Yes, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the conference call with Swiss Steel Group. At our customer request, this conference will be recorded. As a reminder, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions via the telephone line. If any participants have difficulty hearing the conference, please press the star key followed by the zero on your telephone for operator assistance. May I now hand you over to Burkhard Wagner, who will lead you through this conference. Please go ahead. Yeah. Thank you very much, Jen. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I'd like to welcome you to Swiss Steel Group's media investor conference call on the occasion of the release of the 2022 half results. The speakers at today's conference are our CEO, Frank Koch, and CFO, Marco Portmann. The slides for the presentation, which will follow immediately, the media release, and the H1 report have been made available on our website since 7:00 A.M. this morning. During the conference, the speakers will make forward-looking statements as described in the disclaimer on slide two. These statements are based solely on our expectations or forecasts for future developments and may differ materially from actual results or performance. I now hand over to our CEO, Frank Koch. Please, Frank. Good luck and thank you very much. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I also would like to welcome you to our conference call today and thank you for following Swiss Steel Group on the continuation of its journey. I will be discussing the market outlook as well as the operational aspects. Further, I'm pleased to formally also introduce my colleague, Marco Portmann, who took up the position as CFO at the end of March, after having spent the majority of his career within Swiss Steel Group. He will be discussing the financial matters. Let me begin by summarizing the key developments in the second quarter. Swiss Steel Group continued the positive trend and recorded a significant increase in earnings in the second quarter of 2022, with an adjusted EBITDA of EUR 96 million. This result is mainly driven by a margin increase as sales prices rose to EUR 2,442 per ton, from EUR 1,621 per ton in Q1 2021, following the significantly rising energy and raw material costs. The higher sales prices compensated overall lower sales volumes, which in turn were mainly due to the stoppage of the melt shop in Ugine following the tragic accident early 2022 and seasonal effects. These solid results are dampened by the strain of exceptionally high raw material and energy prices, which also resulted in higher net working capital and net debt. The internationally stable market environment provides a solid basis for Swiss Steel Group's results despite high volatility. These were not only shaped by the increase in energy prices in Europe, but also by a distortion in the recovery of the global economy due to impacts from the war in Ukraine and ongoing supply chain issues resulting from pandemic-related lockdowns in China. In the light of the global economic challenges and increasing volatility, it is all the more decisive Swiss Steel Group is at its strongest and maximally market-oriented going forward. In this respect, we are making good progress with our SSG 2025 strategy program, and we have reached a decisive milestone as our new division, stainless steel, engineering steel, and tool steel, will go into operation in September 2022. As one of our strategic pillars, and with the electric arc furnace technology as part of our DNA, our journey to further reduce our carbon footprint continues. We have committed to the Science Based Targets initiative, so-called SBTi, that encompasses our reduction of carbon emissions by around 42% over the next 10 years. Finally, attributing to the tremendous effort of the Swiss Steel team, the melt shop in Ugine has been ramping up again since June after the rolling mill resumed operation in March 2022, supported to a large extent by semi-finished materials from other group companies. I have been in charge of Swiss Steel Group for a year now, and I'm pleased to see my initial expectations confirmed. Our group has enormous potential that will be leveraged further in the course of reshaping the group. Through the SSG 2025 strategic program, we are laying the basis for a fully integrated Swiss Steel Group under a single strong brand. We are making progress towards consolidation operations at a group level in order to drive effectiveness and synergies. We are focusing our production assets even more on quality, service level, and cost efficiency. Finally, we have reached the decisive milestone in reorganizing our sales around the three divisions, stainless steel, engineering steel, and tool steel. This new organization, which will go into operation in September of this year, allows a more holistic market approach and more effective and tailored customer service. Looking to the next chart. As we continue to slide five, we come to another topic rooted in our strategy. Today, steel production accounts for roughly 8% of global emissions. Steel impacts our daily lives in so many ways that we at Swiss Steel Group consider it our duty to help shape a better, greener, and even more sustainable world. We already have to operate on a most eco-friendly production route with our electric arc furnaces, and in fact, sustainable steel production runs in our DNA. We will continue our journey until the Swiss Steel Group name stands for climate neutral steel. In May, our commitment to the Science Based Targets initiative was approved. We are now committed to the further reduction of our carbon emissions by 42% within the next 10 years in accordance with SBTi. Further, we have bundled our various green steel products into three product categories. These give our customers decisive orientation with regards to the respective CO₂ emissions. As Swiss Steel Group relies exclusively on EAF technology, and thus the use of steel scrap, our CO₂ emissions are around 78% below the industry average. Generally speaking, this makes our entire product portfolio green. The footprint of our products is further reduced with Green Steel Climate+, where exclusively electricity from renewable sources is used. With Green Steel Stainless+, our customers receive stainless products that are made from at least 95% recycled materials. We reduce emissions from purchased materials by around 90% by avoiding primary alloys. Finally, we are intensely working with partners up and down the value chain to reduce emissions and offer low emission steel solutions. Only recently, we were able to communicate partnerships with Thyssenkrupp Aerospace or the Swiss energy provider, Axpo. Let's turn to the overall market environment with the next slide. For the automotive industry, the war in Ukraine added yet another layer of disruption to production, compounding the existing shortages of semiconductor chips. According to LMC Automotive's estimate, the light vehicle production in Europe declined by 7% in the first half of this year compared to the first half of 2021. On a quarterly basis, light vehicle production decreased by 16% in Q1, while it increased by 3% in Q2, both compared to the respective prior year level. The mechanical engineering sector is also impacted by several supply chain issues, primarily resulting from the pandemic-related lockdowns in China, as well as the war in Ukraine. Especially the latter is resulting in order cancellations. VDMA has reduced production forecasts for 2022 to 1% growth compared to 7% in December 2021. In the North American oil and gas industry, the upward trends continued in the year-on-year comparison. North American rig count increased by 58% in Q2 2022 compared to Q1 of last year, following a short seasonal decline. As we continue with slide seven, we can see further effects of the current global uncertainties as price surges for raw materials and energy continue. While the upward trends for scrap prices held in the second quarter of 2022 compared to the second quarter of last year, prices for German scrap grades two and eight have declined in May and June due to a weaker demand from Turkey. Nickel prices continued their upward trend until they reached an increase of more than $100,000 at the beginning of March. This led to an interruption in trading on the LME. European prices for High Carbon Ferrochrome continued to trend upwards. The average price in the second quarter of this year increased by 141% compared to the average price in the second quarter of last year. With mounting concerns about an economic slowdown and the strong US dollar weight on the market for industrial metals, prices show a slight downwards trajectory. Energy prices have continued to skyrocket, increasing 211% for electricity and 298% for natural gas in the second quarter of 2022 compared to the second quarter of last year. This rise is accompanied by increasing volatility, which is further accelerated by the current uncertainties in energy supply, mainly due to the war in Ukraine. On Slide eight, you will see in the top left corner that our order book dropped in the second quarter of 2022, reflecting both market uncertainties as well as seasonally based hesitancy of customers to place orders prior to the summer break. Sales volumes decreased compared to the prior year quarter. This was mainly due to lost volumes from Nucetech and due to ongoing volatility in the automotive sector that led to lower sales in the segment. The average sales price per ton increased in the same time from EUR 1,622 per ton in the first quarter of last year to EUR 2,442 per ton in the quarter of 2022. Average sales prices increased mainly on the back of climbing raw material prices and the introduction of an energy surcharge in the pricing mechanism. Despite the lower sales volume, this led to sales revenues above the prior year quarter. In detail, revenue increased from EUR 839 million in Q2 2021 to EUR 1.116 billion in Q2 2022. That brings me to the end of slide eight, and I will now hand over to Marco Portmann for the discussion of the half year and second quarter 2022 period. Please, Michael. Thank you very much, Frank, and a warm welcome from my side as well. Let us continue on slide nine. Frank already pointed it out. We had a strong second quarter and showed very good profitability. Our adjusted EBITDA came in at EUR 96 million. That is increased by more than EUR 20 million versus an already decent EUR 75 million euro in the first quarter of 2022. Adding it up, we reached EUR 170 million in the first half, versus EUR 110 million in the same period of 2021. We have benefited from the good market demand with the continuing COVID-19 recovery, but have high volatility for raw material and energy. We have, however, been in a position to pass on such price increases, also by implementing the mentioned dedicated energy surcharge. This surcharge is so far only covering the true additional costs. Consequently, in terms of adjusted EBITDA margin, it is fair to say that we are not yet at levels where we would like to be. While we have improved the margin to 8.6% in the quarter, compared to 7.3% in the first quarter and 7.8% in the second quarter of 2021, we believe we can do better. Frank already referred to SSG 2025 and the many initiatives to better our footprint, our sales approach, and our cost base. The reshaping of the group will remain key to ensure further improvements. On the right side of the page, you can see the corresponding increase. You can see that corresponding to the increase in EBITDA, we also continue to achieve a positive net income in every single quarter. For the half year, the group results amounted to EUR 74 million, which is more than double compared to 2021 with EUR 35 million. Continuing on the next page, we start in top left chart with the development of our working capital. This steady increase is mainly driven by higher prices for the raw materials and consumed energy. The value of the inventory increased by approximately EUR 222 million during the course of the first half of 2022. The actual inventory in kilotons was essentially unchanged. This increase in value have naturally a negative effect on free cash flow that amounted to - EUR 66 million for the second quarter and - EUR 174 million in the first half of the year. In the previous year, we posted a - EUR 67 million and a - EUR 152 million respectively. These effects in working capital also led to higher net debt. Since the beginning of the year, net debt rose from EUR 721 million to EUR 936 million. Still, leverage, which is net debt over adjusted EBITDA, came down slightly to a ratio of 3.7, given the materially, naturally higher profitability. Apologies. In the bottom right chart, we show the development of our equity. The strong operational results amplified by valuation effects from pension liabilities due to the rising interest rate supported a further increase of more than EUR 80 million in the quarter. In total, this resulted to EUR 595 million equity at the end of the first half, 2022. The equity ratio also increased to 21.8%, compared to 20.1% at year-end 2021. Moving on to slide 11. We had already started our full-year media conference with drop in crude steel production after the seasonally low third quarter, 2021. As a reminder, that was due to the summer break and cutback of production in the fourth quarter of 2021 in order to adapt to lower demand from the automotive industry and already high energy prices. We increased again production in the first quarter of 2022 and had another slight increase also in the second quarter with 534,000 tons, always at a lower level compared to the previous year quarter due to the lack of steel melting at our plant in Ugine, as Frank already alluded to. In the top right corner, we show the development of our headcounts that have come down slightly further in the quarter, reflecting the realization of restructuring programs at Ascometal and DEW, but also the somewhat increased hirings towards the end of last year, when the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic subsided. Generally speaking, we have reduced headcounts for the fourth consecutive year since the acquisition of Ascometal in 2018, as we continue to improve our operational efficiency and work with a more flexible cost structure. CapEx spending, as you can see in the bottom left corner, is seasonally low before the summer break and also unchanged when compared to the second quarter in 2021. In the bottom right corner, we show the effects of our transformation office. As a reminder, we started in 2020 a five-year plan to achieve recurring improvements of EBITDA of EUR 298 million. We are well on track to achieve this goal, having captured more than EUR 200 million to date. We were successfully implementing nearly all planned operational improvements, plus new measures which result in a contribution above plan. This progress was amplified by higher than anticipated volumes, whereas we'd initially more conservative turnaround scenario despite the effects of the downtime in Ugine. With that, I'll close my thoughts and hand it back over to our CEO. Please. Thank you. Yes, thank you very much, Marco. Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to briefly summarize this day's conference then as follows. With a slight slowdown towards the end of the first half of 2022, the second half of 2022 will require continuous adaptation to the market development. This includes the expected softening of the market demand due to the current geopolitical instability, likely continued disruptions in supply chains, energy prices and availability. In light of this, we will focus on further operational measures to secure the group's liquidity. Also, in light of this, more than ever, it is imperative we continue our strategic change program. Our priorities lie with the implementation of the sales organization to enable a more holistic market approach and a more effective and tailored customer service, and to continue to form one fully integrated Swiss Steel Group. Further, we will continue our efforts to reduce our carbon footprint. The roadmap to get one step closer to our ecological goal of sustainable steel production is in finalization. Operationally, the focus will be on ensuring a strong performance of the restarted steel mill in Ugine to regain the group's strength in stainless steel products. Based on our reported earnings in the first half of 2022, we are raising our guidance for adjusted EBITDA. As we look to the second half of 2022, volatility and uncertainties have increased. The geopolitical situation remains unstable. Supply chains continue to face manifold challenges. Inflation is on the rise and potential economic slowdown has become imminent. We cannot conclusively assess the material uncertainties facing the energy sector at this time, neither in terms of price development nor availability. In consequence, we expect lower market demand and the resulting slight decline in margins. Assuming only immaterial additional disruptions, we expect adjusted EBITDA in a range between EUR 220 million and EUR 260 million. With this outlook, I would like to end my presentation. Please feel invited to our Q&A session, thanking you very much for your listening and participation. Thank you. We now begin our question- and- answer session. If you have a question for our speaker, please type your question into the webcast Q&A box or dial star one on your telephone keypad now to enter the queue. Once your name has been announced, you can ask a question. If you find your question has been answered before it is your turn to speak, you can dial star two to cancel your question. If you are using a speakerphone today, please leave the handset before making your selection. We have our first question. Dominik Feldges from NZZ. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Yes, good morning, gentlemen. Well, I was wondering, you know, I mean, why you really expect some lower market demand. I mean, the responses I see are quite mixed, you know, from companies. I mean, some are not so worried and others are a bit more worried. I mean, but it's not that it does not seem to me that the industry really is in a crisis mode and now really reckoning with a downturn, a bit of a prolonged or a strong downturn, but maybe you can correct me on that. Then I would like to just get to this energy shortages or especially these shortages of electricity we might face here in Switzerland. I mean, how do you get prepared for them? If you could tell us again, I mean, what implications that maybe has already on demand from customers. Is it really that customers now are starting to shun Switzerland and ordering their products rather from, let's say, from North America or Asia, where there is enough electricity? Thank you. Okay. I hope we got everything as the line was not always too clear for your question. First of all, your comment. I understood it more than a comment, the downturn in the second half of the year. I would like to point out again that we have to differentiate between two factors. First of all, the industry has a normal economic swing like in every normal economic year. The second half of the year is due to the fact that we have the summer breaks, the maintenance part and also the vacancy times, especially in western and southern part of Europe, always weaker than the first half. This is a matter of fact over decades. This is now accompanied by high uncertainties. This is not only that our opinion counts on what we say here. It is, and this maybe already leads to your other part of the question. The energy shortages and the energy prices are somewhat showing already price levels, which really make it doubtful if consumers, so means the processors and the end users of the final products, are really capable and willing to consume. This is our doubt, and we don't want to really downgrade our economy in the economic trend. What we see in the discussions with our worldwide customers, it is a general trend that we see a slight slowdown in the order intake and also in the processing of steel dedicated to our products. I cannot comment about competitors who maybe see it slightly different. What I have seen so far in automotive industry, steel processing industry, and also in steel production all over Europe, the sentiment is comparable to what we said here. Of course, you asked about the prices and costs for the energy. This is why we already discussed last year, of course with another perspective, to implement an energy surcharge for electricity and gas. By far, we have not thought that the tremendous effect like a war in Ukraine could take place. This only sharpens the energy crisis and that actually we see here. Therefore, we have to continue that and then immediately pass an increase in cost on that side to the market as we do. Of course, with that, we surely get an increase of cost for our products. If you ask something like the competitiveness compared to other worldwide markets, yes, as a matter of fact, if we compare European products to Asian products or American products, we have a disadvantage in terms of production costs over here under the circumstances given. The last question that I took note of is it really a matter of fact that customers are moving away from Switzerland to countries which are less expensive in terms of that? It can only be a very general answer on that. There are customers who have the flexibility and the possibility due to their products to assess them and to purchase them also in other markets. They move away as they come back when the situation is changing again over here in Switzerland. This is a general issue that is not so much driven by the actualities. That is a matter of fact that when you have closing prices and sensitivities in commodity products, that one or the other customer moves along and finds a cheaper source. Not only given to the actualities, I would be very careful in just saying it gets more expensive and the customers start to move away from Switzerland. This is not what we want to say here. Thank you for your question. Again, press star one to ask a question. We will take our next question. Johannes Bringmann from Awp, your line is open. Please go ahead. Good morning. Continuing that, regarding your question with Russian gas exposure, I need to first point out that we have usual contracts with our supplier for the supply of natural gas. There's no specific origin of that gas associated with our contracts. So it's not that we have any specific contract that we can say, this is Russian gas or this is not Russian gas. As every other participant, we're just consuming gas indeed at a quite significant scale. But that's just as a basic statement on the supply. That means consequently that, yes, we are specifically in Switzerland and in Germany, we are exposed to the use of Russian gas as we see in the statistics that of course these two countries are heavily dependent on the Russian natural gas imports. We are exposed to that extent to such imports. Obviously we are carefully monitoring the situation. We are preparing all potential scenarios. We believe we are quite well prepared for most scenarios, including even if there would be scenarios with potential slight shortages. We are quite confident that we can manage the business and adapt our production. Because keep in mind, we have electrical furnaces, so at least from a production standpoint, technically speaking, we are quite able to, on a short term, ramp up or down the production capacity and do not have an issue with an adaptive production to counter whatever then will happen in terms of energy supply going forward and going through the winter months of 2022, 2023. Coming back to the EBITDA question that you had there, and this is what Marco Portmann just described, one of the keys, and to be on a positive view on the EBITDA level that you requested there in the range that we just mentioned. First of all, it is a flexibility that we better have to use. Every order that is in the market will be taken. Even if we had a rundown or a slowdown in one week, we are able to adapt immediately with our technology. Please don't forget that we have ongoing programs also on the cost side. Even if we see what we named a slight slowdown in the second half of the year with uncertainties which we don't know, we will continue to work on also our cost basis and to maintain what we discussed here. Thank you. Thank you. Again, press star one to ask a question. There are no question at this time. I would like to turn the conference back to Mr. Burkhard Wagner for any additional or closing remarks. Yeah. Thank you, Jen. Thank you very much for attending today's conference and for your interest in Swiss Steel Group. If you have any further questions or comments, please let us know. We look forward to continuing the dialogue with you. Thank you very much. Goodbye. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your attendance. This call has been concluded. You may disconnect.