Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Please excuse the late start due to some technical difficulties. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the first half 2024 results conference call. I'm Moritz, your co-host call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in listen-only mode, and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a question and answer session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star and one on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press star and zero. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Harald Hagenauer, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to this conference call of Austrian Post. Today, we would like to discuss the recent development of the second quarter, and so the first half. And here with me is our CEO, Walter Oblin, and I would like to directly hand over to you, Walter. Please go on. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. It's a pleasure to have the opportunity to present to you our results for the first six months. As a summary upfront, we're looking back on six strong months with double-digit revenue growth and double-digit EBIT growth, and we will also provide a confident outlook for the remaining six months. Let me start on page two, giving you the usual overview about Austrian Post Group. We're operating and reporting in three segments. Our Mail business, this is the Austrian shrinking part of our business portfolio, our Parcel & Logistics portfolio. This is a portfolio of 10 geographies with strong networks in these geographies, being altogether our growth driver. Third segment, Retail & Bank, this comprises both our Austrian postal retail network as well as our bank99, our financial service business. Page three is to remind you that we still, that we continue to operate in a challenging economic environment. In Austria and in our geographies, we see little growth, more or less, stagnation, still high inflation. It's coming down, but we only now see some of the high inflation periods coming into our P&L, in particular on staff costs. In the middle of this chart, we are in the middle of a fundamental structural change in the retail industry, both online as well as offline retailers. There is a strong consolidation in offline retail with exits happening almost every month, also affecting our customer base. E-commerce is still growing, but also here strong and dynamic changes, with in particular Asian players entering Western markets and fueling growth also in our portfolio. Third element of the environment is the Turkish macroeconomic environment which continues to be characterized by high inflation combined with a Turkish lira that has been quite stable over the last 12 months and this asymmetry also affects our reported numbers, and I'll come to that in a few minutes. Page four shows you that our structural transformation from a dominance on our Mail business that was still very very strong in 2010 to a business portfolio where we stand on two large and profitable feet. A still highly relevant Mail business and a well-growing Parcel business. This chart shows you that this transformation is well underway and that we have good momentum in growing our Parcel business. Also, the small Retail & Bank segment continues to grow, 25% growth over the last 12 months. Page five gives you a summary of our financials, both for the quarter as well as for the first 6 months. I will focus on the first six months. Top line growth of 17.2%. A lot of that is coming from Türkiye, and the already mentioned combination of Turkish lira with the high inflation gives us some extra tailwinds on the revenue side. Outside Türkiye, still, we are growing double digit with 10.3%, with the good news that all segments are currently in growth mode. And also on the bottom line, EBIT up 10.9%. And here also the good news that both strong business segments, Mail and Parcel, are growing. Page six summarizes our revenue development, in total EUR 1.5 billion revenue and 17.2% growth. I think one of the strongest first six months that we've seen in the recent company history. This is the net of our Mail business growing at 3.5%. This is a combination of strong price effects coming from the price and product reform from last September, combined with a strong election year where we have had two nationwide elections, and a third one, the Austrian parliamentary elections, will follow in fall. Then Parcel & Logistics, very strong growth, 28.1%. A lot again, coming from Türkiye, but also outside Türkiye, we are growing here, at a rate of 15.2%. And we'll explain the drivers later on. And also, as already mentioned, our smallest segment, Retail & Bank, growing 25%, and this growth is almost exclusively coming from bank99. On page seven, I want to highlight that our reported numbers are fundamentally influenced by this period of Turkish inflation and the Turkish lira rate. The hyperinflation accounting that we have to apply since a few years even makes this impact even stronger. You see here that in 2023 in Q2, I just wanna focus your attention on the Q2 figures. In 2023 in Q2, the Turkish lira eroded substantially as a result of hyperinflation accounting, where you have to apply the quarterly end Turkish lira rate on all reported revenues. Caused a substantial almost reduction in the reported figures, 49.5%, compared to the 57.9% in 2022. This year, in the first six months, we report 116.3%. This is the result of a strong, strong price increases given the high inflation with the Turkish lira rate, that has only deteriorated by roughly 20%. And compared with this unusually low reported revenue figures, and this situation today, we show now an increase in quarterly revenues coming from Türkiye of 135%. I hope it is clear to everybody that this dynamic can also work in the other direction, whenever the Turkish lira falls substantially, as happened in quarter two last year, then we basically, with hyperinflation accounting, have to more or less readjust our already reported revenues to the final exchange rate at the end of the next quarter. So I think it's important to understand our figures, also understand the risk to revenue going forward. Let me now move to the bottom line. Page eight. Bottom line, I think a very positive development of 10.9% is despite staff costs in Austria increasing by 10%, due to a collective wage agreement from last year, as of January first. Good news is both Mail and Parcel & Logistics, EBIT up, Mail, EUR 5.3 million to EUR 83 million, Parcel & Logistics, good jump of EUR 10.9 million to EUR 47.3 million. Retail & Bank, down as expected. Why as expected? Because the harmonization of the two core banking systems that we currently operate after the integration of the Austrian Retail business of ING. This harmonization project causes migration cost and causes depreciation of the software that we took over. And this depreciation and the migration project only started Q2 last year. So compared to last year, we have an expected decline in this segment. Operationally, I think we're on, we have a very good development, and I'll come to that later on. So in total, EUR 105.6 million in the first six months, I think a very good result in the current environment. And let me now continue, highlighting some important developments in our business portfolio, along the strategy framework, highlighted or explained on page nine, I think, which is well known to you. I, I will skip and, move right away to page 10. Our Austrian Addressed Letter Mail business. This business is shrinking in volume since 2008. We have lost roughly half of volumes since then. Currently, we see a slightly accelerated decline with volumes being down at the rate of around 7% over the last two, three quarters. This revenue decline is more than compensated by price increases and product changes that we implemented September 1 last year. Moving to the next page, even after those price increases, Austria continues to be one of the cheapest European main markets. We think that this product and price reform as of September 2023 was well accepted in the market, along with price increases. We implemented a change in the whole retail mail volumes, or the mail volume that is dropped off in postal boxes and in our retail mail. This, this stream, these volumes were changed to the Economy product, which helped us and helps us to save costs in distribution. Short glimpse on our Direct Mail and Media Post business in Austria. Still a substantial business, although also declining. Here, the decline rate has a little bit come down. We see some, also some positive impulses in the sector. Still, these positive impulses in terms of mood and sentiment are overcompensated by consolidation among retailers, exits, insolvencies, also affecting our customer base. And this is the major driver behind these decline rates. The core customers, the food retailers, the Austrian large food retailers, are very loyal users of our Direct Mail products. Let's move to the growing part of our business portfolio, the Austrian Parcel business. Growth rates, very strong, volume growth in the first six months, Q1, 15%, Q2, 12%. We see growth, in particular, among our large key accounts, including now new players from Asia who are aggressively expanding in Western Europe and also Eastern Europe. In total, we are also gaining market share, and this volume increase also, we are well prepared for this volume growth, given our capacity expansion program over the last year. We continue to invest, moving to page 14, in particular in Austria, even though our major expansion program has pretty much come to an end. However, we continue to invest in the green transformation. We continue to invest, in particular in electric fleet, but also in IT, and last mile improvement projects. New depots are providing extra capacity in delivery, are the most important elements of the current investment portfolio. Page 15 gives you an update on our, our expansion program, so with, with the implementation of our, most recent and one of the biggest and most modern sorting centers in Austria, in Vienna. A center that we opened end of last year. Our expansion program has pretty much completed all large projects. We continue to further add capacity in smaller steps by adding sorters in selected sites, such as in Tyrol, by in the second half of this year. But, we now have a very modern infrastructure that allows us to take further capacity, and that also provides the basis for very fast deliveries, very late injection times from... for our large customers, still ensuring delivery the next morning. Page 16 shows you the development of our staff transformation. Again, over the last 12 months, roughly 550 civil servants and employees under the old collective wage agreement have left the company and have more or less been replaced by employees under the new collective wage agreement. Also, softening a little bit, the strong staff cost increase that we've seen over the last two years, given the high inflation. Moving to our international portfolio, page 17 shows you the geographic reach of our Parcel portfolio. Our parcel networks comprise countries with a population in total of 150 million people. So I think we can really offer a relevant network to our large international e-commerce customers. And I think this is also appreciated by more and more volumes being directed into our networks. You see that in Eastern Europe, similar as in Austria, we have seen strong volume growth, plus 27%. And accordingly, also revenue growth was very good. In Türkiye, development is a little bit different. In Türkiye, one of our largest customers has continued to insource volumes, leading to a more or less a stagnation, slight decline in volumes. Still, very consequent price and cost management has led to strong revenue growth and also very good margins and very good also absolute EBIT contribution to the group. You see, the most important numbers on page 18 in Turkish lira, 118% revenue growth, translated, given this relatively stable Turkish lira rate, translating in revenue growth of 75% in Euro terms. So roughly EUR 100 million of revenue growth coming only from Türkiye, and again, most of that is price-based. Moving to page 19, our bank99, I think, a very good operational development of bank99. I think given the fact that we are still highly focused on the integration of two banks, I think this good development on the market is even more remarkable, and in my view, shows that a focused retail bank embedded into the ecosystem of a strong and well-performing post really has an opportunity and has good support in a challenging Austrian banking market with subdued demand for loans, in particular, housing financing, and a very competitive market for consumer deposits. bank99 has added 13,000 new customers, has grown the balance sheet by roughly 9%, has grown above market in credit volume, and also has shown a strong increase in net interest income and total income, also including provision income. We are currently focused on the migration of the core banking system that we inherited from the Retail business of ING to the outsourced core banking system that we based bank99 on in the beginning, a core banking system provider that was taken over by Accenture. This program, this project is well advanced, and we expect a migration either still this year or into Q1 next year. Page 20, our self-service solutions are very popular with, with customers, and we are in a very, strong push, in expanding our last mile solutions, in particular, adding 1,000 new locations for post stations. So, basically, parcel lockers, these are well accepted and, in combination with our postal app that allows rerouting and gives the customer dynamic choice over where he wants to receive parcels, I think is well accepted on the consumer side, and as I said, we continue to invest in this direction. Page 21, and on the following page, two updates from our sustainability initiative. We are continuing the rollout of our electric vehicle fleet. Currently, we have more than 4,000 electric vehicles on Austrian roads, by far the largest electric fleet in Austria. By the end of the year, we will have more than 4,800 vehicles. Our objective remains to become 100% CO2-free in last mile delivery by 2030. We continue to generate more and more electricity, renewable electricity on our own roofs. We just passed the threshold of 10 megawatt peak operational on our roofs. Page 22, we also implemented the conversion of our own truck fleet to fossil-free fuel. HVO is here the bridging solution until we either get economically viable electric trucks from the automotive industry or competitive hydrogen trucks. I think both is still some way to go. But HVO provides, I think, a good bridging technology, and we will see a substantial reduction in CO2 emissions reported this year from this effect. Moving now to some more details on financials. Page 23 summarizes the core financials. I have already elaborated on revenues, EBITDA margins and EBIT margins. I think, given the strong growth we've seen on good and stable levels, I think everybody's aware that we are growing in a lower margin business, meaning parcel, than the business that is shrinking in volume. So as a result, we have to expect pressure on margins. But we would look at almost stable margins, given the strong growth that we've seen and given the fact that we had to digest 10% increase in staff costs, is a very good achievement. Let me skip page 24. That gives you the details on the P&L. Happy to take questions later on. Moving to page 25, some more details on the Mail segment. Revenue growth of 3.5%, around 3%, Addressed Letter Mail and business solutions, and around 5% Direct Mail, Media Post. The growth is here in both segments, the net of a decline in volume, as shown earlier, with substantial inflation adjustments and price increases, and in particular, in the Addressed Letter Mail business, the impact from two nationwide elections in Austria. Page 26 shows you the Mail P&L, revenue up 3.5%, EBIT up 6.9%. Again, here also actually a substantial EBIT impact from elections and the price increases. Moving to page 27, Parcel & Logistics division. This chart shows that we are growing in all three important geographies. Austria 16%, Türkiye 76%, given all the effects that I've elaborated on. And in Eastern Europe, Parcel CEE growth of 17.7%. I think good momentum in all regions and it's again your Asian customers that fuel a lot of the growth that we see in Austria and in Eastern Europe. Page 28 shows you the P&L of the Parcel segment. Slight margin improvement. We would think that given the strong growth and the fact that, and I'm repeating myself, but I think it's important to also be aware that also in the Parcel P&L, of course, we have strong factor costs in all geographies. So I think the 6% margin, if you look at profitability development of postal peers in Europe, I think is a good achievement. Page 29, our third and smallest segment, Retail & Bank division, revenue is up 25%. This is mostly coming from an increase in interestb income from financial services both resulting from organic growth and balance sheet expansion, but also from an increase in interest rates. In the meantime, of course, interest rates have, so the central banks have started to lower interest rates, so this tailwind, of course, will not be available in the next quarters. Page 30, I've already commented on the increase that sorry, the decrease in EBIT is, as expected, as planned, and is mostly coming from migration costs and depreciation. One-off depreciations as a result of the harmonization of two core banking systems. Page 31 gives you an update on our balance sheet. Balance sheet has further expanded, mostly coming from the growth of our bank balance sheet. Other than that, I think no fundamental changes in our balance sheet. We continue to operate a healthy, robust balance sheet with a still low leverage. Moving to page 32, operating free cash flow. Our business has shown to be highly cash generative in the first six months, with operating free cash flow at a level of more than EUR 145 million. This includes some positive tax effects from previous periods, but even adjusting for those, I think we have a very good cash generation, and this should be the basis for proposing an attractive dividend also for the full year in 2024. For the full year 2024. Let me close with an updated outlook on page 20 on page 33. So, I think basically we confirm and slightly update our outlook, providing an even more confident outlook on revenues and earnings. Of course, the market environment continues to be challenging. Low economic growth, subdued investment climate, fundamental change going on in the Retail sector, as discussed, and ongoing decline of Letter Mail and Direct Mail volumes. Still, on the revenue side, we expect an increase, at least in the upper single-digit range, also for the full year. Of course, this is highly dependent on the development of the Turkish lira in the second half of the year. On the CapEx side, we stay with our guidance that for the full year, we will invest around EUR 140 million-EUR 160 million cash CapEx. And on the earnings side, we now have a guidance of an EBIT improvement in the mid-single digit range, compared to last year. Overall, I think, summary, very good, very strong first six months, confident outlook for the remaining six months, and I'm now happy to take your questions. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchtone telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered the queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Questioners on the phone are requested to use only handsets while asking a question. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. One moment for the first question, please. The first question comes from Amy Lo from UBS. Please go ahead. Hi, good afternoon. Thank you for taking my question. My first question is on the upgraded guidance. You're now guiding for mid-single-digit growth in EBIT, which implies a full year revenue of around EUR 200 million. With EUR 105 million EBIT already achieved in the first half, this implies that EBIT in the second half is more or less in line with last year. I'm just wondering, given the strong top line growth momentum you're seeing across the group and the strong parcel volume development and election tailwind, just wondering, any reason why we won't see maybe a bigger step up in EBIT year-on-year in the second half? And how are you seeing maybe the volume and profit trajectory in second half? Thank you. I'm sorry, Ms. Amy Lo. It seems we have some technical difficulties. Please stay connected while we reconnect the speaker line. One moment, please. Ladies and gentlemen, please stay connected while we're trying to reconnect the speaker line. You will hear music until the conference continues. Ladies and gentlemen. Ladies and gentlemen, the speakers are now reconnected, and we will continue with the conference. Ms. Amy Lo, please, please, please ask your question again. Thank you. Hi, can you hear me now? Yes, I can hear you, and apologies for the technical problems. No worries. Yeah, so my question was on the upgraded guidance. So, you're now guiding for mid-single-digit growth in EBIT, which implies full year, and the revenue would be around EUR 200 million mark. And with EUR 105 million EBIT already achieved in the first half, it implies that EBIT in the second half is more or less in line with last year. And I was just wondering, given the strong growth momentum that you're seeing across the group and the strong parcel volume development, just wondering, any reason why we won't maybe see a bigger step up in EBIT year-over-year in the second half? And wondering how you're seeing volume and profit trajectory in the second half. Thank you. Yes. Thank you, Amy Lo, for your question. I think a very good question. I think, some reasons to be on the cautious side. One is, we, have another staff cost increase, staff cost increase, in as of July first. Second reason is that, we've had a strong, impact from price increases in the Mail segment, effective, September last year, which, as of September this year, will be included in the previous year results, and we do not, plan to have any further, price increases, in the Mail segment this year. Again, and I, I have to, to repeat the fact that, we, we, have to be a little bit cautious on the, Turkish lira side. If you look at inflation in the country and Turkish lira development, one has to expect that the Turkish lira will deteriorate at some point in time. And with the hyperinflation accounting, this, you know, technically more or less means a readjustment of EBIT that we have already reported. So, I think that, combined with general low visibility on parcel volumes and other things, has led us to this guidance. Yeah, that's very clear. Thank you. And the next question comes from Othmane Bricha from Bank of America. Please go ahead. Hello. Good afternoon, and thanks for taking my questions. First is on Türkiye. You've mentioned a customer that is insourcing their volumes. So, on this, how much of the volumes do you still have on your network right now, just to gauge how much additional volume loss you may experience? And do you believe that they will insource all of their volumes, or they will keep, let's say, half, half for you and half for them? And also, can you comment on your market share in Türkiye, excluding this impact of insourcing, just to understand the health of your business there. Second question is on your domestic Parcel business in Austria. Can you comment on what was the growth, either in Q2 or in Q1 for your domestic parcels? So trying to exclude the impact of this Asian volumes. Third, you just mentioned another staff cost increase in July first. Can you quantify that? And overall, what is the staff cost increase that you have in H2? And my last question, please, just on the interest income line. Can you comment, there's, I think, the valuation of your option on your Turkish business. There's also, I think, cash like interest on some cash from the deposit at the ministry. So can you maybe guide us on how we should think about interest income for the remaining of the year? Thank you very much. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for your questions. Let me maybe start with the last question. Interest income, I think there you asked the question on put option valuation. We're talking about an order of magnitude of roughly EUR 50 million. Then on staff costs, we negotiated a Collective Wage Agreement that leads to an increase in 6.5% staff costs. So there is some complication that last year as well as this year, we have used an instrument of one of premiums for the second half of the year. That gives us taxation benefits on both sides, employer and employee. But I would suggest that, roughly you can work with those 6.5% increase. Then, domestic growth in Austria, I think, you have to be aware that most of e-commerce volumes in Austria come from international customers. Volumes from Austrian online retailers are relatively small, as both the dominant American and Chinese platforms, but also the large European retailers typically ship to Austria from platforms. And also, so orders are made on German platforms or on European platforms, and volumes are shipped from outside. So I just want to say that the term domestic growth is somewhat misleading, but I think roughly you can say that a third of the growth that we have seen in Austria is coming from Asian customers. So substantial, but two-thirds coming from other customers. And then I think on Türkiye, we still this important customer that has continue to insource still makes up some order of magnitude of around 25% of volumes of our schedule. Thank you very much. Sorry, just to follow up, how much further insourcing do you expect to experience? I think we do not have full visibility on the plans from our customers. I think typically these customers do always have some kind of cherry-picking approach, where they establish their own deliveries in urban centers, whereas in less dense areas they continue to work with us. So we do not, and of course we also with all large e-commerce customers, including the large and well-known American platform that is our biggest customer in Austria, we work to, you know, provide them even better service, faster deliveries, and thus trying to stabilize and regain volume. So I think we are, we are confident that we will continue to work with these customers on a very significant scale. Thank you. Just to follow up on the staff cost increase, you mentioned, you said it to take 6.5%. Is that on top of the wage increase that kicked off in July 1, or that is on aggregate? So the 6.5% is more or less year-over-year. So if you take Q3 versus Q3 last year, this is roughly the order of magnitude. Yeah. Okay. Thank you very much. Yeah. Yeah. The next question comes from Marco Limite from Barclays. Please go ahead, sir. Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. The first question is on the letter volumes. So you have reported 7% letter volume decline this quarter and the previous quarter. But both quarters, if I'm not wrong, had some positive one-offs from election volumes. So, wondering what would have been the underlying letter volume decline in Q1 and Q2 without elections? And, yeah, what you think is the driver of this higher than usual or higher than circular rate letter volume decline in Q1 and Q2? And the second question, just a follow-up to the previous question. Just wondering, what would have been the parcel in Austria parcel volume growth when excluding the Asian retailers? Thank you. Yeah. So second question, I tried to answer earlier, so it's, it's roughly one third of the growth. So if you take the 15%, 15% growth that we've seen, roughly in Austria, then one third of this growth is, is being generated by, by Asian customers. And, and the question on mail volumes is, I think the, the impact of elections is in the order of magnitude of a good percentage point, so at 1-1.5 percentage points in decline, if you want to adjust for the impact of the one-off election volumes. You think the higher volume decline is driven by a weak macro, or there is something else? No, I think what we're seeing is an increase in digitization in financial services customers. So banks and insurance companies who have, in the last years, been a little bit late in digitizing their communication with consumers and to now seem to step up. And I think this is the most important driver of accelerated mail volume decline. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Harald Hagenauer for any closing remarks. Thanks, ladies and gentlemen, for participating in our second quarter call. If you have some more questions or want some more information, please contact today or the next days. We are available for you, of course. Thanks and goodbye.