Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Victrex Interim Results Meeting May 2023, hosted by Chief Executive Officer, Jakob Sigurdsson, Chief Financial Officer, Ian Melling, and Chief Commercial Officer, Martin Court. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session through the phone lines. Instructions will follow at that time. Alternatively, participants can submit written questions using the Ask a Question button on the webcast page. I would like to remind everyone that this call is being recorded. I will now hand over to Jakob Sigurdsson to open the call. Please go ahead. Thank you. Good morning and welcome everyone to Victrex's Half-Year Results Presentation for FY 2023, which is held today via call. If we slide introductions first on slide two. I'm Jakob Sigurdsson, CEO. We also have Ian Melling, our CFO here with us, Martin Court, our Chief Commercial Officer as well, Andrew Hanson, our IR Director, is also in the room. Before we start, just so that everyone is clear on the format, the slide presentation is on our website at www.victrexplc.com under the Investors tab, by clicking on Reports and Presentations. We will call out the slide numbers when we are speaking. You can also access the webcast which has the slides moving. The link to this is on our announcement this morning. Secondly, we will have a Q&A at the end, and I will open that up to any questions from the call once we've completed the presentation. Turning on to slide three. I'd firstly like to recognize that this is Martin's last results presentation, although he still has a number of months before he retires from Victrex. I want to pay him my own tribute. Martin is a great colleague, a great professional, and he has been a significant contributor to Victrex over the 10 years that he has worked with us. We are all wishing Martin as well on retirement that allows him to spend more quality time with a growing group of grandchildren. To fill Martin's roles, we have now made two appointments, which enable us to double down on the significant growth opportunities across both industrial sustainable solutions and the part of our medical business. These will report directly to me, although they will not be having a board seat. Firstly, we're delighted to appoint Michael Koch, who has 30 years of experience in global chemicals, including at BASF, at DSM as well. He also has a strong experience across most of our sustainable solutions end markets, and his last role was as the CEO of Mitsubishi Chemical Advanced Materials, which happens to be one of our important VAR customers. Secondly, Dr. John Devine becomes Managing Director, Medical. John has been with Victrex for 24 years, and some of you may have met him on site visit. As you know, he brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to the role, and he's been instrumental in driving our medical business and the pipeline and is now rapidly being commercialized. To move to the next slide, just ever so briefly progress on our strategy. Before we cover the first half highlights, I'd like to spend a moment to step back and consider how we're making progress in delivering on our polymer and parts strategy. We know adoption time for some of our mega-programmes can require patience, but we are moving much closer to inflection points in several programs right now. Our sales from new products have been ticking up to 7% of revenue. Whether it's in the medical area or in the industrial area, the milestones we're delivering, not just on the pathway to commercialization, but greater commercialization itself is coming through nicely. I'm talking about this now, as you know that over the next few years, the fruits of our investment should start to come through. We are now starting to partner and have partners with major OEMs and customers in every mega-programme. That means that they're also starting to put their own investment behind initiatives that they have on their own side to develop products based on our technology. As we start to see these start greater commercialization, it will start to support top and bottom line growth for ourselves, improve efficiency in our assets and improving cash flow. Remember also, we're seeing good pricing traction. Our margin is improving from the trough and sales mix is improving as well. Once the macroeconomic environment improves and volumes come back, Victrex will certainly be well-placed for recovery. Next slide five. Onto the first half, specifically, two messages before we go into the detail of the presentation. Firstly, price, revenue and gross margin is up. Secondly, PBT is lower, very much driven by the macroeconomic impact to a number of end markets translating into lower volumes. We also saw some cost inflation and targeted investment in support of scale-up for key growth programs in the first half. Moving on to slide six and the highlights for the first half. Ian will cover the financial details shortly. Overall, we've seen strong pricing, driving revenue up 1%, also supported by FX. Our price increase program has gone very well. Remember that the major input to our pricing is via structural increases. Sales volume was down 14%, reflecting the macroeconomic environment. Also remembering that we had a record FY 2022 strong first half last year, so much tougher comparatives, obviously. We did see growth in Aero and Auto, and Medical, particularly with our record half year. We do know that Electronics, Energy and Industrial and Value-Added Resellers are softer than prior year. To put it in perspective, Value-Added Resellers are 200 tons down on the first half compared to the first half of 2022. Last year we had seen some records in all of these end markets. I think it's important to keep in mind that we are very well-placed, though, once the macroeconomic environment improves. We should also add that Victrex continues to develop new application areas and new uses for PEEK. This is the lifeblood of Victrex, where innovation is at the heart of everything we do. On margin, good progress year-on-year and from the second half of 2022 and towards mid-to-high 50s target. In fact, as Ian will cover, if you look at ahead suggested gross margin, you get close to 56%, which is encouraging. Certainly, we should see further progress once inflation fully subsides and once we see the ramp up from our China facility. This will remain a drag in the short term. Ian will cover the cash position as well. Again, with tougher trading, high CapEx and higher working capital, it does mask the longer term opportunity to improve free cash flow once the macroeconomic macroeconomic environment picks up again. Certainly, you know, we are well-placed for that. As in FY 2024, we'll be coming off a relatively high CapEx cycle with a significant reduction in CapEx in confluence, hopefully, with a strong recovery in our key end markets. Finally, as I indicated a few minutes ago, great progress on the mega-programmes and growing signs of commercialization. Now I'll come back and talk about each of those at a later stage. I will now hand it over to Ian for the financial summary. Ian? Thank you, Jakob. Good morning, everyone. Just on slide seven to start with. Firstly, I'd like to add my own thanks to Jakob's words about Martin. He's been incredibly helpful to me since I joined Victrex, and I'd like to wish him well in what will be a well-deserved retirement when it comes. Moving on to slide eight and the income statement. I'd like to start with an overview of our results for the first half of 2023. As Jakob has said, we have two key messages, which I will reiterate here. Firstly, we have seen strong pricing, which has supported revenue growth in the half, as well as some gross margin improvement. Secondly, reflecting the macroeconomic environment and impact on our volumes, PBT is down, driven by the weaker volumes, cost inflation, and by targeted investment we have flagged previously to underpin our future growth programs. I'll cover the detail here. At a revenue level, we reported half-year revenue of GBP 162.2 million, up 1% on the strong prior year, with revenue down 5% on a constant currency basis. It is worth remembering that a number of end markets were very strong in the prior year. Value-Added Resellers, Electronics and Energy and Industrial, particularly, each of these saw double-digit growth during FY 2022. VAR itself had a record quarters during Q2 and Q3 last year. We had already signaled that we expected some normalization in VAR. We did anticipate some bounce back after our first quarter, this has not yet been to the level we were expecting. Whilst we did see pickup in monthly volumes from month -to -month in Q2, as we note in our outlook statement, it does mean we need to see a further step up in the latter part of the second half, driven by macroeconomic improvement. Gross profit increased by 2% to GBP 86.7 million, but was down 2% on a constant currency basis. This was after the impact of currency hedging, where we reported a net loss of GBP 6.2 million compared to a GBP 1.7 million gain in H1 2022. Remember that the loss on hedging shown within gross profit means a corresponding benefit within the revenue line. The higher cost of manufacture continued to impact us, though we have seen energy costs starting to ease. Raw material inflation remains in line with our assumptions. Gross margin pleasingly was slightly ahead on the year of 53.5% and up sequentially by 410 basis points compared to the second half of 2022. In December, we indicated we would now show an FX hedge-adjusted gross margin, which treats the hedging result within revenue. Pleasingly, this is close to our midterm goal of a mid to high 50s gross margin at 55.5%. For the year as a whole, we anticipate gross margin being ahead of the prior year and slightly improved on the first half. On the overhead slide, we had already signaled an expected double-digit increase on a full year basis. Overhead growth is first half weighted this year, hence the 21% increase compared to the first half of 2022, which is 17% in constant currency driven by specific items. The activity levels in the first half of 2022 were still depressed as a result of COVID restrictions with travel and trade shows, for example, returning this year. We are seeing an annualization of investments made during the second half of 2022, primarily in medical acceleration as we support scale-up and some excellent progress in both trauma and knee. In China, as we move towards commercial start-up later this year, we have had to ensure that we have the appropriate operational resource to staff the plant. Some of these costs will move to COGS when manufacturing commences. Wage inflation at 5% average salary increase was the highest for some years and will impact the full year. We also put in place one-time cost of living payments for certain targeted grades, and this was well-received by our employees. Overheads were up GBP 7.7 million to GBP 44.1 million. It's worth noting that in the second half, we expect overheads to be similar to the first half and the year-on-year increase, H2 -on -H2, will therefore be more modest. Whilst we will maintain targeted investment to support our growth programs, specifically medical in China, we are also focusing hard on where we can contain costs, noting the tougher trading environment this year. Moving on, this results in underlying PBT of GBP 42.5 million, which is down 12% on the prior year. Reported PBT of GBP 39.1 million is after exceptional items of GBP 3.4 million. Remember, this is year two for our ERP investment, and accounting rules dictate we have to expense this. We expect a total investment of up to GBP 20 million over a three-year period. Our effective tax rate of 14.9% was in line with our expected long-run average of 12%-15%, which has increased slightly from 10%-13% to reflect the changes in U.K. corporation tax rates. We also continue to benefit from the lower rate available through the U.K. government's Patent Box scheme, with the patents in place since 2017. Earnings per share was also down 12% to GBP 0.419 per share on an underlying basis, and by 11% to GBP 0.388 per share on a reported basis. Finally, a brief word on our dividend. The board has noted the growing commercialization within our long-term growth programs and our mega-programmes, we have also balanced the more muted macroeconomic environment. We are therefore pleased to recommend an interim dividend of GBP 0.1342 pence per share equal to the prior year. Turning to slide nine and the underlying year-on-year PBT movements. Unfortunately, after a strong first half in 2022, we can see the effect of the macroeconomic environment on volumes in the first half, impacting PBT by some GBP 3.1 million, even though sales mix was improved. Automotive, Aerospace, and Medical all grew. I'll come onto this in a later slide. Pleasingly, price increases came through strongly during the half. Remember, we have sharpened our focus on price to include surcharge pricing alongside structural price increases. Price contributed GBP 5.7 million. On cost inflation, remember, we started the year with guidance of an approximately GBP 20 million year-on-year impact in the P&L from higher energy costs and raw materials. Energy costs have eased somewhat from their peak, and we should see that to start to flow through the P&L in H2. Year-on-year COGS inflation is now expected to be less than GBP 10 million, subject to continued lower energy prices. Targeted investments, including the impact of annualization of those started in FY 2022, totaled GBP 4.4 million. As I have said, this is primarily in Medical and to support the China start. Currency was supportive in the first half with a benefit to PBT of GBP 2.7 million after the impact of hedging. This resulted in underlying PBT of GBP 42.5 million. Moving to slide 10. Our H1 average selling price was GBP 83.60 per kg, some 18% better than last year as we saw price increases kicking in, and we saw an improved sales mix as well as the benefit of currency. It's worth noting that the significant majority of pricing benefit has been from structural price increases, and whilst we have implemented surcharge pricing based on energy costs with a number of customers, we now expect the contribution of that to be much lower given lower energy prices. A brief word on ASP guidance. We started the year with guidance of around GBP 80 per kg. We’ve exceeded that in the first half, but with some of the softer and lower-priced industrial end markets expected to tick up later in the year. That GBP 84 per ig is likely to edge down slightly, but we're still comfortable at being at or just above GBP 80 for the full year. Turning to gross margin. This slide shows the reported gross margin of 53.5%, up both on a year-on-year basis and up 410 basis points sequentially. The FX hedge-adjusted gross margin was 55.5%, and this is despite lower volumes through the plant versus H1 2022 and higher energy and raw material costs. Clearly, we are seeing some recovery from trough levels. It's worth noting that China will become a drag on gross margin next year once commercialization starts, as it needs time to ramp up. Inflation is still impacting us as it is most manufacturing companies, even if energy costs have been easing from their peaks. Moving to slide 11 and the margin bridge, including the effects of currency. This chart is intended to show how gross margin has been impacted by inflation despite the progress on price increases over the past year. Starting from H1 2022 with a gross margin of 53.1%, we saw a 1.7% impact to gross margin from cost inflation and a 2.4% impact from currency. This led to the margins of 49.4% in the second half of 2022. In H1 2023, we're pleased to see that price and mix have nudged up gross margin by 3.3%. Inflation is starting to ease from our assumptions, even if it is still present. Currency also supported gross margin by 1.5 percentage points, taking H1 2023 gross margin to 53.5%. As I said earlier, the FX hedge-adjusted gross margin is arguably a better indicator, with improvement to 55.5%. We continue to see an opportunity to improve gross margin over the medium term based on operating efficiency, continuing progress on a-inflation recovery and sales mix. The startup of China will slightly hold back progress from FY 2024. We would also note that our polymer and parts strategy is focused on absolute profit growth rather than solely on gross margin and of course, on improving return on capital closer to 20%. Moving to slide 12, we cover currency. The impact of currency hedging is shown on the face of the P&L, in line with IFRS 9, noting that the offsetting currency impacts on underlying trading are embedded in the other lines, most significantly, revenue. We saw a GBP 2.7 million tailwind at PBT level during H1 2023. This was largely the impact of the weakening sterling in the prior year. The loss on forward contracts was GBP 6.2 million compared to a GBP 1.7 million gain in H1 2022. We all know, sterling depreciated against the U.S. dollar quite materially during the second half of 2022. Our effective rate was 1.38 for FY 2022. This includes the effect of hedging. In H1 2023, this effective rate moved to 1.28 against the U.S. dollar, creating the FX tailwind. Against the euro, the effective rate was 1.17, slightly worse than FY 2022 at 1.14. Guidance for the year is unchanged. It's approximately GBP 4 million-GBP 6 million tailwind at PBT. If we look forward into FY 2024, at this early stage, given the depreciation of sterling and the current effective rate of around 1.29 and 1.16 against the U.S. dollar and euro respectively, our guidance at this stage is for a currency tailwind similar to FY 2023. Mid-single digit millions of GBP, though changes in FX rates between now and the end of the year can still change this significantly. Turning to slide 13 and CapEx. Total CapEx was GBP 22.2 million, slightly lower than the prior year of GBP 26.7 million. Around half of this is to support our China assets and capability, with the remainder on mega-programmes and maintenance CapEx. This new facility in Panjin is in commissioning with the aim of commercial production later in 2023. It is worth mentioning again the strategic rationale for China. It is China for China. It is extending our portfolio of PEEK grades. We're working with existing and new customers in China, supporting incremental business. It is also supporting a range of end markets, primarily in industrial and building on our strength in China. We already have a strong sales presence and a technical center in Shanghai. The investment in a new PEEK facility in China is building on this. CapEx guidance is unchanged for FY 2023 at around GBP 45 million. We should see this step down slightly to around 8%-10% of revenue, but noting that it will be above historic levels due to proposed ESG investments built into our midterm CapEx plan, how we can change our processes as we seek to offer the least carbon-intensive PEEK in the world. Turning briefly to slide 14 and cash flow. The weaker trading environment has impacted us here alongside higher working capital. Our working capital movement of GBP 32.7 million was driven by inventory increasing to GBP 117 million from cost inflation, recovery of inventory from lower levels following the pandemic and strong demand last year, and to reflect finished goods stock built to manage the U.K. asset improvement program, where we will see plant shutdowns this year. Inventory is expected to remain at a similar level through the rest of FY 2023. We do see an opportunity to unwind inventory from levels above GBP 100 million once we have started to see a ramp-up in China and once our U.K. asset improvement program is completed. On inventory specifically, a balance sheet is shown in the appendix of the presentation on slide 33. This increase in working capital drove operating cash flow to be -GBP 1.8 million compared to operating cash flow of GBP 10.9 million in the prior year. Looking at the other major items impacting cash flow, total dividends paid of GBP 40.1 million was the final FY 2022 dividend. This was a lower cash outflow than the prior year of GBP 83.5 million, which included both the final and special dividend from FY 2021 paid during H1 2022. Taxation was GBP 5.6 million paid in the prior year compared to a GBP 3.9 million receipt in H1 2023 as a result of refunds of payments on account. The net cash outflow was GBP 29.5 million versus GBP 67 million in the prior year, the difference being primarily the higher dividend payments. From a closing cash position of GBP 68.8 million in FY 2022, we saw net cash at the half of GBP 38.4 million, which includes GBP 4 million of cash ring-fenced in China as part of our investment program. Remember that FY 2023 will be a high CapEx year and a year of high working capital before we can start to reduce both CapEx and working capital over the next couple of years to support improved cash flow. A brief word on the uses of cash. Growth investment remains the priority, and we continue to review some interesting opportunities, particularly on the medical side. On shareholder returns, we did engage with shareholders during the half and have now added share buybacks as an option alongside special dividends. We are not announcing any share buyback here, but it is worth noting that any buyback is likely to be modest, up to GBP 25 million, reflecting the liquidity of Victrex shares. Buybacks may therefore be used for smaller sums of cash, with special dividends driven by cash at a level consistent with paying a GBP 0.50 per share minimum special dividend. With that, I'll say thank you and I'll hand back to Jakob. Thank you, Ian. If we move on to slide 16, turning to business performance in more detail. Firstly, on Medical, we've seen a record half year performance with revenue up 17% and 6% in constant currency, with strong growth in all regions and Asia in particular. This is not just the pent-up demand that I've talked about previously. We're also seeing continued diversification of our medical business with emerging and developing applications as PEEK's strong track record and application uses continue to grow. I also want to cover separately our mega-programme progress. This is an area where we continue to support our customer scale-up. For example, we opened a new product development center in Leeds earlier this year, which is a key part of supporting customers in trauma and knee specifically with design and development of their specific offerings. We are starting to reap the rewards of these investments and to remind everyone that we do see the opportunity for Medical to be over 30% of revenues over the next 5–10 years from around 20% of revenues at the half year stage, driven by core business growth and the potential game-changing opportunities in both trauma and knee. If you go back a few years, the question was repeatedly asked whether we could diversify enough into medical business. We said opportunities both in spine and non-spine, and we're now proving that we're doing that. Non-spine is now 52% of the medical revenues. Progress is made in a number of areas. In CMF skull plates using PEEK, we support better brain function than using metal plates. It's now getting close to GBP 10 million business alone with further potential in Asia and the U.S. Arthroscopy as well is growing double digits. So is cardiovascular applications. We have some more emerging business in both drug delivery and active implantables, which I will come to on the next slide. On slide 17, you know, with over 15 million patient implants, we know that PEEK has a strong track record in spine and increasingly in other application areas within medical. Clinical data on the usage of PEEK in the body is already strong and rapidly growing. Beyond the higher profile mega-programmes, we're also getting good traction in more niche application. This slide, you know, has some great examples to that effect. In cardio, PEEK is used in the impeller within heart pumps. It brings its inert nature, durability, strength, and biocompatibility into play. We now have seen 250,000 heart pumps using PEEK. In the total artificial heart, which has much more PEEK content, we saw last year over 300 patients globally being treated with this solution using PEEK rather than metal. PEEK is also seeing growing uses in drug delivery devices and in active implantables. On the slides here, we have an insulin pump which require a durable and biocompatible solution, which is precisely what PEEK brings. Relatively small revenues right now, but in post-COVID world where care at home and self-care is becoming more important, these smart devices are growing in importance. If we move on to slide 18, I want to talk about trauma. Here we see great progress, and we're on track for revenue of greater than GBP 1 million during the year, which we expect to build into mid-single digit revenues over the next 18 months. Remember that the proposition in trauma is all about enhanced union rates compared to titanium-based plates. With Victrex PEEK union rates are significantly better than titanium. There's a clear problem to solve here, and PEEK seems to have a perfect fit to help in better patient outcomes. In the partnership with In2Bones, where Victrex makes the plates in the U.K., that is going from strength to strength, and we're seeing demand exceeding initial expectations by a factor of five as we had, as we navigate 2023. Already, we've seen more than 200 implants using PEEK-OPTIMA also reinforced. Remember, this is composite technology which we have invested in and built significant IT on over several years now. The slide also has a great quote from In2Bones CEO, Alan Taylor, which emphasizes how PEEK composites trauma plates are starting to take hold commercially. I'm also pleased to announce that we have signed an agreement with Paragon Medical, a leading global contract manufacturer, which will support global scale-up for us as well. This will be based on our IP and technology, but it means that we don't have to put additional capital down in every region, and we will get a support from a world-class contract manufacturing organization to deliver on scale and at pace. If we move now on to slide 19, and knee, we're seeing really strong progress in the Maxx clinical trial. 35 patients already been implanted, 10 already having passed the 15 months post, and two already passed two years without any interventions. We're also collaborating with Aesculap, a part of the B. Braun group, which is a top five knee company, and interest from others in this space is growing. We're now at a stage where we can start to look ahead and consider what a manufacturing scale-up could look like. One of the reasons we invested in a lease facility, for sure. Maxx could have a commercial knee from 2025. Aesculap potentially a year later. Aesculap have already been conducting trials with robots for several years right now, with really, really encouraging results. Remember, the opportunity for knee is around GBP 1 billion of addressable market for PEEK-based implants. With one in five patients unhappy with a metal-based knee replacement today, it's a significant problem to solve. The main benefits are clearly the potential for reduced bone loss, more importantly, for metal-free alternatives and solutions. There are additional benefits associated with both weight and thermal conductivity. The other two are probably the main clinical factors that will drive adoption. We're really pleased with progress here. The clinical trial is a safety trial, and we can now start to consider the manufacturing pathway, remembering that the IP and manufacturing know-how sits within Victrex. Last year, we talked about how we see the opportunity to increase the share of Medical within group revenues. To support this, we have identified investment to support scale-up of our game-changing opportunities, particularly in trauma and knee. What this slide aims to show is that our customer push, which admittedly it has been for a long, long time, is now turning into more of a customer pull. We've signed up larger customers and others who are engaging with us, and they are now starting to put their investment into it as well. Whilst this is referring to Medical, we could also say that for other mega-programmes, for example, Technip and Magma program, made a sizable investment to buy Magma and as well to invest in a new Brazilian facility. Customer pull is increasing across all our opportunities, which is the ultimate sign of commercialization and adoption of the projects that we have been working on for such a long time. Now moving on to slide 21 for Industrial update. Overall, the macroeconomic environment impacted us in several of our main volume end markets, but some good progress too. We're well placed for recovery with a strong pricing, improving margin, and opportunity to rebuild volume beyond last year's record. If I start with Automotive, 1% volume growth in a recovering end market. The recovery has been steady, although we see a greater opportunity in the second half. Remember that auto is an area where we're not anywhere near the total of 95 million, approximately, million passenger cars built in 2018. The market dropped as low as approximately 75 million cars during 2020. It is on a slow road to recovery, but there's still a lot to go after if we're going to or when we will reach the heights of 2018. Forecast car build is set to grow this year to around 84 million cars, but there is clearly still pent-up demand out there, as evidenced by long backlogs for new vehicles. Our progress in diversifying our business continues in e-mobility, which I will come onto shortly. On Aerospace, you know, I was lucky enough to be out at the JEC World recently in Paris, meeting customers and collaborators. We're having some great conversations there. Not just conversations. We're seeing increased plane build help us recover in Aero. We know that Airbus, for example, saw 8% increase in deliveries in last year earnings update. Boeing up 41%, although from a lower base. Our range of application is increasing too, 9% volume growth, but 19% revenue growth, with our composites business and fuel business going particularly well. AE 250, our low melt PEEK grade, either as a polymer or tape, is now well established and accepted within the industry. It was demonstrated in parts of various size and forms by over 35 parties at this largest composite trade show in the world. Last year, we talked about the demonstrator for Airbus' Clean Sky 2 program. I'm pleased to say that the 10x PEEK content opportunity is something we're broadening with our tier and OEM companies as we further develop opportunities and leads, you know, with in this business based on our unique AE 250 technology. Moving to Energy and Industrial. Volumes down 21% as capital expenditure in this area was reigned back. Energy fared better, down only 6%, but clearly tough right now in general industrial. Fortunately, we're able to continue developing new uses for PEEK through new application areas, and I will cover these on the next slide. Electronics. We know that this area has been tougher lately and volumes were down 13% against a strong period last year. Semicon fab spending is forecast to be down 16% versus last year, all but with a strong rebound in 2024 of 21%. In smart devices, the latest forecast suggests a decline of 4% versus 2022 according to Gartner. We are well-placed in both of these areas. In Semicon, Victrex has a play both in the fab process and also in OpEx spending and in smart devices. Our film business is well-placed for continued innovation, smaller, smarter, and higher performing devices. On Value-Added Resellers, remember that last year was a record in Value-Added Resellers, particularly in the first half, so already a tough comparative. Volumes are down 21% or about 200 tons, which explains a large part of the volume drop, half year on half year. We had already signaled that we expected some normalization this year. It's clear that the industry is dealing with a major bullwhip effect, affecting demand, in both compounders and stock shapes. Unfortunately, volumes have been softer than anticipated. We have a long-standing relationship with our customers and a greater insight into their order patterns than ever. We are well-placed for when volumes return. We do expect to see some improvement later in the second half. Moving on to slide 22, in emerging applications, just a quick word on some examples of where PEEK continues to develop in these applications. On Renewables, we're seeing some business coming through in very specific renewables business in wind. PEEK is a good play here in harsh environments, compared to metal, where metal fatigue can cause cracking on certain applications. In Robotics, it's an area we have touched on before and is now starting to see some progress in new business as durability and reduced noise vibration requirements are starting to increase. Turning to slide 23 on e-Mobility. Very pleasing progress here. Remember that we are focused on the next generation of batteries and motors, 800 W to be specific, where the range and performance requirements are higher. Our XPI polymer is used to coat wires on very tightly wound wire for e-motors. We've been winning new business in this area in film and in polymer. We've been working with several of the major wire coaters and the car manufacturers to progress our PEEK solutions. We offer processability and sustainability benefits beyond the performance requirements alone. The good news here is that we're on track for more than GBP 3 million revenues this year in these mega-programmes and expect to build it rapidly from here onwards. Slide 24 on Magma. Remember that TechnipFMC acquired the Magma Global business back in 2021, and this is another example of a major OEM investing their money to deliver their technology to the market and thereby demonstrating their customer-pull approach. Victrex is entwined in the opportunity for Magma going forward. The extrusion of pipe is our know-how. We supply the PEEK polymer and the composite tape. The big prize is Brazil, and TechnipFMC have submitted bids for offshore packages there. We continue to support them ahead of the outcome, which could be material for Victrex, with an estimated eight tons of PEEK per km of pipe assumed across an eight to 10-year timeframe in multiple fields. During 2023, we will see some sample manufacturing, and it's worth noting that TechnipFMC have engaged with us at the board level several times in the past year. A strong relationship to ensure preparedness. I think we may have lost Jakob on the call. You still there, Jakob? Okay, we seem to have lost Jakob. Apologies, everybody. I think we'll carry on from the Magma slide. I'm just gonna turn to it. Okay, we covered e-Mobility. We touched on Aerospace. Magma. I think we covered the Magma slide. The next slide is slide 27, which is the bar chart in terms of the mega-programmes and talking about the pathway to GBP 10 million. There is a bubble chart in the appendix as well for those who need it. In terms of the progress here, just in terms of the sort of movers in, on this slide. What we want to show here is the next step on the journey to GBP 10 million. Aside from knee, which is making good progress in clinical trials, remember that all the mega-programmes have technical and commercial feasibility now. This shows the pathway. There is a slide in the appendix as well, which talks about the actual milestones. That's on that's in the appendix slide. I think that was the main body of the presentation. We'll probably just turn to the end market outlook on slide 28. Ian, do you want to touch on the outlook in terms of the end markets? Sure. With the pent-up demand and performance not yet back at pre-COVID levels, we are optimistic on Aerospace, with build rates scheduled to gradually increase through the next 12 months. We're also optimistic on Medical, with surgery rates still below pre-COVID levels in many regions. The impact of further lockdowns in China has continued to impact surgeries there. We're neutral on Electronics, Energy, and Automotive. Electronics, we note that WSTS forecasts a 4% decline in Semicon shipments in 2023, though Asia is dragging the overall picture down. Energy, while it's still quite buoyant now, we do note that rig count increases have slowed. For example, Canada rig count was down two in the last month, and the U.S. has been relatively flat month-on-month. We also know that in the industrial part of Energy and Industrial, or what we call manufacturing and engineering, we may see signs of CapEx being reined back. Automotive is a tough one to call. Whilst the IHS data suggests growth in both car production to 85 million cars and in sales to 83 million, we still need to see further signs of that backlog coming through. Finally, in VARs, as we signaled earlier, we've seen some sign of normalization in the current quarter. Nothing drastic, but certainly not to the run rates we have been seeing. We had a record Q3 2022 with 700 tons in VAR and a record year of 2,122 tons in the prior year. We remain cautious on VARs at this early stage. To sum up, No. Sorry. I think we're ready. Shall we move to Q&A, Andrew? Yeah. I think if we hand over to Q&A. Jakob, are you back on the call? No, I don't think you are. Operator, can you hear us? Yes, sir. Thank you very much. We will shortly begin the question and answer session. As a reminder, participants can submit written questions using the Ask a Question button on the webcast page. To ask a question on the phone line, please press star one on your touch tone phone or on the keypad on your screen. If you decide to withdraw the question, please press star two to remove yourself from the list. We'll pause for a moment to assemble the queue. The first question is from Chetan Udeshi of JP Morgan. Please go ahead. Hi. Morning. A couple of questions from my side. I was just looking at the numbers that you guys printed for Automotive and Aerospace, volume recovery. If I look at the IHS data, it seems to suggest that the automotive volume production recovery is really stronger, and we've also seen the aerospace volumes getting stronger through last two quarters. I'm just curious, especially given Victrex's exposure is more to the European auto market, where we've actually seen quite a good recovery in Q1 in terms of production for autos. Why are the volumes for Victrex in auto and aerospace still so low? You know, when we think about versus the end market, which seems to be clearly recovering faster. The second question, I'm sorry, but this may be a bit of a tough question, but I think it's worth putting through. You know, this is something in the same sort of, let's say, gist that I've been asking in the previous quarters as well. You know, your CapEx is up. It's almost doubled versus pre-COVID. Your OpEx is up 25% versus pre-COVID, the earnings are lagging more than 10% versus pre-COVID. When is this divergence going to end at Victrex? Next year? The year after? Clearly, I think we all can see the progress on midterm pipeline, but at some point, I guess, you know, we all have to see it in numbers. I guess that's where the key debate is on the stock. When do we see that? If we don't see that, what is the plan B, from management team? Thank you. Chetan, I think, I'm back. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. I'm happy to take the second one. I didn't hear the first one, so either my colleagues will take that one or you'll have to repeat it. Anyway, my apologies for dropping off. Something happened on my end here from a technology perspective. When is it gonna pay dividend? I've asked you a question effectively, Chetan. If you look at it, you know, we have. Not just us, but a number of industries going through a series of black swan events in recent years. We've been dealing with COVID We've been navigating chip shortages, and then, the last black swan that appeared was the Ukrainian atrocities. That has had, you know, huge impacted on businesses, large disruptions to supply chains, big shifts in demand patterns accompanied with various kinds of bullwhips that I think we're seeing actually going through some of our key customers right now. Through all of this, we have maintained our vision of preparing ourselves for the growth that we believe is residing and the growth opportunities that are residing within Victrex. We've continued to invest, you know, both in hardware, naming capacity expansions at Hillhouse with incremental investments. The opportunities that we are now seeing coming through in China, opening up the polymer plant later this year and the compounding plant. Also making sure that from a design perspective, we are in a position to meet the specific requirements on the behalf of customers, which clearly show up on the SG&A line as well. To answer your question, you know, I don't think anybody is expecting this demand trough to be with us forever. If we look at historical recessions, you know, you'll see them last anywhere from between six to nine months. I think, you know, we have a reasonable belief that we could start to see improvement towards the end of the year. That's important to keep in mind then that at that point in time, we are really, really well-positioned to take advantage of what usually is a very sharp uptick in demand at Victrex when demand returns. We are well prepared for that, both as it relates to our assets, and also as it relates to our inventories. On top of that, we'll be coming off a high CapEx cycle that has allowed us to prepare for the future and essentially taking care of all the major investments that we need to support the business for the next five years or so. If you keep that in mind, I think you see a recipe for a strong translation towards the bottom line, particularly when you consider the fact that some of our mega-programmes will start to contribute at or about that time, as we head into 2024 and onwards. That's where I'm specifically referring to trauma, where we're seeing rapid adoption, and we're going to—we are running as hard as we can right now just to keep up with demand and scaling it up. That's why we announced the partnership that we announced today with Paragon as an example, to be able to meet those demands on scale and at pace. Secondly, on e-Mobility, as I referred to in my introduction, seeing great progress both in terms of wire coatings and various other applications associated with the trend moving towards 800 V. Thirdly, you know, I would point to Magma, where we should be seeing some news flow as we head through this year, where Technip is putting their money where their mouth is in investing in facilities in Brazil. That's where we will benefit from both selling PEEK and carbon and UD tape to ultimately make the pipe. A short summary, I think you're hearing all the elements of a very, very strong performance as we head out of this current demand trough, and that's what we're very much preparing the ship for. Chetan, maybe I'll take the first question. On Automotive and Aerospace, we are showing increases over the year. Already I think Jakob mentioned in his commentary that we're seeing growth in those two spaces. We expect that to continue as the market continues to recover through the rest of the year. I think the results are impacted more by the offset of Electronics, and VARs there that Jakob talked about. We are seeing good growth in Automotive and particularly as we look in this transition in the automotive space between ICE and e-vehicles, then we are seeing growth in both parts of that portfolio and continue to push there. On Ae rospace, there's been clearly a different level of recovery in the European builder and the U.S. builder, but we're now starting to see increased activity in both of the primary players in airframe, and we'd expect that to continue to grow for the rest of the year. Thank you. The next question- Did it answer your question, Chetan? Thank you. The next question is from Alex Stewart of Barclays. Please go ahead. Hello. Hi there. I think you said that the ASP guidance for the full year was about GBP 80 per kilo, which is roughly what you guided to before. In the first half, you delivered GBP 84 a kilo, which is much better than you were expecting, but you're not changing your full year guidance. Implicitly, that means the second half must be GBP 76-GBP 78 per kilo, depending on where volumes come out. My question really is why are you expecting a lower second half ASP than before, even after delivering a higher ASP than expected in the first half? I know you talk about mix and all the rest of it. With ASP down that much half on half, it looks like it would seriously impinge on your absolute gross profit in the second half too. I just don't understand why the second half implied ASP guidance has been cut. If you could talk through that. Maybe I've got your guidance wrong on the GBP 80, but that seems to be what you're saying. Thanks. Alex, we're not cutting our ASP guidance, just to be clear. We are still guiding to an ASP. I think we said at or slightly above GBP 80, whereas at the start of the year, I think we were saying we could get to around GBP 80. I think our guidance has improved slightly. We are being a little bit cautious, I think, and the main reason for that would be mix. Clearly, depending on the strength of recovery in the VAR, which as you know, are our lowest priced customers, then that will impact the mix. We had a strong mix with medical in the first half. We expect Medical to continue to be strong. Clearly the volumes involved with VAR are much larger potentially, and will have an impact on the overall ASP. We expect to continue to see positive price. Currency should still be supportive if it stays where it is now. We should see a slightly higher ASP for the full year than what we guided at the start of the year. Sorry, just to go back on this. I appreciate you're not changing the full year ASP guidance materially, but given that you exceeded the guidance in the first half, it necessarily implies quite a big step down half and half in the second half and therefore below what you were previously guiding to in the second half. I'm talking more about the second half implied guidance rather than the full year guidance. I think as I said, Alex, I think that will come down to mix. We do, you know, we have been weaker than we were hoping for in the first half, and that has buoyed our ASP, if you like. Weaker in the VARs area. As VARs comes back and becomes a higher percentage of the total, that will reduce our ASP in the second half. Where that comes out exactly will depend on where that mix is, but everything else, I think is headed in the right direction. Could we exceed GBP 80? Yes. We've said we can exceed GBP 80, but I would expect when VARs returns, that will reduce our ASP from where it is currently. Okay. That's helpful. Thank you. Just a quick follow-up. If I look at the other chemical companies in Europe, they're using price to offset both COGS inflation and fixed cost inflation. You are showing decent progress offsetting COGS inflation. Over the last couple of years, you've had double-digit GBP million increases in your corporate costs, which appear not to be passed through. For a company that makes a product that's highly valued and highly profitable, how is it that other chemical companies are able to offset fixed cost inflation through pricing and you're struggling to do so to protect the bottom line? I'd be really interested in your thoughts on that. Thank you. I think, you know, we have made really, really good progress as seen in the numbers, you know, during the year, for sure. We also have to keep in mind that we are not in the commodity chemicals business, which allows you to push through prices on an index-wide basis. You know, clearly, we're also making investment in future opportunities that impact the SG&A line. We also have to consider the fact that even if we may be quite impacted by energy costs, and significantly so, you know, the global competition may not be. You always have to keep this all in the balance. I think we've shown our ability to recover price, particularly in the, in the last six months or so, six to nine months or so. I think, you know, we've also built into our pricing contracts a mechanism whereby we can react faster in the future when input costs rise of a certain magnitude and at a certain pace. I think we're much better equipped to deal with price increases right now. I would also say that, as pleased as we are with the progress on the pricing front, year -to -date, you know, this is a dynamic game that, you know, might require us to go, you know, further at it as time passes. It's a complex equation here, and we're not operating in a commodity environment whereby, you know, we push through prices based on an index mechanism. Alex, maybe I'd add as well, going back to one of Chetan's points, that for some of these mega-programmes, we're getting so close to the inflection point now that we need to make sure we got the appropriate resources to be able to deliver that, so we don't disappoint our customers after all the effort we've got to acquire them. There is a cost load there which comes before we get the benefit from that. Thank you. The next question is from Andrew Stott of UBS. Please go ahead. Yeah, thanks. Good morning, everybody. First of all, best wishes to you, Martin, in your future. On to my questions. Number one, the CapEx to sales guidance for the midterm of eight to 10. If I take the midpoint, that's about 200 basis points higher than the pre-China investment ratio. Can you remind me what's behind that increase? I think it says on one of the slides, ESG related. Can you just walk me through why your CapEx intensity is effectively going up? That's question one. Question two is a bit more straightforward. I think it's my lack of understanding of accounting here. Medical gross margin down 890 basis points Primarily reflecting currency is a statement in the release. Can you just remind me, Ian, what it is that's going on with hedging there and why the gross margin is impacted so heavily? Thank you. Yeah, sure. Let's start with the CapEx point in particular. With CapEx, the extra allowance, kind of the higher rate than you'd have seen historically in this business is I think twofold. One is making sure that we keep our assets up to date and keep invested in our assets to a point where we can drive the most out of them and be as efficient as we can from a capacity point of view. The other big piece that we've talked about is ESG investment. We do see as we go forward, the opportunities to improve our assets from an environmental footprint point of view, and we're still working through the plans for that. We do envisage to spend some capital to, you know, potentially change sources of energy for some of our plants, for example, moving to electric rather than gas where we can source renewable electricity, and that comes with a conversion cost, if you like, that we're building into CapEx. More to come on that in the future, but that's why we're being a little more cautious than what we saw historically from a CapEx point of view. In terms of the Medical gross margin, I think what you're seeing here is you're seeing the gross profit effectively being hedged by the absolute gross profit effectively being hedged by our currency hedges. We're not seeing extra gross profit. Meanwhile, the revenue number is accelerated by currency, and a higher proportion of our medical sales are in U.S. dollars than in the rest of our business. The revenue accelerates the gross profit. you know, is the amount impact on gross profits is delayed by the hedges. What you effectively see in the short term is you see a lower gross margin. Okay. It's a timing effect. To some extent, it's the timing effect as 'cause the hedges effectively hedge the gross profit absolute number. As you hedge the gross profit number, the revenue moves with the spot currency, if you like. The gross profit takes time to catch up. In this scenario we're seeing here, you see the gross profit deteriorate in the short term as the revenue increases and the gross profit stays the same. Yeah. Thanks, Ian. You can see some of that in the adjusted gross margin, which is stronger. The FX-adjusted gross margin. The next question is from David Farrell of Jefferies. Please go ahead. Yeah. Good morning. A few questions from me, please. Just going back into some of the end markets, surprised to see Energy volumes down 6% and also Medical volumes down 4%, given kind of A, the positive background for energy spending and B, medical, you talk kind of very positively about it. Was just wondering what's going on there. My second question, which you may or may not be able to ask is, I think I saw that Petrobras had awarded another EPC contractor a contract to deliver titanium risers as a way of addressing their corrosion problems. Is that in direct competition to what TechnipFMC is doing and how certain can we be that that contract comes through over the next couple of months? Thanks. I'll start with the macro one maybe. That contract was awarded. It's for a very specific part of the riser architecture, which is not in competition with what TechnipFMC are building for Petrobras. The solution would be way too heavy and also way too expensive for a more broad application. Okay, thanks. On the Energy side, I think we're seeing the impact here of delayed CapEx, to be honest, even if rig count has increased slightly. I think we're seeing the impact here of reduced CapEx for maintenance on the energy side primarily. As it relates to Medical, under medical, we report medical implantable and medical that goes into other medical applications, you know, outside of the body, be it inhalers, and/or other delivery devices that are outside of the body, and that's primarily where the volume impact has been showing up. That's clearly higher volume than the volume that goes into implantables. That's why we see the volume drop there, even if we've seen a significant revenue growth for medical overall. Okay. That's clear. Thanks. Thank you, David. The next question is from Kevin Fogarty of Numis. Please go ahead. Hi there. Thank you for taking my questions. The first one, just a little bit more color on the Medical side, given what you've seen in terms of kind of volume and revenue progress. Is there anything out there that you've seen that might kinda derail that progress in the second half of the year? Just sort of the commentary on that. Just secondly, on energy costs, is there any way of sort of calling out what you think the sort of potential tailwind might be in H2, given where energy prices are currently? On the Medical side, the answer is no. I think we're seeing good momentum in the business, and our operating assumptions are that we will continue to see that momentum in the same direction for the remainder of the year. Just on energy costs specifically, I think we said at the start of the year that we could see energy and raw material inflation in COGS being up to GBP 20 million. That number is now significantly lower and is less than GBP 10 million. Most of that reduction is energy, and we should start to see that come through the P&L in the second half of this year. Bear in mind that, you know, we're carrying quite a lot of inventory at the moment, and most of that energy cost is going into inventory. We'll see the, you know, the start of the reductions we saw in the later parts of the first half flow through in the second half. You know, the benefit from the second half of this year will mainly come through the P&L in the next financial year. Sure. Okay. Mainly a timing issue in terms of seeing that coming through. I get that. Okay. That's great. Thanks for the clarity. Thank you. Thanks, Kevin. Ladies and gentlemen, just another reminder, if you wish to ask a question on the telephone line, you may press star and then one. The next question is from Matthew Yates of Bank of America. Please go ahead. Hey, good morning, everyone. Couple of questions, if I can. Just the first one around inventory. I think you said earlier in the call you are in a position to be ready to meet a demand recovery. But when you look at that inventory position, just how elevated is it? If we don't see that demand coming back in the VAR channel soon, is there a risk here that you're gonna have to cut production run rates for a while? The second question on the trauma business, the agreement you've announced today with Paragon on the toll manufacturing in China. Can you talk a bit about what that does to the economics of trauma? You say this agreement is designed to help you scale up the business, but how much do you have to sort of pay away by going down this partnership route? Thank you. Okay. I'll start on inventory. Thank you, Matthew. We do have significant inventory, but we are going into a period of asset improvement in the U.K., which will involve us shutting down some of our plants over the coming months. That will probably run from the later part of this financial year into the first months of the next financial year, and that'll allow us to burn through some of that revenue over that period. We don't expect it to significantly move in terms of absolute value by the end of this year as we build up ahead of those shutdowns, and then start to burn it off in the last few months. We do look at our production plans for next year. Clearly some of that will depend on where the demand returns to. As Jakob has said, we've got a long history of strong recoveries from depressed periods in this business. We are confident that volumes will return, and we will use up that inventory in due course. You know, we'll talk more about our plans for next year and what our P&L looks like at the end of the year with our full year results. On the trauma question, we've looked pretty carefully at the way the value chain's constructed there. We believe that we're definitely best served by having a toll manufacturer, particularly of the scale and of the capability of Paragon. We recognize that while we bring lots of technology and lots of IP to this, we don't bring a huge amount of parts manufacturing capability in terms of automation and scale. We think actually we will be better served in terms of the returns we make on the business by partnering with somebody who can more rapidly automate than we can. Thanks for taking the questions. Thanks, Matthew. There are no further questions at this moment. That concludes the Q&A session. I will now hand back to Jakob for closing remarks. Please go ahead, sir. Yeah. I think, you know, it's worth putting this into perspective. It's clear that we are going through a demand trough right now, and very much driven by the Value-Added Resellers that are seeing a strong pull with effect going through their operations these days. We know that after such demand troughs, we do recover quite sharply, and we are mindful of being prepared for that, you know. At the same time, clearly, obviously, using all the self-help that one would use to make sure that we deliver as good a bottom line as we can. I think it's really important to also take a look two or three quarters into the future. When we will be sailing out of this, you know, we will have a really well-invested business, as I said before. A business that has kept going and kept investing in future opportunities through at least sort of three tough cycles. At the end of this trough, we'll be very well-positioned to meet demand as it returns back. We'll also start to reap some of the rewards of the longer term investments, like I referred to, such as in trauma, in Magma, and in e-Mobility as well. At the same time, we will be coming into a period of much lower CapEx than we've seen in the past three years or so, with pricing at strong levels as well. I think this clearly will translate into a strong cash generation and returns from the business and growing returns from there onwards. I think that with the things that we have doing, both in terms of infrastructure and talent, we are well-placed and well-positioned to meet the demands of the future, to grow the business. As I alluded to before, where many of our efforts, for instance, on the mega-programmes, have been characterized by what you could call almost an evangelical push for a long time. You know, we're now starting to see the signs of adoption and commercialization. Those signs are the fact that we're starting to see blue-chip OEMs lining up against each and every one of them and starting to devote their own resources, to adopt our technology and our contributions into their own parts, forms, vehicles and equipment. I think that's as strong a testimony to the progress of the mega-programmes as one can have. I do think it's ever more important to keep that in mind as we're going through a cyclical turn in the global economy that is clearly impacting our business in the short term. Bottom line is we're seeing prices at strong levels, margins are improving. As we sail out of this, we should expect continuation of that. As I said, with the added leverage on the bottom line from volume growth, but clearly from contributions from the mega-programmes as well. It's important that we keep that in mind. That being said, thanks for your excellent questions during the conversation. Apologies for dropping out there. Technology betrayed me for a second, but I'm pretty sure that my colleagues covered it well in my absence. Thanks again. Take care.