Okay. Hello, and welcome to the Results Presentation for the H1 Year of the Financial Year 2022/2023, which we released this morning. My name is Marcus Handl, and I succeeded Hans Lang as Investor Relations Officer in September, after I had already been in this role following the IPO. I would also like to introduce Valerie Riegler, who complements the IR team and has just gone through her first release results successfully, as I see. Thank you, Valerie. Before I now hand over to the Executive Board to first guide you through the headlines on the H1 year, then the financial results, and finally, the outlook and answer your questions. I would like to give you a brief technical guidance. In case that you have problems to hear the presenters, please click on the phone icon and choose Use computer for audio. I would also like to remind you that this call is being recorded. Finally, we would appreciate if you could attend with your camera switched on, as this would enable a more human interaction. Mr. Kapsch? Well, thank you very much, Marcus. Good morning, good afternoon to everybody attending our presentation. Thank you very much for attending our presentation. We are gonna take you through the H1 of our current Fiscal Year. The H1 showed an increase in revenues of about 4%. The growth was primarily driven by the following segment. Primarily, the increase is generated from implementation and the components business. The components business, despite the fact of still having supply chain constraints in components. We had a considerable growth in the Americas, plus 24%, primarily driven by Latin America. We have a significant increase in the Asia-Pacific region of 41% compared to the previous year. That's of huge importance for us and for the implementation of our strategy. We won in the urban area in MENA, the city tolling in Gothenburg, and in the Middle East in Sharjah, and in Latin America, Lima. This is a proof that our strategy focusing on urban environments is the right one. As you know, we had two terrible years, then a positive year and this H1 of the Fiscal Year 2023 could confirm the turn around. We are honestly not still where we wanna be, but we are profitable. The EBIT was affected negatively by costs. We had a general increase in costs due to inflation and increase in prices in specific parts that we use in our products. We had an increase in personnel expenses, primarily driven by North America, and this again, primarily driven due to the exchange rate, due to the strengthening of the US dollar. As I mentioned previously, we are still suffering from shortages and delays in supply chain, but it seems, and my colleague, Andreas, is in charge of supply chain, it seems that there is a bit of a relief currently to be seen on the horizon. Anyway, we have a huge order backlog, which we couldn't fulfill it because of the inability to deliver, which was not caused by ourselves, but by our suppliers. The financial position, of course, remains in our focus. Andreas is way more prepared to explain that to you because he is the CFO of the company. What I did in the past, he's doing now. We repaid all of our financial liabilities. The gearing increased to 302%, which is not very nice, but we can live with it due to lower cash and cash equivalents and due to increased working capital because we need to take lots of stock because of the shortages and delays in supply chain. Maybe Andreas will do a bit of a more deep dive in that. The equity ratio is at 12%, which is not really convenient, to be honest, but it's not threatening. Because we are seeing a light on the horizon in order to be able to increase our equity ratio as well in the future in order to get back to the strength we had three to four years ago. Thank you very much, and I will now hand over to Andreas to present the financials in detail, because I think that's what you are primarily interested about. Um, v ery well. Hello from my side. Good morning, good afternoon. Further insights from a more commercial perspective, less strategic one, a more short-term information as well. First slide here is describing revenues. The first two quarters slightly shifting between the two revenue streams. Tolling increased by 8%, traffic management decreased by 6%. Relatively small shifts, I would say, and partly these are temporary effects as well. We will see at the end of the Fiscal Year where we will end up in these relations. Georg already mentioned dynamics in Americas. Latin America is currently our most dynamic region, which we are grateful for, and this is very delightful. You are recognizing a decrease in EMEA revenues. These decreases are two main restrictions, I would say. First, geopolitical environment we are all facing here in Europe. We are more impacted than the rest of the world, America, APAC or Latin America, which is one impact. The second impact is, of course, components business, which did, and this is the line below, you may consider, components business increased year-over-year due to a COVID effect, but could have even increased more, if all the components had been available to come, later to the components topic that is heavily driven mostly by increased lead times of deliveries, we face due to war in Ukraine, due to supply chain disruptions in Far East and so on. To turn the page, coming to profit and loss, to the upper part of the Profit and Loss account. I want you to draw your attention to the EBIT line and the comparison to the H1 year of last Fiscal Year. You see a decrease from EUR 10 million to EUR 5 million, which is simply a fact. I want to point out that we improved heavily in Q2 because otherwise nobody had been part of this conversation three months ago, when we presented Q1 back then. EBIT was close to zero in first quarter. Now we are at close to EUR 5 million EBIT, which in fact Q2 is above last year. We improved in this part and this story tells more or less the entire upper part of the P&L. We improved by 4% in revenues, which is, well, let's say moderate. Other operating income are heavily driven by FX gains. At the right-hand side graph over there, we wrote it down EUR 9.2 million of net effect in operating income and other operating expenses due to FX impact. We reduced our exposure last year heavily, but we as each and every company in this world are facing much higher volatilities, especially between euro and US dollar. Other operating income are even decreasing from one year to another, from EUR 37.2 million-EUR 35.5 million, despite the fact that we as everybody are facing quite heavy inflation pressure in this part. Personnel expenses increased despite the fact that we decreased slightly our personnel, mainly driven by again foreign exchange effects, because we budgeted back then one year ago with an exchange rate of USD to EUR of more than 1.10. We are facing even parity or lower, which drives the absolute number of personnel costs heavily, as well as wage increases, as the labor market, especially for technical personnel, is a very tight one. I talked already about headcount development. We started back then one year ago, we had 4,526, and I'm now on the lower part at the right-hand side, 4,526 employees. As of March, we reduced by 300 to 4,220, and we kept it fairly stable during the last six months at the on a level of close to 4,200 employees. To the lower part of the P&L, starting with the EBIT, we talked already about interest and adjacent expenses and earnings. I want to point out two topics first. Our interest rates are still low. Our average interest rate is between 1% and 2%. Of course, slightly, moderately, slightly increasing in the last month due to the interest increases. Our ratio between fixed interest rate and variable interest rate is 40%-60%, as written down here. Just to mention the other in the financial result, this was last year a quite heavy hyperinflation adjustment that was necessary in regard to our business in Argentina. Coming back to a kind of segment information and coming back to the relations that our business faces in terms of regions. First talk about tolling. The Americas are the strongest and best growing region in tolling. If we remember what we talked about one and two years ago, the Americas had been the region we talked about and it had some concerns. Now the region Americas is a pillar back again in our business, and we are grateful to have the Americas in our portfolio. Especially, facing that Europe walks through difficult times currently, due to the war in Ukraine and other environmental problems. Traffic management at the right-hand side, our revenue split is not that different to the tolling revenue split. To mention that traffic management is more important for EMEA region than for American region, but no bigger shifts here. To come to the other key financials at the left-hand side, cash flow and CapEx figures. Again, yes, free cash flow is negative. Georg already mentioned that we did take decisions in regard of working capital, because due to extended lead times and some of our vendors do have delivery times between nine and 12 months. We decided to build up our inventory to keep our ability to produce, which is, of course, negatively impacting our working capital, driving our working capital to put it as such. Please take into account that this free cash flow figure had been back then in Q1 a figure of EUR -22 million. Our free cash flow figure improved in Q2, in Q2 by EUR 11 million. I'm quite confident that we will improve further. We talked already about net debt and gearing, net assets and equity ratio. I want to point out for these two topics that these figures are also impacted by foreign exchange because we do have in the other comprehensive income, which is below result for the period, which is below Profit and Loss account translation risks. These translation risks decrease, and you can read it in detail in our report, decrease our equity by EUR 15 million as of the first six months in this year, which is an impact of 3% in equity ratio and has a heavy impact on gearing as well. That was the comprehensive financial results. Let me give a brief outlook on the H2 of this Fiscal Year. We are thinking about stable revenue development. Stable means growth like in the H1 of this Fiscal Year. We of course envisage and believe in a further EBIT improvement in the H2 of this Fiscal Year. Our strategy, as I reported frequently, is in execution all over the world. We are convinced that the forthcoming years will show that in regard to strategy, we are on r ight track. We are ahead of our competition. Thank you very much. We are now prepared to take your questions. Are there any questions? In case that you have a question, please unmute and raise a question. Hi, this is Daniel Lion, Erste Group Research. Can you hear me? Yes, certainly. Perfect. I have to apologize. I actually am not able to switch on my camera. I don't know why I c annot. I didn't find a button to do it. In any case, I would like to first look at your revenue development, which definitely looks positive now in the Q2. Would you expect a normal seasonality in the course of the year, meaning that the H2 year should be a little bit stronger, similarly like we saw it last year? Would you see this rather as a function of ongoing opportunity demand, which could be a swing factor dependent on your clients' spending targets or spending budgets? Well... Going forward. Well, according to our current best knowledge, the H2 would be slightly higher in revenues compared to the H1, but don't expect 30% more. Yeah, of course. How would this translate into profitability? H1 year was significantly weaker than the last year. How would this higher revenue impact your profitability in the H2? Well, first, if you compare the H1 of the last Fiscal Year, there was still a strong business. It was strong. In total, it was not that huge, but we had way more business in Russia and we also had more business in Belarus. This impacted both revenues, not that much, but profitability. That's one of the reasons why the H1 of 2023 is lower in profitability compared to the H1 of 2022. What we are expecting is an increase in EBIT, but again, don't expect 30% better than last year. This might be not the case. Yeah. Oh, yeah, of course. Of course. In the end, would it be reasonable to assume this, the EUR 12 million roughly in EBIT plus the one-off that you announced? Or would you even expect that the H2 year will help you to be stronger than that? Well, that would mean, if I got you correctly, what do you mean in total then? Yeah, in total. You know, we had roughly EUR 5 million in the H1. Yeah. You expect roughly EUR 5 million one-off. This would be EUR 10 million. In the end, we would be talking about EUR 7 million in the H2. It's like an increase of EUR 2 million in EBIT in absolute terms in the H2. Look, I as the one responsible for market and growth, I'm always more optimistic than finance, so I hand over to finance now. We saw in last year, and this is somehow a development we saw last year was a strong first two quarters, with an EBIT of close to EUR 10 million, and we ended up at the end of the year with EUR 11 million, which was somehow disappointing. We do have in this year a more linear expectation on that, but we want to be utmost cautious, not to disappoint the capital market in this regard. Our guidance is that we will be able to improve our EBIT in comparison to last year. But we are calculating this EBIT with all the one-time effects that might occur in the Q2, in the H2 year as well. Our outlook is positive in comparison towards our last year as a whole. Fully understand that. We also, when we look at last year's development, you had actually significant one-offs in the H2 year. If we adjust for these one-offs, we arrive at more than EUR 25 million EBIT in the H2 year. Of course, it's clear that there's currently cost pressure that both from wages, still on material and supplies. There are some shortages as well that limit your margin potential with regards to On-Board Units. Everything clear, but the question is, has the cost situation changed so, in such a drastic way that this adjusted figure from last year is completely off? Sorry, I don't completely get what you mean. Are you talking on the one hand about the write-offs or write-downs? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Heavily had in the H2 of last Fiscal Year. We had, of course, write-offs in the H1 of this Fiscal Year, and the two of us just had a discussion in one-on-one, and we would assume that the write-offs in the H2 of this Fiscal Year will not reach the write-offs of the H2 of the previous Fiscal Year because the project situation in North America has drastically improved. That was the prime source or reason of the write-downs. Yeah, exactly. Okay, fine. Second question, looking at your maturity profile, can you give us a feeling what amounts do you still need to repay in the course of this year, maybe also next year? What impact would this have on your average interest that you will have to pay? Scheduled repayments for this year are round about EUR 11 million. Scheduled repayments for the upcoming year are EUR 27 million plus the repayment of promissory notes, which are to repay as of June 2023. The promissory notes are a long-term investment vehicle, funding vehicle. We installed the promissory note seven years ago. First tranche was around about EUR 43 million, was to be repaid two years ago. Last year. No, '21. It was last year. In June 2021. Excuse me. Yeah, it was last year. Mixing up the years. EUR 43 million to repay in June 2021. EUR 23 million in June 2023 and another EUR 8 million in June 2026. These EUR 25 million, we do think that it is healthy for our enterprise to refund these promissory notes on the capital market. Yes, it will be an increase in interest rate in this very part, of course, because the landscape for interest rates is today a different one to that seven years ago. No question. This will be most likely that we want to refinance that on the capital market to a reasonable price. Maybe one question which relates to that, and I'm aware that you might not be able to tell us too much. Would you expect the...? Germany. Germany exactly proved to be somehow settled within the next Fiscal Year already? Is this something that we should expect even further out? Honestly, I can't tell you. As you know, I'm not permitted to tell you anything about that. We are doing our best to get it as fast as possible. That's what I can tell you. The same would, of course, improve our equity position, our ability to repay our loans and all that. Of course. I'm not permitted to tell you more about that. Yeah. Maybe a really last question. Can you give us your view on the development in South Africa? It currently seems that it won't take too long until the project will be scrapped. Well, of course, you read the news from South Africa, and they announced that they will stop tolling in Gauteng, which is our project. There was, of course, a RFP out, and we participated, and I'm convinced that we submitted a very compelling bid. In the end, the decision was taken not to proceed with tolling in that area. We currently do not know what really will happen to the system, because they are using the system for various applications. They use it for speed enforcement, they use it for account-based ticketing, and they use it for interoperability in South Africa. Honestly, I can't tell you now what will happen. They won't stop it within the next two months, because, you know, if they would stop, that would lead to a layoff of close to a 1,000 people, and that's what they can't afford now, having an unemployment rate of 36% in South Africa. We honestly don't know, but we think there will remain business way lower than the current one. I do not assume that it will be zero from the 1st of January onwards. Okay. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Any further questions? Please ask your questions. Unfortunately, we cannot rank... Can...? You in some case. Can I...? Next one. Continue? Yes. Yes. Teresa from Raiffeisen Bank International. First about the cost and inflation situation. Just some quick calculations showed that prices of the On-Board Units seems only to have increased or the unit revenues in the low single digits. Is this just my calculation issue or has the profitability of these components decreased at the moment? What's going to happen there? Well, you know, we have existing contracts which have no inflation clauses, but we also have contracts that have applied inflation clauses. That might lead to your calculation. On the other hand, of course, we are keen to increase prices. Of course, this just impacts new orders and new deliveries, but not the old ones. You can't calculate it one-on-one. It also depends upon the structure of sales, whether we sell it to customer A or customer B or customer C, because they have different prices. Because of volumes, because of regions, because of risk return ratios. Okay. I get that. Could you give us also a rough split between the inflation-adjusted contracts and those that are still based on the old conditions? Well, when it comes to components, honestly, I don't know. I don't know. Most of them are not inflation-based because they are more or less short-term revolving contracts. Okay. I think this is the point to emphasize. We run a comprehensive program called Volatility Management Framework. This includes the analysis and the management of each and every contract that we are in. Talking about design and build business, for example, we have several contracts that are short-term runners. For example, projects that are accomplished between three and nine-month time, which are not that crucial in terms of inflation. In fact, we had to face some deterioration in margin in components business, but this is not our primary concern. Our concern is that we do have a backlog in delivery of components which would be sufficient for more than three quarters. We are building up our production facility to be faster to deliver our market. We do address inflation not only over contracts towards our customers, but also over contracts with our vendors. We are in the advantageous position that our vendors are working with us now for most of them, for many years, some of them for decades. Therefore our relationship to our vendors is in a quality that we don't have to face. Immediate and non-arguable price increases on our components business. Great. Thank you. Next question would be on the new projects you've won in the Q2. Would it be fair to assume that they would in total have a mid-double digits annual impact on revenues going forward? Or can you give us a rough number for the expected revenues? You're talking about the impact of all the intake on the forthcoming year? No, about the Gothenburg and Lima projects. Okay. In total, the project volume, the amount? Yes. Yes. Exactly. National projects, yes. Yeah, that's in total somewhere in between, I think I would guess, EUR 20 million and EUR 30 million. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Other companies with a global business have already reported about or mentioned that the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act led to an increased activity in the U.S. operations, and you mentioned that as well. Can you tell us a bit more about what the impact could be or...? The impact of inflation. No, of the Inflation Reduction Act. Mm-hmm. In the US, which is the weirdly named law that actually increases the investment in green energy and infrastructure. The name is just a PR stunt, but it's like a green new deal that was passed during summer. Well, you see, meanwhile I know that many bills for investments in infrastructure in the U.S., so that I honestly do not anymore really believe in this marketing agenda of the U.S. Government because they never went into force. Hopefully, this time it will be different in order to foster the reduction of emissions in the U.S. and to make even the U.S. more green. If that's the case, of course, it would have an impact, a positive impact on our business because then metropolitan areas, municipalities would receive federal funds in order to improve their emission situation. This would lead to investments in traffic management, in clean air zones, and in the end, in road user charge. Okay. Thank you very much. I honestly, I wouldn't build on that. Yeah. If it comes, it's like a warm shower, a warm rain. I wouldn't build my strategy on that. Yeah. Thanks, very much. Welcome. Yes. Hello, gentlemen. Winfried Becker speaking from FMR Research. Could you hear me? Yes. Great. Wonderful. Two questions I ask, please. The first is, coming back to your sales growth in the H1, the 4%. Could you give an indication for us or a number or a flavor, whatever, by how much this growth is impacted by price increases from your side in order to transfer higher input prices? That would be helpful if you could give some information. My second question is, in regards to a press release you have sent out earlier this week, referring to the testing of a new tolling system in Norway. Sounds very interesting for me and so far. I want to ask if you could give some more information on that project and maybe with regard to the timeline, where you are in case, let's assume positive, you might receive once an order. Could you give a flavor on this could happen and maybe word on competition if there are other companies also which compete with you? That would be also very helpful. Thanks a lot. Okay, welcome. I would hand over the first question to Andreas. First question was net sales, are they driven by foreign exchange effect? Partly, yes. I wouldn't... I wouldn't put the entire growth on that cost, but partly this is a driver as well. The main driver, of course, in our business is our project business, our components business, our operations business, which is positively developing without any Foreign Exchange effect. Regarding Nor... Sorry. Go ahead. No. It's your turn. Okay. Regarding Norway, as you know, we always try to be at the edge of technology and to be a front runner in whatever we do. We were developing a new way of tolling, which is cheaper than the conventional one. Road user charge, which means charging all the roads in a country or in a state, whatever, is of huge importance for the public budgets because the income from fuel taxes is decreasing due to the fact that modern vehicles are less fuel intense, and the portion of electric vehicles is permanently increasing. Consequently, the nations need to look for other income sources. One of those, in order to finance infrastructure, is road use. Therefore, we very strongly explored the best way to cope with road user charge for all vehicle tolling. When it comes to Europe, charging is done by the European Electronic Toll Service provision, the EETS regulation for heavy vehicles. When it comes to light vehicles, you need a way more slim system because you can't afford very expensive On-Board device. Therefore, we tried to implement new systems more based on software compared to hardware, using cheaper devices, using mobile phones. This was a pilot project. This is not a commercial project. This is a pilot project, and I think they drove approximately 2 million kilometers during this trial project, and it worked quite well. Now we'll see whether they will come out with an RFP or not. I would assume this is the future of tolling. Anyway, we will have conventional tolling as we already deliver for many, many years for the forthcoming decade as well. Do you have, in the meantime, reached also, interests from other countries going in the same direction like Norway? Yes, there are. There are others, but honestly, I must not speak because that's confidential. There are states in the U.S. that are very much interested in road user charges. Mm-hmm. This also underlines our move from hardware to software. Anyway, for the next decade, we will continue to supply and deliver hardware, but the portion of software gets way more important compared to the past. Mm-hmm. Okay. This also helps us to enable software-as-a-service models, which would create long-lasting contracts, more stable revenues, recurring revenues, and that's one of our goals. Mm-hmm. Very helpful. Thank you very much, gentlemen. Very welcome. Thank you for the question. We have 12 minutes left. I hear that there are no further questions. Let's then say thank you. Yeah. We say thank you. We will present the Q3 Result in February and hope we can then again prove that we are on a right and good way forward. Thank you very much. Thank you. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. See you next time.