Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Conference Call devoted to the Financial Performance of Grupa Azoty, published yesterday. Our results will be presented by Andrzej Skolmowski, CEO; Andrzej Dawidowski, Vice President; and Paweł Pilecki, Vice President of the Management Board. Before we move on to the presentation, let me remind you that you can ask questions via the grupaazoty.pl website. The floor is over to Andrzej Skolmowski.
Twenty months have passed after very demanding negotiations with the finance institutions and the recovery measures. As a result, we have gained approval for the publication of the stabilizing agreement. We also secured a waiver for the non-delivery of the net debt to EBITDA ratio in order to stabilize the performance across the Azoty shareholders. All the leading companies across the group reported better performance in the nine months of 2025 compared to the previous year.
EBITDA for the nine months of 2025 came in at PLN 319 million. Excluding the Grupa Azoty variations, it was up by—it was up and came in at PLN 315.9 million. The improvement of our performance in a very challenging macro situation is the result of the delivery of an end-to-end Azoty business recovery program. I, therefore, emphasize the importance of this program and involvement of the employees across the Azoty group. Thank you very much for your engagement and involvement. We have published the strategy up to 2030. We will deliver the strategy while structuring our net bank debt. The strategy lives up to our competencies, ambitions, and possibilities, and will only focus on our core business. We will deliver the strategy in a very challenging market situation. Our segments, main segments, four segments: fertilizers, chemicals, and advanced chemicals and plastics, will face a lot of problems.
We will focus on logistics, and we also will focus on the new segment chemicals for defense. We have convened the general meeting of shareholders in order to take a decision on a two-stage issue of shares in order to recapitalize the company and deliver strategic investments. In the first phase, we want to issue more than 33 million series E- shares at a total value of PLN 600 million, addressed only to the state treasury, with no pre-enterprise for former shareholders. In the second stage, we want to—or we consider the issue of, or maybe a couple of issues, of up to PLN 40.5 million, excluding pre-enterprise as well, addressed to market investors and the state treasury as well. After the two stages of the issue, the share of the state treasury in our shareholder structure will not exceed 50%.
This is a very important stage in the restructuring of our bank debt process and is expected by the entire market and our investors. Grupa Azoty Polyolefin had an impact on our performance and negative impact. However, it was down year on year to one-off events, and it's the payout of guarantees. This is a one-off event, as I said, because to a large extent, due to the under-utilization of our capacities, due to lengthy shutdowns, to the regulation of our plants and repairs of our plants, but also very low demand in the polypropylene market and low spreads, which were due to the macro situation. Our operations at Grupa Azoty Polyolefin is not profitable still. It's worth emphasizing that the limited cash that we have at hand, as well as the agreements we have between finance institutions, impact the delivery of the Polymer Polyethylene Product.
Our special purpose vehicle also has an impact under the agreements with the general contractor, and we paid out more than PLN 170 million under this agreement due to delivery of the contract. We focused on the plans and schedules for the repairs and recovery of our operations for this particular plant. This was welcomed by the finance institutions, and we should be financed by the guarantee. However, this plan has never been delivered due to the fact that the banks did not agree to it in the end. In October, there was a set-off by the financing institutions in regards to the payout or payback of the credits. On October 15, Orlen placed a non-binding offer for the purchase of all the shares of Grupa Azoty Polyamid-6 at the value of PLN 1.02 billion.
This offering assumes that all the shares and assets will be taken over on a cash-free, debt-free basis, and we will receive sources of cash to finance our payables. We focus on this offering very much. We have signaled time and again that the solutions to our problems related to this project will be delivered in cooperation with Audubon. A word of gratitude to all our business partners, to all our customers, for your trust on an ongoing basis. This is a great capital, and it will bear fruit and bring the company back on track. A word of gratitude to our employees as well for their involvement in this recovery process, the fight, the struggle to have savings on a daily basis. Without this involvement, we would not have been able to perform better results. Let us now move on to discuss the situation in the market.
The Market Environment, especially in terms of the prices of electricity, gas, and coal in the third quarter, was favorable to Grupa Azoty in the Q3 of 2025. We see declines, especially in terms of the prices of gas, based on LNG supplies from outside of Europe to Europe. Only in September, prices stabilized, and we saw an upward trend. The main determinant here was the publication of assumptions for the EU's 19th sanctions package and instability in the Middle East. In terms of electricity, the price of electricity, we see a decline in the Q3 , especially due to increased production from renewable energy sources year on year, going up by 1% in Poland. As a result, unstable operation of conventional sources that are coal and gas-based sources towards the end of Q3 2025, which translated into a higher price of gas.
In the case of coal, at the end of the quarter, we saw the lowest levels of prices of coal for the past 4 years, which was due mainly to a higher production from renewable energy sources in China and increased demand and consumption across the entire continent of Asia, which translated into a major drop in the price of coal, also due to lower prices of gas, making it easier to use coal sources and gas sources. As a result, it was translated into lower prices of coal itself. In terms of the agro segment in the agro market, it was to a large extent determined by the situation and sentiment of farmers, which were relatively low in terms of expectations for the prices of agricultural products across the quarter. The demand was dwindling for fertilizers. It was very weak.
Also, the global balance for the demand did not improve on the prices levels. The prices went up for Urea Fertilizers, which increased the prices across the board for all other Nitrogen-based products in the group. Towards the end of quarter three 2025, we see instability in terms of regulatory environment or expectations related to the European Union, especially CPAM and ETS2, which did not translate positively into the situation of producers across the European Union. The European Market for compound fertilizers was characterized by low levels and stabilization of prices. The demand for such products was pretty low in this period, and the spreads between feedstocks and final product prices were shrinking. Conversely, higher spreads were only seen for Ammonium Phosphate, so DAP. In this area, spreads in the third quarter were going up.
Upward trends were seen for the prices of our main feedstocks, that is Sulfur and Potassium Chloride, while Phosphate prices were stable.
When it comes to the challenges related to the agro segment, we still see the impact of import of product both from the east and from the other regions from outside of EU and Europe. We've noted a significant decrease of almost 45% year to year when it comes to import of fertilizers. Still, the volumes that arrived to Poland in the first quarter, 1st half of year 2025, were groundbreaking. This, in case of the division of sales in fertilizers in our region, meaning Poland, is going to have a significant impact on our sales till the end of 2025. We've noticed that the decrease of volumes of imported products from Russia and Belarus of over 76% is positively transposed.
The results, as we've communicated before, are going to be visible in the Q1 2026. When it comes to chemicals, stable spreads in products of the Titanium White. The market is still under pressure when it comes to decreased consumptions from automotive segments and construction segment. Similar case in Oxo Alcohols. Fuel spreads are stable with a slight increase tendency in the third quarter of 2025. Segment of plastics. This is probably the most challenging ones in the Azoty group, especially when it comes to the automotive segment and increasing import from Asia, especially from China. It is not only about the product Polyamid-6, but also ready-made products and ready-made cars, which are being imported from China and relate to decrease in production in the EU. Significant decrease of raw materials and prices of products.
Very low level of prices from the very beginning of the Q1 2023 do not allow us for rentable sales of this category of products. With completed 20 months of talks, and we consequently implement the previously accepted repair program, and we on an ongoing basis are presenting the results of it. We have completed almost 20 months of demanding talks with financing institutions. We have been implementing consequently the accepted plan, and we on an ongoing basis are presenting the results of it to financial institutions. The result of talks is an agreement, a consent to continue the stabilizing agreement. It is currently binding till 28th of November.
As I said before, we've also been working on solutions, and we still work on solutions that are going to allow the group to shift from the understandings with banks that were established for several weeks or a dozen weeks to a phase of long-term understanding. At the same time, we are preparing for the new emission of shares of Grupa Azoty. We underlined that on an ongoing basis, we are meeting all the duties of ours related to paying the debt, which are resolved under the financing agreements. This ensures the maintenance of the current situation. For the 9 months of this year, the group increased the utilization of multi-purpose credit limits by PLN 54 million and utilization of factoring limits by PLN 117 million.
The Banking Net Debt to EBITDA ratio at 30 September 2025, just as it was in the case of 30 June 2025, was recorded a positive value, and it equaled over 14 times. The positive EBITDA caused that the net debt and investment expenses that we've been implementing caused that the net debt was increasing in a limited way. It was PLN 263 million. On the 30th of September 2025, the group's available credit limits amounted to PLN 228 million. PLN 1,296 million is Polyamid-6. The factoring of the total available financing limits at 30th September 2025 equaled PLN 1.726 million. An additional liquidity buffer of the group's net cash balance, which amounted to PLN 732 million at September 2025. The stabilization agreement of the Polyamid-6 Azoty Group with financing institutions, which regards financing of the Polyamid-6 project, expired on 30th September 2025.
As per the date of the creation of the report, we have ongoing talks with the banks about the continuation. On the 1st of August, we have signed a memorandum of understanding between Grupa Azoty, Grupa Azoty Polyamid-6, and Orlen, effective retroactively from 31st July 2025. The conclusion of the memorandum constitutes another important step in the process of seeking solutions aimed at stabilizing the financial situation of Grupa Azoty Polyamid-6. On 14th August 2025, Grupa Azoty Polyamid-6 decided to withdraw on 14th August from the EPC contract for reasons attributable to the contractor and to charge the contractor contractual penalties in connection with the withdrawal of the amount of. The withdrawal notice and the debit note for the contractual penalties were delivered to the contractor on 14th August.
On the 15th October, we've received from Orlen a non-binding offer to acquire shares in Grupa Azoty Polyamid-6. The offer related to company's shares, including assets comprising it, free of encumbrances and on a cash-free, debt-free basis. On the 13th October, the financing institutions satisfied their due receivables accounting to EUR 76.8 million under the credit agreement for financing the Polyamid-6 project. The financial results that we presented for the third quarter are in line with the published estimates that we published several days ago. Grupa Azoty has PLN 2.9 billion of income in the Q3 , which means a decrease year by year by 6%. This is mainly driven by lower revenues in the advanced chemicals segment in the businesses related to plastics and chemicals. The agro segment maintained a positive year-on-year revenue growth trend.
The group reported EBITDA of PLN 391 million with a margin of 13.5% in the relationship to the same period of the last year. The consolidated EBITDA increased by PLN 511 million and the EBITDA margin by 17.4 percentage points. The improvement of debit and EBITDA was recorded across all Grupa Azoty segments. In the results of the third quarter, we've taken into account the settlement of the EPC contract related to the Polyamid-6 project, recognized on the one-off item in PLN 316 million. The consolidated EBITDA of the group for the third quarter without Polyamid-6 would amount to PLN 186 million. The main factors affecting the year-on-year charge in EBITDA were as follows.
One of the events that I spoke about related to the implementation of Polyamid-6 project, the total positive impact of them equaled to more or less PLN 316 million and more to that changes in raw material prices. The costs in the third quarter 2025 year-on-year decreased by PLN 53 million, mainly in the sector of the costs of labor due to lower amount of jobs in the whole of Grupa Azoty. There was an improvement in the efficiency of the groups. In the Q3 of 2025, Grupa Azoty noted lower costs of the use of raw materials by PLN 398 million. Of course, the biggest impact on lowering the costs was due to the decline in natural gas prices and more to that, unit consumption costs of electricity, phenol, propane, and propylene decreased.
In the period discussed, gas accounted for 38% of the raw material consumption costs, which was 2 percentage points higher than the corresponding period of the previous year. The majority of the companies from Grupa Azoty noted improvement of EBITDA results and achieved a positive level. The decrease of EBITDA by 29% was in the Compo Expert Grupa Azoty. The key drivers of the weaker performance in the third quarter were primarily market factors such as macroeconomic slowdown, unfavorable weather conditions, and high inventory levels. Despite the decline, the company continues to generate a positive result. In the case of Grupa Azoty Polyamid-6, the positive EBITDA level results from one-off events related to the settlement of the Polyamid-6 project.
In the agro segment, the main drivers were higher sales prices of products and declining prices of gas.
You remember about MPK prices and an increase in the cost of production of compound fertilizers. This was mainly determined by high imports of fertilizers from other regions. We're talking about more than 3 million tons in the first half of 2025, which will have a major impact on volume results of our production and sales in the second half of the year. Moving on to our EBITDA performance, EBITDA improved to 3.7%, going up by 8.1 percentage points year-on-year versus the Q3 of 2024, and the improvement from minus 81 to plus 3 million PLN. In the chemicals segment, as we said before, it was mainly determined by declining demand or no demand from the construction or automotive segment, but the improvement was seen for AdBlue and Technical Urea. Other volumes of sales are going down, especially for Titanium White and Oxo Alcohols.
These are the products that are heavily impacted by the two segments. In terms of the production of Caprolactam, we did not resume the production at Puławy due to dwindling very low demand for Polyamid-6 across Europe. The entire segment came in at minus 6.1. That is translated into minus 1%. The improvement was, however, up by 5.7 percentage points year-on-year. In terms of the plastics segment, we reported a positive EBITDA result due to one-off events that is the recognition of contractual penalties under the Grupa Azoty Polyamid-6 agreement. Without this effect, we would have recognized a negative EBITDA. Plastics were impacted by a very low demand or declining demand from the automotive and construction segment and also declining prices of products. The improvement of this result, considering and not considering one-off events, was recognized.
However, it did not allow us to recognize positive EBITDA in a traditional sense, that is, without one-offs. In the period of nine months of 2025, Grupa Azoty generated consolidated results from sales at the level of. Again, within nine months of 2025, Grupa Azoty generated consolidated sales revenue at the level of over PLN 10 billion and EBITDA at the level of PLN 312 million with EBITDA margin, which came in at 3.1%, going up by 6.1 percentage points year-on-year versus quarter 3, 2025. Consolidated EBITDA for the group for the nine months of 2025 without Grupa Azoty Polyamid-6 would have come in at PLN 346 million. It is worth emphasizing that as of the fourth quarter of 2024, the group without Grupa Azoty Polyamid-6 has recognized positive EBITDA in the so-called core business.
In the agro segment, the EBITDA margin was at 2.8%, going up by 5.4 percentage points year-on-year versus quarter 3, 2024. In the chemicals segment, the EBITDA margin was at minus 5.1%. Despite this negative result, it was still higher by 5.3 percentage points year-on-year. The EBITDA margin generated in the plastics segment was at minus 9.1%, going up by 2.5 percentage points year-on-year. Obviously, these results in the chemicals segment were impacted by the result of Grupa Azoty Polyamid-6. In the agro segment, the key factors determining our results included a considerable increase in production volumes and sales, compounded or combined with the concurrent increase in the prices of products and considerable increase in the prices of gas. As my colleague has already mentioned, the demand for chemicals remained pretty low and limited, and this was one of the main determining factors in the chemicals segment.
The prices of feedstocks in the plastics segment, such as phenol or caprolactam, were going down as well, and the demand across most of our sectors of our customers remained stable but low. As we said before, in the third quarter alone, but also for the nine months of the year, all our main Grupa Azoty Group companies reported higher performance versus the Q3 of 2024. At Grupa Azoty Puławy, EBITDA came in at PLN 55 million. At Polyamid-6, it was at PLN 72 million, so we see a considerable improvement versus last year's negative performance. Grupa Azoty Kędzierzyn reported EBITDA, which was four times higher than in 2024, and Compo Expert reported EBITDA, which was up by 15%, and the company invariably generates positive results across the board, including at the level of net profit.
In the 9 months of 2025, as we said before, we generated consolidated revenue from sales at over PLN 10 billion, and we need to emphasize that EBITDA, which came in at PLN 312 million, excluding Grupa Azoty Polyamid-6, would have been at PLN 346 million. A couple of words on our investment projects. In terms of our CAPEX projects for the 9 months of the year, we focus on CAPEX Control Tower, and we are analyzing the entire portfolio of our CAPEX projects. Due to our current financial position, we took steps in order to limit our CAPEX spending, which is quite visible if you compare it to last year's CAPEX. Our CAPEX spending, investment spending, were limited to a bare minimum. We focused only on our key investments of major importance to our business across the group.
Right now, we have 4 major investments: two in Tarnów and two in Puławy. In terms of Puławy and the construction of a power-generating unit called BASED Unit, we are currently analyzing the selection of the most optimum solution to finish that project, and we are taking inventory, and Polyamid-6 part was due to Polyamid-6 fault. This part of the contract was terminated. After the publication of the strategy until 2030, we are now looking at a very consistent delivery of our goals, which were presented in that very strategy, and its operationalization. We are analyzing a non-binding offer which we received from Orlen, and we are considering all the potential scenarios in relation to a very complex, comprehensive approach to that particular situation. We announced the general shareholders' meeting planned as at the 13th of February.
At this meeting, we want to ask our shareholders to approve of the issue of shares into stages. We will continue our negotiations with our financing institutions in order to arrive at a long-term agreement which will stabilize the group's financial situation. We consistently keep delivering the Azoty business program, and the results of this program are already visible in the improving EBITDA level. This program brings together a couple of hundreds of our employees, and our ambition is to make sure that some of these initiatives that are delivered under this program, the Azoty business program, so the recovery program, will change the group thoroughly. The business environment in the agro segment is changing positively, and the customs duties introduced as of the beginning of July are bearing fruit, initial fruit.
However, we will still have to wait for the effects of those new regulations until the beginning of the new year. The improving EBITDA is visible. We are consistently delivering the assumptions of our recovery plan. We are emphasizing that we are already in the midst of the Q4 of the consecutively reported positive EBITDA across the Azoty group. Therefore, we need to still deliver our goals in terms of our negotiations with the financing institutions and the completion of these negotiations. We also need to prepare ourselves to a major breakthrough event. That is the general shareholders' meeting convened as at the 13th of February 2026. Thank you very much for this presentation, and now we can move on to a Q&A session. The first question, Dariusz Malinowski. Mr. Dawidowski has already partially answered that question.
Do you see any effects of the new tariffs on Russian fertilizers, and if so, how, and to which extent, and when will these effects be visible fully in the fertilizers segment? As I said before, we do not see those effects yet. They were only implemented as of the 1st of July. The very high record-breaking, if we compare it to the previous year's levels of import in the first half of the year, translated into the situation in the market. They are in Poland, but they are still in the shipment terminals, and the prices are pre-customs duties prices still. We expect that the effects will be shifted by six months. That means that the effects will be seen as of the 1st of January 2026.
We need to remember that as a result of these changes, the gradual changes of customs duties, we can expect yet another increase in the prices of products transported or imported from Russia and Belarus as of the second half of 2026. Second question on agro segment. What is your assessment of these higher customs duties on the prices of products across Poland? As we said before, we see that the higher prices are not of major importance in Poland. Those increases are not significant. Fertilizers in Poland are sold at very competitive prices versus other countries, so we cannot say that it has any major impact on the situation of farmers.
The offer of Orlen is binding till December this year. We are approaching the end of the year. When are we going to find out what's the final decision of Grupa Azoty in the meta?
The offer of Orlen is an offer of purchase 100% of shares of Azoty Polyolefins. As we know, we do not own 100% of shares, and we are right now in the process of talks with institutions that are financing and the ones that finance the whole project. The amount offered by Orlen is a very demanding task. It requires a lot of effort from all the sides to come up with the understanding. In the nearest future, the offer is binding till the end of the year 2025. We assume that we are going to get the initial understanding in between parties, shareholders, and Orlen, and we are going to do that under the condition of the consent of all the sides.
When it comes to Polyamid-6, why do we want to sell Polyamid-6 to Orlen for PLN 1 billion-22 million if the construction of the plant cost over PLN 7 billion? Why are we selling it for a lower price? Shouldn't it be higher? Why is it so? We want to underline that this is the public offer that has been submitted by the bidder, by Orlen. The offer is available to all potential other investors who could submit a different proposal. We underline that, of course, when looking at the cost of construction, the offer is several times lower, but the situation on the market is somewhat matching similar levels of quotations that we observe in other similar transactions, including similar installations, which are installations that are on the European Market. The offer is public, publicly available to others who could submit a counter proposal.
The question related to financial results. What was in over PLN 400 million of income of remaining operational activity? In the result of the first quarter, we've also included one event that is one of this is an agreement with a Polish mining group. It's a settlement at the amount described in the financial report and in the ongoing report too. Now, a question related to the segment of chemicals for defense. How the company sees the further cooperation in the sector with PGZ Company, PGZ. The company PGZ, we cooperate with it in several scopes. First of them is preparation to production of the product components which are going to be used in production of explosives. The cooperation with Polish Armaments Group, meaning PGZ, has several sectors. The second one where we have big competencies is the engineering sector of the work on design.
We have communicated it yesterday that we've established yet another agreement with one of the companies that belong to the Polska Grupa Zbrojeniowa. Both paths of cooperation are what we are going to continue. Next question. In the Q4 , the result of Grupa Azoty is going to take into account the compensations for the industry. In the Q4 , information on the energy-intensive sector, information related to your question will be published in the first quarter of the next year because it's going to regard the Q4 of the previous year.
Thank you very much for your kind attention. Those were all the questions posed, so see you on the next press conference.