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Dear ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the analyst and investor conference call of Uniper. At our customer's request, this conference will be recorded. As a reminder, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. After presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. If any participant has difficulties during the conference, please press star key followed by zero on your telephone for operator assistance. May now hand you over to Stefan Jost, who will start the meeting today. Please go ahead.

Good morning, dear analysts and investors. Welcome to the Uniper call for the 2020 financial year, and thank you for participating. I'm sitting here with our CEO, Andreas Schierenbeck, and our CFO, Sascha Wiebert, and our headquarter in Dusseldorf. Most of you may not yet know my voice. I'm Stefan Joost, and the new head of finance and investor relations at Uniper. I'm new to this position, but not at all new to the group. I have been working for this company for more than 15 years now, most of the time in M&A and strategy. I look forward to getting in touch with you online and hopefully at one point in person. Needless to say, our experienced investor relations team remains at your disposal for all topics and questions. Looking at today's agenda, Andreas will start with the highlights of the past fiscal year and then move over to universe key strategic objectives going forward. Afterwards, Sascha will dive into the details of the financial results and provide an outlook for 2021. Right after the presentation, you will have the chance to raise your questions. Having said that, Andreas, please.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome also from my side. Thank you for participating in our conference call today. 2020 was a remarkable year, not just because of the COVID-19 pandemic. We took great care to offer our employees the highest possible level of health precautions through extensive home office options and adjustments to our operating procedures. and that had worked very well. We will continue to develop our organizational processes in this way for the benefit of our employees' motivation and to make process even more efficient. 2020 was always and also a remarkable year in terms of boost business and strategic decisions within the company. Let me start with the essential topics of fiscal year 2020. We can be very happy with our financial performance in 2020. Unibas group earnings ended at the upper end of the guided ranges. Adjusted EBIT increased by 16% and reached the upper end of the range at around 1 billion euros. Adjusted net income increased disproportionately by 26% to 774 million. The key factor here was the improvement in economic interest income that we anticipated and the lower operating tax rate. And now to the outlook. we expect another very solid operating result for fiscal year 2021, albeit not quite on par with the prior year. But I will go into more detail on the outlook and the key earnings drivers for 2021 in the second part. Let's turn to the development of Uniper's portfolio and its strategic evolution. The financial and strategic update in March 2020 was the initial spark to enable us to significantly accelerate our development in the changing energy world. We have placed a much stronger focus than before on decarbonizing the portfolio. For 2035, we have set an ambitious target for Uniper to become carbon neutral in European power generation. It was also a message for our own organization, empower energy evolution and managing the transition by setting up new sustainable sources of earnings that's the top of Uniper's radar. This year, Uniper is working to specify further targets for reducing carbon emissions. At the same time, we want to make the development steps in terms of ESG more transparent to further improve Uniper's ESG rating. In 2020, Uniper also took steps to align its organizational structure with the new strategy. One example is in the area of renewable energy. We want to move out of the niche where we have already been operating internationally for some time in the business field of solar and wind power purchase agreements. In the area of entering a sustainable hydrogen economy, we have set up a team which enables us more and more to utilize our competencies in a variety of different projects on the value chain. With the support of European policymakers, we hope to be able to launch the first commercially functioning flagship by 2024-25. Here we are talking about electrolysis plants in the range of 25 to 100 megawatt. The year 2020 saw quite a few new projects initiatives. Going forward, our task now is to put our projects and plants into practice. Coming to the next slide. As already mentioned, 2020 saw some highly volatile commodity markets throughout the year, with a clear upward trend towards the year headline. For the fossil commodities, gas in particular is sensitive to swings in the economic outlook. The price rebound was supported by cold waves in Asia in December 2020 and early January 2021, followed by cold snaps in Central Europe and the US, and led to strong demand peaks and massive price turbulence, especially in the gas and energy markets. In our view, Globally, natural gas will remain an important fuel for the transition to then be decarbonized over time. I think this winter season has done quite a good job to remind us of that. Moving over to carbon. Here the European allowance unit price has increased by around 150% since its low in March 2020. The key driver for higher prices is the commitment of the European countries To reduce their carbon emissions even more than initially planned by 2030, European emissions was raised from cuts of 40% in greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels to minus 55%. Following the gas and carbon prices, electricity prices in Europe showed also a recent uptick. In Central Europe, the price-setting power plants tend to be fossil, which explains the level of coagulation. Nordic electricity prices have also recently recovered significantly from their lows. As the linkage between Nordic and German outright prices is still limited as of today, the upward trend was far more influenced by the weather situation than the carbon rally. Bark and darkspats show how fossil power plants move in the merchant market. Darkspats remain weak, spark spreads in our two important markets, the UK and Germany, are at reasonable levels. The German peak spark spread has been in the double-dicted area now for quite some time. This development was the base for bringing back the German CCGG power stations Irving 4 and 5 into the merchant market in October 2012. However, Uniper fossil power plant portfolio is more than just about how high the spread level is. Given the embedded optimality, the value capturing does not end by hedging, which means looking in a positive spread and then waiting until delivery. If markets are volatile, like they have been from 2018 to 2020, you are able to churn those positions, which means buy back spreads once they collapse and potentially re-hedge again later. By doing so, you can capture significantly more value than with a static hedge approach. There is not a stable correlation between volumes and earnings on a spread plan. The year 2020 is a good proof point for that, as you will see in better sections. Now from the underlying market and our key performance indicators on the next slide. On this slide, you can see how operating KPIs are developing during the business year 2020 compared to 2019. Let's start with the global commodity business. We have started 2020 with full physical gas storage facilities and unusually high level due to warm winter last season. However, entering the winter season 2020-21, the market changed. An early cold spell in Asia diverted energy cargoes from Europe to Asia, which has been reflected in rising gas spot price on the European markets and higher withdrawals from storage since the beginning of December. Physical storage level At the end of the year, we are back to a seasonal normal of 75%. With the cold waves in Central and Northern Europe, storage withdrawal further accelerated in January to mid-February 2021. At the end of February, European storage levels were around 37% almost at the normal level of recent years. The recent market developments enabled Unipass gas business to get a promising start into the year. Once again, one might say. Looking at our European generation segment, the power generation volume has fallen by 14% year-on-year. The decline is clearly attributable to the COVID-19-related lockdown in the second quarter. As a reminder, at the half-year stage, we saw a decline of 25% here. Coming up at 14% lower volumes at the year-end means the second half of fiscal year 2020 was largely stable compared to prior years, going through the individual essence classes. Hydrovolumes in Sweden benefited from higher precipitation all over the year, while hydrovolumes in Germany were clearly below average due to long periods of drought during last summer. Nuclear was down around 30%, mainly driven by the closure of Ringhals 2 and extended outages at Oskarsham 3 and Ringhals 1 and 3. The low starting point for 2021 means that even with the closure of the Ringhals I nuclear plant at the end of 2020, we still expect overall higher nuclear generation volumes in 2021. Gas and coal fired power generation was down 12%, mostly due to a lower power demand caused by the COVID pandemic and the greater availability of renewables. After a strong decline in H1 2020, 35% the second half was way better with an increase of 20% Here the start of that in four coal power station and bringing two gas plants losing four and five back into the merchant market as a main positive one The volumes and the Russian power generation business showed a pattern very similar to the European Following a double-digit decline in the first half of 2020, it was affected by unusual warm weather in Q1 and a lower demand due to COVID-19 and the OPEC-plus agreement that became effective from May last year. Hydrogeneration production in Russia increased significantly in 2020 in both pricing zones. That also results in lower prices. Finally, Unibus carbon emissions for the group were further down 9% for the full year 2020. The decline in the second half of the year was slowed down by the increasing deliveries of the fossil power plants. Overall, this is a move into the right direction when it comes to our decarbonization efforts, targets going forward as summarized on the next slide. We are constantly working to improve our ESG performance and to make our achievements more transparent to the external world. Beyond, it is important to understand ESG is not only a side topic for us, It is an integrated part of our new strategy and daily business. For example, as part of our sustainability improvement plan, most of our teams have annual ESG targets defined, and most importantly, we consider various ESG criteria, including emissions, for all of our new assessments. Thus, it is central for us to look at this topic not only in retrospectively, but also prospectively, starting with the retrospective view. Putting decarbonization and the energy transition at the center of our new strategy, we made very significant steps ahead during the last fiscal year, 2010. With our group-wide carbon intensity target of an average of 500 grams per kilowatt from 2018 to 2020 coming to an end, we saw the urgent need to set ourselves new, rather mid- to long-term targets, and above all, more ambitious carbon reduction targets. In March, we firstly announced that we will make our European generation business carbon neutral by 2035. At that time, we had already reduced our direct emissions from our European generation business by 50% since 2016, the year of Uniper's start. Last December, we committed to an additional target to cover the entire Uniper group on the one hand and extended our target to all scopes of emissions on the other hand. Our base case and overall commitment is to become carbon neutral by 2050 on group level, including Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions. This is also in line with the long-term goal of the Paris Agreement. However, the path to this goal is of crucial importance. For European generations, we have made our path clear. As already mentioned, for this part we will be carbon neutral by 2035. As a further intermediate step, We will reduce our emissions by 50% by 2030, starting from our 2019 emission level. For our global commodities and Russian power business, the quantitative path is not yet so clear. However, driving the decarbonization for those two segments is also essential to achieve our 2050 carbon neutral target. For global commodities, it is most relevant to reduce scope 3 emissions. As a reminder, here we are talking primarily about those emissions that are linked to gas and coal we sell to our customers, and that, once burned by our customers, will ultimately turn into Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions on the end. As we do not have direct control over the technologies and processes of our customers, reducing Scope 3 emissions is significantly more complex and requires even more collaboration. Nevertheless, we set ourselves goal to come up with concrete and quantitative Scope 3 targets during the course of 2021. For Russia, we have the qualitative mid-term target to focus on renewable capacity schemes and to build up carbon-free capacities. Uniper is known for delivering on its promises. Therefore, it's important to point out that our decarbonization ambitions are well-founded on a track record of significant progress so far. Our major improvement in terms of carbon management and disclosure is reflected in our CTP rating. In 2020, we were able to further improve our score from B- to B, which is in line with the energy utility network sector's average. Another important milestone in this regard was the announcement of Unifas Ambition's coal exit plans for our 8 gigawatt coal-fired capacity in Europe. As a first step, We successfully submitted a bid for our 875 megawatt hardcore plant Heiden and the first tender under the German coal phase-out law. As a result, the plant sees commercial electricity production at the end of 2020 and will permanently be commissioned on July 1st, 2021, unless the transition system operator and the regulator BNSR determines that the power plant is system-relevant. Looking at all aspects of ESG, we also made progress on the S and G letters. This is, for example, reflected in our SUM assessment score, which has improved significantly from 15 to 37 points, towards the industry benchmark score of 42. The CSE questionnaire is now issued by S&P Global and provides the base for the Dow Jones sustainability. When it comes specifically to the S, In ESG, the topic health and safety for our people has become even more important in recent months. Overall, we received very positive feedback from our employees, expressing a high level of appreciation for the measures Unibus adopted to safeguard their health. Also, in the area of work safety, we managed to achieve a TRIF of 1.17 in 2020, which is a significant improvement from 1.48 in 2019. This positive performance is due to the consistent high level of occupational safety across the entire group. To further improve in this area, Uniper has committed to achieve a TRIF at or below 1 by 2025. Those achievements do not go unnoticed and further add up to Uniper's overall attractiveness for new talents. Uniper was able to attract a large number of new talents during 2020. leading to an overall increase of 200 employees. While not a huge increase yet, the percentage of female colleagues moved into the right direction from 24.6 to 25.2%. Finally, the average employee turnover rate of 3.7% has been at the lowest since the inception of Uniper in 2016. This is an important indicator for us, even so, we are aware that this metric is to be interpreted carefully in the year like 2020. Let's now have a look at Unibus ESG priorities for 2021 and beyond. By now, we already have two important achievements I would like to highlight. First, since the beginning of this year, ESG is a significant part of our management compensation. Specifically, that means that 20% of our long-term incentives will be dependent on predefined ESG times. The LTI Trump 2021 is, for example, linked to the implementation of the TCFD framework that UNIFA committed to in December of last year. The implementation project is driven by a team of experts from different departments to fully reflect the scope and underlying idea of TCFD that for us goes beyond the simple tick-the-box disclosure exercise. Second, 2021 is the year which will mark the end of UNIFA's lignite fire power generation in Europe. Already in February 2020, UNEPA signed an agreement to set a 58% stake in the Lignite Fire Power Plant in Schkopau, in the eastern part of Germany, to Saale Energy, a subsidiary of EPH. The transfer of ownership will take place in October 2021. So, what we are working on for the rest of the year and beyond. As already mentioned, we will define concrete mid-term scope three emission targets, which are particularly important for our global commodity segment. and we will intensively work on the implementation of the CCFP framework. The same applies for the EU taxonomy rules, which will be obligatory for reporting starting with the fiscal year 2021. As a last point, we will push forward existing and initiative new projects aiming at reducing our Scope 1 emissions of our fleet. However, the year 2021 will most certainly be a challenge when it comes With the commissioning of the German coal power plant Dattelt 4 in mid-2020 and the plant commissioning of the Russian lignite plant Beriot III in the first half of 2021, our direct emissions will most likely increase, assuming all generation else will be equal. This shows not only the importance of the emission level to our decarbonization targets, it also highlights that the scope of all decarbonization measures needs to go far beyond the shutdown of older coal plants. This is very much summarized in the next slide. It gives a comprehensive overview of UNIPA's strategic milestones that we can see already today. There was a strategic and financial update in March 2020. We sent a clear signal to the market to support the path to a more sustainable and decarbonized world and to make a significant contribution to the energy transition. On this slide, you can see the three layers of our strategy. First, decarbonization via the phase-out of coal. We already covered this today. Second, in the short to mid-term, we have significant growth investments in the non-wholesale area that are focused on security of supply for regulators and other customers. Third, the area of investment in decarbonization of gas. gas and other green technologies and businesses which are today already in our focus but will gain more weight in terms of financial figures in the mid to long term. Our investment budget for organic growth investments for the year 2021 to 2023 amounts to about 1.5 billion in total. Uniper has always been a reliable partner who provides security and diversification of energy supply to its customers. From the short to mid-term, This area plays a key role from a CapEx perspective. Due to the increasing share of volatile feed-in from renewables, transmission system operators face the challenge of enduring stability in the power grid. In the UK, Unipa was awarded four six-year contracts to provide innovative grid stability services as Killing Home and Grain starting in 2021. In Germany, Unipa is building a new 300-megawatt gas-fired power plant Irving 6. for the TSO in order to prevent system outages. It is expected to enter service in the last quarter of 2022. Unipro, Unipro's subsidiary in Russia, will make significant investments in the modernization of our four large units at the Gutskaya power site, totaling 3.3 gigawatts. After refurbishment, the unit will be back to the grid between 2022 and 2026 and will provide greater security of supply. But it's not only regulators that Uniper is supplying with secure and affordable energy. For example, the conversion of the Schorfenstein and the Ruhr region from coal to gas that Uniper is driving forward is in full swing. Here, Uniper will be offering its industrial customers individual energy solutions with the supply of electricity, heat, and other services. The resulting return from those projects will be another catalyst for the third layer, for instance, investments into the areas of renewable energies and hydroterms. UNIPA's goal is to organically develop a portfolio of photovoltaic and onshore wind assets of over 1 gigawatt in its core European markets by 2025. This portfolio is to be expanded to 3 gigawatts in the years thereafter. We see additional growth options in the renewables and the Russian markets as a new investment window will be opening in 2021 under a technical renewable capacity program. Unipro will focus on developing options to enter renewable energy. In the longer term, we see even more potential in entering the hydrogen economy, where Europe aims to play a pioneering role. Unipro already has extensive experience in operating hydrogen plants, as Unipro was one of the first German utilities to produce green hydrogen based on electrolysis processes. Uniprac is in the process of developing an extensive range of projects and will focus on realizing its first electric project in the next few years. In Eastern Germany, at the chemical site in Leipzig, a joint venture with Uniprac called Energiepark Bad Lauchstedt is underway and awaiting approval. This is a fully integrated project with a 30 megawatt electrolyzer. The plan is to supply green hydrogen to companies in that industrial cluster by 2024. Another flagship project is a collaboration with the specialities chemical company Perstop in order to produce sustainable methanol by 2025. In cooperation with Fortum, the project has been developed to supply green hydrogen by means of a 25-megawatt electrolyzer plant and renewable energies and so on. Due to the very good infrastructure conditions and sales potential, Unipass must flag the power plant site in the port of Rotterdam as suitable for hydrogen production. Here, in a joint venture with support of Rotterdam, we're examining the option of building a 100 megawatt electrolyzer, which could be realized by 2025. Just last week, we joined forces with H2EIG, newly founded for Hamburg, Siemens Energy, and other partners to develop the generation and supply of green hydrogen, as well as green process and district heating at the Hamburg war work site. The game changer lies in the interaction of three future technologies for the production storage of green hydrogen, green heat, and peak electricity from renewable energy. We also want to join the hydrogen trading platform. The vision is to expand the concept commercially by 2030. We have said it before, Europe will by no means be able to cover its entire energy requirements for green hydrogen by itself. Uniper is also working intensively on solutions to be able to cover this gap through imports with the option of blue hydrogen, for instance, produced from conventional gas with CCS solutions. In this environment, Uniper is very well positioned in the growing hydrogen market with excellent procurement, optimization, trading, and risk management. Having said that, I would now like to head over to Sascha for the financial part. Sascha and I will be ready to take on your questions. Thank you.

Thank you, Andreas, and good morning, everybody. I can tell you that we are very satisfied with the set of numbers that I'm about to go through. What we are especially proud of is that 2020 and the first weeks of 2021 challenged us with all kinds of extremes from COVID-19 to weather and very volatile markets. And finally, our teams have turned many of those into opportunities with no disruptions also on how we communicate our outlooks. With an adjusted EBIT of $998 million, we're 16 percent above last year's result and just a notch below the upper end of our 2020 guidance range. The outcome above the envisaged midpoint was the result of a strong ending to the year, especially in the gas midstream business. Adjusted net income increased even stronger year-on-year, as it additionally benefited from a higher net interest result and a lower operating tax rate. Operating cash flow is significantly up to 1.24 billion. Compared with adjusted EBIT, the increase is even more pronounced due to higher cash-effective EBITDA. And finally, economic net debt is up 460 million to now 3.1 billion, purely driven by lower interest rates, pushing pension obligations and asset retirement obligations up, while at the same time we could reduce our financial net debt by more than $100 million. The economic net debt over adjusted EBITDA is still comfortably within our previously guided range. I will share more thoughts on the debt factor going forward in the outlook section. To sum it up, strong results and our credit metrics remain very solid. Looking at the year-on-year drivers for the adjusted EBIT, the picture is broadly in line with what you have seen in the past quarters. Please keep in mind that the effects on this slide do not perfectly match the segmental split in the appendix, as there are some further shifts in consolidation effects between the segments. As those net out on a group level, we omit them here for the sake of a clearer view on the underlying business drivers. Let's start with a well-known commodity effect that predominantly reflects the outstanding results in our gas midstream business, which is about 360 million above prior year. Looking at the full year, 2020 is a good example for how our gas team is capable to capture value in different market situations. Even though Q1 and Q4 were fundamentally different when it comes to dynamics and the development of gas prices, both quarters saw very strong earnings contributions. For me, this showcases the potential of having a portfolio based on optionality managed by an experienced team. However, aside from gas midstream, the first effect also includes a negative effect of about 120 million from the other slash international commodity business, formerly known as COFL. This negative effect stems mainly from our US LNG and our trading activities. One major driver were negative contributions from our LNG Freeport deal, which suffered from the realization of lower Henry Hub TTF spreads. Additionally, we saw negative effects in our U.S. gas and power trading business. I suspect that 2021 could be quite different. Let's come back to this later. The next effect is a negative one within commodity power optimization. you might remember that we saw a very strong power optimization contribution in Q4 of 2019. Accordingly, we expect a swing back to normal at year-end 2020. The overall year-on-year effect amounts roughly to $130 million and is also influenced by non-operational items like the disposal of our French business. Next one is the positive outright power price and volume effect which amounts to about 40 million in total and primarily reflects higher achieved prices. This effect is somewhat diluted by excess hydrovolumes, which were not hatched in advance and therefore sold at comparatively low spot prices, especially during Q2. Additionally, nuclear volumes went down due to the closure of Ringhals II end of 2019 and extended outages in OSCA Sum 3, Ringhals I and III. UK capacity market income amounted to a negative 30 million. Even though capacity market payments have generally been on the same level in both years, we had accrued in 2019 the outstanding Q4 2018 capacity market payments, which explains the negative year-on-year delta. Aside from the UK capacity market, the European Fossil Fleet Optimization showed a very good performance year-on-year, as reflected in the next element. One major driver was the broader asset base that benefited from the return of Yixing 4 and 5 into the merchant market, from the COD of Dutton 4, and also from higher availability of Maslachter 3, which had prolonged outages in 2019. The optimization and operations team then very successfully utilized this broader asset base by capturing a sizable positive contribution in volatile markets. Russia's adjusted EBIT is down by about 80 million compared to prior year. The main reasons are significantly lower electricity prices in the day-ahead market, driven by an unusually warm weather in Q1, and a lower demand due to COVID-19 and the OPEC Plus agreement that became effective from May last year. Hydrogeneration production in Russia increased significantly in 2020 in both pricing zones that also resulted in lower prices. Subsequently, slightly stronger operational performance in the second half was compensated by a weaker ruble. The category other amounts to about minus 30 million and consists mainly of unallocated consolidation effect. Lower results in the engineering business due to COVID and partly offsetting the lapse of a prior year one-off nuclear provision effect. To sum it up, Significantly stronger results in our gas midstream and European fossil generation business are partly compensated by lower performance in our power, LNG, and U.S. commodity business, and weaker results from Russia. One remark when it comes to EBIT effects that you might have expected on this chart but that aren't there, specifically effects from the first German coal exit auction round where we participated successfully with our Haydn plant. Please note that we will book the consequences of this tender as non-operating. This is in line with the industry standard in Germany and applies for all elements of the auction, including the auction premium that we are entitled to, as well as the offsetting effects on provision and book values. You can expect the same treatment in case we should also succeed in future auction rounds. Now over to operating cash flow on the next slide. At year end 20, operating cash flow amounts to $1.2 billion, which translates into a cash conversion of roughly 82 percent, which is as expected, but at the same time significantly above prior year's 65 percent. Cash-effective EBITDA, i.e. the EBITDA adjusted for non-cash items, is $363 million higher than the reported EBITDA. This is another proof point for the quality of our results. Secondly, the cash effective utilization of provisions summed up to $436 million. Roughly 40% of the provision utilization is for decommissioning, mainly nuclear decommissioning. 30% is for pension and personnel related provisions. And finally, another 30% is related to the gas business and its infrastructure. Thirdly, working capital has mainly been influenced by how we utilize the different gas assets. The fourth category summarizes all other mainly CO2-related effects. Next is adjusted net income. The economic interest, which is an income for Uniper, has increased from 33 million after the first nine months to now 39 million, and it's driven by interest income from Nord Stream 2 as well as capitalized interest from our legacy growth projects. The applicable tax rate ended up at about 22%, therefore in the middle of our guided 20 to 25% range. The minority interests are largely driven by Unipro, where minority shareholders hold roughly 16%. This item further decreased from minus 34 million at the nine-month stage to now 37 million. On the next page, the waterfall shows the development of economic net debt from 2019 to 2020. The increase is driven by higher pension and asset retirement obligations reflecting a lower interest rate environment. The net financial position, on the other hand, i.e. the part of the economic net debt that is based upon cash flows, actually improved. The related items are in the dotted box. Main driver here is, as discussed, the strong operating cash flow. Investments have been $86 million higher than last year, with a total of $743 million. The increase is purely driven by higher growth investments. Overall, more than half of our investments, specifically $406 million, have been growth investments, evenly split into legacy projects like Dublin 4 and Bayer U3, and new growth projects like Scholven and Yersin 6. The remaining maintenance and replacement capex amounted to $336 million. Pension provisions, which are the light blue boxes in our reconciliation, increased by $340 million as German interest rates came down from 1.5 percent at end of 2019 to 0.8 percent at year end 2020. The same applies to U.K. interest rates being down from 2.1 percent to now 1.5. Finally, the asset retirement obligations in orange Those are up by 231 million to now 1.2 billion, mainly driven by the asset retirement obligations for Swedish nuclear. The corresponding interest rate applied decreased here from 2 percent at end 2019 to now 1.25 percent. In the appendix of our presentation, you'll find a slide that gives you further details on the interest rate sensitivities when it comes to our pension and asset retirement obligations. Looking at the debt factor defined as net debt to EBITDA multiple, we ended up at 1.9 times. This is fully in line with the target range that we need to secure our BBB credit rating. While this target range used to be 1.8 to 2.0, this would change in the future as shown on the next slide. Looking at the three pillars of our finance strategy, the solid investment grade rating has always been a key prerequisite, especially for our commodity business. Given our business risk, we need to demonstrate a minimum 55% on the FFO net debt KPI as defined by S&P. To facilitate communication, we usually express this requirement via the Uniper debt factor. In the past, the FFO to net debt threshold translated into a debt factor target range of 1.8 to 2.0 times adjusted EBITDA over economic net debt. Going forward, and honestly this just didn't start yesterday, this link will be somewhat different. Over the next years, a growing part of earnings will be materializing within the interest result, i.e. outside of EBITDA. This was actually one of the main reasons for us to introduce the adjusted net income last year. Examples are Nord Stream 2 as a lending agreement, or Yixing 6 that will classify as a finance lease under IFRS guidance. Those, let's call them non-EBITDA earnings components, support the S&P KPIs and ultimately our rating. Accordingly, from a technical point of view, we can have a higher debt factor and still secure our target rating as those additional positive factors contribute below the EBITDA line. More specifically, going forward, our target is to have a debt factor not higher than 2.5 times EBITDA over economic net debt. Other than this rather optical change, I can reiterate that we feel very comfortable with our capital position indeed. Ensuring a cost-efficient access to capital is the first pillar. The two other pillars deal with the question on how to best allocate those financial means. CapEx, the second pillar, reflects our ambition to transform and grow the company, which requires investments. We're talking about 1.5 billion of growth investments for the years 21 to 23, which is fully in line with the ambition that I presented a year ago. Please note that this assumes normal activities and no acquisitions are included. In terms of maintenance, CapEx, you can expect us to stay on the historic level of roughly 400 million per year on average. However, just like in 2020, there will always be years when some measures shift into other periods, resulting in a somewhat different number now and then. With respect to dividend, the management and supervisory boards of UNIPAR can confirm the dividend proposal for the year 2020, which due to rounding is 501 million in absolute terms, translating into 1.37 euro per share. As always, the final decision will be made by the shareholders during the AGM on May 19th. Assuming approval, Unipai will show a 19% higher dividend year on year. A dividend policy for the fiscal year 2021 will be given at a later point in time, as announced yesterday in the ad hoc. When it comes to our earnings outlook for 2021, our guidance on adjusted EBIT and net income is summarized on the following slide. Starting with the adjusted EBITs, we expect a result in the range of 700 to 950 million. This assumes a normal operating environment and also reflects that 2020 had extraordinary elements. I will come back to this in a second. For our European generation segment, we expect a positive development. However, the other two segments, global commodities and Russian power, are expected to come out lower in 2021. which explains the overall picture on a group level. On top of that, when it comes to administration and consolidation, you may expect administrative cost to stay in the range of 200 to 220 million. The consolidation line will not be zero. However, from a group and modeling perspective, it will then have an offset in one of the operating segments. Looking at our guidance on adjusted net income, we see a range of 550 to 750 million. The year-on-year change corresponds to the adjusted EBIT development, that is, if one takes into account a tax rate of somewhere between 20 and 25 percent. Accordingly, let's go over the last slide, which breaks down the major expected EBIT drivers year-on-year. Starting with the outright portfolio in European generation, we expect, in sum, a positive effect in a higher double-digit area. despite lower achieved prices in our Nordic markets. The main drivers are higher nuclear volumes, as in 2020 we saw prolonged outages in our nuclear fleet. Therefore, we expect an overall increase in nuclear volumes year on year, despite the shutdown of Ringhals II at year-end 2020. The positive development in the outright portfolio is partly compensated by a mid-double-digit effect in the European fossil generation business. While we see more of Dutton 4 contributing in 2021, we will, on the other hand, lose the contribution from our lignite power plant, Scopal, after Q3. Another main driver is that we do not expect the strong 2020 fossil optimization result to repeat in 2021. Moving towards normal is also the description for the next effect of about minus $150 million, which summarizes the development in our gas as well as our international slash other commodity business. In gas, we expect a significantly lower contribution year on year simply due to the very strong comparison base last year. This is partly compensated by the international commodity business where the swing towards normalization is a positive one. We expect that the negative effects in our US LNG and power trading that we saw in 2020 to not repeat in 2021. Russian generation will have a lower contribution in 2021, as most of our plans receiving CSA payments have transferred to compayments at the end of the year 2020, or will transfer to compayments over the course of 2021. Taking additional negative effects like FX and lower data head volumes into consideration, Barrio 3 CSA payments will not be able to fully compensate for this once online in Q2. Therefore, in total, we see a mid-double-digit million negative effect here year on year. Please note that if communicated via EBITDA in rubles, as our friends from Unipro will do, the picture looks more promising. In sum, all those effects bring us into the guided range of 700 million to 950 million adjusted EBIT. If one would be trying to summarize the year-on-year development with one word, normalization would not be entirely off. The fact that we do not expect any significant one-offs and as such underlines this theme. Finally, I usually give you an indication for how to think about the next quarter. This is this time especially challenging. Overall, I can say that we operationally had a strong start to the year, and I would like to believe that as of today, and it is very early in the year, the midpoint of our outlook may prove somewhat conservative. Among others, our LNG business used the global cold spell very well, and also our US business did their very best to use our assets in the extreme environment that we experienced there. We're also more optimistic that Barrios III can be commissioned already in April. Therefore, I currently expect the first quarter EBIT to come out at around a very strong level we have seen last year, about 650 million, with even some chances to the upside. Obviously, given the full-year outlook, we expect the remaining quarters to come in at a lower level than last year in the base case. I will give you a firmer update with the publication of the first-quarter figures. Now, before we start the Q&A section, I briefly hand over to Stefan.

Thank you, Andreas. Thank you, Sascha. We now come to the Q&A section. And as always, please restrict yourself to two questions each. And I hand over to the operator to start the Q&A, please.

So we will begin our question and answer session now. If you have a question for our speakers, please dial 0 and 1 on your telephone keypad now to enter the queue. Once your name has been announced, you can ask the question. If you find your question is answered before it is your turn to speak, you can dial 0 and 2 to cancel your question. If you are using speaker equipment today, please lift the handset before making your selection. One moment, please, for the first question. The first question is from Sam Airy of UBS. Your line is now open.

Hi. Good morning, Andrea, Sasha, Stefan, and all the team. Thanks again for a great presentation, very clear, and some really positive messages there. I wanted to ask just about the dividend and, of course, about Russia, as I always do. So on the dividend, can I start by just, you know, following up on this comment in your release last night that discussions about the 21 dividend were still pending? And I just would be helpful to understand what kind of discussions those are and if essentially forward communication about the dividend depends on, you know, what Fortum does with the domination agreement and so on. I suppose also on dividend, is it fair to assume you wouldn't be proposing the $501 million for 2020 if you didn't have some sense of force and plan to approve that at the AGM? So that would be very helpful on the dividend. Thank you. And on Russia, well, look, I'm sorry I always come back to this, but I remember we had a conversation at four-year results last year, and I asked if you would consider selling Unipro, And the answer at the time was no, that Russia was an important part of the three-legged strategy at Unipro. But I think since then it's been reported that you're more open-minded, you would consider offers on Unipro. I just wondered how the thinking has evolved there and if we should be expecting some kind of a change on Unipro this year. Thank you very much and thanks again for a great presentation this morning.

Yeah. Hey, Sam, good morning. Hope you're well. Thanks for your question. I'm taking the first one, and then Andreas will take over the second. And I'm grateful that you actually almost gave me the answer in the latter part of your first question, and that is, indeed, we would not propose something where we are not sufficiently aligned with Fortum. as this could simply be misleading from a market perspective. Autumn holds 75% of our shares, as you know, and therefore an alignment is necessary. This alignment is currently pending, and therefore... And you're quite loud. You need to mute. Thank you. And since this alignment is currently pending, the decision is proposed, and we will follow up on that as soon as we can. And now for Russia, I'm handing over to Andreas.

Yeah, Sam, good morning. Thanks for the question. I think Russia, there's an ongoing discussion. We get this message, there's a question again and again, but I want to assure you, Russia is a very important part of our earnings. Sometimes we have more impact from them, and sometimes less. It really depends more on the ruble and the situation we described. At the moment, we're really focusing on the commissioning of Barrier 3 and then to transform the business as well to a more CO2-friendly generation portfolio to renewables. So from that point of view, we have a lot of things to do. It remains an important part of us, but of course, we are always looking into other options as well. We will not exclude that neither.

Okay. Thank you very much.

The next question is from Peter Bischicker of Bank of America. Your line is now open.

Yeah, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. So could you update us on the latest status of the Nord Stream 2 project, please, and your views on the risks there that the project isn't completed and the status of your loan? And my second question is about the UK capacity market. There was a T1 auction earlier this week that cleared at 45%. Just wondering about your thoughts on that. And also, what are your thoughts about the dynamics of the T-4 auction next week and how that might play out compared to last year?

Peter, good morning from my side. Thanks for the question. Let's start with Nord Stream 2. As you know, we are a financial investor. We are not really running the show there, but of course we are following the completion of that pipeline very closely. I think pipeline is going on as far as we know. But from that point of view, we are quite okay that the Russians will finish the pipeline as promised. I don't see any big technical risks since pipeline is starting. It seems to be under control, but it's only speculation on our side. On the political side, we are very much following the ongoing discussion in Europe and in the US. The issue is that, of course, this is still volatile, but I'm quite sure we will find a solution there. So we are quite positive about it. And as you know, we believe in the rationale why we need Nord Stream 2 for the security of supply of gas for Europe. It is a business project which is to 98% finished, and we're looking forward that it will be finished. Coming to the UK. I think the results of the T1 auction needs to be confirmed in the UK by the political regulators. I think it has cleared in a very good result from my point of view. I'm a little bit surprised how good the result was. So from that point of view, we see it quite positively. And please excuse that, of course, for the T-4 auction. We cannot give any guidance about the strategy at the moment if we participate with what we participate and so on. Okay, thanks very much.

The next question is from James Brand of Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open.

Hello, good morning. Thanks for the presentation. Two questions from me. The first is, well, I thought I'd just ask a question on Russia, given that it keeps on coming up, but with a different angle. And if people are asking regularly, whether it would make sense for you to sell it. Can I just ask why it wouldn't make sense to merge your Russian business with Fortum's? I'm not expecting you to announce that on the call today, but you talk a lot about areas with Fortum where you can have, as you say, joint value pools. And when I think about the two entities, it just seems like Russia's the area where there's almost the most and scope for synergies. So that's question number one. And then secondly, you obviously had an increase in pensions and provision charges due to the lower bond yields at year end, and then subsequently bond yields have soared. So I was wondering whether you could tell us how much, if we did a market to market today, how much that would lower your net debt. I would imagine that could be quite material. Thank you.

Yeah, James, thank you for the question. Of course, if you don't expect an answer to the question, that's why you asked the question. But let me try to give you at least some insight. I think for Russia, it was so far not on the focus of our one-team approaches. I think there will be limited synergies, maybe in some fuel purchases and joint procurements. But otherwise, as you know, all the assets, our own assets and the assets of Fordham, are quite dispersed in the geographical area as by nature of power plants, so there are not so many synergies as maybe would be expected. At the moment, we are focusing with our collaboration with Fortum on the one-team approach in the area of Nordic hydrogen and renewables. We're making good progress on that, and I think from my point of view, it's essential to really harvest here the synergies and deliver value that we would take on the other things a little bit more later.

James, I would hope that the slide in the appendix helps somewhat to think about the balance sheet position when it comes to interest rate sensitivities. Surely, every of those illustrations is a bit simplified, but at least it gives you an order of magnitude that slide 18 of the presentation.

Great. Thank you very much.

The next question is from Vincent Aurel of JP Morgan. Your line is now open.

Good morning. So we already had quite a few times questions on Russia and potentially the dividend. I'll come back to it. So on the dividend beyond talking about the 501 million euro dividend for 2020, it's more a question regarding the outlook. When looking at Uniper, it would seem that further growth, either from an earnings point of view or a balance sheet point of view, further growth of the dividend may be difficult. So maybe it's time for a breather. What's your view on that? I'm sure you cannot comment on Horton's view, but maybe you can comment on Uniper's view there. And on Russia, I'll talk about ESG here. That's another angle to look at it. You say that basically you can go neutral in European generation, still have some CCGT, so not fully understanding exactly if they will all cease operation or be switched to hydrogen in the meantime. But on Russia, you say there is no clear path on CO2, so the question is, would there be actually a solution, just selling the Russian assets in order to get on track? I know it's not helping the environment, but it's helping meeting the carbonization target at UNIPA level. Thank you.

Vincent, maybe I'll start with the dividend, and you have indeed given it a different perspective, and I would say the following. I think already in March of last year, we were, yeah, that the dividend policy of the past that included a 25% CAGR is not a sustainable thing. It's simply not to be expected that way. increase earnings or cash flow by 25% every year. However, that aside, I can just reiterate, we have a very comfortable capital position. We just talked about great 2020 results, including very strong cash flow. I think I kind of indicated that also 2021 may have some upside potential. So, I mean, it's certainly the case that we can afford a dividend Also considering the investment plans that I've talked about before, i.e. 1.5 billion growth over the next years, about 1.2 billion in maintenance and replacement. Nevertheless, the alignment with Fortum needs to be there, and before that is not in place, we will not communicate.

Vincent, thanks for the questions. Coming back to Russia, I think we had mentioned already a couple of times that Russia earnings are quite an important part of our earnings profile. They are non-merchants because they are mainly capacity payments, so they have a fixed nature, so they're not that volatile. And from that point of view, it's an important part of the business. Nevertheless, we discussed already and announced that we are working on the ESG and the CO2 intensiveness of our assets in Russia as well. We are investing into improvement programs to reduce the CO2 intensiveness of these older assets and convert them into modern ones. The capacity scheme in Russia is turning more and more into renewable capacity markets, and we are going to participate there as well. It has the charm that, of course, it will be fixed payment for capacity as before, though from that point of view, it's the same thing what we have now. And of course, we are working with Russian partners like Novartek and trying to use hydrogen, blue hydrogen, for our assets there. And from that point, this is a good outlook. So we work in our AUG profile there. That's definitely the case.

Good morning.

Two questions from my side. The first one is on something Andreas said quite early on in the presentation. You mentioned that you see significant upside potential for Nordic power prices. Can you maybe elaborate a bit on that? Is this mainly driven by a normalization of weather patterns? I mean, this winter was quite normal compared to the previous winter, which was record-breaking in terms of mild temperatures, or is that something structural at play? What should be the drivers to get Nordic power prices higher, and how fast could this happen? The second question is on the quite phenomenal start to the year you had. What was the main driver behind it? Was it, again, weather, demand-driven, or was it more gas optimization and trading? This is partially coming back to Sascha's comment on Koffel, the old Koffel, that 2021 could be quite challenging. different. This sounded a bit more optimistic than the not negative. Could we actually see a positive surprise there as well?

Let me maybe start, Lula, about the Nordic power prices. I think it's the kind of recovery we see and we acknowledge because they were quite depressed in the last year, the Nordic power prices, mainly based on a very warm winter with a lot of rain instead of snow where residents were very much full. Now I think we have seen a kind of normal thing. It was winter, it was cold, there was snow, something more normal. So from that point of view, I think this is just the recovery. And of course, maybe as well a kind of small COVID effect that if they're coming out of the pandemic, that may be hopefully an effect there as well.

I'm taking your second question, Luda. Yeah, if the tonality was more optimistic, then this was indeed on purpose. Now, where is the good start coming from? Actually, more than one source, not every source being of equal magnitude, but let's also acknowledge that our Communication when it comes to the commissioning of Perio 3 is now becoming firmer and firmer. That's a good thing. Someone already asked a question about the UK capacity market where we participated with our Redcliffe power station. And yes, certainly I would call it US platform. When I talk about US platform, Speaking specifically about our business line, North America, where we're active with about 80 colleagues there. We are holding storage positions and we're trading power and gas. And in those very extreme circumstances that also affected people, including our own that were working without having power. But those extreme circumstances also provided some opportunities. And that also counts for the LNG business, which was additionally supported by that U.S. platform. So, Luda, for now, I wouldn't point to gas midstream in the sense that we were talking about it all along in 2020, but there are other parts of the business that are also working quite well right now.

Okay, thank you. Just one follow-up question, if I may. I think at the end of January, when we saw you on our field trip, gas storage levels were about 6% full. Do you have a number where they are now?

I think Andreas mentioned in his speech for Europe, 37%, if I'm not mistaken. A colleague just quoted the other day, 34%. I think that then depends on the region. But apparently somewhere in the 30s from a physical perspective.

Excellent. Thank you very much.

The next question is from Deepavankar Tesharan of Bernstein. Your line is now open. Thank you.

I have two questions. One on the capex. So it seems like 2020 capex is a bit below where you had guided last year. So I just wanted to understand where the difference is and is it phasing? And then for the growth capex that you've guided from 21 to 23, 2.7 billion, can you provide a bit of transparency on how much of this new growth is the renewable projects that you discussed on the Fortum CMD, and maybe some color around that would be quite interesting. And secondly, on the Berrizosta commissioning, I think you've mentioned a couple of times on the call already, Maybe if you could just update on what should be our modeling assumption on when we should assume a full ramp-up. Is it already at the beginning of Q2, or how should we think about it? Thank you.

Yeah, Diba, I'm thankful for the question. Maybe I give Sasha a little bit more time to prepare for the two questions you got on CapEx and growth, CapEx and so on. Give you some color on Barrow Soft Scale 3. I think we have made good progress in the last weeks. We have had the first trim run, so the turbine was reaching 3,000 rpm for the first time. We have seen that. Maybe a few of us remember still that's the first time we have not reached that status in commissioning. So we are quite positive that we will get all the necessary updates, technical documentation and permissions to start the unit and have a COD at the beginning of Q2. So we always mention Q2. I think maybe early in Q2, I think it's a good time to mention that. So we are quite positive about that. And then, of course, we will see, of course, the payment for the capacities coming in as well.

I'm taking over with respect to the capex question. Indeed, 2020 actual capex in the end was lower than we have expected at the beginning of the year, and I guess also lower than we have indicated back in March 2020 when we had our CMD then. This is predominantly a shift of payments, no fundamental rethink of projects. So 2020 a bit less, and then some of that has gone into the following years. Now, when we principally think about CapEx, when we communicate CapEx, we think of a total number, either say the 1.5 billion or the 1.2 billion that I mentioned early on, that we can comfortably afford, given our other planning assumptions. And then if we stick with the growth capex, part of that growth max capex is then already earmarked for specific projects. That is usually more in the shorter term, and this includes projects that you know and that Andreas talked about, from Irsing 6, the gas plant, to the grid stability project, to Scholven. But then it also has quite a substantial part that in the second half of the period of growth capex, which is not yet allocated to specific projects, but where we certainly have a strategic view. And then this gets us back to your link into the renewables, also into the Unipa Fortum renewable team. And we are optimistic that as we then go into the second phase of this time period, more and more will then actually be dedicated to specific renewable projects, and in the longer run, also then more and more into the hydrogen space.

Thank you. The next question is from Alberto Gandolfi of Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open.

Thank you for taking my questions and good morning. The first one is I wanted to ask you about your expectations on what we might hear from the European Union in the summer with respect to any potential changes to the emission trading scheme, any tightening and what that might do to the carbon price and how you're preparing for it. And the second question is, again, you talked about some of that, so forgive me to go back to the topic, but you know, your idea to go to net zero by 2035, you're talking about something like three gigawatts of renewables by 2030. You still have gas plants. So could you maybe elaborate a little bit more the main milestones in the next three to five years on how you intend to develop a renewable pipeline? Are you thinking externally? Are you starting to hire people? Are you are you ramping up organically? And are you looking into hydrogen-ready turbines or hydrogen turbines to fully repower your gas plants? And maybe you can give us a bit more of a trajectory of when this new phase might begin or may, it's already started, I guess, but when should we expect an acceleration of all of this? Thank you so much.

Thanks, Alberto. Let me start with the second part about hydrogen and the CO2 emissions. I think our promise to be CO2 neutral in 2035 is based on a couple of assumptions and plans. Of course, we will take out our coal assets in the ramp down, as we have already said, not only in Germany, but as well in the U.K. and the Netherlands. So there are timelines behind that when we are exiting. And you have heard today as well that our plant in Schkopau will change the ownership And our responsibility is starting from October. So that will take a big part of these CO2 emissions away. On the other hand, yes, we're looking into H2 turbines. We have agreements with Siemens and with GE to check if our existing assets can be converted and how they can be converted. I think the good news is that all our turbines are able to take a higher percentage of hydrogen. I think rule of thumb is If you have a turbine with a high capacity, very efficient, then of course it's harder to convert them to completely, such as hydrogen, as the smaller assets are normally easily converted. The turbine, of course, all the instrumentation around that, regulations have to be adopted. On the other hand, one of our IPPSI projects, the one in Hamburg, the H2E project, there's a hydrogen turbine of 300 megawatts in cooperation with Siemens Energy included in that. So that could probably be the first complete hydrogen turbine being implemented in Germany. And of course, this reduces all our CO2 intensity using blue hydrogen in the meantime as well. That's something that we're assuming. But of course, you're right, the wrap-up of hydrogen completely as a big business will take some time because the framework is not there yet in Europe and in Germany. It's still too expensive, but I think everything is pointing in the right direction, and I think we are one of the front one. I say there's a lot of projects, so I'm very promising science, and I'm very comfortable in that position with Uniper. Does it mean you leave the CO2 question to me? I can try to answer the CO2 question if Sascha is leaving me alone on that one.

We'll do it together. I guess none of us will provide a CO2 price outlook that we take from the market. But our fundamental belief is that the trading system will be a key steering instrument for the overall decarbonization in Europe. And if anything, year by year and month by month, that political but also the economic, the societal belief seems to be firming up. So you get the sense that there is structural support for a certain level of CO2 prices.

Let me maybe add to that, because we cannot make a forecast of what the EU will do, but one thing is clear. Politically, I think probably they want to tighten the CO2 price to drive it up because it drives the conversion and the transition. And actually, where I'm sitting, a higher CO2 price combined with higher coal prices and moderate or low gas prices is something which plays definitely into our portfolio.

Thank you.

The next question is from Piotr Czinkowski of Citibank. Your line is now open.

Good morning, everybody. Two questions from me, please. The first one is, we've seen RWE suing the Dutch government for early core closure. You also have similar assets. Do you think there is a ground for such legal action? And would you consider the same step? And can you comment on such possibility? And second, can you please explain, you announced the cooperation with Novartek around the hydrogen in Russia. What is exactly the nature of this agreement? What are you trying to achieve there?

Thanks for the question. Let's start with Maslakt and RWE and these things. We had a discussion with the Dutch government about Max Flachter. I think we are good at constructive talks. Of course, we prefer mutual agreement and a win-win situation to that. Of course, we reserve the right for legal steps, as we have in the interest of all shareholders. We believe that there's a legal ground for that. We are not that proactive in some competition. We are looking for a negotiated solution, but of course, we cannot exclude any other things, as you can understand. And regardless of the Novatec agreement, besides the agreement with Novatec to look into blue and green hydrogen or ammonia to be transported, shipped, whatever, into Germany, Novatec is looking into these things. We are collaborating with Gazprom on the same area as well. So I think that's something where I believe it could be one of the intermediate steps for hydrogen economy in Germany and Europe. We know that we have to import quite a lot. And coming from Russia, blue hydrogen is definitely, blue ammonia is definitely a very elegant solution at the moment.

Thank you. Just to follow up, can you maybe say about How much the early closure do you think is damaging your NPV of Max Flachter? We've seen the RWE figures, what they are claiming, but any damage on your side, whether you are forced to do a write-down on this outfit and so on, could be quite helpful.

I think we will not comment on that. I think that's something we have to decide. From that point of view, I would try to avoid that question for the moment. I'm hoping and quite positive that we probably will find a negotiator solution and then of course we will see.

I understand. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

The next question is from Elgin Mamadov of Bloomberg Intelligence. Your line is now open.

Hi there. I have a couple of questions too. The first one is Sorry if I missed it, but you mentioned scope three emissions. You were planning to reveal them at some point this year. What shall we expect? And the second one is, what's your outlook for evolution of power, carbon, and spark spreads for the coming year or two, if you can give some light to it? And where do the load factors for CCGTs stand now in relation to spark spreads? So that would be great. Thank you.

Thanks again for the question. Let's start with scope three. So scope three, chapter 11 emissions are indirect emissions. So they are the emissions our customers are creating if they are taking our products and use them, burn them or whatever. As it already sounds a little bit more complicated in nature, it's not direct emissions, it's indirect emissions. Of course, the first step from our point would be to create transparency about that. How high is it? And then, of course, we want to drive a target around that. And just to give you some foot for thought, why it's called three emissions are so tricky. Except we would sell gas or LNG to India, which has some carbon intensity. But the Indians would replace coal burns with our LNG. That would mean our Scope 3 emissions are going up because we are selling now gas to them and we haven't sold coal to them. On the other hand, for the Indians themselves, their two emissions are going down because they are creating efficient LNG. They have burned coal. So you couldn't do good things and still having a higher target. That's why we're looking into that first great transparency, then how to deal with that. If we are dealing with hydrogen, there would be no COPE III emissions involved at the moment.

Maybe my approach on your other questions is the following. You have seen that already in 2020, I think it was October, we have put two of our German gas facilities, Irsching 4 and 5, back into the market, into the merchant market. I think that is a certain, that signals a certain expectation. I can additionally say that over the next years, we expect the running hours of our gas fire power plants to increase, and I would say increase meaningfully. And if we go even one step higher in the discussion, I think One of the questions that we have come across also in 2020 is what actually happens and will happen in days and weeks where we have a certain weather constellation in combination maybe with outages or not fully working interconnectors or similar. I think then already today, we see that things are getting very, very tight. And I think the more we then expand on renewables in Europe, as we should, as also Uniper will, the more we will then also face those kind of questions with very practical events, reminding us of the importance of security of supply. I think with that, I guess we would say we have tackled most of the questions. I'm sure there are some remaining. Please then approach the IR team during the day. We will now come to a close, as also our press conference will start in due course. From my side, big thank you to all of the participants. Andreas?

Yeah, thanks from my side as well. Thank you for participating. Thanks for your questions. Stay tuned. And stay safe and healthy and have a good day. Thank you. Bye-bye.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your attendance. This call has been concluded. You may disconnect now.