Siltronic Ag Ord

Hello everyone and welcome to the presentation of Siltronix Q1 results for the financial year 2024. Please note that this call is being recorded and streamed on Siltronix website. The call will also be available as an on-demand version later today. Your participation in this call implies your consent with this. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Verena Stütze, Head of Investor Relations and Communication of Siltronix. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Sandra. Welcome, everybody, to our Q1 2024 results presentation. This call will also be webcast live on Siltronic.com. A replay of the call will be available on our website shortly after the end of the call. Our CEO, Michael Heckmeyer, and our CFO, Claudia Schmidt, will give you an overview of our financials, the current market developments, and our guidance. After the presentation, we will be happy to take your questions. Please note that management comments during this call will include forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. For a discussion of risk factors, I encourage you to review the safe harbor statement contained in today's press release and presentation. All documents relating to our Q1 2024 reporting are available on our website. I now turn the call over to Michael for his remarks.

Thank you, Verena, and a warm welcome also from my side. As usual, let me start with the key messages of today's call. The first quarter of 2024 was without any major surprises and continued to be characterized by weak demand for wafers due to the high inventory levels at our customers. As you probably saw in our top announcement last week, this negative sentiment will remain with us for most of 2024. Accordingly, I would call it a year of transition. Our industry and the future growth will be driven by megatrends such as generative AI, digitalization, and electromobility. And therefore, we confirm our ambition to increase our group sales to more than 2.2 billion euro and our EBITDA margin to a figure in the high 30s by 2028. Let me give you a quick glance on our Q1 figures, which will be presented in detail by Claudia in a minute. As already indicated, the first three months did not bring major surprises. Sales were slightly below the previous quarter, but the EBITDA margin increased from 25.5% to what I consider a respectable 26.4%, thanks to a positive tailwind from the non-operating FX result. We achieved this with stable market shares and prices. Although we have passed the peak of our investments in 2023, the CapEx primarily required for the ramp of FedNext led, as expected, to a continued negative net cash flow. Claudia will now give you a deep dive into our financial performance before I report back with updates on the market development and the outlook. Claudia, please.