Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I welcome you to our analyst conference call on Meyer Burger's announcement to open a solar cell manufacturing facility in Colorado Springs. As a reminder, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. After Gunter's presentation, we will also have a Q&A session. Just to let you know that for the question, you will have to dial star 14 on your telephone keypad so that we can unmute you during the Q&A session. With that, I would like to hand over to Gunter, please. Thank you, Alex. A warm welcome also from my side, Gunter Erfurt speaking. Also greetings from Colorado Springs, 2:00 A.M. Pretty excited about the announcement of today. We will run you through a few slides, give some explanations about the rationale of this move and also business review and business outlook. We have communicated some preliminary H1 figures. We will leave enough room for your questions. This is the building. I hope you can see this. This is our new solar cell manufacturing site in Colorado Springs, in the state of Colorado. It's been used by Intel beforehand as a semiconductor facility. It is large enough to have the capacity for the 2 gigawatt we currently need for our facility in Arizona to take the solar cells produced in Colorado and ship them to Arizona, and exclusively use them to feed the production lines there. The building very likely can also absorb more capacity looking forward. Why a brownfield building? The reasoning behind is that we have taken the new guidance of the US Treasury into account, which was communicated in May, such that solar cells domestically produced in the US are required, and a necessity to qualify for the additional ITC tax add-on for our customers. This has generated the momentum, and we were looking into continuing our successful brownfield strategy, which saves time, which saves CapEx, and the building is, as much as one can say for a brownfield building, it's an ideal opportunity, and also, Colorado Springs and the entire region is well known as a tech hub and also provides us the ability to find enough personnel for this site. What does it do? It will directly generate 350 jobs in the first place, and potentially more as we move on. We are producing almost 1.5 million solar cells there once the factory is up and running. As I said, the cell production is exclusively used for Meyer Burger's own solar module manufacturing in Goodyear, Arizona, resulting in about 10,000 solar modules in the US. As we have previously communicated, the majority of this volume is already part of offtake agreements from three esteemed partners and customers, which are DESRI, Ingka/IKEA, and BayWa r.e. for their US business. The smaller portion of this facility will feed the US residential segment. As we also had communicated, which is publicly known, the United States have done a great job in both incentivizing, the reshoring of manufacturing, and in particular, the reshoring of manufacturing in the clean tech sector, on the one hand, and, as well, has the government, implemented the measures that also protect the industry that's, being erected and protect, the inner market in the U.S. It seems to be a perfect match for a company like Meyer Burger, with our ability to produce solar cells. There are not so many outside of China that can do this. In terms of the financial package, we are receiving from 2024 through 2032, or are at least eligible for, it's amounting to approximately 1 billion US dollars, of which the largest part is coming from the Inflation Reduction Act money. By moving the solar cell to the U.S., we are adding $0.04, $0.04 per watt peak for every module produced and sold in the United States, which will be an $0.11 per watt peak for the Meyer Burger setup. We had or previously communicated that under the offtake agreement with our partners, we are sharing some part of the module-related Inflation Reduction Act, which is $0.07. A few cents from it are being shared. The exact number we have kept under confidentiality. The important thing is the additional $0.04, which is $80 million for 2 gigawatts per annum. This is not being shared at all, this remains fully with Meyer Burger and helps the future growth in the financing of the company. In addition to that, we will be receiving other incentives from the city of Colorado Springs and from the state of Colorado. We are in the process of applying for a Department of Energy loan under the DOE loan program, which comes at preferable terms compared to the market, and we anticipate that these funds will be available also in 2024. The out of the $300 million, here we have it in the split, about $90 million at least are coming from local incentives by the city of Colorado and the state of Colorado, which we are very, very thankful for. The reason why we can fast-track this project, on the one hand, because we have to, because we have offtake agreements in place, which are starting to be served from 2024, around mid-year. We are expecting to start producing in the Goodyear facility. If we had to build a solar cell facility from scratch, greenfield, that would take much, much longer. Here we have the existing building. Here we have a building that formerly did semiconductors, which means that also facility utility requirements are pretty similar to solar cell manufacturing. It's a great fit to be fast. More important, we have the ability to halt the already announced project in Germany, the additional 2 gigawatt, which we had planned to integrate in the former Sovello building in our location in Thalheim, also brownfield. We basically reroute the already ordered equipment now to Colorado Springs and use the identical equipment. Since this equipment is already in the making, we are not losing too much time, except, of course, of shipment and the preparation of the facility. We believe that we can start with a little lag between the module factory and the solar cell facility in the U.S. For the ramp-up of the Goodyear facility, the solar cell supply is secure because this will be coming from our Germany facility, and then we can smoothly move into ramping the solar cell facility in Colorado and then provide the solar cells from here to the Arizona facility. It does not mean that Meyer Burger is stopping its activities in Europe. We have just recently communicated that we were awarded EUR 200 million from the Innovation Fund. We were selected, our project was selected. Now we are working with the European Commission on all the grant agreements and all the elements that are required from an administrative point of view. We are very optimistic also on Europe's initiatives to re-shore the clean tech sector that comes with, for instance, the EU Innovation Fund. That's one part. The other is the so-called TCTF funding that we have already communicated about, which was enabled by the European Commission in March, and Federal government of Germany has now started a tender process, that Meyer Burger is definitely applying into, with a deadline of mid-August, in a month or less than a month, which will also allow the member states, in that case, in particular, Germany, to fund such activities. Moreover, and that is also important for the business outlook that I will get to in a second, is Europe's, and in particular, Germany's ambition to also protect the inner market, which is very important in a time where the markets, the European Union market is the only market of significant size, being flooded with Chinese product in most of the cases at dumped or dumping prices, which, of course, puts all players under pressure. This is nothing that is specific to Meyer Burger, but the market in general in Europe is currently very challenging. There's a lot of stock in also our customers' warehouses, which is not necessarily Meyer Burger, but from all suppliers. There is a bit of uncertainty in the market right now, which surely we will all get over, but for the time being, it is a challenging situation. As long as the European Union is continuing its efforts to come up with a stringent strategy, we absolutely believe that the market in Europe will remain attractive, also looking forward. As it is, one of the largest international markets with a total installed capacity as of last year, or in the last year, of more than 40 gigawatts, and that number will continuously go up and reach very likely a three-digit gigawatt number in the years to come. Maybe a bit of a summary of our US long-term strategy. We have very early started before the Inflation Reduction Act to focus on the US, also for the reason that the United States. A great market in solar and is developing very nicely in the, in the next years. We had communicated the access to the Goodyear facility. The Inflation Reduction Act implementation, of course, generated a novel momentum, and so did the IRS decision that I spoke about on the additional ITC tax adder. We have increased already volume in our facility in Goodyear. We have now the ability to produce the 2 gigawatts in Colorado. We are also actively looking into more offtakes, into more capacities because of the attractive and foreseeable market in the US. The issues that led to our decision to, for the time being, refrain from providing in 2023 EBITDA guidance, we believe once the United States production is up and running and sales is or product is flowing and sales is increasing, that we have a much, much better foresight, given the current, given the current or the setup on the industry policy front, with all the measures for the support of the local businesses. The business review and outlook, we have decided that together with this press release around the facility, we also give some insights into H1 business. Let me go through the items here. We have seen a pretty decent increase in manufacturing. We have pretty much produced in 6 months what we had produced last year in 12 months. Actually, going very well. The ramp-up of the third line is on the way, such that we are ready to take these volumes into production and also increase there. Technically speaking, the team has done a good job, and we are ready with increased volumes. I spoke about the call for interest tender of the German Federal Government for multi gigawatts that we are applying into. Interesting about this tender, just to mention this here, is also the criteria around it. You cannot just make solar modules, and then you are eligible for such support. You need to meet certain criteria, which we believe we will be among the few that can do this with certain environmental requirements and also requirements on the efficiency and energy yield of the solar modules. That being said, we have the 3.5 gigawatt solar module project planned for Germany still, while we are ramping up in the US. And we now have to see how all the other measures of the call for interest, but also the local content that is discussed in Germany first, and then under the Net-Zero Industry Act in the European Union, is supporting the business for European module makers looking forward. As I said, we are working on additional multi-gigawatt offtake agreements. We are continuously looking into additional sites where we can increase capacity in the U.S. Now is the time, now the volumes have to be determined and agreed upon also in offtake agreements. Again, as Meyer Burger has the ability to bring both solar cells and solar modules, we feel that we are in a pretty unique position here. Coming to the EBITDA result, which is, of course, not amusing, clearly not, and again, it's also not yet audited, but we will land at around minus 40 or 42 million due to the challenging market environment. Especially for the reason that Europe's market is so much flooded with product, and this is leading to special effects on inventories, and we have an agreement in place with our customers about stock protection. It may sound more disastrous as it is, because Meyer Burger continues to sell at very, very high prices, comparing the rest of the market, but we have done a significant price reduction, or have announced it. With product that is in inventory or which is still stock protected, we have in this effect of an impairment on for these reasons. To explain that a bit further, why it had an impact on H1 and why we are more hopeful for the second half of the year is: when initially in December, Chinese polysilicon makers dropped prices from one day to the other, or within a week, by 50%, which was not really a market effect, but a political module prices did also drop with a little time lag, but a few weeks only, but wafers didn't. Wafer prices remained very high until May, June. We have a lagging effect here of comparably high wafer prices, comparing to what we will see in the second half of the year. We see the effects of dropped wafer prices already, and we will do more so towards the next months. This definitely has a positive impact on our cost structure. Because of the uncertainty of the market, I mentioned one example. If in a market that grows steadily, where the entire environment globally has not really changed, demand goes up, we see pretty attractive year-on-year CAGRs. In virtual market, where from one day to the next, polysilicon prices dropped by 50%, how can a company foresee all of this? This is very difficult. I have to mention that. Since we do also not know how this is finally continuing in the second half, we have decided to refrain from an EBITDA guidance for 2023, and we'll resume to provide it as soon as we have better visibility into the situation. What is a catalyzer for this is a discussion that is happening currently in Germany, that is a revision planned by the federal government in very likely still the third quarter of this year, so in the next two and a half months. To be in effect, very likely in the fourth quarter already, is a revision of the feed-in tariff law, the EEG, which defines all the solar tender mechanisms, solar subsidies for residential customers. There has been an initiative, interestingly enough, not even driven by Meyer Burger, but by associations and other industry players, and we, of course, are supporting it, to implement a local content, if we will. It's differently named, of course, but it is related to a bonus system for European or Germany-made products, and the more content you have in there, in the product coming from Europe, the more incentive you will get, either via tenders or directly via the feed-in tariff law. This is in the works, in the making, and we are pretty hopeful that this will be an initial part of Europe's ambition to also protect the inner market. With this, I'm through the presentation. Thank you very much for listening and joining, on such notice, and happy to take your questions. Yeah, thank you very much, Gunter, for the presentation. We will start now with the Q&A session. If you have a question now, so please dial star one four on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. Star one four. Once it is your turn to speak, you will be informed and correspondingly unmuted. If you find your question is answered already before your turn to speak, you can dial again star one five to cancel your question. I see here are the question from Konstantin, please. Thank you very much, Alex. Good morning. Gunter, first of all, thank you very much. I think we all appreciate that you're doing a call at 2:00 A.M. I'll try to keep it short here. 3 questions from my side. One is on the cell facility capacity, the expansion potential there. In the press release, and even on the call now, you said an initial 2 gigawatts. Could you maybe give a bit of color on how big or how much capacity can you actually build in that facility? Furthermore, on offtake agreements, could we potentially still expect offtake agreements to take place in 2023? That's my first one. Thanks. Thank you, Konstantin, for the questions. The additional capacity in the building is not yet fully clear. We are still investigating, but the building is large enough. It could be up to 1 gigawatt additional capacity in there, but it's too early to say. Maybe more, maybe a little less. We are still working on the layouts, on all the facility requirements, but it's definitely more than 2 gigawatt. This is what we can say. The good news is that it helps us also to meet immediate demand if it's coming, because then we have a home for additional equipment, and adding a few more lines in there is easier than building an entirely new facility if we have to be quick. On the second question, I mean, it's probably not my role to speculate a lot, but given the fact that we are in discussions with many, many parties, in particular in the United States, this move that we have announced today will increase interest because of the ITC adders. There is a good likelihood that we will come to terms still within this year. As I've mentioned in my presentation, that's why we are also looking into additional sites if we have to grow more than, you know, the additional, maybe up to 1 gigawatt that we could fit into the Colorado Springs building. That is great. Thank you. Second part of my question, just before I go to EBITDA, just on Europe very quickly. Now, August 15th, you have the expression of interest, you have to hand in all the documentation. Is there any news or any potential further insight that you have in terms of the timing now that it might take Germany to make its decision, and any potential additional color that you may have on this local content requirement potentially being included in the Net-Zero Industry Act, and when we might expect the Net-Zero Industry Act to be voted on? Yeah. This is not very easy to answer, but from what we know, I mentioned already, because this is pretty new and has been discussed in the last couple of weeks, only the initiative by the German solar industry to implement already, let's say, a Germany Net-Zero Industry Act before the European Union is moving the big thing. Because this is super important for the market protection. Because, you know, again, if China is flooding European markets with 40 gigawatts, that's, you know, that sit in warehouses, 40 gigawatts. This hit the front pages recently. This is exactly 100% of what has been installed in Europe in the entire year of 2022. This can only happen if a continent misses to protect its own interests. I think this is now another wakeup for the government to move quickly here. Again, you know, the challenges we are facing, this is not unique, not at all unique for Meyer Burger. Currently, the entire market is under pressure, including distributors and other cell and module or other module makers, in particular in Europe, also the Chinese. I mean, that's a critical situation. There needs to be more regulation. This is good news. This, if it passes the German government in the third quarter, there is a good chance that this is turning into effect as a law already this year. This would be great. Net-Zero Industry Act could pass the European Parliament also within this year, towards the end of the year, but that remains a bit in-transparent, at least to us. There is a possibility that it's coming. It is heavily debated in Brussels, so it's not that people are sleeping over this and forget about to implement it. There is a lot of debate and discussions, and I think also some likelihood that it's passing the parliament. If not this year, then it's coming next year. The challenge here is it has to be before the election of the parliament in Brussels. Otherwise, it will be pushed out into maybe late next year, which would, of course, not be good. We are remaining optimistic and are doing our part in Brussels to push this. On the call of interest, what we have heard, and, you know, this is nothing that you find in statements necessarily, that the government is funding the initiative or planning to fund the initiative from what's called the KTF, the Climate and Transformation Fund. There's currently a little bit of fighting over what amount of the KTF goes into what project. What we have learned is that the German government also wants to make a decision on the use of the funds in the third quarter within this year, after the summer break, essentially. Timing, that makes also the timing a bit clearer now for why the government has set such a short notice deadline for the call of interest, because it's quite some work to submit until mid-August, because there will be a selection of projects, and then once in the coalition in Germany, the use of the funds under the KTF funding is clear. That could turn into effect probably also next year, and then we could continue growing in Germany or in Europe. The combination of different instruments make the entire case potentially as attractive as the IRA, even though I agree and admit it's way more complex than it is here in the United States. I hope that answered the question, Konstantin. It does. Thank you, Gunter. I appreciate it's late, but I do have to ask about EBITDA. If we can talk a little bit about the dynamics in the second half. I think after Intersolar, I think there was obviously already an inherent risk that you might downgrade guidance, given all the pricing pressure that we were seeing. If we can talk a bit about the dynamics in the second half, I mean, you have lower wafer prices. Yeah. seem to be stabilizing because polysilicon prices have now reached cost, which means pricing pressure is probably not a story in the second half. You have a significant increase in volumes, meaning significant increase in utilization as well. By the way, just one point here, your volumes were much better in the first half than anticipated, which I guess seems that, you know, production is really running smooth. You have lower costs in the second half as well. If I put all that together, you know, without, of course, talking about numbers or anything, but directionally speaking. Is it fair to expect that we could see a positive EBITDA in the second half of 2023, combining all of that together? I mean, you talk about a challenging market environment, if prices stay stable, given that polysilicon prices have reached cost, is EBITDA positive in the second half, I guess, is my, is the question? In the press release, we have communicated that we are, for the time being, refraining from EBITDA guidances. What I can say is, it is absolutely correct that from the visibility we have, we will definitely see massively lowered wafer prices. The price reduction comparing beginning of the year and maybe end of the year is around 50%. It's really massive. It has a huge impact. Of course, we have not lowered our prices by 50%. That's also clear, we are not planning to do so. The challenge here, Konstantin, is clearly not so much the input cost, because this is coming in a positive way. The challenge here is how will we be able to move product? This has to do with the duration of the market. Again, Meyer Burger is in these challenges, like many others as well. What we are doing here to get a better visibility and to make the loss or the increased volumes moving out the door to our customers, is we have also strengthened sales initiatives. We will come up with more initiatives, some creative ideas to more directly reach our customers. We are working on a few international projects, also in the commercial and industrial segments. We have the volume part in the works and are pushing very heavily on getting these volumes out. If we are able to do so, I think this will have a pretty good effect, given the input costs that go down. You know, the load factors going up and fixed costs being more diluted internally. It's definitely correct. What I have to mention, though, is the initiative now in the U.S. is putting some weight on the P&L, because this is another project where we have costs involved clearly, and also pretty much immediately, as we have to be fast. We have to ramp up all the installation ongoing in Goodyear. We have activities ongoing, of course, also in Germany with our third line, which are associated with ramp-up costs. You know, once we would look into the individual contributors, I think it is correct to assume that there is a good chance given the low input costs and at higher volume, if that's possible, to see a positive effect in H2. Thank you very much. The next question, goes to Amrop, please. Yes. Hi, good morning. Just a couple of questions left, actually, after the first round. In, for the Department of Energy loan, you said the terms will follow, but could you indicate a little bit where, what that could mean in terms of loan terms? Yes. This will be a little bit above 4% in interest rate. Duration? It's a 10 years loan. Currently, we are looking into initially a $200 million loan, but not yet fully decided. It can be more, it can be less, so the deal is pretty flexible. The grant application is taking some 2 maybe 3 quarters, and once approved, then the money is available. The DOE loan program is designed for such activities, and we are perceived a pretty trustworthy partner in Washington, D.C., for this. Also potentially for additional projects. Okay, great. Like, what were kind of like the main one or two criterias to become eligible for this for such a loan? As I know in the past, it was, you know, you've had some, like, big names like Tesla, that received a loan like that once as well, right? Just to get a bit of a better feeling what that means. Was it the product capabilities or what? Can you give a bit more color to that? First of all, when you look into what happened after the IRA was announced, there have been many projects announced, of which some are in the works, others, well, until so far, only blowing smoke. They were dealing primarily with modules. It doesn't really help the U.S. to, you know, increase resilience, because then they still are fully depending with the engine of the module, as we say, you know, the solar cell, to be imported from China. The ITC adder, now the additional 10%, that has to be seen maybe as, you know, I would interpret it, as a bit of a correction in order to spur also solar cell installations in the U.S., manufacturing installations. When Meyer Burger entered the doors of the DOE, you know, they clearly see that we are a nice fit into that strategy, both because we can do it and we have the technical abilities. Guess what? Also, when we said we are Meyer Burger, this something. We have quite a good reputation here, the combination of, you know, Meyer Burger as a company with our abilities, plus the fact that we are really investing here, has blazed the trail, if we can say so. So far, we haven't really seen a roadblock, and it's, you know, it is administrative work, like whenever you apply to something like this, it's also a couple of hundred pages that you need to fill in. We are working also with professional advisors to make sure it's gonna work on time. Great. Thank you. Now, in terms of the additional subsidies, do you expect to share a part of the subsidies for the cell production? No. partners as well? This is fully for you? No, it's fully for us. Clear no. This sharing of these $0.07, whatever that is, this has been. Mm-hmm. has been a single event. Also be reminded, you know, when you speak about 2 gigawatts module making in, as a target in good year, 1.4 is utility, which is, you know, subject to the IRA sharing to some extent, only for the modules. Mm-hmm. The remaining 600 won't be shared, so also this part is Meyer Burger alone. That's why I'm saying, you know, if you crunch the numbers, and if you would assume that we are, you know, up and running more or less from 2025, you know, maybe a little bit of ramp up still in there. Mm-hmm. This makes us eligible for, you know, way above $1 billion in combined subsidies from all these instruments. That's super attractive and also explains why we are currently looking into replicating this as quickly as possible, because now is the time. You really set this up, you can benefit from the support from the government. Great, thank you. Now the, the third and last question is a bit more of an open one. Now with your, with your announcement, I mean, Europe is eventually losing 2 gigawatts of capacity. Just looking from far, I mean, the TCTF matching flow seems to kind of like, be like a, like a shot in its own foot, right? Because as you know, you have to prove that you can get subsidies somewhere in another, in a third country. Now you're getting there, but you're moving the production there. Have you been talking to German politicians recently? Like, what's the sentiment there? I mean, I assume they were aware of your potential or eventual move, and do you think that could trigger now like a step up in, in German subsidies? First of all, to your question, if we are speaking with German politicians, yes, we do, and also with European politicians. I think the understanding that something has to happen has definitely arrived. This I can say for sure. Even in the coalition in Germany, which is sometimes a bit difficult to make decisions. Also, we've been speaking with the Free Democrats, and also they understand that they need to do something about resilience and that they cannot have China playing with, you know, the European energy transition. It all comes down to battling now over the budget because the KTF funds, and for... I'm now speaking for Germany. They are very much thought over because there are other initiatives where the government is providing subsidies into. What we also have learned is that the decision of which project is being awarded is solely made by the German BMWK, so the Ministry of Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck. They are looking into awarding minimum two, maximum five projects. We rather believe it will be the first, you know, minimum two, because otherwise, scale is not really given for these projects, and they will have a hard time in the mid and long term if they cannot scale up and grow. I do also believe that Germany is the leading example. As soon as the Germans are moving, other member states will do as well. We have seen announcements of initiatives now in Italy, in the Netherlands, in Spain. Austria also is doing something. You know, I believe the problem in Europe is, it is not one united, even though it's called European Union, but it's not one united administrative body, and that makes the entire process a bit challenging, I would say. I'm personally convinced, and also from the discussions we're having with high-ranking politicians in Brussels and Germany and other member states in Europe, I'm personally convinced that it's just a matter of time, and if we are all lucky and happy, then we will see the effect in probably in the first half of 2024. We clearly want to continue in Germany. Maybe also, if I may anticipate a question that we have received. It's, did we spend already too much money on the Thalheim expansion? It's below EUR 5 million, so, and this is not a stranded investment. You know, we did some work on the, on the flooring and stuff like this, that, you know, eventually, once we are moving on also in Europe, we can continue where we had halted the project. Again, you know, as much I'm, as I'm a proud European, but I also, I, I love the United States. I have lived here for some years, and the market is great. If Europe is not moving, then we will have an even stronger focus on the United States. I mean, the company goes where the market environment is positive, enough. I think maybe a bit less patriotically speaking, where at the end of the day, the success is coming from the U.S., or Europe, or ideally both, you know, as long as it is sustainably profitable, I think everybody will be happy, and so will we. Maybe just a quick follow-on on that one, on the last part. When you say if Europe is not moving or if Europe is moving, I mean, it's pretty clear in the US, right? We have hard facts on how much you can get per annum. Do you see... I mean, already now, your share of American sales is gonna be higher. Do you, if Europe or Germany is not matching exactly or more or less exactly the same numbers you get in the US, then this potentially mean even a stronger focus on the US, maybe even the 3.5 gigawatt, right? Correct. Correct. Correct. Okay. I mean, to be fair, comparing Germany in particular, maybe Europe also in general, versus U.S. in terms of manufacturing, the support here is phenomenal, clearly, both in terms of market protection, but also the funding support. It is also a little bit more challenging to set up manufacturing here. It has to do with skill levels, and other challenges in other areas. I'm not saying that's not possible, but clearly we will get there, but it is more challenging to erect a facility or a factory in the U.S. versus Europe. So if Europe's support would not exactly match, that's what I'm going to say, it would not be such that my focus is, if it's not, you know, to the penny, exactly the same amount, then we are not coming. I think you always have to carefully review. What is, at least in discussion, is, you know, the TCTF funding for the interest, call of interest, this is, this is supposed to use number 86 in the TCTF, which is 100% CapEx funding. 100% CapEx, done. What I mentioned about the German initiative to implement, you know, earlier than maybe entire European Union, you know, I call it a little bit content, is even though they don't like it, but it's Resilience Bonus and Sustainability Bonus. That's what they call it, for European-made product. If that's coming, that equals OPEX support. That's how we have to view it, 'cause that is the direct- Okay. support. It's very similar to what the US does, via a different instrument, not via your, let's say, tax declaration or direct pay options with the US. You basically add just a higher price paid for the product, and the customer receives the funding via, you know, the tenders, the public tenders or the feed-in tariffs from these tenders or also for residential customers. Okay, perfect. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Amrop. The next question, this is from Sebastian. Yeah, good morning, all. Thanks for taking my questions. The first one would be on the US, and the ramp-up costs, so both on the necessary upgrade investments and also the related hiring activity. Gunter, you said that there's an imminent cost coming through, obviously, when moving parts of the production to the US, as it is not least the hiring, but any color you could provide here in terms of how much we should think of when it comes to CapEx and also eventually cash costs, that would be much appreciated, if we can start there. What I can say at this point in time is, as we also have tried to put in the press release, before the decision, we communicated that the funding or the funding for the 2 gigawatt project is 100% there. When I'm saying that U.S. might be slightly more expensive here and there, it might relate to, you know, additional or other pricing structures, for instance, for facility utility projects like factory upgrades and this. We receive a substantial support from the state and from the city, and this is partly cash and partly other incentives and, you know, preferred rates for utilities, for electricity. This is part of the package. We have started immediately because the customers of this of these products in the U.S., and in that particular case, the three off takers we have, they have a strong interest in, you know, adding the 10% ITC on top. So we have approached them and told them, "You know, this comes with an effort, and would you be willing to support this again?" They said, "Yes." We are now currently working on ironing this out, but it's very likely, and that's now the conclusion I'm saying, that it's also fully funded and even what is required in funding, which we might be able to use for additional projects. In terms of the hiring, we will do a mixed strategy of luring in talented personnel here locally or from the U.S., and we have a strong network, and we have also an HR organization that is has very recently started with a leader, that is experienced in growing such U.S.-European companies in the country. Secondly, we will also send expats, specialists from Europe or from our, you know, from our Asia location, where we also have still experts, in order to make sure that we have a flawless, a more or less flawless implementation. We get a lot of support also from the local administration and, you know, the city in particular, regarding standards. When you ship made-in-Europe product, or equipments, it's usually CE labeled, and in the U.S., there's usually UL labeling. If you do UL, that comes at a higher price or cost, I think we are able to find a good solution, that we don't need to do this. You know, this is how we are trying to maneuver through all of it. At the end of the day, what matters here is, you know, IRA funding is $0.11 for watt peak, $0.11. Which can easily be almost 50% of the total manufacturing, direct manufacturing cost, direct. This is a pretty strong support and for such a long duration. People, maybe to the IRA, because another question could be: What happens if there's a change in power in the White House with, on, with the next election? Colorado Springs, in general, is a red city, so a lot of, very much Republican, but super supportive also in our initiatives. I think the setup is very nice and also sustainable for this growth as now maneuvering through the ramp-up. We believe in steady state, these factories, will be very profitable here in the US. That's a fair statement. The backbone of the question is exactly that. You cannot have the one without the other. Getting the $0.11 obviously does require a lot of front investments. It requires a lot of upfront cash costs on the operational side of things, and that was just the reason for asking that question. That's all, that's all, that's all covered. This is all covered. I mean, we have the funding for the CapEx entirely, so that's covered. We are now receiving the incentive packages. We are talking about the loan program, which comes maybe even a bit in excess to what we need, but, you know, future growth anticipated. The working capital, I mean, you know, cash costs you or let's say cash you need upfront to finance the manufacturing or the operations, this, as we have communicated, is to a large extent, covered by prepayments from customers which are now starting or have already started to be received. I think these mechanisms we have nicely embedded in the offtake agreement, which are used as benchmark agreements also for, you know, the next potential contracts we might be able to sign. By the way, once Europe is ready and is also doing a bit more about its own energy resilience, I think this will exactly be the same approach from our end, and using it the same way also with European customers. Maybe with the European customers we already have in the U.S., that might also do or wanna do business with us in Europe. No, fair point. Mm-hmm. It's not a question, really, if there's a need for more equity or so. I think this is, at least from the outside perspective, under control with everything- All the time being- putting in place. I think you also made the point around the loan, that this is not necessarily needed, at least not to the full extent, as far as I understood you. The point that I'm making is rather that also for 2024, there's a very high likelihood that the earnings levels will still be very, very much depressed because of this ongoing ramp-up, which is now getting a different facade, I think, in the sense of there's another bigger block, I think, that nobody had seen coming. That's just what I meant before. The one is the gross 11 cents, the other one is what net remains, and that is, I guess, the miracle. Yeah. You know, I mean, I would never be super strict on such messages. What I can give you the surety about is that we are doing our level best, and I think we have delivered already on that one to make sure that, you know, additional equity measures are unlikely and not required, as we are moving the financing burden a bit also to our customers. Are seeking also opportunities to receive funding from other sources. Maybe another concept that recently we were tapping into that is also possible to our, I should say, a bit of a surprise. a possibility that the export of equipment to the U.S., made by Meyer Burger or by our third-party suppliers, could be financed via German state banks at very low interest. I believe we have more options now on the table also for financing on the debt front with the DOE, with options in Germany, which can help us. But be assured that we are doing our level best to, you know, make it at least very unlikely that Meyer Burger will surprise the market with, you know, the next cap raise in a couple of weeks. Fully agreed. Last question for me then. Just on the feed-in tariff review in Germany that you mentioned before, the local content clause. If I put it very simply, would you think that the German review will match the conditions in the US so that there's no need to sort of consider, yeah, shipping product from Europe to the US any longer? What's the best sort of understanding from the discussions you have so far? Well, you know, I can just repeat myself. That's exactly what this call of interest is for. That tackles the part one of the entire package, which is the CapEx funding. Once the NZIA or the German initiative on the resilience and sustainability bonus system is in place, then we have the other part, and then we are good to go. Last one, currently, how much of the residential product outputs of the 300 megawatts that you produced in the H1, is this going to the U.S. or to other markets that are not Europe, to kind of escape the striking pressure? I did not understand acoustically. My understanding was that. Initially, obviously, the plant in Germany had been set up to supply Germany and the rest of Europe with products for the residential segment. However, and how prices have played out in the meantime... Okay. Of supply coming from the Chinese, how much is traveling really to the US in terms of product as we speak? The exact number, to be very honest, I don't know from the top of my head. The 300 megawatts we have communicated for the production volume. Of course, you never sell 300 megawatts. You always have some inventory levels. It's still the majority that goes to Europe and we will, you know, keep fingers crossed. The projects we are working on, we will very likely see also some effect in the second half. The US is becoming a bit more important for us. For the resi product, we are also looking into other regions to sell it. We are currently trying to be as creative as possible to, you know, tackle the currently challenging situation. We are not sitting still and wait for it to go by, but try to actively manage. The exact split, Sebastian, I don't know, off the top of my head. Okay, fair enough. Sounds fine. We'll communicate maybe in the, on the eighteenth of August. I think we need to move on. We have another call in two minutes, starting. Alex, right? Yes, exactly. Just wanted to mention that we, I'm afraid that we are running out of time. I see that there are some additional questions. Please write me an email with the questions, or call me up directly. We will certainly answer your questions. We have to move on to another call right now. Maybe just your final words, Gunter, to close the call. Yeah. I mean, final words, it's, I've never done a webcast at 2 in the morning. Pretty exciting. Thank you, thank you all for joining in. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thanks. Speak soon.