Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome and thank you for joining the analyst and press call Q2 2022/2023 results presentation. Throughout today's recorded conference, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. The presentation will be followed by a question-and-answer session. You can ask questions via call and in written form. If you are a journalist and want to ask a question in German, please wait until the end of the call, where we will provide a German slot additionally. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your touch-tone telephone. Please press the star key followed by zero for operator assistance. If you would like to submit in written, please use the webcast. I would now like to turn the conference over to Dr. Steffen Greubel, CEO, Metro AG. Please go ahead. Good morning. Guten morgen. Very warm welcome to our results call. Next to me is, as it used to be Christian Baier, who is the CFO of Metro, we will run you through our results of the last quarter. As always, I will guide you through the key messages, the key progresses that we actually did, later on, Christian will talk you through a bit more in detail, the financial results. Later on, we will have opportunity to do Q&A session, as announced, first in English, we also have the opportunity for the German-speaking journalists to switch to German and continue the conversation. Let's directly jump into the content with a summary of our sCore progress that we have achieved in the last quarter. Our growth, and it's good message, our growth momentum continues. In Q2, we were looking at 10% of growth. When you would adjust for portfolio and FX effects, that would even be 13%. We are growing in all of the channels. Our sort of heritage and most important one, stores, they grow mainly via the introduction or the acceleration of our Buy More, Pay Less strategy. The FSD is accelerating. We just have announced that we bought a FSD specialist in Sweden, Johan i Hallen & Bergfalk. On the digital side, we are also growing. We are adding new countries for our DISH POS rollout, and we are adding new subscribers in even a faster pace. We have, and that's basically fresh from the press yesterday, closed the Indian sale. That will do positive things to our EPS expectation. Christian is gonna refer later on to that one. That's our summary. Overall, we are looking at a good quarter two. Let's go into the details. Before we do that, let's look or let's step maybe back, and let's look at the opportunity that we are having. Because apparently there's a lot of negativism in the world, and we always need to remind ourselves that we are in a growing, big market. It's a trillion market in the countries we are operating in, and it's a growing market, the opportunity is out there. The market is characterized by a high degree of fragmentation. We are the biggest wholesale company in our countries in Europe or in our countries, and usually being number one or number two in every single market. In no market, the top three players are having more than 30% market share. That means our markets are big, and they are characterized by a high degree of fragmentation. We, as being the market leader, are having the right, so to say, to consolidate that market, and that's where we are working on every day and night, and the opportunity is out there. Despite all negativism, our low market share and still being number one indicates that there is great opportunity, and it keeps to be great opportunity out there. Our customers are getting more and more optimistic. If you refer to the German Hospitality Association, DEHOGA, and also out of the press, there are more positive signs coming. After, you know, the shock of COVID, our core customer group, the restaurants are looking way more positive now in the future. We're also having finally a improving sentiment also out there, which is great to fulfill our sCore growth targets. How did we progress? How did we do actually in the second quarter? As you can see on the left-hand side, which is showing the growth against the last year, that we, you're seeing the 10% as just mentioned, and we have overcome the effects of the cyberattack of the Q1. That's one message, right? This plus seven was very much infected by cyberattack, but then we have fulfilled now our plans. We have come back to two-digit growth and this growth is on top of significant growth in the previous year, as you can say, where we have, you know, all the effects of the gastronomy opening up again. Now on top of that, we are adding additional significant growth. The good news is our customers, they have, so to say, in parentheses, forgiven us for the shortcomings and for the problems we had during the cyberattack and now continuing to grow together with us. That's good. On the adjusted EBITDA, and that's very much in line with our plan, we are looking at EUR 111 million EBITDA in absolute terms. That's slightly lower than last year, but there is technical effects coming out of the other income coming out of the last year. There's nothing that is against the plan there in this very moment. We are satisfied with this second quarter. It's not only by chance, it's also by work. You see the key strategic-KPIs of our sCore strategy, and you see all of them developing in the right direction. Sales force is very important for us because we are moving towards multi-channel. We are moving towards proactive sales, so we have added almost a 500 FTE net on top of our already growing sales force. Last year, we have added 800, and we are very comfortable with that we are gonna achieve our 2030 target in doubling the sales force. Strategic customer sales share, you see it's going up 71% in the first half of the year. FSD sales share at 22%. Here we're looking at records. Digital sales share is going up. Of course, there is still way to go, especially on digital sales share. With all the efforts we are doing and the focus we are having, we are progressing in the right direction, and we are very confident that this is helping to achieve our targets in 2030. Own brand, very, very important in this very moment. You see a 21%. If you look a little bit closer, even Q1 or some intra-year dynamics, you see that the trend is still in our favor, that our own brands are very well accepted. They are generating great value to our customers. We are well on track to achieve the 35%, maybe even a little bit faster when the trend continues like that. Depots, so the investments in our network, we see that we are adding new depots and new out-of-stock locations, eight of them, half depots, half out-of-stock locations. We are investing what we have actually said into the capacity of our network to fulfill then at the end our FSD and delivery targets. We are doing in terms of implementation exactly what we have planned to do, exactly what we have announced to do in Q2 as well. Let's look how the growth actually is composed. Let's look how the individual channels are growing. To remind everyone, this is our key strategic visual here, the three circles. We want to grow in all of the channels, the store, the FSD, the delivery business, and the digital. The good news is every channel, every activity is contributing. You see the growth of the stores is 7%. The growth of the FSD, I mentioned the sales record, was 21%. METRO MARKETS, our gastronomy marketplace is growing and also hospitality digital. Our DISH solutions for the digitalization of restaurants, they are also growing even higher than they've grown last year. Why are we doing that besides adding great value to our customers? We know when customers are using more than one channel, we will get an over proportional high sales. You can imagine a customer use all the three channels is roughly 10x more productive, 10x more sales than if he would only use this one channel, that's why we are pushing so much. We have to have the sales force ready to really sell that to our customers, and we are exactly ramping that sales force up to disseminate the message and the offerings that we do have to our customers. That's sort of the background to remind everyone, especially the ones that have not listened to me so often maybe in the past. Let's go a little bit more in details and run through the different and individual channels. Let's start with stores, the heritage and the future of this company. We are growing 7% in sales in this stores. It's mainly driven by our BMPL strategy that we are rolling out. BMPL stands for Buy More, Pay Less. That is basically the logic. If you are buying a pack, you're getting a discount. It gives great value to our customers because they have opportunity for products they anyway need to bypass basically the inflation. For us, it's great opportunity because at the end, you know, when we are selling more boxes, we can put more boxes on pallets. We will have higher rotation, and we will add to productivity. On the same hand, we kill complexity. The complexity often is associated to complicated assortment and to promotion, and you see that we are also basically in parallel reducing our promo share while we are implementing the BMPL sales share. We are now looking at 48,000 articles. We are completely in line with our, with our target. The sales share rose from 17% in the last to 23% now in the quarter two, which is actually great. Every fourth euro we are looking at in the stores is here coming then indeed already from this BMPL. Good. Let's go for a bit more pictures and examples. First, you see Romania. They are the front runners. They are the front runners in wholesale transformation in the store and they're the front runners in BMPL. They start a couple of years back. They are serving basically as the reference for the rest of the group. You see how it looked before. Displays, promo, like supermarket, right? Now you see how it looks then when you are really a wholesale company. You see the Buy More, Pay Less fully in action. You see products on pallet, you see simple, clear assortment, you see great customer value. In Romania, we are already looking at 80% of the sales share and the productivity there is great. The guys are continuing to grow over the last years, the productivity is upon the highest in the entire company. That's just one example. That's the best practice. We always say we wanna make this best practice to common practice. Now, how we are doing that, you see in the next picture. Let's travel to Italy. You see Italy before and after. We just started actually in Italy, even in a relatively short period of time, we can also duplicate and replicate what we have learned. Italy is just one example. We're doing that in all the countries that you are seeing. We added here 1,000 articles, the BMPL share already moved 7 percentage points up to 20% now in a very short period of time. Of course, we applying the learnings that we did in Romania to all the other countries now. It's not only Italy, it's Germany, it's Spain. You go in any random Metro cash and carry store, you will see that in local language, „Il multiplo conviene sempre." It's always sort of adapted to local language. You will see that everywhere now rolled out, towards, you know, our North Star in wholesale, cash and carry, which is Romania. Let's go to the next one. Let's go FSD. Let's talk FSD. Let's talk delivery. You see sales share record 24%. To remind everyone, majority of the HORECA market is delivery. That's our biggest growth in absolute terms, opportunity. We are doing actually good because we are continuously breaking our own set records every single quarter so far. 21% is the sales going up. We just, we are very proud that we can announce that we acquired the company Johan i Hallen & Bergfalk, a specialist for HORECA supplier of meat and fish. For us, it's a perfect match to not only generate significant synergies, but also to have such a strong and well-established player in the Nordics now in our network. We can learn a lot from them. We can also bring synergies to the Scandinavian market. Of course, for us it's quite a logical white spot that we wanna move forward to. We are really very happy that Metro went north. It's closed, and it's already now in the group, which is a good sign. Let's talk digital. I will talk about two things, METRO Markets first and DISH later on. METRO MARKETS, 47% sales. To remind everybody, why are we doing this? We establishing the biggest gastronomy marketplace in Europe, and we are already the biggest gastronomy marketplace in Europe so far, and we continue to grow that one. It's a true marketplace with 800,000 products and 1,600 partners. It's not only Metro that is selling, it's not a fake marketplace. It's a real marketplace. It's continuing numbers of partners, product, services to our customers. For us, it is an extended shelf that's mainly non-food, and it helps a customer whenever they don't find an article or they want to get it delivered fast without going to a store. METRO Market is there and can actually deliver and generate that value. We know if people are shopping at METRO Markets, at the end, they are coming more often to the store. They are buying at the end, more tomatoes, bananas, meat, and fish. That's the correlation. That's why we're also pushing that. We said we wanna add two countries per year in the future. We said that in 2021. We added two in 2022. We are adding two in 2023, and we will add two again in 2024. We are walking the talk. We are having here a say do ratio of 100%. When we look to the other key DISH or the key digital initiative DISH, this is to remind everyone, this is the digital ecosystem for gastronomy. All the processes we aim to digitalize, to help digitalizing at the side of our customers. We are looking at 17,000 new subscribers. Overall, this is more than a quarter of a million gastronomy customers that are our customers that are enrolled to DISH. We have now even increased the number of new subscribers compared to last year. The speed of sales, the speed of dissemination is going up. We have acquired, and you might know that, the leading POS company Eijsink with their technology booq, and now we are about to actually roll that out. You also can expect one to two, maybe three countries a year. Far, we kicked it off in France. The entire logic is to really sell it throughout the entire Metro network. Far, it was very much limited to the Netherlands. We started in France. We launched it now in Germany. We will do it next in Italy. You can also here expect two to three countries then in the future coming up. The overall idea besides generating great value, because it's a great cashier system for our customers, is then on the longer run that we would like to link the cashier with the ordering system because we know how to decipher a recipe into an article list. If you can imagine, or you could imagine at the end, that would be the final state that someone in the future, the cashier is at the end doing the article order at Metro that we then at the end ship. That would be the overall strategic rationale on top of the generation of value for our customers. Those were the progresses for the individual channels and activities. Let me then come to the end and finish my presentation. We are well on track. We also would confirm our updated midterm sales, EBITDA ambition. We are doing what we have told. We are delivering what we have said. We are very motivated to continue to invest in the growth and transform the company. Having said that, I would like now hand over to Christian to run us a little bit more in detail to our financials of the first half of the year and the Q2. Thank you very much. Yeah, thank you, Stefan, and good morning, everyone. Let me continue with the Q2 financial performance. Generally, and as Stefan has outlined, Q2 is exactly in line with our plan. That means the growth momentum really continues, but we also do see a couple of elements that show how intense the transformation is and that it's already successfully on the way. Let's start with the high level KPIs, where on the sales side we have achieved 10% growth, which is partially driven by inflation, but very strongly also by the good progress on our strategy execution. There is strong growth through all parts of our multi-channel model. On the adjusted EBITDA, this developed in general also in line with expectations. The top line elements that we are driving forward are also paying off there. The slight decline that we see to EUR 111 million in Q2 is mainly driven by the expiry of post-transaction effects of the last year and also partially about the expected cost inflation that we also did anticipate. In the other financial result, this increased to EUR 28 million versus - EUR 98 million in the prior year, which was due to non-cash reversible FX effects, mainly from the Russian currency, and it's the same effect that we have talked about in Q1. This positive effect also translated into the EPS, which is increasing by EUR 0.49 versus prior year and is coming out at minus EUR 0.29. The negative free cash flow of EUR 837 million is mainly due to seasonality. In addition to that, there is some effect from the intense transformation and our progress in sCore, mainly in the net working capital. The net debt came in at roughly EUR 3.8 billion, which is fairly stable against the prior year. Let's move on and look into some of more details, starting with the segments. The overall group performance is really built on those strong regions and segments, especially Germany West and East have performed well. Also the other segment contributed to the growth on the top line perspective. There is no lasting impact from the cyberattack. All segments show growth acceleration versus Q1. The decrease in adjusted EBITDA is mainly driven by the segment Others, where we have the post-transaction effects in the prior year. Overall, we are seeing some start of cost inflation impacts and energy, but all of that has also been anticipated and therefore fully in line with our perspectives. If we go more specifically into the various regions, starting with Germany, reported sales increased by 9%, which is supported by significant growth on the HoReCa side, and the reported sales reached EUR 1.1 billion. The adjusted EBITDA decrease of EUR 6 million was caused by the expected cost inflation. In the segment West, reported sales increased also by 9% and reached EUR 2.8 billion. Especially HoReCa sales developed very well, and it proves that the sCore implementation is paying off already in a strong manner. Almost all countries contributed to this with double-digit growth, especially again, the strong countries, France, Spain, Portugal and Italy, very much focused on hospitality, contributed heavily to the sales growth. Adjusted for the sale of Belgium in the previous year, the segment West grew at about even 17%. Moreover, our FSD companies, Pro à Pro France, Pro à Pro Spain, and Aviludo in Portugal also reached double-digit sales growth. The adjusted EBITDA in that segment increased to EUR 59 million and thereby followed the sales growth development. In Russia, sales in local currency decreased by 14% due to reduced consumer spending and also due to the stock-up purchases that were happening in the prior year. Due to the positive currency development, reported sales are almost stable and reached EUR 0.6 billion. The adjusted EBITDA at constant currency decreased to EUR 20 million. This is a reduction in currency-adjusted terms by about EUR 22 million against the prior year, which again also included those stock-up purchases and the decline being mainly attributable to the tougher macroeconomic environment. In the segment East, sales in local currency increased significantly by 21%, where almost all countries contributed to that sales growth, mostly through positive HoReCa development. Turkey achieved sales growth strongly supported by inflation, and very remarkably, the Ukrainian business performed for the first time after the Russian invasion positively with +3% sales growth versus prior year. The adjusted EBITDA increased to EUR 50 million and is up by EUR 8 million at constant currency, which is also in line and following the sales growth. In the segment Others, reported sales grew by EUR 26 million- EUR 47 million. This sales growth is mainly due to the expected growth in our digital business, with METRO MARKETS now being present in the countries that Stefan mentioned before and is strongly expanding, as well as the rollout of our POS provider to France and Germany and also our kitchen equipment company, Günther Group, contributing to these sales improvements. The adjusted EBITDA in the segment Others decreased to minus EUR 10 million due to the expiry of post-transaction effects and further investments into digitalization. How does this performance now translate into our market share development? You know this chart from prior quarters. We are very confident and proud to see that this is developing in a strong manner, where since COVID, Metro's development continually remains above the market, and in Q2, we see an even increasing gap in some of those key markets. This positive trend is driven by Metro's strong performance on both store and the delivery channels, and certainly also supported by our activities on the digital side, which is really complementing our multi-channel offering. The trend is further confirming our effectiveness of our core strategy and that this is paying off despite there is a consumer spending that is actually getting much more attractive at the moment from an out-of-home consumption perspective, which remains higher than some of the market participants were expecting. Steffen was already commenting on the positive development in the sentiment that we see in that sector. We now go to the P&L perspective. Summing up the solid sales momentum that we have seen and the successful implementation of our sCore strategy, we have achieved those 10% sales growth, reaching EUR 6.9 billion sales despite a strong PY development. All channels have contributed to that. The stores have grown by 7%, FSD sales have increased by 21% and METRO MARKETS by 47%. All strong developments. The sales development is generally also reflected in the earnings. Adjusted EBITDA is also impacted by the expected cost inflation and the aforementioned post-transaction with effects that lead to an overall reduction of adjusted EBITDA in line with our expectations. If we move further down the P&L, we see that the depreciation is significantly below the PY level, which was impacted by something over EUR 100 million on goodwill and asset impairments in the prior year, mostly on Russia and Ukraine. Therefore, depreciation is normalizing again. The other financial result, as mentioned before, benefited from the non-cash reversible FX effects from the Russian currency, again, as the same effect in Q1 that we have seen. On the taxes side, we continue to calculate basically the taxes across the year and then allocate those to the individual quarters. That's fully in line and therefore there is a very small tax expense that we are recording in this quarter, as we have done in Q2 already in the last year. Generally, the Q2 earnings per share have the lowest weight due to seasonal factors. Still it's good to see that they adjusted for the non-cash FX effect in financial results. EPS would have been around minus EUR 0.35 and therefore has developed quite well. On the overall view, on the H1, we are at EUR 1.14 in EPS, which also includes the real estate gain from the campus project. Let's move to the free cash flow perspective, where we're starting with the operating cash flow, where especially net working capital seasonality has led to a negative operating cash flow of EUR 583 million. That net working capital development includes the temporarily higher inventory level, which is our key focus on the availability side in sCore in order to really drive and support the sales momentum. We are taking that positively and proactively into account. Over time, net working capital will normalize also to historical, very attractive levels, and we are now reigniting the growth momentum by having that strong availability. On the investment and divestment side, these are all in line with sCore, and the improvement in the other results is mainly due to some war-related effects in the prior year. If we summarize then, the free cash flow in Q2 reached -EUR 837 million and resulted in a net debt development, which is increasing compared to Q1 2022-2023, but stays below the levels of Q2 2021-2022, where net debt was at EUR 3.9 billion. It is important to note that we have limited remaining net financial debt. We have already repaid in March our EUR 500 million bond, as we have envisaged not refinancing that bond. There are no further bond maturities in the short term. We have been happy to see that also S&P has confirmed and recognized our strong financial position, lifting basically the negative outlook, putting us to stable due to the strong sales growth and the positive debt metrics. Overall, we continue to be well set up to fund the sCore growth strategy and well protected against rising interest rates. How are we when we look forward now positioned in the outlook? We have guided that we expect 5%-10% sales growth. In the guidance view, we have reached around 11% in H1. We see higher inflation rates, especially in the East segment. That is also translated into higher sales growth expectations of this segment. Also on a group level, we expect sales development to be very strong and in the upper half of the outlook range. The decline in adjusted EBITDA in Q2 also matches our full year expectation, and we see ourselves positioned broadly in the middle of our guidance range. In Q1, we have announced the strategic decision to exit the Indian market and divest Metro India to Reliance Retail Ventures Limited. As Steffen has mentioned, this transaction has also closed and that happened yesterday. Just to remind you of a couple of facts, what business we have disposed there. The transaction includes the operations of our 31 Indian Metro stores, representing above EUR 900 million of sales and a low double-digit EBITDA in million EUR, as well as also the real estate portfolio of 6 stores that we did have there. The transaction values Metro India at an EV sales multiple of 0.6x and implies an equity value of approximately EUR 300 million. This considers lease liabilities and other related liabilities of EUR 150 million. We have realized a transaction EBITDA gain of around EUR 150 million and a corresponding EPS gain of approximately EUR 0.3. The proceeds will further reduce our net debt by around EUR 400 million, including EUR 150 million that were already recognized in Q1. The gain will be booked in our Q3 and is also then reflected in our EPS expectations for the year. That brings us actually to looking into our expectations for the year, where we are upgrading a couple of points, but also confirming most of our prior expectations. First of all, we confirm our expectation on sales growth by further driving market share gains with our core execution. This leads to attractive productivity gains, but is countered by cost inflation and leads to a temporarily declining adjusted EBITDA. The expected EUR 200 million real estate gains have already been fully booked in Q1 and on the D&A and net financial results without the non-cash FX effect and taxes, they are under normal development. If we look at EPS, we increase our expectation due to the described non-cash FX support in the net financial result, as well as the benefit from the transaction in India. It's important to state there is no change to the underlying EPS expectation. In sum, we now expect an EPS in the range of EUR 1.20-EUR 1.60, this is based on the again, unchanged expectation from operations and the campus transactions of EUR 0.40-EUR 0.80 that we have mentioned in prior quarters. It is also composed of the roughly EUR 0.3 EPS gain from the sale of India and from the about EUR 0.5 EPS support from the FX bookings in the net financial result. This assumes a fairly unchanged ruble level at the end of this fiscal year compared to the end of March. In the event of material deviations there, a certain non-cash volatility remains. We continue to expect cash investments of above EUR 600 million for the full year, which is fully in line with our expectations and is again supporting the growth momentum in our sCore strategy. We now expect on the net debt side an improvement of around EUR 0.3 billion, and this is taking into account the sale of Metro India and the FSD acquisition of JHB in the Nordics. From our side, this concludes our presentation today, and Stefan and I are certainly now very happy to take your questions. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin our Q&A session. Please note that you can submit your questions in English either via call or in writing via the webcast link. In the Q&A session, we will first handle questions via call, followed by questions via webcast. At the end, we will provide a German slot additionally. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star followed by two. If you're using speaker equipment today, please lift the handset before making your selections. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. Our first question is from the line of Volker Bosse from Baader Bank. Please go ahead. Hello, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Volker Bosse, Baader Bank. Congratulations on the great top line momentum. I would have three questions. First is on your statements regarding the whole hospitality industry that you see a positive sales trend development. How do you explain this positive trend given that consumers should see negative salary effects in real terms, given the overall price inflation, which increases the cost of living for all of us across Europe, I would say? A second question would be on the termination of the Real contract, which had a negative earnings effect. When does the contract run out exactly? What is the full year impact on Metro's earnings on an EBITDA level, which will occur out of this termination? Last but not least, a third one is on your partnership with the Czech online pure player, Košík. I think you also acquire a 25% stake in that company. I know that it's a tiny business. However, could you provide more details on the deal? Is your plan to position yourself as a food service provider for more online retailers in more markets? How do you look at this business and this development? What is the last contribution on Metro's P&L out of that equity stake? I think it's a still loss-making business, but just my assumption. Thank you. Thank you very much. Let me take your sub-question one and three, and Christian is gonna answer number two. Let's start with your question around the overall customer sentiment in the HoReCa business, the overall trend. I would have three comments why I'm still looking relatively optimistic to the future and maybe different than other wholesale or retail companies are doing. Number one, the market has a different structure because in most of the countries, the 40% top income households occur for 65%-80% of the gastronomy market. Since those are more well, you know, more net worth or higher net worth individuals, they are a bit more protected by those inflation and the necessity to save actually. They're still going out. It's a different market, number one. Number two, still we see that people like to go out and don't cut so much on their spendings in your enjoying themselves, mainly after COVID, going on vacation and so on and so forth. Even if you look at the vacation numbers, it's quite still optimistic and the restaurant, you best, you better get a reservation. In this moment, we still see a trend of people going there. There is more lack of personnel than of customers in this very moment. Mm-hmm. Which is quite, I mean, which is quite different to when you look at polls, but that's what our people said. Those are the main effects I would say actually. Then on Košík, I think it's a bit too early to tell, to be honest, right? Because we just started that, we are establishing now the operation. So here I would say it's all going like planned. Since, as you mentioned, it's tiny in this very moment, we are still, you know, experimenting and trying to scale that actually up. It's more in a, I would say, experimental status now in this very beginning, and it's too early to say if that is gonna be ever gonna be strategic. It has an option value, and that's what we are in the moment exploring. Mm-hmm. Volker, on your question with respect to the post-transaction effects, very specifically on that Real situation that runs out in Q3 of this quarter. There is still some effects in the Q3. For us, it's more important to basically state the overall perspective on the full year that we would expect from post-transactions. It's broadly around - EUR 50 million, which is completely included in our guidance perspective. This is post-transactions from Real, post-transactions from China, and some other positive effects. Roughly -EUR 50 million in there, fully included in the guidance. Very positively and prominently, we need to say, with our sCore progress on the top line on EBITDA development of that. Over time, we now start to overcompensate those effects, which is exactly driving forward sCore. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Andrew Gwynn from BNP Paribas Exane. Please go ahead. Hey, good morning, team. Yeah, two quick questions if I can. Firstly, just on the guidance, appreciate you saying in the middle of the range, but why not narrow the range at this stage? It's obviously pretty wide and by implication, very wide for the second half. The second question, obviously the lower end of that range flagging a significant cost inflation being the drag on earnings, yet you're taking market share. Is there a conscious decision here not to pass through some of that food inflation or some of those sort of operational cost inflation lines to the consumer? Thank you very much. Thank you, Andrew, for your view. I think we are strongly progressing basically on top line and on the EBITDA side. We at the moment, given that there is still some volatility in the market, feel very confident with the ranges that we have given. We have more specified this now to the upper end of the range with respect to the sales development. On EBITDA, as mentioned, we see us broadly in the middle of what we do have there in expectations. Your view on, or your question with respect to cost inflation, and also passing this on to our consumers. sCore is a strategy that is very, very much based on volume increases, thereby gross margin increases and also the productivity gains that are coming with it. As we see in the market development, we are taking market share from competition. Therefore, yes, there is also a conscious decision in there in order to be very price attractive to get our customers into buying higher volumes. This is turning out to be positive already. We see significant top line development, significant volume increases also in comparable products. We do then over time see also the increasing stock turn, which is coming through, and also the productivity gains. It is a conscious decision in most parts to drive this forward in the way we do, and thereby achieving our guidance in the very solid levels of the corridor. That's very clear. Just on that sort of price investment, if you will, is that something you would anticipate going forward? I'm thinking about next financial year, sorry. Well, we will continue to be extremely price attractive for our customers. If you look into countries within the portfolio that have driven that strategy already earlier, like our Romanian business, they continue every single year to be one step further in the price attractiveness because this is also building the price perception in customers and then really driving the volumes. The positive side, on the other hand, is that the productivity improvements that they continue doing is then continuing to progress. Also price ambition always is certainly in the context of competition. There we will make sure to be very attractive to our customers and have a financial profile solid for us. Okay, very clear. Thank you very much. Have a good day. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question in English, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad or submit your questions in writing directly on the webcast. The next question is from the line of Christian Bruns from Montega AG. Please go ahead. Yes, hello. My question is, on the Buy More, Pay Less scheme. Should the scheme replace promotions entirely, or will you still have promotions also in the years coming forward? At which, or will promotions come down? Which effects do you expect in terms of gross margin from that? Another question is on food inflation. We see strong food inflation currently, so how do you measure your market share gains in the light of this food inflation? Are there other effects compensating food inflation for the customers buying more own brands or lower priced products in your assortment? Thank you very much, Christian. Let me take the first part of your question regarding our BMPL rollout strategy and if it's gonna replace existing promo. The answer is yes, but not fully. That's the short answer. We will still need, also, you know, hospitality sector is reacting here and there to promo. When we think mainly about fresh and ultra-fresh products, promos still play a role here, especially because there is a big seasonality in there. When we talk about the classical dry and non-food assortment, we try to move down promo to the outmost extent and maybe only have it on a seasonal view. For the classical key value or key articles, we try to replace promo per se by Buy More, Pay Less over time, and it requires some time. Okay. Christian, with respect to your questions on food inflation, food inflation is still reasonably high, but it's coming down over the last couple of months. We see that developing. I think from a market perspective, obviously that is competition neutral in the end. Referring to that page that we've shown earlier with respect to our market outperformance, the market overall in those four markets that we have shown is broadly back in nominal terms to the levels of pre-COVID. For Metro, we are in nominal terms, as shown on those charts, significantly ahead of that. It's really apples to apples comparison that we are gaining market share in that perspective. With your view or question on what are consumers doing with those elements of inflation, yes, we see, Stefan has elaborated on that we are strongly progressing on our own brand, which has always been attractive. Now there is an additional argument being added by inflation for our customers really going stronger on that, and it creates a great loyalty also down the road when inflation is coming down. They realize that our own brand products are really very, very solid for their professional requirements. Another perspective certainly is, yes, there is next to own brand, there are elements of customers basically replacing potentially the one or the other more expensive product, like on meat, going from beef to pork to chicken in a certain way. Also we are driving certainly with Buy More, Pay Less pricing. We are driving more volume and with slightly lower prices, at least from an inflation-adjusted perspective. There is some movement in there, but it's also proactively driven by our sCore strategy and our volume drive that we are on. Okay. Thank you. There are no further telephone questions at this time, and we will now switch over to the written questions from the webcast. If you would like to ask a German question afterwards, you can now register by pressing star and 1 on your telephone. We have two English questions in the webcast from journalists. The first is from Stephen Wynne-Jones from European Supermarket Magazine. The question is, "Growth is up in Ukraine in the quarter. Is this sales growth from a reduced network? Last year, you indicated that some Ukraine sites had been lost due to the war. Have those sites been regained? What are your expectations for the rest of the year in Ukraine?" Christian, would you take this? Yeah, happy to take. In Q2, we have grown sales by 3%. Overall, there are tw0 stores that are closed. At the end of last year's Q2, 5 stores were closed. Yeah, given that we all remember the unfortunate development in that Q2, there certainly were in the last year, two full months of full operation and one month of those five stores basically being there. It's always very remarkable to see the team in Ukraine performing and also continuously reopening stores and the volumes as well as the top line and EBITDA development is a very strong one. We are confident that this bar any external effect is continuing in a strong and positive manner. Okay, thanks. There is a second question from Ulrike Dauer from Dow Jones Newswires. "Good morning. Is your country portfolio now where you want it to be after the sale of Metro India or are further market exits or entries in the pipeline? Thanks for that." Stefan? Yeah. Thank you very much, Mrs. Dauer. The, the, I would say, the country exits, this plan is now done, right? We are not planning any more country exits. Also for any other sort of said more M&A related things, we are constantly observing the market and of course, and this is also a general remark, we are always reviewing our portfolio to see if we are positioned right. So far there are no concrete plans in any direction. We are in the moment very happy with the portfolio. Ladies and gentlemen, we would now give journalists the additional opportunity to ask questions in German and would therefore switch to German language. Is there anyone who would like to ask a question in German? We have a question from Annette Claudia Müller from Lebensmittelzeitung. Please go ahead. Guten Morgen. Ja, ich habe eine Frage einmal zu Deutschland, und zwar haben Sie ja zweimal die Geschäftsführung umgebaut, also einmal den Deutschlandchef, jetzt den Einkaufschef. Die Frage ist für mich, was ist nun geplant? Wie sollen beide Umsatz und Ertrag verbessern oder das ganze Team? Welche Maßnahmen sind in Deutschland geplant? Dann noch mal das Thema Preise. Man sieht ja jetzt schon erste Preissenkungen im Markt. Erwarten Sie jetzt einen verstärkten Preiskampf auch im Großverbrauchergeschäft? Wie sind die Gespräche mit der Industrie derzeit? Vielen Dank. Vielen Dank für die Fragen. Erst mal, das war jetzt, ich würde jetzt nicht sagen, das waren zwei Umbauten der Geschäftsführung. Es war eine. Wir fühlen uns jetzt sozusagen mit dem Managementteam sehr wohl. Den Auftrag, den diese neu komponierte Geschäftsführung, die ja immer noch aus drei existierenden Geschäftsführungen und jetzt zwei neuen besteht, ist der genau gleiche wie überall anders auch. Wir implementieren in Deutschland sCore genauso wie wir das woanders auch machen. Wir pushen das digitale Geschäft, wir bringen FSD nach vorne und wir transformieren die Stores mit BMPL und Großhandel. Das machen wir überall genau gleich. Genau das ist der Auftrag, den jetzt die neu komponierte Geschäftsleitung sehr konsistent mit den anderen Ländern auch hat. Preise haben Sie angesprochen, Preiskampf und wie dann sozusagen die Industrie darauf reagiert. Im Preiskampf sind wir eh immer als Großverbraucher, als Großhändler, weil wir ja am Ende vom Tag 35% der Kosten von unseren professionellen Kunden darstellen. Jeder Punkt Preis, den wir am Ende vom Tag daneben liegen, den wird man direkt in der Loyalität der Kunden und in deren Profitabilität sehen, sodass es für uns, glaube ich, eine sehr geübte Praxis ist, mit Preisen sehr eng und nah und hart am Wind zu segeln, weil wir am Ende vom Tag natürlich die Profitabilität unserer Kunden damit beeinflussen. Das ist jetzt keine Neuerung. Wir werden natürlich nur mit dem ganzen BMPL-Thema da einfach noch mal stärker am Ende vom Tag unsere Positionierung schärfen, um einfach auch Marktanteile zu gewinnen. Natürlich geht das alles immer, dritte Frage, im Einklang mit unseren Lieferanten. Das ist nicht notwendigerweise die Industrie. Sie haben die Eigenmarkenanteile gesehen. Da haben wir natürlich strategische Kooperationen auch mit vielen, sozusagen Own Brand Producern. Und von daher müssen wir mit den Leuten, reden. Wir sind da noch ein Stück weg von dem klassischen Verhandlungsgebaren, weil wir auch, nicht unbedingt, diese ganzen Delisting und Auslisten, als professioneller Großhändler von Artikeln machen können und auch wollen, weil am Ende vom Tag unsere Kunden ja zu uns zum Arbeiten kommen und wenn dann Produkte nicht verfügbar sind, ist das für die eine Katastrophe, die im Menü stehen. Deswegen haben wir da noch eine andere Athletik, sind aber natürlich da eng dran, jegliche Form von Preissteigerungen, die ungerechtfertigt wären, zu vermeiden. Das sind die drei Komponenten Ihrer Frage, glaube ich. Ja, danke schön. There are no further questions at this time. I hand back to Dr. Steffen Greubel for closing comments. Deutsch or English now? I don't know exactly. I will say in two languages. Thank you very much for participating. I hope I see you and hear you again next time.