Philipp Schramm
Chief Executive Officer

Welcome, everyone, to our Q1 Trading Update. This call replaces our regular call, which was scheduled for next week to present you our Q numbers. Reason for that is that we have executed last night a successful private placement in the amount of NOK 550 million. Eirik will touch on that in a moment slightly.

I'm happy about an oversubscribed private placement, and that shows great trust into Hexagon. Thank you, our investors, for this trust. This cap rate enables us to have a stronger balance sheet and improved financial flexibility, financial flexibility due to a renegotiated finance agreement with our lending partners, which really substantially reduces the leverage risk and covenant risk, which we had and some of you brought up multiple times during the course of the last year.

But one aspect is asking for the fix of our balance sheet. The other is walking the talk and what is the management, the company doing. We have executed a significant restructuring over the last 12 months. And one testimony, one walk the talk is what Eirik will show you in the Q1 numbers. We have a leaner cost base, and we have tightened cash discipline. This leads to a significant improved EBITDA breakeven point.

This is also supported by restructuring in one of our markets in Europe, where we are consolidating and moving our production from Poland to our facility in Germany, which will lead to operational leverage in the second half of this year. This will mean that we have implemented cost actions with retained capacity to scale. We are the market