Voestalpine Ag Unsp/Adr

Good day, everyone, and welcome to the West Alpine AG first half by 2023-24 conference call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to your host, Mr. Peter Fleischer. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you very much, and good afternoon, and a warm welcome to today's WebEx conference call about the first half of our business year 23-24. Before we start, a quick technical remark. If you can see us, you are in the WebEx. If you want to ask a question, you have to dial into the telephone conference call as well, as the WebEx is a one-way communication line, of course. Regarding the procedure today, right next to me is our CEO, Herbert Eimsteiner, and our CFO, Robert Otto, who will give you a quick overview of the highlights, what has happened in the first half and the short outlook on how far and what we expect for the remaining business year, which will last around 15 minutes, I guess. And afterwards, we are happy to answer your questions. Let me now turn over to Mr. Ebensteiner.

Good afternoon. Very warm welcome to our conference call of our first half year. Let me start with the highlights. I think you're well aware that the measures of the central banks affected European economy in the course of this first half of our business year. So the result were declining industry investments, lower consumer spendings, and we saw also a decline in the service sector. We see a lower demand in the first half of the year from the construction industry, from the mechanical engineering sector, and also from the consumer goods sectors. On the other hand, we see compared to last year improved automotive production growth due to the better supply chains. And what's very positive was the demand from the energy sector and also from the aerospace sector and railway systems was performing very well. So compared to Europe, the North American economy was a bit more resilient, and we saw satisfactory demand for most of our first alpinist sites in the U.S. MCA, and also a smaller market for us. But despite all this demand, environment there in high inflation and high interest rates, we saw a very solid development and those sites benefited from the boom in the photovoltaic sector and also from a strong demand in the energy sector. Asia in particular, in China, we see after the positive reopening effects a loss of momentum. But all in all, we have to say that first alpina sites in Asia and also in China have more or less a stable development. Let me come to the four divisions. I would like to start with steel. Very solid performance, I would say, in the first half of the year, although the steel environment was all in all very complex and difficult. As I mentioned before, especially building and construction, mechanical engineering and white goods in particular were suffering from the economic slowdown. On the other hand, we see positive stable demand from the automotive sector, which is a very important part of our business in the steel division and also in the heavy plate, heavy plate mill, we see a very good landscape coming from the energy sector and we can say that the order book for this special cladded material for the energy sector is very good. When it comes to high performance metals division, we see or saw a weakening situation in the course of the first half year, and especially in tool steel business, and here in particular in Europe. And on the other hand, we see these positive trends in special materials and also in aerospace business. Our best division, I would say, or best performing division was metal engineering, as I mentioned before. And I touched it also in the course of last year that we see a very positive development in our railway systems business for the first half of this year. And seamless business, which was very, very good and booming last year is I would say back to normal levels and also welding performed relatively stable on a good solid level and only wire is really weakening in due to the slowdown of mechanical engineering consumer goods business and also in the building industry. Metal forming benefited also from the improvement in the automotive components business compared to last year and and sections after a very good development in the last year shows again solid development. Also, we see a declining demand in some areas. And weaker is precision strip. And we see there are challenging market conditions, especially in the in the material for saw steel weaker than last year. Ongoing positive is the project business in warehouse and rack solution and also here we have good order books also for the remainder of the year and also for next year. So after the short presentation of the divisions, I will hand over to Robert Otto for the figures.