Dear ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our conference call for the financial year 2022/2023. Together with my colleagues, Jürgen Böttcher and Georg von Graevenitz, we are happy to have you here. Thank you very much for your interest in CropEnergies, and we will guide you through the slides and the question and answers at the end of the slides. This year we have chosen this webcast format. In prior years, that means pre-corona, we physically met in Frankfurt. During corona, we had audio calls, and this time we have chosen this format for two reasons. One is to allow a maximum of people to join us and to listen to us and to see us, because not everybody can make it into Frankfurt for one day. That's one point for making this virtually. The second point is, as not all of you have already met the three of us, we have taken the decision to make it as a videocast, so that they get an impression on the CropEnergies board. Let's get started. As I said, together with my two colleagues, we will guide you through the presentation, which you'll find or have found on the internet on our webpage. Let's have a look on the next slide with the agenda. What is on the agenda today? It is page two. We will cover five points in our presentations. I will start with the framework on politics because there's a lot of new. Georg will continue with the market developments and the update on ethanol feedstock and energy markets. In the third point, I will show you the financial results of financial year 2022/2023, just finished. The fourth point is our leitmotif in whatever we do is the sustainability, which is a key element in our strategy and everything we do at CropEnergies. Jürgen Böttcher will cover this part, and then together we will give you an update on our strategy and strategy execution. Before we get started, on the next page you find some technical details for this webcast. To watch the video, please use the link provided in your registration confirmation, please use your PC speaker for audio and do not dial in via telephone. This is necessary at the end of this presentation when we come to the Q&A. Let's have a look on page number five, where you find the update on politics. A lot has changed. When we met last year at the same time, there was a lot of debate on biofuels due to the Russian aggression war against Ukraine. In following that, they had led by the Greens, ministers in Germany had started a debate on biofuels. This had a negative impact also on investors' confidence and all the discussions brought a lot of uncertainty. What we did at CropEnergies, together with our associations on European level, ePURE, and through German level, BDBe, and also the other biofuels associations, we did a lot of work in explaining fact-based and showing the strong commitment and positive things on biofuels. What I can say, looking back 12 months, week by week, but also really month by month, we got more and more support and understanding. At the end, as what you see, it was largely acknowledged that biofuels have a positive contribution to climate change or to bring down CO2 emissions. More and more people then fact-based, and you find this also always in our presentations, understand that this is an integrated production of food, feed, and biofuels. The grain that we use is not suitable for human consumption. What we also do, because we see the growth potential in ethanol, we will touch on this later, more and more is used by ethanol production from residues and waste. What we also can see is that the prices for agricultural product, they are only marginally affected by biofuels. Last but not least, there's really a very good grain availability with rising stocks in Europe. Georg will have a word on the markets later on. Let's continue with the next slide. Here you can find it's page number six. You find what is new on the Green Deal and the Fit for 55 package. Before I go into the details, just in a nutshell, to our view, overall, this is really very positive. Europe is really committed to bring down CO2 emissions with strong ambition targets and increased ambition targets. This is clearly positive, and this is fully in line with our long-term CropEnergies strategy. The only thing that we absolutely claim for is it's not only about setting ambitious targets, it's also then providing a legislative framework in b y the national authorities to have this really e-executed. Let's look into some details. The first point on the slide is the Emission Trading System. There is a higher greenhouse gas reduction goal of 62% versus 43%. This covers or this touches the sectors in the ETS. New, there shall be an introduction of an ETS system for buildings, road, and fuels. The second point is on the Renewable Energy Directive fee. I will touch on the next slide in more detail. The third point is also interesting for us because it is when we talk about bringing down CO2 emissions in transport, it's about road transport, but it's also about aviation and maritime. For example, for the aviation sector, the sustainable aviation fuels or SAF called, shall have a market share increasing from 6% 2030 to 70% 2050. This is very long-term, but this also gives interesting fields of activity for CropEnergies. The same is true for maritime. That means for shipping. Here, a greenhouse gas reduction target shall be brought in increasing from 6% 2030 and to 80% 2050. You see clearly, the European Commission has a clear target to bring down CO2 emissions in all sectors, and this is fully in line with our CropEnergies strategy. Nevertheless, there's one point, which also last year we have stressed, which is still critical, is the CO2 standard for cars. Because, for legislation-wise, for new registered cars, there shall be a CO2 reduction target of minus 55% in 2030, and 100% in 2035. This means a quasi abolishment of the internal combustion engine. We have all followed the discussions in the politics led by the FDP minister in Germany. They brought into the point that this is in conflict with technology neutrality, and that the combustion engine is not the issue, but the fossil fuels that he uses. There is a loophole. There's an open window for e-fuels made. This could be an option, but we'll have to see how this will be worked out in definitive or final legislation. It's positive that this opportunity exists, but we will have to see how this finally would be worked out. On the next slide, it is page number seven. I would like to go a little bit more in detail into the Renewable Energy Directive, because it is ultimately for us, the most important legislation that is most covering the fields of CropEnergies. For those who are not always following our politics, some more general remarks. Renewable Energy Directive governs how much renewable energy is used in the sectors. There was the first Renewable Energy Directive, the RED I, that covered the period between 2010 and 2020. Now the RED II, that's the current legislation, governs the period from 2020 to 2030. What the European Commission, together with parliament and the member states did, they proposed is, let's call it RED III, but it covers the same period. That means within the same time framework, between 2020 and 2030. Now, all the ambition targets for CO2 reductions will be increased in the current phase. By 2030, there shall be increased renewable energy targets. This is 2030, it's not far away. This is quasi tomorrow. That means all industry players now have to really to come up quickly with solutions to bring CO2 emissions down. For the transport sectors, the member states can choose between two policy options for their climate regulation. One is they can have a greenhouse gas intensity reduction target. This is proposed to be -40.5%. Little bit technically speaking, this compared to the Fuel Quality Directive value of 6% by 2020. They can choose to reach a renewable energy share to be attained, and this shall be at least 29%. This 29% compares to 10%, which was to be reached under RED I by 2020 or 14% under the previous RED II by 2030. That means it's really a huge larger number of CO2 emissions needed. We'll cover later on in the strategy. This is clear. This can only be met by way, if we take all technologies available and do more, and especially biofuels can play an important role to reaching those targets. Important to us that the crop cap was not touched. That means for our business model, the first generation actual ethanol that we produce, this can still be in the member states in the volume of 2020 reached, plus 1%, in parentheses. I would like to see the German politicians to go for that, but not decreasing it being above 7%. There's also a binding sub-target for advanced fuels and renewable fuels of non-biological origin. This gives also interesting fields of activity in the future for CropEnergies. The plenary vote to finally bind this is planned for September. As we have seen in the last weeks, in Europe, this could be somehow a little bit later, but it's a clear objective to do this within the end of this year. On the next page, I would like to briefly touch on the e-fuels, because this has been a lot of in the debate in the last weeks and months, led by the Federal Minister of Transport, Wissing, and the actions of Germany in the RED III discussions to open up the window for the internal combustion engine to be run on e-fuel. What is the CropEnergies positions on that? For us, the e-fuels and the ethanol is a perfect match, yeah, because as the advantage of e-fuels is that they are climate friendly, but they have a high energy. They are energy intense. On the other side, if you make a mixture of e-fuels and biofuels, this gives a very good petrol, because e-fuels per se have a low octane number and ethanol is needed to boost the octane number. Ethanol in combination with e-fuels is a perfect match also for the internal combustion engine, 2035 onwards. This having said, we continue with the market developments, and I hand over to Georg. Thank you very much. Also welcome from my side. Market development on page 10. We look back on a year with highly volatile agriculture and energy markets, in the course of the Russian aggression war against Ukraine. On a year full of challenges, especially in the area of supply chain and in the course of this, of course, heavily reacting and volatile prices. From a volume point of view, we saw, however, an increase of almost 10% in the consumption of fuel ethanol in the EU- 27 and U.K., as you can see on the right graph, upper graph side, while production was more or less stable. We expect a further growth in the years to come, especially in 2023 and 2024, as shown in the graph. At the same time, the forecast for non-fuel ethanol is stable, at least. The main drivers for the increased demand for fuel ethanol were and are the various E10 introduction in the last year and this year, and also as it has been announced for the next year to come. As you know, already implemented is the E10 introduction in U.K., which gave a boost in last year's demand in that area of almost 50%. In Ireland, Austria and Norway this year has induced increased demand and will be inducing increased demand. Poland is planning to introduce E10 also with significant demand numbers in the next year, 2024. This I really want to mention, the increase in demand of E85 in France added to the increased demand overall in the EU. We have an increased demand in that area of +88%. Right now, 900,000 cubes in France are going into E85. The E10 share and ever-increasing E10 share in Germany is adding to this growing consumption in 2022 and the next years to come. This increased demand, together with a big price difference, and now on the next page, on page 11, a price difference between EU and world market prices, mainly due to energy and raw material prices here in the EU, this led to a significant increase in imports. As you can see on the right graph, plus 140%. Numbers we've never seen before, neither in absolute nor relative terms. We also have to say, those imports are structurally needed, as indicated, due to the increased demand in order to cover the volumes which will be needed in the EU this year and in the coming years. I already mentioned the high ethanol price in 2022, 2023. As you can see also here on the page, we have on average an increased price of EUR 183 per cubic meter compared to the financial year 2021, 2022. You can also see on the right graph, on the lower graph, that especially in the second half of the calendar year 2022, we saw a pressure on the prices, which corresponds with increased import quantities. We also see a slight recovery from January onwards, January 2023 onwards in the price of ethanol. Feedstock market on the next page, on page 12. That up front, today we see a price level on the grain markets, which is comparable to the price level before the Ukrainian War. I don't want to say we are back to normal because to my opinion, normal is nothing you can use in times of war, but at least in the price level, we are back in the time, compared to before the Ukrainian War. This has been very different in the year 2022. As you all know, in the financial year 2022, 2023, we had higher grain prices of almost EUR 100 per ton, more expensive than the average compared to the financial year before. We saw a peak in those prices in May 2022 with more than EUR 430 per ton. Since that time, the price declined gradually, mainly to the reorganization and therefore also relaxation within the supply chains. Ukraine is exporting again its raw material, on the one hand via the grain corridor, recently prolonged for another two months, between Ukraine and Russia, and on the other hand, via the land routes into Europe. Also looking at the grain balances, we see very solid grain balances, both in the EU, as you can see on the right lower graph. There you can also see that we always produce more than we consume. Those balances, solid balances we see also on a global living level, looking at the stock to use ratio. Also having the harvest outlook in mind for the current year, fields look really good in the EU. We expect, as you can see from the graph, an increased harvest in the EU and also on the global level, we can expect a harvest close to the record harvest in 2021 and in 2022. Last slide on markets. That is the slide on energy markets on page 13. There were various forms of energy price breaks in German Energiepreisbremse, Bremse in European countries and looking at the energy prices. The upper graph, you can see that's the green line throughout the year 2022. Those price breaks had to cushion never seen prices and never seen price hikes before. Since December 2022, gas prices declined steadily. Main reason for this were the high stocks of gas due to a mild winter, also, and especially looking in Germany, the construction of several LNG terminals adding to security of physical supply. Last week we saw for the first time the gas spot price of gas going below EUR 30 per megawatt hour, the first time since June 2021. Looking ahead, the main drivers for gas prices development is, and I think this is clear to everybody, the global LNG demand as competition for the volumes going to Europe and storage levels, and with that of course the winter that is in front of us, the weather conditions. This is from the market perspective. Back to Stefan. Thank you, Georg. I continue on page 15 with the financial overview of the financial year 2022, 2023. You can see us smiling here. We are very proud. We have reached the fourth record year in a row, so this makes us very happy, very proud. This is a strong team effort, yeah. Such an amazing result you can only have if all the teams work excellently together. It starts with raw material sourcing. It's about production, it's about logistics and sales and all the teams that we have in finance and administration and communication and so on. That means all in all, together with all our CropEnergies colleagues, we have reached this excellent result, and this goes along with a very thank you to all our CropEnergies colleagues for having worked so thoroughly and so hard with us on this year. You can see from the slides, all the production is slightly above year, above the last year. Revenues has a strong increase and also all the profitability figures. We can continue on page 16, where we see the revenues slide. If you start on the right-hand side, you can see on the graph that production was stable, slightly above last year's and previous year's production. But we see a very strong impact on revenues. We have reached almost EUR 1.5 billion in turnover. It's the best record revenue we ever had. If you make the breakdown between ethanol and other food and animal feed products, the share is 78% on ethanol products and 22% on others. This is quite stable over the years, this 80/20 ratio. The main reason for this excellent result were very good ethanol prices, as Georg just explained here throughout the year, and we have seen this particularly in the first half of the year. We will later on, we will see a graph on the operating results per quarter, and there we can see that most of this excellent result was achieved in the first half of this financial year. Let's continue on page number 17. On page number 17, you find the EBITDA. Starting with revenues at EUR 1.5 billion, we had an overall per-performance which was slightly above. Cost of new materials came out at EUR 1.1 billion. That means there's also a strong increase, especially in the raw materials. Yeah, that's like Georg has shown on, for example, on the grain prices and also on energy. We have been also, like others, been strongly affected by higher raw material prices and energy prices. As the ethanol price increase was even higher, we overcompensated this negative effect by the increased ethanol sales. Overall, then material expense ratio turned out at 74%. Let's continue with the income statement below operating profit. You can see that we had a slightly positive financial result. This is due to the fact that we have as in prior quarters or prior years, we always can have unrealized currency effects linked to the Euro GDP ratio. On the next page, you find the balance sheet. Let's have a brief look here on the balance sheet. It is like in previous year, we are building up equity and also total assets number increases. Now the total asset number stands at roughly EUR 1 billion. Our equity shows a strong position with an equity ratio of 75%. As you know, as we are working in volatile markets, we are happy to have a conservative financial position and a strong equity position. Let's continue with the dividend. This is on page 21. If we bring down the earnings per share and the cash flow per share, you see that earnings per share came out at EUR 2.25, and cash flow at EUR 2.74. What our proposal is to pay out a dividend of EUR 0.60. That what we have proposed to the supervisory board who confirms this proposal. This proposal of EUR 0.60 will be proposed to the general assembly in July, and this gives a payout ratio of 27%. If we compare the EUR 0.60 to the share price at the end of the financial year, which stood at EUR 11.64, this gives the dividend ratio of 5.2%. Overall, our dividend policy is unchanged compared to prior years. In general, we tend to pay out a ratio between 30% and 40%, but each year we take into consideration the net financial position, the forecast for the following year and the investment needs. We deem this EUR 0.60 proposal as a fair dividend proposal, taking into consideration all stakeholders' interests. Let's have finally for the finance section a look on the outlook. Our first outlook we released on April 17th, and this outlook we confirm as of today. For the financial year 2023-2024, CropEnergies awaits revenues to range between EUR 1.27 billion-EUR 1.37 billion. This compares to the EUR 1.5 billion of this year. An EBITDA in the range of EUR 140 million-EUR 190 million, which corresponds to an operating profit between EUR 95 million and EUR 145 million. In a nutshell, compared to the financial year we just closed, this is a decrease. If you take a broader look, if you compare those numbers to the years we had before this exceptional year, this is also a pretty good year for CropEnergies. Our outlook is based under the following assumptions. One is, we clearly see there's a continued volatility on the sales, raw materials, and energy markets, as Georg also just explained. On the positive side, we clearly see that the introduction of E10 in other European countries points to a stable sales of fuel ethanol, so mobility is good and increase the blending mandates. That is positive for our European industry. We will also see increasing imports, who can have an effect on prices and on the volatility of the markets. This having said, that was the finance section. At the beginning I said sustainability is one of our key elements in our strategy. I hand over to Jürgen for news on sustainability. Stefan, thank you very much. Also to my side, good afternoon, everybody. You are aware with our Green Deal, already addressed several years ago, we have set ourselves ambitious CO2 reduction targets. We announced that we would like to reduce the Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 50% by 2030. We can conclude today, as you can see also in the slide, we are on track. For 2026, we have set a new intermediate target. We are aiming now for -32%. The measures which are needed to implement or to achieve this new climate target are already under investigation or being implemented. That means here we have taken all the decisions to achieve the intermediate target by 2026. In a CE-wide working group, we are currently investigating which additional measures we do need to achieve the new climate neutrality after 2030. Here we are focusing on usage of waste heat, improve of energy efficiencies of our processes. We do look into electrification of processes, for instance, with heat pumps, and for sure, we are further going the way to do fuel switches from fossil fuels to renewable fuels. With Südzucker Group joining the SBTI initiative, we will tackle, yeah, the really challenging task of reducing our Scope 3 emissions by 30% till 2030. Due to the fact that most of our Scope 3 emissions are from the purchased raw material, we have started the discussion with our raw material supplier and even initiated first small pilot projects. On the next slide, Stefan addressed already our biomass boiler in BioWanze. With the realization of this boiler, BioWanze will be our first plant which will be fully fossil-free in the production process in a couple of years. The boiler is ready for start-up. We have now to install the turbine during the summer period, and the start will be then in autumn this year. We are currently examining when and how we replace the remaining 10% fossil energy. We have different options. It's thinkable that we produce our own biogas from residual materials, or we are also thinking about usage of green hydrogen if this green hydrogen is available in the future. On the next page, you see a review on sustainability activities outside the CO2 reduction pathway. CropEnergies underlined with all these initiatives, its strong commitment to global sustainability goals and joined several voluntary initiatives in 2022, 2023. You see examples on the page. CropEnergies increases transparency through participation in ratings and disclosure projects. CropEnergies is aiming to increase its engagement in sustainability platforms in the near future as sustainability in general and sustainability ratings are becoming increasingly important for the capital market. For the first time, on the next page, we reported in our annual report the turnover and CapEx and OpEx with regards to the EU Taxonomy regulation. You see here that we achieved 6% of turnover are Taxonomy-aligned. This is mainly due to the fact that for this alignment, only waste and residue-based ethanol is recognized. With the 6% also, to be honest, we are thus within the range of the European industry as a study or by the Philipps-Universität Marburg recently has shown. In general, we do not agree that the EU Taxonomy does not allow for our certified sustainable fuel ethanol become taxonomy-aligned, but only taxonomy-conformed. This is a thing where we don't see the logic behind, but we can't change it so far. For sustainability, and hand over back to Stefan. Thank you, Jürgen. Last but not least, before we come to the Q&A section, we would like to together give you an update on our strategy, and this is on page 29. You can find the summary of our strategy, which we already communicated to you last year. What we can state now, looking back the 12 months of this financial year, it's great to see that we are already in midst the execution of this strategy. We see full commitment from all our CropEnergies teams to work on that, this is really a fascinating way that we have started towards more sustainability and climate neutrality contribution that we can give. Our claim is innovation from biomass. Our purpose is to deliver green carbons, our strategy, as we communicated, stands on five pillars. The first pillar is clear, our core business like we do today, first-generation ethanol for mobility, so it's with sustainable and climate-friendly fuels. We want to increase our production of second-generation e-ethanol because it's clear this is a clear growth potential for the future. Also, we believe that I showed you the huge increase of ambition level in Europe for fighting climate change with higher ambition levels for renewable energies. This clearly means that we also need higher lending mandates. This could be, for example, an E20 blend for Europe, and I will come back to this point on the next slide. The second point on our strategic agenda is to build up a new business area in the field of ethanol derivatives. Thank you very much. Very kind. Build up a new business area based on ethanol derivatives in the field of bio-based chemicals. We will give you an update, Jürgen and Georg. The third pillar is also very interesting. Everybody talks about CO2 being negative, but this is not the truth, yeah? The truth is that fossil CO2 is negative. Biogenic CO2 is a very interesting raw material which can be used for synthetic fuels, can be used for biochemicals. There's a huge potential that we can make out of CO2. We have also seen during the last summer that there was a scarcity of CO2 in Europe, and we believe CO2 to be a very interesting product. This is a strong element in being an ethanol producer because during the fermentation process, the CO2 is captured and you. let's say you get it quasi automatically with producing ethanol. The fourth pillar is as important as the others. It's our protein products, which is very important, and to contribute to the food CMs production in Europe. We have projects in mind for increasing here our protein business. The fifth pillar is also very interesting. It's a little bit more in the future. It's to develop a new business area for green electricity and green hydrogen. Let's go on the next slide. As I said, I want to touch the E20. E20 is a fuel grade for petrol cars with 20% of ethanol. This is not yet allowed, that means standardized, petrol grade. Nevertheless, there's a lot of preparation work being done for this petrol grade. For example, you see on the right-hand side of the chart, you see standardization of E20 fuel with a position paper of the VDA, the Verband der Automobilindustrie. It's the German car makers association, which clearly says that if we want to have a significant impact on climate change and with the existing car fleet, we need to go to E20 in Europe. We strongly support this idea, and we also believe that E20 would be the best fuel grade for Europe. We are already testing this E20 grade, so with different measures. One is that you find in the middle of the slide. It's the example of Four Motors. We just yesterday published together with our Four Motors and the other partners working for Four Motors. It's a special racing team and with them together we test E20. This was developed together with Shell. We have taken their Blue Gasoline from Shell. We added an additional 10% of ethanol and other biological components, and then this leads to a fuel that is 60% renewable. That means only 40% fossil. This is very important to prove that there are today technologies available who can gradually, so okay, this goes time over time, can decrease the fossil parts. We see, for example, the discussions in Germany on the E10 changes. We have to make sure that mobility remains affordable and that we take the people with us. For us, E20 is an excellent example to show within the existing infrastructure, within the common technology that we use, we can make more on climate change. We do not have to change everything as of a sudden, but gradually we can phase out fossil fuels. This gives directly CO2 reductions right now, which is of key importance. The third point is an outlook, what is going to happen in autumn in Mannheim. We will keep you posted. We want to launch together with a partner the first official petrol station in Germany delivering E20. This is not everybody can already use it, but we want to do this in a closed fleet. We will use our own fleet. That means here our Südzucker Group based in Mannheim, the people having a car with gasoline, we can ask for commitment, and then those cars will be allowed to go for E20 in a closed fleet test. This will be, we hope to conclude all the technical details by the end of this year or in autumn, we will have the first showcase for E20 in Germany to prove that this is really feasible without changing infrastructure, without doing a lot of changes. It is really something. This is what we want to prove, a proof of concept, that this can be done immediately with the existing infrastructure and leading to increased CO2 savings. I continue on page 31. It is on the fifth pillar of our strategy. That means this what is a time given more ahead. We have taken a 25% stake in East Energy, East Energy is a project developer who plans to construct several large photovoltaic parks in Northeast Germany. East Energy awaits that the first photovoltaic parks should be ready to reach ready-to-build status now in later 2023, they are also working on the idea to integrate wind parks in their portfolio. This is important in a sense that we believe if, as a society, if we want to really make an impact to changing climate change, we need much more green electricity. Green electricity will be needed for so many applications, could be in transport, we are not against e-mobility because there can be sectors, for example, small cars, inner city traffic, car sharing. Why not taking their electric cars? They need green electricity. All the other sectors too, they need to have green electricity. There's a global trend for more green electricity and via East Energy, we also want to participate in this growing demand. An option for the future is then if you have green electricity production, then you can also add on this a green methanol production or green hydrogen production. This is the ideas with East Energy. In this context, for me, that you will see on the next slide, what is very important also maybe in your discussions that you have with other investors or companies, for me it is key to talk not about decarbonization, but about defossilization. The idea, what we can see here on this graph, it's page 32, that's the situation in chemistry. In chemistry, between 2020 and 2050, we await a CAGR of the need for green carbons. I said at the beginning, CropEnergies stands for our purpose is to deliver green carbons. A lot of carbons are needed, it makes no sense to talk about decarbonization. It's about defossilization. We have to make sure that the fossil carbons remain in the ground, because all, for example, base chemicals or energy carriers, they all contain carbons or carbohydrates. If those carbohydrates or carbons shall no longer be fossil, they can only come from three sources that you see here for the example of chemistry. It can come from bio-based. That's what we do. We are ethanol. It can be CO2-based. That means that is synthetic, or it can be recycling. That's a major part. It's not a focus topic for us. Our focus topic is bio-based carbons based on ethanol. Here we have identified two base chemicals that we want to develop. I hand over to Jürgen to explain more in detail what is planned here in this section. Yeah. Thank you, Stefan. Not only what is planned, but what is already ongoing and on the road. You see it here on the slide, our biggest project, the SETA project. We have started the realization of the project. That means a first of its kind production facility of 50,000 tons of renewable ethyl acetate in Europe based on Johnson Matthey technology. The location for this facility will be close to our bioethanol facility on site in the chemical park in Altötting. We just started the intensive permitting procedure. It's a long-lasting process. We do expect to get the approval by autumn this year. We expect the official groundbreaking in beginning of 2024. We have not yet defined the date, beginning of 2024. If everything goes very well, in summer 2025, Georg, we will deliver the first product to our clients. The clients gave us an impressive feedback about this new product. You know, recently during the European Coatings Show in Nuremberg, it was very impressive, all the reactions you have got there. Shows that we are on the right way with the project, and the products have a clear demand. The next project we would like to discuss a little bit more in detail is a further step forward into the bio-based chemical route with a second molecule. This is ethylene. Renewable ethylene is hardly not available yet in Europe. It's also that we are investigating in a first of its kind project for a direct dehydration of renewable ethanol to renewable ethylene. The cyclists team is currently really, conducting a very extended feasibility study, the results, we expect end of 2023. With this technical feasibility and the business model, we will take an investment decision, to build a production facility up to 100,000 tons in the chemical industrial park in Chemelot in Geleen in the Netherlands. Here, we got a lot of positive feedback about, renewable ethylene from talks with future customers in Geleen in the Netherlands, but also outside of the Netherlands. It's also obvious that we will see an increasing demand on renewable chemicals as the chemical industry has to fulfill their climate targets and to reduce their CO2 emissions. Ethanol to ethylene is by far the easiest way. If we take investment decision by end of the year, the construction could start early 2025, and then we would start the operation in Q1 2027. Far from my side. Thank you. Thank you, Jürgen. That was our strategy update. You will have remarked that we have not yet touched on proteins and second generation ethanol. This is not due to the fact that there are no projects, though. It's there. Those projects are ongoing, they are not yet able to be communicated. We are very confident that also in the protein field and on the second generation field, we can soon give you more project ideas and communicate more on projects. This was our strategy update. We are now happy to take your questions. Technically speaking, we ask you now to dial in for your questions via telephone, and we will give you some minutes because it's not possible via the computer because we also have a time delay. For the time being, I will hand over back to Natalie to give you the exact details how to do, and then we go into together with you in the Q&A section. Thank you so far. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. At this time, we'll begin the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please dial in via telephone. The telephone number is included in your registration confirmation. Once you are connected, please press star followed by one and mute your PC speaker. To withdraw your question, you may press star followed by two. Your questions will be answered in the order they are received. If you're using speaker equipment today, please lift the handset before making your selections. Anyone who has a question may dial in via telephone and then press star and one. We're now waiting for the first question. One moment, please. We have our first question from Axel Herlinghaus from DZ Bank. Please go ahead. Yes, hello and hope everybody is fine. I would have two questions, if I may. I would ask them one by one. First one would be to in the sphere of net import expectations. Based on estimates from S&P Global Commodity. Can you hear me? It was slightly interrupted, Mr. Herlinghaus. Okay. I got it was on net imports, but then the second phrase was gone. I think I go back to line and come back with that iPhone. No, it's good. Now it's good. No, now it's good. Now it's good. Now it's good. It's good now? Yeah. Okay. If you could please repeat your question. Yeah, sure. I just hear myself in my computer. I'm coming over through teams. Based on estimates from S&P Global Commodity Insights. Your just published annual report, assumes. I come back. Yeah, sure. I come with iPhone. I come back. Okay. Okay. Okay. Hear you in a minute. Okay, we can continue in the meantime with Hartmut Moers from Matelan Research. Please go ahead. Good afternoon. Well, I've quite a couple of questions. I just start with one, two, three. I give the floor to another, to our colleagues. I probably come back later. Okay. Working my way backwards because we are just finished with your projects. Do I read it correctly that you are pushing back a little bit the solar methanol project, or was that just referring to the methanol part of that project? You label it as your fifth project, but you still have on your slide a 2023 target for the first solar panels you want to install. As far as I know, you haven't yet taken any investment decisions. Give us please a bit more detail on the timescale you have for this particular project. Okay. I will start with that. Thank you, Mr. Moers, for your questions. It's not about pushing back. The only thing that we have seen that it takes us slightly more time for the approvals, both on the project time and also internally. We still fulfill it this way. I only said that the first step is the photovoltaic, and that means the green electricity. In the second step, we can evaluate whether this position of this solar park is able to go into electrolysis. That means then to produce green energy, green hydrogen, and based on the. In a third step, you always need a CO2 sink. That means a source of CO2. Means if this is given, then you can go the next step with methanol. It's not about pushing back. What I want to try to explain is that there's a time gap between those three steps. There's no pushing back, and we await the first parks to be ready to build by the end of this year. When would you expect to take the decision really to invest in, or in building up the first. Yeah. Megawatt of- Yeah. Solar? This will be alongside East Energy. The working method together with East Energy is that they are the project developers, and they bring the solar parks, and they have, let's say, 10 to 10+ solar parks in preparation. As soon as they reach ready-to-build status, we together with them look into the project and take then solar park by solar park the investment decision whether we invest. This is also possible for other investors. The first step is to have the parks ready to build, and then we would go for an investment decision, and this would be end of this year for the first parks. End of this year. Sorry for being more precise. End of this year for the investment decision or end of this year for having the first park, having the first park available. No, for the First parks will be ready to build by the end of this year. This is the point where we also have to take the decision to build it. The investment decision is by the end of this year. Meaning the first, assuming that this, you know, would be positive, we could see the first electricity coming out of these parks, sometime in your next financial year. This is still a realistic view? This is a realistic view because for sure, between ready to build and then getting everything on the grid takes some months. I cannot part by part say what the exact number of months it takes. It's for sure between ready to build and then having the first electricity in the grid takes some months. Yeah. We're talking months. We're not talking years here. Yeah. Once the decision is taken. Yeah. Your next financial year should see some impact here. Yeah. Okay, fine. Bear in mind, it is a 25% it's energy balance you will see there. It's a 25 participation. It's not consolidated yet in our books. Fine. The original plan, as I understood it at the time, was that this participation is going to increase with the money you put in for the. Exactly. Yeah. With each park invested, our participation increases. Will rise. As soon as we have more than 50%. 50%. We will come into a full consolidation. Okay, fine. That's exactly as planned. Great. I mean you have presented ethylene and ethyl acetate. Yeah. The question that, and it's great to hear that customer response is so good. From my perspective, pricing is a critical point because production costs are still, even under current ethanol prices, higher than current prices for fossil or for the equivalent fossil product. What response do you get from the customers to pay the prices you need for the products in order to build up those capacities? I mean, it's clear you wouldn't do it if you would just get the price for the equivalent fossil product. How much commitment do you get from your customers? With you're taking money, you're spending the money, and at the end of the day, you have to have a good chance to get the adequate return on that money. Indeed. I want to go a step back. Before we took that investment decision, we took two years to scan the market, to really look into potential customers and ask for their willingness, firstly, to source. In terms of volumes I can tell you that already at that stage, we had demand, 3-4x of the capacity originally planned. That's not EU-wide, that's the wider German region. That for the one thing, and the other, also, the statement is clear that there will be a premium. I don't want to go into too much detail, firstly, because I'm not talking very much about prices in a general note. Secondly, I don't want to limit the fantasy of our customers' heads in terms of premiums, simply because due to the demand, we of course, would focus on those markets where the highest premiums are. I can assure you that our target of a return of capital employed of 15% remains untouched. Okay, that's great. The last point belonging to that topic would be, I mean, you haven't talked about LXP, but as w e have someone with- Sorry, I can't hear you. Yeah. Yeah, we just disconnection. You were asking about LXP second generation, but the second part of your question was interrupted. No, about the LXP project. I mean, you, originally it was planned that you, t hat LPX. LXP. LXP, sorry. Will have a pilot plant ready by the end of this year. Is this still on track and how far is the project or how do you see the chances of really replacing some of your traditional way of producing ethanol from that project? Okay. The demo project you mentioned, Mr. Meeder, is on the way. LXP is currently in the engineering phase of a demo plant close to a biomethanation plant in Genthin. It's not a CropEnergies project. The project is a partner in biomethanation. The first goal of LXP is to demonstrate the technology, and they are focusing on lignin as a raw material extracted out of the lignocellulosic materials. For sure, they would like to improve all the efficiency of the digestion of the biomethanation process. By doing this, they extract sugar solutions. If we get the sugars out of the process, we are taking the sugars and do the fermentation trials and see how efficient that would be, which yields we can achieve. It's an important step forward to implement their technology. As far as we are aware, they are on track with the project, whether it's really by end of this year, beginning of next year, sorry, I can't really judge on so that we can ask in detail, but they are in the engineering phase and on track. Based on that, we will intensify our discussion about more CropEnergies-based usage of the technology. That means of intensifying use of hydro and cellulosic materials we have not yet in our portfolio. Great, thank you. That was very helpful. I have a number of questions on the financials, but I would give the floor to my colleagues for them also to ask some questions. Thank you. Okay. Thank you so far. We have Mr. Axel Herlinghaus on the line again. Your question, please. Okay. Can you hear me now? Yeah, very good. Thank you. Now it's working. We hear you. Okay. For the net import expectations. Based on estimates from S&P Global Commodity Insights, you've just published in the annual report, you assume 2.3 million cubic meter ethanol for 2023-2024 against 2.5 in the year before. In your presentation, which is probably more recent, you even estimate 2.6 million in net imports, cubic meter ethanol for 2023-2024. Given the current price ratios and development of sugar versus ethanol, and the significantly more unattractive arbitrage window right now and the reintroduction of federal taxes on ethanol in Brazil, shouldn't one expect at least slightly falling volumes from Brazil and also net import in 2023-2024? Yes, at least I would hope so. There's another element you should also, I mean, you talked especially about Brazil, and you mentioned two points. First, the relationship between sugar and ethanol, and as you mentioned, the high sugar price would suggest that most of the cane harvest will go into sugar. We expect it to be around 47% of cane will go into sugar, and that's significantly higher than last year's. If you also look at the overall harvest, which is around 40 million tons higher than last year, there will still be some volumes left, and I would even say not significantly lower than in the last year. That's exactly what you also hinted at, what is the effect of the reintroduction of the COFINS taxation on gasoline, which will of course have a price supporting mechanism in Brazil as well. We have these three dimensions: sugar, probably less; high harvest, probably more; COFINS tax, probably less. If you would ask me, I would more or less stick to a answer of something between probably something around last year to I don't know. Okay. Steve. If I may, a second question to the ethanol price. It's known to be very volatile, and after starting into this year, into this fiscal year, with spot price in the range of EUR 800-900 and the future curve indicating prices further out between EUR 750-825, spot price and the curve are currently down by 5% to at least 10%. Do you see the current future curve as a good indicator for the next three quarters, or it's currently too low to the temporarily reduced demand from some refineries undergoing maintenance and or potentially mislabeled biofuel from China? There are two effects which could have those price effects. I would completely agree. I would even add the strike in France being also a disturbing element to the price. To answer clearly the price of the curve for Q3 and Q4 especially does not reflect our price expectations. I would consider them to be higher than that. Okay, thank you very much. Very clear. Ladies and gentlemen, if there are any further questions, please press star and one on your telephone. One moment for the next question, please. The next question is in line of Thomas Schiessle Please go ahead. Hello, gentlemen, warm welcome from sunny Frankfurt. Congratulations to this good result in the last fiscal year. My questions are on the ethanol market. You, Mr. Meeder, you indicated that you are preparing for E20. Could you shed a little bit more light on your efforts, I guess it's not only showing one petrol station with a E- and using the Südzucker Group fleet using E20. What are the next steps to go? Very critical, what is the price point and the cost point of E20, please? Thank you. Yeah. Mr. Schiessle, yes, E20 is an important part of higher blending mandates reaching the climate goals. You are absolutely right. What we did so far, we were supporting Four Motors in showing, giving the showcase that is already feasible and gives a high octane, high performance yield. That is the intention in working together with Four Motors, making race cars more and more sustainable. The second thing is also like a showcase here in Mannheim with the first petrol station to show that it's feasible within the existing infrastructure also to have a showcase for that. More important, this is the work that we do over years. This is via our colleagues from Südzucker. We are part of the standardization bodies, and we are in discussions also with the car manufacturers and refiners. That means, for example, Volkswagen or Bosch or Shell. We are in discussions how to prepare the entire value chain for producing E20. Our contribution to E20 is this does not change to an E10 logic. Means we are the producers of sustainable ethanol, and then the blending is done in the refineries in the mineral oil companies. Basically this does not fundamentally change our business model. It's just that we have via E20 the potential to have higher ethanol sales and a better climate change. The more important or the most important thing is that we get this standardization work done and that on the EU level, when it comes of the specifications for the Fuel Quality Directive and the parametrics of the CEN norms, that E20 is an allowed petrol grade. All the fleets, for sure, this is not significant in terms of volumes, but it's significant in terms of giving showcases that this is a feasible option for reducing CO2 and then later on as quickly as E20 is on the market. This can take another, let's say, two years until then the specifications will be done. It's the normal process of us being the supplier of choice for our mineral oil companies and customers. Thank you. Is E20 the end of the story or are you heading for E30? The good thing is in ethanol and petrol cars that there's no blend wall. Typically, in biodiesel, there's a certain blend wall due to the characteristic. In ethanol, there's no blend wall. For example, if you look on the Brazilian market, they have flex fuel cars which can run with 100% of ethanol. They can use all types of mixtures between petrol and ethanol. This is typically, there's no limit for ethanol. The step beyond E20 could be E85. This is already allowed on the European market, and we see a very good success, for example, for E85 in France, where it shows month by month more and more petrol stations offering E85. This is for the French market. E85 is a very successful product. The only thing is that, let's say, going directly from E10 to E85 in Europe, we would assume that this step is too big, because we are in favor of gradual positive development. For us, the next natural step would be to go in a standard grade in Europe from E10 to E20, and then gradually be it integrating synthetic fuels in this or even higher ethanol mandates. This can be stepwise. Both can be increased to decrease the fossil part. For me, the next ultimate step would go be then from E10 to E20. Technically speaking, there's no limit for ethanol in petrol cars if they are flex fuel cars. If E20 will materialize and used by co-consumers, do you have enough capacity or does the European whole industry has enough capacity to serve the demand arising on? Yeah. At the horizon or do we need extremely high imports coming from Brazil or from elsewhere? I would appreciate having a European production. One growth path is then waste and residue-based ethanol. This is one part of the solution. The second one is we just discussed the imports. We already see as of today, let's say, 2 million cubic meters of e-ethanol coming in. That shows that Europe is already deficitary. That means that the consumption of ethanol is already today higher than the production. Why is the production limited? Because of the politicians giving so much uncertainty over the last years that there hasn't been any major investments into first-generation plants in Europe. What we would need if going to E20 is a strong political framework, saying clearly a commitment also from politicians to higher biofuel mandates. I'm convinced that we would see additional investment projects, both on the first generation side and then the second generation side, and also at the beginnings, more and more imports. This can then be a new market equilibrium can develop with higher base and higher consumption of ethanol in Europe and higher also production, but it can also come from imports. As I said, we are already, that's just the case of imports. We are already deficitary on the European market. You, you're not heading for a production site outside the EU? We are often contacted because CropEnergies has a very good reputation in the market as being one of the European market leaders. For sure, we are a lot of also getting teasers or being in contact with international players. Far, we have this not on top of our strategic list. For the time being, we focus more on, as we said, bio-based chemicals development. Nevertheless, we also look into markets out of Europe, and this is an option for us, but it's not our top priority. Firstly, we focus on the European market. For example, for also when it comes to international markets, our daughter company, Ryssen, has a different production setup. It's using raw material, raw ethanol being imported, for example. This also comes, for example, from Latin American markets. We also have a footprint on the raw material side on non-European markets. Okay, thank you for your answers. I go back into the queue. Thanks. Okay. You're welcome. Thank you. We have a follow-up question from Hartmut Moers. Please go ahead. Yes, thank you. You highlighted that you had a record result, which was, yeah, extraordinarily high. You made the predominant part of these earnings in the first half of the year. In particular, the fourth quarter was, in terms of earnings contribution to this record result, by far the smallest. What I am looking for is a quantification of factors. I mean, obviously, the decline in ethanol prices have played a major role in producing this rather low quarterly result. I'm looking for factors that have additionally impacted the quarter that might not reoccur. Independently of now the price development of ethanol and wheat. I'm talking here about factors such as production, which was, from my perspective, better than Q3, but still not at an ordinary level. Was that a result of maintenance or is that result of Ensus producing a bit more than they did in Q3, but not yet at the level where they could go? What's the background behind it, and could you give us a run rate here for a normal production that we can expect now for the coming quarters? Other factors would be hedging. Was there still a significant amount of hedging that has impacted the results either on the positive or the negative side? I also noted that if we look at the position change in stocks you had in the fourth quarter, a huge increase here of roughly EUR 22 million. I would assume, you can give the details, but I would assume that this is still some, you know, unrealized profit that you still have on the balance sheet that once you sell the product, you should realize, which would probably come in the first quarter. And also you have probably had an impact from the time lag that you have between the purchase of raw materials and the sale of your end product, which obviously has a negative effect in terms of falling prices. Just give us a roundup of what we have to expect to recur in the coming quarters and, probably a quantification of how much that those effects had on the fourth quarter. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Moers. I would start with some of the elements, and then my colleagues will join first on production. Yes, you're right. If you take Q4 production isolated, this was slightly below 230,000 cubic meters, so compared to other quarters, slightly lower, below prior year, but higher than Q3. The reasons for that would have been, one, maintenance, but you can say a word later on maintenance and on maintenance strategy. For sure also if the market conditions were not brilliant at that time. For sure also we adopted production to market conditions as we always can do. That is one point on production, but maybe you later you can give more details on our maintenance patching with Georg. Working capital you ask for. That's true. We've seen this in the cash flow statement, also in the capital employed development. There has been an increase in working capital in Q4, and this is due to the fact both volume-wise and price-wise. In working capital, it turned out at EUR 163 million in the range of EUR 40 million-EUR 50 million higher than last year. This was also driven by the fact that we have regular maintenance in Q1, and that this was also building up stocks for that period. Maybe you can say a word on hedging, but maybe, Jürgen, if you could also say some word on maintenance. The maintenance we can do it short. We have planned maintenance in our facilities. Ensus is part of the maintenance planning. We had a planned shutdown in autumn last year at Ensus. The other facilities didn't have any shutdowns in 2020-2023. As Stephan Meeder mentioned, we are running already or we have finalized one in Q1 and the other is ongoing so that all the maintenance activity will focus more or less in Q1 this year in our facilities. For the long-term perspective, we have a clear maintenance plan where not every facility is going into maintenance every year, but maybe on a second or third year in a row. This is a strategy and it's a little bit fluctuating in the development, also depending on market conditions. In general, it's a clear, dedicated timeline where the facilities are planned to stop. Okay. I take it correctly that part of that affected Q4, but we can also expect some maintenance in the current quarter. In Q1 there is dedicated maintenance activities. That's clear. In Q4 it was more to market conditions, the run rate, and maintenance was in Q3 last year. Okay. Thank you. On your question on the hedging side, if you especially look in the buying enough raw material and if you look at the business model of CropEnergies and the mechanism on grain, we always have to take positions around six months plus in beforehand in order to secure security of supply. That is, of course, very good in markets which have increasing prices, and it's the other effect in markets where you have declining prices. That is on the raw material side, that's something I showed what the price development was in that time of the year. Indeed also the ethanol prices, especially in Q4, became under pressure. We talked a little bit before on the COVID tax. You remember, was now in June 2022, canceled those taxes on gasoline, which meant that the price of ethanol came under pressure, especially there were huge stocks at that time in Brazil, which were by one night devaluated, and that created additional pressure on imports to the EU. In a way, this, there are prices and hedgings behind which were in contrary directions. From my calculation, but it's, this is a bit obviously guesswork because we don't have the full picture. I would assume that looking at your sales and also looking at your material costs in the net impact of your hedges was not too excessive in the fourth quarter. I would guess you were already netting all positive and negative effects. You should have been rather close to the market prices we could observe. Is that a fair view or is there's something I'm missing? No, you're fully right. As I tell you, we have been slightly better both on ethanol side and on the grain side. It's not huge. It's very quite close to market prices. Okay. Fine. Okay. From this side, we should see no relief or are you running differently positioned into the first quarter? As Georg explained, our overall hedging strategy remains unchanged, yeah? We do this gradually month by month rolling forecast, where we go into raw material hedging and if we deem the forward curve or the degradation of the forward prices interesting, we also go into ethanol hedging. As in the prior years, compared to the raw material hedging, the ethanol hedging side is always much, much lower. Given to the cost of carry. The second one is there's a low liquidity for ethanol. Even if we wished, we couldn't go for very high ethanol hedging ratios. This strategy, overall strategy is unchanged. Giving, for example, over the year, you have seen the price curve that also over the last year, the spot prices at the forward prices, for example, for grain were quite high. That means we were reluctant to take huge numbers of grain in, but for sure also we did in order to secure production, and that means those high cost hedges out of the past, they factor in, for example, Q1. That was also one of the reasons we already when announcing the preliminary figures for financial year 2022/2023, we also communicated that Q1 will turn out weaker than the prior year. That's also linked to this hedging effect now with the high hedging costs coming into Q1. Okay. Could you also give a short update on Wilton? I would guess, under current conditions, I mean, it was a huge topic at the end of last year. From a current perspective, they're operating at around the break-even point, so there is no burden we have to expect from that side now. We have a clear strategy that all of our plants have to be stable and robust producers and contribute to our earning situation. The same is true for Ensus and the team there had made over the last months, tremendous efforts to bring down costs and to be cost efficient. We are very confident that Ensus has our full commitment and full support, and they are doing a brilliant job. One positive thing is as we have not from the past, not so many energy hedging positions like in Ensus, like in other plants, there's the big chance that Ensus can contribute now better than the others from the decrease the energy prices. This we do not treat Ensus differently than the other plants. All of our plants are the vocation to be robust and reliable producers and contributing to the earnings situation of the group. Okay. Now going away from Ensus, but staying with the energy prices. If you look at your energy cost, which is an important factor for your production. Compared to the energy costs you had in the past financial year that you just published, how big or how much relief could you expect in the current year if prices stayed roughly at the levels we are currently looking at? How much lower would energy costs be? Difficult to say in detail. I mean, we have seen a strong increase in energy prices. We have high hedging positions in general. I think energy costs went up at least one-third the last financial year compared to the year before. We still have high energy. There should be a relief, I've not in hand the exact number. I cannot give you right now. Okay. To add on that, the relief will not be that good because we had a quite very good and high hedging position. Yeah. Therefore, we are not. In detail it has to be seen, but I would suspect not a huge relief due to decreased prices. Okay. final one, would be, do you have a figure for CapEx? How much CapEx do we expect for the current financial year? Yeah. Current financial year, we are planning with roughly eighty million euro. Uh, most of it, uh, we will, we will spend for sure in the Zeitz project, but, also a huge amount is to be placed in BioWanze, uh, and at Ensus. Uh, so eighty million, this is a target for the year 2023, 2024. Without strategy projects. Without strategy. With the strategy project Zeitz in- Already announced. Yeah, exactly. Sorry. Zeitz is in, but that would be my next question. This is excluding any solar parks, which would be an option for, you know, January or February next year. Exactly. See, in this only the only sort of confirmed and decided-upon projects. The other projects would come on top. Okay, great. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Thank you. We have another follow-up question from Axel Herlinghaus. Please go ahead. Yeah, thank you very much. You're working on a lot of projects right now in different development stages. It's clear that's no easy task to give a kind of midterm target number. When can we expect to get some kind of ambition numbers, perhaps like gave some months ago for fiscal year 2025, 2026, just to help us creating better CropEnergies models? Yeah. I can fully understand, this need. For us, we work on the project and a lot of those projects materialize, some do not. It's for us very difficult to give precise numbers which will when come in which financial year. Nevertheless, for sure, we have some guard rails. We have a big picture, but this is not, has not the quality of a financial markets communication in the sense that this is our precise, and communicated forecast. Nevertheless, what we can state, and then, for example, if you look into the Matelan Research of your colleague, Moers, in his model, he comes up with a number of EUR 2 billion of sales in 2030. For sure, this is his calculation or his ideas, but I would say this is not far also from what we have in mind. We clearly we want to invest a strong three-digit billion number in our projects by the year 2030. What we strive for based on, let's say, normalized prices, our target is to have a target turnover of EUR 2 billion in by 2030 with also the CapEx that is needed for building up that. Okay, thank you very much. We have another follow-up question from Thomas Schiessle. Please go ahead. Oh, yeah. Thank you for taking my additional questions. They are more from the financial side. Your personnel number increased roughly 4%, but the personnel costs increased the double the size. Is this the new normal? Is this the inflation, the wage inflation? Shall we take this as a run rate for current and next year? What is your feeling? Will you increase the number of personnel this fiscal year will you hold it stable? Given the strategic projects that we have, we also build up our organization because it's clear the various and high number of projects that we deal with, this cannot be done by the existing colleagues, even though they are brilliant. We need more and additional colleagues. This is something that we already started integrating new colleagues into the CropEnergies group. This is not only true here in Germany. This is in all our plants where we increase the headcount for managing our projects. This is right. The full-time equivalent went up by 5%. It's too early to say that this will continue in exactly 5%, but there will be an increase in FTE over the years to come to manage the project work and the growth ambitions that we have. The remainder is, as you said, that is inflation or increased wages and salaries. The third topic who has on them is the profit link bonuses. It was an exceptional year, and based on that, a lot of the contracts are linked to the operating profit. There's also an increase for the variable part of the wages. This is depending on the next developments of the next years. I don't think that it was new. We cannot see year by year such an increase, but there will be an increase, mainly driven by headcount increases to manage our growth. The pension obligations went down dramatically. What is the reason for that? Yeah. The reason for that is the increased interest rates. Okay. Because the number of employees or the beneficiaries are increasing? No. Yeah. This is linked to the fact that there are defined benefit plans and they are factored down by the higher interest rate, bringing down the interest expense for pensions. Okay. Could you give me some insight in your tax policy? It's quite amazing reducing the effective tax rate down to 23%. Is this 2023 your aim for the current year? If you Sorry. If you look into the last years, we typically have been in the range of 25%-30% for the tax rate. There was one particular year where we had a much higher tax rate that was linked to Ensus losses. This year the tax rate went down due to the very positive situation at Ensus. As you know from as we also stated in the annual accounts, we have tax losses carried forward at Ensus from the time prior to CropEnergies acquiring Ensus. Those tax losses carried forward, they can be used against the profits of Ensus and it then the tax rate goes below 29%, which is our corporate tax rate for a German corporation, taking into account the capital, the tax for the corporate tax plus the Typically, we are between, let's say, 25 to 29, and this is also for the on average, which should go forward for the years to come in this range. Does this mean there is no loss carry forward available to you? There is. For at Ensus there are tax losses carried forward in a huge amount. It's in the annual report. It's over EUR 200 billion tax loss carried forward from the past, which we can utilize against the profits. Okay. For the future, there will be the usage of loss carry forward as you've done it in the current business year going on, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A question on CO2 emission certificates. A totally different subject. If politics will go further and the price of fossil energy will have to increase, this will be done by this by surcharge of fossil energy. Will this be corresponding to an increase in the price of certificates? You will enlarge your earnings out of the certificates in the future? okay. There are CO2 certificates, and you are reflecting to the green certificates of Wanze. Yeah. for me not 100% clear because one is the ETS scheme where you have to pay for the CO2 rights. CropEnergies Südzucker Group has a big portion in the ETS scheme. In ETS we are good covered with already available certificates. The dedicated Wanze system for the green certificate is a specific system in Belgium, where we now start in this third period from November onwards with a minimum price guarantee to the certificates we get from the green electricity produced in Belgium. This is a specific system only applicable for Belgium. The rest is a normal ETS scheme where the ETS price is reflecting the market price of CO2 certificates. We are now in the range of 90 EUR a bag. We have been higher, we have been a little bit lower, but to be expected that the CO2 price will increase for sure in the next years. If it comes to warmth, and your bio boiler will produce more or less more than 90 of the energy, yeah, you will get more out of this production. Unfortunately not, because we are producing not more electricity. This is limited to 22 megawatt electricity produced out of biogenic raw material, burned in the boiler. This is unchanged and this is reflected in the Belgium system. We will not produce more green certificates, but we benefit for the next 15 years from the new scheme. Okay. Thank you for clarification. Yeah. That unfortunately. Okay. Thank you. It's a very good system. Oh, okay. Yeah. I agree. I agree. Thank you so far. Thanks. Thank you. Far there are no further questions, and I would hand back to Dr. Stephan Meeder for closing comments. Okay. thank you, Natalie. Thank you very much for your, for your interest and your participation in our conference call. Thank you much for your questions. As I said at the beginning, in prior years pre-corona, we met physically in Frankfurt. Then during corona, just on audio. This time it is a webcast. Please feel free to give us feedback and comments to Heike. I would like to accompany this with our great thank to the entire CropEnergies team for preparing that, especially to Heike Baumbach and Annabel Kopp, who supported us here today technically. Thank you very much for your interest and see you soon. Goodbye. Thank you.