Welcome to UNIQA Group results for the first half year 2024 conference call. My name is Alan, and I'll be your coordinator for today's event. Please note this call is being recorded, and for the duration, your lines will be on listen only. However, you will have the opportunity to ask questions at the end. This can be done by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. If you require assistance at any time, please press star zero, and you'll be connected to an operator. I'll now hand you over to your host, Kurt Svoboda, to begin today's conference. Thank you. Thank you, and, welcome to UNIQA's, presentation on half year 2024. I refer to the document, which is, published on the website, and, start on page number 5, with an overview on a very strong EBT in the first half year of 2024, in relation to the last year and also, in relation to our internal plan, which is driven on the one hand by a very great, growth in both markets, international and Austria. We grow in, the international markets exceptionally high by 12%. Austria, we have a P&C growth of 5%, which is all the market, and health growth of 10%, and still in life, focus, around, plus, minus zero, over the first six months. This growth is followed by a very favorable development of the claim side, especially in the P&C side. That means, on the one hand, we see good development on the loss side and also a better than expected situation on the weather-related claims. And this leads to a combined ratio on a gross basis of 87.3%, which is also better than last year, which is 87.7%. The financial result is driven by more or less not worth mentioning topics. Of course, interest rates increased, which gave us a boost on the unrealized gains, and this lead to a net investment income of EUR 438 million. And overall, we are then fine with an earnings before tax of EUR 277 million, which is a great improvement of close to 20% in relation to the year 2023. If you look on the different topics, also on page 6 on the key financial indicators, increase on earnings per share following the good results, the same for book value, and we are on a good position on 16.3 percentage points. Interest rates, especially on the OCI, led to a decrease on the equity position, and this was one of the main drivers on the decrease of 2.2%. Solvency position is close to 270%, exactly 260%, on a very good and solid level. CSM, page number seven. On the one hand, profitability drove the development on the new business. Second, a good development in the net investment income is partially also going into the CSM, and that's the reason why the increase of the CSM and then also the higher lapse impacted the, especially life and the health book. Growth on the segments I explained on page number eight. We see also no worth mentioning lapses in the regions or in our countries, even though here or there, the inflation rate is still very high, so very stable development over our customers and also over all lines of business. Costs are under control and led also to a slight decrease of the cost ratio, which is described in page number nine. Of course, we have our investments, especially in IT, in Austria, digitalization and HR development, but believe that the costs will be slightly below the plan for this year by the end of the year. On the P&C side, page number ten, a robust result driven by a good technical result in both segments. I can report that we have rather no worth mentioning major claims in the first six months, just one with a high amount in Serbia. The rest is very favorable. Of course, nothing that we expect the same development in the second half year, but it shows that the portfolio is quite stable. Still portfolio restructuring, especially in Austria, is ongoing, but here we have covered more than 80% of the half year, made our homework. Second, we have a weather-related claim situation in Austria, with around 45 million EUR impacting the result, which is in line with last year's, slightly better than the average. This is also ongoing up to the day of today. Runoffs of 85 million EUR, offsetting the moderate cuts, also impacting the favorable result of P&C. This leads then to what I said, an combination of 87% and also a technical result, so sustainable situation on that side. Basic claims ratio is more or less in line. Basic claims, everything are below 500,000 EUR. Also here we can say stable and sustainable development in the first six months. Life business dominated by the CSM, I explained before. Of course, we have high volumes that mature coming from the days 10 and 15 years ago. This is the situation where we saw high volumes on single premiums, especially in the unit link business and also but also in the traditional, and this is the reason why the growth in life is behind the growth in the other business lines. Differently in health, page number 12, a very good growth with 10.7% on the insurance revenue. Outbound tariff is something that was with higher claims payments in the first half year. Still, we believe that this is then going down in the second half of the year. But anyhow, all of the earnings before taxes is EUR 19 million, following the expectation and also the profitability coming from the health business. This is also visible then on page number thirteen, on the new business values, especially for health and life shown here. We doubled more, we doubled the developments in the comparison to the first three months. This is on the one hand, an interest rate impact, and on the other hand, a profitability impact from the products. Our core markets, and also on page number fourteen, we can report that all markets are positive, and all markets have the same trend. A, good growth, B, sustainable and better technical result. This is visible here in comparison by Austria and the main countries in the international business like Poland, Czech Republic, and SA Six, which we treat as one more or less artificial company with the UNIQA. In the investment portfolio, we have a stable position. The net result is driven by, as I said in the beginning, favorable development on the interest side, but also less impairments and no worth mentioning impairments over the first six months. The new money yield, I also report on this, part of the presentation, is also about 4.3%, and the average yield that we achieved in the first six months, and the whole portfolio is 2.9 percentage points, which is, slightly, better than in 2023. Investment activities, not with a big difference to that, what we, also reported in the previous quarter. This brings me to the outlook of the year 2024. We'll be cautious for the year 2024 because, A, the Nat Cat season is not over, especially weather-related claims. We saw this in the year 2023, when the development between half year and full year more than tripled in that area, or even in the year 2022, half year to full year, even doubled. So anyhow, with this, we see a very positive development of the year 2024, so that we can achieve the expected results, which was a little bit in line with that what UNIQA developed and showed 2023. With this, I stop my presentation, and be happy to take the one or other questions from you. Thank you. Thank you. If you'd like to ask a question or make a contribution on today's call, please press star one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star two. You'll be advised when to ask your questions. We will take our first question from Thomas Unger, Erste Group. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Yes, hello, good afternoon. Thank you for the presentation. Thank you for taking my questions. I'd like to continue on with what you said about the outlook 2024. You're cautious because of the Nat Cat season not being over. Can you tell us anything about the bad weather claims and developments in Austria and other countries in Q3? So very recently in July and also in August, do you expect the Combined Ratio to be impacted in Q3? That's the first question, and the second would be on the. If you have any details on the large claim that you mentioned in the presentation, I believe in Serbia, that had a three percentage point impact on the combined ratio in UNIQA International, if I'm correct, and then thirdly, and lastly, on Russia, there was a positive effect in the discontinued operations right above the bottom line. If you could tell us what happened here and you continue to expect- ... that the exit will be completed by year end, or the exit from Russia. Were there any new developments here? Thank you. Thank you, Thomas. Regarding the first question, the impact in July was rather low, so we talk here about EUR 17-20 million that we can report in July. Although so far is a little bit too early, but nothing that brings the combined ratio at the moment for Q3 in a big danger. Yes, we saw the pictures in Vienna. We saw the pictures in Burgenland, but this is something that is in our plans and forecast included, so I would say at the moment, no major hits on the combined ratio for Q3 and also for the Q4 result. Second is your question about the large claim survey. The bakery somewhere in the middle of Serbia, where the gross result is about EUR 31 million impact in UNIQA. It's a co-insurance with another insurance company, and we take in that case a net retention of 10 million EUR. The rest goes to the external insurer, and this is the impact that you saw in the report. On Russia, I can report I would say rather done. So in a metaphor, if you see a marathon that we took here, we are now on kilometer 42, so still 500 meters to go. That means, yes, we received those days the official paper from the Russian government that they agreed on the exit on Russia. So what is happening now is the last step that this has to be translated into the different languages and then also offsetting the bill. So I would say that takes a little bit of 10-20 days, and then we would report that Russia exit is finalized. Okay, thank you very much. So, what you had in discontinued operations in Q two was- In Q3, this would disappear. Okay, fine. Thank you very much. We will take our next question from Augustus Markham. UBS, your line is open. Please go ahead. Hi, thanks for taking my questions. My first question's on the P&C combined ratio. A very strong combined ratio, but I saw there was about 4% positive development from PYD. What would you expect a normalized level going forward of PYD to be and normal level of cats that you usually budget for? And my second question is on solvency ratio. Again, very strong solvency ratio. Could you give us some moving parts between OCG markets, how we got to the 218 number? Thank you. Combined ratio, we calculate because we see that Austria is heavily hit by weather-related claims and CAT claims over the last years. And we calculate internally on a 3.5% impact in combined ratio, but this already included in our plan. I would say if it stays like that, then we are in plan or slightly better. Solvency II, I couldn't get the question, sorry, because I was not getting the correct... Strong solvency II ratio, and your question was exactly what? Yeah, just the walk from full year number to H1 number. What was the market impact? What would be the OCI impact? Just the breaking down the building blocks of the solvency, if possible. So the interest rate movement was, is visible in the sensitivities, so I cannot give you now the exact numbers. Sorry for that. We will deliver this to you, but the only impact that we saw between the different stages is the interest rates. All other things are more or less stable at the moment. Okay, thank you. Once again, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad now. We'll take our next question from Michael Huttner, Berenberg. Your line is open. Fantastic. Thank you very much. I'm sorry I jumped on the call late, so apologies if I'm asking something which has already been asked. I was interested in health, which looks really strong, particularly in terms of new business. And I just wondered if you can maybe talk about the outlook here. I see it's both interest rates in Austria and then biometric in the rest of the CE. And I just wonder what the trend looks like going forward, as this is a big part of the profit. And then the other, I was interested to see that, the life profit, and I perceive, and maybe I'm wrong, the life business to be, sorry, the life revenues, the life business to be, less growthy, as it were. It still went up, and I just wondered what the outlook is there, whether there's an improvement in the trend or something. Thank you. Michael, thank you for the question. First one is health business. Yes, you're right. We are quite comfortable with the situation on the life, on the health business. What we see as a first half-year trend was that in the outbound tariff, we had higher claims payments. This is maybe customer driven, but on the other hand, we have also the growth behind that. Secondly is the inbound tariff is highly profitable, high demand, and this drives the profitability from the product itself. Secondly, we also have a favorable development from the net investment income, which goes then with a portion to the CSM and with a release also impacts the health business. In that case, interest development, unrealized gains, and also higher ordinary income is also a part of the profitability of the health business, which we see at the moment also in that trend for the rest of the year. Life, yes, you're right, less growth. This has to do with high maturity of products coming from the years ten and fifteen years ago, where UNIQA was selling high single premiums, high volumes in that respect. We cannot, in that case, absorb these maturities and therefore the growth is lower than is in health or in PNC. Growth is coming predominantly from the international business. Austria is having minus 3% in that respect because of that, what I said at the beginning. On the other hand, what we are selling in the life business is okay. biometric products, in that case, which is also reflected in the IFRS statement, because unit- linked and index- linked is not part of the P&L anymore on the IFRS, and same like in health, we also have a favorable net investment income, which then goes to the CSM and is reflected in the release of the CSM, of course, accordingly to the duration of the contracts in life. Very clear. Thank you very much. We will take our next question from Augustus Markham on UBS. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Hi. Thanks. Just a quick follow-up. There was around EUR 200 million positive effect in your equity in the other bucket. Could you just give a bit of detail what happened there? Thank you. Yes, give me a minute. Mm-hmm. So first answer is that has to do a little bit with the FX development in our countries, especially Polish zloty and Czech crown. And this is reflected in the other position. We will take our next question from Michael Huttner, Berenberg. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Sorry about that. It just, I think you mentioned it, the group cost ratio improved from thirty-one point something to thirty-one point something a little bit less. But, and I think you also mentioned the IT, but the IT either would cost less or the impact would not be as quick. Could you maybe talk about how you see the cost ratio developing, please? We see the cost ratio development on a sustainable basis over the next year decreasing. This is a target that we have to fulfill. And yes, IT is one of the major spendings that we have. This is a vast part of the UIP platform, plus innovation and digital trends that we are following. But anyhow, costs have to be lower than the growth, and therefore, we expect a reduced cost ratio not only in Q3, but also what I can say so far, as a strategic target for the upcoming periods. Fantastic! Okay. Very good. Well done. Thank you. As a final reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star one on your key telephone keypad now. We'll pause for just a quick moment to allow everyone an opportunity to signal for questions. There are no further questions on the line, so I'll now hand you back to your host for closing remarks. Yes, thank you very much. Thank you also for your participation and, for your questions, and wish you a remaining successful week and a remaining successful and nice summer. Thank you. Thank you for joining today's call. You may now disconnect.