Morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Oerlikon's Q2 results call. With me in the call, I have Philipp Müller, CFO of Oerlikon. Philipp will start the call with a presentation, providing an update on our end markets, financials, and outlook. We will then follow up with Q&A. With that, I would like to open our presentation and hand over to Philipp. The floor is yours. Thank you, Stephan. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our second quarter results presentation. In Q2, we continued to execute on our strategic priorities of driving efficiency and innovation. We achieved robust orders and strong profitability in a difficult economic environment, as industrial production and consumer spending continue to be subdued. Following a strong start to the year, we will raise our full-year margin guidance. In addition, we are driving forward our pure-play strategy, and we're fully on track with our plans. I will start the presentation with an overview of the group results, followed by an update on our end markets, the divisional results, and we'll conclude with our outlook. At the group level, orders increased 1% year-over-year at constant FX to CHF 651 million. Q2 represents the second quarter where we see a sequential improvement in our Polymer Processing Solutions orders. After a prior period of five quarters, where we saw our customers delaying their investment decisions. Group sales decreased 10% at constant FX to CHF 616 million. This was driven by lower filament orders in the second half of 2023, and was in line with our expectations. Surface Solutions achieved higher organic sales year-over-year, despite soft PMIs. Operational EBITDA margin was 16.3% in Q2, slightly lower than last year. In the context of reported sales being down 12% and the majority of our end markets being in a difficult position, this is an excellent result. It's a clear proof that we're managing costs extremely diligently, and we will continue to do so. We achieved the double-digit EBITDA margin in Polymer Processing Solutions and improved margins in Surface Solutions by 230 basis points. With that, let me provide you an update on our end market. In Surface Solutions, we're operating across the tooling, automotive, luxury, aviation, and general industries end markets. Particularly the general and tooling industries show close correlation to industrial production. Euro area, U.S., and Chinese PMIs showed sequential improvement in the first half of this year compared to the second half of 2023. Overall, they remain subdued, however, with momentum fading in recent weeks and months. The sluggish industrial activity had an impact on our general industries and tooling sales. Despite that, we made a very significant step in our innovation pipeline by successfully launching our BALINIT ALCRONA EVO in the first half. It features a 30% performance increase and will position us at the top of the tooling market for years to come. In automotive, global light vehicle production was stable in the first half. Industry agencies' forecasts have been recently revised downward, but remain roughly stable for the year. We continue to drive innovation to make future mobility more efficient and sustainable, be it in the vehicle body or in the battery, hybrid or combustion powertrain technology. In luxury, the market momentum remains relatively low for the time being, with customers acting in a wait-and-see mode. This is primarily related to the weakness in the Chinese end market, but also inflation and certain geopolitical uncertainties, which are dragging on spending power of the middle class. Some leading indicators, like Swiss watch exports, underscore this, while other indicators, like tax-free shopping, remain strong. Mid-term growth drivers for the luxury segment remain well intact. With product quality, value for money, customization, and unique designs becoming more important to luxury customers, Oerlikon, as a technology leader, is very well positioned to grow in this segment. In aviation, we saw a 15% passenger growth year-to-date, with industry agencies expecting around 10% growth in 2024. Rising flying hours are driving activity and demand for our solutions. We see plane manufacturers reinvesting and upgrading old equipment. Our products are supporting them to develop more efficient and more sustainable aircraft engine technology. In our Polymer Processing Solutions division, 2023 has been impacted by large customers delaying their investment decisions. Meanwhile, we are confident that we have seen the trough of activity in the market. Q2 was the second quarter in a row where we saw a sequential improvement in order intake. Year-over-year, order development turned slightly positive. We see continued signs of momentum in small and mid-sized orders, and continue to note that all midterm growth drivers for the business are well intact. Our positive market view is backed by governmental stimulus for the machinery industry in China in the first half. We also note that the price-cost spreads of our customers improved and remain positive. This means our customers continue to earn a positive cash margin of every ton of product they sell, which naturally is a precondition for them to invest into our equipment. For the moment, we continue to focus on profitability and innovation and remain ready to drive the next upcycle. In our non-filament business, where our end markets and geographies are more broadly diversified, we saw the impact from globally soft PMIs in the last quarters. The nonwoven, staple fiber, and industrial yarn businesses are seeing some customers delay investment decisions. Typically, orders are smaller, with lower financing needs, and return faster when consumer demand picks back up. I am pleased to see that we saw orders slightly improving in the second quarter sequentially. In Flow Control, our performance is closely related to car model launches. The recent slowing momentum in the automotive production is weighing on the reacceleration of car launch projects. Despite that, we saw positive momentum with our hot runners sequentially. Summing up, Surface Solutions, we see a continued subdued industrial environment. While PMIs indicated early signs of improving growth momentum in the beginning of the year, the momentum faded in recent months and weeks. In Polymer Processing Solutions, last year's difficult order environment will impact 2024 sales. Compared to our expectation in the beginning of 2024, the sales outlook for our full-year expectation has improved. It is backed by the second sequential order intake improvement we saw in the second quarter. We are confident that we have seen the trough of activity in the market. With that, let's move to page four, where I will discuss the financials for our Surface Solutions division. In the second quarter, we achieved orders of CHF 389 million and sales of CHF 392 million. Despite soft PMIs, orders and sales improved by a low single-digit% year-over-year at constant FX. This solid achievement was supported by strong performance in equipment and materials for the aviation industry. Operational EBITDA in the second quarter improved by a strong 14% to CHF 74 million. This includes an operational EBITDA margin increase of 230 basis points to 18.7%. The improvement was driven by strong pricing, innovation, and continued cost discipline. Our EBITDA margin in the first half improved by 180 basis points to 18.1%. In the context of a continued difficult environment, this is a clear sign that our focus and actions on Surface Solutions margins are gaining traction. Our management team is laser-focused on this critical topic in order to achieve our 20%+ ambition in the medium term. Let me move to Polymer Processing Solutions. Orders in Polymer Processing Solutions were CHF 262 million. This is a 2% year-over-year improvement at constant FX and represents the second sequential quarterly improvement. In the first half of the year, we achieved a book-to-bill of 1.3. Improving momentum was supported by filament, where we saw continued momentum in small and medium-sized orders. Government stimulus and improving price-cost spreads of our customers make us confident that we have seen the trough in the market. Second quarter sales of CHF 224 million were down 26% at constant FX. This was mainly impacted by last year's difficult order environment. We expect sales trends to stabilize in the second half. In terms of profitability, we achieved an 11.7% operational EBITDA margin. Considering the downturn and the significant reduction of our sales, this is an excellent achievement. It was supported by our proactive cost actions implemented last year, and we will continue to manage costs very diligently. With that, let's move to cash flow on the next slide. First half cash flow from operating activities was CHF 105 million. Taking into account investments, we achieved CHF 67 million operating free cash flow. This is a solid achievement, and it represents a strong improvement compared to the negative CHF 141 million in the first half of last year. The year-over-year improvement was mainly driven by better net working capital. While net working capital continued to be a drag in the first, due to the usual seasonal buildup for deliveries in the second half, the drag was much less intensive than last year. This was supported by our very tight net working capital management, as well as increasing customer advances related to the improving order intake and filament. As we have described a few times, decreasing customer advances in Polymer Processing Solutions resulted in a total cash outflow of almost CHF 350 million in 2022 and 2023. Now that we have seen the trough, we expect that trend to reverse and customer advances to be a source of cash in the future. Given the usual seasonality of our business, we expect the second half of the year to be significantly more cash generative than the first half of the year. We remain fully committed to maintain a strong balance sheet, and we'll continue to focus on cost management, net working capital and cash. Ceteris paribus, we continue to expect a leverage ratio between 2.5x and 3x by year-end 2024. Next, on return on capital employed. Operational was 5%, representing a transitorily depressed level given the current filament downturn. The latter leads to cyclically lower earnings or net operating profit after tax and customer advances. Taking into account the one-off expenses from the fourth quarter, 2023, reported ROCE was 1%. We continue to target a sustainable double-digit ROCE in the medium term, supported by the filament market recovery, continued cost containment, and disciplined execution of our capital allocation framework. Let's move to our outlook on the next slide. Following a strong first half year and our diversified portfolio, we are increasing our full-year guidance. We now expect EBITDA margin to be in the range of 15.5%-16%. This represents an improvement compared to the 15%-15.5% we previously expected, and is supported by both divisions. We continue to guide for a high single-digit percentage sales decrease. In Surface Solutions, we expect flat sales year-over-year. Given the recent fading in PMIs and the slow momentum in automotive and luxury, this will represent a solid performance. We raised our EBITDA margin guidance from 17.5%-18% to approximately 18%. This takes into account the strong progress we made year-to-date. In Polymer Processing Solutions, we previously guided for a mid-20s% sales decrease. Following the strong start to the year, we now expect the sales decrease to be in the low 20s. With this improved top-line outlook, we also expect a better profitability for the division. We now expect to exceed 11% EBITDA margins. Let me now recap the first half year on the next slide. We have made excellent progress towards our forward-looking priorities and executed operationally and strategically. We are on track with our pure-play transformation announced in February. We look into various options for the separation of Polymer Processing Solutions. This includes a trade sale or a spin-off. In parallel, we are in the process of separating the division from an organizational standpoint. We have a very solid plan in place to adjust corporate costs to a smaller company setup and ensure future cost efficiency. As previously announced, we want to be ready to execute the separation sooner rather than later. Another key priority for our team is to bring Surface Solutions' EBITDA margins back to levels above 20%. We improved margins by an impressive 100 basis points in the first half, despite the difficult environment. The division is in good shape to reach the targeted 20%+ margin in the medium term. In Polymer Processing Solutions, the early signs of improving end markets reported in Q1 were reconfirmed in the second quarter. Overall, we are confident that we have seen the trough of activity in the market. At the end of last year, we announced to realign our additive manufacturing business. The execution of that is now largely finalized. We improved the scalability of the business by transferring the European production to the U.S. North America is the largest additive manufacturing market globally and more mature in terms of transition to series production. Finally, we achieved a strong improvement in operating free cash flow in the first half. In line with the past, we expect the second half of the year to be more cash generative than the first. We are on track with our plan to reach a leverage ratio between 2.5x and 3x by year-end. Overall, we have made solid progress on our operational and strategy execution in the first half. We are raising full-year guidance and are on track with our transformation into an attractive, pure-play global leader. With that, let me open it up for a Q&A. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question-and-answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touch-tone 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. Questions on the phone are requested to use only handsets while asking the question. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. Our first question comes from Michael Foeth, Vontobel. Please go ahead. ... Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Hi, Phil. Hi, Stephan. Two questions, please. The first one is you in Polymer Processing or in filament, more specifically, you mentioned smaller and mid-sized orders coming back. Do you have any visibility from your larger customers on their roadmap and the outlook on when they could sort of trigger CapEx again? And the second question would be regarding your business separation plan. Do you know the recent market correction, is that having any impact on the execution of that strategy or on the roadmap? Does it create any delays, and are you targeting to execute that still this year? Is that the plan? Thank you. Great, thank you. Good morning, Michael. On the first one, you're right. We saw the demand drivers really on the smaller and medium-sized projects, which we take as a positive, so there's not sort of a one-off in there that drives the demand in the first half. I'm very pleased with 1.3 book-to-bill in the first half, and that obviously gives us a lot of confidence for the revenue outlook in the second half of the year, and then also after that. The customer roadmap, I think, is always a little bit difficult to assess in terms of the timeline. We certainly have a number of discussions on future projects, both with our customer base in China, but interestingly enough, also with a significant customer base outside of China. And so I would say very active dialogue. The timing of when they pull the investment decision trigger, always difficult to predict, but I'm confident that, you know, we will start to enter into larger projects as well as we go forward here. And then the second one, I think our timeline is not changed. We are preparing the business internally, fully. There's for sure, at the moment, a difficult market environment, but you know, I think it remains to be seen what that entails. For us, clear is still the strategy to separate the two divisions sooner rather than later. Thank you. The next question comes from Sebastian Vogel in UBS. Please go ahead. Good morning, I have three questions I would ask them one by one. The first one is on Surface Solutions, and if I look there into the sort of the end market as you were outlining on a slide deck, the growth sort of momentum in the end of the quarter or potentially also what you have seen in July, if you can share some thoughts on the various end markets there, that would be appreciated. Yeah. Good morning, Sebastian. I think in line with our guidance, so you could see us first half of the year, we had about a little bit over 1% organic growth. And when you look at what we're guiding, we're expecting that to slow down a little bit in the second half. But think about that in the context, obviously, the second half having some backlog that we already know it's happening. So we have some backlog strength that supports us in the second half, and we're thinking about the more transactional side of things, the very short cycle of things, to slow down, specifically in the third quarter, maybe. So that's implied. You know, aviation stands out as a very strong market for us. There's a couple of other regional pockets that have strength, but apart from that, we certainly see a weakness driven by the global PMIs and so on and so forth. I think July supports that. To your question, June, July support that from an exit rate standpoint, that's exactly what we're seeing. And what I would also say is that the diversification of our portfolio, both in terms of the end markets and the regional exposure, is for sure helpful in that context. But June, July exit rate support what we're talking about here. Got it. Second question is on the textile recovery. In that regard, what's the sort of base case for you, how you pencil the recovery? Is it more like a bathtub, you know, at the bottom and see a couple of additional quarters of weak demand, and then there's some acceleration, or do you expect some sort of V-shaped recovery? What sort of, what's your, your base case there? You know, I think we talked about the fact that we have seen the trough here. We don't have any reason to believe that recovery will look similar to prior cycles in this business. How steep or not steep that is, remains to be seen. I think for the moment, you kind of focus on the fact that, you know, we're expecting a substantially stronger half, second half than the first half. When you think about what we're talking about here from a guidance standpoint, that means the second half of the year is about 25% higher in terms of revenues than the first half. And so I think you start to see that, and then how exactly that's gonna shape up in terms of form to be seen, but I think we'll see similar pattern to prior cycles. Got it. And then the last question, with regard to the guidance, on a group level, if I was calculating correctly, I mean, therefore, for the midpoint, we see that the margins are supposed to be coming down a bit, while the top line actually is a bit up, if I'm not mistaken there. Was just wondering if there's some sort of extra caution being baked in, or is there any sort of cost escalation, or escalation may be the wrong word there, but some inflation being baked in, in that regard, or any thoughts in that regard that you can share, that would be great. No, none of that stuff. I think we're being a little bit cautious just with regards to the overall economic environment right now. Prudent, I think, because there's some on the short cycle side, there's certain things that we don't know. We feel very confident with what we've put forward now. And then the bigger part is obviously you have a little bit of mix effect with Polymer Processing Solutions being up about 25%, second half versus first half, and them coming in still at a lower margin. You get a little bit of negative mix for the total company, but no incremental inflation that we're seeing or no other cost increases that we're seeing across the company. Well, that's me. Thanks, and I'll go back to the queue. Sure. Thank you. As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, you may press star and one. Ladies and gentlemen, looks like we have no other questions. Great. So thank you, everybody. This concludes today's call. In case of further questions, don't hesitate to contact us in the IR team. Thank you for your attention, and goodbye. 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.