Hello, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Francotyp-Postalia Holding AG conference call regarding the financial results for the financial year 2023. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode. The floor will be open for questions following the presentation. Let me now turn the floor over to your host, Friedrich Conzen, CEO of FP Group. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I would like to welcome you to our conference call, presenting you the financial results of 2023. My name is Friedrich Conzen. I joined Francotyp-Postalia on the first of March of this year, and I'm very honored to work for a company with such a great heritage, and I will do my utmost to extend those 100 years to a very successful new period. I would like to hand over now to my colleague Ralf Spielberger, who will present to you the results of last year. Thank you very much, Fritz. A warm welcome to everybody here on this call. I would like to give you an update how we have done in the last year, 2023. From a revenue perspective, we have seen a slight decline of 3.7% to EUR 241.8 million. If you look at the revenue development at the constant currency basis, there was also a decline to nearly EUR 246 million, which is in line with our guidance, which we have given on the beginning of the last year. On the EBITDA side, we have reported EUR 31 million of EBITDA. If you look at the constant currency basis, it's EUR 33.4 million, which is slightly above our guidance. I will explain some of the underlying developments later on with a little bit more detail than here. Our EBITDA margin is 12.8%. At a constant currency basis, it's 13.6%, which is also above our guided margin range. On the depreciation side, we have seen a decline compared to 2022 to around EUR 18 million. This is driven from lower depreciation in our rental equipment, and our consolidated profit is EUR 10.5 million, which gives us an earnings per share of 0.67 EUR per share. As you see on the 2022 result, there's a small change, which we had to do. We had to adjust our financial figures for the 2022 result. That had to do with the fact that there was a reassessment of our tax effects from intra-group relationships. This correction has led to reduced tax expenses of around EUR 2.5 million. In the end, that improved our last year's results in 2022 and also our earnings per share for 2022. On the next slide, you see what are the key drivers for our development and our financial performance. On the revenue side, we have seen a small decline in our core business, in the franking business of around 1.1%. Please keep in mind that in the prior year, we had some positive one-off effects, especially the rate change. On our DBS business, on our Digital Business Solutions, we have a mixed picture in my eyes. On one side, we have seen a decline in the Output Management, where we have lost a key customer. On the other side, we have seen also good growth in our SaaS business solutions, which I will provide a little bit more detail later on. On the mail service, there's also a decline of 9%, but that was in line with our expectations. In the year 2022, we have benefited from a lot of corona pandemic-related print shops and extra work. Therefore, that was in line with our expectation. Overall, we have seen significant external constant currency headwinds that had a negative effect of around EUR 4.1 million on the revenue line. On the EBITDA side, we have expensed our investments in the One ERP system like we did in prior years. There were also negative currency effects of around EUR 2.4 million compared with the year before, and there was also a significant effect from the rate change of around EUR 2.6 million. On the positive side, we could release some provisions in regards to our restructuring activities, that was needed because we have seen some progress and some reductions on our plans, and that was reflected in this accrual, which led to a release of this provision. How did we do on the free cash flow side and our net debt position? On the cash flow from operating activities, we have achieved EUR 23.6 million, which is one of the highest values which we have achieved in the last years. Our free cash flow is up to EUR 9.1 million. The key reason for this development is that we have seen a higher consolidated profit and have seen lower depreciations and lower inventory levels and also lower trade receivables. On the net debt side, there's another positive development. We have seen a further decline in our net debt positions down to EUR 14.4 million. Our cash also slightly declined to EUR 19 million. Please keep in mind that we have done a significant repayment of our loan in the last year of EUR 7.5 million, which was financed out of the free cash flow. I would like to remind you that the net debt position is very low, the lowest in the last nine years. Please keep in mind that at the end of 2019, we had a net debt position of EUR 32 million, so we have here achieved significant progress in this financial KPI. How did we do in our core business, in the mailing, shipping, and office solutions? The revenue development was in line with our expectations. Everybody is aware that the overall mail volume is declining, so that we could keep stable our revenues is a good development, especially if you look at constant currency basis, where we have seen a slight increase. Mentioned several times, we had this positive one-time effect in the year before. We have refreshed our product portfolio. We did two product launches in the last year, and we are continuously working on switching our smaller customer base in our own FP franking machines, and we are seeing some progress in the last year as well. DBS, first of all, if you look at the reported figures, there's a decline, which was not in line with our expectation, but that was driven from the fact that we have lost a key customer in the last year in the Output Management. T he good message here is that in our SaaS solutions, we have seen a growth of nearly 14%, and we have now reported a yearly revenue in the last year of EUR 8.3 million. Our SaaS solutions are FP Sign, e-Justice, De-M ail, the parcel shipping solution, and the TRAXs uite. We are seeing in all these areas continuous growth, and that's also our focus going forward. Mail Services, we have seen a decline of 9%. As I mentioned, in my starting comments already, we had around EUR 10 million of pandemic-related one-time effects, especially in the first quarter 2022. Overall, we have gained some new customers and have improved our margins with a consistent cost management and logistic cost savings, and this revenue development was in line with our expectations as well. Let me summarize what we have done, achieved from a revenue perspective. Overall, we are largely in line with our expectations. In our classical franking machine business, we have seen a robust development, especially in the light of this overall letter decline. We are good with this development. We are seeing significant challenges in our Mail Services and Output Management business, and we have seen a continuous growth in our SaaS business. Again, I want to repeat it, it's 13.7%. The EBITDA results have reflected that the transformation initiatives over the last year have improved our overall profitability. A t constant currency, without any re-release of provisions, we have seen also an increase in the EBITDA result. That is an overview about the financial results, and as you have seen in the comments, the full year audited results will be published on the thirteenth of April. That has to do that there's a significant workload necessary to make this tagging happening, and that takes a little bit more time than we have seen, and we had also some sickness and capacity issues on our side, which is causing this delay. W e will provide this tagged report on the thirteenth of April. That means next Tuesday. Then I would like to hand back to Fritz. Yeah, so thank you. Looking at the next page, I've of course spent the last weeks assessing the overall situation and learning about the business, meeting key stakeholders. I think we have a very good foundation to keep making money with the traditional MSO business as a basis to also provide the necessary cash that we need to invest more in our digital products. How do we do that? We implemented a key value driver framework, which summarizes all key projects going on in all different business units, so that we can really have a full overview in the management on the progress and also the needed resources, and we speak very strong alignment. What we do is, we really have broken down our customer experience process into the different steps of finding new customers, retaining existing customers, developing the right assortment, making sure that the ordering and promise to deliver process is in place, and making sure that all of our after-sales and customer support experiences are the way they should be. This will take some time until we have fully implemented it into the overall organization. T he key focus will be on driving operational excellence in order to make the necessary results. T hen afterwards, we will reassess our strategic direction. I n general, it will probably remain similar to what it is, that we use the MSO business, try to stabilize it, despite the fact that the mailing market is declining. Make sure that there is a lot of focus on efficiency and generation of cash. Similar in mail services, which is also a tough market, as we depend on some key business partners that on the one hand, are business partners, on the other hand, are also competitors. T he growth focus will be on the DBS, and there, especially on the SaaS business. Ralf already mentioned that we also see chances to regain some key customers for the Output Management, which will help. T he scalability of the Output Management, as it requires production capacities, is not as easy as in the pure digital business with our SaaS solutions, and therefore, we see the chance to drive growth there much quicker than in the Output Management. When we look forward to this year, and we switch over to the guidance, we expect the revenue to be constant or slightly below the previous year. The same is true for the EBITDA, where we will still continue to improve our cost base, but due to the fact that the MSO market is still the biggest part, or the MSO business unit is still the biggest part of our business, it could also mean that we see a slight decline. W e are going to do our utmost to compensate this by growing even more than the double-digit numbers that we saw last year in this year's SaaS business. Thank you for participating, and I think we will now switch over to questions. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question via the telephone conference, please press nine, followed by the star key on your telephone keypad. In case you wish to cancel your question, please press nine, followed by the star key a second time. Please press nine and star now to state your question. There is one question coming from Felix Ellmann, Warburg. Please go ahead, your line is open. Hello, can you hear me? Yes. Yes, we do. Oh, wonderful. What about your possibilities of the large loan you have? You have huge, huge possibility from the past, a large loan, maybe for acquisitions or enhancing the business. What are you gonna do with this option? As we have reduced, as you have seen in the announcement a few weeks ago, that we have reduced the overall loan agreement. W e have the flexibility if there's an opportunity that we could do something. R ight now, we are focusing on reducing our debt because in these times, there's higher interest rates, it costs also some money, but we keep the flexibility and the opportunity available. T he clear focus right now is in generating higher free cash flows and reducing our debt position. Okay, so no concrete plans with this? We keep our eyes always open, so I don't want to say a category no. Yeah, okay. Right now, it's nothing in front of us. Okay. Thank you. At the moment, there are no further questions. If you would still like to raise a question at this point, please press nine, followed by the star key. Now there's one question coming from Peter Rothenaicher, Baader Bank. Please go ahead. Yes, hello, gentlemen. Three questions from my side. Firstly, congratulations, once again, the free cash flow was very strong again, so you were able to reduce net debt. On the other hand, there is definitely the questions, don't you intend to pay a dividend now? The plan is, and the decision of the board was, that we propose not to pay a dividend, and that has mainly to do with the fact that we have planned investments, especially in the Digital business, but also in our traditional business, where we need some cash for it. A gain, we have repaid already some parts of the loan in the last year, and we have repaid a further EUR 8 million on the beginning of this year. O ur focus is, as I said a few seconds ago, right now in bringing down our overall debt and focusing on a higher free cash flow. W e have made the proposal to the supervisory board, and then it will be decided on the AGM what we are doing with the dividend. T he decision from the board was not to pay a dividend for the 2023 result as well. Also, share buyback is no further opportunity anymore. I don't like a share buyback in your situation, where the market cap is already relatively low and the number of shares low. Therefore, I would have preferred a dividend payment, so but nothing of both is currently planned, though? We are in discussions with the share buyback, but we are getting a mixed feedback on this question. There are also a lot of investors which are preferring a share buyback. Y eah, that's as I said, it's a mixed feedback what we are receiving here from the institutional investor side on this question. Mm-hmm. As you have seen, we have, we have a new chairman of the supervisory board. Fritz is quite new, so these, these things will be investigated and, and reassessed in the, in the next weeks. The status right now, as I said, is, was a decision not to pay out a dividend for 2023. Okay. Then on the operating business, your core business, how is the situation, in particular, in terms of demand, from the U.S., where I think currently there's a decertification of the meters is a key topic? Are you benefiting from that? Are you expecting in the current year, some tailwind? Yeah, let me answer that question. C urrently, we see North America to be the strongest performing area, so we definitely profit from the decertification situation. I'm quite positive that United States and Canada business will really support us. Actually, they also started to sell some of our DBS products quite successfully, especially TRAXsuite. As TRAXsuite is not only a digital solution, but it can be combined with physical lockers, which are really helpful for our dealer business in the United States, as those lockers also need some installation support and some maintenance support. I t's rather close to the known business of the franking machines. I'm very fond of the way things develop right now in the U.S., and I will be flying over on Sunday, actually, to have a closer look. Okay. Then, last question, considering your guidance, have you put in here some negative earnings effect from already increased investment into new solutions? Is this playing a role in your guidance? We have included in our planning the investments which are needed, and that's reflected in our EBITDA prediction. Is this higher than in previous years? It's on a, maybe slightly higher, more or less on the same level, slightly higher, maybe. On the other hand, in terms of your investment in your IT systems, how is the situation? Are you already benefiting here from the installations you have made now in 2022 and 2023? Is this already reducing your cost base, and how do you see here the benefit cost situation, 2024 compared to 2023? We are live in some countries with the ERP system, and we have seen some benefits. A lso, that was also part of this release of this accrual, that some of the things have paid out earlier and in a slightly different way than we have assumed in our original planning. W e are seeing some benefits on this productivity aspect from the system. N evertheless, there's always work needed on the overall IT landscape. Fritz will also take a deep look into what we are doing there. As you know, we have this postal infrastructure, which is playing a very important role in our business model, and there's always also investments needed, and from a security aspect, but also from a stability aspect. And that is also things where we have probably to invest some money going forward. Okay, thank you. Again, at this point, there are no further questions. Just going to wait a couple of more seconds and see if there's still any questions coming in. Again, if you still have a question at this point, please press nine followed by the star key. Okay, there are no further questions, so I'd like to hand it back to the speakers. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for participating in our call, and we are looking forward also to your support of transforming FP, and making it a even better company. I think we will now close the call, unless there is still something popping up, but I don't see anything in the chat, so I guess we can finish for today. Thank you very much. Thank you for your participation.