Volkswagen Ag Unsp/Adr

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Volkswagen Investor Analyst and Media Call, first half 2024. I am George, the chorus call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be listened on remote and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by 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 Oliver Bloom, Chairman of the Board of Management. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning, everyone. And this is not Oliver Bloom, but Sebastian Rudolph. Thanks, George. You will listen to Oliver in a few seconds. Good morning to the half-year results core of Volkswagen Group. It's a joint call for both media as well as investors and analysts. Teamwork effort also from our side. It's a pleasure to have Rolf Wohler with us, our Head of Treasury and IR, and I'm the Vice President of Global Group Communications. With us today is Oliver Blume, our CEO, and Arno Antlitz, our CFO and Chief Operating Officer. Let me provide a few remarks before we start. You should have received the press release, the interim financial report, and all other related materials all published this morning. If you do not have them yet, then you can find all documents on our website or just drop us an email and we will send them straight to you. We have also just released the Volkswagen Group Green Finance Report, which is also available for download on our website. With that, let me now hand over to Rolf for a brief run-through of the next one and a half hours. Rolf, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Sebastian, and a very good morning to everyone on the call. Again, thanks for joining us today. Let's have a brief look at the agenda. Olli will start presenting the key developments of the first half year, including an update on the Top 10 program. And then he will pass over to Arno, who will then provide a closer look at the financials and thereafter to the full year outlook 2024. Following the presentation, we will first host the Q&A session for the investor and analyst community, which is moderated by myself. And after that, we will have a short break before we then continue with the media Q&A, which will be hosted then, of course, by Sebastian. As a reminder, and as always, the safe haven language and other cautionary statement on page two of our presentation will govern today's presentation. I would like to encourage you to read the disclaimer carefully, since all forward-looking statements are qualified by this language. As always, I will not read it out to you in order to save time. With that, I hand over to Olli, and Olli, the floor is yours.