Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. On behalf of Verbio, welcome to the Verbio earnings call following the publication of the financial results 2021 and 2022, as well as Q4, which will be presented by the CEO, Claus Sauter, as well as the CFO, Olaf Tröber. The floor will be open for upcoming questions following the presentation. Having said that, I hand over the floor to you, Mr. Sauter. Thank you very much. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, for the presentation of Verbio for the business year 2021, 2022, and the Q4 results from the last quarter. Our agenda is, first of all, we want to highlight the figures, then a strategic highlight for 2021, 2022, market developments, the financial performance for the business year, for all the year, then the financial performance for the last quarter, deep dive, then an outlook and our climate goals regarding our ESG report. First about the highlights. We made again a new record year. The EBITDA went up to EUR 503 million. It's a plus of 203%. It was an amazing year. I think I can say we did really a good job, the whole team. All the market opportunities, what we saw in the last year, most of them we were able to catch. Our global expansion is well underway, and I think especially the dramatic situation of German and European economy shows that that was the right decision. The production of CO2 savings in metric tons and gigawatt hours. We increased the production of biodiesel from 574,000 tons to 601,000 tons. Bioethanol was slightly lower with 200. Oh, no, the other way around. Biodiesel went down from 601,000 tons to 574,000 tons, mainly due to our production in Canada, which was very volatile. Bioethanol record result from 233,000 tons to 264,000 tons. Again, we were able to increase our production of advanced renewable natural gas from 795 gigawatt hours to 885. Overall, with our biofuels, we increased the amount of CO2 savings from 2.3 million tons to nearly 2.6 million tons. Facing our expansion and to be pre-prepared to further growth, we changed our organization from the beginning of the year. We started in January to think about a new organization and we changed the board from our former setup related to our products with biodiesel on the one hand side and bioethanol and renewable natural gas on the other side to a more regional structure and we appointed Olaf Tröber, who is working now many, many years for Verbio as our head of treasury, as a CFO. That helps especially me I could hand over things like accounting, treasury, and that I have more space for strategic, important things, and also to be able to focus on our expansion and especially, political strategic work because at least, one of our, let's say, main important issues are always regulation, local regulation. It's quite different in the other regions like North America or Asia about the regulation compared to Europe. Now to the strategic highlights and there we focus on globalization, diversification and expansion. As I mentioned already, I think it was very important for Verbio to leave Europe to concentrate on other markets, global markets. Highlights there are our investment in the United States and in Canada, North America. Then diversification. Diversification means that we are not only concentrated on biodiesel or ethanol or renewable natural gas. Our approach is that we want to be able to use all kind of agricultural feedstocks. Verbio is the only company who is able to use anything what is related to biomass. Finally, the market is growing. Market is growing globally, especially the situation at the moment with extremely high natural gas prices. Extremely local distortions show that it is important now to expand the capacities and to invest in new production. Alina, maybe you can go one step. What is the situation in Europe and especially in Germany? The greenhouse gas reduction target increased in 2021 from 5% to 6%, which is finally an increase by 20%. The big challenge is until 2030, and the greenhouse gas reduction goes up to 25%. Also, the focus in the United States, where our main focus there is on or was on cellulosic biofuels. The target increased from 560 million gallons to 630 million gallons. The market situation there, especially for the product, renewable natural gas made from agricultural residue use, is quite stable. Now we have in Europe and in Germany, really ambitious and interesting target for advanced biofuels. We have there a double counting, which is a big incentive, for everything what is related to advanced biofuels. Biofuels doesn't mean only renewable natural gas. In the past, Verbio was suffering of, lack of a defined, market, situation for advanced biofuels. Now we have it. Double counting is very interesting for us and we are now increasing our capacities. It's not only renewable natural gas, it's also a certain amount of biodiesel, what we had in the past already. Now we are increasing this production, and in the near future, we will also have advanced ethanol. The market was quite volatile, bioethanol and wheat prices, but our team made a great job. We were able to source our feedstocks in time. A lot of market distortions. We were able to anticipate it very early at an early stage so that we were able to secure. This is also something what I used to say permanently. It's not only our technical ability to use all kind of biofuels, biomass to make renewable fuels. It's also market intelligence to assume market developments on the feedstock side and also on the product side. What you see on the chart on the left downside here is the development of the bioethanol prices. We had there a peak of 1,600 EUR per cubic meter of ethanol. The wheat prices were very volatile. Same for biodiesel. We had a situation of 2,000 EUR per ton of biodiesel. The market came down to 1,500. There was even a time when the margin on rapeseed methyl ester was negative, but we had a good assumption about the availability of rapeseed oil and the market development on the prices. Also here we made really a good job. Now for the next slide, I want to mention that Verbio is not only a producer of CO2-neutral biofuel, which was the main focus in the past. More and more energy security is coming up. With the dramatic development in natural gas prices, what you see here is the chart. You know, we started with our renewable natural gas production at the time when natural gas was below EUR 20 per megawatt hour, and now we saw prices recently from more than EUR 300. This is something what is finally very favorable for Verbio, but what is very, very negative for the German and the European economy. We are not crazy that this will continue, but finally, at the moment, we don't have to have only a look when we are marketing our renewable natural gas as renewable natural gas. At these price levels, we are super competitive and finally super profitable if we just sell our renewable natural gas on the normal natural gas markets. Now I want to hand over to Olaf to say something about the development of the pure numbers. Olaf, please take over. Thank you, Claus. Most likely not all will be familiar with me, so please allow me a few sentences in advance. I joined Verbio in the beginning of 2007. I had various roles with Verbio, starting from treasury, investor relations, risk management, merger acquisition and trading, and, yeah, had a chance actually to become a CFO mid this year. I mean, the overall role is a common CFO role, but with focus on streamlining processes and with a strong focus in digitalization. So it's just to give you a broad view in which direction I would like to develop the indirect CFO functions. Now let's go to the key figures. We will start at a high level and drill it down the following slides. Key figures, financial year 2021, 2022. As Claus pointed out before, it is another record year I never could imagine before. We had strong rise in renewable natural gas from close to 800 GWh to 885 GWh, and growth is continuing. In biodiesel and bioethanol capacity utilization for the financial year, last financial year was 91% versus close to 91%, more or less unchanged. We had a little bit higher bioethanol production and a slight drop in the biodiesel production, but I will come later to it. EBITDA, yeah, what shall I say? We started with a guidance of EUR 150 million for the last financial year, and we ended up at EUR 500 million. It's a record EBITDA, and mostly due to volatile markets and substantial market expansions, also thanks to strong demand for advanced biofuels. What it shows is actually that Verbio is not that huge oil tanker. It's still a fast ship, and we can adjust quite quickly to market distortions or changes in the markets or high volatility. Net cash is nothing surprising. Higher EBITDA is followed by higher cash flow. Net cash is slightly below last guidance of EUR 300 million, but it's due to one-off effects. Simply, if one of the oil major pays 24 hours later, then you've got a slight difference. Also, cash is affected by two major things. First, the dividend payment in February this year, and also CapEx of EUR 121 million. Simply to compare the figure of the EUR 120 million, the last financial years, we were able to invest approximately or close to EUR 70 million. It also shows that we are gathering traction. We employ more engineers, so we can invest more in existing plants and also in our plants in the United States, in the US, yeah, in the US and India, and also in Germany. ROCE, yeah, not a surprise as well. We had a steep increase in ROSI by 37 basis points from 27- 64. Alina, could you move? Yeah. Now we come to more to the details. Q4 2021, you can see the figures. Actually, we are also quite happy to achieve such figures. We had an EBITDA in biodiesel of EUR 38 million and EUR 15 million in bioethanol. With the other segments, we achieved the EUR 54 million in Q4 2021. Alone in last quarter, last financial year, we increased the EBITDA of biodiesel by EUR 67 million, bioethanol by EUR 68 million, which leads at the end of the day to EUR 188 million EBITDA in one quarter. Just a reminder, go one year back, that was not even the EBITDA we had the entire financial year. Next, you see the 160. No, go one back, Alina, please. It's for the financial year, you see the 166 and now the 503 million. Alina, go ahead, please. Biodiesel. It's always interesting to report on the biodiesel segment because it's actually the driver of the company in the past. Now you can see it's changing gradually between the segments biodiesel and bioethanol. Nevertheless, the sales in Q4 actually were a little bit lower. It dropped from EUR 147 million to EUR 130 million, but it was mostly due to that we had an issue with the production in biodiesel in Canada, so we reduced the production slightly, but we are now up again to previous levels. What you also can see is the sales. The sales increased in Q4 2021 from EUR 231 million to close to EUR 400 million. That's it, not close, but it's nearly doubles. EBITDA. What shall I say? We had the figures before from EUR 38 million to EUR 105 million. What is more impressive is actually EBITDA margin. I can still remember the discussions I had with Claus, and when we reached the first EBITDA margins of 10% and he said, "Oh, that's quite good. Now, we ended in biodiesel. It is 26.7%, Q4, 2021/2022, and coming from 16.2%. Going a level up again for the whole financial year, you can see the biodiesel production slightly dropped from 601,000 tons in 2020 to 2021 to the last financial year, to 574,000 tons. But as I said before, mostly due to our Canadian plant. And the EBITDA margin for the whole financial year increased quite substantially from the 12.8% to 23.5%. Alina? Ethanol. Here at ethanol, yeah. What shall I say? That's quite impressive. We had a 446% increase in EBITDA, mostly driven by strong demand for CO2 reduction. Sales increased last quarter from previous quarter, fourth quarter, from EUR 200 million-EUR 233 million. What was really more important is what we see in the production figures. The RNG, renewable natural gas production, increased from 61 GWh-69 GWh, and also the bioethanol production. EBITDA, as outlined before, EBITDA margin more than doubled from 20.2%-46.2%. Actually going for the whole financial year, you see that we especially had strong effects on Q4 last financial year. Here, for the full financial year, the increase was not that. Well, it's still substantial, but not so, not doubled actually. We increased the margin from 24.6%-38.1%. What was the reason? It's actually substantial higher ethanol sales prices due to a strong demand for E10 compared to a proportional lesser growth in input costs, grain, non-food grain, et cetera. What we saw, I do not know if some of you had a chance to spend a few days or weeks in France and visited a petrol station. I had a chance, and the petrol price was actually more than twice as high compared to a pure ethanol. In France you can buy pure ethanol or E85 which costs only the half. You can imagine what's going on. Strong demand if you only pay fifty percent or even less and that also drove the entire European market. We have a favorable German regulation for second-generation biofuels from January 2020, coupled with a strong demand for CO2 reduction quotas. Alina, onto the next one. Financial outlook, energy security, and climate protection. Actual figures for the financial year 2021-2022, we achieved an EBITDA of EUR 503 million and a net cash of close to EUR 300 million. The forecast now is EBITDA EUR 300 million and a net cash of EUR 30 million. EBITDA assumptions are based on current sales, raw material, and energy price levels, and also the plant capacity utilization. Production capacities remain more or less unchanged, 660,000 tons per year of biodiesel. We've got a change in bioethanol, so we increase our capacity with the existing German production facilities from 260,000 tons to 300,000 tons. I think what most of you are interested in is that we also increase our renewable natural gas production capacities from 900 GWh to 1.3 TWh. Net cash assumptions. We actually execute a EUR 300 million CapEx plan plus a little bit, not a little bit, US expansion and in other regions. I will give you the rough figures what happens with the cash. We have currently approximately EUR 300 million cash at hand. EBITDA new is EUR 300 million. We have to pay deferred taxes for last financial year of roughly EUR 90 million. Current financial year, we expect approximately taxes in the range of EUR 27 million, then roughly EUR 340 million in investments, a little bit dividend. At the end of the day, we arrive at the EUR 30 million net cash. Investment plan. We've got here the EUR 3 million. I think it's rather EUR 340 million for the current financial year, what I pointed out before. It's approximately EUR 140 million Germany, United States, and India, whereas the largest chunk goes to Germany and United States. We also have the US expansion of the existing plants, not only in Nevada, also in other regions in North America. What's going on with the new investments you're likely not so familiar with. We invest approximately EUR 80 million in liquefaction plant, also in LNG and CNG stations. We also invest in the ethanolysis we discussed previously. Claus will elaborate a little bit more later on ethanolysis. We also invest in proteins that's directly linked to bioethanol and also synthetic fuels. What we have else? USA, yeah, as I pointed out, 160 GWh RNG plant operational. Actually, that plant is running, and I've been there a couple of weeks before. I'm actually quite impressed talking with these U.S. guys. They are doing a really good job. The economics of this new plant are better than all our other plants. It's also thanks to our technicians. They've done a really good job. India same site plant is working. We've got a couple of challenges. We've got other climate. We are working partially with different kinds of straws. We'll have potentially a longer ramp-up phase. Liquefaction plant, I pointed out before, start of construction in H2 2022, 2023 with the 60,000 tons per year. With the investment of the BioLNG and CNG stations, we already started. We have one plant, LNG filling station in Zörbig, next to our production facility, bioethanol production facility. Ethanolysis site search is ongoing, yeah, and additional projects. Yeah, it's like a train. We don't stop. Claus, I think the floor is yours now. Yes. Again, it is globalization, diversification, and expansion. As I mentioned before, in the new structure, now I have more time to focus on, let's say, the challenges. Our contribution to society and climate protection is in high demand. What you can see here on the slide is that I was in India. Everywhere in India and also in the United States, Verbio, with its approach to be able to make biofuels, and biofuels doesn't mean only molecules for transport. Biofuels means renewable fuels also for other applications. We reached the highest level. A few weeks ago, I was in India. We met there the Indian oil and gas minister, which is here on the left side down together with my colleague, Oliver Lüdtke, and our CEO, Ashish Kumar. India at the moment is suffering of high oil and especially high gas prices. India has a clear plan to increase the use of gas, and finally, the timing couldn't be worse. They are suffering of the high global LNG prices. What is important is that we have now access really to highest political levels to discuss with them what is necessary to change in regulation that makes it easier for us to roll out our plan. What we learned in the past years is also that in India, agriculture is highly subsidized and also the energy business. India is not a free market, so some things coming from the traditional energy market and agriculture market is harming our business. That was a very good meeting with the oil minister, where we had four main points where we just need a change in regulation. Finally, it doesn't cost money for the Indian state. We are not asking for subsidies. We are just asking for some adjustments on the existing regulation. India has huge potential of biomass, which is unused. Stubble burning, so the burning of straw, it's wheat straw, it's rice straw everywhere in the country. Even sugar bagasse is burnt. We can contribute here a lot of positive impacts that air pollution will go down just from stubble burning, and we can use this biomass. I told the oil minister, we made an investment. We built the first plant, but we didn't come to India just to build one plant. We want to build hundreds of plants. Now I have more time to talk with these politicians and together with my colleagues to make pressure to adjust the legislation that it will be more favorable for our business. Last week I was in Berlin. I met the Chief Minister of Punjab, which is the region where we have our plant. Also from there, we get a lot of support. The United States on the right-hand side, that was the upper picture, the inauguration of our plant. The biggest increase of our RNG production is due to the fact that we started up our renewable natural gas production from corn stover. As Olaf mentioned already, the yields of gas production from renewable natural gas from corn stover is significantly higher than from wheat straw. Everything is raw, but we are also permanently learning. What is interesting in the United States, the United States passed a huge subsidy program, especially for renewable fuels and especially for renewable hydrogen, which is favorable for our new business unit, synthetic fuels. I also will care about synthetic biofuels. United States has stable gas prices. It is still around $20 per MWh, not $300 like in Germany and in Europe. It's $20. The subsidies for renewable hydrogen, what we need for synthetic fuel production, which is finally based on electricity, big incentive, 1 kilogram of renewable hydrogen will be subsidized with $3 per kg of renewable hydrogen for the next 10 years. We, let's say, foresaw this development. We build up a new unit in the United States with synthetic fuel. We are already in planning to adapt our site in Iowa, in Nevada, Iowa. I think we will be able there to start up the first big scale production of renewable natural gas, renewable methane based on our CO2, which is coming out from ethanol and gas production combined with renewable hydrogen. Approach to high political level is important to be able to discuss changes in regulations, to be able to develop our business, and it is there. Yeah, expansion. Expansion and diversification, new products, and also ethanolysis. With ethanolysis, we will be able to go into a completely new market, not only in transport where we are right now. Carbon is important for chemical applications, and I think, now everybody understood that also for the chemical industry, we need a new regulation which enables chemical industry also to replace their fossil carbon with renewable carbon. Also here, Verbio is an entrepreneur. Next slide, please. So what are adding value and protecting our climate? What is our contribution? In 2021, 2022, Verbio enabled our customers to save at least 2.6 million tons of CO2 with our biofuels. This will go up to eight million tons in 2025. We will enable our customers to save at least eight million tons of CO2 using our products. Direct emissions, Scope 1 and 2, Verbio emitted less than 0.2 million tons of CO2. Verbio will be climate neutral in 2035. Scope 1 and Scope 2 will go down to zero. At least Verbio reached our goal of achieving a closed production cycle in which more than 99% of the waste is reused. For us, using residues and waste is part of our business model. Not only our own wastes, we are also using waste from the food industry. And I'm not talking about used cooking oil, I'm talking about much more complicated and difficult residues coming from the food industry. 99% of our own production and even more from other clients. Next slide. Now I come to the Q&A session. As I said, the main focus is globalization, diversification, and expansion. Right now, we are just in the Northern Hemisphere. Globally, there are two harvests on this planet, and the second harvest is on the Southern Hemisphere. We are already looking now for additional expansion on the southern hemisphere that we will be even able to have access to biomass 12 months a year. Now I start with the Q&A session, and the floor is yours to ask questions. Thank you very much, first of all, Mr. Sauter, Mr. Tröber, for your presentation. You can submit your questions either via chat or directly approach the board by raising your virtual hand. It's a button on the lower part of your screen. If you have dialed in via phone, please press the star key followed by number nine and then the star key followed by number six to unmute yourself. We would start with one question or with the questions from Jonah Emerson. Your line is now open. Hi. First of all, congrats on your results. I have a question on slide 14. Maybe you could go back real quick. Exactly. So, you mentioned that EUR 140 million will go to the U.S. and EUR 160 million will go to other projects. There's another gray bar, right? The US expansion plus other regions. Is that part of the EUR 300 million? That's my first question, and then I have a few follow-ups on that. Okay. Look, on the left side there is capacity expansion. EUR 140 million. Yeah is invested in existing sites for capacity expansion. This is EUR 140 million for the capacity expansion on existing sites in Germany, in the United States and in India. USA means, at the moment, on our site in Nevada, Iowa. We started with renewable natural gas from corn stover, and now we are finishing the ethanol plant. Remember. Yeah We bought the cellulosic ethanol plant from DuPont, but we didn't use the ethanol production because we are not producing ethanol from corn stover. We are producing renewable natural gas. We have the complete infrastructure for ethanol. Okay. Now, let's say, we adapt this ethanol production, and there we will produce normal corn ethanol. We are using corn. The residue, and this is the big change to all the other 220 ethanol plants. Sure The residue distillate will also go to renewable natural gas. In India we are also doing a small expansion. On the right side, when we talk about USA expansion and other regions, it's that we are looking at the moment at new sites and we are looking at other regions, Southern Hemisphere. Okay. There we are just looking into it. There is no clear plan yet that we have allocated something and where we can say, "Okay, here will be the next expansion." USA has to be rolled out. Okay, perfect. Including the EUR 140 million, one part of it will go to the U.S. Yes. In total, the cost of acquiring the plant in Nevada, Iowa and changing it was still roughly EUR 330 million-EUR 340 million, right? All together, yes. Okay, perfect. Maybe, you know, you don't have that much fat cash left on your balance sheet. Does this somehow influence your strategy of acquiring ethanol plants in the U.S. within the next 4-5 years, so at least one per year? Has this changed a little bit? Well, you know, our leverage is still zero. Yeah. Okay. Once you know, Olaf is now talking with or working on having the ability doing expansion on a higher leverage. First we need the targets and Okay You know, a lot of these expansion, you know, we are talking here about EUR 300 million altogether, the expansion in the United States and the new units, liquefaction plants, BioLNG, BioCNG filling stations and ethanolysis, and especially ethanolysis will take longer. Okay We have still enough flexibility to acquire something in the United States, and we are always conservative. We don't jump in with a lot of money. Sure. We try to buy something on a low level, and then because, you know, the approach what we have, nobody else has. True. There must be investment. Even if you have a location in the United States where there is ethanol production, our approach is quite significantly different from a traditional ethanol producer. Okay. Maybe another question, if it's still okay with you. Yeah. Concerning- Of course. Okay. Are you not afraid that the move to temporarily supply the energy grid line with renewable natural gas might lead away, you know, the trucking industry not to be committed to RNG? Sorry, I didn't understand the last question. What do you mean? Are you not afraid that when you supply the energy grid line with renewable natural gas, so instead of the Russian gas, you supply the RNG, that this might somehow, you know, influence the trucking industry not to be committed to RNG? Do you still supply the trucking industry as well as then? Okay. Trucking industry. Yes, the trucking industry, especially on LNG, they have a terrible situation at the moment. Yes. Yeah. There was IAA, the international automotive, just this week, ended on Sunday. We were there- Yeah In Hanover. We had a lot of good talks, and I would say nearly everybody who has LNG trucks was contacting us because now we have the ability with renewable natural gas to help them to survive their business. I am personally working on, with our ministries, on an approach that we will be able short-term to supply them with BioLNG. You know, our calculation was based on EUR 20 MWh for the molecule, and the rest was contribution from our CO2 savings. Now the situation is completely different. We are able to offer our BioLNG on a much lower price, and this is something what we want to do to help the haulers who invested in LNG trucks to survive. I am working on it, and I'm quite positive that there will be a short-term solution. Very perfect. Thanks. Okay. You know that the point is that, yes, we see that LNG haulers are suffering at the moment. Some are running already on BioLNG. Mm-hmm. Their customers are giving a contribution, which is something unusual. The customers of the haulers give a contribution to the higher cost of fuel. They will not continue, I would say, years. Yeah. We have to find a short-term solution. Because of this, we are also increasing now our efforts in our own BioLNG and also BioCNG filling stations. Because what you can see at the moment is that BioCNG is still EUR 1.20 or EUR 1.30 at the filling station. Still very much cheaper than fossil diesel. Mm-hmm. Here you see already the effect coming from our biomethane, from our renewable natural gas. Right now, our liquefaction unit is not finished, so we have to find, let's say, a pragmatic way with the government that they give us the ability to supply BioLNG even before having our own liquefaction, and I'm working on it. Okay, perfect. I'm quite positive. All right, perfect. If there's still enough time, I also have a question on advanced bioethanol, but. Yes You know what? Okay, perfect. Maybe could you just elaborate a little bit on advanced bioethanol, you know, how is it made? Is this going to be, and from when do you actually expect to start the production? Yeah. Yeah. Look, okay. As I said. Yeah We needed and we were asking many years for, let's say, a positive environment for advanced biofuels. We didn't have it before 2022. Okay. Now we have it. What is advanced bioethanol? Bioethanol or ethanol is not only used for E10. Mm-hmm. Ethanol is also used for chemical application, just for some chemical processes. What we are doing now is to source from industries where alcohol is used as- Mm-hmm Let's say some which is needed for a production. That we source this used ethanol. Mm-hmm bring it back to our ethanol plant, and bring it up again to high-grade ethanol. It's a little bit like vegetable oil, you know? If you use vegetable oil Mm-hmm to make Mm-hmm fresh fries, then it's used cooking oil, and from this used cooking oil you can make again biodiesel quality. The same approach we have in ethanol. From chemical applications, we are now sourcing used ethanol. It's like used cooking oil. Then we bring it back to fuel quality, and that goes as an advanced to the oil industry. We are starting slowly because it's not so easy to acquire their big amounts. Mm-hmm. The technical ability we have already, and it is when I showed you this slide that in the new business year we will go up to 30%. There it is included. Perfect. Okay? Perfect. Concerning the, like, maybe $140 million of the U.S. Expansion, does this also include any subsidies from the Inflation Reduction Act? Well. What the subsidies about? The subsidies. Uh- are not on CapEx. The subsidy, and this is the big difference in the United States, the subsidies are on the product. No, it is not included. We are not getting, let's say, money from U.S. government for our CapEx. We get some tax incentives, which is Mm-hmm which is also quite a good instrument for the future that we will be able to lower our tax payments. You know, let's say a tax incentive, as long as you are not producing and as long you are not making money, a tax incentive has no value. That will come in the future. Mm-hmm . will improve our after-tax revenues. Perfect. All right, perfect. Maybe let me just end my questions with political news. Have you heard anything from inside your network? I mean, obviously, you know about the biofuel quota in Germany. Well, everything stays like it was in the legislation. I think, you know, we had this terrible discussion in March again, food versus fuel. Now is October and nothing happened. Let's say it positive. We have some new ministers. We have a new government. Most of them are completely new in the political business, and we are facing extreme challenges to everybody of them. Biofuel is not only to save the climate, it is also energy, and it is an energy security. That is something which nobody took into account in the discussions until 2022. More and more, they learned that the biofuels, the same like renewable electricity, will help Germany and Europe to become more and more independent, and we are not using food quality. What was a little bit funny for me was I was arguing and I say, "Hey, we will not be able from Germany to save the world. It is more important to focus on logistical issues to get grains and oil seeds out of the Ukraine." You remember the first shipment out of Odesa was chicken feed. It was not food wheat, it was chicken feed. What you also must know is that most of the wheat which is growing in the Ukraine doesn't have food quality. Most of the food wheat is coming out of Russia. These are details which somebody who is new minister of environment, a new minister of agriculture might not know, but now they know it. You see it from the table. Nobody is discussing reducing first generation biofuel anymore. We have a limit. We have a cap, which is 40% lower in Germany than in other, in any other European country. That is what I mean with, yeah, my job to try to convince and, let's say, teach ministers what are the real effects and what are the real business. We are not, as I said, we are not purely a biofuel producer, biofuel for transport. We define biofuel as a contribution also, and mainly in the future for the chemical industry, and the chemical industry needs the carbon. It is not possible to decarbonize chemical industry. It is just possible to defossilize them. They need the carbon. On a mid- and long-term, more and more of our molecules will go to chemical applications. Okay. Perfect. That already answers my questions. Thank you for your time. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for your questions, Jonah. We will continue with the questions from Cesare Colombo. Your line is now open. Okay. Can you hear me? Yes. Yes. Loud and clear. Okay. Thank you very much. My question is related to your EUR 300 million EBITDA guidance for 2023. Can I ask you, because in the statement you say, based on current sales, raw material, and energy price levels, we are forecasting EUR 300 million EBITDA. Can I ask you, I mean, clearly going from EUR 500 million to EUR 300 million is a big slowdown. Can you elaborate more? Can you say which variables, I don't know, final prices, raw material costs are changing in the environment, explaining the different environment in 2023 against 2022? Thank you. Yes. Well, look, if you compare the business year 2021, 2022, then you see that we had big distortions everywhere, in ethanol prices, in wheat prices, in vegetable oil prices, in biodiesel prices. Our team did an amazing job in, let's say, foreseeing some market changes. Look at the situation that we have at the moment. You know, gas is coming from EUR 20 per MWh. We saw 330, and from 330 we came down again to below 200. Our planning is based on, let's say, the forward curves that we have at the moment. What if Germany will be really short on gas? Look, our big flagship is in the PCK refinery. Right now, I think gas is under control, but what will be with mineral oil? There are a little bit, a lot of political influence. If we can continue our production, there will be no distortion on this side, and especially from the refinery. The only thing what we need is we need electricity, and we need steam to run our production. If these things will be, let's say, more or less stable, we will be able to make this EUR 300 million EBITDA. You know, that's the first time that we two talk together. I don't know if you were joining our presentations in the past, but Verbio is famous for conservative guidances, sometimes too conservative. You know, the biggest distortion is related to Europe. Also here we have different developments. I would say the biggest distortions are in Germany, but we are also exporting a lot of our biofuel to other European countries where it is more stable. What is completely not affected at the moment is the United States. There it is, everything is stable. You have a high inflation. Maybe there will also come a recession. I would say compared to two or three years ago, our flexibility related to local market distortions, related to extremely price volatility, and related to change of regulation is much more stable than a few years ago. You know, in times like this, nobody knows what will happen. Okay. Thank you. Okay? Thank you. We will continue. What I want to add here is, you know, we are really living in extremely challenging times. I think there are not many companies to whom this extreme volatility is favorable. You know, finally, all these extreme movements were favorable to our business, and we made the right assumptions. We bought the wheat what was necessary for our production before Putin entered Ukraine. We were sitting together. You know, EUR 500 million EBITDA was really extreme, and I cannot assume that our team will always be so successful. Three things which are important are of our business. First of all, the knowledge about the upstream. We are coming from agriculture. We know how farmers are thinking, and we know what is coming there. We have the technical ability to use these kind of feedstocks to make the molecules. The third part is market intelligence. Market intelligence in buying the feedstocks, the right amount at the right time, and finally, selling the product. We didn't have so much gas output for this year like the years before with fixed contracts. Only one-third of our production was with fixed contracts. Because already in December 2021, you saw that there is something in the gas business. We saw already prices beyond 100 EUR per megawatt hour. It was far before the war. We saw this market distortion, and we said, "Okay, let's go down. Let's keep more and more." Maybe you saw now on our numbers that our inventories are quite high. Inventories, what we really kept back, we saw, hey, we will get in the near future much more money for our molecules than right now. We cannot assume that we will be always on the right side. As I said, conservative planning. We are living in challenging times. Okay, next question. We continue with the questions from Hartmut Moers, please. Good morning. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you fine. Yes, loud and clear. Okay. Perfect. My first question comes with regard to the political environment. I mean, you made reference to the working paper we had from the Ministry of the Environment in May. You talked about some education efforts that you did with the ministry. Can we take from what you're saying that you do not expect anything more in the direction that we've seen to come from that direction? The second thing is with regard to PCK, you also made reference to that. I mean, we have now seen some political involvement there. Last time you said Verbio will be part of the solution. Can you give us an update here where you stand with regard to PCK and probably you can also say what the solution for PCK will be? That would be the first set of questions. Okay. Let me jump in because these two questions, they belong together. Okay. I think now everybody in Germany knows what is PCK Raffinerie and that the main shareholder with 55% is Rosneft Deutschland GmbH. Now I used to say, why does the PCK exist? Why it exists there in Schwedt. The PCK exists there in Schwedt because the pipeline from Russia is coming there. The crude oil is there, and because of the crude oil, the PCK is there, and because of PCK, there is the city of Schwedt. If you close the pipeline, you can close the refinery, and you can also close the city. The discussion started with the transformation, and I was asked, or Verbio was asked, "Yeah, you are already there. You have a biorefinery, so what about increasing the capacities and creating new jobs and start to help for, let's say, the first real green refinery in Germany? You know, the PCK is also embedded in a very effective big scale agriculture area on the German and on the Polish side. For a green transformation, perfect. I asked a question, I said, "Well, look, yes, we can help to make a green transformation, and we would be happy to help there because we like the people in Schwedt. They are busy. They are Germans. Yeah, it's okay." What about the food versus fuel discussion? You know, at a certain point, we cannot close all energies like coal, like nuclear, and now we even don't want to have biofuels. That was my question, and the answer was clear. They say, "Okay, you are right." I think that also helped to tell them, if you want to have a green transformation, then agriculture is the upstream. I think everybody must be clear, we are not using food quality grains, and especially in this area around Schwedt, there is no food wheat growing because the soils are bad, agriculture conditions really to make quality, that is not the right location. This is more in West, South Germany and, let's say, the area around Magdeburg. We never went there with production because the wheat or the grains there are too expensive. Both things are together. First of all, the discussion food versus fuel disappeared. I think my explanation there was helpful. The other thing is, yeah, we are still in good talks with different ministries and, well, what is quite difficult or what was quite difficult still was the ownership from the PCK Refinery. Nobody want to make business at the moment with Russian companies. The situation changed Friday, two weeks ago, when the German government went into Rosneft Deutschland and took the leadership. The ownership of Rosneft Deutschland GmbH is still to the, to the former owners, Russian owners, so nothing has changed there. Now the leadership is to the German government. Yeah, we are now, let's say, intensifying the discussions and thinking about what we can invest there to expand the production. Nothing is decided yet. I expect that we will come to a clearer picture in next weeks or months. Yeah, everything goes very well. Okay. Maybe I can jump here. Sorry, Mr. Moers, I will continue. I have here just two questions in the chat from Achim Bock, which is very interesting. One thing was: How does your efficiency on bioethanol production from residues compare to competitors, please? I heard from Clariant sunliquid that their outcome per input ton is up to 50% higher than competition. What I was mentioning with ethanol from residues has nothing to do with Clariant and sunliquid. Clariant is using straw to make ethanol. We are using straw to make renewable natural gas, to make methane. Completely different. Compared with our process to Clariant, our investment costs in the production is 50% lower and the yield is double. We cannot mix these two things. When we are talking about second generation ethanol, then we talk as chemical ethanol as a residue which was used for cleaning processes or something like this. We just take this finally used ethanol to bring it back. It had nothing to do with the Clariant process. It's completely different. Second question was, why don't you add more leverage to your balance sheet in favor of a higher growth rate? Well, we need the organization to grow faster. The first step was now the change in our management board, so more regional. We have to ramp up our stuff here. We ramped it up. We hired in the last months more than 100 new employees. They have to be integrated. They must know how we think. All this stuff. You know, United States was more or less a startup. India, a startup. A lot of work has to be done around the regulation just to figure it, just to fix it. We are moving continuously. Proof of concept in India and also in the United States has been done. Now in the United States faster than in India. Now we are searching for new sites. It's not a question of the availability of money, it's a question of availability of management power. Okay. Now back, Mr. Moers. Sorry. If I may interrupt as well for a second, Mr. Sauter. The time was scheduled until 11:15 A.M. Do you still have some time remaining? Yes. Yes. Yes Yes. Yes Yes. Yes to answer the questions? Yeah. Absolutely. Okay, perfect. Thank you so much. We make another 15 minutes. Okay? Okay, great. Mr. Moers, please go ahead. Okay. Thank you very much. Well, I can continue on the thing you just referred to. I mean, you were quite bullish with regard to your international side. In the past, Canada, the U.S., and also India were not yet profitable. Can we take from your statement that this has changed now? I would say we are in Canada. We reached profitability. Canada is making money. We had big investment plans there. Right now it's on hold. We are observing the market because there were just too many announcements for new projects. We saw that a lot of them are not executed. We have now utilization for Canada which is fixed. Also the margin is fixed. We are not starting to invest there. For this year we continue to observe the market. In India we are not profitable, so we are still on the ramp-up phase for the production. With rice straw, it's a little bit more complicated than we expected. In the United States we made very good experiences with corn stover, higher yields. In India with the rice straw, there are lower yields. There are still some challenges. On the other side, you know, it would take too much time now to explain you how the Indian market works. The Indian market even on the energy side, it is not an open market, so energy for private households and for transport is subsidized. The country spends a lot of money to pay the invoices. There also the political work has to be done. I think in this year we will continue to move further, and maybe until the end of the business year, we will be able to announce new projects also to India. My target at the moment is to be profitable in the new business year in India, and this is the fundament to build up new production units. Hello? Mm-hmm. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. The final one I have is a very small one. It's with regard to energy costs. I mean, everybody is complaining about rising energy costs. You profit from it on the top side, but on the cost side, you should also suffer to some extent. In fact, energy costs for you have doubled compared to the previous financial year. What are you expecting for the coming financial year? I mean, it shouldn't get cheaper on that side. Well, in our planning, the actual energy prices and the forward curve is included. Mm-hmm. Just to give you a feeling, our energy costs on the cost side increased by EUR 100 million. This is included in our planning, and I don't agree with you. I don't agree with you that the energy prices will stay at this level. I personally you know, if the energy prices will stay at this level, you know, we will see huge de-industrialization all over Europe and mainly in Germany. The government has to do something, maybe a cap, maybe something else. You know, it's not due to our business. Finally, as I said, we get now a lot more money for our renewable natural gas that we ever expected. It's favorable for our business, but it is very negative for the German economy, and something has to be done. I know that they are working on something. I don't know. I expect that energy goes. My personal opinion, I expect that energy goes below 200 EUR per MWh electricity, and that gas, soon we will see again 100 EUR per MWh for gas. This is the maximum what the German and the European economy can afford. Wait and see. Okay. Thank you very much. That was it from my side. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Moers. We did not receive any further questions, in the meantime, which means that we are now coming to the end of this earnings call. Again, Mr. Sauter, thank you very much for taking the time, and also to you, Mr. Tröber, for your presentation. I hand over to you, Mr. Sauter, for some final remarks before closing. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you very much to everybody who was joining this call. Thank you very much that you took your time to listen to our plans, and yeah. I think we are on a good way. I'm bullish. Finally, I like that the market is, let's say, challenging. With the team I have behind me, the whole Verbio team, I'm not scared at all for the future for Verbio. I hope that my assumption for energy prices will become true. It will not affect very negative our business, but I think it is necessary. What is the positive takeaway from this distortion, that now everybody, especially on the political side, saw that it is very urgent to become more independent and that renewable energies are not only expensive, that they also give us independence, and that we have to work on all sides. That it is not a question renewable electricity versus renewable biofuels. Biomass is a significant part of the energy transformation and will give us additional contribution to more independence and more stability. It will be hard the next years, as long as these alternatives will be established, but I'm quite positive that we will be able to do it. I think also what shows this situation, that our decisions to go global, to discover new markets, to build up our technology in other markets, was the right decision, and we will continue like this. Thank you very much that you took your time, and we will hear from us again very soon. Thank you very much. Bye-bye.