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Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to today's earnings call of the Verve U.S.E. following the publication of the nine-month and Q3 figures of 2023-2024. We are delighted to welcome the CEO, Klaus Sauter, and the CFO, Olaf Trüber, who will speak shortly and guide us through the presentation and the results. Afterwards, we will move over to our Q&A session, in which you will be allowed to ask your questions directly to them. And having said this, Mr. Sauter, I hand over to you.

Thank you very much, Mrs. Marlock. Good afternoon. or in my case, good morning, and thank you very much for joining today's earnings call. With me on this call today is Olaf Dröber, our CFO. At the moment, I am in the United States in our headquarter in Stanford, Connecticut. We are making good progress here. in South Bend, in Nevada, the ethanol plants, as well as in Welland, and also in Europe. Our strategy remains steadfast, even in the dynamic renewable market. We are now 10, almost 11 months in our financial year. And as we had anticipated with our guidance cut in January, for the actual financial year. The market in renewables was more challenging in the third quarter. But let me first give you a quick run through of our key figures for the first nine months. So as you can see, In good verbio fashion, we continue to deliver strong production volumes, increasing our production across all key products. The biodiesel volume increased year on year was mainly driven by the acquisition of South Bend ethanol in the US. the plant which we bought in May 2023, and what we ramped up the last month. So at South Bend Ethanol, we have managed to increase our production about the nominal capacity, which represents a 30% increase from just a few months ago. technical changes, but mainly operational changes. So despite the increase in volumes, Group Epic DA for the nine months, 2023, 2024, reached 82 million down year on year from 214 million. The main reason remain largely unchanged from what we have seen for the first six months. So let me quickly reiterate. In the financial year 2022-2023, we still benefited from the exceptional contribution of the biodiesel segment. We made more than 90 million in the first quarter alone with our bio-deal. Meanwhile, we are getting up for further growth, which led to additional fixed costs year on year. Considering that our European operations still have to cover all growth investments and that we are facing short-term headwinds in the European biofuel market, the results are largely within our own expectations. Net debt stands at 55 million, especially our investments in growth projects of close to 130 million weighed against our positive operating cash flow. Still, our equity ratio is at a level of 68.4%. came down slightly. And now I would like to hand over to Olaf Dröbe, our CFO.

Thank you, Klaus, and a warm welcome also from my end. I'm here today at Bitterfeld, where we hold our groundbreaking ceremony for the etinolysis plant. But first, let me turn to our Q3 results. before we delve deeper into our strategic update. The chart shows the APTA bridge from Q3-22-23 to Q3-23-24 left to right and gives you an overview of how both segments have developed. Once again, The biodiesel segment safeguards our earnings as ethanol segment covers all the costs related to the US expansion. The decline in the biodiesel segment year over year is mostly due to unrealized changes in the fair value of open commodity derivatives. Excluding this effect, The biodiesel segment result would have stood at 21.1 million euro close to the level in the previous year. Overall, we posted an EBITDA of 7.3 million euro in Q3 23-24 down from 43.2 million euro in Q2 last year and from 26.1 million euro sequentially. But let us dive a bit deeper and look at the key drivers. While our sales volumes were roughly stable year over year, sales came down by 29% year over year. The main reason for the sales development in biodiesel segment were the lower biodiesel and greenhouse gas quota sales prices in Europe compared to the same quarter of the previous year. Additionally, changes in the presentation of the sales revenues in Canada led to a significant reduction in revenues. What does it mean? Since December 23, the contracts for the production volumes in Canada are treated as tolling contracts. The change in reporting has no impact on our EBITDA. However, the unrealized changes in fair value of open commodity do. As you know, we only opportunistically choose to hedge. And considering that Q4 forward spread stood at attractive levels, and we are operating in volatile markets, we decided to take a position, including the effect our Q3 reported EBITDA came in at 11.44 million Euro. This chart, you can see how the market spreads, in this case, biodiesel price per tonne minus rapeseed oil price per tonne have developed over the past two years and specifically during our Q3. This year's market spreads shown as the dark green line were below previous year's spreads, but remained roughly stable throughout the quarter. Considering that we buy our rapeseed oil approximately two to three months in advance, we couldn't lock into spreads in financial year 22, 23, though. Over the first quarter of the year 2024, which is our third quarter, biodiesel prices and rapeseed oil prices increased slightly. While demand was stable, biodiesel prices increased on the back of higher raw material prices and rising fossil markets. Now, moving to the ethanol and biomethane or ING segment. Production and sales volumes increased mainly thanks to the acquisition of South Bend Ethanol in May last year, where we greatly advanced in terms of efficiency, as Klaus mentioned before. With this, revenues were up despite lower sales prices in Europe. Grain prices came also down. But the lower greenhouse gas premiums in the contracts that started in January 2024 had a negative effect on overall margins. On top came, of course, US expansion costs. And last year, we earned about 10 million euro more by additional quota sales compared to Q3 this year. Overall, We returned a negative 5 million euro EBITDA, which includes a positive effect from unrealized commodity futures. As you might be able to identify from the chart, the average quarterly market spreads were roughly stable quarter over quarter and year over year. During the quarter, Spreads increased, and here in the chart on the right, you can see why. Ethanol prices recovered, while prices continued the downward trend. Reduced imports, in particular from Brazil, led to a reduction in ethanol stocks in Rotterdam from 2023. due to increased blending mandates and the introduction of E10 in Poland and elsewhere. There was healthy demand for spot quantities. The ongoing backwardation is making ethanol imports more difficult and should contribute to a positive price trend. In Germany, however, the low greenhouse gas quota prices continue to slow the E10 growth. the incentive to expand the market share of fuels with a higher proportion of biofuels remains limited in the short term. Yet, the ongoing anti-dumping investigations at European level, as well as the media attention, in particular with regard to cases of fraud involving upstream emission reductions, allow us to stay optimistic that missing control mechanism will be installed and that we will return to fair market conditions in the future. Klaus will now give you an update on that and share the latest news.