Again, a warm welcome to our half year's conference call. My name is Hardy. For those of you who don't know me, I am CFO, COO of Basler, and I will run you through today's presentation and also the Q&A session. Before we start with the presentation, I would like to remind you on the disclaimer that the statements and also the content of today's presentations are based on information that are available at this time. Our forward-looking statements, by nature, are subject to significant known and unknown risks and uncertainties. Please keep this in mind, and let's come to today's presentation. Today's presentation has five different sections. We start with an executive summary. We then go into a deeper dive of the financials, have a quick glance to the share development, and by the end of the presentation, giving an outlook for the remainder of the year, but also for the midterm. Then we start in point five here, our Q&A session. Hope to have a lively one. Let's start with the executive summary. Looking first at the environment we were in, in the first half year, it can be described with a very weak market environment. As we added already in Q1, there was no bigger change. We see a weak market demand across all different regions. After a relatively robust 2023 in the European region, this region also started to cool off, and the Americas markets and also the Asian markets did not really wake up, so far. There are slight improvements into especially the Asian regions, but it's on a very low level, so that all regions are very weak at the moment, or have been weak in the first half year, but still weak at the moment. From the vertical perspective, from the applications, we see only certain signs of recovery at the moment in logistics, so especially on the fulfillment center optimization, and also on the semiconductor side. Here, it's really meant semiconductor, front end, but also back end, but not on consumer electronics. Consumer electronics is still very weak, as many, many other verticals, in the market at the moment. The inventory levels are still, and has been, high in the first half year on our client side, but they are reducing, so it's still a legacy effect from the chip crisis. So the effect or the higher value of the inventories are consistently going down. We believe we might have another, let's say, couple of months as this effect, which are positive to us because it means step by step, this muted demand will go out, but the majority of it is cleared up, at the moment. In Germany, we see a situation where the industry-- we have here the industry situation. Billings were down by 19% first half year of the German industry for vision components, so all the companies exporting worldwide, and bookings were down the first half year, -7%. Let's have a look how we did in this environment. First of all, we are making good progress after our restructuring in the second half of last year with regard to all key parameters we look at. However, our top line is still pretty much impacted by the weak market environment. So looking at our bookings and billings, our bookings were down by -2%, so industry was down -7%, so we are a little bit better here. On the billing side, we are very close to the market figure. Our billings were down 20% in the first half of 2024. What has to be mentioned is, there is also a baseline effect, because last year's first half was still relatively good, and then the second half were going south significantly. So, we are now seeing also this effect, the baseline effect, comparing first half to first half of the years. Looking more sequentially, we are making consistently progress on bookings and billings. So from Q1 to Q2, our bookings went up by 10%, our billings went up by 14%, and, we are seeing this trend now for the fourth quarter in a row. We will see this later on the coming slides. Gross profit margin, also here we are improving compared to the first half last year. We improved approximately by 1.5 percentage points to 48.1%, coming from... There is a typo here, coming from last year's 46.5%. This should read half year 2023 versus half year 2024. So all in all, the restructuring is paying off. We are at what was the planned break-even point of approximately EUR 200 million sales annually. Actually, we are more in the range of 195 at the moment. So on our pre-tax earnings were also a positive, first time after three quarters, EUR 1.3 million positive in the second quarter. For the first half year, we were still, we are still in the loss area of year, EUR 2.3 million euro. So looking at the team structure, we talked also about this in the last calls quite a bit. So you see the effect. Last year's end of first half year, 2023, was approximately the top level of the number of full-time equivalents that we had on board. And this used to be 1,117. We are at the moment, or by end of first half year, this year, at 882. So we are approximately 240 people less, or full-time equivalents, not people. You see that the structure has kept in place from the distribution of the different functions. We have quite a sizable R&D still on board, with approximately 220 people, full-time equivalents, heavily innovating on vision components or vision products. We have invested approximately 15.5% on sales in the first half year on R&D. This also means we are continuously bringing out new products, innovations to the markets on all different kind of product fields. Starting here on the upper left side, we introduced in the second quarter, recently, a new 3D stereo products. On the lower left, we also enlarged our portfolio of non-visible two-dimensional products on our ace platform. So these are products where you can see beyond the human visual spectrum, for example, to look into a wafer or to look into a fruit in order to inspect defects that can't be seen by human eyes. On the frame grabber side, so our processing boards, we also came out with a new ima Flex CoaXPress, high processing, high bandwidth frame grabber. And on the software side, we are continuously releasing new functions and features on our pylon suite with regard to framework software, but also with regard to vision algorithms. Yeah, these two are the organic new products. We are also proud to stress again or to underline again our recent investments in a small innovative company in the field of robotic vision. It's one of the pioneering companies, still a small company, very innovative small company, founded in 2015. They are based in Munich. Company name is Roboception, and they are approximately 14 employees. And their core products are 3D sensors, so hardware side, but especially 3D algorithms and software suite, in order to make robots see, to guide robots, and also to connect this visual sense, especially to robots, stationary robots, but also mobile robots. You can have a look on www.roboception.com to get a feeling about the company. We acquired a 25.1% stake. With that stake, we are the largest shareholder within this company, but there are some other shareholders, also named well-known company. We are very happy to, yeah, to be part of this company and see how we can, with this company, also innovate the robotic industry. Yeah, these organic and also inorganic innovations and investments pay into our long-term strategy to develop the company from single component factory automation-oriented company to a full line provider acting in different kind of vertical markets, and become a full solution provider or a full range provider for computer vision over the long run and step by step. Yeah, let's come to the financials in more detail, starting from top line and going further than to bottom line. Starting with booking and billings, you can see here our quarterly development, and I mentioned this in the beginning of the call, we are making step-by-step progress. Even though we want to make faster progress, and we would like to be in the markets and to be in a better shape, however, we can demonstrate a fourth quarter now in the role of growing bookings and also a step-by-step growing billings. You see the last quarter's bookings here at 48.5 and 49.5 in billings. Second quarter of this year. And the book-to-bill ratios are, let's say, on the same level. For those of you who know us longer, this is relatively normal because our lead times are relatively short. So normally, times are in the range of two weeks, one week sometimes, so bookings materialize and billings very fast and quick. So this also means that, let's say, book-to-bill range of approximately one is a normal situation. Yeah. How does it look from the regional distribution standpoint? So from this EUR 93 million in total sales for the first half year, we have realized 49% in Asia. So Asia is a bit faster growing than the other regions compared to the first half of last year. Thirty-five percent came from EMEA, still a relatively, in the long-term trend, good value, and America stays weak with 16%. So that was the regional split, so we need to see which, when, what kind of markets or which markets will wake up, because it's obvious, when semiconductor and consumer electronics will wake up, the Asian portion most likely will rise again. Yeah, looking at the gross profits in absolute terms and also in relative terms, here also, we are making significant progress. So we had our, let's say, down, or lowest values in the second half of last year with gross profit margins in the range of 38-39 percent points. Coming in the first half year, last year, from roughly 45 and coming long-term from a level of 50-52%, we are now betting, getting step-by-step back to where we have come from. So as you can see, we made very good progress from Q4 to Q1, and then also again from Q1 to Q2, to 44.6, and then 48.1% gross profit margin. Together with the growth in sales, this also led to growing absolute numbers here. This is to be mentioned also in front of the background that we have still, let's say, negative influences at hand for our gross margins. The biggest one at the moment is the low economies of scale. So we are running at still a low revenue level. That means that our fixed costs in operations of purchasing productions are not very good scaled. But we still have also some spot buy legacy in our books that step-by-step will further go out. And on the currency pressures, we see, let's say, RMB to be weak. Yen recently changed, but in the first half year, the Japanese yen was pretty weak, and we also see continuous price pressure in China. But we have made significant progress here, and we are also working on further improvements. So those two angles, first, sales growth, then gross profit margin growth, also has brought us step-by-step back into the profitability zone with EUR 1.3 million pre-tax profit in the second quarter. We had still a loss of EUR 3.6 million in the first quarter. So here also, we can see definitely the improvements. However, the weak sales around our break-even point is limiting us at the moment with regard to bringing the company back to a higher level of profitability. The half-year comparison in an overview here from the P&L, order entries, EUR 92.5 million, so -2%. Sales, EUR 93 million, -20%. Also here again, stressing the point, with EUR 116 million last year, we had a relatively good base. This will change in the second half of the year, where the base is also getting lower. Gross profits, in absolute terms, EUR 43.2 million, minus EUR 17 million, so not going down as high as the sales because we made the mentioned gross profit margin improvements. EBITDA positive with EUR 7.1 million, still significant behind the year before. And then earnings before tax, minus 2.3, the overall half year, coming from roughly break even first half of last year, and net income, minus 3.4. Yeah, looking at the cash flow, side of things, also here, step-by-step improvements are visible, especially on the second quarter, with our higher, higher operational-... performance and earnings level, we were also able to have a higher operational cash flow. We still are, from the operational cash flow side, behind our plans, reducing the inventory levels because of the weak demand. So this would even be a higher contributor then. And on the investment side, it's worth to mention that in the second quarter, the 25.1% stake in Roboception is paid. So the normal, let's say, level of investments we run at the moment, intangibles and intangible assets are in the range of EUR 2.5 million per quarter. So this means we were able to be free cash flow positive in Q2, but as you can see, Q1 was still negative, and the overall figure is also still negative. Yeah, the half year in total, we started the period with EUR 32 million cash, then positive cash flow from operation EUR 3.9 million. Cash flow from investments -EUR 6 million, including the Roboception investment. So free cash flow -2.1, significantly better than first half of last year, however, not yet positive. Cash flow from financing -6.4. Two thirds of the 6.4 are also paying or reducing our loans, so pay back loans. The rest is interest and finance lease, so that we ended the period with approximately EUR 24 million cash account. Yeah, have a look, let's have a look, a quick look at the share performance. Yeah, nothing special in the first half year, so more or less a side move with also the uncertainties in the market, also with the situation the company is in at the moment. Yeah, development also relatively parallel to the TecDAX. I mean, recently, after yeah, now in, in July, there were also some developments. Now, the share price is at around 9 EUR. So we definitely, what we are seeing, we have to further do, and this will- is our concentration point, doing our homework to bring back the company to a profitable growth track. On the shareholder structure side, no change in the recent months, so this is why I'm flipping through this slide quickly. Coming directly to the outlook, and starting with our assumptions for the short term, for the second half of this year, we expect a stepwise but slower recovery of market demand than what we have anticipated beginning of the year. We still see that our customers and also the macroeconomic data is, yeah, it's not really significantly improving. So this means for us, we see further gradually the improvements of the market, but not really a strong rebound. And we see also this improvement, further improvements kicking in more in the fourth quarter than in the third quarter, because we also have summer season in the third quarter, so there's also a seasonality effect. With regard to the inventory levels, we expect to have, let's say, a couple of more months muted demand due to a higher inventory levels at our clients, but it's definitely phasing out, and this effect will be over after, let's say, Q3 from now. Then this will be only an exceptional effect at some of our clients, but not a phenomenon across the markets, across all clients. On the geopolitical side, yeah, definitely uncertainties will continue, will rise, unfortunately. Yeah, this is not in our hand. We can just do our best to make progress in this environment. We also expect continuing of the very high competitive intensity, especially in China and Asia Pacific, due to the aggressiveness of the competition, but also due to the weak market demand. This goes hand in hand, and this has been already in the first half, quite a competitive environment, and this will definitely continue. Yeah, having this said, under these assumptions, we confirm our guidance. However, we narrow it down to the lower half of it. So coming for before previously, EUR 190 million-EUR 210 million in sales, our corridor, we are now narrowing it down, from EUR 190 million-EUR 200 million in sales. And on the earnings margin, pre-tax earnings margin, respectively, beforehand, we forecasted or guided 0%-5% margin. We are now focusing it or narrowing it down to 0%-3%. Yeah, we definitely expect further top-line improvements over the course of the year. I mentioned more the fourth quarter than the third quarter. We also work continuously on further improvements on the gross margin. We are also positive here, but on that side, I mean, definitely the improvement steps will become slower as we have already gained quite a lot in the first half year or the first two quarters. We definitely will be continue our tight OpEx and CapEx management as the weak markets remain, and this will be the managing mode for the coming months. For the midterm, we are more positive regarding the market environment. Sooner or later, we believe there will be a market recovery. At the moment, we expect this to get in to kick in in 2025. So this also leads us to the position that we confirm also our midterm guidance here, to achieve in 2027, EUR 300 million in sales. So to bring back the company to a, by and large, 15% top line growth, and over the course of the next years, also step by step, bring the company back to 12% earnings margin level. This could be earlier than 2027. Let's see how the company develops. But this is our clear mission to reach the EUR 300 million in 2027 at 12% earnings margin, and also a sound cash conversion rate of 70%. Here also, the assumptions or the perspective has not changed. In order to achieve this, we still need to have access to the China market. I mean, it's still 23% of our sales exposure, so this is definitely a critical parameter we need to watch out closely. We are, let's say, positive, as I said, that the markets will recover sooner or later. There is a lot of macro or mega trends that are fueling vision technology and also our strategy feels right. We are continuously further implementing our way to become a full line provider/solution provider for computer vision to enlarge, let's say, the addressable market for us, and also to give us more room for differentiation. Yeah, this brings me to the end of the presentation, and I'm now looking forward to have a lively Q&A session. Our operator and my colleague here, Manuela, will help us to run through this, and I will hand over to her, to give some, some introduction how to do this. Hello, everyone. My name is Manuela. I'm your host today. We're now starting our Q&A session. So, if you want to ask a question to Hardy, please raise your hand and then unmute yourself. So we have the first question from Robert. You now should be able to ask your question. Hi, can you hear me now? Yes. Yes. I hear you. Thanks, thanks for taking my question. So, three questions, actually. The first one would be on the impact of the still expensive materials you have on your books. Do you expect that effect like, to a similar extent in the next quarter, or should it, you know, like, phase out over the third quarter and then will be off the books in the last quarter? So maybe just an update on how you see that, burdening effect going forward. My second question would be more generally on the Asian market, given the high competition. Have you already, you know, lost market share? Are you expecting to lose market share? Will this be a gradual thing, or do you think that the aggression we see now will be, to some level, the sustainable new pricing level in and around China? And the last question actually would be, if I compare, like, the cost positions we saw in the second quarter this year compared to last year, the main reduction was really in, like, R&D. So I was thinking, is this somehow at odds with, or a challenge for the strategic development of the company going forward? Which, to my understanding, you know, is also, it is also important to keep investing, especially in software, to give this, you know, full line product suite that you're targeting. So these were my- Mm-hmm. questions. Okay. Okay. Yeah, Robert, thank you for your questions. Maybe starting with the first one regarding the gross margin and the impact of the, let's say, legacy, higher cost material. So I see this effect still being in our books for, let's say, the next 3 or 6 months. However, the effect is getting smaller and smaller, and, to quantify it, I see maybe here a potential of another 0.5-1 percentage points improvement from now until end of the year. Yeah, to give you a feeling here. Perfect, thanks. From this parameter. So the other question regarding the market share in Asia, I think here we have two different situation. We have Asia-Pacific, how we call it, and we have China maybe as, and we look at it separately. In China, we have definitely lost market share, especially over the course of COVID times and the delivery and supply chain crisis. So here we have lost market share. We also believe it will be hard to get back this market share. The situation at the moment is that we, for 2-3 quarters now, we are keeping market share when we look at roughly what is the growth in the market or the development and how we develop. But we are step by step, let's say, focusing on clients that are willing to pay a premium for Western technology or for better technology. So this will be definitely ongoing because yeah, just competing without a clear differentiation in China is becoming very difficult, because to meet the price points of the Chinese local suppliers is yeah, is not sustainable. In Asia-Pacific, we don't see that we have lost market shares here. I think we have even in the supply chain crisis, because we were good in delivery in the more northern part of the Asia-Pacific regions, we believe we have even won market share. When you go further south with, for example, to countries like Taiwan, where also Chinese players are stronger, maybe here it's a bit different. But all in all, we think in this region we have kept or one market share, and we are at the moment just in a very, let's say, weak situation, because the main markets in this area are all around consumer electronics. Some are also in semicon, but the majority of the vision components market is definitely driven by consumer electronics, and this machinery is pretty weak. Will the competition level further increase? Yes, we believe so. But here, again, our strategy to become more a full line provider and offer also bundles that give more, let's say, more room to differentiate, here we believe we can definitely further differentiate from competition. And the last question, R&D investment. So all in all, we spent roughly the first half of the year, EUR 14.5 million, which is 15%-16% from sales. That is quite a high number, so and it's in people, it's, 220 full-time equivalents. Yes, we have reduced, significantly the number of R&D people during the restructuring, but the R&D department beforehand was, yeah, was sized also for, let's say, a revenue level of approximately EUR 300 million, which we cannot afford this this size of R&D at this point in time. And, this is why we, we had to cut back, but we are at a healthy level, that gives us possibilities to further innovate, on hardware, but especially also on the software side, because that's correct what you mentioned. Significant portion of our R&D investments are today already going into software development, be it framework or algorithms or how the products play together, or preprocessing. And this needs to continue, definitely, because these are the key differentiators for the future. Perfect. Thanks. One small follow-up, if I may. So on the Chinese competition outside of China in Asia-Pacific- Mm-hmm. I would have thought that the price aggression we saw in mainland China would probably also be projected, you know, in the region surrounding it. So could you just give me an idea how those markets look and how you were able to gain market share here, despite the increased pricing pressure? Yeah. Yeah. So the, there are two factors, actually. The one factor is that, in Asia-Pacific, I would say, especially in the southern part of Asia-Pacific, customers are neutral, whether a product comes from China or whether it's a Western product. They are not in favor of either or. I would say in this region, they are neutral. So this is different in China. In China, many customers are in favor of local Chinese, yeah. So, and, and this, also is helping us in Asia, in Asia-Pacific to be at least neutral. And the other aspect is in Asia-Pacific, in most of the countries or in, in all of the countries, the Chinese competitors are going through indirect or market, go-to-market strategy. So this, this means they are using distribution companies in between. Whereas in some of the Asia-Pacific markets, we are direct. And so this is a different game than in China, because in China, we are direct, and the Chinese rivals are direct. So also here, the price aggressiveness of those companies, yeah, are directly impacting the customer, and this is also a different situation. Okay, so the closeness to the customer is key outside of China? Yes. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Perfect. Thank you very much. Yeah. You're very welcome, Robert. More questions? Yeah. There's one question from Lasse. You also need to unmute yourself. Hi. Good afternoon. Hello, Lasse. Hi. I just have a question on, you know, you had another recovery or sequential improvement in orders in the second quarter. I'm just wondering, how do we think about—I think you said that you expect a bigger improvement to come in this fourth quarter. Is the, if I call it this, the, I guess, the weaker Q3, is that coming from Europe having weakened throughout Q2? Or where is that kind of the change in the, you know, I guess, the step change coming from? Yeah in terms of demand sequentially? Yeah. Yeah, maybe also to the picture that it's pretty clear. So we definitely, what we are seeing as we have already some weeks in Q3 behind us, and here to manage the expectations, the third quarter most likely will be more in the realm of the second quarter, and then we see future seasonality effects better in Q4 happening. And this has two aspects. The one aspect is especially what you mentioned, Europe. Europe cooled off, and Europe is now the region with the highest summer seasonality effect because of some countries are, let's say, closing down in August, more or less, and we see also longer, let's say, vacation periods in Europe. So this is why in the third quarter, we expect Europe even further cooling off and then coming back more in the fourth quarter. And another aspect is also typically what we see in the fourth quarter is then further, let's say, orders coming in for the consumer electronics for the coming year, and also for semicon investments. And this is why we see this kind of development happening. Thanks. Just because you mentioned semicon consumer electronics usually coming through later in the year, do you have any early indications around the magnitude of demand for next year? Because, I mean, everyone's talking about- Yeah you know, the semicon CapEx cycle for next year, and I wonder how that looks for you. Yeah in both consumer electronics and semicon. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so to bring everyone on the page here, so for us, consumer electronics is typically or is the much, let's say, higher exposure that we have or because more cameras go downstream into the electronics compared to semicon. In semicon, unfortunately, we have no clue yet. So the market is still low and very high uncertainties. We don't get a clear picture from our clients. On the semicon side, what we are seeing is we see already, let's say, investments continuing or increasing in everything around AI technology. So AI chipsets and memories and bonding of those, we see all also that the companies that are in this field, the machinery companies, also starting to have higher order entries. And also the recent studies we get from the industries are pointing towards, let's say, a 10-15% growth in the equipment market for the semicon side. This at least gives us, let's say, certain positive signs, but not having any, let's say, significant and growing orders on hand already. This is also why we see definitely not, let's say, a change kicking in in the third quarter already. Understood. Final question: is there anything that's kind of changed structurally in terms of the competitive environments in Europe? Or, you know, are you still dealing with the same competitors? Is pricing still pretty rational, at least versus China? That would be interesting. Yeah, it's still. So no, no significant change. I would say that we see pricing is rational. We are seeing the brands of Chinese competitors, but they are not considered in each and every customer. And we also see that the uncertainties of the geopolitical situation brings customers more to think to stay, let's say, with local vendors or Western vendors. So this is why I don't see at the moment significant change. I mean, in Europe, there is Stemmer as a big distribution house or solution provider. I mean, there was also recently or is in the process of changing the owner, but this won't change the strategy of the company, I guess. This is why I don't see at the moment, bigger changes happening or in the near future to happen. Understood. Thank you. Seem to be no more questions. More questions? questions? Hmm. No more questions? No. Do we have summer vacation season on Q&A also? Last chance for questions. If not, I mean, if you have questions afterwards, you know how to find us, get us an email, and we can go into direct conversation after the call. Yeah, I am looking forward to the coming quarters, presenting hopefully further improvements. Also, we cross fingers that the markets will further improve and that a real rebound or recovery will kick in in the coming year. Yeah, I wish you a nice summer season, seeing you at the latest next time during the third quarter call, and we keep in touch, and I thank you very much for your attention. Bye-bye.