Sika Ag Adr

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the SICA Health Year Report 2023 Conference Call-in Live webcast. I'm Andre, the Corvus Call Operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in a listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star and 1 on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press star and 0. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Mr. Dominik Znaplnik, Head Communication and Investor Relations of SICA. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Andre, and good afternoon, good morning, and welcome to our half-year results conference call. Present on the call with me today is Thomas Hasler, CEO, Adrian Wittmann, CFO, and Christian Kukan, Head of IR. We published our half-year figures this morning at 5 o'clock. The presentation to the half-year is as well published on our website. With this, Thomas Hasler and Adrian Witmer will provide further details on the results and the outlook. Afterwards, we will be ready to take your questions. I hand now over to Thomas to start with the highlights of the first half-year.

Thank you, Dominik, and welcome everybody to our half-year reflection. And let me start first with a view on the markets. The markets have been challenging. The environment has been, let's say, challenged by the interest in the inflationary tendency. But at the same time, no major disruption took place in the last six months. Therefore, the main trends have been reconfirmed and are positive. Markets have learned to adapt to this environment more and more. If I look into Europe, which has certainly the biggest impact with negative volumes in the beginning of the year, last year, we see here a steady move upwards. It's less and less impactful as it has been. On our side, distribution is leading here exceptional growth patterns. North America, another steady growth element in our markets. led by infrastructure, commercial, industrial, manufacturing, giving a boost to the North American overall environment. China, after a rather tough first quarter with the relaxation of the COVID measure, started the Q2 rather softly, but now steady growing. Here again, on our side, the distribution business is already back on a double-digit growth pattern. And then finally, on our global business, business that is mainly the automotive manufacturing business here, we have a good base effect by the build rates that have double-digit increased in the first six months. But on top of that, we have our additional content on the traditional, but especially also on the electric-driven vehicles, basically the battery business that is gaining traction. This is the market, but now most excited about the first six months is our acquisition highlights. And here, of course, after 18 months of pregnancy, we were able to close and bring home the NBCC transaction on the 2nd of May. And since then, we have been working on our first 100-day reviews with the specifications on the implementation and the synergies. Amazing first two months included in our results, but also amazing in the potential that is visible through the first two months review. We have an accelerated integration effort here, which Adrian also will then refer to with the, let's say, front-loaded costs that have been accrued in these regards. We have excellent feedback from the stakeholders of MBCC, Customers, employees, we have clearly brought the message across that this is a creative for all the stakeholders. In particular, also our new 6,000 employees that are now part of the Zika family, the one big Zika family, and they are excited about the untapped potential that we can now dive in and bring to realization. On the acquisition, also beginning of actually the second semester, early July, we brought home the Thyssen team, a mining expert in Shotcrete and Grouts in the US, which we will be able to leverage into our Canadian as well as into our South American mine business very nicely. Here, maybe just a brief comment on the M&A side. You know, it has been a bit slow since we had this this let's say antitrust ongoing in Europe and in North America, but we expect now to be back into the game and more to come in the near future. All this all together resulted in an outstanding first six months. We grew 7.9% in local currency. I think the material margin increased by 330 base point is most remarkable and is a result of our pricing discipline and excellence. The EBIT, if we leave out the one-time effects, has increased by 6.9% and is now at 14% margin level. And the cash flow has increased strongly to 316 million. Also here, a strong improvement compared to the prior year period. So all in all, a solid set of performance numbers but most excited about the acquisition and the possibilities that the MBCC acquisition is offering for the now even bigger ZECA. With that, I hand over to Adrian to go a little bit further into the numbers and the details.