Good day and a warm welcome to today's earnings call of the PATRIZIA SE, following the publication of the H1 figures of 2026. Kindly note that every participant is in a listen-only mode. After the presentation, we will move on to a Q&A session where we would be happy to take your questions in person via audio line. Having said this, I hand over to PATRIZIA's Director of Investor Relations, Janina Rochell. Thank you, Mara. Welcome everyone to our analyst and investor call for the first half of 2026. This is Janina speaking. I am pleased to have our CFO, Martin Praum, with us today. Martin will provide an update on current business developments. If you have any questions, the IR team is more than happy to assist. As usual, this call will be recorded and be made available on our website. We will also provide a call transcript for further reference. With that, I'd like to hand over to Martin. Martin, the floor is yours. Thank you, Janina. A warm welcome also from my side, and thank you for joining us today. I am happy to be hosting today's call and taking you through our performance in the first half of 2026 and providing you with some background on the market environment and our outlook. Over the last few months, the Investor Relations team and management have thought about how to further optimize the format of our quarterly analyst and investor calls. Rather than walking you through the H1 financial results presentation slide by slide, today I would like to focus on 10 key messages that, in my view, best capture our performance, the progress we've made, and the key developments across our business. Directly after that, I will open the floor to your questions. Let me start with the first key message. In the first half of 2026, our strategy further translated into results. Our EBITDA grew by 47% to EUR 43 million. Our EBITDA margin expanded by more than 10 percentage points to almost 32%. Net profit more than tripled to nearly EUR 15 million in a challenging but slowly improving market environment. With these financials locked in after the first half of the year, we are confirming our guidance ranges for the full year. As usual, we do not recommend simply extrapolating our first half results, as certain performance fees booked in the Q1 and timing effects on the cost side supported EBITDA as in previous years. Before turning to our business performance in more detail, let me briefly touch on the market environment in which these results were delivered. Point number two, the market. You know that the Iran conflict temporarily weighed on inflation and interest rate expectations and briefly clouded the investment environment. But as tensions eased, sentiment recovered to pre-conflict levels by the end of the reporting period. You could argue that market conditions have improved compared to the immediate aftermath of the conflict, but the investment environment remains selective and overall still challenging. Simply looking at the volatility of the 10-year Bund yield as a risk-free rate, this has increased again by 30 basis points after the end of the reporting period, after dropping 30 basis points before, showing the volatile market environment our clients and we are still faced with. Against that backdrop, it is encouraging to see that investor conviction in real assets remains strong in selected areas. Let's go to the next point. What do our clients think? Our latest investor survey shows that demand for real assets in certain areas is structural, not cyclical. While the overall appetite is still impacted by market sentiment, yield developments, and geopolitical risks. Selectively, we nevertheless have reasons for confidence. Nearly half of the investors surveyed plan to increase their infrastructure allocations up from around a third a year ago. More than three quarters intend to expand their living exposure over the next five years. And a striking 85% tell us that geopolitics is affecting their real estate and real asset portfolios, which is precisely why local European expertise and operational capability are becoming more valuable, not less. At the same time, investors remain highly selective in how and where they deploy capital. In that environment, the breadth of our product offering is an important differentiator, allowing us to address demand across multiple asset classes, strategies, and investment themes. This provides the backdrop to the business performance that we delivered in the first half. Let's come to point number four, our business volume. I mentioned the selective market environment, but we were able to deliver good fundraising momentum in the first half. Equity raised from clients climbed to EUR 0.8 billion from EUR 0.3 billion a year ago, with fundraising clearly accelerating in the Q2 with EUR 0.7 billion alone. The living sector was the main contributor, accounting for more than EUR 460 million of equity raised, primarily through market-led initiatives. Our multi-manager platform, ADVANTAGE Investment Partners, contributed more than EUR 300 million, while infrastructure added around EUR 60 million. The direct and indirect infrastructure investments account for around 40% of equity raised. Transaction activity and investment activity also continue to recover, with signed transactions rising by more than 15% to EUR 1.6 billion. Just as important, we enter the second half with EUR 1.5 billion of open equity commitments, which is up from EUR 0.9 billion a year ago. This is capital that is ready to be deployed when the right opportunities arise, and it's the foundation for future assets under management growth. With that, let's go to point number five, AUM. We ended the period at EUR 55.9 billion, virtually flat versus year-end, down only by around EUR 0.3 billion. Inflows and supportive currency effects largely offset disposals and net cash returns to clients, while valuation effects remained limited. The portfolio itself remains well diversified, more than EUR 45 billion in real estate and around EUR 10 billion in infrastructure, spread across risk sectors, styles, and geographies. During the period, the portfolio composition continued to evolve in line with our strategic focus areas. Living further strengthened its position as our largest exposure, while office decreased by one percentage point to 23%, driven by completed disposals across the U.K., Germany, and the Benelux region. Retail also declined by one percentage point to 7%, reflecting completed asset sales in Germany, Spain, and the Netherlands. This ongoing shift towards higher conviction sectors, combined with broad diversification across asset classes and geographies, continues to support the resilience and the quality of our AUM base. Let's go to point six, our P&L. Let's look at our own performance. The story this first half of the year, I think, is operating efficiency. Total service fee income was broadly stable at EUR 127 million, with performance fees up almost 17%, partially offset lower recurring management fees. Yet, EBITDA grew by nearly half because our cost base is structurally lower. Operating expenses fell by 11% to EUR 100 million, with staff costs and other operating expenses each down 13%. These are not one-off savings. They result from platform optimization that is now embedded in the way we operate. While we expect expenses to trend higher in the second half, particularly in the Q4, due to normal seasonality and investments in strategic projects, we continue to expect operating expenses for the full year to be below the 2025 levels. Let's have a look at the next point, the quality of our earnings. If there's one figure I would want to highlight, which I also did in the past, it is this. Our recurring management fees of EUR 110 million now more than cover our entire operating cost base, with coverage of EUR 10 million against less than EUR 1 million a year ago. That means our core business generates a further improving operating profit even at subdued investment and transaction volumes in the market. The key driver behind this improvement has been the significant reduction in our cost base. Over the past two years, operating expenses have been reduced by EUR 34 million, materially widening the gap between recurring revenues and cost. As a result, the surplus generated by recurring management fees has increased significantly, fundamentally improving the resilience and the quality of our earnings profile. Let's go to the next point, number eight, our balance sheet liquidity, and again, our earnings and value creation. We continue to use our balance sheet with discipline. In the first half of 2026, we invested EUR 26 million in co-investments, which, going forward, will support our P&L with recurring participation and finance income. At the same time, we continue running a strong financial position with an equity ratio of 65%, a net equity ratio of 73%, and available liquidity, which increased to EUR 222 million. The operating cash flow of EUR 17 million and the cash inflow from the partial realization of exit carry entitlements in the amount of EUR 49 million more than covered our dividend payments and the investments that we've done. Here is a super important point to make when discussing our financial results. Value creation goes beyond simply looking at the P&L. Some effects, for example, value changes of our co-investments and participations, are directly shown in equity in the position other comprehensive income or OCI. Here, we saw a positive impact of slightly more than EUR 5 million in the first half of the year. At the same time, we crystallized value that we built over the last decade, and that was so far only reflected in OCI and not in the P&L, with the exit carry payments of EUR 49 million showing up in the investing cash flow. So together with our EBITDA of EUR 43 million and looking at our net income after minorities of over EUR 17 million in H1, you can see the three dimensions of value impact from a shareholder perspective. Let's have a look at the outlook. We confirm our guidance for 2026, which is assets under management between EUR 55 billion and EUR 60 billion, an EBITDA between EUR 60 million and EUR 75 million, and an EBITDA margin between 22% and 26.5%. Within that, total service fee income is now expected to remain largely stable versus 2025, with a stronger contribution from other income items and continued cost discipline expected. While we see some headwinds on AUM growth, but tailwinds for EBITDA and EBITDA margin based on the results that we've delivered in H1, we recognize increased market opportunities in a selective way with client activity improving. Especially market-driven opportunities could impact the business activity in the second half, and as usual, this depends on timing of signing and closing, which do impact AUM and P&L lines in our business. With that, let me close with the reason for some confidence that we have. In a half year that included a genuine geopolitical shock, our earnings grew, our margin expanded, and our cost base came down further. That is a business model doing what it is designed to do. We, as management, will continue to focus on the things we can influence. With client demand that is structural, a recurring fee base that now covers our costs, and a balance sheet that's built for flexibility, we think we are well-positioned for the second half and beyond. With that, thank you so much, and I look forward to your questions. Yes, thank you very much for your presentation. Dear participants, we will now move on to our Q&A session. To keep this conversation engaging, we kindly ask you to ask questions in person via audio line. To do so, please click on the raise hand button on the lower part of your screen. If you have dialed in by phone, you can raise your hand by pressing the key combination star nine, and with star six, you can unmute yourself. We have already received a risen hand by Mr. Neuhold. You may unmute yourself now. I just sent you an invitation. Can you hear us, Mr. Neuhold? Can you hear me? I can hear you. Yes, perfect. Hello. Perfect. Okay, great. Thanks for the presentation and taking my questions. I have two questions. Firstly, on the investment market environment and the survey you did, what do you think would be or could be key triggers that the intention of your clients to increase the exposure to infrastructure and property markets translate into real investments? I was wondering if you have any idea which percentage of your clients still have some legacy issues to work off. Do you also see new clients who are interested in the infrastructure property markets who are talking to you for the first time? That's the first question. Thomas, thank you for your questions. First of all, yes, we saw some existing clients, but also new clients doing business with us, so I can clearly answer that question with yes, there are new clients that are interested in our products. Certainly, given the breadth of our client base, there are here and there are some clients that have some things to digest from the last cycle. But again, we have the power, and we have the product and the breadth of product to attract new clients and new product and volumes on our platform. The investment market in general, I think I can reiterate a little bit what I said, and also looking at the feedback we got from our investor survey. It is selective, but it is very much focused on good cash flow, good IRR investment themes, especially in the region of living. This still includes residential student housing. This includes healthcare. But also on the infrastructure side, we see structurally a higher demand because many of our clients are still under-allocated in this asset class and are still exploring ways to benefit from the growth expected in infrastructure. Okay, great. My second question would be on operating leverage. Obviously, you have done a great job in reducing costs over the last two years. I was wondering if AUM growth comes back by, let's say, by 10% or 20%, by how much would your OpEx need to grow in order to capture the new business? Sure. Thomas, we didn't simply cut costs in this cycle, and that's why we always mentioned that we optimized the platform and the processes. We're also working a lot on introducing new technologies and certainly, also AI solutions to make us even more efficient. So from here, if we look at the efficiency that we've built so far, with an increased operating leverage, we definitely see that AUM growth and revenue growth would be higher going forward than cost growth because we simply became more efficient through the measures we've taken in the last few quarters. Okay. Thank you. Thank you so much, Mr. Neuhold. We have another risen hand by Mr. Philipp Kaiser. You may speak now. I just sent you the allowance. Perfect. Hello, everyone. Can you hear me? Yes, perfectly. Hello. Perfect. Thanks for the presentation, and congrats to the strong performance in the first half of the year, and for taking my question. Just a couple one from my side, probably starting with the most obvious. You already touched it during your presentation. You had a strong first half with regards to the EBITDA development, and kind of only confirming the guidance. Could you walk us through the guidance bridge for the second half of the year? What's your scenario, also cost-wise? Certainly. Hi, Philipp, and thank you for your question. Just to reiterate for the benefit of all listeners, yes, in the second half, we are somewhat more cautious versus the first half. Simply, these are technical effects in the Q1. We usually book the performance fee driven by one of our major investments, which is unlikely to reoccur in the second half of the year. We also had some cost items timing-wise that will rather occur in the second half versus the first half. This is why we currently expect that the EBITDA in the second half will be a little bit lower than in the first half. I mentioned that also in my comments when I talked about the guidance. We left the guidance ranges as they are because there is still some uncertainties in the market. Although we have increased our basically operating income from recurring management fees, still some of our revenues do depend on market activity, also in the second half. There is always a certain level of uncertainty when exactly we do signing and when exactly we do closing, which then impacts P&L or AUM. Taking your point, absolutely, I would agree. We started the year with a strong first half. If I look at the guidance ranges we have given, obviously on AUM, we still think we can achieve the midpoint. Currently, we are slightly below that. On EBITDA, I would say we are starting with the midpoint. We have good opportunities to be above that at the moment. Definitely for EBITDA margin, we are more in the upper range of the range than in the lower end of the range. So there is no real realistic scenario for the lower end of the EBITDA guidance, in your view? As I said, we feel comfortable now with the midpoint. Currently, I would be surprised if we really had to hit the lower end given if we look at what we achieved so far and how our pipeline looks like. Thanks a lot. My next one is on the total service fee income. You slightly kind of lowered the guidance. Is that management fee driven or what's the main driver behind this? Absolutely. We basically now expect a little lower contribution from management fees for the full year. But on the other side, we have other contributing factors, for example, like participation income from investments that we did, which will offset that. It's a smaller change in the mix of call it revenues or income items, but not a material change to what we expect. Perfect. Is the management fee income driven by a lower than previously assumed AUM growth in the first half or limited expectation on the development in the second half or closing maybe towards more the last quarter? No, it's certainly, again, timing does play a role here. If you want to generate management fees and grow management fees, you need to have AUM on board. If equity raising takes a little bit longer than expected, then also deploying that capital takes a little longer, and then the positive effect on management fees also is delayed. This is kind of the reasons for a change in view. Some things do take longer these days. As we've seen, you see equity rates going up. You see that our firepower is going up, but some of these things take a little longer than initially planned. Understood. Thanks a lot. Speaking of a management fee, as far as I remember correctly, last year was positively impacted by some development fees. Could you give us a kind of a like for like management fee growth rate, excluding those development fees? The delta is only EUR 1 million roundabout, from this effect delta. Okay. Compared to last year. Okay, perfect. Thanks a lot. Speaking of activity recovers also visible in your equity raise. I think the first inflection point since a couple of quarters. Signed transaction also rose by almost 16%, but it is heavily disposal-led, reversing last year's mix, and should eventually weigh on your AUM and your management fee. Do you see any trend reversal towards more acquisition in the short term? What could be the trigger for that? Any major impacts on AUM? Sorry. Sure, Philipp. I think this is a typical pattern you see, I think I mentioned it before, in this part of the cycle where you see some portfolio rotation. With the market now opening up and we have more transparency, more deals coming to the market, this also means that we advise some of our clients to do some portfolio rotation. As you've seen, that we've changed sectors as an active advisor. This is why simply in the first half, you've seen more disposals than acquisitions. Also look at the equity raised and the open equity positions that we have. They will certainly translate into investments. They will be deployed, and that will then also have an impact in the future on the transaction volume in terms of acquisitions, and subsequently, upon closing, also on stabilizing AUM and growing AUM. We still believe and are confident that also in 2026, we'll see AUM which are at a higher level than last year. Perfect. Thanks a lot. That brings me to my last one, fundraising. Any specific areas or countries, investor types returning to the table, or is just a general start of a recovery we see in the market? Not a general comment I can make here, Philipp, because as I mentioned, it really depends on the investor. It's very selective. We are in the very good position that we have way more than 500 institutional investors globally. If you look at the fundraising that we've done, it was really well-diversified. Not only German investors, a lot of international investors, different in terms of investment style, et cetera. It's really broadly diversified. That's what I can say. Perfect. Thanks a lot all from my side. Thank you, Philipp. Thank you very much. We have another risen hand actually by someone who dialed it by phone this time, with the last digits of 784. I just gave you the allowance to speak, and you may unmute yourself by pressing star key six. Can you hear us? Yes. Can you hear me? It's Kai Klose from Berenberg. Perfect. Yes. Hello. Yes. Hey, good afternoon. I've got three quick questions. The first one is in the income statement, the impairment for trade receivables and contract assets. If I see that correctly, increased quite strongly in H1 compared to last year. Could you elaborate a bit more what was the reason for that? Second question is on the salary expenses or salary costs or staff costs. All items went down except one item for share-based payment. Maybe elaborate a bit more if this was really only because of, let's say, share performance or other reasons. Third question would be on the AUMs. Could you indicate if in the full year, the withdrawals, or sorry, the inflows could compensate for withdrawals or payments to tenants, payments to clients? Thank you. Thank you, Kai. Let me start with the first question. The impairment you've seen in the P&L, absolutely correct. This was a precautionary impairment that we did on fees that we generated. In this specific case, for this specific mandate, we currently do not expect that we can actually harvest the fees over the year. That's why, again, as a precautionary measure, we booked that impairment. We are still working on unlocking that problem so we can actually harvest these fees in the second half or shortly thereafter. On the last question, it was, I think, on AUM and whether inflows should outweigh outflows. This is our assumption, yes. This is the basis for AUM growth that we expect for the years. On the cost side, you mentioned the share-based payments. This is a reflection of, you could say, more granular planning and booking, because based on the improved EBITDA margin and performance, we've also assumed a higher variable pay and share-based pay for certain programs that we have. Okay. Thank you very much. May I ask one last follow-up? Regarding the valuation of the assets you have on the balance sheet, could you indicate how the values have changed or have gone down compared to December 2025? Yeah. Absolutely, and thanks for the question, Kai. There are two elements you have to bear in mind here. One, you will see in the P&L that we had a smaller negative valuation effect on the consolidated assets that we hold of around EUR 4 million. At the same time, we had a positive effect in our equity in OCI of over EUR 5 million on participations that we hold. I think this is also a good reflection of the market environment. There are some items where you see an upward valuation and some selected items also in our exposure, where we have some remaining valuation to digest. Overall, I would say stable development. Sorry, last one. When do you expect at least some of the assets on the balance- Sorry, Kai. One follow-up, and also important, and this perhaps explains another question you might have, why do we have minorities, or why is the net income after minorities higher than the net income? In some of these exposures, we are not the sole or 100% investor, and especially on the assets where we had a negative valuation in the first half, the EUR 4 million. This actually not only hits us with the full amount, but also part of this valuation impact goes to external investors, and that's why they are reflected in the minorities. That's why the net income after minorities is actually higher than net income. So these valuations only hit us partially. Okay. Could you indicate how many and when of the assets you currently have on the balance sheet will be transferred into a third-party product or into a fund, if any? That depends on the strategy. We have a number of consolidated assets and co-investments. For some of them, we are currently looking at the market environment and whether it makes sense to sell them directly in the market. For others, we check whether there is a structure that might make it interesting for our fund investors. These are ongoing strategic reviews we are, as management, doing at the time. There are several exit options for these positions, which we are actively checking at the moment. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. We have one last risen hand by Mr. vom Cleff. You may please unmute yourself now. Yes. Thank you very much. Good afternoon. Three questions from my side as well. Martin, we all know one swallow doesn't make a summer, and I understood that you expect client activity to gain further momentum during the remainder of the year. Would you be able or at least willing to already provide some concrete figures for the transaction volume or equity raised that you are targeting for this year? Hi, Lars, and thank you for your question. First of all, yes, we saw a significant increase in equity raising momentum in the Q2 versus the Q1. What gives us a certain confidence is the equity-raising pipeline that we see and the equity-raising discussions that we're having with clients. Also looking at the July figures, I think we are on a good track for 2026 to deliver what we have planned. That kind of confirms that we are on a good track to show growth in 2026. That's what I can say to your question. Okay. With activity gaining momentum, shall we then expect transaction and performance fees to also materially be up year-on-year, or is that rather something that would react positively rather in 2027? I would say yes, that we would expect investment and transaction fees to be up versus 2025. Also, for performance fees, we do expect an uptick compared to the 2025 numbers. Yes, we should see the impact from that also on the revenue side. Perfect. Thank you. You already elaborated on your EBITDA guidance range and that you rather regard it as likely to end up in the upper half. Looking at your AUM guidance range and considering that AUM have even declined so far year to date, how confident are you that you can reach the upper end of your guidance range, i.e., the EUR 60 billion? I would say from where we stand today, I think I made these comments before on the three KPIs that we guide the market on EBITDA and EBITDA margin, I think we are more optimistic than on AUM. If we wanted to reach AUM, the upper end of the guidance range, yes, for that, we would need to find some market-led opportunities, some larger portfolios in the market in the second half that would also close the deal before 31 December. So we're looking at several investment opportunities. But again, as I said before, on our AUM guidance range, I'm a little bit more conservative versus profitability and efficiency. Okay. Understood. Then maybe lastly, thinking about your medium term strategy, that implies a 16% AUM CAGR. Are you considering revisiting or updating this target at some point in the near future, or will you continuously work with your EUR 100 billion AUM North Star for the time being? Lars, you correctly mentioned that the EUR 100 billion that we mentioned before is a North Star and not one of our key financial KPIs that we guide on. We certainly want to grow, also for the benefit of our clients and for the benefit of the platform. But certainly management focus is more on bottom line profitability and delivering good growth, and running a stable platform for our clients and all our stakeholders. We will certainly, on a regular basis, revisit what the market environment is, what the targets are that we can achieve. But again, very important, the EUR 100 billion is a North Star. Whether at the end of the day it is EUR 80 million, EUR 90 million, or EUR 110 million is less important to me than having a solid profitability and a solid balance sheet and platform. Understood. Thank you. I will go back into the line. Thank you so much, Lars. Thank you very much. In the meantime, we have not received any further questions, so everything seems to be answered by now. Should further questions arise later, please feel free to get in contact with Janina and her team at any time. Thank you very much. I guess with this, I hand back to Martin for some final remarks, which concludes to our call for today. Thank you so much everyone for listening in. Thank you for your very good questions. Thank you for looking and investing at and in PATRIZIA. If there are any follow-up questions, the IR team and I, we are very happy to answer them, and we very much look forward to meeting many of you in the next conferences in autumn of this year. Have a good rest of the summer. Stay healthy, and talk to you soon. Bye-bye.