Hi, good morning, everyone, and welcome to Umicore's full-year results media call. Please note that this conference is being recorded. Your lines are automatically muted. Our CEO, Mathias Miedreich, will first take you through last year's results and strategy milestones and then answer your questions. Mathias? Yeah, Clarice, thank you very much. Also a warm welcome from me this morning. I'm very happy to walk you through our 2022 year result and give you already some kind of flavor how we see the year of 2023. First of all, 2022 was again a very strong year of Umicore. It was the second most successful year in the history of Umicore. Revenues significantly up with 10% year-over-year and strong EBITDA at EUR 1.2 billion, which especially in the second half of last year was strong because we have been, as we all know, seen quite some volatility on the end markets and unseen inflation and energy prices. In this context, we are very satisfied with the results. Also with the ROCE, the return of capital employed, that we take as a measurement of value creation, with that the group has provided very strong value creation for its shareholders. With that we are satisfied about our performance this year. Also we are very satisfied in the progress that we have made implementing in what we have launched last year, which is the 2030 RISE strategy. You might recall this sheet. I will not explain it again, only so much. The mega trends that we have incorporated into our strategy, especially the mobility transformation, is not only confirmed, it is highly accelerating. I will come to that in a second. Our assumption that Umicore will grow like a startup, based on quite significant base of an established company is absolutely coming true, and we have already made significant steps forward and showed proof points in this regards. What you can see here is, first of all, what we have been achieving last year on the customer side. We have been very successful in closing what we call value creative contracts. Value creative contracts always means that the money that will be invested for them will yield a return on capital employed that is significantly above our cost of capital. So that's value creation. The joint venture with VW, obviously we have talked about last year. We also have signed an MOU now meanwhile with PowerCo Volkswagen for the North American business, but also with ACC, that are backed by Stellantis and Mercedes, we have closed a long-term supply agreement. Not only on our battery material business, also in the automotive catalyst business, strong acceleration on the customer side. I will cover that in a second, just highlighting here by receiving the supplier award from Mercedes, which is a confirmation of us being a reliable transformation partner. Big step up also in technology and innovation. A lot of IP has been generated in the last year. If I just want to mention 1, is the HLM technology. This is a key technology and it shouldn't be underestimated for the battery material market because it's catering to what's called the design to cost market that is currently addressed by the LFP battery material. HLM is a much better equation as we think. HLM, I remind you, is standing for Highly Lithiated Manganese. You could also say manganese rich. That's a technology that is dealing with much less nickel content than the traditional NMC. We talk about 25% of the nickel only that is used. It is very positive versus LFP because it has full recyclability and is compliant to the manufacturing footprint of NMC. At the same time it is, we estimate around up to 10% better in cost expressed in EUR per kilowatt, and it has a 25... up to 25% higher storage density compared to LFP. With that we are very happy that we have solved two of the major technical hurdles, which was the stability of the material and the conductivity. We have created a proprietary coping, doping and coating process that helped us to overcome this challenge, and now we are ready for industrialization. We're working with five of our customers in all continents on the further qualification of the technology, and we are confident that this will hit our production lines from 2026. I can go in more details if you want in the Q&A. For us it's an exciting moment where we made this major step for this key technology in battery materials. Not also on, only on the customer and on the technology side. We have made major progress also on implementing the regional supply chains that are so much needed. I will give you some more data points in the later slide, that are so much needed, and where we are in Europe already, you know, very much advanced. We have the only company that has a fully integrated supply chain, going from refining to PCAM and CAM. We're the only company also that has a gigafactory of CAM in Europe that is 100% based on renewable energy. We are very happy that we have been able to add another very important addition to that equation, which is, the supply of nickel, of not any nickel, of European nickel from Finland that is, harvested on a new bioleaching technology that's bringing down the CO2 equation tremendously. With that, we have everything that it takes for the European supply chain. We also, as you know, work on the North American side of it, with our Canadian footprint that is, in full swing and in full preparation going forward. We also have made very good progress on our clean mobility ecosystem and the ESG roadmap, where we have been able to further prove our Let's Go for Zero plan that we have launched in 2021. Well on track for our targets, even overachieving them in some regards. That was also a very good success. Now, going a little bit more in the details of our business fields in 2022. First, let's start with the catalysis business group. Of course, the underlying market here is the automotive market, especially the automotive market for combustion engines. You see that around 74 million of cars with combustion engines have been produced last year. That's still a very significant number compared to the overall production. You can also see that volumes didn't grow in the last three years, still well below the COVID level and the supplies chain constraints that have been there last year. I think we all know them. I don't have to repeat them. A quite volatile, difficult environment. In this environment, we are especially proud that automotive catalysts, so catalysis business group, and especially automotive catalysts, have posted again a record result in 2022, outperforming in most of the global automotive markets, winning market shares, also being able to largely offset the inflationary effects through operational efficiencies and a quite significant pricing power. Put forward inflation into pricing. This is visible in the EBITDA margin that has relatively stable versus last year at 23.6%, well above the historic level. If you want, the embedded assumption in our 2030 RISE strategy that this business group will be a key contributor of cash is fully confirmed, and with the recent Euro 7 announcement, also the assumptions to be able to differentiate through technologies are clearly there. On fuel cells, the revenues have been flat. Fuel cells and stationary catalysts flat year-over-year, driven by the lockdowns in China through COVID. We know about them. The good news is that we have been able to continue to close contracts with Chinese commercial vehicle players, the biggest market in the world. We are well on track for the additional capacities with the new fuel cell catalyst plant that we are planning in China are fully on suite. Now let's go to the E&ST business group. you know the underlying market that we have to look here is the electrification of mobility, so electric vehicle market as the main contributor to this business group. The market that you can see here is undoubtedly accelerating. It's driven by regulatory push and pull. The stick and carrot approach that you have between the U.S. with the Inflation Reduction Act, i.e. the carrot, and the stick with the 2035 ban of the combustion engines in Europe. just this week it was announced that there is a proposal now from the European side to even accelerate the commercial vehicle segment in a similar way with reducing CO2 emissions by 90% towards 2040. That's another strong push in that direction. Another key topic to mention is that the renewable energy availability is clearly accelerated. The energy crisis, you can call it a catalyst. The International Energy Agency is estimating that from now to 2027, around 2.4 terawatts of additional capacities on renewable energies is installed. Just to get this an order of magnitude, that's the full power generation of China today being rolled out in renewable energies. A clear catalyst function of the war and the subsidies. We think that this could leapfrog renewable energies as well as COVID has leapfrogged communication technologies. One thing that is coming out very clearly, besides the fact that our markets are tremendously expanding our end markets, is that there will be structural undersupply of critical materials, especially the cathode active materials in the regions of North America and in Europe. This is something that we have analyzed more in detail in what you can see here. Already today, the demand for batteries and battery materials in Europe and North America are by far outpacing the supply. This today is bridged, as we all know, with imports from mostly Asia, from China, Korea and Japan. Going forward, as we have discussed already, this will be much more difficult, if not impossible. First of all, through the regulatory side, through the local content requirements that an IRA is putting in place, that the NZIA, the Net Zero Industry Act that the European Union is discussing, could also include. That's the first very pragmatic topic. If you are not local, you will not receive the financial benefits or your customers in terms of tax credits. Secondly, a very rational one is the CO2 equation, because the OEMs themselves have a quite strict target to reduce the Scope 3 emissions of electric vehicles of the battery material. Shipping over continents is producing a lot of CO2, so it's already from that perspective, it's forbidding to do that. Last but not least, the lessons learned from the last years is that resilient supply chains need to be close to the customers, which also caters to the same needs. You can see that the projection to 2030 is that there's still a significant gap. Of course, these are all announcements, and you have to also discount them on both sides, probably. We know especially how difficult it is to produce cathode material. Take whatever factor you want from the green bar and go down 10%, 20%. For sure, we will not see all of those capacities that are announced really coming true. Secondly, it does not include yet the commercial vehicle decisions or proposals that have been now put forward in Europe. Also through the IRA, you could see an increase, and that's the target of the IRA, an increase of electric vehicles in the US. The blue bar would grow, which again would increase the gap. For Umicore, that means with our current fully integrated supply chain in Europe and the plans that we have in the US, we feel very well equipped to make this even more a competitive advantage and support our customers in their capacity needs forward. What about the performance of the E&ST business group in this year? It was quite a strong performance. In rechargeable battery materials, we are on track for what we have already said last year to enter a growth phase, end of 2023 and then majorly in 2024, with all of the contracts that we have been able to close and that we will still be able to close, this year. The qualifications are well on track, and the commercial discussions with customers are where they should be. Revenues and earnings are also well up in rechargeable battery materials. There was a special effect of lithium as well included that we have already discussed at the half-year results. Another important information that we have been sharing, or that I will share today with you, is that we have the intention to group all of the activities of the battery materials, the RBM activities, within one legal entity inside of Umicore to be ready to scale up and to be open for all options that we could need in terms of financing. That's an activity that is part of the structural preparation for this business unit for growth. A very good result in 2022, and we are on track for our ramp up towards 2024. Last but not least, our recycling business group that had, again, an excellent operational performance. In the same time, it was the business group that was mostly affected by the inflation headwinds, mostly in energy, but also by a less favorable precious metal price environment. As you know that, rhodium, for example, is one of the key metals that plays a role here, and that the average pricing last year was quite considerably lower than in 2021. The operational performance was pretty good, and revenues were at the level of the record year that we had seen in 2021. Very positive development also on our newly created Battery Recycling Solutions business unit. This is the one that is carrying of the lithium-ion battery recycling business model based on the existing battery recycling factory that we've already built 10 years ago and that has now, with all of this experience, been updated with the newest addition of high efficiency battery recycling flow sheet, significantly uplifting also the yields of recovery, which is the key component in this, in this business, and also very well on track with additional customer agreements as well with the plan of the large scale battery recycling factory that we will decide on this year in terms of location for Europe. Taking all this together, the year of 2023, the outlook that we are providing today to the market for Catalysis, for automotive catalysts, is expected to benefit from its strong market position in gasoline catalyst applications, a supply chain recovery and an anticipated rebound of the Chinese heavy duty diesel market and therefore, the adjusted EBITDA of the Catalysis business group is expected to show a further good uplift in 2023 versus the already very good performance in 2022. In Energy & Surface Technologies, it is expected that the earnings of the rechargeable battery material business units will be in line with the 2022 levels. Considering that in 2023, the Cobalt & Specialty Materials business unit will no longer benefit from the exceptional profitability that occurred in the first half of 2022. The adjusted EBITDA of the Energy & Surface Technologies business group in 2023 is anticipated to be somewhat below the levels of 2022. Finally, in recycling, the Precious Metal Refining business unit is expected to continue to benefit from an overall supply environment and assuming this metal is expected to be below the levels of 2022, in line with the current market expectations. A very good year of 2022. We are on track for our 2024 ramp up, especially battery materials. The 2030 RISE strategy is in full swing, and we are ready to tackle the challenges ahead. Thank you very much for your attention, and I'm now more than happy to answer your questions, if any. Hi Mathias. To ask your questions, could you please raise your hand button at the top menu of the team's window, then when I see your name, you can unmute your microphone and ask your questions. Please lower your hand afterwards. Olivier Sorgho from Reuters. Hi. Sorry, apologies. Technical problems. Hi, Matthias. Thanks for this interesting presentation. Congratulations on the results. I have a few questions. 1 is, you talk in the press release that for cathodes, there was a more kind of subdued performance, is what you say in the press release. Could you just give us more color on why investment in cathodes might be a bit more subdued? Is it inflation? Is it something else? That's my first question. My second question relates to pricing. Can you tell us a bit more what you're doing in terms of pricing, what you're envisioning for 2023, and also how are your customers reacting to that? On top of that, I've also got a question on state aid and state projects, like government investment in cathode projects, which you're investing in. Are you seeing potentially more government funding or investment for those projects? Yeah. Finally, my question is, you know, in case, if precious metal prices drop, let's say, significantly this year, what would you do to mitigate that? Because it would obviously probably hit your earnings quite a bit. Thank you very much. Yeah. Thank you very for very relevant question. Let me go through them one by one. First of all, cathode materials, that's basically something that we have already communicated, I think end of 2021. In fact, we are currently going through a renewal of our contract portfolio in battery materials. We have been very successful in the last 18 months to close key contracts, and I have listed some of them. That, as usual in the automotive industry, are taking some time to hit our production lines, and this will happen this year already, end of this year, and then ramping up through 2024, going forward into our ambition in 2030 to reach around 400 gigawatt hours of production. The good news is that we, for that ambition, we have already secured more than 50% for 2030, which is quite strong looking to the long timing. Now for the year of 2022 and 2023, the same logic applies that the current contracts that we have that are currently running, that are important contracts for us, but they are not further growing, and that's why we are concentrating all of our efforts to this new projects that hit our manufacturing lines as we speak. You know, we are very active in what's called the qualification process, which is a lengthy process in the automotive industry, can take up to 2 years, and we are now at the end of that, which is pretty good. In terms of pricing, we have shown in 2022 that we have quite some substantial pricing power in very important parts of our business. The automotive catalyst business, for example, is one very good example, where we have seen that we have been nearly completely able to offset inflation, not only in pricing, also through, of course, measures in operational efficiencies. There are other businesses where pricing cannot be offset so easily. That is, for example, the case in the recycling business groups, that's because of the contractual conditions where we have long-term contracts that cannot be changed in between. You know, the effect will be there, it will be something that is not possible within one business year. Overall, we still remain confident that we can show the same pricing power that we have showed in 2022, also in 2023. Talking about state aid, yeah, indeed, this is a big discussion point right now. You know, the Inflation Reduction Act has brought that very much on the table. Even before that, you know, we have announced our investment in Canada with our cathode material factory that we plan in Ontario before something was known about the IRA. Still at that time, we have received quite a positive, you know, environment from the Canadian government, which is quite similar to what is set now in the IRA. The big question is for Europe, obviously, what will be the answer from the European legislations or legislators? This is all speculation right now, but you could think that overall, the environment in Europe should also, you know, improve in terms of state aid and funding because of the fact, and that's what we have seen earlier, it is very difficult for the different regions to impose a ban on the combustion engine if you don't have enough capacity in your region to fulfill that. I would assume that there is also some, you know, upside on the European market. Last question on the precious metal pricing. If the precious metal prices are dropping, this is something that is outside of our, you know, we cannot influence that. Of course, we are prepared. You know, our precious metal management system that we have is making sure that any ups or downs of the precious metal prices are managed in the most efficient way to have the most benefit out of that or the least negative effects. We will do the same. Umicore has done that in its whole life so far, and we are confident that we will do it in the same way. As we speak here, we cannot predict the precious metal price environment. We can only plan on the assumptions that we see today. Does anyone have one more? Thanks very much. Another question, please? We have five more minutes, so I suggest one more question or two maximum. Please don't hesitate to raise your hand. Pascal Sertyn from De Standaard. You can unmute your mic if you want. Yeah. Hello. Good morning, Mr. Miedreich. I have two questions. One about the battery recycling plant that you're planning in Europe. Can you be more specific about the timing this year of this decision? Also about which countries are still in the race. The second question is a side question. It's about the Euronext Brussels introduced a new index, a share index, based on the ESG criteria. Umicore is not a part of that index. What's in your opinion about that? Absolutely. Battery recycling, as we said, we will do the decision this year. I don't want to pin ourselves to a more precise timing because we want to take all of the time needed. We have not made a shortlist of countries yet, I can share with you that Belgium is, of course, still in our consideration because in Belgium we have. It's the heart of our recycling activities today in Hoboken, the plant that we have. With that we want to, of course, take that into the weight of being close in proximity. There are other factors like space availability or the whole logistic chain, availability of energy, but also the workforce equation that ties into that. Please bear with us, we will make sure to share with you all news we have along that road. It will be an important decision that we do this year. For the ESG index, we're fully aware on that. You know, that's something that is probably not surprising because Umicore traditionally has been always a frontrunner in ESG, but not necessarily in ESG declarations. We know that this index is working with a provider consistent called Sustainalytics that have a certain way of rating that depending on what kind of data is disclosed, and we have just not disclosed enough of the data. While we received the feedback that they intrinsically rate us very strongly on the ESG side. We will correct that. We will provide more data. With that, I think we will be also able to to right-size that. It's not funded on on the basics behind. It's more I would say a data-driven thing that we need to be more transparent as we have already started the road forward. If there are no more questions, I suggest to wrap up. Very good. Thank you very much for your attention. I wish you a great continued day and looking forward to our next discussion. Thank you very much. Have a nice day everyone. Bye.