Wacker Chemie Ag Ord

The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Yorick Hoffman, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. Welcome to the VACA-CHEM-EAG conference call on the 2024 second quarter results. Dr. Lucien Hartel, our CEO, and Dr. Tobias Ola, our CFO, will take you through our prepared slides momentarily. The press release Our IR presentation and detailed financial tables are available on our webpage under the caption, Investor Relations. Please note that management comments during this call include forward-looking statements involving risks and uncertainties. We encourage you to review the Safe Harbor Statement in today's press release, the presentation, and our 2023 Annual Report regarding risk factors. All documents mentioned are available on our website. Chris?

Welcome, everyone. The second quarter of 2024 saw a good result in chemicals and polysilicon and a successful cloud startup in biosolutions. While overall market conditions remain challenging and some end markets, such as construction, stay weak, we see slowly improving conditions in a number of areas. It is still too early to speak about a broad-based macroeconomic recovery. The strength of order intake still fluctuates and varies from region to region and application to application. On the last earnings call, we mentioned that order intake began to weaken at the start of April. This slowdown did not continue. Activity picked up in our chemical segments, supporting a better-than-expected performance in silicones. Group sales came in at about 1.5 billion euros. The combined EBDA of the four operating segments was 205 million euros, up 11% on the previous quarter. Group EBDA, however, was 7% lower quarter on quarter due to the other segment. Sequentially, the other segment incurred higher costs while the CO2 charge was comparable. As explained before, the CO2 charge will be reversed when we get reimbursed in the fourth quarter. Now, chemicals EBDA came in at 149 million euros, which is up 17%, and 9% year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter, respectively. Demand for chemicals shows signs of improvement, but low prices and overall cost inflation continue to define our results. In silicones, we completed our planned turnaround ahead of schedule. The impact of this regular maintenance event did not hold us back to the extent that we indicated on the last earnings call. Demand for specialty silicones developed positively in the second quarter, and we are now looking to raise prices for certain applications. For polymers, we see seasonal quarter-on-quarter improvements. While demand for construction-related binders is weak in Western Europe and China, we see good demands in other regions. All tumor-related binders are performing well, with strong growth in packaging applications and coatings. In BioSolutions, we successfully opened the new mRNA facility in Halle at the beginning of June. Our colleagues did a great job, and the site was completed ahead of time. I will provide some additional details on the next page. In the second quarter, Polysilicon reported a sequential improvement in earnings on much lower sales. Supported by lower energy costs, EBITDA came in at 55 million euros, up from 43 million euros in the previous quarter. During the quarter, the plant in Tennessee was successfully ramped and is now fully operational. Polysilicon sales declined over quarter, quarter over quarter, as we eliminated our exposure to domestic China solar prices. The intense competition in the oversupplied Chinese polysilicon market results in unsatisfactory domestic pricing that hardly reaches local variable cash costs. The outside China market saw strong volumes and spot interest until the anti-dumping, countervailing duties, ADCVD, petitioned targeting cell and module manufacturers in Southeast Asia were filed in the U.S. As a result, the market for solar-grade polysilicon outside China is currently experiencing uncertainty. This may persist until there is clarity of the outcome of these investigations. Looking forward and regardless of the outcome of the ADCVD investigations, PV solar installations in the U.S. will continue to grow. The monocrystalline modules for these new projects will need to be produced with UFLPA compliant polysilicon. Supply chains will adjust to any potential outcome to ensure access to the U.S. market. These investigations further strengthen our view that the U.S. will protect its domestic solar market. We continue to discuss with existing and new customers about selling the volumes that are currently not contractually committed. We intend to have these volumes be the basis of long-term agreements with customers who want to access to the premium US market. Looking to sustainability. At WACKER, our efforts are targeted at lowering the footprint of our operations and enabling and improving the performance of sustainable products. We've committed ourselves to reaching net zero by 2045 and have shown good progress towards reaching this target. SPTI validated our net-zero target in early 2024, putting us among the first companies worldwide. There is a strong customer pool for sustainable products and solutions. In electromobility, there is a clear need to improve battery performance and safety. At this year's Battery Trade Fairs, we presented new specialty silicone solutions. One product was specifically developed to enhance the safety of lithium-ion batteries. Essentially, our silicon rubber compound prevents fire from spreading in the event of a thermal runaway in a cell. Silicones play an important role in enabling electromobility by improving the performance of batteries with this and other applications, such as thermal interface materials. With the completion of our new mRNA facility in Halle on June 3rd, we have achieved a key milestone in biosolutions. This new production line more than triples our capacity at the site, which is now part of the German pandemic preparedness program. If needed, we can produce 80 million vaccine doses per annum for the German government. In return for keeping these capacities available, we will receive a standby fee until 2029. The new site provides BioSolutions with a strong foundation for further growth in biopharma. As a contract development and manufacturing organization, we will produce advanced therapies targeting multiple indications in areas such as oncology and personalized medicine for our customers. We see growing interest from customers who are attracted to our PDNA and mRNA capabilities and larger capacities. We've already started acquiring the first customer projects and we intend to gradually load the new sites. Before I hand over to Tobias, I will first address our full year guidance. As you saw in this morning's press release, we confirmed our full year guidance. We now expect EBITDA to be in the upper half of the 600 to 800 million euro range. The range is defined by improving conditions in chemicals and reflects current market conditions in polysilicon. In chemicals, we see room for price increases in certain applications as demand for specialty silicones improves, while other areas remain challenging. In polymers, our global setup provides us with an exposure to growing markets, helping us offset the weakness in certain construction markets. In biosolutions, we are focused on filling our new capacities. In polysilicon, our semi-business provides a stable foundation. We continue to invest in our future and act on unique opportunities. We just closed a small acquisition to increase our silicone's wound care capabilities in the US. Silicones offer best-in-class solutions for certain applications due to its unmatched skin compatibility and tunable adhesive properties. We will continue to look for add-ons to further strengthen our portfolio. Now to Tobias for further details on our results.