Dear ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Analyst and Investor Conference Call of Uniper. At our customers' requests, this conference will be recorded. As a reminder, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. If any participant has difficulty hearing the conference, please press star key followed by zero on your telephone for operator assistance. May I now hand you over to Stefan Jost, who will start today's meeting. Please go ahead. Good morning, dear analysts and investors. A warm welcome to the Uniper Interim results call for the first half of fiscal year 2021. Thank you for participating in our conference call today. Our CEO, Klaus-Dieter Maubach, and our CFO, Tiina Tuomela, will lead you through the interim results presentation today and answer all of your questions. Klaus-Dieter will start with the key highlights, and Tiina will then focus on the financial data. Klaus-Dieter, please. Thank you very much, Stefan. Good morning, everyone, and a warm welcome also from our side. I would like to briefly outline the key highlights of the first half of 2021 and shed some light on our major developments in the portfolio before Tiina will go into the details of our financials. What are the highlights of the first half of the fiscal year? As you can see on the slide, the half-year results are under the heading "Sound Results." Operationally, the business at the half-year point fully met our expectations. Already with the Q1 call in mid-May, we had communicated that the isolated adjusted EBIT in Q2 would carry a negative sign. In the end, the well-known carbon phasing effect, which resulted from the sharp increase in CO2 prices towards end of June, was even more pronounced than anticipated. Accordingly, adjusted group EBIT in H1, 2021 decreased from EUR 691 million to EUR 580 million compared to previous year. For the full year, we confirm our previous outlook, which we raised in the first quarter. Turning towards our strategy and portfolio development. When I entered office more than 100 days ago, I made clear that accelerating Uniper's decarbonization strategy would be at the top of my agenda. Back then, I did not expect how strongly the upcoming weeks would further highlight the urgency in this regard. Governments and courts are increasing the pace. With its Fit For 55 plan, the EU Commission has set the frame to make Europe the first carbon neutral continent. Germany itself has just increased its reduction targets for 2030 from 55% to 65%. The recent extreme weather phenomena inside and outside of Europe make one thing very clear. Whatever the costs of decarbonization are, not transitioning will lead to even higher costs for society. With regard to the recent floods in Germany, luckily, Uniper employees, our activities have not been affected. We are supporting the people who are affected both financially and directly at the locations of our customers and partners. In the long term, it is our portfolio transformation that contributes the most in the fight against climate change, which brings me to the next slide. The phase out of coal-fired generation is the most visible sign of how we at Uniper are moving forward with our decarbonization strategy. At the beginning of 2020, we set for the first time a concrete phase out schedule for coal-fired power generation in Europe. As you can see on the slide, by now, we are making even faster progress than originally planned. Compared against the original plan, we saved more than 5 million tons of CO2 with our accelerated coal exit. In Germany, the plan was to end coal-fired power generation at four of the five sites by the end of 2025. We have now been awarded in all of the first three German hard coal exit tenders. The Heyden Power Plant involved in the first auction ceased commercial operation at the beginning of 2021. This power plant was declared system relevant by the TSO. After approval by the Federal Network Agency, the power plant is now to be kept ready as a backup solution for two years until September 2022. Since going into the reserve scheme, Heyden has been requested several times by the TSO, which highlights the issue of security of supply and system stability. The Wilhelmshaven Power Plant, which was successful in the second auction, will cease operation in December 2021. Given its port access to the North Sea, we are working intensively on solutions to establish a commercial hydrogen hub there in the medium term. In the most recent auction, Scholven Power Plant Unit C was selected. Accordingly, it will cease commercial operation at the end of October 2022. We want to push ahead with the coal phase out, not only in Germany. Of course, we also fully support the ambitious national coal phase out plans abroad and even deliver above those in the case of the U.K. We announced just last week that we'll bring forward the closure of one of the four Ratcliffe coal units to the end of September 2022, two years ahead of the date announced by the U.K. government for the coal phase out. Power generation in the remaining three units of the 2 GW power plant is scheduled to end by the end of September 2024 at the latest, after the power plant has fulfilled its obligations under the U.K. capacity market scheme. With respect to the Ratcliffe site, Uniper is making progress in the development of an energy recovery facility to be known as the East Midlands Energy Re-Generation EMERGE Centre, an anchor project for a zero-carbon technology and Energy Hub for the site. Datteln 4 will be the last of our European coal-fired power plants to be taken off the grid by the end of 2038 at the latest, which is in line with the German Coal Phase- Out Act. The power plant has been almost completely marketed to our customers. Recently, in its new climate protection law, the German government has materially increased the greenhouse gas reduction target for 2030. For the energy industry, this means the old reduction path from 257 million tons in 2020 down to 175 million tons in 2030, has now been decreased further, even down to 108 million tons in 2030. If a new German government wants to talk about the coal phase out again in this context, then we are prepared to talk. Of course, such talks need to cover the question of compensation as well. The second lever for decarbonizing the portfolio is getting the growth projects on the road more quickly. As you know, we have earmarked EUR 1.5 billion to spend on growth investments over three years. Renewables will be a key element in improving Uniper's energy mix. At the same time, we will leverage Uniper's existing expertise and platform in many areas of the gas value chain to offer lower carbon products and services. Green gases are therefore the second pillar of our transition story. I would like to share with you a few examples of how we have been ramping up new business areas in 2021. As part of our One Team Approach, we have bundled Fortum's and Uniper's capabilities in the renewables area. The joint organization, with around 100 employees in the future, will be developing our onshore wind and solar activities in Europe. The plan is to jointly build 1.5 GW-2 GW of new capacity in the most attractive European markets by 2025. I'm optimistic that we will be able to be more specific on first promising projects towards the end of the year. We have expanded our renewables PPA portfolio. On the one hand, we use our experience from the trading and optimization business and act as an enabler for developers. On the other hand, we will increasingly address medium-sized and small commercial customers in order to structure long-term carbon-free energy supplies according to the individual needs of our B2B customers. New contracts signed in Spain and the USA have recently further increased our PPA portfolio. At the top of our agenda is also to leverage the gas business for the opportunities that arise in the transition of the energy industry. More specifically, this involves the further build-out of our already existing green gas portfolio. From a midterm perspective, we will continue to utilize Fortum's and Uniper's joint capabilities to position ourselves as a major player in the rapidly increasing hydrogen economy. The initial focus here is on launching major pilot projects, which need to be supported by public funding and developing concepts through cooperation agreements. The green methanol project, Air, in Sweden is one step further towards concrete implementation. This project is being planned by the Swedish chemical group Perstorp together with Uniper and Fortum. Having already qualified for the next stage of evaluation under the EU Innovation Fund, the project recently received financial support of EUR 30 million from the Swedish Energy Agency. Moreover, further cooperation agreements were concluded to improve our market entry opportunities. Uniper and Shell Gas & Power Developments recently signed a MOU to drive forward joint cross-border projects. The focus is on exploring future opportunities for the large volume transport of hydrogen from the ports of Rotterdam and Wilhelmshaven to Germany's core industrial region of North Rhine-Westphalia. For Uniper, as a major European gas midstream supplier, creating import channels for green hydrogen or alternative fuels, such as green ammonia for Europe, is a core story. A few days ago, Uniper signed a cooperation agreement with the project company HYPORT Oman, representing Oman's national petroleum investment company, and DEME, a world leader in the highly specialized fields of dredging and solutions for the offshore energy market. The project foresees building both an electrolysis plant for 250 MW-500 MW, and the corresponding renewable power assets by 2026. Uniper will provide technical services. The main focus is on drawing up an exclusive offtake agreement for green ammonia, which we intend to import via our planned Wilhelmshaven hub. Not to forget Uniper's commitment to expand mobility solutions for heavy-duty transport. Uniper, with its subsidiary, Liqvis, has been in the process of establishing a liquefied natural gas filling station network for long-haul transport in Germany since 2017. The small LNG station network in Germany is slowly expanding, and sales grew by about 75% in 2020. Following the successful completion of a trial run of bioLNG with a major logistic company and the truck manufacturer, Iveco, Liqvis will now also offer a carbon neutral product at an attractive price for the first time from 2022 onwards. The use of bioLNG results in greenhouse gas savings of around 96% compared with conventional diesel fuel. Now over to our key performance indicators in the first half of fiscal year 2021. Starting with the global commodities business, storages have been close to their peak in half year 1 of 2020, following a mild winter and decreased demand due to COVID-19. Meanwhile, a colder winter with ample withdrawals from our storages was covered with a global economic recovery and supply shortages. In light of this market environment, European gas prices showed a volatile development and have more than doubled since the beginning of 2021. These combined factors brought our storage levels to around 66%, which is still above the currently observable market average. As recently announced, the upcoming COD of Nord Stream 2 in Q4 2021 may help to ease the current tightness on the gas markets. Building up on our first quarter, the European generation segment achieved, again, a remarkable increase in power generation volumes of 19%. Hydro volumes decreased by 9% year-on-year. This development is mainly related to a normalization in Nordic generation volumes as we faced extraordinary high precipitation and snow melt during the first half of 2020. In contrast, German hydro output has risen by 5% following strong precipitation. Nuclear output declined by around 2%, which mostly resulted from the closure of the minority-owned Ringhals 1 power plant by the end of last year. Gas and coal-fired power generation continued the Q1 trend and has risen by almost 50% year-on-year, which can be explained by several interconnected developments. Firstly, a significant decrease in renewable supply, e.g., due to less wind, as well as additional power demand due to colder weather across Central Europe and U.K. Secondly, the higher volumes are also driven by the COD of Datteln 4, which has only been producing since June 2020, and the gas-fired power plants Irsching 4 and 5 being back in the merchant market since October 2020. The Russian power segment continues to deliver performance above plan with an increase of roughly 4%. This development can be mainly explained with a withdrawal of COVID-19 related restrictions for businesses, higher demand on the Russian market, and also beneficial weather conditions compared to the very warm winter in 2019/2020. As can be expected from the group-wide rise in fossil generation volumes, carbon emissions show a plus of about 19%. This development is in line with the overall market this year and highlights today's relevance of fossil fuels to ensure security of supply and the need to change that going forward. From Uniper's perspective, given the broader fossil asset base, we expect this trend to continue for the full year 2021, and even 2022, as already highlighted back in May. Starting with this quarter, we will also report our group-wide specific carbon intensity to provide further transparency on our decarbonization progress. Our specific carbon intensity remained at prior year's level with approximately 440 gms CO2 per kWh produced after the first six months, even though the percentage of fossil volumes increased. This is mainly attributable to the high efficiency at Jänschwalde 4 and 5. Looking forward, we will drive the emission intensity of our fleet down. Uniper is actively tackling decarbonization across the organization and along our entire value chain. Throughout the next months, we will be more specific when it comes to providing proof points on our strategy execution. Having said that, I'm handing over to Tiina, who will lead you through our key financials. Thank you very much, Klaus-Dieter. Overall, looking at Uniper's financials after the first six months, we can see, as expected, mostly a decrease in the relevant metrics compared to prior year. There are three key messages around those numbers that put the development in perspective. First, while we see a decrease compared to prior year, the absolute level of our metrics are healthy. Second, the negative earnings development year- on- year is driven by phasing effects, which reflects the recent carbon price rally. The underlying business development is actually stable and solid. Third, we are fully on track to reach our communicated full-year guidance. Having said that, let's go through the KPIs on this chart. Both adjusted EBIT and EBITDA are down by around EUR 112 million compared to the previous year. Accordingly, economic D&A remains stable at around EUR 320 million in the first half of the year. In comparison, the adjusted net income decreased only by EUR 42 million year-on-year. As taxes and minorities remain stable at about EUR 25 million and EUR 150 million, the reason for the comparatively better development of the adjusted net income is the improved economic interest result. Here we have a positive impact from revaluation of our hydro provision due to higher interest rates. The unadjusted or reported net income shows a very strong decline compared to prior year. This results mainly from mark-to-market effects on unrealized derivatives. The main driver here are our power hedges, i.e., short deals at the exchange that lost in value as prices increased. Economically, this is offset by a higher value of our assets. However, those assets are not accounted for on a mark-to-market basis in the net income. This mismatch highlights the usefulness of adjusted earnings metrics to assess our actual performance. Economic net debt increased somewhat compared to the end of last year, in line with the usual seasonal pattern. Finally, on the operating cash flow, we actually see an improvement year-on-year. As usual, I will now get into details of those KPIs, starting with the underlying earnings drivers on the next chart. This slide breaks down the year-on-year development on the adjusted EBIT into main effects. The overall negative delta of EUR 111 million can be fully explained by carbon phasing. This means that in the first six months of 2021, we had more than EUR 100 million of additional carbon phasing compared to prior year. Like in the past, this effect will fully revert in Q4 and will therefore have no impact on the full-year result. It stems from the fact that we hedge our carbon exposures with products that settle at year-end. Accordingly, in times of increasing CO2 prices, we record higher expenditure within the year for higher CO2 provision, while the offsetting gains on the hedges are not yet realized in adjusted EBIT until they settle in Q4. The magnitude of the carbon phasing effect can be explained by the CO2 price increase of more than EUR 20 since the beginning of 2021. Looking at the underlying business performance, we actually see overall a flat development year-on-year. European fossil generation is up almost EUR 100 million compared to the already strong prior year. Here we see additional contributions from Datteln 4 and the gas-fired Irsching power plant, all of which were not in commercial operation for the most part of the last year's half year. Additionally, we received higher UK capacity payments in 2021. Our hydro generation business is down by about EUR 30 million due to the lower volumes and prices. On the volume side, it is mostly due to the normalization from high water levels last year. Price-wise, the decrease is mainly driven by lower achieved prices for the nuclear side. Moving over to global commodities, which shows a higher double-digit decrease year-on-year, primarily to the gas midstream business. As mentioned in the last call, we see here a normalization of earnings after an extraordinary result in half year last year. This swing in gas is only partly compensated by the positive development in the international commodity portfolio, which benefited from the market environment in Q1 2021. Our Russian power generation business showed a decrease of roughly EUR 10 million, mainly driven by FX development. Business-wise, the negative impact from Shaturskaya and Yaivinskaya moving from the CSA to the KOM has been compensated by additional contribution from Berezovskaya 3. Category Other sums up all remaining effects, adding up to a single-digit positive number that is mostly reflecting a lapse of expenses in the outright generation area. On slide eight, you can follow the reconciliation from the group's adjusted EBIT to operating cash flow. Even though adjusted EBITDA decreased by EUR 112 million compared to prior year, we see the operating cash flow before interest and taxes actually increased by roughly the same amount. Accordingly, the cash conversion rate improved from 35% to 50% year- on- year. Let's go to the waterfall. Starting with the EBITDA on the left side and moving to the right. The EBITDA is adjusted for non-cash effective items. Those are primary additions and revaluation of provisions, in this case, mostly workforce-related provisions. In the next, effects reflects the provision utilization, i.e., the actual payout of provisions that have been built up in the past. As usual, this considers primary three categories of provisions: nuclear decommissioning, workforce, and onerous contracts, mostly related to our global commodities business. Next, change in working capital, and here is one of the main reasons why the cash conversion is significantly higher compared to last year. As Klaus-Dieter mentioned, our current gas inventory levels are significantly lower compared to prior year due to the colder winter and the current market environment. Accordingly, our net increase in working capital is about EUR 170 million lower compared to prior year, which explains the swing on the OCF side. The next element, called other, includes mainly the net effects from CO2-related provisions and working capital movements. Here we also see a significant positive driver due to the higher correction for non-cash effective additions to CO2 provisions. Let's go over to the development of the economic net debt on the next slide. After hitting a low in Q1 at EUR 2.5 billion, the economic net debt amounted to EUR 3.2 billion at the end of June 2021. Compared to the beginning of the year, this is an increase of roughly EUR 100 million. Looking at the underlying drivers from the left to right, we see that the OCF fully covers our group's investments. The dividend of EUR 501 million was paid out in May after our virtual AGM. All else equal, this would have pushed the economic net debt significantly higher. On the provision side, we see a relief of more than EUR 400 million due to higher interest rates and therefore lower pension and asset retirement obligations. When it comes to pension, interest rates increased for Germany from 0.8% to 1.2%, and for U.K. from 1.5% to 2%. Overall, when it comes to our credit rating, we remain in a very comfortable position. This is further underlined by the recent S&P decision to change the outlook of our BBB rating from negative to stable. When it comes to our full-year outlook on our financial KPIs, the outlook, which we raised following strong Q1 results, is left unchanged. We expect adjusted EBIT to end up between EUR 800 million and EUR 1,050 million at the year-end. For adjusted net income, we see a range of EUR 650 million- EUR 850 million on a full-year basis. While Q2 turned out somewhat lower than indicated during our first quarter analyst call, we remain fully confident in our guidance for the full year, mostly for two reasons. First, the lower earnings in Q2 were primarily driven by phasing effects, which by definition will reverse in Q4 and have therefore no impact on our full-year results. Second, looking at the business forecast over the next six months, we see already significant contribution materializing, especially in the global commodities area. Looking at the remaining two quarters individually, you can, as usual, expect a negative adjusted EBIT in Q3 and a strong positive contribution in the last quarter. As of today, we expect a negative isolated third quarter, but better than previous years Q3. Please note that the earnings split between Q3 and Q4 depends on the further development of commodity prices, especially carbon and gas, as just witnessed in Q2. This brings me to the end of my presentation today. Stefan, back to you. Thank you, Tiina. Speaking of commodity price development, may I remind you that our IR app Energy Hub Uniper is the perfect tool to stay up to date on all relevant commodity prices. This is underlined by the very positive feedback we received since its release last summer. With the recent update, it now includes the daily European utility newsletter provided by Bloomberg. Of course, it's free of charge. We neither take your money nor your data. If you have any questions on this app, please reach out to our IR team. For questions related to Q2 and today's presentation, however, I'm happy to open the Q&A round now. Operator, please. Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question for our speakers, please dial zero and one on your telephone keypad now to enter the queue. Once your name has been announced, you can ask a question. If you find your question is answered before it is your turn to speak, you can dial zero and two to cancel your question. If you're using speaker equipment today, please lift the handset before making a selection. Remember please for the first question. The first question is from Lueder Schumacher, Societe Generale. Your line is now open. Yes, good morning. Two or three questions on my side, all mainly related to gas prices. Normally, you tend to benefit in a strong environment for fuel commodities, and Q2 has been extremely strong. Gas optimization, there was a lot of optimizing to be done. Why can't we see this in the numbers? You actually showed a negative impact there. Were you sort of positioned the wrong way, or can you maybe explain why you, unlike other big trading houses, Vattenfall, RWE, they had an absolute storm in Q2. Why did it not quite work in your favor? The second one is just your general view on gas prices. We are now 25% for the TTF front month above the previous high in 2008. There's, of course, a big squeeze. You referred to Nord Stream 2 in your presentation. Do you think that this coming online will sort of ease the squeeze and the tightness we are seeing in European gas markets at the moment? Could there be a prolonged squeeze simply because gas storage can't be filled up in time for the winter, with prices and supplies being like it is? The last one is just a technical one. When you mentioned your carbon intensity on page five, does this refer to all of Uniper, or is this just Europe? Thank you, good morning, Lueder. Thank you for your questions. I think the general one on gas prices, that's one that Klaus-Dieter will answer, Tiina will comment on the gas optimization. On the carbon intensity, we're checking that quickly and refer to it. Maybe I start with your second question on the kind of general outlook of gas prices. Obviously, it's a little bit about kind of speculating for the future. What we see is that we monitor a number of factors. One of the factors we've mentioned in our presentation, this is the filling of the gas storage facilities across Europe. We mentioned that, as far as we know, we are ahead of our competitors in terms of that, with a 66% of filling so far. On average, I think it's 50 something%, which is again, if you compare it to previous years, rather on the lower end of the averages that we have seen so far. That is one factor clearly going forward. The second factor, as you rightfully pointed out, is about gas import infrastructure and availability of gas import infrastructure. We've received recently news on congestions due to an incident in Russia, which is still unclear how the mid to long-term effect would look like. I think we can't speculate on this one. The main driver for that would be simply, what kind of winter do we have to anticipate? If it was a winter like the last one from 2020 to 2021, I think that would rather support high gas prices. If it was a warm winter, we would rather expect a lower price. What I'm saying is there are a number of factors obviously playing into that price development going forward when it comes to, in particular, the price developments over the next, say, I don't know, 12 months or so. On gas optimization, maybe Tiina? Yeah. Thank you. I continue. As mentioned, of course, very significant increase in the gas prices, but in our operations, we would say that there is no direct impact on our profitability as we do not have a pure long positions here. I think for us, it's more question about the volatility and summer/winter spreads. As usual, our margins are mainly made during winter, so to say, last quarter of the year, first quarter of the year, when we withdraw from our storages. What comes to the relevant spread, we can say that the gas have not improved so much. What comes to our, in a way, performance, however, we can see that the first half year overall for gas is on the stronger side, so maybe impact a bit more than EUR 200 million EBIT. We expect it also to be a good full year. Okay. Very clear. On the last question. Yeah, last question on the carbon emissions there, that's referring to the group. That's the program on page five. Excellent. Thank you. The next question is from Alberto Gandolfi, Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open. Thank you and good morning. I want to ask two questions, if I may. The first one is, if you can share, please, your thinking regarding the gap between German power prices and Nordic power prices, and if you expect the gap to widen, narrow, or remain stable, and if you maybe can tell us why, that'd be great. The second question is, if you can give us an update on your new businesses. You eloquently explained on slide four the ramp-up you expect in renewables and in green gas. I was wondering if you can give us an update as to potentially what uplift to EBITDA you would expect from these, given changes in cost of raw materials, given the change in commodities, or perhaps if you can tell us maybe the invested capital and the returns that you're targeting, in light of the new scenario that we are living in. Thank you. Yeah. Good morning, Alberto. Great questions. Good to have you on the call. The first one on the German and Nordic power prices, that goes to Tiina. The second one on the new businesses will be tackled by Klaus-Dieter then. Tiina, over to you. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for the question. We agreed there is a massive gap, in a way, between the Nordic and German prices. In our view, it could come down over the time. The reasoning why we believe that's possible is that there are new interconnections between the different marketplaces. Already last year, there was a NordLink between Norway, Denmark. At the end of this year, North Sea Link is planned go online at the end of this year. Then further, Viking Link 2024 and more to come even following years. Also, what we have seen in the Nordics, they have also some restrictions between the different areas, particularly between the Swedish area two and area three, which are easing up. At the end of the day, I think it's also a question about the supply and demand pattern. As there is a strong need for decarbonization and electrification is the one key, we expect industries, heavy users of electricity, to use and in a way take also the demand side up and in a way balancing the very big differences what we currently see. Over to you, Klaus-Dieter, the first part of the question. Yes. Yeah. Thank you. I am building on what Tiina said. Clearly, there is one big unknown effect that we have also seen in continental Europe, and that is obviously also something that we do need to fully understand and notice is the additional renewables power generation that comes on stream, and how does that have an impact on kind of prices. This is very difficult to predict. We have seen that also in continental Europe. Back to your second question on our growth ambitions. Number one, I would say we have two areas, as we try to highlight, renewables and green gas, hydrogen. If we look short term, which means one, two, three years, then I would rather expect us to spend most of the money that we have available for growth investments, we indicated would be EUR 1.5 billion over the next three years. I would expect more money to be spent on the renewables side and not on the green gas side, since we have more, I would say, tangible and large projects already in our pipeline on the renewables side. That's number one. Number two, difficult to predict how the returns for these investments will look like. It depends on a number of factors, and I cannot give you any number on our calculation on internal rates of return because obviously our return expectations, we expect are dependent on a number of factors. It's a country factor. It's the technology, wind or solar, because wind is more volatile than solar. It's about the maturity of the projects that we are embarking on. Is it an existing or already producing wind farm that we're looking at, or is it a greenfield investment, which would carry then, as a project, a higher risk? Our return expectations depend on also the project and the number of factors that come with a certain project. There is nothing that I can. Even if I wanted to disclose that number, it would be difficult to do that. Got that. Thank you for your answers. The next question is from James Brand, Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open. Good morning. Thanks for the presentation. Am I allowed three questions, or is it two? Some people have been going for three, so I'll try for three, and if you only want to answer two, that's fine. The first question is, you still haven't outlined an updated dividend policy. When should we expect one? Will we have one before year-end, or should we anticipate waiting until the end of the year? The second question is on hedging, which I know you don't disclose the hedging after 2023, but you obviously have a very high level of German forward hedging out to 2022 at almost 100%. Obviously at levels quite way below where the current forward curve is. When we're thinking about the upside potential for your earnings from that business and thinking ahead to 2024, it's useful to at least have some kind of indication as to how much you might have hedged. I'm sure you don't want to disclose an exact percentage, seeing as you haven't formally disclosed that. When we're thinking about 2024, have you hedged very little or a moderate amount, or you're pretty hedged for 2024 as well on German power? The final question, Dr. Dieter, you made some quite strong comments at the beginning around the green transition and that we need to kind of pursue alignment with that, kind of whatever the cost, or at least I noted down, maybe you didn't quite say it in that exact way. I was wondering whether you could just elaborate a bit on that, how we should think about that. When you say whatever the cost, should we expect you to close profitable stations or make disposals of assets below what you think they might be worth just because it kind of aligns with the green agenda? How should we think about the kind of trade-off there between you pursuing that, whatever the cost, and maximizing shareholder value? Maybe the two go hand in hand. Thank you very much. Good morning, James, and thank you. I think I didn't mention this time the two-question rule, so I think it's perfectly fine if you ask three questions. The first one on dividend, but also the last one on green transition, that would be two for Klaus-Dieter, and then Tiina will take the hedging question afterwards. I would like to say thank you for the third question because I felt, kind of listening to your first question, that I received today all the questions from the participants, which I have to kind of push back and give almost no answer to. I'm grateful for your last question. We'll come back to that in a second. On dividends, I have to admit that we're not ready to comment, even not ready to give any kind of outlook on when to come back to this dividend question. We're working on this. Clearly, the number of things that we have to figure out going forward, some are clearly connected to our business, to the volatility of our business. Some are also connected to the growth story that we're trying to outline, since there are obviously a number of things that we have in our pipeline, which could have also an impact on that one. No, we can't say anything on dividend today, and unfortunately, no, we cannot even do any outlook on when we are going to come back to this topic. Your last question, the third one on decarbonization. I think you rightfully pointed to a discussion that we do actually have internally. It's clearly a trade-off between our ambitions to decarbonize our footprint, our business, and at the very same time, also maximize shareholder value. This is constantly a discussion that we have. It's very concrete whenever we have our internal discussions and decisions. For example, to participate in German coal exit tenders, because we have to submit a certain price level. That price that we know the maximum cap, for example, when we kind of discuss that in the boardroom. We make a decision on how to position ourselves, and to do that in a way that on one end, we are not kind of leaving money on the table, if you like, and on the other hand, that we're also pursuing our decarbonization strategy. Ratcliffe is another good example for that. We made a decision to earlier close one unit as of end of September 2022, as I mentioned, so that it's two years earlier than originally planned. Clearly, that again, was also a discussion that we have, to what extent are we not capturing maybe a remaining value with that unit? To what extent is it supporting our decarbonization strategy? Finally, we made the decision to announce this earlier closure of unit one. I think it will continue to be a debate that we will internally have on this kind of trade-off between our ambitious plan to decarbonize our portfolio on one end, and at the very same time, also creating shareholder value for our investors and shareholders. Moving to the other question about our hedging. In overall, we could say that our portfolio is not very sensitive to the price changes for the remainder of this year, next year, 2023. The reason being that when we look at our position at the year beginning, we were widely hedged. On the overall, we could say that the price level is the one thing. The other thing is that what is the liquidity in the market? In our view, the summer liquidity has been also fairly low, what has also impacted our hedging possibilities. What comes to the further years, so of course, the direction is very promising. At the moment, we will not yet disclose our hedging levels as 2024, but we are coming later to that in the quarterly report. Great. Thank you very much. The next question is from Sam Arie, UBS. Your line is now open. Hello. Thank you. Good morning, everybody. Very helpful presentation as always. Listen, I wanted to ask a question, if I may, on the bigger picture around carbon prices. I think the way I'd put the question is as follows. Correct me if you see it differently, but a few years ago, I think it was consensus that if the carbon price went above a level of about EUR 30, then there would start to be some fairly intense lobbying from industrial groups, consumer groups, and so on because of the impact of that on power bills. Now we've been at a carbon price over EUR 50 for a while, and what surprises me is that we don't seem to hear a lot of complaining so far from the people paying the power bills. I suppose my question on carbon is, given your position in the market and what you see, do you think carbon at this level is politically sustainable? Specifically with reference to, I guess, Germany and Sweden that you must know very well, do you pick up any discussion of potential or clawback measures similar to what we've seen in Spain this year or anything equivalent? I do have a second question, if you forgive me, on Russia, but perhaps I'll let you answer on carbon, and I'll come back on Russia in a moment. Okay. Thank you, Sam. Good question. I think Klaus, you go. Well, indeed, I agree with you that we had a totally different discussion on carbon pricing a few years ago. Now we are constantly above EUR 50, and we should acknowledge that at the very same time also have very high gas and also coal prices. We've seen pretty high prices for the wholesale market for the next winter. What I would say is that, when you were coming to this topic of power build, I think my major concern that I would have is in particular how that leads to, not so much the Nordics, because they have different price level obviously these days, but in particular to the power market in Continental Europe, how industrial customers can digest this price peak. What we know from our industrial customers, their input prices, not only for power and gas, but also for other materials, are pretty high and have increased over time. They do face a number of price increases that they have to digest and turn into increased prices going forward. That is, in my view, something we as an industry should be concerned about, because that basically has an impact on the competitiveness of our industrial customers. When it comes to retail customers, let's wait and see how the price development will look like mid to long term. That will depend on a number of factors. We should acknowledge that, for example, in Germany, higher wholesale prices would have a compensating effect on the, what we call EEG, which is the compensation on the renewable side. That's difficult to judge how the residential prices would look like. Carbon pricing, I think, obviously, is very much driven also by political agendas that we should also expect. You know that we have elections coming in Germany. We have an election coming in France, which is also very important for Europe. I don't see that there is any appetite to intervene from the political side in a way that carbon prices are going down. Let's wait and see whether governments will even push it into a direction in which they still rise. That's somewhat difficult. In a nutshell, my main concern would be with our industrial customers that are exposed to very high- power prices meanwhile. Thank you. There was a second question. Oh, yeah. Well, sorry, just a quick follow-up on carbon, but just on this specific point about, we get this question all the time, if we think there's a risk that other countries might introduce some kind of clawback scheme similar to the one that the Spanish government is putting through at the moment. Have you heard any discussion of that we should be aware of? Do you think we can rule that out in other countries outside of Spain? I think I would be careful in ruling that out, but at least what I can say honestly is that I've not seen any debate that we actually had so far for the time being around that or any risk that we would have identified in that sense. I'm not aware of that. Okay. Very clear. Just quickly, my other question was on Russia, and it's very simple, but I suppose it wouldn't be a Uniper results call if I didn't ask you guys a question on Russia. Can I just ask, is there any update on your thinking about Unipro, whether this remains a core asset in your planning, or if we should be thinking of the holding in Unipro as more of a financial asset now, which could be up for disposal at some point? No. On Russia, situation is unchanged. Now, first of all, come back to what we've said earlier. We are very happy about the fact that our Russian team has successfully put on stream Berezovskaya 3, which is an important unit also when it comes to capacity payments that we receive now, starting from May 2021 onwards, obviously. That's very helpful. Great achievement of our Russian team. When we look at Russia and our activities there, it's more that we also see this as an element, a part of our portfolio. As I said before, also Russia, we look at Russia and then ask ourselves, how can also our Russian business contribute to our decarbonization strategy, which is clearly something that is very challenging also for our Russian power business. There's nothing new from that end when it comes to Unipro or things that are speculated in the media around our future divestment or something like that. Okay. Very clear. Well, forgive me for asking, but thanks for your very helpful explanations. The next question is from Vincent Ayral with JP Morgan. Your line is now open. Yes. Good morning. We'll come back a bit to the beginning of the call regarding the commodity price and what seems to have been a missed opportunity potentially. I'd like to adjust a bit better. You're saying like 66% of gas storage at end of June, that's more than market average. That begs the question, why do you have high gas storage when gas prices are high? Didn't you have an opportunity to sell at higher price and a lot more profit in Q2? You're talking about Nord Stream 2 coming in Q4. Is it that you've sold forward some gas volume for to lock summer winter spread in towards the end of the year? On the gas storage side of things, is it that actually you had an opportunity, and you locked it and we just don't see it in Q2, but we'll see towards the end of the year? It will be interesting for us to understand that. The second thing is on the power generation. I'll say, like usual, I say I spoke for it to speak for everyone. It's an almost impossible for us to assess the trajectory because of the volatility mark-to- market obviously to provision and release. Uniper is the only one to do that, and it makes things very difficult for either sell side or investors to get a clear assessment. Hopefully one day we'll get publications like peers in this respect. Coming to the outright, it seems that you've tuned the price slightly down. You are hedged a lot out, and that was a point raised by a competitor a bit earlier, I think Deutsche Bank. Yeah. What was the reason to be hedged that much? Is question number one, and question number two is, when you start the year, normally you still got 5% to usually we'd say 10%-20%, but maybe in this case, 5%-10% at least of open position. The power price went up 50%, why weren't you able to capture this opportunity? If I were to put things, just two questions, and rephrase them. You're saying you're not long gas. Absolutely understand, that's physical. You have a trading desk like competitors, you don't have to be physically long. It's a trading position. What is different in your trading department from peers? I do not mind having lower volatility and profitability, to be very honest, but it's something we need to understand. Thank you. Fine. If I start on your first question on the commodity, wasn't the filling and our strategy behind that, and then maybe, I don't know whether, hopefully Tiina get this question around CO2 trajectory and also other hedging strategies you make, then kind of try to answer the questions that you had on this one. Let me start with this gas and filling. Number one, I don't know why our kind of competitors do follow a different strategy on filling their gas storages. I don't want to speculate on that one really. What we do see, it's just a fact that the average filling in our sector is lower than our gas storage filling. Clearly, we're trying to understand that and also the rationale behind that. As Tiina already said, we are in particular also after kind of understanding the summer winter spreads that are a key driver for our profitability, and we're trying to kind of adapt that, trying to understand that, and trying to benefit from that, and hence also kind of trying to make the right decisions on our gas position. I would add, there are a number of things in our long-term gas purchase strategy and also in our long-term contracts that I would not like to disclose honestly, that have an impact on the way we are trying to kind of hedge our position, but also trying to purchase and also fill our gas storages. That may also be different, be a factor that distinguishes us and our strategy from the position that our competitors do take. It's a little bit of speculation, and I don't want to go so far speculating on why others do pursue different strategies in the way they are dealing with a similar challenge. Yeah. If I continue about the hedging and outright hedge percentages, it is very true that the percentages are high. It's always easy to, in a way, look backwards and see that that's what could be the optimal position. I think that if we think about last year, we were in the middle of the COVID situation. We didn't know how the demand and the economy will develop. I think in hedging, we in a way that's also risk management, but also securing our cash flow. I would say that this is probably the one background reason. If we look at from the past and the reasons why the hedges are fairly big. About our commodity business and how we are doing. I think it's good to, in a way, see the overall profitability of our commodity business and just thinking about our last year cash results. It was around the EUR 600 million EBIT with a very difficult winter. This year, we see more kind of the normalization and after six months, we have already gained EUR 200 million. This is significant results. I think one reason, kind of the parameter, is the timing, when the results will realize, when we take our position. Usually, we also hedge and how they turn to our accounts might have some swings. Okay. Thank you very much. The next question is from Deepa Venkateswaran at Bernstein. Your line is now open. Thank you. I think some of my questions have already been asked, so I'm going to have a go at the Russia question again, but in a slightly different way, which is that currently you're not dominated by Fortum. Do you think that if Fortum were to dominate you, that is what is needed for clarity on how you would look at Russia? Do you think that the outcome is completely independent of Fortum's ownership on what you do with Uniper? Deepa, good morning. Good to have you on the call. If that's your only question, we close, Dieter. Yes, we are not dominated by Fortum. Yes, we still don't know how Fortum is going to take any decision, if at all. I think I cannot comment and will continue to not comment on and speculate on what Fortum is going to do with their shareholding in Uniper. Hence, we are discussing our Russian power business activities totally independent from the discussion that Fortum might have. I don't see any kind of connection between Fortum's ambition or ambitions around the Russian business and our ambitions. We have to take our decisions and our strategy implementation clearly independent from that. What I would stress, though, is, and that is important, and I can kind of confirm that again, that the strategy that we have defined, and that was defined in early 2020, it was confirmed by end of last year, is still the strategy that we are implementing, and that is still and clearly supported by Fortum. That's important to say. We feel absolutely comfortable with our strategy implementation path, clearly supported by our main shareholder. Okay. Thank you. The next question from Piotr Dzieciolowski. Your line is now open. Hi. Good morning, everybody. Thank you for letting me ask the questions. I have two maybe small ones. First, can you maybe tell us what's the impact of the CO2 hedging provisions on your cash flow cycle throughout the year? Do you build the cash up front and then you release it in the April? Based on the current carbon pricing, what's the kind of magnitude of annual cash flow difference if there is a swing like this? Second, I'd like to ask you about the Irsching 4 and 5, which you brought in the fourth quarter last year online. Clearly the market condition changed somewhat. I just wanted to ask you, what is the position now? Are they in the money and what's the margin there? What's the kind of contribution you would expect from these two plants on a forward basis? Thank you. Good morning, Piotr, and thanks for your question. Good to have you on the call. The first one on the CO2 provision, that will be answered by Tiina, and the second one on Irsching 4 and 5, that's closer to home for you. Yeah, I can do. Are you going first? Yeah. All right. What comes to the CO2, in a way, cash flow and also in accounts. Basically, we are building the provision during the year, and we are hedging our CO2 position and using the yearly product what's available at the year-end and settle then. The cash flow impact comes in a way later, usually working capital release in May time. What was the other question? The second question was on Irsching 4 and 5. I can take that. What we have disclosed, and you know that because you will follow also kind of the market developments, clean spark spreads are, in my view, positive. We have seen a number of months in positive territory, and we have clearly hedged Our position on Irsching back then. That was very helpful for us. Clearly, I would see for the time, the months ahead of us, that Irsching 4 and 5 will obviously be key to the German power market and the continental European power market. What we have to acknowledge that we have very, very high CO2 prices and high gas prices now. If that continues to be on that kind of level, then we have to see how prices will develop over time, because obviously very high gas prices, very high CO2 prices are not in favor of our gas-fired units, but rather the coal units would then benefit from that. Recent developments have shown that, for example, clean dark spreads have made quite a turn, and that is something that we are trying to follow and trying to understand whether this is something that is only a short-term development, or whether we should anticipate that there is almost a comeback for the clean dark spreads. This is difficult to judge, and I don't want to speculate on that one. I think so far, looking back, I would say the decision to bring Irsching 4 and 5 back on stream was the right decision to take, and we're producing on site, well, nicely, I would say. Okay. Thank you very much. The last question is from Jessica Menton, Bloomberg News. Your line is now open. At the moment, you are the only one in the Q&A. Maybe you put yourself on mute. Your line is now open. You can ask your question. Okay. So far, then, no one is answering. We have no further questions. I would like to hand back to the speakers for some closing remarks. Thank you very much. Yeah. Thanks, everyone, for participating in today's call. We can close the call now and wish you all a nice day. Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your attendance. This call has been concluded. You may disconnect.