Novonesis B Unsp/Adr

Welcome to the Novozymes first half 2021 conference call. Throughout the call, all participants will be on listen-only mode, so there's no need to meet during individual lines, and afterwards there'll be a question-and-answer session. Today, I am Peace% Tobias Cornelius Bjorklund, Head of Investor Relations. Please begin your meeting.

Thank you, Operator, and welcome, everyone. As stated, my name is Tobias Göklund, and I'm the head of investor relations here at Novozymes. At this call, our CEO, Esther Bajé, and our CFO, Lars Green, will review our performance for the first half of 2021, as well as the outlook for the full year. Also present at this call are Tina Feiner, EVP Agriculture and Industrial Supply Solutions, Amy Byrick, EVP Strategy and Business Transformation, Anders Lund, EVP Consumer Buy Solution, and Klaus Fuglsang, CISO EVP of Research and Development. The entire call will take about 60 minutes, including time for questions at the end. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that the information presented during the call is unaudited and that management may make forward-looking statements. These statements are based on current expectations and beliefs and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in any forward-looking statements. By that, I'll now hand you over to our CEO, Esther Bacher. Esther, please.

Thank you. Thank you, Tobias, and thank you all for calling in. Please turn to slide number two. Before we dive into our first half performance, I would like to ask Amy and Lars to put a few words to the just recently announced and very exciting investment in advanced protein solutions. In addition to being a very strong business case, the deal is also an important milestone in the execution of Novozang's strategy, Better Business with Biology. Amy, please.