Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. On behalf of BASF, I would like to welcome you to our conference call on the second quarter 2025 results. Today's presentation is being recorded. All participants will be in listen-only mode throughout. The presentation will be followed by a question-and-answer session. Today's presentation contains forward-looking statements. These statements are based on current estimates and projections of the Board of Executive Directors and currently available information. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of the future developments and results outlined therein. These are dependent on a number of factors. They involve various risks and uncertainties, and they are based on assumptions that may not prove to be accurate. BASF does not assume any obligation to update the forward-looking statements contained in this presentation above and beyond the legal requirements. With me on the call today are CEO Markus Kamieth and CFO Dirk Elvermann. Please be aware that we have already posted the speech on our website at basf.com/ Q2 2025. Now, I would like to hand over to Markus. Yeah, good morning, everyone. Welcome to our conference call here on Q2 and H1 results 2025. As you are aware, we pre-released already on July 11th due to the necessary adjustment of our full-year guidance. Today, we will provide you with more details on our performance and the rationale for the revised outlook. BASF generated EBITDA before special items of around EUR 1.8 billion in the second quarter of 2025. The Agricultural Solutions segment considerably increased earnings, while the Surface Technologies and Nutrition & Care segments achieved slightly higher earnings. In the upstream businesses, margin continued to remain under pressure due to the high product availability in the market. Let's start with a closer look at the sales performance of BASF Group. Overall, sales were almost at the prior year quarter level thanks to volume growth. Volumes grew particularly strong in Agricultural Solutions and in Surface Technologies. Prices declined in four out of our six segments, particularly in the Chemical segment. The exceptions that managed to achieve price increases were Surface Technologies and Nutrition & Care. Contrary to the first quarter of 2025, currency effects in the second quarter dampened sales in all segments and were mainly caused by the significant depreciation of the U.S. dollar. Reflecting this underlying sales development, EBITDA before special items came in at EUR 1.8 billion compared with EUR 2.0 billion in the prior year quarter. Here is a snapshot of how the markets and our segments' volumes and specific margins have developed in Q2. In general, the business environment in our upstream businesses was very challenging. Compared with the second quarter of previous years, we generated significantly lower EBITDA before special items in the upstream divisions in Q2 2025. This can be attributed to the high level of uncertainty and cautiousness of our customers in most markets globally. Let me highlight some segment-specific aspects. As mentioned, the market environment for base chemicals remained difficult. Nonetheless, volumes in our Chemical segment were almost stable. Specific margins declined in both divisions, particularly in Petrochemicals. In an overall tough market environment, the Material segment showed robust volumes and earnings performance. I will touch on the standalone businesses only briefly as we have more detailed slides to follow. According to the latest data, global light vehicle production increased by 2.6% in the second quarter compared with the prior year quarter, mainly on account of production growth in China. In this environment, the Surface Technologies segment recorded robust volume growth and outperformed the automotive market. Specific margins in these segments were almost flat. In Agricultural Solutions, we achieved strong volume growth and were able to considerably increase specific margins. Now, let's look at the EBITDA before special items by segment. Considerable earnings growth in Agricultural Solutions and slight growth in Surface Technologies and Nutrition & Care partially offset lower earnings in the remaining segments. Earnings in Agricultural Solutions increased across all regions, particularly in North America, followed by South America and Europe. In the Surface Technologies segment, the main earnings driver was the higher contribution from the Environmental Catalysts and Metal Solutions division, which added to a continued strong performance by Coatings. In the Nutrition & Care segment, EBITDA before special items increased thanks to the improved earnings in the Nutrition and Health division. Here, earnings were supported by a low double-digit million EUR insurance payment related to the fire at the isophytol plant at the Ludwigshafen site. In the meantime, our production plans for vitamin A and E, as well as for aroma ingredients in Ludwigshafen, have restarted and are ramping up as expected. Force majeure for most products has been lifted. This will support volume growth in the Nutrition and Health division as of the second half of 2025. By contrast, earnings declined, particularly in the Chemicals segment, because of the still unfavorable supply and demand situation for base chemicals. In addition, startup costs related to our new Verbund site in South China burdened earnings by around EUR 70 million in the second quarter of 2025. These startup costs will ramp up considerably during the next quarters to total around EUR 400 million in the full year 2025. Lower earnings in the Industrial Solutions and Materials segments contributed to the overall decline in earnings at group level. Compared with the second quarter 2024, EBITDA before special items were considerably weaker and turned negative, mainly because of the reversal of bonus provisions in proportion to earnings in the prior year quarter. In BASF's new remuneration system, the influence of group ROSI has been reduced, while EBITDA before special items, cash flows, and non-financial targets are gaining in importance. In the following, I will provide some additional color on the strong performance of the Agricultural Solutions and Surface Technologies segments. Compared with the prior year quarter, Agricultural Solutions achieved remarkable volume growth of 21%. Volumes rose in all indications and sectors except for seed treatment. The absolute volume increase was most pronounced in herbicides. Compared with Q2 2024, segment earnings improved by EUR 282 million to EUR 417 million. On a half-year basis, earnings rose by a remarkable 8% to EUR 1.6 billion, resulting in a strong EBITDA margin before special items of 30%. As forecasted in February, we continue to expect a slight increase in earnings for the Agricultural Solutions segment for the full year 2025. Now, let's move on to the strong performance in Surface Technologies compared to the prior year quarter. In this segment, we achieved volume growth across all three divisions. Overall, volumes increased by 6.5%. Even when excluding volumes from precious and base metals, as shown on this slide. Compared with the second quarter 2024, EBITDA before special items in Surface Technologies rose by around 10% to EUR 350 million. All divisions contributed to this increase. The highest contribution came from Environmental Catalysts and Metal Solutions. Next, I will provide you a short update on our portfolio management. As announced at our Capital Markets Day in September 2024, our goal is to unlock the value of our standalone businesses. In February 2025, we agreed to sell our Decorative Paints business to Sherwin-Williams. The purchase price amounts to EUR 1.15 billion on a cash and debt-free basis. We are well on track to close the divestiture in the second half of 2025, pending approval from the relevant competition authority. As planned and previously communicated, we approached the market in Q2 2025 to explore strategic options for our coatings activities excluding the Decorative Paints business. These activities, which comprise Automotive OEM Coatings, Refinish Coatings, and Surface Treatment, generated sales of EUR 3.8 billion in 2024. We have received a considerable number of bids from private equity and strategic buyers. The process is well on track. In Agricultural Solutions, we are advancing as announced and are currently focusing on executing the legal separation and the implementation of a dedicated industry-specific ERP system. In parallel, we are preparing a potential listing of a minority share to start unlocking the value of Agricultural Solutions. This business has global scale, strong growth potential, and attractive cash flow characteristics. We remain committed to completing all internal preparations for a successful IPO by 2027. In summary, we are executing our portfolio management strategy as announced. With that, I will hand over to Dirk. Thanks, Markus. Good morning, everybody. Let's now take a closer look at the financial details of BASF Group for the first half of 2025. At EUR 4.4 billion, EBITDA before special items was slightly below the level of the first half of 2024. The adjusted EBITDA margin before special items remain almost stable at around 15%. EBITDA before special items reached EUR 2.5 billion compared with EUR 2.7 billion in the first half of 2024. Special charges were largely incurred for restructuring measures as well as for the sale of BASF's equity share in the Nordlicht 1 and 2 wind farms back to Vattenfall, which took place already in Q1 2025. Net income decreased to EUR 887 million. Compared with the first half of 2024, net income from shareholdings declined significantly, mainly due to negative contributions from Harbor Energy, which was burdened by negative tax effects in the U.K., and from Wintershall Dea. Cash flows from operating activities amounted to EUR 603 million, compared with EUR 1.4 billion in the first half of 2024. The decline was particularly driven by the lower net income and higher cash outflows from changes in working capital. Payments made for property, plant and equipment, and intangible assets decreased by EUR 554 million compared with the prior year first half of EUR 1.9 billion. The decline shows that we have passed the peak investment phase for our South China Verbund site. Free cash flow was EUR 1.3 billion in the first half of 2025. I will provide more details on the next slide. In the second quarter of 2025, cash flows from operating activities decreased by EUR 365 million. Changes in working capital led to a cash inflow of EUR 38 million compared with a cash inflow of EUR 710 million in the prior year quarter. The main reason was the change in trade accounts payable. Payments made for property, plant and equipment, and intangible assets decreased by EUR 428 million compared with the second quarter of 2024 to EUR 1.1 billion. Free cash flow increased and came in at EUR 533 million compared with EUR 471 million in Q2 2024. Now, let's focus on the measures we are taking to protect our balance sheet. The top priority in our capital allocation framework is to maintain BASF's financial strength. We are fully committed to our financial policy. We aim for a single A credit rating, which is best in class in the chemical industry. S&P recently confirmed our single A credit rating, which we also enjoy at Moody's and Fitch. Over the last three years, our financial debt and leverage ratio have increased. This was driven by lower earnings in a cyclical downturn and also by our considerable investments, mainly in South China. This mega project is on time and below budget. We have already entered the commissioning phase and will start up most of the plants as of the end of 2025. Our CapEx peaked in 2024, and we will bring it down below the level of depreciation as of 2026. At EUR 5 billion, payments made for property, plant and equipment, and intangible assets in 2025 are expected to be EUR 200 million lower than forecasted in February. Furthermore, we will partially use proceeds from divestitures to reduce our financial debt and to deleverage our balance sheet. We have also accelerated our cost-saving programs. We now expect to generate annual cost savings of EUR 1.6 billion by year-end 2025, EUR 100 million more than originally anticipated. Overall, we are well on track to achieve a targeted EUR 2.1 billion in annual cost savings by the end of 2026. Finally, we have a strict focus on further reducing inventories while remaining a reliable and trusted partner for our customers, also in challenging times. Now, I would like to touch on a topic that we address less frequently. To safeguard BASF's long-term competitiveness and operational resilience in Europe, we have established a very robust and flexible setup for procuring natural gas by concluding two cornerstone gas supply agreements. The first agreement with Equinor will start in October 2025. Equinor will supply us with up to 23 terawatt-hours of Norwegian natural gas annually for the next 10 years. This contract ensures long-term supply security, competitive terms, and a lower product carbon footprint due to Norway's efficient production and transport infrastructure. It covers a substantial share of BASF's European gas needs, particularly for our major sites in Germany and Belgium, and supports our transition strategy by securing cleaner fossil energy in the current transformation phase. The second agreement with Cheniere will start in mid-2026 and comprises several steps. BASF will receive up to circa 12 terawatt-hours of liquefied natural gas, short LNG, per year under a long-term contract through 2043. This agreement introduces strategic price diversification via Henry Hub indexing and gives us full control over an end-to-end LNG supply chain. It offers a critical hedge against European gas price volatility and complements our pipeline gas portfolio. These two agreements ensure long-term energy and feedstock security, high volume flexibility for demand-driven operations, diversification across geographies, pricing models, and delivery models, and a lower product carbon footprint for our products. Together, they form the backbone of our gas supply strategy, balancing reliability, cost efficiency, and sustainability. This results in clear competitive advantages for BASF in Europe. With that, back to you, Markus. Yeah, I will now comment on the outlook of BASF Group that we pre-released already on July 11. To account for the elevated macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainties, we are now providing ranges for our assumptions regarding GDP, global industrial production, and global chemical production in 2025, as shown on this slide. Most relevant for us is the continued high product availability in the chemical market, which is resulting in ongoing margin pressure, especially in the upstream businesses. Consequently, BASF expects earnings development to be weaker than previously forecasted and has adjusted its outlook for the full year 2025. We now anticipate EBITDA before special items to reach between EUR 7.3 billion and EUR 7.7 billion. For free cash flow, we continue to expect a figure of between EUR 0.4 billion a nd EUR 0.8 billion in 2025. We stick to our forecast due to lower expected payments for property, plant and equipment, and intangible assets, amongst other reasons. The forecast for CO2 emissions also remains unchanged. The content of this slide is familiar to you from our conference call in February. I would like to emphasize today that we are focusing on what we are focusing on in 2025: the execution of our value-enhancing portfolio measures, the successful startup of our new Verbund site in China, structural cost reduction, and the rollout of our winning culture. These are the things that are within our control, and we want to get them right, especially in view of the unsupportive economic environment. To conclude, I would like to briefly outline the decisions we recently took regarding the publication of our annual report and the format of our annual shareholders meeting. The audited BASF Report 2025 will again be published at the end of February, as you were accustomed to in the past. After successfully tackling the extended sustainability reporting requirements this year, the team is confident in its ability to accelerate the process. Furthermore, on the basis of the positive experience with this year's virtual annual shareholders meeting, the Board of Executive Directors of BASF SE has decided to annually alternate the format over the next four years. This decision was made to meet the expectations of our broad and diversified investor base. In 2026, we will therefore again organize an in-person meeting. With this, Dirk and I are glad to answer your questions. Ladies and gentlemen, we are now at the—sorry, ladies and gentlemen, we are now entering our Q&A session. If you wish to ask a question, please press star and then enter 11 on your telephone. For the best sound quality, we kindly ask you to be sure to unmute your phone and use your headset when asking your questions. Please limit your questions to only two at a time so that everybody has a chance to ask their questions. We will start with Alex Vigil from Santander, then have Christian Faitz, and then Tom Wrigglesworth. Now, Alex Vigil, Santander, please go ahead. Yes, thank you, Markus, Dirk, for taking my questions. One question about the outlook of 2025: you have significantly reduced the EBITDA guidance, but the free cash flow is unchanged. If you can bridge this gap between the lower EBITDA and maintaining the free cash flow unchanged, that is the first question. The second is, in general, about the European regulation. We have seen the German government and also the European Union with some proposals to support the chemical industry in Europe. If you can elaborate on that, what is the potential impact on your company? Thank you. Yeah, good morning, Alex, it's Dirk speaking. I start with your first question. Indeed, we are very confident to keep our free cash flow guidance in line. First, we will—and this came in the speech already—we will lower the CapEx again. We will save another EUR 200 million, I would say at least in CapEx for the year 2025. We have an ongoing focus on working capital management, and these two components together make us confident that we will reach our free cash flow guidance. Alex, Markus, your question on EU regulation and, let's say, how much support the intentions of the European Commission and maybe also the German government is giving the chemical industry is really difficult to answer in short terms because overall, we're getting a lot of positive intentions and signals, both through recent announcements on the European level, for example, the chemicals industry action plan that was announced, but also certainly from the new coalition agreement in Germany. I would say overall, the narrative is positive. It has some very positive intentions, and it's clear that both on European and German level, politicians have understood that. The The chemical industry will be key to securing industrial competitiveness of Europe. I would say the events over the weekend have shown how important it is to remain competitive and strong as a European Union with regards to industry. However, I will also say that, as always in these times of strong narrative changes and communications, actions will have to prove itself, and we are still waiting for implementation of many of these announcements. Too early to call it a tailwind yet, but certainly the signs are turning much more positive than they were 12 or 18 months ago. That's how I would summarize it. Okay. Okay, the next questions are from Christian Faitz, Kepler Cheuvreux. We will then have Tom Wrigglesworth and then Georgina Fraser. Now, Christian Faitz, please go ahead. Yes, good morning, Markus, Dirk, Stefanie, and team. Two questions, please. One observation: it's pleasing to see the two segments performing, which are on their way out. Congrats on the solid performance in X solutions. With weather having been rather dry during a good chunk of Q2 in Europe, would you see some channel buildup in this region, i.e., you and your peers having to buy back some of the Q2 volumes you sold over the next couple of quarters? My second question would be, again, a very solid performance in Surface Technologies. Can you elucidate a bit the improved volumes? Is this automotive OEM-driven? How much would you attribute to OEMs in Q2 having tried to produce/ship as much as possible in order to circumvent upcoming tariffs? What would this mean for Q3 volumes, particularly in automotive? Thanks. Christian, good morning, Dirk speaking. I take your first question. Indeed, an excellent performance of the Eck team in the second quarter. I think we indicated it already a little bit during the roadshows prior to the quiet period that this is going well and that we have a good momentum. Channel buildup and buying back, we do not see. I did not get from the teams any indication in this direction, but the demand that we are fulfilling appears to be real. This is not only volume, but this is also quality of earnings. I would really like to highlight one thing that we have improved significantly. Last year, we talked about the calamity of the glufosinate ammonium, where we had to take a restructuring measure. The team did a forceful turnaround, came in with an innovation called Glufosinate- P- ammonium on an acid-light approach now, which is significantly contributing to this great result in the second quarter. Higher quality of the business compared to last year due to forceful action, and I do not see a big risk of significant channel inventory. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, thanks. Christian, I'll take the second question with regards to Surface Technologies. I mean, overall, as I said in the speech, the automotive market actually grew quite a bit over the last two quarters. I think year to date, we are up a million cars globally. Versus last year, it doesn't feel like this when you're in the Western world because solely this growth is coming from Asia, in particular China. And overall, Asia is up 2 million. The rest of the world is down a million cars. That's roughly the picture year to date. There is growth in automotive. Of course, both in our, or in all of our automotive-related divisions, we are over proportionately present in China. When you are in China, you also have volume growth in automotive. Here, we are benefiting from our strong partnerships with OEMs that are also in China, increasing market share. Even in our Environmental Catalysts and Metal Solutions business, we are benefiting from the strong drive towards hybrid models at this point in time. Overall, I would say the market is not so unfavorable, but we are still in this environment outperforming on a volume basis this market, especially due to our strong presence of all businesses in China. We do not see any pronounced, let's say, tactical supply chain actions by tiers or by OEMs with regards to the tariff situation. We do not see any pre-buying or offshoring or something like this. This, for us, are just small and anecdotal stories, but not in the meat of the business. Very good and pleasing to know. Thanks, Markus and Dirk. Okay, now it's Tom Wigglesworth, Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Thanks very much. Thanks for the opportunity to ask questions. First question, if I may. I just wanted to unpack the assumptions that you've made around the upstream chemicals business. For the second half of the year in your new guidance. Just you cite chemical growth and production at 2.5%-3%, and yet your own upstream business is probably running at - 0.5% to - 0.7%. Have you just assumed that conditions from June continue through the second half in this new guidance? The second question, if I may, Markus, obviously, you spent time in China. You are obviously adding capacity in China through the new Verbund. At the same time, we've started to see the Chinese make statements around what they call anti-involution. I was intrigued to understand whether you'd received any insight on this policy and what they're trying to get at in terms of oversupply in the chemicals industry. Thank you. Yeah, thanks, Tom. First of all, let me come to the assumptions for chemical growth and also our growth. I mean, we're not now going to specific growth expectations per segment, but overall, we do not expect, let's say, a demand increase from what we have seen in the second quarter for our full-year outlook. We basically, from here on out, expect a rather flattish demand environment. If there is any revival of markets of our customer industries, positive surprises on volumes, this certainly would be an upside. When you look at the overall world figure, this, of course, is always quite an intriguing figure, 2.5-3% global chemical growth this year. If you look into the composition, regional composition, this is solely China. If you take China out, the rest of the world is negative. Our assumption is that there will be slightly negative chemical market growth outside of China. You know that from our regional distribution, and that's true for most Western chemical companies, our market share in China is, of course, always significantly underrepresented. This overall global headline figure always seems a bit too positive. Overall, I would say we're looking at a flat market environment. Next year then, of course, we will see significant boost of growth also in China for us, coming from our new capacities that we put in there. Overall, I would say we should not be too optimistic about significant growth outside of China for the rest of the year. We are not. We are planning for a flat environment. We continue to show also in our figures a strong volume growth in China as well. Now, your second question is quite interesting because for a long period of time, the sense was that the Chinese government and authorities are sort of dodging the discussion around overcapacities and buildup of, let's say, yeah, unhealthy capacities in many of the industries. I think if you now see in the run-up of the 15th five-year plan, which will be put in effect in March next year, you see now first signs of intentions to work on supply-side reforms. As you said, also, this addressed what they call involution or red race or however you want to call it. I personally think that this will also have an effect on the chemical industry because I was in China a few weeks ago, and I think I got some good—we had some good conversations around bringing two of the big intentions together. On the one hand side, the supply chain, the supply-side reforms, addressing overcapacities and the low profitability of many chemical companies in China, especially small and medium ones. Also, on the other hand, the green transformation and achieving carbon peak in 2030. Our intention is to pitch for addressing both things at the same time. I think this will happen now over the next years. You will see capacity adaptations also in the chemical industry, also addressing assets with high energy efficiency, subscale, and high emissions in China. I think supply-side reforms are becoming more popular. You will probably not hear the word overcapacities a lot, but this will be communicated differently. We have positive expectations, and that will lead to this picture that we always say, a rebalancing of chemical value chains, chemical market by the end of the decade in China, so t he last weeks have been rather positive in this aspect. Very clear. Thank you very much. We will now have Georgina Fraser, Goldman Sachs, and then James Hooper, and then Chetan. But now it's Georgina. Thanks, Stefanie. And good morning, Markus and Dirk. I've actually got a question that follows on quite nicely from the previous discussion from Thomas. We're seeing that even U.S. chemical companies are under enormous pressure with global oversupply at the moment. Your competitor, Dow, has recently cut its dividend. And I think a lot of investors felt that U.S. companies would be better off than European ones because they have a favorable cost position. Can you say a bit more about the structural dynamics that you see at play outside of China and whether BASF can act as a consolidator to strengthen its core asset base and come out of this downturn in a better competitive position? And then second question, if you could please give us a little bit more detail around the CATL battery material supply agreement that you recently announced. Thank you. Yeah, Georgina, thank you. I'll try to do my best in the first one because this, of course, also is a multidimensional question. I'll try to be simple. I think we always have to be very cautious if we make statements like, U.S. players have a favorable cost position if we project this out to an entire chemical industry. There are enormously many subsegments in the chemical industry. If you look at the BASF portfolio, we produce about 50,000 different chemicals. The statement to say there is clear raw material or there are clear cost advantages for people that are close to, let's say, cheap feedstock regions like U.S. or Middle East is only true for a small portion of this. It's true for large-scale commodities. If you have a portfolio that is, for example, heavy on polyolefins, polyethylene, polypropylene, then you are, of course, much more exposed to these raw material feedstock cycles, but also to the advantages compared to a company like BASF, where we have a variety of different midstream, downstream businesses and typically long value chains, and we make very different things out of our olefins than polyethylene and polypropylene. That just as a disclaimer. On the competitiveness side, I would say we have certainly looked at our asset setup globally and where we are potentially, where we have risks with regards to competitiveness, also as it relates to trade flows from low feedstock regions. We've been very vocal about our analysis here in Europe, in Ludwigshafen in particular, that most of the assets we have here are actually going to be long-term competitive, also against imports from low feedstock regions. The same holds true for our portfolio also in the U.S.. Since we are not a company that is comparable to some of these upstream-only, very cyclical commodity-heavy companies, I think we are much less a proxy for this kind of discussion. You asked also whether we are potentially a consolidator in this industry. I think here we've also been very clear, and I said this very consciously at the Capital Markets Day, that this is, of course, something we are taking a look at. In an industry that in low-growth regions like North America and also Europe for the next 10 years will go through a phase of consolidation and restructuring, as one of the market leaders in almost all businesses that we're in, we certainly will see and look whether there are opportunities for BASF in this consolidation phase. However, this does not mean that we are now on a shopping spree when it comes to buying non-competitive assets from other companies. We feel that we have competitive assets and we are rather opportunistic, but we believe there are opportunities and benefits for BASF in a phase of consolidation and restructuring because we fundamentally feel our asset base is robust and our market positions are good. Your question to CATL, this was announced, I think, a few days ago. CATL is by far the biggest producer of battery cells in the world. I think their market share, if you look at public figures, is about one-third when you look at EV-type batteries. By far the largest player. We've had a long collaboration history also with CATL. A few years ago, we've also announced plans to look at value chain collaboration with them. Now, w e have just agreed on looking at very concrete opportunities to supply CATL with our cathode-active materials over the next years, with high-performing materials for their new investments, both in China and in Europe. That is just a confirmation of our joint intent to increase the business between BASF and CATL. Not much else more to say about this. Great. Thank you. Now we have James Hooper, Bernstein, and then Chetan, and then Laurent. Now James Hooper, please go ahead. Good morning, everyone, and thank you very much for taking my questions. I have two, please. The first is that you said on this call that your outlook is predicated on flattish demand. In the case that demand does deteriorate, what actions can you take to protect cash flow and EBITDA guidance? Are there more CapEx savings that can be taken or further management or acceleration of cost savings? My second question is also about cost savings. You've clearly done a good job of executing the plan so far for 2025 and accelerated those. The current plan ends in 2026. What are the plans for beyond 2026? Are there more structural savings you can make in the Borbon business in particular? That's cool. Thank you very much. Okay, so this is Dirk speaking. I take your first question. Of course, we are always standing on the tiptoes in these times. In the case that demand was further decreasing, we, of course, will have a sharp look again into our cash and cost. These are the self-help measures that you typically can command. In terms of cash, I think I already gave an indication saying we are in CapEx down by EUR 200 million. Could we even go lower? Certainly, we could. In terms of cost savings, we are accelerating already by EUR 100 million. Is there always a little bit more that you can do? Certainly, there is. In terms of the outlook overall, I would say we have now taken a reasonable look, and it is half a year, a little bit less than half a year to go. I am hopeful that we found the right corridor and that we have the right measures in place. Yeah. James, Marcus here. I can only confirm. I think we're all on the same page, but we're also not expecting any further significant deterioration. I think there's already significant, let's say I would call it a wait-and-see attribute in almost all industries that we see. Apart from certain subsegments of the global economy, everything that has to do with AI, with digitalization, data centers, everything that the data center needs, everything else is rather. Already, I would say, at a very conservative path. We do not expect any further deterioration. Of course, as Dirk said, you're always looking at also additional measures that you can take. Right now, we are—I like that picture—we are on our toes almost every day. Second thing to cost savings. I said this also in the past. I think we have announced now this EUR 2.1 billion until end of 2026. My ideal scenario would be that this is the last ever real big program that we would announce because from my perspective, a company is running excellent if you are constantly improving on productivity and cost, let's say, leadership positions. I do not really like this ongoing announcement and then tracking of individual restructuring programs because in this day and age, the world is turning so fast that then individual programs overlap and you are not really managing a company responsibly. From my perspective, right now, we have to get the company into a constant productivity increase mode. I think our current restructuring efforts help to get us started, but we do not expect any cost savings initiative, productivity programs, or, let's say, striving for benchmark cost positions initiatives to end in 2026. Rather the opposite. We accept that real cost leadership and being best in class cost in almost everything we do is part of being competitive as a chemical company. I do not need to announce an ongoing wave of restructuring programs for this. Thank you. We move on to Chetan Udeshi, JP Morgan. Please go ahead. Yeah, hi. Thanks for taking my questions. I had two. One is, Markus, you mentioned previously that you will see strong growth in China next year, which makes sense from the startup of your Verbund plant. I'm just curious, at some point, a few years back, you guys talked about EUR 1.2 billion EBITDA from the Chinese Verbund. I mean, if you were to mark to market today's reality, which is the pricing and margins are probably much lower, do you have a number what the mark-to-market EBITDA will look like? Will it be half? Will it be less than half? The second question was just going to this whole discussion around cost savings. I appreciate you mentioned you guys are accelerating the cost savings this year. When I look at your personnel expenses, they are up 10% year on year in second quarter 2025. I mean, first half is up 5%. I'm just trying to tie those two things together of cost savings being accelerated while personnel expenses are rising so substantially. Maybe you can help us there. Thank you. Yeah, okay. I'll take the first question. You're right. Next year will be, of course, a first year of operation for our new South China Verbund site. The plan is still to ramp up utilization of this plant relatively quickly for most of the operations. Volumes will actually come in rather quickly. The reason is because almost all assets have favorable positions in the cost curves in China, in South China. If you want, they all have a right to have a high utilization. I talked about this repeatedly that we feel with comparing this, for example, with our Nanjing situation, we're relatively sure about that. Volumes will come. As you rightfully say and expect, currently, margins in most of the upstream chemicals in China are at very low levels, some of them at all-time lows. 2026 will be, from a margin perspective, a very tough year to start up new capacities in China, for sure. We also expect that towards year-end, there will be a rebalancing of most value chains with regards to supply and demand. If you want the simple picture, compared to our original expectations, we will still get to the level of profitability that we have also communicated, but we will have a slower ramp-up. The years 2026 and 2027 will certainly be more challenging years in the commodity space in China than what we originally thought when we decided to build this plant. That is nothing unusual in commodities. Commodities are a cyclical business, and it always depends on what timing of the cycle you're starting your plants in. The only new element is that China now also has a pronounced cycle, which was never the case for the last 20 years, at least not so much. We are starting now in a bottom end of the cycle where we still expect that our profitability expectations are realistic and plausible, but they might come a bit later, greater than what we originally expected. That's maybe the picture I can give you today and then more to come once we have actually started up the plant and we know what the margins will actually look like in 2026 and 2027 in China. On the personnel expense, I give it a simplistic answer, and then I look at Dirk whether he can give color on this. You're right. The personnel expenses, as reported, are going up. First of all, when you look at our restructuring programs, a lot of that has to do, of course, with reduction of headcount. That, of course, always takes a while until the paycheck is actually out of the company. It always takes some time. We still are, of course, seeing increases or inflation coming from wage, salary increases in most, especially European countries. You also have to see that in times of restructuring, and especially personnel restructuring, your personnel costs typically also go up because you're paying severances. That also is part of the personnel expense. Whenever you do high restructuring, you see personnel expenses first go up before they go down. In the P&L, you see it as special items. Of course, if you only look at personnel expenses, you see it all in. You have to take this a bit apart. The intention is, of course, that as a result of our restructuring measures, eventually our personnel expenses will go down significantly. I'm looking at Dirk. Yeah, I can just confirm that and put one more number into context. The EUR 2.1 billion savings that we want to achieve until end of 2026, this is a fixed cost reduction for the group of 10%. It is an enormous effort that is currently going on in the company. This comes with the severance payments that we have to pay now. From my perspective, this is rather an investment into the efficiency of the future. Yes, the number is high, but it is good money to be spent, I have to say, in order to achieve the restructuring target. Thank you. We will now move on to Laurent Favre and then have three more analysts in the queue: Sebastian Burbank, Matthew Yates, and finally Jeff Heard. It is now Laurent Favre, BNP Paribas, Exane. Please go ahead. Laurent? Yes. Good morning. Sorry. Two questions, please. The first one around M&A in the presentation, you mentioned that proceeds would be partially used to reduce leverage. I was wondering if you could talk about the timeframe of that comment. I understand that this year, free cash flow is not going to cover dividends, but I would have thought that for next year with CapEx below D&A. I mean, I guess deleveraging would not be top of mind, and you would also think about, I guess, other things with the cash flow. The second question is around the startup costs, the EUR 400 million. I understand that the ramp-up, I guess there are more of those costs in Q2 than Q1 and in H2 than in H1. Can you be a little bit more specific on that split? What should we be assuming for next year as well? Laurent, Dirk speaking. I start with your first question with the use of funds from M&A proceeds, etc. I do not have a concrete timing for you, but direction of travel, I think, should be very clear. This year, we are surpassing the investment peak that we had last year, but it is still high on CapEx. We have spent quite a lot in investments in the last couple of years. I would say after completion of Sung Jin and then also MDI Geismer, we are what we call fully invested. We have now funds available that are coming in from operating cash flow, but also from the proceeds from the projects that we can use in order to strengthen our balance sheet, but then also think about our shareholders and do more on shareholder distribution. What we really want to say is we want to strengthen the balance sheet. We want to do more for the shareholders. The latter you only can do if you have a strong balance sheet. This is really the emphasis that we are now taking as a board. The concrete timing, I do not have for you, but you should not need to wait too long. Okay. This is just a comment for Dirk. Quick guidance on. Maybe guidance is a strong word. If you have the picture in mind that these are, of course, startup costs, you automatically, I think you have a good gut feel that this becomes more the closer you get to actual startup. If you look at the total figure that we have communicated and try to give you something to model with, I would say if you split that number into roughly one-third, first half, two-thirds, the second half, you will not be totally out of proportion. Nothing for next year then? Next year, we still have, of course, let's say, extraordinary costs because just imagine, I mean, we're starting up the steam cracker in, let's say, very late in 2025. There will definitely be a spillover of startup costs. I don't have now a number in my head that I could give you to kind of guide or model this. Just remember that we also next year will still have a pretty significant share of CapEx also to finish up the plant. I think we still have roughly EUR 1 billion for 2026 in the books for CapEx to finish off this plant because it's so big. It will have a tail. That also holds true for operational startup costs. Overall, I don't have a picture now, but it will tail off how quickly and how fast in 2026, I cannot tell you off the top of my head. Okay. Thank you. Now we move on to Sebastian Burbank, Berenberg. Your turn. Hello. Good morning, and thank you for taking my questions. I have two please. One is on the natural gas supply agreement signed with Equinor that I think covers quite a large portion, if not the majority, of BASF's European demand. Is this a fixed price or floating rate for contracts or a mixture of both? Does it have any impact on the sensitivity of BASF's earnings to a future decline in gas prices? My second question is on the coatings divestment. Is there any sense from your side on a willingness to use bridge financing once an acquisition is announced to finance things like a buyback, or would this be a case of literally waiting on the proceeds? It is quite a large asset, and I imagine regulatory hurdles are pretty significant. Do you have any sense of the amount of tax leakage that might be associated with this transaction? Thank you. Sebastian, good morning. Starting with the natural gas, we are not disclosing the exact commercial terms that we have. What I can give you, it is an agreement that gives us a very high reliability on the pricing conditions. It is, from our perspective, an excellent agreement, also giving us high planning security and also a competitive edge, which is certainly also due to the high volumes that we are procuring, the 23- terawatt. This is, I think, the biggest volume by one supplier that we have ever secured. In terms of share buybacks, the idea is not to finance share buybacks via debt. We rather would wait for the proceeds in order to have the money attend before we think about distribution to the shareholders. It is rather about accelerating and confirming and wrapping up the deals that we have in the pipeline and then only do share buybacks once the money is on the bank account. In terms of tax leakage, there is no exact number that I can give you here, but be and rest assured that the tax departments are on it to make the deal as effective also post-tax as possible. That's helpful. Thank you for taking my questions. Thank you. Now, Matthew Yates, Bank of America. Please go ahead. Hey, good morning, everyone. Thanks for letting me in. I had a question about the strategy and the portfolio. I'm trying to imagine what BASF's cash flow would have been this year without the contribution and resilience from its coatings and agriculture business. It strikes me that if you execute on your divestments over the next couple of years, BASF is going to be a more volatile and fundamentally less cash-generative company unless we see a significant improvement in upstream spreads. My question is whether a less diversified profile is actually consistent with your financial framework for leverage, which is getting up to three times and a fixed dividend commitment rather than something that's more flexible in terms of a payout that would allow you to take advantage of countercyclical actions in the way that I think your peer, Dow, has just admitted that they sort of regretted. I guess my question is whether you're rethinking the amount of debt that BASF can carry and dividends it can pay in light of losing the cash flow streams that you have in agriculture and coatings. Thank you. Matthew, I think I give it a start, and maybe Markus was wrapping that and also up for the broader perspective. I can just say. First of all, not all the standalone businesses we are losing. Let's just take the example of Agricultural Solutions, where we have announced a partial IPO, which would, even after an initial floating, leave us with a consolidated business in BASF. That is one. It will all take its time. Secondly, we are fully aware. Management team is fully aware that with a business profile change, we also have to take decisive actions then with the capital base that we have, with the leveraging profile that we have, with the approach to shareholders, etc. We have given, I think, a consistent framework until 2028. Also, in terms of dividends and share buybacks, we have emphasized that a single A rating for us has a huge benefit, particularly in these times where resilience is so important. You also heard me saying earlier that funds from proceeds that we are expecting, we will invest into the robustness and financial health of the company. We are fully aware. The wheel that we are spinning has to be adjusted if the cash flows that we can expect are a little bit lower. On the other hand side, we have strong confidence in our core businesses to prosper over the next couple of years. We have also said that in the longer term, we are not categorically excluding M&A. At the end. This all relates on each other, but we will make sure that the leverage is not surpassing the three and going further north. We will also make sure that we stay on a healthy equity ratio. Yeah. Not much to add. I would just say that, of course, Matthew, with the new look on our portfolio in the real world, not as much will change so quickly as Dirk just alluded to. Also, in a more conceptual world, of course, we are now looking also at the core a bit more. As a hypothetical, how would the core perform if it would be a company or something like this? Of course, the ambition in our plans is to make sure that the core in itself can be strengthened and grown profitably so that also the core in itself earns a premium on its cost of capital. I think with the size, the scale, and the portfolio we have, we're very confident that this is something we can achieve over the next years. Just to give you a data point, sometimes in this discussion, it sounds like the core becomes somewhat small or undercritical. Only the core businesses of BASF are still the biggest chemical company in the world outside China. We have ample opportunities to strengthen the portfolio, to work on operational excellence, and to, at the end of the day, also achieve cost competitiveness to outperform our markets and use the size, the scale that we still have in the core to be competitors. We're very confident, and we hope that we can give you more color on this when we do the capital market update in October because we will be in Antwerp and we will showcase a bit why we are so confident about the core. Yes, sir. Thank you both. To conclude this call, we now have Jeff Heard, UBS. Your turn. Yeah. Good morning and thank you for allowing me to ask a question. I just wanted to really come back to the natural gas contracts. I was wondering if Dirk could help us by giving us some idea that if you'd had these contracts in place in 2022, what would have been the savings that you would have generated from having these in place? Yeah, Jeff. As I said, we cannot really comment on the commercial terms in detail. Would I have liked to have the deal in place already in 2022? I think when we met Equinor, when I met the CEO of Equinor to sign the deal, we both were of the opinion that earlier would even have been better. Sometimes matters take their time. We are happy that we have it for 10 years. I am particularly happy that we have it from Norway, which comes with the low PCF simply due to the very optimal Norwegian conditions in exploration and production. It is very stable, and I think it is—let me just end with saying it is really just a good deal. Everybody acknowledges in the industry that this was the deal to be made between a big consumer and the biggest supplier from Norway, and terms satisfying for both sides. I think that's a key message. Okay. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we are now at the end of today's conference call. Let me draw your attention, Markus has already mentioned it, to BASF's upcoming capital market update, which will take place in Antwerp. The program will begin on October 1st with a dinner with management at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts. On October 2nd, the program comprises a keynote by the CEO and CFO and presentations on the polyurethanes and ethylene oxide value chains by the respective division presidents, as well as a site tour. We sent out personal invitations at the end of June already, and we would be very pleased if you could register as soon as possible. If you are interested in attending the event but have not received an invitation, please contact me. On October 29, we will then present our third quarter results. Should you have any further questions regarding the second quarter results, please do not hesitate to contact a member of the BASF IR team. Thank you very much for joining us today, and goodbye for now.