Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Uponor's half-year results presentation here from our studio in Helsinki. My name is Franciska Janzon from Uponor's Investor Relations. Today, presenting with us, we have many of our executive committee members. We will start with an overall of the group performance presented by Michael Rauterkus, our President and CEO. We will dive into our divisional performance, and we will also hear from Andres Caballero, President of our North American Division. This will be followed by our strategy execution, introduced by Michael Rauterkus, and we will also hear about the progress we've done towards operational excellence in conjunction with our transformation program from Chief Technology Officer, Thomas Fuhr. After this, we will listen to a financial review by our CFO, Markus Melkko, followed by a few words on the outlook. We will open up for Q&A over the teleconference line. With this, I hand it over to Michael. Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome from Helsinki. I'm very happy to present the results of the second quarter, and as always, we start with health and safety. What you see here is really a step change in the safety performance, which we are really proud of. When you see Q2, 2021, 2022, and now 2023, this is a significant improvement. You know, we have a Mission Zero ambition here, and we come closer and closer, and this is a result of good work in our offices and all the factories, and I would like to congratulate our people who really put a focus on this. On the financial results, I can really report for Q2 and H1, really strong results. We finished with net sales for Q2, EUR 315.6 million. That's gross. I come to this in a minute because we had some structural changes. An OP of EUR 41.4 million, and an operating margin of 13.1%. The H1 numbers is now EUR 644.9 million, EUR 86.9 million in OP, and 13.5% in operating margin. It's really another quarter after the first quarter with strong comparable OP margin, despite the soft overall market demand, specifically in Europe. These numbers, as I said, are gross numbers and adjusted for structural changes. They're all in the Infra section. The net sales decrease was 16.7%, not the 20, as you see here on the left chart, and 11% in H1, and this again, is all Infra. The strong profit performance, it really comes from Building Solutions-North America and from Uponor Infra. Both regions have done an outstanding job. This is also why we have invited Andres Caballero today to talk a little bit about the Americas, because they have significantly contributed to results of Uponor Group. We also have a really strong momentum in the transformation program, and transformation means more than just cost cutting or a haircut in cost. This really goes deep in the way how we do things at differently, and it's all about also operational excellence. This is why we have also invited here today, Thomas Fuhr, to talk a bit about the progress and give you a little bit of a deeper insight what transformation at Uponor really means. Here's... you see a bit more in detail, the strong Q2 comparable operating profit, which is EUR 333 million in net sales for Q2 when you adjust for the changes. Here you see the flow of the last quarters, and it's clearly over Q4 last year, which was impacted by the cyber, but you can now compare versus Q1, this gives also, I wouldn't say signs of stabilization here, but I think overall, we need to put these structural changes really into perspective. What we are really proud of is the OP results, so profitability is really strong, 13.1%. I think that's really remarkable. Also, when you think about what we were envisioned for the full year, when we set our targets for the year 2023. This is what it really means for the first six months, half year. The adjusted number for sales is EUR 666 million. You see also this is basically in line with the H1 result, 2021. You see here, it's still a very good result after a super strong clearly comparison we had last year. Last year, of course, had some specific effects, but I come to this a bit later. You see also now the absolute numbers on the comparable OP, EUR 87 million for this year, and coming from EUR 98 and EUR 96 the years before. You know, we also took the, a bit, the long-term perspective here since 2019, and you see here in the long run, really, this is a pretty good result. Remember, we had years 2018, 2019, where the whole year we did about EUR 90 million OP, and this is what we have achieved in half a year in a total different environment. I would like to also congratulate the whole team here at Uponor. They have done really miracles to deliver these results under these circumstances. Let me now do a bit of a deep dive by region and division. No surprise, there is a weakness in the European construction sector. While consumer price inflation goes down a bit and surprisingly, consumer confidence goes up, the construction market is really under stress. The builders' confidence goes down. Of course, mortgage rates go up. There are little signs of stabilization, if you will, because interest rates are not increasing anymore so strong. That's the title also of this presentation, it's still a very volatile environment. Especially we have in Central Europe, Germany, a pretty weak market. As you know, housing permits is down 30%, if we are not careful, we will be close to the 2009 levels, which would be really bad. I hope that the politicians take the right measures here to do something against this. However, the long-term trend, the mega trend, is still intact. I mean, we miss in Germany, roughly 700,000 houses of flats. There is a demand there, and sooner or later, the demand will come back. At the moment, this is a very tough environment. We also see similar signs in the Nordic markets, Finland and Sweden. The Southern European markets are a little bit more stable. Europe, at the moment, is really a tough spot. What we have then faced here is lower demand in key markets in Europe, therefore, it was really needed that we looked into a transformation program, again, which was not just focusing on costs. Our interim leader, Gerrit Schmidt, has done a super job in really looking in how we could optimize our structure. We have put more resources into market-centric functions. We have relooked at the setup of the regions. The transformation program is really going really well. We will see also some profit improvements from this program in Europe in the second half. Despite all these challenges, they could still deliver 10% OP margin. Clearly, this is not what we expected. Of course, we expect also from our European team a bit more. In the light of all these challenges, I think that's still a good result. The highlight also here, this is also something I always kept talking about, that we really can transform our business units. A super example here is Infra. They really managed, in this environment, to deliver a double-digit OP margin of 10.1%. This is really in the environment. Think about not only it's an Infra business, but also this team operates in the Nordic markets. This is a super result. On a like-for-like basis, the adjusted number on the sales side would be EUR 17.6 million higher, the de facto number would be EUR 81 million. The reported number is EUR 64 million. Again, here, what we said from the beginning, we will make this Infra business highly attractive, more profitable, and we are really here on a good path. As I said, the highlight of this quarter in terms of divisional performance comes from the United States, and this is why I've invited my colleague, Andres Caballero. Andres, are you online? I hope he is online. Andres? Okay, he is there. Andres, how are you doing? I'm doing great, Michael. Thank you. I must say, I'm super proud in Uponor and super proud of the U.S. results. You know, why don't you explain a little bit how the overall market is and how has Uponor specifically performed in this environment? Over to you. Well, thank you very much, Michael. I'm joining this broadcast from Colorado in the U.S., where I have been meeting with our top sales leaders to review our first half performance and prepare for the second half of the year. Let me start with a little bit of a summary of the state of our key markets. The inflation rate in the U.S. continues to be trending in a good direction. It's now at 3% in June this year, and this is the lowest since it's been since March in 2021, and this is compared to 4%, that was the inflation rate in May, and the expectation of the market that it was gonna be about 3.1%. This is certainly a good indicator on the market. We all remember last year when a surge in energy prices and food prices pushed the headline inflation rate to highs as high as 9.1%. Certainly we're looking better from the inflation perspective. Unemployment, currently at 3.6%, very low, and employment continues to be very strong and trending up in areas like government, healthcare, social assistance, and one of the big areas of growth is construction, which is very relevant to our industry, and certainly that is a good indicator for us as well. The Housing Market Index in the U.S. has increased to 56 in July, and this is the highest it's been since last year, matching what the forecast was for this indicator. This is driven by, you know, low existing house inventory, which is keeping demand really solid for new homes, even as the industry continues to struggle with rising mortgage rates, elevated construction costs, and certainly limited lot availability. Mixed signals on that side, but certainly some of them trending better. The total non-residential building starts in the U.S. are currently 1% down year-to-date versus 2022. This is a mix between commercial being down 7%, institutional construction up 12%, and manufacturing down 11%, mixed signals on non-residential markets. The Consumer Confidence Index remains relatively flat. Also we're monitoring closely the 30-year mortgage rates, which is very critical to our industry and our customers, and that remains at a high level at 7%, and this is compared to 5.1% a year ago. Remember, this is slightly down from early peaks of nearly 9%, so this continues to put a little bit of cooling down in the market until we see our rates going back to about 5%-6%, as they were a year ago. We're also seeing a slight improvement on Architecture Billings Index over the last six to nine months, and this is an index that forecasts how architectural firms are planning for new projects for the next about nine to 12 months. The index is above 50 in the month of June, and that indicates that, you know, activity remains pretty solid. This is the second month in a row where it's been above 50, which isn't happened, you know, recently. Certainly a good trend, but it's not a definite indicator that we are out of the, you know, concerns with economic conditions. That's the markets. Now let's move to some of the strong performance for the business in Q2. There's a lot to be proud in our Q2 performance. You know, given the soft markets, given the tough comparables to last year, Q2 and first half, and given the volatile economic conditions, I am personally very proud of what the North America business has done for Q2 and how it's preparing the business to continue to perform for the year. Net sales were at EUR 121 million for the quarter, and this is relatively flat to the previous year level. Remember last year, there was a lot of one-timers and unique situations that drove a very strong performance in the last year. Without all of that, we're still maintaining a flat performance in the top line, which is very impressive. This is driven by strong demand generation activities across both the U.S. and Canada, accelerated growth into commercial and non-residential markets, and this is to diversify the business a little bit from the more traditional single-family residential markets that were very, very strong, and also some adjustment on wholesaler inventory given the residential market's volatility. The execution of our sales playbook, the demand generation focus, and then accelerating to non-residential markets are, you know, key to build resilience to the business, and we're doing that. That's what shows, our very strong performance of near 20% operating profit, making the second quarter of this year one of the best quarters that this business has ever delivered. Congratulations to all my North America team on that. This strong profit performance is driven by very robust operational execution, continuing to maintain very strong price discipline. The early execution of our group-wide transformation program that Michael had mentioned, that we started earlier, this year, and the launch of our lean operating model, which is going to maintain this performance regardless of economic conditions. Just in a nutshell, I'm very proud of our entire North America team as we continue to execute well. We remain focused on advancing our strategy, delivering our priorities, and focusing on excellence in sales and marketing, investing for the future, maintaining, of course, our award-winning people first culture, and our lean principles to ensure that we maintain this operational performance and efficiency. We're well-positioned to navigate the markets and continue to perform better than market in the next months and years, regardless of the environment. Very proud of the results, and thank you, Michael. Back to you. Thanks, Andres. The question is really: Are we here already at a tipping point here for the Americas market? We don't actually know. We think, you know, let's wait another quarter, maybe two. We see first signs of recovery of the overall market. I think what your summary on what you did in Americas is basically a summary of what we try for the whole company, which is de facto executing our strategy. Let's talk a little bit about now the strategy. The strategy execution is really on track. We want to unlock the potential of water to protect the place we call home. This is really our purpose. This is why we are here, as always, we maximizing the core, which is the famous 4C approach, which starts with customers, and you heard Andres is not in the office. He's in Colorado meeting customers, and this is so important that we really systematically talk about the channels, the customers, the countries, and categories, which Thomas will refer into the minute. Thomas will also talk about how we run innovation in the future, we are leading in sustainability, and we put our people first. We have done a lot this year. We shifted gears because the market reality was this year very different to what it was one and a half, two years ago. Thomas, over to you. Let's talk a little bit about what really operational excellence means, and how we drive innovation in the future at Uponor. Over to you. Thanks, Michael. Welcome from my side. My name is Thomas Fuhr, Chief Technology Officer at Uponor since October of last year. I want today explain a little bit what we have done during the last six months, which were the key initiatives and our focus points. We focused basically on four main topics. The first one, safety. Michael mentioned it was the first slide, and it was for the whole company, the first priority. I'm incredibly proud what the whole team has achieved. We could basically reduce our LTIF by more than 60% compared to last year. This was only possible because the whole organization focused on safety and walked the talk. Safety is in all our management meetings, the first priority, the first slide is always safety. If an accident happens, top management reviews every accident. Last but not least, we also reformed and restructured our safety organization to a state-of-the-art organization, extremely well done from the whole team. Secondly, service. I think we want to be seen by our customers as a reliable partner, a partner you can trust on quality, on price, but also on delivery. On the last one, we have improved, and we did also some significant steps here. We have, for example, in Europe alone, increased our on-time in-full performance by 10% versus last year. Also here, very well done from the whole team. There is more to come. The next one is a complex beast. We are reducing the complexity in our business because complexity drives cost and drives also delivery performance in a negative way. For us, one major focus point was: how can we reduce the complexity in our business without reducing the offer to our customers? I'm happy that the team found some really smart ways to do this and in the same way, reduce our complexity by more than 40%. This will help us to reduce cost and increase our service performance to the customers even more in the future to come. One more topic which drives cost is productivity, and it's in this times, more needed than ever. We put really a strong program around culture of continuous improvement. Also, not only in the operational areas, we put it in all areas in place, starting R&D, purchasing, supply chain, and last but not least, the factories. I'm really happy also to see what was achieved in a relatively short time. Markus Melkko will later demonstrate on the headcount reductions we could achieve already in Europe based on the program of productivity. Also here, from the team, very well done. Coming back to Michael's chart regarding our strategy. Innovation is one of the key pillars and one of the success pillars for our future. We have hired in January our new chief technology officer, and during the first six months of his work for the company, we focused basically on two main topics. On the one hand side, picking some low-hanging fruits and getting some quick wins under our belt. I mentioned this before. Secondly, which is more important, defining our future. What does it mean? I think we have defined now a future-proof organization within R&D, which will deliver for us the innovation steps we really need. I'm really happy to share that basically already some first indicators show some good results. For example, the number of patent applications in the first 6 months of this year has already reached the level which we had during the whole last year. There is more to come. If you look at this chart, we have basically, as a company, defined our portfolio in four key categories: water systems, energy systems, Installation Systems, and our Infra business. These four categories, we will drive in the future very, very hard. In order to do so, we have decided to hire also a CMO, a Chief Marketing Officer, which will coordinate and drive these categories for us hard. But a CMO can't do it alone, so we need to have a strong R&D culture going hand-in-hand with it. The reorganization of the R&D is basically based on these four key categories. And it's not only a reorganization, we put also new people on board. We invested in R&D. You will see this also in the numbers. We invest in talent, we invest in people. I'm sure that with this combination, we do already a big step forward. That's not enough. On the other hand, we geared up also a technology push, because also the factories, our suppliers, and also outside partners, like universities, have a lot of ideas, and we want to coverage that and also use it in order to fill up our installation pipeline. Last but not least, our customers are demanding, and they have also ideas. Our sales departments have ideas, and our peers sometimes have also ideas. All this together, I think, will shape a diamond and will make us leading the industry on innovation. I hand now over to Markus Melkko, who will give us some more insights on the numbers. Thank you, Thomas. From the excellent strategy update done by Michael and Thomas, I will share a bit more insights into the Q2 and H1, the first half financials. Before we go into the financials, I would like to spend a minute on our transformation program. Michael already pointed out that we're making good progress with the program, and with this chart, we want to give the audience a bit of an understanding that on the left-hand side, you can see in the pie chart, the blue part, is the savings, annualized savings, from the actions that have been completed and validated by the end of June, this year. The gray bar there is the gap to EUR 30 million, but at the same time, we're very confident that we're actually making great progress of already more or less identified the actions needed to meet that EUR 30 million cost-saving targets. The flip side of the thing is that the transformation program, like Michael said, is not a cost cut or a haircut per se, but it does have also the painful impacts on the personnel side. On the right-hand side, you can see the development from the Q3 2022 FTE outcome, which was the benchmark for us to start or the reference point for us to start calculating the savings. You can see the bridge now to the end of Q2, the reduction is 11% or actually 445 FTEs. It actually goes into three different buckets. The blue bar there is a reduction that is actually related to the headcount, a headcount reduction in the transformation program, meaning that we have restructured organizations, not taking headcount, sort of haircut reductions, but actually taking headcount out by really remodeling the work we do, or actually shutting down operations permanently. The 60 part there is the sale of DE, does not refer to DE as Germany, but actually the district energy business, which the transaction was completed at the turn of Q1 and Q2. The other changes there are changes related to capacity movements, adjusting for capacity, or for example, when we have had involuntary exits, we have not backfilled the positions. All in all, the impact is quite significant. This is now visible already gradually in our financials. When we look at the first half-year, this year, compared to the comparison period, Michael already noted out on the net sales development. On the top left-hand side chart, you can see the bridge, division by division, basically summarizing the development year-on-year that Michael already alluded to. I would also like to point out to you that Michael showed in his earlier slide, the net sales for year to date, when corrected for the restructuring, or basically the divestment of the district energy business, as well as then the closure of our Danish factory, that amounted to EUR 666 million as a comparable net sales. On top that, this year, we've actually had a negative currency impact of EUR 9 million during the first half, out of which EUR 5 million actually already goes into Q2. These two bridges give you then the impact of, in a way, really the like-for-like performance. The net sales, like Michael already pointed out, has been negatively impacted by especially the European soft demand. Whereas, like Andres pointed out, the North American business did a great job in holding the line in terms of net sales. When we discuss the operating profit development for the first 6 months of the year, the bridge then on the bottom left-hand side corner gives you an indication that the input costs, as opposed to the impact we saw last year, is actually trending a bit positively. That's the positive EUR 5 million there. The other change in comparable operating profit is more or less the lower volume activity that we have. The net impact of that is minus EUR 26 million, which we then compensated with the other EUR 9 million, which is effectively the overhead cost savings that our teams have done. Also on my behalf, I'd like to extend my gratitude to the Uponorians who have taken a great action and initiative, driving the productivity and cost efficiency already during the first six months of the year. All in all, the comparable operating profit, EUR 86.9 million, which is EUR 11 million down than year-on-year. The comparable operating profit margin improved to 13.5% from 13.1% a year ago. A big chunk of the performance improvement, as these are absolute numbers, big chunk of the operative improvements are coming from the work that Thomas and his colleagues in U.S. have done and in the Infra division have done to drive our productivity up and keep our conversion costs at bay. I'm happy to report that for Uponor Group the comparable gross profit margin climbed above 40%, which has been kind of like an, a bit of a goal for ourselves internally that we've set ourselves compared to 36.8 a year ago Q2. The rolling four-quarter comparable gross profit margin that you can see there on the chart as the solid orange line, is now climbing. The dotted line obviously has the dip from Q4 last year, which was impacted by cyber. Now during the first half, we've been then trending at or slightly above 40%. Just shows the strength of the team's work on driving productivity. Price discipline, mix, and cost control really helped us to drive the gross profit margin. As everybody can understand, with sustained gross profit margins, the volumes will obviously play into the absolute numbers as the volumes gradually come back. On cash flow part, I'm happy to report that the development has improved year-on-year. The Q2 cash flow at EUR 47 million, basically driven by better net working capital development versus the performance year ago. Also, the investments have been lower than the year ago, but also in the cash flow from investments part, you can see the positive number there. It is also getting the benefit of the district energy divestment we did during this spring. Cash flow from financing includes the first dividend payment installment, which was done in March. As a small change to the previous quarter end financing position, we have also issued EUR 25 million in domestic commercial programs for short-term financing, testing a bit the market. Brings me to the financial position. You can see the net debt development on the left-hand side chart. The net debt stood at the end of the quarter at EUR 20 million, versus EUR 77 million a year ago. The rolling four-quarter gearing percentage is at 7.5%, which is trending downwards also year-on-year, but very clearly below our financial target range of 40%-80%. Like I said, the financing position this end of this quarter has a bit of a change compared to the previous quarter-end, where we have the EUR 25 million commercial paper program in use. When you study our balance sheet in a bit more detail, you will find out that the cash position of the company is very solid at the end of quarter. Overall, the financial position continues to be very strong and keeps us motivated to drive our strategy forward. Just a brief recap. These are the financial targets we set and communicated to the market March 2022. We have the financial targets set for the periods of from 2022 to 2024, and then with the ambition of 2025 onwards to accelerate the growth rates and the OP margins. I think the teams have done a fantastic job at Uponor. The comparable operating profit margin is indeed meeting our financial targets that we set already for the period by 2024, and the gearing obviously well below. Unfortunately, given the market softness, the organic growth rate during the first half of this year is on a negative path. The teams are working hard to make the most of the volumes available in the market as we speak. On the dividend side, obviously, the second tranche of the dividend for the fiscal year 2022 is still not paid, so therefore we haven't laid it out there. Based on the decisions done by the annual general meeting in March, the dividend for this, for the past, fiscal year is actually growing in line with our financial targets. This is a brief summary into our financials for the first 6 months of the year. With this, I would like to hand over back to Michael and the outlook for the year. Thanks, Markus, and thanks for really keeping the numbers together, because in these times it is really, really important that we navigate through this stormy weather. Let's talk about the outlook for the year. As we always said, it is very volatile. Clearly, we see in some parts of the world, in our markets, signs of stabilization. I'm cautiously optimistic on the U.S., and I said, let's wait another quarter to see how things are doing. Also, what we clearly must say, the mega trends and the long-term trends are intact. People need homes, and there is a shortage of homes. I mentioned the German example. There is the same situation in the U.S., and the market will come back. The question is, when? We will not waste the time, and we make this company more robust, more agile. We really gain muscles, and I think also probably one of the biggest difference to the past is Uponor is more agile. This is a company and a world-class team which can shift gears very fast. The tailwinds might help us a bit, but let's also talk about the headwinds. Interest rates, you know, we have, of course, a picture here, and we hope there's a bit of a stabilization, especially in the U.S., but we don't know, and it's a bit unpredictable. Clearly, there will be a soft demand in Europe for the next two, three quarters. This is what we believe, and this is also why we continue to look into our, into our cost structure and, in our transformation programs. At the same time, as Thomas said, we invest in our future. We invest in new products. The long-term investments stay while we really look at the short-term impact. It's also important that when the demand comes back, we have the resources in place. I don't want to be in a situation like the airline industry a year ago, when all of a sudden the demand is back, and then, and then we run into capacity issues. We have a really and even better position now and KPIs to look into a bit into the future and see what we can do here. That's the situation, given the strong performance of the first half, we have issued yesterday evening a new guidance. Basically, it's a tactical adjustment on the sales side due to our disinvestment at the Infra business of EUR 50 million. At the same time, also with 13.5% OP margin in the first half, we now think the comparable operating margin will be at or above 11%, which is de facto last year's results. With this, I would like to thank everybody here for listening, and we are now open for any questions. Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please dial star five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial star five again on your telephone keypad. There are no questions at this time. I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments. The next question comes from Dinesh. HH from BBG. Please go ahead. I hear there are no questions. I think, which is a proof, I think we have been probably clear enough or more clear than ever. I would like to thank you for listening to our call. We are, and we are, as we said, very proud of delivering these numbers, and see you then back in October, I think, for- Yes, the October 25th, the Q3 results. October 25th. Have a nice day. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.