A wonderful good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the results for the first half year, twenty twenty-four conference call and live webcast. My name is Franci, the conference call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in a listen-only mode and that the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a question and answer session. You can register for question at any time by pressing star and one. For operator assistant, please press star and zero. At this time, it is my pleasure to hand over to Nina. Please go ahead, Nina. Thank you, Franci, and good afternoon and welcome to everyone, to VIG's half year 2024 results call. Today, Liane Hirner, our CFO, will guide you through the presentation and will then answer your questions together with Peter Höfinger, who is live connected with us from the European Forum Alpbach. I now hand over to Liane. Please go ahead. Thank you, Nina, and also a very warm welcome from my side to all those attending our results call. We are pleased with the results of our group, which we were able to achieve in the first half of 2024, and the favorable development of our key figures, which are as shown on slide three, give us the confidence with regards to the expected full year performance. On slide three, we show our key performance indicators. Our insurance service revenue of EUR 5.9 billion is up by 10%, primarily driven by the growth in P&C segment. Our profit before taxes, that more than doubled in the previous period, further increased by 3.9% to EUR 481 million. The net combined ratio for P&C of 93.3% improved by 0.7 percentage points. An overall better claims ratio of 61% and a rather stable cost ratio of 32.2% contributed to this positive development. Based on the annualized net profits after taxes and non-controlling interest, earnings per share moved up to 5.38 EUR, and our operating return on equity increased to 16.2%. The solvency ratio of VIG Group, including transitional measures, ongoing strong at 265%, both own funds of 10.477 million EUR and the SCR of 3.950 million EUR increased as a consequence of the increased profitable business that we are underwriting. The solvency ratio, excluding transitional, stood at 243% and is on the same level as at year-end 2023. Before we go into details of the financials, let me shortly draw your attention on the confirmation of our Standard and Poor's rating. Even under the revised criteria of the S&P capital model, VIG is rated A plus with stable outlook. Thus, VIG remains on the best-rated companies of the Austrian traded index. S&P highlights the group's solid capital buffers at the highest confidence level of 99.99%, as well as VIG's financial leverage, which firmly moved below 40%. On this slide, we only mentioned some of the key strengths and risks identified by Standard and Poor's. The full research update is available on our website. With this, I would like to switch to the next slide six. Here, as we go into the details of the key figures of the profit and loss statement on the following slides, I will only briefly comment on the development of the insurance service result, reinsurance result, moving from minus EUR 22 million to minus EUR 320 million. This is where, among others, the impact of the weather-related claims becomes visible. In the first half of 2023, we had EUR 256 million of gross weather-related claims, of which almost EUR 160 million were covered by reinsurance. In the first half of 2024, gross weather-related claims were significantly lower at EUR 123 million, of which only roughly EUR 12 million were covered by reinsurance. This development of weather-related claims is the main driver for the lower insurance service result, reinsurance result. Over the page, on slide seven, we show the details of the insurance service revenue issued business up by 10%. Double-digit growth rates were recorded in the segments Poland, Extended CEE, and Special Markets. In absolute terms, Austria, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Türkiye are the main contributors of the substantial plus of EUR 538.6 million in insurance service revenue, which is driven by the positive development of the property and casualty business. On slide eight, you can see this in the reinsurance service revenue breakdown by lines of business. Here, the property with +13%, Casco with +12%, and MTPL with +9% revenue growth demonstrates the strength of our P&C business. In the first half of 2024, also health and life businesses without profit participation contributed with double-digit growth rates, both lines together totaling more than 100 million EUR in absolute terms. On the next slide, we can present similar positive developments. Results before taxes further grew by 3.9%. This rise originates predominantly from the growth in the segments Extended CE, Poland, and Austria. The decline in the Czech Republic in the first half of 2024 is driven by a lower result in the life insurance and an increased claims ratio in P&C. The split between claims and cost ratios we show on slide ten. The net combined ratio of the group improved to 93.3%, including a stable discounting impact of 3.1% on the claims ratio. As mentioned before, when speaking about the results development in the Czech Republic, a higher number of property claims and an increased net impact of weather-related claims are the reasons for the increases in the combined ratio in Austria, as well as in Czech Republic. On the contrary, a favorable claims development in Turkey was the reason for the strong improvement in the combined ratio in the special markets. With this, I would like to move on to slide number 11 and the CSM and margin development of the life and health business. On the left, the life and health CSM roll-forward, but shows a slight net CSM decline of the period of 2.8%, driven by the CSM release in life and health, which amounted to 279 billion EUR, and smaller impacts of changes in Variable Fee and FX effects. The new business CSM in life and health was strong at 216 million EUR, with an excellent new business margin of 9.8% for the half year 2024, after 8.9% at year-end, confirming the profitability of business sold in 2024. Over the page, we present the details of the total capital investment result. Here, the investment result increased by 5.1% to roughly EUR 1.15 billion, positively impacted by the average new investment yield for VIG, which was 5.3% at half year 2024. The only specific one-off to be mentioned here is the development of the impairment losses, including reverted gains on financial instruments. The increase was driven by a change in risk provision of fair value through OCI bonds. With this, I would like to switch to slide 13. On slide 13, we present the investment splits for thirty-five point four billion euros. These are the investments held at VIG's own risk, excluding the investments for unit and index-linked life insurance. The total capital investment portfolio, including unit-linked and index-linked products as of June 2024, amounted to EUR 43.1 billion. Here, there are no substantial changes to mention, neither in the asset split on the left, nor in the bond breakdowns by rating issuer on the right-hand side of the slide. Over the page, on slide fourteen, I would like to end my presentation with a short executive summary for the first half of this year. The strong results and positive developments that I have just presented to you give us confidence for the second half of the year. Weather-related claims, as we have already experienced in July and August, remain a topic for the rest of the year, and their impact is hardly to predict. Based on these developments and expectations, we confirm our guidance for the full year profit before taxes to be in the range of EUR 825 million-EUR 875 million for 2024. With the solid operational business performance and positive combined ratio development that we have seen already in the first six months, we expect profit before taxes on the upper end of the announced target range at year-end. Our strong capitalization, reaffirmed by Standard & Poor's A plus rating with a stable outlook, backs our diversified business model and our ability to navigate even in uncertain environments. In addition, at the beginning of September, Christoph Rath, a very experienced manager from our group, will join the management team of VIG as deputy member of the Managing Board. All of this, we feel very well positioned at all levels, not only for the second half of this year, but overall for the continued long-term, resilient, positive development of our group. With this, I have come to the end of my presentation, and we are happy to take your questions you might have. Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two.... For questions, please press star and one at this time. One moment for the first question, please. Our first question today comes from August Makan from UBS. Please go ahead with your question. Hi, thanks for taking my questions. I have two. First one's on P&C. How do you see the year-to-date 2H developments, pricing, claims, in July and August? And my second question is, with the S&P review now done, how do you think about excess capital that you hold, any usage for it? Any thoughts about it? Thank you. Thank you. Liane speaking. I would like to take your second question regarding Standard and Poor's review and our good capital position. We are growing. We have been growing in the past years, and we still aim to grow and use the excess capital mainly for growth, organic growth, but also for future M&A activities. Thank you. I'm taking your question one. If I understood it right, it is mainly about the recent claims in July and August. There hadn't been, because there was also the topic of pricing, there hadn't been tremendous changes in July, August of pricing, so it must be claims the question. You saw that our region, specifically Austria, were severely hit by weather-related claims. Nevertheless, we cannot yet give you a serious estimation of the figure. I would not think that it will have a significant impact, looking on the whole development over the 12 months. Thank you. The next question comes from Rok Stuhec from RBI. Please go ahead. Good afternoon, everyone. This is Roke speaking. First of all, thank you very much for the presentation. I would like to learn more about two topics and have the following questions. So number one, last year you announced an internal restructuring and streamlining of activities in Poland. Could you perhaps comment about the status of this project? Have you already seen any improvements in overheads as a result of this project? And second, how do you see the life and health segment developing in the second half of the year? Thank you. Thank you. I will take the first question for Poland. First of all, we got the official approvals for the merger of the non-life companies with first of July. We are expecting the official approvals in the next two months to come for the merger of the life company. In the meanwhile, we have already started to streamline our organizations and very much also on topics of IT and back office. One can see that also in the first half year results, that our results are quite well developed in the first half year in relation to the last first half year. But this is not only due to first restructuring efforts, this also has to do with market environment. We also see in Poland rising rates in motor. From these rising rates in motor, we are benefiting. So we are quite well on track with the simplification of our structures in Poland. So, regarding your second question, life and health development of the second half year, what we currently see is a stable production volume. Also, on the capital market side, we see a little bit increased volatility, which we expect to be continued. So we're a little bit cautious on that, but overall, I would say we see or we expect a stable development in the life and health part. I hope this answered your questions. Yes, thank you very much. The next question comes from Baheen Kumar Rathod from HSBC. Please go ahead with your question. Hello, good afternoon. Thank you for taking my question. So I have three on my side. The first one would be on the strong insurance revenue growth on the P&C business. It would be helpful if you could just provide further breakdown of this strong development between pricing and volume, and maybe provide additional color by different geographies. The second one would be on the higher property and weather-related claims we are seeing in Austria and Czech Republic. So particularly with respect to the property claim, could you provide some colors, as in what's driving that? Is it because of higher frequency or higher severity? And is it a more structural change that you are seeing in this market? And the third one would be on the CO3 program that you launched last year, the collaboration, communication, and cooperation. Can you provide some color on how are you seeing the development of this program? Are we already seeing some synergies coming up from that program? And any outlook on how we should be seeing that? ... developing going forward, in terms of synergies? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for the questions. I answer all three questions, and I start with the first one. Pricing and volume. Frankly speaking, it's a bit difficult to answer due to our various different countries and including various different business lines. We are looking on two different aspects. One is pricing, but this, I also would include inflationary effects, meaning that automatically some insurers, for example, in property business, are increasing due to inflation, which results in a premium growth, but it's not yet also having a rate increase. So we are taking rate increase and inflationary effect in relation to increase of number of risks. A very, very rough estimate would be that our volume growth in P&C is driven 60% by the first effect, so pricing and inflation, and 40% by an increase of number of risks. If we come to the second question, which is about the property claims, Austria, Czech Republic. What we see and I think it was also a little bit explained in the presentation of Liane, is that we do have a quite conservative reinsurance program, which is protecting us for severity. So you saw last year when we had, for example, the earthquake in Turkey, most of it was covered by a reinsurance. Yes, this year, and specifically in the summer months, we do have a different characteristic of the nat cat event, which is a higher frequency, but lower severity. Which means, these days, more in our self-retention, and you can see the difference between gross and net in the first half. So there we have the effect of frequency, not of severity. Coming to the third topic. We have been intensively working on CO3. We have developed cooperation synergy plans, country by country on one hand side, and specifically, I can also mention here, Romania, where we have identified additional areas where we can realize synergies or in Bulgaria. On the other hand side, we have also implemented group-wide technical tool, which allows a know-how exchange between our group companies, and on this platform, we also see first successes, country by country, benefiting from experiences of the various countries in these areas, so CO3, we are quite happy how it is progressing, and looking forward in the next years to come, then also to see the effects in our PNL. I hope this answered your questions. Perfect. Thank you so much. The next question comes from Jonas Schoukens. Please, go ahead. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for taking my question. I've got three questions, please. The first two questions is actually on the P&C combined ratio. The first one is on the special markets improvement of six points to 93% in the first half. Is that the level which you think is sustainable going forward? And then secondly, on the combined ratio, if I look at the increases in Austria and Czech Republic, I mean, how much of the increase is down to just, you know, bad weather-related claims, and how much of that is possibly more structural? And then my final question is on the life side. If I look at your CSM, I think earlier you mentioned you expect a stable development on your production. Would it be fair to assume that, you know, the CSM release should be a fairly stable figure, at least in the second half, if there is no major financial market moves going forward? Thank you. Thank you for your questions. I will answer your first two questions. Special markets, so you know, within special markets, we also have included Turkey. You know that in Turkey we are facing challenges with significant high inflation. Our colleagues there are quite experienced in tackling this inflation. We are constantly adopting our premiums according to these inflation topics. Due to the volatility of the Turkish market, I cannot confess here that this level now of what the claims ratio will be as sustainable going forward. But I'm quite optimistic that we should be in this area looking forward. But again, there is the volatility and certain uncertainty in the Turkish market, which does not allow to give a very clear guidance, to count on this, for the years to come. ... Yeah, all right. Correct, understood. Yeah. When I come to your second question, Austria and Czech Republic, and you see in both that there has been a jump in the claims ratio in the first half. There is maybe, if you say structural, one could say maybe two, three percentage points, more or less in both areas, where we see a certain rise in claims ratios, also in motor business. Where I think we had exceptional claims ratios in motor business the years before. Also, still as a consequence out of the COVID years and lower frequency in claims. So I think now we are back in the normal world. This is maybe the part which one could we say, structural or normalized. The rest is clearly on one hand side in Austria with an unusual accumulation in the first half of small to medium-sized fire claims and the weather-related claims, and in Czech Republic the weather-related claims. I hope I have answered your question. Yeah. Thank you. Just to be clear, right? Because when I look at the half year and half year moments, there's quite a big change in the loss ratios, and even the claim cost ratios have come down quite a bit. So you- Yes. You're saying there's roughly two-to-three quotes, which is- No, this is also to do with a certain structural change in the reinsurance in Austria. Oh, right. Okay. Got it. Yeah. Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you. I'm happy to take your last question, your third question regarding the CSM release of the life and health business. Here, I would like to comment that we expect a stable development for the second half. The only thing is, what I would like to remind you, is that there is no big change in the changes in variable fee, for example, big interest rate changes, but we do not expect that. So we expect rather a stable development. And I would like, like to inform you that on page 32 of the half-year report, you can see the run-off pattern of the CSM, we have more details there. All right, great. Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, for any further questions, please press star and one. The next question comes from Thomas Unger from Erste Group. Please go ahead with your question. Yes, hello. Thank you very much. Thank you for taking my questions, and thank you for the presentation as well. I mostly have a follow-up questions. First, I'd like to hear about the Czech Republic in general. You've spoken about the weather-related claims which have been higher, but the revenue growth also was a bit sluggish, with plus 3% in the first half, combined ratio higher, earnings before tax down. But also if you could talk about the life side and how in general you see the insurance business in the Czech Republic developing. The second question would be on your outlook on revenues for the coming months, in the second half and going into 2025. You had double digits revenue increases in Casco, almost in MTPL, in other property health and life without profit participation. Now, with the inflation pressure easing, what do you expect for the coming quarters? Do you see these dynamics slowing down going into twenty twenty-five? That would be my second question. Thirdly, on your... You mentioned the use of excess capital, but do you have a feeling of where the dividend proposal could be for twenty twenty-four earnings? You made a very good progress towards your guidance for the full year, twenty twenty-four. If you hit that mark on the upper end of the guidance, where do you expect to be with dividends? Do you expect a higher increase this year than last year? And lastly, just on the weather-related claims, you mentioned the figures for this year and last year, first half 2023. I missed the last year figures. If you could repeat that, please. Thank you. Okay, thank you. I will take your first two questions, and I will start from the back to the beginning. The figures of last year for nat cat claims were EUR 256 million gross and EUR 97 million net. This year, EUR 123 million gross and EUR 111 million net. If I come to your question to growth dynamic going forward, you are fully right. We also have very much benefited the last years in adopting our premium levels according to the inflation. As inflation goes down, certain mechanism, also certain indexes, but also certain annual renewals will slow down. So from this, in our book, there will be a bit less dynamic in premium growth. On the other hand, if you look on the economic development in Central and Eastern Europe, we had some kind of overview in the first quarter, an analyst call, but even in the meanwhile, all the forecasts have been confirmed and even increased for Central and Eastern Europe. We see more or less across the place a GDP growth of 3% and 3%, plus. Very differently than to Western Europe, the salary inflation which we see in Central and Eastern Europe, combined with a significant lower income tax than we have in Western Europe. Meaning that the disposable income of the populations in our markets are much more grown up means that this is a push for the internal demand. So there is a very fair chance that we can compensate the inflation adaptation momentum by the momentum of a stronger internal demand within our markets. I would expect us to grow also next year in a similar dimension as we are here today. When it comes to Czech Republic, which was your question, we do have a unique extraordinary position in Czech Republic with a market share above 30%. We do see in the Czech Republic already in for our CE market; it's the maturest market by insurance penetration, but also by what we call risk literacy. We do have this unique also brand name with Kooperativa, which is an institution in Czech Republic. Yes, there has been this first half year a certain reduction in our profitability in life business. But I think in the years to come this will then normalize. There are also certain effects for the last two years when introducing IFRS 17. So I think this will then balance out. In the non-life segment I would also see here a positive development. Yes, it will be more moderate than maybe in comparison to some more emerging markets in our portfolio, but this is due to the maturity, and I would not expect seeing this high frequency of natural events each and every year to come. This first half year, we are hit in this relation. Overall, I'm very positive and very optimistic about our position and our development in Czech Republic. I'm happy to take your third question regarding the dividend proposal. Here, I would like to remind you that, in Q4 2023, we changed our dividend policy, meaning that the last year's dividend is the minimum dividend for the next year. So this is minimum EUR 1.40 for this year, and also I pointed out that we expect profit before taxes on the upper end of the announced target range this year, and as we always said, we want to be a stable and reliable partner also to our shareholders, so our earnings development should also be the basis for the dividend proposal, but at the end of the day, we decide when the 2024 results are finalized, so this is what I can say for the moment. Okay, thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question for today, and I would like to hand back to Nina for closing comments. Thanks, and thank you for your interest. We look forward to presenting the first to third quarter highlights on the twenty-sixth of November. If you have any further questions, in the meantime, please do contact the investor relations team. We are happy to help. Have a good afternoon and goodbye. Bye-bye. Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now concluded, and you may disconnect your telephone. Thank you very much for joining, and have a pleasant day. Goodbye.