Volkswagen Ag Unsp/Adr

Good morning, everyone. A warm welcome to the half-year 2026 results call of Volkswagen Group. This is a joint call for both the media as well as investors and analysts, moderated by Ralf Woller, our head of Group Treasury and AR, and myself, Sebastian Rudolph. With us today are Oliver Blume, our CEO of Volkswagen Group, and Arno Antlitz, our CFO and COO of Volkswagen Group. A few remarks before we start. You should have received the press release, the interim financial report and all other related materials which were published this morning. If you do not have them yet, you can find all documents on our website or just drop us an email. Now, let me hand over to Ralf, the floor is yours. Thank you, Sebastian.

Good morning to everyone on the call. Thank you for joining us today. Let's have a look at our agenda. Oliver will start with the key developments of the first half year and Arno will then take you through the half year financial results and the full year outlook for 2026. And I will hand it back to Olli, who will guide you through the current status of the Group Target Picture 2030. Following their presentations, we will first host a Q&A session for the investor and analyst community, which will be hosted by myself. And after this session and a short break, we will continue with the media Q&A moderated by Sebastian. Since our call will include forward-looking statements, the safe harbor language and other cautionary statements on the slide you should currently see on the screen will govern today's presentation. As usual, I encourage you to read the disclaimer carefully as all forward-looking statements are qualified by this language. In the interest of time, I will not read it out loud.

Thank you Ralf and good morning and also a warm welcome to everyone on this call. Let me start by providing you with an overview of key developments of the first half year. We are operating, as you know, in a more than challenging environment. Major markets face weak consumer confidence Subdued demand and intense competition. In China, the market declined by 20% in half year one, further increasing excess capacity. Everything in spite of over 500 new models arrived in half year one in the market. As a result, Chinese OEMs have sharply increased exports, adding pressure in Europe. US tariffs create a significant burden and restrict international trade. In our home market, regulatory requirements and high energy costs add further pressure. This affects not only Volkswagen, but the European auto industry as a whole. We at Volkswagen are acting early on and decisively. Before I take you through our group target picture 2030, let me start where we stand after the first six months of 2026. In the environment described, group deliveries came in 6% lower at 4.1 million vehicles. But underlying demand for Volkswagen is stronger than the headline figures suggest. Europe remained positive with the deliveries up 3%. In our home market, we thus retained the clear number one position. North America returned to growth with volumes increasing 8% despite continued BEP weakness and supported by the new models. South America also delivered solid growth of 9%. In China, deliveries declined 37% in Q2 and 26% in H1, reflecting very weak consumer sentiment, the end of subsidies and the ongoing model transition. In light of a weak NAV market in Q1, we started the year as number one in China. After six months in 2026, we continue to be strongly positioned in the top three. Excluding our China JVs, deliveries increased 2% year-on-year the first six months and by 3% in the second quarter standalone. Our renewed SUV portfolio is creating momentum across key markets. In North America, Tiguan and Atlas supported growth, while T-Cross and Audi Q3 continued to drive volumes in Europe. Even in China, Initial customer response to locally developed models such as Audi E7X and Volkswagen ID.ERA 9X is encouraging, strengthening our confidence in the China in China for China strategy. We are not standing still. The ID.CROSS is complementing the electric urban car family in Europe. The vehicle was just introduced to the market. Order intake remains strong and increased 4% year on year to 2.1 million vehicles in half year one. As a result, the order book grew to around 1.1 million vehicles at the end of June, providing visibility of more than three months of sales. We are especially encouraged by the strong momentum in our BEV order book, which increased by 57% year on year to 330,000 vehicles. BEVs now account for 31% of the European order book, up from 22% at year end 2025. A major contributor is our new electric urban car family. For the first time, Volkswagen Group has a comprehensive and highly competitive offering in the entry-level BEV segment, opening up a large customer group that we were previously unable to address effectively. The Volkswagen ID Polo, Skoda Epic and Cupra Voile have already generated more than 70,000 orders within weeks of launch, even before entry-level variants become available. Together with the recently launched ID Cross, this provides a strong foundation for future BEV growth and market share gains in Europe. This shows how our platform strategy is working. One platform shared by three brands across four models. Unique cars and highly differentiated, yet about 80% shared parts. Produced together in two factories in Spain, overall realizing synergies of more than 600 million euros. Importantly, this will also put us in a better position to reduce the remaining gap to the CO2 targets in Europe. And in such demanding environments Volkswagen Group held up also financially. The group generated stable sales revenue of €158 billion. Operating profits amounted to €5.9 billion, corresponding to a 3.8% margin. Excluding restructuring costs and the ID4-related write-off in the US, the margin reached 4.3%. The consistent implementation of our performance programs is increasingly visible in our results. of the past years, these measures have enabled us to weather substantial market-related headwinds with a cumulative headwind in a double-digit billion-euro range to date. At the same time, cash generation remains strong with 3.2 billion automotive net cash flow in half year one, up 4.5 billion euro year over year. Net industrial liquidity amounted to 32.7 billion. This is providing us with a solid base to stay successful in the market environment and to decisively push ahead with our group target picture. Looking at the results of our passenger car business, the operating profit increased from 4.4 billion to 4.8 billion in half year one. Brand Group Core Volkswagen brands stayed firmly on the path of improved efficiency while simultaneously advancing the largest product campaign in its history. The Brand Group Core margin, excluding special effects, improved to 5.9% in half year 1, 2026. Brand Group Progressive increased results with improved performance in Europe, overweighting the headwinds in China and the US. In half year two, the operating margin is expected to accelerate to six to eight percent. Brand Group Progressive should benefit from product launches such as the new Q7, Q9 and RS5 models, as well as continued cost work. At Porsche, we undertook a comprehensive restructuring and repositioning in 2025, including a sharper focus on our core business and expanded cost program. As forecast, the restructuring measures are beginning to gain traction with operating profit increasing to more than 1 billion Euro in the first half year 2026. On reported basis, results were up by 45% to a corresponding margin of 8%. With that, I hand over to Arno for a more detailed presentation of our financial results.