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and welcome to chess group conference call on first quarter 2024 results. Martin Novak, chief financial officer will go through the presentation and then we will have a room to your questions for which we also have Mr. Ludwig Horn, head of trading available for the answers. Now I'm handing over to Martin to go through the presentation.

Thank you. Good afternoon. Good morning, everybody. So let's start with a brief presentation. On the first table, you can actually see our financial highlights and full year outlook. Our EBITDA has grown by 24% to 40.3 billion check rounds. Our net income and at the same time adjusted net income has reached 13.6 billion check rounds or 25% improvement year on year. We confirm our guidance of 115 to 120 billion for 2024 and on EBITDA and adjusted net income at a level of 25 to 30 billion check rounds. So there is no change compared to our last presentation that was held on March 21st. On the next slide, you can actually see main variances between Q1 2023 and Q1 2024. As I already said, our EBITDA has grown by 24%. And you can see the main factors actually on slide number four, where the biggest variances are basically two. The first one is in the generation segment. last year in first quarter we had an additional cost of 10 billion Czech crowns related to price caps on various power plants as it was introduced by the government and actually four year cost at the same time was as well 10 billion Czech crowns so basically all those caps or payments above those caps have materialized in the first quarter. Clearly, this is not valid any longer after December 23 and that's why we don't have this extraordinary cost and therefore we have 10 billion lower cost, meaning 10 billion better result in Q1 2024. At the same time, we also see narrower margins, mainly on the lignite plants. So about 5 billion Czech crowns. So this is partially compensating a lack of those price caps. In the sales segment, we had a negative result of 3 billion Czech crowns in our retail business last year. Now we are kind of back to normal. So 800 million positive result, which makes total difference with other little items of 4.2 billion positive. So those are two main variances actually in EBITDA. Going to net income, main changes actually in net income are mainly in interest income and expenses where we have a little bit higher interest expense or the other way revenue on interest received due to declining interest rates. We have somewhat higher nuclear provisions and there is also segment other income and expenses and there is a revaluation of financial derivatives of 2.2 billion check rounds negative, which actually are function of weakening check round. So in total, we are going down to 13.6, which is 2.7 billion better than last year for 25% growth. Next slide, you can see total operating results in volumetric units, which we can probably skip and go to slide number seven, where we are actually confirming our guidance from March, 115 to 120 billion on EBITDA and 25 to 30 billion net income. The main year-over-year effects on EBITDA are expected lower trading results. Last year, we had actually second-best trading result in our history. The first The best result was actually in 2022 due to high volatility of prices. We don't expect such a volatility and therefore we expect lower trading result. We have also lower sales for ancillary services. We have a higher cost due to inflation. And on the other hand, as a positive, we have still power prices that are a bit higher than the entire effect of power hedging in previous years. And we don't pay 10 billion Czech crowns in caps on power prices. There are also selected assumptions listed and opportunities and risks. So clearly opportunity is a better trading result than anticipated. And negative downside is always availability of generation facilities, mainly nuclear. On the next slide, you can actually see new nuclear events. In Dukovan, we actually received updated bids for the construction of new nuclear power plants from two bidders, which is French EDF and Korean KHNP. It was submitted on 30th of April. And now we are actually analyzing the bids. We will hand it over to the government who will based on our recommendation, make a choice of the winner and the final contract should be signed by March 31, 2025. There is no change in the schedule, so the unit should start operating in 2036. EU has also approved state aid for our nuclear unit in Dukovane. with the parameters listed. So basically, government provides interest-free financing that should be actually repaid within a few decades. We will receive CFD basically for 40 years. And of course, we will be protected against changes in the legislation and regulatory environment in the Czech Republic. So now let's go to the segment of generation mining. On slide 10, you have a lot of detail on this segment. I have covered the most important factors, which is basically no levy on the nuclear plants or on our production portfolio. mainly it is actually seen in nuclear you can see that on the second line item actually nuclear has improved its operations from 10.7 to 19.9 and the main reason is that nuclear was mainly subject to price caps as the price cap on the nuclear units was around 70 euros versus coal units were around 180 euros so that's the main variance You can also see emission generating facilities, as I said, are impacted by higher carbon credits. So 11 billion in 2023 and 5.9 billion EBITDA in 2024 declined 47%. More details actually in the text. Then when we look at next slide, slide 11, you can see our nuclear and renewable generation. So emission free generation. We had a slight decline actually in the nuclear facilities, but this is different on scheduling our planned outages. Overall, year-on-year, the plan is to be 1% below last year, again, because of the outages. For renewables, we plan to be about 4% higher due to better than average hydrological conditions. in the Czech Republic, and we also have new installed capacity in Germany. On the next slide, we can see actually electricity generation from coal and natural gas. There is a quarterly decline of 2% in total, 15% on gas, mainly due to market conditions, meaning gas price, electricity price, and carbon grade price. 38% decline in Poland, the same effect. and 5% increase actually in the Czech Republic mainly due to shorter outages in two of our power plants. Year on year we plan decline actually in the Czech Republic of 8% on coal, 8% in Poland and 9% increase in gas. So in total we plan 6% decline actually in our electricity generation that is coal and natural gas based. uh risk price risk hedging we are basically almost fully sold for this year only three percent open position for this year and uh zero percent basically sold position open position and carbon credits uh on next slide you can see uh the level of hedges for 2025 through 2028 and the same on carbon credit side So looking at the prices, we can clearly see that we are above current levels of market prices, forward prices actually, for 2035 through 2028 due to our hedges in the past. The same applies to carbon credits that are somewhat more expensive, but at the same time, we were selling electricity at much higher prices. So always kind of looking at our margin when we sell coal-based electricity. Distribution and sales segment is actually on the next slide. So on slide number 16, you can see our EBITDA distribution, which is 10% higher, mainly due to higher margin from distribution fees growth. There was a relatively significant growth in the fees. We have lower revenues from connection activities and providing balancing of the grid. and connecting new customers with less demand. And we have also somewhat higher expenses due to wage inflation. So electricity distribution is 1% lower after we actually climate and calendar adjusted, it is 1% higher quarter on quarter. Sales. segment EBITDA. I already commented on retail segment. We had a negative in 2023 because sales retail customers are paying the same price per megawatt hour no matter whether it's January or July. We actually entered the year with somewhat open position. So in the first quarter, our sales organization had to pay more for the power. uh and it made the money back actually uh in the few in the uh out course uh but compared first quarter uh to first quarter 2023 24 when power prices were much more stable we are actually have a significant difference of 4.2 billion positive uh where chess pro day which is our retail organization is returning back to standard operations i would say not seeing such a swings in profits Other companies basically having corruptively marginal changes in their performance. So overall, the segment is made profit of 2.6 billion check rounds, which is variance of 4.2 billion. volume of electricity and gas sold. Year-on-year change in electricity and natural gas supplies is 11%. This is mainly due to extremely warm winter, so consumption of both gas and electricity went down. We had a slight change in customer base of 1%, negative, but this is a reaction to the times when we gained about 300,000 customers from collapse of a few operators in 2021 and 2022. Now, actually, we have a 1% decline mainly due to customers who are always seeking the best offer that are always part of our portfolio. So that's the main reason. And of course, we are always discussing optimization of the number of customers and margin per customer. So it's not necessary to keep all customers. to simply say. Revenue from sales of energy services are growing in all our segments. Germany clearly had a large jump due to acquisition of a few companies. Year on year we expect mainly organic growth, but nevertheless in Germany we expect 13% growth. In Czech Republic we expect decline but this is due to major contracts one of contracts that we actually had in our group and especially decrease in commodity prices where we had a significant profit on our corporate customers actually in the first quarter of 2023 compared to 2024. Overall the segment will be growing by four percent four year numbers estimated three numbers sales for the 3.8 Bering Czech crowns. And that's basically it. You have a lot of information and appendices. So now I think we are open for questions and answers.

Yes. So if you have a question, just raise your hand. I will call your name and you can ask your question. We have the first question from Anna Webb.