Verda Tasar
Director of Investor Relations

Thank you, Michael. Hello, everybody. This is Verda. Welcome to Ulker Biskuvi's First Quarter 2026 Earnings Release Webcast. Here with me in the room are CEO, Mr. Ozgur Kolukfaki; and our CFO, Fulya Banu Surucu. I now leave the ground to our CEO, Ozgur, for the opening remarks and initial thoughts. Ozgur, please.

Ozgur Kolukfaki
CEO & Executive Director

Thank you, Verda. Good morning, good afternoon and good evening, everyone, wherever you are. Thank you for joining Ulker Biskuvi's 2026 First Quarter Earnings Call. I'll walk you through our results, strategic progress and our road map for the rest of the year. First, I'll start with the key highlights, then review operational and financial performance and close with our outlook for 2026 growth plan, and then we'll take questions at the end.

Looking at the key highlights, 2025 was a resilient year despite softer demand and regional challenges and 2026 has started in even a more challenging context in terms of both geopolitics and macro economy. Despite this challenging environment, we continue maintaining our leadership in Turkey and strengthened regional competitiveness even more. Innovation scaled strongly, contributing meaningfully to growth and balance sheet discipline remains as a core strength.

Looking at the macroeconomic highlights. This slide is important because it explains why we, as the management, focus in 2026 is not simply growth, but quality of growth, cash discipline and protection of earnings. Macro environment in Turkey remains challenging. Inflation is still high at around 31% as of March 2026.

As you can see in the details, education is