Schindler Hldg Ag Akt

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Schindler's Conference Call on Q1 Results 2021. I am Sandra, the Chorus Call Operator. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Marco Knuchel, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to our first call to 2021 Results Conference Call. My name is Marco Knuchel. I'm Head of Investor Relations at Schindler's. I'm here together with Thomas Oetterli, CEO of the Schindler Group, and Urs Scheidegger, our CFO. As usual, Thomas will set the scene and summarize the first quarter, and Urs will then lead us through the financials. After the presentation, we are happy to take your questions. I would like to ask you to limit your questions to two questions only. Thank you very much. With that, I would like to hand over to Thomas. Thomas, please go ahead.

Thank you, Marco. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and a warm welcome from me too. Before we take a closer look at our quarter one 2021 results, I would like to highlight the factors that continue to impact our business. I think we are facing a unique environment at the moment. Geopolitical uncertainties, slowing global trade, A volatile economic recovery underpinned with historically low interest rates and increasing national debt will continue to affect markets. Equally, the continued Swiss franc appreciation continues to impact Schindler and our business negatively. Looking at the past 10 years, we lost 2.7 billion in revenue last and 400 million Swiss francs in EBIT due to the strong Swiss franc. These meet to longer term circumstances and their effects on businesses drive our cautious market assessment. With that, please turn to the slide number three. In the first quarter, we saw improved results in all line items supported by the gradually improving economic environment and especially a favourable prior year comparison, particularly related to the lockdown in China in Q1 last year. However, Q1 2021 key figures are broadly only in line with Q1 2019 pre-pandemic performance. At the same time, We have a cautious assessment for the markets in the longer term, despite the fact that we currently see recovery signs in some geographies. In the first quarter of 2021, increasing pricing pressure and cost inflation also continued to wait on the order backlog margin. Meanwhile, uncertainty remains. and we accept pricing pressure and commodity price inflation to accelerate. Hence, we continue to be cautious. Against this backdrop, we will launch our new program to accelerate digitalization, boost product innovation, and address profitability gaps. I will elaborate on this later in the presentation. But for now, let me pause here, and I would like to hand over to our CFO, Urs Scheidegger, for the financials in Q1. Over to you, Urs.