Voestalpine Ag Unsp/Adr

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the publication of the first nine months of the year 2023-2024 conference call. I am Sandra, the chorus call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a question and answer session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star and one on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press star and zero. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. This time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Peter Fleischer, head of IR. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you very much, and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Again, a warm welcome to our results presentation today of the first nine months, respectively the third quarter of our current business year, 2023-2024. Just a quick remark from the technical side. We got on the one hand this webcast, which is a one-way transmission only, If you want to ask a question, I would kindly ask you to dial into the conference call as well. If you don't have the detail, please shoot Andrea Klepp a quick email, and she will reply instantly and send you all the details for the call as well. So far with me, our CEO, Herbert Eibensteiner, I think you all know him. We will give you a quick overview on what has happened in the last nine months and also speak about how far we can see in the current business year, end of March, and as well want to give you a quick update on our decarbonization projects. Herbert, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Peter. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Let me start with a quick overview of the actual situation of the current development of our markets. I think you are well aware that the European economy is affected by lower demand, I would say, compared to other markets or other geographic markets. Europe is more affected. We see here a weaker demand for our products in construction, mechanical engineering, and manufacturing. also consumer goods. The very important part of our business, automotive production, is stable on the actual level, which is slightly higher than last year. And what's very positive is the very positive demand for from the energy sector and from the aviation industry, and very positive and the biggest sector, which is very stable and with high demand, is our railway infrastructure business. North America is, from our perspective... the economy more resilient, and we can say that in mostly all of our first alpina sites, we have a very satisfactory demand. Also, Brazil, always very interesting. We had a very robust development despite this high inflation and high interest and why is that the case? Very good underlying demand, and in addition, we saw a boom in photovoltaic in Brazil, and we have also strong demand from the oil and gas sector. China is growing, but a bit lower than expected. I would say all this reopening effect at the beginning of the year quickly faded, and we saw a steady development. And from our business, we have a relatively stable development in China. Let me come to our divisions. First, the steel division. We have a good performance in a really difficult environment in the European steel industry, as presented before. We see this... lower demand in building and construction industry, lower demand in mechanical engineering and consumer goods. But we can mostly compensate that with other sectors. We have a good demand from the automotive side. And also the energy sector, mostly heavy plates, is doing very well. In high-performance metals division, we have a very weak demand for tool steel due to this very low spending, industrial capital spending, which is a driving element, and also a lack of new models in automotive sector, which is also driving this business. But we have a strong demand in special material and aerospace business, and the bigger part, the even bigger part, is in energy-related industries, and demand here is good. Metal engineering, very good development of railway systems. and very stable, good demand, good order book, and seamless tubes for oil and gas exploration on a good level again. And just to remind you that we had exceptional development at the beginning of this business year in the first quarter. Welding technology is overall stable on a good level, and a weak demand is in wire technology. And, yes, I would say we have here bottomed out, and I think we are stable on a lower level. And metal forming division, We see some improvement in the course of the year in automotive components, solid development, good development in our tubes and section business, and we experience a lower demand for our precision strip products and, what can I say, an ongoing positive development in in warehouse and rack solutions. So this is a quick overview. You can say, yes, we have some areas where we face this lower demand, as I have explained. But on the other side, we have very stable markets, stable markets, and very positive developing markets, as I mentioned before, railways, energy, and others. So let's move to the figures. Peter?