Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. This is Christian Herrmann speaking. On behalf of Daimler Truck, I'd like to welcome you on both telephone and the Internet to our Q2 results global conference call. We are very happy to have with us today, Martin Daum, our CEO, and Eva Scherer, our CFO. Martin and Eva will begin with an introduction directly followed by a Q&A session. The respective presentation can be found on the Daimler Truck IR website. On our request, this conference will be recorded. The replay of the conference call will also be available at an on-demand audio webcast in the Investor Relations section of the Daimler Truck website. I would like to remind you that this telephone conference is governed by the safe harbor wording you will find in our published documents. Please note, our presentation contains forward-looking statements that reflect management's current views with respect to future events. Such statements are subject to many risks and uncertainties. If the assumptions underlying any of these statements prove incorrect, then actual results may be materially different from those expressed or implied by such statements. Forward-looking statements speak only to the date on which they are made. With this now, I would like to hand over to you, Martin. Yeah, thank you, Christian. Sorry, Michael. First of all, thank you, Christian. And let's jump right into our business topics of the past quarter. As always, let's start with an overview of our key figures and the key topics. Our second quarter was impacted by a one-time, non-cash impairment of EUR 120 million of our Chinese joint venture, BFDA, driven by the persistent weak market development in China. Excluding this impact, adjusted EBIT for the industrial business would have amounted to EUR 1.3 billion, with an adjusted return on sales of 10.2%. We achieved an adjusted group EBIT of EUR 1.2 billion, an adjusted return on sales of our industrial business, earnings per share of EUR 0.93, and a free cash flow in our industrial business of EUR 9.5 million and a net industrial liquidity of EUR 7.2 billion. Main takeaway is that excluding the impairment impact, in total, we had another solid second quarter with double-digit performance. Therefore, I would like to thank our entire Daimler Truck team for their contribution. It is really important to me to do this very frequently in our earnings calls, because the dedication of all our colleagues around the globe is the basis of everything we do. What does that mean? Another solid quarter, double-digit margins on industrial business level, record margins with 14.5% at Trucks North America, and 9.1% at Daimler Buses. For those, an excellent performance. A solid performance in a very weak market in Trucks Asia, adjusted return on sales of 4.7%, excluding the full impact of the Chinese business. But to make it clear, 6.5% return on sales from Mercedes Truck, nothing which satisfies us. We are fully aware that we, the team now, have to work even harder to close the gap to our competition. Let me now quickly highlight a few specific developments in the past quarter. We will discuss some of them in more detail later on. Our unit sales decreased by 15% compared to prior year. At Mercedes-Benz, by more than 20%, with Brazil up by 50% and Europe down by around 40%, and at Trucks Asia, by close to 30%. Especially in Asia, we saw also in Q2, weak markets in Indonesia leading to this very low sales level. Incoming orders and order backlog decreased as well, while sales of zero-emission vehicles continued to grow. Our long-haul, zero-emission truck, eActros 600, completed the most extensive testing that we ever did at Mercedes-Benz Trucks. Two vehicles drove more than 13,000 km each across all of Europe. Test results show that our eActros 600 exceeds our expectations in terms of range and energy consumption. We have even successfully tested megawatt charging with this truck. This enables to put the charging levels of the batteries from 20% to 80% in just 30 minutes. Regarding hydrogen-powered drives, we have now reached an advanced development stage. Just last week, we started initial customer trials of our fuel cell trucks with five customers for testing in everyday operation. We unveiled the first autonomous battery electric liner, eCascadia, to explore the potential when these technologies come together. Our joint venture, Greenlane, announced its first charging corridor for electric commercial vehicles between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Our new diesel Actros L can be ordered since April and will go into production in December. It features our new ProCabin, which not only looks nice and futuristic, but is above all very aerodynamic and enables fuel savings of 3%. We announced that we intend to form a joint venture with Amazon to jointly develop a software-defined vehicle platform. The goal is to accelerate the digital transformation and to unlock its potential regarding driver comfort, safety, and productivity. The rating agency, S&P Global Ratings, has raised its long-term rating for Daimler Truck from BBB+ to A-, which underlines the financial strength of our company. I now want to give a quick update on key market developments in the second quarter. In North America, demand in the heavy-duty segment has normalized. Year to date, the Class 8 market amounted to 145,000 units. This is a decrease by 22,000 units compared to last year, but still a solid level. Our market share remains on a strong level of 40.3%. We continue to remain the undisputed market leader. Going forward, my message from last quarter is still valid. We remain committed to go from strong to stronger in North America. For example, we are not yet done with taking full advantage of our all-new Western Star vocational trucks. In Europe, demand has weakened as well. By end of June, demand in the heavy-duty market, 294,000 units. This is decreased by 1,500 units compared to last year. Our market share amounted to 18.5%. When we move to our unit sales and order intake, our numbers for Q2 in total are below Q2 last year. As in Q1, the development is very different across our segments. At Trucks Asia, unit sales are well below prior year by 29%, similar to Q1. As mentioned, many of the core markets of Trucks Asia continue to show a significant decline. This is especially true of Indonesia, and as a market leader there, this weakness hits us particularly hard. However, orders increased at Trucks Asia by 4%, so market demand is stabilizing. At Mercedes-Benz, unit sales are well below prior year by 22%, with Europe down by around 40%. In North America, sales are down as well, but only by 5%. Incoming orders are down by 11%. Our new vocational strategy is paying off. Vocational vehicles are making up for a large part of the reduced on-highway volume. I also want to point out that the absolute volume level in North America is still very solid, if not just very good. At Daimler Buses, the business continues to grow, with an increase in sales by 7.5% and an even stronger increase in orders by 17%. The comeback of bus continues. Now let's look at our progress in zero-emission vehicles. Here, I'm happy to report that the development remains as positive as in the last quarters. In the first half of 2024, we sold 1,461 battery electric trucks and buses, more than twice as many as in the first half of last year. Orders for our zero-emission vehicles increased significantly as well by almost 80% compared to last year. What remains positive and encouraging as well is the great feedback we get for our zero-emission vehicles. This is particularly true for our new eActros 600, our first zero-emission truck for the European long-haul segment. Series production for this truck will start in November this year. Another great example is our FUSO eCanter, a light truck that we first launched back in 2017. Today, we sell in more than 100 variants and in more than 40 countries around the globe. In total, our product portfolio already comprises 10 different battery electric product lines. Our zero-emission vehicles, therefore, are clearly ready. However, it is also true that the absolute numbers are still low. We will not get tired to point out the missing charging infrastructure more and more is becoming the crucial roadblock on the path to sustainable transportation. We therefore continue to have kickstart things with respect to infrastructure, also together with partners and policymakers. At Daimler Truck, we remain fully committed to decarbonization and to keep leading this way. With that, I hand over to you, Eva, for a deep dive into our financials. Thank you, Martin, and hello, everyone. As you are aware, we already pre-released the results for the second quarter on July 16, and I will now go through some more details on our Q2 financial performance. On group level, revenue in the second quarter decreased by 4% to EUR 13.3 billion. Group EBIT decreased by 22% to EUR 1.08 billion, and group EBIT adjusted declined by 18% to EUR 1.17 billion. The adjusted items from M&A amounted to slightly less than EUR 100 million. As in previous quarters, they were still mainly related to the spin-off. Free cash flow for the industrial business was at -EUR 285 million. The main reasons for this negative cash, free cash flow were: firstly, a reversal of the timing effects that drove the strong free cash flow in the first quarter. Namely, the earlier collection of receivables driven by customer mix and earlier than usual received prepayments. Secondly, a specific issue with a supplier shifted North American truck deliveries to the end of the second quarter, which caused a temporary increase of working capital by around EUR 150 million. In the meantime, the cash has been collected, and the working capital has been reduced accordingly. Thirdly, high net investments driven by transformational projects. And lastly, high tax payments, as usual in Q2. This negative cash flow result in Q2 balances out with the respective high cash flow in Q1, and for the first half of fiscal year 2024, we see an improvement of free cash flow versus prior year of around 70% or EUR 379 million. Mainly due to the dividend payment in Q2 of EUR 1.5 billion, as well as the continuing share buyback, net industrial liquidity at the end of Q2 stood at EUR 7.2 billion, which is around EUR 2.2 billion lower than the level at the end of this year's first quarter. Second quarter EBIT adjusted for the group declined from EUR 1.4 billion one year ago, to EUR 1.2 billion now. As Martin mentioned, this includes a one-time non-cash impact of EUR 120 million related to the full impairment of our Chinese joint venture, BFDA, in the Trucks Asia segment. Positive contributions came from improved net pricing, as well as a favorable functional cost development, driven by lower accruals for incentives and share-based compensation, and temporarily lower IT costs. Lower volumes, the impairment loss, and a negative industrial performance, driven mainly by variable overhead costs, could not be compensated by the aforementioned positive effects. With -EUR 53 million, financial services also had a negative impact on EBIT. With regard to the EBIT adjustments, negative M&A cost effects of EUR 91 million were mainly related to IT costs from the spin-off. Year-over-year, Q2 revenue of the industrial business declined from EUR 13.2 billion by 6% to EUR 12.5 billion. EBIT adjusted of the industrial business saw a decline of 15% from EUR 1.4 billion to EUR 1.2 billion, with return on sales adjusted decreasing from 10.3% to 9.3%. Mercedes-Benz and Trucks Asia, including the impact of the BFDA impairment, year-over-year burdened the industrial business adjusted EBIT by EUR 245 million and EUR 172 million respectively. Whereas Trucks North America and Daimler Buses had each a positive contribution with EUR 92 million and EUR 83 million. Excluding the one-time impact of the impairment of our joint venture in China, return on sales adjusted for the industrial business would amount to 10.2%. Looking at the segments, Trucks North America printed a strong EBIT adjusted of EUR 875 million, resulting in a record return on sales adjusted of 14.5%. Both KPIs improved year-over-year as well as quarter-over-quarter. The team dealt extraordinarily well with a supplier issue relating to mirrors, and managed to deliver all units as planned. Hence, unit sales in Q2 declined only by 5% compared to last year's second quarter, supported by strong growth of our Western Star vocational truck sales. Year-over-year, continuous pricing enforcement, a positive sales mix, as well as an improved after-sales business, were the main positive EBIT contributors. Negative effects came from inflation-related cost increases. Overall, an outstanding quarter for Trucks North America. Our vocational strategy is paying off. We are reducing the dependency on the on-highway cycles. We continue to translate our market leadership into profitability. EBIT adjusted at Mercedes-Benz declined from EUR 554 million to EUR 299 million, resulting in a decline of return on sales adjusted from 9.8% to 6.5% in the recent second quarter. Clearly, this result does not meet our expectations. Volumes came down more than expected, with sales in Germany declining by approximately 50%, which was partially compensated by increases in Latin America. This led to significantly lower production volumes at our Wörth plant compared to our forecast. While the team has already done a lot to improve the cost structure, it has become clear that we require additional measures to optimize our cost base for both fixed and variable costs to better handle the down cycle. Year-over-year, the biggest burden to quarter two EBIT was volume and market mix. While our sales volume only declined slightly, we faced significant shifts away from our core Central European markets and Germany in particular. We expect these headwinds to continue for the rest of the year. This results in a negative mix effect, since the relative weight of less profitable markets increases. Another significant burden to our profitability was underutilization in production. The team has adjusted production capacity already over the last few months, and we will implement additional measures to adjust capacity and accordingly, our cost base as of September. Pricing and service business remains strong in Europe, but could not compensate the aforementioned negative effects. Foreign exchange, material costs, selling, and G&A expenses each had a slight positive contribution. We benefited from a one-time release of warranty provisions related to a legacy quality issue. Our restructuring efforts in Brazil are paying off and contributing positively to EBIT. We are therefore well positioned to benefit from the market recovery. However, the positive development in Brazil does not compensate for the challenges in the European business. At Trucks Asia, EBIT adjusted came in with EUR -82 million and a negative return on sales adjusted of 5.8%. Similar to Q1, in Q2, volumes were down 29% year-over-year, driven by the still weak Asian and surrounding markets, particularly in Indonesia. As disclosed with the pre-released Q2 results two weeks ago, the persistent weak market development in China caused us to fully impair the at equity book value of our joint venture, Beijing Foton Daimler Automotive, or BFDA. We are reviewing the market perspectives together with our joint venture partner. Potential further financial impacts cannot be fully assessed at this point in time. The non-cash one-time impairment of EUR 120 million, combined with the low sales volume and unfavorable foreign exchange effects, led to the negative Trucks Asia results. Positive effects from an improved net pricing, good after-sales development, and a favorable development of functional costs could not offset this headwind. Without the BFDA impairment, the adjusted return on sales of Trucks Asia would have been 2.7%. Including full impact of the China business, the Trucks Asia margin would have been around 4.7%, which reflects the improved resilience in this weak market environment. Once again, Daimler Buses delivered a strong result with an increase of EBIT adjusted from EUR 33 million in last year's second quarter to EUR 150 million this year. Return on sales adjusted increased from 3.4% to a record Q2 of 9.1%. The main positive impacts on EBIT came from higher volume, a better mix due to increased coach sales, improved net pricing, and positive foreign exchange development. Higher manufacturing costs, mainly caused by inflation-related effects in Turkey, had a negative year-over-year EBIT impact, but were more than compensated by the aforementioned positive effects. Let's move on to our financial services business. New business increased by 19% compared to last year's Q2, resulting from significantly higher penetration rates, driven by North America and the ramp-up markets in Europe, especially Germany and France. EBIT adjusted significantly decreased year-over-year from EUR 65 million to EUR 12 million, and return on equity adjusted decreased to 1.8%. The driver for this decline is cost of risk, which increased substantially compared to previous year's quarter due to the risk of higher credit losses in the Americas, especially due to the U.S. real estate recession and the default of one big customer. Additionally, the return on equity was impacted negatively by the first tranche of the additional equity injection required to support our rating. In contrast to the first quarter of this year, cash generation in Q2 was driven by a negative effect from working capital of EUR 229 million, mainly coming from Trucks North America, where the mentioned supplier issue led to a negative cash effect of around EUR 150 million, mainly from temporarily higher inventories and receivables. The earlier collection of receivables in this year's first quarter, driven by customer mix and earlier than usual received prepayments, had also a negative cash effect on Q2 from timing. Net investment in P&E and intangible assets amounted to EUR 402 million. This resulted in a cash flow before interest and taxes of the industrial business of EUR 274 million for the second quarter. Cash taxes amounted to EUR -612 million, leading to a free cash flow of the industrial business without adjustment for M&A transactions and restructuring measures of EUR -285 million. Adjusted free cash flow of the industrial business amounted to EUR -184 million. As mentioned before, the free cash flow in the second quarter balances out with respect to strong cash flow performance in Q1 of EUR 1.2 billion, resulting in a year-to-date free cash flow of EUR 928 million, an increase of around 70% or EUR 379 million versus last year. After accounting for the dividend payment of EUR 1.5 billion and the effects from the continuing buyback program, industrial net liquidity remains at a high level, standing at EUR 7.2 billion at the end of the second quarter. Before I move on to our outlook, let me remind you that our outlook is subject, especially to further economic and geopolitical developments. Our expectations for the full year 2024 are unchanged. We still anticipate a range of 280-320,000 units for the heavy-duty market in North America, a decrease of -3% to -16% versus 2023. We see the overall heavy truck market in Europe in a range of 260-300,000 units, translating into a decrease versus 2023 of -12% to -24%, but with Central European markets and especially Germany, being overproportionately affected. Based on the Q2 results and increased headwinds in Central European and Asian markets, we are updating our full year guidance. Let me start with the updates on group level. Driven by lower volumes in Asia and Europe, we now expect revenues between EUR 53 billion-EUR 55 billion. For EBIT, we now expect a significant decrease, and for EBIT adjusted, a slight decrease. We have defined a slight decrease for adjusted EBIT as a decrease between 15% and 5%. On industrial business level, we update the guidance for the following KPIs. We now expect unit sales between 460,000 and 480,000 units, with resulting revenue between EUR 50 billion and EUR 52 billion. The adjusted return on sales is expected between 8% and 9.5%, including the EUR 120 million impact from the BFDA impairment. We now expect free cash flow of the industrial business on prior year level. Our underlying segment guidance is as follows: For Trucks North America, we now expect an adjusted return on sales for the full year at the top end of the guidance range. For the second half of the year, we expect similar volumes, but with a less favorable sales channel and product mix. Hence, we expect Q3 margin on a similar level as Q1. From a status then, unit sales are now expected between 120,000 and 135,000 units. As outlined last quarter, we expect pricing to remain stable with quarter-over-quarter, the carryover effect, while quarter-over-quarter, the carryover effects will decrease, and it will take some time to define and implement further structural cost measures. Therefore, we expect adjusted return on sales for the full year between 6% and 8%. Our outlook for MB is based on the assumption that sales volumes in Central Europe will not further decrease. For Q3, we expect an adjusted margin towards the lower end of the updated guidance range. For Trucks Asia, unit sales are now expected between 120,000 and 140,000 units, with an adjusted return on sales between 1.5% and 3.5%, mainly driven by the impact of the non-cash full impairment of the BFDA in Q2. Due to the expected market recovery, for example, in Indonesia and India, for Q3, we assume increasing unit sales resulting in a similar level as Q3 last year, and an adjusted return on sales around the Q2 performance, excluding the China at equity result. For Daimler Buses, we now expect an increased adjusted return on sales between 6.5% and 8.5%. For Q3, we expect another strong quarter with similar unit sales and an adjusted margin around the midpoint of the new guidance range. For financial services, we expect reduced additions to the portfolio between EUR 10 billion and EUR 12 billion. We now expect a return on equity between 6% and 8%, mainly driven by two effects: higher cost of risk and the mentioned customer default in the second quarter, and approximately 90 basis points impact from the rating-related equity increase. Assuming no further increases in cost of risk, we expect an adjusted EBIT for Q3 on a similar level as in Q1. With... Let me, let me now hand over back to Martin for some closing remarks. Yes, yes, thank you, Eva. Before our Q&A, let me wrap up with a few concluding remarks. As you know, I like to do so by referring to our two strategic ambitions, that is, to unlock our profit potential and to lead sustainable transportation. Regarding sustainable transportation, we are convinced that our eActros 600 is the leading part for European long-haul transportation. It completed the most extensive testing in the history of Mercedes-Benz Trucks. Customer feedback is great, orders are in the four-digit range, and serious production is only a few months away. Regarding profitability, we ended the second quarter on a solid level, but this is a combination of three different stories. In North America, on track to match our record year, and at Daimler Buses, we are on the way to exceed our previous expectations. Asia, excluding the BFDA impairment, shows, despite weak markets, a very good resilience. However, we are not satisfied with the development in China and especially at Mercedes-Benz Trucks. As a consequence, we are working on additional measures to further optimize our cost base in Europe, both for fixed and variable costs. Because I want to make one thing very clear, at Daimler Truck, we have embarked to unlock our full profit potential, and we remain 100% committed. We do not labor, not one bit. On the contrary, we will further intensify our efforts, and that explicitly includes a willingness to make difficult decisions. With this, we are now looking forward to your questions. Thank you very much, Martin and Eva. Ladies and gentlemen, you may ask your questions now. The operator will identify the questioner by name, but please also introduce yourself and the organization you are representing. A few practical points: Please ask your question in English, and as a matter of fairness, please limit the amount of questions to a maximum of really two. Now, before we start, the operator will explain the procedure. Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, we will begin the question-and-answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star followed by one on their touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star followed by two. If you are using speaker equipment today, please lift the handset before making your selections. Anyone who has a question may press star followed by one at this time. Please mute the sound of the internet stream while you're asking your question on your telephone. One moment for the first question, please. The first question is from Nicolai Kempf, from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead. Yes, good morning. Nicolai Kempf here from Deutsche Bank. Thank you for taking my question. My first one would be actually on Mercedes Trucks. You've mentioned that you will implement some more measures, both on the fixed cost side and variable cost side. Can you highlight what these measures are, and how much should they yield in terms of improvements? That's my first question. Nikolai, thank you for your question. I mean, the key is certainly to adjust to the lower production volumes, which, as Eva alluded, are especially for the European business, significantly lower, and it continues in the second half. That means we might not be able to avoid short-term work in German Kurzarbeit. So that will be one. We have on the other side to work that more of the variable costs that will be variable. So we have to work in our factories and started already the respective programs to cut those costs further down. It is necessary to keep with the lower volume that guidance if I just gave, and therefore there is some really tough months in summer ahead of us and the factories in Germany. Nicolai, maybe just to answer your question regarding the impact that would bring, we cannot quantify it at this time. Overall, what we can say is, obviously, we're looking at it from a short and midterm perspective. From a short-term perspective, that means the second half of the year, and there, obviously, we're also taking measures such as spending stops, hiring freezes, in order to increase profitability as much as possible for the second half of the year. And as Martin explained, we're about to implement short-term work as of September. Those were the measures I was referring to, that we were planning to basically reduce capacity and bring down the cost base pretty quickly. And then, obviously, on a midterm basis, we need some more time to really define and implement more structural measures. If you can understand that we cannot share more at this point in time. But once we are ready to share our plan and the impacts of this, we will, of course, update you as soon as possible. Okay, great. And maybe just my second one would be on the visibility. We do appreciate the guidance on the third quarter, but it turned out that the guide on second quarter, the soft guidance, was maybe a bit misleading. What improves the visibility that at this time, and the kind of soft guide we have on next quarter would be more reliable than last one? Nicolai, that's the problem with transparency, and as much detail as you guide, but we live in a very volatile and factual world, a lot of things can happen. But we try to do as much as and accurate as possible. I would say the second quarter, we had certainly a lot of hiccups in production. I can tell you the mirror situation, for example, in the United States, I don't know at what time I was sure that we were able to start. That was no walk in the park at all for many people involved from the supplier side, but mainly on our side, in our factories, in close contact with our customers, who get a late but delayed delivery of the trucks. Those things are always part of the normal business. We always, since the start of our company, we are always trying to be a very transparent company to you on the analyst side. And transparency sometimes have the downside that if unexpected things happens, then you get surprised. I tell you, we will do everything to make the third quarter, and therefore, we are confident with our third quarter numbers, that they will come as they come. It is a huge commitment to everyone in our company to fight that outcome, so it's hard on that side. So, yes, I'm very confident. They don't give you any numbers which we have then to correct. And if you go back, how many times we, in the last 2.5 years, had to correct numbers, I would say the hits far, far, far outlast the misses. And I have all the confidence that the third quarter is on the hitting side and not on the miss side. Great. Thank you. Next question is from Miguel Borrega, from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead. Hi, good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my questions. I've got one on Mercedes-Benz and another one on North America. So the first one on Mercedes-Benz. Can you give us a little bit more color on the reasons behind the margin weakness in Q2? You mentioned a very negative mix effect from lower sales volumes in Germany, for example. Were there also an element of extra costs involved? And I ask because, obviously, overall, your deliveries were sequentially flat, and I assume these deliveries were booked one or two quarters ago. So just wanted to understand a little bit more the bridge of Mercedes-Benz into Q2, and if you expect anything different in Q3 and Q4. And related to that, how should we think about 2025? I know it's still early, but can you maybe comment on the progress of the previous fixed cost action plan? I believe that was independent of current market conditions and to be delivered by next year. Do you still think you can deliver on the 10% margin for Mercedes-Benz? Miguel, thank you. Thank you for your question. I'll try, try to give you as much detail as possible. I mean, first of all, you talked about extra costs, that whether extra costs were involved in quarter two to lead to the profitability of 6.5%. No, there was no major special impact on extra cost. It was really related to mix and to the significant decline in Germany, and then a higher sales volume coming from Latin America, which could not compensate from a margin perspective, that shortfall in particular in Germany. And what you could really see was that under absorption effect. I mentioned that we had to significantly reduce our production capacities in our German plant, and that really had a very negative effect on our margin. When we come to fixed costs, I mean, I made it very clear that we're not satisfied with the result, and that we have to do more in order to streamline our cost base, and we will do that, in order to also prove more resiliency. What we have done, when you look at our fixed cost program for Mercedes-Benz, we have reduced, since 2019, about 10% of fixed costs. However, that was eaten up then by spin-off related costs, mainly on the IT side, which is why, overall, on a profitability perspective, it is not helping us right now to the degree that we would have hoped for or expected. When it comes to 2025, I think when you look at the overall fixed cost that we had achieved last year, where we were at -6% versus 2019, I tell you that achieving the 15% decrease versus 2019 in next year is more than challenging. I will give you an update how we will look at resiliency and efficiency programs, November, with our Q3 disclosure, and then you will get an update of that with some more details, but it is challenging. About profitability and return on sales expectations for 2025 for Mercedes-Benz, I really cannot comment yet, because we're in the middle of our planning for next year, and we have not finalized that, so it is really too early to comment. Great, thank you. And then on Daimler Truck North America, obviously, the market remains resilient. You mentioned order intake in the market is okay. No pressure there, and as a result, you had a record margin in Q2. So what is the reason for the lower implied margin in second half? You mentioned Q3 a little bit lower sequentially. Aren't you already sold out for the year? Is there any cost step up we should be aware or price mix effect? So what explains the second half year margin much lower than, for example, in Q2? Thank you very much. Yeah, thank you, Miguel. First of all, I would debate whether it's significant lower, it's slightly lower, in the second half, in the first half, and that on an extremely high level. The main reason for that is nothing extraordinary. It's just, I would say, accidental product mix. Yeah, we have a very good visibility of our order backlog. We are very precise in knowing what we earn with, with each truck, by customer, by market size. We have in the second half, a higher mix of medium duty trucks, which, as you might know, carry the Cummins engine and not the Mercedes engine. That take... This is not bad business, but it, it's, it takes away some percentage margin. We have, for example, a higher Mexico mix. Mexico is going very hot, this year. We have pushed, and I would say this is more the accidental one, how you schedule the trucks, how the orders come in, whom you want to satisfy first. So there is a higher mix of Mexican trucks. This happens on an extremely high level and therefore is not decisive. We are not sold out for 2024. That is what I said already some calls ago. It's normalizing. Normalizing means you don't know at the beginning of the year whom you sell your trucks in November, December. But when I look at the current order intake, that looks really not problematic. The last couple of months compared in a historical context have been really right at the midpoint of what we can expect in those months. We all know that June, July, August are the lowest order months, so nothing bad about that order intake. It will pick back up in September, October. I'm here cautiously optimistic for the end of the year. As I said, when we end at the top end of that guidance, that will be another record year for Daimler Truck North America, and on a solid pace. Yeah. The next question is from Michael Arnold, from Jefferies. Please go ahead. Yeah, thanks. Good morning, Martin, Eva, and Christian. Michael Arnold here from Jefferies. Just two. We've got the order numbers for 2Q. I'm interested in what you're seeing on the front line with your sales force and customers at the moment. Are you seeing subdued activity across the regions, or if you can give us some insight into what your sales force are seeing and talking about across the globe, that'd be great. I mean, Michael, that is, as always, on our, in our big trucking world, a mixed picture. I start with the most positive one. That is on the Daimler Buses side. I tell you, this is going extremely hot. It pays off that we invested, during the crisis, a lot into our product. We have an absolute, fantastic product lineup, starting with the city buses, continuing with e-buses and ending with coach buses. We're completely sold out for this year and sold out in many variants already, big into 2025. We think, how can we increase here and there some of the production, but you all know in our industry, there is a long tail when it comes then to suppliers and everything else. So it's going really, really well, and it continues to be extremely strong. So buses will... We don't do any 2025 forecast, but you see me very positive. Yeah, I have to be careful not to do a 2025 forecast, but you see me positive. 2024, really good year. We increased it. So bus, no problem. North America, as I just alluded to Miguel's question, is going as we have expected, normalized markets, normal behavior. The fleet customers in 2025 even a little bit more reluctant to buy and order like we expected. But on the other side, the vocational market, much, much hotter than expected, both on the heavy-duty side, where we sell the Western Stars, as on the medium-duty side, where we sell Freightliner M2s with Cummins engines, much, much, much better. So overall, we are doing very well with normal historical average or order intake, leading to a year with our guidance of the volume, where we are really in one of the historical high, still continued high, high years. North America, the big question going forward will be, how will 2025, the fleet orders pan out? And we will know that in September, October, we should start the first negotiations and discussions, and we'll certainly inform you in our next quarterly call. But when I look at the age mix of the fleets now, after two years of a little bit delayed purchasing, I could see here rather a pent-up demand going forward. So you yes. Then Asia, big mix, Japan, India, Indonesia being the large markets, there's a lot of smaller markets similarly, normal to rainy scenarios. So the overall volume, the first half in Asia would fit to our rainy scenario, which on the other side, then gives us with the 4.7% was seen in China without China, a relative good performance, which shows the profit potential we have and the markets pick up. We are positive and see it in first signs that the second half might be better, and then 2025 goes up. The biggest issue for me is Indonesia. There is no underlying problem in Indonesia. The overall, from my experience with the volatility of truck markets, at one point of time, that shift to higher markets should come, and with our 50%, close to 50% market share there, we will benefit big time from that. And similar thing is to India, where we thought that this booms in 2024, it didn't. It's more normal, so no problem at all. But so I would say here, you know, it will come. Is it now in the second half already? We'll see and let you know when we see it, but we are not so much concerned. Brazil, similarly, strong, fair, good order intake. The two problem areas are, and I leave Europe for last, the one is China, and that's therefore the impairment, an absolute catastrophic market. You remember we had one million, 1.2 million. We always saw long-term average is 800,000. We had now a couple of years of... And in the truck theory, that after a couple of low years, you should get the next upswing. We didn't. Yeah, in 2024 is another bad year below 400-500,000, which comes on top, that China moves away from diesel at the moment to natural gas because the country is flooded with cheap natural gas from Russia. And in our portfolio, we don't have a natural gas engine. That means our addressable market has an even bigger slump, and it seems that real bad market continues for a longer term, and therefore, we decided to completely impair our investment there in China. Now comes Europe. Europe is... When I look at my own European story, first, I talked about normalization. We know that the first half will be a bad half, but we were always positive that it will pick up in the second half and then goes back to a good average year. Three months ago, we had planned, it does not pick up, so we don't have an overcompensation in the second half. It goes at the speed of the first half. It didn't. Orders remained low, and so we have that depressed first half when it comes to volume going on into the second half. It's not picking up, and especially in markets where we are especially strong. If I mention Germany, where our market share is about double of that what we have in the remainder of Europe, therefore, it impacts us as a market leader in Germany, especially hard. In theory, at one point in time, you need truck share, for the market has to rebound. When is this rebound coming? If you would have asked me six months ago, I would have said in the third quarter. If you would have asked me three months ago, I would have said in the fourth quarter. We don't see it definitely for the third quarter. Therefore, we reduced our production significantly, which we haven't thought of, and we now think it continues throughout the entire 2024. And I'm really curious, when we look at our market research, how then it goes on for 2025. At one point of time, it has to rebound, but the question here is when. If you look at the overall European market, for the first half, unit sales sold, and look then at the industries, not just ours, but at the industries', prognosis for the full year, you see that the second half is planned by everyone here as a very low second half. And then what we have always to, to consider for the better first half is that we have... And we do look market, we look at registrations. When we look here on the company level, we talk about production and sales, and there is a pipeline in between, and there had been the first quarter, a lot of trucks being registered that had been produced and sold last year. So that, I call it the pipeline effect. This pipeline gets now drier and more empty. When the market rebounds, we have just the opposite effect. Yeah, we produce and sell more than we get registrations, but we are not yet at that point. So I would say we will see a still weak second half, and the orders reflect that. And, the orders does not indicate a rebound in 2024. Because we are on that normalized short order board, where we have only a visibility of three to four months, I can't give any prediction of 2025 at that very moment. ... Okay, great. Thanks. And- Four would work, yeah. Great, thank you. And one quick one on financial services. ROE is bouncing back kind of in the 20 s. Is that because you believe the cost of risk will improve in the second half, or was 2Q due to one large default? We assume that the cost of risk will not further deteriorate in the second half, so that will ultimately be a positive effect than when we compare the first half of the year to the second half of the year. I also mentioned in my speech that we had a negative effect due to the default of one customer in North America, and that, of course, also then happened in the first half of the year, not in the second one. Those are the two major impacts versus the improvement to explain the improvement in Q3 and Q4. All right, great. Thank you. Next question is from Klas Bergelind from Citi. Please go ahead. Thank you. Hi, Martin, Eva, Christian, Klas at Citi. So my first one is on Mercedes-Benz. It's obviously mainly mix hurting the margin rather than price cost currently. You still have a good carryover there on pricing in the backlog. We are hearing more price pressure in Europe, though. How should we think, Martin, about pricing on new orders here, moving into the backlog for delivery later in the year? And linked to the margin performance, Eva, I think you said that you think you can do a 6% margin for the third quarter, the lower end of the full year range. That's only 50 basis points lower quarter-on-quarter. You have the summer shutdowns there in Europe, a big part of the business. I thought the margin would be down more quarter-on-quarter. I hear you on short-term working, but if you could develop a little bit there. Thank you. Klas, yeah, thank you for the question. Pricing is still positive. Yeah, we, and I tell everyone the pricing is, was necessary, the price increases in the past, because we, we had higher costs in every single aspect of our business. So part of the pricing is, and was necessary, not just for us, but for everyone in the market, to cover those higher costs. So that is what we call inflation, normally. And therefore, good news is we can keep the price level we went into the year, and we keep, we can keep it. And when we see price pressure, we talked about, and we see that in other markets, too, that one or the other player, we called it last year, opportunistic, played what I call the opportunistic pricing game, which we never did. So I would say I see a stable price development for the orders we have in our order backlog, definitely, and for the orders to come, no reason to change our strategy and policy. So what was your second question? Oh, you said the 6% margin seems high for you. Thank you. When you look at the volume, our production volume, I would say in the third quarter from the production and therefore sales side, clearly in the rainy scenario, especially, in the European side. So I appreciate that you consider 6% a high margin, and yes, fighting for that. Absolutely, with the Brazilian business, you know, that was one of the dragging our profitability in the past years. We completely turned that around, so we have the capability of turning it around. Yes, in Europe, we have some homework to do. We have to slash some of the costs, as I said initially, on the variable cost side. And as Eva alluded, we will run a very tight ship when it comes to additional spending everywhere else. And with this, I'm pretty confident that we go for that. This is in the past, you know, the organization like it, the organization is fully aware that with our promises to the capital market, that is a number we have delivered to deliver in Q3. Thank you, Martin. No, I totally appreciate the turnaround, yeah, great achievement. It was your seasonality there with the business being heavy European to the third quarter, but okay, that's good to hear the ambition. My second and final one is on trucks in North America, on orders. You had the supply issue like others there in Mexico, on the mirrors, and you had other bottlenecks earlier. Were the orders impacted by this at all, or is it mainly on unit sales? Or do you see a much higher on-highway business now relative to vocational, looking at orders? Reason for asking is that you say vocational is still very strong, and I wonder if, had you the on-highway is weaker than you might have thought at the start of the quarter looking at orders. The reason I ask as well is that obviously looking at the Finco, the customer default there in North America looks a little concerning. Thank you. Klas, I would say not, no surprise at all in the quarter. First of all, the supply issue has nothing to do with the order, yeah? I mean, the supply issue, it was an important part, which we got 100% from one supplier, where the factory burned down and the part, without that part, the mirrors, you can't register a truck. So it was from the very moment when we heard about the fire, the entire time, very diligently, yeah, to find alternative sources and our global sourcing strategy, our commonalities with other regions, helped a lot. So we were able then, with some delay in the quarter, and Eva showed it, it had some... The only impact ultimately was on the cash flow, because we got the trucks out, but the receivable didn't, which we have by now, yeah? So that by June thirtieth, we had the EUR 160 million gap. By December thirtieth, it's back in our pockets. So, but that had nothing to do with the order side, yeah? So, I would say in total, we didn't lose a single unit through that. The order side itself is, as I said earlier, when we went into the year, we know that on the one side, the on-highway side will be difficult in 2024, no problem for us. We have that great best-in-class product that we finally have, you know, can play in that market field. We initially produced Western Star just in one plant. We started last year to open up to produce it in a second plant in our extensive network. That plant, meanwhile, is completely booked out by Western Star. Something which I would say even three years ago, I thought would have been a fairy tale. We are now opening up a third plant for Western Star, which gives us next year increased capability for that brand to even expand further. So that was a very, very positive development. Parallel, the medium-duty business soared as well, especially what I call always the Baby 8, at the higher end of the medium-duty, which goes into the vocational business. That went very well, better than we expected initially. And then last but not least, and that was then the negative, but we balanced it out, and so we are still on a good pace, is that on the on-highway side, the business goes down, went down in both segments. One, on the big fleets, that we have very close contacts, where we know their capital plans. And as I said, I'm cautiously optimistic for next year because they have to replace a lot. And then it's what we call the smaller business, and those guys are mainly hit by what we call the freight recessions. We see that on the side of our financial services group, as well as in our orders, but this is not the decisive segment. Overall, I would say a very balanced situation in the United States for 2024. Thank you, Martin. The next question is from Jose Maria Asumendi, from J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead. Thank you so much for taking my question. Just one, so Martin, I'm just thinking about the margin in Europe, which I don't -- I know you don't disclose, but obviously Germany was down substantially in the second quarter. I assume it's you're making money in Europe, despite volumes down heavily, excluding aftermarket, probably not. So I'm just thinking, is this not a very good opportunity to go back to the unions and show the numbers, and show that you need to take some additional measures to make the business a bit more resilient? This is a wonderful opportunity in such a downturn in Germany to show the numbers, to show the numbers and show the need to improve the profitability from here. Thank you. Thank you, Jose, for your question. I mean, as you rightfully stated, we're not disclosing the profitability on country or market level. But yes, we are making money in Germany and in Europe, I can confirm that. And rest assured that we will now define and implement structural measures. And I think it's also clear that we cannot share this now in detail before it's something that can be communicated on a broader basis. But as Martin has also said, we are not afraid to make tough decisions, and we will do that going forward. I think that's all that we can say at this point to this topic. Thank you so much. Looking forward to it. Thank you. The next question is from Daniela Costa, from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Hi, good morning. Thank you. I just wanted to drill a bit into the US commentary again, just make sure I understood. On, you clearly seem very confident on the outlook on the US, but hearing many of the fleets cutting back yesterday, I think one of the big dealers talking about the market becoming more competitive there on pricing as well. Is it basically that you're fundamentally seeing yourselves just gaining significantly market share in the US? Is that why you're confident in the outlook for the US? And then subpoints related to that, maybe, how do you think about the pre-buy for EPA now after the Chevron ruling? And if I can put a final point on the US, what is... If the market situation does change in the US, how quickly can you cut costs in the US compared to Europe, for example? The last one is very easy, much faster. Yeah, much faster, and with systems in place, both on really the full production cost, very flexible, very fast, and we have shown that in the past, several times. And I would say we rather increased here our capabilities than decreased, and I know they were very good in the past. So I'm not concerned about that. First of all, I'm confident on the outlook. We will have, this year we guide 180-200,000 units on the US. And if you only take the midpoint to that, it's another record year in sales for Daimler Truck North America. So I would say this is—I hope this shows the confidence. And when in my answers to Lars, Miguel, it was. You see that it's we play in every single segment of that market, and we have the flexibility to play. In the past, for example, for like in 2023, when the fleets are soaring, we had an opportunity to harvest on the strengths of our Western Star product. This year, we have it. Therefore, we rather look and see how can we be flexible, even if the fleets come back, that we continue on that high level on the Western Star side. We have a very strong medium-duty product, playing both on the lower end side, where the leasing companies are playing, and on the higher Baby 8 side, where vocational is playing. So Daniela, I would say the benefit of the United States is this really broad extremely good product program without any gaps and holes, very modern, always leading. It's always us against someone in the market when a customer decides, and when you are in every single final of a decision, you win, you have a lot of chances to get the deals, and that's exactly what's happening. Market share at the end, I would wait until the end of the year. We have so many things like you can, you see our, I know one competitor who has mirror problems. That competitor might gain a little bit, but our trucks that we pushed out in June, yet registered as well. There's a huge amount of in the pipeline to hit the market in the third quarter. I have no clue how that shakes up at the end of the year, but, I only know we will produce every single unit we can produce, and the result will be satisfactory. Regarding the EPA? If I just completely forget about the EPA 2027. You know, we were never... We saw the impact of EPA 2027 lower than other players in the market, and I continue with this. But this is a topic I would say we could, we should have the elections and talk early next year about it. I don't see an immediate impact, definitely not on 2024, and definitely not on the first half of 2025. Got it. Thank you very much. The next question is from Virginia Montoliu from Bank of America. Please go ahead. Thank you. A quick one on my side. Just on free cash flow, could you help us, a little bit in terms of how to think about the second half, the reversal of the net working capital headwinds? I know you provided guidance for the full year, but could we just have a bit more color on what to expect? Thank you, Virginia. We're not obviously giving too much details on a quarterly basis, but as we said, for the full year, we expect to be on the same level as prior year. And that is what we are working towards. We are very much aware that cash flow focus is absolute key now for the second half of the year. While we will also focus on cost very much, we know that implementing structural cost measures will take a while, which is why we also now reduced our profitability guidance. But we will really diligently focus on free cash flow generation for the second half of the year. Then for the particular quarters, Q3 and Q4, I would not be in a position to share any details now, but for the second half of the year, we have given a clear guidance. If I may allow me to add. Thank you very much. Virginia, when you look at us in the past years, our business is always cash flow leading more to the end of the year. So I'm pretty glad that by half year, this year, we are already ahead of last year. So that gives us a certain confidence that our guidance, cash flow and prior year level, is despite the EBIT situation coming into play. Any further questions, please press Star and One on your telephone. So this seems to be the last question. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for your time, for the questions, and for being with us today. Thank you, Martin and Eva, for taking the time and answering today. As always, IR remains at your disposal to answer any further questions you might have. We are looking forward to staying in touch with you. The media call will start in around 15 minutes. Have a great day and stay healthy. Thank you and goodbye.