Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the publication of Half Year 2023 Results Conference Call and live webcast. I am Alice, the corporate operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be listening only mode, and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by Q&A 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 Edwin van der Geest, Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir. Yes, thank you very much, Alice. Hello, and good afternoon, and welcome you to our conference call regarding our half year result. I'm very happy to be here in the room with Thomas and this Felix, and for the first time, with Jens. The new Jens, who will be here at the end of the presentation, he will give a short welcome. To start with the figures and the highlights, and I hope you have found all the information on the website, presentation, press release, and the semi-annual report. I hope you're all fine, and then I hand over to Felix. Felix? Good afternoon, also from my side. I would like to start our presentation of the group's half-year result with the main highlights and key achievements. In a nutshell, we can report a successful start into the year. Demand for automated intralogistics solutions remained strong in all regions. Bookings were up by 6% against the previous year. Only with larger projects we experienced that customers are starting not to cancel, but to postpone projects. Here, of course, mainly Amlog and to a lesser degree, also AutoStore are affected. Due to our strong backlog and improved availability of electronic components, we can report a strong growth in revenue. Revenues were up by 30%, especially supported by US sales. Gross profit and gross profit margins were positively influenced by the previously mentioned volume effect, but also due to the improved efficiencies in the factories. This led to a strong EBIT, and here I can say this is the best EBIT result of Kardex ever, and we are back in the communicated target range. During this time, we have also appointed a new CEO, who is now on board since nearly two months. Now, I would like to hand over to our CFO, Thomas Reist, for the detailed financials. Thank you, Felix. Hello, everyone. As always, I would like to start with looking back to the key figures of the last five years. Here, as Felix said before, we can look back at a very successful first half year, 2023, with three new record levels. It's not only EBIT, it's also bookings of net revenues and EBIT, as explained before, which set new record levels. While on the volume side, so bookings and net revenues, we achieved to surpass the record levels of last year. On the EBIT level, it is not 2022, which set the last record level, but it was the year 2019, so the last half year before the COVID crisis hit us. Looking at the EBIT margin with the 12.9%, we were not able to set a new record level. The last record was set in the year 2021, with 13%. Very close, but not fully achieved. The EBIT, coming back to the EBIT level again, with the CHF 43.1 million EBIT result, we surpassed the best result from 2019 by 52%, up by 52%. Looking on the free cash flow, there we have now a positive free cash flow achieved. It turned positive again. It's not the best cash flow, but a solid one, affected by net working capital and the investments we did during the first half 2023. Looking at the details of the income statement. The bookings went up by roughly 6%. We achieved a book-to-bill ratio of neutralized 1.01%. This is more or less the level we had before the COVID crisis. This led to a further increased order backlog of EUR 510 million. This order backlog went up by 17% and represents now a net revenues volume of around nine months. The net revenues themselves, they went up by 30% to a very strong EUR 334.5 million. This volume increase was mainly pushed by Kardex Remstar and the AutoStore business. On the gross profit level, especially the gross profit margins, there we are on the very positive side with the 33.2% gross profit margin we achieved. In the first half, 2023, this is an up by 1.5 percentage points compared to the previous year. There we have several effects. To put it in a historical background, the 33.2% are still below the pre-COVID levels. If I look at the gross profit margins we achieved between 2016 and 2019, there we on average had around 35%. There you see that the 33% are very strong, but not back to the same levels we had before COVID. This has two main reasons. One is that Kardex Remstar did not yet achieve the same profitability levels they had before. Secondly, the share of Kardex Remstar or the contribution of Kardex Remstar to the overall result of the group has decreased. Earlier, they had a share of around 80%, and now the share dropped to 73%. This goes back to the increase in volume of the AutoStore business. Looking now at the OpEx, there we see an increase of EUR 10 million, or 17.5% compared to last year, so quite a significant increase. This is mainly based on sales, marketing costs, which went up because of the increased sales force and the variable pay. We also increased the cost for our IT, and R&D was also a main part of the OpEx increase. Looking at the efficiency of our OpEx, this increased heavily. While in 2022, OpEx represented 22.4% of net revenues, it went down now to 20.3%. The resulting EBIT of EUR 43.1 million represents an up of 81.1%. Very strong increase this year. EBIT margin of 12.9%, I commented before, this is well in the upper range of our target level of 10%-14% on group level. Here, a side effect, looking at the currency effect in the income statement, there on the bookings level, we were negatively affected by EUR 1.3 million. Net revenue, negatively affected by EUR 500,000, on the EBIT level, a very small positive effect of EUR 100,000, not very significant currency effect. The financial result was positively affected by our financial assets, leading to cost of EUR 200,000. The tax rate dropped by 200 basis points to a tax rate of 24.5%. This is mainly due to tax losses going forward in the U.S., which we could use to and have a positive impact on tax rate. Balance sheet has extended, mainly based on two reasons. One is that we continue to invest, mainly in property, plant, and equipment in our two factories, Bellheim and Neuburg. We also increased the net working capital, mainly based on the increased volumes. This I will comment further in the cash flow statement. The equity, despite the dividend paid, the dividend of 1.4 million- EUR 206 million. The sheet, the equity ratio, went south slightly to 54.1%, but is still very strong. Now, the cash flow statement. The cash flow statement was positively affected by the very strong result for the period, which has more than doubled. The EUR 32.4 million very positively affected the cash flow. Here you see the impact of the net working capital, so the net working capital compared to last year went up by EUR 21.7 billion, mainly based on the accounts receivable because of the business volume, but also because of the accounts payable there, EUR 7.7 billion. There is the increase of the over-financed POC projects. As mentioned before, the CapEx went up, mainly in Bellheim and Neuburg, where we invested in machines, so we had the replacement investments there, and we also did building extensions in our Bellheim factory. This all leading to the free cash flow of EUR 12.2 million. Looking at the divisions, starting with the big one, the Kardex Remstar division, we have a positive effect, positive bookings increase of 7%. Here, the main contributors are the European region as well as the LCS business unit. Here, we also have to admit that the main factor of the increase comes from the price increases we have introduced last year. This is the main contributor to the bookings increase. Order backlog went up to EUR 344 million, which represents eight months of net revenues and a book-to-bill ratio of 1.11. Net revenues went strongly up by 22.5%. This is mainly due to the supply chain bottlenecks. Which were not affecting so much anymore, the availability of components has improved. This will not mean that it is fully solved, we still have problems getting all the relevant components, but we have the process better under control. Net revenues amount to EUR 245 million. There, all the regions contributed to this positive increase. Main contributors are North American market and also European, mainly Switzerland and Germany. Gross profit went up by 35%, and the gross profit margin of 38.5%, very strong increase, a plus of 3.5 percentage points compared to last year. Here we have three main contributors. This is the volume increase. This is, as mentioned before, the price increase, and also the reduced negative effect of the U.S. factory. We have also neutralized effects. I will comment on the next slide. The resulting EBIT of CHF 41.2 million is very strong. This is an up of 73.1%. Very strong increase, resulting in a very strong EBIT margin of 16.8%, which is well in the upper range of our financial target of 14%-17%. On this slide here, I would like to highlight two neutralizing effects I mentioned before. On one hand, looking at the net revenues mix, there we see a decrease of the share of the life cycle service business. The life cycle service business share dropped from 32% - 29%, minus of 300 basis points. On the other hand, we also see on the geographical split, that the share of the American business has increased from 23% - 27%. You all know that the after sales business comes along with slightly better margins than the new business, so this would expect a higher margin effect. While the share dropped, so this would reflect then a negative effect on the margin levels, which is neutralized on the higher margin, or the higher share, so the higher share of the U.S. market, where we also achieve higher profitability levels. These two effects are neutralizing themselves. Coming to the Amlog division. Here on the bookings level, we could repeat the very positive bookings of last year with EUR 52.5 million, so approximately on same level. The order backlog amounts to roughly EUR 130 million, representing net revenues of 15 months. The net revenues themselves, they increased by roughly 6%. The gross profit margin with 18.6% are slightly below previous year's levels. There are two effects. Was a bit stronger in terms of absolute figures, new business, as you know, very well, comes along with slightly lower margins than the after sales business. In addition, we have bigger projects in very early stages, where we assume a positive effect in the second half of the year. The EBIT of CHF 2.1 million, representing south of -25%, EBIT margin of 3.9% is slightly below the financial target of 5%-8%, we expect that the margin will regain momentum in the second half of the year, so in H2-2023. Here, in addition, we wanted to mention that the market position of the Amlog division has strengthened especially in the light goods business. This because of the market approach with the AutoStore and the Rocket Solutions, solution portfolio. Here, the perception in the market is that Amlog can not only provide high-class pallet solutions, but also high-class light goods solutions. Here, again, main focus on the net revenues mix, so we see that there has almost no movement. The Life Cycle Services here has gained momentum, slightly, and up from 27%-28%. The more obvious change in the geographical mix is that the share of the German business has increased heavily, from 83%-92%. This is mainly due to the that the share of the rest of Europe has decreased from 16%-8%. Here last year, we had two bigger projects in Poland and Slovenia, which are now finalized. Coming to the last business unit, the Kardex AutoStore business. Here on the bookings level, we have a very strong up of 24%, you will remember well, the EUR 14.1 million are below what we achieved in the second half of 2022. This was expected and also communicated in the last call we had. There we had a very strong December order intake, and this affected the bookings in the first half of the year 2023. The EUR 14.1 million represent roughly five projects. In average, we have a project volume of around EUR 3 million. The projects we achieved, they were assigned from customers from North America and Europe, and from the Asian market, we expect. The first project, the first booking in the second half of 2023. The order backlog went up very strongly, so a plus of 60% to EUR 36 million. Net, net revenues also went up 4 times to a volume of EUR 36 million. Gross profit was 5 times to a gross profit of EUR 6.5 million, and the gross profit amounted to 18.1% of gross, gross profit margin to 18.1%. This also here, due to the early stage of the project, a slight down compared to last year. You can see very well in the number of employees, that we are still or continue to invest in our infrastructure. We strengthen our teams in Europe, North America, and especially also in the Asian market, to profit from the positive momentum of the AutoStore business. We achieved also a positive EBIT contribution from the AutoStore business. Here, also, a side comment, good news to share. We learned yesterday that the patent litigation between Ocado and AutoStore has been settled yesterday. This is also positive news that there is no turbulence to be expected from that side. Thanks a lot for your attention. With this, I would like to hand back to Felix for the outlook. Thank you. I would like to end our presentation with an outlook for the end of this year. The mega trends in which Kardex business model is based on remains intact and strong. Nearshoring, skilled labor shortage, and optimizing of space are the main factors for our customers to continue to invest in automated intralogistic products and solutions. This despite the fact of worldwide cooling of growth expectations. The strong backlog of both Remstar, Mlog, and AutoStore is a solid foundation for a successful second half of the year. One must also say that despite the fact that the availability of electronic components is improving, the whole situation remains still fragile. Due to these overall positive signs, Kardex is well-positioned to develop in line with the communicated financial targets for the whole year. Before now starting our Q&A sessions, I would like to give our new CEO, Jens Hardenacke, a chance to introduce himself. I, for my part, will now resume my duties as a Chairman of the Board exclusively, and hand over these types of presentation for the future, back to the management. Thank you for your support during this time. Jens, please. Thank you, Felix. Good afternoon from my side. For the first time, I would like to introduce myself. My name is Jens Hardenacke. I'm 51 years old, and since June this year, I am the new CEO of the Kardex Group. Before I joined Kardex, I worked for only two companies before. I started to work for the Gildemeister Group for almost 12 years. Gildemeister manufactures sales and services, sophisticated machine tools, so products, milling machines, turning machines. Afterwards, in the year 2017, I changed the industry and started to work for the American intralogistic company, Dematic, where I worked for four years in China. China was a very strategic market for Dematic because the shareholder of the Kion Group was Chinese. Afterwards, the last two years, I worked in Europe, in the headquarter of Heusenstamm in Germany. All in all, I worked in the product business, which is very close to Remstar, and I worked in the system business, what we do for AutoStore and for Mlog. When I started to look for a new challenge, for me, it was very important to work for a company who is an industry leader, who sells premium products and services, and who has a lot of potential to develop, and a company with a very solid and good, open, down-to-earth culture. I found this with Kardex. When Kardex was looking for a new CEO, one of the main topics was to look for somebody who has experience in the product and in the system business, who also has experience in the key markets, America and Asia. I think I bring all this to the table, I think it's a perfect match, My experiences for the first two months show that this indication is quite right. I'm looking forward to work with Kardex, to be part of the Kardex success story, to have a good exchange with you in the future, I hand over to Edwin. Thank you very much, Jens. Thank you very much, Felix. Thank you very much, Thomas. For the ones who would like to know more about Jens, I would like to mention that we will send the save the date for our site visit day on November 7th, tomorrow or on Monday. There'll be the day to for all of you to meet with Jens in person. Now, first of all, I would like to thank the two presenters of our results, and I give back to the operator to start the Q&A session. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question, may press star and one on the 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 hand sets and eventually turn off the volume from the webcast. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. Our first question comes from the line of Walter Bamert with Zürcher Kantonalbank. Please go ahead. Good afternoon, everybody. I want to refer in my first question to the outlook you give in line with the communicated financial targets. I assume you're referring to the midterm targets, but I think this is kind of a misleading message when it comes to sales growth. Can you say what you mean with this outlook? Yes, Felix Thöni. The outlook is on the basis of EBIT. You are right, in regard to revenue, it will be above the, I think, 7% we are have committed. 7% is on a medium-term basis. I mean, this is what we are now showing this year, this is exceptional, and one cannot put this figure into the future. I mean, this has something to do with our problems we had with electronic components last year. You're referring to the EBIT margin at group level, mainly being the, what you confirm for the full year? We actually confirm it also on the divisional levels. Oh, okay. Yeah. Can you help me with the speed of the backlog execution that you expect? Because it can be anything between the same sales level as you had in first half, or it could even be that you execute almost the entire backlog of EUR 510 million in the second half. What do you expect there with regard to timing? Hi, Walter. Hello. This is Thomas. Hi, Thomas. We had a very positive momentum now in the first half-year, we expect to have the same pace. This means you cannot expect that in the second half of the year, the full 510 are being executed. This will also lead into 2024. You would say it's rather at the lower end of the 334 to the 510 range, but perhaps slightly above the first half. Exactly. There is no reason it should be below. Yeah, very well assumption. Okay. My last question for the time being is: Can you remind me of the price effect you had for the entire last year, and how much was the price effect, as your guess, in the first half of this year? If I can answer this as well. We had last year, two price increases, maybe priced by 10%, then in, then with around 4%, depending a bit from the products, talking about the Cortex Ramstein. This leads to a price effect of around 8% in the figures we have presented. Okay. Thank you very much. The next question comes from the line of Stephanie Scibor-Rylski, with Miha Security. Please go ahead. Yes, thanks a lot, and congratulations to the good EBIT result. Jens, I wish you a nice start in your new role. Maybe coming to that price effect and volumes effect. Order volumes at Ramstein don't look them that brilliant anymore, taking out the price effect. Do you think that volume, almost negative momentum, would continue into the second half? How much pricing effect would you still have in the second half? Is it still 8%, or I would assume it's rather going down. That's my first question. Hi, Stephanie. It's Thomas. The assumption is absolutely right. In the second half of the year, you cannot assume that there is an additional price effect. You remember that we always talk about this lack of when we increase prices until they get effective. This is a lack, a gap of around six months, and this clearly shows that there should not be a price effect then. In regards to question, the volume, what can be expected in the bookings? It is difficult to say. What we can confirm is that our sales funnels are full, we have a very healthy and strong demand. This demand continues in all our three business units, there is no sign currently that there is any direction downward. Any recession which would affect our business model, there are no such signs. At Cortex Lamarlock, as we explained in our letter to the shareholder, we have a certain effect that the decision-taking takes a bit longer for larger projects, but this is the only sign we have currently. Again, the demand is strong, our sales funnel is strong, we still assume that we can base our future on a strong demand and continued growth. ... maybe a second one also on Remstar. You're saying that you have two effects that are leveling out each other. One is from servicing, the other one, that your operation in the U.S. has improved. Maybe, can you quantify a little bit? How much was your negative effect coming from the U.S. operation? Maybe also share with us, how many machines are you producing currently per week? Are you on the output you would like to be, or do you expect further improvements in your U.S. operations? Okay. I see that I was not clear in my explanation. The neutralizing effect, there, I explained two things. One is the LTS business share has gone down. As a consequence, normally, then you have to, the effect is that the gross profit margin, profitability goes also down for the division. We had an increase of the North American market, so talking about the sales business, so selling machines to the market, this has increased. The North American market has a higher profitability than other regions. Mm-hmm. This is why I said this has a neutralizing effect. There's nothing in common, there are two different effects neutralizing themselves. Your question referred to the U.S. factory. Mm-hmm. I thought it was like this. Yeah, exactly. Neutralize each other. Yeah. I learned it now that I was not clear in my explanation. Talking about the U.S. factory there, yes, we could improve the output. It is not to 100% at the level we wanted to have it. We are happy with the current setup, with the current level, and we continue to improve the setup of the U.S. factory. Currently, we are in a situation where it becomes an operational task to improve continuously the output of the factory. It's not a major threat anymore. Where do you stand currently in terms of output, like, in terms of machines per week? We were able to achieve 20 machines per week. We have the possibility to go up to 20 machines per week, but currently, the average level is a bit lower. Okay. Thanks a lot. I might come back later with other questions. You're welcome, Stephanie. The next question comes from the line of Benjamin Heusel, with Helvea. Please go ahead. Hello, good afternoon, thank you for the opportunity also for a media representative to ask question. I would like to directly connect to the previous point regarding North America. You mentioned in the press release, you see some demand related to nearshoring, I was wondering if you could please add a bit of color to that. What is driving the demand in the U.S.? How much is associated to support programs by the U.S. government? How sustainable do you think is this demand in the U.S.? How long will it last? Thank you. Benjamin, this is Edwin speaking. I mean, couple of weeks ago, we read in the handset, what is the reason? A very good article. What is the effect of the Inflation Reduction Act, this is actually a very important part. It's very difficult to say how long this will last. We, but we see it not only in the U.S., also in Europe, reshoring has really become an issue, and it's really taking place now. I mean, two years ago, I mean, during COVID, we were saying: We expect this to come, and then nothing happened. Now this is really happening. In U.S., there is an additional driver through the Inflation Reduction Act. Probably, hi, Benjamin. Adding here to your question in regards to the U.S. government. There we, especially in the first half of the year, we did not have any major order from the U.S. government. We have the usual business, but not a really inflated demand from the U.S. government. Okay, thank you. Maybe just a quick follow-up. How important do you expect the North American market, the US market, to be in the future for Kardex? I mean, we've seen some growing shares now in the first half. Do you expect this trend to continue? Will North America be more important in the future for you? Yes, Felix speaking. Yes, the American market is important for us. As you have seen, we are now coming close to 30%. If our revenues would be evenly distributed all over the world, our aim is to have 40% U.S., 40% Europe, and 20% Asia. That would be our long-term aim for the revenue distribution. Okay, great. Thank you. Yeah, one can also add, maybe this last point, In U.S., there is still a heavy under-penetration of intralogistics if you compare it to Europe. Europe is still far ahead in terms of penetration of these technologies. U.S. far behind. That's why, it's not, it's also the market itself that's now developing and that's helping to increase our U.S. market share. Mm-hmm. Of course, it's a little situation. I mean, if U.S. and China go on like they're doing now, I'm sure this is a trend which will not just end in the near future. Mm-hmm. They want to become more, less dependent on the production of China. Sure. Mm-hmm. Thank you for having this covered. Yep. The next question comes from the line of Sebastian Vogel with UBS. Please go ahead. Good afternoon. I have three questions I would ask them one by one. The first one would be on Remstar and the margins there. How sustainable you see the current level going forward? Well, we see two trends. One is positive trends, because we still are not to 100% efficient in our factory. We still have inflated transportation costs because these inefficiencies, this is a positive potential. On the other hand, we also see a certain headwind in regards to the market. I mean, the competition is getting stronger. Price pressure is there in the market, and depending on what the demand is doing, this might cause an additional headwind. Got it. Many thanks. The second question would be related to, to the AutoStore business. Sure. Don't forget the staff costs in Germany, the tariffs are only going up in May, June. This will affect us in the second half year, that we have quite substantial staff cost increases in Germany. Well, makes total sense. The second one is on the comment that you made on the AutoStore business and the orders there. Would it be then a better idea to sort of average the second half of last year for order intake and the first half of this year to sort of have a better jumping off point for the second half of this year? Is that would be a fair thinking there, to sort of balance out the strong December? Yeah, from a technical point of view, yes, this would be worthwhile. Got it. To give you a flavor there, I mean, the sales fund, as well as the backlog, is very full. We have a lot of opportunity. The market is very bullish currently with the AutoStore business, so it could go in both directions. Based on a positive growth rate or on a very strong growth rate. One additional thing, Sebastian, this is Jens. There was also a strong effect last year with the price increase of the AutoStore in December. We have to be a little bit cautious to compare it. Most likely, there won't be this price increase this year, I would be cautious to assume the same December order intake than last year. Yeah. Got it. Many, many thanks. The second, the third question, last question would be on CapEx plans and net working capital for the second half of this year. CapEx plans would be, of course, then for the second half and for the full year. What are your plans there, and how do you see net working capital developing in the second half? Yeah, sure. For the full year, we expect the CapEx around EUR 18 million, could go up to EUR 20 million. A stronger CapEx activity is in second half of the year. Looking forward, depending a bit, the possibilities, and we have to spend the money, to invest the money, but the plan is that we have higher CapEx in 2024. Got it. Net working capital? Very difficult. Very difficult question, because net working capital is, it's also affected on, increased inventories. This was my intention, that we increased our inventory levels, especially the critical components to have, higher, stock levels. Please expect it, that we reduce very cautiously the inventory levels again. Does this have a positive impact on the net working capital? Not really sure, because whenever the volume increases, then you have the counter effect. I would rather, calculate with a neutralized net working capital situation, rather than going, south or north. Got it. Many thanks. That helps me. All my three questions. Welcome. As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press star and one on your telephone. Star followed by one. The next question comes from the line of Alexander Koller with Stifel. Please go ahead. Good afternoon, gentlemen. Alexander speaking from Stifel. A question for the new CEO: What are your initial strategic directions, and is there an increased focus on Asia, since you are very experienced in that area? Thanks for your question, Alexander. I have to disappoint you. I'm with Calix only for two months now. If I would have a strategy now, I would either be a genius or fool. I think I'm neither the first nor the second one. Give me some time to discuss this also with the group management. I have some ideas, and also with the board, but I will discuss these ideas first and get also the real impressions from the regions, what we can do here, and then at a certain point of time, I come back to you. The next question comes from Remo Rosenau with the Helvetische Bank. Please go ahead. Yes, good afternoon. Thank you. I would like to come back to the AutoStore business, which has seen a very impressive development. Basically, is there any kind of seasonality in this business normally, or is it just hopefully growing steadily, you know, depending on demand? That would be my first question. Hi, Remo. Here's Thomas. There is no seasonality. Okay. What is actually possible in that field, in that business? I mean, you went from EUR 7 million-EUR 36 million, compared to last year. How much sales could you deal with, with the current setup? Well, we did not change our position. Currently, we do not disclose any targets in regards to the AutoStore business. We will have our capital market day in November, so there we will shed a bit more light on this business. But currently, we do not provide any guidance in this regard. What I can do, is I can refer to what colleagues of you are expecting, is that they say that it could go up to around EUR 100 million. Okay. I want to add, this is also not a capacity here. It's not a capacity issue, because we are very asset light, and it's more the, it's more... I mean, the team can further grow and further get business, and then it's a question you should put to AutoStore, how much capacity they can handle. Yes, exactly. Personnel, I guess, huh? Personnel, yes. That's our team force. Yeah. Which seems to be hard to get as well these days, right? To be honest, we were lucky. We have a very strong team at hand. We were able to fill the key positions we wanted to, with very strong colleagues. We are very proud of our team, of our AutoStore team, very experienced people, a very good reputation in the market. So far, we did not have difficulties to find the talents, probably also because the positive momentum we as Kardex have. My last question here, I mean, the gross profit of 6.5%, and could you give any indication about what kind of an EBIT contribution it has? The gross profit was CHF 6.5 million. Yeah. Trend. Yes, right. I would say the EBIT is in the mid-single digit now. Okay. It seems likely that there is an operating leverage when this business continues to grow, right, in terms of the margins? Now, I mean, now there's a lot of build-up costs. I mean, we went up from 15 to 44 people in a year, and not everybody is still fully up, fully effective and, contributing. It's, we're still in the building-up phase. Mm-hmm. Okay. As we have mentioned in other situation, I mean, we expect margins that are somewhere between Emerox and Muratec's margin, once the business is fully built. Okay, makes sense. Okay, great. Thank you. Welcome. For any further questions, please press star and one on your telephone. Star followed by one. We have a question coming from the line of Lasse Stueben with Berenberg. Please go ahead. Hi, good afternoon. Just one additional sort of general follow-up. Just looking at sort of European PMIs and the overall, I guess, mood in the market, you know, it seems like, you know, companies are getting more negative, but your demand funnel seems to be very full. I'm just wondering, can you shed some light on the conversations that you're having with your customers? I know they said they're still willing to invest, but I'm just, you know, I'm just curious to hear how your customers are thinking about the current environment and what that means going forward, maybe into 2024 for Kardex. Thank you. It's Lasse, Adrian speaking. We are saying the market is cooling off. We see that all over, but our customers still have the problem that they have to, that they are facing the same problems we have ourselves. We are lacking some temperament of staff in Berlin, and that's the problem our customers have as well, and the only solution is investing in automation. This goes on, then reshoring goes on. That's why we are actually, in a way, also helping our customers to overcome difficult market situations by further automate and digitalize their businesses. We are not the first who would start savings- if it comes to pressure from the market. That's what we see so far, in particular, in the Kardex Remstar business. Okay. I guess it's more just sort of the bigger projects, as you mentioned, that are being impacted, right? It's the big automated warehouses rather than, you know, some of the smaller customers which you tend to service with Remstar. Yeah. Yeah, that is correct. I mean, we for 2024, we really see it more in the, the large projects where especially Mlog is currently active, but might also be AutoStore to a lesser extent. Important is that, especially with the main business, you know, these are not the major investments which a company has to do. I mean, it's usually investments which are not going up to the, to the top management or board level, which is at the moment, very cautious. Especially at Remstar, I think, we are still in a good position also for 2024 to keep ourselves going. Great. Understood. Thanks very much. The next question is a follow-up from Mr. Vogel, UBS. Please go ahead. Many thanks. I got just this, if I may. The first one is on exit rate. In that sense, if I look at orders in June at Mlog and at Remstar and compare them to the average that you have been reported, was there any big gap there, or was there sort of intra half year development that is worth highlighting, or was it rather consistent? If I understand you properly, Sebastian, you were asking for a special effect in June, or? No, no, it's more like at Remstar and Mlog, if the June order growth rate, if I look it on a monthly basis, was that particularly different to the average that you have reported for the first half year? In that sense, was it particularly strong? Was it particularly weak? Was there any development worth highlighting over the course of H1 that you saw some sort of trajectory going, either on a weakening side or on a strong strengthening side, on the other side of things? Was there anything worth highlighting? Oh, you have sometimes volatile months, but the volatile months were more in the middle of this, of the last reporting season than towards the end. One can also say it's sort of the general picture we have seen since many years. You know, June is always a very good month for us, but it was now not exceptionally good. It has always been strong in the past as is December. There was no specific event for the June month results. It has been a good month for us. That's great to hear. Just quick second follow-up, if I may. On the Remstar side of things, was there any sector, any vertical, you would point at, that was particularly strong in terms of demand, or that was particularly weak in terms of demand in the first half? Kardex Remstar, there we had a very positive momentum in the mechanical engineering and the electronic segment. This was particularly strong in the first half 2023. There was positive growth, not as strong as, for instance, in 2021, in the retail and warehousing and e-commerce business. Anything on the weak side? Not particularly. Evenly distributed, good growth momentum. Got it. I can say that the e-commerce part, e-commerce sector, which was very strong in the past, is not as bullish anymore as it was one or two years ago. Yeah, makes sense. That will be my two follow-up questions. Many thanks. We have another follow-up question coming from the line of Mr. Bamert, Zürcher Kantonalbank. Please go ahead. Thank you very much. I'm also fishing for more insights on the industry. With Mlog, you have a good grip on the bigger projects, and I understand that the big system integrators, as there are not that many projects in the size they used to do in the past, are now more active in the area that's the bread and butter business of Mlog. Do you experience that pressure there? Is that also an effect that you experience when it comes to the Remstar business, as you mentioned, some increase in price competition, or is that coming from the smaller competitors that are strong in that area? Hi, Walter. Hello. Mlog business, there, we experience a bit stronger competition, to be honest, but not from new integrators. We don't really see that the large integrators are coming down to smaller projects. This is currently not happening. Looking at Kardex Remstar, there it's always the same picture. We have, the competition landscape has not changed, there is more the line of North Italian competitor who is on the market, very strong positioned. No change from that side. Okay, thank you very much. Welcome. Maybe to add, Walter, that we, we're mentioning some more price pressure is really. I mean, since the inflation rate is coming down, you have automatically customers trying to put a little bit more pressure again, on the prices. Here we, as we said, we are also still facing increasing costs, and in particularly for staff and for electronic components. Whereas, I, I mean, not all inflation has gone. The staff inflation is still there, and this is also what our customers would then understand, that there is a bit more price pressure than we saw it last year. When, you know, when it was really a seller's market rather than a buyer's market. Is it increasing that it goes with automated picking, what you sell at Remstar, and is that beneficial to your profitability? That's difficult to say. Hello? I'll also have to come back to that, to that. Here, I can, we don't have. Okay. The proper answer ready. Okay, thank you. I think one can say that on the medium and the long term, it's actually a positive effect. On the short term, yes, you have price pressure, this could have a negative effect in the short term. In the long term, it's really a positive trend for us. Well, we take it with us, we come back to you. Thank you very much. The next question is another follow-up from Mrs. Schulthess with Mirabaud. Please go ahead. Yes. I have a question on reporting. I mean, now you're speaking about AutoStore having its own slide in your presentation, but looking at the income statement or segment reporting, you're not handling it as a separate segment. Is that right? Then maybe another one, your other venture, Rocket Solution, would that also go into, like, Others in the segment reporting? How is this business doing, by the way? Yeah. Hi, Stephanie. Thanks for the question. Very valid question. Currently, we report the AutoStore business in our division called Holding Division, Holding and Others. We initially started that kind of reporting, because it is a very small business unit. It is still growing. We will reflect what is the best approach to report the AutoStore business in future, and we will come up with a solution at our capital market stage. Second question, Rocket Solution. Rocket Solution, this is a minority stake, so we own there 26.47% of this company, meaning that we do not consolidate the Rocket business. It is a financial investment in terms of financial reporting. From the Rocket business, what we show is the volume we have as integrators. Kardex Mlog is in 2 project integrator of Rocket Solutions, projects. There you see. Well, it's not openly disclosed. We see. We see, in the volumes or net revenues volume, the Rocket business. Rocket business is, having an effect on the volume side of Kardex Mlog as integrator. Maybe 2 very boring maintenance question. I hope I'm not the last person to ask a question. What was the FX impact, if there was any at all? I mean, the low tax rates due to cash tax loss carry forward, that can't be repeated in the second half, or what should we assume in terms of tax rates for the full year? Yeah. Currency effects, this is very minor. I tried to mention it at the beginning of my speech. It is in, on bookings level, it's -EUR 1.3 million, net revenues level, EUR 500,000, and EBIT, it is a very minor positive effect of EUR 100,000. Very minor effect from the currency side. In regards to the tax rate, yes, you're absolutely right. This cannot be repeated in the second half. Yes, this was a positive effect on tax losses carry forward in the U.S. We would assume the, what was it? 26% tax rate for the full year. Yeah, 26% is probably a good guess. Okay, thanks. Welcome. We are coming to the end of the call. Are there any further questions, operator? There are no more questions at this time. Back to you for closing remarks. Okay. Thank you very much, everybody, for joining us and for being interested in Kardex. We hope to see and hear you soon, later in Arbon on the 2nd of November, or whenever you have questions, contact me or Alex. We are happy to go further in detail. Thank you very much and have a good day. Bye-bye. Goodbye. Bye-bye. Bye. Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now over. Thank you for choosing Chorus Call, and thank you for participating in the conference. You may now disconnect your lines. Goodbye.