services to the pharmaceutical and biotech industry. We are highly specialized, so-called specialty CRO, and we're renowned for our services within metabolic diseases. In the discovery and partnership arm of the business, we have our own ideas, we make our own programs, and we use the same laboratory models to mature these programs to the right level, and then we partner them. Typically, we partner our programs relatively early, still in the preclinical phases. However, we do have one program, our amylin program, which we are maturing towards the clinic. The first half of the year has been ahead of our expectations. We went through an IPO and got listed on March 30. And looking at the entire half of the year, we've seen a revenue growth in the CRO business of 21%, compared to the same period last year. So a nice growth and more than what we anticipated going into the year. That was why we recently changed our guidance for the full year, and we now guide with revenue growth for the CRO business, business of 16%-21%. Also, late in June, we made our first acquisition. We acquired a CRO called MiniGut. From the D&P part of the business, we saw several important advances of our pipeline programs and partner programs. So we, we saw the amylin project being matured, in the way we expected towards the clinic. We saw a narcolepsy program being added to our pipeline. It's based on orexin, an important addition to the pipeline. And, we also matured our streaMLine platform, our peptide platform, which we use as the basis for most of our pipeline program. So we made some important advances of that platform, and we're now able to handle a lot more complex peptides. All in all, a very satisfying first half of 2023 for Gubra. At Gubra, we are highly specialized, and we deliver scientific counseling to our customers within the biotech and pharmaceutical industry. We're focused on metabolic diseases, and we deliver services within a range of indications covering diabetes, obesity, NASH, certain kidney diseases, certain lung diseases, certain intestinal diseases, and certain heart diseases as well. We also deliver certain services which is based on analyzing aspects of the brain. We deliver services also within certain quite sophisticated technologies. We have our 3D imaging, we have our 2D histology based on AI-assisted scoring, and our RNA sequencing is also an important technology which we deliver to our customers. As a CRO, we are an end-to-end service provider. That means when a customer comes to us, could be a customer developing a novel therapy for, let's say, fatty liver disease, we can help them find out, is version A or version B of the pill the better one? What dosage level should be included in the pill, and how often should you take the pill? That's the kind of services we deliver, and we deliver a full data package to the customers. They don't have to send around tissue to other CROs, and that has a high value. Combined with the brand we have of delivering really high-quality services, we can price our services at a premium, and we remain with quite decent EBIT margins for our service business. As mentioned initially, we acquired another company. We acquired the CRO, MiniGut, a CRO specialized in delivering services using the minipig as the model system. Historically, Gubra has used rodents as model systems. Now, when fully embarked in our digital platforms, we can deliver minipig studies to our customers as well. So an important addition to our model catalog going forward, as well as an opportunity for us to accelerate some of our internal pipeline programs using these new models. So our very first acquisition, and we have high expectations for this addition going forward. I'll now leave the word to our CFO, Kristian Borbos. ... Thank you, Henrik. And, as mentioned in the beginning, you know, we had a very strong first half of the year, and especially very comforting to see the growth across many disease categories. So looking at the business a bit in more detail, we see especially the fatty liver field, you know, that it continues to be strong. I think we talked about this in the last conference call also, where we saw strong industry data, late last year, and this has sparked a rejuvenated interest within the fatty liver field, and that is making its way to orders for our CRO services within that field. Another field of particular strong growth is the kidney area. It's very encouraging to see that the investments we made in this field to, you know, develop the kidney space and offer more models within this area is paving its way to customer orders also. Last but not least, we also have, you know, the obesity field also. You know, a lot of pharma companies put a lot of emphasis on this area, and that is also making its way to orders for Gubra. I should also mention the lung field, the IPF, which is probably our newest field, and where we also see, you know, considerable interest. So all in all, solid growth across many disease categories, and that enabled us to grow the CRO business organically by 21% compared to the same period last year. In terms of earnings, you know, we have an EBIT margin of in the first half of the year of around 27%, and outlook for the full year is 25%, so a good level in the first half of the year. If we look at, you know, the development in the EBIT margin from Q1, where we had an EBIT margin of 29%, it has declined somewhat to 24%, for the second half of this year. That is mainly explained by, you know, we are growing our offerings. That also means that we are growing the number of employees. That is one point. Another... The other two, you know, that impacts our cost base is a bit more technical. One being that we've implemented and recognized cost for a long-term incentive program to employees that we introduced in June this year, that you accounting-wise need to take into the books, and that had an effect of a little more than DKK 1 million impact in Q2, and that we did not have in Q1. And secondly, whenever we develop, you know, software and applications that we use in our customer offerings, you know, then we capitalize some of this expenditure that we did to a higher extent in Q1, where we capitalized DKK 1.8 million, compared to zero point eight million in the second quarter, so a delta of around DKK 1 million. Those three explanations, you know, explain why we saw a sequential decline in the EBIT margin from Q1 to Q2. But over and above, we have an EBIT margin of 27% in the first half of 2023, which is, you know, slightly higher than, than our, our full year guidance. With that, I'll leave the word over to Niels, our Chief Science Officer. Thank you, Kristian, for handing over the word to me. Here is the highlights of our discovery and partnership business that Henrik mentioned previously is the other part of our business model, where we work with peptide-based drugs. So, we have developed this platform that we call the streaMLine platform, which has really enabled us to accelerate the identification of what we call clinical candidates, so that means peptide drugs that are suitable for formulation and administration to humans. And we have also used our streaMLine platform to generate and understand a very broad, you can say, intellectual matter. So we can really use that platform to generate very strong patents around our molecules. As we, Henrik also mentioned, we have a portfolio approach, so we are constantly trying to add new programs to our pipeline and also constantly in discussions with the potential partners on opportunities on how we can bring these molecules into man. So this is just how this part of the business has performed in the first part of the year. So we have been working on our streaMLine platform to be able to work with more complex peptide structures that essentially opens up new areas of business. We can then address more targets with peptides and address more disease areas. We have also seen the first data from the Phase 1 obesity trial that was performed by Boehringer Ingelheim with our partnership with them, and they presented these data over the summer at the European Congress on Obesity, and the data are looking very promising. We have added a narcolepsy project, an orexin peptide project to our R&D pipeline, which we find very promising, and enables us actually to deliver peptides that can affect the brain that is involved in this disease. Then also, the financial results on the partnership part of our business is in line with our expectations. Importantly, our most advanced discovery project that we're running ourselves, our amylin program, the amylin peptide for obesity, is progressing according to plan, and we're still expecting the first patient to be dosed end of 2023. ... Yes, and now I will hand over the words again to our CEO, Henrik. Thank you. At Gubra, we have a strong green commitment. We have a fully owned subsidiary named Gubra Green, and 10% of the profits in Gubra A/S are transferred to Gubra Green and invested in green initiatives. We are nature positive and carbon negative, and these investments are an important aspect of that. These green initiatives are a key part of the company DNA, and it's also fully embraced by our employees, and it's an important part of the culture here at Gubra that, that we have this strong green commitment. There right now, approximately DKK 20 million in the green pool in Gubra Green to be invested going forward. And here, Kristian will take us through the outlook and guidance. Thank you, Henrik, and this is our financial outlook and guidance. As you probably know, we raised our outlook for the full year 2023, some 1-2 weeks ago, for organic revenue growth for the CRO segment. We raised that to a growth of 16%-21% compared to last year. And previously, our expectation was around 10%. So that, you know, follows, you know, the, the strong development we had in the first half of the year, good current trading, as well as, you know, a solid order book for the second half of this year. Apart from that, we keep the other guidance parameter unchanged. That concludes our presentation, and, operator, we now open up for questions from the audience. Operator, please. In order to ask a question, press star, then the number 1 on your telephone keypad. Again, if you would like to ask a question on the phone, press star 1 on your telephone keypad. Your first question comes from the line of Martin Parkhøi from SEB. Your line is open. Martin, Parker, but I think that the Parker was close enough. Just a couple of questions. Firstly, of course, we have seen a significant, as you also call it, regenerated growth in the liver studies following the data in late last year. Now, we saw these fantastic data from Novo Nordisk recently on the so-called SELECT trial proving the cardiovascular benefit of Wegovy. Do you think that could also spur some even more interest in the obesity studies? Of course, that are not impact Q2, but if you look at the remainder of the year. Then my second question also related to the CRO business. You did, of course, a strong 21% in the first half and now guiding 16%-21% for the full year, which with only about four months left of the second half, then it's still a quite big spread in the guidance for the second half. Where do you see the primary uncertainty on the second half? And then I think that I also should ask a bit of questions for the D&P pipeline. Of course, I'm interested, I know it's not related to Q2, but just to the Bayer termination of the partnership. Firstly, maybe that is to Niels, what do you mean about a healthy weight loss? What is exactly going to happen with this asset in the short term? And then, secondly, you're still promising 1-2 partnerships this year. I understand that you have entered the cooperation with Hemab, but I don't perceive that as a partnership yet. Is Hemab one partnership you expect to become a partnership before the end of the year? That was all. Thank you very much, Martin. This is, Henrik Blou, and I will try and divide and conquer here. So, I think the first question was, addressing this, significant growth in the liver space and, what we expect now that we've seen the data from Novo Nordisk. So the effect on the obesity space, and Niels, would you please comment here? Yeah. So, thanks for that question. That's a good question. I mean, that was indeed some pretty amazing data that of course had a massive effect on some of the companies that have GLP-1 analogues very either on the market or very close to the market. It does, of course, put a lot of interest, further interest into the entire obesity field, because, of course, if you can add on a cardiovascular benefit to your, to your medication, that will greatly increase the likelihood of people using that medication. So I think it does add another, you can say, positive aspect to the entire obesity field. We can definitely feel the obesity field is very active in our CRO business. But we can also see that there's a lot of interest for obesity programs in, in you can say, in the discovery and partnership business. So it's of course difficult to say how that will pan out, but it's definitely good news, you can say for the different obesity partnerships that we have with Boehringer, I think. Any follow-up to that, or should I go to your second question, Martin? No, it's fine. The second question was, as you remind, the growth in the second half. Yes. Exactly. So, we do guide with a 16%-21% for the full year, and as you mentioned, yes, there is a spread in that interval. This is the guidance that we can give at this point in time. We see strong order books, a strong first half of the year, and right now, what we can say is that we are confident we will end up in this interval. If we get confidence within this interval later on, we'll of course publish that to the market, but at this point in time, this is what we can say. And then your third question with regards to the Bayer project, where it was terminated, and we issued that announcement earlier this week. Healthy weight loss Niels, that was a question for you. What, what is in that? Yeah. So, when we say healthy weight loss, of course, that is, that is open for very broad interpretation. But, Yes. One of the big things that is discussed right now in this entire field is that when you lose weight, you tend, of course, to lose, primarily fat mass, but you also have a slight decline for, also for some of the GLP-1 analogues in muscle mass. And the question is, of course, if that loss of muscle mass is significant or not. I don't think there's any evidence for that, but there is an increased interest in, you can say, mechanisms where you spare the muscle mass, or you could potentially even increase the muscle mass. And with this project, we have some indications that muscle mass is preserved at least. We still need more data to support that, but it's definitely an interesting target, and that's why we mentioned that. We will definitely pursue this, and I think we will aim for finding a new partner, but it's still something that we need to analyze internally and make the final decisions. But we are generally, we really like this project and this mechanism. Yeah. So right now, some web activities, and then we are assessing how to take it forward, and we will definitely take it forward, this project. And then your last question, Martin, with regards to the Hemab collaboration. So we signed this pre-agreement with them, and, as also stated in the announcement, we expect to very soon be signing a full agreement with them, and that's then one collaboration. So everything on track there and a really interesting bleeding disorder program that we are running with them. So you asked specifically if that is part of our guidance on the D&P, and that is part of. Mm-hmm. So that would be one of the partnerships in 2023. Great! Thanks. That was just what I was looking for. Great. Thank you. Before we move on, before we move on to the next question, just a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Then your next question comes from the line of Morten Larsen from ABG. Your line is open. Thank you very much. Hey, guys, congrats on a very good quarter. A couple of follow-on to Martin's questions just to elaborate a bit. First, on the 1-2 partnerships, you signed one, which means there is an opportunity for the second one. Could you maybe sort of stabilize this a little bit, whether you feel more comfortable now versus three months ago in Q2? That's one. Second is on the overall early-stage customer funding environment, and how do you see that impacting us sort of our CRO business into the second half? Kristian elaborates sort of the pipeline that you have, the order book solid, but Martin also indicated in his question is: How does this fit into your second half guidance for the CRO business? It seems like you are being, you're being lowballing a bit here. Am I way off here, or is this something we're not seeing? I also want to touch on your commentary around M&A thinking. You bought the MiniGut, looks very healthy, and then you've talked about cash and mortgage bonds. How do you feel the environment is for M&A going forward? Let's have those three, please. Great. Thank you very much, Morten. So first, your question with regards to partnerships. Our guidance, 1-2 per year, and now we are, as mentioned in the announcement, very close on having the first one with Hemab. We, we're still guiding with 1-2 partnerships this year. As mentioned earlier in the year, we had—at any one time point, we have a number of partnerships dialogues ongoing, and we know from history that you need a number of dialogues in order to sign these deals on a regular basis. So that we are doing, and we are still comfortable with our guidance of 1-2 partnerships for this year. The next question with regards to the funding environment and, and our CRO and activities question, would you comment on that, please? Yes, sure. So, well, actually, the activity and the orders we get from smaller biotechs is actually quite high. So we don't see any, you know, decline in the, you know, orders from smaller biotechs, even though some of them could have some difficulty in finding financing. But that is not something we see in our order books. Rather, the opposite actually. Can I add a small comment on that? And that's also because we are gaining traction again in the U.S., and the U.S. is just a gigantic market and a lot of small biotechs. And I think they are because of the travel activity has been picked up again after COVID, because we have started really heavy on digital marketing, we are really addressing a much larger potential customer base than we used to. Thank you. And the pipeline or our order book, as mentioned, it is solid and we saw this very nice growth in CRO revenue in the first half of the year. We wanted to see that continue over the summer for changing our guideline guidance, and we did. So we see it strong now and we are confident with that, and that's why we are confident giving this guidance of 16%-21% for the full year. So it's our current best expectations where we will end up for the full year. And for your last questions with regards to M&A, we were very happy with the minipig acquisition. We are now getting that up to full speed on our use of platforms, et cetera. They're running the test studies, and as soon as it's fully implemented, we expect it to become a very good addition to our CRO and model catalog, as well as potentially also a way we can accelerate some internal research programs now that we have a non-rodent model which we can run ourselves. Looking into future acquisitions, we are still very actively engaged in this. We do see opportunities out there, and we are following up on that, analyzing various possibilities. So our general thinking is that also on the M&A side, it's the market is okay at the moment and we are still quite active on this aspect. Okay. Thank you. Can I ask a follow-up? Yes. Okay. Just on the Bayer, heading back, am I thinking correctly that if Bayer would have been interested in an obesity drug, kind of a cardiorenal, you know, they would have to sign a new deal, or they just simply roll the deal forward, the, the current collaboration deal? Yeah. So I cannot comment on the terms in the deal. I can just see that, you know, from the public announcements, Bayer is not at all involved in the obesity space. They have the cardiorenal as a focus area. And upon a pipeline review, they decided to terminate this collaboration. We see a strong asset that we now have back. It's a strong asset within healthy weight loss, and we're actually excited to continue the development and potentially further down the road, engage in new partnership with a party that is having obesity as a strategic priority. Right. Thank you very much. There are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the call back over to Henrik for closing remarks. Thank you very much, operator. It's been a pleasure presenting this first half year result. We are, as mentioned, very pleased with the development of the company and looking forward to reconnect after the next quarter. Thank you very much, everyone. This concludes today's conference call. Please enjoy the rest of your day and your weekend. You may now disconnect.