Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Deutsche Börse AG Analyst and Investor Conference call regarding the Q3 2023 results. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode, and the floor will be open for your questions following the presentation. Let me now turn the floor over to Mr. Jan Strecker. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for joining us today to go through our third quarter 2023 results. With me are Theodor Weimer, CEO, and Gregor Pottmeyer, CFO. Theodor and Gregor will take you through the presentation today, and afterwards, we will be happy to take your questions. The link to the presentation materials for this call has been sent out via email, and they can also be downloaded from the IR section of our website. As usual, this conference call will be recorded and will be available for replay. Let me now hand over to you, Theodor. Thank you, Jan. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. Let me first comment on the financial performance in the first nine months of the year. Afterwards, I will give you an update on the strong progress we have made with the SimCorp acquisition and the creation Investment Management Solutions segment at Deutsche Börse. The secular net, net revenue growth this year of around 6% is in line with our expectation, and a consistent delivery is proof how well our diversified business model is working. With regards to the cyclic influence, we saw two different trends over the course of the year. On the one hand side, lower and range-bound market volatility, except for the spike in March, resulted in cyclical headwinds for some of our trading and clearing businesses. On the other hand, further increasing interest rates resulted in a much stronger net interest income compared to our original expectations. This by far compensated the volatility effects. Very noteworthy is also the development of our commodities business. After almost 40% net revenue growth last year, we achieved another 19% net revenue growth in the first nine months of this year. This is mainly because of the normalization of trading activity and a significant step-up of our market share against OTC in power derivatives due to the benefits of clearing for our clients. Overall, this development resulted in 15% net revenue growth in the first nine months. As expected, the operating cost growth decelerated in the third quarter, and therefore, the organic cost growth year to date amounted to 8%. As a result, EBITDA, excluding exceptionals in relation to Investment Management Solutions segment, increased by 17%. Because of the strong development in 2023 so far, the outlook for the rest of the year and the initial consolidation of SimCorp in the fourth quarter, we again increase our guidance for the full year. We now expect net revenues of around EUR 5 billion and a reported EBITDA of around EUR 2.9 billion. This brings me to the SimCorp acquisition and the creation of Investment Management Solutions segment on page 2. With SimCorp, we are now taking another leap forward. SimCorp offers an industry-leading front-to-back SaaS investment management platform and ecosystem. The acquisition will contribute significantly to our secular growth by helping us to address trends in the asset management industry. In addition, it will help us to further diversify our business mix, grow our buy-side exposure, and last but not least, increase our recurring revenues. Therefore, there is an extremely strong fit with our strategy. Together with the combined ISS and Qontigo business, a leading ESG data and index provider will transform our current Data & Analytics segment into the Investment Management Solutions segment. this is expected to result in significant value creation from cross-selling opportunities and efficiency gains. In total, we expect run rate EBITDA synergies of around EUR 90 million. Since the announcement of the transaction at the end of April, we've made excellent progress and closed the SimCorp acquisition in line with our plans on September 29. The tender offer for SimCorp shareholders under Danish law has achieved an exceptionally good result of 94% acceptance rate. This allows us to complete the squeeze-out process already in October, which should result in slightly accelerated synergy ramp-up. On September 22, we successfully issued EUR 3 billion senior bonds with tenors of three to 10 years to finance the SimCorp acquisition. The effective yield on the bonds amounted to 3.5%-3.9%, which includes the effect of hedges we entered into in May this year. The bonds have been issued via Clearstream's new digital post-trade infrastructure, D7. During our Investor Day on November 7, we will dive deeper into the two parts Investment Management Solutions segment and the excellent growth opportunities. Christian Kromann, CEO of SimCorp, and Gary Retelny, CEO of ISS, will present their respective business in detail.... In addition, my colleagues on the Executive Board and myself will present further growth opportunities under our new strategy, Horizon 2026 framework, and provide you with our midterm guidance. The event will take place at our headquarters here in Eschborn, and we are looking forward to welcoming many of you here. With that, let me hand over to you, Gregor. Thank you, Theodor. On Page 3, we show the details of the results for the first nine months. The financial performance throughout the first nine months was very positive. Besides the consistent secular growth, the cyclical drivers for the strong performance shifted somewhat during the period. In the first quarter, the development was partly driven by elevated market volatility, while in the second and third quarter, we saw the full benefit from higher interest rates in our net interest income. The operating costs overall increased by 11% in the period. Adjusted for exceptional cost items in relation to the creation of Investment Management Solutions segment, operating costs growth amounted to 8%. The organic cost growth was driven by a couple of effects. Slightly less than half of the cost growth is driven by inflationary effects from building operations, general purchasing, and higher staff costs. The rest is a function of higher investments into growth and infrastructure, as well as an increase in FTE to support the growth ambition of our organization. The cash EPS growth in the first nine months, excluding exceptional items, amounted to 20%. This brings me to the details of the third quarter results on Page 4 of the presentation. While the secular growth developed in line with our expectation, the cyclical growth from higher net interest income was partly offset by a decline of activity in financial derivatives and cash equities because of lower market volatility. The operating costs in the third quarter included around EUR 37 million exceptional effects related to the SimCorp acquisition and the creation of Investment Management Solutions segment. around half of that were SimCorp transaction costs, and the other half, costs to achieve the synergies. The operating cost growth, excluding those items, amounted to 5%. In addition, depreciation and amortization included an impairment of EUR 25 million in Crypto Finance. Due to the ongoing weakness of crypto markets, we decided to fully impair the intangibles relating to that asset. The cash EPS growth in the third quarter, excluding those exceptional items, amounted to 18%. I am now turning to the results of the segments, starting with the former Data & Analytics segment on Page 5. The weaker US dollar turned into a substantial net revenue headwind in the third quarter. Adjusted for FX, the net revenue growth of the segment amounted to 11%, which is very much in line with our expectation. While the currency-adjusted growth of the ESG business is below the strong level we have seen last year, it's still ranging from high single digit to small double digit year to date, depending on the product line. We are firmly convinced that investor demand and regulation, as well as rising complexity in performance and reporting requirements, will continue to drive the need for trusted and comprehensive ESG data solutions. Analytics benefited from another seasonal renewal of contracts of existing clients, which is encouraging and resulted in some point in time net revenue. The EBITDA in this segment was affected by the exceptional cost items and a small negative impact from the return from financial investments. Adjusted for those effects, the EBITDA increased in line with the net revenue. Let me turn to Slide 6, the Trading & Clearing segment. After the spikes of volatility in the first quarter, we saw some normalization of activity in the second and third quarter, with the VSTOXX in a range of around 15-20. In financial derivatives at Eurex, the improving equity market conditions resulted in reduced demand for equity and index derivatives, broadly to a level we have seen already in the second quarter. As expected, this also resulted in a decline of the collateral requirements for clearing and thus a decline of margin revenues to EUR 19 million. This compares to around EUR 35 million in Q3 and Q4 last year, when this line item peaked. In commodities, markets continued to recover from the energy crisis. Volatility has significantly declined, and prices across our markets have seen a healthy development. This translated into a strong upward trend in power products, which suffered under uncertainty last year, with net revenue increasing 41%. Margin revenues from the commodities clearinghouse came down compared to the peak last year, but still amounted to around EUR 30 million. In the Fund Services segment on Page 7 the continued onboarding of new clients and funds helped us to offset the ongoing cyclical headwinds... and develop better than the market. Cyclical headwinds continue to mainly arise from the trend away from active equity funds into passive funds and fixed income. The carve-out of fund services from the core business of Clearstream is now largely completed, but the third quarter still included some one-off effects in the operating costs. Our Securities Services segment on Slide 8 saw continued strong performance in the third quarter. Main driver was the net interest income, which amounted to EUR 169 million. This excludes the EUR 15 million net interest income that are now reported in the Fund Services segment. Total cash balances on average amounted to EUR 15 billion in the quarter, which is somewhat less compared to last quarter. This is partly driven by a seasonal effect we see every year, but we also assume that clients are now managing their balances somewhat tighter because of higher interest rates. This does not really change our view for the full year, and we continue to expect a level of around EUR 700 million net interest income in securities and fund services together. This brings me to the outlook on Page 9 Theodor already outlined our revised guidance for the full year. We are now expecting net revenue of around EUR 5 billion and EBITDA of around EUR 2.9 billion. This guidance includes our assumptions for the development in the final two months of the year and the SimCorp consolidation effects, including the expected exceptional cost items. In Q4, SimCorp is expected to contribute around EUR 185 million of net revenue and around EUR 85 million of EBITDA before exceptional cost items. For 2023, we are expecting around EUR 50 million of total cost to achieve synergies, of which around EUR 21 million have already been booked, so far. We have also booked all the transaction costs already in the first nine months, which amounted to around EUR 21 million. As a result of the SimCorp acquisition, depreciation and amortization is expected to increase to a quarterly level of around EUR 125 million in the fourth quarter. Because of the financing of the SimCorp acquisition, we expect our financial result to increase to around EUR 50 million in Q4, and around EUR 40 million per quarter on average next year. This concludes our presentation. We are now looking forward to your questions. Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press nine and star on your telephone keypad. We kindly ask all participants to limit their questions to one per person. Please press nine and star to state your questions. The first question comes from Arnaud Giblat, from BNP Paribas Exane. Over to you. Hi, good afternoon. Yeah, just one question then. I was wondering if you could talk a bit more about the cash balances of Clearstream. You mentioned that there was seasonality. Is September a good level on which we... Is September representative of a more normalized level of cash balances, I suppose? And I'm just wondering how much visibility we can get into how cash balances are going to evolve. Historically, you said it's been a function of security of settlement activity. Is there something changing there? Is there? Because the reason I'm asking is, well, interest rates have been up for some time now. If there had been any optimization, you would have expected this to have happened already. So is there anything really changing with clients? Thanks. Yeah, thanks, Arnaud, for the, for the question. Yes, indeed, so the cash balances decreased compared to the second quarter from EUR 17 billion now to EUR 15 billion. I think if you compare it with, with last year, then indeed, Q3 is specifically with the summer months of July and, and August, very much weaker months with, with lower volumes. And what we have also seen, lower volatility, obviously in, in, in Q3. So that's the main reason for the, for the decline of the cash balances. And, and so, so far, we expect that this will disappear in, in Q4. But nevertheless, we also see that some clients have now a higher sensitivity, because if the U.S. dollar rates are above 5% and the euro rate is above 4%, obviously, there is some pressure into the institutions to allocate cash in a reasonable way. But the development in Q3 is mainly driven by seasonality. If I can just follow-up. You mentioned volatility as a key input. Should we think about rate volatility or settlement activity, or asset under custody as a driver of cash balances? No, both of that, right? So it's on the one hand side, the settlement activity, but also the lower volatility in the bond rates and also in the equity. Thank you. The next question comes from Andrew Coombs from Citi. Over to you. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. I just want to come to the depreciation and amortization guidance of one to five Q4 in the financial results 50. Is it fair to annualize that as an outlook for 2024, or are there any other key drivers we should be aware of? Thank you. Yeah. The key challenge for you was so far that with regard to the depreciation, you do not know the purchase price allocation, basically. And to be very honest, it's still not finalized with the auditor. But we wanted to give you at least some guidance with regard to the Q4 number we currently expect, and that's why we guided EUR 125 million out of the depreciation what we have here, where we roughly included EUR 20 million PPA. But again, it's preliminary, and it's not finally agreed. And with regard to 2024, so we expect also a normal increase in the depreciation as we still continue to increase our CapEx, and therefore, you will also see some higher depreciation in 2024 compared to the Q4 guidance. If I could just follow-up on the PPA, is there a pull-to-par timetable on that? Sorry, could you repeat that, Andrew, please? On the PPA, is there a pull-to-par timeframe envisaged on that? Timeframe in what sense? Until we know the final numbers or...? I'm assuming it's a fair value of assets and what you'll see as a pull-to-par effect as those assets are held effectively. So I'm just trying to work out kind of if there's an adjustment that will close over time. No, there's none. That's a regular, you know, depreciation, which will be with us for the foreseeable future. So this is not changing next year, the year after next year. This is the same amount. Okay. The GBP 20 million addition is part of the fair value account. Okay, now that's clear. And on the financial result, if you could just comment, because I think you've previously said that you had EUR 2 billion of debt that you pre-financed at 3%. Obviously, you then would lose some yield on the cash, but it does still seem quite a, quite a big step up in the financial results. So, is there anything else there that we should be thinking about? No, there's nothing else specific. So again, here, we wanted to give you some guidance what the EUR 3 billion bond refinancing what is the impact out of that, right? And therefore, you can basically calculate it's a EUR 30 million per quarter, additional funding cost, and that's why we guided the number as it is. In Q4, there's still the commercial paper as a short-term funding element, therefore, you see a little bit higher level of financial result, but this roughly close to EUR 10 million will very fast disappear in 2024 because we expect that the commercial paper programs are already reduced to zero in Q1. It's in Q1, right? So it's very, very fast that we are able, and that's why we did the short-term funding because we already knew at that point of time that we will be able to reduce it to zero within six months. So that's why we said overall, the existing bond portfolio leads roughly to a EUR 10 million quarterly interest expenses. So, and then for the next year, another EUR 30 million out of this bond. So that's the EUR 40 million. That's a composition of the EUR 40 million for next year. That's great. I think I've turned my one question into three, so I'll duck out there. Thank you for your answers. The next question comes from Enrico Bolzoni from JP Morgan. Hi, good morning, and good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. One was on the guidance for SimCorp. Here you're guiding for the fourth quarter for EUR 185 million revenues and EUR 85 million in EBITDA, but the guidance has not really changed for 2024. So I just wanted to ask, with respect to the EBITDA, clearly, that would imply a step down compared to Q4, if I think about for next year. Can you just give us some color on why actually this is going to happen? And related to that, can you already provide any commentary in terms of what sort of seasonality in terms of revenues we should expect from SimCorp going forward? And then a second question, just related to those impairment on Crypto Finance. Can you just remind us, are there any other intangibles related to that asset that potentially might be impaired going forward? Thank you. Yeah, so starting with your third question, very easy. There are no other intangibles anymore, so we fully write it down, so no further risk in the future anymore. With regard to the SimCorp numbers, so yes, there's a strong seasonality. Q4 is by far the strongest quarter compared to the other three quarters, and it's 35%+, roughly, in Q4, what you can expect from a revenue perspective. Therefore, this EUR 184 million is including that kind of seasonality, what we expect, and therefore, this EUR 85 million EBITDA is also above the EBITDA margin what we usually have. So overall, for full year, as we confirm our guidance for 2024, we expect some 33% EBITDA margin, so the EUR 200 million EBITDA and the EUR 600 million net revenue. And these are numbers purely on the standalone basis, this, without synergies. Obviously, synergies will help us to increase that margin, and obviously, it's also the intention to show some scalability over the next years in the standalone case. So overall, EBITDA margin, as already said to you, will increase over time to a level of 40%+, right? So that, that's our expectation and our clear commitment. Yeah. The next question comes from Benjamin Goy from Deutsche Bank. Yes, hello. Also, the question on SimCorp. So you mentioned the 7% net revenue growth in the first nine months. I was just wondering whether you can compare that to H1, because I believe you only do cross revenues, how the business has developed, and if you could add a bit more color on the different revenue streams, SaaS, on-premise, and professional service, that would be helpful. Thank you. Yeah. So, so far, we do not want to go in all the details for the first nine months just because it's obviously not the responsibility of Deutsche Börse anymore. So we took over basically beginning first of October, and that's why we really focused on Q4 and also with confirmed the outlook for with regard to 2024. But we just wanted to highlight that the business is growing, right? And that the business is growing by a 7% for the first nine months. And there are always it doesn't make so many sense to follow on a quarterly basis, but because it really depends what kind of contracts you made in a single quarter. Yeah, just, so overall, they are exactly in line what they guided. So they give you a full year guidance from SimCorp, and it's just in our internal discussions, they just confirmed that they will achieve their guidance and therefore they were fully in line what was planned. Understood. Thank you. Next up is Kyle Voigt from KBW. Go you. Hi. I believe you recently launched 0DTE options on the STOXX index. I know it's still early days, but just wondering if you could comment on the demand you're seeing so far since launch, and then of the early volume you're seeing in those zero-day expirations. Just wondering if you could provide any more color on where the flow is coming from, and particularly interested to hear if more of that is coming from the U.S. or retail specifically. Yeah, I think, we've briefly touched upon this already on the last earnings call, Kyle. There are certainly some demand for those products. That's why we've launched them. But as you know, the R&D costs to launch an additional sort of, you know, derivatives contract are pretty small. So, there's no huge effort really because the system is in place. So we see some demand, we've engaged market makers, but, the difference compared to the U.S. is that this is a professional product, right? So there is no real retail participation on derivatives markets in Europe, compared to the U.S., and therefore, I think the overall size of the opportunity is also much, smaller. So we see this as one of the elements to grow the business structurally. There are many different other products, and in total, we are able to achieve also nice secular growth rates at Eurex, but it's just one piece of the puzzle. Next up is Bruce Hamilton from Morgan Stanley. Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. So another one on SimCorp, and just going back to sort of Andrew's point, and to the extent that you can share, because I know you'll be talking more about this at the Investor Day. But so it seems like versus the initial guidance for sort of mid-single digit accretion, what we're seeing is slightly higher cost of funding and then possibly a slightly higher D&A. And so although you make a positive comment about, you know, getting the synergies off to a faster start, it sounds like you've got to sweat the asset fast harder to hit that mid-single digit accretion. Is that the correct read? No, I don't think so. That's, that's, that's a correct read. So, from our perspective, everything works according to plan, so no, no reason to, to deviate from, from that. So the cost of funding, just when you take the, the rate, so we, we hedged some months ago, and we have a very strong mid-double-digit million EUR saving out, out of that. So, therefore, no, cost of funding are according to plan. The D&A, we will finally see what, what, what is the final outcome and when we discuss with, with, with the auditor. And, and again, the, the business development is, will, will, will appear as, as it's planned. So for next year, with EUR 600 million net revenue, I think that that's a strong, strong increase, right, on a, on a, like-for-like basis. It's double digit, right? So that is obviously very positive here. And the ARR is also double-digit growth, so that's already guided by SimCorp, and we can confirm that this also currently happens. So there are very positive elements what we see here. With regard to the synergies realization, the more we go into the details, the more fun we see with joining forces between Deutsche Börse and SimCorp. And so far that looks quite promising. We are quite confident that we achieve everything what we guided so far, and we will deliver the details on our Investor Day on November seventh. Brilliant. Very helpful. Thank you. The next question comes from Hubert Lam, from Bank of America. Hi, good afternoon. Just got one question again on SimCorp. So I think you've reiterated your target of EUR 90 million of EBITDA synergies for SimCorp. Do you see any upside to that, just given that you know you can now squeeze out the minorities and maybe at the point, at the time when you gave the original guidance, you weren't sure if that was going to happen? So possibly, could there be upside to that synergy target today? Thank you. No, I think it's too early to talk about that. So it's our clear commitment that we are delivering as the EUR 90 million EBITDA synergies, so EUR 55 million cost synergies, EUR 35 million revenue synergies. We are in the middle of implementing and realization of the plans, and therefore, we are optimistic to deliver these additional synergies. And again, we will give the update on November 7th. Fine. Thank you. Next up is Michael Werner from UBS. Thank you very much. Just wanted to ask about the collateral management business within Security Services. I believe we've seen improving or increasing balances as we've gone through this year. But it seems like the revenues have been, for the most part, flattish. Just wondering if you can help us understand what's going on there and what the outlook looks like for the next couple of quarters. Thank you. Yeah, Mike, so this is a business that has many, many different components. You, you're right. We have, sort of stood at around EUR 26 million-EUR 27 million of net revenue per quarter. That's part of the custody revenue line item, but there are higher yielding and lower yielding parts. So for instance, if you have securities lending, then it's typically market dependent, a higher share we are taking in relation to the value. If you have a simple sort of report transaction, then it's typically a lower share. So it also depends on the product mix. So therefore, the volumes are leading indicator, but the product mix also matters. What's good to see is that it's up significantly year-to-date compared to last year, so there's definitely more demand in the market. Thanks, Jan. Appreciate it. Thanks a lot. The next question comes from Ian White, from Autonomous Research. Hi there. Thanks for doing the presentation and for taking my questions. I just wondered on Data & Analytics, can you call out for us, please, the extent of the point in time revenue contribution in analytics in the quarter? And then sort of by extension, the 11% constant currency net revenue growth that you've highlighted for data and analytics on Slide 5, what would that number have been on a sort of a true like for like basis, I guess? You know, there's, I think there's a transfer now of EUR 2 million-EUR 3 million a quarter in the index business that was booked sort of entirely in 4Q last year. So there's sort of a bit of growth from that. There's a point in time difference in analytics as well. If we kind of smooth those things out, what would be the sort of true constant currency growth rate in that business, please? Thank you. Yeah. So with this regard, you had two questions around the currency FX impact and the point in time revenue impact. So with regard to the FX, again, for the Data & Analytics segment, in total, it's a +5%. So it's a 5%-6%, so it's overall 11%, on a constant cross-currency basis, specifically on US dollar. And that was a little bit higher in Q3 compared to the first half year. So it's a very big impact in Q3 here. And I don't think that it will be the same number in Q4, but it's now really a specific situation in Q3. With regard to the point in time revenue, so overall, the point in time revenues are roughly 25%-30% of the Axioma business, and therefore it really depends now on a quarterly basis, when are the contract renewals, et cetera. And indeed, there is some positive element here in Q3. And it was also the majority of the increase comes from point in time revenue, but we can also state that the analytics business from a one-way perspective is growing double digits. So that's that we can confirm. Okay. Thanks very much. The next question comes from Johannes Thormann, from HSBC. Good afternoon, Johannes Thormann. Two questions left. First of all, on your cash balances, you said clients become more sensitive. Is this only in terms of managing the balance levels, or do you already get requests for revenue sharing? And, and secondly, on the cost to achieve, are there the transaction-related costs on top of it or included in the current year guidance? Thank you. Yeah. So with regard to the cost to achieve, so the transaction cost on top of it. So the cost to achieve, we guide basically two times 50 million, so EUR 50 million for this year, EUR 50 million for next year, and the 21 million transaction costs on top of it. So it's then it's 121, all including. With regard to the cash balances, the first questions of Clearstream, no, we continue not to share revenues on the NII with the clients, so the reduction purely comes from the reduced cash balances. All right, there are no further questions in the pipeline, so we would like to conclude today's call. Thank you very much for your participation. If there's anything else, then please do feel free to reach out anytime. Thank you.