Mercedes Benz Group Ag

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Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. This is Christina speaking. On behalf of Mercedes-Benz, I would like to welcome you both on the telephone and online to our Q2 results conference call. I'm very pleased to have with me today Ola Kallenius, our CEO, and Harald Wilhelm, our CFO. To allow more time for your questions, Ola will give a brief introduction and Harald will walk you through our financials. We will then move directly into our Q&A session. The corresponding presentation is available on the Mercedes-Benz Investor Relations website and can also be accessed via the webcast in the web interface. And with that, I will now hand over to Ola.

Thank you, Christina, and good morning, everybody. Welcome. We delivered solid results in the second quarter in spite of a dynamic business environment from macro and geopolitical headwinds to softer consumer sentiment and intense competition in China. You can see this reflected in the financial results. Nevertheless, we remained on track in the first half of the year. And I think all in all, we have shown the ability to adapt, execute and succeed as a team. We will definitely carry this mindset into the second half of the year. Let's have a quick look at what happened in Q2. Our product and technology launch program is gaining momentum. The latest premieres that we have shown to the world was the AMG GT four-door coupe as well as the GLS Maybach. We have started the sales of the C-Class battery electric vehicle, the GLE, the GLS, the one-of-a-kind VLE, and also that AMG GT has now also started sales. And if we look at the feedback and response so far, very positive, not only from Product media experts, dealers, but primarily in the community and amongst Mercedes fans. And if you read test results from comparison tests on products, most of those in the established product media are won by Mercedes. And we want to seize also next to our automotive business some opportunities in the defense sector. If you look at the technology that is underpinning this launch offensive, I want to highlight three things. To start with on the powertrain side, we have now started the production of the new axial flux motor that really redefines BEV performance. It is a USP that no other manufacturer in the world possesses. We're also the ones that ventured out developing a from the ground up brand new V8, high-tech electrified V8 EU7 ready that will take that technology to the next level. So on the powertrain side, we're well positioned for both BEV growth and maintain our strong position on ICE. MBOS is coming to fruition. The beauty of MBOS, it is a platform. We can roll it out in all our vehicles, not just on the BEV side. I think that's what people expect. But I believe that the new S-Class that we have also just brought into the market is the first fully software-defined vehicle on the high-tech I-side. So MBOS will be in every single Mercedes going forward. One highlight of that MBOS is ADAS. We already last year introduced our AI-based point-to-point assisted driving in China. We then continued with the US and are rolling out step by step in the US. We believe that by the end of this year, beginning of next year, we can bring this point-to-point technology also within the new European legislation. So here, in terms of a global play on ADAS, we are at the forefront of what's happening on the technological side. If we switch to the industrial side, at the same time we're strengthening our resilience and our competitiveness. We have launched a global productivity initiative with a special focus on Germany. We want to significantly speed up processes, streamline structures and improve the competitive cost position. One good example of that is the opening of our expanded plant in Keskemet in Hungary. which we did only a couple of weeks ago, doubling the capacity of that plant. And that allows us to shift products to this attractive site, new electric C-class, new electric GLC and also the upcoming compact G. It is our goal to make the production network more resilient, efficient and competitive. Moving over to the numbers for the group, revenue slightly below last year at 32 billion euros. And EBIT, as booked, and Harald will get into the financials in more detail here in a minute, at 1.5 billion euro, which is 22% above last year. I want to highlight that in spite of the dynamic challenging environment that I described, We generated 1.1 billion in free cash flow, which is a combination of the operating activities as well as M&A. And in spite of giving shareholders 5 billion in return as a combination of dividend and share buybacks, the net industrial liquidity is still sitting at a healthy 30 billion euro. If we drill down a little bit on the sales side, I think it's a tale of two worlds. On the one hand, we saw the Chinese market as a whole drop by about 20%, which is, of course, a significant reset in the world's biggest market. This affected us. So in China, we had a significant reduction of our sales in the period. But we could in the first half of the year in all markets without China increase our sales by 2%, which certainly wasn't a given considering the business environment. And in relative terms, I think we're doing well there. You can see a clear sign here in these numbers of the second generation battery electric vehicles, which were up 51% driven by Europe, up 87%. We have an extremely strong order intake, particularly in Europe, on this side, and are looking forward to ramping those BEVs in the second half of the year. And with that, I'm going to hand over to Harald, who will dig deeper into the financials. Over to you, Harald. Thank you, Ola, and hello, everybody.