Good day, and welcome to the Ströer SE Q2 Results 2022 conference call. Today's conference is being recorded. After the presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Christian Schmalzl, Co-CEO. Please go ahead, sir. Thank you. Dear ladies and gentlemen, thanks for joining our Q2 results call today. As in our past calls, I would like to share with you the developments of the just ended quarter and give you a strategic update. Henning, our CFO, will then present the financials for the second quarter 2022 and our progress in ESG, before we give you a short outlook, what we expect for the third quarter and the remaining months of the year. As always, following our presentation, we will be available for Q&A. Despite the ongoing challenges of the macroeconomic environment due to the Ukraine war, significant inflation rates and still strained supply chains, we delivered on our promises in all relevant KPIs and were able to achieve the highest second quarter sales in the company's history. Total reported group revenues for the first six months were up by 18% from EUR 686 million - EUR 810 million. Organic revenue was at a comparable level with 18.4%, up nine percentage points versus prior year. The successful sale of our online performance marketing specialist, SEM, for roughly EUR 14 million, will have no major impact on organic growth development. Henning will elaborate on this in detail later. The Adjusted EBITDA increased over proportionally by 22% to EUR 220 million, mainly driven by the strong performance of Out-of-home, which was fueled by the continued high margin, strong development in Digital Out-of-home and the robust local and regional business. Adjustments remained low, and came in at EUR 8.2 million positive in the first six months or EUR 11.5 million positive, among other things, due to the just described sale of SEM and the revision of a capital reserve for stock options in the second quarter 2022. Our adjusted EBIT reflects the strong performance of the quarter, but also taking into account the comparably weak prior year basis due to slowly expiring COVID-19 effects in the course of the prior year quarter, rising by EUR 84 million-EUR 88 million. Same applies for adjusted net income, which more than doubled from EUR 27 million - EUR 58 million in H1. Operating cash flow for the first half 2022 developed again pretty much in line with revenue and Adjusted EBITDA performance and was up by 25% from EUR 120 million - EUR 150 million. In the overall mixed environment, we continued to invest into profitable growth and with that into the rollout and accelerated expansion of our digital Out-of-home portfolio. Consequently, CapEx spend after six months is about half of what we planned for the full year and increased from EUR 38 million - EUR 66 million when compared with prior year CapEx spend. The current situation, the heterogeneous client structure, makes our Out-of-home business by far more resilient than most of our competition. We have shown this slide already before, but we think it's absolutely crucial to understand and predict our performance in more challenging times. About 60% of our revenues come from, in total, roughly 58,000 local clients, and we approach them with in total 1,000 inbound and outbound salespeople and specialist teams. In particular, the local customers sign multi-year contracts and also 58,000 clients sound like a lot. There are more than 600,000 SMEs on our general target list, so still a lot of space to improve. Both across local as well as national advertisers, our clients are spread in a very balanced way across all industries. Accordingly, there is no specific exposure, and if one customer segment suffers, another one might develop in the opposite direction. Key takeaways for H1 are that our local business is completely unimpressed from the current environment. That we see unchanged momentum for Digital Out-of-home as it's meanwhile nicely integrated in the digital base spend of national advertisers and offering maximum flexibility. That this overall momentum also continues in the summer months, where we see mid- to high-single-digit growth for our Out-of-home segment against a strong rebound quarter last year. That also the pre-bookings for H2 in total look pretty much normal year to date. At the end, we operate with an unsubstitutable market share in a fully consolidated Out-of-home market. I think there are three aspects that make our business and the German Out-of-home market special against any other peers, and I just feel it's important to repeat it. We operate with an extremely high market share in an almost duopoly situation in a consolidated Out-of-home market, so no disproportionate competition also in tougher times. We focus predominantly on a high number of very diversified local customers, so many small and steady tickets instead of few large and volatile ones. We have an extremely strong momentum for Digital Out-of-home, and roughly a third of our Out-of-home revenues are digital. Only a little bit more than 2% of our sites are digitized yet. We are just at the beginning of a longer structural shift with a lot of tailwind. All of that is a strong counterbalance to the temporary macroeconomic challenges. At our Capital Markets Day nine months ago, we talked in detail about our strategy to constantly improve our Digital Out-of-home proposition for advertisers. The achievements in H1 have taken our audience coverage to another crucial milestone. Across the top 10 cities where TV broadcasting is historically weak, we reach roughly two-thirds of the population on a weekly basis, and especially the younger, more mobile, more digitally driven audiences. We are constantly working on balancing the net coverage city by city to offer a truly consistent product for national brand advertisers. 65% is the net reach average. No top city is below 60%, and cities like Hamburg or Cologne show where we will be overall in three years from now at around 80% coverage. Execute our midterm plan with a CAGR of 500 roadside screens and 300 incremental premium indoor screens per year until 2026, but decided at the beginning of this year to pull some of our investments forward and accelerate the momentum in 2022. In H1 to date, we have installed 402 roadside screens and 207 premium indoor screens, so we are on track to 750-800 roadside and 400 indoor displays on a full year basis. Even if we have a constant look at CapEx, given the current market conditions. Essen, Hamburg, and Hanover have been focus cities in H1 and, i.e., Q2 to roll out more roadside screens with nine square meter size or larger, so-called Giant Formats. Cottbus, Düsseldorf, and Offenbach have meanwhile a really nice and diversified standard nine square meter network. We have also installed more two square meter inner city formats to get into the pedestrian areas of e.g. Gelsenkirchen, Hanover and Kassel. In Hamburg, we are still rolling out more of our so-called City Towers, digital columns. One of our last quarterly calls, we talked about the large format screen at the highly frequented so-called Stachus train station in Munich. We've developed the first 3D spot ever on our network with our client, Sky Deutschland, in Q2 on that screen. You see those kind of spectacular 3D staging rather in New York or Hong Kong and Shanghai, but it's also possible in the German market now, and besides nice revenue streams, it's an important marketing tool to show the attractiveness of digital Out-of-home. We try to leverage that momentum also with even increased presence around industry events and marketing summits. The online marketing festival in Hamburg, for instance, was a strong kicker for our Programmatic Digital Out-of-home business, as we were able to approach a lot of new digital pure play companies there. The GreenTech Festival in Berlin was a fantastic stage to present both carbon neutral advertising solutions as well as smart and green Out-of-home and street furniture products. Good triggers to win brand campaign budgets, even in times where advertisers are more careful with larger broadcasting investments. Digital Out-of-home in general, Programmatic Digital Out-of-home solutions, as well as ESG-oriented marketing bundles, have been key drivers to deepen the relationships with customers like Panorica, AIDA or Disney. All of them have significantly increased their investments in our Out-of-home segment. We also want new clients on that basis, either bringing them again back to Out-of-home or for the first time into our medium. Uber and PayPal, for instance, have been digital or dialogue customers for a while. Q2 was an outstanding Out-of-home quarter with them. Calzedonia wasn't that active in Out-of-home for a while. They spent more than 90% of their classic budgets into Out-of-home in the second quarter. None of that would have happened in the same way if we wouldn't have the Out-of-home plus set up to constantly be in touch with advertisers, also in times where Out-of-home is not or not yet on their radar. With the two press releases on Asam and Statista in the recent weeks, we've already given you an initial assessment of the successful developments in the first six months. With the results delivered in H1, both were able to successfully continue their historic growth track record. Let's start with Statista. The first half of the year, Statista's revenues increased by 42% compared with the same period of the pre-previous year, and EBITDA adjusted even grew faster than revenues. Our international business played a particular role in this strong development. To highlight a single market here, the U.S.A., now accounts for around 36% of sales. Statista is thus continuing its success story. Since our acquisition end of 2015, Statista recorded an average increase in sales of around 39% per year. Asam also performed very well, and especially the relative performance versus peers is interesting in times of more headwind for the consumer business. Asam significantly outperformed established players in that environment. We doubled sales with a makeup brand, M. Asam Magic Finish, in the second quarter. Skincare grew twice as fast as all comparable facial cares in the drugstore environment, and our haircare brand, Ahuhu, grew ten times faster than the relevant market and doubled its sales year on year. Last but not least, Asam Beauty ranked eighth in the NielsenIQ brand score. Step by step, we get amongst the top 10 beauty brands in German-speaking markets. With that, Asam continues its success story under the Ströer umbrella. An average sales growth of 25% per year since the acquisition speak for itself. All of our other levers and strategic USPs are fully intact, as H1 results show, and we continue to execute our midterm strategy unimpressed. First of all, the digitization of our Out-of-home infrastructure, especially with more digital roadside inventory to strengthen our profitable public video proposition. Secondly, the continued optimization of the synergy potential of Out-of-home and digital and dialogue media in the areas of content, tech, data, and customer access, more and more important for the Out-of-home business. Finally, there is the unlocked value crystallization potential of Asam and especially Statista, and both have shown excellent growth and performance in the last weeks and months. With that, let me hand over to Henning, who will guide you through the financial details and results of the second quarter, 2022. Thank you, Christian, and hello to everyone from my side. Let us together have a brief look on the Q2 2022 P&L. With a growth rate of 14% for the second quarter, we are fully in line with our guidance range as communicated three months ago. Group level sales increased to EUR 425 million compared to EUR 374 million in Q2 last year. With that, we achieved again record sales, and this despite a high level of macroeconomic uncertainty. Due to the strong performance in Out-of-home, and here in particular at our high margin digital Out-of-home business, which delivered a revenue increase of more than 70%, Adjusted EBITDA for the group increased slightly ahead of our sales development with 18% and came in at EUR 126 million for the quarter. Exceptional items stood at +EUR 11 million. These positive exceptions are mainly attributable to two effects, which each amounted to a mid-single-digit EUR million amount. First, successful sale of Turkish online performance marketing specialist, Zem. Second, the reversal of a capital reserve that we had recognized for our stock option program. Due to the corona crisis, we were unable to achieve the ambitious targets set out in the program within the specified timeframe. As these exceptions are excluded Adjusted EBITDA, reported ebitda came in at EUR 137 million and thus considerably above the prior year level. As in previous quarters, depreciation and amortization continued to decline and were down to EUR 75 million in the quarter, mainly due to the declining D&A from capitalized purchase price allocations. As mentioned in previous calls, PPA will decline further going forward due to the general write down of the underlying assets. The financial result improved slightly from EUR 7 million - EUR 6 million due to lower interest on these liabilities and more favorable exchange rates. Taxes developed mainly in line with business performance and the improved tax base. Looking at the adjusted net income, the increase is pretty much in line with the improved business performance when compared with the prior year period and taking the effects described before into account. In total net income adjusted increased from EUR 26 million - EUR 39 million in Q2 2022. Moving over to the cash flow. Altogether, we again saw solid cash flow development, which to a very large extent could offset the decline in Q1. Operating cash flow went up from EUR 93 million - EUR 118 million, underlining good cash conversion even in more challenging times and our cost flexibility. In other words, we feel well prepared for potentially bumpier roads ahead. Investing activities declined to -EUR 12 million. The reason here is the adjustment on items such as the already mentioned gain on disposal from the Zem sale and the non-cash release of provisions for the stock option plan. Cash outflows from non-M&A investments increased from EUR 24 million - EUR 33 million, reflecting the continued expansion of our digital roadside and public video portfolio. Due to these effects, free cash flow before M&A was up from EUR 70 million - EUR 86 million in Q2 2022. After decline in Q1, leasing repayments increased by EUR 7 million from EUR 36 million in Q2 2021 to EUR 43 million due to phasing effects. Free cash flow adjusted came in at EUR 43 million, so EUR 9 million ahead of Q2 2021. To be noted that this does not include the positive cash effect from the mentioned divestment, which is recognized in M&A investments. With this development, financial debt was at EUR 726 million for the end of Q2 2022, and thus EUR 103 million higher compared to the same period in 2021. However, the dividend payment for fiscal year 2021 of EUR 128 million must be taken into account. As a reminder, the dividend for 2020 was paid in Q3 last year. Despite this effect, the leverage ratio improved to 2.1 x compared to a level of 2.3 x a year ago. In this context, let me add that we successfully placed an ESG-linked note loan in the quarter under review, generating more than EUR 200 million in a busy market, which saw a lot of issuer activity. The transaction included tranches with tenors of 3, 5, and 7 years. An amount of EUR 120 million thereof was used to prematurely refinance a note loan maturing in October. All in all, this contributed to improving the maturity profile of our debt. As a next step, we are currently working on the refinancing of our facility agreement, which we expect to close in fall this year. Let me now walk you through the segment performance, starting with Out-of-home Media. In total, Out-of-home benefited from the still mainly positive market dynamics in Q2 2022 compared with the prior year period, which is still affected by COVID-19 effects. In total, the Out-of-home segment revenue increased by 23% from EUR 152 million - EUR 187 million, and thus came in within our forecasted corridor, although in the lower third. Ukraine war, inflation and rising uncertainty as a large part of the first quarter already led to a softer demand from national accounts, in particular for our classical products. In contrast, the local and regional business proved to be persistently resilient. In total, Digital Out-of-home continued to show compelling growth in all three categories national, local, and regional. A clear proof point that customers appreciate digital, probably even more in times of increased uncertainty. As explained in prior calls, classical tobacco advertising is spent in Germany from the start of this year. Therefore, when adjusting sales performance for tobacco, advertising growth amounted 26% in Q2 or 39% for the first six months. With this Q2 2022 achieves an index level of roughly 91% compared to the pre-COVID Q2 of 2019. Looking into the different sales categories, classical Out-of-home sales increased by 10% to EUR 122 million. This was outpaced by the developments of Digital Out-of-home, which rose by 73% to EUR 51 million. Out-of-home services increased by 18% from EUR 12 million - EUR 14 million. These performance trends were also reflected in the development of EBITDA adjusted, which increased disproportionately by 38% from EUR 64 million - EUR 88 million in Q2. Especially driven by the strong performance of Digital Out-of-home, as described before. Accordingly, the margin went up from 42%-47% and with that towards pre-COVID levels. Altogether, we believe it is important to recognize the defensive quality of Ströer's Out-of-home business, reflecting a quite different setup with a broad diversification across national, regional, and local sales channels and industries, compared to many international operators or so-called peers. Our digital and dialogue media segment continued to show revenue growth. Revenues increased by around 4% from EUR 175 million in Q2 2021 to EUR 181 million in the second quarter of the reporting period. Revenues in digital, so online advertising and content publishing decreased slightly in the second quarter due to comparably lower traffic on T-Online as we re-launched the website and due to the beginning holiday season. As well as due to comparably high negative exchange rate effects at international business activities. These were successfully disposed of in Q2 as described earlier. In contrast, programmatic advertising on our own platforms drove performance, getting us to PY at revenue levels year to date. The businesses grouped under Dialog Media continued to perform robustly. Sales accelerated compared to the first quarter to 13%. Revenues increased from EUR 74 million in Q2 2021 to EUR 83 million in the second quarter. However, performance showed diverse business dynamics in detail. German door-to-door operations performed very strongly, driven by highly successful direct sales activities for telecommunications products, offsetting weak business in France and Italy due to challenging market conditions in the French energy sector and the realignment of the business in Italy. Call center remained broadly stable compared to PY. Taking the challenging market environment into account, all in all, Adjusted EBITDA of the segment in Q2 2022 was with EUR 40 million, EUR 5 million lower compared with the same period in 2021. This earnings decline was mainly due to the sales development in our content business, which nevertheless turned in better earnings than in 2019, and our call center business in Germany, which had to digest rising minimum wage levels. The minimum wage rose by more than 6% to now EUR 10.45 in July, and from October onwards this year it will be further grow to then EUR 12. Christian already commented on both Statista and Asam. Let me only make some brief comments. In total, our data as a service and E-commerce segment was up by 28% to EUR 71 million from EUR 56 million in the prior year period. An increase of 37% growth in the second quarter of Statista continued to show strong performance and achieved sales of EUR 34 million, or EUR 9 million up compared with the same period of 2021. Against a very favorable environment for E-commerce and TV shopping in the prior year period, Asam performed very well, in particular in the context of other German E-commerce players in the second quarter 2022. Sales were up by 20% from EUR 31 million - EUR 37 million. Due to continued growth initiatives as well as cost inflation, Adjusted EBITDA margin came in at 6% for the segment. Adjusted EBITDA was EUR 4 million in Q2 2022, so some EUR 600,000 short of Q2 2021. Excluding start-up costs for Asam, Adjusted EBITDA Q2 2022 would have been clearly above the prior year value. In addition to good business performance, sustainability in all its forms E for environment, S for social, and G for governance is of great importance to us. In the past 36 months, we made significant progress forward in all areas. In our sustainability report 2021, we not only report on this, but have once again significantly increased transparency in the variety of topics and set ourselves ambitious targets. We have prepared our reporting in accordance with GRI's guidelines to ensure a solid basis for our data and the relevance of the topics covered. We carried out extensive double materiality tests. Central topic in which we were able to make significant progress is our carbon footprint. The period from 2019 to 2021 reduced our CO2 emissions by around 50% to 32,000 tons of CO2. The key driver here was and is the switch to renewable electricity supply. However, this is only an intermediate step on the way to CO2 neutrality, which we want to achieve by 2025. Also in 2022, we again celebrated the Diversity Day at Ströer. At this event, we highlighted our diversity, present ourselves. Open company and exchange ideas on various topics. For this purpose, our diverse employees have planned keynote speeches, panel discussions, and presented the Welcoming Out initiative. In addition, if you've heard it before, because I think it's the most important message in the current environment. Operate with an extremely high market share in a more or less fully consolidated Out-of-home market, so no disproportionate competition in tougher times. Focus predominantly on the high number of very diversified local customers, so many small and steady tickets instead of few large and volatile ones. We have an extremely strong momentum for digital Out-of-home, and roughly a third of our Out-of-home revenues are digital, but only 2% of our sites are digitized yet. We are just at the beginning of a longer structural shift with a lot of tailwind. Let me now close the presentation with looking at our financial calendar for the coming months and further in-depth information we plan to provide. In the course of the remaining year, we plan a capital market teach-in with a focus on Digital Out-of-home and Statista. We will announce the precise date as soon as possible, and on November 10, we will publish our Q3 2022 numbers. On this occasion, we will also publish our release dates for 2023. As always, further dates and information can be found on our financial calendar on our Investor Relations website. Thank you everyone, and we are now happy to take your questions. Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, press star one on your telephone keypad. We will take our first question from Annick Maas from BNP Paribas Exane. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Good morning. My first question is on Q3. I think you say Out-of-home is going to be above the prior year, but July and August is mid- to high-single-digit up. Are you already seeing something in September, or is this just a pure caution that you don't expect it to be up more? My second one is on the full year guidance. You say the order book is normal from September to December. How much do you actually see at this stage of the year, and how much has this varied in previous years versus, you know, when you saw it in August and you thought, okay, it's more or less normal. How much can it change before year-end? An update on Asam. I think last time we spoke, you were still expecting to potentially sell Asam at the second half of this year. Is this still up to date? My last one is, can you remind us if there's any advantage you have over TV to potentially benefit from the World Cup being in Q4 this year? Thank you. Hi, Annick. Thanks for your questions. I think very plausible questions here. On Q3, you're right. We said Out-of-home will be above prior year. While what we see for July, which is done, August, which is almost done, where we see rather mid- to high-single-digit% growth in general would mean a weaker September. What we see at the moment is that the September order book is in line or slightly above or around prior year. The point is the month is not done. The guidance for Out-of-home that we mentioned for Q3 is more driven by caution that we just don't know exactly what is possible. In prior years, we would have said, well, what we see in July and August is what we see for the full quarter. I think at the moment, markets are, in general, difficult to predict, so we only want to guide where we have clear visibility. This is more driven by caution or being on the safer side than seeing that September would be worse than what we've seen in the first half of the quarter. Rest of the year, that means September to December. If I move away from July, August and the full year, I think what we have currently in our order book is probably roughly 60% of where we normally end up at the end of the year. That number is pretty much in line with what we had in the order book for those months in relative terms, in absolute terms last year. I think in the years before, what you could see, but that's more a historic trend than anything short term, that in general, the lead times for Out-of-home get a little bit shorter year-over-year. Why? Because advertisers in general tend to book less full year basis, at least the national advertisers, and more quarter-by-quarter or month-by-month. And we have, over the years, a stronger shift towards Digital Out-of-home, where I would say, in general, the lead times are also, in theory and practice, shorter, which means we can also benefit from money that is allocated at the very end of a quarter. That's why I would say what we see at the moment is for the months September to December is in line with what we see under normal conditions. The only aspect of being cautious is we just don't know if the following four months are different than the normal September to December time in prior years. What we see in the order book and the booking behavior so far looks all normal and without anything that would make us nervous around the performance for the rest of the year. On maybe on Asam and your question here, first of all, I think it's again worth highlighting the very good performance in the second quarter. I mean, there was a lot of obvious observation of the development of E-commerce players now in the first and second quarter. Asam did very well, we believe. And this is very important also for potential future crystallization. However, I think everybody knows where the M&A market is at the moment. The fact of the matter is that we are more or less done with the internal preparation, so we could sort of start the process at any point in time. At the moment, I think looking at where M&A activity in general is, we have not pushed the button yet. I think we are here on the sidelines for the moment, observing the market development. Again, the most important thing is that the operating performance continues very solid. The question around advantages versus TV, I think it's the general underlying long-term trend, yeah. If I compare Out-of-home proposition today versus one, two or three years ago, I think it's more flexible, it's more digital, therefore more attractive than historically. The audience coverage that we are able to deliver is better than in the past. Yeah. Generally people are more mobile. That trend continues even more after the pandemic. That I would say we have more eyeballs that we can deliver in a more flexible way, better targeted on more digital inventory. That's what Out-of-home stands for at the moment and what the relative development is. I think linear television is facing, in general, structural challenges with their audiences at relatively higher prices, if I look at their current pricing and inflation strategy, and an overproportional decline in the younger, more educated target groups. That's also an ongoing trend, and I think that's where the advantage over time structurally is of Out-of-home versus television. I would say there might be short-term biases slightly different views for whatever reasons, but I think that's the general trend, and I would also see and expect that for the coming months and years. Thank you very much. Wait a second then. Oh, sorry. Not to forget, 60% local TV is 100% national advertising. This is especially in a situation like now, if you look back to all the other crises since 2000, you see that national advertising is reacting quite fast to any kind of macroeconomic change, and local advertising is completely unimpressed. Even the pandemic, our local advertising was still growing. I think this is the key difference also between the TV guys and us, and by the way, also between JCDecaux and us, because we get again and again compared with JCDecaux. JCDecaux is amazing company, but they are global. They focus on national advertising, and we are focused on one country and focused on local advertising. Except that we do outdoor, I think we have in common at the end because the local advertising market is reacting completely different. We have a big chunk of permanent advertising, which is completely unimpressed by any kind of macroeconomic downturn what we might see now in the second half of the year. That is something what we maybe should also communicate much stronger in the future. Our focus is clearly on the local advertising market. International, it's maybe to say the add-on is maybe too strong, but the heart of the company is the local advertising market. That's what you are targeting. That's why we also can't compare all the TV if we can. Besides this structural development, which are clearly key because what Christian already said, I mean, TV is under pressure from digitalization, structural under pressure. This will not change even if, like last year, there was a certain uplift suddenly due to the crisis reaction. But on a normalized basis, free-to-air TV goes down structurally because eyeballs are vanishing and digitalization is obviously supporting outdoor in every dimension, in shortening time to market, much higher turnover per location, et cetera. These are the, I think, the key difference, structural headwinds against structural tailwinds and local advertising market against national advertising markets. This is all super clear. I guess my last question was more related to the World Cup specifically, and I had in mind that, you know, maybe gambling rules for Out-of-home are less strict than what they are on TV, which means that you could potentially benefit from extra ad spend in Q4 around the World Cup. Yeah. Could indeed be. It's always a little bit driven by the sponsors and their behavior, but in general, if there is an impact, it's rather positive. It's also normally an interesting impact on the online portfolio for both the sports assets that we have, as well as the news areas, because they are always. I mean, soccer or football is like general news, and that's why I would say there is some positive momentum there as well. Might not be extreme, but definitely some kind of positive kicker. Okay, great. Thank you so much, everyone. Thank you. We will take our next question from Christopher Johnen from HSBC. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Yes, thanks, guys, for taking my questions. First, I mean, partially coming back to the World Cup question, obviously, it's always a huge event, sucking up a huge amount of advertising euros in any given time. If I understood you correctly, you were saying you'd rather see positive impact also flagging the online portfolio. I mean, in terms of the advertiser mix, it's hard to sort of ask you what you're budgeting here. As far as the classic Out-of-home is concerned, you would make that same statement as a net positive? With respect, or sort of coming further from that point with respect to the full year guidance. I mean, for Out-of-home, 16%-20% is, at least on the top end, I think, if I assume for Q3, let's say mid- to high-single-digit is guided, if July and August also carry over to September. Let's say 7.5%, on the top end would imply 15% in the fourth quarter, which would be quite a significant acceleration. I'm just trying to pick your brain here, on where, particularly in Out-of-home, you think the guidance is realistic at this point, the low-, the mid-, the high-end. Yeah, and also how that translates, whether or not the World Cup has a significant impact here. Yeah, that'll be the first question. Yeah. Thanks, Christopher. Well, I mean, the guidance is what the guidance is. As we've seen in the last nine months, situations can change in both directions quite quickly. Looking at the momentum today, I would in general agree with you that the guidance that we've given, especially for Out-of-home, was before that Ukraine war started. It's probably more realistic to look at the lower end of the guidance, anything. But nevertheless, when I look at last year's development, yes, we had a very good second half, but you could also see declining momentum in the fourth quarter because of, at that time, the rise of the Omicron variant and beginning restrictions around and after Christmas again. There was a lot of momentum, I would say, until September, October, and then it really got softer. This year, yeah, that might be towards the end of the year, slightly different, or we are running against softer cap comps from mid of Q4 onwards. As you say, there is that World Cup extra momentum, where we see at least two or three advertisers that could also show different spend behavior in Out-of-home versus prior years. As Udo mentioned, I think our local business is just a recurring business that is operating in general already on a higher base and bringing in month-over-month more base momentum. That's also something where we see the longer the year lasts, the more impact we will see on that. Yeah. That's why we still feel okay with the guidance we've given so far. Okay. That's very clear. A final question on pricing, more general. I mean, on the demand side, you know, that's one thing maybe somewhat harder to influence, but how are you seeing the pricing at this point in time? Well, On the Out-of-home side. Sorry. We've discussed that over the last couple of months. I mean, our general decision was to say we stick to the pricing that we've given for 2022 to our customers, no matter what energy costs, other inflation rates were, and so on. Because we just wanna be a reliable partner, and felt like we'd rather talk about extra opportunities and what we can do for them in a way that they spend more money, yeah, than asking them for more money without any benefit for the advertiser. I think it will be a different discussion for the coming year. Yeah, we are currently working on the price list for the next year and are in discussion already with bigger advertisers and agency. I think for 2023, we will somehow reflect price increases that we've also seen in different areas. That needs to be reasonable. For the running year, our feeling was the better net revenue development will happen on the basis of consistent pricing, no changes throughout the year. At least to date, I think that was the right momentum, and I think other media have operated in a different way. We will see now towards the end of the year how advertisers react to that. I think different media categories at the moment have a slightly different view on the rest of the year. Maybe that is also driven by the fact that some have been more aggressive on pricing in the last couple of months, and others have been more reasonable. Okay. That's very clear. Thanks a lot. Welcome. Thank you. We will take our next question from Julien Roch from Barclays. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Yes. Good morning, Udo, Christian, Henning, and Christoph. My first question is on the macro. I mean, you were very clear you're not seeing a slowdown because you have structural tailwind and you are local and regional. But if we focus just on the national, part of your portfolio, the one that is more cyclical, are you seeing any change in behavior at all or not? That's the first question. The second question is on Q3 guidance. You were very clear, overall guidance, 5%, very clear on, out of home. But can we have some color on the other two division? The third is on net debt, which from Q1 to Q2 was up EUR 73 million. Free cash flow is EUR 43 million, dividend is EUR 128 million. The net debt should have gone up by EUR 85 million. There's a EUR 12 million difference in your favor. I know 12 is not a big number, but that's 28% of free cash flow. If you could explain what happened there? Those are my three questions. Thank you. Thanks, Julian. On your Q3 question and the guidance there first, well, just taking what we've said for the group, in combination with the Out-of-home business. If you want to get to that mid double-digit number, it requires, probably low to maybe mid single digit in the second segment. In the third segment, the historic growth of Statista above 25%, and as I'm probably more around the range that we've seen in the first half of the year. If I take that in combination, the base assumption would be segment three, I don't know, around 20%, maybe more, if there's good momentum. In segment two, where we've been running, especially against an extremely strong online business, part of segment two, in last year's Q3, maybe around 2-3%, maybe 4%, maybe a little bit more. We'll see. The base case is probably around that. Combination with Out-of-home minus the consolidation should take you to around 5%. If we take the standard number for missing a digit, that would be roughly the momentum. Yeah. Again, across all the three segments we see July and August. Current trading order book at the moment, slightly above that, sometimes a bit more than just above that. I think there's still buffer for whatever happens in September to feel quite comfortable with that kind of guidance. On your first question, national advertisers, is there anything we see structurally? Structurally, no. Other than more shorter lead times from national advertisers in their booking behavior. Yeah, that's something we've seen year-over-year in the last decade. I think through that more challenging macro environment, it's even more short-term. Takes a while until we have clarity about every month and quarter, especially as far as national advertisers is concerned. That's one aspect. The second one, I would say is not structurally, it's just more of an individual decision that we see since March or April here and there. Maybe a traditional, more brand-oriented broadcasting campaign from national advertisers less. Yes, clients that just think, is it the right moment of time to invest EUR 1 million or EUR 2 million in a quarter into pure brand messages and rather postpone it. At the same time, as Udo mentioned, we win on the digital Out-of-home side with short-term allocated money. We see positive momentum locally and regionally. So far I think we've been able to compensate those more individual client decisions. Structurally, all we see is really more short-term orientation, but nothing eroding by means of wild reactions that are completely different to what we've seen historically, that advertisers spend sometimes a little bit more or occasionally also cancel something. That's just normal course of business. Net debt is something for Henning, I guess. Julien, you're right. I mean, if you just, you know, come from the cash flow development compared to the end of last year to now, you would expect an increase of EUR 120 million more or less rise in net debt. It actually rose by EUR 113. There is a difference, EUR 6 million-EUR 7 million, which comes from the reduction overpayment of customers, which we have to recognize as a financial liability. In some situations, actually customers pay more than they should, and that changing. It's overpayment of customers that is the difference. Out of curiosity, overpayment strikes me as a bit of a working capital item. Why is that not included in free cash flow? The way we set it up, we know obviously we can have an argument about that, but we don't have it included in the working capital. Okay. All right. Thank you very much. Transparency, giving you the- Yeah, yeah. If you ask for it. No, very clear. Just coming back on the first question. My question was not on the structural, actually, it was whether you've seen a macro impact on national. You know, some cuts because every single ad-driven stock gets the same question. The market believes in a recession, the market believes things are slowing down, and most companies are telling us, "No, there's absolutely no slowdown." My question was, in the part of your business, national, which is more cyclical, are you seeing some kind of macro adjustment or you're not seeing anything for the time being? We've seen nothing that would be outside of our original guidance. Yeah. But if you ask me personally, what would our national world be without the Ukraine war? My personal feeling is that we would have seen maybe EUR 7-8 million more national Out-of-home spend in on our portfolio in Q1. And we've maybe would've seen EUR 12-15 million more in the second quarter. So to date. But that's only guessing what would have happened if, because I couldn't, I don't know, say there were clients that precisely said, "I'm taking this out because..." and that's the Ukraine war. But my personal feeling is that it's maybe worth EUR 20 million, the first six months of national ad spend on Out-of-home, yeah. an Out-of-home segment in the first half of the year of almost EUR 400 million or 73-80. I don't know exactly. Nothing that I could precisely connect with the situation. It's more like what would I, what kind of numbers did I have in mind at the top end of our guidance or, maybe, even beyond that, if everything runs perfect. Okay. Very clear. Thank you. If you look back, by the way, to 2008, there's always a strong idea about being a cyclical stock. If you look back to 2008, which was a major shockwave obviously for the media markets, our turnover was almost stable. If you go further back in the crisis to the point where the internet bubble burst, last 20 years, you see that it's not really cyclical because even if some customers get a bit cautious, others investing more. Don't forget it's a mass media. I always say toilet paper is also used in a crisis. It's more, let's say the luxury market, financial advertising market and stuff like that is more impacted by macroeconomic impacts. The customers we have a little bit slightly on a different page. I mean, they have now since we run the company. I think it's crisis number four or five. A, they have a lot of experience. How to address the challenges of a crisis. There we have a lot of comparable data. That's why we are quite relaxed also for the upcoming months. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, press star one on your telephone keypad. We will take our next question from Craig Abbott from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Yeah. Hi, good morning, everyone. Yeah, just first question, please, is just on your energy costs and how your supply contracts are structured. I think if I recall correctly, you're pretty well covered for the rest of this year, but I'm thinking a little bit more about 2023. Now you mentioned earlier you were in the process of sort of developing your own price list for your customers for 2023. I just wondered if you could maybe shed some, at least conceptually, results at this stage on how you see that balancing out for you in 2023. Can you please, in line with that question, also remind us roughly of what your current energy share is, particularly in digital Out-of-home? Thanks. The second question is, we saw in digital, you know, your online ad sales for the third-party publishers, you know, already saw a decline in Q2. You just indicated a moment ago what you kinda expect for the combined division top line in Q3. I think you said +2%-+4%. If you could give us a feel for how you see those digital ad sales, you know, continuing to develop in Q3 and in terms of bookings into Q, you know, further out. Thank you. Regarding pricing for 2023, I mean, you know, we want to communicate that to our customers first, and we're still in the progress of finding the right levels. But in general, maybe answering on the basis of the history, I think in the last couple of years we've seen general market inflation rates of 1% or below 1%, and our average price increase year-over-year for the Out-of-home portfolio was around 3.5%, driven by better audience structures and more digitization. The general inflation rate has gone up from below 1% to, I think at the moment, 7% - 7.5%. I don't think that double-digit price increases are reasonable and are in line with what advertisers are willing to do. I think our price increases will move more to where current market inflation rates in general are. We do not talk about crazy inflation stuff in some quarters like in television. We just see what the overall cost inflations are in the market, what therefore advertisers would expect, and we try to find the right balance here. It's more probably around the general market inflation at the moment than where our historic price increases have been. On the third party ad sales, I think like for like, we still see unchanged good momentum. I think we have one special aspect this year, which is more a revenue aspect than a profitability topic, is we have one bigger publisher that is doing parts of the ad sales internally again, for the moment temporarily. I think that means on an annual basis, about EUR 18 million or EUR 20 million less reported revenue. I think the gross margin that we lose is 1 million or so, less than 1 million. That is the key delta at the moment, I think that we see on third-party sales. Other than that specific individual mandate, I think the business is doing fine on the basis of the historic numbers. Craig, on energy costs. Okay. Thanks. Yeah, yeah. Sorry, go ahead, Henning. Sorry. Energy costs, I mean, if you look into our Out-of-home business and you know that energy is not a particularly, you know, high amount or high share within the P&L structure, it's clearly less than 2% spend on energy. For the current fiscal year, I think we're reasonably safe in terms of the contract durations that we have, and we're working now on securing that further from 2023 and beyond. Obviously, there will be drivers now. This cost position will go up in the future, first of all, because of the expansion of the digital network. On the other hand, there are some other parts in the P&L which will look better because obviously digital billboard, nobody needs to go there and glue a poster. Then there will be the price increase. You know, in the end, I think within the overall context of the P&L structure and also what Christian referred to in terms of our pricing policy, I would say it will be absolutely digestible. I think that explains a little bit what we've done pricing-wise, and I think it was right this year to be more cautious, I think especially for the second half of the year, to be a maybe less pricing aggressive partner for advertisers. Because in all fairness, energy is also an important topic for us, but it's not the big driver on P&L. Yes, wages are going up, but again, a lot of our costs are also commission or provision-based and performance-oriented in line with revenues. I think we can work with the current price structure for 2022, and didn't feel like we want to make significant windfall profits on increasing prices on the back of inflation rates that do not 100% apply on our cost structure. Okay. Yeah, thank you both very much. Very helpful. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. We will take our next question from Nizla Naizer from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Great. Thank you. I have three questions from my end as well. The first is on digital Out-of-home. So it's been a few quarters since you opened your inventory up to national level clients. Could you remind us what the split now is between national versus sort of local and regional within digital Out-of-home? And also what the margin in this business is compared to the 47% sort of segment margin that you reported in Q2. The second question is on the Dialog business. Was there an element of pricing driving growth in Q2 as well? And can the double digit type of growth you reported in Q2 then continue in the second half? My last question is on Asam and Statista. Could you remind us again what the steady-state margin for these businesses would be at scale, and when would this be reached, according to your plans? Thank you. Maybe on your first question. I think in general, our Out-of-home business is 40% national and 60% local. In the Digital Out-of-home business, it's 65% national and 35% local. But across the indoor and the outdoor portfolio, that's why we also manage our different sales forces, of course, to address and approach different products. Because for a local advertiser, location is key, and no matter if it's digital or not, you choose the site that is close to your business. That's the most important point for national advertisers, of course. When they're looking for national broadcasting and there is an opportunity for digital, then they go for digital. I think that's the nice setup that we have that also protects us from potential cannibalization effects. We have enough sales people, yeah, to go out and connect the right customer with the right part of the portfolio. On the margin question regarding Asam and Statista, I think in the case of Statista, it's more a question of where are we with the different markets. I think a fair view on the ultimate profitability of the companies when you look at the very mature countries, so where the company started 7, 8 years ago. Good example or good reference are the German-speaking markets. They are fully developed since 3 or 4 years. They've been established 7 or 8 years ago. There we see margin profile beyond 30%, up to 35%. Then we have development clusters of countries that are operating since 3, 4, 5 years now. Which are operating on a break-even level. Then we have very new markets that are still cash investments, either because we built the sales force or we open up offices, or it takes a while in the subscription model until we have all the sales that we generate and converted into annual revenues in the running year where we have the factual costs. That's why I think the margin profile is driven by the maturity of countries. The mature countries indicate an ultimate margin profile beyond 30% EBITA. You had a question on pricing activity in the segment two, and I think the only activity really worth writing home about is actually the effects from rising minimum wages in the call center business. Actually here we need. When we cannot take these costs entirely on our accounts, we need to discuss constantly with customers how much of that we should share. There's an effect now from pushing forward large chunk of these costs. Obviously, it's not so easy to charge 100% of these forward. At the same time it helps the top line development, but it's also a bit of a dampening margin effect until we are able to offset those increasing costs with improved nearshoring activities or the increasing of the productivity and also the German side. As a rough indicator, about a third of the contract with customers has a direct link to minimum wage, either by fixing it or indexing the cost that the client pays. About a third of the customers has already agreed on us moving one by one the costs forward. Henning, as Henning said, we are working with the last third of customers on finding the right solution, where it's a mixture of three things, increased nearshoring activities. We've gone from, I think at the moment we're up to 15%-18% across all of our workforce versus more or less zero three years ago. It's a question of then those clients picking up more costs, and it's on us improving the overall performance so that we can somehow, in combination across the three elements, find the right solution. It's something I think we can handle. It's well on the way, but it's nothing that happens, unfortunately, automatically. Yeah. The government is doing those things automatically. It's happening automatically for the people. We have to work roughly a year until we've adjusted our business to those kind of things together with the customers. Understood. Christian, one follow-up, please, on Digital Out-of-home. Could you remind us what the margin is for that segment versus, you know, the whole Out-of-home media group? Yeah. I think we do not disclose it explicitly, but the total segment, I think if you look at the last 2 or 3 years, full year basis, a little bit adjusted by COVID effect, is probably around or above 48%. It's fair to assume that Digital Out-of-home is higher than that. Yeah. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, press star one on your telephone keypad. We have no further questions at this time. I will hand the call back to the speakers for any additional and closing remarks. Thank you very much for your questions and for your time and attention, especially now in the summer months. Yeah, we appreciate that. Yeah, we hope to see you next time and soon. If there are any further questions, just let us know. We're happy to help. Take care. Enjoy the rest of the summer and stay well. Bye-bye. Take care. Bye. Thank you. That will conclude today's presentation. Thank you once again for your participation. You may now disconnect.