Mercedes Benz Group Ag

Welcome to the global conference call of Daimler. At our customer's request, this conference will be recorded. The replay of the conference call will also be available as an on-demand audio webcast in the investor relations section of the Daimler website. The short introduction will be directly followed by a Q&A session. If you want to ask a question, please press 0 and 1 on your telephone keypad. To remove the question, please press 0 and 2 on your telephone keypad. Again, for a question, please press 0 and 1 on your telephone keypad and 0 and 2 to withdraw. I would like to remind you that this teleconference is governed by the safe harbor wording that you'll find in our published results documents. Please note that our presentations contain forward-looking statements that reflect management's current views with respect to future events. Such statements are subject to many risks and uncertainties. If the assumptions underlying any of these statements prove incorrect, then actual results may be materially different from those expressed or implied by such statements. Forward-looking statements speak only to the date on which they are made. May I now hand over to Stefan Hoffmann, head of Daimler Investor Relations. Thank you very much.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. This is Stefan Hoffmann speaking. On behalf of Daimler, I'd like to welcome you on both the telephone and the Internet to our Q2 results conference call. We are very happy to have with us Ola Kelenius, Chairman of the Board of Management of Daimler and Mercedes-Benz AG, Martin Daum, member of the Board of Management of Daimler AG, responsible for trucks and buses, and Harald Wilhelm, member of the Board of Management of Daimler, responsible for finance and controlling and Daimler mobility. In order to give you maximum time for your questions, the three gentlemen will begin with a short introduction, directly followed by a Q&A session. The respective presentation can be found on the Daimler IR website. Now, I'd like to hand over to Ola.

Thank you, Stefan. Welcome and good morning, everybody. And thanks for joining us this morning. We certainly have had to endure a complex quarter, three months that have been dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic. And as we informed you last week, we recorded a net loss in this quarter. But our results in the second quarter were partially above market expectations, in particular on the free cash flow. And in general, I think it's fair to say that our management of the challenges from COVID-19 is working. And at the same time, we continue to make progress on our long-term strategic course and our efforts to lower the break-even of the company. For starters, let me briefly take you through the second quarter's key topics. And I would like to make four main points this morning. Number one, we initiated a large number of measures to protect our cash position in this quarter. And our robust net industrial liquidity is a testament to the effective cost control and cash management. Harold will follow up on this in his part of the presentation this morning. Number two, we're seeing the first signs of a sales recovery. While the market slumped like never before in a quarter, our unit sales were better than expected, especially at Mercedes-Benz passenger cars, with a strong demand for top-end models and electrified vehicles. In China, our passenger car sales set a new Q2 record level, and also our vans had their best-ever sales quarter in China. And in recent weeks, order intakes of trucks turned positive again in nearly all of our core regions. Number three, we continued improving the cost base of our company. While our previous efficiency goals targeted the upcoming transformation, they did not anticipate the sudden and steep global recession. And that's why we have reinforced these efficiency measures. One example, We initiated adjustments of our global production network capacity to match the expected market environment. And number four, we are working with full focus on our key strategic objectives, leading in electrification and digitization. All the core product projects in spite of COVID have progressed according to plan. And we have also in the past months announced some major partnerships in this regard. Our truck joint venture with Volvo on fuel cell technology. Martin will allude to this. Our partnership with the battery cell supplier, Farisys. And finally, our partnership with Nvidia to develop a smart computer architecture for automated driving functions. The first two points, they give us confidence in dealing with the COVID-19 recession in the short term. And the last two points give us confidence in building our mid- and long-term future. That said, let's talk numbers. And that's Harold's home turf. Harold, would you mind taking over?