Siemens Ag Spons Adr

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Siemens 2021 First Quarter Conference Call. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. Before we begin, I would like to draw your attention to the Safe Harbor Statement on page two of the Siemens presentation. This conference call may include forward-looking statements. These statements are based on the company's current expectations and certain assumptions and are therefore subject to certain risks and uncertainties. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to your host today, Mrs. Eva Reisenhofer, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Madam.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to our Q1 conference call. All Q1 documents were released this morning and can be found also on our website. I'm here today with our CEO, Joe Kaeser, who will start with a brief introduction, and with our Deputy CEO, Roland Bush, and CFO, Ralph Thomas, who will review the Q1 results and fiscal year 21 outlook. After the presentation, we will then have time for Q&A. Please be aware that the Siemens AGM starts right after this call, and we have to limit the time of the call to 45 minutes. Since there is a lot on the agenda, with that, I hand over to Joe.

Thank you, Ife. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us to discuss our first quarter results ahead of our virtual AGM. And I'm sure you're all keen to hear what the company has to say about the full fiscal 21 guidance. So I'm not taking too much of your time. I believe it's fair to say that Siemens delivered an outstanding first quarter 2021. It accelerated the trend, which we have seen in 2020, in basically all matrices. And when you look at all the growth of 15%, revenue up 7%, and profit on industrial business up 39% year over year, this company must do something right. Especially if we remind ourselves that we are comparing the actual numbers year over year with a pre-COVID quarter. There are several reasons for this, and Roland and Ralph will dive deeper into the analysis and what it means for full fiscal 2021. I'm particularly pleased with the performance of digital industries, as it seems that this business not only outperformed expectations, but also peers. Being a decisive driver of the company's valuation, I'm deeply respectful of what Klaus Helmrich has put together here while he was CEO of that enterprise. Another reason for performing well is structural in nature. The company's closer focus on its core industrial priorities has also been quite beneficial for the shareholders. After the final decision of the energy spin-off was made at the extraordinary AGM in July 2020, the re-rating started slowly but surely. It accelerated with the listing of Siemens Energy in late September and has continued since then. As you are all aware, We've just got another all-time high yesterday, and we'll see what happens today. I am also pleased with the performance of these Siemens Energy shares since then. The accelerated re-rating of the new Siemens AG has clearly been high up in our wish list, and I'm sure in yours too. And you all know there is much more potential to unlock in this record. Well, folks, ladies and gentlemen, this is also the time to take one last look back to where it all began and what happened since then. There are many ways to do so. If I was a shareholder, which I am, as you can potentially imagine, I want to see what has been in it for me. For example, looking at total shareholder returns. Well, it is not on me to judge, but I hope you agree it could have been worse. Anyway, the question would be, could it have been more? I would say it could have been more. Maybe it should have been by international standards. But in striving for more, I had to realize that there was a balance to strike between the desirable and the doable. So I went for what was doable in Germany. With that, I do thank you for a great time together. Be open and fair to my successors. They deserve it. And with that, I hand it over to Roland. Thank you.