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Yeah, thank you very much and good morning and a warm welcome to all of you, this time from Greenville, Tennessee. So I'm not standing next to Oliver in our normal room, but I'm here with our US people. I'm still looking forward to present to you the Q2 numbers for 2024. So let's look at the financial highlights that we've had in 2024 Q2. Our sales have reached 298 million euros in this quarter, partially supported by M&A contribution of 21 million euros. Our adjusted EBIT reached 34 million euros, and the adjusted EBIT margin remained strong on the prior year's level of 11.3%, despite the declining sales that we had due to the much softer markets in Q2. The free cash flow grew to 61 million euros in the first half year of 2024. And our leverage, and that's important to us, remained below the one time factor, even after the dividend payment of 22 million that we have done in Q2. Our adjusted earnings per share reached three euros and seven cents in the first half year. and the adjusted net earnings to sales rate ratio remained high at 7.8%. Even though the markets were much softer than the previous year, we confirmed the outlook that we have given for the year 2024. So these have been the financial highlights, but I would also like to present to you a highlight in a technology investment that we've done. We have acquired 10% stake in a mature startup called Trailer Dynamics. With this investment, we become a strategic investor in this startup, and that strengthens our R&D cooperation in the field of e-trailer technology. We're investing 15 million in the financing round, and with that investment, we're bolstering the industrialization of the market-ready plug-and-play axle electrification kit that can be used to build e-trailers, electrified trailers. It also strengthens our R&D position in e-traders, and we support this matured startup because we're planning to be an integrated partner into that startup as a supplier, as a distributor, and as an industrialization partner. So this partnership will lead to new products and systems, and these will accelerate the decarbonization and the economic efficiency of transport and logistics. So we're quite excited to not only develop our own products, but also engage in strategic partnerships to support future technologies. So that's another highlight of Q2. And then let's go to the market outlook. I already mentioned that the markets have been much softer than previous year. In the truck markets in Europe, minus 9%. In North America, minus 8%. Asia Pacific, plus 4%. um trailer markets um minus 20 percent 25 minus 5 respectively um in the different regions and also the tractor markets have been below previous year even though they already had the downturn a little earlier than the truck markets um with uh minus 15 minus 11 and plus one so our um Organic growth has been impacted by that, minus 17% in the region Europe, minus 22% in the region North America, and minus two in the region Asia-Pacific Africa. I think we've weathered that quite well, but the details to the financial numbers will be presented by Oliver Gansert.

Thanks Joachim and also welcome from my side to our second quarter and first half year investors conference. Indeed, let's have a dive into our financials and start with the regional overview first. So let's jump into the European numbers. So the European markets, as Joachim was mentioning, are quite a challenge. He mentioned that minus 17 organic decline in sales so from 178 last year's second quarter we were down to 166 million sales this year's second quarter and this is more or less the same organic decline that we have seen then for the full first half year reported wise this is minus 6.2 percent and the impact is here as stated to the right the consolidation of our acquisitions that we did mid of last year they are now ramping up into our sales numbers from a full year point of view and that impacted the sales by 20 million in the region um europe um within sales we had this quarter no material fx impact so that we consider as a positive mark on that side if you go down to the second um second quarter EBIT results for the region Europe we see that we have a significant decline in absolute EBIT down from 14.3 million last year's second quarter down to 8.3 this second quarter and probably as you know and are aware now we are hit here by the higher proportion of fixed costs in our region Europe to versus the other regions um as um the region europe is uh incorporating the headquarter costs and has in general higher um snj s sgna proportional costs which also relate to a corporate function so that means with the lower volume of minus 17 percent organic wise we see a lower utilization in our european plants and that has um for sure an impact on our absolute ebit in the european What we have already initiated in the first half year, and this should give us a backwind for the second half, is a cost takeout program for the region Europe. We are indeed working with instruments like short-time work. We are reviewing temporary worker contracts. We have a strict cost discipline implemented. And also looking on our projects pipeline for the second half, is there potential for shift? What is top priority and what could potentially shift it to next year? So that, as I mentioned before, should give us some tailwind result-wise for the second half of this year in Europe. And if we now go to North America, we see definitely the full opposite. As Joachim mentioned, the sales declined organically by minus 22%, as shown on the market slide. Report-wise, a little bit less. But more or less in line with this and as we mentioned before, we are hit here by the strong decline in the trailer business segment and also the compact loader segment within our business line agriculture is still suffering versus a very good prior year's comparison. On the other side, and we also see this then down in EBIT, we see a recovering demand for premium loaders, which for sure have a much higher margin than the compact segment. And also we had some smaller FX tailwinds within the sales. And this turns then for the second quarter into a fantastic EBIT margin of 17.4%. And even for the full half year, it's 14.3%. So a significant increase of almost 32% versus prior year second quarter. And this boost is driven by various reasons. One reason is the very favorable products mix, as I mentioned before. And one impact is here, as I mentioned, the higher sales share of premium loaders within our X segment. That helps a lot. and also in both business lines transport and agriculture we see a still strong and solid aftermarket business and then share wise that contributes more to the profit and helps here as well and ongoingly as we mentioned in previous calls also we are still benefiting from a good efficiency momentum in our plants as we can run with that kind of volume very efficient both transport and agriculture plants and also are benefiting from a good price momentum in the North American region so again despite the significant sales decline a fantastic result and we also expect for the second half margin wise that a good margin development should here continue for the remainder of the year. If we then go now to our Asia Pacific Africa region, We see a slight decline of minus 1.3 reported sales and minus 2.3 organic sales. So from 55 last year, second quarter down to 54 now. We see all in all still very robust markets in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. We see a good and increasing business in China. China here is benefiting from a higher export business. On the other side, there is a slight opposite, and this is India. As you are probably all aware, there were big general elections in India in spring, and that affected especially the transport business a little bit in the first half year. But here from what we see at the moment is we definitely expect a full recovery until end of the year for the Indian business. And we also had some slight tailwind from the consolidation of LH Lift in our region APAR, an acquisition that we did last year. We also had some slight negative sales FX headwinds in the region of almost 1% point. But all in all, we are happy with the result. EBIT has come down by minus 10%. from 11.0 million euros last year second quarter down to almost 10 million this year but as i said this is driven by a less favorable regional mix as with the increasing share of china business china is predominantly on highway business for us that comes with slightly lower margins that our off-highway business comes with. So that's the main effect here, nothing structural, just sales mix driven. And on the other side, we are benefiting from the ramp up of our agricultural business in India, where we are still quite successful underway with our customer Mahindra Mahindra there. And this now turns into the group picture for the second quarter and the full half year. And as Joachim pointed out in his summary, profitability remains very high despite the cyclical sales. We report a reported decline of sales by almost 10% and organically. by 16% for this year's quarter versus prior year's second quarter. If you look into the organic numbers for the business lines, we see for transport roughly minus 17 and for agriculture minus 11%. All in all, no material FX effects as they are netting each other out. and the total m a impact is for the second quarter 21 million in that sales number leading to an organic decline of minus 16 percent in line what um your arm has presented regarding the market overview um and for ebit this means as he mentioned before we could remain a very strong EBIT margin also for the second quarter was 11.3% exactly on prior years level. And also for the full half year, that means that we could still achieve the same margin in like in our record year last year was 11.5%. So we are very proud of this. um and all in all this means um with a reported sales decline of almost 10 percent we only declined in ebit by minus uh 10 percent or a little less and i think that shows again our resilience of the business as i pointed out before we have a good aftermarket share in both business lines this quarter and the full first half year they had a very strong North American business by various effects and lots of them should remain throughout the year and also with district cost control and active portfolio management that we have implemented we should continue to support a strong just even margin going forward We then go to our typical adjusted net income and adjusted EPS pitch. What you see here, as I have shown on the slide before, adjusted EBIT for the first half year comes up with 68 million. If we then deduct our finance result and our adjusted tax rates, which is slightly higher than the reported tax rates for the first half year, we end up with 46 million adjusted net income. If you transform that into EPS numbers we see for repopulated EBS 2.31 versus 3.01 and for adjusted EBIT we see 3.07 versus 3.79 of last year. Main impacts here below EBIT are that interest payments have raised versus the first half year of last year, and this is just purely driven by the URI board that has risen versus last year. Still a little bit, and as I mentioned before, taxes raised for the first half year a little bit versus prior year. All in all, we are still proud of this, and Joachim mentioned that the adjusted net earnings to sales ratio remained very robust and very high at almost 8% of sales. Then if we have a quick look on our KPIs, ROSI, equity ratio and leverage, ROSI is still very high, around 20%, slightly reduced versus the full last year, driven by the lower run rate of the LTM EBIT, driven by the sales decline. Our equity ratio is at 39%, so clearly above 35%. And despite the dividend payments, et cetera, et cetera, we had some slight negative FX translations effects. But all in all, I'm very happy with the numbers. And as Joachim pointed out, leverage stayed. Exactly below the 1.0 mark, which is quite interesting for us because that gives us a huge interest benefit going forward for the next months. and also is quite in line with the strong free cash flow development, although that we had to pay 22 million earn outs and the dividends that we could achieve that ratio in this quarter. Then have a quick look on cash flow and working capital development. Free cash flow, as mentioned in the summary, 61 million for the first half year. So, a result of the very strong cash flow development of the first six months. It is supported by some factoring that we did and ramped up versus last year. This is just purely opportunistic to reduce our finance costs. So, there's nothing else behind that. For me, this is just a mix of instruments, of financing instruments. and the cash conversion ratio then results into 1.3 for the first half here so well above our target level of 1.0 capex with 13.8 million in the first six months remains a little bit below our corridor for this year of 2.5 or a little bit above that's i mean part of the cost Takeout program in Europe that I'm mentioning, we are reviewing the projects, but it's more or less in line what we have achieved in the past as well. So nothing special here. And the networking capital ratio is with 17.7% by end of June. Very positive development here driven by the working capital management and slightly by the factoring and well above our guidance of below 19% for the full year. So we should be very confident to achieve that here. Then I think that's it from my side and I would hand over to Joachim for our closing outlook.

Yeah, thank you, Oliver. And yes, how does it continue from here? Let's look at the market expectations that are based on the market consultant institutes. And they expect the markets to be a bit weaker than initially planned. So in the last slides, you saw the truck markets a little stronger and the tractor market's a little stronger than on this one. So they've updated the market outlook and expect somewhat weaker markets for truck and for tractors. Overall, for trucks in Europe, minus 10 to minus 15%, the same in North America. And in Asia, a slight increase between 0 and 5%. On trailers, decline in Europe, 5 to 10%, 20 to 25% in North America. And in Asia, a growth of 10 to 15%. And on agricultural tractors, minus 10 to minus 15 in both Europe and North America. And more or less a flat market in Asia Pacific Africa. So we have to keep in mind that we are comparing this with an extremely strong market in the financial year 2023. And that's, you know, despite the fact that these numbers look dramatic, we are comparing it to a very strong previous year and we will be able to weather that quite well. We've analyzed that data and we've reviewed our outlook and we can confirm that our outlook as we've presented in Q1 remains unchanged. Despite this, we expect our sales to decline single digit from last year's 1.25 billion euros. our adjusted EBIT also to decline single digit a bit more than sales because of the scale effects that we have and the fixed cost effects that we have. And with that, the EBIT margin, the adjusted EBIT margin, we expect a slight decline versus year over year. But well within the strategic corridor and in the upper half of the strategic corridor that we us to be in the upper half of that corridor capex remains at the usual rates between 2.5 and 2.9 of sales and working capital will be below 19 percent of sales last year we were at 18 so to summarize like the messages for the q2 2024 um yours remains uh or maintains its strong profitability in the second quarter but also in the first half year and achieving a high adjusted EBIT margin despite a considerable sales decline. We are improving our working capital and the operational excellence is strengthening the free cash flow and with that we kept the leverage below the one times threshold. We are investing in strategic opportunities to grow our R&D capabilities like we've done with Trader Dynamics. And we continue to create strong shareholder value with a ROC of 20% and the cash conversion rate of 1.3 in the first half year of 2024. We confirm our outlook. And we are using the current market environment to continue to strengthen our market positioning and to leverage our group's business resilience, which works quite well between the different regions, as Oliver has explained, and also across the two business lines that we're operating in. Last not least, just a reminder to the Capital Markets Day that we will have on the 10th of September. We're looking forward to present to all of you a bit more details, a bit longer outlook, more strategic insight of what we're planning and developing, and we're all looking forward to your interest to that Capital Market Day on 10th of September. With that, thank you very much for your interest, and we're open for Q&As.