Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, to our H1 2023 Earnings Call. My name is Arne Dehn, CEO of STEMMER IMAGING. With me is Imme Pritzmeier, replacing Michael Birkert, our CFO today, who is absent for a personal reason. Unfortunately, his father-in-law passed away. He has to spend the time today with unfortunately other things. As always, we have uploaded the half year report and the earnings call presentation on our web page in the section Investor Relations. Please note that I will concentrate my presentation on the main topics. The uploaded presentation is the full investor presentation, just for your information. With this, let's start. Yeah, I would say in general, despite the overall market influences, STEMMER IMAGING has done well, I would even say very well, in the H1 year. Results are up by more than 25%. This is not only valid for the EBITDA, the EBIT, but also the net results and the earnings per share. I think that is something which, yeah, stands out at this point in time. We are in a great industry, as you know. Machine vision industry is something which is greatly demanded also in these times. Based on the growth drivers, I believe STEMMER IMAGING proves more and more that we are very well positioned in this industry with a lot of application knowledge and the implementation competence, and that really with a proven track record. I think over the last years, we have shown that we generate attractive margins, and also operating cash flow, which becomes more and more important in these times of higher inflation. Just as a reminder, for those who participate the first time, STEMMER IMAGING at a glance, we are a leading machine vision technology company, basically active in two main segments: in the industry for quality inspection and all these applications, and in the non-industrial field, which has helped us over the last years to improve basically our growth path and also the solution path, which we have been able to transform this company into. As a summary, we deliver and continue to deliver really on focused on value- add. I think over the last year, we had to also make a clear distinction, this becomes more and more valid, I believe, if we follow just the growth path or really a profitable growth path with EUR 78.4 million revenues, I think, and 8.3% revenue growth. I think we have clearly shown that the market is continuing to grow, and that we see the opportunities and our positioning in it with EUR 14.2 million EBITDA. I believe we have again proven that the value add, which we provide in the market, is valid. 25% or almost 26% up from last year on the EBITDA, I think, speaks for itself. Mainly, value creation, I've spoken about our value creation model, which we continue to follow. This year is not only based on the growth, but really on the growth of the gross margin. We have record numbers here with 40% in Q2. We have shown the operating cash flow with EUR 8.3 million up from last year. Also the working capital, especially in these times, where balance sheets tend to inflate instead of deflate, that has been a strong performance. The earnings per share, again, EUR 1.35, nicely up over 25% from last year. We have put a lot of focus on doing the right things in the right markets, and with this efficiency, and I want to also show that a little bit today, is that we are able to increase our sales per FTE. We run now at a a last 12 months average of over EUR 200, sorry, EUR 500,000. I think quite a remarkable number. This is something where we believe that, yeah, we will continue to, to focus on. We have seen quite an important phase in the market in the H1 year because we all came out of delivery performance issues in this market. I think STEMMER IMAGING has less suffered than other companies in this segment. It is now also time to show that innovation and adoption of innovation really proceeds. I think with that, I'm really happy to present today that we were able to get a breakthrough order for our InPicker, our vision-guided robotic systems, in, in a very important market, which we believe has great growth potential, which we have been active for quite a while now. I think having this, yeah, this additional success gives us more confidence that we are really getting a good position in this segment. Also, other subsystems in high-growth segments, and I will talk about this a little later. We're prepared for more. We have used the moment to really implement a group-wide model in our sales model, in our technical support model, to make the scalability of our business model possible. We have launched a new website. We have launched what we call a STEMMER IMAGING MORE program, more than a product, which really qualifies our services in a more, in a structured way. We also use that moment to further improve, let's say, synergies in the group. I will talk about the one-off costs, which we will take in Spain for our subsidiary, Infaimon, where we have grown substantially over this year from last year. We use that momentum actually to, yeah, install further, let's say, common structure. will, which will leverage us for the next year and years to come. The ambition is to keep a positive outlook, despite, you know, the circumstances in the market. I will talk about a little bit what we see in the market. We think that single-digit growth in top line is possible this year. That's why we keep our guidance at the lower end of the guided range. Also the EBITDA growth, we feel very comfortable to maintain, let's say, our guidance, which we have given, not only in% terms, but also in absolute terms. Just as a reminder, why I believe that the market continues to show continuous demand for machine vision. I don't wanna go through all of that, but scarcity of skilled labor, digitalization, electrification, circularity, and de-globalization, I think are main topics. I don't wanna go further into this. Additionally to that, obviously, the whole hype about AI, which we will see going on, has shown some good, yeah, drivers for us. With that, I really want to dig a little bit deeper on the next page, on what we see in the market. On the left side, this is not news for you. I know that you look at these numbers in much more detail every day. Just the overall, let's say, business climate, which the VDMA, the German Machine Builder Association, is publishing, is a longer-term view. I understand, but I basically, it sees that the trend is downwards on the upper left side, not only from the business climate index, but also from the assessment of the order book levels and the production expectation for the months ahead. Typically, you would say, "Well, you know, how can you be positive in this environment?" I think we have seen some announcements recently, which, you know, confirm this downward trend from other companies. Obviously, the business constraints have changed a little bit. Obviously, we are coming out of that's the lower left side, shortage of material and equipment, which is not fully where it used to be. This is the, the, the brown line, which had a big peak in 2021, 2022, which is coming back to normal. The labor shortage, we see that, I think I talked about this earlier. We see a release or a relief of that a little bit since summer last year, that, yeah, with the capacity not fully loaded and, yeah, some, some blocking elements, might it be shortage of material or demand shortage, labor shortage will become less, less of a pain. We'll not go back to where we used to have it, in, in terms of, the demography, development, but I believe that, the, the biggest concern, I think that's probably the most interesting part for you, is, is the demand shortage, in, in the general machinery market. On the left side, I therefore want to go a little bit into what the German, the VDMA says about the machine vision, market, and I just took a shorter look here. What you see in the top is basically revenue to order income, development, and this is just a%, so it's an index, which was, is based on some, some, let's say, fixed point and how that is developing. You basically see that the revenue line is okay-ish, but the order income line, basically, since December last year, is typically more negative than just in March, a positive upwards trend. What I would like to say here is that, and I think the Viscom announcement today confirmed that, there is quite a difference between machine vision component manufacturers and machine vision systems, system builders. This is not machinery, builders, but really machine vision, system builders. I believe Stemmer is somewhere in between the components and the system builders. The component manufacturers see a negative trend in revenue and in order income, but especially in order income, consecutively, I would say, since October last year. The machine vision system integrators or system builders don't see that, and they have basically a good revenue line that has to do with their order book, which they basically built down. They continue to also have good order intake. That gives us also, let's say, aspiration that the industry in general, in Europe, is quite healthy in terms of demand for machine vision systems. Obviously, the machine vision system guys have some stock, and that stock needs to be built down, but the overall demand in this market is quite good. That's why we also believe, as Stemmer, that we will go through this turn maybe better than some others who focus really only on component business. To qualify that, I must say that also July, also what we see of August, our order entry levels continue to be so confident or at a level where we think that our prognosis on the revenue line is sustainable. In order to show that a little bit more in detail, and I, I talk about that we have been really starting to be a data-driven company and really not have a gut feeling about what's happening, but we have done a quite an intensive analysis of what's happening in the market. And I'm really pleased to say that when we ask our customers, this is, I would say, more than a representative analysis of our customer base, over 60% say that their business is equal or better from an order situation than last year. This has to do with delayed projects from 2022, the increased demand of machine vision. And I believe the reason why that is the majority for us, is that we have been focusing on growth markets, which are, which are independent on some, let's say, I would even say, old-fashioned industry demands. Only 38%, still a number, but I think for, in these days, quite impressive, low, say, we have sufficient on stock, we miss project funding, we have weaker order situation or a staff shortage. Then the question is obviously: Okay, when do you order material? Again, here, over half of them, of our customers say that they will order in 2023. We think that this might be still slow in, in Q3, but, or slower in Q3, so we expected Q3 not to be that strong. But we expect a pickup, and that's really based on concrete, you know, customer-by-customer analysis, that we will see a pickup in, in Q4. Obviously, you know, that can change over time, and if we talk ourselves into a crisis, then that might happen. This is a very recent study, which we conducted internally, and I thought I can share that. What we see, especially positive, is the print and packaging industry, sports and entertainment, to a certain extent, also the logistics market. Only the recycling market, and don't ask me, could do with energy cost, I don't know, is something which we see more on the, let's say, delay part. Why do we think that STEMMER IMAGING has an advantage here? Really, the high diverse customer base in industrial and non-industrial base. I think what we all have to realize is that the book-to-bill, the turnaround time, has shortened because people just order when they need the material, back to normal. We believe that our distribution business remains quite stable in the cash and carry needs. It's not a large percentage of our business, but at least, you know, a flow business, which is giving us business in small ad hoc orders. The solution business in the industrial, especially in the battery business, where we won a nice deal in the U.K. this year. We continue to enlarge our customer base in that, in that important base of battery, and then the non-industrial with transportation, logistics, sports, entertainment. Highly innovative, I must say, and really with high time to market requirements. These guys need the material now and not in two years and not next year. Overall, we have an order book of close to EUR 55 million. Again, we confirm here that these are fixed contracts in terms of volume and order delivery time, that gives us also a good indication of where the business should be this year. Hope that clarifies a little bit why we are confident that our prognosis for the second half year is what it is. We are advancing on our roadmap. You know, the green rocket should show that we basically have launched all the initiatives which we promised to do this year, from the service campaign, talk about it in a second, the project or the portfolio project opportunities really on what has to do with our sales model and to focus really on the right industries. The launch of the digital offerings with our new webpage and then also the expanding of our own offering, especially around embedded, InPicker and our own software suite. With that, really want to talk a little bit about the breakthrough, what I believe is a, is a breakthrough, really, in the vision-guided robotic market. On the left side, you see basically a graph, which I've shown in already in Q1, that we really see that the AI-enabled robots are going to pick up. We see that the automotive applications are mainly in the electric vehicle transformation projects, where we also scored this breakthrough project. A lot of new applications, and we feel well represented in these markets, healthcare, agriculture, that these applications, that's the growth driver for robots and also for vision-guided robotics. I think it's, when you talk about companies who are more in the industrial, the industrial space, they might say that, you know, some of the robotic segments don't really grow and have some problems growing. We've seen, especially these areas, the non-industrial and the automotive applications, which has to do with the electric vehicle transformation projects, are really very high up. We see that vision-guided robotics, also with deep learning, especially for mobile, autonomous, and especially the collaborative part, is very important. On the right side, basically, you see our proposition. We have a software, our own software, which includes deep learning and AI, basically a full solution, what we call a subsystem, which enables basically a robot to pick and place certain things. We have been choosing by a leading automotive OEM for their vision guide robotics platform. This is a multi-year project and includes also a gigafactory rollout, so also from its size over the next year is quite nice. We are going to deliver the first parts of this this year, second half this year, September. With that, we believe that this has also a quite, quite growth potential, as obviously the industry looks at reference cases, and we believe that this is therefore a breakthrough project. In this context, I also want to put the restructuring or one-off cost in Infaimon where we will now move the manufacturing from Barcelona to Munich, to headquarter, as we have done this with larger orders in France earlier. The growth in Spain or the Infaimon business has been substantial this year, has been over 30%, which also gave us the good ground not to restructure because of a downturn of the business, but really of, because of the growth. Therefore, we are, we now feel that we are in the position to really adapt group processes there, operational-wise, and also the group synergies. We have published that we have restructuring cost of about EUR 700,000-EUR 900,000, which give us an operational result leverage of next year of short of EUR 1.5 million. I believe great, great opportunity to do that out of a growth momentum and not out of, let's say, a pressure moment, with to actually also deliver on these projects in the right quality, in the right time. In the STEMMER IMAGING MORE program, this is basically a catalog of services. On the right side, you see them, engineering service and operating services. This is really where we believe Stemmer makes a difference. We see a big trend toward that, that customers ask much more than components, that, I believe, is something which has been proven also now with the order intake situation, which we see at the moment. This is actually one of the elements why we think that STEMMER IMAGING can still continue to grow in these times, even if there might be a downturn in a quarter. Q3 might be a little bit weak, in general, we see that these, these are the enabling services, that's why we also put much more focus on, on marketing them, structuring them, and for sure, delivering them also in a very efficient or scalable way. On the financials, I think this is a slide which you are now used to. I think we are quite on the way in terms of revenue. We have seen good internationalization. Germany has been okay, are doing okay, especially in the H1 year, with I believe, 11% growth just in Germany. Result-wise, as I mentioned, the gross margin development is nice. We said in 2022 that this is, there were some, let's say, exceptionals in it, and we are on a good way up. I think this proves that not only in the machine vision or industrial, but also in the artificial vision business, we are quite nicely underway. On the cost ratio, you might say, "Well, they forgot a little bit to look at their cost." It's not, not a lot of difference, but I want to remind you that in the H1 2022, we were at 22.3%. For the full year, we expect to be slightly up from last year, so we might not reach the 19.4%, but for sure, stay in this area, so don't expect any slippage on our cost ratio. On our distribution solution business, you might find the solution part a little low. We had a very strong Q1, 2021, and then also 2022 was, we see some distortion on high stock levels with some customers. This is a temporary, let's say, view. We basically have a nice growth, especially also in the gross margin for both businesses, distribution and solution. On the regional split, I said, Germany, 11% up. Nordics, just about par for the whole group, around 8%. U.K., very strong with good, good growth. Also, Spain, as mentioned earlier, are the whole Ibérica, Latin business, 30%, over 30%. Both regions, U.K. and Ibérica, didn't have that high growth last year, but again, they had growth, and we see now that this growth also materializes in 2023. Switzerland, the coffee business after Corona, coffee capsules don't seem to be the, the, the high seller. That is something which we have also envisioned going into the year. Benelux, we believe the decrease, 4%, is okay. We believe that this is only relevant for one, two customers who make an impact here, which will recover end of the year to show growth. France is a little bit the, the laggard in growth. We had a very strong growth last year. We might not see growth for the full year in France, which has to do with, I believe, also the... It's the growth has been based on, on, let's say, younger industries and, and some of them basically don't show the same performance as last year. We also have big companies, as you know, time and action companies and so on, which for sure will can generate growth in the year 2024 and, and, and beyond that. With this, coming really to the numbers, we had a decrease in the order intake, a little bit expected. To my view, it could, it could have been a little bit better, clearly. The revenue in Q2 nicely up. For the order intake, I want to say that it, I mean, absolute terms, is better than Q1. We saw an in absolute terms, order intake increase. We should not forget that, but the highlight, really, I think, on this page is, is the gross margin development. The personal expense, I think, quite normal, I would say, move or slippage here, and also on the operating expenses, income. Basically, normal development. That leads basically to a great 18% return on sales of the EBITDA, and 15.5 on the EBIT, I think quite, quite impressive numbers. On the out here, pretty much, you know, consecutive to, to what I just showed, quite nice development. Personal expenses down 16.1% of sales to 17.4 last year. Gross margin, just below the 40% record number for us. Again, with an 18.1 EBITDA ratio and for 15.6 on the EBIT. I believe revenue and without numbers which, yeah, some other companies in the industry would be happy to show today. The under proportional cost development, the higher gross margin and top line growth helped here. For those who want to understand the price effect on the revenues, we believe it's somewhere between 4%-6%, maybe more on the lower side, so we would say 4%. On the margin, the regional mix, about 0.3 margin points for an exchange, 0.5. Distribution solution business basically developed in the same way up, which we believe is quite nice to see. Also shows basically that we don't expect price decreasing for the second half of the year. There's we still see suppliers trying to improve costs, but I think that this time a little bit more difficult to increase costs, but we don't see any, any tendency for lower pricing. Again, our value-added services will for sure help, that we will be able to continue to sell value at with the services and, and let's say, packages, subsystem packages we offer. Balance sheet, I think also remarkable that we saw a deflation of the balance sheet. I have to be careful of not emphasizing that too much with the dividend, which we paid EUR 19.5 million, which we see obviously also impacting our balance sheet on the asset side. Inventory level at still, I think, healthy, little, little up, but healthy, EUR 18.7 million. Receivable, EUR 24 million. I can say that we have a plan in in action to look at both. I think the overall working capital relation or working capital has been managed well. Net debt at -EUR 25 million, cash at almost EUR 14 million. Our machine to generate cash, despite the payout of the dividend of EUR 19.5 million is nice to see. On the equity liability side, I would say normal things. We pay our loan and we had a decrease in the current liabilities of the tax liabilities of EUR 2 million- EUR 2.9 million. That helped us to reduce that side. Nothing more to say on the cash flow statement. Obviously, the net income helped here to improve it compared to last year. I would say no other major elements to mention here. Obviously, from the financing activities, the dividend, again, plays a role. With that, we come to the outlook. We have, we believe, a healthy level of orders on hand, and we expect a very, again, order intake pick up in Q4. Overall, our customer base is quite positive. I showed you the numbers to that. That we believe that we have a good outlook for single-digit growth rate. We believe that the lower end of the revenues is possible, and we are comfortable with the EBITDA range, especially with the, let's say, profitability and the margin development, which we have seen not only in the H1, but also over the last quarters, and I would even say years. Including the planned one-offs I've mentioned, we don't have to adjust, and we will not adjust as promised. We are pretty much transparent on what we do and, and what we show. I say pretty much because we don't want to invite the competition to know too much about our business from these presentations. In general, we are confident on this EBITDA level. Outlook, we remain clear on the 10, above 10% growth rate. Our revenue target for next year is EUR 200 million. This is given the lower range of, you know, we are short of the double-digit growth this year. Again, this was always meant with organic and M&A. We are still confident that this is the target for next year. With that, also, we will update, basically, in the months to come on the outlook beyond 2024, as we said earlier in the year, that we will do a capital market day, where we basically announce, the outlook beyond 2024. With that, I close my presentation, and we come to your questions. Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we'll begin the question-and-answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star, followed by one on their touch-tone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star, followed by two. If you're using a speakerphone, please lift the handset before making your selection. Anyone who has any questions may press star followed by one at this time. One moment for the first question, please. Our first question comes from Robert-Jan van der Horst from Warburg Research. Please go ahead. Hi, yeah, thanks for taking my question. It's 2, 2, 2.5, I guess. The first one would be on Infaimon. Could you maybe share a little bit more details what you target with those integration or cost efficiency measures there? What is it you specifically want to improve? The other question also on Infaimon, considering the strong growth we've experienced there now, and also the strong outlook for the InPicker application, do you foresee any maybe investment requirements after you've been very low on CapEx during the last year? This was my first 1.5 question. The second one would be on the product mix in the second half of the year. Could I infer from your statement concerning, like, the component business and the systems business outlook going forward, that you expect to see, maybe a product mix in the second half of the year, more favoring solutions, over distribution, which I would interpret more as, like, a component part of your business? Thanks. Yeah, thanks, Robert. Good questions to start with the second one. Yeah, I think that would be a normal consequence if the story which I presented is, is turning to be true. At the end, we don't really see the demand that clear in terms of components, because the stock level of our customers depend also on when they will ship out. So everything really depends on how we will build down the existing order book, and how we build up a new order intake and are able to deliver that into the customer base. I would say, yes, that we would expect that. That also means that not only the solution part, but also the margin is, it should be more on the higher side than on the lower side. Again, there's always some, some uncertainties in this, but I think that that would be a normal consequence from that, yes. For Infaimon, again, we, when we acquired Infaimon, Infaimon had a substantially higher gross margin than the group. We had also higher profit levels than the group average. They have remained that, especially on the gross margin, but also on the, let's say, result level. Fortunately, I must say, the group has improved so much, that we have basically been able to overtake, let's say, the Infaimon profitability levels, by, I would say, 3-4% now. Basically, Infaimon, with their, at the acquisition time, high profitability levels, were bringing us up. Now, they are bringing us down on average. That's something which we have seen already last year. Again, not out of a problem, but really a nice profit coming out of the business. Now with the growth, we say, well, you know, there, we have to basically also implement some more measures to really make that business more scalable and really bring them on the group level on, in terms of profitability. What do we do? We basically close the manufacturing there. We move everything that's manufacturing related, here to, to Puchheim. We will further align all the sales processes, and so we have implemented our Salesforce model, everything that's related to sales processes, which has worked out very nicely for us. We believe, to a certain extent, you could say that, that has had the negative last year, that we did not grow last year as much as we should have because of, yeah, maybe not the same focus as we had in the rest of the group. On the sales side, we have implemented that model. We have worked in the group last year, and we implement that now with Infaimon, also on the technical support, so that we include them basically in the group by technical resource level, so that people from Spain go to the Netherlands, if needed, if there's a certain, let's say, application request, which we have resources in Spain. We basically leverage the resources we have there, and with that, we don't need as much resources. This doesn't mean that we did not have good people there, but with the focus always comes basically the opportunity and the synergies that we basically make some people redundant, and that's what we do by not looking at cost, but really on performance and efficiency. I think we had a good reason with the growth we have shown in the group that the model works, and that we would just implement on, on Infaimon. On the InPicker, I think that, yeah, the last two years have been more difficult in terms of putting innovation into market. I think that's not the case only for Stemmer. For us, it was clear that we have to be ready in 2022 or ready to, to present that. We scored that deal basically on the fact that we had over six months running systems with that customer, and we were the only system, the only mainly system provider that really had a top quality for this complex application. This is an initiative which we have done already last year. The software has been developed. For sure, this will be continuous development. We have about six developers for this software in Spain, and that remains also in Spain, so no changes there because you cannot transfer knowledge like this. No expectation of, of additional investment in this area from a, from a software side. On the, I would say, hardware or embedded, we are currently looking at the development of producing more of the subsystem ourselves and replacing some of our suppliers in this to have a bigger USP and not to sell a single component, but to sell it as a subsystem. We're currently in the evaluation phase of that, and as you know us, we are not, we're not expecting any high investment. It might cause, you know, say, three, four man years in development per year for the next, let's say, year, but nothing substantial in the, let's say, overall picture. On manufacturing, we think that this is possible to produce here. We have a very flexible manufacturing, let's say, site, and at this moment, our capacity is good. I think we are able to cope with the growth. Again, we have seen 8% growth, not 20% growth. I think at this point, we are quite happy. As I think I've mentioned earlier, that we are thinking about moving. No decision here made. This happens in the next year, course of next year, I don't expect... There, there might be some movement costs, exceptional ones, but nothing exceptional in this case. I would say, if you want to have a figure, yeah, think about, you know, capitalization of, you know, maybe EUR 2 million or something, but not more for a move like that. Okay, perfect. That was very helpful. Thanks. The next question comes from Jonah Emerson, from Hauck Aufhäuser Investment Banking. Please go ahead. Yeah, thanks for asking, taking my question. Basically, two questions. Question number one, could you maybe just elaborate again why the system builders actually face less pressure on order intake from elevated inventories, versus the component makers? Question number two, in your report, you mentioned that in Q3, you anticipate a "more subdued order intake." Does it mean that in Q2, order intake will be down sequentially? Then I also have maybe a follow-up question. Yeah, thanks. On the second question, I believe you, you referred to Q3, I think, instead of, I think you said Q2, but I would answer the question on Q3. Yes, we, we think that Q3 might be a little soft in order intake. That's, that's what we currently see. Again, the July and what we see in August gives us confidence on the level that it is not so substantially down that we don't think that, you know, that we have to adjust our, our bandwidth of our revenue prognosis. July has been okay-ish, could, could be better. And again, in, in the analysis with our customers, and this is not, you know, an anonymous questionnaire, it's really a one by one, we have quite confidence on the, on the order to intake development. On the first question, why does the system builders have more order intake than the component manufacturer? I think it's quite simple, or at least I see it quite simple. Typically, the, the value chain basically requires that somebody has a request, and then it triggers down to a system builder who builds a subsystem, and then the system builder will come to a manufacturer of components and says, "Can you deliver a component?" I think what, what we have seen is that the component manufacturers have suffered early from higher stock levels, which is still the case. We see that there's a big order book with system integrators and, and also machine builders, which they're currently working down. On the same side, the order intake, the positive order intake of the system builders basically says that machine vision subsystems are highly requested currently in the market. I think this is a trend of the industry, that machine vision continues to be a strong demand. Think about good labor, think about, you know, further optimization, reshoring, all of this, which basically shows that the market, or the, you know, the market trend, in general, is healthy, but it doesn't yet come to the component manufacturer. For sure, once the system builders have built down their, their warehouses, then the order intake will also pick up from the components. I believe component manufacturers. I believe the component manufacturers will also see a pickup in the order intake. Here I talk Europe, I don't talk Asia, I don't talk US, because obviously, that has this different dynamics, especially Asia and China, which currently basically looks very desperate for component manufacturers, obviously. That is something which STEMMER IMAGING is not exposed to, we don't, we don't really focus on that. This is also a statistics which or index, which is based on the VDMA from a German perspective. It's not a global perspective, it's really more a European perspective or from companies in Europe or especially Germany. There's, with statistics, there's always kind of a little hiccup, but I think in general, the picture is right here for Europe. Okay, perfect. Thank you. That was helpful. Again, if you have a question, please press star, then one. The next question comes from Lukas Spang from Tigris Capital. Please go ahead. Yes. Hi, good afternoon, Arne Dehn. I would like to follow on, on the topic of cost structure. If you look on the first six months, you had a very good cost discipline, and that's the reason why also EBITDA was over proportionally up. You also mentioned a very good gross margin, so what should we expect in terms of cost structure for the second half of the year, also for the gross margin? Can you sustain this, this high gross margin nearly of around 40%? On the cost structure, you know, there's always, as you see here also in Q2, you know, some growth for holidays and other stuff, projects and so on. In overall, I would expect a similar cost development in the second half year. I think on the personal cost, it might be even a little, little bit lower. We're currently evaluating also on the operation expenses, as the top line is a little bit on the lower side, kind of operation expenses we need. We're, again, not cutting back on any sensible investment or spendings, I must say, here in this context. Then I mentioned the one-off in Q3, that basically has an impact on Q3. Yep. I think I've, I've mentioned that more than once, so but nobody should be surprised about that anymore. On the gross margin, as said, and I think Robert asked that question, was, what do we see on the gross margin? Well, we don't expect, you know, the country mix to change. We don't expect the, let's say, foreign exchange to change that much. We don't expect pricing to, to, to change that much. Hopefully with a stronger development of business, should be okay with the gross margin to maintain it in the area which we have shown. There's always, you know, peaks from one customer with a larger order in the component distribution business, which might deteriorate that or, or lower that a little bit. In general, I would say I'm, I'm comfortable on the gross margin. I think, the overall development over the last years has shown that, that, we didn't see so much fluctuation also in, in the business, right? Yep. Let's see. The future is always hard to predict, as we all know. I think STEMMER IMAGING, and I, I spoke earlier about that. STEMMER IMAGING always comes at a certain risk profile. We are, I think, conservative, but we are also aware that there is, with certain growth aspects, there is certain risk. I think we could have grown harder, not only last year, but also this year, if we would have taken more risk, in terms of customer base, in terms of markets, in terms of investments. We want to show a very consecutive development, and I think that we have done over the last three years, and we want to continue like that. We're not, we're ambitious, but not, you know, we're not risk- takers. Yeah. On, on volume versus price effects, you already gave us an indication for the H1, if I got it right. Is it fair to assume a similar range of price increases for the full year, or do you see a change for the full year in these terms? Tendency would be even lower because we saw already an effect last year. I don't think that we will see large price increases going forward. That has a little bit to do with the competitive environment and how many players now view Europe as a key market for their business. I think that some of our competitors have burned their fingers a little bit outside of Europe and have discovered that the Old World is a quite attractive one. In general, you know, we also don't have so fast that the switching times of customers from one supplier to the next or something, that will change quite dramatically. Especially in the markets, I, I just can quote a customer, I can't say who it was, but I asked him, "You know, is pricing an issue for you at the moment?" "Oh, it's time to market. It's that we deliver innovative solutions." So pricing was not an issue. We might even have a chance to raise pricing, but I would say it's a little lower than the 4% I just mentioned. Yeah. Then lastly, on working capital and cash flow development. If I remember the full year call, there was the explanation that you expect a slow downwards trend in the inventory stock versus a number of EUR 15 million. If we look now on the balance sheet, inventory is still nearly about EUR 19 million. Is this still the plan to bring inventory at the end of the year down to a number of around EUR 15 million? I think that I, I, I really appreciate that, and I, I know that you that you always have a good memory on, on what I said or what people said. I, I really appreciate. No, exactly. This is the number we target. We see, especially on the component manufacturing side, that the pressure is very high to deliver material. We are very heavy under pressure, and I, I can tell you, I see the white of the eyes of a lot of suppliers to, to get material out. I can tell you that our not only Michael, but also our director of operations has that target. We have the measures in place. That is still the target, and I'm sure you will ask, latest when we publish the full year numbers that, that we bring that down. In general, I would say, you know, EUR 3 million up or down is, for us, is important, but it's not critical for the business or, but material availability is there. We should also be able to bring that down. We have also stopped to replenish. I also can tell you that's also why the component manufacturers don't have any order intake anymore, because the replenishing doesn't happen anymore. It's, I think, very consecutive picture, that if we wanna bring down our, our warehouse and we don't order anymore, that's very simple. Mm. Obviously, that accumulates, and then you get the picture of what we have currently in the market. I think what the picture is, that other component manufacturers don't have orders, and that's also because the customer doesn't order and a lot of others. Yep. That should help, us at least. Okay, thank you. Yeah. All right, next question comes from Maarten Verbeek from the IDEA!. Please go ahead. Good afternoon, it's Maarten Verbeek of the IDEA!. A couple of questions from my end. Firstly, I'd like to get back to the gross margin that you mentioned you expected to remain flat maybe this year. Looking somewhat longer term, and also looking at your target of growing by more than 10%, shouldn't you expect a bit of leverage, resulting in an uptick in your gross margin going forward? Yes. I think we also always mention that. I think we said that gross margin overall should be possible, at least in the years to come, of 42%-45%. I think that the underlying, let's say, criteria of distribution solution and all that might not, might not indicate that, but at least our gross margin development per quarter shows that we are on the upward trend. Therefore, we, we, we see that we are moving in this area. I believe that, yeah, when we want to improve our profitability area, that comes with the transformation of subsystems. The demand for subsystems is there. We're able to deliver that value today, and we are every day basically improving our position here. I think that, that will help. Okay, thank you. You will be transferring the production of Eufemian to to Puchheim. You will take a charge initially, have cost savings later on. Might it also result in a one-off buy, for example, selling real estate in future? No, we don't have any real estate in, in the company. We don't own any property. It's a philosophy which we have, that we, we discussed. We moved in a, in a new building last year, which is also not a manufacturing office, by the way. It's a, it's a city office, very nice for our customers to come. We don't own any property, so there's no, no write-off or, or impairment from that side to, to expect. Okay, thank you. Lastly, could you discuss, what your lead times are at this moment? Yeah, I can say they're very good, because since the last two years, we learned to know that numbers are very good. I think we are down to less than two weeks on subsystems or on solutions. We are having, let's say, performance of delivery on orders of in the range of 98% and 99% on confirmed date. Basically, on normal material, back to two days, you know, get the order in and basically ship it out on the same day or the next day. That depends a little bit, obviously, on the material. I would say in general, nobody should wait longer than two weeks. Obviously, you know, if you have a custom lens which needs to be baked in an oven for six months, that's, that's different. We're back to normal, so I don't understand the curve, actually, that materials they're missing. We don't see that really in our business. Okay, thanks very much. There are no further questions at this time. I'll hand back to Mr. Arne Dehn for closing remarks. Yeah, thank you very much, everybody. I think in total, as I said earlier, a strong H1. We see some, some mix effect in the second half year. We're working hard to to to be on top of of things here. Yeah, we will report Q3 when available, as usual.