Voestalpine Ag Unsp/Adr

And gentlemen, welcome to the publication first half business year 2024-25 conference call. I'm Serge and the chorus call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in listen-only mode and the conference being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A 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. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Peter Fleischer, head of IR. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much. Good morning, good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, for the call and the webcast of our half-year's results. With me is our CEO, Herbert Eibensteiner, and our CFO, Gerald Mayer, who will give you a brief overview around the 10-15-minute presentation of what were the highlights of the half year and the outlook. And afterwards, we will be very happy to answer your questions. So far from my side. Herbert, please go ahead.

Thank you very much, Peter. Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. You have already seen our information on the first half, 24-25 financial year. So today I would like to start by presenting what we have done in this difficult environment in the first half of the year. And we have quite a bit of managing tasks to do or have done this. We have made some structural decisions for structural challenges. That means that we started the a selling process for Puderos Edelstahl in Germany. It was a strategic decision and we have signed this project. So closing is planned at the end of the calendar year and we started the reorganization and the streamlining of our automotive components business in Germany. I think we can discuss this afterwards, and I'm sure that you have some questions about that. But on the other hand, on the positive side, we want to show you our successful international growth projects for this last half year. On the example of our railway systems, which is very well underway and growing even in these difficult times, we have made a small acquisition of a turnout plant in Knoxville in Tennessee for the United States, for the American markets. And we... have implemented two years ago a joint venture in Egypt, a turnout plant, and we have now the first delivery for a big project in Egypt, more than 250 turnouts for this bigger high-speed train project in Africa. And we have already completed in the last weeks a major rail project in Hong Kong for an underground in China. And I always explained to you in the past that we have the rail business, the turnout business, and we want to be more and more a system supplier for this. for that railway systems. And when we say systems, we need to have a system and the heart of the digital heart of this business we have now presented at the InnoTrans in Berlin and Centric system means all the software and all the sensors we need for more complex railway applications is presented and will be complete our system approach.