Morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Francotyp-Postalia Holding AG conference call regarding the financial results of the H 1 year, 2022. At this time, all participants have been placed in a listen-only mode. The floor will be open for questions following the presentation. Let me now turn the floor over to your host, Carsten Lind, CEO of FP Group. Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the presentation of the financial results for the H 1, 2022 in Francotyp-Postalia. I hope everyone had a pleasant summer and is ready for moving forward during the year here. In terms of the agenda, we go through as regularly the accounting numbers. We offer a normalized perspective of the EBITDA. We break down the revenues and the developments per segment, the three segments, and then at the end, we look at the guidance and we are happy to take some questions should there be some. The H 1 results, looking at the main performance indicators on the financials, we have improved basically on all of them. Revenues are up around 28%. EBITDA and earnings per share up as well. A number of effects in here driving this development, organic growth, continuous cost reductions. Also, the rate change in Germany plays a role. Of course, in the H 1, we have one quarter of Azolver added to the revenue part. We are of course happy that every segment, every business area is growing both on the top line and on the bottom line. EBITDA at EUR 16.3 million versus EUR 9.2 million last year. Earnings per share EUR 0.32 versus EUR 0.04 last year. In the normalized view, we simply backed out for the H 1 in 2021, the expenses relating to the Freesort at FP and a few more moving parts in 2022. We have backed out the rate change, the currency effects, and added back the expenses on ERP, some extra expenses relating to increases in, particularly, computer chips, and also added back our expenses relating to the Azolver acquisition and a bit more. From the normalized perspective, the EBITDA we consider here as EUR 14.8 versus EUR 10.2. The normalized perspective is quite close to the accounting numbers overall. As we look at it here also, the margin is up over 13% versus around 10% for the same time frame last year. On the free cash flow and net debt, we have achieved an increase in the free cash flow from EUR 4 to EUR 7.4. Yet, as part of that, we have paid for the Azolver acquisition out of our cash flows. Together with that, reducing debt, I think, is the development that we wanted to see. Moving into the segments and into the business areas, we continue growing in our digital business solutions both in the broader document workflow management space, where we help our customers with their customer communication outgoing and also handling of incoming communications. This goes both with physical letters but also on pure digital offerings. On the input side, we are moving forward. We definitely want to do quite a bit more of that both this year and next year. In the area below the business process management, business process automation, where we count FP Sign, our digital signature solution and others, we as well are growing and we imagine that we will continue growing. As you can see here as well, we also have now a contribution from the product TRAXsuite, which is a software as a service-based asset tracking solution that we got in with the Azolver acquisition. Maybe to put a couple of words around what is this software about. One application of TRAXsuite is that we help hospitals get control over their internal logistics. For example, when you distribute food, medicines, samples, and also keep track of core equipment in hospitals, we are basically contributing by giving time back to core personnel in the hospital so they can spend more of their time on what really matters, which are of course the patients in the hospital. We see everywhere around the world that the healthcare sector is under pressure, not just on the costs, but also on certain key personnel. It is our ambition here to bring a small contribution of giving time back to this sector by the application of TRAXsuite and sometimes also combining TRAXsuite with FP Sign to create more value in those internal logistics flows in hospitals in particular. The mailing, shipping, and office grew to 74.2 versus 60.4. Of course, here we have some effects in here from this year. We have the rate change. It is a recurring element. It's just not a recurring element that happens every quarter or every year, actually more like every second year. The Azolver acquisition is of course helping us here, and contrary to last year, the currency effects in terms of more euros for dollars are here a bit of a tailwind, whereas last year it was a headwind. We have as well organic growth in this area of 2.3% in a sector that overall, of course, worldwide, is declining. Not just on market shares, but on actuals, we are actually performing nicely compared to the competition. In the mail services area, we also see quite some growth. The Q1 was influenced by certain, let's say, effects relating to corona that some of our customers have outsourced more to Freesort, for example, the franking process and others. However, we also achieved to get in a few more new customers. However, the effect here in the H 1 of basically more than EUR 10 million above last year, it will not repeat itself in the H2. However, we envision that going forward, into 2023 and onwards that, part of this, hopefully a significant part of it is something that will stay with us, so it is kind of recurring. When we are looking at it, year-on-year and between the two halves of the year, for 2022, the extra EUR 10 million revenues are happening only in the H 1. Last comment to the mail services, as we have communicated a few times, the business model of mail consolidation is only in the German space, and it is a low-margin business, which means that EUR 10 million extra revenues has a quite limited impact on our earnings. Future at FP, yeah, one project, of course, with a lot of focus now, which is still relatively new, is the post-merger integration of Azolver. It has a number of components. We are investing more in the different digital solutions, for example, the TRAXsuite that I mentioned before, but also other. We have in there as well a restructuring process and of course a combination, and bringing the two companies to be in the same supply chain in terms of replacing the installed base of Pitney Bowes machines in those countries with Francotyp-Postalia franking machines. This is already ongoing in all countries, so we are moving there forward in the way that we anticipated. I do expect that a major portion of this is closed before the end of this year, whereas the further development of the software as a service side of this, of course, is an ongoing process that hopefully never stops. On the operating model, what we do is to integrate Azolver both in our mailing, shipping, and office business, or the business area with franking, inserting, and office solutions. However, we will with Azolver expand the footprint of our digital business solutions as we move forward, for example, in the Nordics, having legal entities there focusing only on software and software solution selling. This helps us, as on our way to becoming an international technology company. On the ERP, CRM, we are standing here in front of shortly, and with shortly this is Q4 starting the rollout, the onboarding of various entities onto the new platform. We will continue driving that in terms of basically quality over speed, if you like. We think that we are in a good way in terms of moving forward with that program. That is, of course, important for a number of processes. Also, the next, let's say, wave of restructuring across FP, not related to Azolver, but the other part, of course, has some dependencies on the ERP CRM system. The program 4 and 5, we are moving forward, continuing and with the actions that we are taking in those two programs, we are not just delivering growth this year, but by keeping investing and in the development, building the roadmaps together with customers, we believe now and we are confident that the actions that we are doing now in this that we did in the H 1 and that we will do in the H2, again, going forward into the future, will enable us to keep growing at reasonable growth rates for the digital business solutions. On the guidance for the full year, we basically stay in our range. We do recommit our statement of delivering the upper range of the guidance with the likelihood of exceeding on the revenues, at least, on the EBITDA. For the H2, we consider ourselves in terms of the performance of the underlying business to be improving versus the H 1. As mentioned, there are investments, the post-merger integration program, further investment in the software development, and also some extra costs that we need to take in terms of shipping costs, in terms of ancillary costs, in terms of extra costs for computer chips that we do consider to go away again in a not too distant future. However, we will incur a number of costs, and we are doing further investments in the H2 that on the EBITDA we stay in the already announced guidance, although as said, likely the top line will exceed EUR 237 million. Petra, these were the words from our side, and we are now happy to take some questions. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question now, please press nine followed by the star key on your telephone keypad. If you wish to withdraw the question, please press nine followed by the star key again. The first question comes from Peter Eilering, Baader Bank. Yes. Hello, Mr. Lind. Firstly, on Azolver. The company is now being consolidated for 1 quarter. How is your experience? Have all your expectations been fulfilled? Is the company on a good track toward profitability as you expected? The very short answer is yes. To add a little bit more color to that, the post-merger integration project has a few dimensions. One, of course, is the major portion, which is moving forward and consolidating the markets with Francotyp-Postalia products and starting that process of replacing the Pitney Bowes product. That and setting up the supply chain for that. We are in very good shape with that because we are already selling on a daily basis Francotyp-Postalia in those countries that we did not sell before. On the digital products, we have the very interesting situation that the asset tracking software that I mentioned 10 minutes ago, we can sell. We can sell both through the mailing, shipping, and office and through the segment digital business solutions. We have some ambitions in terms of driving that forward. We have basically kicked off that together with Azolver. On that dimension, it is also. This is not happening overnight, but in terms of initiatives to build the pipeline to invest further in the software development, we are on a good way. The last I mentioned is that we have combined in Tallinn the initiative that we initiated in FP last year and the hirings with it. We have now merged the two Tallinn sides so that we have one technology and service center in Tallinn. We will continue driving that forward. There we are also confident that we will get the results that we are after. We also understand, let's say, the drivers of doing the consolidation and reducing the cost base. However, let's also say that combining two companies is combining two cultures, two different modus operandi. All of that of course comes with some, let's say, welcome challenges, but we are on a good way. Regarding your printing business in the U.S., we know that there is some special demand situation coming up in the next few years. Have you already experienced here some additional demand in the U.S. from the replacement of the meters? We have seen some effects of this since we are year on year growing the installed base in the U.S.. Having said that, we want more. A technical question. You had very strong results pre-tax basis. What happened in the tax position? Was one special effect in this quarter, and what do we have to expect for the full year? The tax rate that we see is 30% flat across the different regions and. Yeah. Why was the tax position so high this quarter? I think that we can walk a little bit further down that route on the technical side. I think we will record here the question, and we're happy to give a very simple, relatively simple answer. Let's record the question, and then we get back in writing on the answer. Okay. The last point within your digital business, you did not mention IoT, but my expectation is that it is still relatively weak in terms of performance. What are your ideas regarding the IoT business? On the IoT, where our proposition now has both the hardware component of the part in terms of gateways, but also the application, the software that the end users in reality are using when they are looking at and let's say controlling heating T-Systems. That's what we are talking about in the real estate sector, where our proposition is that they can avoid paying penalties to tenants because they, in due time, with our IoT hardware and software, will see when heating stations are falling out and hence can intervene before they get penalties. That is one application. What we have achieved so far is the onboarding of quite a number of customers to do proof of concept on that application, including some namhafte, including some local clients in Germany. However, at this point in time, we are still on, let's say, proof of concepts and small extra projects. We have not yet seen, when we launched, we have not yet seen that we win, let's say, big ticket IoT projects with the real estate sector. It is our impression that actually, no one else in the IoT or property technology, PropTech scene, no one else is also not doing that. It's this sector is not moving slow. The conclusion is it's still small. In terms of what we started up in April last year, we have onboarded a real customer base, and we are working not just on new customers, but building up also the installed base of customers because we see that there's more potential on that installed base. That is where we stand with the IoT. Perhaps one question regarding the printing business. You mentioned the extra costs you had for chips and all the news are full of cost increases for energy, for personnel, et cetera, for logistics. How, what will be your reaction? Do you intend to increase prices? Everybody is currently increasing prices, so why don't you as well? We have a number of levers that we will pull to the extent possible to battle this situation on the inflation and the cost pressures relating to that. Across a number of products, we consider that carefully, of course, we will increase the prices. Secondly, we have initiated projects to build new chips, new motherboards for the printing machines in terms of making ourselves independent on the chips that we have now sourced but at a quite high price. We want to make ourselves as soon as possible independent by launching projects where we know with the new chips and the new motherboards we can buy them at a price at pre-corona or pre-inflation levels. That is very important. We are looking at how in our supply chain and our logistics work moving around machines and spare parts and consumables how we can optimize that to get to as low a number of shipment as possible. Since the shipping cost or the logistics cost, we cannot really control. This is something that we just need to buy at market rate from the market. On the salary part, we are of course here and there increasing. However, like most other companies, it is not, there's no, let's say, automatic compensation coming out of FP due to inflation or increased taxes. We don't lower the wages, by the way, also, if taxes are going down in a country. So these are the levers, the toolbox that we have, and we are pulling all of those. It has an impact. We consider that we have good actions against this. Yes, the cost pressures are going up, but they are not going up in a way that we do not see, going forward, that we can continue improving both the top line and the bottom line. Moving on to the next question here, that is Felix Hermann. Good morning, congratulations for the results. Most of my questions have already been asked and answered. Looking at the future and program, the improvements you are gonna be making in this fiscal year 2023, what is possible here when it comes to EBITDA level of 2023, with regards to further improvements? I know that you did not have a guidance or didn't make a guidance so far for 2023, but can you give a rough impression of what is possible here from the cost side in general with regards to the EBITDA in 2023? It is, of course, a very good question. I will rather let's say in terms of having some precision on that, we will come forward with that at a later time, at a later point in time, of course. However, let's say I can illuminate a bit of some of the works that we are doing, but we expect that we will see a contribution next year, for example, from the business-to-business solutions moving into black. We have here some. We still have some, let's say, some restructuring, some work to do on the cost base. However, both in the case of Azolver and in the original case of FP, we are in unionized environments, and we all understand in Germany, Italy, Sweden and others, we are following a certain process. We are still in consideration mode in terms of following that process, and it would be, let's say, not helpful for me if I gave you concrete numbers. However, we do have both from the, let's say, contribution from an expected improvement on the top line and a list of initiatives on the cost base, we are still confident that we can walk a better earnings and top line next year versus 2022. Thank you. The next question comes from Kai Schlüter, TIA. Yes, good morning. I wonder whether we could drill a little bit into the digital business solution and specifically if you could shed some light on how FP Sign is doing and how parcel shipping is doing. As a further question, you mentioned on the mail service slide that you wanna focus on expanding market opportunities. Could you tell us more about which market opportunities you're talking about? Thank you. Yes, thank you for this question. If I should start with the Freesort part, what happens in that marketplace in terms of mail consolidation is that Deutsche Post AG basically lays out now a new framework in terms of what fees and what services defines mail consolidation. Basically what Deutsche Post wants to do is that same in the same line as, say, for parcels, no digitally what are the volumes to produce, so to speak, relating to parcels. Now they want to have also basically a digital information from the process of franking, how many letters are coming in to be produced at what size, et cetera. We have now in terms of Freesort actually not capitalized, but we are incurring in this year costs for investing in our IT platform in terms of being capable of delivering this extra value in terms of digital in the marketplace. We believe that not just that we can keep some of the customers that outsource the franking process to us that I have illuminated here, the EUR 10 million extra, but we do believe in that marketplace, we have the better IT and the better process framework, and that would enable us to onboard more customers going forward. All right. On the business-to-business solutions, we do not, let's say, disclose exact revenues per product because kind of that would help potentially the competition, and we are not so interested in doing that. What we can say below the plus 30% growth is at your question on FP Sign, and we had a slide on this. We are better at our direct sales for FP Sign, and we have not just the d.velop framework. We are also signing up, let's say, other partners in terms of document workflow management software packages that are white labeling FP Sign. This is moving forward in a good way. On the D, you didn't ask the emails, so let me not talk about that. On parcel shipping, parcel shipping now consists of our own original parcel shipping and also revenues and earnings in that business model from Azolver. I will say overall with our own initiative to make that clear, we are not satisfied at all with what we have achieved so far. We see the market opportunities and we are adding more development capacity into that product line. It is better year-on-year, 2022 versus 2021, not the number that we wanted. Right. However, we are driving it forward, and I still strongly believe in this area. With Azolver and the Azolver countries, we also will further internationalize that product. Not just US, UK, we are also looking at other countries, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden. This now has more, let's say, more fantasy internally than it had a while ago. All right. While you're on it, you might wanna say a word or two on De-Mail. Yes. Yes, I can do it. As has been communicated, systems are withdrawing from this, let's say, this service. We are still offering it. We are seeing weekly quite a number of new customers onboarding that platform, the Behörden in Germany on a broad scale. This line of service is growing and we think that it will be around for quite a while. It helps that the individual deals add up, these are, let's say, the sum of small parts making up the growth here. We of course envision that we can, let's say, make ourselves serve to sell other products and offerings into this very significant market in Germany of the Behörden in Germany. Now they're coming onto a De-Mail. Some of these, they also need input management, for example. Some of them need output management. Many of them can use FP Sign in terms of processes. Maybe that would be hopefully a good lever for growth more than De-Mail itself, the potential upsell and d.velop business development opportunities this quite significant amount of new customers brings in front of us. All right. Thanks a lot. There are no further questions. Back to you, Mr. Lind, for some closing remarks. All right. It's now 11:30 A.M., thank you very much, everybody, for spending the time with us. We can't wait until November, where we will talk about Q3 and much more. Thank you very much and goodbye.