Half-year 2024 results conference. Throughout today's broader presentation, all participants will be in the listen-only mode. The presentation will be followed by the Q&A on the side of your screen, and then raise your hand or a text question. If you are connected via phone, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. Our speakers today are Joachim Dürr, CEO, and Oliver Gantzert, CFO of JOST Werke SE. I would now like to turn the conference over to Joachim Dürr. Please go ahead, sir. Yeah, thank you very much, and good morning and a warm welcome to all of you. This time from Greeneville, Tennessee. So I'm not standing next to Oliver in our normal room, but I'm here with our US people. I'm still looking forward to present to you the Q2 numbers for 2024. So let's look at the financial highlights that we've had in 2024, Q2. Our sales have reached EUR 298 million in this quarter, partially supported by M&A contribution of EUR 21 million. Our adjusted EBIT reached EUR 34 million, and the adjusted EBIT margin remained strong on the prior year's level of 11.3%, despite the declining sales that we had due to the much softer markets in Q2. The free cash flow grew to EUR 61 million in the first half year of 2024. Our leverage, that's important to us, remained below the 1x, even after the dividend payment of EUR 22 million that we have done in Q2. Our adjusted earnings per share reached EUR 3.07 in the first half year, and the adjusted net earnings to sales ratio remained high at 7.8%. Even though these markets were much softer than the previous year, we confirmed the outlook that we have given for the year 2024. These have been the financial highlights, but I would also like to present to you a highlight in a technology investment that we've done. We have acquired a 10% stake in a mature startup called Trailer Dynamics. With this investment, we become a strategic investor in this startup, and that strengthens our R&D cooperation in the field of eTrailer technology. We're investing EUR 50 million in the financing round, and with that investment, we're bolstering the industrialization of the market-ready, plug-and-play axle electrification kit that it can be used to build eTrailers, electrified trailers. It also strengthens our R&D position in eTrailers, and we support this mature startup because we're planning to be an integrated partner into that startup as a supplier, as a distributor, and as an industrialization partner. So this partnership will lead to new products and systems, and these will accelerate the decarbonization and the economic efficiency of transport and logistics. So we're quite excited to not only develop our own products, but also engage in strategic partnerships, to support future technologies. So that's another highlight of Q2, and then let's go to the market outlook. I already mentioned that the markets have been much softer than previous year. In the truck markets, in Europe, -9%, in North America, -8%, Asia Pacific, +4%. Trailer markets, -20%, -25%, -5%, respectively, in the different regions. And also, the tractor markets have been below previous year, even though they already had the downturn a little earlier than the truck markets, with -15, -11, and +1. Our organic growth has been impacted by that -17% in the region Europe, -22% in the region North America, and -2% in the region Asia Pacific, Africa. I think we've weathered that quite well, but the details to the financial numbers will be presented by Oliver Gantzert. Thanks, Joachim, and also welcome from my side to our second quarter and first half year investors conference. Indeed, let's have a dive into our financials and start with the regional overview first. So let's jump into the European numbers. So, the European markets, as Joachim was mentioning, are quite a challenge. He mentioned that -17% organic decline in sales. So from EUR 178 million last year's second quarter, we were down to EUR 166 million sales this year's second quarter. And this is more or less the same organic decline that we have seen then for the full first half year. Reported wise, this is -6.2%, and the impact is here, as stated to the right, the consolidation of our acquisitions that we did mid of last year. They are now ramping up into our sales numbers, from a full year point of view, and that impacted the sales by EUR 20 million in the region, Europe. Within sales, we had this quarter, no material FX impact, so that we consider as a positive mark on that side. If you go down to the second quarter EBIT results for the region Europe. We see that we have a significant decline in absolute EBIT, down from EUR 14.3 million last year's second quarter, down to EUR 8.3 million this second quarter. And probably, as you know and are aware, now we are hit here by the higher proportion of fixed costs in our region, Europe, to versus the other regions, as the region Europe is incurring fixed costs and has, in general, higher SG&A proportional costs, which also relate to a corporate function. So that means with the lower volume of -17%, organic-wise, we see a lower utilization in our European plants, and that has, for sure, an impact on our absolute EBIT in the European region. What we have already initiated in the first half year, and this should give us a tailwind for the second half, is a cost takeout program for the region Europe. We are indeed working with instruments like short-term work. We are reviewing temporary worker contracts. We have a strict cost discipline implemented. And also looking on our projects pipeline for the second half is there potential for shift? What is top priority, and what could potentially shift it to next year? So that, as I mentioned before, should give us some tailwind result-wise, for the second half of this year in Europe. And if we now go to North America, we see definitely the full opposite. As Joachim mentioned, the sales declined organically by -22%, as shown on the market slides. Reported-wise, a little bit less, but more or less in line with this. As we mentioned before, we are hit here by the strong decline in the trailer business segment and also the compact loader segment within our business line. Agriculture is still suffering versus a very good prior year's comparison. On the other side, and we also see this then down in EBIT, we see a recovering demand for premium loaders, which for sure have a much higher margin than the compact segment. And also, we had some smaller FX tailwinds within the sales. And this turns then for the second quarter into a fantastic EBIT margin of 17.4%, and even for the full half year, it's 14.3%, so a significant increase of almost 32% versus prior year second quarter. This boost is driven by various reasons. One reason is the very favorable product mix, as I mentioned before. And one impact is here, as I mentioned, the higher sales share of premium loaders within our Ag segment. That helps a lot. And also, in both business lines, transport and agriculture, we see a still strong and solid aftermarket business, and then share-wise, now, that contributes more to the profit and helps here as well. And ongoingly, as we mentioned in previous calls, also, we are still benefiting from a good efficiency momentum in our plants, as we can run with that kind of volume, very efficient both transport and agriculture plants, and also are benefiting from a good price momentum in the North American region. So again, despite the significant sales decline, a fantastic result, and we also expect for the second half, margin-wise, that a good margin development should here continue for the remainder of the year. If we then go now to our Asia Pacific Africa region, we see a slight decline of -1.3% reported sales and -2.3% organic sales, so from EUR 55 last year, second quarter, down to EUR 54 now. We see all in all, still very robust markets in Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. We see a good increase in business in China. China here is benefiting from a higher export business. On the other side, there is a slight opposite, and this is India. As you are probably all aware, there were big general elections in India in spring, and that affected especially the transport business a little bit in the first half year. But here, from what we see at the moment is we definitely expect a full recovery until end of the year for the Indian business. And we also had some slight tailwind from the consolidation of LH Lift in our region, APA, an acquisition that we did last year. We also had some slight negative sales FX headwinds in the region of almost one percentage point, but all in all, we are happy with the result. EBIT has come down by -10% from EUR 11.0 million last year, second quarter, down to almost EUR 10 million this year. But as I said, this is driven by a less favorable regional mix, as with the increasing share of China business. China is predominantly on highway business for us. That comes with slightly lower margins than our off-highway business comes with. So that's the main effect here, nothing structural, just sales mix driven. And on the other side, we are benefiting from the ramp-up of our agricultural business in India, where we are still quite successful underway with our customer, [crosstalk]. And this now turns into the group picture for the second quarter and the full half year. As Joachim pointed out in his summary, profitability remains very high despite the cyclical sales. We report a reported decline of sales by almost 10%, and organically by 16% for this year's quarter versus prior year's second quarter. If you look into the organic numbers for the business lines, we see for transport, roughly -17, and for agriculture, -11%. All in all, no material FX effects, as they are netting each other out, and the total M&A impact is, for the second quarter, EUR 21 million in that sales number, leading to an organic decline of -16%, in line what Joachim has presented regarding the market overview. And for EBIT, this means, as he mentioned before, we could remain a very strong EBIT margin also for the second quarter, it was 11.3%, exactly on prior year's level. And also for the full half year, that means that we could still achieve the same margin, like in our record year. Last year was 11.5%, so we are very proud of this. And all in all, this means, with a reported sales decline of almost 10%, we only, no, declined in EBIT by minus 10% or a little less. And I think that shows again our resilience of the business. As I pointed out before, we have a good aftermarket share in both business lines, this quarter and the full first half year. We had a very strong North American business by various effects, and lots of them should remain throughout the year. Also with the strict cost control and active portfolio management that we have implemented, we should continue to support a strong just EBIT margin going forward. If we then go to our typical adjusted net income and adjusted EPS pitch, what you see here, as I have shown before on the slide, adjusted EBIT for the first half year comes up with EUR 68 million. If we then deduct our finance result and our adjusted tax rates, which is slightly higher than the reported tax rates, for the first half year, we end up with EUR 46 million adjusted net income. If you transform that into our EPS numbers, we see for reported EPS, 2.31 versus 3.01. For adjusted EBIT, we see 3.07 versus 3.79 of last year. Main impacts here below EBIT are that interest payments are half raised versus the first half year of last year, and this is just purely driven by the Euribor that has risen versus last year. Still a little bit, and as I mentioned before, taxes raised for the first half year a little bit versus prior year. All in all, we are still proud of this, and Joachim mentioned that the adjusted net earnings to sales ratio remained very robust and very high at almost 8% of sales. Then if we have a quick look on our KPIs, ROCE, equity ratio, and leverage. ROCE is still very high, around 20%, slightly reduced versus the full last year, driven by the lower run rate of the LTM EBIT, driven by the sales decline. Equity ratio is at 39%, so clearly above 35%, and this despite the dividend payments, et cetera, et cetera. We had some slight negative FX translation effects, but all in all, we are very happy with the numbers. And as Joachim pointed out, leverage stayed, yeah, exactly, below the 1.0 mark, which is quite interesting for us, because that gives us a huge interest benefit going forward for the next months. It is also quite in line that, I mean, with the strong free cash flow development, although that we had to pay EUR 22 million earn-outs and the dividends, that we could achieve that ratio in this quarter. Have a quick look on cash flow and working capital development. Free cash flow, as mentioned in the summary, EUR 61 million for the first half year. So a result of the very strong cash flow development of the first six months, it is supported by some factoring that we did and ramped up versus last year. This is just purely opportunistic to reduce our finance costs, so there's nothing else behind that. For me, this is just a mix of instruments of financing instruments, and the cash conversion ratio then results into 1.3 for the first half year, so well above our target level of 1.0. CapEx with EUR 13.8 million in the first six months remains a little bit below our corridor for this year of EUR 2.5 million or a little bit above. That's, I mean, part of the cost takeout program in Europe that I mentioned. We are reviewing the projects, but it's more or less in line what we have achieved in the past as well, so nothing special here. And the net working capital ratio is with 17.7% by end of June. Very positive development here, driven by the working capital management and slightly by the factoring, and well above our guidance of below 19% for the full year. So we should be very confident to achieve that here. Then, I think that's it from my side, and I would hand over to Joachim for our closing outlook. Yeah, thank you, Oliver. And, yes, how does it continue from here? Let's look at the market expectations that are based on the market consultant institutes. And, they expect the markets to be a bit weaker than initially planned. So in the last slides, you saw the truck markets a little stronger and the tractor markets a little stronger than on this one. So they've updated the market outlook and expect somewhat weaker markets for truck and for tractors. Overall, for trucks in, -10%-15%, the same in North America, and in Asia, a slight increase in E urope between 0%-5%. On trailers, decline in Europe, 5%-10%, 20%-25% in North America, and in Asia, a growth of 10%-15%. And on agricultural tractors, minus 10 to minus 15 in both Europe and North America, and more or less a flat market, in Asia, Pacific, Africa. So, we have to keep in mind that we are comparing this with an extremely strong market in, in the financial year, 2023. And that's, you know, despite the fact that these numbers look dramatic, we are comparing it to a, to a very strong previous year, and, we will be able to weather that quite well. We've analyzed that data, and we've reviewed our outlook, and we can confirm that our outlook, as we've presented, in Q1, remains unchanged. So despite this, we expect our sales to decline single digits from last year's EUR 1.25 billion. Our adjusted EBIT also to decline single digits, a bit more than sales, because of the effects, the scale effects that we have and the fixed cost effects that we have. And with that, the EBIT margin, the adjusted EBIT margin, we expect a slight decline versus year-over-year, but within, well within the strategic corridor and in the upper half of the strategic corridor that we have stated between 10% and 11.5%. So you can expect us to be in the upper half of that corridor. CapEx remains at the usual rates, between 2.5% and 2.9% of sales, and working capital will be below 19% of sales. Last year, we were at 18%. So to summarize, the messages for the Q2 2024, JOST remains or maintains its strong profitability in the second quarter, but also in the first half year, and achieving a high adjusted EBIT margin despite a considerable sales decline. We are improving our working capital and the operational excellence is strengthening the free cash flow. And with that, we kept the leverage below the 1x threshold. We are investing in strategic opportunities to grow our R&D capabilities like we've done with Trailer Dynamics, and we continue to create strong shareholder value with a ROCE of 20% and the cash conversion rate of 1.3 in the first half year of 2024. We confirm our outlook, and we are using the current market environment to continue to strengthen our market positioning and to leverage our group's business resilience, which works quite well between the different region, as Oliver has explained, and also with both within and across the two business lines that we're operating in. Last but not least, just a reminder to the Capital Markets Day that we'll have on the tenth of September. We're looking forward to present to all of you a bit more details, a bit longer outlook, more strategic insight of what we're planning and developing, and we're all looking forward to your interest to that Capital Market Day on tenth of September. With that, thank you very much for your interest, and we're open for Q&As. Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may click the Q&A button on the left side of the screen, and then raise your hand or submit a text question. If you are connected via phone, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star for two, or please lower your hand. For written questions, please click the Q&A and Text button and type in your question. One moment for the first question, please. The first question comes from Fabio Hölscher from Warburg Research. Please go ahead. Yes, good morning, gentlemen, and congrats on the continued strong profitability. I have two questions for now. First on trucking profitability in North America, the 17.4% is obviously very strong. Everything seems to have come together with the mix. Has there been anything structural that positively influenced profitability as well? My question is aiming towards what are the structural measures and what's the one-off, and which margin level you refer to when you say you expect it to stay strong in the coming quarters? That's the first question, and the second question on the agriculture outlook. Your high horsepower demand in North America has improved somewhat. Compact is still weak. The ag OEMs are still rather cautious for next year. ... Do you continue to expect a broader recovery around early 2025? And what are perhaps the factors which we should look out for there? Thank you. Yeah, maybe I could start, and then I'll hand over to Oliver for some details on the North American numbers. So, we did not have any structural, large structural impact in North America, so we continue with the three plants. We've obviously adjusted the personnel to reflect the market outlook, and we are quite flexible in those plants. And we're not carrying a lot of overhead costs, even though we have reduced some of that overhead costs. There has been no structural adjustments in that sense, that we were closing plants or we shifted the business model. Oliver explained already a little bit the mechanisms. I'm sorry, Mr. Dürr. It seems your interaction- You- Was a little bit unstable. We could not hear you. I can continue the question. So Johan is right. So we didn't do really structuring our, like, footprint and so on and so forth. It's a combination, Fabio, of different things. We did a lot of portfolio cleanup and optimization in last year, and in both business lines there, in transport and in agriculture. And now we see the full ramp-up effect of that measures as well. And the secondly, and that shouldn't be underestimated, was the very high demand last year in some of the plants. We were at 11, we were at a level like 24/7 production, et cetera, where you are a little bit more inefficient than when you run the business from Monday to Friday and could use the weekends for maintenance and so on and so forth. We are also benefiting from that. So the operating leverage in the plants, to use a standard shift model, et cetera, et cetera, has a huge profit impact there as well. We keep a very good price momentum. That's probably a little bit something that might fade out a little bit over the next 6-12 months. That means the sales prices are still healthy, whereas input costs are partially global input costs and have gone down. But we fight for this to keep this incremental margin as long as possible. And the probably, especially for the second quarter, a very important impact is the higher share of premium loaders that we have sold in the Business Line Ag. So that has definitely an impact. And that's something, okay, I mean, that, that can continue, that cannot continue. We have to look from quarter to quarter. But overall, there are a lot of influence factors within the margin that makes us quite confident that North America will stay definitely well above the historical average of its margin before, yeah. Joachim, now you are back, probably you can... Yeah. Yeah, yeah, there was this, a Wi-Fi glitch here, so, sorry about that. Yeah, so nothing to add to that. And for the Ag outlook, I mean, a year ago, when we had, the big Ag fair in Hanover, Agritechnica, the Ag players were still quite bullish, especially the OEMs for the agricultural tractors, despite the fact that the market was already weakening somewhat, and the dealers were already mentioning that they have a very high stock. Now, everybody is, like, in the other mood, very depressed and, and I personally, and I think that was the question: How do I see 2025? Yes, absolutely, the OEMs still have a very low outlook, but I think it will actually be a bit better than everybody expects today. I do expect a slight recovery in the Ag markets in 2025, just because the dealer inventories have been reduced. Right now, I think the mood is a bit too pessimistic, because at least in Europe, the farmers are still making good money. The interest rates are not going up. The big hurdle is that the pricing, especially of the tractor equipment, is still very high. But I think if there some adjustments will be coming there, then we will see the markets come back in 2025, more than everybody expects today. There will not be a big kicker, but I think you will see you know reasonable growth rates in starting 2025 again. The next question comes from Jorge Gonzalez Sadornil from Investment Banking. Please go ahead. Hello. Good morning. Hello, Joachim and Oliver. Hi. A couple of questions from my side. The first one, regarding agriculture. The results were clearly above my expectations. So I am wondering if you have gained some market share in North America, or if you are already enjoying some revenues from India. If I remember well, you were going to ramp up production there, so that would be interesting to understand on how this can help you in the second part of the year. Also, it would be very interesting if you can give us a gross view on the market share—sorry, on the aftermarket in Europe and North America independently, to understand well this decline in volumes. And also, related to that, if I look to your outlook, it caught my eye that you have reduce the outlook in truck for the year, that it is quite in line with your peers. Everyone is expecting that this now. But in trailer, you are maintaining the decline of 5%-10% in volumes, where some of the peers have reduced this to 20%, and in the first part of the year was 20% decline now for you, too. So here I'm wondering if this is because the comparable base is easier in the second part of the year, or if you are already seeing some pickup or at least some stability in the volumes in trailer for the second part of the year? That would be very helpful. Thank you. [audio distortion] Yeah, I, I was disconnected briefly, but I got the first question, right, and I think I also have the gist of the second question. So, I'll just start. With agriculture, yes, we have a positive mix effect, especially in North America, and that is that the large loaders have a much bigger weight now, but mainly because the compact loaders also reduced, and that has helped us. You asked for market share in general. We have very positive market feedback, market share feedback from our customers, so we are winning customers. What they do like is that we are a global player. I always say that the consolidation that we have seen in the truck industry is also happening in the AGCO industry. So the big groups, be it AGCO, be it John Deere, they take over a lot of the smaller manufacturers, and they all develop global platforms. So they really support our strategy of being able to globally supply the same loaders to all their plants in North America, Europe, Brazil, and so on. And with that, we have a very positive market feedback, and there may also be a slight effect of that. We are winning business, but mainly the results and the positive results from an EBIT level are due to the positive mix of products that we have. India is a factory for compact loaders, and it's running as planned. But the positive surprise really came out of the loaders that we produce in our Swedish factories. So that's maybe the quick summary of it. Concerning the trailer markets, we've just presented the numbers that we have seen from clear in Europe, and they may be a bit more pessimistic now than they should be, especially when you take into account that the markets here have already declined also in even- Yeah, I think we have lost Joachim. I see. Oh, okay. So let's wait for him for coming back for the trailer explanation. But you are right, now we reduce truck, in Europe, or in general, the outlook, which is probably in line what you have seen for trailer. We need to see our comparable bases have already been down, since mid of last year, so that is definitely in effect now. I wouldn't say that we see a huge recovery. What we see is a stabilization of the current level at the moment. So we need to wait, and especially wait, for the summer break when everyone comes back, what happens here. But I wanted to add also on your question regarding the ag margin. So, the mix effect, as Joachim described, and a little bit of the ramp-up India, the India ramp-up of our Chennai plant is also indeed a little bit higher than our investment case here. So Mahindra & Mahindra is quite pushing here, wants to gain market share, and then we grow with Mahindra & Mahindra, that's one effect, and also in the business line ag, we are consolidating Crenlo, the Brazilian company that we acquired. And besides the inorganic effect, that the EBIT is now included in that segment, they are also performing better than our business case and acquisition case. They are very strong at the moment with the construction business in South America. One big customer we have there is Caterpillar, and that industry is booming, and we are well positioned at Caterpillar here. So that helps the business line here, ag as well. So indeed, yes, it's. We are very happy at the moment, despite let's exclude the sales decline for the moment, with the EBIT contribution that ag has at the moment for the whole business, it's quite supportive. Let me make a couple of follow-ups on that. So in agriculture then, it is well, first, the margin is still accretive in comparison to the group, the volume, even with the ramp-up in India. Can you share more or less if it, I don't know, if it is in the low single digit or how much was India contributing, this time in agriculture? I would say it's a mid, mid single digit number. Okay. Perfect. This is expected to continue, or you still don't know? Or this is maybe seasonal, and then the second part of the year is, I mean, we need to see. Now, seasons are different in agriculture, as you know. It's more about harvesting, et cetera. And as this is a ramp-up with the customer, we also need to see how successful is Mahindra & Mahindra finally with its own plans, no? So, we are quite confident for the full year that, that the ramp-up remains fully in line with our investment case for this year. The runway could be probably a little bit lower than this in the first half year. On the other side, now we will see a recovery in the transport business. As I said, the general elections are over. Mm-hmm. Everyone gains now confidence, again, for India, et cetera. So overall, for total India, we are quite supportive for the future. Okay, so- But there could be from quarter to quarter, slight, slight movements, no? Just because it's a ramp up, and sometimes the customer now says, "Okay, I need to stop. I need to wait until I see my success," et cetera, et cetera. Okay, very, very interesting. Two last for me. Regarding agriculture and the comments that Joachim did were indeed very interesting. We can say that now the demand is below replacement levels because the stocks were very high, so this is why you are optimistic that, when stocks are clean, we are going to see some levels above where we are now. So is this a little bit the reading on, on the- Exactly. Now, that's what you, Joachim was mentioning, with, we said, also in the agricultural industry, everyone seems to be over-optimistic when, when we are at the last stage of a boom, and everyone is too pessimistic when we are really down. And what we see is from our insight that we have in the supply chains, is we should be really at the low level. Now, stock levels are really down, et cetera, et cetera. That's all the signals that we get. So we definitely expect that it has to come, it has to start now, step by step, to come back again. That and. I mean, that. So there might be also support starting end of the year, but especially for 2025. Okay, yeah. Regarding your question regarding market share, if we gain or lose market share, I would say in general, you know, we increase our market shares through the crisis. Probably more in U.S. than versus Europe- Mm-hmm ... as, we are already very mature in the European market. And in U.S., we have definitely much more, much more chances to grow. But what we see from a customer feedback and what orders come in, although they are not directly sales, but are more from a long-term point of view, "Once the market recover, we want to do it with you and not with this, guy," we definitely expect an increase in market share. Mm-hmm. Yeah, and, I switched off my camera because it seems like everybody's waking up here in the hotel and start streaming, so the Wi-Fi is weakening. But your reading is absolutely right. We expect that with the stock levels at the dealers going down, that there will be a refurbishing starting, and we should see that effect in 2025. Following this, I was just wondering, is this similar in truck in Europe? Because here, I mean, we have less data than in North America, and the demand has been super strong after COVID. So in which stage we are for trucking in Europe? It's also demand probably below replacement levels, so here it's different. We should see some stable demand in general, in the coming quarters. For Europe, it's hard to read. I mean, in the US, I would say that we expect the markets to come back, because they're already preparing for the pre-buy, for the next emission regulation. So we expect the market, because of that pre-buy effect, already to come back in 2025. In Europe, it's a bit harder to read, I would say, because, last year, we had still replacements going on, from years before, where there was not enough availability of trucks. The current level, I would say, I'd be cautious to say, is that a sustainable level or is it below replacement need? We see the kilometers going down. We see the industrialization in Europe not growing, so industrial production is not growing. So this may actually be a healthy level compared to the industrial output that we're having at this point in time. But this is a very cautious answer, but and more a gut feeling. In North America, I think we are below the level that we're seeing for the coming years. In Europe, you know, this may actually be the level that we should plan for the coming years. Thank you very much. I'll go back to the line, and maybe later I come with a question on the capital market day. Thank you. Then I think we have Nikolai. The next question comes from Nikolai Kemp from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead. Yes. Good morning. Thank you for taking my question. Let me start by following up on your truck market assumption for next year. I mean, at the beginning of the year, the sentiment got very excited that the pre-buy effect could already start next year. Then we got some updates over the last days and weeks saying this will maybe still start again in 2026. And actually, some market forecasts, like ACT, is now expecting the truck market down next year, instead of up. So that would be interesting to hear. And then also on Europe, because sentiment seems muted, we got some very soft sales numbers from Mercedes trucks, with their sales almost halving in Q2. Do you see that OEMs are kind of prolonging their summer break? And my last one would actually be on the free cash flow. Stronger start in H2. Typically, H2 is stronger. Would you expect a similar figure to come in H2, or could it then be lower because we had already some positive effects in H1? ... I don't know, Joachim, are you online? Okay. Yeah, yeah, I'm online. So from the market, Nikolai, thanks for the questions, first of all. I think your question was concerning the pre-buy concerning the North American markets. We've seen a lot of excitement, you know, like almost a year ago, when they actually expected the market this year not to decline because of the replacements of, or the pre-buy effect already kicking in. I think that was totally overestimated. So the decline that we see right now is probably healthy in a way. You know, the new regulations are supposed to be in 2027, and everybody expects that these trucks will be less reliable and will be much more expensive. So I'm sure that in 2026 we will see a pre-buy effect, and I also expect that even in 2025, we would see that. Even though FTR has now reduced the numbers somewhat, but you know, in line with all of us comments, the whole industry seems to be overly optimistic when things are at the end of the positive cycle and overly depressed when they are at the lower of the cycle. So I'm not so concerned about North America in the next year, and as stated already earlier, I expect North America will be stable and maybe even a slight plus, as compared to this year for next year. But we will give you more guidance, of course, for the next year when it's due time to do that. We have not even started our budget process and, therefore, we're not guiding for 2025 right now. But that's kind of the midterm expectation that I'm having. And I think the rest of the question can be answered by Oliver. Yeah. So Nikolai, regarding your free cash flow question, you are right structurally, you know? Normally, first half year free cash flow is a little bit lower than second half. And let's say, organically, I expect that to happen as well in the second quarter, in the second half of the year. One topic here is that we still have a little bit too high inventories. I expect that in the APAC region that they should come further down based on the initiatives that we have started here, so that should support free cash flow for the second half year as well. On the other side, you have to, and probably you can discuss this, Romy, based on the official financial report that we have disclosed this morning, a bit more adjustment as a certain portion of the arbitration payment that we made beginning of the year for the earn-out of Ålö is included in free cash flow. Not everything, but a certain portion. And on the other side, we had a ramp-up of factoring. So we used some kind of factoring end of last year, but it increased throughout the first half year, as I mentioned, and that's also an impact on the free cash flow. If you adjust both, probably you should end up as a free cash flow around EUR 45 or something like that for the full first half year on a, let's say, pro forma adjusted free cash flow basis. I hope that answers your question, Nikolai. Yeah. Perfect. Thank you. Yeah, looking forward to see you in about a month's time. Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, anyone who wishes to ask a question may click the Q&A button on the left side on the screen and then raise your hand, or if you're dialed in by telephone, you may press star followed by one. We have one follow-up question coming, Carlos Ramirez from Hauck Aufhäuser Investment Banking. Please go ahead. Hello, can you hear me? Yes. Okay, Oliver, and Joachim. So, just a clarification. So you said EUR 45 million free cash flow, adjusted by the receivables? Roughly, you know. If you exclude somehow the free cash flow impact of the earn-out payments beginning of the year and the ramp up of the factoring program, which for sure decreases accounts receivables. So around 45 with those For the full- Two effects. For the full year, not for the first semester? No, no, no, for the first semester. For the first half of the year. Okay. Okay, okay. Okay, perfect. Now, so my follow-up is around the capital market day. Obviously, I imagine you don't want to to anticipate many things, but can you summarize us the main highlights we should expect in terms of M&A or agriculture opportunities or transfer opportunities that you want to discuss on the capital market day? That will be very interesting. Thank you. Joachim, do you wanna take that question first? No, Oliver, I think, I mean, you're leading the CMD, so, you're closer to the topics. But you are probably speaking more at the capital markets day than myself. We believe it's a very interesting agenda, you know? And it covers the topics that you mentioned before. So, for sure, Joachim, in the beginning, will give probably a little bit longer introduction into our overall new, let's say, our refreshed corporate strategy for mid- and long-term outlook. Giving a first indication about the new guidances in terms of sales growth, EBIT growth, adjusted EPS growth, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And then, for sure, in detail, how should it come in place? What of this is going to be organic, and what are the initiatives within that organic topics? And also we will give a definitive M&A strategy overview, you know. As we mentioned in several sessions before, we have implemented a clear M&A strategy. There's a dedicated M&A team working on this. We have built several clusters, so we say, "Okay, probably do something in this area, in this kind of size," et cetera, et cetera. So that's going to be disclosed by Joachim in introduction. Then the idea is we will have a podium discussion, roughly an hour or a little bit less. And there are also some kind of our C- minus-1 suite level will be involved. So we will meet and greet, and can discuss with our head of the business line, agriculture. She will give us a guidance on, okay, what's the current trends and how, in the industry itself or in the business line, how are we gonna explore that and exploit that, with our corporate strategy, in this. So this is one topic. Then we will have, our head of global R&D, for a quick session. Mr. Fischer, giving us lots of insights about also the organic, pipeline. What are the projects that are currently working for? Also, how that ties into, why have we acquired, a component loader Ålö or that 10% stake in Trailer Dynamics? You should see then why this ties into our overall, into our overall activities at the moment, so to speak. He will also put an insight on, from a customer's point of view, what are the topics from a customer point of view for the next four to five years, in terms of where does the customer sees value synergies across certain business lines that we are serving, transport, agriculture, infrastructure/construction, and what does this mean for JOST? And this is then something you, Joachim and Mr. Fischer, will do both together to say, "Okay, and let's just transform this now into the picture. What JOST needs to do within the next years, and what is our action plan on this?" I will give a full range of a new mid-term outlook in terms of, as I said, sales, EBIT, leverage guidance, capital allocation guidance. We will also give a quick overview on how successful was the ALO/business line ag introduction for us as JOST over the past years. That's a valid request by our analysts and especially also by our investors, to get a little bit more insight on that, so we will do that. But also we will give them finally an outlook on what do we expect out of that activities in terms of shareholder value creation for the next years. And then probably we'll do a quick roundup, and also we'll offer a plant tour with this guy, Mr. Fischer, our head of R&D, to give you an insight and all the attendees on where we are at the moment. So, from my point of view, definitely worth to come in person. Thank you, Oliver. Thank you very much for the detailed agenda. I don't know, Joachim, something to add, or? No, not really, nothing to add, but we're all looking forward to it because we think we have a lot to show in that regard. And we're also looking forward to, you know, the sessions where we have a little bit of interaction and discussion. So I think that will be a lot of fun and a lot of insights and inspiration for both parties. And we expect also inspiration for us out of that discussion. So we're all looking forward to that, and as Oliver said, Jannie Frederiksen, our head of business line ag, and Michael Fischer, head of R&D, they're also looking forward to that day. So hope to see you all. Thank you, Joachim. Of course. Thank you, Oliver. We go back to that. Then, gentlemen, this was the last question. At this time, I would like to turn back the conference to you, Joachim Dürr, for closing comments. Nothing to add. Thank you for an interesting comment, for your interesting comments. As we mentioned, we are quite happy with the performance. We were able to show that even in softer markets, we are able to perform well. That the overall strategy of balancing our business across the regions and across the business lines is working, despite the fact that we have the markets in both agriculture and transport. Really it's a case, and thank you for your attendance, and we hope to see you all on September tenth at the Capital Markets Day. Thank you very much. Have a nice day.