Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the conference call on EVN's results for the first quarter of 2021/22 financial year. At this time, all participants have been placed on listen only mode. The floor will be open for questions following the presentation. Let me now turn the floor over to your host, Mr. Stefan Szyszkowitz. Good morning and welcome to the conference call on EVN results for the first quarter of the 2021/22 financial year. The developments in the energy market during the past month took many energy experts by surprise. Within an unbelievable short period of time, market prices for natural gas, CO₂ emission certificates and electricity reached historic highs. Due to our diversified business model, this market distortion had different effects on our various activities. Whereas renewable generation benefited from higher prices, there were negative impacts on the procurement side. EVN KG, our Austrian supply company, already reacted to higher procurement costs and passed them on to customers. For electricity, higher end customer prices just became effective as of January, and for natural gas as of February. In Southeast Europe, the high electricity prices are a challenge for the whole energy sector there. Our activities are especially impacted by rising costs for network losses. Together with other utilities in Bulgaria, North Macedonia, we initiated a close dialogue with regulators and governments to discuss possible measures to keep the system stable. In both countries, extraordinary government, respectively, regulatory measures, were introduced as partial compensation for the significant rise in energy procurement costs. The remaining additional costs should be reflected in future tariff positions. Before I will guide you through our numbers of the quarterly result, I would like to reiterate our key messages. In line with our strategy 2030, we decided to further increase investments. This is already visible in the first quarter, which shows us a rising CapEx of 26.8%. Over the coming years, annual investments will reach levels of around EUR 500 million. Thereof, three-fourths will be dedicated to Lower Austria, mainly networks, renewable energy, and drinking water investments. It is our ambition to increase EVN's attractiveness for ESG investors. That's why we stepped out of the coal-fired generation and procurement rights from the Walsum 10 power plant as of September 2021. There's more than that. We agreed on CO₂ emission reduction targets until 2034 with the internationally renowned Science Based Targets initiative. One measure is that we will further grow our renewable generation portfolio. Our goal is to grow our wind capacity by another 350 MW to 750 MW by 2030. We will build up a photovoltaic portfolio of about 300 MW within this decade. As you know, it has become increasingly difficult to realize new wind projects, even if already approved by authorities. Therefore, I'm glad that we got green light for two new projects in Lower Austria. The projects have an installed capacity of 12.6 MW each. One is a repowering project. Let me now continue with the key financials of the reporting period. The group's revenue was up by 49.1% year-on-year. The main reason for this development was the sharp rise in electricity prices, which had a strong impact on revenue in Southeast Europe as well as from renewable generation. Other positive factors included higher network sales volumes due to the cooler weather in all three core markets, as well as the higher network tariffs led by E-Control in Austria as of January 1, 2021. The more frequent use of the Theiss power plant by the Austrian transmission network operator for network stabilization offset the lost revenue due to the disinvestments from the Walsum 10 power plant. I would like to remind you that last year in the first quarter we had one-offs from the takeover of an additional electricity procurement right of the Walsum 10 power plant. Other operating income included a positive one-off in which the depreciation was reversed by a prior impairment. The cost of electricity purchases from third parties and primary energy expenses were substantially up at EUR 552.8 million. The main driver were higher energy procurement costs in Southeast Europe. Other factors include the more frequent use of the Theiss power plant and higher procurement costs for our heat customers. The share of results from at equity accounted investees was down from EUR 60.2 million to EUR 52 million, which gains were recorded among others by Energie Burgenland and our other supply business in Austria and Germany. Based on this development, EBIT was down by 39.5% at EUR 201.9 million. In the first quarter, we had to record a revaluation of EUR 6.4 million to the Kavarna wind farm in Bulgaria. The previous year, as already mentioned, was affected by impairment losses totaling EUR 113.3 million to the Walsum 10 power plant. In total, the group's EBIT declined by 4.7% to EUR 129.5 million. It has dropped to minus EUR 16.4 million due to foreign exchange developments. In total, we generated a group net result of EUR 81.5 million, which represents a decline by 12.7% over the previous year. Now I would like to move to the next slide, which provides some information regarding the group's balance sheet structure. EVN's net debt amounted to EUR 905.9 million. Gearing ratio was down and amounted to 12.8%. Our financial flexibility is solid. We benefited from low net debt and sufficient committed undrawn credit facilities, which amounted to EUR 552 million as of the end of December 2021. In April, our corporate bond with a nominal amount of EUR 300 million will become due for repayment. As part of our primary refinancing measures and to ensure temporarily increased financial flexibility, we concluded short-term loans totaling EUR 150 million and two interim loans with maturities until February, November, and December 2023, totaling EUR 250 million. Further financing steps will be evaluated. Let's move now to the next slide, which covers the generation segment in more detail. Electricity generation volumes in this segment were down by 11.4% on a year-on-year basis. The reduction in generation came from the absence of Walsum 10, following the divestment of our stake last year. On the other hand, Theiss power plant increased generation due to more frequent calls by the Austrian transmission network operator for network stabilization. The share of renewable generation increased to 54.4% compared to last year's 51.9%. Higher wind flows were partly able to compensate the decline in hydropower. Revenue nearly matched the previous year. Higher electricity prices offset the decline in electricity generation. EBITDA was down to EUR 50.3 million. Again, please bear in mind, previous year's positive one-off related to the takeover of an electricity procurement right. Also, due to the revaluation of the Kavarna wind farm in Bulgarian segment, EBIT increased to EUR 46.3 million. On the next slide, I will continue with the energy segment. The development of revenue in the energy segment depends primarily on the marketing of electricity generated in EVN's power plants. Besides, it includes the revenue from our domestic heating business. The strong increase in wholesale prices resulted in higher revenue from the marketing of our own electricity production. Higher sales volumes supported revenue growth of our heating business. Therefore, revenue was up by 90.4%. Operating expenses reflected higher procurement costs for the heating business, as well as the absence of a positive one-off related to the takeover of an electricity procurement brand. According to our contracts in the heating business, higher energy costs will be passed on to customer once a year based on price index mechanism. It's a certain time left here. In energy sales volumes, they were above the prior year level due to colder temperatures and the return of demand to pre-COVID levels. The earnings contribution from the equity consolidated company, EVN KG, declined due to higher procurement costs. As already mentioned at the beginning of the call, EVN KG meanwhile increased prices for household customers for electricity and natural gas. Based on these developments, the segment reported an EBITDA of EUR 35 million and EBIT of EUR 29.8 million. On the next slide, I will present the developments in our network segment. Network sales volumes increased, supported by stronger demand for electricity and natural gas in the household customer segment due to lower temperatures and higher gas flows related to increased use of gas-fired generation for network stabilization. In the beginning of 2021, the Austrian regulator increased tariffs for both electricity and natural gas. Based on these volumes and price development, segment revenue increased by 7%. EBITDA in the network segment was up by 11.1% and EBIT by 16.3%. The Austrian regulator determined new tariffs, which became effective with the start of the new calendar year. On such decisions, the network tariff for electricity will increase by 8.4% on average, and for natural gas by 4.7% on average. On the next slide, we will continue with the Southeast Europe segment. Temperatures in Southeast Europe were above the previous year and a long-term average, which had positive volume effect. In combination with higher prices, this resulted in a sharp rise in revenue. As already mentioned in the beginning of this call, our Southeast Europe segment suffered from rising costs on network losses due to higher market prices. In both countries, extraordinary government respectively regulatory measures provided for at least partial compensation for the significant rise in energy procurement costs. In Bulgaria, our distribution network operator received a compensation from the government covering network losses, which resulted from higher wholesale prices. The compensation in the amount of EUR 31.6 million covered the period from July until December 2021. The payment was made under a state aid program for the utility sector, which the Bulgarian government had agreed with the European Union to be in line with EU laws. We are in constant discussion with the government regarding measures to cover higher costs, which have been in place since January 2022. In North Macedonia, the regulator announced the extraordinary increase in electricity prices for household customers of EVN Home DOO and the network carriers as of January 1, 2022, as partial compensation for the significant rise in energy procurement costs. The remaining additional costs should be reflected into tariff decisions. Segment EBITDA was down at EUR 7 million and segment EBIT amounted to -EUR 12 million. I would like to conclude my presentation of the segments with the environment segment. In our international project business, we can rely on a solid order book of about EUR 1.2 billion as of the end of December. In total, WTE Wassertechnik is currently working on 14 projects in Germany, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Bahrain and Kuwait. Included are two sludge treatment projects in Germany, which are done by our joint venture company, sludge2energy. The financial performance of this segment is in line with the development in the international project business. Due to a slight reduction in construction activities as compared to last year, there was a corresponding decline of both revenue and operating expenses in this segment. In total, this development led to a lower EBITDA of EUR 17.1 million and slightly higher EBIT of EUR 8.9 million. In view of the current political crisis, I would also like to inform you about EVN's remaining activities in Russia. As you will remember, we realized a couple of projects, including drinking water plant and thermal waste utilization plant for the city of Moscow. This project we are also on a basis of PPA basis. For all of these projects and contracts to operate, the plants already ended, the last one in June 2020. With this, our last PPA project ended in Russia. However, we still own and operate two sludge-fired combined heat power plants in Moscow. The total book value of these plants is single-digit contribution to the EVN's revenues and results are not material. Apart from that, we don't pursue any environmental projects in Russia or Ukraine. With this, I complete the presentation of the segments. On the last slide, I will continue with the development of our group cash flow. Gross cash flow was substantially lower than EUR 204.4 million. Please remember that it was an unusually high in the previous year due to the receipt of a compensation payment for the takeover of the electricity procurement right. The decline was reduced slightly by higher dividends from equity-accounted entities. The decline in cash flow from operating activities was lower in comparison. The sharp rise in energy prices was responsible for working capital effects. In the previous year, the not collected part at the reporting date of the compensation payment for the takeover of an electricity procurement right increased working capital even higher, and tax payments were above business level. Cash flow from investing activities was influenced chiefly by a year-over-year increase in investments in property, plant, equipment and higher investment in cash funds. The increase in cash flow from financing activities is due to three bank loans totaling EUR 250 million. The change in cash and cash equivalents amounts to EUR -182.5 million. As mentioned before, our financial flexibility is solid, secured with committed undrawn credit facility of EUR 552 million as at the end of December 2021. I would like to conclude my presentation with the outlook for the group. Having just finished the first quarter, I would like to summarize our view on the current financial year as follows. We are going through an extraordinary year with substantial distortions. When looking at our main activities, we need to differentiate. For generation, higher prices are a clear positive and a certain upside. However, please bear in mind that generation has been hedged at pre-running average level rather than peak levels. For our energy supply business, higher prices are a burden we will be able to overcome through price increases. However, there's a certain timing effect. For Southeast Europe, we are facing a financial year of transition. Management puts whole effort on finding substantial solutions with the governments and regulatory authorities. Segment results will show the effect of this distortion. This is obvious as we will miss our usual EUR 40 million-EUR 60 million EBIT target for the segment, which we managed to outperform in the past couple of years. On group level, we are confident that our diversification management measures will provide resilience to our financial performance. Hence, I confirm our guidance for this financial year with a group net result in 2021-2022 to be in a range of approximately EUR 200 million-EUR 240 million. With this, I have reached the end of my presentation. I'm now looking forward to answering your questions. The first question comes from Lueder Schumacher. Your line is open. Good morning. Three questions from my side. The first one is on South East Europe. There's some decline in EBITDA you have seen there. Do you expect a full recovery here? Can you maybe run us through? The process of recovering these extra costs. Are there any risk associated with, maybe not recovering all of it, but certainly some, what some other companies have experienced in Eastern Europe, that the recovery of these high, very high procurement costs, can be quite tricky. The second one is on EVN KG. You said the EBITDA was down due to higher procurement costs. Is that mainly a Q1 effect, i.e. you just had to wait for tariff increases to come through and now you're passing on higher procurement costs? The last one is on generation. Just to get an idea of the underlying EBITDA, there with all these one-offs. Can you maybe give us the total contribution of Walsum 10 in Q1 last year, i.e. the normal EBITDA as well, as the one-off from the procurement? Okay, thanks for the question. First of all, Southeast, there's a regulatory regime, more or less, there is no liberalized market. It's a question mark when regulatory authorities do their normal decisions on future tariffs. In our case, this will be the first of July for Bulgaria and North Macedonia. Nonetheless, due to this extraordinary situation, the North Macedonian regulatory authority made already a decision for the first of January, partially compensating as for the burden we are carrying there. The issue is the energy we have to buy on a forward market for the grid losses. It is too early to say how the year will develop. As you have seen, and I mentioned it before, in Bulgaria, we have been covered for these grid losses from July to December. Therefore, I would expect that we will have the resources due to their production, and they are making there an extraordinary profit, and they will use this to compensate down the line, the energy value chain, to ensure that the end customer price decision will be not too harsh and then not an extraordinary will be necessary. But of course, these are all about the discussions we are having. The situation in North Macedonia is more tense because there we don't have own state production, which is relevant in the country itself. We are following here the regulatory system, and of course, our prices will be defined. There might be a timing effect. Therefore, we expect that we will have a weak year there and that the make up for these differences will come in the next regulatory period. To the EVN KG, yes, of course, if you carry higher procurement prices, but don't underestimate, we are also buying on a rolling basis. It is not just that we're buying energy for our customers on a short-term spot basis. Therefore, it's a rolling effect, and this is over all these years always taking place, that you have a certain delay in both sides. With this price decisions for the first of January for electricity and the first of February for gas, and also the tariff setting for the grid, under the bottom line, I think we will be quite stable on a normalized basis. If you compare EVN KG's performance this year and our expectation to last year, there's of course a big difference due to the change of the environment. Don't forget, there are also the question mark of the end states evaluation of the rewards. Therefore, there's a certain volatility due to the business itself. Regarding the effect of Walsum, if you compare the first quarter to the first quarter, the group was carrying a burden of EUR 2 million as an EBIT result coming from the effect of this procurement risk, and all the results coming out of the parts, the first part of the exit of Walsum. As we discussed, then we presented the overall result on MP & L basis have been around a positive effect of EUR 11 million at the end of September 2021. Two follow-up questions there. One is on Walsum. I was actually after the EBITDA. You did say in Q1 last year that net of the impairment charges is only minus EUR 2 million, but I'm specifically after the EBITDA. If you could give us the number for the one-off. Yeah. The impairment have been EUR 113 million. The data contribution was just about EUR 56 million-57 million. No, there's been EUR 115 million, yeah, and then the impairment EUR 113 million makes it EUR 2 million. Okay. Last follow up on Macedonia, you mentioned partial compensation. Just how partial? Are we talking half, 70%, 80%, 90%? No, see, this is very hard to judge what we are talking about. Are we talking on the yearly level, or are we talking on the monthly one? The increase of end customer prices has been 9.5%. They were also taking off under the weakest certain tariff privilege, which brings another 5%. The total effect over the next coming months and weeks will be around an increase of around 14.5%. Of course, it's pretty much depending how the weather is developing, how much energy they have to buy on this kind of short-term energy prices. I have no further information on that, more than I hope that the backlash in North Macedonia will be compensated by the procuring stability and therefore under the bottom line, we will not have a result there. Hopefully we will also not have a big loss there. Very clear. Group level. Yeah, on the group level, this will be compensated by higher result on the renewable division. Therefore, we can confirm our outlook for the year at the same level as we have already give the signal in December. That's great. Thanks. The next question comes from Teresa Schinwald. The line is open. Yeah, good morning, and thanks for taking my questions. It's kind of two and a half from my side. So first, could you give us an update on the progress of the Renewable Energy Expansion Act amendments? Also, as you have mentioned, some administrative issues in project approvals. Secondly, in light of current events, could you also give us an update on the gas storage activities, especially with the partners in the Haidach storage facility? Yes. Thanks a lot. As you can imagine, these kinds of developments are really now bringing new questions also to the whole European energy supply system and also the security of supply. What we have seen on the gas side over the last couple of weeks and months, a higher volatility, and of course, the decrease of the levels of the gas storage facilities, which are very transparent, by the way, also on the home pages of these institutions. Therefore, we are down to a level like we have seen it in 2013 and 2014, if you compare this over the last six years. Fortunately, the temperatures have been not so deep over the last couple weeks, so therefore, the official information from institutions is that for this winter, the gas supply is secured by the stored volumes. Yeah. Of course, if there would be change in weather in the upcoming weeks, March and April, it could be tense more times again, but there was a certain additional flow of gas also by LNG to Europe, and this was also partly pumped into existing gas storage facilities. Yeah. It is tense, but it's not critical from today's point of view. What we have seen yesterday and also today, that the flows from Ukraine, Russia and Baumgarten has not changed. Yeah. They are at a normal level so far. Yeah. Please keep in mind, the developments are very dynamic. There's no sign that the normal natural supply is in any way influenced, by the way, more or less since 68, this was always secured. What we see is that Brussels is discussing how we can secure our gas needs more for the future and more for the next winter. Therefore, we are following the debate very closely. This is regarding the gas and regarding Renewable Act. As we have discussed it in the past, fortunately, Brussels was now giving the green light to the latest version of the new Renewable Act in the parliament. Therefore, now the ministry and the different ministries, because they are pretty much in the same boat, have to issue the directives to get this new law more really working. As you can imagine, we are expecting some guidance here also regarding how the new market premium will work, and how the tender will function and how we can use all this new framework also for our activities. Because as I mentioned before, we would be ready and willing to further invest in renewable generation. What we have also seen is that in comparison to three years ago, five years ago, every wind park and even every photovoltaic activity is facing question marks on a local level. Therefore, it takes a lot longer time between making the decision to invest and then the possibility to start with construction. Fortunately, we have now two smaller wind activities which we are ready to build now, and we got the legal permits to do so. We will start with the constructions in the year 2022, and we are very hopeful that a bigger park will also be ready that we can start on the construction in the upcoming months. There is a certain delay, but I would say on the general perspective, I think the support for renewable production will even get a boost coming out of the situation. Maybe there will be a change on attitude also and a stronger consensus in society that we want to secure our energy needs as much as possible on renewable energy. Always knowing that renewable energy in this kind of wind and photovoltaic has one disadvantage. The question mark of how you can plan it. Just to let you know, if there's a lot of wind, it does not mean that there's not a need for tiles to produce electricity. The volumes alone and dependability is one issue which you cannot cross easily just by wind and photovoltaic production. Therefore, we will need a diversified energy industry also in the near future, mid-term future, maybe longer than we expect today. Thank you very much. Maybe the follow-up also on distribution tariffs. I read that the regulatory account for 37% increase in the loss energy coverage, accounting for higher prices. Do you already have an indication if this would be enough for this year? Because of course, next year the coverage will be renegotiated. Yes. No ongoing debates also. Yeah. The uncertainty in the system has increased in the past couple of weeks a lot. Yeah. I would not feel well, yeah, to comment on too short-term assumptions at the moment. Yeah. Understood. Thank you very much. There are no more questions. Ladies and gentlemen, if you'd like to ask a question, please press nine star on your telephone keypad. Please press nine star if you'd like to ask a question. There are no more questions. Okay. Thank you for joining us for today's conference call. We will publish the results for the first half of 2021-2022 financial year on Wednesday, 25th of May. Please join us then again and stay healthy and all the best.