My dear ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our earnings call on the RATIONAL AG H1 half-year 1 figures that we published this morning. My name is Stefan Arnold. With me are my colleagues, Nicole Engelhardt and Tobias Stadler, and of course, our CEO, Dr. Peter Stadelmann, and our CFO, Jörg Walter. Peter will start the presentation in a few seconds. As always, a few hints at the very beginning. You also can see them now on this slide. After the presentation, we then will directly go over to the Q&A. Our colleague, Nicole Engelhardt, will read the questions that you already sent us via email, which then will be answered by Peter and Jörg. We already have quite a big number of questions, and we say thank you to all of those who sent them in advance, to make us here the life a little bit easier. If we already gave the answer to a question during the presentation, or if we already had a comparable question, we then might not repeat the question later on, or we combine the questions. And of course, at the end, we will make sure that all the questions will be answered before we close the call. One hint regarding the recording of the call, we will send a YouTube link to all the participants after the call, as we do it always, and we kindly ask you to not share this outside the organization as we have here, written on the slide. Thank you for that. And before Peter starts the presentation, our last hint from my side, you can see here our disclaimer on the information statements, estimates, and forward-looking statements given in the call. I am not going now to read this out word for word, but would like to ask you to take note and to consider this, please. You can also find the disclaimer on our homepage at the end of the earnings call presentation. And with this, I want to hand over to Peter now. The stage is yours. Thank you, Stefan. Good afternoon. Before we look at the key financial figures, I would like to talk about great sport events of this summer: the European Football Championship in Germany and the Olympic Games in Paris. Those events become events also with food and drinks. Imagine being in a stadium and not getting any drinks or food. In Paris, only Sodexo hired 6,000 staff to cater 15,000 athletes and more than 10 million visitors. We are happy and proud to be preferred supplier for Sodexo worldwide. There's another happy customer in Germany, in the Veltins-Arena. Built in 2001, the Veltins-Arena is now an established multipurpose stadium and home ground of Bundesliga Club FC Schalke 04. It had also hosted four European Championship matches. In addition to soccer, stars such as Metallica and, in mid-July, superstar Taylor Swift honored the stadium with their visits. More than 18 million people have now visit the arena since 2001. All these spectators want to be catered for. 62,271 people are on site each match day, and 3,500 guests have to be catered for in the hospitality area. In addition, there are up to 700 business events with catering. Unlike in many stadiums, FC Schalke 04 arena management is responsible for all catering on its own. On match days or during concerts, 3.5-4 tons of goods are processed in the large areas and lounges of the Veltins-Arena to cater for the guests. Managing Director Karbacher and Head Chef Dworaczek currently see two opposing trends as challenges. The pressure from the shortage of skilled workers continues to increase, and guests are becoming more quality conscious. Dworaczek is particularly pleased that we did not leave him to his own devices when it came to training. If needed, we show our customers several times how to work with the programs and cooking methods. This makes our cooking systems application really foolproof and eliminates sources of error. Not only practical for Dworaczek, but also a key point in fulfilling the guest's desire for sustainable use of resources. When we reduce user errors, we guarantee no food is being wasted. Thanks to our cooking intelligence, also less educated staff can fulfill the demand of the more quality conscious football fans. And then the Wembley Stadium, holy ground to the English and home to the Football Association, the Three Lions. The UCFB shows stars like Elton John, Adele, Coldplay, and Ed Sheeran, and up to 90,000 fans. They all have one thing in common. At some point, they get hungry, just like the security personnel, the police, the fire brigades, the press, and so on... They all rely on the delicious food services from the Three Lions restaurants team at Wembley National Stadium. Fish and chips, pizza, nachos are the fastest-selling products. Everything is produced in Rational Cooking Systems. The kitchen can send up to 600 chickens in 12 minutes and 150 liters of creamy lobster soup at the same time. Why Rational? They like to rely on the efficient use of the workforce, on digital solutions like Connected Cooking, Cooking Research, and technical refinements like MyDisplay. This means that the most important dishes can be viewed on the unit display as a picture or icon. The corresponding cooking program is stored. Now, just one press of a button, and the cooking process runs automatically and according to plan. Steam and heat, not too much, not too little. After all, the 600 chickens ultimately have to look all the same. And finally, talking about sports and stadium hospitality, let's talk about the iHexagon. The iHexagon is the perfect fit for every kitchen, where speed and perfect food quality for larger volume is requested. In a town nearby our headquarters, we tested iHexagon in a snacking environment. Results were great. We were able to get an even deeper insight view on use cases. We are looking forward to continuing working together with the ice hockey club there. The football stadium, on the other hand, decided to invest in an iHexagon. We will keep you posted with new developments. Before we get to the key financial figures, let me talk about the most important figure at all for us at Rational. It is customer satisfaction. We want to offer people in commercial kitchens the greatest possible benefit. To check whether we are on the right track, we evaluate customer satisfaction. We do this using the internationally recognized Net Promoter Score, NPS, every second year. The NPS indicates whether customers would recommend our cooking systems and services to friends or business partners. We run the NPS survey for the third time in 2024. As you can see, our customers are very satisfied with us. We remain in the best-in-class segment and well beyond the average NPS of peers. What is even more important for us is the feedback we get. This will be immediately addressed in workshops, in our sales teams and service teams, in order to keep high satisfaction or to increase it in the future. Let's take now a closer look at the figures altogether. We start with sales. Let me repeat 2023. There we set a new sales record of EUR 1.126 billion, and we were able to exceed the previous year sales by 10% or by more than EUR 100 million. After two years of exceptionally high growth rates after the pandemic, we are returning to our normal growth rate of the many, many years before 2020. Having a look at the annual sales figures, we now turn our attention to the quarters. In the second quarter of 2024, sales revenues grew by 6% to around EUR 295 million. This is a new all-time high. In half year 2024, we grew by 4% to more than EUR 581 million. Let's have a look at the regional business development. Europe, including Germany, remains our largest region, accounting for more than 50% of sales. Due to higher market penetration of combi steamers, the growth rates here are lower than in the overseas markets. Europe, excluding Germany, recorded sales revenues near previous year with EUR 240 million. While developed markets like Italy, Benelux, Spain, and Sweden did not reach prior year levels, South and Southeast countries grew successfully. The biggest two markets, France and UK, were also above prior year. In Germany, sales fell by -4% in half year 1. Q1 sales were down 17%. Q2, on the other hand, grew by 11%. This is explained by the reduction of order backlog impacted prior year. After growing by 50% in half year one, 2023, mainly price-driven, sales in North America continue growing organically by 6% in half year one, 2024. Double-digit growth rates came from Asia. We achieved our highest growth rate in Asia with +13%. We saw a great development in China and in Japan, where big key account and OEM customers placed and realized orders. The smaller regions also contribute to growth, albeit a little bit lower absolute, at a lower absolute level. With that, I'm glad to hand over to Jörg for more details. Yes, thank you very much, Peter, and also from my side, hello to everybody in this call. So after looking at the sales by region, how is the situation regarding our product groups? And as Peter stated earlier, we have an increased growth rate in the second quarter, went up from 1% in the first quarter to 6% in the second quarter, and this is basically also the situation that we see for both product groups. That means we, both product groups contributed to this positive trend. In the case of the iVario, after returning to the growth mode in Q1, we could even accelerate our rate in Q2. So sales in Q2 grew by 15%, and which resulted in higher sales by 11% for the first half year. iCombi grew 3% in the first half, 2024, and with a growth rate of 5% in Q2 alone, and having in mind that the growth rate in the first half, 2023, was 27%, due to working down the high order backlog. The iCombi, in this year, successfully defended its high prior year figure. Let's move on to the development of earnings. EBIT grows over proportionally in relation to sales by +10% to EUR 149 million in the first half year. This is the best half year result that we have ever achieved, so a new record for us. Looking at Q2 alone, the EBIT was EUR 78 million, which translated to an EBIT margin of 26.4%. When we look at the long-term development since 2019, you see here on the slide, we achieved in this year with an EBIT margin of 25.6%, already a margin level that is even higher than the pre-pandemic level. Now, on the next slide, we see more details about the margin development. So first of all, as always, besides the basis for a good, good EBIT is a good sales development. So you see here sales grew by 4%. But besides that, the main driver of the good earnings was the favorable gross-margin situation. We were able to increase the gross margin, gross-profit margin by 2.8 percentage points to 58.9%. And this reflects basically two effects. On one hand, we were able to implement our price increases for our own products in the market, following the reduction of the high order backlog last year. And then secondly, at the same time, we currently benefit from, example, from the easing of the commodity markets. Basically, chemicals are on a lower level, also, the alloy surcharge is on a lower level. The operating costs, on the other hand, rose at a slightly higher rate than sales by +77% to EUR 190 million. We recorded the highest increase in R&D expenses, where we grew by 24%, and thus continued to invest in our, the future of Rational. However, you have to keep in mind that around EUR 3.9 million of the R&D costs were capitalized in the last year, in the first half of last year. The percentage change of the R&D costs without this effect is on a lower level. It's on around 11%. So overall, you see that we have a quite positive earnings development, and with this development, we are quite happy. Again, a short look on our quite solid balance sheet structure. There was no change in Q2, so after paying our dividend in May with around EUR 154 million, our balance sheet remains very solid. Our equity ratio is at 75%. Our liquidity ratio, that is bank deposits and short-term investments combined, is at 38%, and in absolute figures, that means that cash and cash equivalents we have on the balance sheet of around EUR 350 million in these two line items, other assets and liquid funds. Compared to the end of the second quarter last year, the total assets grew by +10% or EUR 87 million to EUR 940 million, and this was mainly due to an increase of long-term assets by EUR 22 million, and the rest is the higher liquidity we already talked about, and that we didn't distribute to our shareholders. So, and that brings us already to our sales and earnings guidance for 2024. We stated earlier, after Q1 and also after the publishing of the full year figure, after a quite volatile last three financial years, we expect 2024 to be just a normal year for us. ... And that means with regards to sales, we expect sales growth in the mid- to high single-digit% range, without any planned price increases for our products. For our gross profit margin, we expect the trend of 2023 to continue, and we expect our input prices to further ease. That's why we now state that we benefit significantly from a better cost situation in the gross profit. On the other hand, looking at our operating cost, we are planning a slightly over proportional increase in our operating costs. That is, as we said, expansion of our sales activities, the strengthening of our R&D capacities, and then, on the other hand, we will continue our strategic projects. We already talked about Road to China earlier, so this is one of the investments project. So overall, we expect EBIT to grow slightly faster than sales, and thus we expect an EBIT margin slightly above the previous year. Yeah, and with this outlook, we are at the end of our presentation, and we are now starting the Q&A session. I hand over to Nicole. Thank you very much, Jörg. Hello, also from my side. I'm Nicole, and I will lead you through the Q&A session. And we'll start with Peter. Peter, what is your current view on peers and market share developments? There hasn't been any change, so market shares and peers are the same. Are you seeing a change in the replacement cycle for combi ovens in mature markets? Is it lengthening as customers delay CapEx? We don't see this in our usual reporting. We assume an average lifespan of 12 years for both our cooking systems, the iCombi and the iVario. How is your production site in China developing? We are more or less in plan. End of 2025, start of production is still achievable. Also here, we want to do it right the first time. Could you tell us the cost of the planned investment in a new service parts center in Landsberg? This is around EUR 60 million. Can you give an update on the iHexagon in terms of customer feedback, orders, et cetera? Yes, the interest for the iHexagon is still very big. A lot of requests for tests from new and existing key accounts. We know that it takes time until this translate into orders and then in sales later on. That's what we always mentioned earlier. And again, as always, we put customer satisfaction first, and we want to make sure the iHexagon is perfectly supporting their needs. This takes time, and we will give it the time it will take. Your Net Promoter Score is pretty impressive. How could you explain that it is lower in 2024 than it was in 2021 and 2022? I appreciate you take actions to improve. You mentioned the measures already in place. Could you give more details, please? Yes, thank you. We are happy again, being in the best of class segment, even if it's a little bit lower. To be honest, we didn't expect it, the 2022 value score to go up that much, but it did, so that's what it is. The main explanation, probably for the lower score, is that we, if we add new customers in younger markets, they bring usually a lower satisfaction in those markets. So we had 16% more participants this year. That also could be one reason. For us, first of all, 2023, there was no NPS, so we do that every second year, since it's also putting some pressure on the subsidiaries and the service structure. And after the survey, we want to have time to really implement improvements and conclude our actions. That's why we do it every second year. The actions we initiate depend on the specific statements. For instance, late response from a service partners or a technical problem like the cover of the plug socket on the iVario, which is not solid enough. So that defines then where we start to improve those things. One end could be our R&D, of course, and the other end then would be that we do more training with our service partners. We also had feedbacks that we need more ChefLine availability in some markets, or even more recipes in ConnectedCooking in some markets. Do you acquire further big clients in China besides from KFC? No, the key account share in China is high in all segments. That means supermarkets, casual dining, restaurants, catering, and so on. But we have no comparable customer like KFC, Kentucky Fried Chicken, China. I think they are running now some 10,000 units in China, and no other customer is close to that. ... Where would management aim to land the backlog at year-end, all else equal? Is the visibility on business expected to be better or worse in half year two? EUR 120 million are a very comfortable order backlog level, so we are used to that level. Is it fair to assume that iCombi unit growth was flat in the quarter? Are there any initial iHexagon sales to report? iCombi unit sales are flat. They are slightly below prior year. In case of the iHexagon, we received initial orders, but we do not disclose or comment on quantities yet. Now comes a rather long question, a couple of questions in one. Could you give some color on sales development and outlook in North America? Could you please elaborate on the performance in the North America region in Q2 2024, and how satisfactory the +0.5% growth in the quarter was for you. Also, second quarter 2024, North America sales were lagging other regions in terms of growth. You seem to be outperforming peers. Would you agree to that? Yes, but we have to put the growth rate of North America into perspective. First, maybe let me address the competitors question. Competitors' figures do not indicate combi steamers only. It is always a package of several product categories. That is the case for our huge North American competitors, ITW or Middleby, but also Ali or even Unox. They have a broader range than we do. Some of them, they have the full range of equipment for commercial kitchens. We globally only provide combi steamers and the iVario, and both markets are highly unpenetrated. We believe in the law of focus and specialization. If you do less, you are more successful. That might explain overall our outperformance in general, independent from short-term volatility. We expect overseas regions to grow in the lower double-digit percentage range in the long term. After the extraordinary development in recent quarters, this is normal. North American Q2 of the previous year grew by 57%, just as a background information. What is the order trajectory from the mentioned large orders from Asian customers for the rest of the year? We saw the two big effects in half year one. That's overlapping orders from Chinese key account customer. You probably guess who it was. And strong orders from our Japanese OEM customer. Both effects will cool off for the remainder of the year. Next to this, there is always recurring sales with these big customers. Why have you now separated North Asia from South Asia? Should we factor in a change in sales focus here? Asia North is Japan, China, and Korea. Asia South is the rest. The reason for changing is rather due to change in internal reporting, where these two parts are now reported separately. LATAM came back with 11% year-on-year growth in Q2 2024, after a strong second quarter last year. Is this just a blip, or is there a broader return of customer demand levels? LATAM is known to be a volatile market. We are happy with the current development, and we have a strong team supporting us there. Do competitors in the U.S. reduce prices from previous high levels? So far, we did not see any price reductions. Do you see kind of sustained demand decline in any region? No, we don't. Which factors drove the strong growth in Asia North? Main driver was strong key account and partner business in China and Japan. Thank you, Peter. Now, I'm gonna ask you some questions, Jörg. You expect for the whole year a sales increase in the mid- to high single-digit range. Will you catch up in half year two 2024 after a sales increase of 4% in half year one 2024? Yes, we announced that already in our press conference in March. We expect the bigger part of the growth in the second half. What are the FX effects on revenues slash EBIT in Q2 alone? On the sales side, it was more or less neutral, and when we look at the currency result, it is around negative EUR 2.2 million, which comes mainly from valuation effects, so it's not realized yet. Did you see better gross profit margins versus Q1 2024 in both product lines? Was the quarter-on-quarter increase in gross profit a function of operating leverage or rather a function of a further reduction in certain input costs? The improvement of the gross margin mainly comes from the material side. So especially the purchasing costs for stainless steel and also chemicals, they stabilized in the first half, 2024, and we expect costs to stabilize on the current level. And that means that basically that goes into the costs for both products. So basically, also the iVario and the iCombi are equally affected. What is your outlook for the gross margin in half year two? We expect the gross margin to be on the Q2 level. Depreciation was up about 9.4% in Q2 2024 versus Q1 2024, +17.2% year-on-year. Is there a specific reason for this? Although we know that CapEx is up, but looks in line with expectations. Yes, it's not the general CapEx level, but as we also stated during the call, or during the presentation, in the last year, we have capitalized R&D costs, especially for the iHexagon and the iCareSystem AutoDose systems, so the products that we launched in the second half last year. And now we have the normal depreciation for these capitalized costs, and that is the reason why the capital or the depreciation value is going up. Sequentially for Q3, assuming even a high single digit year-on-year growth would imply only flattish sequential development, could you please provide some color here? I'm not quite sure whether I understand the question right. In pre-COVID times, Q2 and Q3, they were more or less on a similar level. Now we expect Q3, that it's more or less a little bit on a higher level compared to Q2. It was stated in the pre-close call that growth is expected in the mid-single-digit range, rather than the high single-digit range. What can we expect for the fiscal year 2024? Where do you expect most of the acceleration to come from? Yeah, you already realized that in our outlook, we basically went back to the original range. The reason why we were looking at the pre-close call had a little bit of reduction was the effect that we had still in the months of May and June an order entry on a lower level. Now, July is again better already, and therefore, we are again a little bit more optimistic. But in the end, it shows that for us, we still operate in volatile times and also in volatile markets. And that means with our low order backlog, as we know, we need to work in all the sales for Q2, Q3, and Q4 through a good order entry. There is also some, let's say, uncertainty, really, to judge whether it will be 5%, 6%, 8%, 9%. It's really depending on the different markets. What gives us a positive trend is that the iVario is back on the growth mode with double-digit sales growth rates, and also the overseas demand is still on a high level. That's why we are still quite optimistic for the second half of the year. One question regarding your EBIT guidance. What does upper part of the current forecast range mean? That means we said it plus one percentage point against the actual year figure for the full year last year, so actual was 24.6%, and that means we go up to 25.6%. How significant will the impact from alloy charge and freight costs be? Also, we have higher comparisons to gross margin in the second half. Yeah, we see that we have a stabilization on the costs, on the Q2 level. And also that means when we talk about the freight costs, they are, well, on a lower level compared to last year, certainly, but we don't see them dramatically falling. There might be some upside at the nickel price, as earlier indicator for alloys sucharge was coming down. The personnel costs, they might not increase as expected due to more difficult hiring situation. So that are the most important effects on the second half year, EBIT margin. If 2024 EBIT margin would be at 25.6%, that means half year two margin will be 25.6%, same as half year one, but lower than Q2 at 26.4%. What will be the key reasons to have the lower margin by quarter? Will there be increased OpEx investments in half year two? Yes, we are still aiming to hire more people for our sales processes, and the investments are also in more customer activities. That is one topic. Then we have less capitalization to the balance sheet of the R&D cost. That means we have a higher cost effect there. Also, we have a yearly wage increase that starts from July. So we had an average increase of our wages on a worldwide scale of around 3%-4%. And then also we have some, you know, sales mix. So as you know, the sales profitability of all the areas are not the same, also when it comes to partner business, to our own subsidiaries. There are a lot of factors why we expect the second half of 2024 to be a little bit lower than Q2, but in the end, be on the same level as of the first half year. Do you expect to hold the EBIT margin of 25.6% for the whole year? Yes, that's what we had just in the guidance. So we said, above last year, and we just explained that would mean up to 25.6%. Will the iVario grow now with sustainable higher rates? That's what we expect. I mean, the market demand is unchanged, and our expectation is that we have a double growth rate compared to the iCombi, due to the early stage. We think that is realistic. Thank you, Jörg. Now two questions for you, Peter. What is your outlook for the markets in North America, Latin America, Asia, and Europe? We expect in the long term, double-digit growth for the overseas regions. For Europe, including Germany, rather mid-single digit. For this year, of course, a little bit lower and a little bit higher than in half year one. What is the outlook for the gastronomy industry in your markets? All over, still positive view on out-of-home business. People need and want to eat and go out. There is a shift between customer groups, still ongoing, so we see that they go for more snacking, for cheaper offerings, for more retail, casual dining, and less classic gastronomy. And the number of meals being served out of home is still growing. Don't forget the sustainability impact. So we are converting traditional equipment into modern, innovative iCombis or iVarios, using much less energy, much less water, offering better ergonomic jobs, and creating healthier food. Now, a question on the cash flow for you, Jörg. Operating cash flow was strong in Q2 2024, outpacing EBITDA growth in the quarter. Could you elaborate on the elements of improvement here? Yes, we looked at the numbers in detail to understand the statement here, and we couldn't see it really from the numbers. In our view, the operating cash flow and the EBITDA more or less grow at the same speed. They are in line with each other. Between the line items, we have some impacts, but really no clear effect with... I mean, you have some working capital ups and downs or some accruals ups and downs, especially when it comes to tax payments and tax accruals, but there is not a real, let's say, effect that that really explained that as a sustainable development. R&D expenses went up significantly in Q2, reaching more than EUR 16 million. This is clearly more than the usual pattern. Since you're launching the iHexagon, should we understand that these expenses are related to the launch, or is there anything else you would like to comment on that topic? Yes, I shortly commented on this during the presentation. We had, this effect is mainly due to the capitalization of the R&D costs in the last year, especially also for the iHexagon. And when we take this balance sheet accounting effect out, then our R&D costs are 11% up against previous year. And this just is a normal, let's say, expansion, that we do into R&D in order to secure our innovations for the markets. How do you see the further development of the logistics cost? Do they increase again? For the coming months, we see rather a stable development of the logistics costs. How do you see the further development of the wages? For Rational, as I stated earlier, we made this salary round as of July. On average, worldwide, we increased 3%-4%. Now, looking into the future, we will increase the wages in line with the inflation rate. As we see that the inflation comes back a little bit, but we don't see, let's say, any special effect from the inflation currently. For our customers, we expect increasing wages. We also had some, I think, news lately that the wages in the hospitality hotel and restaurant industry went up significantly. So, this is certainly a factor that is even a good argument to invest in a iCombi or in a iVario. Thank you, Jörg. I have a couple more questions for you, Peter. Regarding staffing in sales and marketing, could you provide an update on how you are proceeding here versus plans, and whether or not this might have an impact on your targeted revenue growth medium term? ... So far, we hired 170 more staff in the last 12 months overall. In sales, we are slightly behind our hiring plan, as usual, I have to say. So, our plan foresees that we find all of them first of January, which is not realistic, so we are slightly behind plan there. Our salespeople are former chefs, and chefs are the missing staff everywhere, so also we are challenged by finding them. Some regions could be slightly affected by that in the short term. We put some countermeasures in place. I think 2 years ago, we increased the number of recruiting staff here in Landsberg, but also in some subsidiaries, for instance, in the United States. So long-term growth expectations for us is still intact. Is there any major change in the shareholdings? No, there isn't. In Q22024, sales grew 6% year-on-year. Would you be able to quantify how much of that was volume and how much was price-driven? Main drivers were growth in non-unit business and price increases, each around EUR 15 million. Units were stable, but mix effects from customer segments, unit sizes, and so on, was negative with EUR 10 million. During the Q1 2024 call, I noted that new price increases are not yet planned, and that volume growth shall be expected strongest in overseas regions, with still low market penetration, as well as recurring revenue from cleaners, service parts, and accessories. Is this statement still correct? Absolutely, yes. Two more questions. What would be the impact of a war in the Middle East on your supply chains? As long as trade routes are not heavily affected, we do not see any impact. Possible impact could be on higher freight costs and an initial delay when leaving the Red Sea route. Here comes the last question: How much of the growth in Germany in Q2 was driven by reducing the order backlog? The effect was in 2023. 2024 numbers were not affected by order backlog. Thank you very much, Peter. Thank you. Thank you very much, Jörg. I give it back to Stefan. So thank you very much, Nicole, Peter, and Jörg. And if there are now still any open questions, please do not hesitate to give us a call or to send us an email. As always, I now want to come to a few announcements for the coming events. So Monday, next week, on 12th August, we will have another IR follow-up talk, as you already know it. So if you have any question arising in the meantime, we will then have the opportunity to discuss them then as well. You can find the registration link on the homepage in our IR calendar, where you already registered also for this call. The next announcement will be on the 9-month figures, 2024, on the 7th of November 2024, with the well-known setup here. And with this, I want to close the call. I thank you for your participation, for your interest. Wish you a good time until we meet the next time. Bye-bye, and take care.