Rwe Ag Ord S/Adr

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining the Q1 2024 RWE Investor Endless Conference Call today. Our CFO, Michael Müller, will guide you through our key highlights in financial performance in the first quarter and the outlook for the current year. And with that, let me hand over to you, Michael.

Yeah, thanks Thomas, and good afternoon to all of you. The first quarter was a solid start into 2024. Adjusted EBITDA stood at 1.7 billion euros, driven by good wind conditions in our offshore business, capacity additions in the onshore business, and a good trading performance. Earnings and flexible generation were lower after exceptional market conditions in the previous year. We confirm our full year guidance at the lower end of our guidance range. We've also made significant progress on offshore portfolio optimization. We have de-risked our 3GW Dogger Bank South project by selling down 49% to our partner, Mazda. And we have acquired the highly attractive 4.2GW Norfolk project portfolio from Button South. These well-developed UK offshore projects are eligible for CFD auctions in the coming years. In April, We issued the first U.S. green bond. With this transaction, we have successfully re-entered the U.S. debt market. In the future, we want to be a regular issuer in the U.S. bond market. The $2 billion U.S. bond has maturities of 10 and 30 years. We saw a high demand from investors with the bond being oversubscribed 3.8 times. The final order book volume was close to 7.6 billion US dollars. The high level of interest demonstrates our ability to access debt capital markets, enabling us to finance our growth investments at attractive rates. Let's now take a closer look at the Q1 2024 financials. After the exceptional earnings in the first quarter of last year, EBITDA in Q1 2024 stood at 1.7 billion euros, thanks to a good performance. In offshore wind, adjusted EBITDA was 548 million euros, and earnings were up mainly on the back of better wind conditions. Onshore wind and solar recorded an EBITDA of 341 million euros. This was driven by organic growth and the full contribution of the CEB assets. Adjusted EBITDA of the flexible generation business was 552 million euros. As expected, we have seen the lower earnings development in line with normalized market conditions after the exceptional year in 2023. Our supply and trading business had a good start into 2024, and Q1 results stood at 251 million euros. On the back of the strong operational performance, adjusted net income amounted to 801 million euros. The year-on-year adjusted financial result is almost stable. For adjusted tax, we applied the general tax rate of 20% for the RWE group. And finally, adjusted minority interest reflects lower earnings contributions from minority partners. The adjusted operating cash flow was minus 379 million euros at the end of Q1 and is mostly driven by seasonal effects in operating working capital. Changes in operating working capital were marked by the seasonal purchase of CO2 certificates compensated by positive effects from the reduction of trade receivables and withdrawals from gas in storage. Net debt increased to 11.2 billion euros due to investment and high timing effects. In total, we invested 2.3 billion euros net into our green growth. This includes the acquisition of the Norfolk offshore projects from Wattensal and our sell-down of 49% of the Dogger Van South projects to Mazda. Other changes in net financial debt amounted to 1.9 billion euros This includes timing effects from hedging and trading activities. Our net position from variation margins for power generation hedging stood at minus 1.4 billion euros, representing an outflow of 2.8 billion euros. This includes net variation margins from the sale of electricity as well as purchases of the respective fuels and CO2 certificates. We expect other changes in net financial debts to revert over the course of the year. For 2024, we confirm our outlook despite the faster normalization in European commodity markets. Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be between 5.2 and 5.8 billion euros Adjusted EBIT is assumed to be between 3.2 and 3.8 billion euros, and net income will range from 1.9 to 2.4 billion euros. We expect adjusted EBITDA, adjusted EBIT, and net income at the lower end of the guidance ranges. The dividend target is 1.1 euros per share for this year, and with that, let me hand back to Thomas for Q&As.

Thank you, Michael. We'll now start the Q&A session. Operator, please begin.