Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I am Paulina, your Chorus Call operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the MedLife conference call to present and discuss the first half 2026 financial results. Please note, the conference call is being recorded, and during the management presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. The presentation will be followed by a question-and-answer session, and you can submit questions via the webcast platform or via telephone. Should anyone need assistance during the conference call, you may signal an operator by pressing star and zero on your telephone, or by dialing the phone numbers under the Ask a Question section on the webcast page. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Mihai Marcu, CEO and the Chairman of the Board. Mr. Marcu, you may now proceed. Good day, everybody. I am, today, here for this conference, and thank you for your participation with all the team. Mr. Dorin Preda is the Deputy CEO, Alina Irinoiu, CFO of the group, Ioana Birsu is IR Manager, and Flavia Cimpea n is one of our financial managers, financial manager, the right hand of Alina here. First, Alina Irinoiu, the CFO, will present the figures, and after that, of course, we are here for your Q&A session. Thank you. Alina, please take over. Yes, of course. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you very much for joining the presentation today. As always, I will start this presentation with the highlights for the first six months of this year. We will look, first, at the overall performance, and we had a solid start of this year. Pro forma sales reached RON 1.7 billion. It is up almost 11% year-on-year, out of which organic growth was of 9.5%. This growth, you will see that was mainly driven by higher patient volume, so it is based on traffic in all of our units. We witnessed that the demand for healthcare services remained rather strong even though there is, of course, a challenging macroeconomic environment in Romania, and we have seen that the consumer spending has decreased. What is also important for us is that growth came together with an improvement in EBITDA margins. We saw a positive progression in the second quarter, which brought the first half pro forma EBITDA margin to 16.4%. For us, on one side, this is revenue growth with better absorption of our cost base, but also reflects the efficiency and the cost optimization measures that we have implemented across the group this year. All our main business lines performed well, with particularly strong momentum in corporate and clinics, while laboratories and hospitals also posted solid results. We will go together into more detail regarding each business line in the next slide. But overall, the results do confirm the synergies across these business lines and also the strength of the underlying demand. At the same time, we continued to make good progress on the projects that are very important for the group's next phase of development. We have continued, during this period, to invest in infrastructure, in advanced diagnostics, in personalized medicine, but also in digitalization and technology. As we go in the second half of this year, our priorities remain very clear. We will continue to grow organically. We will improve efficiency across the group and deliver on the strategic projects that are already underway. On the network expansion side, we continued to consolidate our regional footprint through a combination of acquisitions and organic investments. In January, we completed the acquisition of Medstar Group. We added four clinics to the Sfanta Maria network and further expanded our presence in the west part of the country, particularly across diagnostics, imaging, and recovery services. In Arad, we opened the fourth MedLife medical center, expanding access to over 17 specialties, while also introducing their longevity center. In Bucharest, we have relocated a clinic into a larger one-stop shop hyperclinic. This brings our network to 37 hyperclinics at the national level, including eight in Bucharest. More recently, in August, we have announced the acquisition of a 75% share in Qualipat company. This is a specialized pathology and molecular diagnostics laboratory. The transaction has a strong strategic rationale. It will further strengthen our capabilities in advanced diagnostics and personalized medicine, and i t is also sustaining our leading position in the Romanian anatomical pathology market. Beyond the network expansion, we have continued to invest in higher value healthcare services and new growth areas. For example, in MedLife Polisano in Sibiu, we invested over EUR 2 million in advanced surgical infrastructure, expanding our robotic-assisted surgery capabilities and positioning the hospital as a regional hub for complex care. The corporate division maintained strong growth. We developed there new products and tailored service packages. Another strategic area we continued to develop is personalized medicine, and there, we took two complementary directions. First, we are increasing the complexity of our laboratory capabilities. The Longevity 100+ program evolving from genomic sequencing towards the integration of genetic microbiome and clinical data, laying the foundations for more personalized diagnostics and care. In parallel, we are taking our mobile app to the next level. We are gradually developing it. We want it to be a health ecosystem, and of course, a trusted health partner for our patients. The idea here is to bring together the medical, the genetic, the biometrics, and also the lifestyle data in one single place, allowing us to better understand each patient and to provide more personalized insights, recommendations, and also care over time. Looking ahead, our focus remains on sustainable growth, and also disciplined capital allocation. We continue, of course, to closely monitor the macroeconomic environment, and remain flexible in how we respond to the potential changing market conditions. On the investment side, of course, we want to continue to invest in technology. We want to capture the synergies across the network and to further improve margins. The last one that I didn't mention is M&A. On M&A, we remain active in the market. We will continue to look at opportunities that make sense for us strategically, both in Romania and across the region. Our focus remains primarily on small and medium-sized transactions. We are not currently looking at any large deals, and we expect this approach to remain broadly unchanged over the medium term. Moving to the next section, the financial results. We are now looking at the consolidated statement of profit and loss. Six months 2026 pro forma versus six months IFRS. Gross sales, National Health Program for chemotherapy drugs included, has increased by roughly 11%, reaching RON 1.7 billion. The pro forma operating profit increased by 22.3% to RON 103 million. Pro forma EBITDA increased by 14.5%, reaching RON 259 million, resulting in a margin of 16.4% on a pro forma basis. You will see 13.9% on IFRS against 14.4% in the first half of 2025. I want to make a comment here. Please note that on IFRS figures in other administration and operating expenses, it included an amount of EUR 1.5 million paid during the period in connection with the final resolution of a litigation involving the company. No provision has been recognized in prior reporting periods in respect of this litigation, because based on the information available at the respective reporting date and also the developments in the proceedings and the decisions that were, of course, issued by the competent authorities, m anagement assessed that the recognition criteria for a provision under IAS 37 that is covering this topic were not met at those reporting dates. Nevertheless, following the final outcome of the litigation that took recently place in May 2026, this amount was recognized in full in the current reporting period. After normalizing this expense as one-off, you will see that IFRS margin for the first half of this year is 14.4%, which is backed on a stronger second quarter. In terms of net result, the approximately 2.8% depreciation of the RON against the euro during the second quarter of the year impacted the financial result. The impact was of RON 56 million coming from this, leading to a pro forma net loss of RON 20 million. On the financial impact side, because I mentioned it, and particularly looking at this unrealized FX loss, one of our priorities is to gradually rebalance the foreign exchange exposure on our balance sheet. There are a few alternatives that we are contemplating to be done by the end of next spring. Firstly, is to increasingly use local currency financing for future investments. This would allow us to better align the currency of our debt with the future cash flows and gradually reduce our foreign exposure. At the same time, important to mention that we are seeing a natural hedge developing within the business. As you already know, our corporate segment continues to grow strongly and ahead the other business lines, and i t is predominantly euro-denominated. As this business grows, it should increasingly help balance our overall foreign exchange exposure. We are also looking at financial hedging solutions, including euro to RON exposure swaps and other such like instruments. Also, we do not exclude a capital increase among the broader financing alternatives that we are considering for future investments and consequently FX debt management. Overall, the objective is clear. We want to gradually improve the currency balance of our funding structure and reduce the sensitivity to euro towards RON movement over time. Moving next. In terms of the bridging revenue from IFRS figures to pro forma figures, we have included RON 3 million normalization adjustments from subsidiaries that were integrated in the first half of this year, n amely, Medstar. You know that entered into consolidation in February, so we have adjusted for January, a nd also extracted RON 166 million reclassification of the National Health Program for chemotherapy drugs. Just as a reminder, this is a business with zero direct margin contribution, but of course, very important in supporting volume growth in a complementary service area. We also always approached this as an adjustment in pro forma figures. In the same period last year, the corresponding such adjustment was of RON 120 million. Moving to EBITDA, also the bridge, 108,000 corresponding to normalization adjustments from acquisitions and 16 coming from non-recurrent or non-operational expenses. Here, Pareto amount is this one-off litigation expense and also expenses for units that weren't opened or expenses incurred by units until their opening, and also expenses related to M&A transactions. Looking on the next slide at the quarter-on-quarter evolution. The positive profitability trend accelerated in the second quarter, with the EBITDA margin improving compared to the same period last year. You will see that we marked on IFRS and without the one-off. There is an increase from 14.2% in the second quarter last year to 14.7% in the second quarter of 2026. On the revenue side, we continued to see a steady progression quarter-on-quarter. As mentioned before, it is mostly backed by traffic and increased patient volume. Turning to the performance of each of our business lines. I will start with clinics. It remains the largest revenue contributor with 39% of total sales. Here, revenues increased by 15% year-on-year. Performance was primarily volume driven with visits up by 12% overall. The increase in volumes was broad-based across all our outpatient segments including MedLife units, second brand units, Sfanta Maria, but also the oncology clinics. Hospitals also delivered a solid growth, with revenues up 8% year-on-year. Patient volumes here increased by around 5%, while the average fee was up 3.5%, partially reflecting the shift towards more complex medical services and procedures performed. We mentioned that hospitals remain an important strategic growth pillar for the group. We continue to see further potential here in this area. I remind you that we did attend also the contract with the National Health Insurance House with the general hospitals. At the same time, you will see the growth rate that naturally started to normalize here compared with previous periods. This is something that we expected as the hospitals are now moving beyond their initial ramp-up phase. Laboratories also performed well. I'm moving to laboratories, with revenue up 13% year-on-year. Here, it's mainly driven by higher testing volumes. You will see that the average fee remained broadly stable, reflecting selective price adjustments and slightly lower average ticket per patient. Looking ahead, we see significant potential in this segment, particularly as we continue to develop our capabilities in genomics and microbiome. Over time, we expect these areas to become increasingly important. We see healthcare moving gradually towards more personalized medicine, while also strengthening the role of advanced diagnostics across our network. Moving to corporate, continued to be one of the strongest performing segments, I mentioned before. We see here an increase of 17%. This is linked to the new products and service packages that we have introduced during the period. Demand here remains very strong. We have brought in our portfolio new clients. We have also strengthened the position with our existing clients, so w e are seeing increased market share. Dentistry remains the area where we continue to see some pressures, with revenues down 4% year-on-year. This is a segment that it is more sensitive to purchasing power and discretionary spending. The softer consumer environment continues to have an impact here. Nevertheless, we have already taken steps to adjust our approach with a stronger focus on medium to high-end services, and we are implementing further measures to improve performance going forward. I will touch a bit the last two. Pharmacies are performing very well. Revenues increased by 34% year-on-year. This is mostly linked to higher client volumes but also improved product mix. Others that represent 6% of total sales have declined by 13%. This is reflecting the lower wholesale distribution activity. Looking at the cost structure on the next slide. Operating expenses as a percentage of sales improved slightly year-on-year. There are two main trends that I want to present behind this evolution. On one hand, consumable and repair materials increased from 19.4% to 20.4%. This is basically reflecting the growing contribution of hospitals, oncology centers, and laboratory services in line with the trend that we have seen partly since the second quarter of last year. This was offset by a lower contribution coming from commodities that is linked to the distribution activity. On the other hand, salary and related expenses has decreased as a percentage of sales. As the business continued to grow, we were able to increasingly scale on the existing cost base, resulting in a better operating leverage. This trend, if we are looking on a quarter-by-quarter basis, is much more visible in the second quarter of this year. Turning to the financial position on the next slide. Non-current assets remain broadly stable, increased by 1.2%. Here, the main movement is coming from goodwill following the acquisition completed this year. Current assets, excluding cash and cash equivalents, increased by 16%. This is partially in line with the growth in activity and partially, as I also explained in the first quarter, related to the timing of advanced payments and receivables. On the other side of the balance sheet, the current liabilities excluding interest-bearing liabilities increased by 7.2%, broadly reflecting the higher level of activity. Moving to debt and leverage. Financial debt increased by 5% during the period, resulting in a 6.3% increase in overall net debt. Our net- debt-to-pro- forma EBITDA ratio remained approximately flat compared with March, at 3.85x as of the end of June. This was mainly influenced due to the 2.8% depreciation of the RON against euro. Also, I made a comparison excluding this FX impact, and the ratio would have declined to approximately 3.74x, basically reflecting the underlying operational de-leveraging trend. Looking ahead, we remain focused on gradually reducing leverage and we target the level of around 3.5x by the end of 2026. The last part, and I will just comment a few on it. Moving to the consolidated cash flow. We continued to see strong underlying cash generation during the first half of the year. Operating cash flow before working capital increased by 10%, reaching RON 249 million. Net cash generated from operating activities was RON 141 million, representing a 40% increase compared to the first half of 2025. On the investment side, during the first six months of 2026, RON 128 million were allocated to investing activities, which is 6% higher than prior years. This includes the acquisition of subsidiaries. RON 37 million was used in acquisition of subsidiaries, while RON 80 million in property, plant, and equipment. This concludes the presentation that we have for today. We can now move together to the Q&A session. We will take the first questions by phone, and afterwards, we can move to the questions submitted by you through the platform. Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, at this time we will begin the question-and-answer session. You can submit questions through the platform in the Ask a Question section, or via telephone by dialing on one of the numbers provided and pressing star followed by one on your telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, then you may press star and two. Please use your headset when asking your question for better quality. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. One moment for the first question, please. The first question is from the line of Bram Buring with WOOD & Co. Please go ahead. Hi, Alina. A couple of questions, please. The first is, I am looking at your full-year budget of revenues, and that would imply growth of 12.5% in the second half of the year. So, given the market dynamics, is this still achievable, that pace of growth? The second question is with regards to losses associated with new units. Are you still generating any EBITDA losses in the new hospitals? If so, when do you expect them to start breaking even on the EBITDA line? Thank you. Yes, Bram. Thank you for your questions. I will start with the first one, which is related to the budget. As you can see, we have succeeded during this period to increase, and to do that by organic development, despite the Romanian macroeconomic environment. We will do that in the coming months as well. We have also improved the margin, and we do not see a reason not to capture these improvements in the following quarters as well. We are on track of the budget, and we keep our estimations by year-end as well. Indeed, you might think at the net result as well. I mentioned it also last time. In the budget, we have captured a depreciation of 2% by the end of this year, a gradual depreciation of 2%. What we can see now is a 2.8%, so this will have a slight impact on the net profit. But the 2% was captured in the budget. In terms of EBITDA, it is true, there are still some gaps, let us say, in EBITDA margins that we are witnessing in the new units. This is especially due to the contract with the National Health Insurance House. We do not have visibility of when we will enter into the contract. Nevertheless, the question is when, not if. Up to now, those hospitals were cash-based, and this, let us say, is reflected in a gap between how we budget it versus how those are performing. But all the other units are covering for this gap. Okay. So, those units are awaiting contracts with the health house. I assume, reading between the lines, they are still EBITDA-negative, but better performance from mature units are offsetting that negative contribution from. Yeah. New units. Okay. Yes. Actually, one hospital is EBITDA-positive, the other is slightly EBITDA-negative, but they are, b oth of them have a greater potential, let's say, once they benefit from the other resources that all the hospitals here in Romania do benefit from. Are both hospitals awaiting contracts with the health house or just the one? Yes, both of them. Both of them. Thank you. Contracts and national program. Yes. Hello, Bram. Thank you for the question. It's Mihai. I would say that it's not something special we are for these two hospitals, but just the average what happens with the hospitals, with private hospitals in Romania. We are not fortunate in sense that of the many political changes the past few years in Romania, and unfortunately, they were open just into this period. But it's not something, again, if it's just when. But it can be a long period, I can tell you that. We don't see any, let's say, lights at the end of the tunnel in this moment. On the other hand, it happens all of a sudden. All of all the other in the past, what happen when you're not expecting. So we're simply waiting. We adjust a bit the expenses of these hospitals, and we'll do continuously if we see that it's not coming. We will wait because these investments will pay in one day, but I don't know if it's going to tomorrow or maybe in six months, I don't know. Yeah, sure. No, it's just a box-ticking exercise to keep track of how they're performing. One other question, if I may add. Are you, at this stage, still not planning any price hikes, say, for the second half of the year? Yes. Up to now, we didn't discuss or decided on any price hikes. We did some at the initial of this year, but we consider that as of now, no price adjustment should be applied. Understood. Thank you very much. Thanks, Bram. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone or type your question in the Ask a Question box. As a final reminder to register for a question, please press star and one on your telephone. There are no further audio questions. I will now pass the floor to management to accommodate any written questions from the webcast participants. Okay, I will go first. I still have an add to the last question and comment of Mr. Bram. With the prices that we are offering to the market, as Alina said, we have not increased any prices from the beginning of the year. Just very, very small increase in a bit on another, but not relevant to the aggregate business of MedLife. I am telling you, the demand is there. On the other hand, we succeed to keep a robust growth operational due to a demand, and especially, you can notice easily that the ticket is slightly decreasing in most of the business lines. In the same time, we succeed to have more clients offering actually, more services these days. But the market is suffering. We are lucky, and we succeed not to be linked with the consumption in Romania, because that goes down. Most of the markets, and including, as I know, some of the medical market, is not necessarily growing as it was in the years before. That is why we will not, of course, we did not try, but we do not want to try to increase the prices. We succeed, in a way, to surpass that by increasing the number of clients. I do not think we need. Then, I will just switch to the first question, which I see here. Is that following the improvement of underlying profitability on the Q2? If we still consider actually if, in all the year 2026, the EBITDA budget of RON 512 million is achievable, a s long as, of course, reaching the budget will require an amount of RON 270 million EBITDA in the second half, implying a margin of roughly 15.1%, comparing with what happened, say, 14.7%, and m y answer is yes. It is challenging, right? But we are still there. As you can see, we succeeded a bit to increase the margin as well. So, not only the sales and the organic growth, but the margins also improved a bit. As our visibility today is that it is not easy, but we can achieve this 15.1%. Yes. That is the first question. Alina, please go for the second one. Okay. What is your outlook for the Romanian private healthcare market over the next one to two years? What do you see as the main growth drivers or risks for MedLife specifically? I will add some, and maybe Mihai will come with additional one. I would say that Romanian private healthcare market is seen to further increase over the next years. We were looking also at some reports and analysis, and they are projecting us 8% increase in organic development of the private healthcare market. The increase is still there. The need for medical services is there. The main growth drivers or risks for MedLife, I will say that our growth drivers is corporate. These products are very well received by the market, and we will continue to promote and adjust our products in order to attract more patients. Another growth driver is hospital. Apart from the two that we mentioned, you have seen that we are improving the infrastructure in our hospitals, and we believe that they are at the core of our business with complexity, with finalizing the medical act. Another growth driver is laboratory. Genomic together with microbiome, together with putting here images, putting biometrics, putting lifestyle will also help the patients to approach their health from a personalized, let's say, approach. We see all these coming as growth drivers for our business. Did I, Mihai? I will use that because that's a lower view that created with the last question. I will do also the final statement in the same bandwidth with the answer. I will say first, as you see, that consumption remains robust in MedLife and the demand for our services, but this is not a result of fine-tuning to make during these months comparing the market. We have few products which will pay in the coming years as well, and we have some others coming. Just to give an example, two weeks ago, we have launched, w e are the only institution in Romania ever, private or public, and one of the few in the region, in the south, is able to do microbiome with their own forces, not any kind of support from outside. We are doing it ourselves. We have done first time in Romania and in the region, the genome, and we will launch some others, a nd these are very well received by the market. It's not necessary as themselves to pay back, but the image of MedLife is strong and the demand for our services remains strong because we are proving that we are able to deliver technically and scientifically results that nobody else is able to do, at least in Romania. These are things that have been cooked years ago, and I can tell you that we have launched just few days ago the new app. I suggest you to try it. The name is MedLife and iMed. You can switch from one to another. Just keep in mind that you will be able to compare in the real-time your biometrics, your lab results, your imaging in MedLife, and your genome, which was calculated by MedLife. Of course, this is only for the people that they made the genome with us. But starting with the second half of September, it's going to be for all persons, so you may use it as well. We are preparing some other unique services to the market as well. And we just see some acquisitions when we see that maybe they are small, as you can notice. But just to give you a flavor of Qualipat. Qualipat, today, together with the acquisition we have made about four years ago, the name is [inaudible], and two years ago, Personal Genetics, MedLife is becoming the higher and the most sophisticated and with by far the biggest volume in genetics and in molecular biology, sorry, a nd also, in pathology. MedLife is, today, the most specialized laboratory for the new technologies and the new blood tests and the new medical tests in Romania to come and for the next generation of medical results. That put us in a very good position for the next two years. I hope if the market is stabilized and we succeed also all the hospitals to deliver services at their potential; I think we are in quite a good situation today. Also, we are aware of the fact the debt of MedLife is not a small one, not necessarily very big like it was two years ago, but it is still important, and also that is denominated in FX. With this, as Alina mentioned, we have some plans, at least for the years to come. We will not increase our debt in foreign currency. If we will increase any debt, it will be in local currency. The second one, very interesting, I think you noticed already, we started increasing the sales and we emphasize a lot on corporate sales, where we increased with 17% compared with 10% the rest of the business. Usually, these contracts are denominated as well in foreign currency, and that means we are making a natural de-hedging. It is still a very small part, but we are continuing to do that. Not the least, we are contemplating also to swap some of our debt. We are in discussion with financial institution. Why not? Of course, it is not a promise because I have not discussed this with the board and I have not decided as well as a CEO. But why not maybe in months or one year, maybe to increase the capital if we have to develop the company and to ask some capital from the stock exchange. These are things we are discussing here. None of the route is decided, not even partially, but just for your flavor, we know that, we are aware of that, and on top of the operation activity, which we believe is doing decently and may have performance in the coming years and in the second half of the year, we believe we have to adjust these things. Thank you very much for today. We wish you a very nice weekend and thank you very much for participating to our press conference today. Bye. Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now concluded, and you may disconnect your telephone. Thank you for calling and have a good afternoon.