Hello, everybody. From my side, a warm welcome to PALFINGER Capital Markets Day. I'm very pleased to be moderating and guiding you through this very special event. Welcome to the audience here in the studio, and to all of you following us via stream from their offices or their home offices. I know there are a few international guests who do not watch maybe Austrian TV on a regular basis, so let me just briefly introduce myself. I usually do the TV show here in Austria, the Zeit im Bild, but I'm very pleased to be in the studio here today in Vienna. As I said, we have a very international and very special and interesting program ahead of us. The executive board at Palfinger has been working both on the Vision and Strategy 2030 for almost all this year from the very beginning of 2021, and today we will reveal many insights on these ideas and on the future of Palfinger. Before we hear more about what is planned for the future, just let me briefly introduce Palfinger and give you an overview of this, the company, this very ambitious company. As you know, it is the world market leader for innovative crane and lifting solutions. It currently has 12,000 employees in 34 production sites. Worldwide it has a sales and service network with over 5,000 service points. It joined the Vienna Stock Exchange in 1999, and since then has increased its share price more than seven times. For the full year of 2021, we know it's been a very, let's say very interesting year, very, a tough year, but it aims to achieve another record year. It's, I think, because of the diversity of its industries that it is crisis resistant. Also the global economic uprising is obviously pushing the positive development of Palfinger. It is recording growth in most product lines and regions. It assumes, and that's very interesting and I think a very good point, it assumes social, ecological, and economic responsibility along the entire value chain. It's a highly ambitious company and, as I said, we'll hear more about it from various speakers. Before we get to that point, I want to introduce and welcome here a very special guest. He is a well-known simulation researcher. Let's say, the pandemic almost raised his fame here in Austria. He's been on almost all TV shows here in Austria. We're very happy to have him here with us. He's an expert simulation researcher. Please welcome Niki Popper. Hello, hello. Hi, Niki. Hello. We usually. Hello We just know each other from the TV. Normally we- But now- Normally we meet at the TV studio. Yeah. We're very happy to have you here, Niki. Thank you. Since not too many, well, I assume, are familiar with simulation research, with that kind of scientific Mm-hmm Scientific approach, just tell us more. How does it work? What kind of science is it? Yeah. That's interesting. What we are doing is more or less we are reinventing the real world with its processes, with its systems, in a virtual computer setting. For example, what we did during the COVID crisis, we had to support the government and countries here in Austria. We have developed in the last 10 years a virtual population, so the inhabitants in Austria, and we can combine them with the hospitals, with schools, with the working places, with the mobility, of course with the interventions, with the measures and the vaccinations. Then we can compute what happens and what would happen. The idea in simulation modeling is to ask all the time why- Mm-hmm And not so much how much or how many. The idea is to understand, and we combine it of course with artificial intelligence methods and a lot of things, and the idea is then to say, "Okay, we can learn from the past, we can analyze the present, and we can compute scenarios for the future, where we try to understand what a decision will lead us to. Mm-hmm. The good thing is, I mentioned we are more interested in why and not in how much, by knowing why we are normally even better also for the question how much. Mm-hmm. That's the good thing. It's a very interesting view into the future. What areas can it be implemented in? Or should I ask which areas can it not be implemented in? Not is everything which is very simple. Yeah Because you don't need our methods. Is life- Sorry? Is life simple? No. Mostly not. No, I think everywhere where you have social, technical, ecological, environmental systems. Everything where you get together technology, nature, humans, IT, economy, and everything which deals for example with carbon dioxide footprints or money, and is complicated enough. I think that's nearly everything which is interesting. Almost everything. For society and for economy. Yeah. I've brought an example with me. Let's take, for example, the health system. Okay To show what we are doing. The idea is just a simple question, not COVID, because we are all bored of COVID. Yeah In the meantime. The idea is a very simple question. How far do I have to drive to the next physician? Mm-hmm. The idea is we have our virtual population. Let's say 1 point will be for 100 people, and then it's the question, okay, if I have blue points. I think we've brought some- Yeah. Graphic with me. We can show something, yeah. The blue points are near distance to a physician, and the pink points are far away, a long time to go to the physician. The idea is now not only to compute, okay, these distances, how is the situation now, but also to compute what will happen in the future based on the educational program for physicians. What are the universities doing? What are the hospitals doing? We can compute, and what you can see now is with a good qualification strategy on the right side, and the bad qualification, or no qualification strategy on the left side, you get more and more pink points. The situation gets worse. That's only an example where you can say, "Okay, what will happen if we have not a good education for my experts in the future?" Then, of course, you can go into the detail and compare the two strategies. Here is the good one. We have no problem in the future, and here we have a problem. In Western Austria, for example, if you have regional complexities because of the high mountains here in Austria, you get even more problems. That's the thing we are doing, and of course, you cannot only apply this for health. You can apply this for energy, for supply chains, for logistics, for mobility, and yeah, every complicated system, and we have a lot of them today. We have a lot of them today, yeah. What can you give the audience here in the studio and following us via stream, how can you support them? Is it a management tool also? Can managers use it? Of course. Yeah? Of course it is. How? Of course it is. Because, I mean, normally you look on the money and you look on the technical and logistic processes. What we can do is we can combine the infrastructure, we can combine the impact on the people, we can combine the processes where, for example, Palfinger products and services are working. Mm-hmm. We can analyze then in the scenarios, and you can go with such a slider. Yeah. You can go with the slider from the past. You can see, okay, what happened, and you can go to the future and see, okay, if I make this decision, if I invest money in this area, in this region, like you have seen, what will happen then if I do this? Of course, we don't know the future, and it's, for me, it's very important always to say, even in the COVID crisis, the future is not set. Mm. I mean, we have today again discussions of the government here, and they're discussing measures. People ask me what will happen next week, and I say, "I don't know." I mean, maybe next week we know because this already happened. Not very clear. What will happen in what months? It depends on our decisions, and that is very important. For example, we use our tools not only for the COVID crisis for the government, but for example, we are at the moment developing COVID strategies for different production facilities for a big company, depending on the situation there in the different countries worldwide, what will be the strategy to keep the facilities open, or what are the strategies, the strategies I have to set to be able to produce in a secure and financial optimal way? For example, we use the same model also for the ÖBB, which is an important player in Europe for rail cargo and logistics to improve their possibility to make the services in Europe more efficient. I think this is very important in the future. We have a guest here. I have a guest here. Yeah, a fly. Hello. To make the processes more sustainable. I think this will be the challenge of the future. I mean, in the last years and decades, it was mostly about money. Mm. Of course, it's still important, money. I think it's a very interesting and important thing to also have a look at sustainability. With the simulation models, we have the big opportunity to combine the economic and the ecological outcomes. We can make analysis and a combination of these two outcomes and have a look what processes are efficient but also sustainable. Let me give you an example. We already 10 years ago. Sorry, I need some water. Yeah. Go ahead. Already 10 years ago, we developed a model where you can look into production processes, so you can really go inside the production process. We have modeled this as a digital twin and mapped the carbon dioxide footprint on every single produced item and have a look what happens if I change the production process. What happens based on this single item? I have, of course, systemic variables. I have variables that are only depending on the single item. Then you can say, "Okay, what are my production processes like, and how can I make them more sustainable?" I think simulation tools are very good items to help to improve this side and to help to improve the management. I think that's why companies like Palfinger and companies who deal with these approaches will be much better off in the future. Yeah, it's very interesting. Obviously you can't foresee the future, but if I listen to you can pretty much give very much support the strategic alignment of companies. Why then, I have to ask you, why do, and I know this from our TV show, you support the government when it comes to COVID, you support many universities, et cetera, but not as much managements and companies. Why is it not this your research, why is it not really established within the management fields? It is, but maybe the management doesn't know. Okay. No, but seriously, I mean, of course, I think a lot of consulting companies are using such models. Very often behind the scenes. Mm-hmm. I mean, we have a lot of corporations. We have, of course, we are developing at the TU Wien, but we have the spin-off of the dwh GmbH. We have a lot of corporations with companies where we support consulting processes with models behind. For example, the efficiency of production processes, the efficiency and the usage of hospitals, of big public buildings, I mentioned already with the ÖBB of rail cargo logistics and so on. We are on a way. I think we are on a way. Often people come to me and say, "Okay, we don't need these complicated models. We have Excel. Mm-hmm. We have to convince them. We built a model when we make the same like the Excel they have in the company. Uh-huh. We increase the possibilities. Mm-hmm Step by step. Then we convince very often the management that we can have better solutions in the future to understand the dynamics, the feedbacks, the nonlinearities like we have it now in the COVID crisis, and to develop better strategies. But to be honest, you have to focus on one thing. It's not an easy thing. Normally people say, "Okay, it's too expensive to get your models." I always say, "No, no, the models are not the expensive. Expensive is the human resources you have to give us, because we need a lot of information on the processes. We need a lot of information of the things in the system." It's more or less easy to get data. Yeah. Every company has a smart database system. Of course you can very easily, if you have professional users, and not governments sometimes, but companies are more professional with data anomaly, and you get this very easy. It's a huge effort that, to be honest, to get this information and to include this into models, but it is worth it. If you have good input from the management, from the operational experts, you can really do very good models as I presented, for example, this one example, and to improve the analysis and also strategy planning for companies. I'm sure we are only on the first step here for the future. Niki, you know, we all are gathered here together with the focus lies on 2030, on the PALFINGER strategies for 2030. A more generic question, how will companies function in 2030? How will we work? What will be the big challenges? How they will work, I'm not the expert. You need an economic expert. No, I, of course, I understand what you mean. I think from our point of view, every company will have a digital twin. Mm-hmm. I mean, we know in some areas already digital twins. Okay. I think in 10 years, 9 years, soon 8 years we will have digital twin for all the processes. Mm-hmm For not only the management, not only the IT, not only the logistics and supply chains, we will have digital twins for every process and every interaction between these subsystems. At the moment, we have a lot of models which are only the production, only price predictions, only this or that. Mm-hmm. I think the main goal to solve the future of the problem, and we can see it at the climate change simulation, and the whole question is we need integrated solution. It's very complicated to make these integrated solutions where you can combine IT, logistics, management, and so on. Therefore, a lot of the big companies all the time sell solutions for modeling and simulation for one area. In the future, we need these holistic view. This integrated approach where we will also include the environment of the company. Mm-hmm. It's not only the company. A company is not standing alone. Mm-hmm. It needs the processes, it needs the supply chains, it needs to understand what happens at the customers. It needs to have highly educated workers and people to understand what happens if I change something in one of the processes. I think nowadays we make a lot of decisions only on this very focused view. In future simulation models will be glasses to help to have a look on the holistic processes in a company and in its environment. This will, I think, improve a lot how we can deal with the questions of the future, environmental, financing, sustainability, and so on. Since you've mentioned bottlenecks, we all hear a lot about the current bottlenecks in the supply chain. How can your method help solving these problems? Or can you offer scenarios that can solve this problem? I mean, the question is what are important things for companies? Mm-hmm. I mean, on the one hand side, you have the internal planning. Mm-hmm. You have to have human resources and functioning supply chains, and a lot of these things. Another point is you have, for example, to deal with decisions of politicians. I mean, for example, for Palfinger, they have probably different decisions in a lot of countries with different processes behind it. I think what is the advantage of companies who use simulation tools? Maybe if you take this- Mm-hmm At this point, I think we are talking at the moment a lot on fake news, and the world is not evident anymore. Yes, it's true, it's a problematic situation if people don't understand why vaccination is working. Alternative facts. Alternative facts, yes. You know, I'm not only a simulation researcher, I'm also very, how is it called in English? Idealistic person. Mm-hmm. I'm pretty sure that evidence will win. It's not an easy way, but every day we get more evidence. What I've seen in projects with the dwh GmbH, you come, you have better evidence, and you are of course discussed, it will be discussed, and they will say, "No, no." If you are consistent, if you rely on your position, at the end, you can convince normally in these processes. Mm-hmm. What I mean is, if you have a discussion, for example, as a company with strategic things, with politicians, it will be not easy to convince with the evidence. I think if you have long time enough, if you have "genug Atem" [Foreign language]. Mm-hmm If you are sustainable, it is the better solution. Of course, if you invest money, you can make a lucky punch, a quick win, but that's, especially if we are here, that's not the thing people should look on. I think the most important things are reliable, sustainable processes. If you have the evidence, we are only doing. We have only these glasses to see evidence to these things, what might be an advantage for me, and I can use them in discussions with other companies, with customers, with dec- Mm-hmm With decision-makers. Mm-hmm. I'm very often asked, "Do you have a miracle, magical Glaskugel?" Is it called in- Glaskugel. I think it's called Glaskugel, yeah. In German? I always say, "No, no. No, we don't have." We don't. We can't see the future. The future is not set. The future depends on our decisions. What we can support companies in is, with our glasses, with our simulation glasses, is we are 5%-10% better than the others. Mm-hmm. That's totally enough if you're better than the others. It's like the reindeer who is running away from the wolf. You only have to be not the last. Last one The slowest. Yeah. I mean, if you are in the first third, it's even better. I think that's an important thing. With our simulation tools, we are normally 5%-10% better. It's until now, and I think will consist also in the future. I think there is a lot of possibilities with these tools to improve things which can be seen, but which cannot be seen directly. Mm-hmm. That's maybe the idea. Yeah. You make us see complex things. We try to. A little bit clearer. Thanks. We try to. Thank you so much, Niki Popper. Thank you. Thank you for this very interesting insight in your scientific approach. Thank you, Niki Popper. Our next guest is from inside PALFINGER. He will tell us more about the Strategy 2030 and how it will be implemented over the next months and years. A warm welcome to the CEO of PALFINGER, Andreas Klauser. Welcome, Andreas. Hello. Thank you. There's a special event next year. PALFINGER will celebrate its 90th birthday. From the very beginning, it has been driven by a pioneering mindset. You will tell us more or give us an idea how this was possible over all these years that you became even stronger, bigger, and stronger also on a global basis. Obviously, you will tell us more about the Strategy 2030. We're looking forward. Thank you. Thank you very much, Nadia. Luckily, it's not my 90th birthday next day, next year. I think it's important that you joined us at this meeting, and it's important either you follow us from a live stream or here in reality at the Marx Halle. It's important because we have a lot to tell. We have a lot to tell to the capital market in terms of our strategy, what's upcoming, which kind of challenges we see. I can already tell you that we see by far more opportunities than risks. The story you will see today is to confirm this, that you get a clear picture not only of a big vision we have, as well as the strategy which is behind and what PALFINGER is doing related to the challenges we see. Let me start first of all, as we mentioned already, we have a quite remarkable year next year. We will celebrate 90 years. Luckily not my birthday, as I already said. The spirit in our company was always the same. It was one strong PALFINGER spirit, a family spirit, a company spirit, which leads us. Even in difficult days, and most of you, I think, have seen the numbers last year, have seen the numbers so far this year, and this confirms that the strategy that based on this solid base works quite well. You see here the different images when PALFINGER started and where we sit today. In terms of the industry itself, the technology we have, it was always based on innovation and being the leader in our technologies, being the leader in the industry, being the benchmark, not only by products, in future by solutions or as well how we are presenting ourselves to the outside world in terms of customers, dealers, investors, whoever, that everybody understands what PALFINGER is doing, where we are heading towards. You see as well here, this innovation, just moving bricks a couple of years ago, and today, robotical systems, autonomous systems, where we'll hear more later on from Martin Zehnder. The portfolio, I think quite clear, strong, solid, not question marks every other day, every other week. As well, the marine business is developing quite well. As well, I think here there had been some question marks from your side. Yes, we are progressing, and that's the portfolio we have today and tomorrow. We will hear later on what are the plans behind to be even more successful, more efficient. I also brought one story, and I think most of you, and as well when I arrived to Palfinger, it was one of the first questions I received. What about the TMF? What about the truck-mounted forklift? What is happening? You tried it several times. You tried to launch it in U.S., it didn't work so well. I can tell you today, it was really moved from a poor dog into a cash cow. Into a cash cow in terms of deals we are making. We made a huge deal now with Ryder in U.S., so yes, we are progressing. Even if we are touching hot potatoes, after some time, we manage to fix it, and I'm happy to report this. On the other hand, we can as well talk about quite remarkable numbers, facts and figures, as we would say. I think first of all, yes, we are the number one. Knuckle boom cranes, forestry cranes, timber and recycling, all this kind of stuff, we are always within the top three, and this shows that our products are well-recognized, our services are well-recognized. As mentioned already earlier, we are exporting in more than 130 countries globally, so we're a real global company. All this leads into our final number, which is expected for 2021, EUR 1.75 billion in terms of turnover. We'll hear later on from Felix Strohbichler what are the details behind that, how we are getting there, how optimistic we are, and even in these days, and I invite as well the audience here, join us on this path. We have heard before that we have many negative impacts. Till today, COVID is around, but we take this as an opportunity. We accept the challenge, moving forward, even being more successful in future. Where do we want to go? I think, we are not, we should not forget in terms of what's happening in the entire world. We are not isolated, so even PALFINGER is doing the greatest job on Earth, I cannot neglect what's happening around us in terms of globalization, sustainability, digitalization, demographics. Globalization, one, quite important element here is that the region itself have to been seen and identified as opportunities, not only just from the global scope. We need to make sure that we are really delivering the right results, the right solutions for our customers and for our dealers. As well, we have to bring more diversity. Globalization means we have to be more diverse and we still have maybe sometimes too many Austrians even in our own management team and staff, because we want to be more international. Digitalization, we'll hear a lot later on that, and I think here as well, that the technologies we are grabbing at the moment, we can use at the moment, that these are used in the best way, best manner, and as well to see where does Palfinger come from. Are we already there where we want to be? No, but we are on a good way, on a good path, and we will see later on what's happening. Last but not least, I think sustainability, and about sustainability, I think we could talk hours and hours what needs to be addressed. We rather prefer to identify what can PALFINGER do? What can PALFINGER do in terms of global warming? What can we do to become more carbon neutral? Here we can already report 75% of our electricity is green energy already. So we have a good base. We need to further develop it, but we see it as well as an opportunity. The Green Deal is a challenge, no doubt, but it's more of an opportunity to save resources, to save even costs and be more successful and more efficient in future. What does it mean in terms of our journey, in terms of how can we build on our strengths? As we said earlier, 90 years of experience, I think that's a lot, and this means a lot as a base, but we need to look forward. We need to look forward in terms of being the leading company for cutting-edge lifting solutions. There's no doubt when you talk about lifting solutions globally, you talk about PALFINGER. It is no difference if you do it somewhere in Africa, if you do it in U.S., it's always talking about PALFINGER. We need to have this premium approach as well in future. We need to invest in this premium approach, and this is as well something I think which will be quite interesting to you, to all of you, to the audience here, to see how this works and how this goes. In terms of our vision, I mean, we have here a lot of challenges ahead, no doubt, and we can really create a quite positive impact with our solutions. We have electrified products already. We have already a strategy to cover upcoming challenges in terms of the approach to be even better tomorrow in a sustainable manner, and heavily to reduce energy consumption, not only at our plants, which is one part, as well using green steel, for example. Today, Herbert Eibensteiner from voestalpine will join us, and he will as well tell us how they are managing in this supply chain to be even more green in future than ever. As I said already, these challenges are resulting in opportunities, and I clearly believe that these opportunities, if we take them properly, if we use them in right manner, can really create new business models. New business models where PALFINGER can step in, can get its portion, and can be even more successful in future than it has been in the past. Maybe to be more specific here, what do we mean in terms of driving this sustainability approach inside PALFINGER? First of all, we established here a sustainability council. To make sure that the ESG is really properly rolled out in terms of environment, social, and governance. I'm happy to report that this works now quite well, not only in the different functions all across the company. It's one element in this council which is driven together, which is supported and clearly focused to be even better tomorrow. We have all these kind of elements, and just to pick a couple of, I think, the positive impact with the solutions I mentioned already, and we will see later on what does it mean in our upcoming product strategy. Not to forget about energy consumption and emissions and waste. Here, there's a lot to do, and this leads as well in efficiency, improving our financial numbers, because if I have less waste, if I have less energy consumption, I can be more efficient, I can be more profitable at the end of the day. This is how we need to see it, and I think here it's important that, yes, politics give the right guidelines. They give us the frame, but then the industry needs to be able to fill that and to follow this kind of strategy and this vision, and this is as well something which we wanted to share with you today and to show you further on. On the other hand, what to do and how? It's always a question. Yes, we need to become better. We need to become more efficient, but how can we do so? We identified two really strategic pillars here. One is, the primary pillar is Go for Solutions. Yes, no doubt, we'll have the products, best products and premium products in the world. Also we want to provide solutions to our customers, dealers in future, which are state-of-the-art, which are unique, which are premium. Solutions means that a customer just can tell us which kind of problem needs to be solved, and he will find his lifting solutions at PALFINGER. No doubt which kind of energy use, no doubt in which region, no doubt which product line is questioned. On the other hand, the secondary pillar here is Go Digital. Go Digital means that we need to identify our strategies in terms of how do we communicate? How do we impact our products? How do we set our services? All this together is the entire digitalization strategy of PALFINGER. This is based on the strong roots which we have seen in 90 years, I think, and the numbers even this year are confirming this. An impressive brand. If you go somewhere, you do not even need to explain what does Palfinger mean in the industry. Everybody knows, and it's the benchmark as well to our competitors. A clear commitment on a sustainable manner to be sustainable. In terms of the pillars, just some example, and I think this visualizes it quite well, to go from a simple crane solution to an entire vehicle solution. Palfinger can even provide in future the entire vehicle, the entire solution, as our customers are requesting here. The second pillar, and I mentioned it already, is covering internal processes, because everybody here has this really different understanding. Just to be here aligned, we try now to address to you what does it mean for Palfinger. The internal processes like S/4HANA, the process rollout, the solution itself, but as well the services we are talking about, like predictive maintenance, the Smart Eye, the Fleet Monitor, business with data, what we are doing here on STRUCINSPECT, just to mention a couple of example here that you can really understand that this is not something we are dreaming about, which will come one day or maybe not. That's real. That's reality. This is who we are, and this is what we are talking about at PALFINGER when we talk about digitalization. Finally, what does it mean? What do we want to achieve in 2030? What does it mean to be number one, gaining EUR 3 billion of revenue, mostly through organic growth? What does it mean? Here we are counting on the solid product lines, as we mentioned already at the beginning, and the regions that everybody, every region, every product really contributes to these results, so that we lose all these bad shocks on our way. That we have an excellent global operation, local footprint as well, so that we have the right balance being global but strong enough locally. The COVID-19 impact last year has shown us that this strategy, multi-sourcing, et cetera, we will hear later on from the head of procurement, Harald Hauser, how this works, is quite important to us. To have really innovative lifting solutions so that I can already identify today probably upcoming requirements we have, our customers might have in five years. That's a premium product. I cannot lead anybody else, unfortunately, because I'm number one, yeah. That's a good thing. The bad thing is I have less orientation maybe than the number two and number three. On the other hand as well, the efficiency in the supply chain, the new business models we are talking about. STRUCINSPECT is just one topic we can talk about here, and which we can already mention. I can tell you next week already in Dubai at the Expo 2021, we will show STRUCINSPECT on a big reception and event here just to show what is Palfinger in this respect. We have already plenty of requirements. We have a couple of U.S. customers coming over who are working on maintenance on roads and rails as well. This will be a quite interesting story next week, where we will see about the further feedback. Last but not least, what is required here is customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction at the end of the day, no doubt the customers are paying our bill, so they need to be satisfied that, first of all, they pay on time and on the other hand, they will do, let's say, further investments on Palfinger. I think all this story together explains quite well where are we coming from, what's the solid base. I think most of the audience understood this already clearly before. What are our challenges, opportunities, and we will hear later on, luckily, that we have by far more opportunities than risks we would see here. Thank you very much for your attention. Thank you, Andreas, for these insights. Well, the company is already very successful, and we've heard a lot of the facts and figures already. And we also often report in our TV show about Palfinger's success. It stands here as a very strong company. Why do you think this transformation process has to be started now? Where is the need? We have to turn, as I said, these challenges and risks into opportunities. If we manage in these days, and Niki Popper said it properly, fact-based certainly. If we identify the risk, we see the challenges, then I can provide solutions. With all the know-how, the knowledge we have, the great teamwork is one Palfinger we have behind, I'm absolutely convinced and sure that we can be more successful in future, even the environment is more critical, is more volatile, yeah? In the past, we had long-lasting planning processes, yeah. Even today, we had then to see if we have to make additional tests that people can join physically inside here. We have to deal with this volatility, and I feel quite comfortable that my team, myself, we are ready to fight this battle and to win this battle. The Palfinger success is very much tied in also to your name and to your team. May I ask for a successful Strategy 2030, what would that mean for you personally? It would mean for me less work and more success. I mean, I think, and it's not only a joke because we need to become more efficient. Mm-hmm As well at the lower levels in the company. I think my colleagues, the board, the management team is really working their asses off, as you would say in the U.S. We are really working heavily to deliver the numbers as committed. We need to make sure that as well on the lower levels, we identify people who are willing to perform and having more fun and enjoying. Mm-hmm. I think this is as well what is missing in these days, mostly due to the COVID impact, that we are not having that much fun as maybe in the past. Yeah, that's a little. This is the second wish I would have for 2030. Yeah. That we all wish that, it will be over by then. Are there questions from the audience? You can ask questions also via internet, obviously. There are no questions so far. They're still writing at home. So there's a gentleman. Do we have the mic? Thank you. I would have a question concerning the first pillar you mentioned. From a product more to a solution, and you indicated that on top to the crane, there will also be more coming from your side as regards the truck in total, if I understood correctly. Can you kind of put that into perspective? What does it actually mean? What else on top to the truck, to the crane you will deliver? Yeah. The plan is as well that Palfinger, whatever brand you need, can provide a truck which we need in terms of our entire solution. The crane or hook lift or whatever, the tail lift is mounted on such a truck so that I can provide an entire solution as well really considering any kind of energy resource you need. If you have an electrified version, if you have a hydrogen version, Palfinger will always be ready to provide a premium solution as an entire solution for our customer, including the vehicle, if it's required, if it's needed. All right. The second question would be on the revenue target. If I do the math from your 2023 target to the 2030 target, you need about 5% top-line CAGR. Can you point out where you see that growth coming from, both regionally and also from a product perspective? I think important here is that, we have, let's say, quite stable market environments like EMEA, where we're doing more than 55% of our revenue. We have marketplaces, like North America, where we are now shooting for 25%, so a quarter of our turnover. There we have great opportunities out of the product itself, but as well of the network. We as well now looking quite closely into our network, not only if they are professional enough to deal with our customers and products, but as well if they have a succession plan, if they have a proper coverage. Stories you know already from some other industries like automotive, commercial vehicles, it was done couple of years ago. We are looking at all these elements together, all these little small wheels will make sure that we can really succeed and that we can really achieve this target which was mentioned today. Maybe along this way we might need to take another opportunity of taking another company on board or achieve or whatever. But the focus is clearly on organic growth based on the product lines we have, based on the strategy we have, and based on the regional approach we are having. This opportunity is still there. Just another number to mention here. We had a year-over-year increase in terms of sales only in Brazil of 175%. Yes, the numbers are still low, but this opportunity is there, and this is how I see a quite positive future about Palfinger. I think later on in the presentation of Felix, Martin, we will give more answers to that. We will have more meat on the bone, and then I think at the end of the day, if there are still questions open, let's discuss it. Thank you. Are there more questions? If not, I would say thank you to Andreas Klauser for sharing your thoughts and plans for Palfinger's future. Thank you so much. Thank you, Nadia. Yes. As already mentioned by Andreas Klauser, our next guest will give us more insights on the financial performance, especially with a focus on the midterm targets. Please welcome Palfinger's Chief Financial Officer, Felix Strohbichler. Hello, Felix. Welcome on stage. Palfinger just increased its midterm targets for 2024 last week. I'm sure this will be one of the points you will talk about. Absolutely. Those targets. This is one of our key messages. Felix- Thank you. The stage is yours. Thank you. Welcome to everybody also from my side. Good morning. I'm happy to talk about our financial performance, our targets, to give a little bit more meat to the bone, as Andreas Klauser mentioned. First of all, I would like to go back in history for the last decade, so not ninety years back, but let's look at the last decade. If you just look at the turnover development, you can see that we grew between 2010 and 2019 from EUR 650 million of revenue to EUR 1.75 billion. This was a massive phase of growth. In these years, until 2017, we did a lot of acquisitions. We had 28 acquisitions and joint ventures since 2010. The vast majority until 2016. Still more than 50% of the growth of Palfinger came from organic growth, but acquisitions were a major part. In the last four years, we have really been focused on integrating all the acquisitions we did in the past to get the synergies, the benefits out of all the acquisitions, and we really were much more careful on making further acquisitions, which would increase the complexity. We did some minor acquisitions. For example, dealers, which were clearly core business, where we didn't really stretch our complexity, et cetera. What I want to highlight on this slide is that if you look at the years between 2017 and 2019, you can see that the growth path continued the same way, but just coming from organic growth. This should just underline that the potential of Palfinger from organic growth is huge, and that we don't need to rely on further acquisitions to continue our growth path. This is what I want to bring across with this slide. Now, if we go to the actual situation, where do we stand today? We just released our Q3 figures, and probably most of you know them. Still, let me go back into the year 2021. Here we have three images which somehow reflect what has happened in 2021 to Palfinger. First of all, we had the cyberattack at the beginning of the year, and we are lucky that in the end we could manage this quite well. In the end, you don't see this anymore in our year to date KPIs that we had such a severe cyberattack at the beginning of the year. COVID is still a major factor, becoming now an even bigger factor than it used to be for several months now. Also supply chain, as we have already mentioned, has been a major topic throughout the year and is still a major topic. Actually the challenges were quite huge, but with this background we still could clearly achieve revenues and earnings above the record year 2019 in the first three quarters. If we look at revenue and we even don't talk about 2020 anymore, 2020 is gone. This was the COVID year. We want to achieve the next record year, so we need to compare ourselves against 2019. This is also what I will do on this slide. We could increase already our revenue in the first three quarters compared to the respective quarters of 2019. More important, this also happened of course on the EBIT line. Our EBIT margin increased from 9.2% in 2019 to 9.4% with all the difficulties we were facing this year. Of course, the most important part is that the consolidated net result increased over proportionally. Perhaps to give some more details on this development, I also want to show you some KPIs we didn't publish with the Q3 results. Starting first of all with the profits from at equity shareholdings. Here you can see that the number decreased from 2019 from EUR 15 million to EUR 11.5 million in 2021. The background of this is that in 2019, we were reporting EUR 8.4 million from our SANY shareholdings, so from the at equity participation we have in the SANY Group company, and I will come back to this later. If you deduct the EUR 8.4 million from the EUR 15 million, you can clearly see that our at equity companies have really increased their performance, and we are really showing here a clear success with our at equity companies in our group. Second line I would like to touch on is the net financial result. Also here you can see a clear improvement from 2019 and 2020. Part of the story is of course that our financial debt has substantially decreased, and I will come back to this in a minute. Last but not least, also our tax rate has improved, and all of this together, of course, helped us to get to this over proportionally positive net result. As I already said, we could decrease our net financial debt substantially since 2019, so we could decrease by more than EUR 170 million, and this with the COVID year in between. I have to admit that COVID even helped because we really could increase the whole focus on cash in the company, optimized our working capital, put a lot of emphasis on this, and this obviously paid off with now a substantially lower net financial debt level of around EUR 400 million only. At the same time, equity increased from EUR 620 million to EUR 690 million. This means PALFINGER always had a solid balance sheet, but today I would say we have a highly solid and extremely solid balance sheet structure. What I also would like to highlight here, our net debt EBITDA ratio is at an excellent level. I recall about 3-4 years ago, we had 3.5. Now we're at 1.8, which means that our debt capacity, our room to maneuver has substantially increased, and we can really move in a very flexible way into the future based on this balance sheet structure. All the other KPIs, equity ratio gearing, all of that is on track, close or above our target levels we set ourselves for our balance sheet. You can see the development of our investments, and already in the first three quarters with EUR 86 million of net investments, you see the highest figure ever. If you compare against 2018, which was the highest year up to now, of course, we have the IFRS 16 effect of a few million in there as well. Still it means never ever Palfinger has invested so much in future growth as in 2021, and this will continue also in the future because our plans are aggressive. We talk about this today, so obviously Palfinger is a company which believes in the future, and also this requires investments, and this is reflected already in this development. A slide, which we have shown now again, for the first time, I have to admit, is the ROCE development, because obviously, we are now above our previous target of 10% ROCE, so we are now at 11% in the first three quarters. This is also one of the reasons why we increased our midterm target, because obviously to set a target of 10%, if you're already at 11% is not anymore, a stretch target. If you look at the cash flow statement, the top line, of course, is a good starting base due to the very good operational profit. If you then go further down, the lines, we have, of course, some impact from the supply chain development. If you look at the change in working capital, we reduced dramatically our finished goods in the last year, and now we have kind of an adverse effect from suppliers not delivering in time. We have a lot of semi-finished goods work in progress in our factories, and this is reflected here in the change of working capital. This is something which is negatively impacting the cash flow and also, of course, the high level of investments with 100 million of cash flow from investing activities, plays into this KPI, why the cash flow is not that high or is relatively low. In the end, this is very logical based on the actual development. It's because we invest and it's because today we have to cope with supply chain issues. 2021, Andreas Klauser mentioned it already, we clearly target for a record year. We want to achieve a revenue of more than EUR 1.75 billion and EBIT above EUR 150 million, which was more or less the result of 2019. We have a very, very positive market environment still. I would say that if you look at the overall economic development, the peak of the cycle is already behind us. For us, driven also by the construction industry, with the boom of construction, with our customers having order books of two years, we still see a very, very positive market environment. Our order books are fuller than ever. We have an absolute record level of order book with a visibility until Q2 2022, so with an order reach of six months in the meantime. Of course, material availability remains a risk factor. We have implemented here a supply chain task force to constantly handle this and to optimize here what needs to be optimized based on the constraints, and Martin Zehnder will talk about this in a few minutes. Already mentioned our high level of investments. We are planning for EUR 130 million in 2021 and don't expect that this level of CapEx will decrease over the years to come, otherwise we would not be able to reach our aggressive plans for the future. What are then the targets for the next year? We have now raised last week our midterm target for 2024. I already mentioned ROCE, so obviously we have surpassed our targets, so now we set a new target, and we believe 12% is a good level we will be able to deliver until 2024. The 10% EBIT margin are a stretch. We have implemented measures. We are implementing measures which kick in over time. This is why we said it will still take the time. We communicated until 2024 to get to such a level. What is really the main change here in our midterm target is the revenue target. We said until two weeks ago, we want to reach until 2024 at least EUR 2 billion, but the at least was already pointing in the direction that this is probably at least 2023 or earlier. We are very glad that we can communicate here that the two billion we will see sooner rather than later if the tailwind from the market continues and the two point three billion euros revenue through organic growth is an absolutely realistic figure with clear plan behind for 2024. Of course, we still have some challenges on the way there in 2022. We still see a volatile environment. COVID is still around. Supply chain is still around. Material costs are at the peak level today, but in the end, all of that is factored in our 2024 targets for revenue, EBIT and ROCE. We have a clear vision for 2030. Andreas Klauser mentioned it, EUR 3 billion based on Go for Solutions, Go Digital, based on our strong roots, brand and our commitment to sustainability. What I want to highlight as well for you as investors, as analysts, it's not only about revenue. We also clearly want to grow the value, to increase the value of the company. The market capitalization needs to double as well as the revenue, and this is clearly our commitment that we will do whatever we can to clearly achieve also the target to increase our market capitalization to the same extent as we want to increase our revenue. Where will this increase in revenue come from? This was one of the questions we had before, and just if you look at the geographical split today, you see that EMEA is very dominant with 64%. 16% is APAC, LATAM and CIS, and about 20% of our revenues are coming from North America. We clearly see that EMEA still has a lot of potential, so the red surface also becomes bigger. We also have interesting growth rates in EMEA, but clearly we do expect over-proportionate growth from North America and all the other regions as well. In the end, we believe that there will be a split of around 50% EMEA, 25% North America, and 25% of the other regions. This is also reflected in our plannings and in our broken down targets to the regions. Finally, I would like to come to the share performance of PALFINGER, and it was already mentioned in the beginning that we have quite a positive share development since our IPO in 1999. Today, we are standing at around EUR 38.5, I think, in the morning. This is, I would say, a good level to stand here on a day with such a share price. This means seven times increase of the share price or even more than seven times increase of our share price since the IPO. We have today a market capitalization of around EUR 1.4 billion. As I said, EUR 3 billion should be the target in the next 8 years. We have a coverage today with seven analysts at the consensus since beginning of the week. As one of you raised, the price target is now EUR 43.21, which we highly appreciate that you also trust in our strategy, in how we do things and what we are planning to do. Last but not least, I would like to highlight our payout ratio and our dividend policy. We are constantly paying out one third of our net profit. I think this is also a very attractive factor for our investors. If you look at the shareholder structure of PALFINGER, we have here a free float where some of you would like to see a bigger figure. I will come to this. On the other hand, we have a very stable shareholder structure with our main shareholder, the PALFINGER family, which in the end ensures a long-term orientation, which allows us really not just to look on the short term, the next quarterly results, which also have to be the right ones of course, but clearly to focus on a long-term development. We want to add value over the years for the long term, and this is clearly supported here with our main shareholder. You also can see here, SANY Group is an investor of 7.5%, and this is the potential to increase the free float in the near future because we have communicated end of last year that we are negotiating with SANY to dissolve our cross holdings. We have 7.5% in a group company of SANY, and SANY owns 7.5% of the Palfinger shares. We've agreed on the principle that we want to dissolve this shareholding simply because in the end, we have a very successful operational partnership. We are doing around EUR 100 million-EUR 120 million of turnover in our common joint ventures. This is a very successful story. We are profitable in these joint ventures, so there is no further need for a cross holding to secure this. For both companies, it's better to be able to invest the funds into operational business at Palfinger AG and at SANY as well. We are still working on implementing this, on negotiating the details. I am not sure when this exactly will happen, but we believe it's a question of months, yeah, in the end, and probably this will happen then in the first half of next year. We are talking here about the book value of EUR 107 million. This is really a substantial topic for us, which in the end will increase dramatically our room for maneuver at PALFINGER. Thank you very much. I would be very happy now to receive some questions. Yes. Thank you, Felix. Thank you for telling us more about the financial performance. Are there questions? Can you introduce yourself maybe? I forgot to ask before. Yeah. Yeah. Charlotte Friedrichs from Berenberg. You mentioned that you expect to record stronger growth in the LATAM, North America regions. Okay. Can you explain what the drivers behind that are? Is it a greater catch-up potential post-COVID, market share gains? Where exactly do you expect that growth to come from? Thank you. The growth is actually coming from across the board, but as you said, and also presented, it's mainly coming, of course, over-proportionally from these regions. For example, if you look at Latin America, namely Brazil, the need for raw materials, commodities is clearly a driver for a huge growth there. The market has been quite depressed now for quite some time, and now we really see a huge demand from this area. This is by far the fastest growing region at this point of time. In North America, it's a huge market, and with only 20% of share in turnover, this is simply underrepresented. In North America, we still have a lot of potential, not relying on any future trends or so, but just really going aggressively into the market, positioning our products, working on our setup. We can increase here our turnover, and this is why we believe that we can reach the 25% there. We have a question from somebody watching us and following us via stream. His name is, and I hope I say it correctly, Jorge Gonzalez. He's from Hauck & Aufhäuser. He has different questions. Felix, you tell me if you've already answered the question. Can you please share your expectations of revenue split by region for 2024 target? Don't expect that until 2024 the world will change completely. In the end, I can only do the same thing as you also could do because I'm not Mr. Popper. I cannot do now an exact simulation of the future, but actually our plans show more or less a straight increase from today to 2030 in the regions, as it was shown also in the graph. We believe that on a yearly basis there will be a slight increase of all the other regions, and EMEA will slightly shrink in terms of percent, and the others will grow. Of course, we have here exact plans, where do we see the growth? In the end, now from the big picture, we do assume that this will develop over the next years and there is not a major chunk now coming in very quickly or a major chunk coming in at the end of this period. This will be a constant development, and we will just go towards this split we showed for 2030. Mr. Gonzalez also wants to know, can you please share with us your vision in relation to construction in China after the issues in the market with Evergrande? And also what is your vision on the reactivation of infrastructure investments in Europe and, especially, in the U.S.? And then he says, "Danke schön." We say danke schön to Mr. Gonzalez. I mean, China is, of course an interesting question because my personal assessment and, actually nobody knows exactly what it will mean, but my personal opinion on this is that this will impact the Chinese economy as a whole, and especially the construction industry. The good thing is that for us, China on the one hand is not such a big part. Yeah, I talked about, the size of China for us. This is in terms of a total business we are doing together with our joint venture around EUR 80 million-EUR 100 million in China, so not unimportant, but it's also not that huge. Still, our product portfolio in China is an upcoming portfolio. So it's not that these products are mature to the same extent as in Europe, for example. Even if the market in China would not grow to the same extent and in the same pace as in the past, still we would see a positive development simply because they are lagging behind in terms of using products of our kind. This still means independent of what's happening now due to Evergrande, we have an underlying trend of an increase of usage of our products simply because it's such a low base. Also in China they have lack of labor, they need to lift goods, and they will use more and more cranes and hopefully, of course, PALFINGER cranes. Mm-hmm. This was about China construction industry. Yes Construction industry in general I think was the second question. Yeah. Yeah. This is obviously a driver for us, and I mentioned before that our customers in construction industry have around two years of order book. I also do not see any reason why this trend that construction is booming should end. On the other hand, we also have to be a little bit realistic on the infrastructure programs. If you build a huge bridge, for example, or if you make a new railroad is perhaps not the right example. If you say a new highway, typically the PALFINGER equipment is not the core equipment to do this, yeah? We are mainly pushed by buildings, housing, smaller commercial buildings, et cetera. This is really fully going into our portfolio. If you talk about building roads, building bridges, yes, you will also see PALFINGER equipment there, but this is not the main driver. Of course, infrastructure projects drive the overall economic development, and we are then again benefiting from the overall economic development. Yes, it also helps us from this perspective. Mm-hmm. Good morning. Stefan Scharff, SRC Research. I have two questions. The first question is about your EBIT target and the target for the return on capital employed. You mentioned that it's over the economic cycle, or I could read it in your reports. We have quite high demand at the moment, and we are at a high point in economic cycle. What would be your margin if we are in a lower point in economic cycle? What would be a low point for your assumptions regarding the return on capital employed and the EBIT margin? My second question is about the working capital issue. You mentioned that the working capital was a little bit up, about EUR 35 million, if I took the number right, and your net debt was a bit higher in the third quarter than at half-year numbers. Perhaps you can say what this means for your interest expenses, now and for the coming years. Mm-hmm. First of all, thank you for the question regarding the over the cycle, because in the past it has led to some confusion, and we always had the discussion, what does it mean, 2024, 10% over the cycle? Because if you go for this target, it means that you believe on a positive development in this year. Does it then mean in 2024 you have more than 10%? Now we want it to be just clearer and precise and say it takes us until 2024 to reach the 10% EBIT margin. We have started programs, we have started to implement measures which will pay off over time, but it would be unrealistic now to promise that in 2024 we can achieve more than 10%. The 10% are already stretched. The underlying assumption is that the programs we have started, the ideas we are implementing are working out, are paying off. This is where we said, "Let's go away from over the cycle and let's clearly say, this is what we want to achieve in 2024." In the long term, of course, we would like to see more than 10%, but let's remain realistic. This is what we can see today. If we would now talk about over the cycle in 2024, it would still be a realistic figure of 10% we can achieve and not more. This is why we did away with the over the cycle. The second question was working capital, yeah. In the end, the impact on our financing cost is a little bit limited. We have here a lot of representatives from our banks also in this room, and sorry for them that our interest rate on average is about 1.3%-1.4%. This is at the moment in terms of cost factor, relatively limited. If you talk about on average 1.4%, it means that today, if we do a refinancing, we are talking about much lower interest rates. Any refinancing we are doing today is extremely low. I don't want to give you precise figures, to be fair to all of the present people here. Financing cost at the moment is actually no concern at all. However, still, our target is clearly to improve the capital employed, to improve the working capital, and to get the stock levels down as soon as the situation allows it. Markus Remis with RBI. Can I just ask, sorry, I have to sit down, otherwise I don't see you. Can I ask you, growth, of course, requires CapEx. What should we expect in terms of your investment going forward? Given that you target above average growth in the overseas markets, how should we think about the production? Do you expand it locally? Is that going to be brownfield, greenfield? What would be like a kind of CapEx to sales ratio that you require to get to this 2030 target? It has been clearly one of the key success factors, and Martin Zehnder will talk about this, that we are quite integrated in our supply chain. We do a lot of steps in the value chain in our own factories, opposed to our competitors who mainly rely on purchasing components and just doing the assembly. We will continue, of course, the path of investing in our factories. However, we will increase the share of outsourcing in the future, because to do everything on our own and to invest everything which is needed to achieve a EUR 3 billion turnover in 2030 would be probably something we couldn't deliver. We need to go for more outsourcing, but still we will invest in our own supply chain. In terms of CapEx level, of course, we will need a high level of CapEx also in the future. Already made a hint in my presentation that you should not expect that the CapEx level goes down. The EUR 130 million is for sure something we will also see in the years to come. Probably it will even increase with growing turnover, because otherwise it would just not be realistic to achieve the targets. I've seen simulations from analysts assuming that at a certain point of time, there is no more net financial debt at Palfinger and we need a banking license. This will not be the case, because we need to finance working capital, especially for overseas growth. We will have to finance all the investments. We also expect that we will need certain funds and also have net financial debt in the future to finance our growth. If there are not any other questions, I would say thank you to this very lively discussion and for your interesting information, Felix Strohbichler. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. At this point, I do wanna mention that all questions that are posed via internet will be answered by Palfinger, either here on stage or via email. To conclude this morning's first round of presentations, we want to hand over now to the COO of Palfinger. He will tell us more about the key success factors and the challenges in product management and engineering and the supply chain. Please welcome Martin Zehnder. Welcome, Martin. Hi, Andrea. We've heard already a lot about, yeah, the challenges that you face. If it's the supply chain constraints, the price increases, the availability of workforce or workers. You will tell us more about how these challenges can be solved. Yes, I will do this in my presentation. Thank you. I think it's important to know on one side, there are challenges, but on the other side, there are even more opportunities. In my presentation today, on one side, I will explain the current footprint from Palfinger in product management and engineering. I will also explain the current footprint from Palfinger in the supply chain, so on the procurement side, and also on the operation side. I will tell you some secrets why Palfinger is doing better in 2021 than most of our competitors. In the last part of my presentation, I will tell you what we do in the future to stay in the first position. To be successful in the market, the most important, and I think Andreas Klauser would be like to hear this, the most important is really to have a very strong sales and service network. Always it starts with the route to the market. This is the most important. To have that with a strong sales and service network, you need for your customers, you need the best product offering, the best solution offering. To do this best offering, you need a strong supplier footprint, and you need a strong own production. All this I will explain today. Let's start with product management and engineering. Here on this slide, you see on the left side our global R&D site setup. We have 33 R&D sites globally. In 13 countries with more than 700 employees. In the product management and engineering, you have to find a certain balance between modular system, between global standardization on one side to really reduce the cost and to make it easier to produce it for the plants. On the other side, and this was also mentioned from Andreas Klauser, you have to answer the need from the regions. We have to be flexible to adapt our solutions to the need in the regions. On one side, standardization. On the other side, to answer the needs from the region. To do this, in our product line management, we have global and the regional product management. Product management, we have outbound product management. This outbound product management is reporting to sales. We have inbound product management reporting to product line management, and here we find the balance and the fight between what is needed and how we can standardize on one side. We have a chief engineer really responsible for the modular system. Very important, these are our 33 R&D sites we have in all the major region, we have engineers to answer the need from the region. This is on the left side. On the right side from the organization, this is R&D metrics organization. We started with this organization also in our change to GPO. You see here we have eight product lines. We have product lines for land and product lines for the marine. On the right side, we have three center of excellence. There are a lot of synergies between the product lines. With the center of excellence, we have to standardize also between the product lines. For example, when we develop a telematics system for our products, this is important for the digital twin. It was also discussed already today. A telematics system makes no sense. We develop eight different telematics systems, so we have to develop this one times. Or from the processes we developed a Palfinger development process. How we can control our development performance, how we can integrate our suppliers, our plants, sales and service into the development process. Also this is globally standardized and always the same. With this global setup, what it means? What they produce? What is really our offering? You see here, Palfinger, we have the most powerful product offering in the market. We have the product offering on the right side for the marine-based customer and on the left side, we have it for the land-based customer. You see here a high variety of product offering. Even more important than this is we have the product offering for different industries, for different customer segments. Very important in last year, in 2020, in the middle of the COVID situation, somewhere in Q2, then was a strong ramp up from construction industry. Construction industry is about 50%, from the Palfinger turnover is based on construction industry, and construction industry is today extremely powerful. We have a big order book based on construction industry. One good example, another very important customer segment is offshore wind. In the next 10, I think even in the next 20 years, we will see a lot of investments in the offshore wind industry. We, as Palfinger, we have the products for this industry and this for sure will be a great business for us in the next years. The last example, below the offshore wind, you see this cruise ship, and we have also products for this, for this segment. These are davits and safety systems and safety boats. Cruise ship is still weak. Cruise ship is really still strongly impacted from the COVID situation. We see the first increase on the service business in this segment, but to make bigger, to find new big orders, for sure, this will take a certain time. To produce all these products, we need a very strong supply chain. Let me start with our supplier footprint and the most important factors behind our supplier footprint. In the afternoon, Harald Hauser, the Global Head of Procurement will have a certain deep dive, but let me point out certain points. We have EUR 1 billion sourcing spend in our group. The impact from the procurement to the overall success from PALFINGER is extremely important. This group, they have to do really a good job because 60% from the turnover is based on our sourcing spend. We are organized in seven categories with 100 sourcing groups plus minus. We have 700 strategic suppliers. From the 7,000 suppliers, 700 are strategic suppliers with a long partnership over many years, very important for the success from today. We have to deal with about 250,000 article numbers. This means 50,000 positions per day. Why long-standing partnerships with suppliers so important? First point, we need a very strong delivery performance. Today, to speak about strong delivery performance is perhaps a little bit special. Normally, delivery performance from our suppliers is up to 90%. At the moment, it's about between 70% and 75%. We have a lot of problems with the delivery performance from the suppliers. This is important. I'm sure we are able to deal better with our suppliers than our competitors. We are, for our suppliers, more important than our competitors, and we have the possibility to get the product. Also with all these problems today, we are able to make a record year, and this is the main message here. Very important is also, and I mentioned before, in the PALFINGER development process, we work together from the engineering with the suppliers. We have to integrate the suppliers very early in the engineering process to really do the best product together. In the end, we need stable suppliers, stable quality to be number one in the market. In the supply chain, on one side, we have the suppliers, but on the other side, and Felix Strohbichler mentioned, we have also the own plants. Let me jump here into our own operation footprint. We have more than 8,000 employees in our operation footprint. Part of these 8,000 employees are in joint ventures, but these are all the guys that are working in operation for PALFINGER. We have these production plants in 17 countries, and we have 33 production sites worldwide. We are very close to our market, very close to the customer. This is one part of the. On the right side, an important success factor from PALFINGER is also we are able to produce high quality products in best cost countries. We have plants in Argentina, in Brazil, in Russia, in Bulgaria, in Vietnam, and in China. All these countries are best cost countries, and we have the experience since years to really produce in these countries highly qualified products. This is for sure very important success factor from PALFINGER. Now, let's talk a little bit about vertical integration. Palfinger very often starts really in the steel production. With laser cutting, with bending, then we go into the welding process, then in the machining, so to machine the parts, painting. Normally the most of our competitor starts on the assembly process, and we do also installation. We not only produce a crane, we produce also solutions. In a situation like after crisis with COVID, with our own plants, Palfinger was able to much faster ramp up to come out of the crisis, and this was a big benefit for our market, for Palfinger based on this. There are a lot of advantages to have these own plants. On the other side, this was a question also before, we have high structural costs. We are based on these plants, and when we have a market decline, for sure we have higher fixed costs to deal with. We have also higher level of capital employed. 2021, and also 2020, for sure it was not a normal year. It was big challenge for us. You can see here, this on the headlines, also PALFINGER faced all these challenges. What is important for me, we have to accept the challenge, we have to deal with these challenges, and we have to find the best measures. I will show on the next page, how we deal with this and what are our measures. On one side, supply bottlenecks. Today, we have a lot of missing parts in our plants. Based on the missing parts, each day we have to discuss what we are able to produce, what we can produce, what it means for the customers, how we have to inform the customers, how we have to deal together with the engineers, perhaps to approve new suppliers, new parts. We have to deal with this. For this, for short and fast communication, we installed a supply chain management task force, and this works really very, very well. We have to deal with long lead times. For example, for our solutions, we need trucks. Today, the lead time for a truck goes up to 11 months. With Photovoltaics, we have more or less to know for the full next year how many trucks are needed, when these trucks are needed, what kind of trucks are needed. For this is very important. We have a strong planning process. This is the S&OP, sales and operation planning process. This process we discuss each month. What is the need from the market for the next 24 months? What is the answer from operation? What we need from our suppliers? Here we have to work very strong together. We have to fight against price increases. For example, steel price in the U.S. this year, today is four times higher the steel price in the U.S. than it was in Q1. Four times. Something like this was never happen. In Europe, it's 2-3 times. U.S., four times. It's totally crazy. We have also to deal with geopolitical challenges. We see that all these games, these power games between U.S., between China, with taxes, with import regulation, all this we have to deal, we have to be flexible. We have to optimize our footprint, also based on these challenges. What is important, once again, we accept this challenge, we deal with this challenge, and I think we deal, or I'm sure we deal better with these challenges than our competitors. This is the reason why we can show also in 2021 in turnover and in EBITDA record year. We are very proud about this. Now I discussed about challenges, about footprint, but now I would like to inform also so in which direction we have to go. What we have to do to show the same progress, the same performance also in the next years. Let's start with product management and engineering, and let's start with Go for Solutions. Go for Solutions, Andreas Klauser explained already, is our primary pillar. What is behind Go for Solutions? Important is we have to understand our end customers. We have to understand the job to be done. We have to understand the different needs in the different region. We have to be, and this is the key point, we have to be extremely close to our end customer. For this, we have this product management, outbound, inbound, I explained. I think Andreas also mentioned, we have also to anticipate what is needed in the future. For example, sustainability, and I will come to this point, is a big driver for the future needs. Here we have to understand what that means for our product offering in five and in 10 years. Based on this and based for Go Digital, we started with the ACES program. ACES stands for autonomous function. We have to offer on our products autonomous functions, like you know from your car, drive assistant, park assistant, things like this. We have to offer function that makes for the end user easier to operate with our product. We have to connect our product, so we have to have this digital twin. This digital twin from our products and solutions helps the engineers to better understand what is going on really in the field with the product, helps the service organization to follow the maintenance strategy, helps the sales organization to offer extra tools like a Fleet Monitor to their customers. So connectivity extremely important. Then the third part are eco-efficient solution. What means eco-efficient? It means less noise, less weight, and less energy consumption. How we see our responsibility and how we can impact our CO2 footprint. I will ask you a question. What? I have a guessing qu- Now? Yes, now. I have a guessing question to you. This is not-- This is- This is not- Unfair. This is not prepared. I'm not paid for this. Yeah, that's okay. I ask the same question also to my friends from the board and also from the engineers, and it's not so easy, but it's good. Our solutions, our crane, hook loader, hooklift, timber recycling crane, all these products are installed today mainly on trucks with a diesel engine. Yes? When the operator operates his product, then the power comes from the diesel truck. Yes? Yes. The engine gives the power. The... Now it comes to the question. Because I think it's important to have this picture in mind. If the diesel engine is burning one liter of diesel to power our products. One liter of diesel, how many CO₂ kilograms or grams are produced from burning one liter of diesel? What is your guess? I don't- One liter diesel, you burn in an engine, how many kilogram, grams CO₂ are produced? You have an idea? No. You have a guess? No, there's no way I know. She's not prepared. No, this was not. It's good. I'm interested. Has somebody a guess here in the audience? What do you think? What is your guess? Uh. Yeah. It was not a fair question. But I will answer for you. This is to burn 1 liter diesel, you are producing 2.5 kg CO₂. That's a lot. 1 liter diesel, 2.5 kilogram. This is now the next slide, and this is to explain here. Thanks. Thank you. Perhaps I have to have another guess. No. This is the CO₂ footprint from PALFINGER. You see in the center, and also Andreas Klauser mentioned already, in the center you see our plants. Our plants, we have 75% is based on green energy. We have a lot of photovoltaics, and we invest in this also today and in the future. Our plants from the CO₂ footprint from PALFINGER, and this is Scope 1 and 2, is less than 1%. On the left side, these are our suppliers, so this is Scope 3 upstream. Here the biggest impact comes from the steel producer. Here the impact based on suppliers is 7%. In the afternoon will be a discussion also with Herbert Eibensteiner from voestalpine. voestalpine is offering today already green steel, but only 10% of the steel is then linked to green energy. For sure, for voestalpine it will and for all of the other steel producers, it will take 10-20 years to really go totally to green steel. I think this could be part of the discussion also this afternoon. Very big impact on the supplier side. The biggest impact, and this is exactly the point, this is the product in use. This is Scope 3 downstream. This is from 92%, and here we see a big potential to install our products on e-trucks, on hydrogen trucks powered with hydrogen and fuel cell. Here we see big potential on this side, and we have to develop our product to the easy work with this new technology. Today in Germany, we have already government subsidy for the extra cost for a e-truck solution, and the government subsidy is 80% for the extra cost. Also a number perhaps you can then remember, a e-truck is about 2.5 times more expensive than a diesel truck, so huge leap from EUR 100,000 to EUR 250,000 for a truck. Big impact for sure, we need some government help. This is on the engineering side. Go for Solutions, Go Digital and understand the impact of sustainability for our future product offering. What that means for the future on the procurement side, so for sure we will stay on the strong partnership with our suppliers. Very important. We have even more to integrate our suppliers into the digital chain. And we have to develop more knowledge on our side to really, to have more expertise in these mechatronic topics, what is also related to ACES. On the operation side, perhaps the last point, to go to this installation, we need a lot of installation plans, so we have to invest in installation capabilities all over the world. For this, and this is then on the logistics and supply chain management side, we have to really discuss and we have to adapt our strategy and make or buy. For sure, we will not have all the resources to do all together, so we have to find also in the future very strong suppliers. What that means for 2030 for me, what makes Palfinger also in 2030 competitive and successful as a company? We have to offer to our customer sustainable solutions. We have to collaborate with best-in-class partners and from the engineering side, from the operation side, from the sales and service side. We have really to cooperate with best-in-class partners. We have to develop a resilient supply chain, so we have to work on this. Perhaps one of the most important point, we have to find and to retain talented people. In the end, it always starts with good people. That's from my side. Thanks. Thank you, Martin. Now I have a question for you. It is from- A guessing question? It is a question, a clear question, a concrete question from Daniel Lion from Erste Group. Can you share some details of your efficiency programs that will burden your cost base until 2024? What are the programs that you were referring to? Very good question. Today, we have a lot of efficiency programs, yes? Mm-hmm. We go in mainly in operation, we move strongly in automated processes. We invest a lot in robot welding, for example. If I compare with 5-10 years ago, we didn't invest in robot welding in Bulgaria, for example, because to weld it by hand, it was not much more expensive than a robot welding. Today also there, we have the problem to find the welders. Mm-hmm. We invest in robot welding. This is on one side. On the other side, today, the efficiency in our plants based on all these delivery constraints, to be honest, is not on the best level. The efficiency is behind what it was one year ago or two years ago. We have to fight to bring the supply chain under control and also to work on this. All in all, based on digitalization, also to have the digital twin in operation, in supply chain, all this brings our efficiency up. Are there questions from the audience? There's a gentleman. Thank you. Nikolous Somogyi from RBI. I just wanted to clarify, the EUR 1 billion in sourcing is per annum you mentioned, or the, that was on the slide? Yes. Okay. Thank you. Other questions? Our sourcing spend is about 64% from the total turnover from the group. Okay. Thank you. Yes. Very important. Harald makes a good job with his guys. Good. Yes. There's one question here on my laptop. Yeah. From Miro Zuzak. He's from JMS Invest. Regarding installing the solution on e-trucks, his question is, do you stick with electrically driven hydraulic actuators for the moment? How quickly do you expect these to gain market share? This is a very good question. When we started to discuss what is the impact for our products when we install our products like a crane on a e-truck, in the first understanding, we thought the impact is not so big, because what in the end, we still have hydraulics and hydraulic power, so the energy density is much higher than on an electric solution, electric actuation. For sure, we will operate our cranes also in the next years with hydraulic power. Then we started to discuss and what we learned, the efficiency from our hydraulic systems is not so high, and we can optimize this efficiency from the hydraulic systems. In the past, if you have a truck with 500 kilowatt or 600 horsepowers, to operate the crane is easy. The efficiency is not important. Tomorrow, we have a truck with a battery capacity of 400 kWh, then it's very important you have an efficient system in your own solution. That means we have to invest in efficiency on the hydraulic system. When there is not a high level of power needed, we also go to electric actuators, but this is only a small part of the solution. Mr. Gonzalez has another question. Mr. Gonzalez from Hauck & Aufhäuser. Can you please give us more color on the management of the supply issues related to semiconductors? In the afternoon, we will also jump into this topic. Harald Hauser, but I can tell you from our side. When the semiconductor story started perhaps 6, 7, 8 months ago in the car industry and in the trucks industry, PALFINGER was not impacted. Mm-hmm. I hoped a little bit that this was wrong. It will not be our case. The difference is in the car industry and the truck industry, the supply chain for the semiconductors much closer to the assembly of the trucks and cars. Our supply chain, we have suppliers, sub-suppliers, and sub-sub-suppliers. They are using these semiconductors, and all of these guys they had a certain stock level. That means PALFINGER was impacted for the first time by the semiconductors about two months ago, and we really fight against this. Mm-hmm. For example, what we did, and this was also decided in this task force, we reduced the output from the high-tech cranes. They have a high need of semiconductors, and we do a little bit more simple cranes to bring these cranes to the market. It was a big discussion with the sales guys, because we had to inform all the customer first to get this crane and later this one. There are a lot of problems. Today we have a certain shortage based on this, on the radio control. We decided yesterday we send out the cranes without radio control, and then the service guys will bring the radio control perhaps two weeks later. There are a lot of challenges, but we are able to handle this, and we are able to make a record year. I think these are good last words, record year. Thank you, Martin. Yeah, I think it's a great word. Thanks. Thank you so much. Thanks. This was our first part of today's event. PALFINGER has always in the past been a very ambitious company and proves to continue to be ambitious. Starting today, it opens up a new chapter. It is clear that for a transformation of this scale, you need a strong partner network and also a very strong strategy. I think what we've heard so far is that PALFINGER has a concrete roadmap for all the challenges ahead. There is more to come in the afternoon. We will hear more from PALFINGER's side. We also have CEOs with us joining us to talk about CEOs of very important Austrian companies that will talk about the market situation. Please stay tuned. We will have a short lunch break. We will see each other again at 1:30. Thank you so much. See you later. Hello and welcome back, everybody, here in the Marx Halle and everybody joining us from home or their office spaces. Well, we had a very interesting first session where we got an overall look on the strategy and plans by PALFINGER's board members. After that, we want to underline all these points that we've heard so far with global leaders from PALFINGER to get further clarity and understanding how the growth will be managed. Just to let you know that, we'll do this in one round, let's put it this way. At the end of this afternoon's session, you will have the possibility for a joint Q&A session where also the board members will join us again here on stage. Keep in mind all the questions that you wanna pose. You'll obviously have the opportunity to do so. Our first speaker of this afternoon session will talk about the transformation of smart products into smart solutions, what are the main steps, and how can the different customer demands be addressed. He sent us a recorded presentation. It's the Senior Vice President, Global Product Line Management and Engineering. It's Andreas Hille, and here is his presentation. Thank you very much, Nadja, for the introduction. I'm really sorry that I'm not able to present this really important topic to you today in person. I'm happy to give you a short introduction of how we at PALFINGER are transforming our current product offering into smart solutions. The core business of PALFINGER today is to provide different types of lifting systems which are installed on trucks, either at our internal PALFINGER installation center or at our global partner network. With the definition of our solution strategy, we are now extending our responsibility from products towards fully integrated lifting solutions. These solutions consist of our core lifting system, the vehicle, and all other necessary elements like the vehicle accessories or the logistics support systems. Doing that, we are taking full engineering responsibility for the complete solution, from design to manufacturing, all the way to installation and service. Important is that we are extending our scope of engineering responsibility from our core lifting system towards fully integrated solutions. We develop fully integrated solutions and ensure that the solution, for example, the crane vehicle, meets all requirements of our customers and his application. With this, we are extending our PALFINGER quality understanding and the PALFINGER performance from the core lifting product to the complete and fully integrated solution. This will greatly support our customers, but in addition, we are also supporting our global partner network. We have defined four levels of products and solution with which we will serve our customers and partners. Number one, products. We will continue to serve our existing partner, providing products which are installed by our partners in the same way as we do it today. Then we move to solution number one. We are taking full engineering responsibility to design fully integrated solution, which will be handed over to our certified partners, which will use our specifications and our installation instructions to install our lifting systems on the chassis and to deliver a complete solution to our customer. Continuing with that, we move to solution two. We will establish internal installation centers where the complete solution is assembled and commissioned by us, but the chassis is provided by our customers. Last, solution number three, where we will offer fully configurable, ready-to-use factory build solutions to our customers, everything out of one hand at the expected PALFINGER quality and performance level. At PALFINGER, we have always focused to understand our customer applications, the needs and the requirements, and what job our customer is executing to create value. This knowledge is the foundation to design products which really make a difference in the markets and in the hands of our customers. Over the years, our products have evolved from a core mechanical system to a highly complex mechatronic product. We have moved forward, and we have continued to introduce a wide range of new controlled and assisting functions to move our products and solutions into the next years towards autonomous operation. Today, we are building up capabilities to stay connected with our products and to link them to other global ecosystems. With the creation and exchange of data, we will be able to generate additional value within the value chain of our customers. With the formulation of our PALFINGER solution strategy, we are now moving to the next level. As I said before, we are now moving from smart and connected products to seamlessly integrated solution. This will allow us to further increase customer value by generating following key customer benefits. First, we will further optimize the performance of the integrated solution. At our core lifting system, we have reached a maturity and a performance level which limits our overall optimization potential. Optimized mechanical shapes and designs, the use of high-strength steel has today limited effect on the performance of our core lifting systems. On the other hand, in the integration of our lifting system with the vehicle, the potential is still extremely high. We can save far more weight in the optimization of the mounting frame on the vehicle instead of reducing material on an actuator or moving towards carbon, and use it as a material on our main boom. Designing a complete solution, for example, a complete crane vehicle from start to end, including all interfaces, modules, accessories, we can optimize the interaction of the different systems, system elements to increase efficiency and therefore performance. All this in high-quality factory-built from PALFINGER. Second, the seamless integration of different systems. Today, we are mainly connecting our system with other systems like the vehicle. Connecting means mounting the crane on the chassis of the vehicle, connecting the hydraulic pump to the vehicle engine, and interchanging control signals from our lifting system to the vehicle. Integration, on the other hand, means that the mechanical system of the crane and the vehicle are designed and integrated together, or the control logic of our crane is an integrated element of the control architecture of the complete vehicle. What you see here is an illustration of our new Smart Loading Assist functions for hookloaders. By using a 3D camera to detect the position of the container and automatically position the hook at the correct height, it is supporting the driver to load the container. It's minimizing the risk of accidents and speeds up the complete loading process. Integration means that we are transmitting the camera signal on the screen of the vehicle dashboard, so that the driver can actively steer the truck to the correct position. As a next step, we will integrate the information of the camera into the vehicle park and steering pilot system, so that the vehicle autonomously steers and maneuvers the vehicle to the correct position. All this can only be achieved if we develop our lifting system in parallel and harmonized to the development of the vehicle. This requires close collaboration with the vehicle OEMs and critical system suppliers to develop together the solution of the future, moving from connected systems towards seamlessly integrated solutions. As described before, the understanding of the real customer application, the so-called job to be done, is a critical success factor in the development of integrated solutions. At PALFINGER, we are providing lifting systems to a wide range of different markets, segments, and application. Understanding the different needs and the requirements of our customers and to translate those into configurable modular system has been a critical success factor to minimize cost and complexity. In the execution of our solution strategy, we are essentially combining the complexity of various modular vehicles with the complexity of various modular PALFINGER lifting systems, with the complexity of multiple different applications and operational requirements and regional or local laws and standards. The wide range of external market-driven complexity needs to be managed by an intelligent and highly professional variant management system to minimize the internal complexity of our product variations and our internal value chain. Variant and complexity management is a core competence of PALFINGER today. With the introduction of the PALFINGER solution strategy, we will lift this capability to the next level to generate a critical asset for our future success. At last, we see that our industry is going electric towards a sustainable future. Moving towards electric vehicle will generate new challenges but also great opportunities for our industry and for us in the implementation of our solution strategy. With the introduction of electric vehicles, not only the power supply interface to the vehicle will change, but also the requirements on our lifting system to manage and to optimize power consumption, that all will become increasingly important. Today, at our combustion-driven vehicle applications, the power consumptions of a complete lifting system performing the lifting job is not an important requirement. Lifting performance, controllability, speed, dynamics, and the overall weight of the system are the critical requirements of today's applications. Moving toward electrified vehicles, these requirements will remain at high importance. In addition, we need to significantly reduce the power consumption of our lifting system. Storing and carrying the required energy to achieve the required drive distance and to perform the lifting job has a great impact on the overall cost of an electrified vehicle and the total CO2 footprint of the integrated solution. Minimizing the energy consumption and the ability to recuperate energy during operation will become a critical differentiator within the electric world of tomorrow. In addition, electrified vehicles and lifting solutions will require a completely different set of capabilities within the installation, service, and repair process. By providing completely engineered and integrated solutions to our partners and customers, the need to develop these capabilities and to master the new world of electrified solutions are greatly reduced for our customers because we take care of that. You can see that the execution of our solution strategy and to move from smart product to seamlessly integrated smart solutions is a great opportunity for PALFINGER to serve our customers and to further differentiate our products and solutions in the markets. We are building up required new capabilities to be able to provide the solutions of the future for the benefits of our customers. Thank you. This was Andreas Hille. Let's give an applause. I'm sure he's joining us online. Thank you, Andreas. I suggest we quickly move on to our next speaker, who also sent us his recorded speech. He will talk about how PALFINGER evolves its digital business models, its Vice President Corporate Incubator, Philipp Smole. He will tell us more or give us an overview of the digital map for PALFINGER and also tell us if there are already examples of new data-driven business models. This is for you, Philipp Smole. Thanks, Nadia, for the introduction. Unfortunately, I cannot be here today in person, but I hope to convey my message through this video. As already pointed out by our Executive Board, digitalization is very important for us to realize our Strategy 2030. Maintaining our market leadership and position requires us to understand our customers and their needs in detail, develop the right solutions, and bring flexible business models to them. It's important to understand that our ambition is very clear. However, the path to achieve it yet remains to be shown. Therefore, we take a learning approach, and we learn as we progress. We use data to inform our decisions. One thing, however, is very clear. Digitalization and the digital transformation is not a topic of one unit or a single person. No, it requires an effort of the complete organization and affects all of us. Therefore, we need to transform and build capabilities in all of our organization, but also help our partners and customers to go along with us. This is why at the heart of everything we do, it's the people which are the focus of our digital transformation, the people we work for and work with, our customers we serve, our partners and employees. We develop together our smart lifting solutions and deliver our services. A little bit later on, Gerhard Sturm will explain how our digital customer journey is being used and how we evolve digital touchpoints throughout that journey to support our customers. Let's not forget, we need to focus also to build our foundations and strengthen them. A strong IT core and digital backbone is the foundation of every digital organization, making sure that we are taking the right choices between on-premise and cloud services, having the right responses for the emerging threats from the security landscape, but also making sure that we equip ourselves for the future way of work, so we can work from anywhere, standardize our processes. Only if we strengthen that foundation and further build, we'll be successful in the marketplace in future. A second focus point is our process organization, which is running and making sure that our processes are running well. We need to ensure that we have repeatability, but also reproducibility in our processes, ensure high quality in the results, but also making sure that we take decisions based on facts and data. Only if our foundation and our processes are running well, we can do what a technology company is doing best, deliver smart lifting solutions for our customers, helping them in their daily routines and to outperform in the marketplace. Andreas Hille has already introduced this important focal point for us and with our autonomy program, our connectivity program, but also making sure that we are emission-free and electrify our fleet, we're taking a huge step forward. This is not it. Just developing solutions is not sufficient. We also have to produce them and digitize our complete value chain, making sure that we connect the shop floor to the top floor where decisions are being taken, making sure that we are a complete data chain from our tier-three suppliers towards our customers, support our operators with tools to make sure that quality is being produced and safety ensured, to ensure comprehensive logistics reports to optimize our value chain. Last but not least, make sure that we can operate predictive and preventive maintenance and services. This is where we need to focus next. Our last focus area, of course, are our business models. Only if we get the other areas right and we have new solutions, we can grow with the market, and I will go more in detail what that means to us. What is connecting all of those focal points? There is one simple answer. It's data and data architecture, which is extremely important. Some say data is the new gold. Actually, I don't believe that. The information we derive from data, that's the important fact. Only if we make available the right data set at the right point in time to inform a decision of our customer or ourselves, we really create value. What you can see here is extremely important, because that is the focus of the digital transformation of Palfinger. It's a holistic approach, which is enabling through a couple of different measures and initiatives that we transform ourselves and that we can realize our vision 2030. What does that mean for our business models? I've already stated that data is important pillar to capture value in future for our company. Only if we have a comprehensive data set available and really and truly understand our customer needs, we can develop the right solutions and offer flexible business terms. It's our ambition to create a large revenue stream through data-driven business models in future. How we are going to do this, I will explain through a couple of examples I have brought with me today. I'm very happy to say that our transformation has already produced some recognizable results. First and foremost, we are focusing on data-driven business models. In an adjacent, almost disruptive area with STRUCINSPECT, we have founded a company which is revolutionizing the bridge inspection market. We will go more in detail right afterwards, but actually driving pure data-driven models is one example how PALFINGER plans to capture value in future. We are not only innovating in adjacent and disruptive areas, but also around our core. With our PALDesk services and our PALFINGER CONNECTED, smart services and contracts are being rolled out. Gerhard Sturm will go more in detail a little bit later, how we generate additional value around our machines with smart services and going forward. Another important pillar is that we recognize that the market conditions are changing. Customers have flexible needs to interact with our machines, and we see the rise of lifting-as-a-service platforms. We will not build such a platform ourselves. However, we need to get ready to participate, and this is why we are exploring ideas for usage-based business models, rental and functionality on demand. This is what we have the incubator for, so we are trying out how we can best capture the value there. Last but not least, we explore further business opportunities and drive enabling factors. Very important so is, for example, our e-commerce service with PALDRIVE. The very first time that we can basically offer a complete solution directly to our dealers and customers. This is extremely important for our future business models to go forward, that we build those enabling processes and functions which will help us in the next step. Let me make this a bit more concrete and give you a glimpse behind the curtain. What's really cooking in the PALFINGER kitchen? Some of the examples I have brought with me, it's a number of 3, can show and point out where we want to go in future. A very important one is to get real-time data from our solutions which are out in the market and connect the relevant stakeholders which are there. With the PALFINGER CONNECTED, we have established a platform and launched it two years ago and are continuously equipping our high-end machines to capture real-time data from our products and solutions in use to support the operators with an operator monitor in the execution of their daily job, have a fleet management system coming with it, supporting the dispatchers with job planning in the back office and the owners of the machines. Last and not least, our service cockpit, which is an extension of our PALDesk and is helping the service partner to do the interventions and maintenance intervals at the right point in time. Our ambition is to increase the overall equipment efficiency, support our operators in their execution, but reduce unplanned downtime. PALFINGER CONNECTED is so much more. Actually, through receiving the real-time data and having the records also out of our production from every single machine and knowing the service records, we're working towards providing preventive and predictive maintenance services. This is unlocking quite some potential for PALFINGER, but more importantly for our customers. A second example, Andreas Hille has already introduced it, is that we make our devices much smarter. With the Smart Loading Assist, we will actually combine new technologies to build a smart assistive function. With a rearview camera, we recognize the roller container, and the hook is automatically adjusted, so a pickup can be done almost automatically. The Smart Loading Assist is so much more. Actually, through the rearview camera, we can also detect the container ID, and by using the GPS location from our PALFINGER CONNECTED, we can help our recycling customers using those containers to introduce container logistics because we can provide the data. This is a second pillar of value generation in future, that we use the data which is being created around our machines to provide additional services for our customers. My last example, and the one I've participated also, is STRUCINSPECT, our bridge inspection service. An idea which has been around within PALFINGER for quite some time. Three years ago, together with strong partners, VCE Vienna Consulting Engineers and the Angst Group, we have founded a company with the aim to revolutionize the bridge inspection market. In the past three years, we have gone through quite a development steps, have assembled the right technologies, a strong team, executed more than 80 projects, adopted large customers from ASFINAG to ÖBB to extend in the Nordics, regionally and internationally. We've pivoted the business model of STRUCINSPECT. We started with project business and have now launched a technology platform which is bringing together the most relevant stakeholders, performing asset management in an infrastructure lifecycle hub. We are very proud to present today as a world premiere, the new STRUCINSPECT vision, which will be presented at the Expo Dubai next week. Go and enjoy the STRUCINSPECT video. It's giving us the vision where PALFINGER wants to go with data-driven business models in future. Thank you for your attention and have still a nice day. The way we look at infrastructure has fundamentally changed. We bring people together, assure safety, and head into new directions with a view for efficiency and sustainability across the entire life cycle. StrucInspect revolutionizes infrastructure lifecycle management. StrucInspect provides knowledge and services for data capturers, engineers, and managers, connects experts, provides digital services, and ensures quality. Data capturers demonstrate their expertise. Artificial intelligence assists engineers in damage detection. Structured data along all process steps ensures precise and efficient maintenance activities. StrucInspect is so much more. You get best practices in trainings, blogs, and access to an expert network. Everything on one platform. StrucInspect enables a digital, sustainable, and connected future and supports your digital transformation. StrucInspect shares technology leadership among participating experts. Data capturers, engineers, and infrastructure managers have a complete overview using the world's first hub for digital inspection and lifecycle management. StrucInspect, the power of more. Well, that's a pretty impressive project. Thank you, Philipp Smole, who is also joining us online. Thank you for your contribution and for your glimpse behind the curtain, as you put it in your presentation. Mr. Smole already announced almost our next speaker. He mentioned who will give us an overlook or an overview of the digitized customer journey. Please welcome here on stage, he's here in person, Gerhard Sturm. Gerhard, you will tell us how you see this journey, this customer journey, how it will develop. Mm-hmm. How or which tools can support the sales organization? Please, Gerhard. Thank you. Thank you, Nadia. Yeah, first of all, welcome and also good afternoon from my side. Before I touch base on this question and to focus, how we are going to shape the digitalized customer journey, I would give a short recap as well on what has happened in our markets in the last months. Starting more or less in September last year, we saw order intakes quite significantly growing in most of the regions. We have seen very, very strong order intakes then starting February, March, April this year, more or less in all customer segments, but predominantly in the construction industry, the forestry industry, but as well in the recycling and the waste management industry, where we partly have seen skyrocketing order intakes. Philipp Smole already mentioned that we are having a record order book. The positive thing is that this record order book is not only driven by our strongest regions of EMEA. This is strongly coming from very positive development in several markets. It's coming from North America, where we are almost doubling the order book. It's especially coming from Latin America, where we're almost tripling the order book. It's as well coming from the CIS countries, where we have a very stable and positive development. This order book gives us good order coverage well into the second quarter. It's giving us a good visibility. Based on this solid and very strong outlook for the next year, we can tackle now a more strategic issue, a more future-orientated issue, and this is the digitalized customer journey. I would like to point out that the aim is not the digitalization itself or the digitalization of the customer journey. This is a tool. This is a means. Palfinger is focusing very much on the need of our customers. Palfinger is an extremely customer-centric company, and we are aiming towards making the life, making the work of our customers easier, more efficient, and above all, safer. Traditionally, we are in an industry which is a rather conservative one, and this specifically applies to the route to the market. We need to understand where our industry is developing to. We need to understand the changes in our industry. We need to anticipate changes in our business models. We need to get prepared for it, but we also need to be careful that we don't start revolutions with this topic of digitalization. Talking about digitalization, we also need to understand well where we are coming from. Historically, the roles between PALFINGER, our channel distributors, our dealers, our sales partners, our service network, has been pretty clear. PALFINGER was providing the product on a pallet, and the rest was taken care of by our network. The customer relation, the service, the marketing, but as well the installation, which is key for our product, have been taken care of by this, by our network. Today, these roles are blurring into each other, and this is especially driven by seamless digital communication. All along the customer journey, together with our network, together with our partners, we need to rebundle our strength and to shape this in a new way. Let's look back a little bit into history. Before 2016, the only PALFINGER Group-owned distribution company was PALFINGER Germany, selling largely through sales partners to sub-dealers to the end customer. In the last five years, this picture has changed quite significantly. In Germany, for example, we're heading much more towards a direct sales approach. But as you have noticed also here on the chart before, in the last 11 years, we have done quite a significant number of acquisitions, and especially in the field of our general distributors, we have had several acquisitions. This development was mainly driven by the need for succession. There was... In several cases, there was no clear succession in place, and therefore, we took the decision in 2016 to take over the general distribution in Portugal and in Spain. They are today managed under the umbrella of PALFINGER Iberica. In 2017, we were taking over Palfinger Danmark, and early this year, we were taking over our Swedish distributor, the company HINZ. There was another step in the region of Catalonia, so close to Barcelona, we were taking over a sales partner, Equipdraulic. This development actually is something we are also driving forward in other regions of this world, for example, in APAC, with distribution companies in Korea and Japan, and also in North America, we are more and more going towards direct sales, fully covering the regions, all the relevant states with sales and especially with service. Service coverage, especially in U.S. with mobile service fleet, is a key topic to gain market share. This vertical integration, on the one hand, is leading us that we are much closer to our customers and getting more direct feedback from our customers. On the other hand, it's also needing more focus because we need to manage all this integration. This is also today reflected in our organization. We have set up an organization who is only dealing with this integration of these recently acquired general distributors. As well as strong focus, and this goes more towards 2030, is dedicated to network development. Whether it's our own distribution companies or it's external distribution companies, we are looking into if all the countries are well covered with the sales and service network. We are identifying growth potentials in countries where we are already good at, but there are still a lot of growth potentials even there, not yet fully covering all the regions. Specifically, we are also looking to the quality of our network. Yeah, our goal is to deliver complete solutions. From the board and as well from Andreas Hille, it was already explained what is our solution strategy. I would like to come from a different angle. It was already well explained what we consider as a solution. I would like to explain it from the customer journey once again. When you look today about the customer journey, our customers today have up to three different contacts. You have the PALFINGER dealer, you have the truck dealer, and very often you even have a bodybuilder. The customer is in charge to deal with the three different interfaces. Actually, we want to make the life of our customers easier and more convenient, and that's why we are discussing with customers, "How would you like to have the customer journey developed?" There are certain customers who want to have it like it is today, so the three different parties, they are happy with this. No, no issue. But there is well customers who would like to have a ex-works solution from us, so where the installation, the body is done from PALFINGER with an ex-works guarantee. Or there are fleet customers, big key accounts in Europe, who would like to follow a different sales approach like they used to have it in the past. For those customers, we have developed all these different solutions. Either we are providing the engineering of an installation and of a body, or we are providing the installation in one of our installation plants worldwide, like in Spain, like in France or in Poland. Does not matter. Then there is as well another solution, and it was already pointed out, the PALDRIVE units. PALDRIVE is a concept where we are selling ready-to-go trucks. Including the truck, where we have identified highly standardized solutions, which we keep on inventory, but this is mainly targeting towards where the customer has an urgent need. With this, we are rather answering this urgent need topics, and this is already as well good accepted by our markets. Providing solution, and it's indicated here on this chart as well, also means that we are covering this entire customer journey. Providing solution means that we are providing digital offerings all along this customer journey. This starts with a product configurator offering our solutions and goes further towards offering predictive maintenance via connected solutions. Here this strategy, Go Digital and Go for Solutions, and when you combine it, this is the essence in the end of what our customers expecting from us. I already was several times now using this expression, the customer journey, so I would like to explain the concept itself. The customer journey explains the process when a customer gets aware of a need, towards the consideration, where we are most likely doing an offering, and then there is the purchase. In the best case, the customer is sending us the order. There's a very important step. As soon as we have done the purchase and we are handing over the equipment to the customer, we are taking care of this handover. With this milestone, and this is a very important one for us, the usage and the service starts. A key element of our success and a key USP for PALFINGER is the service life. Spare parts availability, the service network coverage, trained and skilled service engineers, together with superior product quality, is turning customers into loyal customers and into fans, and this is what we want to achieve. All along this customer journey, we have identified the most relevant touchpoints to PALFINGER, which you're seeing here. Our ambition is, again, to make this work and the life for our customers as easy and as efficient as possible. We want to facilitate the job of our customers. For several of these touchpoints, in the recent months, in the recent weeks, we have developed certain digital solutions. You see the ones in red, so those are the already existing ones. We are on the way to bring a lot of new solutions in the upcoming weeks and months. Those are the ones in the yellow frames. With this, we want to facilitate, once again, the job of our customers. We want to facilitate as well the job of our service partners. It was during the COVID crisis a tremendous help for us. Why? Because we have had components like you have seen with the Smart Eye, so this helmet with the camera. This was instrumental to execute our job in certain cases. We have, for example, shipped a big platform, a 100m-high platform to Taiwan, and without the support of these tools, the handover would not have been possible. These solutions, these tools, are for us really crucial to do our job. Let's have a closer look what are the topics we are currently driving. As you have seen, we have acquired a lot of companies, and what we were lacking in the past was to have really standardized tool set in our sales. The rollout of a standardized tools in sales for all our companies is a key element of our commercial strategy, and a key element is as well the rollout of a CRM system. Of course, CRM is nothing new, but the level of process integration and the level of the different sales channels and service channels we are covering with this is certainly. Besides the CRM, we are working on a couple of sales tools, looking into the process efficiency of the order and offering process, where we are forward integrating also the entire sales partners. Very important is then as well the customer experience, so the feedback loop from our customers, where we try to learn from their feedback and where we are measuring the satisfaction as well. The current rollout of the new CRM system is replacing more than 12 different local CRM systems. We try to get the 360-degree view on our customers, covering all the different views, so from the salesman, from the serviceman, from the marketing side, so the entire customer journey from the salesman in the field towards the service manager who is traveling with his service van. The product configurator is an offer and order tool with which we want to manage complexity and avoid mistakes. We forward integrate to our sales partners, are offering them this tool, and with this we can manage the product offering in the different markets. With this, we can reduce the product offering, and above all, we can also make sure that our sales partners don't make any mistakes in the ordering process. Also, speed matters a lot here. With the tool, we are substantially improving our speed from an inquiry, when an offer is sent, when an order acknowledgement is sent. We are also gaining much more visibility. We are winning 6-8 weeks how the markets are developing because we see how this demand, how these inquiries are developing in all the different markets. Again, feedback is crucial for learning, is crucial for development. We are asking for each unit we hand over to our customers, what was their experience, what is their feedback, and we are reporting this and measuring this then in a so-called customer satisfaction index. Above all, it's important that we give them the feedback to our service partner. Within two to three days, PALFINGER make sure that the customer is approached once the customer is giving us a negative feedback. We're having the first runs now in Germany, learning from it, but we already get the very valuable insights. Now looking to service is a business, but above all, it's very important to secure customer satisfaction. Our solutions are quite capital intense, so reliability and availability of our machines are really crucial for customer satisfaction. Felix, Philipp Smole was explaining that together with the possibility of connectivity, we get real-time data of our machines. Based on this data and information, we can do predictive service. We can do predict the next service stop. We can tell our customers when he needs to do the next maintenance stop. Once again, this is to avoid unplanned downtimes. This is to maximize the uptime of our capital intense machines. This is a support also for our service partner to efficiently execute their job. Well, some tangible examples of these smart processes. In the past, all the service activities, all the handover activities, all the maintenance jobs you had to do with one of our machines were paper-based. You had to document all this on a paper, on a service book and whatsoever. You know all this from the cars. Now, with the smart processes, you document all these steps in any mobile device, whether it's an iPhone or an iPad or whatsoever. The benefit here for Palfinger, we can learn out of this, the status of the machine. For the service partner, he can prepare for the next service, for the next maintenance, but as well for our customers, because for example, the fleet manager knows exactly if his workshop manager is doing his job. Very important thing, gaining transparency from this. Fleet Monitor, already mentioned today. Fleet Monitor is a tool providing information for big fleet customers. You see the location of a truck. You see the status of our machines. You understand whether there is a service need or not. Together with the map service, you can use this as a job planner. All in all, this is a very important tool to optimize the fleet utilization. Last but not least, early next year, we are launching the e-commerce. On the first glance, e-commerce is not more than a webshop solution for our spare parts, but actually it's much, much more. It's a full-scale webshop, fully integrating all the processes from PALFINGER to our channel importers to our service partners. In the next step, we are even able to integrate a inventory planning for our service network, so that we are connecting the decentral spare part inventories, doing a inventory proposal for our partners. With this, we centrally manage the inventory, we reduce the capital employed, still optimizing the parts availability. E-commerce as well is a prerequisite for digital business models. It's a prerequisite for subscription models, for service contracts, so to that we are able to charge them or to buy features on demand. There is a lot of elements, a lot of features, a lot of tools which we are bringing or have already brought out. Once again, and this is very important, all these tools serve one ultimate goal. We want to make the life and the work of our customers easier, more convenient, and more efficient. Thank you. Thank you, Gerhard Sturm, for telling us how much has happened in the sales organization since 2016, with more and more direct sales and PALFINGER also acquiring dealers and sub-dealers, and especially the after-sales process, PALFINGER will provide intelligent services in the future. A lot going on in this field. We will become or get a final insight on PALFINGER now and how supply chain constraints are managed. Please welcome Harald Hauser, Vice President of Supplier Management. Harald, you are our final speaker of this afternoon's session. Tell us what were the bottlenecks that caused PALFINGER the biggest headaches, to put it this way, and where you locate the supply chain constraints and how these problems were solved. Yeah. Thank you, Nadia. Thank you, Harald. Yeah. Also very warm welcome from my side, ladies and gentlemen. It's a great pleasure for me to be personally here to give you some insights in the world of the procurement, and I can tell you the life of the procurement is not the easiest today. Before I start, I give you some short overview about our procurement organization. Already Martin have mentioned this, our spend volume is a bit more than EUR 1 billion per year. We have the 7,000 suppliers and also, already mentioned from Martin, 700 strategic suppliers. I point out this again because with these strategic suppliers, we covers more than 70% of our sales spends. We do a lot more with these strategic suppliers. We have a special contract with them. We have a quality contract with them. Supplier approval process, and we have no one supplier which have not this approvals. We have a supplier assessment where we quarterly measure all these KPIs. The very important thing is we have a rolling forecast system with them to give them an overview up to 12 months. I can tell you without this forecast, we have no chance, especially in times like this, to get any of these materials. We have these 250,000 article numbers. A lot of master datas is necessary, clear. 50,000 order positions. Here we have the supplier strategy. 5% from the orders is organized via just-in-time. It's only 5% orders, but this means more than 25% of our spend is organized via just in time. That means the material arrives one day before assembly start. 10% is window management inventory. This means our suppliers is handling or managing our demands. Fifty percent, especially for C parts, kanban. 35% normal orders, and as well, more and more coming, 5% with e-catalogs. Very important here, you can see 95% is our goal, and we achieved this goal over many, many years. 95% is our delivery performance, and this is absolutely necessary for the assembly area to be efficient. We are also proud we have our claiming rate is below 0.5%. I give you a short functional overview, what is the added value, what coming from the procurement. Utilization of the sourcing synergies for the whole Palfinger group, and this is mainly possible to bundle our Palfinger spends. Most power what we have to enter new international markets. To have a central responsibility for our sourcing group strategies. Multiple sourcing, I come back a little bit later with that. Standardized processes, procure-to-pay processes, and also to increase the efficiency for these processes. Last but not least, performance of our suppliers in costs, delivery, as well in quality. This all should reduce the risk for the PALFINGER. I give you a short overview about our structure. We are organized, Martin told us, in seven categories. Raw materials, cylinders, hydraulics, controls, mechatronics, and so on. Below that, we have 100 sourcing groups around about. We have also a regional organization which is supporting all these lead buyers to have the regional strategy or to finalize the regional strategy outside of EMEA. All of this, we are doing this with around about 100 employees for the lead buyers. We have also in the quality, in the supplier quality, we have 25 people who is securing our quality for external partners. We have also process and tools, especially also for digitalization, to make our processes more efficient, to automate our process. We are also, what Gerhard telling, with the CRM, we have a SRM, supplier relationship tool, to connect our suppliers directly to Palfinger in our systems. Yes, now coming to this disruption in our supply chain. There was an unexpected worldwide increase of the demands for all the materials. This leads, we have a huge increase, an increase for the steel plates, for example, from 2 months normally up to 5 months. From tubes up to six months. Semiconductors, we discussed this during the lunch, up from 4 to 12 months. Trucks and chassis also up to 10. We have a shortage in the electronics, also discussed during the lunch. The whole industry was affected in this. It's clear. The semiconductors, only to give an insight, 60% of all the semiconductors is used in the electronics. PlayStations, handies. Only 14% in the automotive. That means a lot of families, according to COVID shutdowns, bought for all these kids PlayStations, and this is one of the reasons why this bottleneck is so big, so strong. We have also increased transport costs and times. A 40-foot container normally from China to Europe costs $2,500. Now we are paying $16,000-$20,000. The transport time is increased also from four to eight weeks. COVID in the supply chain. We had very strong reduction from our capacities with infected workers. Many working women have to stay at home because the kids was at home. A lot of double sourcing we have. Had already said this, double sourcing, but we have done this in the same region. For example, Italy. Italy is a very strong market for hydraulic. We have a lot of suppliers and second source and multiple source suppliers in Italy. But the big failure what we have done, all of those suppliers was placed in Italy in Lombardy or Reggio Emilia. We know from COVID, the total area was blocked. All this double sourcing was senseless for us. We don't find enough skilled workers. Already Martin have said this, especially welders. Also with our suppliers, they're suffering with that. Contracts. We have really strong delivery contracts, but sometimes we lost the validity due to force majeure. Transport was blocked. We also remember on the border to Italy, they was blocked for days. We have not only problems with our suppliers, or we see the problems with our suppliers more and more. We suffering with problem with sub and sub suppliers. Sometimes we are buying material for Tier 4 or 5 suppliers. Last but not least, we still have a huge problem with the very low vaccination rate level in East Europe countries. All of this brought us in a challenging situation. As I said, normally we have a delivery performance up to 95%, we should have. We see here the corona was the first reduction was clear, but after a short while, we improved the situation, come back to acceptable level the second half of last year. We had this cyberattack. We have to stop immediately all these trucks supplies, because we was not able to book this in our systems. We come back also, and now we see more and more this bottleneck situation where we are suffering a lot. Let's make a deep dive what means the price, an absolutely unexpected price, dramatic price increases in the steel. We know extraordinary high demand in China increased the iron ore, scraps, all these materials. China needed and China produced 50% of the worldwide demand in China. They stopped to export. There was no import from China to Europe, and normally they're doing 200 million tons. This material we miss in Europe. By the way, 200 million tons is exactly the same gigawatt we are able to produce in Europe. A worldwide shortage in the capacities because everybody stopped and the restart of the blast furnaces was by far too late. At the same time, we have a high demand, still high demand from the car e-car industry. Additionally for the prices and for the U.S., a huge import tax up to 25%. When you see this curve, the orange line is the trend from the last years. The blue line was the expectation. We know we was on a very low level with the raw material price. We have to increase a bit. The blue line was the expectations. After every color is two months later, every two months, we see a huge increase, up to $1,200, two times higher than before. The good and positive thing that we still achieved the peak, and we see clear signal that we see the first reduction, 20%. This is not only in Europe, this is for Europe. We have the same picture now in the U.S. since last week, and we see the same picture in China. It's not a promise, but there's a clear expectation from my side. Metal prices is always the first indicator for the rest of the price world. We will also for the 2020 year continue with some challenges, clear. The situation with the electronic components will not relax before the second half. We got some signals that a lot of new production capacities invested, millions of euros invested, and they start to produce. We heard as first signals that also end of this year, all allocation what they have done will be stopped as beginning with next year. Martins explained also we need new suppliers to have double sourcing, additional double sourcing, but as well for our extension of production capacities. Very important also, we see now the price starts to go down. We have to be very careful. The big challenge is we do the negotiation four times. We fix our contract maximum for one quarter in order to secure all these reductions. The risk for the transportation will also continue for the into 2022. The big challenge will be the availability of trucks due to this long lead time. We are buying up to one year quantities to secure all to this. What is the learnings? The learnings from us is we already have a strong base to rely on with the inventory strategy. We have to adjust this. We do this all the time, but maybe we have to go a little bit more in the higher safety stock. The double sourcing we have to push, but in different regions, not in the same as I mentioned before. Using global acting supplier, we are looking for suppliers who is able to produce local for local to avoid transports. Fourth, the long-term and the strong partnership with Palfinger. It was very clear for us with the strategic partner, long-term partners, with an open, transparent communication and collaboration. All this is very important, but on the other side, we should not overreact. All this what we have done works brilliant the last 10 years. Now we have two years challenging time, but I'm personally totally convinced when we overcome this, and we will co-overcome these times, this will work also the next ten years. The highest priority for sure is to guarantee our customer demands. We are able to overcome this situation for sure and come out even stronger. Thank you. Thank you, Harald. It's been a tough year, but despite all challenges, PALFINGER was able to fulfill all delivery obligations in 2021. Harald, you stay with me. Yes. I also want to ask Gerhard Sturm to join us, and the board, of course, Andreas Klauser, Felix Strohbichler and Martin Zehnder. I will stay in the middle. Yeah. Remain here. Is this a good? Yes. Before we get to the questions from the audience, I would drop this question and whoever wants to answer is more than welcome. How large proportion of sales goes via distributors across your key regions currently, and what do you expect to be the level in 2030? Topic for Gerhard. The level of sales via distributors is approximately 60%, and due to the fact that we are certainly increasing more in the countries where we own the distribution, I would say this is going down a little bit towards rather than 50%, something like this. It was a question from Daniel Lion from Erste Group, and he also has this other question: How is your sales network reacting to plans to move towards integrated solutions? Is this move cannibalizing their business? No, they appreciate because they see potential shortfalls coming from trailer chassis availability, and they see it now as an entire solution for their business for serving the customers in the best way. Thank you for this answer. Are there questions from the audience? Remarks, folks. Wishes. Hey, this is Maximilian Huber speaking from JP Morgan. I have a question regarding STRUCINSPECT. I found that segment quite interesting, and I wonder, you're targeting, you mentioned ASFINAG, I think. You're probably also then targeting STRABAG, for instance. Like, besides these companies, what's your view on these certification services industry like a TÜV, for instance? So basically, are you certifying also that this bridge is not collapsing, or are you just providing the product and the service, like facilitating the service for TÜV, for instance? We are the facilitator in this respect, and it's always certified by a civil engineer. The civil engineer can be a person, can be an organization, can be TÜV, but it's always based on our tools and based on our data management. I can't take the risk that the bridge is collapsing on board and being responsible for that, this would be too much, even for us as PALFINGER, even for us as STRUCINSPECT. Thank you. You're welcome. There's another question online again from Daniel Lion. We've spoken a lot, we heard a lot about shortages, and he asks, "Are you already seeing logistics shortage? Do you see it already improving? Yes. Slightly. Yes, on big picture, we see a certain improvement in the last weeks, perhaps in the last five, six weeks. Also, Harald mentioned, so if we look at the situation from today, I'm sure we will have a more or less similar situation than also in Q1, and then we see improvement somewhere in Q2, Q3. For sure, the supply chain challenge is also a challenge for next year, but we handled this very well this year, so we're also able to handle this next year. Yeah. What's your take on this, Andreas? Well, I think there's no further negative development expected, so I'm, as Martin said, quite confident that we can do even better next year. There's a question again from Daniel Lion on the chip level. What chip categories you face the biggest shortage? By when do you expect to have supply again meet your demands going forward? Harald. We had a lot of escalation calls together with the board. Since two or three weeks, we got a clear confirmation that we will get our chips. We are strongly convinced. Now, we know we are safe up to the first half of the next year. We are strongly convinced that when they stop with the allocation, we will secure also the second half of this year. Strangely enough, even with all these digital tools, it was more efficient to call some of the CEOs providing chips to us personally with a phone call. Oh. The phone board. Please, to the audience also. Yeah, Markus Remis again. Three more questions, if I may. Firstly, on the service business, can you specify the revenue share that is currently generated from services and maybe break that down for the group and for the truck crane business specifically? That will be the first one. Our share of service business is around 16%-18%. If we split between the product lines and look at the marine segment, we have about 40% of revenue coming from service simply because we can cover this with 25 service stations, which are servicing more or less the whole world. However, in the land business, customers expect, for example, in Central Europe, that they only have to go for one hour to the next service workshop. In order to cover the whole world, we need thousands of service stations. We have today 5,000 service stations. It's not our strategy to run 5,000 service stations, sometimes in areas where it's not profitable just to focus on servicing PALFINGER products. Clearly, there is potential to increase this percentage, but there is a certain limitation because we do not see a benefit in really starting to run thousands of service points. There will be more and more service content which will be provided by us. However, the final service point with also the margin on spare parts, with selling hours, is still majority owned by independent partners and not by PALFINGER, and this will be the same situation in the future. Perhaps we get to 20%, perhaps 22 until 2030, but I would not say that this has a potential to go far beyond this figure. In other words, Felix, if you allow me, we are not a nonprofit organization, okay? We also need to serve our customers, yes. But at the end of the day, for any kind of service I provide, I need to earn money, and that's the baseline what I can tell you here. Okay. I guess a nonprofit organization won't reach a market cap of EUR 3 billion, so. That's the point. I knew that this was your next question. Okay. On this 2030 ambition, I mean, looking at the prospective revenue split by region, more revenues coming from LATAM, Asia, and also North America. I mean, these are regions where typically generate lower margins than in Europe. How should we think about the margin progression over the next decade? I mean, there will be some dilution coming from the regional mix. Do you see within the regions, say, LATAM kind of moving upwards to more sophisticated crane types? I think first of all, again, Palfinger is providing a premium service, and so far we managed that we get really to pay for that. That is, well, one of the reasons, as Felix mentioned earlier, why we are not really further pushing in China because there is only, let's say, a quite low level in terms of premium product requirements. While on the other hand, like North America, where we have truck-mounted forklift, where we are, let's say, serving the infrastructure, we can even charge more for that because we are faster, we are quicker. This was in the past, for sure a major concern. It seems now it's slightly different than to the past, and we want to continue this path, but always having and providing premium services and solutions to our customers. To add on this, because you were mentioning that in LATAM it's rather on the low end. This was historically true, but we are seeing recently a development that also the LATAM countries are targeting towards higher-end cranes, especially in the mining industry in Chile, in Peru, and as well in Brazil. Recently we just sold one PK 165, so one of our most premium machines, to a customer in Brazil, and he was also participating with this machine on the Palfinger World Tour. Perhaps to add to this, also another region, CIS, for example, is one of the most profitable regions in the group. It's not just EMEA where we are performing well. By the way, still in EMEA, we also have potentials to improve our margins. We are not at the limit in EMEA, and also in other regions we see attractive margin potentials. All right. A very specific one on the PALFINGER CONNECTED, this system, which you elaborated on. Is that installed only on new equipment, or is it kind of retroactively also put on the equipment, I don't know, on certain maintenance intervals? Today, it's also only for new equipment, but we're also thinking about to do some refurbishment. Today, very clear, only new equipment. Does this answer the question? Yeah. Okay. Are there other questions or remarks from the audience? Oh, okay. Yep. First there. No. Well, you're next then. Chris, yeah. No, this one. Stay there. You don't have to. Otherwise we jump out. Yeah. Sorry for that. Hi, I'm from Bank of China. As Felix mentioned that you will switch back your shares with SANY, right? Does it mean that your strategy towards Chinese market is changing or has been changed? Thank you. No, I think it. Thank you for making this question. I think it's important that our strategy in terms of focus on premium products for the Chinese market does not change. We just found out in the further analysis we did that, let's say, the standard products are very well present and available in the Chinese market from Chinese providers. As well, SANY is working on that, stiff boom cranes, et cetera. That's the reason why we said, "Okay, then let's focus on the premium segment here." It will be fully supported and coming out of these joint ventures we have with Sany. I think there's no doubt, just in terms of the capital flow which we had or which we have, which we are currently having. We want to disconnect this to be even more direct in the approach to the Chinese market, that we can take easy decisions on both sides. I don't know if you want to add anything. What I would like to underline, as I also mentioned in my presentation, this does not change the operational cooperation in our joint venture in China. We'll continue to aggressively work on the Chinese market with our solutions, and if we dissolve the cross holding or not, has nothing to do with this clear focus of both parties. Thank you. Perhaps some numbers to China. Last year we sold about 3,000 cranes in China. This year, 4,000. Next year we go to 5,000. We have a very good development in this market, and also from the profit side, it's a very good market for Palfinger. Wow, impressive numbers. Yes. Huge country. Yeah. It's Roman Eisenschenk from Kepler Cheuvreux. I have a question. It's regarding the marine business. Maybe you shed some more light. You know, you had a difficult phase a couple of years ago. You turned around the whole area. You introduced new products, when was it? In 2018 and 2019. So can you shed some more light and how big the upside is in the marine business? Perhaps if we talk about marine business, we have to distinguish a little bit between product lines. Actually we have three major chunks. The one chunk is the marine crane and the wind crane, and this is an extremely well-performing business. On the one hand, all of us know that the Green Deal is really putting some fire behind the demand of those products. In terms of wind cranes, we are one of the market leaders, and we clearly expect a big potential out of this. Already today we can see high profitability, good demand from wind cranes and marine cranes, mainly used in fish farming, for example, also are in a segment which is highly interesting. We are booked out for many months, so this is performing extremely well. We are present in this offshore crane, winch business, high-end player. We are a niche player with about 4% market share. If you followed also the KPIs of our main competitor, MacGregor, within the Cargotec Group, they lost substantial amounts of money. I think it was around EUR 50 million last year in this business. We were at break even with this in a phase where oil and gas was very difficult. With our focus on high-end, we managed at least to break even in a highly competitive environment. We have now recently done an acquisition with the OPTS, the offshore lifting platform on ships, which is also with an active heave compensation, which can compensate, so to say, the movement of the waves to be able to work on wind platforms, et cetera. This is something which will also help in this segment of marine handling solutions to further grow. Again, this targets high-end niche markets. Even if this is attractive and a growing market, still it's a niche market. We are not like Cargotec, covering every commodity business in this area. Last but not least, we have the boats and davits business. On the one hand, service, a big chunk, and also new products. For service, we see a bright future. Service is important, is a profitable business normally. Here we felt really the implication of COVID with limitations to go onto oil rigs, onto ships, et cetera. This is now recovering, and we do expect that next year this should really contribute again significantly to our bottom line. On the other hand, the new business is difficult. We decided a few years ago to focus rather on cruise than on oil and gas. As we all know, with the wisdom of hindsight, this did not really work out, as cruise is completely dead for the time being. I mean, this is expected to come back probably rather in Asia than in Europe in the short term. Of course, this year and also next year, boats and davits is a very difficult business because oil and gas is by far not booming for these products, and cruise is still more or less dead. In total, I think the setup in Marine is quite clear, and we have a clear strategy here. With the acquisition of these OPTS units, we also underlined that we believe in the future of the Marine division. If there are no more questions. Oh, there's one more. Sorry. Final one, because you gave quite a buzzword. On the competitive environment, your major competitor, Cargotec, has merged with Konecranes. You said this might open up some opportunities in the market, in case the competitor is kind of busy with itself. I mean, did this materialize? And how do you perceive competition these days? I mean, competition is always good, and especially when you have it in similar circumstances as PALFINGER. The good thing is that there is so much internal focus now that has really started slowing them down. As well we saw in terms of recovery phase, in terms of the operation side, they could not hold up with the market growth as we did. This shows something was holding them back, and I think this was their internal focus. Yes, it's good that we have Cargotec as a main competitor. On the other hand, it is slowing them down and gives us additional opportunities. I think we should slowly come to an end. We're good in time. Andreas- Yeah. I will ask you to sum Just, uh- This Q&A session for us. I think a big applause for all the presenters who did really great presentations this morning. I'm proud of you. Big applause. As well, Nadia, that you managed to catch the questions. Yeah. Even then following the guests of Martin. Great job as well to Nadia. We will see her later on as well in our discussion round. I think. Yes, looking forward. We give a big applause for you. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It's been a pleasure. As you can imagine, it's not the field I'm most familiar with, but it was really interesting. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. Just to give you an outlook what we have planned, we will have a quick coffee break now, and we'll be back with an online factory tour, which I also look forward to. PALFINGER will sort of say open up its doors, and show you, give you an insight of their factory. Then we have an ATX panel discussion about in general the current market situation with the CEOs of some of Austria's industry leaders. Yeah, see you back in about 20-25 minutes. Thank you. Thank you. Welcome ladies and gentlemen to the online factory tour. I'm Martin Reiter. I will be your guide for this special kind of tour and when I say special kind of tour, I really mean it. I am one of the factory guides that are usually doing tours here at the different PALFINGER facilities in Austria. Usually, when we do tours, we would have all the guests in front of us, and we show them around, we show them the different facilities here, we show them all the machinery and how the whole products come together. This time it's online. We launched this new tool this year. I'm sitting here at our studio that we built in Lengau, and this is really a live stream. I'm now sitting here in Lengau. This is no pre-produced video. Why am I saying this? I'd like you to know that this is all live and, don't be alarmed if I have to look to the side every now and then, because inside the studio, I'm all alone. I'm basically responsible for the lights, for the camera, for the sound, for the different scenes that we will have a look at. It's a one-man show in here, so don't be distracted if I have to look to the side every now and then. I will look to this side because there is a screen right here, and on this screen I see all the participants, so I can see, okay, there's lots of people in here right now. Also, you can text comments, you can ask questions, you can send emojis, say hi, whatever you want. My colleague, Andrea Jacobs, who's also doing tours, she will be in the chat as well to answer some questions. If there's too many questions, if I won't be able to answer all of them, then she will also be available. Okay. Yeah, I said the basics now. This is really a new format that we figured out this year because it's getting more and more difficult for people to come to our different production sites. We really developed this ongoing project. As you may know, this is something that's developing. We produced some footage, and I would like to show you some of the footage, especially for the facilities here in Austria. We have around 40 minutes time where I will show you the birth of a crane. I will show you the production of the different parts and how everything comes together, and in the end, we will see a finished crane. This happens mainly in Lengau here at the biggest production plant. We will also take a little peek into Köstendorf as well, which is a big plant in Austria as well, and also Elsbethen. It's in the south of Salzburg. That's where the timber and recycling cranes are produced, so we will also head over there. I guess we will also leave Austria for some parts. We will go over the borders and look to Slovenia and also to Bulgaria, what's going on there. It's gonna be an exciting journey, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. I will also be able to ask you some questions. This is really an interactive tool. During the course of this tour, I will also ask you questions. You will have different options to answer, and when we'll get to it, I will explain it once again. Okay. Hello, everybody. I can see there's some comments already. Hello, everybody. Capital Markets, Rashid, that's my colleague, Andrea Jacobs, and she will be happy to answer your questions as well, and I might also do it. I will always check once and again if you have any questions, anything that I can answer, anything I can help with. Okay. I'm sitting here in Lengau, which is the biggest production site of PALFINGER worldwide. We have 120,000 sq m in size here. We have over 1,300 people working here currently, and it's also expanding here. We're getting bigger here. We're building new halls, we're investing, and we're investing into the future because what we have right here is there's gonna be a new campus area that will be opened next year in May, and this is really a great project where we're investing in our future and the apprenticeship program is really something that we're very proud of, and this is also the first area I would like to show you. For those of you who are not from Austria, Germany, Switzerland, any of the countries that have this dual system, I would like to explain really quick to you what it's like in Austria. In Austria, we have this dual system, which means after nine years of school, you can actually train for a job. You can do a training, get professionalized in an area, and in case of Palfinger of course, it's technical jobs, it's mechatronics engineer, it's electronics engineer, it's welding technician, for example. It's also industrial office clerk. These are a few of the trainings that we offer. We also have more. If you wanna become a professional in one of these fields, you can come to the company, you get the training, which takes about 3.5-4 years. You also have to attend a business school in that timeframe. After those 3.5 or 4 years, depending on which job you wanna do, you have a job at Palfinger, and you get the best training here. This is really the way how we invest in the future, how we guarantee that we have highly professionalized employees here. We have this program here in Austria, in Lengau. There's a big apprenticeship workshop. We also have it in China as well, and I would like Bernhard Eicher, who's the Head of the Apprenticeship Training, to tell you a little bit about the apprenticeship training. In the first film I'm going to show, Bernhard Eicher is going to talk to you about the apprenticeship training. Welcome to the PALFINGER Training Center. My name is Eicher Bernhard, and I head the apprenticeship training. At present, we have 104 apprentices in training with 12 different job profiles. Most of the youngsters are aware of the qualifications in mechatronics engineering. With the complexity of this job, it's more about a technical qualification, mechanically as well as within electrotechnics. In addition, we can also offer the technical qualifications for mechanical engineering, welding technology, as well as for vehicle construction. Qualifications within administrative positions, for example, industrial office clerk or freighting specialists should not be forgotten. Together and working as a team, we challenge and support our apprentices throughout their qualifications. We accompany them for their first trial days in the company to their final examinations. We acknowledge their talents and strengthen them. In addition to the classic qualifications, we also offer programs including A Levels within the dual education academy system. This includes a technical training qualification for A Level graduates that are interested in entering the job market. I am particularly proud of the training team and apprentices, their performance from the start of basic training right up to their final exams, as well as their great achievements in the Upper Austrian Apprenticeship Contest. I am happy to mention that approximately 90% of the PALFINGER employees that have trained through our program are still working in the company. With PALFINGER training, you can be someone. Okay, back in the studio. This obviously was a pre-produced video that we have, and the next video is also pre-produced, but the next video I'm going to comment live. I really want you to know that this is something I do live, so you get to know what possibilities we have with this special kind of format. This next hall that we're going to have a look at is the steel warehouse. This is where all the steel plates arrive here in Lengau, and I will show you what it looks like and tell you a little bit about what's going on and what sort of steel we use for the production here in Lengau for the knuckle boom cranes. Okay, here you will see our main suppliers. These are the big suppliers where we receive our steel from. This is SSAB from Sweden, Tata Steel from the Netherlands, and voestalpine from Austria. Okay, this is the steel warehouse. You see all sorts of different steel plates, different qualities as well. Here's a chart with all the different steel qualities. Begins at S 235 and S 1,300. In order to give you an idea what these different numbers mean, I would like to show you a tension test. We have two pieces of steel with different qualities, and they get pulled. On the left-hand side, you see S 355, and you see it's a very soft and elastic steel, so it deforms, and then it finally rips, whereas the S 1100 takes some time until it finally deforms, so it needs a lot of strength, and then it rips apart with a big bang. You can also see it here on the computer screen, on this graph. You see the difference between the two steel qualities. Okay, we're back in the steel warehouse. The forklift drivers have to pick up the different plates, and the forklift driver will bring these plates into hall number 2. That is where the profiles are produced. You can see he has a little tablet screen right there, so he gets to know which steel qualities, which plates he has to pick up and drive into hall number two. Then he puts them into this Paternoster system, and that's where the fully automatic line of the profile production begins. Okay, before we look at the further production of the profiles, I would like to use the opportunity and ask you my first question. For this, I have to look to the side, and there should be a question that appears under the screen. The question is, how many tons of steel does PALFINGER purchase worldwide per year? You can take a guess, an educated guess, whatever you think is most reasonable. I will give you some time, of course, and afterwards, I will tell you what the correct answer is here. Okay, let's continue. We saw the forklift driver, and he brought the steel plate to the warehouse, or he took it from the warehouse, and he brought it into hall number two, into our Paternoster system, and that's where the fully automatic line will start. Okay, let's see. There's a laser cutting machine. The laser cutting machine will cut out the basic shape of the profile. This is the shape of a hexagonal profile. Next up this profile, this shape, will go to the bending machine, and the bending machine will bend this profile. The employee will check every third profile, make sure that it's within our norms, make sure that the opening has the correct size, that all the angles have the correct size. As you can see, the top angle is still open, so there's a gap in there. This has to be welded. There's a welding robot welding the top outer seam of the profile. What needs to be done next is we also need to weld the inner seam of this profile. Here you can see the top angle is already welded, and now two welding booms go inside the profile, and they weld the inner seam. The last step is this dressing robot. That's the orange robot arm that we see right here, and this orange robot arm makes sure that it's up to our standards, that the profile has the correct measurements, and it gives it a last check, basically. This profile is ready for further processing. We also produce the P-Profiles here in Lengau, which is a special shape. It's a polygonal shape, so it's kind of in the shape of a drop or a pear. We introduced this profile for the biggest crane that we produce, the PK 200002. We also use very high grade steels for this profile, and it also has a different welding technique that is applied here. With these P-profiles, we use laser welding, which we can see right here. The advantages are that the laser welding is a much finer seam. It's a higher quality, so the welding seam is less of a weak spot with these profiles. This is really a big advantage, and it's also faster because right here, as you can see, it's already finished. It's already ready for further production. Okay, he will set it here on the pile with the rest and then put it into hall number one. Okay, let's have a look over at the question that I asked you. The question was, how many tons of steel does Palfinger purchase per year? The correct answer was round about 54,000 tons of steel worldwide, and most of you got that right, so 80% got it right. Congratulations. Okay, Daniel Lion asked. Okay, Andrea already answered the question. "Hi, are you planning further apprentice training centers in other regions?" Yeah, as far as I know, just like Andrea answered it, we have it in China, we have it in Austria. As far as I know, not planned yet. I would really have to talk to Bernhard Eicher, who's the head of the apprenticeship training, to get further information on that. If you want to know, you can also contact us via email, and we'll be happy to answer that. Okay, we saw the P-Profile in this last film, which is the special profile. We have a patent on that profile, and I would like my colleague, René Feichtenschlager, who is head of the training department, to tell you some of the advantages of the P-Profile. In this next film, René is going to tell you what's so special about this P-Profile. Hello, my name is René Feichtenschlager, and I'm team leader of the service trainings department in Salzburg. The patented P profile was developed at first for our largest crane, the PK 200002, and was first used in 2013. Compared to the hexagonal profile, the P profile has up to 13 bends. This results in the typical pear shape. By the way, the P stands for polygonal. The P profile has a higher lateral stability compared to the hexagonal profile. Among other things, it was possible to design the P profile with thinner walls by using higher steel alloys, and therefore save weight. Thanks to the reduced weight, higher lifting capacities can also be achieved, and the payload for the truck is increased. The P profile is currently used for all cranes in the TEC series, the high-tech line of PALFINGER cranes, so to speak. You can see that the P-Profile really gets the maximum performance out of the crane. Okay, we saw here in Lengau, we produce the profiles for the extension booms for the crane, for the knuckle boom crane. Also, we do produce the knuckle boom right here, but the crane, of course, consists of more than just extension booms and the knuckle boom. We also need cylinders, for example, and we also need a main boom, and those are produced in two factories in Bulgaria. Let's take a short trip to Bulgaria and see how it looks there and what they're doing in Bulgaria. Follow me on the map. Here's Bulgaria. Here's Cherven Bryag, where one of our factories is at. In Cherven Bryag, there's more than 600 employees working. We do the production of different welding components in Cherven Bryag, for example, the side box and also the main boom as well. We also have robot welding in Cherven Bryag, of course, and we need to do the drillings where the bolts go in later on. Here's two finished main booms that will travel to Austria further on. The other plant is in Tenevo, and Tenevo is also quite big. There's more than 700 employees working there, and in Tenevo, we have the production of cylinders and hydraulic components. Of course, this is a very critical production, so we need to do lots of measuring with these cylinders. We need to do leak tests. We really need to be very exact 'cause if you consider it, I mean, it's the part of our products that really moves the product, so this has to be of great production value right here. You see some coating, and then you will see the finished cylinders here with the biggest crane, for example. Okay, this was a short trip to Bulgaria, so we could see what's going on there and what we receive from there. The last step, we had the extension booms, we had the knuckle boom. Now we have the main boom from Bulgaria and the cylinders. The main boom and the extension booms, the knuckle boom, they were still raw material, but they need to be coated. Next up, we would head over to the coating plant and coat all these parts of the crane, and we use KTL coating and powder coating. What this procedure is like and what the advantages, especially for the customers, are of these procedures, I would like to show you in this next video. Palfinger's long-lasting lifting solutions are ideally armed against various environmental influences, thanks to their surface protection. This is made possible by a multi-level and state-of-the-art surface treatment that combines cathodic dip coating with powder coating or a two-component conductive lacquer coat. For us, as a premium manufacturer, surface quality is a decisive quality criterion. As far back as 2002, we were already dealing intensively with surface coatings and were one of the first manufacturers in the industry to introduce the KTL coating. At that time, this procedure was only used in the automotive industry. Zinc phosphating guarantees corrosion resistance for the entire surface. The subsequent cathodic dip coating is environmentally friendly and energy efficient, thanks to the exclusive low-temperature process. Special parts and colors are given a top coat of water-based, environmentally friendly, two-component conductive lacquer coat. We have gone one step further with powder coating. We opted for this procedure to improve the resistance of our components and of surfaces to mechanical damage. Powder coating is a procedure in which the paint is applied as a powder in the dry state. The powder is charged and is applied to a grounded conductive carrier material. The material for the powder coating is generally solvent-free. Excess color powder is collected and fed back into the powder system again. The component then enters the curing oven. The curing oven is subdivided into several sections. The first part is known as the gelation zone. This zone is fed by the heat recovery, and the components then enter the curing oven. Here, the components are heated to around 160 degrees, where the powder is evenly polymerized. After the curing procedure, the components enter the cooling zone. In this cooling zone, the energy is used to preheat the components in the jellification zone. They are then cooled down once again and can be brought directly to assembly. Thanks to our extensive experience in the field of surface technology, we guarantee a high standard of quality and therefore a high resale value as well. Our coatings are elastic, abrasion-proof, and UV and temperature resistant and offer optimal anti-corrosion protection throughout the product's entire lifetime. Okay, that was our coating plant, KTL coating and powder coating explained in a nutshell for you. Now if we continue our journey, we have the main boom, we have the cylinders, we have the knuckle boom, and the extension booms of the crane already, and they're coated, which is already good. There's something missing still. Well, we need the bottom of the crane as well. We need the slewing gear, we need the crane column, and we need the stabilizers, the crane base, so to speak. This crane base is not produced in Austria. It is produced in Slovenia, in Maribor, and there's also a big plant there, and we'll take a short trip, and I will show you what's going on in Maribor with the crane production. They also produce marine cranes in Maribor, but for the purpose of this tour now, since we have limited time, I'm only going to show you the bottom part of the crane that's going, that's produced there, and then we'll continue our journey. Okay, Maribor. Maribor is close to the Austrian border. It's in Slovenia, and here you can see a rack and pinion gear that's made. We have two sorts, rack and pinion and continuous slewing gear. Here you see the crane column, also robot welded. Here's the drilling that's done for the opening where the bolts go in. They also have the same coating plant as we do in Lengau. Here the parts are coated, and here we see a not yet finished rack and pinion gear, and here's a continuous slewing gear. This one can go round and round, whereas the rack and pinion has a rack in here. There's a gear in the middle and a toothed rack as you can see, and then the crane column can turn. Okay. Now we have the bottom part of the crane, we have the main boom, the extension booms, the knuckle boom, the cylinders, so we're ready for assembly basically. The next hall I would like to show you here in Lengau is the hall where we do the assembly. Here you see my colleague, Andrea. Andrea is placing a gliding bracket in one of the extension booms. This needs to be greased up, and here we see the finished boom system. All the extension booms are in the knuckle boom, the cylinders are mounted, and also the hydraulic hoses are mounted as well. The employee will take this part, he will place it to the main boom. He will next up hammer in this bolt, so he will connect the two parts. He will also connect the hoses as well, and this really finishes the boom system, what he's doing here. Parallel to that, we need to finish the crane base, so here's a mounting line, an assembly line, and the guys here are still mounting the cylinders, the hoses, also the hydraulic valves as well, so they're finishing up the bottom part. Then there's 2 final assembly spots that we have, and the employees will pick up the different boom systems and place them at the crane base. Once again, this guy is going to hammer in a bolt to connect the two parts. He will also connect the hoses as well, and what he's doing is basically the mechanical final assembly of this crane. When he's done, he will once again use the ceiling crane and put it over to the other side. This other side, the cranes you see there, they still need electrical assembling. There's guys standing here as well, putting all the wires together, making sure that all the lights work, but also that the crane works, of course. Making sure that all the sensors work, and they will also play the software system on there so we can remote control the crane. This is what they're doing here. Okay. We basically now saw the birth of a crane. We saw it all come together, but this is not where the journey ends here in Lengau because each crane that leaves the factory will be tested. We have a testing hall here where every crane will go through, and there will be different sorts of tests to make sure that the cranes work when they come to the bodybuilders. Okay. Let's have a look at the test hall. So you see the forklift drivers, they bring in the different cranes, and then we have blocks of different sizes where we mount the cranes, and that's where the cranes receive hydraulic oil, that's where they receive the electricity so they can work. There's guys or girls at each of these blocks, and they're testing the crane. You see there's weights that are being attached. We need to extend the crane, we need to check that everything works properly, we need to check that everything is greased up. Yeah, great. The gliding brackets are also here, perfectly placed. The bigger the crane, of course, this takes longer. Smaller cranes take about two hours until they're finished here in the testing area, and if you have a bigger crane also with additional equipment, it might take over 10 hours. We really use that time so we can make sure that the customers receive the best quality, because next up this crane will go to the bodybuilders, and the bodybuilders will mount the crane on the truck. Here you see there's a rope winch. A rope winch will also prolong this testing phase. The testing phase consists of at least 120 test steps, and then it can be more as well if there's a workman basket involved, a rope winch, a workman's basket, yeah, anything like that, a grabber, something special. I told you that usually it works like this. When the cranes are finished, they will be at our shipping area, and within three days, they will be transported to the respective bodybuilders, and the bodybuilders will mount these cranes on the vehicle. We also have the opportunity to do that here in Lengau as well. We have a Mounting Competence Center here in Lengau. We started this in 2013. We started it because of our biggest crane, the PK 200002, because this one will only be mounted here in Lengau. It's a very specialized mounting, and you have to really do an auxiliary frame for the crane in the Mounting Competence Center. You have to do some adjustments at the truck, and this is really difficult to do, so that's why we do it ourselves, to guarantee that it has a high performance or the best performance that it can actually achieve. In the meantime, we also mount different cranes, so it's not only for the biggest one. Now we also use it for other crane sizes. It's mostly really specialized vehicles. The big guys are mostly in the Mounting Competence Center, and I would like to introduce you to Thomas Ewen, who's the head of the Mounting Competence Center here in Lengau, and he's going to talk to you a bit about the Mounting Competence Center, about this concept, and also show you around a little bit in this next film. My name is Thomas Ewen, and I'm Head of the Mounting Competence Center in Lengau. In our mounting center, cranes are installed directly onto trucks that have been personally selected by our customers. We strive to fulfill our customers' requirements with unique and individual bodybuilding concepts to obtain optimum performance of the crane and overall machine. This is a great success with the customers. For this reason, we opened an additional center in Poland in 2020, enabling us to increase the capacity of up to 400 vehicles, and therefore fulfilling the increasing needs and demands of our customers. Quality and performance in our projects are most important, and therefore in our MCCs, we use the same materials as well as working processes. After the installation, the vehicles are brought to a test area, where they are thoroughly checked, adjusted, and settings are carried out. Here, the pressure levels are set, functional checks, tightness tests, and final stability tests on the vehicle are completed. After the final testing, the official handover to the customer takes place. Okay, back in the studio. Please forgive me, I'm not answering the questions, but Andrea, my colleague, is answering the question. She's doing a great job here. I can see you're asking a lot of questions, and I really try to stick to the timetable here. That's why I don't have too much time, apart from commenting on all those videos, to answer the questions. But Andrea is doing a great job. Thank you, Andrea, by the way. We saw a lot in Lengau. We saw the birth of a crane. We saw how they're mounted onto the trucks in the Mounting Competence Center. I promised you that we will also have a look over to Köstendorf, which is about 10 kilometers from Lengau. We have a little overview of what's going on in Köstendorf. We shot this footage like a month ago, something like that, and it's gonna give you a little peek into what's happening there. Köstendorf is also a big production site. What we do there is we do the railway products. We also have the truck-mounted forklifts in Köstendorf. We have the crawler crane, which is a quite new solution. The research and development is over at Köstendorf, and also the big cranes are mounted in Köstendorf. In this next video, I would like to show you what's going on in Köstendorf. Okay, Köstendorf is in Salzburg. Like I said, it's also quite a big plant. There's more than 600 employees working there, and here we see the railway assembly. In the railway assembly, we also have these workmen's baskets from different sizes. We have different connections inside these workmen's baskets for electrical tools, pneumatic tools, hydraulic tools, and we work together with lots of railways. Here's the cranes. The railway cranes are a little different than the truck-mounted loader cranes. They have more security functions. They also have a grounding cable on there because of the electrical overhead wirings. Okay, next up, the PK 200002. That's the big boy. That's the biggest crane we produce, the only one that's mounted lengthwise onto the truck, and it's mounted here in Köstendorf in two parts. When it's fully extended, together with the fly jib, it can reach a length of 45 meters and, yeah, I'm not going to tell you how much it can lift because I'm gonna ask that later on. Here you see another big crane. That's the 165. Here we see the crawler already. There's a crane mounted onto a crawler-type vehicle. This is also a very specialized solution. You can use it on slopes, ski slopes, for example, in Austria. You can also operate it electrically. This means you can use it inside a factory to set up big machines, for example. This is really quite a nice advanced thing. What we see here is the mounting line of the truck-mounted forklifts. We have three different truck-mounted forklift models: the BM, the Box Mounted, the F3, and the GLS, that's the new one for the American, U.S. American market, and we produce all these forklifts on this production line here. It consists of 10 different assembly steps, and we also have six pre-assembly steps. For example, they're pre-assembling something from the motor, and then it goes right into the main assembly line, and where they finish all different models, and at the end of the line, you already have the testing area. Yeah, we have solar panels as well in Köstendorf, and we have a testing hall as well that you can see right here in Köstendorf. It's the very big cranes that get tested. Here the testing takes quite some time. Also, the railway products are tested here in Köstendorf, and research and development is done here. Prototypes are built in Köstendorf. Yeah, new technologies come into play, lots of testing of the slewing gears, endurance tests are done here as well. This is what's going on in Köstendorf. There's also a small warehouse that you see right here. This is basically Köstendorf in a nutshell, a very short overview. I'll just peek at how much time we have. Okay, we don't even have 10 minutes left, but I think we can still manage to see everything that I've prepared for you. Otherwise, you would have to come back to do another online factory tour, which I'm happy to give you. Let's ask another question. Okay, yeah, I already told you which question I wanna ask you. This is the maximum lifting capacity of our largest crane, the PK 200002. Take a guess, or maybe you know it, and we'll see what the correct answer is in just a little bit. I also mentioned in the beginning that I would like to show you the factory here in the south of Salzburg, the Epsilon factory. That's where they produce the timber and recycling cranes. For the Epsilon factory, I have my colleague, Markus Prenninger, who's going to tell you a little bit what's going on at Epsilon in Elsbethen. Markus Prenninger is going to tell you about the site at Elsbethen, the Epsilon timber and recycling cranes. Design, technology, and comfort for your success. That is what drives us every day because if you're successful, so we are. With over 40 years of experience in crane production and over 40,000 cranes produced, we're the world-leading producer of lifting solutions of specialized cranes for timber, recycling, and construction applications. Therefore, we're a solution provider for hard and long-lasting applications with fast movements and many loading cycles. Our cranes come into use when material needs to be loaded fast and precise. This opens quite a wide field of possible challenges for our cranes, from getting the trees out of the wood with forwarders, skidders, tractors, chippers, or even cable yarding in extremely steep terrain, to the transport out of the forest and to the sawmills. In the field of construction and recycling, we offer solutions for the handling of green waste manipulation, of recycling material, container handling, as well as manipulation of loose construction material as earth or sand. For all these solutions, we always have one focus, the operator who is working with our equipment day by day. For those, we developed a range of unique features which makes the handling of our cranes as easy and convenient as never before. Palfinger. Okay, that was a little peek into what's going on in Elsbethen at Epsilon. Yeah, let's take a look at the question that I asked you, which is the maximum lifting capacity of our biggest crane, the PK 200002. The correct answer is 40 tons, and most of you got that right, so congratulations once again. We're nearing the end of this presentation of this online factory tour, and like I said, we're still expanding this tour, so we're in the very beginning stages of this tour, so we'll be able to show other factories as well. We will continue to produce new footage as well and really try to come up with new ideas. There's really lots going on. We just started it a few months ago, and I hope you enjoyed it anyways. We're not quite done yet, so I would still like to show you something. What we saw so far is lots of the crane production. We saw Köstendorf. We saw Epsilon as well. We took a short trip to Bulgaria, a short trip to Maribor as well in Slovenia. Of course, what's also very important for Palfinger is service, and that's also very important for our customers, of course. Finally, I would like to talk to you about the topic of service. We offer a great worldwide network of service partners, so we have over 130 countries where we offer service, where you can really get our products from and where we have service partners. Together with service, there's also the topic of spare parts, spare parts availability, production of spare parts. That's always a very crucial thing, of course, for our customers. In order to be able to provide them with spare parts, we have a very big spare part center here in Lengau. We also have a big spare part center overseas in Canada as well. During this pandemic, we did not have the chance yet to go to Canada to shoot some footage, so I'm going to show you the spare parts warehouse here in Lengau. That's also the one I'm quite familiar with because that's where we take most of our tours. Let's head over to our spare parts department to the warehouse, and I'll show you around a little bit. Okay. Here you see how it looks like. We have big parts in here that are operated by a forklift. We have 94.7% of the spare parts that are available within 24 hours. There's around 250,000 parts in circulation. 20,000 spare parts are delivered each day. The general dealers have around 25,000 spare parts in stock, and 120,000 packets are sent every year. Here we see the fully automatic spare parts center with robots operating these different aisles, and they pick up the boxes right here. They put the boxes on the conveyor belt. Then there's the different employees taking out the different parts that we need. They're packaging them or they're packaged by machine, as you see right here. Next stop, it will go into our PALFINGER vehicle and then be delivered to the respective dealers, to the respective customers. Okay. Okay. We're almost done. I think time's up as well. I hope you enjoyed this tour. I did certainly. Like I said, you can find the information on our homepage. You can also do your own private tour. We can customize it. You tell us what you wanna see, and we're trying to meet all your wishes. Sorry for not answering too many questions live here, but like I said, Andrea did a good job. Give it up to Andrea, and that's it from my side. Greetings back to Vienna or to wherever you are in front of your computer. See you next time. Goodbye. Ladies and gentlemen, after this online tour, we take over again here in the studio in Sankt Marx. We have here with us four high representatives of prominent and very successful Austrian companies. I sit down as well. They represent, on the one hand, construction, which is Palfinger's most important segment. On the other hand, we have here with us Palfinger's most important main raw material supplier. Please welcome with me Herbert Eibensteiner, CEO of voestalpine. We are very pleased to have with us Heimo Scheuch. He's CEO of Wienerberger. Hello. Peter Krammer is here. Hey From the management board of STRABAG. Welcome. Andreas Klauser is here- Thank you. Obviously with us also. I just wanna just open up the rounds. I would just ask all of you, why did you perform so well? Heimo, maybe first, would you like to start? Why did you perform so well? What did you do better than the others? Let me just say one word before we go into this. I think what the construction sector, if I may speak for the construction sector, did very well in the COVID era, and millions of people worldwide are working in it, that we were so good in organizing sales and safety for our people. Mm-hmm. I think it's a great job how we very quickly, not only in Austria, but in Europe and in North America, were very good in implementing clear rules, and the construction sector could work through. This was very important. I think that's my first remark. Secondly, in industry, obviously like, a lot of our colleagues here, we also implemented clear rules and regulations, so we could work through without incidents. For example, Wienerberger had no real incidents in the first wave and in the second one. I think that shows that we are very disciplined and can cope with such crisis. To your question, I think important is to understand that people wanted obviously to go more in real estate, yeah, because real estate is something where you can protect yourself against inflation, and you invest more in new build, in renovation, and also in infrastructure. Certainly, obviously, you have big initiatives now from the EU, like the Green Deal, from the American government, but also other governments, for investing in infrastructure and investing in renovation. This brings obviously a lot of money into the sector. Mm-hmm. Can I ask maybe our technical colleagues, can we have a time code so we know sort of where we're going with our discussion? How much time we still have maybe? Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Heimo. Same question to you two, maybe. We all said that we all call our- That's fine. First names. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. From the construction perspective, we are quite a decentralized company with a very strong management in the regions. One of our success stories is to have some parts of the company centralized organized, and a lot of power in the regions. That was one of the reasons why we could manage COVID that good because we could react very flexible on the issues which are needed in the countries. So that's probably the reason why we are so successful as a company and why we managed COVID. Mm-hmm that successful. You know, first I would say we have a very robust strategy, I would say. The COVID crisis had really proven that it's very well communicated also to our people. I was really surprised that the big international company like voestalpine with 50,000 people can react so quickly and adapt to a really new situation with all these measures we have to implement worldwide. To be honest, we have at any time delivered to our customers. Sometimes we had problems with the supply chain, but we have at any time delivered to our customers in a really difficult situation. That means great people and very well-educated people. I would say it's strategy, it's adapting to new situation and the people. Mm-hmm. Andreas, of course, we've heard a lot about Palfinger already, why it performed so well. Just give us another view. No, I think after first shock, and I think everybody was shocked what happened after March 16th, 18th, whatever, 2020. I think we recovered quite quick. We found our strategy and exactly what you are saying, we were really focusing on safety and health. We managed quite well to keep our engine running, the plants running. On the other hand, I think as well what we found, a way to deal with this very volatile environment. I think this is still a strength of the backbone we have generally as Austrian based companies that the team spirit, team cooperation is by far more advanced maybe than any other countries. Mm-hmm. Because we're quite in a limited environment as we know each other, so we could call each other, we could give a hand each other. We could even talk about vaccination at a certain point in time that we had some joint forces and joint interests, and I think this made us quite successful. On the other hand, this is common for the three of us, we are here really seen as premium brands and premium companies, not only in Austria, Europe, globally, and I think as well what we have in common, therefore, it's so good to have you guys, and I wanted to say thank you for coming because that's the common ground we have as global leaders leading in the industries where we are in. What was the biggest lesson that you've learned and for the steel industry in these times of crisis? When for the steel industry, we have seen that we found even a compromise between securing volumes and prices. When Herbert Eibensteiner needed volume, we secure it. Later on, when I need certain price security, he helped us, and this is really how it worked. When we delivered cranes and delivered services to STRABAG, we did not ever let them down for one minute, and this is what we learned that our customers paying for that and highly valuing that. Mm-hmm. Herbert, what's your take on this? What would you say is the lesson that has been learned? That the lesson is, it's easy to stay customer oriented, so with a certain customer intimacy as we, I think, we can say we have that, really. I think it's don't lose the focus. You have a clear strategy, what are the sectors, what are the customers you want to have and stick to that. One of the lessons learned, at least from the customer's perspective, because we got this feedback. We were very reliable and for deliveries, also everything was tight at this moment, and especially when we recovered after this, after the summer. Steel and all the input material was very tight. we stick to our contracts and you can imagine that everybody wanted at this time be a strategic partner of voestalpine, but we stick to our long-term and strategic partners. Mm-hmm. By the way, we are talking about 60 years marriage, not both of us. That's pretty impressive. At Palfinger we talk about 60 years of partnership and half of the volume we are getting on steel, 20,000 tons are coming from voestalpine in terms of premium steel. I think this is well something which is a recognizable number and a recognizable partnership. How would you define these 60 years? I mean, what- Oh, as a steel supplier, and also that we always got proper information when they are exploring new technologies, new steel qualities, and our cranes are even more robust than ever, but lighter. Mm-hmm. It's a combination of technology, innovation, and partnership with our suppliers. Also personally knowing each other, as you mentioned. Personally knowing each other. Yes As you mentioned before. If we can't agree in the teams then over a beer we review and we agree. Heimo is nodding. Yes. Do you think the same, Heimo? Yeah. Sure. No, I think you asked the question, what did we learn or what was our experience? Yeah. I think we all have been through crisis. I just recall the crisis 2009, 2010, markets in construction were around 60%-80% in certain areas of the world, so we had to deal with this. This is, for us, nothing new. The COVID one had another aspect also, the human one. Mm-hmm. Political instability, very important in these very tough moments, and also a certain instability in the society. To manage through this crisis, and I remember also with investors, financial markets, et cetera, it was very important to focus on communication. Yeah. Communication, communication. If you go out and in this tough time speak with your own people, yeah, if you're 50,000, 20,000, that doesn't matter, but you need to be in contact with them because we understood very quickly that actually the political side didn't do its job, yeah. There was so much instability where if I look at the first 3-4 weeks in Europe, the EU was not present. Mm. It didn't exist. There was a status of shock because I remember when some of the borders were closed, we couldn't get our goods movement or our people around. The technicians were not able to go to sites or go to clients. This was actually a very critical moment for all of us. We managed it. We learned to manage it. The most important experience for me at least is that we as a company have to deal with much more than just our clients or our customers. We need to talk about political instability which comes a more critical issue in the future. Let's look at this point. We're heading into the next crisis. I mean, we have 8,400- Mm New cases in Austria. Today will be a tough winter for sure. Since you've mentioned politics, what would you expect from the political side? What all of us expect is the same stability and continuity. They should provide us with a good, not only legal system but also a society that works, and the health aspect is one of the most important one, yeah? Today actually when you look at what they have learned from the first wave of this COVID, they didn't learn a lot because we are running just in the next one right now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah? It's amazing how bad these countries are managed. I'm sorry to say this. We would be bankrupt. Yes, exactly. If we would have managed in such a way. We would be bankrupt already. I think as well the good thing about us and the Austrian environment is here, that we are finding ways to talk to each other, to sharing best practice. When you had a concern, Herbert, or when you had certain question marks, then we could talk to each other, not only in terms of technology, what to do, but as well how to manage our daily operation, and then we could talk with one voice towards the government, towards the authorities, and I think this is quite important as well. Unfortunately, in the next couple of months that we really liaise and make sure that the government, the officials are understanding what is required, which kind of stability we need, because otherwise we cannot afford short time work and all this kind of good tools we have. Mm-hmm That will not work. Just to sum this up, do you feel heard by the politics in Austria? How do you feel? We feel heard but not understood. Okay. I say this is. Not always understood. This is a very, very good answer. I think the politicians are listening, but they don't act, and this is the big problem. I think they know how difficult the situation is, they know how affected we are in this situation, but for them it's another world. Yeah As we in industry, they don't act accordingly. Okay. Let's talk about another topic that we've heard about a lot and we also report on Zeit im Bild often, the steel shortage. What's your take on this? Will it continue next year or do you see a positive development? I think after such a crisis there is always a bullwhip effect, and so we had a very overheated situation during the summer, and now I think the situation has normalized, I would say. We have to say that we are in a very positive environment. Also, we have all these issues, COVID, and high energy prices and all these supply chain disruptions. We have growth. Mm. That means the demand will be high also for the next months and also into next year, especially automotive industry. They are affected by the semiconductor shortage, and they have full order books, so they have to produce this car. I think when we heard, okay, we will see a certain relief in the middle of next year, so we can expect that demand is still high. The big players like China is focusing on their own supply, and there are not so many imports into Europe from China. The U.S. is booming. Mm Still. The U.S. is lifting Section 232 in January, which means that we can deliver from Europe again to the U.S. All those things. I think that's a cocktail for high demand also into next year and with a relatively stable price level, I would say. Pretty optimistic. I'm pretty optimistic. Look on 2022. Peter, do you agree? Are you as optimistic? Yes, I agree. I agree on that. Of course we started very shocked in 2020. After this hit of the Corona crisis we thought everything will break down, but it was vice versa. Our main countries Germany Czech Republic, Poland, stays at the same level of turnover, except Austria. We went down by 8% because of the hard lockdown in the first weeks of March last year. The economy rises very quickly in U.S. and China, and in Europe as well. The investments were quite big in infrastructure on one hand, and that's the reason why I'm not criticizing the politics because the infrastructure investment was still quite a lot, and housing as well. Therefore we faced a supply chain problem with some materials like wood. This had a lot of reasons, not only COVID, but a lot of reasons. The supply chain problems stabilized very quickly. The price is high, still high, and we expected that the rise of the price will take until the third quarter. Mm-hmm. Now we passed the third quarter, and it's going down. Yeah. But we will not, definitely will not reach the level of before crisis. Okay. Heimo or Andreas, what's I think what I can fully confirm that, yes, politics did quite well in supporting us to get this, infrastructure projects up and running again. I think that the start was very well managed, as well the COVID part one was quite managed. Now it seems that, politicians are leaning back a little bit and again focusing purely on their political daily problems they have fighting for voters. Yeah. Mm-hmm. This has nothing to do, this does not fix anything if I fight for voters. This does not help us. This is something which we need to overcome, and therefore, I think the pressure here from the industrial side needs to be quite big on the guys to make sure that they understand that they can have the political games, but this does not fix our issues. I think this is more or less. Do you agree, Heimo? Yeah. I think you were referring to the supply chain problems. Yeah That some of us have or in the industry. I think when you look worldwide, you will see some critical supply chain issues that are not so much linked to the construction sector, but others. Because- Where do you see them, Heimo? Yeah. Critical ones like semiconductors, for example. Yeah. Because people understand that you can influence other economies by not delivering as much as you should. Yeah. It becomes also a tactical political issue between big- Mm-hmm Sort of economies. The US plays it very well, China does it, and Europe is again a little bit behind. Yeah. We are always sleeping a little bit. A little bit. Yeah. Yeah, a little bit. The other thing I would like to mention when you talk about shortage is labor. Yeah. I see it very much in our sector that qualified labor is an issue, and it will come, I guess you will confirm on the construction site it's an issue. Also when we look at the. We have more than 200 production sites, obviously also in rural areas, and to attract qualified labor becomes also in Europe a big issue already. I think it would be also wise to think ahead what is going to be next 10 years, 20 years, who is actually working for us. We need to be very innovative. That's again, a very interesting aspect of cooperation because we need to think much more holistic than today about infrastructure, construction, renovation, to do it with less people and with more intelligent solutions. Let's get more concrete, Heimo. I mean, labor shortage is a problem everywhere in almost all sectors. What can Wienerberger do? Wienerberger alone, not much. Not much. We can train, we can do. You have. You need ideas and strategies. Yeah. It's a fight for talent, to be honest. Yeah. The big problem will be in a small country like Austria. If you take us here, we fight already for the same talent. Yeah. Mm-hmm. We are fishing in the same pond, if I may say so. At the end of the day, we need sometimes to work together and attract the right people. It's also a hot topic. It's also an issue of immigration. Yeah. Of course. What people do we attract in the economy? Who should come here? Who should work here? These are big issues again, and I think it would be very nice to sit together with decision makers on the political side to talk about the next 20-30 years. Yeah. We shouldn't talk about the next months or so and somebody to discuss about his or her popularity, but about Yeah The future really. It's also maybe a problem of our educational system in Austria. Very much. Of course, or in Europe in general. Yeah. Mm-hmm. As well to let migrants coming into the account. On the other hand, I think this is what you said already, we need to identify these talents on one hand side. At the end of the day, it's not only about, let's say, engineers and then specialists. This is really about an ordinary workforce, blue collar. Mm-hmm. If you have a shortage, I can't produce any more in Austria, so I need as well to identify people who will do a manual work. Here we are now starting a project which is called AQUA with the Salzburg AMS, Austrian Arbeitsmarktservice, which is supporting identifying long-term unemployed people and bring them back into a normal working environment. Out of 10, we can already identify one at least who takes a job out of 10. Yeah. If you're considering we have 450,000-460,000, I see some potential, but these are all initiatives which are coming from us and not so much really on a government regulation or on a government support. This is something where we need to look at in future how we can get supported from that, and that the guys are not only listening to us as well, implementing at least something which is agreed and which would be wise and not just talking about it. Mm-hmm. That's, I think, the It's obviously a small items that you can offer. I moderated for Ortner Gruppe. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It's a big company as well. They implemented like a talent scout almost. Mm. Our own school f-to, to- Yeah Locate their talents, and we're talking about blue collar, obviously. Yes. So could this is something that- Yeah, yeah. Yeah. STRABAG is of course part of We just opened the Campus Ybbs, yeah. Mm-hmm To train young and older people, blue collar worker- Mm In a case of lifetime learning, yeah. Because we have new materials, we have new aggregates, we have something to learn how to use the machines. Mm-hmm. Learning by doing is not enough. We have to train them very hard and we invested a lot of money. In my perspective, to attract or to bring young people to the construction business is very hard because it's a tough job. Yeah. Wind and weather, and it's cold, it's hot. You earn a lot of money, of course, but on the other hand, you have a quite attractive and safe job, and this brings a lot of people to- Yeah To the construction industry. We try to support, like we talked earlier. Yeah, yeah. In terms of automated processes. Mm-hmm That a crane operator does not really stand out in a bad working and weather conditions, that he can stay in the cab of the truck, optimize processes easier, but will never, let's say, the real hard work on the construction site will never disappear. That's unfortunately the case. As the construction industry, we have a huge potential. Yeah. We have a huge potential to speed up our work, to make it more attractive, to make it safe, more safe, but it takes time. We need digitalization as well. We need BIM, 5D, building information modeling, to make a digital twin out of the construction site from the design, to know what to do for the next step and to think forward. Mm to step forward. Heimo, the construction industry is booming, we've heard many times. How do you see the next years? How is Wienerberger also planning on benefiting from the global upswing? First of all, everybody thinks everything is booming, you know. Well, not the media. First of all. Not the media. First of all, I think we are coming in certain countries back to pre-crisis levels. Mm. That's the first thing. I think from what you have heard from everybody of us, we are also saying cautious. Be cautious. We actually can't cope with more because we don't have the people to do that. Mm. Yeah. We're back to the labor shortage. Back to yeah, exactly. We can actually not do more projects because we don't find enough. I give you just one example. We like to talk about Austria, but in the Czech Republic, we are very strong on the roof, yeah, with roofing materials. In the Czech Republic, in the roofers' schools, this year you had only 20 young people. Wow. Yeah. The roof is obviously a golden business, as we all say, because you earn a lot of money on when you are a roofer, yeah. Mm. 20 young people, Czech people, joined this career path. The thing in Europe is we were always in a luxury position because we took people from the East. Mm-hmm. When you look at the Czech Republic, they have lots of Ukrainians coming and working on the roofs. But this will, at the end of the day, change, and we won't have this anymore. That's why I'm saying automation, innovation, new products, new solutions. This is the future. Prefabrication, for example, these are going to be very important issues. If we work together among companies, if we find something, then I think solutions, that will be it, yeah. That's what we need to do, invest in the future. I agree with- We're just- Yeah We're just acting on a 3D printing house. Mm. Yeah. An office just nearby, near Vienna. We are presently printing this house. First time. This is not the end, this is probably not the best solution, but this it is, we are learning to do that. Mm-hmm. Probably we can do other things with that innovation. Let's talk about other trends, steel trends. How do you see what trends are there? Will steel become even thinner and stronger? Yeah, I think the trend is, you know, voestalpine is more focusing on high quality steels. For us, the next step is more high-strength steel. You're a big customer in high-strength steel. Just to give you a picture, normal steel for building is 300 MPa. We are discussing about 1,200 MPa. The next step is 10% stronger. I think it's a thinner material, it's material for electrical steel, for instance, for the automotive industry, for motors, electric motors, more efficient, thinner, higher strength. It's wear resistant. Just for example, also for mechanical engineering or for railway applications. There are a lot of things we are working on, but high strengths and especially automotive industry is driving that, you know, lightweight is decisive even for electric cars and crash performance also very important, especially when it comes to the battery box. It's a very important topic there. There are a lot of different requirements in steel, and as you can see, it's a very versatile. Schoen, there's also green steel as a buzzword that comes up frequently. Tell us more about that. Yes. That's right. You know, we are all talking about sustainability of our business models. I think greentec steel is a big topic because we are emitting CO2. I think we can say we are benchmarking in our business when it comes to environmental issues, but there is no red button to push and CO2 problem is finally solved. We have a plan developed greentec steel. Greentec steel means that we want to reduce our CO2 emissions of around 30% in the first step till 2030, I would say. We'll begin 2025. The next step is from a blast furnace oriented production to electric arc furnace production. The next step is beyond 2030. We are working on technologies that use green hydrogen, and we think that green hydrogen and increased use of green hydrogen will lead us to a CO2 neutral steel production till 2050. Okay. Can it be established as a production standard in the long term? I think it's important just to mention here that we fully count on the supply of green steel and steel. As you have seen this morning, 10% of our eco efficiency comes from steel. I mean, nearly 10%, 7 point whatever. Only 1% is in-house, and then the rest is remaining with the vehicle carrying our products. It plays really an important role that we can get this steel, and this is as well why our partnership with voestalpine globally is so important that we can roll this out as well in terms of our sustainability future and programs we have. We are fully counting on it, but I think this is agreed as well. The head of procurement is here, Harald Hauser, so he knows already when we can get certain impact, and this is where we are counting on. Mm-hmm. Let me pose this question again. Can it be established as a production standard long term? I think it's clear to us that we are committed to these climate goals till 2050. We have to say that this cannot be for free. Mm-hmm. To change a technology costs a lot of money and at the end what we see to reduce CO2 will cost a lot of money to all of us. That will drive inflation. That's clear. We have this plan. We have this technology. We have all these preconditions and from voestalpine's point of view, but we have also the environment, the political decision. We have not enough green electricity and green energy, and we haven't especially in Europe enough grid power to provide this green energy to all this project which are running all over the world, and especially in Europe. Peter, what's your take on sustainability? What's STRABAG's commitment to sustainability? Our commitment is our sustainability strategy. We just published some months ago we will be climate neutral up to 2040 in our processes. This is a quite tough challenge, yeah. I'm sure. We're discussing about Scope 1, Scope 2, Scope 3, and we are not the producers of the materials, yeah. We are just taking the materials and assemble a house, yeah. Of course, we can do in Scope 1 quite much. If you know that 40% of the energy and 36% of the carbon produces the construction industry, yeah. Not only the construction industry and not the industry, but all together, yeah. It means construction and use of a house, yeah. There are many things to do for us as a construction company. The first part, this is around 20-25%, yeah. 75%-80% is during the using phase, and there you can do a lot with renewable heating, insulation, new windows and all this stuff. As a- Mm. There's really much to do, but it takes time because it costs a lot of money and who will do that? Who will pay that, huh? The owner of the house or the renters? This is a big question. A lot of work to do for us, but I'm pretty sure we will achieve that. Heimo, in your segments, where do you see innovation and trends? Please. First of all, I think when you talk about sustainability, that's not only climate, yeah? For us, for example, Wienerberger commits now 'til 2023, that every product that we produce is recyclable or can be reduced. Mm-hmm. Every. Mm-hmm. That's circular economy. That's very important, first of all, because here we make a strong commitment. Secondly, when you run more than 200 production sites, biodiversity is very important. We actually have committed. Mm That we increase on every site biodiversity. We add something to biodiversity. This is also communicated, tracked, monitored, et cetera. From a production point of view, already very important. Obviously innovation comes on the whole product solution front, yeah? New products that are more energy efficient, that can contribute positively to climate change by reducing in the use process of a house or a renovated building to reduce energy consumption. Sure. On the other hand, when you look at our production processes, and I think we are all very similar, every transformation process, industrial, needs energy. Every. There are some believers that think with the hand I can transform something, but that's not true. Yeah. Stones maybe also. Probably. There are some people that are very intelligent, but that's not feasible today. Energy, the biggest question is we all can reduce, we all will invest millions and hundreds of millions in new technology. At the end of the day, we need sustainable energy resources, and where should they come from? The grid is one thing to get it from A to B, that's not even possible in Europe right now. Wind energy is very nice to have somewhere, but you need to get it to other places with industries. We need electricity, for example, 24 hours, not only when the sun is shining. All these issues are very important issues, and we are all putting money into research and development, but there needs to be a very strong commitment from somebody like the European Union to sustainable energy resources. We need to have a much bigger plan than the von der Leyen green plan for energy. Because obviously the French will fight for their nuclear business. Yeah. Yeah. The others will fight for the windmills, the others for photovoltaics and et cetera. It will not solve our problem, yeah? Therefore, we can do a lot. We can use biogas, we can use a lot of things in our sector, and we will do a lot of things. For the European industry as such, we need a sustainable sort of policy when it comes to energy resources. Mm-hmm. Yeah. This is what they're discussing about right now in Glasgow. Yeah. The good thing about this such summit is they don't issue what, how much CO2 they emit, yeah? With all the jets that fly in and all that. What was on the news as well. Yeah. Just getting there are. Yeah News about that. Heimo, let's stay with the topic trends. What trends do you see when it comes to private housing? Well, I think after the COVID, we have seen a very positive trend to private, because everybody wants to move outside, obviously, having a little house and a garden, if you can afford it. I mean, that's obviously the case, and the dream of everybody is to have it. We see it very strongly in the U.S., for example, a strong boom in one- and two-family houses. The same also in a lot of countries in Europe. Yeah, you will have this movement for a while, but affordability is the big issue, because real estate gets shorter and shorter. There's a shortage of real estate, so you need to think in both ways. We won't have only now one-family houses in the next years to come, we need also multifamily residences and houses and high-story buildings as well. I think good trend in this family, one family. You will have very efficient house types now that are zero emission house types, and they're also affordable, certainly compared to years from back in 10 years ago, for example. I think here you will see a good trend for the next couple of years. How globally is the booming construction trend for Wienerberger? Well, it's a- Where are the biggest demands? Biggest demands, I mean, if you, the single biggest market is obviously the U.S., for its dimension, but if I take the whole of Europe, it's much bigger. That's from a dimension perspective. I think in Europe you have very different pockets that are very strong, for example, right now in Eastern Europe. In Western Europe, very different. For example, countries like the U.K. is very strong in new residential housing. Not the whole, by the way, not the whole of the U.S. is strong, eh? We have Texas that is much stronger than California, for a lot of reasons. Political again, and investment. You, I think construction-wise and investment-wise in real estate, and the residential housing especially, will depend very, very much on demographic movements, on tax policies, because they attract and where, and where the labor goes, where you have actually innovation and new companies starting. Peter Haas, the visibility in your industry, are you fully booked for 2022? Is there any visibility for 2023 already? Yes, we are, thank God, fully booked this year. We mentioned at the end of August an all-time high order backlog with EUR 21 billion. With turnover around EUR 50 billion, it's much more than one year turnover. We have a quite good outlook on residential buildings and housings and of course also in our core markets, which is Germany, Austria, Czech, Poland. We have a lot of infrastructure to do. We have the Bundesverkehrswegeplan in Germany up to 2030. They have to invest a lot in their infrastructure, especially in Western Germany and in Austria as well. We are quite confident that this will stay over 2022, 2023, 2024 probably. Mm-hmm. But that- Where do you see the biggest potentials in which countries? In Germany. In Germany. In Germany. Yeah. What's- Still. Say again. This is our biggest market, and we are in comparison to the other companies the strongest. For Palfinger, Andreas? I think there's not a lot to add when our customers and the construction business goes well. We need just to serve you properly with best solutions, best technologies. I think we need to think beyond that that we make your business more efficient and easier. It starts with the supply of construction material. It's servicing your needs on the building site. I think all the tools and all the solutions we have is really leading towards this direction. I think this really makes me confident, not only seeing the good numbers we have in our order book. Our order book is as well fully covered until first half of next year. Beyond that, we see already a huge demand which is coming up. On the other hand, yes, I hope that good suppliers and friends like voestalpine will not too much increase prices. The good news for the investors is the money remains in this room. It's just a question of which pocket do we give it. Here. You can give us quotes. I think we can give a quite positive outlook, and I think this is well, especially considering COVID times. I think it's needed. It's needed for the population, it's needed for the people, it's needed for Europe that we give a positive outlook that at least something works and it's not everything in crisis and everything comes to an end. This will attract people, this will attract employees globally. We see it as well that we have by far more requirements now for apprentices, whatever, coming now up. We have usually we had 25 on our campus in Lengau. Currently, we're sitting at 48 young people who ask for a job there, who ask for a trainee program. This makes me believe that we are doing the right things, and this is as well a positive trend where we can participate on. Mm-hmm. If there are any questions from the audience, maybe briefly raise your hand. Otherwise, I would sort of slowly get to an end. Yeah With final statements, if this is okay for you. I think it's been a very lively discussion. Heimo, your final statement, so to say, maybe an outlook. What's there to come? Well, I'm. As my colleagues, I'm not negative about the future. By nature, I'm an optimist, so there's a lot to be done, and there is a lot of challenges ahead of us, yeah? But I also see when you look in the future, there might be some bumpy roads ahead of us because there's ups and downs. As I said earlier, we certainly live through a very I would call it a time where a lot of changes are possible, influences, new things are coming. Who actually thought about a pandemic five years ago? Yeah. Nobody, yeah? We will have to cope with new issues coming our way, yeah? That's why we are sitting here, and we can deal with a lot of things at the same time. We are all much more flexible. How we work has become very different from the past, yeah? Actually we as a company, who would have thought that Wienerberger is one of the leading pipe producers of this world today, yeah? It's true. We will probably in a couple of years be one of the leading companies in water management, yeah? We are already heavily investing in northern Europe, like Finland, Sweden, and Norway, where we are leading companies supplying solutions to infrastructure for water companies. In a couple of years, we will might have a completely different way forward. I think voestalpine did the same, you did the same. We develop ourselves, and this keeps us young, yeah? Mm-hmm. Innovation and new things is the big challenge for the future. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Peter, what will be the biggest challenges for STRABAG ahead? Yes. Well, of course, what we already mentioned before, sustainability is one of our challenges, our biggest challenges. Also what I said at the beginning of this meeting, we're decentralized. We have 10,000 construction sites running at the same time, so we are highly decentralized. Putting this in a way together to keep the flexibility on these sites, on the decentralized processes and centralized as much as necessary to form a way of the possibility to digitalize the processes. To form as necessary, as needed, constant processes, this is our biggest challenge. Too, of course, to make us more profitable on the one hand, and on the other hand, more flexible. Thank you, Peter Haas and Herbert Eibensteiner. Please share with us your view for the future. You know, I think when it's considering that we are in a global business, I think that we have these challenges in front of us. Energy availability, energy prices, these supply chain issues, sustainability topics, climate crisis, all those things I think will stay volatile and will push us to a certain direction. In general, I would say the world economy is growing, and maybe more driven by Asia. I think the U.S. will stay very strong. Europe is maybe lacking a bit behind, but also on a good level. At least from my perspective and looking on the markets we are in, and you saw you have a lot of projects you're delivering into this, to these markets. Right. I think the order books are good. Also we have this disruption in certain areas, so at least for 2022, I'm optimistic, and I'm even optimistic in 2023. Mm-hmm. Andreas, may I ask you? Yeah, similar on our side. Some of the thought. I think it's important that we manage really to fully participate in this positive economic environment we are in now. Really to drive the harvest home, so what we have on our plate, what we have in terms of orders, that we can supply our solutions, our equipment properly to our customers, that we do not have too long lead times, that we manage to secure quality and services. I think there's as well something when the next impact might come from COVID, that we can still provide services 24/7, that we don't let the machines down. I think this is everything we people count on, and this makes me as well believe, since we know how to manage this, that we will be even more successful in future. The outlook is already quite positive towards 2023, which as well helps us here beyond 2023, that we are really in many different industries. It's about this construction. The other side is the marine business, which we have heard today. Mm-hmm. Safety equipment, services there. If this is coming back, including oil and gas, we are quite well-balanced, and this makes me believe as well that we will see a quite strong and successful future for PALFINGER. Thank you. Is there anything else you want to share with us? Any other thoughts? Otherwise, I would say thank you to Heimo Scheuch from Wienerberger, Peter Krammer from STRABAG, and Herbert Eibensteiner, CEO from voestalpine. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and ideas here with us. Klaus? Thanks for moderating us, huh? Big applause to. Andreas, I think you stay with us. With me. Yeah. We have to improve a little bit now. Thank you to the gentlemen. Thank you. What's happening now? We will have immediately after this session now our rum tasting. You're all invited. We will share a little bit about rum. We like to talk about rum, but we even prefer to drink it. On the other hand, it's a part of our safety and health program at PALFINGER that we make sure the virus spread is minimized. Thanks. It's disinfection. Yes, disinfection. Danke dir. [Foreign language] Danke dir. Ein ganz Packerl für euch.] Danke. Bleib stehen, bitte. Ja. Toll gemacht. Was? Offizielle Verabschiedung.] Ja, bitte.] Wir machen das noch, aber jetzt ist sie schon abgedreht. Nadja hat noch einen Kommentar.] No, no. Bitte. No, no. I just wanted to thank everybody for having me. It was, as always, a delight to moderate an event for PALFINGER. Thank you very much. On behalf of all of you, a big applause and flowers for Nadja. Thank you. [Foreign language]Danke[/Foreign language]. Schau mal kurz in die Kamera. Thank you. [Foreign language] Machen wir ein Photo all together, please. Yes. Da haben wir mich. Nein. [Foreign language]Repräsentiert ganz gut eure Branche, oder? Die Quote.[/Foreign language] Sollen wir vorher? Vorhin? Okay. Vorn Tisch sagt er. Nein, nein. Wir stellen uns vor den Tisch. Geht so? Ja. Da passt kein Elefant hinein. Keine Sorge, da brauchen wir einen. Nein, nein. [/Foreign language] Shall I first start? We are continuing. We just had this little break since some of my CEO colleagues had to leave. Some of them will remain with us for our rum tasting, huh? Rum tasting, we have it here in the room. You will get some rums here and some explanation, but as well at home. I think you got a little black box delivered to your home and you can now taste online with us. The idea came from Peter Affenzeller, who is a whiskey manufacturer, whiskey producer in Upper Austria, and he told me about his idea sending whiskeys to home, and then he was doing a whiskey tasting. He started doing this, I think, after two months when COVID started, and we're a little bit copying this. I have Lucia here with me. She's a rum connoisseur, and she will lead us, and she will explain a little bit. As I said, it's a part of our safe health program of Palfinger. Welcome. Stay with us, and I'm handing over to you. Thank you. I'm so glad I can be here. Thank you so much for having me. I was looking forward to this. My name is Lucia, and I will guide you through the next half an hour, 40 minutes, and we will taste these four rums. I must say, the selection is wonderful. I was surprised. Like, my chef told me, "Okay, we're having the Plantation, the Centenario, the Doorly's, and the World's End." I'm not sure how familiar you are already with rum. Maybe you know the Plantation already. It's quite famous. I've heard you chose the rums for us, Andreas. Yes. Did you know them or? I knew most of them. For me, for example, here, the Centenario was one which I experienced quite a long time, Plantation I knew. I thought, yeah, let's share this with the colleagues here. Let's share this with our participants to our Capital Markets Day as well, to come to an end and to close this event in a way that we can still talk to each other and avoiding viruses by rum. I think it's also interesting that rum is a long history in terms of production. Even until 1985, the Royal Marine, the Marine of England, gave one shot of rum once a week, and this was a part of the payment to the soldiers. until 85, then somebody stopped it, and this shows how strong the belief in rum is. Now let's learn a little bit more about it. Exactly, yeah. I'm happy to tell you all about a little bit about the history of rum, because in Austria, as you mentioned, like the British Navy, they have this huge rum tradition. In Austria, we're kind of a little bit behind in learning about premium products, yeah? They're really made for sipping, for drinking neat. There's no mixing. Of course, you can mix rum. That's your personal taste or opinion. The products we are tasting today and you have at home, they're really for sipping, for drinking pure. We will start with pouring the first rum with- Yes. We need to have another participant. Oh, I'm sorry. Exactly. Yes. We have a guest. Welcome. Welcome. Hello. Hello. Thank you. Hello. Hi. Hi. Nice to meet you. What's your name, sorry? Charlotte. Charlotte. Okay. Charlotte. We'll drink together the first round, which will be for you at home, the Plantation XO. I think you guys in the room will as well have it in a minute in your glass, correct? Yes, exactly. Please share it. Okay. Here. Thank you. Hopefully at home as well, you can follow here. I think it's the relaxing part of this event here today. May I ask you, what's your experience with rum? Almost zero. I'll probably take over the role of asking the stupid questions that There are no stupid questions. Novices to rum don't know. Maybe a first one, how is this different to a wine tasting, for instance, which is probably what most people have tried before? I will give you some notes on how to taste properly. Yeah. Okay? Let's start with that. The first rule is we enjoy it. We take time. Okay? You always need some time for a good glass of rum. Then probably you've heard, "Okay, let's look at the color." There's a bronze, mahogany. I'll tell you, forget about the color. Most rums, unfortunately, they have color inside, like they add color. We don't talk too much about color here. We will talk about the smell, the bouquet, the nose, and the palate, the taste, and then the finish. That's the three signs of quality of a rum, and we start with the nose always. What I like to do, at first a tip, advice, is that you keep your distance. You put the glass on the height of your chin. That's the perfect distance, okay? It takes a little bit longer to smell actually something. Like, if you put your nose inside and you're like impatient, I do it all the time, so no judging here. The perfect distance is actually chin height, and then you wait, and you smell. You drink. You drink. Cheers. Salud. 'Cause if you are from Upper Austria and you grew up with schnapps, you know how to do this correctly, but. I'm always thinking of do I get on the palate the thing I expect when I smell? Here I smell sweet notes. Yeah? Maybe honey, maybe banana, coconut. I think the coconut is very prominent, toasted coconut. I don't know if you smell it. How do you enjoy it? Vanilla. You like it? Yeah. Sure. I would've said sugarcane probably. Sugarcane. Okay. Sugarcane. The special thing about Plantation, it's actually from France. It's aged 8-10 years in Barbados, and then Alexandre Gabriel, he's the master blender of Plantation, he brings the bottle, the barrels to France, and then he puts in the rum in his own cognac barrels. Then there's a finish in France. It's a double aging. There's a tropical aging and a continental aging. That's actually remarkable because he does not only buy barrels and sells them, he curates the rums he's buying, and then he changes the product and makes really fine rums I think. Yeah. Now, since you are talking about Barbados and this was the discussion when we prepared this meeting, I'm also only knowing and talking about rum since 2016 when I enjoyed the first rum visit to Mount Gay. Mm-hmm. We agreed yesterday, I think it's the oldest. It- rum distillery Mm-hmm on the globe. Yeah. It's nearly 320 years old. 320 years. 1703 it was founded. Correct. Yes. Yes, exactly. It's the oldest one. Yeah. Still distilling rum, still famous for the rum products in Barbados. They got me on their hook when I was there. It was a rainy day in Barbados, so what can you do? You can have some rums and some food, so enjoy. You still enjoy to drink it today, right? I still enjoy. Yeah. It's a fine rum, yeah. Maybe if you get the vanilla notes and the cocoa notes, just to note where this is coming from. From the barrel, of course. Most things we taste, we smell are coming from the barrel directly. If you have the vanilla toast note, it always come from American oak. You always know, aha, this was aged in American oak. The reason behind this is there are a lot of old bourbon casks, bourbon barrels, because there's the bourbon rule. Bourbon, they can only age in fresh, new casks. Okay. There are a lot of bourbon producers, they have the barrels, they use it for 12 years, and then they can't use the barrels again because they have to sell it, because otherwise they couldn't name the product bourbon. There are a lot of bourbon casks. They're all from American oak, and American oak has a lot of lignin in them. If you toast the barrel, so if you kind of burn off the most inside layer, then the lignin turns into vanillin. Now you know always when you smell vanilla in a rum, it was always aged in American oak. Always. Now we learn something, you know? That's the part of the Palfinger education system. There will be a test afterwards, so I hope. Cheers. Andreas, I need an extra shot. Sorry. Please thank Martin Zehnder, our COO, and some other colleagues. They did a great job today. Nix zum Gleichen. Thank you. This means you like it here in the room. I hope as well at home you found the right bottle which you opened now and you share this experience with us. I think we can continue here- Of course. to the next one. Very well. The next one is the Centenario 1985. Comes from Costa Rica. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. This is a bit more complex I think, more difficult to drink, more layers. The intention behind this rum is to create the image of a forest. Think about a forest. It's woody, it's a bit smoky, red fruits. Maybe you can smell cherry, strawberry, red apple, but also the wood and the smoke. It has the sweet side as well, but definitely more difficult than a Plantation. It's nice. Andreas, how long would you say it takes people to get to know you to find out about your passion of rum? I think only the length of a meal. Because latest after I finish a meal I would ask and would like to ask for a rum. It's really the softness, tender, but still inspiring and strong, and this combination makes for me a good rum. This is to your taste? Yes. You like it? Okay. For you? It is definitely a lot more subtle than the other one. Okay. This one I find it harder. The coconut I definitely smelled. Mm-hmm. Yeah, of course. It's not too easy to find single aromas out of like, if you're not used to tasting spirits. Just concentrate on the three pillars of the taste. There's the sweetness, spice, and fruit. You can always every rum you can categorize into these three pillars. I think this is more spicy than the first one. Mm-hmm. There's the Plantation almost has no spice, only sweet. I think the colleagues will find in their box the Plantation. Exactly. In the Plantation. The softer one you will find in your- Exactly ... in a bigger quantity so that you can still reach out to Christmas. Yeah. I think, like, the Plantation would always be my recommendation for newcomers as well. Yeah. I mean, did you like it? Did you enjoy the rum? This one is definitely more accessible, I would say. Mm-hmm for a complete newcomer than the second one. Mm-hmm. Cheers to everybody. Cheers to you. At home and here in the room. A master blender, I think from Havana, told me that we always drink rum with the left hand because it's closer to the heart. I always forget as well. I'm right-handed, so. Cute. Maybe some basics on rum. I don't know how familiar- Yeah, please. Yeah, may I? Rum must always be made out of sugarcane. Always. Yeah? But there are still different options on how to produce rum. For example, you could make rum out of the fresh sugarcane juice. That would be a rhum agricole. Yeah. But it's not often used that way. Normally, like, all of these rums are made out of molasses. Did you once see molasses or try molasses? You believe it or not, in my previous job, I was a provider of sugarcane harvester. My previous company was the largest company, Case Corporation, for sugarcane harvesters. Therefore, I know a little bit about that. I know as well about the smell. Mm-hmm. Because when it's boiled and cooked, it doesn't taste that nice. It's quite smoky and quite a strong taste. Mm-hmm. When it comes to rum, it's the best form you can consider and you can consume sugarcane. Yeah. I also prefer the molasses in my rum. I bought it once because it's very healthy. I thought like, "Okay, I wanna cook with that. It should be sweet, right?" It's not so sweet as you would think, you know. Yes. It comes from the word miel. Yes. Spanish or French for honey. It's also sticky, thick, dark, honey-like molasses bases of the rum. But it's actually not so sweet. Yeah. It's like the taste of mineral or soy sauce. Like, it's unfamiliar. You wouldn't expect it. I'm glad they're making rum out of it. Maybe some additional information so you don't need to note down, to write down what you're learning about rum. You will get a little booklet at the end of the day that you can really follow, and as well in future, experience rum even better to understand the history. You will get therefore a little book, which is called Talking About Rum. Exactly. For all now. What else do we have here? We have the Doorly's, the 12-year-old. This actually again is from Barbados, so you could have the direct. You can compare it to the first one 'cause they're both from Barbados. As you can imagine, the fun thing about rum, in my opinion, is that there are so many places of origin. I had one question in between, Lucia. Yes. What made you a rum connoisseur? I mean, it seems to be rum is your favorite. You It is. Definitely. Shall we ask what is your experience? Where do you come from, enjoying rum? I'm from Baden, Lower Austria. There is one company who makes events and Yes A communication company. It's the typical job for a student in Baden. You just work there. They actually started in 2013, the Rumzentrum. Yeah. I just kind of slipped into it. It soon became a passion, I'd say. I was doing the Vienna Rum Festival project management, organizing, and I'm doing tastings for, I think, six years now. Yeah. It's always something new to learn. It's as well the provider of this rum, and the rum you got to your home is from rumzentrum.at. Mm-hmm Here in Austria, close to Vienna. Thanks to you, the management team, that they are supporting us, that we can do this today. Okay. Thank you. We're happy to be here. For now, the Doorly's 12, that's a special one here, with these four. It's currently, I think, my favorite rum. Yeah. It's real 12 years old, so there's no blending of different ages, which is fine as well. Here, you know, they're really 12 years aged in a barrel. Never compare it to a whiskey because in the Caribbean the aging is, in a natural way, much faster. So it's much more mature than a 12-year-old whiskey. We have a proper 12-year-old rum, and it's made in the Foursquare Distillery from Barbados. It's not the oldest one, but it's a very old one. With a lot of history. The master blender is Richard Seale, and he's a purist, a traditionalist. He's really into the handcraft. Yeah, he doesn't add color. He doesn't add sugar. This is really a proper rum without any manipulation or blending off some edges. Enjoy. Let's try it. Charlotte, and then you let us know. Yeah What do you think about this. My incompetent- Cheers Opinion on this. Oh, no. It's all about the taste in the end. If you like it. I think here if you have chocolate. Yeah. I think you have- Oh, it's spicy. Yeah, spice. Yeah, more spice. Especially if you compare it now to the Plantation- Mm Which is also from Barbados. Two distillates from Barbados. I think it's buttery in the- Mm. Mm. ... in the finish. It has some butter notes. Also we have vanilla. Not as strong as the Plantation. Mm. It's not like a coconut explosion or a butter explosion, it's just more subtle. I think I like it. It's nice, huh, as well? Yeah. Absolutely. bit more spicy, but still nice. Yeah. Good. You have the aftertaste for a long time. Yes. Mm-hmm. Every shot keeps us healthier. That is true. That's a very learning I had. Here we are at 43% alcohol, so a little bit over the 40% we were drinking. It, I think it's still incredibly smooth, so it's not hard to drink. Mm. There's no burn, so it is really high art making such a good rum in my opinion. Like, this is one rum I have always open in my shelf at my home, because it's like, I could drink this any time. It's not a winter/summer rum. No, that's my everyday. Also prior to COVID. Also prior to COVID. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think it's always okay. You know? Yeah. Some rums I prefer. In your shelf, Andreas, let me ask, what is always open? What's your It's the Plantation. It's the Centenario, but it's more the 15-20-year-old one. Mm-hmm. Certainly the Mount Gay, the premium brand. Here I need to ask you how you spell it. It's the A.H. Riise. Mm. You told me it's called Riise. Yeah, A.H. Riise. It's- Because it's named Albert Heinrich Riise. Yeah, it's a Danish producer. Mm-hmm. Not to forget, since I like to sail, I like to be here on the lakes in Austria and on the seaside, as well the Austrian Empire Navy Rum. Believe it or not, Austria had its own Navy Rum under the First World War, and the rum exists again. It's this very nice taste, and you can as well find it in your product offering- Exactly I would say. Yeah. Next time we will bring some Austrian Navy Rum. So- The Habsburg drank this rum. Hapsburger. It's. Is that also made by an Austrian company, the Austrian Navy Rum? It was made by Albert Michler. Yeah 18, I think 30-something, but now it's owned by an English company. Ah. The rum is from the Dom Rep, but still. Okay It is the same recipe. You can imagine Austrian Navy Rum. To all the Austrians in their home, let's have a toast on the- Cheers Austrian Navy. Cheers. Maybe a little story, because you mentioned the navy. Yeah. The British Navy in this history, they always had their rum portion. The peak now, like in the 1970s it was, like, 2cl they were drinking a week. In the peak season of the rum in the Navy history, it was, a pint of rum a day. Oof. A little bit over half a liter of rum, so not too shabby. Right. Still they had no means of controlling if the quality of the rum was good enough for them. They invented a test, a proof, and they called it gunpowder proof. They mixed the gunpowder with this rum, and had a look if it still sparks, if it's still burning, the gunpowder. Only then the rum was good enough. Do you know at what percentage of alcohol it sparks? At 57.15. It's a strong rum. Still today, we are calling such rums that are over this 57%, overproof. Mm. From the gunpowder proof, overproof rum or navy strength. Yeah? It's still continues. It was a part of their payment, huh? Yes, exactly. It was really a part of the payment was paid in rum, and that's why it was so important that still the British environment could take rums from Barbados. Yeah. This is why still Barbados is a part of the U.K. environment and the British environment, because they needed this resource as a provider of rum. Unbelievable, but it's true, huh? Yeah. What we found out. Yeah, it's true. Cheers. Out of these three, which one is your favorite for now? I think the first one, to be honest. The first one. Yeah. You have the big bottle in your box. Ah. We still have one remaining, I guess, huh? Exactly. Mm-hmm. Shall we? Yeah. Perfect. The World's End. This is actually a spiced rum. It is a proper rum, because it has 40% as well. Thank you. Classified as rum. The base is molasses, and it's over 30%-40%. Yep. There have been influences, spices in the barrel. Ah. Maybe you get some of the flavors, some of the taste. Cheers. I've, I really liked it because it's very complex. There's cinnamon. Mm. I think there's mango. Anise hint? Anise. Yes. Yeah. Anise, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Mango, banana. What do you think, Charlotte, considering the tasting? It's almost Christmassy. Yeah. I know. Yeah. I hope at home you can follow our presentation here. It's already quite getting quite nice here in this room here in Vienna. Yeah. Because people started really to enjoy rum, not only understanding, as well enjoying rum. You agree? Yeah. Salud. Salud. Cheers. Salud. Cheers. This rum is blended from different distillates from Barbados and Trinidad. It's aged 3-5 years, so not that long because it's a spiced rum. There's no need to put it in a barrel for 20 years. There are different qualities of spiced rum, and this is one of the good ones. Yeah. They're real aromas. Mm. No artificial aromas. I think we have this. It's enjoyable. What do you think? Yeah. I was just wondering, is it common to add spices into rum? Like, for instance, in wine you sometimes add minerals or leaves, et cetera. It's an own style. Yeah. Okay. For flavored or spiced rums, it's an own style. Mm. It's popular because it's nice, it's easy to drink. Let's have another sip, and then we need to give an applause to Lucia. Yeah. I think a big applause to Lucia here. You really concluded the day in a very good way. Now we are relaxed. We make sure that we are completely protected from any COVID impact. Again, just to remember ourselves, COVID is still out there, but this should be a part of protecting us from COVID. Thank you for coming, and- Thank you so much. Thank you for joining us, being here in Vienna with us. Stay healthy and safe. Cheers.