Good morning. Good day, everyone. We know it's a busy day on your end, given that many of you will follow Straumann and Demant, and then we also come out with an ad hoc announcement here on top of it. As you can imagine, we would have liked to have a better news on our market, but we still felt compelled to give you in due time an update here. In that regard, thank you for joining. With me is Birgit Conix, our CFO, and Thomas Bernhardsgrütter. I'm planning to voice over the key elements of the announcement we did with a couple of, let's say, background infos, and then we would expect questions to come our way. We have announced this morning an interim business update outside our regular reporting schedule. From a high level, we're seeing slower than initially anticipated hearing care markets, which are adversely impacting the sales, but also the profitability because it's mainly the high price markets, namely the U.S., which are significantly slower. We also have seen additional headwinds on higher component and transportation costs than what we had expected. Therefore, as you have seen from the numbers, the impact is more meaningful or more significant on the profitability side than the revenue side. Allow me to put this briefly into context and with regard to the market. When we came out with our full year guidance, that was in May. We had certain assumptions about how the market evolves. I think we're all aware this is a very dynamic environment, if you want to call it that way, with regard to a war in Europe, with regards to significant inflationary pressures from many different corners and continued supply chain issues, not just on microelectronics, but also other things. It's really hard to predict why we're in such a high inflationary environment, which we haven't seen for many decades, what ultimately the consumer behavior in our industry is. We knew the 2008, 2009 dip, slowdown in GDP, but that wasn't linked to high prices. What we have seen over the last couple of months that in reality there is more impact to the consumer confidence. It's probably also fair to say that we didn't plan with such high inflationary pressures. I think the other one to keep in mind, and that's particularly true for the U.S., where our target group depends a lot on 401(k)s, which are directly linked to share prices. The first half of the year was a quite dramatic reduction in average share prices in the world, impacting what people have in their pension funds. In that regard, I would say it's probably more severe from the response, but also from the parameters driving the behavior than what we had thought three months ago. Therefore, I think we see a slower demand, particularly in the U.S., and we find it appropriate to reflect on that and then share back what we think about the first half year because that's coming up soon. Secondarily, also what our best read on the second half year is. Highlights of the messages here, subdued volume growth in the higher priced hearing care markets and distribution channels. What we mean with that is that particular on the independents, the local open market in the US, we have seen lower revenues, but in other channels we've seen continued good growth for our business. With that, the private market in the United States is the highest priced part of our revenue mix. I think it's also fair to say that when we looked at July, and here I'm commenting on market data, which in some of the markets we see on a monthly basis, we have seen a further decline in momentum in the US, but also in Germany, which is publishing currently on a monthly basis, and on Canada. Clearly July was a softer month than our Q1 was. We don't know if this is a one-time effect. We're looking at a better momentum right now for the May, but it certainly raises the question of what's the trend line for the remainder of the year. I commented on continued headwinds from a transportation component cost perspective. I think it's also fair to say if you look at an EBITDA year-over-year, we have not so much against our change here. We also have a higher wage inflation, which is weighing on the profitability. We expect for the first half year growth in consolidated sales of approximately 16%-18%. Keep in mind, that does include the lift out of the Alpaca acquisition and the Sennheiser acquisition, and an adjusted EBITDA to remain largely unchanged versus the prior year, and both measured on constant exchange rates. Now, reflecting on the results we expect for the first half year, which clearly are below what we had expected, compared to coming into the year, but also our sentiment that the momentum will remain somewhat lower than what we had assumed at the beginning of the year. We're adjusting our full year guidance and that led to the numbers you already have seen, where we expect a growth in the range of 15%-19%. An adjusted EBITDA growth of 6%-10%, both measured on constant exchange rates. In my eyes, that outlook implies a sound sales performance in the second half because as you can hear between the lines, we assume that we see a slowing of the market momentum from the first half year to the second half year to a degree, given that July was lower than the Q1. I think if you then look at the numbers, and you factor in that we assume the momentum in the market will be lower from a year-over-year growth than in the first half of the year, you can see that we have a good confidence in our ability to drive our own agenda. I think to a large degree, this is based on our knowledge, which we have shared today with you, that the new platform launch, which most of you have expected, is imminent and will help us, particularly in the second half year, potentially also slightly in the first half year. When we talk about a new platform, I will not share what will be in the release when we launch the product, but you have to assume this is a significant step of innovation, elevating the hearing performance by a meaningful step, probably comparable to what you've seen on a Paradise or a Marvel level. The stronger performance in the second half year also implies the typically higher seasonality in the Consumer Hearing business. Why is that relevant from a year-over-year? Because we acquired the business new, and so the inorganic component lifts off the Q3, our Q3, so the Christmas season in the Consumer Hearing business to be significantly higher than all the other quarters. We have a strict cost control in place, which we put in place over the last couple of months. We have also implemented pricing increases. We've done a second wave in July 2022. After the first wave in the first half of the year, we do expect that to benefit us on the EBITA side. When you unpeel the full year guidance versus the first half year outlook here, you can see that we expect a better year-over-year EBITA performance in the second half year. Obviously, the new product launch, the Consumer Hearing business on a higher level, the price improvements. Please keep in mind last year's second half was from a comp basis, probably softer than our first half year, where we were still on a low-cost base coming out of COVID. That's what we have announced with some incremental color here. Alice, I would now open for questions on the line. Our first question comes from the line of Christoph Gretler with Credit Suisse. Please go ahead. Thank you, operator. Good morning, Arnd. Just wanted to quickly ask now two things. Now first, you know, on the cost side, you know, could you maybe break out, you know, the different elements, you know, kind of the product mix and, you know, the general increase in cost that you experience in terms of, you know, impact? Hi, Chris. Thank you for the question. I think there's two cost components which were not helping. I think the first one is in the Hearing Instruments business, where we have a margin level which is below what we had expected, which you can put, call it, two-thirds into additional transportation cost and component cost. But two-thirds really come out of channel and geo mix. Keep in mind, we have significantly different price points in the independents in the US. So on the gross profit side, Hearing Instruments really more of a price mix matter, but also the logistics cost and the components cost. I think the second one we still have seen in the first quarter in order to generate the momentum on the Audiological Care side was we were still running at a higher than expected and higher than historically generation cost. I think that's starting to come down, but not as fast as we have thought. The second question is just, I know you mentioned, the U.S. specifically as a market that has slowed down, you know. Is there any other markets that you would call out? I guess France has a pretty high comp, you know. Is there any other markets where you see, you know, a more, you know, kind of, more of a relevant slowdown? Yeah. Let me comment on the U.S. side. I think you're talking for the four months of our fiscal year at a low single digit negative unit volume in the market, but stronger in July. We need to see how much that's specific for this summer versus more of a run rate side. France was weaker in our Q1, so the calendar Q2, in the high single digit as a market to some degree expected. What we also see as softer is the U.K., the private market. That's kind of the story for our fiscal Q1. We've seen, and that is really July, we need to see how that evolves. We've seen also more softening in many other European markets, but we also heard people argue it may have been the heatwave, it may have been other reasons. Perhaps people went early on vacation after COVID. I think the jury is out on the European markets. Hence our cautiousness with regard to the second half year here. Measurable in the Q1 U.S., U.K. private market and then, let's say France, not unexpected. Mm-hmm. Okay. That's very helpful. Now, thanks, and yeah, speak another time. Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Maja Pataki with Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead. Yeah. Thank you very much for taking my questions. I have two as well. First, just to understand a bit on your commentary around cost side. I understand the channel mix impact, you know, the geographic and channel mix impact on margins on the hearing side. Could you elaborate what the transport costs and costs for components and wage inflation have changed dramatically since your release in May? Or it's basically more like, okay, it's on elevated levels, we didn't account for the margin impact from the mix change? That's number one. The second question is, I am aware of the fact that you don't have a crystal ball, but, you know, arguably we can say, yeah, inflation is high, but we possibly haven't seen the biggest brunt of it hitting consumers when we enter winter season and heating costs and electricity costs are really gonna take a dramatic toll. How, you know, how negative is your assumption for the second half of the year? Or could you just elaborate a bit what you expect from a consumer sentiment? Do you think it's gonna deteriorate? Do you think it's gonna stay at par? Just to have a bit of a level. Yeah. With regard to the cost here, I think the freight was the continued negative surprise. Mm-hmm. To give you an order of magnitude, we've seen year-to-date freight costs being about 40% higher than last year. I think that's clearly tied to more challenges with regard to more supply chain matters in the world, probably not only the microelectronics, but we've seen China closing their harbor, which makes a huge difference when you ship from China, you have to go a lot of air freight and everybody does. I think you also see the impact of the higher fuel prices, which immediately get translated into surcharges, right? I think on the component side, we have some on the microelectronics where people are still using the opportunity to increase prices on long-term contracts. I think these are the surprises. I think the wage increases we knew we had factored in. This was more comment if you look at the year-over-year. I think from the outlook for the second half, I think we're muted. I think our assumption baked into the numbers here assumes that the second half year is colored by a low single digit less positive from a growth perspective globally in our market than the first half year. I think that is credible in our eyes, too. There seems to be not an easy solution to the inflation. Yes, there's people who are concerned about the energy prices. I think in our market for the U.S., the share prices, I do believe, play a big role in the 401(k) case for the elderly population, and I wouldn't expect that to dramatically change. Assume under our numbers that our growth staying flattish, relative to the growth we had in the first half year, the market being softer, we do expect with a new product to win some share. Understood. Thank you very much for that. You're welcome. The next question comes from the line of Veronika Dubajova with Citi. Please go ahead. Hi, good morning, and thank you guys for taking my questions. I just wanna follow up on a couple things. One is just to or maybe understand the magnitude of the price increases that you've taken in July, and I guess how you're thinking about that, as far as, you know, the competitive position that you have, is concerned. Are you seeing other players follow suit, with similar price increases or not at this stage? That would be the first one. I guess just related to that 2-point reduction in the revenue growth guidance, maybe you can decompose that. Is that, you know, 4% in unit terms and a 2% incremental price against that? If you can just give us some flavor for how significant that price increase is. That would be my first one. The second question just for housekeeping, any implications you would expect this to have on the midterm guidance that you've communicated? Thank you. Thank you, Veronika, and good to have you back in the call. From a price perspective, it is public because we share it with the customer, so I can share this reasonably well. I think from a list price increase, we have guided in anything between 5%-6%, 5%-6.5% for different geographies. But you need to keep in mind that only 50% of our revenue is places where we can go up by list price and then see an impact because others are under long-term contracts. From a competitive perspective, competition by and large has followed suit with their own price increase announcements. That really becomes a question, who is pulling those through and who allows that to go away by promotions and others? There we don't have any insight. We collectively, totally uncoordinated, as you would expect from a compliance perspective, but one after the other, have increased prices, list prices by about 3% in the first half in January, and then about 6% in the July timeframe. In that regard, I would expect a meaningful fall through, but again, keep in mind you have two elements, only 50% are at rest by list prices, and the rest is really big contract negotiations which are not very easy. The second one is there is some leakage here. Now translating this into the growth equation, I must say in the first half, when we gave the guidance, we already had the plan to make a change on price in September. I would say all of the reduction we're doing on the growth expectation is an assumption on lower market in terms of unit volume. Now the third question, I didn't note- [crosstalk] Oh, from a mid-term target perspective? Honestly, no impact. I think we're having to go through this inflationary environment as a world. I think some will argue afterwards there may be some pent-up demand, others will argue, no, that's not as linear. We don't see an impact to the viability of our industry and business and the interest of our target audience to ultimately get better hearing help. No change on the midterms. Understood. Thanks. If I can squeeze in a quick follow-up, if that's all right. Just on the mix development in the second half, I guess I understand, you know, obviously you've reduced your volume growth expectations, but what does the guidance assume for mix? Are you assuming mix sequentially remains unchanged? Are you assuming it deteriorates further? If you can give any quantitative expectations around that would be great. Thanks so much. Yeah. I think our assumption was that the mix by geo stays directly as it was in the first 4 months, so also baked into our expectation for the first half year. I think our opinion is, this is only an opinion, and this is the first time in a high inflationary environment, as a company, at least with the analysis we tend to do, is that probably Europe is less hard hit because our thesis about the US is the link to the 401(k) in addition to higher costs. We don't have reason to assume the mix is going to now change. I think in all places you're going to potentially see people be a little bit more careful while the inflation stays high. Understood. Thanks, Arnd. You're welcome. The next question comes from the line of Olivier Metzger with Oddo BHF. Please go ahead. Yeah. Good morning. Thanks a lot for taking my questions. The first one is on your comments regarding the patients' behavior. You said there are some reluctance. Historically, during economic crisis, we saw more of a downtrading towards lower priced devices. Now, basically you say that they are more reluctant with regards to they just don't buy the hearing aid. It's interesting because this we have seen only once and that was two years ago related to the pandemic. We all know that the purchase of hearing aids is something which you can postpone for a certain extent as but hearing loss is not better. What's the view? If you just give your gut feeling, what do you think? Is it a delay which might be more in this 3-6 months territory and we will see some subsequent pent-up demand, afterwards? Or how do you evaluate this situation? The second question is also regarding your imminent product launch, where you basically it's quite clear that it will come soon. How sensible is it to launch a new product in a soft market, in particular from a volume perspective? During the corona pandemic, we saw a competitor which launched basically directly into the weak market, and it was most likely the worst launch we have seen over the last decade with a quite negative impact. Potentially you can give a comment also about your launch strategy, whether it might be sensible even to postpone a launch after basically volume development has normalized to a certain extent. Oliver, thanks for the question. Yeah, it's uncharted territory with the hyperinflation and the strong compression on the share prices if you compare to 2008, 2009 recession. It's perhaps closer to COVID, at least what we see in behavior, but by no means at the same order of magnitude. We're talking about a couple of percentage points lower demand. You can see where we had a good growth in the first half year. If you translate it would be around 5% organic growth year-over-year. We're talking about not the same problem in size as with COVID. By the way, just factually, looking through all the numbers we have, we have not seen a meaningful downtrading, even not in the US. It seems to me more a binary decision than in a recession a la 2008, 2009. I think that comes probably because of the numbers being a lot bigger. If you have an inflation of, call it 8%-10%, and it gets published every day in the news, and then on top you lost probably 40% in your 401(k), there may be some people who say, "I really need to think about my money, including what I have for the remainder of my pensions, as long as the share prices are this low." I think that's very different too. There's a recession and the GDP doesn't grow, but my pension is not that much impacted, and I don't have 10% and perhaps 20% in your real inflation if you only look at energy and food, right? I think our thesis is this is here more if somebody wants a hearing aid and they think they have enough money somewhere on the side, then this is a good time to do it. We haven't seen the down trading, but I think there are more people holding back. That could trigger some pent-up demand. My only word of caution, half of our volume, order of magnitude, is new customers coming to the industry. Half of the volume is people who are looking for a replacement of an existing device. I always believe the pent-up demand is more the people who know they're up after 5 years. It's hard enough to convince people to come to the category. I think if they can punt for a year, you still have the same work and investment to do to convince them. On the product launch, we don't think there's any link between the market being at 3% growth versus 5% growth to when we launch. I think launching is super important in a competitive environment. Keep in mind, we launched our Paradise at the second quarter of COVID, and we had people asking, "What's the threshold? How much does the market need to be back?" We said 70%. Fortunately, in that quarter, we had 100% of prior year, and we had a very successful Paradise launch. In that regard, I don't think at this order of magnitude of the market growing somewhat slower and a little bit more strongly in the US, we would halt the launch. It's just, A, it's important to get the product out. It's important to be in the right position against the competition. We wanna take full advantage while the technology is new. Okay. Good. Thank you very much. Thanks, Oliver. The next question comes from the line of Urs Kunz with Research Partners. Please go ahead. Good morning together. Thanks a lot. Questions I have two. First is, would you imagine that there could also be some people holding back from buying hearing aids in the U.S. because of the imminent OTC regulation launch? The second question regarding exchange rates. You say they have now a negative impact on sales and EBITA, EBITDA. Could you elaborate a little bit how much you see that if the currency rates stay at these levels? Well, thanks for the questions. Let me cover the first one, and I think Birgit will comment on the FX here. On the OTC, certainly not on the order of magnitude of the slower U.S. market. I think OTC is something which we watch carefully. First products are in the market. Bose had launched a product just a couple of months ago. They now have decided to not sell themselves anymore, but there are offerings out there. Eargo is out there, and they have a small share of the market. So I don't think this is going to impact the order of magnitude of a change from a, call it, mid-single digit unit growth to, what I said, a low single digit negative right now. I think that's really more economics. Birgit. On the FX, when you looked at our full-year presentation, we said we have a low single-digit tailwind on the revenues, and there you could expect a low single-digit headwind. That would reverse. It's difficult to quantify at this moment because given the high volatility in the currencies in the recent weeks, it's really difficult to make an explicit statement on this. We do provide sensitivities in the investor presentation as you will see when. For reference, the euro and the US dollar each represent like a third of the revenue base. On the operating level it's about the same? No. If you look at the EBITDA, it's a higher impact there than sales, what we typically see. The headwind would have a more disproportionate impact. Thank you, Urs. Thank you. The next question comes from the line of David Adlington with JP Morgan. Please go ahead. Hey, guys. Some questions. Most have been asked, but and apologies we said this earlier in the comments, but I think you talked about July being slower than expected. Do you have any early data on August? Yeah. August is more back to what we've seen in Q1, David, fortunately, but we're only in, what now? Two and a half weeks. We're trying to wrap our head around was there some timing difference on how people were coming to stores based on vacation and weather and whatever else. I think July was low. August is getting better, but only in line with what we've seen in the Q1. All right. Perfect. I'll leave it there. Thank you. You're welcome. Thanks. The next question comes from the line of Daniel Buchta with Kepler. Please go ahead. Yes, thank you very much. Maybe a follow-up question on pricing. I mean, you mentioned the other 50% of your revenue base where you cannot adjust prices swiftly. I mean, can you share a little bit more insights how the price discussions with VA, with Costco and similar players are going? And then also maybe if we look into the next year already a little bit, I mean, we see now the headwinds you see due to inflation. Hopefully you can pass on now over the course of the year more and more of that. Would you expect that next year you have an incremental margin benefit again from the higher sales prices? Or how do you expect this to be the case then going forward from next year and afterwards? Then you mentioned the seasonality in the Sennheiser business. I mean, is the rather soft first half you see with Sennheiser just seasonality or with Sennheiser now being a little bit longer within the Sonova setup, is there anything else than that that may worry you a little bit more, the competitive environment, for example, or things like that? Thank you. Daniel, thank you for the questions. I would like to not comment too much about big account and pricing there. I would simply say the ones with significant growth year-over-year are in a better position to put that into a conversation on pricing. There are at least one larger one which is very significantly growing on the U.S. side, right? One needs to factor this in there. Overall, we're doing our best in order to make sure people understand the value we add, and secondarily, that we do have factor cost issues or input cost issues. On your question with regard to next year, I think not giving a guidance already for the next year, but if you think it through, you would say some of the cost increases should normalize back again. Now, the timing is a little hard, but when you have lockdowns in freight systems and logistics, you normally, when that is out of the system, it takes 6-12 months. Then normally the freight costs are going down again, right? You could argue the same on microelectronics, at least if you come to a world after everybody increases capacity, and we know that the companies are busy on that. At the end it becomes a buyer market. Right now it's a supplier market. I think that will have a positive impact. I think we will most likely not be able to claw back the wage increases. I think you're going to see continued wage increases over the years to come. From a seasonality perspective on the CHB, I must say we are encouraged by the first couple of months from CHB on the top-line side outside of the seasonality, but we did know that seasonality when we planned the year. We've seen a successful launch of the product called Momentum Three, which is the new true wireless, and it has been received very well. You can see this in the ratings the product gets on the online marketplaces. Just a week ago, we launched what's called Momentum Four, which is the new flagship for the over-the-ear headsets. Again, very well received in the market. We also see this in the initial sales numbers. I think from a product roadmap perspective, the team has gotten the product out. In the first quarter with us, there was still supply issues on the hearing product ranges. They have TV listeners predominantly in there. That is getting better. We had planned for that. We knew that. In that regard, I think two successful product launches for the two largest products, which we expected measured on revenue impact. I think it is really seasonality. I think what is important when one thinks seasonality through and also the EBITDA here, because the business is only in that mid-single digit and we're moving it up as we go, you have to assume that the first half year was negative if you assume that, call it 40% of your revenue happens in Q3, right? Mm-hmm. A little bit of a helper also when you do the EBITDA bridge from first half to second half year. Mm-hmm. Thank you very much. Very helpful. You're welcome. Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Arnd Kaldowski for any closing remarks. Mr. Kaldowski? Yeah. Thanks again for taking time on short notice. I hope we gave you good chance to understand not just how we're doing, but as much as we can on how we look at the market. I know this is a tricky environment for us as well as for you, so it was our intent to give you a heads-up when we feel we should. Thanks for your interest, and now I let you go to the other places you need to go with the busy schedule today. Thank you. Thank you.