Welcome to the RWE conference call. Markus Krebber, CEO of RWE AG, and Michael Müller, CFO of RWE AG, will inform you about the developments in the first half of fiscal 2026. I will now hand over to Thomas Denny. Please go ahead. Thank you, Laura, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to RWE's conference call on our results for the first half of 2026. Thank you for joining us today. Markus Krebber, our CEO, and Michael Müller, our CFO, will start by taking you through the presentation. After that, we will open the call for questions. Markus, over to you. Yeah. Thank you, Thomas, and a warm welcome to everyone. This year to date has been quite decisive and successful for us. I am very happy with the continued progress we are making in strengthening our portfolio, as well as in delivering our operational and financial targets. With that, let's jump into the presentation. We have delivered an excellent financial and operational performance in the first half of 2026, and therefore raised our earnings expectations for the current year and for 2027. For 2031, we had already elevated our guidance when we announced the Amprion transaction. Market fundamentals continue to remain strong. Structural demand growth, energy sovereignty, and the necessary grid build-out provide significant investment opportunities for us. We are best positioned to capitalize on these market fundamentals. We have further strengthened our platform through the increase in our stake in the German electricity TSO Amprion to 55%. Our strong project pipeline and our portfolio of attractive sites perfectly position us to capitalize on the further growth catalyst ahead of us and to deliver upside to our current plan. Our agenda is clear: disciplined investments based on financial strengths will deliver long-term secured earnings and dividend growth. Let's have a look at our financial performance. We have delivered an excellent financial performance in the first half of 2026. Adjusted earnings per share stood at EUR 1.8, up more than 60% year over year, mainly driven by strong operational development of all business segments and the compensation payment in the Netherlands. Our trading business is back on track and has delivered a strong performance in the second quarter of the year. Strong performance in trading continued in July and August. As of today, we have already reached the midpoint of our guidance range to EUR 100-EUR 500 million. For the full year 2026 and 2027, we have raised our EPS guidance. The 2026 target has been increased from EUR 2.55- EUR 2.95. Our new 2027 EPS guidance of EUR 3.15 fully reflects our 55% stake in Amprion and higher power generation margins. Let's now look at what is ahead of us. The fundamentals in our business remain strong. Power demand is growing. In Europe and the U.S., demand is expected to increase by more than 10% on average by 2030. The key drivers are clear: further electrification across transport, heating, and industry, as well as rapid growth in demand from data centers. At the same time, energy sovereignty has become a strategic priority. Europe, therefore, intends to significantly accelerate electrification. The European Commission has proposed almost doubling the share of electricity and total energy demand to 46% by 2040. Additional generation capacity alone will not be enough. The entire power system needs to expand. A system with significantly more renewable generation requires additional grid infrastructure, storage, and flexible generation capacity. In Germany alone, transmission system operators expect grid investments of more than EUR 360 billion by 2045. The conclusion is clear: these structural trends provide significant investment opportunities for us, and we are very well positioned to capitalize on these trends. We have superior delivery capabilities, a broad pipeline across regions and technologies, and a portfolio of attractive sites. Our investment program perfectly reflects this. In addition to renewable and flexible power generation across our core markets, it now also includes regulated grid infrastructure. From 2026 to 2031, we plan to invest EUR 42 billion net across all core businesses. Our strict return criteria for new generation and storage projects remain unchanged. The IRR will be above 8.5% on average. For our grid investments, we target a return on equity of more than 8%. Our investment program will deliver strong and visible earnings growth, with adjusted EPS growing at a CAGR of 10% from 2025- 2031. Dividends will be increased in line with earnings plus 10% per annum. Let's now have a look at our strategic and operation delivery in the first half of 2026. In June this year, we took an important strategic step forward. We increased our stake in the German TSO Amprion to 55% and added regulated grid infrastructure as a third pillar of our strategy. We closed the transaction at an attractive EV to RAB multiple of 1.07x. As we speak, we are in discussions to potentially further increase our stake. To be clear, this would not require an additional equity raise. Looking at our U.S. business, through the settlement agreement with U.S. administration for our offshore wind leases, we achieved a value-preserving solution. The settlement now allows us to release capital from projects without a realistic path forward. We redeploy it into U.S. energy infrastructure with an attractive risk-return profile. Our $900 million U.S. financial investment in an energy terminal is backed by a long-term tolling agreement and is expected to contribute earnings from 2031 onwards. An upside to our current plan with fully secured contracted earnings. We are also progressing well on our U.S. flexible generation strategy. By 2035, we target to build more than 3 GW of gas generation capacity. The necessary grid connections will not be a constraint for us. Across our development pipeline, we have secured grid connections for up to 10 GW that could be used for gas projects. This will enhance our customer offerings with baseload PPAs or behind-the-meter energy campuses. To accelerate our development, we have now entered into a $300 million U.S. turbine reservation agreement with GE Vernova. Initial units can already be delivered for projects with commissioning in 2029. We expect to make the first FIDs by the end of this year. We also constantly streamline our portfolio. As part of that, we have sold our Swedish wind activities and our offshore wind project under development in the Polish Baltic Sea. Just recently, we announced the sale of our U.S. distributed generation business. We achieved further progress on the operational side. In the first half of the year, we have secured income for more than 15 GW of capacity. With our successful awards in the U.K. AR7 and the British T-minus four capacity auction and in the recent tender for capacity reserve in Germany. In addition, we have signed almost 1.1 GW of new PPAs. As part of that, we have secured a new 500-MW PPA for an existing asset in the U.S., the largest recontracting our portfolio so far. With our FIDs, we have also continued to secure attractive earnings. On average, the IRR for FIDs that we made since the beginning of 2025 was 9.9%. More than 750 MW of new capacity has been commissioned in the first six months of the year. By the end of H1, we had 10.3 GW of projects under construction, with the construction program being on track. Let's now move on to look at further catalysts ahead. Investment framework in our core markets are attractive and provide upcoming investment opportunities. In Germany, auctions for new flexible generation are planned for 2026 and 2027. We are ready with more than 3 GW of gas new build capacity available to bid. The future German capacity market will create further opportunities for our then existing portfolio of more than 6.5 GW and potential new builds. In the Netherlands, more than 3.5 GW of our capacity will be eligible for the capacity auction scheduled in 2028. Earnings contribution from capacity markets both in Germany and the Netherlands will be an upside to our 2031 guidance. Also, the U.K. remains an attractive market. We have more than 2.5 GW of eligible new build projects for AR8, majority of which being offshore wind projects. Our portfolio of attractive existing infrastructure sites provide us with additional upside to our plan. We are further advancing the development of data center sites. Two sites are nearing agreement over the next month. In July, two of our former nuclear sites in Gundremmingen and Biblis have been selected as fusion energy hubs by the German Federal Ministry, one for magnetic, one for laser fusion technology. Accordingly, we will optimize the decommissioning process of these sites to adapt the continued usage of existing infrastructure for fusion technology. Let me conclude. Our capital allocation is and will be disciplined. Our balance sheet is strong, and we will maintain our levered ratio at the lower end of our 3x- 3.5x guidance range. Our earnings growth is highly visible, and the acquisition of Amprion adds further regulated earnings and visibility to our growth profile. 75% of our 2031 adjusted EPS is secured We will grow adjusted EPS by 10% annually until 2031, and our dividend will grow accordingly by 10% per annum. Now over to you, Michael, for more insights. Thanks, Markus, and also good afternoon from my side to all of you. Let's now take a closer look at H1 2026 financials. We delivered an excellent financial performance in the first half of 2026. Adjusted EBITDA stood at EUR 3 billion. This is an increase of more than EUR 900 million compared to the first half of last year. Offshore wind earnings increased by EUR 167 million to EUR 810 million. This was mainly driven by normalized wind conditions. Onshore wind and solar recorded an adjusted EBITDA of EUR 1.02 billion. Earnings increased by EUR 186 million, driven by the commissioning of new assets. Flexible generation delivered an adjusted EBITDA of EUR 1.03 billion. Earnings were significantly up on the back of a EUR 332 million compensation payment for the production restriction of our Eemshaven power plant in the Netherlands in 2022. Higher contracted capacity payments in the U.K. also contributed positively. Our supply and trading segment delivered an adjusted EBITDA of EUR 134 million. After a weak start into the year, our trading business is back on track and showed a strong earnings performance in Q2. As Markus mentioned, the strong performance has continued, and as of today, we have already reached the midpoint of our guidance range of EUR 100 million to EUR 500 million. Adjusted depreciation increased to EUR 1.2 billion. This reflects the organic growth and the commissioning of new assets. In addition, depreciations in H1 slightly increased to account for hyperinflation in Turkey, where our Denizli gas power plant is located. The adjusted financial result improved to EUR 56 million. This was driven by higher capitalized interest. For adjusted tax, we applied the general tax rate of 20% for the RWE Group. Adjusted minority interest increased to minus EUR 216 million. This reflects Apollo's share in our Amprion stake and our partner's share in the better offshore wind results and capitalized interest. Year on year, adjusted EPS increased by more than 60%. Adjusted income stood at EUR 1.3 billion and adjusted EPS at EUR 1.77. Adjusted operating cash flow was minus EUR 759 million at the end of H1, mainly driven by seasonal effects in working capital. Changes in operating working capital amounted to minus EUR 2.7 billion, driven by the seasonal purchase of CO2 certificates in the first quarter, an increase in accounts receivable, and a decrease in accounts payable. Changes in provision and non-cash items amounted to minus EUR 1.1 billion, driven by changes and utilization of provisions and the cash flow of our phase out technologies. Net debt stood at EUR 15 billion at the end of June. Cash investments amounted to EUR 6.3 billion. This includes the gross investments and EUR 1.7 billion for the share of the Amprion acquisition that closed in June. The remaining stake of the acquisition will be closed in July, so additional EUR 1.9 billion will be reflected in the Q3 number of this year. Other changes in net financial debt had a positive effect of EUR 3.9 billion, mainly driven by our capital increase in June. Net debt at year end is expected at EUR 15 billion, so on a similar level as at half year. Let me close with our earnings outlook. For 2026, we have upgraded our outlook. Adjusted EBITDA is now expected to be between EUR 5.57 billion and EUR 6.35 billion. Adjusted net income is expected to range from EUR 1.95 billion - EUR 2.45 billion. The midpoint of adjusted EPS is EUR 2.95. Our guidance is based on commodity prices as of June 30 of this year. Our dividend target for the fiscal year 2026 remains EUR 1.32 per share. This reflects our annual 10% dividend growth target. Let me summarize. We have delivered an excellent financial performance in the first half of 2026. Our adjusted EPS increased by more than 60% year-on-year, and we have upgraded our outlook for the year 2026, 2027, and 2031. Now, let me hand back to Thomas. Thank you, Michael. We will now start the Q&A session. Operator, please begin. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. If you wish to withdraw your question, you may press star two. We will pause for just a moment while waiting for them to queue for questions. Thank you. We will now take our first question from Alberto Gandolfi of Goldman Sachs. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Thank you, and good afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions. I have these two. The first one is on your slide nine, where you seem to be talking about quite a lot of optionalities, particularly in FlexGen. I wanted to ask you, how much of this slide nine is included in your 2031 guidance, and can you give us a range? I do not know. If we look at EUR 50- EUR 100 a kilowatt for capacity payments, there is quite a lot of capacity here that could be receiving compensation. Would you look at the capacity payment almost as a substitute to ancillary services, or do you think it would be incremental to your profits? The second question is, you can decide maybe to just reply to one part or the other, but there are two parts to the second question. It seems to me there is upside to the target returns that you are achieving, both in renewables, where you talk about 10% over the past 18 months, your guidance is above 8.5%. You are now talking about above 8% ROE on Amprion, which is a little bit more than what you said last time when you bought the stake. It is still very, very much below what Elia or TenneT are reporting, which is more in the double digits. I guess the question here is, after this long introduction, if we were to mark to market renewables IRR to the current level of 10% and to double digit in line with the other transmission, could you give us a sensitivity in terms of million euro profits that we could see by 2031? Or can you give us the building blocks so that we can do it? Thank you. Okay. Thanks, Alberto. This is quite a journey. Let me start with your first question: what is potential upside to the plan? Let me start short term, not only focusing on page nine. In short term, we clearly highlighted that trading is going very well in Q2 and also Q3. By today, we have already reached the midpoint of the guidance, and the midpoint of the guidance is what is reflected in our EPS target. Anything else from now on is on top. Second, if you look into the backup of the plan of the deck, you see our prior power price assumptions for the EPS guidance. That was by the end of June. Today's baseload 27 prices in Germany are more than EUR 10 higher. Long term, what is not included in the plan, I tried to highlight that in my speech, is the U.S. offshore settlement and the investment in LNG, where we now turn, let us say the stranded investment in the U.S. offshore lease in cash returning investments. This is not included in 2031 guidance. If we can manage to build up the Amprion stake, and I made clear we do not need additional equity capital for that is not included. We have now a pipeline of more than 3 GW for gas new builds to be bid into the auction. So far, we have planned with three. The most prominent one where you ask for a number, where I would like Michael to give you an assessment what that could mean is the capacity market income in the Netherlands and Germany and of course, one-offs on potential data center deals. So this is the entire upside we see with the plan. We are typically very conservative, but you see us here very optimistic about our business going forward. Please understand that we do not update guidances real-time. We do that when we either have an announcement like the Amprion deal or a strategy review, including the full governance cycle with our board as well. Michael, on the capacity market. Yeah. First on the capacity market, let's start with your last question. If that is kind of substituting auxiliary incomes or it comes on top, I would assume that comes on top. Yes, there will be some offsetting effect, but largely that should come on top. If you do the math and you just, for a moment, assume what the last U.K. auction realized, and then convert that into euros and apply that to the capacities Markus mentioned, so the 6.5 GW and 3.5 GW, obviously, since the German capacities also include batteries and pumped storage, you assume some degrading factors. That probably brings you in the range of EUR 300 million-EUR 400 million. Then I take the other part again, Alberto, on the uplift on IRRs. First on renewables, we continue to see higher locked in IRRs at FID compared to the 8.5% blended hurdle rate. Of course, the moment we lock something in, that becomes part of the earnings guidance. So it's only for the non-yet FID capacity where you can expect an uplift if the returns stay where they are, and that is not the majority. At least I would say, rough ballpark, gut feel, 70% is probably locked in when it comes to 2031. So there's only a potential uplift on 30% of the investment volume. On the TSO side. The numbers you mentioned for Elia and TenneT, these are historic ROEs, and also Amprion has achieved historic ROEs in that ballpark. But we are now entering a new regulatory regime from 2029 onwards. You know that is under discussion, and we are here on the conservative side. I think investments above 8% are valuable in regulated grid business. But what can in the end be achieved under the new regime with different levels for outperformance remains to be seen. So we do not want to stretch that too much, but we are confident we see above eight now. Thank you. Thanks, Alberto. Next question, please. Our next question comes from Harry Wyburd of Exane BNP Paribas. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Hi. Good afternoon, everyone. Hi, Markus. Hi, Michael. Thanks for taking my question. Two, please. Firstly, on Amprion. You mentioned the stake build. Could you give us any color on how much of an additional stake you are in discussions to take on? On equity raises, noted that you said that would not need an equity raise. But if we extend the question more generally, clearly the equity markets are being very generous right now. Would you consider equity raises for other operations, whether that might be greater opportunities in U.S. renewables, other very attractive strategic acquisitions that are accretive, et cetera? Would you still look to equity markets as a source of capital from here? And then second one, on the Louisiana and the gas turbine reservations that you signed in the agreement last week, should we, just to isolate those, if we assumed high single digits pre-tax ROIC on that, you would be looking at around about EUR 100 million or so of EBIT. Is that something you are willing, Michael, thank you, to give us a rough range for the capacity payments. Could you help us a little bit with the agreement last week in terms of EBIT accretion that you might expect from that from 2031 onwards? Thank you. Yeah. Thanks, Harry, for the questions. Let me start with the easy one. The second, your assumption is correct. That is ballpark the right figure. On Amprion, our aim is clearly to collect further stakes at the same valuation level than we have paid for the first transaction. So remains to be seen how many additional stakes we can collect. I am quite confident about smaller stakes. Whether we can get bigger stakes remains to be seen. For the smaller stakes, that is probably part of the normal capital allocation, and we have some headroom left. On larger acquisitions, if they materialize, we will probably look for earnings accretive capital recycling. And that brings me to your second question. I currently do not see any strategic additional move, which would bring us into the question whether we want to raise equity. And one battle after another I think we now also have to digest the move this year, so I can rule out for the foreseeable future any bigger strategic move or a capital raise. Very clear. Thank you very much. Thank you. We will now move on to our next question from Peter of Bank of America. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Hi, it is Peter Bisztyga here. Couple of questions from me. Firstly, on these upcoming German CCGT auctions, I understand there is still some EU approval that needs to be finalized. Is that correct? Are there any concerns that the timeline might get delayed at all? Also, how are you feeling about the competitive dynamics? Because there is now a number of players lined up to participate here and across the two auctions. Just interested to hear how you think the dynamics might play out. Then also, can you just give us a little bit more color on whether Amprion is still part of your financial asset portfolio? Or is it now kind of a core business? If so, are you happy with how all of your provisions are funded? How are you thinking about that whole structure, please? Is it E.ON or? Was it E.ON? Pete, thanks for the question. So CCGTs, it is not only CCGTs, it is a firm capacity auction, so we also expect OCGTs and turbines and other stuff to be bid in and being successful. On your question on timeline and potential derailment from the European approval side, we do not expect it. What we understand is that the current design, which was taken to the parliament, was pre-agreed with the European Commission and it is just a formality to get the formal approval, which needs to happen before the first auction results are communicated. No concern on our side here. Then, the second question was on, what was this? Competitive dynamics. Yeah, the competitive. We are quite confident with our bids. We have started early, secured good prices, projects are far developed. We have a good understanding who would do what. All pre-agreed with contractors and suppliers. When I look at the last auctions where we have participated, I think we always had a good read of the auction dynamics. I think with the flexibility, which is also provided with two auctions where you can play a bit with price levels, I think can be a very good outcome for us. Amprion is clearly a core segment, but your question was on E.ON, right? The last one, or was it on Amprion? Yeah, basically. Amprion, as we said when we announced the transaction, will become a separate segment from next year onwards, which is regulated grid business as a separate core segment. E.ON is not core. It is a financial investment. We use it as funding our Lignite provisions. You also know when you look at the numbers that we currently have an over-funding of EUR 2 billion. There is EUR 2 billion headroom from the E.ON stake. Okay. Fair enough. Thank you. Thank you. We will now move on to our next question from Ahmed Farman of Jefferies. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Yes. Good afternoon, everyone. Two questions from my side. Just coming back to slide nine again, thank you earlier for your earlier response where you very helpfully outlined, provided some of the sensitivities around capacity market. I was wondering if you could give us a little bit more about the two data center sites, nearing agreements that you mentioned on that site as well. Give us a little bit more color on how we could think about the potential economics or financial impact of that. Maybe also remind us where is the sort of the overall backlog or pipeline of such opportunities today from your perspective. That's my first question. Secondly, just interested in your views on the outlook for European power and gas market. Markus, you already alluded to that your guidance versus where the forward curves are. There's a sort of a difference already. What is behind your guidance in commodity prices? I'm just more interested in any views that you may be able to share, how you think the power and gas market may evolve as we move towards the winter. Thank you. Yeah, Ahmed, thanks for the question. On the data center side, since it's a very competitive environment here, we don't want to give more insight, just expectation management that we are making progress. But in terms of sites, potential partners, and also economics, we will communicate the full details when the deals have been signed. On the overall question, we see strong demand. We now see the need to build what I like to call operational data centers in Europe, not to train the models, but which you need to have close to your customers to solve the latency problems. They are coming, and big time. Also from new players. It's just a question of time. So we do one step after another. We don't want to rush into it. We take a very cautious approach, but I am, again, very optimistic, like we already said in March this year, that we are going to do one deal after another here from our European pipeline. I am also optimistic about our opportunities to deliver U.S. energy campuses, where we also have lots of interconnection agreements with existing sites, existing development projects. Here the discussions are also progressing very good. EU power and gas, I have no view on fundamentals, whether the situation in the Strait of Hormuz is going to be resolved quickly or not. The level I have no clear opinion on. I think we have now for the next month before we enter the full trialogue in the European Commission with clarity about carbon markets, and markets have calmed down. Going into winter, what I see is a very tight system. Gas storage is, especially here in Germany, only filled to the level we have seen before or in the wartimes with Ukraine and probably we enter the winter with the lowest fill level over the last decade. We also see that hydro reservoirs in Scandinavia and the Alps are not filling like normal. That all hints into an environment where we should expect high volatility. Of course, we cannot predict how harsh the winter is going to be, whether we have a windy winter or not, and whether we have disruption on other supply sides. We should be prepared for a rough ride, which is typically for our portfolio, not a bad environment. Thank you. Thank you. We will now take our next question from Pavan Mahbubani of JP Morgan. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Hi, team. Good afternoon, and thank you for taking my questions. I have two on offshore and one on onshore, please. Firstly, on offshore wind, I am noting in your slides that your commodity sensitivity for offshore has decreased quite a bit between when you updated it last in March and today. Can you talk about what the dynamics behind that are, whether it is more hedging PPAs or anything else that we should be thinking about? And maybe relating on my second question on offshore as well, how are you thinking about PPAs, if you are thinking about PPAs for the remaining open exposure, for example, for Thor and North Sea Cluster? Are you in any active conversations? Are you happy to keep those assets merchant? My last question on onshore and solar is, when I look at the midpoint of your guidance, it implies a slightly lower run rate in H2 versus already what you have delivered in H1. Can you talk me through what the dynamics are between H2 and H1 in terms of capacity additions and what would be offsetting that, whether it is lower power prices or currency exposure, that means that the midpoint is realistic or actually should we be thinking about something above the midpoint already today? Thank you. Yeah. Thanks for the question. Let me take the general one on PPAs and the marketing of our open position, and Michael Müller will go into the details of the financial question. So on PPAs, yes, we are for our drum portfolio in discussions to contract significant more capacity. I am also very optimistic for the rest because I see the demand coming, especially from the tech companies. The moment they have decided to build a data center, they typically procure the green power to it. When you look at the available portfolio across Europe, which is not contracted, it is not so much, and all the new projects enter into CFDs. So I am very confident that we can contract the portfolio. That is also the clear objective. But we are not in a rush. We do it step by step. You are going to see more PPAs for our merchant offshore capacity over the remainder of the year. Yeah, let me take on the sensitivities. Obviously, the sensitivity for 2026 incorporates that we are already half year through, so therefore the sensitivities for the remainder of the year are smaller. Then as we go into 2027, that's obviously then the rock assets and also still the commissioning of our new offshore assets that is included there. If you look at the full year or two halves of the year, first the statement is yes. The guidance is basically reflecting the expected midpoint. Obviously, Markus has kind of explained that if trading outperforms, that is clearly upside, and also if commodity prices stay where they are or potentially a tighter winter even leads to further increase, that is clearly upside. But based on our forecast on the guidance is very much in line with H1. Because if you look at H1, what you have to take out, obviously is the Dutch compensation, EUR 332 million. It's the E.ON dividends paid in the first half, EUR 230 million, or pre-tax. Then that brings you basically then to a second half that is about EUR 140 million in irony above the first quarter. That about reflects the higher capacity that we also see then in the course of the second half of the year. Also Amprion is contributing higher in the second half since we then have the higher stake. Great. Thank you. Thank you. We will now take our next question from Olly Jeffery of Deutsche Bank. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Thanks very much. Thanks, guys. A few questions from me. Coming back to data centers, I appreciate what you have said around what you can say is not a lot, but I will try. Drawing the dots between what you are saying on PPAs for offshore and looking to secure some vacant positions, I presume your desire would be to potentially lock some of those into the data center deals that you announced. Is that a fair assumption? On the connection size, you mentioned your larger data centers, looking to secure sites, so potentially could we see a higher grid connection size than what we saw in the deal you did in the U.K.? Would that be a reasonable assumption? On volatility, highlighting that we could see more coming into this winter, presumably that could make the midpoint of the FlexGen guidance a little bit conservative if we see more volatility. Would you agree with that? One other question, which is just on Uniper. It has been in the press, with Ardent Green being a potential bidder. Could you put a pin in that notion or perhaps whatever you are able to talk to on that would be helpful, because I imagine if that were to go ahead, there could be some anti-trust issues potentially. I will leave that present for you there to discuss. Yeah, Olly, thanks for the question. I fully understand that you try to get more information out of us on the data center side, but I think everything we want to say, we have already said. On the volatility side, yes, if markets are tight, typically there is more potential for trading, but there is definitely also more potential to make some money on the commercial asset optimization side from the flexible fleet. That remains to be seen. We do not know how the winter in the end goes. If it is a very mild winter and windy winter, you should not expect any upside, and that is why we have not baked anything into the EPS guidance yet. On Uniper, yeah, I think that is a very relevant question. The situation around the government plans for Uniper are very dynamic. I would say it is totally unclear where that might go, what the government really intends to do. If something very material happens in our core market, I expect our M&A team to be involved, take a look, and if it is necessary to have a seat at the table to notify you, notify. In that case, you notify interest. You should also not be surprised when I can now confirm the obvious that we have no interest and no intent to acquire Uniper. Thanks. Very clear on that one. Thank you. We will now take our next question from Rob Pulleyn of Morgan Stanley. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Hi. Good afternoon. A couple of questions, if possible, and hopefully my signal holds. Firstly, there are two auctions for the German CCGTs. I wondered whether you can make a comment on whether RWE is more likely to be successful in the September or the December. I believe there is some criteria around bonus payments for plants in the South, if you could elaborate. Secondly, a higher-level question. Given the guidance for 75% of your earnings to be secured by 2031, I was wondering what in the long term you believe the optimal earnings mix between contract secured and spot merchant would be? Is 75% perfect, or is it going to be slightly different? Thank you very much. Rob, thank you. We are going to participate in both auctions, of course, and I think the auction design is split in a way that you get the results from the first auction only, I think, a couple of days before you have to hand in the bids for the second auction. It is an interesting play around tactics, where I do not want to go into the details. There is no clear, let us say. We could bid anything in the first auction, but also anything in the second auction. That gives us a high degree of flexibility. On the 75% secured earnings, if you look at our investment program and where we have made very clear that we will only enter into new investments, be it on the renewable side with CFDs or PPAs, or be it on the FlexGen side with capacity markets or also PPAs or energy campuses deals, other than the merchant batteries where you probably don't get a lot of secured income but have a very short payback, we only do contracted investments. If you consider that including the now increased investment plans in Amprion, you should expect that that 75% goes up over time. I think in the 2030s, we're going to reach 80% +. Thank you, Markus. I'll turn it over. Thank you. We'll now take our next question from Louis Boujard of ODDO BHF. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Yes, hi. Good morning, and thank you for the presentation, for taking my question. Maybe two on my side. You increased indeed your 2022 regulated grid infrastructure. You are becoming now more diversified across different stream. What would you consider being the optimal long-term balance in terms of capacity and for the three business lines and the three earnings category, in the mid to long term? Additionally, I was wondering if you could provide maybe some granularity on your strategic visibility in the U.S. market following the deals that you signed with the U.S. offshore wind leases. Now investing in LNG and flexible generation, how do you see your identity in the U.S. evolving going forward? Thank you very much. Yeah, thanks for the question. It's already a very long-term one in the 2030s for probably the next strategy update or the one after that. I think when you look at our investment plans, we have the full flexibility and that is the highest value of the portfolio. So it will always depend also on where the investment opportunities are and what the risk-return profile is. But given the significant investment needs in regulated grid business in Germany, where I would expect that that proportional share in the 2030s will increase, which will also bring the overall portfolio more into that direction. On the U.S. strategy, nothing has really changed. The offshore investments were not in the plan, which we announced in March this year because we have already a clear view that these investments are not possible anymore under the current administration. The investments in renewables and flexible generation has also not changed. We have now done a gas turbine reservation agreements fully in line with our strategy, just showing the confidence of the investment plans we have. The only thing which was on top was the LNG investments to fulfill the requirements of the settlement agreement with the U.S., which we saw as a very valuable, also secured infrastructure investment at good returns. But overall, our investment strategy in the U.S. is more or less the same, which we have announced in March this year. Thank you. Thank you. We'll now take our next question from Piotr Dzięciołowski of Citi. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Hi, good afternoon, and congratulations on the results. I have two questions. First one, you gave the number for the TSO CapEx in Germany for the next decade, and you also previously gave a CapEx, like how much equity you will have to provide to Amprion by 2031. I wanted to ask you, what is your view on the pace of CapEx in the TSO? Do you think all of the components, including Amprion, will stop having a need for extra equity in the early 2030s, or that depends on the currently developed grid development plan? I am basically asking, will you have to contribute extra equity to Amprion beyond 2030, 2031? That is the first question. Second question, I wanted to ask you about your view on the German renewable law. What is the implication of this law for the market, renewable development pace, and achievability of the targets? Specifically on RWE, I know with German renewables, probably a very small part of your business, so not that big, but any views here would be welcome. Thank you. Yeah. I think the first one, yes, we expect additional equity raises also in the 2030s because that is, in the end, our net investment into regulated grid business the moment we provide additional equity into Amprion. To what extent, in the end, depends on the update of the grid development plan. But as we said, when we announced it until 2031, with the capital raise we did, the equity which is needed for Amprion is fully funded by us and reflected in the CapEx plans. On all the legislation we currently see in Germany, I think it is a heated debate, but the net effects on renewable investments we see very, let us say, muted. Of course, with the redispatch topic, renewables have to take over more risk, but every good investor will bake that into his bid. Since we also have seen that the auction volumes, especially for onshore wind, have been significantly increased, I probably expect that what we save on the grid side, we probably spend more on higher auction prices in the renewable auctions for in two, three- year times when the existing pipeline, which has already secured grid connections and doesn't fall under the redispatch rules, has been delivered. What we now see with offshore is probably more relevant for us. The German government has tabled a first proposal draft legislation for the new offshore regime, where they are going to move to CFDs as well if the merchant auctions fail, which everybody expects, and that would bring also then offshore investments back on track. The most relevant question for German offshore is, of course, what happens to the very expensive leases which were awarded in 2023 and 2025? Will they come back and be re-auctions, whether via CFDs or are the companies willing to build at these prices? As you know, we don't have anything in the pipeline which has any relevant lease payments. That is a very favored position because we expect our projects to be built, and then they're probably the only ones in that time period. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. We'll now take our last question from Wanda Serwinowska of UBS. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Hi. Wanda Serwinowska, UBS. Two questions from me. The first one is on the offshore wind auctions in Germany, which you, Markus, referred to. In your future growth potential, you mentioned AR8, but you didn't mention German offshore wind auctions. The question is, why? Is it because you don't have projects? Is it because you don't want to commit, or you are not even looking at given the merchant first requirement? The second question would be on the heat wave. What do you see these days on the operation of your asset in the heat wave? Is there any capacity being shut down because of the lower river levels? Do you see FlexGen performing really, really well and trading? Any comments would be appreciated. Thanks a lot. Yeah. Thanks, Wanda. On offshore wind, we have not mentioned. Of course, we are going to participate in CFD auctions. We have participated in the Danish auctions, but not at the price level where it was awarded. We will also participate in other CFD auctions. We have simply not included it because there is nothing. It is nothing where you need to provide a pipeline. In the U.K., you can only participate in the offtake auction when you have a pipeline. We have a great pipeline. In Germany, it is a one-step approach, so everybody starts from scratch. But we will participate, and that is potentially also an upside. But beyond 2031, to be clear. On the heat wave side, we do not see any impact on our operations. So no limitations, and we can run at full capacity. Of course, the current, sometimes very tight markets provide opportunity for additional earnings from the flexible portfolio. Thank you very much. Thank you. That is all the time we have for questions today. I will now hand it back to Thomas for closing remarks. Great. Thank you, Laura, and thank you everyone for dialing in. Thank you, Markus and Michael, for the discussion today. If there are any further questions from investors or analysts, do not hesitate to reach out to the investor relations team. Of course, I am looking forward to see many of you at the conferences, roadshows, and everything that is ahead of us in the second half of the year. Have a great summer, and speak to you soon. Bye-bye. Thank you. This concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation. 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