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Dear ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Uniper Analyst and Investor Conference Call, Full Year Results 2024. At our customer's request, this conference will be recorded. As a reminder, all participants will be in listen-only mode. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions by dialing star 1 on your telephone. We now hand you over to the Executive Vice President, Investor Relations, Sebastian Veit. We'll start the meeting today. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Dear investors and analysts, good morning. I'm pleased to welcome you to our conference call on the 2024 financial year. Next to me on today's call are Michael Lewis, our chief executive officer, and Jutta Denglis, our chief financial officer. Michael will guide you through our key developments in the past financial year, 2024, and our plans for the current financial year. Then, Jutta will present the details of the key financial data for 2024 and provide some further details on the outlook for 2025. As usual, there will be a Q&A session after the presentation. And now, let me hand over to Michael Lewis, please.

Thank you, Sebastian, and good morning, everyone, and welcome from my side, and thanks for dialing in today. And I'm very pleased to share with you our full year 2024 results. and how well positioned we are for the year ahead. So let's kick off by summarizing the main strategic achievements and financial highlights for 2024. First thing to say is that 2024 was the first full year of the new UNIPA following the strategic review we unveiled in August 2023. And let me take this opportunity just to thank all of my UNIPA colleagues for their tremendous work in 2024 and their contributions to a very successful year. We've made many strides in the execution of our strategy despite multiple challenges for the energy transition, such as pressure on European competitiveness and political uncertainty in our home market of Germany after the collapse of the coalition in government late last year. However, I will just say a couple of things about the German election which happened on Sunday two days ago. I was very pleased with the high voter turnout of 82.5%, and this is something which a number of us campaigned for in the run-up to the election to ensure that people voted. And it's a sign of the importance of the federal election and of the value of free democratic elections. And that voter turnout should encourage all of us. We now need a new government to form quickly in Germany that can have a positive effect on the mood and the investment climate in Germany. It's what the country needs, and it's what companies like Uniper also need. So what did we deliver in 2024? Well, first, we continued to focus our capital allocation to our growth areas. In 2024, we increased our total investment spending by 21% compared to the previous year. And one of the largest single investment projects is the revitalization of the Hapberg pump storage plant in Germany. And here we're planning to invest around 250 million euros. And that's the biggest single investment volume in Uniper's history. Furthermore, we're striving to further expand our renewable projects in core markets. And recently, we took financial decisions for solar PV projects with a combined investment volume of around 140 million euros with a capacity of more than 200 megawatts. In addition to our targeted investment projects in our core business areas, we are completing the necessary divestments to fulfill the obligations agreed between the German government and the EU Commission. And the vast majority of our required divestments have been achieved or are being progressed. And at the beginning of this year, we announced the closure of the sale of the gas-fired power plant GONU in Hungary and our North American power portfolio. And we are confident that we will accomplish all divestments by the end of 2026. Furthermore, we harmonized our group-wide climate targets towards 2040 to reflect the change market conditions, such as the slowdown in the development of the hydrogen market or the delay in the investment framework for new dispatchable power plants in Germany, the so-called Kassex-Strategie. And our interim target to achieve carbon reduction of 55% for our Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2030 remains unchanged. Second, we're on track to achieve the commercial coal phase-out by 2029. In 2024, we reached a significant milestone in our decarbonisation pathway with the decommissioning of around three gigawatts of large coal-fired power plants, Ratcliffe in the UK and Haydn in Germany. And the sale process for the German coal-fired plant, Dateln IV, has been initiated. And starting from 19 million tonnes of Scope 1 and 2 emissions in our base year of 2019, The planned coal phase-out until 2029 is expected to save over 9 million tonnes of CO2, and this is a very important element to achieve our interim target to reduce carbon emissions by 55% by 2030. And third, we successfully de-risked our business activities. Notably, after UNIPA was awarded more than €13 billion in damages for the gas volumes not supplied by gas promo exports since mid-2022, and the right to terminate the contracts, Uniper formally ended the gas supply contracts in the first half of 2024. And with the 2024 annual financial statements, we have clarity over the exact amount of the contractual repayment claims of the Federal Republic of Germany, which amounts to approximately 2.6 billion euros and is planned to be paid in the first quarter of this financial year. And our financial and strategic process has resulted in an improvement in our standalone credit profile recognized by the rating agencies last year. And also S&P Global and Scope have confirmed our BBB minus rating with stable outlook. And we remain committed to regaining a standalone investment grade rating. So in summary, we delivered in 2024 what we promised. And let's now turn to our financial highlights for the last year. So our group 2024 earnings were very strong and our financial position in 2024 is rock solid. 2024 is the second year in a row in which we achieved extraordinary results. Group financial earnings in 2024 turned out better than expected. We raised our outlook twice during the past financial year and we achieved what we aimed for. As already announced in our ad hoc release in mid-February, Group Adjusted EBITDA amounted to €2.6 billion, and Group Adjusted Net Income stood at €1.6 billion for the 12 months of 2024. And both KPIs are in the range of our outlook for 2024. And all three of our segments, green generation, flexible generation, and greener commodities, contributed to this exceptional result. Jutta will elaborate on that in more detail in a few minutes. And at the end of the financial year 2024, we have a comfortable economic net cash position of 3.4 billion euros, up 11% year on year, thanks to our strong operating cash flow. However, let me briefly remind you that this cash position will be affected by the contractual recovery claims of the Federal Republic of Germany of around 2.6 billion euros. The last year was an outstanding year, which was remarkable for Uniper. However, the market environment remains very dynamic, and our 2024 results are not expected to be repeated. This becomes evident when we look at the markets in which we operate. So let's look ahead to the financial year of 2025. The commodity market environment is extremely challenging. particularly due to conflicting political and economic signals. Economic development in Europe is weak and international pressure on the European economy is growing. This is also reflected in intense competition in commodity markets. In the electricity markets, we see weak, clean spark spreads on the forward markets, as can be seen here on the slide for Germany and the UK. At the same time, we see very high and increasing price swings on the spot markets. In particular, European gas markets are highly nervous. And after the closure of the gas transit through the Ukraine at the end of last year and a rapid depletion of European storage facilities, prices at the short end have continued to rise before falling again in the hope of an end of the Russian war on Ukraine. And the negative summer-winter spread for the coming winter season, 2025-26, currently makes refilling gas storage commercially unattractive. But with the EU emergency regulations that are still in force, regulators have the tools to send signals or take measures to achieve the filling level targets set for the EU for the coming winter season. If we look more towards the medium-term outlook, we see more bright spots. Demand for electricity and gas has bottomed out, and in 2024, Europe recorded slight increases in demand. And the electrification of energy consumption, thinking of battery electric vehicles, heat pumps, and the expected rapid growth in data centers, is a driver for accelerating growth rates towards 2030. At the same time, dispatchable power capacities in Central Europe are declining. More flexible generation capacities are therefore needed. And this is Uniper's home turf. We can provide solutions, and we want to play a very significant role here. And we expect positive developments for Germany and the UK during the year that could trigger investment in new gas-fired power plants that can later be decarbonized, either with CCS or hydrogen. The situation on the European gas markets is more diffuse. Uniper is one of the players that makes a strong contribution to security of supply for Germany and Europe and in the transition to green gases. And on the demand side, we expect a recovery, particularly for gas use in power plants. For Europe, a broad-based sourcing strategy with LNG is important for security of supply, and it's also part of Uniper's strategic focus to better synchronise our sourcing volume more closely with sales volume again. So overall, the current market environment is a mixed bag for Uniper. On the spot markets, we harvest good returns offered by increased price volatility on the electricity exchanges. However, we no longer benefit from a strong tailwind from favorable hedging for our flex power and gas portfolio in the forward markets. So what does this mean for our earnings outlook and for our planning for 2025? On this next slide, you can see the outlook for 2025 for the two KPIs, adjusted EBITDA and adjusted net income. We already pre-announced these headline figures in an ad hoc news release on February 13. And at this point in the financial year, the delta between the upper and lower end of the range is comparatively high. It reflects the uncertainties due to the high volatilities in the commodity markets. And since the presentation of the new Uniper strategy in mid-2023, we've been working on significantly reducing the dependency on commodity markets in the future. All growth investments will preferably be made in assets with a high non-merchant contribution, and will also improve the earnings quality of existing activities. For example, by hedging prices in the outright power generation business, for longer periods with PPAs. And overall, this policy is expected to reduce the merchant share of total group earnings from 70% to 80% in the past to below 50% by 2030. And at the top of our agenda for 2025 is the further rollout of our transition strategy. And for 2025, we've approved a total investment budget of around €1 billion after €0.7 billion in 2024. around half of which is earmarked for growth. However, let me once again remind you that we will only invest where we can achieve adequate returns with a balanced risk profile. And also, it's important to continue filling the project pipeline. We're experiencing a significant upswing when it comes to renewable energy, and a strong focus is also on developing new gas-fired power plants in Germany and the UK to auction maturity. At the same time, projects like these will take us an important step towards generating a predictable and sustainable stream of future earnings. And in view of the increasing risk to security of supply and high European energy costs, we count on seeing clear political signals in the second half of 2025, particularly in Germany and the UK, that will mark the starting point for new power plant investment. And another job on our to-do list is to work through the EU remedy measures. We're already well advanced in this regard, as I said earlier. But the main item on the agenda here is to successfully complete the initiated sales process for the German coal-fired power plant Dateln 4 and Uniper Werner, which is one of the market-leading district heating providers in Germany. So where do we plan to invest in 2025? The planned growth and maintenance capex for 2025 is roughly distributed as follows. 50% in green generation, 30% in flexible generation, and 20% in greener commodities. In the green generation segment, the largest single project is the revitalization of the German hydro pump storage power plant, Hauptberg. And in the renewable energy segment, we are constructing over 200 megawatts of new photovoltaic capacity, and in 2025 we target additional financial investment decisions for around 400 megawatts. In the flexible generation segment, we're still in the middle of developing large power plant projects. Growth investments will probably not take off here before 2026. And to benefit from the volatility of the electricity markets and the required ancillary services in the future, We're also in the process of building up battery capacity. However, the timeline here is currently heavily influenced by the process of obtaining approvals for the connection to the electricity grid. Another focus is on developing joint concepts with data center operators on our brownfield sites. Meanwhile, at Greener Commodities, the focus is less on investments and more on rebuilding our trading platform with new gas supply sources and our established customer base. This should enable us to better exploit the potential for optimizing sourcing and supply by using our LNG terminal markings, our large gas storage capacities, and our outstanding trading platform. And the green gas business also requires little funding. Here, we've significantly scaled back our ambitions. The largest single project is participation in the integrated 30 megawatt hydrogen production plant in Bad Laustadt in East Germany, which is currently under construction and is scheduled for completion by the end of 2025. However, we also remain flexible. Our strong balance sheet in a changing market environment helps us to allocate our funds efficiently and adopt our course if necessary. And this is precisely how we plan to face into the politically and commercially volatile energy environment. And now over to Jutta, who will share with you the highlights of the operating business performance for 2024 and will comment on the outlook for 2025. Jutta.