Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Q3 2024 Earnings Call of WashTec. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode, and the floor will be open for questions following the presentation. So let me now turn the floor over to your host, Michael Drolshagen, CEO. Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the WashTec Board, I would like to welcome you to the Quarter 3 presentation 2024. Attending the call with me is my colleague, Andreas Pabst, our CFO of WashTec. In the first section, I will give you some spotlights and news on WashTec. In the second section, Andreas Pabst will present WashTec's Quarter 3 results and figures. Let's start with the spotlights and news. The newly formed team is focusing on WashTec's strategy to become an ecosystem provider, focusing on total customer care, on which we will have more news to report later. I would like to take this opportunity to inform you that we are currently working on revising a comprehensive strategy for WashTec. This involves our mission, guiding principles, our culture, but also, for example, our brand values and company and equity story. We will communicate this to you in the first half of 2025. Our machinery is our enabler. With our new SmartCare and SoftCare SE, we are perfectly positioned for our customers. We are setting new standards as an enabler on our way to becoming a full ecosystem provider, both in terms of wash speed and wash quality, but also in terms of digital connectivity. Our clear focus continues to be on the European and US market. In order to further implement and operationalize this strategy, we have worked on the organizational structure as well as on processes and partnerships. One example of this is the organizational anchoring of the new operator services as part of our global sales team, which is responsible f or optimizing and professionalizing customer processes and aims to optimize our customer journey. With our strategy, we want to create a feel-good factor for our customers with and after the vehicle wash and contribute to maintaining the value of their vehicles. As announced at the last quarterly conference, we fully implement the Matrix Organization on 1 September 2024. The three business lines have been implemented and, in addition to the markets, are equipped with a complete profit and loss for their area of responsibility. The functions assume process and responsibility and ownership and are the company solution providers. This means that an organization has been implemented that supports cross-functional communication across all departmental boundaries and is highly cost-sensitive once it has settled. We are already seeing the first successes in optimizing the assembly of our Rollover Systems. In operator services, we have continued to work on cooperation to optimize our customer journey, as we will see later. Next slide, please. To professionalize our strategy, we presented key areas of action in four categories in our last quarter presentation. In today's presentation, I would like to deep dive in some of the highlights and present them to you, including our machines as enablers for our ecosystem, our sustainable consumables to optimize our wash quality, and our customer experience. Over the past few months, we have been focusing on finalizing the development of SmartCare as well as SoftCare SE, which is currently in the ramp-up phase and is already being delivered to selected customers. Sales for SmartCare will officially start at the beginning of next year and will complement our portfolio perfectly. We are also recording incoming orders for our SoftCare SE according to plan. We are also working on the details of standardizing and modularizing our machines to reduce complexity. Next slide, please. Today, we would like to present three highlights in chemistry, two of which are for Europe. Firstly, we are working on our sustainability in all areas. We have therefore installed a first machine to fill approximately 25% of our capacity in Chemie-Box. We are delighted to see that our customers are jumping on this bandwagon and that demand from the markets is increasing. We are taking a huge step in the right direction with this, particularly in the handling, but also in disposal, and can double capacity in-house within a financial year if demand continues to increase. This is another important step in our ESG and sustainability strategy. Next page, please. In addition to Chemie-Box, we are also working on our consumable products. In some stations, we are using our new products for testing purposes to obtain and respond to direct customer feedback. Since the feedback is really outstanding, we have decided to talk about it today, even though the market launch will take place in the first quarter next year. We are talking about Magic Care as one of several new products. Magic Care is a brand new high-end polish with AMP technology, which means active modified polymer. Special ingredients actively form a 3D cross-linked layer with exceptional properties. Best-in-class protection for clear coat surfaces against, for example, UV radiation, and Magic Care delivers also shine and color enhancement. At the end, Magic Care stands for a wow factor with repair and easy-to-clean effects. This is an important component in our strategy for our customers with regard to the feel-good factor and after the car wash and the value retention of their vehicles. Next slide, please. In the area of operator services and for our customer journey, we are working on the cooperation with Superoperator. We recently reached an important milestone in the cooperation here, in which we have created a basis for the future with the contracts to jointly operate our products for our customers. From license plate recognition with many possible business models behind to the upfront end, we are taking a huge step in this direction and look forward to our cooperation and to make our customers happy. Let us now turn to our North American market and how we have planned the next steps on the topic of consumables on the next page. As an example out of Europe, WashTec Chemicals hold a market share of more than 20% in Germany. In the U.S., the total annual market value for car wash chemicals amounts to $1 billion. Larger players dominate half of this market share, while the remaining half is supplied by independent chemical manufacturers. Notably, Mark VII holds a market share of less than 1% currently, rendering it practically non-existent in this landscape today, and we want to change that with our chemistry. Next slide, please. We are deeply convinced that we can repeat the success of chemistry in Europe in the U.S. To this end, we are focusing on the launch of our new brand car wash lines in one U.S. state, California, Greater Bay Area, and Southern California, and later on Texas and Colorado. Furthermore, we are pursuing this path with our well-known and established partner in order to keep the complexity of the market launch manageable. Based on our test groups and their feedback, our brand launch in the US is currently taking place at the trade show SEMA, and we are looking forward to the feedback from our customers there. With that, I would like to hand over to my colleague, Andreas Pabst, for the presentation of the quarter 3 results. Thank you, Michael. Hello, everybody. A pleasure to have you on the call today. Thank you. Now, let's talk about WashTec Q3 figures. On this slide, you see our main KPIs for the first nine months. To summarize the first nine months in a nutshell, revenues are behind previous year, but we see that our order intake is coming back. In terms of profitability, we are doing well. Progress can be seen in the increasing EBIT margin, which is now at 8.2% versus 7.5% last year. Let us now look a little bit closer to the figures. WashTec generated EUR 334 million in the first three quarters. This is EUR 23 million, or 6.3% less than prior year. The main reason is lower equipment sales, down by 6.7% to 281, compared to prior year figure of EUR 302 million. We had weaker sales to key accounts in North America and a decrease in the direct sales business. Contrary, revenues with key accounts in Europe increased significantly year on year, but was not enough to offset the negative trend in North America. Direct sales business in both regions was down on prior year, mainly due to the lower order backlog and the lower level of orders received in the first few months of this year. Chemicals revenue fell too, mainly due to a weather-related fall in car wash volumes, primarily in the first quarter, which couldn't catch up. In addition, the prior years, we saw an increased delivery to newly acquired major customers in connection with the initial stocking of their chemical inventories. Despite the lower revenues, WashTec increased gross profit in the first three quarters to EUR 102 million from EUR 98 million last year. This means that gross profit margin increased to a quite good ratio of 30.4% compared to 27.4% we saw last year. Sure, some material price reductions supported us, but the main driver for this positive development is that we did a lot of our homework. On the one hand side, our efficiency programs to further optimize our production costs helped us to stabilize or even lower our production costs despite a lower number of build units. On the other side, all of the price increases, which we did in the past, now kick fully in. All this contributed to gross profit as well as to full EBIT. As a result, the Group's EBIT for the first nine months rose by 2.6% to EUR 28 million, and EBIT margin improved from 7.5% to 8.2%. Remember, in the first quarter, we reported one-off items of around EUR 1 million. If we take this into consideration, the overall EBIT margin for the first nine months would even be a little bit higher, around 8.6%. Following the increase of EBIT, we also can report that our net income is 3% higher than prior year. Earnings per share are now at EUR 1.30 compared to EUR 1.26 last year. And also, our equity ratio stays at a good 26.7% like last year. Our free cash flow comes in with EUR 25 million and is somehow on prior year level of EUR 27 million. Nevertheless, compared with last year, we have different movements. In detail, this year we had higher cash outflows for net operating working capital, whereas last year we had higher cash outflows for acquiring our US production facility. In terms of hiring, we are still very cautious and restrictive with expenditures. At the end of this reporting period, we have 1,745 employees, which is 22 below last year. Now, let's proceed with the figures for the third quarter. Also, the third quarter revenues are down compared to prior year. With EUR 140 million, we are 5.2% short. This is primarily due to the weak course of business in equipment sales, especially in North America, both in key accounts and in direct sales business. After two declining quarters, we achieved in our chemicals business revenues on a par with the prior year. And again, based on the aforementioned reasons, WashTec could increase gross profit margin from 28.7% to now 31.0% in third quarter. Quite a good development. This, together with the ongoing cost sensitivity, led to a stable EBIT margin of 9.6% despite lower revenues. With the result, we can be confident, but we as a management see the clear task for further improvement. Now, let's put those figures in a more long-term context. The development of revenue and EBIT for the last five years on the first three quarters as well on the third quarter can be seen on this slide. Compared with 2020, it would potentially be a little bit misleading as this is the COVID year, but nevertheless, an impressive development in terms of revenue and EBIT growth. But also, if we compare 2022 as a starting point, we see that our revenues are in 2024 on a similar level as of that time, but our EBIT margin compared to 2022 is much higher, 8.2% versus 6.7% for the first nine months, and 9.6% versus 8.2% in the third quarter. So you see, profitability is what we are aiming for, and steady we are climbing back to our double-digit EBIT margin. Coming now from the long-term development to our revenue split by region. Next page, please. In the Europe and other region, revenue fell slightly by 2.6% in the first nine months to EUR 280 million. But if we take into consideration that last year also the Chinese subsidiary, which we sold in December 2023, contributed 5 million to the revenues, we are on a par with prior year. The weak first quarter in that region, which saw difficult market conditions, particularly in direct sales business and weather-related fall in car wash volumes in the chemical business, still left some marks. In addition, the prior year saw an increased delivery of newly acquired major customers in connection with the initial stocking of their chemical inventories. While key account business grew significantly year on year, direct sales business was down on the prior year. Especially in the third quarter, revenue was positively influenced by key account business. At EUR 95 million, revenue was adjusted for the revenue of the Chinese subsidiary on last year's level. In North America, revenue in the first nine months fell significantly by 21.3% to EUR 57 million. At EUR 20 million, revenue in the third quarter was 15.5% down on the prior year. Less decrease, but still decrease. Both direct sales business and the key account business were down in the first nine months, mainly due to the lower order backlog at the beginning of the year and the weak level of orders received from key accounts in the first few months, but, and that's worth to mention, orders received increased in the third quarter compared to the prior year. Here now, our regional EBIT development. EBIT in Europe rose to EUR 26 million the first nine months from EUR 25 million, adjusted by the Chinese sale, corresponding to an increase of 7.3%. Once again, this effect is mainly due to the efficiency programs to optimize production costs and to the prior year price increases. Third quarter, EBIT at EUR 10 million was on prior year level. China had no effect on the third quarter compared to the prior year. In North America, it is not surprising given the revenue decrease, also EBIT is below last year. Luckily, we already implemented several measures last year and still continue this year to increase profitability on a lasting basis. That led at least to a positive EBIT. For the first nine months, we achieved EUR 1.2 million compared to EUR 3 million last year. In the third quarter, EUR 1 million compared to EUR 1.6 million last year, Q3. Moving on to the revenue performance by product on the next page. The revenue breakdown by product shows what already has been mentioned. In equipment and service, the revenues are lower compared to prior year due to weak order backlog at the beginning of the year and the lower intake in the first month. Altogether, equipment and service revenue came in with EUR 281 million. Chemicals fell by EUR 3 million compared to last year's nine months. This is caused by the already mentioned weather-related shortfall in car wash volumes, especially in the first quarter. Furthermore, we had last year some tailwind from the initial stocking of a new major customer. Both effects are hard to catch up later in the year. But if we have a look at Q324 chemistry revenues, we are back on prior year level. Our EBIT bridge shown on this slide here gives some more details to explain the EBIT development compared to prior year. The first red and the first green column show our development in gross profit. With lower overall sales, we managed to increase our gross profit from EUR 98 million to EUR 102 million. Respectively, our gross profit margin rose to 30.4% from 27.4% last year. This was due to the efficiency programs to optimize the production costs and partly to price increases implemented previous year. On the other hand, we invested those savings partly in R&D. Research and development expenses were 10.5% or EUR 1 million higher than prior year. The increase mainly related to additional activities to speed up the exploitation of market potential in Europe and North America. Administrative expenses amounted to EUR 16 million, which is EUR 2 million above prior year. This was mainly due to the one-off expenses in connection with the change of the CEO position and expenses for cost optimization of the new production generation together around EUR 1 million. Furthermore, we had higher spend for external advisory in the field of IT and recruitment. Next page, please. Coming now to some other important financial KPIs. Let's start with the net operating working capital, the sum of trade receivables, inventories, trade payables, and prepayments on orders. Compared to the same period in time of last year, this figure is nearly unchanged with EUR 93 million. If we compare this number with the NOWC at the beginning of this year, we see an increase of around about 11%, mainly due to the orders-driven build-up of finished goods, the basis of our sales in Q4 this year. Our free cash flow with EUR 25 million for the first nine months is also quite stable compared to prior year's period, and we are somehow confident with that number, as already explained earlier. Same with our net financial debt, which is at EUR 55 million end of Q324, only slightly above prior year. WashTec is very well funded, and our liquidity cushion is in good shape. Finally, the equity ratio, 26.7%, same ratio like last year, and we have the same level of confidence. Let's now talk about our order intake and order backlog. As usual, we do not give any detailed numbers due to competition reasons, but we want to share about the current trend. Therefore, this slide might be useful. Like last quarter, we indexed our order backlog of 2020 with 100%. You can see compared to that point in time, our order backlog as of September 30, 2024, increased significantly to 181%. Taking our seasonality into consideration, it is important also to compare on a quarterly basis, meaning comparing Q323 with Q324, where the index increased from 168% to 181%. This positive trend is mainly due to orders received from key accounts. Orders received in the direct sales business also improved, and through the end of September, we are on par with the prior year. As a result of this improvement in orders received, the overall order backlog at the end of September was above last year's level in Europe and in North America. This positive general trend in orders received in recent months is not yet reflected in revenue, and it is worth mentioning that in some countries, market conditions are still challenging, and there is always the risk of revenue slipping from one quarter to the next. But overall, we are confident with the order backlog for the total group. After those details on current order intake and order backlog, let's now come to our guidance. As explained, we are currently facing some pressure on top line, whereas EBIT develops quite well. Looking forward to Q424, we expect good revenue streams and continuous good EBIT. Nevertheless, we are not immune to slippage of revenue from one quarter to the next. We need to work hard to turn existing order backlog into revenue in 2024. Therefore, as of today, we still believe we will achieve our guidance in all terms. For revenue, we had a guidance of plus minus 3% compared to prior year level, where we currently expect to be at the lower end of this range. EBIT guidance is a mid-single-digit percentage range, and free cash flow should come in between 30 million and EUR 40 million. This guidance is subject to uncertainties, of course. My last words are related to our next event. We will be at the Eigenkapitalforum in Frankfurt from 25th to 27th of November. Currently, the company presentation is scheduled for Wednesday, 27th in the morning. Hope to see you there. This was it from the finance side. Now, we are happy to answer your questions you might have, and for that, I hand back to the operator. Thank you very much. Dear ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question for our speakers and are dialed into the conference call, please press nine followed by the star key on your telephone keypad now. If your name has been announced, you can ask your question. To cancel your question again, please press nine star a second time. The first question comes from Stefan Augustin, Warburg Research. Over to you, Stefan. Yes, hello. Thank you very much for taking the question. The first one is actually on the fourth quarter and the implied development. I see that you have an increased order backlog, and you stated that this is true for Europe as well as for the U.S. And if I do some math on, let's say, basically looking at the lower end of your guidance expectation, this still means that we will be significantly well up above last year's sales for Q4, and that looks good for the group. And I know you don't give, let's say, separate guidance, sales guidance for Europe and North America, but looking last year in North America, we had a steep increase over the quarters before. And if I would now put in an even stronger increase, it would be quite challenging. So can you give us a bit of an indication? Is this easily done by Europe alone, or how strong does a North American pickup need to be in the fourth quarter? Okay, thanks for the question. So yes, it's correct. We are expecting a growth, good growth, good Q4 in terms of revenue. And if we look in our books and the details, we are really on a single unit level, and we are chasing every single unit that we can install this unit already this year. Because we also see there is the pressure to fulfill our guidance, and we believe we can do it. So you especially ask for the U.S. Also in the U.S., we are doing exactly the same. We have here some tunnels which we want to install already this year. There are the orders, the sites are ready. We are doing our utmost to do this. But you can imagine if a tunnel is not ready already in this year, but at the beginning of January, you do not have it already in your own hand. But nevertheless, as of today, we are feeling confident that we will do this in both North America as well as in Europe. And to ensure that we have implemented a task force supervising all the planned tunnels and rollovers in both countries to manage this with our customers, provide that the station is ready, that the machine is ready, that we have the installation capacity. And with that in place, as Andreas mentioned, we are quite confident to fulfill our promises we have given to the market last year for this fiscal year. Okay, thank you. And the next one would be on the explanations in the gross margin. Can you, let's say, differentiate a little bit if the higher effect is coming from the efficiency measures or actually coming from the price measures? And yeah, that would be the first part of it. I will take the question. Yeah, I would say it's more or less equal. On the one hand side, we really managed to reduce or keep the production cost per unit at a very good level. That's one thing. And now if you compare this first three quarters with the one of last year, then all the price increases, which we did in the year 2022, 2023, they are now all in, and they were not in the period last year. So I would say it's both are really the reason for this better gross margin. And in addition to that, we are working heavily on bottom line to be more independent on the top line. So we started a lot of cost efficiency programs, which we are not seeing already in the numbers, but we are quite confident that in the near future we can implement them step by step and also then seeing that we are improving on bottom line. So it would be right to conclude if you increase significantly the sales level in Q4, we should actually expect a quite good drop through as price and efficiency should be consistent and effective also on the higher sales in both regions. Totally correct. Higher revenues help us at the end of the day always. Yeah. Okay. The last one is actually what makes you so confident that you can repeat the success of the EU chemicals in the US? We have seen an opportunity. We don't want to attack the big chemistry suppliers with around 50% of the market share. We see that sizes between 1 to 10. We see that customers with size 1 to 10 places, that they, in the feedback survey we did, are not confident with what they got offered in the past, and this is what we want to attack. And with our Mark 7 brand name, WashTec brand name in Europe, and our new Carwash Alliance brand with our partner and in future also with our own chemistry. So we start with existing chemistry, but in future also with our own chemistry, we can repeat our European success because it's strongly recommended by our customers that they want to have another key player that they can count on and which is listening to customer need. That makes us confident. And we are not attacking the U.S. in total, so it's far too big. So we do it step by step where we already have experience in the country together with our partners. All right. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Thank you also from my side. Dear ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question for our speakers, please press nine star. The next question is from Alexander Galitza, HAIB. Over to you, Alexander. Yes, good afternoon and thank you for taking the question. Maybe the first one on order intake, you've seen an improvement in Q3, seems like across both customer categories. Just wondering if you can judge from today's perspective and I guess observing the current ongoing dynamics, whether this was sort of a temporary blip, if you will, or whether there is a more sustainable dynamic to it, that would be the first one. So in general, Mr. Galitza, you totally have right. So if we look at our key account customers, there are bigger tickets. Yeah, they are coming in in one month or the next month. Yeah, so it's fluctuating a little bit. But if I look at the last months and the average, I see that there is increasing order intake, and that gives us a lot of confidence. It's not only one big ticket. It's a lot of key account customers who gave us some orders, really happy on that. And we also see that on non-key account customers, on directs, that the order intake is increasing. So for example, we really see good order intake in the SoftCare SE. So, the new machine which we have on the lower end, we already explained, I guess, in the last quarter calling. There are a lot of things which make us confident that this is not a flash in the pan. It's turning now the market, yeah. Okay, understood. That's helpful, and then maybe on Europe. I guess we've seen pretty weak development overall in the direct sales. I think as of nine months, you're saying that key accounts grew significantly, which was evidently fully or more than offset by the weakness in direct sales. Just wondering, how should we be thinking going forward? Are we now down to a more or less sustainable level in terms of direct sales, or do you expect this sort of to be an ongoing headwind into 2025? We don't want to count only on key accounts. That's our strategy that we also want to have more sales in direct sales. And to get this, SoftCare SE is our product in future, which we started to implement and where we are now going to delve more and more in the markets. To do this, we have to align our sales KPIs that we can trigger our salespeople with our data we have out of our machines, the age of the machine and so on, that we are going proactively to our customers and to do the business. And this we did not consequently in the past, and therefore we see here a strong door we can go through in the future and can do with our new machine more business here in direct sales, which we want to have to be that we have a second. Opportunity where we can make business with and not only focused on key account. That we split risk in the market more than we did in the past. Understood, and then the very last one for me is around chemicals. I wonder if you can add, if you can, any color around your go-to-market strategy in the U.S. You kind of already alluded that you don't want to attack the major suppliers, which accounts for 50% of the market, but rather the other half. Just also wondering how those customers are different, I guess. So who is supplied by the top suppliers and what is the remaining market, I guess? And also whether what's the leverage for you? What makes you confident you can actually switch those customers who are already supplied by other players in the market? Do you go with the pricing or is your installed base helping you in any way? Just any color you can provide on the go-to-market strategy here would be helpful. Okay, first of all, we are focusing on the smaller customers because the big key accounts are spread all over the U.S., which means we have to support all over the U.S. We have to implement sales and service all over the U.S. And therefore, this is not our strategy firsthand. So the step-by-step approach we have decided is to focus on California, on these smaller customers between one and 10 sizes. And to do this by direct sales with a new sales team which are going to ramp up. And if we have success, then we ramp up sales team again and again. So step by step, we will increase numbers of salespeople in the direct sales area. And if you multiply $1 billion business opportunity in the U.S. market and multiply this with currently 0.7%, this is what Mark 7 currently has. And we double this in first step and then enlarge it to our two other countries. Again, we can double this. Hopefully, then we will see that there are a lot of opportunities. And the good thing is the EBIT margin, which is much higher in consumables and chemistry than it is in other areas in our equipment, for example. Maybe to add here, so the strategy is that we really focus on the first step on regions like California where there is a high density of car wash sites. So that means that our salespeople do not have to travel by hours to come from one site to the next. Imagine how it is in Montana, for example. And that is the step-by-step approach we really want to take, which probably, or which we really believe that this will have a good payback in a short payback period. And the big customers have contracts which give us a chance to step in for the smaller ones because in that contract, say, you have to take specific volumes per year and so on. And that is how we want to negotiate and get into the business with low risk at that end. Understood. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you very much also from my side. The combination for asking a question is nine star. So dear ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question, please press nine star now. Let's wait a couple more moments. There are at the moment no further questions in the queue. And there seems one follow-up by Alexander Galitza, HAIB again. Over to you, Alexander. Yes, thank you for taking the follow-up. Just wonder if you can, it's a question on the acquisition of the Polish distributor earlier this year. Just wonder how one should look at it, whether that was sort of a one-off transaction for you, or can you imagine also further acquisitions down the road? Thank you. We decided to go with the existing partner now with a new brand in the US due to the fact that we wanted to reduce complexity in our business or not to make new salespeople, a new operator, and so on, and in future, we think to do more acquisitions is a good way we should proceed to think about that. Sorry, I was referring to the acquisition of the European. It was not chemistry. No, no, it was. I guess Mr. Alexander asked about the acquisition of the Polish. Sorry, sorry. Okay, sorry for that. We bought the company in Poland because this is a good chance to strengthen our services as well, not only for Poland as well as for the states around Poland and to provide here in future also services which are cost competitive. We think also that this makes sense for other states, but we will decide this step by step. For example, we discuss a different setup in Italy, Spain, and France, not with buying, but with an organizational and process perspective, how we organize the market. Maybe let me add to this one. It's not the way that we are aggressively searching for M&A targets. The Polish distributor, we worked for many years together with him. He supported our key customers in Poland, and the person is now in the age of retirement and was simply a good chance for us to acquire the company with an excellent service team, installation team, which is very well organized within the Polish market. So it was simply, hey, it's a chance, take it. And I guess also in the future, if there is a smart opportunity somewhere, we will not say no to it, but it's not that we are traveling around the world and searching for M&A targets, I would say. Thank you. But in addition to link this to our strategy, one of our biggest advantages is our service. And therefore, if there is an opportunity to strengthen our service, we will take it. There's a big market barrier for all the suppliers for washing systems outside Europe. And therefore, to have a good service in place is the best way to be protected. All right. Thank you very much. With that, I am closing the Q&A session now since there are no more questions in the queue. And I'm handing the floor back over to the host. Thank you very much. Thank you for attending our call. Hope to see you in Frankfurt. Bye. Bye-bye. Thank you.