Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Media and Investor Conference Call. I am Sandra, the Chorus Call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in listen-only mode, and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star and one on your telephone. Webcast viewers may submit their questions in writing via the relative field. 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 Thomas Oetterli, CEO. Please go ahead, sir. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Also, a warm welcome from my side. First, let's have a look at the environment we are all in. The turbulences in the world have continued. Geopolitical challenges, inflation, high interest rates have kept uncertainty high regarding the economics in the near future. As a consequence, textile demand is still on a low level, resulting in respective low order intake. Second, the team has continued to work on the strategic front and executed well on our performance program, Next Level, to prepare for a tough year, 2024, with lower sales levels than what we have experienced in 2022 and 2023. We cannot change the market, but we can change the attitude with which we act in such a market to satisfy the requirements of all stakeholders. It is all about excellence in execution, delivering on our commitments with tangible action plans and proper follow-up. Let's start with the key messages on slide number two. Our performance program, Next Level, is on track. I will share with you the actual status of the different key initiatives we have taken to achieve a strong competitive level in the future. Order intake in the third quarter, 2023, was only at around CHF 127 million, one of the lowest quarters in the recent past. This is a result of the previously explained low market sentiment in the textile industry. Sales were around at CHF 335 million for the single quarter, CHF 1.1 billion for January to September 2023, and therefore, well on track with our guidance for the full year. As a consequence, our order backlog is at around CHF 900 million and still extends well into the year 2024. Our sales activity for the Rieter site could be successfully closed and will help to improve our balance sheet. Last but not least, we can confirm our outlook we have shared with you at the half-year closing call in July 2023. Our operational performance has, therefore, improved as expected. I will directly go to slide number three and report on the actual status of Next Level. At the half-year closing call, we announced our performance improvement program, Next Level, with which we want to substantially improve our competitiveness for the future. In a nutshell, we are on track. A lot of the initiatives could be concluded, and we are confident that this program will lead us to a much better performance level, also in challenging times. In sales excellence, we started to measure customer satisfaction with Net Promoter Score, and we will strive to improve our after-sales and component business share to ultimately achieve a more balanced ratio between new machine sales and after-sales business. We introduced a standardized process and organization to further enhance our product competitiveness. First results are encouraging. We also worked hard on our effective supply management and can proudly say that our supply performance has dramatically improved. The shortfalls in purchasing of critical components will disappear until the end of 2023, and our progress to achieve agile structures is well on track and will make us leaner for 2024. Let's move to a key topic of Next Level on slide number four, our adaptation of structures. We have achieved conclusions with our employee representatives in our key sites, and we'll finish most of our reductions of positions in the overhead functions until the end of 2023. This is a very painful but necessary part of our performance program, and I'm happy that all the relevant parties showed a constructive way forward. As the market environment is still on a low scenario, we will execute adjustments of our production-related positions in the coming months. The timing and magnitude depend on our production planning, which is a result of our sales plan. First adjustments will already be implemented in the fourth quarter 2023 and beginning of 2024. We can confirm the key points of the program, Next Level, on slide number five. The one-time cost will be in the magnitude of around CHF 45 million-CHF 50 million. Most of the program initiatives will be implemented by the end of 2023. The whole program has a strong return with around CHF 80 million per year. The majority of these CHF 80 million will be visible in our profit and loss statement for 2024, and will mitigate the negative impact of our lower sales volumes with less gross profit. I turn to slide number six. In the past, everybody was keen on seeing the so-called ITMA effect in the respective years. Our innovations presented at the ITMA in Milano met with great resonance. Our strategic direction to bring our products towards more automation, digitization, and technology leadership was the right one. There are many projects in the markets where exactly these topics are key for decision-making. However, due to the low market sentiment, final project decisions are still pending. We are sure that once projects will be approved and released, we will strongly benefit from our innovations. For certain products, we issued reservation lists, and within two days at the ITMA, all those reservations could be placed. It is a question of timing, until this will turn into order intake and sales later. Now, I will hand over to Oliver Streuli, our new CFO, for the financials. Thanks, Thomas. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Let's quickly come to facts and figures on slides seven and eight. On slide seven, we show the nine months order intake by business group. Order intake dropped by 59% year-on-year and shows a continuation of the low level of the first half year 2023. The major drop is seen in Machines and Systems, but also Components and Aftersales are still on a low level due to the low capacity utilization of spinning mills. A different picture is seen on slide eight regarding sales by business group for the first nine months. Overall, we were able to achieve an 11% growth year-on-year, driven by high volumes in Machines and Systems, as well as in Aftersales. Components were slightly negative, driven by one component business unit acting in a more machine-type setup of business, which is characterized by shorter cycle times. Of course, an increase of sales and a decrease of order intake is not sustainable over the longer term. Our key focus is, therefore, to grab the greatest possible share of a potential market rebound in the coming months. Which brings me to our order backlog as of the end of the third quarter in 2023 on slide nine. Our order backlog as of September 30th, 2023, amounts to around CHF 900 million. The order backlog extends into the year 2024. As we anticipate a stronger fourth quarter 2023 and have some optimism for the beginning of 2024, we are still planning with a low scenario for 2024. Next Level will prepare us for this scenario and will allow us to achieve a positive EBIT margin in 2024. Some indicators are showing some light at the end of the tunnel. Our cancellation rate in the reporting period was within the usual range, at an average of around 5% of the order backlog, but with a slight downward trend. The number of projects addressed to us is increasing, which gives us the assurance that the low point of the market should be behind us. That's it from my side. Back to you, Thomas. Thank you, Oliver. Another positive topic about the execution drive is the sale of the Rieter site on slide number 10. We were able to successfully complete the transaction as of September 26 in this year and received the whole sales price of CHF 96 million. This will not only result in an extraordinary profit contribution on EBIT level of around CHF 70 million-CHF 75 million, but also tremendously helps us to improve our balance sheet in terms of net debt and equity ratio. If we contribute with strong operational results in the future as planned on the Next Level, the minimum equity ratio of more than 35% will be achieved mid-term. Let's go to the outlook. We can confirm the key points of our outlook presented with the half-year results. The market environment is still on a low level, and we do not expect an improvement until end of 2023. We confirm sales of the previous year's level of around CHF 1.5 billion, and we confirm our EBIT margin of around 5%-7%. This includes the special effects from the sale of the Rieter area of about CHF 70 million-CHF 75 million, as well as the one-time costs for Next Level of around CHF 45 million-CHF 50 million. Both special items amount together to less than 2%. With this, we close our presentation, and we are now available for your questions. 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 followed by two. Questioners on the phone are requested to use only handsets while asking a question and eventually turn off the volume of the webcast. Webcast viewers may submit their questions in writing by the relative field. Anyone with a question may press star and one at this time. Our first question comes from Walter Baumann from Zürcher Kantonalbank. Please go ahead. Thank you. Good morning, everybody. You have been very consistent with your guidance and the explanations. However, I think it would be helpful that you can confirm that the guidance for this year already includes the cost you expect also from the production-related capacity reduction expected for next year. Do we have to expect more costs there? Good morning. Thank you very much for the question. I will take this up. This CHF 45 million-CHF 50 million are including the production-related headcount or position reduction. These 400 to 600 positions we will face over the next coming months are included in this setup of cost of CHF 45 million-CHF 50 million. No additional costs are foreseen at the moment. Perfect. The second question: Now that we see a certain downturn in the market, how disciplined is your competition? Are they disciplined when it comes to pricing, or do you see ugly developments when it comes to the few projects that are out there? Well, competition is always tough. Even in good times, you always find someone who might offer at a lower price than you are offering. We are not seen as someone who is the cheapest in the market. That's not our ambition. We always try to generate a value proposition which allows us to achieve a higher price than competitors. Otherwise, it would become very, very difficult for us. Our market share of roughly 30% is driven by innovation and by a better so-called total cost per kilogram yarn produced. Customers are willing to pay a higher price for a Rieter equipment than for a competitor equipment. Of course, we always have to drive this innovation drive, otherwise we would lose that advantage. Now, last but not least, of course, when the cake in the market gets smaller, all the market players are getting more nervous. Yes, the one or the other is might considering also to be more aggressive on the pricing front, but this is not the strategy we are following. We want to generate value for money. This has been our strategy in the past and also will be the strategy in the future. We have not lost market share now because of maybe some pricing attacks of others. Perfect. Thank you very much, Thomas. Let's have other analysts asking questions. The next question comes from Mark Kaufmann from AWP. Please go ahead. Yes, good morning. My questions goes to job cuts. Can you already quantify more or less how much of the up to 900 job cuts will be affected in Switzerland or maybe in Winterthur? Thank you for the question. I think it's important to get clarity into that. With the half-year results, we announced that we have a reduction in overhead functions of around 300 positions. This has been mainly in Winterthur, but also in Germany. We said that we will close or shut down our presence in Ingolstadt. This has been agreed and will be achieved by the end of 2023. We said that roughly 100 positions will be canceled in Winterthur. That's it. The other 400 to 600 positions are much more volume-dependent in our production sites. As we do not produce any more in Winterthur, Winterthur is not affected by this number. This is more in our production sites in Germany, in Czech Republic, in India, and in China. There we have our major production sites, and there we will also see, according to our production volumes, the reduction of these capacities. Winterthur is not affected by this. Thank you. Thank you. The next question comes from Emrah Basic from Baader Helvea. Please go ahead. Yes. Hi, good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. I will start with the first one. Could you maybe give us some color on the regional development? What's driving positive China development, and also in terms of the rest, like, which regions are declining the most? Just, you know, what are your clients in those regions saying? Just to get a bit some more color, that'd be great. Okay. Thank you for the question. We also said at half-year, and there is no difference to that, that in our order intake, we saw a very low market sentiment worldwide, with one exception. The exception is China. We all were discussing in the past whether spinning mills will move out of China. This is a certain trend which happens, yes. On the other side, the Chinese spinners are then confronted with higher competition from other countries. They also have to ramp up their technology and have to go to the latest state of technology in their spinning mills. The reality is that China has been growing for us in terms of order intake, if you compare 2022 to 2023. The rest of the countries, there was not a big difference, you know, how much it was dropping. The rest of the world, very, very low levels. One exception, China being at the good level, and we even could gain some market share. Now, discussions, I'm traveling really in the last couple of months in all the major markets. I spent roughly 50% of my time with customers, and it's very interesting to see what they say. They are, of course, impacted by high financing costs, because usually these are bigger investments they have to do. High interest rates are creating some uncertainty. That's one side, and the other side is that there is still a low market sentiment in textile demand in the Western Hemisphere, due to Ukraine war, due to still uncertainty about energy cost, due to high inflation for food. People are, at the moment, still saving money in the areas of clothes, textiles. That's what we see. What we also see is that now stocks of yarn, stocks of fabrics, stocks at the retailer side of clothes, is going down. In the discussions I have with customers, they are very bullish now to plan projects. There are many, many, many projects, just someone has to push the button to take it off. With this economical environment, they are still hesitating to do the investment. Interesting is what they say. They say we now are since one and a half year, so since more or less the end of quarter two 2022, in this very low level of order intake, and customers are expecting that the rebound will be much, much steeper. It will not be like a cosine curve. It really will be, you know, a strong pickup once the market is coming back. Now, the key question is, when does this happen? There, nobody dares really to say it will be, you know, towards the end of the year, or it will be in Q1, or maybe somewhere in Q2. Everybody somehow is confident that it cannot take so much time anymore, and we also share that confidence. Perfect. That's quite helpful. Thanks a lot for that. Now just two other questions. Now that we're already in the Q4, I mean, do you expect a slight sequential improvement in order intake for the last quarter? Yes, we do expect that Q4 will be better than Q3. Now, in all fairness, Q3 was so low, it does not take so much to be better than Q3. Nevertheless, we have some confidence that quarter four in order intake will be better than quarter three. Of course, all of us hope that this is the start of a trend. As I mentioned before, there are many, many projects at the moment we are negotiating, and if only half of them really turn into reality, then we should expect a better Q4 and also a better Q1. Okay, perfect. Just a quick last one. Do you still expect approximately 2/3 of the CHF 80 million cost reductions to come into effect in 2024? I guess I believe that was the number that was said during the half-year conference. I think this is a fair, this is a fair assessment. As we mentioned in our different work streams we have, we will have now finished a topic of a more stable and sustainable supply management. We will not have these, let's say, turbulences in missing material towards the end of the year. This should have disappeared. I think the major adaptation of our overhead structures will be finished by the end of 2023. The site in Ingolstadt will be closed by the end of the year. Some few people still working into 2024. All the changes in Winterthur have been communicated to the individuals. It has been agreed with the workers' representatives. These have been the two big blocks, so this will be executed, and of course, then we still have this product competitiveness, our continuous cost reduction program. This is something which ramps up, of course. There, we do not expect full impact, but I think two-third of the impact to be visible in 2024 is also, for us, a must, and we are very confident that this will happen. Okay. Thank you very much. That was it from my side. Thanks a lot. The next question comes from Christian Arnold from Stifel Schweiz. Please go ahead. Yes, good morning, gentlemen. Two questions also related to actually your comments you just mentioned, maybe more specified. I mean, how big is the risk that actually the downcycle sales level could be below the CHF 1 billion you have announced in the course of the Next Level program? Looking at the order intake, CHF 127 million in Q3. I mean, you said you have some positive view on Q4, that it will be better. Is there a risk that we actually end up in 2024 with a sales level below CHF 1 billion? That would be my first question. The second question related to the weak order intake in Q3, the CHF 127 million. I would have assumed that we already see some better order momentum on the back of the ITMA, that you have some first orders coming from the ITMA, as you have showcased very strong products there. Why has this not happened or not significantly happened? Thank you. Thank you for the... It's, in fact, a one billion-dollar question. This is the question we are also, you know, asking ourself, I would say every single week. I can give you some confidence there. That's point number one, huh. You know, a significant part of our order intake is also depending on Aftersales and components. Both are much less volatile than the volume of new machines and systems. This, I think, is important to know that, you know, in a low scenario, roughly half or maybe a little bit less than half of our sales volume is driven by Aftersales and components business, which is much more stable. Once, you know, the utilization of the spinning mills is going up, and I believe this will happen because the stocks in yarn, fabrics, and clothes is getting smaller and smaller, we need new orders to the spinning mills, and this will generate higher utilization of the spinning mills, and this will generate more spare parts, more wear and tear parts in these businesses aftersales and components. Now, when I look into the backlog of the new machines and systems, we have a good chance, huh, to achieve the share that we need to bring the sales volume on a low scenario level. You can assume that the book to build cycle in the machines and system business is between six to 12 months. Now, when you take all of this together, let's do some mathematics. At the moment, we have CHF 900 million. We are confirming our sales volume towards the end of the year with roughly CHF 1.5 billion. We still have to build CHF 400 million, which would mean that the CHF 900 million drops down to CHF 500 million. We are also getting new orders in the quarter four, which are higher than what we have seen now in quarter three. Probably our backlog towards the end of the year is roughly something like CHF 700 million. Now, if we have this trend going, you know, slightly better also at the beginning of the year 2024, assuming that we also have still, you know, coming in Aftersales and component order intake, this will impact, you know, whatever we have in the first half the year there. This will impact our sales volume in 2024. We are already somewhere at close to CHF 900 billion. We need some sales in machines and systems at the beginning of the year, which will be billed in 2024, and with a cycle of six to 12 months. Let's take nine. Whatever we have in the first quarter, maybe still in April or May, will impact our sales value in 2024. We have a good chance, honestly, to be at this low scenario figures. I'm pretty confident. Now, you said, is there a risk? There is always a risk. Of course, I cannot change the environment we are in, but we have a good confidence that we will achieve this low scenario, not only in top line, but of course, also in bottom line. It was a little bit extensive explanation, but I think that's probably a question almost everybody has. Very clear. Thank you. About ITMA, orders from ITMA? Yes, sorry. I was so much discussing that I forgot the second part of the question. Yes, ITMA was a really great success, and we do have many, many projects which have been not only addressed to us, but also have been confirmed towards us, but have not yet been executed because of the sentiment in the market. That's the reason why it gives us some confidence that quarter four and quarter one should be better than the quarter three we have seen now this year. It's not that we lost, you know, those commitments and those orders, it's just, you know, the paperwork still is ongoing, and customers are delaying partially because they want to wait before they have to do the down payments, but there is no risk that we lose that. Okay. Thank you. The next question comes from Sebastian Vogel from UBS. Please go ahead. Good morning I have two questions and I will ask them one by one. First of all, good catch. Yes, it is by purpose that we use the different wording. At the middle of the year, of course, we only had the order intake of the first half of the year, which will impact our sales volume in 2024. Now, we have three quarter of order intake, and we have more clarity about our probability that we will go into a low scenario. You know, at the middle of the year, we said we are expecting. Now we are quite convinced that we are moving towards a low scenario. That's the reason why this probably 400 to 600 becomes much more firm. We will have to adjust our capacities in the next coming months. Still, whether it is on the lower end or on the upper end, this will depend now on order intake, and sales planning, and production planning in the coming months. Yes, you are right, we are now more certain that this is necessary to do. Got it. The second question is, when I look back to the beginning of the year, when you were coming out with the sales guidance for this year, and now we have seen the sort of order trajectory, and if you compare that one with the one you had, you know, that was there by the management in mind when they were putting out the initial sales guidance. Where were the sort of the key positive, sort of, the key negative surprises on its way, or was it eventually more or less in line with what you had back in mind? I think overall it was more or less in line what we expected, but there were some unexpected negatives, and there were some unexpected positives. The unexpected negative, of course, was the earthquake in Turkey. This has hit us in all the backlog execution. Almost the world stands still for a couple of weeks in Turkey, and it was a real tragedy for our customers, but also for ourself. We suffered together with our customers a lot. This was unexpected when we made our first guidance. Now, the positive unexpected is that we see a slight improvement in the trend of cancellations, which has been mentioned by Oliver, that if I go quarter-by-quarter, there is a slight improvement of cancellation rate, and we take this also as an indicator to create some optimism looking into the next couple of months. If you put all together in one pot, then you still have a confirmation what we thought at the beginning of the year, but there were some areas where it was worse, and there were some areas where it is better. Now, coming back to the redundancies in people, what you alluded to initially, and at the same time, keeping in mind the potential chances for quite a strong pickup in case positive trends would materialize in the end, do you sense that you're potentially also running then into a situation in which you have not enough production capacity and then extensively build up a backlog again, and that the customer then would be waiting too long, potentially, and jump off on the backlog on that side? What are your thoughts in this context? First of all, that's the, let's say, that's the so-called, in German, you would say, Kür, in our industry. This is really the masterpiece. How do you deal with the cyclical market developments? Of course, we have discussed that in our teams very, very deeply. We don't want to create a mess for the future. We are a company which exists since more than 200 years, and we always had those cycles. I think what we changed this time, compared to the past, is that the buildup of capacity is much more driven by flexible third-party capacities in all the areas of the company. In the production, of course, you know, we keep the good people we have, the really good people we have, the best ones we have. Even if we would have a little bit of overcapacity, I don't care, because these are good people, and we want to keep them on board. When we have a ramp-up, then we will ramp it up with temporary people, point number one. The ramp-up, of course, also creates more jobs in overhead functions, more tasks in accounting, in development, in purchasing, and this we will also do with temporary capacities. I have that experience that this is possible. Because we cannot have another redundancy program in three years, and definitely we will not allow any more that we have supply chain issues. Besides capacities, it's also how you deal with your suppliers. The last couple of months, we have continued what has been done before, you know, to very, very closely work with our suppliers, and we have achieved certain consignment stocks, which allows us to adapt very quickly. You know, if there is higher volume requested, very quickly, we can use these consignment stocks, which is still in the books of our suppliers, and this helps us, of course, to ramp up very quickly. This was also one part of the Next Level, you know, how do we manage our supplies in the future? I think the team has done a great effort to prepare the ramp-up, which should happen, I hope, as quick as possible in our industry. We are, I think, better prepared because we also have less now external turbulences. You know, at the moment, there's no problem in rates. There is no harbor which is shut down. I think also we are in a simpler environment than where we have been two years ago. Got it. Many thanks for helping me on my questions, then. Thanks a lot. As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press star followed by one. The next question comes from Alessandro Foletti from Octavian. Please go ahead. Yes, good morning. Thank you, everybody, for taking my question. I wanted to put what you just said about the order backlog and what your expectations are for next year, a bit more in context with the market. I was wondering if you can tell us how many spindles have been installed in 2022, maybe 2023 as well, and what would be the number of spindles that is on order today? Well, I guess this is not necessary. It's gonna be half of what it is installed. If you can give these two numbers, then I have another question later. Maybe I have to say, no, I cannot tell you that now exactly by heart, but please contact our Investor Relations for that. Okay. It's very deep. You don't even have, like, a broad number? I mean... Well, well, we know we have, overall in the world, we have installed about 250 million spindles. Exactly. For me, it's very difficult now to say also what has been exactly the market in spindles. I, honestly, I cannot tell you that now by heart. Okay. I can't. Let's agree that you just give a call to Investor Relations, and then we can give you that figure one by one. Okay, fair enough. The second question that I have, I heard that you within your program are planning to basically close Ingolstadt, if I have heard correctly. Does it mean that afterwards there will be some remaining industrial land that can be repurposed, similar to what you have done there already and what you have done in Winterthur? No. You might remember, it is now, I think, five years ago. We still had a production facility in Ingolstadt. We closed that, and we sold the whole area to a third-party investor, and we moved into an office facility, which is rented for our white-collar people we still have in Ingolstadt. We don't have any blue-collar people anymore, and we don't have any land anymore in Ingolstadt. Unfortunately, we already booked that sales profit a couple of years ago. There's nothing left anymore where we could do a one-time profit in Ingolstadt. Okay. Okay. Sorry, I forgot about this. Okay. No problem. Thank you very much, anyway. Thanks a lot, Alessandro. We will now switch to online questions from the webcast. I think this was a question we also had before, that, let's say, the adjustment of 400 to600 in positions, in terms of capacity, is in our manufacturing sites, which is mainly in China, in India, in Czech Republic, and partially also in Germany. There are no further adjustments planned in Winterthur. The next question comes from Stefan Frischknecht from Schroders. Good morning. You are guiding for a better Q4. Could you quantify a bit what you expect in terms of orders? Did you have a high level of order cancellation in Q3, given to the low order intake? On what is your cautious optimism based for 2024? Thank you. Maybe point number one, yes, we are guiding for a better Q4. You know, in all terms, I mean, we still have to do CHF 400 million of sales in quarter four in order to come to this magnitude of CHF 1.5 billion in sales for the whole year. We still have to do, you know, some good profitability improvement because we have given a clear guidance of 5%-7%. We have to work on that. Of course, we also expect a slightly better order intake. I mentioned before, Q3 was really low. Some of the projects of Q3 swapped into Q4. I would say... It's difficult to say now exactly a number where we will be, but I would say, you know, something like CHF 170 million-CHF 220 million should be okay. If you take somewhere there, the midpoint, this is a little bit our expectation, but honestly, it could be the same again, that one or the other project is swapping into quarter one in 2024. For me, much more important is that we get that order, whether it is now one week earlier or later, I don't care, as long as it helps us to create the sales volumes in 2024. The last question was? It was on cancel. A cancellation in Q3 was slightly less than it has been in Q1 and Q2. Good, I think the last one then was: What is your cautious optimism based on 2024? Now, it could be pragmatic. It can't be worse. If you say we are now on a very, very low and a half years, it's hardly to imagine that it could be even worse, point number one. Point number two, we see that the stocks I mentioned before are going down, and also feedback from customers is they expect that 2024 is coming back. They don't say when, but they are all, whether I'm in China, I'm in Turkey, I'm in India, I'm in the U.S., I'm discussing with Brazil and Argentina, even in Bangladesh and Pakistan and Uzbekistan, we see that many, many projects are in the pipeline, and all the customers tell me they're expecting that 2024 is coming back. Also, you know, giving you a little bit the market sentiment of our customers, and this, of course, also makes us a little bit more optimistic for 2024. I think that's it. Gentlemen, so far, there are no more questions. Thank you very much for attending this call. Thank you very much for those very good questions. I wish you all a good rest of the day and say goodbye. 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.