Operator

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the Q1 Earnings Call 2026 of AlzChem Group AG. I would like to welcome the company's CEO, Andreas Niedermaier; and CFO, Andreas Losler, who will guide you through the presentation in a moment, followed by a Q&A session via audio line and chat.

And with that, I hand over to you, Mr. Niedermaier.

Andreas Niedermaier
CEO & Chairman of Executive Board

Yes. Thank you for your warm introduction. Thank you for joining us today, and welcome to our quarter 1 analyst call here. As always, we will go through the presentation first, and then we'll be available for all the valued questions at the end. So let's skip the disclaimer and go directly to Page 5.

I think, yes, you should see the presentation. Let me briefly summarize our performance in the first quarter of 2026. We have made a very solid start into the new year. Group revenue increased by approximately 3% on a year-on-year basis to approximately EUR 149 million, building on an already strong comparison base. So at the same time, profitability developed significantly better than revenue. EBITDA rose by 18% to EUR 32 million, and our EBITDA margin expanded to markedly 21.7%. This clearly reflects the success of our strategic focus on high-margin specialty ingredients.

In particular, our ingredients once again proved to be the key growth driver here. Growth was predominantly volume-driven with strong demand across Human Nutrition, Animal Nutrition and