Welcome. Thank you for joining today's earnings call of New Work SE, following the publication of the half-year figures of 2023. The CEO, Petra von Strombeck, CFO, Ingo Chu, and Patrick Moeller from Investor Relations, will give you a presentation on the results in a moment, and the floor will be open for all of the upcoming questions following the presentation. This, I hand over to Mrs. Von Strombeck. Hello, and welcome everyone to our Q2 update. Thank you for your interest and for joining us today. As always, Ingo Chu and Patrick Moeller are seated next to me. Ingo Chu will guide you through the financials later. Let's start. In the early part of the year, when relevant indices and indicators initially suggested an uninterrupted catch-up trend in the economy and job market, given that the corona years were finally behind us, we had to acknowledge a rapid deterioration in the market. Companies showed increasing hesitation in adopting our HR solutions, thereby exerting pressure on new business. Some market observers found this surprising, given the seemingly positive market situation. However, it is now widely acknowledged that the German economy is in a recession, with the impact of various challenges such as inflation, energy prices, and supply shortages being felt across the board. Although the shortage of skilled workers remains a top concern, companies are presently prioritizing other matters. This is why we made early adjustments to our forecast. While this news hasn't been pleasant, it highlights the importance of open and transparent communication, particularly during challenging times, with you, the participants in the capital market. Several indicators reflect the market situation now. To just name two here, the open vacancies reported by IAB are down 12% since the beginning of the year, also the BA-X index shows a steady decline since the beginning of the year. These indices are now reflecting the negative trends we have anticipated since Q1. Unfortunately, at this juncture, we do not anticipate improvement in the employment market this year. Please keep in mind that despite potential short-term macroeconomic challenges, there exists an underlying trend. The overall demographic trend works in our favor. The German employment market will encounter a continuous decline in the workforce over the upcoming years. Even in scenarios with high immigration, labor market forecasts predict a daily reduction of 1,000 individuals within the classic working age bracket of up to 64 years by 2035. This is precisely why we remain dedicated to executing our long-term strategy aimed at becoming Germany's number one HR recruiting partner through talent acquisition. How did New Work perform in Q2 2023 amid a recessionary environment? In a nutshell, financial KPIs for the group have declined year-over-year, but, and this is important when examining our segments, we still observe revenue growth on the B2B side, although the market is tight. Moreover, we have experienced robust growth in workplace insights, making the strongest growth in kununu's history. Additionally, XING continues to thrive during its ongoing transformation from a social platform to a job network. Here are the key financial KPI in more detail. It's essential to note that the slight decline in group revenues is predominantly driven by the double-digit drop in revenues from paid B2C memberships. Our strategic focus is on expanding Talent access over monetization, contributing to this decline. The double-digit increase in EBITDA and net income is mainly attributed to a negative, lower than anticipated revenue growth. This can be attributed to an increased employee count compared to 2022, alongside continued expenditure in brand and performance marketing to fuel the talent inflow on both kununu and XING. Thus, we are investing in our strategy and in customer value to be in a good position when the market recovers, while at the same time working on cost efficiency. Ingo will come to that later. After this short overview on the KPIs, let me come to one of the highlights of Q2. In June of this year, we hosted the New Work Experience 2023. For the first time, we presented the New Work Experience as a festival dedicated to exploring the future of work. A diverse array of speakers and experts captivated the audience in the Elphi. Additionally, XING presented a XING Job Fair aimed at attracting young talent, while onlyfy, our B2B brand, offered specific content and formats for recruiters. Additionally, the kununu brand featured program segments centered around transparency and Employer branding. Through these initiatives, New Work underscored the expertise of its brands, making the event the number one event in the world of work in DACH, which, by the way, achieved the broadest reach ever compared to the last years, and received extremely high satisfaction scores within our target groups. Moving on to our two core C destinations. Regarding talent acquisition, the brands XING and kununu play a pivotal role as you know. The value of the kununu platform for users lies in genuine insights and evaluations available for employers in the DACH region. Thanks to precisely targeted marketing efforts, the number of workplace insights encompassing employer reviews, salaries, and insights into company culture, has expanded significantly by 2.1 million. This represents the most substantial growth in kununu's history. Since Q2, job advertisements placed to onlyfy one can now also be featured on the employer review platform, kununu. For our C-side talents, this offers the opportunity to not just learn about an open position, but also to gain authentic insights into the company. For our B-side customers, these advertisements are explicitly tailored to diverse age and professional groups, spanning from managers and knowledge workers, to employees across various sectors, such as manufacturing, production, logistics, craftsmanships, healthcare, and nursing. Furthermore, to aid companies in identifying candidates from non-traditional office roles, we have introduced a new offering, the onlyfy one job ad essential. This offering is designed specifically to target job seekers within this segment. We are thus leveraging the power of kununu for our jobs product. Let's shift the focus to XING. We are continuing our transformation of XING into a comprehensive jobs network and persisting investing in our strategy to emerge as the number one recruiting partner for HR departments, even amidst these challenging times. Given that the shortage of skilled workers remains a challenge for the local economy, we stand ready with a solution. Under the guidance of the experienced industry expert, Thomas Kindler, XING is now fully committed to jobs, jobs, jobs. The platform continues to amplify its unique strength. Unlike the typical matching of job openings and resumes seen with other providers, XING does not only profit from the most extensive array of jobs, but can also unite personal preferences, a feature we have launched, with companies aligned to a variety of job roles. Consequently, XING is increasingly aiding more members in discovering roles that align with their lifestyles or connecting with over 20,000 recruiters actively exploring the platform. Over the past 12 months, we have witnessed the addition of nearly 1 million new registered members, translating to 140,000 active members in Q2. While this figure is lower than preceding quarters, it remains in line with our high penetration within the total addressable market of approximately 27 million white-collar workers today. Moreover, we see an uplift of the recruiter reply rate and the uplift of the applicants per job posting as first indicators that our new job focus pays off and delivers customer value both on C-side and on the B-side. Throughout Q2, we have also established two partnerships aimed at engaging younger audiences, namely Karriereguru and the Staufenbiel Institut, which is spearheading the Absolventenkongress across major cities in Germany. Moving forward, let's provide an update on the development of our B2B business with a focus on HR solutions. When analyzing customer development, you observe a minor decline in Q2. Actually, our customer number is pretty much stable concerning corporate HR clients. This trend essentially illustrates the reduced demand for digital recruiting solutions. It's crucial to specify that our products perform quite differently depending how directly they are related to recruiting. While recruiting solutions have faced a downturn, Employer branding, similar to the pattern seen during the corona period, continue to witness double-digit growth, even in Q2. This trajectory is mirrored in our onlyfy one solution, which similarly continues to thrive with double-digit growth. On the other hand, the classical recruiting services, including job ads and our Talent Manager, reflect negative trends. Job ads have seen a significant year-on-year decline, closely mirroring the trend in vacancies across Germany. That concludes my update. As you can observe, we are continuing our strategic path. Regrettably, we are feeling the effects of the recession through our financial indicators. Nevertheless, we are driving the transformation of our company, making strategic investments while maintaining stringent cost discipline. It is our objective to regain growth and secure a leading position within the competitive landscape once the market regains stability. I look forward to keeping you updated of our progress throughout this journey. Having said that, I hand over to Ingo. Thank you, Petra. Hello, everybody, this is Ingo. I will talk to you about our Q2 numbers in more detail. The macro situation remains negative, and as a consequence, our situation remains difficult as well. However, our cost countermeasures show first effects, and profitability has improved quarter-over-quarter. We are on track with our new plans, and we confirm our adjusted guidance from May. Let's start with the key message points. Number one, revenues came in at EUR 75.8 million and slightly down year-over-year. As you know, this is less than planned, given the weak market. Number two, we continue to increase our access to talents on the C-side. Both XING and kununu have grown their non-fin metrics. That's important because a strong talent side is the basis for our monetization in HR solutions. Number three, Pro forma EBITDA came in at EUR 22.9 million. That's up quarter-over-quarter. Number four, operating cash flow came in at EUR 16.7 million. Number five, we confirm our updated guidance of a Pro forma EBITDA of EUR 92 million-EUR 100 million on a full-year basis. Let's have a look at our P&L in Q2. Revenues amount to EUR 75.8 million, which is down -3% year-over-year. The macro situation has not improved. On the contrary, it has gotten worse, and this clearly impacts our revenue development. We've talked about that in our previous two calls. Our HR solutions business continues to grow. Given the weak market, that is good, but it is also clearly significantly less than we had planned. Marketing solutions revenues are also adversely affected by the macro situation, and direct B2C monetization is down according to plan for the strategic reasons that we've already talked about. Altogether, this leads to revenues being down year-over-year. Reported EBITDA amounts to EUR 23.1 million. That's down year-over-year, but up quarter-over-quarter. Reported EBITDA margin comes in at 31%. Pro forma EBITDA came in at EUR 22.9 million, down year-over-year, but also up quarter-over-quarter, and pro forma EBITDA margin comes in at 30%. Quarter-over-quarter development is driven by classical cost seasonality on the one hand, but also by the cost countermeasures that we have initiated in Q1. We've frozen hiring, we have significantly reduced other costs in general, for example, such as travel and entertainment and training or consulting, and we have improved marketing efficiency. We've started various productivity improvement projects in order to adjust our cost base to revenue development and to create headroom for investments to capture structural long-term opportunities. Depreciation amounts to -EUR 9.2 million. That's down year-over-year. Compared to last year, we just had slightly fewer extraordinary platform write-offs. Reported financial result amounts to +EUR 0.5 million. That's up year-over-year, and the delta versus the previous year mainly stems from revaluation of financial assets. Last year, we had a negative book loss of -EUR 0.6 million. Now, we have a book gain of +EUR 0.3 million. If you take out the revaluation of financial assets effect, pro forma financial result amounts to +EUR 0.2 million, which compares to -EUR 0.3 million in Q2 last year. This is explained mainly by getting positive interest on our cash reserves instead of paying negative interest. Reported net income amounts to EUR 10 million, down year-over-year, up quarter-over-quarter, and pro forma net income amounts to EUR 9.7 million, also down year-over-year and up quarter-over-quarter. Let's move on to segment reporting, which is showing, as you know, reported figures. The HR solutions and talent access segment came in at EUR 13.6 million in segment EBITDA. That's down year-over-year. In this segment, revenues from recruiting, cost for go-to-market for recruiting, and cost for talent access are shown. As you know, that segment shows the heart of our new winning aspiration. This is where the growth will come from long term and where we invest in go-to-market on B-side and in increasing talent access on XING and kununu. Of course, also here we have taken cost countermeasures, and we're working on productivity improvements given the current macro environment and the resulting revenue development. The B2C segment had EUR 10.9 million in segment EBITDA. That's down year-over-year. That is the XING paid memberships business and the respective costs and InterNations. That is our former historical core business, which is now a cash cow. The marketing solutions segment came in at zero. That's down year-over-year, and it shows the advertising business and the respective costs. As you know, this is a non-strategic by-product business, and also, as you know, we're showing here in the new segment reporting more of a full cost perspective. The marketing solutions business is profitable on a contribution basis. On the next slide, you can see our revenue development by segment. HR solutions revenues came in at EUR 53.7 million. That's up 6% year-over-year. We know that this is the revenue stream at the core of our new strategy. As we've discussed before, the macro situation is difficult at impacting our growth. This point in time, sentiment is still not good, and we do not see short-term improvement. It is good, given the weak market, that we've managed to grow our HR solutions revenue, and growth was particularly strong in employer branding. B2C revenues came in at EUR 18.7 million. That's down 17% year-over-year. As you know, this development comes as planned. Key driver behind this development is the direct B2C monetization at XING. InterNations, which is only a smaller part, is growing again. With our refocused strategy, we concentrate on building our access to talent through XING. Short term, therefore, direct B2C monetization is less of a focus, because we monetize our talent access through HR solutions on the B-side. Finally, let's look at the B2B marketing solutions segment. Revenues amount to EUR 3.4 million. That's down year-over-year on the back of a weak advertising market. On the next slide, you can see an overview of our cost structure. These are reported figures. In Q2, personnel costs before capitalization amount to EUR 38.2 million. That's an equivalent of 50% of revenues. That is up year-over-year. The big picture is, as discussed before, when invested in growth throughout the last year, so we do have full year effects now, despite our cost counter measures. If you look at marketing, Q2, overall marketing cost amount to EUR 11.9 million. That's 16% of revenues, and it's up year-over-year. Here, we've increased the volume of our branding campaign to drive XING repositioning and also the brand building for kununu. We've increased performance marketing to increase talent access for XING and kununu to fuel our HR solutions business. The last cost line, other operating expenses, and as you all know, it includes, as usual, external services, legal, audit, consulting, payment processing, server hosting, and other costs. In Q2, other operating expenses before capitalization amount to EUR 10.2 million, or 13% of revenues, down year-over-year, driven by tight cost management. On the next slide, you can see our cash flows. Operating cash flow, excluding organizer cash, amounts to EUR 16.7 million. That's up year-over-year, despite our lower EBITDA. The driver behind that development are measures to improve our networking capital. Cash outs for operating investments amount to minus EUR 9 million. That's up year-over-year. This is mainly driven by higher capitalization and some hardware investments. Cash out for interests paid for XING and rent amounts to minus EUR 2.2 million. As you know, this is mainly our lease cash outs. With that free cash flow before dividends, before organizer cash amounts to EUR 5.5 million. Out of that, and out of our cash reserves, we have paid out to our shareholders EUR 17.8 million as a regular dividend and an additional EUR 20 million as a special dividend. As you all know, given the cash generative character of our business model, cash is not the bottleneck for our future growth. To sum it up, the macro situation continues to be weak. Nevertheless, we continue to grow our strategic HR solutions business. In Q2, you can see the first results of our cost counter measures. We've started on working on additional productivity measures to adjust our cost base to short-term top line development and to create a headroom for necessary investments. We confirm our adjusted guidance from May with a Pro forma EBITDA between EUR 92 million and EUR 100 million. That's it for the numbers, and we are now happy to take your questions. Thank you very much for your presentation. We will now move on to the Q&A session. For a dynamic conversation, we kindly ask you to ask your questions via audioline. Please know that your questions can be asked, if you're dialed in by phone, please click on the click the key combination, star key nine, followed by star key six. If you don't have the opportunity to speak freely, you can also place your question in our chat box. We already received the first question. Please go ahead, [Isla Neiser]. Hi, I hope you can hear me. Yes, we can hear you very well. Yes. Great, thanks. I guess my first question is related to maybe your thinking on M&A. I mean, it's a weak macro situation. Things are obviously tough in the sector. Has it made it interesting to find maybe potential candidates that you find interesting and maybe new avenues of growth that you want to go go down? Some color there would be great. Secondly, you mentioned kununu Jobs. I just wanted to understand a bit better as to what that product is, and how does it differ to XING Jobs, and is there a threat of cannibalization? My last question, it goes on the EBITDA guidance for the full year. Clearly, reaching even the midpoint would require an absolute step up in Q3 and Q4. Is there anything that you're planning in terms of cost optimization, et cetera, that would make this possible in a tough environment? Any color there would be great. Thank you. Okay, I, I'll start with the M&A and the kununu Jobs question, and I'm happy to answer that. Now, if we look at M&A, obviously, that's always an interesting field, and we are constantly monitoring the market. Our M&A strategy follows our group strategy, and we do M&A or will do M&A once we can actually execute on our strategy with more safety, more speed, or given the opportunities there are in the field. When we look at M&A, we look at potential talent inflows into our system because we define our model as being HR monetization based on talent access. Talent access is one important field where we look at potential targets. The second is obviously the field of B2B. Is there additional recruiting things? Is there marketplaces? Is there eventually client bases or type in team deals we can do? There is a big variety on the B2B field we are looking at. It's actually too early to call, to talk about concrete targets. We are constantly monitoring the market, and we are very interested in going down that route. So far for the M&A part, I hope that answered the question. For kununu Jobs, actually, that's a new product on kununu, because we, we believe, and we have tested that, that on the C side, some of the kununu users are obviously in the position that they are in an application somewhere, and they want to check the company, that and find out how that company really is, and this is why they then consult kununu.... We think, and we've tested that, that this is a very attractive position of kununu to then directly offer additional jobs to those people in an application process already. Is that a cannibalization of XING? No, not at all. It's basically a second organic inflow of, of jobs, jobs traffic for our B2B field. The value proposition on the C-side is obviously slightly different, because we give much more kununu details on the kununu side, so that the person can really judge on the company in more detail than on XING. I hope that answers the question, [Isla]. Yeah, very helpful. Thanks, Petra. Thanks, [Isla]. Okay, when it comes to the EBITDA guidance, we've confirmed today our guidance, our pro- of a pro forma EBITDA for the fully of EUR 92 million-EUR 100 million. If you look at where we stand in the first half of this year, we are at a pro forma EBITDA of roughly EUR 41 million. To make it into the bracket, we have to do EUR 51 million in EBITDA in the next two quarters. That is, you know, a little over EUR 20 million, EUR 25 million per quarter, which is, if you look at what we've done in the past, is feasible. Of course, you're right. I mean, we've taken cost countermeasures, and, you know, especially the hiring freeze only comes into effect over time when you have natural fluctuation, which has gone down, but which is still there, which is included. Of course, we are also working on our marketing efficiencies, constantly. That is happening on the cost side, that will help. Then also, if, if you look at our quarterly revenue seasonality, independent of macroeconomics, we do have always a strong revenue seasonality in Q4. If you all factor that in, we are, at this point in time, confident that we, we will make the bracket. Understood. Thank you. Thank you very much, Ms. [Neiser]. Well, in the meantime, we have received no further questions. Oh, well, just the hands goes up, and I will hand over to Nicole Winkler. Please go ahead. You can unmute yourself now. Thank you, and hello, everybody. Maybe some little follow-up questions. You know, can you give us more color on churn rates? Because you once mentioned that you expect an uptick end of September and October, and what would this imply for your guidance if the churns increases? Is this factored in, yeah? If, generally speaking, you know, for competitive purposes, we don't give out exact churn figures. If churn increases in Q4, the impact will be low in this year, if that happens. Just from method, because if you have cancellations, then it takes time till the contract runs out, then it starts becoming revenue effective and thereby bottom line effective. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Okay, thank you very much. I will hand over to Mr. Wolfgang Specht. Please go ahead. You can unmute yourself now, Mr. Specht. Yes, I have. Can you hear me now? Yes. Okay, three additional ones from my side. First, can you give us an indication how the, the number of paid subscribers in B2C developed in the first half, on, delicately in the second quarter? That would be interesting. Then, do you have a view on the competitive situation? Did anything change in, let's say, recruiting software providers in the first half-year? The third question, some housekeeping, own work capitalized went somewhat up in the first half. What can we expect in the second half of this year? Okay. Well, paid member, paid members basically have developed, just as paid membership revenues have developed, okay? To give you an indication there, just look at the B2C segment revenue development. There is a small part of InterNations in there, which is growing, but the weight is less than 10% of the total segment. You can take basically, you can take basically, B2C segment revenues as a proxy for the way our subscriber has developed. There have been no price effects. When it comes to capitalized software, that should be on the same level as in the first half of the year. Competitive situation, there is, to our knowledge, there is no major change in competitive situation. Everybody is facing the same macroeconomic environment than we are, and no major change in competition. Okay. Very helpful. Thanks a lot. Thank you very much, Mr. Specht. We received a follow-up question from Nicole Winkler. Please go ahead. Yes. Thank you again. Maybe one little follow-up. Regarding current trading, can you give us some indicators in terms of subscribers and cost efficiency measures? Because we're now halfway through, yeah, Q3 or almost. We're on track. We're on track with our guidance. Thank you. Thank you very much. Just a quick reminder, if you still have questions, you can ask them via audio line or place them in the chat. I will hand over to Lukas Spang. Please go ahead. You can unmute yourself now. Yes. Hi, good afternoon. I would like to follow up on the question about the guidance. You already pointed out that you expect strong seasonality in the Q4, but if you compare, for example, the revenue, it should be more or less flat also in the second half of the year versus last year. Maybe you can give us a little bit more color in the cost structure for the second half of the year to understand more detailed where this at least EUR 10 million more Pro forma EBITDA in the second half of the year should come. And also, if you take the upper end, which would be EUR 18 million more than in the first half of the year. Thank you. Well, in terms of cost, what you will see, you will see a steady decline in quarterly personnel costs. You will have lower marketing costs, because from a seasonality point of view, we always are higher in the first half of the year than in the second half of the year for the branding part. When it comes to performance marketing, we are working on cost efficiencies, and we are making quite a lot of progress there, so that will help in mark-- Those effects will help in marketing overall. You will also see lower other costs in general, because we are very tight on any cost that we can save with this kind of macro environment. Okay. If you have still this range open, what must happen to reach the upper end of the EBITDA guidance? Well, if, the upper end, so that is the EUR 100 million. Yeah. we'd need we need higher revenues, significantly higher revenues, than we are at this point in time forecasting. We should factor in more the lower end than the higher end at this point of time? That's what you said, but that can be inferred. Okay. Thanks. Thank you very much, Mr. Spang. I received questions from William Bone. Please go ahead. You can unmute yourself now. Hi, can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you very well. Thank you very much for the presentation. I just had one, one question on HR solutions. I saw in your semi-annual report that you expect positive growth in HR solutions for the year, but flat subscribers. What are you currently seeing in terms of churn? What does it say about maybe growth into 2024? Because you'll, you'll end the year with, with flats, let's say, subscribers, and as you've mentioned before, it has some, some effects for the growth going forward. What are you expecting in terms of growth into 2024 then? Thank you. As you rightly state, our subscribers will be flat this year. This is clearly a market-driven effect, because the new business generation is much more difficult in a recessionary environment. That's clear. For the next year, we will give our guidance and any statement relating to the next year in the first quarter, once we have a clearer visibility. I mean, the current times and the recession was a result of the last month only. If you look at all the indices and predictions out there for 2024, the predictions out there currently say that Germany will probably stay in a rather lower macroeconomic environment. We don't want to confirm that yet, because it might well be that the shortage of talent has a positive impact on that. Our guidance for next year will only be given in the first quarter. I hope for your understanding. Yeah. Thank you very much. Maybe if I, if I can, add a follow-up. Of course. Again, new, new business generation is, is quite tough. If I understand correctly, you've got also potential upselling and cross-selling with the existing customer base. Is it also difficult to cross-sell currently? Do you have any, any figures or indication that your current strategy might also give some, some results in terms of cross-selling and, and potentially lead to, to revenue growth into next year? I mean, what, what we told you already, in our presentation during the call is that our different products do perform really differently, depending on how correlated they are directly to recruiting. If you look at job ads, for example, the transactional business, that's in a decline compared to last year, because that's a thing where people react directly to market conditions and to a reduced hiring need. The, the same is true for the Talent Manager, where we have a reluctance to actually new customers to join the Talent Manager, because if they have no recruiting need, they don't need the tool. Whereas employer branding and also onlyfy one are, are in a growth-- have, do have growth rates beyond 20%, because employer branding is a long-term strategic thing, and the onlyfy one product is also a, a, a long-term, strategic invest to manage your talent inflows. So we do see an impact of the macro directly on our products. If you look at the growth rates we have achieved, of 8% in the first quarter and 6%, in the second quarter, you exactly see the effect of both price and, and up- and cross-sell, because the customer numbers have been stagnating. Yes, we do see effects there. Thank you. Structurally, it's, it's the, the structural business is doing well. It's more the transactional that, that is, taking a, yeah, a hit on, on your revenues. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Mr. Bone. In the meantime, we have received no further questions. We therefore come to an end of today's earnings call. A big thank you to the management for your presentation and the time you took to answer the questions. Should further questions arise at a later time, please feel free to contact Mr. Moeller from Investor Relations or us. Thanks for listening, and I wish you all a lovely week. Goodbye. Thank you. Bye.