E.ON SE

Good morning, everyone. Dear analysts and investors, a warm welcome from my side to our first quarter 2025 earnings call. I am here with our CFO, Nadja Jacobi, who will present our results. As always, we will leave enough room for your questions at the end. With that, over to you, Nadja.

Thank you, Iris, and a warm welcome from my side as well. Since our full year results, much has happened from a global macroeconomic perspective. With Liberation Day, a spiral of tariff announcement resulted in recessionary fears and high volatility in equity markets globally. But with the suspension of tariffs between the U.S. and several countries, a relatively quick recovery has started during the last days. In this period of uncertainty, we have seen that our business model proves to be very resilient and robust against these macroeconomic developments. In Germany, we had federal elections and the new coalition government was formed swiftly. They are encouraging signs of positive momentum for the German economy as well as the energy transition. On the regulatory side, we expect the framework and methodologies for the fifth regulatory period in Germany for power to be developed by the end of 2025. However, history has shown that timelines can sometimes slip. We expect the first regulatory consultation documents to be published in the coming weeks and months. We will then be able to provide you with our assessment. Let us now leave any further discussions on macroeconomic or political topics for the Q&A session later and instead turn to our business. I have four messages for today. First, E.ON delivered a strong operational financial performance in Q1, which puts us firmly on track to deliver our full year guidance. Our adjusted EBITDA reached 3.2 billion euro and our adjusted net income came in at around 1.3 billion euro, an increase of 18% and 22% respectively. Second, our increased earnings were mainly driven by investment-backed growth, strong operational execution, timing effects from network loss recoveries, especially in Southeastern Europe, and higher volumes from normalized weather conditions. We have accelerated our capex spending by around 13% year-over-year, with a predominant share going to our energy networks business. Our planned capex ramp-up and our EBITDA contribution are on track in terms of expected quarterly fill rates across all our business segments. Third. Our economic net debt outturn of around 44 billion euro in the first quarter shows the typical Q1 cash flow seasonality based on the working capital pattern of our business model. And finally, we fully confirm our short and long-term guidance, including our dividend policy. So let us move on to our Q1 year-over-year adjusted EBITDA bridge. All segments contributed to the earnings growth. Starting with energy networks, we saw an adjusted EBITDA increase driven by the accelerated investments in our regulated asset base across all business regions. In Southeastern Europe, a large contribution to our earnings growth came from the expected network loss recoveries and higher volumes. Moving on to our energy infrastructure solutions business, The growth in adjusted EBITDA was driven by higher weather-related volumes and an improved asset availability. The commissioning of new projects added to the growth. In our energy retail business, we also delivered a strong first quarter. Increased earnings came from year-over-year higher volumes due to weather compared to the record warm temperatures in Q1 2024. In addition, our UK B2B business continued its strong performance in Q1, which we expect to normalize over the course of the year. Moving to adjusted net income, which came in at around 1.3 billion euro. All P&L elements below adjusted EBITDA developed in line with our expectations. As a result, we are well on track for our full-year 2025 guidance, supporting the promised high single-digit underlying adjusted net income growth. As announced during our full-year reporting, we are now providing performer figures for adjusted EBITDA and adjusted net income, which will exclude value-neutral timing effects in our energy network segment. You may find the figures as part of the appendix to this presentation. For Q1 2025, our adjusted EBITDA contains in total a positive mid-double-digit million euro amount of value-neutral timing effects, mainly relating to network loss and volume recoveries in our Southeastern Europe segment. With our full year 2025 reporting in February next year, we will then also adjust our outlook for 2026 and the years thereafter. Looking at the development of our economic net debt, I would like to highlight three key points. First, our promised capex ramp-up is progressing well. We continue to be fully focused on ensuring a frictionless execution by closely managing our operations and supply chain. And so far, we are well on track. Second, the typical negative operating cash flow in Q1 reflects the usual seasonal pattern of our working capital. Third, our balance sheet remains solid and S&P and Moody's have recently confirmed our ratings. As communicated before, we have additional balance sheet capacity in line with our waiting commitment to a strong BBBAA, enabling us to fund further investments to support a successful European energy transition. However, as we have emphasized before, attractive regulatory conditions remain a prerequisite for that. Let me now conclude today's presentation with my key takeaways. First, the strong Q1 outturn firmly supports our expecting earnings delivery for 2025. Second, our investment ramp-up is progressing well, underpinning our mid-term targets. Third, our balance sheet remains solid. We will continue to focus on delivering an attractive total shareholder return based on value-creative organic growth and an annually growing dividend per share. Finally, we fully confirm our fully 2025 guidance and 2028 outlook, including our dividend policy. And with that, back to you, Iris.

Thank you very much, Nadja. And with that, we will start our Q&A session. Let me briefly remind you all, please stick to two questions each so that most of you can have a go. And we will start today with Alberto. Hi, Alberto. Let us please have your first question.