Status Update

Nov 25, 2020

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our conference call regarding the succession of the Chairman of the Supervisory Board. I'm pleased to announce we speakers today who will give an overview of the background of the change, the success management process which took place over the last month and future focus points of the Supervisory Board together with the Managing Board. We will not discuss any trading update in this call today. Our speakers are Peter Sjonsson, the current Chairman of the Board Peter Steiner, his successor as of January 1 and Timo Sjogs, our CEO. After their statements, we're ready to take any of your questions. And now I hand over to Peter Johnson. Please go ahead. Thank you, Anna. Hello, everybody. Now I add my thanks to you for joining us today. I took over as a transitional chair of the Veenaberger Supervisory Board just over a year ago. I had two primary tasks. The first was to bring begin to bring the structure, practices, and behaviors of the supervisory board into line with BEST International practice while still respecting the laws and traditions of its Austrian home. We recently carried out an independent review of the board and chair, which confirmed that good progress has been made. Those findings and the consultant's recommendations will be presented fully in next year's report and account. My second task was to ensure a professional and thorough process was put in place to identify my longer term successor. The supervisory board agreed the experiences, skills, and attributes it was looking for, and an independent board member led a process with headhunters based in The UK and Germany to identify potential external candidates. The leading candidates were interviewed and evaluated alongside our own colleagues on the supervisory board. It was clear to us all that Peter Steiner was the outstanding candidate, not only meeting all the criteria we had established, but having considerable knowledge and understanding of Veenaberger and its markets. We were all delighted when Peter agreed to accept this role. I would like if I may to add a personal comment. I worked closely with Peter over the past year. It is not only his experience and skills that have impressed me. He works hard. He's traveled to Vienna regularly through these past rather difficult months. He doesn't think about himself, but is focused on what is right for the company, its shareholders, and indeed all its stakeholders. And he works well with all its colleagues. I'm delighted to be passing this back on to someone with such integrity and professionalism. And so, Peter, over to you. Peter, thank you very much. Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for taking the time. It's not easy to say at all something, at this early stage. I have not even taken seat of the chair of Winnebago, but, I have a couple of remarks to make. First of all, this is not going to be the only opportunity to talk. Of course not. I'm I intend to follow Peter's example to be available to analysts and investors whenever it seems to be appropriate. This is the first remark. Then the second one would be, I'm pleased that my colleagues at the supervisory board have come to me and asked me to follow Peter Chonson as chairman of the supervisory board. Peter has, in his tenure, shaped the work style and the inner org organization of our board and and much improved its efficiency. This is both a burden and an excellent basis to build on. The the focus of the supervisory board and then so far, my focus as well for the immediate and medium term future will be we should, you know, support management on any effort to realize organic growth. We, you know, we support performance enhancement, and we also support selective value creative acquisitions. The the supervisory board will closely follow and add as much value as possible to come to best decisions possible. That's about the style which we work on and we all I I could almost say we are now used to work on. We use with our tools, we use transparent KPIs, and we use agreements and commitments amongst management and supervisory board towards innovations, towards ESG. And and and, also, I add that remuneration has been an important topic, particularly over the last twelve to eighteen months. We've worked on on that topic a lot, and this is going to remain an important topic to us. The supervisory board and I as its chairman will closely work with Jaime and his team to grow Wienerberger to make it and strengthen its position as leading building material solution provider in Europe and in North America. And, again, I'm glad that Peter Johnson has decided to continue to stay on the supervisory board for some time. I I have enjoyed so much working with him over the last month, and and we together, you know, have helped to move the whole thing really forward. So thanks again, Peter. This is a good opportunity to officially thank you. And on to Jaime. Thank you. Thank you both. And from my side, first of all, a big thank you to you Peter, Peter Johnson for making this happen. And obviously, the last year was not the easiest of all the years with COVID and a lot of sort of changes that took place throughout the business world. But again, I think we all showed the strong commitment to Wienerberger and that we also are ready to cope with such extraordinary situations. Well, on the business side, with the performance of Wienerberger in these difficult times, which is great and very satisfactory, but also on the corporate side when it goes with the cooperation between supervisory board and managing. We have in this year again established a clear roadmap for the next three years, and I'm glad obviously to work together and excited to work together with Peter Steiner to realize it, to implement it, because we say independently from any market development, Wienerberger will organically grow again in the next three years, focusing obviously on optimization, on innovation and also on the implementation of our very ambitious ESG targets. We are dedicated to these targets, we are ready to invest also considerable funds into the different projects, and special CapEx especially, it's about EUR 80,000,000 a year and EUR 60,000,000 into ESG. So an important program that we have put together. And we as the team, the new team, will make sure that Wienerberger grows throughout this period of time and obviously creates substantial value for its shareholders. And this is I think the good message that we have a strong team on the Supervisory Board and also here in the Managing Board to carry Wienerberger forward. And I'm delighted that we have this sort of continuity and strength in the Managing Board on one side and also on the Supervisory Board on the other side to make Wienerberger very successful in the years to come. Thank you for your attention and I think we are ready, Anna, to take questions if there are any. Yes, please, Helmy. We can go back to Q and A. Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will begin the question and answer session. If you are using speaker equipment today, please lift the handset before making your selection. Anyone who has a question may press star followed by one at this time. And the first question is from the line of Xingtong Yu Yang of On Field Investment Research. Please go ahead. Hello. Hi. Can you hear me? Yes. Hang on. Hello? Yes. Hi. Good afternoon, and congratulations, mister Steiner. So I have actually a very small question. It's that when you were at the board of Zella, when when Zella acquired IRSA, were you still there, or actually it was after your tenure in Zella? Oh, my tenure in Zella actually lasted from early two thousand fourteen to early two thousand seventeen. I was hired by Goldman Sachs and PIE and helped them to sell it to Lone Star. Ah, okay. So when they applied IRSA in August, you weren't there anymore? That's right. When I went I I left the the chairmanship of Xela at closing when Lonza took over because I actually was on the Xela side. Yeah. Okay. Great. Thank you. That's that's very helpful. Thank you. Mhmm. The next question is from Pan Liu of Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Hi. Hello. Congratulations, Peter. I just want to check-in your view and given your assessment of the business so far, what are what would you say are your top priorities out of the sort of support that you have given to the management team? And what do you think are the greatest risks that the business is facing and and and you would like to address? Well, I mean, the focus really is naturally to take advantage of market development, which means that we dive into the individual geographies and and create additional volume and at at stable prices. This is my priority one. But the situation, around corona has also led to, weakening of, competitors and, you know, has actually, created, activity. So there are a number of opportunities to create consolidation in our market, and and Winnebago has to be in this situation a consolidator. And and then so far, we are going to selectively take advantage of these situations that we are, sure that they would create value. Those are the the two growth through organic measurements and growth through external transactions. Those are the both directions that we are heading at. And on the on the other hand, it's really all about performance. Dina Daggers has done a fantastic job over the last twenty four months and improved the unit cost substantially. But there is more to do. We've already identified together with or management has identified, and we, super supervisory board follow that closely, has identified additional room for improvement, which we will capture as quick as we can. And so those are the the the directions we are heading at. If you ask me what are the the threats that this company is facing right now, well, it's really, you know, about at the beginning of the of the pandemic, faced threats to closing borders, for example. So the the international workbench was partly interrupted. I don't believe that this will happen again. I believe people have learned. But this actually led to a loss in EBITDA, which we are going to see at the end of the year despite of actually a good recovery in our performance. But what you know, what's gone is is gone. Actually, that that's that's very much because of volumes that could not be could not be shifted and delivered and supported, you know, to the end where it's supposed to be. The the other the other, you know, threats or the challenges, let's call it challenges, are the ones that are typical to our sector such as energy efficiency. All all all of these things that we would, we would cover under our, new, ESG program. Okay. Thank you very much. And there appears to be no more questions at this time. Okay. I think we don't have anyone else in the line for the moment. I would like to close the call then. Thank you very much for dialing in today. As Peter Steiner said at the very beginning, we're always happy to engage at any later point still this year or at the beginning of the year before the next AGM if you have any follow-up questions. And for today, I wish you a nice afternoon. Stay healthy, and thank you very much. Goodbye.