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Hello everyone and welcome to Chess Group Financial Results 2024 conference call. It's my pleasure to welcome Martin Novak, Chief Financial Officer and Pavel Sirani, Chief Sales and Strategy Officer who will walk you through the presentation and then we will have time for questions and answers. I'm now handing over to Martin.

Thank you. Good afternoon and good morning, everybody. I will go through first two sections of the presentation. So, when you look at slide three, you can see actually our EBITDA and net income results for 2024. uh there compared to our guidance from november 12th we actually increased the real numbers significantly so we achieved 137.5 billion check round ebitda and 38.1 billion adjusted that income the reasons that actually led to higher ebitda than originally expected in november are are coming from Two parts. One is actually generation segment, which is plus 5 billion check rounds. The main reasons are listed on the slide. Revolution of derivatives, high prices, then originally anticipated update of provisions and lower cost. and higher operational availability of our nuclear and hydroelectric plants. In other segments we had lower purchase cost of commodities and also higher revenues from connection of the customers into distribution segment. So very simply taking our adjusted income and applying our payout ratio of 60 to 80 percent of of this adjusted income, you would come to a potential dividend of 19 to 25 billion Czech crowns or 35 to 47 Czech crowns per share. On the next slide, we have more information about our acquisition of GasNet. We acquired Czech gas distribution that covers the vast majority of the territory. You can see it actually on the little map. With the exception of Southern Bohemia and the capital city of Prague, we cover the entire Czech Republic. And actually numbers are consolidated since September 1. We acquired 55.21% stake. The remaining 45% is held by two financial investors. There are main indicators, financial and also volumetric data. Those that are actually worth highlighting is the size of the distribution of 59 terawatt hours are actually transported of natural gas a year, 65,000 kilometers of gas distribution network, almost three quarters are actually hydrogen ready. 2.2 million connection points in the country. EBITDA around 11 billion Czech crowns annually and net income about 4 billion crowns annually. And, you know, this asset is not only a very interesting investment from financial point of view, but also would help us actually to achieve our goals in converting our heat plants to CCGT where more gas will be needed. And also in the future, also power plants having better access to infrastructure and of course gas as a result of our trading operations. Next slide, you can see actually a few highlights of our nuclear assets. With more details provided, I would just maybe stress that we are increasing the generation volume in existing power plants and our ambition is to achieve 32 terawatt hours per year. We are actually getting close in 2025, 31.8 TWh that you would like to produce, as you will see later. The details of how this should be achieved are provided in the text. We also ensured or contracted non-Russian nuclear fuel from Westinghouse with the first deliveries to be provided this year. We selected a preferred supplier in a tender for construction of new nuclear units in Dukovane. It is KHMP, Korea Hydro Nuclear Power Company of South Korea. It was actually selected as a preferred bidder in July 2024. Negotiations on the contract actually are ongoing. and signing the contract should be happening sometimes during the second quarter of this year. We also became a strategic shareholder of Rolls-Royce SMR and continue to prepare SMRs in our country. South Korea, on next slide actually, KHMP information is provided with more details. So basically, one more thing is worth mentioning. Also, the paperwork actually and the approval processes are running according to schedule. So on February 27, we received a zoning permit. uh for new dukovani side uh and we also uh negotiate not only the colony to extension but also a having option on two nuclear units in tamilin uh on next slide you can see details on our partnership with rose royce uh we acquired uh approximately 20 stake on march the 4th and the logic is as we already stressed out last time in November that we would like not to be only customer of future SMR providers but also participate through our chain of suppliers on construction of those units not only for us but for other customers as well and be able to utilize actually our expertise and supply chain in those projects. Again, more detail is provided on the slide. On the next slide, you can see how we are doing in ESG agenda. In 2021, when we started officially communicating ESG, Agenda, we set a goal to be among 20% best companies worldwide measured by CSR Hub. And we are actually now, we have got actually gotten between six or among 6% best companies. So we already overachieved our original target as you can see on the chart. on the left side with again more details provided. So we are happy that we are on the right track. Financial outlook for 2025 on slide number nine. This is important slide. Actually, we are aiming at 125 to 130 billion EBITDA and 25 to 29 billion check rounds of net income. The main changes year over year are lower prices, power prices that are declining in the future. and also lower revenues from ancillary and regulation services and lower revenues from coal sales. Positive effects might be coming from or will be coming from us acquiring GasNet, which will bring about 7 billion Czech crowns into our EBITDA and higher utilization of nuclear plants, where we should increase year-on-year utilization pretty significantly. Selected assumptions of the current forecast, we aim to produce 43 to 45 terawatt hours in the Czech Republic. Average realized prices of electricity generated in the Czech Republic are 120 to 125 euros per megawatt hour. Total depreciation and amortization of around 50 billion Czech crowns, 6 billion of which is attributable to Gasnet, and another 7 billion is attributable to accelerated depreciation on coal assets. Windfall tax of 26 to 30 billion to be expected on 2025 numbers. So those are the main highlights of the year. Now I would continue with financial results and detailed discussion on EBITDA and net income. mainly comparison with 2023, which is on slide number 11. You can see that our operating revenue has grown slightly by 1% to almost 345 billion Czech crowns. Our EBITDA, as already mentioned, is 10% higher on a year, achieving 37.5 billion. Operating income 93.4 billion or 11% better. Income taxes are actually a function of pre-tax profit, which means it's growing as well as our EBITDA is growing. So in total almost 53 billion Czech crowns, 32 billion out of which is attributable to windfall tax. Our net income is actually 30.5 billion, which is 3% better over 2023. Adjusted net income is actually 9% lower. Adjusted net income has achieved 31.8 billion check rounds, and I will cover the adjustments on the further slides. Operating cash flow is somewhat lower, mainly due to significant amounts of cash coming back from margins in 2023 and it achieved 124.4 billion Czech crowns. CapEx almost a quarter or 25%, 24% higher than in 2023, achieving almost 57 billion Czech crowns. Our net debt as of 31st of December has grown to 102 billion or 203 billion Czech crowns, increase of 34% and net debt to EBITDA ratio is well below our target and it is actually on 1.5%. Next slide, you can see actually split of our breakdown of EBITDA. On the right slide, on the right side, actually on the right picture, you can see the breakdown of 137.5 billion split among various segments of our business. Generation from nuclear is almost half of our EBITDA, 65.3 billion. Generation from renewables, 8.6 billion. Trading, 5 billion. Sales segment, 9 billion. Distribution, which is the second strongest segment, 27.2 billion, which also includes gasnet for the last four months of 2024. And then we have actually fossil generation and mining, 13.7 and 8.8 billion. Those actually emission-free activities in our EBITDA are now achieving 84%, which is significant improvement over 2023. And our emission-based EBITDA is now only 16%. So again, it's moving us closer to our targets in the future. Next slide. So you can see actually comparison for waterfall chart, getting us from 2023 EBITDA of almost 125 billion to 2024 EBITDA of 137.5 billion. There are a few items that move it upwards and two items that move it downwards. 7.1 billion improvement on generation segment, generation facilities. out of which 10 billion is actually a lack of cap on the revenues that was only in place in 2023 and it was 10 billion Czech crowns. So this is the main variant, actually something that we did not have to pay in 2024. Trading, although it's showing negative variance, trading has achieved 3.6 billion result, which is way above usual average, but it is below last year as the volatility was significantly lower in 2024 than in 2023 and maybe 2022. So we are getting back to normal, I would say. Mining activities minus 3.4 billion check rounds mainly due to lower prices of coal that we supply to our coal plants and lower amount of coal to be supplied to third parties due to lower demand for coal due to market conditions. On the other hand, we compensate this by lower operating cost of 1.6 billion check rounds. Distribution segment is now comprised of two entities. It is just distribution, which is such a distributor, which is actually power generation or power distribution and gasnet, which is gas distribution. Gasnet is a new segment, which we did not have before. So in full EBITDA for four months of 2024 is actually included and there was nothing in 2023. So it's all actually positive impact. In Czech power distribution, we had significant improvement versus 2023, but the vast majority of it is actually coming from so-called correction factors, of which we will have to return actually in 2026, after it is audited in 2025. Sales segment, 2.7 billion better result. Retail segment, 1.8 billion improvement, mainly due to declining purchase prices of commodities. And ESCO or energy services is helping us with 700 million check rounds. On next slide, you can actually see the year-on-year changes in net income. So we are starting with EBITDA. that is 10% higher. Depreciation amortization is actually 6.4 billion or 18% higher, mainly due to us including actually Gasnet depreciation, which was 2 billion for one third of 2024. We have higher depreciation on coal assets because we decided to accelerate actually depreciation of coal assets. in October 2024 so this is an effect of one quarter of a year and we also have high depreciation in other segments mainly just distribution. Then asset impairments 2.3 billion a significant part of it is actually being reversed back into adjusted net income, as you will see later. So those impairments are mainly related to impairment on our mining assets. Other income and expenses, the largest variation is coming from interest income and expenses, which interestingly enough was zero in 2023. where we had a lot of cash coming from margining actually from power exchanges being deposited at relatively high interest rates leading to the fact that our situation that basically our interest received the interest paid was equal however this is not usual situation so now we are again back to normal where our interest paid is higher than interest received by three billion check rounds I already commented on income taxes, so we are coming to net income of 30.5 billion and adjusted net income 31.8. there are two adjustments one is actually 1.9 billion of non-cash charge into income that we actually return back which is actually impairment of a mining company so we increase actually net income by 1.9 and we decrease it by 0.6 billion and this is actually non-control in non controlling interest in So this is actually a net income that is attributable to minority shareholders that we, according to accounting rules, fully consolidate, but for purposes of adjusted income, subtract from the net income. So this is how we get to 31.8 billion CZK. On the next page, you can see nuclear and renewable generation. We achieved 29.7 billion. 29.7 terawatt hours of power generation in nuclear plants, which is 2% lower than in 2023. Mainly it is due to lower plant availability of tamaline. This will significantly change in 2025 when we assume a 7% increase. This is mainly due to shorter scheduled outages of tamaline. and we should be getting closer to 32 terawatt hours, actually 31.8 precisely. On renewables, we had a good year actually in renewables. We had better results in Czech Republic due to better hydroelectric plants output in 2024. On the other hand, we don't expect it in 2024, 2023, I'm sorry, we don't expect it in 2024, I don't expect it in 2025. So again, there should be a little decrease in hydroelectric by 0.1 terawatt hours. And in total, we would expect to produce the same amount of power from renewable 3.7 terawatt hours in 2025. So overall increase of nuclear and renewable generation should be 6%. Next slide. You can see our generation coming from fossil fuels. We have identical generation from Czech-based power plants, 14.1 terawatt hours in 2023, 2024, and the same expectation for 2025. We had a decrease actually between 23 and 24 on Polish plants of about 18%. And as you know, we actually disposed Polish plants on 6th of February. They were actually transferred, the ownership was transferred to the buyer. So we have only 0.2 terawatt hours produced actually in Poland and that will be it. It will be nothing more coming from Polish plants. further this year. On natural gas generation, we had practically no change between 23 and 24, and we expect actually 29% decline in 25 due to lower, expected lower deployment of Pocharadis CCGT due to market conditions. Next slide is fairly important. You can actually see how much power is hedged, how much power we actually sold. This also provides information about 2024, which is 100% clearly delivered. And in the orange bubbles, you can see actually average achieved prices. uh and in the table below actually what portion of power it is so for example for 2025 we were 90 hedged on December 31, 2024. The same chart on the right side is actually showing the information for the carbon credits that we purchase as well in the moment when we sell actually coal-based power. and on the last slide from this section you can see selected events of q4 we actually sold polish assets to rest invest group company as i said on 6th of february very successful transaction from our point of view uh part of our decarbonization strategy we would like to stay in poland we are very active in poland in uh esco services but uh we decided to leave power generation gold market Temelin and Dukovany meet the requirements of the new international standards for environmental management. We again actually received certificates proving that. And we also sold 15% stake in a company Veolia Energia Czech Republic. We historically had a 15% stake, which was a result of the larger transactions when we got actually a stake in heat plants in the Czech Republic. So now we decided actually to dispose after many years of holding this financial investment, basically this take back to Veolia Energy International. So this is all for me. And now I will hand over to Pavel Tseranyi to go through customer segments and implementation of Vision 2030.

Thank you, Martin. So splitting to page number 20, just a quick overview. The customer segments contributed 36.1 billion CZK with 23.2 coming from distribution, I also already mentioned. On the distribution, it's about 33% year-on-year growth. Electricity distribution now, gas distribution obviously is the addition of GasNet here with only the four months where we actually consolidated gasnet out of about roughly 11 billion check runs which was the full year EBITDA. The sales segments contributed roughly 9 billion and those were about 42% year-on-year growth. So overall all of the customer segments fared nicely in 2024 and obviously we expect the same or better even in 2025. Now, in terms of some of the other numbers, in terms of electricity distribution, which means basically consumption, we see a flat development year on year. After the decreases since 2020, we basically see stabilization and looking forward, we see the opportunity for growth. And similar situation in gas, again, year-on-year basically flat with a very slight growth. But again, we perceive this as being kind of the local minimum with the outlook being of consumption growth. Now, why the consumption should grow on both of these is as electricity and gas replace coal in all the aspects of coal being used, either in electricity and heat, that would be mostly gas, or also in household heating and industry, which would be more on the electricity side. Going forward, the demand for Looking at the retail segment, I'll start with the number of customers. We basically see a flat development, 1% decrease. Again, we see the situation stabilized. We have acquired roughly 400,000 customers since 2020 as a number of customers basically returned to like a very reliable partner which Chess is and there's now a slight correction with some of them going and looking for other options at the same time the number of customers which we started off in 2020 was 2.85 million. So we still see a very significant growth compared to the pre-crisis situation. In terms of the volume, the volume in retail might look a little bit misleading. As during the crisis, there are also some SME customers coming to České Prodé, which normally is a household only supplier. uh there was a a window of opportunity for them to get better prices by by the switch uh now they're typically three-year contracts expired and they are coming back to chess esco so uh a large part of this volume drop is actually uh a migration to chess esco uh in terms of the energy services we see uh the growth uh both in the revenues as well as uh the actual profits to continue. We experienced 14% growth year-on-year and we expect 7% forward-looking. What we recognize and what we see in the market is that regardless of the discussions in the public arena in terms of further development, Green Deal and so forth and so on in Europe, the mostly industrial customers are still looking for ways of safe energy, save money, and with this also reduce emissions. And that is causing the demand for our energy services companies being just as going to Republic and Eleveon in the other parts of Europe. Now a quick overview from the customer segments of selected events in Q4. You all heard that we have worked to develop our LNG business, so bringing gas through LNG cargoes through Netherlands and in the future also through Germany. Our teams also worked on developing other routes of gas and one of them is importing gas to Europe from Algeria through undersea pipe and into Italy and then from Italy further into Europe. And we've concluded the first contract starting in October last year with Zonatra, which is kind of the national RGN gas company. The other piece of information is a long-term cooperation agreement with the city of Ust-in-Labem, one of the regional capitals, where we agreed to supply them with heat in the long term. That would be from the Trmice side, where we intend to build a combination of gas-fired and biomass-fired heating and CHP stations. This follows the same development for Kovultov, coming from other Prunejov and Trusimets' side, as well as Northern Moravia, coming from the Dětmarovice side. And last but not least, just a highlight, we have achieved 100 high-performance public charging stations number with 55 being built in 2024. I think the density of the charging network is quite high in Czech and especially the share of the high performance charging stations is way above European average. And the good news is, again, that we see also growth in the usage. So also the volumes of electricity charged through our charging networks are going up by tens of percent over year on year. Now, a quick recap of how this all fit into our vision 2030 Clean Energy for Tomorrow. Just a reminder, we are working on our strategic initiatives under two pillars. One is transforming our generation portfolio. The second is providing the energy solutions to our customers so they can also transform their energy usage. Now, we get asked to what degree this is or this is not and will be or will not be impacted by the public discussion on the Green Deal goals, targets, developments. We are sure, we are confident that it will not impact our strategy significantly. Our strategy has always been aimed at achieving all three goals of the energy trilemma, and that is energy security, energy competitiveness and energy sustainability. Now sustainability is the part that is being kind of discussed now obviously in terms of security and competitiveness. These are goals that nobody questions and all our activities that we are doing are targeting all three of these. So we definitely aim to continue in delivering our strategy Now, pages 26 and 27 highlight some of the achievements. Many have been already mentioned by Martin in the era of nuclear. Let me mention just a couple more. The construction of the second LNG terminal we have contracted starting 2027 in Stade has started, has been launched. And then I already mentioned we are working on achieving our targets to convert our heating station portfolio to gas and biomass by 2030. So there's construction going on a number of sites. And last but not least, we are also working on expanding our renewables portfolio. We have added roughly 40 megawatts of new renewables just last year being supported from the Modernization Fund. And we have just a little less than 160 megawatts of solar power plants under construction and more in the pipeline. in terms of the customer activities again a number of things have been already mentioned i just put some highlights uh i think our uh colleagues in uh just distribution the electrical grid uh have been uh successful in uh answering the demand from our customers to connect new uh solar photovoltaic panels typically rooftop by now we have connected almost 30 000 of those So with a record investment of 20 billion Czech crowns last year, we're also working on digitalization, both in distribution and supply. So I think overall, we are meeting all of the targets we have set forth within our vision. And we also see demand for these services still continuing from our customers. In terms of the priorities for 2025, Again, basically along the two main pillars plus sustainability or ESG, we will work on operating our nuclear power plants at maximum capacity. We expect the generation to grow quite a lot. Obviously, a number of milestones are ahead of us on both the large and the small modular reactor programs. will continue again in our program for renewables build-up and heating station transformation. Now, last but not least, the law, which for the Czech speakers, which is now in the final stages of approval, contains a paragraph which allows the Ministry of Industry to introduce a capacity market uh so that that would be the last piece in the uh generation portfolio puzzle for the czech republic and we hope that once the law is passed uh the ministry of industry will uh start uh working on on introducing capacity market or also like plain vanilla uh gas fired backup power in terms of the energy solutions and our and customers customer segments Again, basically alongside digitalization, investment into new connections. And 2025 will be the year when we will see much more flexibility-based products being available for our customers. There is a rollout of smart electricity meters starting this year. and with this our supply companies will offer more products for customers to participate also in the in the sport market and be able to you know get involved in demands and management and so forth and so on. And obviously in the sustainability I think we have done and as already mentioned a lot of work in improving our ESG score and this is something we want to maintain and work on further. And with this, I'd like to conclude and hand over back to Bar.