in Czech Republic. Remondis is the biggest recycler in Europe. ČEZ, one of the biggest recyclers in Europe. UNITANK , the biggest tank operator in Germany. VTTI, the biggest LNG operator in the world, here in Greece. Thermo Lysi, there is a company behind that is already recycling most of the tires in Greece. You see that the quality of the projects is really, really high today. Yeah. Just some information about that. Bike tire shredder with our partner Schwalbe is also a new announcement I can do.
Schwalbe became shareholder of Pyrum end of 2024. We are building now together with Schwalbe the biggest bike tire shredder in Europe. Hopefully we can announce our completion of that end of this year. VTTI, I told you already that VTTI started now the project in Antwerp together with us. The plan is to make a 90,000 ton year plant, which will be the biggest plant Pyrum has ever built. The financing there are very sure. With Thermo Lysi SR in Impactus[guess], we can say that they received the permit and we can hopefully soon announce that the detail engineering has started there. With Siemens, it is also new that the newest Siemens operation system called Siemens Neo is for the first time, so it's a world premiere, implemented in Pyrum line two and three.
That will cause, in the soon future, international commercials together with Siemens and Pyrum. Now, best practice, that is something most of you know already. It is just again for those people who want to read it at home or are not so aware about it. Our environmental impact assessment has shown that we save 965 kg of CO2 per ton of used tires, which is better than material recycling, better than cement plants, and better than EBS power plants. If you compare that to the mix of recycling in Germany, we are 72% better in CO2 savings. That is the reason why companies like VAUDE are already producing clothes that are based on our oil that is used by BASF to make the polymer fibers.
That's why Continental has signed the big offtake agreement with us, which is completely new in the tire industry because there has never been a 10-year offtake guarantee. Usually they have one- or two-year contracts, but a 10-year offtake guarantee for the full production of full plants has never existed in the automotive industry. Continental also officially announced that they want to be 100% sustainable by 2050. That's impossible without using recovered Barbon Black from old tires. That was a big milestone for us and o ur CO2 savings are one of the big arguments here. Schwalbe, also one of our shareholders, they have already about 2,000 bike stores, which is 1/3 of the German market in which we together with Schwalbe collect bike tires. Bike tires come to Pyrum. We do our thing. So make RCB and oil.
Already from the RCB, Schwalbe is making new tires. The new bike shredder that we do with Schwalbe is here so that we can increase the volume because our bottleneck today is that we cannot shred more bike tires. That is why we invest here together. They became shareholder at Pyrum in November 2024. Just recently in April 2025, we signed also a 10-year offtake guarantee for RCB and the delivery of bike tires with Schwalbe. Mercedes-Benz, that is already an older partnership in which it was shown that from a waste stream it is possible to make polymer granulates that are today used in Mercedes S-Class, EQS, and also today E-Class. That was to show that recycling is not always a downcycling.
It can also be kind of an upcycling because the outdoor door handle of a Mercedes S-Class is one of the most quality polymer pieces in a modern car. That was the idea here to show that from a waste stream you can do a high-tech polymer car, part of a car, and we even won the Materialica award for that. That is a reputation. You can also see that, in the, when you look at the presentation at home. I hand over to Kai for the finance part.
Yes, good morning everybody. We are coming to the plant economics. They're unchanged. We still expect that we treat 22,700 tons of tires in a standard plant with three reactors receiving a gate fee of around EUR 100 per ton. We have a mix in revenues: EUR 2.3 million for gate fee, around EUR 1.7 million for steel, about EUR 3 million for the oil, and the most important part, EUR 10.6 million for the RCB. We calculate direct cost of EUR 2.6 million, OPEX EUR 4.9 million, and then roughly coming to an EBITDA of EUR 10 million. The only change on this slide is that we clarified here that there is no contingency or financing cost included, as we always also have clients, partners, for SPVs in the call. Regarding the rollout, financing, we still have the contract with BASF. We have been paid out EUR 14.3 million until today from the EUR 50 million tranche, so there is enough capital for the participation in the plant with Zohar's, where we want to get 49% on the plant in Perl- Besch.
We are in discussions with the Saarland with officials if they can support our CapEx as the total finance now went up to 62% at EUR 62 million. As Pascal said, we have a framework agreement for long-term acceptance of Pyrum RCB. That means that all that what we produce here in Dillingen and in Perl- Besch in the future is covered by the contract. The MaxC ap test in TD 2 and TD 3 was successfully, so that all three production lines are in parallel operation. We're coming now to the figures that we published this morning. I don't know, sorry, first overview of the shareholders of Pyrum. Pascal Klein and family still holds around 19%. Biggest shareholder is Pascal Klein with 8.8%. ARML Holding is the holding of the family. Michael Kapf is still on board, one of our founders. Benefin, one of the first investors, at 7.4%.
They also participated in the last capital increase by, let's say, indirect shareholders that are, yeah, connected with Benefin. Jürgen Opitz also participated, is now at 7.3%. BASF 7.1%, Schwalbe, the new shareholder on board, the new strategic one with 4% and around 0.9%. And actually we have more than 5,500 shareholders. Now we're coming to the financials that we announced this morning. We increased our revenues by 76% to EUR 2 million. This was mainly due to the oil production that we could deliver. As most of you know, there is that, lots of the RCB that we actually produce is on stock. That's also reflected in the increase of finished and unfinished goods that went up to EUR 699,000. This also includes contractual work with SPV partners. So the operation output went up by 150% to EUR 2.7 million.
Other own work capitalized slightly went down as most of the investments for the plant in Dillingen has been done in previous years. Most of the capital needs and investments for Dillingen, for Perl- Besch, will start this year and next year. Total output was at EUR 11.7 million after EUR 12.8 million in the previous year. We have better results on the EBITDA, - 5.9% after EUR 7 million in the previous year. Depreciation went up as the shredder has been completed in Dillingen, and the depreciation started. EBIT was slightly better at -EUR 8.9 million. On the other hand, interest and similar expenses went up as we took more debt, especially from BASF. Net loss for the year is -EUR 10.1 million. We are now coming to the forecasts. We expect revenues for 2025 at EUR 4.5 million-EUR 6 million.
This requires that the pelletizer, the new pelletizer is up and running in July, that we then over the next month can increase the capacity to 80% production rate. Total output should be around EUR 20 million-EUR 25 million. And the EBIT will still be negative at -EUR 8.5 million to -EUR 10.5 million. There's one remark I, I'm sorry I have to do. One of our analysts found out this morning we had a typo in the, in the annual report in, our forecast for 2026. Our plan is to be, to achieve break even on EBITA basis in 2026. Unfortunately, in the report, they're missing two letters. There was a written EBIT, but it's EBITDA that we should achieve as break even in 2026 and then positive results on net basis in 2027. That's from the financials.
Regarding the outlook, we are still in negotiations with the bank. They are very supportive for the financing in Perl-Besch. They are very supportive. As said before, we are also talking to the Saarland that we can quickly find solutions that the plant in Perl-Besch is fully financed. As said in the past, long-lead items have already been ordered and we are expecting the building permit very soon. More to hand over to Pascal.
From the recovered Carbon Black, also, I told you last time that we are trying to improve the throughput of the old mill and pelletizer, which is the one that is constantly running. That one looks good. We found two clues to get more through it. The problem here is you cannot, as we are, as told before, delivering security relevant raw materials to the automotive industry. If you have a good idea, you can test it, but then you have to do a management of change. You have to inform Continental what are the findings. There was a big meeting with Continental here. They watched at the plant and they found our ideas very good. Now we are just waiting for the green light from Continental so that we can do the plant changes. We tried it already, but when you do these trial ones, you are not allowed to sell the product that comes out as long as that management of change is not approved. I do not want to say too much, but it was much better than before on the old line.
I said the new mill and pelletizer, which is five to six times bigger than the old one. We just wait that the commissioning is done. Here we are then at about, yeah, you will see it in the numbers. I said 5x-6x more. From the staff side, we changed a little bit the organigram. We have some new employees. I said we put in place a night shift at the shredder so that the shredder has more capacity. It's bad if you lose 3 hours-4 hours on a day shift for maintenance and the shredder is only allowed to work over the day and you lose the time overnight. We are also running now on late night shifts on the shredder or at least late shifts. We start now also, which is an important thing.
That was one of the findings in the technical due diligence that we should quickly start finding employees for Perl- Besch so that that is secured. We will start soon with that already so that we are ready once the building starts there o f course, when the production starts. Yeah, one last thing now, we have a new Pyrum Mane, as we tell them sometimes, call him sometimes Felix Magath. He came to us as a shareholder of Pyrum. He bought Pyrum shares from the market like many others. He was so convinced about Pyrum that, yeah, he presented himself here at Pyrum and he asked how he can help. Yeah, now he is officially since last week our brand ambassador. Believe me, he knows everybody. He knows so many people in politics and investors and wealthy private persons.
Yeah, the idea with Felix is to get more hearings from the political side because we found out that in Brussels or in Berlin, Pyrum is not known. They really think that what Pyrum is doing is future music, that there will only be technologies at the stage where Pyrum is today in 20 or 30 years. There are now laws in discussions in Brussels and Berlin that are not taking, they're not aware of us. They are not taking our technology into account. That is, it's not blocking us in any way, but it is not helping us either. What we want is that the new laws and regulations are, yeah, pushing the industry more in our direction and not just because they believe in it, but also because they have to, because it's in the regulation.
There Felix can open a lot of doors and he is already doing it. Of course, we all want that the Pyrum share is more traded so that it is a more liquid share and that Pyrum is better known not just in Germany, but around Europe. Felix is really also well known outside of Germany. After the press release, we got requests from Spain, from Italy, why is Felix Magath working with Pyrum? That gives more international awareness. On the right side, you can find some citations from Felix about Pyrum. The German is the original one, the English is a translation. Thank you all for your attention. That is from my side and Kai's side, the end of the presentation. Now we can go to Q&A.
Yes, thank you very much for the presentation. We will now move on to a Q&A session. You can place your question in the chat box and we will read it out for you. Questions via the audio line cannot be asked today. We have some questions. I guess the first one was already answered concerning the EBITDA and the break even in the guidance of 2026. A follow-up question for this guideline. What is the basis of uptime of palletizer? What share of working capital CB to be palletized in your earnings guidance?
We expect that we can ramp up the palletizer very quick, but we stayed very conservative. In the assumptions, it is shown that the RCB should go up from 0% to 80% till end of the year. That is the assumption for the forecast. In 2026, we are constantly running at 80%.
Okay, thank you. There was a follow-up today for SPVs. What is the contract terms versus earlier years?
I do not completely get the question, but there has not been that many changes, let's say. We still expect that we can participate in an SPV. We still expect that we can be part of it by 15%-49%, as there is always the goal by the partner to have the majority. What has changed since the IPO is mostly that we do not see ourselves anymore as a full EPC contractor, that parts of the plant could be directly ordered with the shredding supplier as example and that we then get a fee for the sales contract.
Okay, thank you very much. We have a question from Mr. Hinkel. Has the pelletizer become more expensive as it is bigger than anticipated?
No, it was very funny when we have not known before that it is the biggest one in the world. There has not been changing on the purchase prices, but Pascal found out that, yeah, or were informed by many sites that it is the biggest one on us.
Yeah, we did not know that in fact. And honestly speaking, on the building plans and everything, it looked much smaller. It is more a perception. How can I say that? Yeah, but it did not really become bigger.
Thank you. The follow-up, can you update us on the financing process now that Pyrum received T9?
I think it means TRL 9. Technical readiness is nine. I hope I interpreted that correctly. Yeah, because it is opening doors. I can tell you most infrastructure funds and most, yeah, project financing banks are not speaking with you at all when you do not have Technical Readiness Level 9. That is more or less opening now a lot of doors that had been closed before.
Thank you. What are the assumptions behind the guidance? How much pelletized RCB will be produced in 2025?
Kai, do you have the number exactly how much it will be in tons? As Kai said, the plan says that we start in July with production and that the ramp up goes up from July to December from zero to 80%. Kai has done the model. The detail numbers are in the model. What I can also say is that that is conservative, but usually it should be much quicker. We learned in the past that it is better to be conservative and have good news afterwards.
Yes, in the planning, if we expect EUR 1.7 million revenues from RCB at prices of EUR 1,500, that would mean 1,100 tons of RCB in 2025.
Thank you. We move on with another participant, and congrats. Thank you very much for the excellent progress. A few questions. Did you already have a celebration at the Dillingen plant opening with TV? If not, when is it? Very practical question.
No, in fact, not yet, because the asphalt work was only accomplished two to four weeks ago. There is still a little asphalt work to be done. You are right. That is something that we could really take into consideration now. Now the plant is beautifully running and yeah, it's time to invite them, but there's no date planned yet.
Okay. As your pelletizer is not in operation, I assume you are piling material quantities of Carbon Black. Can you indicate what would be the value of the inventory at sales price?
Yes, it's around 800 tons that we have on stock a t EUR 1,500, that would mean EUR 1.2 million. You need to know that we cannot immediately treat that material into recovered Carbon Black. We store most of that in Perl-Besch, as we know that there, let's say, it will be needed in the future. The idea is to, let's say, start the plant building from the back, that the mill and pelletizer will be one of the first parts that should get into commissioning, as we already have enough material there.
The idea really behind that is really that we looked for a location where we can put the recovered, the unmilled and unpelletized material so that we do not need to take it in our hands a second time, because each transportation costs money. That is why our new building site in Perl- Besch was the, not the building site itself, a hangar that is just next door from our new building site. Once the new mill and pelletizer in Perl-Besch is built, we just need to open the fence and we can treat it there. Yeah, the new mill and pelletizer in Dillingen will have a lot of work to do with what comes out every day from the lines.
Thank you very much. To all the participants, as soon as a question is answered, then please delete your own questions. That would be lovely. We move on. You have two businesses, development business where you work on the new plans and the production business. Investors would appreciate if you would be publishing EBITDA for the production business. This is something you are considering?
Quite honest, not yet.
That was pretty clear. When do you expect the final investment decision of your project partner in Greece?
We expect it in autumn when they have clear answers on subsidies and grants.
What I can tell is, they are moving forward very quickly as they receive the permit and they ask us very clearly what can we do right now in order to save time. We offered them a new contract, which is preparing all the calls for tenders and collecting all the offers so that they can collect the offers locally from groundworks, asphalt companies, hall builders, and so on. We do really now the detail to detail to detail engineering for them. Hopefully we can soon announce that that contract is signed because that is a nice revenue for Pyrum for our engineering team. Once they have the financing complete, they can the next day start building.
Great. Can you give us an idea of when the physical work will start in Greece and the Czech Republic?
Greece, as said, it's planned for the end of the year as soon as they, you know, the problem is when you ask for grants, you're not allowed to start before you get the final feedback. That is the main issue with all grants. In this perspective, politics are really slowing down these projects. You would like to start if you have already some capital available, you could start, but you are not allowed to, yeah, put one hole in the ground before you get the answer from the authorities. That is a little bit the delay here. There will be no answer there before, yeah, September, October, I think it is this year. They cannot build before all everything that can be done there is preparing all the detail engineering now. In Czech Republic, Kai is more in that subject.
Yes. In Czech Republic, we are in the final negotiation of the shareholder agreements. As you know, we want to participate by 49% and want to have a fair agreement. It is not a quick step. Yeah, as I said, it's in a final decision. I will be there next week. We know that they're already, let's say, contracting the oil with BASF directly, that they get, let's say, all contracts done before they start building. We expect building permit around October. It is all with the authorities now and it should start soon then.
Thank you. A question. When will Suez start on site in the U.K.? Good question.
What I can say about these big recycling companies is that they are very committed. They really want to do it, but they are slow. We deliver them right now a lot of data from our plant in Dillingen. For them, it's really important to see the actual operating data from the plant. Also, they want long-term emission data from the plant. We are now collecting for some months the emission data from the plant in Dillingen. Yeah, they have now everything, not since a long time. I think it's just since two or three weeks that they have all the data they needed. I hope that they get now all the green lights from their authorities, that they know at least verbally from the authorities that there's no issues to build, and then they can move on with the next steps.
Great. Thank you very much. Please, can you explain in more detail what is contained in the EUR 8 million capitalized work in progress item within your total output number? Thank you.
I would ask if the one who asked that directly connects with me so that we can get in more detail. In general, we put in, let's say, everything that is our work and material for, especially here in Dillingen. There were also capitalizations of parts, let's say, for the digital twin as an example. Please come back directly to me.
Okay. I noted that one. A question: What do you think about a further capital increase to accelerate Pyrum's expansion?
In general, we are always thinking in every direction. We also wrote in the report that we expect that there will be capital to increase in the future to speed up the rollout. As we do not want to have, let's say, in the future, capital increases just to pay interest, there will always be a mix.
Thank you. A practical question: Are you participating this year in any investment conference? What are the initiatives to broaden investor universe and increase investor awareness of the Pyrum opportunity?
Yes, we decided that we will participate in the HIT, so by Montega, Hamburger Investorentag. Traditionally, every year we participate on the German Equity Forum, on the Eigenkapitalforum. We, the first time, did this year with MWB, an Investors Roundtable. We are slowly but steadily increasing that activity. Still, our core focus is on the financing and getting the projects done.
As I said before, Felix is now, as our brand ambassador, also there to bring a bigger awareness out in the world. He knows he brings us into an area where we had no connections before, in the sports area, and we all know many people are interested in sports. Felix Magath is one of the best known trainers in Europe. He knows really everybody. He has also planned to prepare roundtables with investors and dinners and so on. Yeah, could be a nice step forward.
Okay. We go on with some last questions. In your report, you mentioned that disposal fees for ELT are currently under pressure due to exports to Turkey and India. Can you put a more precise figure on this?
Go Pascal
Yes, more precise figure. I do not exactly know what is meant by that. The figures we have are those that were here in the presentation, meaning that it went up from 10% to 33%, 30%-33%. It depends on which report you look. On the other hand, Siemens companies are reducing their prices and, not the prices, the volumes, and the recycling industry making rubber granules is also going down. In fact, as of now, as there are not enough Pyrum plants and not enough other recycling alternatives, the high export is even needed because there is simply no other solution. We cannot pile up tires here up to the sky so that we recycle them in the next year. The export right now is not nice to see, and it is putting some pressure on the price. The European Union is hardly working on putting an export ban on tires and other polymers and plastics in the next year. I do not know if this is official information, but we are speaking a lot with politicians in Brussels lately.
The idea is to ban the export of tires outside of Europe until 2027. For that, several laws have to be changed, for example, the custom numbers, as there is no custom number directly for used tires today. You first need to create the legal basements to ban something, and the plan is to do that until 2027.
Thank you very much. I'll read out some more questions. Due to the time, I would suggest that you stop as the participants put more questions in our chat box. Please take them and place them to the IRs of the company. I'll read out some last questions. Can you talk about the progress on the blade recycling business? Will you be progressing this within Pyrum or would you transfer it into another entity, which could raise capital independently?
Technically we are working on that. Our R&D team has put in place a pilot unit. Today, as of today, we are working a lot with the patent authorities to get the patent through. As we said before, we declare the patent. That is not that you have the patent. Most investors are asking for IP. It is always better to have an actually declared patent that has a value. On the other hand, there have been no decisions made yet if we do that in another entity or things like that. Honestly speaking, that question is new to me. It is good as a homework so that we can think about it.
Thank you. Will there be always the same mill and pelletizer system of Hosokawa Alpine for every project? Do you expect further work in optimize and ramp up the mill and pelletizer to full output capacities?
I think this question could just be answered after, let's say, ramp up of the mill and pelletizer. As we have seen in the last years at Pyrum, there were many expectations also on some well-known suppliers. Hopefully we can answer the question by yes. Yeah. It depends on how good they finish their work now and how good they are under pressure.
Great. Two more questions. Could you give some color on the plan with VTTI? What exactly will Pyrum do? Will it be only planning activities or some kind of EPC contractor? Do you expect cash flow only from the selling of the plant or will there also be cash flows from licenses?
Yes, there will be cash flow from licenses. We are not just simply selling the technology or something like that. The core parts of the plant will be sold by us. We are not the EPC contractor. It is more or less called EPCM. We deliver core parts of the process. We will have the overall lead of the project, but things like shredding units or mill and pelletizer will be directly ordered by VTTI. More details, not every detail is clear today. We are in the pre-feed and the feed phase. The idea here is now to make the basic engineering and parts of the detail engineering and to get the permit. It is sure that Pyrum will not be co-shareholder in the plant itself because it is an LNG terminal.
It is very complicated to take new shareholders in there because we would have to get access to the LNG terminal and all of that stuff. They do not want that. Therefore, there are higher fees for the plant, one-off fees, and license fees. I would say we found, or we are almost done with finding a nice structure here together with VTTI so that both parties are happy.
Great. One last question. Are you still working on separating H2 from pyrolysis gas?
Yeah, on small burner because most separation technologies that we are, yeah, hardly announced in the market even did not work or we did not, we do not develop the separator. We were looking with partners to find a system to separate our hydrogen from our gas. There is no finished system you can buy. That was more or less what many suppliers claimed to be able to. The position where we are today, we would have to develop something ourselves or some developments from some big players that they have announced to come out in the next month will bring the big breakthrough. The whole hydrogen discussion is also in politics and on the market is going up and down. Sadly, we are not swimming in cash so that we can follow everything simultaneously. We prefer to focus on things that are clear. That is the projects that have permits and projects that we can build ourselves. It is not forgotten and it is not stopped.
Thank you very much. We now worked off every question in the chat box. Should further questions arise at a later time, please feel free to contact investor relations. We therefore come to the end of today's earnings call. Thank you for joining and all your questions. A big thank you to the two gentlemen, Mr. Klein, Mr. Winkelmann, for the presentation and the time you took to answer these questions. I wish you all a lovely weekend. With this, I hand over again to Mr. Klein for some famous last words.
That was not said before. Now I'm not prepared. No, sorry. Thank you everybody for your attention. It was really a pleasure for me, doing this presentation like always. Thank you also for the well-thought questions. For us, it's very important that everybody out there and all of our supporters understands what is happening. I can understand that not always everything that we do is directly understandable. If you have questions, we are always there to answer them and our investor relations team. I also wish you all a beautiful weekend. As it looks, it will be sunny. Enjoy it.
Thank you very much.