Thyssenkrupp AG

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the ThyssenKrupp conference call interim report, first half year 2022-2023. For the first part of this call, all participants will be in a listen-only mode, and afterwards there will be question and answer session. I will now hand over to Klaus Ehrenbeck. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much, operator. Hello, everyone. Also on behalf of the entire team, I wish you a very warm welcome to our conference call. All the documents for this call are available on the IR section of our websites. In addition, there is a comprehensive document that contains all the numbers and figures that you need also when you want to take a look at the segments. Here with me in the room are our CEO, Martina Merz, our CFO, Klaus Keisberg, and from Investor Relations, my colleague, Jacques Esser. As always, the presentation of our board members will be followed by a Q&A session. And first, for the presentation, I would now like to hand over to our management. And please, Martina, go ahead. The ball is in your field.

Thank you, Klaus. Good morning, everyone. Martina speaking. Thanks for joining our call today. And we're going to start with the first slide, progress along the transformation path of ThyssenGruppe. As you know, the Q2 Quarterly results are the last ones for which I'm responsible in my role as CEO of Thyssen Group. That's why I would like to take this opportunity to classify the figures published this morning for you together with Klaus. This is not just about the past three months. We also want to take a brief look back at what we've achieved together over the last three years. But above all, we want to look ahead, of course, because ThyssenKrupp can look to the future with optimism. And as you know, after the elevator transaction, we have embarked on a structured transformation path along a framework involving focus, improve, and scale. And we have achieved a great deal along these paths in three steps. First, we clearly structured our portfolio to make performance and potential for all segments visible, We increased value, focused on challenges and opportunities in the businesses. And second, we improved our financial figures. Today, we forecast a mid to high three-digit million euro number in adjusted EBIT and a slightly positive figure for free cash flow before M&A. So we are on track. And third, in addition to improving our balance sheet, we have created development plans for all businesses to create sustainable value. ThyssenKrupp is now a group of largely independent high-performance technology companies that are in a good starting position to take advantage of their opportunities, enabling the green transformation. On the next slide, it's visible that progress becomes especially visible in our improved balance sheet and our expanded footprint in green transformation. Not only have we significantly improved our financial KPIs through performance and restructuring initiatives, today we also have a very solid balance sheet and we turn the net debt into a net cash position, also supported by accretive portfolio actions at Multitricks. And we boosted our equity ratio to approximately 40%. Compared with 1920, the Thyssen Group is now in a much better shape, also for capturing opportunities that might come our way. This brings me to the right part of the chart, the green transformation. In all areas, we have focused on the opportunities that that present themselves for our technologies. And this applies particularly to the hydrogen economy. At Steel Europe, our decarbonization journey continues. In March, we reported the contract for the construction of our first hydrogen-powered direct reduction plant and two innovative smelters. And regarding offer in the triangle, At Nucera, we recently signed an MOU for capacity expansion for an H2 electrolysis plant. The customer, Unigen, plans to significantly expand its Brazilian plant to 240 megawatt. With that, Nucera now holds a large contracted capacity of more than 2.5 gigawatt H2. On the infrastructure side of the triangle, our plant engineering businesses, UDE, signed an MOU with ADNOC for a joint project development of a large-scale ammonia cracking plant. The business is developing very well, and the break-even result is in sight. The next slide shows that we continue on the path of transformation. Thyssen Group has achieved a lot in its transformation. It is now a matter of holding the course we have taken and further increasing the pace. The change in the CEO position will not hold back the company in this phase of implementing the transformation. The strategic lines that have been set will systematically continue. And in terms of performance, all our businesses have the clear objective of achieving benchmark performance. Their mid-term targets are important immediate steps on this path. Looking at the green transformation, we, as an industrial ecosystem player, want to leverage our technological expertise and intellectual property to seize the opportunities that will arise in this disruptive process. For our portfolio, our top priority is to maximize the value and development of our businesses. Even this means adjusting our ownership structure. And finally, our role as active owner is to enable innovation and to empower the management teams to realize the full potential for their businesses and their people. At Steel Europe, we are evaluating stand-alone options and are in promising talks with possible partners to address the diverse economic and ecological challenges of these businesses. We are also working on an independent solution for marine systems. The supervisory board gave the green light for this at the end of March. In addition to this, we will streamline our portfolio to reduce risk and improve performance which also will be reflected in the next measures at Multitracks. For ThyssenKrupp New Serra, an IPO remains our preferred option to unlock the full potential of our hydrogen business. However, the decision on a possible timing will depend on the situation in the capital markets. I can assure you, The ThyssenKrupp has grown very close to my heart over the past few years, and I will follow the company's further development with great interest and great passion, by the way. Not standing in this document, but I say with great interest and with passion. I wish the company and all its employees and its investors all the very best. I'm sure that the transformation we have powerfully embarked on will also succeed. And having said that, I would now like to hand over to Klaus to give you more details on our Q2 figures.