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Dear ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Uniper Analyst and Investor Conference Call First Quarter Results 2024. At our customer's request, this conference will be recorded. As a reminder, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions by dialing the one on your telephone keypad. May I now hand over to Stefan Joost, who will start the meeting. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. I'm pleased to welcome you to our first quarter results of fiscal year 2024. So, we are here in our regular setup, and next to me on today's call is Jutta Dönges, our Chief Financial Officer. Jutta will lead you through the presentation today, and as usual, there will be a Q&A session at the end. Now, let me hand you over to Jutta Dönges, please.

Thank you, Stefan. And good morning, everyone. A warm welcome from my side. Let's kick it off with the highlights and major achievements in the first quarter. We have successfully started the fifth year 2024. In the first three months, Uniper's new KPI as of January this year, the group adjusted EBITDA amounted to 885 million euros, following an exceptional strong first quarter in the prior year. The development was mainly driven by declining achieved gas and power prices in less volatile markets. The bottom line came out even stronger. The group adjusted net income has risen to 570 million euros. The performance is fully in line with our expectations. And today, we confirm our outlook for the full year for adjusted EBITDA and adjusted net income. Before I will provide more details on our figures during the presentation, Let me highlight some remarkable achievements during the first quarter which underpin our financial stabilization. I am pleased to emphasize that we recently achieved a meaningful milestone in our financing leeway. We have refinanced and extended our syndicated credit facility from 2018 of 1.7 billion euros to 3 billion euros. This is our first credit facility that anchors our sustainability targets. namely our carbon reduction targets and the strategic expansion targets in renewable energy. The new sustainability-linked credit line has a maximum maturity until 2029, including two options to extend for an additional year each. The new RCF gives Uniper the financial headroom needed to support our operations going forward. At the same time, we were very delighted with the high level of demand and the confidence of our lenders. The order book was well oversubscribed, which is a clear signal for universe regain stability. As a result of our accelerated financial recovery and our exceptional sound performance in 2023, the rating agency S&P Global confirmed in March our corporate investment grade rating at BBB- with a stable outlook for the third time in a row. Notably, our standalone rating improved by three notches. Correspondingly, S&P revised its assessment of the so-called likelihood of extraordinary government support downward, thereby reducing the government uplift from five to two notches. Ladies and gentlemen, the high rating uplift for our standalone credit rating confirmed our efforts and ambition of further strengthening our financial as well as our business risk profile by de-risking our business activities. A further improvement and a higher predictability of our earnings streams are essential steps on the way to become a standalone investment-grade company again. As announced during our presentation for the financial year 2023, we have implemented a new IFRS segment structure to reflect how we see our business going forward, which we report for the first time today. As our strategy is to transform Uniper into a leading provider of green energy in Europe, we have adjusted our segment accordingly. This enhances our steering towards our green transformation. The former segment, European Generation, is split into two segments. Green Generation, which contains our existing carbon-free generation and our over-time increasing renewables business. Flexible Generation, under all generation activities that contribute to ensuring grid stability and security of supply, a key pillar of the energy transition in UNIQA's core markets. The former segment, global commodities, has changed into greener commodities. As said earlier, our aim is also to transform our commodities business over time into a greener commodities business with increasing shares of green gases like hydrogen for our PPA activities. One example for our role in security of supply and delivering green bespoke solutions is the recent expansion of a power purchase agreement with our long-standing customer, Deutsche Bahn, for a further five years. This means we will supply around 88 gigawatt hours per year of green electricity from our Swedish hyper power plants. Let's now move on to slide four, which highlights our strong focus in strengthening our financing base. Before we will dive into our financial numbers, I would like to take the opportunity to have a closer look at Unipress financing instruments. As I mentioned in my opening remarks, I am proud that we have successfully expanded Unica's access to financing via credit markets in recent weeks. In our approach, we were guided by four key financial objectives. First and foremost, we want to ensure that Unica always has sufficient liquid funds available. This is particularly important to support our operating businesses with adequate liquidity. On the one hand, we have developed strategies to better manage our margining requirements and thus minimize the potential liquidity risks. And on the other hand, we have credit facilities with a broad range of plans in place to cover collateral for margining obligations, if appropriate, and serve working capital needs. Secondly, and just as importantly, We want to ensure that we have sufficient access to diverse and flexible financing instruments that will enable Uniper to pursue significant transformation investments in line with our strategy. Supporting these two goals, Uniper has a new revolving credit facility of 3 billion euros agreed since March, replacing the previous one of 1.7 billion euros. The new credit line serves as a constant liquidity reserve and as a flexible financing means of working capital. As mentioned before, the new credit facility agreement has been signed for the first time as a so-called sustainability linked credit facility. Financing conditions are partly new to the achievement of carbon reduction and strategic expansion targets in renewable energy. This is a major achievement and a clear sign that the financing market is recognizing Juniper's regained stability and new strategic direction. In addition, in April, we completed the re-establishment of our 2 billion euros debt issuance program, which is listed at the Luxembourg Stock Exchange. This provides the next fundamental step to regain credit market readiness and gives Juniper technical access to the EU bond market. On top, I would like to briefly remind you that we have already prolonged our Euro commercial paper program in the amount of 1.8 billion euros in the second quarter of 2023 to flexibly cover short-term liquidity needs. These key financing instruments provide us with considerable financial headroom to support the green transformation of Uniper going forward. Bear in mind, Due to our very comfortable economic net cash position of 4.5 billion euros at the end of the first quarter 2024, we are not yet making use of any of these credit facilities, with exception of a base issuance of our commercial paper program to be visible in the market. Back to our financial objectives. The third essential aspect is the full redemption of the utilization under the KfW credit facility already in 2023. The KFW facility expires in 2026. After our financial turnaround in the financial year 2023, we are less dependent on the KFW facility and together with our new RCF, we are confident to further downsize it. And accordingly, we also have been able to take a major step forward and have reduced the KFW credit line from 11.1 billion to 5 billion euros at the beginning of May. Fourth, our ultimate goal is to achieve a solid standalone investment rate rating. As already mentioned, the latest update from S&P has brought us considerably closer to this target. We are working hard to achieve our goal as quickly as possible, also to make Uniper fit for the capital markets again. Now, over to the key financials for the first quarter 2024 on the next slide. Looking at adjusted EBITDA of 885 million euros for the first quarter of this year, the earnings trend is within sight of prior year's record figures, despite substantially lower achieved power and gas prices. I will explain the result drivers in detail on the next slide. Operating cash flow doubled year on year and stands at 1.45 billion euros. main driver and the reason for the significant deviation from the operating performance is the absence of effects from liquidity measures during crisis years that had burdened the first quarter of 2023 operating cash flows. Adjusted net income of 570 million euros in the first quarter of 2024 is 112 million euros higher than the already good prior year figure and our operating style. The largest effect comes from a very good economic interest result in line with the development of our cash position and driven by lower utilization of financing instruments. I will come back to adjusted net income in more detail during my presentation. The net income of 462 million euros is in par with adjusted net income. The enormous swing with a negative year-on-year effect of almost 6.5 billion euros is mainly caused by the absence of the release of long-term provisions for onerous contracts. To remember, a significant provision had to be recognized in 2022 for potential future losses in the gas portfolio following the discontinuation of Russian gas supplies and was reversed at the end of the first quarter of 2023 as a consequence of significantly lower market prices. As already mentioned, following the enormous financial turnaround in 2023, Uniper had achieved an economic net cash position at the end of last year. Thanks to the very good operating cash flow, this position was further expanded to more than 4.5 billion euros at the end of the first quarter 2024.