Good morning. This is Hannover calling with the results for the first six months and the second quarter of the financial year 2025 for the Talanx Group. I'm here together with my CFO, Jan Wicke, who will guide you through our numbers and tell you where we stand on the delivery in the current financial year. After the presentation, as usual, we are happy to take your questions. We are on a video conference today, so if you want to pose a question, please use the hand-raise feature and we'll make sure that your questions are going to be addressed. All the details complimentary to this call, including but not limited to our interim report as well as the financial data supplement, are posted in the section of our webpage. Obviously, the team is available for any further questions you may have after the call. With this, I hand over to Jan. Jan, the floor is yours. Thank you, Bernd. As you can see, climate change is happening and we have very different perceptions of what does this mean for us. Bernd is able to stand the heat and I have to take off the jacket. Next to that, thank you for attending our call and thank you for spending some time with Talanx. We have some very good numbers to report. Let me just kick in. I have three messages which I want to bring across. First of all, we've had a very strong technical performance during the first six months of 2025. This resulted in a record result with EUR 1,373 million net income. This has led to our conclusion to improve, to provide you with an improved outlook or to raise the guidance to around EUR 2.3 billion for the full year 2025. Where's the profit coming from? Primary versus Reinsurance. We are now at 51% primary insurance after 48% in the previous year, so roughly 50/50. Looking into Primary Insurance in more detail, 25% of the result is derived from Retail International, slightly above 20% Corporate & Specialty, and another 6% by Retail Germany and 49% by Reinsurance. Now let me explain in the usual format a little bit what has happened during the course of the first two quarters. First of all, we are growing currency adjusted 4.5%. Those of you who have listened to the call of Clemens and Christian this week know that in Hannover we've had an accounting refinement with regard to the insurance revenues, a non-distinct investment component in it. If we were to adjust for it, the growth rate currency adjusted would be even above 7%. Bottom line is growing much, much faster. 26% positive growth to EUR 1.373 billion, which is another record in our history. This translates into a very strong return on equity of 23.4%, which also had some tailwind from currency. If you adjust for the currency, in fact, in both in the net income and in the equity, the return on equity would have been 20%, which is still not a bad number. We are very satisfied with the results which we have seen in this first six months. I already mentioned that we had a very, very strong technical result, and you can see that in the development of the insurance service result. We had a strong growth delivered by primaries, or primary is outperforming in gross numbers by the insurance revenue, insurance service result, reinsurance with 14% growth. For the first time in history, we've seen an insurance service result in primary above EUR 1 billion after a half year, whereas in Reinsurance is outperforming Primary I nsurance with regard to the combined ratio, which is 88.4%. Together, reinsurance and primary, we are able to deliver a record in both, a record with regard to this 90.7% combined ratio. It's a record combined ratio for the Talanx in history and also a record with regard to the insurance service result, which is for the first time after half a year above EUR 2.5 billion. We have been a little bit lucky after we have had two very, very different quarters in this year. In the first quarter, we were hit by the Los Angeles wildfires. We were exceeding our large loss budget by far after the first quarter. In the second quarter, the frequency of large losses was super low. Together with regard to the net large losses, we have booked our budget after six months EUR 1,273 million in our accounts. We have just occurred large losses of EUR 1,134 million. What does that mean? We have a buffer of roughly EUR 140 million for the coming six months and also for the hurricane season derived from primary insurance. The balance sheet is super strong. Solvency II capital adequacy ratio stands at 224%. It's slightly down from previous quarter by five percentage points. Roughly half of it is due to the non-refinancing of EUR 500 million subordinated debt at Hannover Re. The other effect is related to currency effects and also the dividend payment in the second quarter. All in all, we are very satisfied with the solvency. Please keep always in mind that the resiliency we have on our balance sheet also translates into a resiliency under Solvency II. The capital adequacy is very good. Having said that, strong balance sheet, very strong technical performance, this translates into our confidence, which has driven the decision even before the hurricane season to increase in the group net income outlook to around EUR 2.3 billion. This also translates in a higher return on equity guidance. We have increased it to 18%. If you do the maths in more detail, it's slightly above 18%. You know how we do it. Digging into the numbers a little bit deeper, segment by segment, as you are familiar with this procedure, starting with Corporate & S pecialty. In corporate specialty, currency adjusted, we are growing 8% and nominal 7%. Strong, rather volume-driven growth. What we see here, group net income is up 23% to EUR 274 million. We have continued to do our reserving very prudently here. On top of it, out of this EUR 140 million buffer on a group level as a whole, more than EUR 100 million or EUR 111 million large loss buffer for the second six months of the year are allocated here in this segment. Very, very, very strong numbers here. Return on equity stands at 17.4%, clearly above the guidance of 15%. Going to Retail International, where Wilm and his team is also, like Edgar and his team, exceeding our own expectations by far. Starting with the top line development, currency adjusted, the gross number is 9%. If we were to adjust this also in addition for the sale of Argentina, Uruguay, and Ecuador, then in total it would be even above 10% growth in original currency. Yes, we were hit by the currency development here, which you can see in the nominal growth rate. The group net income, which is accounted for in euro, is up 49%. Outstanding number here from Wilm and his team. The combined ratio stands at 90.9% in retail, below 91%. We believe this is really excellent. If you keep in addition in mind that in Latin America, in three countries, Chile, Brazil, and Colombia, there are mergers ongoing, delivering such a great technical excellence here is really good. It is far above our own expectation. This group net income also benefits from one effect, which I explained already in the last call after the first quarter. We bought the minorities in Poland. They contributed slightly, roughly a little bit more than EUR 30 million to the group net income in these numbers. Also with regard to the return on equity, as we have to pay for the stake in the Polish minorities next year, not this year, there is a positive one-off effect on the return on equity of roughly 3%. Without it, the return on equity would have stand only at 18%, within it's above 20%. Very, very strong numbers. This is why we also have increased the outlook for the segment with regard to the return on equity to above 17%, which is strong for retail. Coming to the smallest segment, Retail Germany, which accounts for 6% of the group net income, we have a declining insurance revenue here by 8%, which doesn't come as a surprise given that we knew that the Targobank Corporation will end starting from 1st of July. They have started to do the distribution of ACM products here. The group net income, despite this decline in insurance revenue, we were able to keep it stable, even to grow it by EUR 2 million to EUR 84 million. Very strong technical result in Germany. The motor business and the rest of the business is delivering positive results here. All in all, we have a return on equity of roughly 12% here, which is strong and which is a great performance of Jan Wicke and his team to manage this transition. Coming from the smallest segment to the biggest segment, which is Reinsurance, you might have listened to the call of Clemens and Christian. Insurance revenues are up and even keeping in mind this accounting refinement effect of the non-distinct investment components. Excuse me, please. They are well in their target growth rate of 5%- 7%. Group net income is up stronger, 13%. They have a great technical performance. Looking at the combined ratio and return on equity stands at 23.5%. If we were to adjust it for currency effects, it's around 20%. We are a proud majority shareholder of Hannover Re. What needs to be done? Coming to the outlook, first of all, I want to underline a little bit why we are so confident. Looking at Talanx as a whole, you can see we are participating in different insurance cycles. We have hardening cycles in Poland, in Germany. We have some softening cycles like P&C, a re property business. All in all, we have a very good diversification and we can balance the result development. Second, we are predominantly in P&C players. We are less dependent on capital markets compared to those composite players who have a larger life and health book. The cost leadership is something which we are really passionate about and which gives us a competitive edge throughout the cycle. We are a cost leader in more than 90% of our business and in some areas like HDI Global, we have cost leadership of five percentage points. This really drives our confidence that with this cost leadership and with this strong, super strong balance sheet, given the resiliency we have, we are well positioned for our future to grow, first of all, steadily our dividends and second also to deliver earning growth with lower volatility. We cannot absorb all the volatility, in particular not those which are derived from capital markets, but to deliver earnings growth with lower volatility. This has driven the decision to increase the outlook already here after the second quarter to around EUR 2.3 billion for the full year and also the return on equity number to around 18% for the full year. With that, I'm happy to take your questions with regard to our numbers. Bernd, I think you're organizing. Yes, I'm trying to organize. Now Q&A, please use the hand-raise feature and I will call you. The first question comes from Michael, Michael Huttner. Michael, please unmute your mic and shoot your questions. Fantastic. Thanks for amazing results and raised guidance. Lovely. A few points. One, change in management. We've seen change in management, I think at Munich Re, at your subsidiary Hannover. Can you reassure us about the management at Talanx? Every time there's change in management, the numbers never look quite as good. That's the reason I'm asking. Second, M&A. With so much solvency and such a strong outlook, you clearly, and buffer building, etc. My guess is, and maybe despite, I mean, I know you're saying you've got a balanced book, but bits of it are slowing. What's your appetite for acquisitions now? Is it up or down or the same? What does it look like? The final point is the thing which Munich Re was a little bit weak on is the top line. I know you explained top line if you adjust for this, that, and the other. Given where the cycle is for some of your businesses, in primary, I'm thinking more of a Corporate & Specialty where it looks like the Q2 number is a little bit not quite as strong as the H1. Can you give us a feel for what top line might do? Thanks. First of all, with regard to change in management, I'm not aware of any. We want to continue. We have fun together and we want to deliver. This is the first one. Second, with regard to the M&A appetite, as we always said, we are ready to do acquisitions, but they have to fulfill certain yardsticks. Financial discipline is key. What you also have seen, we have sold our entities in Latin America, the small ones, Argentina, Uruguay, Ecuador, where we had just very little market size or market share because we want to focus. We really believed in focused management. This will pay off. Yes, we are ready to do M&A. We would love to, and I continue what I always said, in Mexico, we're still looking for how whether we can strengthen our position one day. In corporate and specialty, we would also be ready to increase our business when we can leverage our cost ratio. This is really something which would add value. For Reinsurance, I would rule it out given the strengths of Hannover Re, their lean business model, their unique culture. I would rule that out. For Retail Germany, you have to find something which is sizable and good that it adds value. It's a little bit of a difficult task, but if there's something, we would take a close look at it to strengthen our market position. Finally, with regard to the top line, Michael, we are looking to currency adjusted growth rates and we keep our guidance amid single growth number for the full year. We have some special effects in it, like what was explained by Hannover Re, by the colleagues, which is roughly 3% in currency adjusted growth rates for the Talanx Group as a whole. It's quite significant. I really love to look a little bit through the cycles. We are a cost leader. We have a lot of resiliency. Let's put it like this. We have the right to grow profitable. Okay. Thanks. Next question is from Roland Pfänder. Roland Pfänder from ODDO BHF. Roland, please go ahead. Yes, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Two questions. First one would be on your C orporate & Specialty business. You showed an FX-adjusted growth of 8%, which is quite remarkable. Could you decompose this in price variation? Where are your growth momentum pockets in specialty or corporate? Where's this growth coming from? Maybe you could provide an outlook on the pricing side of both businesses just to get a better feeling of what's going on there. Second question is on Retail International. I saw your expense ratio trending down in the first and second quarter. Is this a new base level also for the second half of the year? Is it related to your bringing together the companies there and saving costs? Will this continue? Is this 26% ratio a more normalized level you would expect also going forward? Thank you. Thank you, Roland, for both questions. With regard to the first one, price and volume development, it's roughly half-half volume and price given the three segments within global, which is short tail, long tail, and specialty. In short tail, we see rather some pressure from the prices. In long tail, the prices are okay. In specialty also, inflation rates are slightly above price increases. All in all, if you look also at the future, it will be a little bit more volume than price driven, the growth, what we expect for the future. Given that we have the substantial cost benefits there, I'm very confident that we will write profitable business also in the future. With regard to Retail International, you guessed exactly the right way. We are here in Latin America on the way of integrating, merging the Liberty entities with the HDI entities in Chile, Colombia, and Brazil. This leads to cost savings. We are well on track there in all of the three countries. Given that I was myself responsible for some mergers in my past, I know this is a tremendously difficult task. I think the management in all of the three countries from Wilm Langenbach, they can really be proud on what they have achieved so far. It's not yet over. Still a lot of work to do. It will take another one to two years depending on the countries. You can already see the first positive development in the cost lines. The target is pretty clear. We want to become cost leaders in those markets because we believe as a strategic position, if you're significant among the top five and your cost leadership position, this is really the strategic target position which we want to be in in order to get a little bit more margin than our competitors. Okay. Next one in the line is Chris. Chris Hartwell from Autonomous. Chris, unmute your mic and go ahead, please. Good morning, gentlemen. Just a couple of quick questions. One is actually a little bit of a follow-on from the previous question just on Corporate & S pecialty. When you were talking sort of more holistically around the primary group, you were talking about the various cycles. Obviously, you didn't really mention specialty that much. I was wondering if you can just dig a little bit more or sort of go a level deeper in terms of what lines of business you are still seeing growth opportunity. Obviously, notwithstanding what your overall comment on the sort of the price leadership, I wonder where you really see the opportunity there in C&S currently. Secondly, I know it's a relatively small part of the business, but I was wondering what you are seeing and what your experience has been so far this year across German Motor. Thank you. I take the second one first. In German Motor, we are writing positive results. The combined ratio is clearly below 100% for the first six months, and we expect it to remain there. We have seen a hardening in the market as a whole, and we are benefiting from it. With regard to corporate and specialties, we do see opportunities. Sorry for saying that nearly everywhere given our position, but we obviously observe the market also in casualty. We've seen quite nice development also for both prices and volumes. In property, we've seen a decrease in the price or the price increase was below the inflation increase, but nevertheless, we are able to write profitable business here. Motor, the prices have gone slightly up because we have some fleets, particularly in Germany, where we had this increase in the motor premium. We are positive here as well. In specialty, as I already mentioned, and specialty is a bunch of various different businesses, we've seen overall that inflation rates have exceeded the price adaption. There we will do a little bit less business then because the main focus is in the end always to grow the bottom line. Even in specialty, we see some growth opportunities. I hope this, Chris, I hope this answers both of your questions. Yes, thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Okay, I can see you on the screen that Michael Huttner from Berenberg has another question. Mike, go ahead. Fantastic. Thanks, both. On Germany, the bits where the sales are coming down, they're linked to TARGO. Can you just give us a feel for presumably there'll be a profit impact at some stage? I just wonder if you could give us a timeline for this. Clearly, it will be delayed, but I don't know. Going back to Retail International, the feeling I have is the improvement in costs is there's quite a bit to come from LATAM. I just wondered if you could put a number to that. In Poland, the extraordinary improvement in profitability from already a very high level, can you give us a feel for where you see that going? Is this kind of sustainable? Thank you. Yeah, to start with TARGO, TARGO has contributed to both top and bottom line. Retail Germany has to compensate for it. The good news is if the end of the cooperation does not lead to a stop of profits right now because the portfolio is winding up with some profits over the time. They are able, together with some restructuring measures, to compensate for it. The target for Retail Germany is to keep the bottom line flat. The bottom line currently is roughly EUR 160 million flat. The good news, as you're always asking for the capital upstream, is it should be around EUR 200 million on average from Retail Germany. They are a strong contributor of dividends to Talanx AG and therefore enable us also to finance growth elsewhere. This is the role of HDI Germany. It's a tough management task for Jens Wagentin and his team. They are doing very well so far and they will continue with it. With regard to Latin America, we are well on track or we are exceeding the initial plans by far. It's really what Wilm Langenbach and his team have done there. We are still not where we want to be with regard to the cost position. There is more to come. We would be also ready to invest a little bit into making positive growth in the near future. The next year will be still focused on getting the mergers done. In one and a half years, next steps might arise here. We also have to look at the market sentiment. Currently, the pricing level in Latin America is very benign. It's a nice place to be. In Poland, I think it's an extraordinary performance of the management team around Jarek there. They are growing market share significantly. We are growing much faster than the market. Again, out of a position of a cost leader, you know we are a little bit passionate about that. This enables us to earn money with less premium than our competitor. In some areas, price really matters to the customers. We are very confident that we are having quite profitable growth here and we want to continue with it. This is the development of Poland. The growth rate of Poland, I wouldn't do extrapolation. There was some one-off effect due to the competition and then some of the competitors were focused on different things like taking care of their customer. We benefited a little bit from it, but nevertheless, we want to keep the customers which we gained and continue the relationship with them. All right. There is a follow-on question from Roland Pfänder from ODDO BHF. Roland. Yes, one follow-on question. You increased your guidance to around EUR 2.3 billion. May I ask you which combined ratio did you factor in for the Retail International and what would you expect to be the more normalized combined ratio run rate going forward, looking at the expense ratio improvements which look a little bit more underlying? Thank you. To start with, Retail International, you shouldn't take the result of Retail International multiplied by two for the full year because at the end of the year, there will be some steering measures also in Retail International. Combined ratio should remain below 93%. This is what I currently guess, but there might be some steering measures. Please give me this carve out by the year end. Okay, checking the screen for more questions. Are there any more questions from the audience? Give you some more seconds. Michael? Yes, sorry. Michael. Michael, you're mute. Sorry, probably because my question wasn't very clever, but it's more kind of philosophical. If I mean you have this cost leadership, but in some areas, pricing is, as you said, a little bit below cost inflation. I know you're very careful when you do your profits, but at some stage, are we going to arrive at peak profit? Is there such a thing or are we close to it? It's just that one always, you know, we like to do straight lines, but we're always worried about the bits afterwards. Is there any fear we should have? The reason, and I don't know how to put it, but in my life, I've never experienced insurance companies making 20% ROE. That's why I'm kind of thinking, is there kind of, are we, you know, over-earning or I don't know how to express it. That's a philosophical question. My CFO team and I, myself, we first want to provide for balance sheets which can deliver steadily growing dividends. This is the first priority. The second priority is that we want to produce earnings over time with lower volatility than our peers. The obvious thing is if there are capital markets events and so on, and fair value through P&L assets decline significantly and so on, there is some volatility which we cannot absorb. We have built over the past year a very, very strong balance sheet which can absorb quite some volatility. We are quite confident that we can deliver on earnings growth with lower volatility. Obviously, given the current profitability, and I share your view, we shouldn't keep always 20% return on equity as a given forever. The result out of it will be increasing competition if return on equity is so high. Therefore, we have to prepare for competition. We believe that's our core belief. You may, I'm repeating, repeating, repeating. We believe that cost leadership is really key to that. Cost leadership and good diversification because those are the two components of the price of an insurance. If you look at the price of an insurance from a customer perspective, it's about the admin costs and it's about the relative costs of a risk which is contributing to the overall portfolio. This depends on the degree of diversification. This degree of diversification within the Talanx Group is really very, very good. Operating in 175 countries in the world, we have a very good regional diversification. We have a very good diversification over various cycles. This is what drives our confidence. Yes, we would like to add certain things already to the markets where we see still some improvements for diversification. We are ready to grow also externally to do so. Overall, we are already in a very, very competitive position for that. May I just add, is there anything to say on Turkey? On Turkey? Yes. Turkey, they have improved their technical results quite significantly by more than the insurance result is better by more than EUR 30 million out of my mind. Quite strongly. Combined ratio stands slightly above 100%, which is not a dilemma given the high interest rates there. We are earning money. Nevertheless, operating in a high inflation environment, this is always challenging. Second, in Turkey, they have some currently new solvency standards for local purposes under consideration. This may have an effect on the cost of capital, on the amount of capital which you have to do in the business. With regard to the current earthquake, I haven't heard first numbers out of it, which have been there. If it would have been above a certain threshold, I would have heard it. I cannot give you some more insight. Thank you. There's another follow-on question from Chris Hartwell. Chris, go ahead. Sorry, me again. Just a very quick one. Apologies, this is probably a subject you talk about a lot, but as I'm sort of relatively new to the stock, I just want to sort of come back to the resilience sort of building. I think from the 2024 year-end position, it was like EUR 4.7 billion, I think, from memory. With Hannover Re the other day, I was coming out with something close to EUR 400 million of additional resilience built through the first half of the year, maybe a little bit less than that, but somewhere around that number. If I look at your primary business and assume you've recycled all of the favorable cat experience variants, I'm getting another, whatever that is, EUR 100 million, EUR 150 million or something. That would get me to something like EUR 500 million or so of resilience. Is that the right way to think about it? Looking at the question another way, can you help me walk through potential sources of resilience build over the course of the first half, please? Yes, I can. I think I like the way how you thought about it. First of all, all the liabilities are estimates. Once in a year, we're doing this additional assessment where we then say in concrete numbers, the resiliency as a difference between the tower squats and assessment of our liabilities and what we have booked. I think how you guessed about it, that's pretty okay. I just want to draw your attention that next to resiliency in the liabilities, there are some other positions in the balance sheet where we are also quite prudent, like tax accounting, like what we did on the investment side. We realized some losses during the first half of the year in the bond portfolio in order to achieve higher interest rates going forward. It is more than just the resiliency on the liabilities. I liked what you thought through, Chris. Yeah. Okay, thank you. Okay, checking screen, some more seconds. Anyone else with a question? Does not seem to be the case. I hand back to Jan for some concluding remarks. Thank you, Bernd. Once again, we had a very good first half of the year with an outstanding technical, really outstanding technical performance here. This has led to the confidence that we are increasing our guidance to around EUR 2.3 billion. We are happy to deliver on that. We will see each other in the next quarter after the hurricane season or after a large part of the hurricane season. Then we will know more about how to steer the year-end results and so on. We're happy if you could attend this call too. All right.