Yes, thank you for this introduction. Good morning together, and thank you for joining us today, and a very warm welcome to our half year figures. As always, we will go through the presentation first, and then we'll be available for questions at the end, and let's skip the disclaimer and go directly to page, I think it was 5, to start the presentation. Let's now start with a brief overview of the actual situation. Looking at the first half of the year, we are ahead of the previous year in terms of sales and EBITDA. The segments have developed very differently, but we will look at the end in more detail later. The important thing is that we are able to remain on our growth path despite rocky roads and tough general conditions out there. We presented our climate roadmap to the annual general meeting and received very strong support for it. Incidentally, I personally have also received a lot of encouragement from the investment community, which tells us that we are on the right track here and that we will fit into many new investment categories with this, which confirms that we are progressing in the right direction in this way. With a very strong growth of our human nutrition business, including our star product, Creapure, we are meeting completely our forecast. Forecast is a good keyword here. We will analyze this in more detail later, but this much upfront, we are still within our guidance, albeit at the lower end in terms of sales, but at the upper end in terms of EBITDA. What has been extraordinarily better than last year is our free cash flow, which was very strong this year, and thus had a very positive impact on our key figures overall. On the CapEx side, there is also positive things to report. Starting in quarter four, we will bring online a further incremental capacity increase in the creatine area, which will then again support our growth, especially with the beginning in quarter four. There are also news to report on the topic of growth and CapEx, for which we go to the next page. You are probably all already familiar with our Verbund system and our production family tree here. On the one hand, we are working on new topics outside the family tree. We will be able to say more about this in the next report. On the other hand, we are also growing considerably within the family tree, especially within the fruits, the Specialty Chemicals part. Here, we may give you a little more detail on our very popular branch product, which is our Creapure. From calcium cyanamide, we produce a chemical that represents a major unique selling proposition, namely our cyanamide. On the one hand, an interesting, highly reactive industrial chemical. On the other hand, the basis as a raw material for further very interesting AlzChem developments. One of our most interesting products is Creapure, a premium brand of creatine monohydrate as a dietary supplement, not only in sports nutrition, but with good prospects in additional applications. In order to reach all market potentials of creatine, we are adding our new product, Creavitalis, for health and food applications. These two markets have profoundly changed in the last years. The increased attention people are paying to health and healthy nutrition open new opportunities for our creatine here. With Creapure, we are clearly positioned in the performance sport market, where Creapure is the top brand in this market. Creavitalis is targeted for health markets based on the various new scientific findings because of its importance for well-being. It has a potential as well in the functional food market. Livadur is our D2C or direct-to-consumer brand, addressing the healthy fitness market. We have been able to obtain even an EU health claim, proving that creatine can avoid muscle loss with increasing age. Why Creavitalis as an additional creatine product? With this brand, we follow a trend. End users in health and food markets have product needs and expectations which differ substantially from application in performance markets or performance sports. To be successful, these needs have to be addressed specifically. Apart from a different marketing approach and language, we are micronizing creatine for better solubility and mouthfeel, and applying a tight analytical check to support close to clinical applications. Supported by clinical studies, we are focusing on applications in female health, in male fertility, in cellular energy, in recovery, in cardiovascular, in brain and cognitive functions, and in post-viral fatigue. All these body functions need a lot of energy, creatine is important to them. We are doing groundbreaking work here, since until today, no one has entered these markets with creatine. The potential of this market is important. All in all, this is our next arrow in the cure to grow further in specialties. Let us now return to our figures analysis segments and in general. The development of sales in the second quarter of 2023 shows a different picture compared with the first half of the year. Sales decreased by around EUR 14 million to EUR 120.6 million. The decline in sales affected both operating segments, albeit to a different degree. This mainly affect the Basics & Intermediates segment, while the Specialty Chemicals segment recorded only a slight decline in sales. Half year sales amounted to around EUR 277 million, an increase of around EUR 8 million or 2.7% compared to the same period of the previous year. The main drivers for this development were the products from the Specialty Chemicals segment. Looking at the group as a whole, the increase in sales was mainly generated by 15.1% price increases, which overall had to, and was able to compensate for around 12.8% in volume decline. EBITDA in the quarter two was EUR 17.9 million, and thus almost exactly at the absolute level of the previous year. The analysis of the second quarter thus shows that the lower revenue is merely a pass-through of lower production costs, but also the deliberate decision not to sell products with low or negative earnings contributions. The EBITDA margin thus increased from 12.7%-14.1% in quarter two. Half year EBITDA increased by EUR 1.9 million to EUR 36.8 million. This corresponds to an increase of 5.5% compared with the same period of the previous year. We were able to increase the EBITDA margin by 8.4% from 12.9% to 13.3%. Earnings per share follow the result of the period and are at EUR 1.46, 14.6% lower than in the previous year. Here we see effect from higher interest costs. So much for the big picture and the overview. Let us see some market developments that Dr. Weichselb aumer will present to us on the next few pages. Thank you, Andreas. Let's start with Basics & Intermediates. In the Basics & Intermediates business, we recorded a decline in sales in the half year from EUR 115.4 million to EUR 103.4 million, or approximately 10%. The decline in sales in the quarter was even stronger, from EUR 57.9 million to EUR 46 million, or approximately 20%. The volume decline in Q2 was about the same as in the first quarter, at approximately 26%. Only in Q1, the price increase of 5.1% counterbalanced more than the 6.5% in Q2. In general, but above all, the energy and electricity-intensive products suffer, especially our fertilizer PERLKA. In addition to higher electricity prices, alternative fertilizers, also produced outside Europe, are imported to Europe in large quantities. We are currently refraining from contribution margin business with very low margins and a price war with Asian manufacturers. This has already a positive effect on both the quarter and the half-year figures, due to our flexibility to cut costs and to shift employees to higher capacity utilization plants in Specialty Chemicals. We achieved EBITDA of EUR 5.2 million for the half year and EUR 2.4 million for the quarter. Both are significantly better figures than in the previous year. The positive effect of the volume reduction is that we were able to slightly improve our margin. However, the weight of Basics & Intermediates is also decreasing in our group, which has an overall positive effect on the figures at all. Much for the Basics & Intermediates segment. Let us now move on to the Specialty Chemicals segment. The Specialty Chemicals segment was on a growth path in the first half of 2023, increasing sales by EUR 17.5 million to EUR 159 million, which means +12%, mainly due to strong sales in the first quarter of 2023. The increase was driven by higher prices, but also by volume increases in individual product areas. Overall, a slight decline in volumes was recorded for the segment as a whole. The situation is somewhat different in the second quarter. The Specialty Chemicals segment also saw a slight drop in sales in the second quarter by EUR 3 million to EUR 73.2 million. Overall, volume declines had a somewhat stronger impact here than price increases. However, it can be seen that the price increases are no longer as severe as those in the second quarter of the previous year. Price increases were necessary there due to the considerable cost increases. On the sales side, the picture in the second quarter was mixed. Here, too, the dietary supplement groups achieved strong volume growth with Creapure. Sales also increased for some products in the automotive area and the use of guanidine salts. In the other areas, sales were down on the prior year quarter, albeit to varying degrees. Here, the decline in volumes outweighed the increase in product prices. As production in this segment is not so electricity intensive, and the remaining raw materials remain at a high level, only a few price reductions were necessary. Particularly in the Specialty Chemicals segments, customers are currently given preference for reducing their own inventories. One of the reasons for this is the company's own liquidity situation, which is forcing them to reduce working capital as interest rates rise. On the other hand, however, the improved logistics situation is also allowing safety stocks to be reduced, as delivery times can now be planned more easily again. EBITDA for the second quarter was around EUR 15 million, only a slight decrease, and essentially in line with revenue. Half-year EBITDA remained almost stable at EUR 31 million. This resulted in a slight decline in the EBITDA ratio to 19.5%, compared with 21.6% the previous year. Let us now move on to our third segment, Other & Holding. The Other & Holding segment generated sales of EUR 1.7 million higher than in the previous year. This is mainly attributable to general price increases for the services purchased from customers at the chemical park, and to higher grid work fees from AlzChem's grid operations. Last year, prices for media and services at the chemical park could mostly only be adjusted retrospectively due to rapidly rising costs, whereas current prices already take into account the increased cost level. The segment's EBITDA of EUR 0.9 million was slightly above the level of the previous year. This is mainly due to the external grid work operations of AlzChem. Higher approved grid work fees and lower electricity losses led to improvement in earnings here. Let us now take a look at the balance sheet and back to Andreas. Thank you, Georg. Then some words to the balance sheet. The decrease in our total assets by EUR 3.7 million to EUR 419 million, resulted mainly from a decrease in other non-current assets and is a subsequent effect of more cautious CapEx activities this year. Inventories are slightly above last year's level and will rise again slightly during summertime as we stockpile more favorable summer electricity prices in the form of our central products, carbide and calcium cyanamide. Furthermore, there were no extensions to payment terms and only very little bad debt losses in the customer side, and thus, receivables were roughly on a par with the previous year. Our equity also increased by EUR 2.4 million to EUR 140.8 million, as a function of the good results despite payment of the dividend in May. The equity ratio remains at a stable level of just over 35%. In the first quarter, EUR 30 million in non-current liabilities were raised. The short-term line was therefore reduced by this amount, but the original volume of short-term commitments was also maintained. We have thus re-established a reliable and sustainable financing structure. That's it for the balance sheet. Let's go to the next page and do some analysis on the cash flow statement. For the half year, we generated a quite positive cash flow from operating activities of around EUR 40 million. This represents an improvement of around EUR 57 million compared with the previous year. The reason for this are the now positive effects from the strict working capital management, which was started in the second half of the last year and has been consistently continued since. Furthermore, the very high sales in the first three months led to significant cash flows, and the change in working capital resulted in an inflow of EUR 6.7 million for the group after an outflow of EUR 49 million in the previous year. Capital expenditures reflect the more cautious investment policy of the first few months of the fiscal year, which is constantly reviewed in the light of developments in the economic environment. That's it for the cash flow, and let's have a talk about our main targets. You may know our target list. We are focusing on mainly three areas here: improvement, growth, and sustainability. Let's talk about improvement. Our top priority this year remains to pass on all raw material prices increase, price increases to our customers. Conversely, if raw material prices were to fall significantly, this could also mean that we would give some of this back to our customers. We have decided to further increase flexibility in production. To this end, we will run one of our furnaces along the electricity price curve. This means that when electricity is cheap, we increase output, and when electricity is expensive, reduce output or even shut down the carbide kiln. The third point is our zero waste strategy. This could also be classified as a sustainability goal, but for us, it has always been an important economic issue. We are in the middle of implementing all the improvement measures here and are well on our track. In the target area of growth, we are primarily focusing on filling the remaining spare capacities in Creapure, Creamino, nitriles, and silicon nitride activities. We are already well on the way here, which we will see, then in the forecast. In addition to filling capacities, the focus is on establishing Eminex as a methane reduction product. With Eminex, it would be possible to save up or up to 5 million tons of CO2 per year through already existing production capacities. We are in close coordination with politics and authorities, and assume that it will only be a function of time to make that product great. As always, growth is also about plant expansion, where we are planning the next steps for our multipurpose plant and our silicon nitride business. In respect to sustainability targets, we are persistently pursuing the goal of zero accidents and zero waste. Another key point here is the implementing of our climate roadmap. Last but not least, we are working on the EU Taxonomy Regulation and the CSRD reporting. Here, too, we are in full implementation mode of our climate roadmap, right at the top of the list is of course our revenue and EBITDA target, which we will look at on the next page. From today's perspective, we can continue to confirm the forecast up to EUR 590 million in sales and around EUR 70 million in EBITDA. In contrast to what we saw in quarter 1, we now see sales at the lower end of the forecast range, and thus closer to around EUR 560 million. In many product groups, product prices also follow raw material price developments, which trigger the somewhat lower sales forecast. The fundamental growth drivers are volume effects, as already described earlier in the target list via Creapure, Creamino, et cetera. Specialty Chemicals will remain to be the growth engine. In the Basics & Intermediates segment, we mainly expect price fluctuating with raw material prices. Volume declines in agriculture will be offset by higher average prices, and demand for the metallurgical products is likely to decline slightly with the economy, and the pricing formulas will allow cost changes to be passed on. On the earnings side, we expect higher raw material prices, more or less similar to the 2022 average, but with slight relief trends in the second half of the year. That's it from our side with the information for the half-year figures. At this point, we would like to thank you for your appreciated attention and are now at your disposal for possible questions, if there are any. Thank you very much for your presentation. We will now move on to the Q&A session. For a dynamic conversation, we kindly ask you to ask your question in person via audio line. To do so, click on the Raise Your Hand button. If you have dialed in by phone, please use the key combination star key nine, followed by star key six. If you do not have the opportunity to speak freely, you can also place your question in our chat box. We already received the first questions. Please go ahead, Mr. Markus Mayer. You can unmute yourself now. Mr. Mayer? Yeah. Good morning. Do you hear me? Yes, we can hear you very well. Very good. Good morning, good morning, gentlemen. I have four questions, if I may. The first one is, today we've heard from BayWa that farmers have restarted their ordering behavior in the third quarter for fertilizers and all the other agrochemical products. My first question would be: Do you also see this in your third quarter for your agro product so far? The second question would be on destocking. Can you quantify if you have seen destocking at your end customers? I f so, where, and if you also expect to continue this in the third quarter. The third question would be on your expectations for the second half for your Other & Holding line. For us, this is quite hard to judge the development here. Then the last question would be on your financial costs. Can you quantify the effects of your financial costs from the refinancing of the EUR 13 million liabilities? Thank you so much. Okay, let's answer the questions one by one. I'll try to do that with number one and two, and then hand over to Andreas for three and four. On PERLKA and additional sales in PERLKA, I mean, we continue to get orders for PERLKA because there are still applications there where it gives a benefit to the farmers. We have just or in the process of announcing our pricing, where we actually will go up to make the market understand. That's the key issue at the fertilizer market, that people will wait for the lowest price and then buy, and therefore, there's very little buying activity. We think we can trigger the market by showing them that we have reached the trough of pricing. On the destocking, yes, we have seen destocking in Q2. We expect that to continue in Q3, again, mainly in the Specialty Chemicals area. We do not expect that it will continue beyond Q3, and expect then an increase again in Q4. Mainly driven by the commissioning of capacity and spending expansions on our pure business line, and also by seasonal business, for example, in the agricultural area. Yeah, okay, I try to go on with the next questions. This was how will second half year will be the forecast for Other & Holding? From my point of view, we will see more or less the same situation as the last year, only at a little bit higher price levels. Therefore, there could be that the margin will be as healthy as for the first half of the year. If you calculate more or less with the same situation as in the first half of the year, that would be a good idea from my point of view. What is the cost of financial cost of refinancing? I have opened that information on the slideshow. You should see that on the slide 27. You see that information on other interest and similar expenses. Last year we had an reverse effect here because of the accrual, of the pension accrual and the reevaluation of the pension accrual. There was a positive effect on other interest, similar income. This year, we don't have this effect further on, but we have already higher interest rates from our financing banks, and you see that in quarterly figures here, EUR 1.8 million for the first quarter, and EUR 1.6 million for the second quarter. Should we expect, or basically should we model in, or model at the, the run rate of Q2 and also for going forward for the quarters? Does it make sense? Yeah, it, it makes sense from our point of view. Because of the good cash flow, I expect a little lower interest costs, but it could be compensated with higher interest rates to be honest, yeah. Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Mayer. We received another question from the person that has dialed in by phone, ended by 553. Please go ahead. You can unmute yourself now. Hello? Hello, here's Peter. Yeah, hello, here's Peter Hasler. Hi. Hi. Yes, thanks for letting me ask some questions. You mentioned that energy prices are past their absolute peaks. And I remember that you have formulas where you have to pass on the prices with a delay of approximately one quarter. Has this already been happened in the second quarter of this year? Is this so fast? Are you so quick in passing on energy price declines to your clients, or are we going to see this in the third quarter? Unfortunately, both directions function at a similar pace. As we tried very hard to increase it quarter by quarter, now we have to give the effects of reduced energy prices as quickly back to customers as we increased it. I see. This is what you, what you meant when you said that, energy price escalator clauses, which, leads to price declines? Correct, yes. Okay. Okay, I get it. Can you quantify how much revenues you deliberately lost or not wanted to have in the first half year? Is this possible, or are you willing to do this? I, I think, you see, you see that more or less on basic and intermediate analysis. You see that, we gave back volumes about 25% to the market, or we avoided to make that business because, otherwise, we had too much losses. There is a price increase already overall of 15.1%. We have seen that there is some price decrease, especially in the steel market. In the steel industry, we have to give back the price increases already. Okay, I get it. Then something which will probably increase your blood pressure right now, if we ask you about the EU decision on ALZOGUR or cyanamide. Can you, can you tell us what the revenues have been in the European Union last year with that product? I suppose there is a lot of it going outside the EU already. I mean, when we look at the revenue side, it's negligible. We're talking here around EUR 1 million or EUR 2 million. Still, we will strongly oppose that decision, and we are currently preparing a court appeal. We will go to the European court and fight that decision because we think it is fundamentally wrong, and they have actually acted against legal procedures, against laws which were in place, and we are not prepared to accept that. Understand it. Understand it. Finally, a question on Creapure. Are you going to address also professional sports persons with Creapure or your, your creatine products? Should this be limited to private sportler? No, no, no, no. The growth story of the past comes from professional sports. What we see is that all professional sports, men and women take creatine or creatine products. That's the, that's the, the success story of creatine. At the actual point, this story goes more to private use because of healthy aging issues and people avoid eating fish and meat, and therefore, they have to less creatine intake. From this point of view, this is a very interesting market development for us. We try to act in this market at least, with Creavitalis. This means that you can also guarantee that these professional sports persons will not eat anything which are listed on anabolic lists or something like that? Absolutely. I mean, we're on the Cologne List. It's considered a natural body of the substance. It's not considered as doping, and every professional athlete, people who attend the Olympics, everybody takes creatine in the meantime. Yeah. Okay. Thank you very much. Yeah. Okay. Mm-hmm. Thank you very much, Mr. Has, for your question. Well, in the meantime, we have received no further question. We therefore come to the end of today's earnings call. A big thank you also to the gentleman for your presentation and time you took to answer the question. Should further question arise at a later time, please feel free to contact Mrs. Lochner from Investor Relations or us. Thank you for listening, and I wish you all a lovely week. Yes, thank you very much for your questions. We can now offer you the opportunity to visit us again, virtually or in person, at our conferences, as shown here on this slide. Otherwise, we will back with quarter three figures on October 19th. Should we not see each other by then, stay safe and sound, and stay in our good graces, and goodbye.