Ja. Guten Morgen, meine sehr geehrten Damen und Herren. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Hello from Essen and a warm welcome to the presentation of the figures for the first six months. Our CEO, Leonhard Birnbaum, is with us here, and Marc Spieker, our CFO. A warm welcome to both of you. Because of the high interest on the part of the media associated with the Ukraine crisis, we decided to change our traditional format. We now are offering a virtual press conference, and according to our and my information, about 30 journalists have dialed in. A warm welcome to all of you, but the structure will remain as in the past. Leonhard Birnbaum is going to give an overview of the current situation. Marc Spieker will then continue to provide an overview of the details in the financial area and an outlook for the group. Afterwards, both will be available for questions. If you have a question, if you would like to ask a question, please use the hand raise sign in Teams. After the Q&A session has been opened, I will call you, and it would be great if you could switch on your camera so we can engage in a virtual dialogue. That completes the technical information. I'd like to pass this forward to Leonhard Birnbaum, our CEO. Thank you, Lars. Ladies and gentlemen, hello everyone. A warm welcome from me as well. The H1 of 2022 was for all of us, obviously dominated by Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine. The energy industry has been in the public eye since February 24 at the latest, but the truth is that the energy crisis had actually already began less noticeably in the fourth quarter of 2021. Today, I'd like to focus on four points in this regard. One, despite the massive challenges facing Germany and Europe, I'd like to start on a positive note, a positive assessment. As a society, we are much better prepared today than we were a few months ago. Secondly, we've done our part to achieve this. E.ON has lived up to its responsibilities. We're helping our customers in Europe, as well as policymakers and regulators, respond to this extraordinary crisis in the short term. Third, we are helping to enhance Europe's long-term energy autonomy by further accelerating the energy transition. E.ON has continued to implement its growth strategy amid the current crisis. We can demonstrate tangible progress, and at the moment, that's an extraordinary achievement by our employees. Fourthly, our setup is robust, as they say these days, resilient. We have delivered despite the crisis. Amid this extraordinary situation, we posted solid H1 year results, and we are reaffirming our forecast for full year 2022 at group level. This too is an extraordinary achievement by all of our employees. Now, allow me to elaborate on these points. Over the last few months, policymakers and the energy industry have committed to an extraordinary degree of responsibility. We've worked together intensively and under great pressure to overcome the current energy crisis. The short-term crisis has not been resolved. However, we are in a much better position today than we were back in March. The storage levels have gone up. The individual countries and the EU have developed strategies and mechanisms for managing the crisis, and critical decisions have been made. The first steps towards diversification of the energy supply have been taken. Moreover, governments in the EU have adjusted energy policies and legislation at an unprecedented pace and on an unprecedented scale. Policymakers have largely been reluctant to intervene in the market, and we welcome this because market prices provide a strong incentive to conserve energy. These price signals are slowly having their effect. Market-wise, less gas has been consumed than last year. Energy conservation is the watchword because energy conservation is one important factor in supply security. It helps to make energy affordable. There are two effects, lower consumption, and secondly, lower demand leads to lower prices. E.ON therefore supports the EU's new gas reduction plan. We also unambiguously support the German government's campaign, Eighty Million Together for Energy Change. If every household in Germany that heats with natural gas were to reduce its consumption by 15%, then this would yield annual gas savings of almost 40 TWh, which is equal to the annual gas consumption of almost all the households in Hesse. However, we all are also well aware of the burden this represents for many of our customers. That's why further measures are needed, such as the rescission of the energy tax, a reduction to the reduced VAT on energy, and targeted relief for customer groups that are particularly hard hit and that can no longer cope with the high energy prices. We welcome the fact that the German government has put in place stabilization mechanisms for individual energy companies whose economic existence could be threatened. The German government has so far, in this way, prevented gas importers from insolvency. They are in the first link in the supply chain, and they now have to replace the gas they are not getting from Russia with more expensive gas purchased at the current market prices. Therefore, these companies must be supported to avoid a domino effect along the entire supply chain, all the way down to the municipal utilities and private and commercial end users. We also welcome the renewed amendment of the Energy Security Act, especially the new mechanism for passing through additional costs is particularly important, and this is being discussed these days in particular. It will enable the additional costs of replacing gas from Russia to be shared fairly and predictably among all customers nationwide. However, it's problematic that the ordinance introducing this gas procurement levy doesn't provide any rules for passing the levy through to end customers. Lawmakers urgently need to improve the ordinance here. A lot of positive news, but after all, many people are shocked by the short-term turbulences. We must not lose sight of the fact that we will only reduce our exposure to unilateral dependency in an energy world which is characterized by sustainable, distributed, and renewable solutions. Solutions that function by being connected physically and digitally to our Energy Networks. E.ON and its growth strategy, founded on sustainability and digitization, are part of this future. We've therefore continued to systematically implement this strategy despite the current challenges. Here are just a few examples. Our Energy Networks segment has continued to implement our growth strategy amid the crisis. Energy Networks' H1 investment of EUR 1.4 billion were slightly higher year-on-year, and we plan to invest around EUR 4 billion in this segment in 2022, mainly new connections and grid expansion in conjunction with the energy transition. About 15% of Europe's renewable capacity is already connected to our networks today. That's an impressive 88 GW of generating capacity, which theoretically replaces 75 large coal-fired power plants. Our Energy Networks are the backbone of the energy transition, and this transition won't succeed unless energy infrastructure is expanded in parallel. Our Customer Solutions segment is also strong. Demand for smart solutions and products for decarbonizing households has never been higher. We sold 20,000 new E.ON solar and storage solutions and 40,000 modern E.ON heat solutions, especially heat pumps, in the first year of 2022 alone. Many people are responding. They want to take energy supplies into their own hands. Our H1 sales in this business increased by around 40% to more than EUR 600 million. That makes us Europe's largest provider of energy solutions for decarbonizing households. A side effect is that we have carbon savings of 500,000 metric tons, so solar panels, batteries, efficient heating technologies, and e-mobility. Talking about e-mobility, we are also seeing a noticeable increase in demand from our business customers to decarbonize their vehicle fleets. We're seeing tangible increase in demand not only from residential customers, but also from the decarbonization of city districts. Our still relatively new Energy Infrastructure Solutions business increased its first-year EBITDA by 23% year-on-year and its investment by 32%. This comes with a number of exciting projects, and one project is our focus in Berlin, where we are implementing a sustainable energy supply in more than 15 city districts. The latest project there is the Estrel Tower, which at 176 meters will be Germany's tallest hotel. The colleague's favorite project there in Berlin is the Havel Energy Quarter. Our newest project is not in Berlin, but in Utrecht, where we've been awarded the contract for a sustainable energy solution for more than 4,000 households and over 80 companies. Our plans to invest EUR 27 billion through to 2026. We demonstrate that we are living up to a responsibility for the long-term energy future. The sustainable transformation for the energy system, of the energy system remains the main long-term task. The crisis is making the energy transition even more important, and it must be further accelerated. I think that's a broad consensus these days. Brussels is increasing its pace as well. The European Commission's REPowerEU plans to mobilize up to EUR 300 billion to end the EU's dependence on fossil fuels and not only from Russia, but generally. The overall renewables targets is to be raised from 40% to 45%, so we are becoming more ambitious. The EU Solar Energy Strategy aims to double photovoltaic capacity by 2025. That will be a real effort. Because all of these plants will have to be connected to the grid. 10 million metric tons of domestic renewable hydrogen and 10 million metric tons of imported hydrogen are expected to replace natural gas, coal, and oil in hard-to-decarbonize industries and the transportation sectors. This is no less ambitious, and what we also require for that, first and foremost, is infrastructure. All of this provides additional impetus for E.ON, and it reaffirms our strategy. Without us, green electricity and hydrogen won't reach the customers. Our Energy Networks and Sustainable Energy Solutions are what's making this enormous transformation possible. This is E.ON's core business. Production processes that until now have largely been dependent on gas urgently need an alternative here, and we are happy to take on this challenge as well. We've reported in the past that at E.ON we're involved in a number of projects, roughly 50 different projects, along the entire hydrogen value chain to make green hydrogen available. I'll mention just three examples. Salzgitter AG, where we will be using wind hydrogen or hydrogen produced from wind energy for steel production. This will enable even highly intensive energy steel production to become green, and we have already entered the next phase of this project. We have entered into a strategic partnership with TES of Belgium to import large amounts of green hydrogen at a green energy hub in Wilhelmshaven. We have also entered into a strategic partnership with Australian hydrogen pioneer FFI to find ways to import large amounts of green hydrogen to Germany. These examples demonstrate that we're systematically implementing the growth strategy we presented last November. Our strategy of growth, sustainability, and digitization is on course, and despite the crisis, this course is reflected in our half-year results. Our group EBITDA of EUR 4.1 billion and the adjusted net income of EUR 1.4 billion are solid and demonstrate that even amid the crisis, we have a robust and high-performing business. My colleague, Marc Spieker, will now provide you with the details. Thank you very much, Leo, and good morning to the audience from me as well. As Leo Birnbaum already pointed out, our business model puts us in the right position, particularly in the current tense situation. This has enabled us to systematically pursue our course in the recent months as our H1 results confirm. Because despite the ongoing crisis, we've kept our promises, both from an operating and financial perspective. First, from an operating perspective, as Leo Birnbaum already said, we posted H1 group EBITDA of EUR 4.1 billion and an adjusted net income of EUR 1.4 billion. This puts us well on our way toward meeting our forecast for 2022. Our financial position is likewise good. The sharp increase in interest rates has further enhanced E.ON's financial flexibility because lower provisions for pensions reduces our debt. I'll turn now to the details of our H1 results. The particularly stable network business in our European markets again contributed to our performance in these times. It recorded adjusted EBITDA of EUR 2.7 billion. Price-driven increases in expenditures for line losses, which we already reported on after the first quarter, continued to play a role in the second quarter. We also saw that the anticipated recovery of higher expenditures for line losses from the prior year is already beginning to have a dampening effect. This underlines the fact that all short-term adverse earnings impacts resulting from this factor will ultimately be offset. Synergies from the Energy Integration are on schedule and are contributing to the anticipated improvement in network earnings in Germany. The mild weather led to a temporary earnings reduction in the high double-digit million EUR range. This will be recovered in the years ahead under established regulatory mechanisms. Our Customer Solutions segment is also performing well, considering the difficult market environment. It recorded H1 -adjusted EBITDA of about EUR 1 billion. You'll remember that we had to announce at the start of the year that the huge increase in wholesale energy prices would require us to adjust end customer prices. In Germany, most of these price increases have already been implemented or announced. However, this won't have a stabilizing impact on our earnings until the second half of 2022. It's also just as important for our earnings that our digital transformation is increasingly paying off. We successfully concluded the migration of our U.K. customers to a digital sales platform. More than 8 million residential customers were migrated in recent years and are now served by a new brand called E.ON Next. We're making equally good progress in our other markets. This demonstrates that even when faced with difficult challenges, E.ON is decisively shaping a profitable business. As anticipated, our non-core businesses earnings were significantly below the prior year figure, and the main reasons are the non-recurrence of the positive one-off effect related to the agreement on nuclear output rights and the closure of two of our nuclear power stations at the end of 2021. This was partially offset by rising wholesale prices. We reduced our economic net debt by EUR 1.3 billion relative to year-end 2021 to EUR 37.4 billion. Despite that, the fact that we paid out the dividend in the same period and wrote down the value of our stake in Nord Stream 1, which we hold for our provisions for pensions. In addition, our program to optimize our asset portfolio is making good progress as well. We told you that we're aiming for disposals totaling EUR 2 billion-EUR 4 billion to finance our growth. We had reported on that in November. We're delivering on our promises here as well. A few weeks ago, E.ON signed an agreement with the financial investor Igneo. According to this, Igneo will acquire a 50% stake in Westenergie Breitband GmbH, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of E.ON SE. In the future, we will have a 50/50 joint venture and will propel the growth of the broadband service in our network territories, providing glass fiber broadband connections, especially in the rural region. We therefore expect to provide about 1.5 million households in Germany with broadband connections. We therefore expect our debt factor at year-end to be within our target range of 4.8-5.2x adjusted EBITDA. As you know, our last nuclear power station will go offline at the end of the year. At the start of the war in Ukraine, the German federal government clearly expressed its opposition to extending the operating lifetimes of nuclear power stations in Germany. The government weighed the trade-offs and made a political decision not to utilize this option. We respect this decision. We've been preparing for years from a technical and organizational perspective for the decommissioning and dismantling of our nuclear power stations. If, as part of the ongoing stress test, the federal government reassesses the situation, we are open to discussions. Ladies and gentlemen, we've very carefully analyzed the risks to our business in this crisis. We've prepared ourselves and acted accordingly. We're convinced that thanks to the recent adjustments to the policy framework, including Germany's Energy Security Act, the risks are manageable for us. This transparency and visibility strengthen my confidence that we'll achieve our targets for this year despite the considerable headwinds amid this crisis. We're standing by our forecast for Customer Solutions because our energy retail unit has already been able to pass through a portion of the huge increase in wholesale prices. Germany's planned levy will give us another mechanism for passing through wholesale prices and distributing the social burdens more evenly. Energy Networks earnings will reflect organic growth resulting from additional investments, as well as recovery effects relating to the price-driven increase in expenditures for line losses in the prior year. Both segments will also benefit from further improvements resulting from the synergies from the Energy Integration that we've reported on many times and that we'll achieve in full. Rising energy prices will have a positive effect on the non-core business in the near term. Consequently, we've raised our forecast for non-core business by EUR 200 million to EUR 0.8-EUR 1 billion. On balance, we can therefore reaffirm our EBITDA forecast for 2022, as well as the complete implementation of our ambitious investment program. With that, I'll hand things back to Leonhard Birnbaum. Thank you, Marc. Before we start the Q&As, let me come once again to the three points and make an important comment as well, the three most important points. One, we're doing our part in the short term as E.ON to tackle this unprecedented energy crisis. Our top priority now is to maintain supply security and to stand by our customers. Two, despite the crisis, we are delivering what we promised. Our H1 year results are solid from both an operating and a financial perspective, as Marc just said. This underscores the resilience and the crisis resistance of our group and our business model, and we can therefore again confirm our forecast. The current crisis, as I said, confirms that our growth strategy focusing on sustainability and digitization is right, and the implementation of this growth is progressing. A final personal comment. I've been actively working in this industry for 25 years, and I have never seen a situation like this, although a lot has happened in these 25 years. I also see that precisely in such challenging times, the capabilities and strength of large market participants like E.ON are crucial for overcoming the crisis, and I can promise you that my E.ON and I personally will do everything we can to do our part for society, and our customers in this extraordinary situation. With that, I'll hand things back to you, Lars. Thank you, Leon. Thank you, Marc. I'm now going to open the Q&A session, and we have already received the first questions, and I can see that we have three questions so far. One is Antje Höning from Rheinische Post, and Christoph Steitz from Reuters, and Caspar Busse from Süddeutsche Zeitung. The first question comes from Mrs. Höning. I've got two questions, one about the end-customer prices. But what's the average increase that E.ON has already implemented, and when will the next increase come? And then, nuclear energy, you said you would be prepared to extend the operating lives. Does that only refer to extending the operation, or would you also purchase new fuel rods for Isar 2 and Nord Stream 2? When do you want to withdraw from that project altogether, or do you want to stick with Nord Stream 1? Yes, okay. Well, end customer prices, I mean, we've got customers all over Germany in various regions who have different tariffs, different prices because they have different network charges as well. Let me give the answer for North Rhine-Westphalia, where you're from. Here, on average, year-on-year, from 2022 compared with 2021, we've increased customer prices by 40%, for gas. That's good in the market and well below what you see from portals on the internet. Part of that 40% was the increase from the first of August. Now, as far as nuclear power is concerned, I don't want to speculate. First of all, it's policymakers who need to assess the results of the stress test to come to a conclusion as to whether they want an option to increase or to make possible to operate the nuclear power plants beyond the 31st of 12. I would like to leave it at that. Nord Stream 1, we explained this extensively for Q1, that we will retain our stake and also keep our governance rights because the importance of this pipeline is great. This hasn't changed, even though the flow has reduced, and I don't want to speculate into the future. I think for various reasons, speculation has turned out to be difficult. Can you say for the first question, when we'll see the next round of price increases? That would be speculations. It depends on the development of the wholesale markets. We have only limited visibility on that because when you look into the future, it is unclear, of course, how demand will develop. It is unclear at the moment how the levy will develop because we still have a range of EUR 0.015-EUR 0.025 per kWh. So to speculate about what would happen next year, that's something I would not want to do at the moment, and nobody can really do that, honestly, at the moment. Thank you, Mrs. Höning. Thank you, Leo. The next question comes from Christoph Steitz from Reuters, please. Hello from Frankfurt. I have two questions about the Nord Stream project. What I'd like to know is the shareholder committee meeting at the moment? And if so, if you exercising your shareholder rights, what kind of talks are you holding with Gazprom at the moment, the majority shareholder there? How would you describe those talks? Thank you. Well, Mr. Steitz, I'm happy to answer this question. First of all, I can tell you that this year the shareholder committee has not met. That's not unusual by the way because sometimes we don't meet over years because the resolutions that are adopted are usually adopted in writing. It's usually about operations aspects that are discussed and need to be decided. It's operations-related solutions. There over the last few months, some operations, some resolutions have been taken, but it only concerned operations and the readiness of the pipeline. Other than that, there has been no exchange on this committee or you were asking about the shareholder Gazprom. No, there has been no exchange other than that. Okay. Thank you. The next question is from Süddeutsche Zeitung, Caspar Busse. Hello from Munich. I have two quick questions. You pointed out earlier that you will retain supply security at any price. Can you give us an estimate to what extent this is actually threatened? What are your expectations there? How big is the risk for supply security? And my second question is, if you continue to operate Isar 2, what does it mean in terms of numbers for you economically? Will you make losses? Will you make profits with that? Can you explain on that? Thank you. Coming back to Isar, so far we have very clear plans, and according to these plans, the plant is to be shut down. We don't plan to continue operations in any way, and we don't know the framework conditions surrounding this. Therefore, Mr. Busse, I cannot answer these questions. We haven't made any calculations. Now, as far as security of supply is concerned, I've said this repeatedly on a number of occasions. I think the changes that have happened this year is that we had to realize also as a society that we can't take security of supply and affordability for granted if we want to drive a green transformation. For that reason, I have stressed this point on a number of occasions, and in the current circumstances, this needs to be addressed. I wouldn't now say that security of supply is the only parameter. We need supply security at acceptable prices. What good is supply security if you get it at a price at which production cannot happen? In the chemical industry, for example, where, which has competitors in Asia who are not affected by the price increases we're seeing here, not to the same extent. The takeaway for you should be here, please, that when we continue to transform our energy system, we need to look at security of supply, affordability, the economic efficiency and sustainability. All of these objectives need to be pursued in parallel. We, as an industry, will make our contribution to ensure system stability, going forward. Again, security of supply includes aspects like affordability and, at the moment, if you look at the wholesale prices, there is real pressure there. I don't want to make any forecasts or prognosis as to how threatened security of supply is, but the challenges are really, really massive. It's nothing like we've seen over the past decades. Thank you. We have received further questions and an English-speaking one. Okay, let me start with Stefan Schulte from WAZ, Mr. Müller-Arnold from Spiegel, and Joe Miller from the Financial Times. Mr. Schulte from WAZ, please. Hello, and good morning. Most of the questions have already been asked and answered. The one that's left is the one about the windfall tax. I'd like to know what you believe. I mean, in Berlin, they're saying the energy industry is supposed to make a contribution there. It's a general statement that's made. What's your take there? You've already commented on the price increases for Germany, but you have 50 million customers across Europe. What's the situation in other European countries? What can you say there? You've answered this for gas, but what about electricity? Okay. Good morning, Mr. Schulte. First of all, the windfall tax. Thank you for raising this. Thank you for saying that, whenever this is discussed, it's the energy industry as a whole that's being mentioned. As we said before, with the high prices we're seeing at the moment and the high price fluctuations, which are also problematic, it's only causing problems for us. It's not an upside for us. Our company would be better off, would be stronger if we didn't have these high prices. For that reason, say it's difficult to make this lump sum statement for the energy industry as a whole. When it comes to the windfall tax, it's understandable, of course, that policymakers are looking at this. You need to be careful there. Let me take an example. The Italian example is quoted as saying that it works. The Italian example is linked to turnover. Of course, turnover increases if the prices go up for a sales company like us. The EBIT is not changed. On the contrary, there's more pressure on EBIT. You cannot make this lump-sum statement. There are sectors, of course, which are generating much higher cash flows than they've ever done historically. If you look at oil and gas companies, there's no doubt there that these companies have generated the largest cash flow in the last decades. That's why the U.K. government has introduced a windfall tax for oil and gas companies, which they're using to dampen the price increases for end customers. There are nevertheless massive price increases. Mr. Spieker will comment on that in a minute. That's politically understandable, yeah. I'm saying it's acceptable that the policymakers are thinking about it, but you cannot address it in a lump sum way as politicians are doing it, to some extent, and allow me this criticism of the press and the media, which are doing it to the same extent as well. RWE would be a candidate for that. Your neighbor, RWE, would be a candidate for that, would they? That's what you've said. I mean, because you only mentioned the oil and gas companies, but there is an energy company in Germany which is making good profits. You believe the demand is acceptable. I accept the thoughts that are being made, but they are difficult. You need to be careful when it comes to the details. I've just explained why, and then you need to think about how you deal with this. These demands are quickly made, and the after effects is something you have to live with for a long time. I would be reserved there. Mr. Schulte, you asked about the price adjustments, and Leo already mentioned that it's not easy to make a lump sum statement here, because as you've asked rightly, that is, I have to answer that this will differ according to the regions and the countries. I'd like to give you one example, that's the U.K. We have a strong sales position here. The retail business is very strong, but the regulator has now imposed or foreseen that prices will be passed through to the customers, and this is happening much more quickly here than in Germany because the regulatory price adjustment path and the schedule is different in Germany. Now, the British regulator is expecting that the price adjustment that is normally made every six months, the next one is scheduled for October, and the government is expecting that prices will be increased considerably. There's always a combination of gas and electricity. I can't give you a breakdown. The reference product is a combined product of gas and electricity. Here we're at about GBP 2,000 per customer, and the regulator is expecting that after the price adjustment in October, these costs will be more than GBP 3,000 per customer. Price pressure is a pressure that exists in all markets, and the only thing that is different, and that depends on the specific market, conditions, is how quickly these price increases will be passed through. But they will undoubtedly be passed through. We've witnessed in all of our markets that politicians are letting the market, markets develop freely. But as Leo said, the economically weak households will get political support in order to deal with an increase in bills, which in the long run will be very, very difficult for the households. Thank you very much, Marc. Thank you for your answer. The next one is Mr. Müller-Arnold from Spiegel. Mr. Müller-Arnold, good morning. Thank you very much. I have two questions that are quite different. Number one, you mentioned the demand for decarbonization solutions such as heat pumps, photovoltaic solutions. Do you still have the impression that more would be possible if certain factors didn't exist, factors that reduce the demand? Are there factors that are a barrier in this process? And the second question relates to nuclear power. If, let us be honest, aren't the conditions at Isar 2 different than Neckarwestheim and Emsland because you have dealt with your fuel rods differently during the last inspection and because the government in Bavaria is sending different signals? Shouldn't we say that the situation in Isar 2 is completely different than in the other two nuclear power plants still operating in Germany? Well, I'll address the second question first. That's a question of the result of the stress test, and the stress test is going to be done by the politicians, and I don't know whether a different assessment or evaluation makes sense. Unfortunately, I can't give you an answer here. I will have to repeat myself again. But concerning bottlenecks, well, growth potential for new Customer Solutions, Mr. Müller-Arnold. Now, with regard to customer demand, there a lot is possible. There's a huge scope here. Currently, there are two factors that are restricting developments, and that's global supply chains, and that relates to solar panels, but also the part related to digitalization. Energy transition will only work if it is highly digitalized, and in this area we see some bottlenecks. The second aspect, well, is our own installation capacities. Of course, we rely on the input products being available, but they also have to be installed on the roofs, in the basements, integrated into the systems digitally. Then for this, we need more capacity in the medium and long term. The supply is restricted, and not really demand. Demand is high. As you assumed. Thank you, Mr. Müller-Arnold, for your question. We have a whole list of additional questions. Joe Miller from Financial Times, then Helge Toben from DPA, Julia Demirdag from Montel, and Philip Akoto from Energate. That would be the order. Joe Miller, good morning to Frankfurt. Assume, right? Hi, good morning. I'm on the English stream, so. Go ahead. Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now? Yes. We can hear you. Good morning. All right. Fantastic. Yeah, good morning. Thank you for taking my question. Unsurprisingly, it's about Isar 2. You mentioned that you would be willing if the government decided to extend the life of nuclear plants in Germany to go along with that. I just wondered how much time you think you have for such a decision to be made. In other words, I'm sure you're gonna have to procure fuel rods, keep staff on, things like that. There must be a cutoff date by which if you want to continue running it beyond the end of the year, you need to know by. I wonder whether we're talking days, weeks before you have to have a decision from Berlin one way or another. Thank you. The answer is actually quite straightforward. If there's a desire, a political desire to revise the position which the decision which has been made, then the earlier, the better. If such a decision would come at a later stage, then we might have some delays and less of a contribution. The key point also when it comes to the timeline is not our internal requirements, the key point is the point in time in which politics actually make a fundamental decision whether they want to deviate from the current position. We expect that the stress test is gonna come out soon. Therefore, we would expect a political evaluation of the results soon, and then we will know more. Our internal bottlenecks are less relevant. This is what I would say on this topic. All right. Thank you. Dann haben wir- The next person is Mr. Torben from DPA. Mr. Torben, please go ahead. Good morning. Two questions. End customer prices. Could you tell us something about the electricity price and how it has developed in Germany throughout this year and what you're planning? You mentioned the gas price and the increase of 40% for North Rhine-Westphalia. Could you give us a similar figure for Germany and for North Rhine-Westphalia for electricity? The second question relates to the EBITDA in the non-core business, which is at EUR 480 million. Could you give us the share of the nuclear power business in this figure? Mr. Torben, electricity. Yes, correct. This question was raised before, and we didn't give you an answer. For North Rhine-Westphalia, and just by way of example, we had an increase of 17% year-on-year. However, we had the Renewable Energy Act levy that was reduced. If you look at the monthly burden, the additional burden for the households for energy costs is only gas-driven. On the electricity side, we've really haven't had any changes because of the factors offsetting each other, but we've seen a huge increase in electricity prices in the wholesale markets. If this is going to sustain, then we will see adjustments in the electricity markets as well. Compared to gas, we've only had an increase of 70%, and this is offset by the reduction of the Renewable Energies Act levy, so that there won't be any major increase for energy, for electricity customers. For those customers in industry who do not have to pay the levy of the Renewable Energy Act, they have seen increases in electricity prices. Their cost base has deteriorated because they were exempted from paying the Renewable Energy Act levy. Mr. Helge Toben, you also asked about the contribution of the nuclear business. The non-core business, it was at EUR 480 million for the non-core business, and the share of the German nuclear energy business is EUR 390 million. Compared to the previous year, this is a decline of about EUR 600 million. A very strong decline down to about EUR 400 million. Thank you, Mr. Torben. We have Ms. Demerdag from Montel. Good morning. Now we can see you as well. Great. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to ask a few questions. I would like to hear from you looking at the forthcoming winter. I know it's a little early for an outlook as to whether it will be warmer or a colder winter, but I'm looking for information about what happens if the winter is one degree colder than normal. Do you have a rule of thumb, a calculation which would say then gas consumption would go up by X%? I just wanted to ask whether there is this kind of equation, whether you can put it in numbers. The answer is yes, we have experience, but we don't know whether the values we have from experience are worth anything at the moment. Yes, if had the prices been stable, I would be able to give you an answer now. We must expect that given the price increases we are seeing, the demand will change to some extent. The customers will try to reduce their consumption by, in order to fend off the price increases to a certain extent. Given the fluctuation we've seen, we're finding it difficult to say what this response will look like. I mean, there's been the request to reduce demand by 15%, and we will see how they respond. I'm convinced they will do something in their own interest, but also because they are always trying to do the right thing and make a contribution. To be honest, I can't give you a good answer. That's one of the questions which we are looking at very intensively at the moment. How will demand develop given the current circumstances? That's one of the big challenges for energy suppliers, because we need to make precautions and purchase energy. How much are we supposed to buy for a customer? Same as in the past or less? And how much less? We don't know. I mean, we are in the process of forming our opinion here. Good question, but I can't give an answer at the moment. Sorry. Okay, thank you. Right. There's one further question at the moment, if I see that correctly from Energate. Koto from Energate, can you hear us? Yes. Hello, good morning. Great. Hello to everyone. I have one question, and this question is about the expansion of the distribution system and the digitization process and also electricity prices to some extent. I have recently heard from TenneT, for example, that because of their increased commodity prices, they presume for network operators that electricity prices will go up considerably, because those increases will be passed through. I'd like to have a statement from you on this. The other point I wanted to ask about is, I mean, you mentioned it already, supply chains are tight and components are difficult to get hold of, particularly for digitization. Chips, for example, that's becoming more difficult. How are you addressing this situation? What are you doing? Are you preparing yourselves for in any way, because this could affect your further plans as well, if I see that correctly. These were my two questions. Or this is my extensive question. Yeah. Well, Mr. Koto, let me start, Leo, you can add your thoughts later. Generally speaking, for the development of our energy systems, this triangle which Leo mentioned, sustainability, security of supply and affordability, we need to invest a lot more in grid infrastructure. Additional infrastructure will lead to additional costs for consumers. This is many years into the future. These are good costs. These are necessary costs to be able to handle this triangle in the long term. This is something different to the money we are now transferring to the oil, gas, and coal producers at the moment. This is money that's going somewhere into the world, which is not helping us here at all. What I'm saying is there are good investments and investments that make sense to develop the system, and they come at a price. The second part of your question, I mean, at the short end, we are seeing in our network operations, and you're seeing it with all the commodities, a considerable price increase. This will have an impact on network expansions. As you know, we are doing predictive maintenance and predictive procurement, and we have to assume that prices will increase there, of course. Our main answer here is we will set up partnerships with suppliers to, in order to tackle this rapid ramp-up of the energy infrastructure. That will make it most efficient. Yes, indeed. I mean, in the past, we had a very comfortable situation where supply chains operated very smoothly, and they could respond very quickly. I mean, you had framework contracts, and you could draw on these framework agreements at even very high volumes, and you managed to get them to wherever they were needed. That has changed now, not in the recent months, but because of Corona, this changed a few years actually ago. If we are now saying we are digitizing our local network stations and we want thousands of them in this kind of environment, then we need totally different relationships with our suppliers. We need to have framework contracts where we draw down or have a guaranteed offtake under these framework agreements. We are redesigning our supply chains. We're not alone there. This is a topic that most industries. This is not an energy industry issue. Most industries are faced with this challenge. These changes in the supply chains are changing the German economy to a certain extent, to a considerable extent, but we will manage in the medium term. I mean, we have this scarcity of ships at the moment. This is not a permanent issue. I think the markets will help us there, and if markets can do one thing, then that's in dealing with bottlenecks and putting the capital where it's needed. I think that will be resolved. Okay, thank you very much. I see three further questions. Vera Eckert, Caspar Busse, and Joe Miller. I'd like to start with Vera Eckert. While Mrs. Eckert can ask that question. It would be nice if Mr. Busse and Mr. Miller could check whether the hand they raised is an old hand or whether it's still old hand. Okay. Yeah. Vera Eckert from Reuters, please. Hello to everyone. I wanted to ask what you wanna do with Tree Energy Solutions in Wilhelmshaven. I mean, they are sometimes in the media. They have Alvera on board now, and they're talking a lot, high sums there, albeit only in future years. What would be your next time horizon there from E.ON's perspective? Mr. Alvera is a very renowned manager from the energy industry. He was the CEO of Snam, the transmission system operator in the gas transmission system operator in Italy, so one of the big players of the gas industry. Mr. Alvera, I mean, he was the CEO there for six years, I think. He is one of the known players in this industry. TES, I mean, these are two topics that are being discussed here. One is the question, would it be possible to get a floating storage and regasification unit to Wilhelmshaven? These barges, these tankers that are available at short notice. TES have an option there, and this will be resolved or decided at short notice. This would provide further additional capacities, energy capacities for Germany at short notice. If TES are picked, then they have the option of replacing the FSRU unit by long-term import terminal, where they could land green gas. They have proposed an innovative concept there, but the second decision will depend on whether it'll be possible to conclude the FSRU topic. As I said, we will see over the next few years whether it's possible or not. We, as E.ON, have an interest there because this will give access or will give our customers access to LNG imports and secondly, also to green gas. The sums involved here are huge, but the sums with all import projects are huge because it's very expensive infrastructure here. As I said, this will be decided over the coming. I mean, I don't want to say a deadline, but in the not too distant future. This would be a private initiative, not a state initiative. Yes, that will be a private initiative indeed. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Eckert. There's one additional question from chat from Ms. Vitch, who is somewhere apparently where it's very noisy in the background, so I'm going to read your question out, so everyone in the call can hear it. Mr. Birnbaum spoke about the problems with solar modules. German producers have issues getting hold of components. How big is the problem for the expansion of solar for E.ON, and what impact does that now have? Are projects being delayed? Well, Mrs. Vitch, yes, there is scarcity for very important components. How big the problem actually is, isn't something I could answer, to be honest. We have. The demand is much higher than what we can supply. What we are seeing is that we have much longer delivery times and our customers. I mean, we've had to tell our customers that delivery times are much longer. That's why our acquisition activities have been, yeah, not put on hold, but turned down slightly. It can take sometimes up to a year, you know, for customers to get their panels, so we cannot meet demand. I don't have a number there. But whatever we order is delivered, so it's not that we order things and then we cannot deliver. I mean, whatever we order is delivered to the customers. Thank you, Marc, for that. It's now 11 o'clock, and there are no further questions, so I would like to close this press conference. A big thank you to all of you for taking part. My team and I will be available to you all day for any further questions you may have. As usual, thank you to our CEO, Leo Birnbaum, and our CFO, Marc Spieker. Thank you and enjoy the rest of today. Thank you.