Dear colleagues, very good morning, very good afternoon. Very pleased to have you join us for the Boehringer Ingelheim 2026 Annual Press Conference. Glad to see some of the colleagues here in Ingelheim joining us today live, and 140 colleagues or so joining us online. Very pleased to share our annual results for the year 2025 today, and I'm joined by my colleagues from the Boehringer Board of Management. I'd like to quickly introduce the colleagues on the panel here today. On the very right, Shashank Deshpande, chairman of the Board of Management and responsible for Human Pharma. To his right, Dr. Michael Schmelmer, responsible for Group Functions and Vice Chair of the Board. Dr. Paola Casarosa, looking after innovation for Boehringer, and to her right, Frank Hübler, our Chief Financial Officer, and at the very far left from you, Armin Wiesler, looking after our Animal Health business. My colleagues are looking forward to share with you some insights on how our business has gone in 2025 and what is the road ahead. We'll also have plenty of time for Q&A, so everybody is happy to take your questions later on. Just wanted to quickly run you through a couple of housekeeping items. You have a little access code in your press packs. For those of you joining online, you'll find the access code on our press release that will lead you to our annual report and our sustainability magazine with further information that you can access. Very quickly on how we'll run the event today. We'll start with a set of presentations to take you through the full line of the business of Boehringer and what is important for us and what we do. Then we have time for the Q&A. For the Q&A, if you are joining online, there is a chat box in the tool, so you can already enter your questions as the presentations run. Please make use of that. It would be great if you could add your name and the publication you're working for, so that we know from whom the question is. Likewise, for the colleagues here in the room, if you join the Q&A later, just maybe quickly state your name, the publication you're working for. We'll conduct the Q&A in English. There is translation available online into German and Chinese. Those are the language options we have, and the working language for the Q&A will be German. I think that's pretty much all I have from this point. I'd like to happily hand over to Shashank for the initial presentation. Shashank, please. Thank you. Stefan, good morning. Ladies and gentlemen, good morning to all of you. A very warm welcome, from our side, to all of you here in Ingelheim, but also all of you who are joining online. Thank you for your interest in Boehringer Ingelheim. 2025 was certainly marked by profound change and persistent uncertainty, and yet at the same time, it was a year of remarkable progress for us at Boehringer Ingelheim across both Human Pharma as well as Animal Health businesses here. On a quick personal note for me also, 2025 was an exciting year because I was entrusted with the chairmanship of the Board of Managing Directors in addition to my role as head of Human Pharma, and that fills me obviously with great pride to be able to lead our organization that is now 141 years old soon, with a heritage of you know really having dedicated to serving patients, animals, and customers overall. A very warm welcome. Let's get into it. When we look at the overall development of our business, you see the numbers in terms of our patients reached. 70 million patients reached. That's an increase to the previous year. We had 66 million in the year prior. When we look at animals, hundreds of millions, in fact billions, if we include poultry. What does that mean in numbers? Top line, net sales are at, or were at EUR 27.8 billion. What we are very happy to report also is the ability to again fuel our growth here in the R&D investment. Frank will take you through the numbers here in more detail in a bit. I want to give you a top line overview here where we find ourselves, or found ourselves at the end of 2025. As we move forward, I want to dive a little bit more into it, we over the period of 2014 to 2025, so last year, we have really been able to consistently and continuously increase our R&D investment. While sales have doubled over this time period, we see that we were able to even grow our R&D investment further. When you look at it as a percentage of the net sales, we have been able to grow R&D from 19.9% to 22.9% of our net sales. That fills us, you know, with great confidence and also hope that our focus on science and innovation for patients and for animals is the right path. It is the sign that we have ideas on innovation in the respective areas, and Paola will speak to that more. I would maybe add that in the report of the European Commission, Boehringer Ingelheim has been ranked as or among the top 10, in fact, I think we're number nine, of the research or the most research intensive companies in the European Union. That, and this is across all of the industries, not just pharma, this is something we you know take great confidence in. As we go, okay, what drove our growth in the last year? It comes to you as no surprise. It's still our big brands. We have Jardiance having grown, we have Ofev, which you've seen over the last years. Also on the Animal Health side of things, we've clearly seen that NexGard has been a driver of our success as well. Armin will go into more detail on Animal Health for sure, and also that we've been able to really manage a couple of outbreaks in the area of Animal Health quite well, and that fills us also with great confidence that we have been able to work with stakeholders such as farmers, veterinarians, public health authorities often under intense pressure of timeline to really make a difference to contain outbreaks. I think that's really Animal Health at work from our perspective in service of society. NexGard as a brand of brand family of pet products has been for quite some time, I believe now the number one selling brand in the animal world. When we look at Jardiance and the NexGard, these are really our two main products still also in the years to come. Having said that, you will see now us shifting gears overall as we mature our R&D portfolio on the next slide, that we have been able in 2025 also to now convert our promising pipeline into real successes, and real advancement for patients. JASCAYD was launched, HERNEXEOS was launched. JASCAYD is the first new innovative therapy for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis in more than a decade and was approved in the U.S. in October of last year. Patients with this disease face progressive and devastating build-up of scar tissue in the lungs and, which affects their ability to take in oxygen and dispense it into the bloodstream, and JASCAYD is more really than a medicine for these patients who face this devastating disease. It's really a sign of hope, and we'll speak a little bit more about it, but the uptake has been so far very strong. In early December, JASCAYD also received approval for the additional indication of progressive pulmonary fibrosis in China, making it for us the first time that China has approved an indication first, and faster than any other geography. That's something we have certainly taken note. The FDA followed with the approval just a few weeks later, at that. HERNEXEOS is the other new launch we had last year. HERNEXEOS is our HER2 mutant non-small cell lung cancer drug, which is a rare and aggressive form of cancer. HERNEXEOS was launched in August 2025, and we are particularly pleased with that because it marks really our return into oncology or the cancer space after an absence of almost 10 years. HERNEXEOS is also approved in China and in Japan, and you may have taken note a couple of weeks ago, about three or four weeks ago, that we received approval in the U.S. for the first-line treatment, so the first-line indication for HERNEXEOS under the new FDA's Commissioner's National Priority Voucher. Within 44 days, our teams have been able to work with the FDA to turn around the review of this file, of this dossier, and we have received very fast approval, making this now available in the U.S. for first-line patients. I do need to add that in Europe, we will have to wait, patients will have to wait until 2028 before we can start using the drug here, and that's primarily because of the requirement to have a phase III study against an active comparator. It is something that we are in the process of conducting, and we hope ultimately to bring this to European patients and patients all over the world as well. Both new launches really, they represent now the beginning of our portfolio renewal as we've talked about behind our R&D. We are really interested or we are motivated to bring new launches to the market, obviously. I won't go into detail because Paola will cover it, but we are extremely focused on R&D and innovation. As we've said, we have 80 projects in our Human Pharma pipeline, and so Paola will speak to that a little bit more. I do want to highlight just on the next slide, maybe our commitment in CRM, where we have been active for quite some time now. If I could have the next slide, please. We have been active quite a long time, first with Jardiance, but we really see the interconnectedness in the disease space here in the disease area. The heart, the kidney, the liver, they're all interconnected to some extent. Kidney disease is not just a kidney disease, but really impacts the heart. Obesity impacts everything. We believe certainly that a broad portfolio in this space addresses different unmet needs, but also, our push really over the years to accelerate earlier diagnosis, earlier treatment, and avoid some real big bills when it comes to dialysis, when it comes to managing late-stage complications, is everything we are really looking at in this space. Of course, we have here also with survodutide, with Victoza, empagliflozin, but also with apecotrep, several drugs that Paola will highlight in her presentation as well. Last but not least, let me move maybe to the next slide and then hand over. As I mentioned, 2025 was a successful year, but of course also in an increasingly disruptive or unpredictable environment. This is not all, really challenges. There's a lot of opportunity that we see here, whether it is AI really impacting the value chain across the board in pharma, whether it's the rise of China as a source of true innovation. At the same time, we do have an eye on and are looking at the competitiveness of Europe continuously declining over the years, and whether it's fiscal pressures, tariffs, MFN. These are certainly all topics I'm sure you will ask us about in the Q&A session. Suffice it to say, our point is at the end this. We believe innovation will continue to be the mega trend and the driver of value in our industry, and that's why we feel we can confidently look at our pipeline, our portfolio as we face the opportunities head-on. With that, let me stop by saying, thank you for being here again, and I would like to hand over now to Dr. Armin Wiesler. Thank you. Thank you for listening. Thank you. Thank Thank you very much, Shashank. It's my great pleasure to share a few insights into our Animal Health business in 2025. As Boehringer Ingelheim, we are a global leader in animal health, and we have a broad range of solutions from vaccines, from parasiticides to medications spanning across dogs and cats, horses, and of course, also livestock, including cattle, sheep, poultry and swine. While Frank will give you the detailed numbers, suffice it to say that we have been able to drive good growth in 2025 across species and across regions in a healthy and resilient animal health industry. What is driving this industry? I want to share a few key trends with you. All of us know that the life of humans and animals is deeply interconnected, and we know that companion animals play a critical role in the well-being of humans, of families. They bring joy, and they bring companionship across the world. In this mega trend, of course, we see in the numbers, we see that the pet population will continue to grow. We see that owners are willing to invest in the health of their animals. We also see the result of that, which is a significantly increased lifespan over the last few decades. Now, dogs live twice as long as they have done in the past. This deep connection we also see on the livestock side, because livestock production is critical for food security and enables the livelihoods of many, many people across the world. Of course, all of us know the growing human population will ensure that the livestock industry continues to grow because of the demand for healthy animal protein. I want to double down on one really important aspect that Shashank has mentioned. We see an increased outbreak of the so-called transboundary animal diseases. What are these? These are highly contagious diseases that are crossing borders and that have a devastating impact on animals, but of course, also on producers and on communities. I'm going to give you a few examples because unfortunately, 2025 was not an exception. We have seen outbreaks of the bluetongue virus in cattle, in sheep in Europe. We see, and all of us can read it at least every week, if not every day. We see outbreaks of avian influenza in Europe, in North America, in South America, in Asia. Last, certainly not least, we see outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease even in Europe. Even in Germany, a year ago, for the first time in decades, we saw an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease. Just to give you a little bit of a picture of what that means. 14 animals, economic damage of EUR 1 billion. That shows the relevance. What is important is to collaborate across the ecosystem, industry, authorities, academia, government, so that we can work together through vaccination, through monitoring, through biosecurity to address it. We are proud as a company, as an organization, that we have been able to support across all three disease areas. Let me talk about the innovation that we have been able to bring to our customers in 2025 to further expand our portfolio across species. There are a number of examples here. I will not go through every detail, but let me highlight VAXXITEK H5 because that is a vaccine for poultry. It's a three-in-one vaccine addressing Marek's disease, infectious bursal disease, and H5 avian influenza, which can play a critical role together with other measures to work against avian influenza. This vaccine has just received approval in Europe end of last year. Another example that I want to highlight is the risk of New World screwworm outbreak in the United States. This is a devastating disease for animals. It can impact livestock, it can impact companion animals, and very unfortunately, this disease is moving up north through Middle America, through Mexico. U.S. authorities have asked industry, "Can you help? Do you have medications that could help if this disease comes?" As a result, we have been able to achieve three emergency use approvals. One is Ivomec, it's a parasiticide in cattle, NexGard in dog, and NexGard COMBO in cat. Let me talk about our pipeline, because also on our pipeline, 2025 has been a very important year. As a company, we work in three areas: non-infectious diseases, infectious diseases, and parasiticides. I'm gonna give you a few examples of what we're working on. One is a near-term example. In just a few weeks from now, we will launch [Canine BeatAI]. What is that? It's a digital stethoscope with an AI-powered algorithm that helps the vet more easily diagnose heart murmurs, irregular heartbeat in dogs. Because earlier diagnosis can help to put the dog on the right treatment and can significantly increase the lifespan of the dog. Canine cardiology is a very significant area. 10% of dogs will develop heart disease over their lifespan, and for some breeds, it's even more. Another late-stage pipeline project that we're really excited about is in the space of equine, of horses. Insulin dysregulation is a key driver of laminitis in horses, and everyone who has a horse knows how devastating laminitis can be. We're working on a medication that can address insulin dysregulation, and we're looking forward to bringing this through the finish line. Let me talk a little bit also about our earlier pipeline, about our research phase. We're working on a new technology. It's called virus-like particles. It basically solicits an immune response to address many chronic diseases in pets, for example, pain, allergy, or inflammation. This technology has the potential for better outcomes, longer duration of treatment, or improved convenience for the owners. Let me summarize Boehringer Ingelheim 2025. Number one, we have seen good growth across species, across regions. Number two, we're really proud as an organization that we have been able to do our part to support customers, communities, governments in fighting transboundary animal diseases. Last, certainly not least, we have been able to bring innovation to the market, and we have made strong steps forward to further evolve our pipeline, which will set the basis for a successful future. With that, thank you very much for your attention. I'm happy to hand over to my colleague, Frank, who will share the financial details with you. Thank you. Thanks, Armin. Good morning, everyone. Reflecting on 2025, I personally can say it was probably, for me, the most volatile and uncertain year since I started to work for this industry 25 years ago. Now, you might remember last year we came together here at the press conference, and it was also the day in the evening later that day where President Trump announced his first set of tariffs. A lot of things happened since then. Yet our teams across Human Pharma and Animal Health delivered for patients, customers, and communities. Now, let me share a few numbers. As Shashank already said, Boehringer Ingelheim as a corporation achieved EUR 27.8 billion in net sales with a growth of 7.3%. All growth numbers my colleagues or myself mentioned today are adjusted for currency effects. Now, coming back to the growth. Both, w e are particularly proud that both of our businesses are actually driving or fueling that growth. Let me start with our Human Pharma. Our Human Pharma achieved EUR 22.7 billion in net sales with a growth of 7.4%. I would like to highlight two products which basically are essential for that growth. On the one hand, Jardiance. Jardiance, approved in four different indications, Type 2 diabetes, chronic kidney disease, heart failure, and overall cardiovascular risk reduction, ended the year with EUR 8.8 billion and a growth of 8.7%. Secondly, Ofev. Ofev, approved in three different fibrotic indications, achieved EUR 3.8 billion with a growth of more than 5%. Last but not least, I would like to mention our BioXcellence business. This is basically how we use our biopharmaceutical network to not only supply our Human Pharma business, but we are also producing for other pharmaceutical companies. The teams, based on long-lasting customer relationships, were able to drive a growth of more than 19% last year. With that, I'd like to have a look at our Animal Health business. Animal Health achieved EUR 4.9 billion with a growth of 6.5%. Now also here, I'd like to take the opportunity to mention two products. First of all, NexGard. NexGard, our parasiticide as a prevention for cats and dogs against fleas, ticks and a lot of other parasites, landed at EUR 1.4 billion with a growth of 8.5%. Now secondly, I would like to mention BULTAVO 3. You can see with EUR 75 million, BULTAVO 3 is a much, much smaller product. Nevertheless, I would like to take the opportunity to talk about it today as it's a testimony to our teams. You can really see when teams rally behind one goal to help farmers and communities to deal and fight the devastating bluetongue virus, how does this, let's say, motivate teams to deliver? That's what actually happened here in 2024 and also 2025. Now, how do we make sure that we can deliver solid results as we see? We continuously invest into our infrastructure and our capital expenditures in 2025 were EUR 1.4 billion. We basically invested in 40 different major projects. A major project for us means more than EUR 50 million for this respective project. We also basically invested across four continents. Therefore, I would like to take the opportunity to give you a few examples. I'd like to start at the east side of the globe in Japan. In Japan, we were able to finish our new production site in 2025, where we will produce our antidiabetic portfolio for the Asian Pacific region. This will also give us more resilience in terms of supply as we are regionalizing the supply. Secondly, in Ingelheim, probably at the moment our most expensive in that sense investment is our Chemical Innovation Plant. Here we are building a facility which will enable us with state-of-the-art technology to produce and develop our new chemical entities. Paola is already looking forward to 2027 when her teams can move into and drive the pipeline with that equipment forward. We also continue to invest in our liquid launch facility, and I'd like to highlight our United States investment as well. Here on both ends, on the Animal Health side first, we have quite a large extensive production footprint. We continue to invest in Athens, Georgia, to expand our facility, while in Puerto Rico and Missouri, we are continuously investing to make sure that we have the right equipment available for the development of our product portfolio. On the Human Pharma side, we have already a biopharmaceutical production site in the United States, and we now invest alongside with our partners into chemical production capabilities as well as in drug product or finished product production capacities. With that, I would like to come to an even more important area of investment. As we already heard, we invested EUR 6.4 billion into R&D and M&A, which is obviously the core to every pharmaceutical company. Now on the Animal Health side, we invested more than EUR 500 million, while on Human Pharma, EUR 5.8 billion. Overall, this gives us 23% in terms of revenues we reinvest every year. Now on the Animal Health side, it is almost 11%, while we have on the Human Pharma side more than 27% as a ratio. In both businesses, this means that we are investing above our peer level. We can see and heard already about it that our pipeline is not only an investment, it also continuously delivers. This year we were able to launch HERNEXEOS as well as JASCAYD. Let me end on that positive note with saying our financials show a clear picture. We are strong, we are resilient, and we are ready for more. More innovation, more access and more impact. Thank you very much. With that, I would like to hand over to my colleague, Dr. Paola Casarosa. Thank you. Thank you, Frank, and a very warm welcome from my side as well. Now, when we met here one year ago, I told you that we were enjoying the strongest pipeline in our history. Since then, we made significant progress. Today, here we are. Our portfolio has more than 80 projects which are currently being developed across our four therapeutic areas, namely cardiorenal metabolism, immunology and respiratory, oncology, as well as mental and eye health. In the past 12 months, our pipeline has gained significant momentum, and I would like to share a few highlights among the many inflection points and the many achievements that we had. First, Shashank as well as Frank already mentioned something we're very proud of. Two new molecular entities were approved. Second, very importantly, six new pivotal phase III trials were initiated, strengthening our late-stage development pipeline and paving the way for a new wave of launches in the upcoming years. Last but certainly not least, our commitment to innovation continues to stay strong. In fact, 2/3 of our assets enjoy a first-in-class potential, and this continues to be rewarded by regulatory authorities around the world through designations being awarded. Now, let me dive a bit deeper in some of these achievements. First, the approval and launch of HERNEXEOS and JASCAYD speak for the strength of our innovation engine, because both molecules were actually discovered in our own laboratories. As we heard from Shashank, HERNEXEOS was approved in the course of 2025 for HER2-mutated non-small cell lung cancer. That is just the beginning. We are in fact exploring, as we speak, the potential of zongertinib to improve patients suffering from HER2 aberrant different types of cancers, including breast, gastric, colorectal, as well as a pan-tumor basket trial. Same philosophy and same approach for JASCAYD, which has been approved in course of 2025 for two deadly forms of lung fibrosis. Building on the mechanism of action of nerandomilast and its modulatory, immunomodulatory potential, we are investigating its ability to affect autoimmune diseases, very severe actually, autoimmune diseases with very few therapies available, like systemic sclerosis and myositis. Let me now switch to the recent developments in our late-stage pipeline. In our cardiorenal metabolic space, we focus on the interconnectivity of diseases. Of course, here we are building on our expertise in developing new treatments that have the potential to affect multi-organs, just like Jardiance. Let us not forget that in the course of 2025, Jardiance has positively impacted over 30 million patients just in 2025. Yet we know our job is not done. This is why we are building on top of empagliflozin with a combination with a new molecular entity, vicadrostat, where we see the opportunity to set a new standard of care for patients suffering from kidney and cardiovascular diseases. We don't stop here. We are expanding our horizon to primary kidney diseases. This is, for example, the case with apecotrep, our latest entrant in phase III development stage. This is a completely new mechanism and a new approach to treat a rare set of kidney diseases which unfortunately affect patients at a very young age and is the strongest causality for renal transplant. Very severe diseases with very few options of treatment. Last but certainly not least, we are building over 100 years of scientific excellence in lung diseases, and here we are bringing verducatib as a new approach for the treatment of bronchiectasis. Now, I assume the majority of us have never heard of bronchiectasis, despite it being the third most leading lung inflammatory chronic disease after COPD and asthma. It is not surprising that this disease is strongly underdiagnosed, particularly in the early stages. We are seeing a strong momentum in the recruitment of our phase III, which adds to our excitement for this program. Now, let's switch page and look at 2026. We expect equal momentum in the course of 2026 with important milestones, important readouts, and transitions. Let me mention my three personal highlights. First, in the cardiorenal metabolism space, we are expecting pivotal data readouts for survodutide in obesity. Survodutide is our dual agonist peptides combining GLP-1 and glucagon agonism and is currently being developed for obesity as well as a form of lung disease called MASH. You see here, both these diseases have breathtaking epidemiology. We are talking over 1 million patients with obesity around the world and also 250 million, at least 250 million suffering from MASH, with a strong overlap into these patients. This is where on the basis of the mechanism of action combining glucagon and GLP-1 as well as previous phase II data, we believe that survodutide could provide clinical benefits to patients that go beyond weight loss. Potentially improving the overall metabolic health with a particular focus on the liver. Beyond survodutide, I'm equally looking forward to key inflection points in our eye health portfolio. We have in fact several molecules that in the upcoming months will reach the so-called proof of concept into patients. This is a new therapeutic area, an emerging therapeutic area for us, and so this is an important year to see whether we are able to scale to a fully fledged therapeutic area. Our objective here is very clear. We want to prevent eye vision loss for the over 300 million patients worldwide that suffer from retinal conditions. This include diabetic retinopathy, age-related macular degeneration, as well as geographic atrophy. Last, and certainly not least, I'm very excited about our early stage portfolio. As in 2026, we have the opportunity to put 13 new molecules in clinical research. Among these, eight are actually in the oncology space, with the vast majority being first in class and also new therapeutic modalities, including T-cell engagers, as well as, protein degraders and antibody drug conjugates. Taken together, we continue to see strong productivity for our innovation engine and a strong progress of our late-stage portfolio, which pave the way for a new set of hopefully potential launches in the future years. With that, I pass it to you, Mike. Thank you. Thank you, Paola. Also a warm welcome and a good morning from my side. My colleagues have already spoken about the growth of Boehringer Ingelheim and the innovation coming from us. We also heard about the company's strong and resilient position from Frank. Now, I want to dive deeper into some multiple factors for that resilience, our people and our investment into technology. In both, the investments were substantially in 2025. By developing our people and also reinforcing our technology foundation, we are ensuring we can make the most out of the future opportunities. As you heard, we have a lot. Paola spoke about the strength of our pipeline and the amazing science we are creating. That means we all have a huge responsibility to ensure our innovation reach the patients in need better, safer, and especially faster than ever before. Technology and AI are key factors to achieve that. We invested, as you know, very early in technology. For example, we built a digital lab almost a decade ago. The lab is called B IX. We have built tools such as ADAM, an advanced design assistant for molecules. ADAM is using AI to support our chemists to come up with new molecule structures by learning patterns from data of the past. It speeds up the design of new drug candidates, but especially it increasing also the quality of the candidates. We have many other examples how we are tapping into AI and in technology along our value chain. We use digital twins in the processes of medicine. We use digital twins in production and in our supply chain. AI is enhancing also our patient engagement and customer-facing interaction through data-driven insights. Looking further ahead, we have also committed to advance pharmaceutical research with pioneering partnerships, especially in quantum computing. That is a long shot, but that is what we at Boehringer can do. As you see, AI and the smart use of data is for us a strategic lever that is implemented through the whole value chain. There are, of course, risk inherent in AI. If it's applied responsibly, the opportunities are much higher. We take responsible use of AI seriously. Our global responsible AI framework combines ethical principles with robust governance and education in line with the EU AI Act and other legislations we find in local government. Our technical ambition is considerable, but technology alone does not guarantee success. What makes a real difference is the approach how we take as humans to apply AI. Our approach can be summarized in some key principles: invest to build up the necessary skills, understand the underlying technology, apply it responsibly, mitigate the known risk and embrace it as individuals. That's why we say, that's why I say AI is an opportunity, let's embrace it, not to be afraid of it. AI strategically implemented will give us much, much more than we have on the risk side. Not only in technology we rely on highly skilled colleagues to succeed. This applies to all of our functions, from research down to finance. That's why we are fully committed to invest in our people and in their skill set. We are spending more than 20% above industry average in training, education and people development per colleague. In total, we spent last year more than EUR 80 million in our trainings. This illustrates our ambition to prepare us for the future. A key pillar for this is our Boehringer Ingelheim University, a virtual campus that supports all of us in our lifelong learning journey. It offers more than 55,000 education units, consists of multiple functional academies and has more than 1,500 learning courses, enabling every colleague to learn at any time from anywhere on any day. Also, leadership development remains essential for us. Leaders are the architects of our culture of openness, respect and equal opportunity. More than 3,000 leaders participated in targeted programs of our Leadership Academy, which is part of the university. Connecting what Frank just said earlier, this prepares us to navigate the world that will most likely remain uncertain and volatile. This focus on developing our people and our capability is also reflected in the way our global workforce evolves. Boehringer Ingelheim employed more than 54,000 colleagues worldwide, representing 138 nationalities in 76 countries. Our global workforce remained stable in 2025. In Germany, our teams grew by 2% in all highly qualified and highly skilled positions. When you look at what we are investing in learning and development, it becomes clear how serious we are about building future skills. This commitment has also been recognized externally by the Top Employers Institute, which awarded us again as a global top employer. Taking all that together, linking to what my colleagues said earlier, we are doing our part in strengthening Germany and Europe as an innovation hub for the pharmaceutical industry. Having that said, I'm handing back to Shashank. Thank you for listening. To Stefan. Yeah. Cheers. You too. You want some? Nope. Good. Let me wrap it up before we go to the Q&A. In terms of what you've seen, we hope that. First of all, thanks colleagues, for the concise presentations. Before we come to your questions, maybe quickly, first quarter is over. We see a good progress across the businesses and so far as I'm sure you're going to ask us about an indication for 2026. We expect to grow this year on a comparable basis, adjusted for currency and extraordinary effects. More importantly, you've seen us now in the process of renewing our innovation of driving really our portfolio through the milestones. While the macroeconomic environment is more dynamic than ever, we believe, as we've said, that innovation will be ultimately the driver of value in the industry and will be important as we look at how do we connect science, people, healthcare systems to drive for better outcomes. With that, thank you from our side for now. Let's go over to Stefan and the Q&A then. Thank you. Thank you, Shashank, and thank you everybody on the panel here for sharing these insights. We're ready to start the Q&A, so please keep the questions coming through the tool if you're asking online. Of course, we'll take questions here from the audience as well. I have one quick clarifying question that maybe we can start with, and that was the question around the animal health ratio of R&D on sales. That's 10.7% or EUR 0.5 billion in absolute terms. With that, we can take first questions. Let me take a quick look around. Anybody here in the audience in Ingelheim who wants to have a go? All right, there we go. Maybe we start with Ralf Heidenreich from Allgemeine Zeitung. That mic is coming. There you go. Thank you very much. I have some questions about your plans and your investments in the U.S. I understand it this way. Boehringer plans to invest $10 billion by 2028 in expanding the pharmaceutical research and the development of new production facilities. Yes? This will be part of a program for many years of $20 billion in the U.S. My question: would you have invested a total of $10 billion as part of your six-year plan without the deal with the U.S. president, but now further $10 billion more has been added as a result of the agreement you made? Or how can I understand this? Shashank, you will take this? Maybe I'll take this one. I think overall, maybe for context, we've, as you probably well know, at the end of July, we received a letter like 17 or 16 other companies from President Trump on MFN. We subsequently then entered into negotiations with the U.S. government, and then December 2019 announced, as part of the agreement with the U.S. administration, some of the figures you mentioned. What this really is for us is, keeping in mind that the U.S. is obviously our largest market and will continue to be our largest market, it is our opportunity to contribute to American patients, and this is primarily the focus of the overall agreement here. As we look at the commitments into and the investment we have, whether it's R&D and whether it's CapEx, this is obviously part of a longer and broader term plan, really anchored in what we've said previously. As we now are expanding our portfolio in multiple therapeutic areas, as we looked at, as Frank mentioned, regionalization of our manufacturing, it's a continuity of our commitment to the U.S., but taking into account our upcoming portfolio and the preparations we need to make, therefore. It is not possible for us to say, would we have done it differently? Because quite frankly, the U.S. is in fact and will remain, especially for the drugs we have coming in the next years, will likely also be the largest market for us. Therefore, we are confident that this is a good investment for us and is also one that serves really, again, the largest market in a still very attractive market, we have to all say, I think. Thank you very much. I've seen a hand from Torsten Strauss, please. Can you tell us something about the development of employment here in Germany, especially in Ingelheim, first? The second question is about animal health. I've heard nothing about the Afrikanische Schweinepest. Is that a topic for you? I think, Ingelheim question, Mike, if you could start and then Armin on animals. Thank you, Mr. Strauss, for the question. I mentioned it in my presentation. Overall, on a global basis, we went flat. In Germany, we grew by 2%. In absolute numbers, you know, we have 19,000 people on. My colleague is just forwarding me, and it's almost 400 people. Okay. For all of you on the webcast, I haven't heard that the question was around employment in Ingelheim going up 2% by around 400 people. Yeah, I think they heard it because it took a mic. Yeah. Thank you. Armin? I'm happy to take the second part. African swine fever continues to be a significant unmet need in the swine industry across the globe. We are one of the global leaders in swine vaccines, and I can tell you, we, as the industry, do research on African swine fever. Very unfortunately, it is a very difficult virus to tackle. As a result, many companies are in research phase. Also, Boehringer, we work with academia to find a solution, but it's a tough one, and that's also why we have not outlined it as one of our projects that is gonna come to market soon. Thank you, Armin, for this. Let's take a couple of questions from our online audience. There is a couple of questions coming in on survodutide, and maybe Paola, I can hand these over to you. One question is, could you share the expected timing for the first phase III readouts for survodutide? A question connected to this says, we have seen recent clinical results from Zealand, the collaboration partner on survodutide, that their development fell short of market expectations. Asks the question, how does that affect Boehringer's collaboration? Thank you for the question and starting with the survodutide, the development plans, of course, these are multiple pivotal trials. There's over 5,000 patients that for regulatory purposes needs to be evaluated. Timelines of course depend a bit on the closure on top line data, as well as some of these trials have events as endpoints, including the cardiovascular risk. Overarchingly, we expect in the course of the year to see the majority, but I don't wanna put a specific date because those are still moving targets. With regard to Zealand, our collaboration, it's a traditional licensing deal, meaning we are in charge of developing survodutide. This is our commitment to Zealand. The rest of their portfolio is outside this collaboration. From that perspective, I don't see necessarily any connectivities in between what is happening with the Zealand and the Roche portfolio versus survodutide. Shashank, maybe you want to add? No, I think that's it precisely. This is not in any way really touching survodutide. Thank you for these answers. There's another question I have here that we can bring up from the online audience regarding innovative drugs in China. Are there any plans for Boehringer for further collaboration acquisitions in the future? And if so, what would be the focus areas? Thank you. Absolutely, we look at China as an important source of innovation. We have a business development team, and we are doing business there. In fact, we announced the latest of our deals a few weeks ago with the Simcere Pharma around the bispecific addressing bowel diseases, and we'll continue to do so. I'm particularly keen on continuing to see China's potential when talking about biologics and new modalities. They've shown a lot of strength with this bispecific, trispecific, as well as new modalities, and we'll continue to work closely together because, again, we wanna make the best pipeline possible, and that means also looking at the totality of the world as resources for meaningful innovation. Thank you, Paola. I've seen a hand from Christoph Moritz from SWR. Mic is coming your way. Thank you. Looking at the net sales by region, we see that a very big proportion of the net sales grew in Europe while the other two big markets shrunk by a certain margin. How would you explain that? Okay. Do you wanna take it? Okay. First of all, we have in the United States a change of pricing and therefore we had also impact, let's say, on the stock and trade. If we exclude that, we would have also grown there as we did in Europe and other regions. We have to look at this, I think also, by business, that was more for the Human Pharma side. If we look to the Animal Health side of the business, we can say all regions grew by 8% or even more, 8.5%, 8.6%, except for the U.S. In the U.S., we still grew nevertheless a little bit less because we had a tough time in the pet segment to further drive our growth there. Thank you very much, Frank. I have a question here that, I mean, maybe I can give to you for Myriam Chauvot. Can you please give the amount of sales of vaccines for bird flu and the perspective for 2026 for these vaccines, knowing that France is still vaccinating? What can we say on this? Thank you. Very important question. Let me give a little bit of context. When it comes to avian influenza, there's the highly pathogenic avian influenza, that's what you read a lot about, and that has hit Europe, that has hit the United States. There's also the low pathogenic avian influenza that is endemic in many parts of the world. As Boehringer Ingelheim, we have one of the leading portfolios to fight both HPAI, so the highly pathogenic, and also LPAI, the low pathogenic, and we do that across the world. This is a long-standing commitment and also an ongoing business that we're driving. When it comes to Europe, so far France has decided to vaccinate the ducks, so kind of the more valuable, for lack of a better term, birds. Given the significant outbreaks that we're seeing, many authorities across the world are assessing prevention and vaccination as part of a broader approach, including monitoring and biosecurity. As an industry and also, of course, as a company, we are in contact to ensure there's awareness about the solutions that are available and, as I said earlier, that we can do our part accordingly. Thank you, Armin, for this. There's a question from Kevin Gorgen. Thank you, Kevin, for joining in. CEOs in the pharma industry regularly say Europe is innovation unfriendly. What practical measures would you like to see to improve the environment? Shashank, would you like to take this one? Yes. Thank you. You know, as I've also mentioned previously, we're seeing generally clearly a decline in European competitiveness, whichever metric we use, whether it's clinical trials, whether it's new drugs approved, whether it's also biotech deals. As you've seen and as Paola mentioned, we clearly see, which is also good news for all of us, now China increasing its innovative force or power. When we look at Europe, we have to look at the facts and they say we used to be, especially in this country, the pharmacy of the world. As we look at declining output, as we look at increasing regulation, we certainly are also worried that Europe is falling further behind. Whether there are conversations ongoing to that extent, both at national levels as well as the EU level. Here we are, but also through the trade associations, we are involved in trying to really find new ways because reallocating the same budget is likely not going to work. Rather, what are the more creative solutions? I mentioned one, how can we push more towards earlier diagnosis, earlier treatment? How can we reduce the red tape when it comes to running clinical trials? I also mentioned the FDA approved our first-line indication for HERNEXEOS in officially 44 business days. Why is that possible in one jurisdiction or territory, and why does it take six months, nine months in Europe? I think these are all the right questions. I do know that decision-makers and governments are engaged in these questions, and so we hope really for a constructive dialogue here, because something does need to be done for Europe to keep up the competitiveness, and not fall further behind. Thank you, Shashank. A very important topic here. I have another question coming in from Yong Jin Lee. Can you explain the current state of joint development with Inventage Lab in Korea, and what stage it has reached? Paola, is this something that you can comment on? Can you explain? I honestly need to acknowledge I don't know what you're talking about, but we can come back. We'll follow up on this. After speaking with the teams, as you guys know. We'll follow up on this one offline, Yong Jin Lee. We'll come back to you. Thank you, and let me see if there is further questions in the room. Hey, Heidenreich, second round. Microphone is coming your way. Yes. Yes, I have two questions. First about the German sites. We know what you are planning to invest in the U.S. How much do you intend to invest in the German sites, Ingelheim and Biberach, in the next five years? I don't know the exact plans. That would be interesting. Then to the price reductions in the U.S. You have drastically reduced the price of some medicines in some cases more than 80%. I ask myself, are you dealing with this? I mean, the U.S. is the most important market for you, and I think you will recognize that on the profit side. Can you tell me, how do you deal with this in the future? First, I'll start with Germany and investments. I would say I don't have now concrete numbers which you can compare to what you alluded to before on the U.S. side. Nevertheless, if you look over the past years, we invested heavily in Germany. I would say, now this is probably a rough number, but if you look at our CapEx and if we go back over the past years, we are coming somewhere between 40%-50% of the CapEx, which we did invest in Germany. As I already told in the presentation or mentioned in the presentation, our Chemical Innovation Plant, which when you leave the building and turn around, you will see it, the high-rise building. It is our largest investment which we currently have in our portfolio. We also continue to invest in production site like our liquid launch factory, which you see at the end of the site when you leave gate number two. Meaning, so there is substantial investments currently ongoing, and there will be also in the future. We also, Paola, have our, I think it's fair to say, largest research site still here in Biberach in Germany. We also continue to invest on the Biberach site. Second question, remind me. I lost it. What was the second question? Lost in-- I can take the second question, maybe. Because you asked about the U.S. prices and some of the price reductions-- [audio distortion] About the U.S., how you deal with the enormous-- Oh, yeah. Profit. Yes. About the U.S., how you deal with the enormous price reductions for some medicines? Yeah. Overall, I think we need to look at. There's in the U.S., it's a very different market than in Germany. There are very different channels. Roughly speaking, they're the government channels and the commercial channels. Even before the current president, you know that President Biden had introduced the Inflation Reduction Act and some of the changes therein. In fact, for us, Jardiance, Ofev, Tradjenta are now negotiated under the IRA agreement for Medicare. As we look at, yes, it affects our planning, it affects our investment, but obviously, it is also something we have been able to prepare for over the years. And thereby, as we shift our investment, also promotional investment, as now the new launches come up, and this is why it is so important for us. As we have quite substantial reductions in price in the United States, we are now obviously also seeing the opportunity to further grow also with Jardiance, but mostly in certain channels, as well as with the new launches. I think to some extent, as long as we can prepare, it is something we were able to plan with. Having said that, it is obviously for us always of concern as we look at whether it's the IRA or whether it's the current pricing, how do we maintain our innovation? How do we get innovations, the value of innovation recognized? That still is the critical question, whether it's in the U.S. or Europe or elsewhere. Thank you, Shashank, for this answer. One more question here coming in online from Yi-Ning Ding. What are the plans and key focus areas regarding the development and commercialization of new drugs in China? Maybe I take a stab and, Paola, maybe you want to add. I would not necessarily say that the key focus areas are different than the therapeutic areas we mentioned today. As we look at China, as we look at opportunities to partner in China, it is exactly that. We follow sort of the blueprint we have with our therapeutic areas. Just as a reminder, it's cardiorenal metabolism, it is oncology, it is inflammation and respiratory and mental health, eye health. Under that filter, if you will, we would be looking at innovation and how we can leverage the upcoming innovation in China, how we can leverage China's speed. In development, but all through the lens of our existing, research portfolio. I don't know if you? Nothing to add. Okay. Good. Thank you. I think that's all we have online at the moment. Let me take a look around in the room. There's another question from Michael Terkader. Mic is coming to you. There we are. Good morning. I have a question regarding the R&D on zongertinib. The phase III head-to-head study here in Europe is already started? Yes. Okay. Regarding the phase II studies in breast cancer, and I think it was Colorectal and gastric. Yeah. Okay. What is the timeline? When do you think you will see the first results, and how are things going on regarding the presence of zongertinib in U.S., Europe and Asia? Yeah. To get full approval in certain geographies and have a first approvals in territories like Europe for the lung cancer, where we are addressing HER2 mutation, we're expecting to see data for the ongoing phase III trial head-to-head versus standard of care. Our plans, as we showed on the slide, is around 2028, give and take, because again, these are progression-free survival, so again, are endpoints driven by outcomes. Separately, we are exploring the value of zongertinib beyond HER2 mutations and also looking in HER2 amplifications, and that opens really a plethora of new potential diseases, particularly breast. Here we are exploring zongertinib as a mono in those escalations as well as in combinations with different standard of care. These are very complex trials with many different arms where we are looking really at what is the right position of zongertinib. Again, in the next few years, we will see key inflection points which will help us understanding is there a value as a mono, is there a value in combination when we expand beyond the mutation moving into the HER2 amplification, which is particularly relevant for some of these new cancer types. Thank you so much for this. There's a couple more questions coming online now from Gert Mengele from Schwäbische Zeitung. Biberach is the topic. Can you say something more on what are the plans for future developments, and investments on this site? I think Frank could touch a little bit on it. Yeah, I think, to be fair, I don't have a concrete number now for 2026 with me. Nevertheless, we continue to invest in Biberach. As I mentioned, it is our largest research site globally, and we are also here building new laboratories and will continue to invest into the site and infrastructure. Thank you, Frank. A question I think, Armin, this is coming your way now. At what point in the future is a generic version of NexGard or afoxolaner expected to enter the market? Can you share how the Animal Health business believes this may impact the sales? Very good question. Let me give a little bit of context. afoxolaner is part of the isoxazoline class, and depending on the geography, the isoxazoline class over time will lose exclusivity. When it comes to NexGard, that is important and has been mentioned by both Frank and Shashank. NexGard is the leading brand in the entire animal health industry. The vet and consumer confidence in this brand is incredibly high based on many years of experience that this product does a wonderful job in protecting dogs and also cats against ticks and fleas and many kinds of very dangerous worms. As a result, we are of course aware of the development, but we believe that we will be able to manage this transition very, very well based on the strength and the confidence in this brand. If I can stay with you for a moment, Armin, there's a question coming in on Animal Health R&D spend. Why is it lower than the spend on R&D in Human Pharma? What's structurally different? I'll give a few examples. We are one of the very few companies at Boehringer Ingelheim that has human health and animal health under one roof, and we are leveraging the synergies in science and in innovation. Because many examples that Paula has given, cardiorenal metabolic or obesity are also highly relevant in pets, and we have a number of examples of products like a diabetes product in cats and Senvelgo that is coming from our human pharma research. We're really leveraging this proactively. Number two, human health and animal health are two separate businesses with also separate approaches in investing into R&D. With more than EUR 500 million every year at a share of net sales of above 10%, we are investing heavily within our industry framework in Animal Health, and we are usually, I have not seen all the financials, investing significantly more than the industry average. Why? Because Boehringer Ingelheim is driven by innovation, and we have this long-term perspective knowing that if we build innovation, if we bring value to our customers, we're gonna be successful for generations to come. Armin, I've one last question to you before we slowly wrap it up. Opportunities and risk in Animal Health, what do you feel good about in this space? I love that we are getting so many Animal Health questions. As I said earlier, the fundamentals of the Animal Health industry are very strong, both on the companion animal side, pet and in equine, and also on the livestock side. We see some variations underneath. During the COVID times, all of you or many of you will remember the pet market has been booming. The last one or two years you see more dynamic on the livestock side, also driven by the disease outbreaks that I have shared. Both parts of the Animal Health industry have long-term underlying growth drivers that will ensure the success of this industry. What I care a lot about is that we can help customers and governments and communities to fight especially the disease outbreaks. I love the questions about avian influenza and there are others, because we really have to collaborate. It takes a village so that we can partner with governments because the vaccination decision is with governments, but as an industry, as a company, we can do our part to support. Because my prediction would be that the challenges we have seen the last few years when it comes to disease outbreaks will continue, and it will be important that we are prepared, we work together early so that we can address it, but at the same time focus on prevention across companion animals and of course also medications when it comes to chronic diseases, especially on the companion animal side. All right. I will take the last two questions here before we wrap it up. JASCAYD performance in 2025, trends and expectations in IPF and PPF, and do you expect Ofev sales to be impacted by the launch of JASCAYD? Shashank? Thanks, Stefan. I'll take that one. We don't break out the sales. However, what we can share with you is that we are very pleased with the uptake. It looks like a very strong uptake in both IPF and PPF. Feedback we are getting. By the way, not just for JASCAYD, also for HERNEXEOS. We're seeing very good, very strong uptake in both brands. Feedback that we're getting is, it's addressing unmet medical need, and what we wanted to achieve is that this product is obviously used very early on. We are, as far as JASCAYD is concerned, tracking above the historic launch performance of Ofev, and that's always a marker for us to look at, how JASCAYD may perform. We are also seeing more combination use actually with Ofev and JASCAYD. Yet having said that, of course, we do expect over the course of the next years that Ofev sales will decline here, as JASCAYD takes up in the market. The last question we have before we close for today: What potential emerging disease areas does Boehringer see as most material and interesting? Shashank Deshpande, you wanna take this one? What areas are most interesting for Boehringer from a Human Pharma side? From Human Pharma side, I think we've already talked about it, right? Because the areas where we are in, where we have expertise, many things are interesting, but unmet medical need, our capabilities, they need to come together, and the therapeutic areas we presented is where we feel we can make the biggest contribution to patients, customers, to societies ultimately. We believe we're well-placed with the portfolio and the diseases it intends to address, I would answer. Maybe one additional word on that, because indeed, we are looking where there is unmet medical needs, but also where do we see emerging science that we believe we can do something about that. We re-look into this every five-six years to make sure that we do not remain just connected to places where meanwhile, hopefully, new solutions have been brought to the market that makes us confident we continue to invest in areas where there is a high unmet medical need and breakthrough science coming. We'll keep you updated on how the development journey continues for Indeed For Boehringer going forward. Thank you so much to the panel here for answering all the questions. If there's one or two open items online, we'll make sure to follow up of course. With that, we'd like to close it for today. Thank you for your interest in the company, and we're looking forward to staying in touch. Have a good day. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.