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 forwarded by a Q&A session. If you want to ask a question, please press 021 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 find in our published results documents. Please note that our presentations contain forward-looking statements that reflect management's current views with respect to the 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 mutually 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 you over to Steffen Hoffmann, head of Daimler Investor Relations. Thank you very much.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. This is Steffen Hoffmann speaking. On behalf of Daimler, I'd like to welcome you on both telephone and the internet to our Q2 results conference call. We are very happy to have with us today Ola Kelenius, our CEO, Harald Wilhelm, our CFO, and Martin Daum, the CEO of Trucks and Buses. In order to give you maximum time for your questions, the three gentlemen will begin with an introduction, directly followed by a Q&A session. The respective presentation can be found on the Daimler IR website. Now, I would like to hand over to Ola.

Thank you, Stefan. Good morning, everybody, and welcome to this Q2 call. In the second quarter of this year, we have continued to deliver strong financial performance, and this is in spite of the fact that the low availability of semiconductors has impacted both our production and sales. In tackling such challenges, I think we can rely on our flexibility, our agility, and also increasing resilience of our business, as you can see in the numbers. But we have, of course, also in Q2 focused very strongly on strategy execution on the path to electrification and digitization. Let's start with Daimler and look at some highlights. The group EBIT and free cash flow is significantly above expectations. This high profitability is thanks to a very healthy top line development and also strict cost discipline across all divisions. The net industrial liquidity is on a healthy level. And as I said, it's been a quarter of strategy acceleration with a focus on electric vehicles and digitization. but also an important quarter on the path to what we call project focus, splitting Daimler into two pure-play industrial units. If I continue with Mercedes-Benz, we wholesaled 511,000 units. In the second quarter, we had a new record in China, very strong order intake. We have a super attractive product portfolio, you know, starting with the flagship S-class, but really across the board and especially on the top end. As I mentioned, the semiconductor shortage impacted us again in Q2, and its factors beyond the original corona issue, such as the winter storm in Texas, fire at the factory in Japan, and then more recently the shutdowns in Malaysia. Harold will take you through more details on that. Improving the supply stability, needless to say, is a top priority for us. In that context, eager customers, Mercedes fans are really longing for their vehicles. And of course, we're doing everything we can to shorten some of those lead times with the demand situation that we have. On the Mercedes side, Favorable product mix, strong pricing, ongoing cost discipline, that delivered the double-digit margin at Carson Vans for the third quarter in a row. On the XEV side, the XEV sales more than quadrupled, and we will continue to build on this momentum with more product launches during the year. If I switch to Vans, at Vans the group sales were up by 37% in the quarter, driven by pretty much all regions. the group sales of electric vans increased more than eightfold in this quarter. And at the beginning of May, we showed another one of those electric products for the van division, the Concept EQT. We also see an ongoing strong profitability on the van side here. Again, healthy mix pricing and a tight grip on cost. Just one example of Small structural measure, just to give you a flavor, is that we decided to put two sales organizations together, Germany and Europe, into one, reducing fixed cost, making processes leaner, faster, and more customer-oriented. To take us through more details on the numbers, I would like to hand over to Harald. Harald, please.