Good afternoon. My name is Bill Peterson, U.S. CleanTech analyst, and we're really pleased to have Daniel Wiegand, the founder and chief engineer from Lilium. He's going to make a brief presentation about Lilium. Lilium is a pioneer in the eVTOL space based in Germany, with, I would say, a unique aircraft amongst the several that are in the space. So he's going to walk us through a presentation. I'm going to then probably kick off with a few questions, and then I'll also ask the audience if they have any questions as well. But thanks for supporting the conference, and over to you. Good afternoon. Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you, Bill. So yeah, what is Lilium? We are Europe's largest electric aviation company with roughly 1,000 people working in Munich, in Germany. We are democratizing regional electric aviation, fully battery-powered. And if I just jump to the next slide directly. Why regional? Some of you might be familiar with the air taxi segment. We also make vertical takeoff and landing airplanes, but we do not believe so much that the largest market here is for inner-city flights of 10, 20 miles. We believe the time savings will be much larger if you fly intercity. If you fly intercity distances, it's longer flights. You have hours of time savings, not a couple of minutes. And you can also bring more passengers on board of one airplane. What you see now is the airplane which we are developing, fully battery-powered, first electric commercial jet globally. It flies at roughly 250 km/h in its long-range flights. That makes it roughly 25%-30% faster than its peers using propeller technology. It also offers the largest cabin in the sector for up to six passengers and one pilot. That is going to be very useful in bringing down the cost. It has an operating range of about 170 km with the batteries we have in production today. What is unique? It's being certified at the same safety level like a commercial airliner, which means you have all the redundancies you know from an airliner. You also have that 10 to the -9 failure target, similar to an airliner, and that highly differentiates it both from products from our peers being certified in the U.S. at 10 to the -7, but it also differentiates it with respect to helicopters. Something that my co-founders and myself thought very early on was, if we want to certify an airplane at the safety standard of an airliner, we have to have people on board who have successfully done this before. Aerospace is just too complex to make all these learnings yourself. And that's why we have brought a team on board who is among the most experienced and best people you can find in aerospace globally. It starts with our chairman, Tom Enders, who was the former CEO of Airbus. Our CEO is the former head of the Airbus A320 program, today the most successful airliner globally. I could go on like this throughout the whole management team, but also the 500 engineers we have underneath. This is the main reason why I am so confident that this aircraft will be certified, will be certified on time, will be safe, and will successfully make money for our airline customers. Our business model is very simple, two columns. We design, certify, and produce aircraft as an OEM. But additionally, there's also a significant after-sales support business, and that stems from the fact that it's battery electric airplanes. The aircraft has a lifetime of about 20 years with around 30,000 flight cycles. Those batteries only can do roughly 1,000 or 1,500 flight cycles. That means roughly once per year, potentially more often, you are replacing the battery packs on the airplane. If you accumulate all those battery replacements over the lifetime of an aircraft, the revenues coming from that is comparable to the revenues of the aircraft itself. We're in the printer and in the cartridge business. What we do not do is any operations of the airplane. Some of our peers in the market intend to do this. This is why I'm saying it so clearly. We also had in the past some plans to do this, but we said two years ago, we're going to fully focus on delivering airplanes. That's what we are best at. This also helps us to get pre-delivery payments from our customers, and it collapses the funding need required to become cash flow positive. In terms of our launch strategy, we're launching at first in the premium market because it's an existing market. There are higher margins, and it helps us to achieve an earlier profitability. Then in a second step, we are scaling in the mass market with airlines as a customer who are using the aircraft for feeder flights into long-range flights or as an intercity shuttle between different cities. The market we are anticipating in size is around 500 aircraft per year globally for the premium segment, replacing executive helicopters and business jets. Then for the mass market, we expect around 4,000 airplanes globally by 2035. These are our numbers. On the right side of the slide, you can compare this to the numbers from other people, which are slightly larger, but overall, they are comparable. What you see now is the cabin, one of the unique selling points of the aircraft. Very comfortable, very large, very big panoramic windows. We offer this in two versions. One is the four-seat executive version, where we capitalize on a lot of space in the cabin for the passengers. Then on the right side, you see the six-seat commercial version, which is still more comfortable than an economy seat in an airliner. What is unique about the aircraft is the pricing we can achieve. We have a very detailed operating cost model for the aircraft. This model tells us that our airlines can operate the aircraft charging $2 per kilometer from their customers. That includes a 20% margin for the airline, a 75% load factor in the airplane. Of course, it's loaded with all the fees for landing, pilot cost, insurance, etc. How is that enabled? Mainly through two things. There's a high aircraft utilization. We're talking about close to 2,000 operating hours per year, whereas a helicopter can do roughly 500 to 600 operating hours per year. The reason is that the maintenance is so intensive on helicopters that roughly for one hour of flight time, you have two hours of maintenance on the ground. Here, the electric powertrain helps us to really bring down the cost and increase the utilization of the aircraft. The second advantage where we are unique is the high passenger capacity, and that obviously distributes the cost over more different tickets. We have a global customer landscape at the moment with close to 700 MOU pre-orders and 45 binding contracts for the aircraft. We are quite unique with that global market access because our certification in Europe is the highest standard globally. That means we are complying both with FAA standards, but also standards in other countries around the world. If you look at the different types of customers, you can see roughly a 50/50 split between customers from the premium segment, such as NetJets or Evolare or GlobeAir on the one hand, and on the other hand, airline customers such as Saudia or Lufthansa or Azul. Yeah, we have recently announced a big partnership with Lufthansa, who said they will now, after a pre-study, investigate across all their brands how they can utilize the Lilium Jet as a feeder into their existing products. They're not only looking at, of course, time savings, but also airspace integration, how they can bring in their technical centers, spare parts supply, integration into the airports on the ground. So there's a very comprehensive partnership looking into all these details, and we're obviously very excited about that. Looking a bit at the technology, there are two types of propulsion technologies in aviation: propellers and jets. 95% of all airplanes around the globe right now are using jet engines because they have some distinct advantages. They have usually a higher performance on speed and range. They have significantly higher comfort, lower cabin vibration, lower noise emissions. They're safer because you can contain engine failures within the duct around the engine. And we're basically bringing those advantages into the vertical takeoff and landing and electric aviation segment. We have developed our own electric jet engines, and we are globally the first company certifying an electric jet aircraft for a commercial certification. These airplanes obviously need batteries. Here we have, a couple of years back, down-selected a lithium-ion battery technology using a high silicon content. At the time, this was very novel. Meanwhile, it's more or less a standard in the premium electric car segment. You will see in 2025 and 2026 a lot of cars coming out with that. We have tested that technology extensively to meet our demands and our requirements on energy, on power capability. We have manufacturing partner Customc ells. In Germany, we have set up a dedicated production line for those cells from which they are shipping right now on a weekly basis to us. Lilium is then integrating those cells into battery packs and certifying the packs, where we have also done already extensive testing on meeting the safety requirements of the regulators. What is unique in our airplane is that we have designed it such that you can replace the battery packs without changing the airplane, and this way capitalize on the improvements of energy density in the batteries. So historically, they have improved at roughly 6% to 7% per year in energy. Our intent is roughly every two years to offer a higher energy density battery pack to our customers, and this way increase the value of the existing fleet. As you can see on the picture, at the moment, roughly 50% of the energy is actually used for the cruise flight segment, and the rest is regulatory reserves, takeoff and landing energy. That means if we get 50% improvement on battery capacity, we can almost double the range of the aircraft. Yeah, why should we fly electric at all? People are usually underestimating this. We have three options. There are e-fuels, there's green hydrogen, and there are battery-powered airplanes. On the ground, there was a lot of discussion, and battery electric cars are the clear winner at the moment. It's very similar in aerospace because you need roughly three times more primary energy to fly with green hydrogen and six times more primary energy than for the battery to fly with e-fuels. That, in the end, shows up in the cost per seat mile, and energy makes up roughly 40% of the cost in a regional flight ticket. It's ultimately the cost why we believe that every flight that can be done with a battery electric airplane will be done with a battery electric aircraft in the future, only limited by range. Here, on this chart, we had our engineers extrapolating how the range of a vertical takeoff and landing airplane in red or a conventional takeoff and landing electric airliner in blue would increase over time, assuming a 4.5% improvement only every year. You can clearly see, by 2050, the airliner, the electric airliner, would already hit 2,000 kilometers operating range, which means you can do roughly 80% of all commercial flights done today with a battery electric airplane. The fundamental technology for that is the electric jet engines and battery technology we have in our aircraft today. Where are we on certification? For those who are not familiar with aircraft certification, there are basically four steps. The so-called first step, the certification basis, means your regulator is laying out a set of roughly 200 baseline requirements your aircraft needs to fulfill. The second step: means of compliance. Here, you are discussing with the regulator how you demonstrate compliance, in which tests and which pass/fail criteria. The third step is the so-called certification plans, in which we, as the company, lay out over which timeline and which test procedures we want to demonstrate compliance. We have completed those steps, which means we've been enabled to start our assembly, our final assembly of the certification aircraft in December last year. This year, we will roll out a total of 3 airplanes. In summer, we will then start the ground testing of the fully assembled airplane. In December, we target to do the first flight to then do compliance demonstration in this certification. There'll be a total of 6 certification aircraft. In 2026, we target to do the first customer deliveries, which we have already contractually committed. We also had a great milestone recently, at the end of last year, becoming our so-called getting our Design Organization Approval. This means it confirms that we have the skills in the organization and the processes to design and certify eVTOLs. There are lots of types of design organization approvals. We are, at the moment, the only one globally, the only company holding an eVTOL-specific Design Organization Approval, which spans the whole scope from airborne electronics to airborne software structures, flight testing, the whole span of activities we have in the company. We have done five years of extensive flight testing with full-size airplanes. You see on the bottom left here our flight test center in Spain. What we have tested there initially is just, can we do the basic control and flying at all with these airplanes? Can we take off and land vertically, fly transition, etc.? And then as a second step, you can start the video now. As a second step, we have done also failure testing, for example, failures of engines, how does the aircraft react to actuator failures, to control computer failures? And basically, the design of the certification aircraft is in this area. You can tune down the sound, and I can voice over. So here, you see how it works. The aircraft lifts vertically, then the engines tilt. The aircraft accelerates. As it is in high-speed flight, it is incredibly efficient, almost comparable to an airliner. This high-speed flight with wing-borne lift is what makes the airplane so efficient, roughly three times more efficient than a helicopter. For landing, the engines tilt again, pointing down. They carry the lift of the aircraft, and it can touch down on any helicopter side. We can charge it with a standard automotive combined charging plug. Yeah, I mentioned the assembly. We have in Munich a manufacturing facility of 170,000 sq ft of manufacturing space. This is where we do the final assembly of the airplane, as you can see on the upper right side. But we also do engine assembly and battery pack facilities we have as well. What is something that I'm personally very excited about is our supply chain partners. You have to imagine it's a startup. 4 or 5 years back, we were worried, would the aerospace supply chain play in this field at all? With an electric airplane, do they believe in electric aviation? Are they going to work with a startup? If you look at the list of suppliers now, it's basically the who's who of the aerospace industry. That's great because we can capitalize on their experience, their certification know-how, their production experience and technologies. It's a great testament in how much the industry believes in electric aviation, but also in this specific product because every supplier does their own due diligence. They often make their own investments into this program So they need to be sure that it's going to be a success. I think there are very few in the industry who know better about the technology and the certification and how to bring an airplane to market than these suppliers. Yeah, with this, I would finish my part. I'll just come over to you, Bill. Great. Great overview there. So with the remaining time, I'd like to kind of dig deeper on a few of these and stop and take some questions as well. But your role changed in the organization since the beginning when you started. So as Chief Engineer of Innovation and Future Programs, I guess, what are some of your key priorities ahead of commercialization and launch in 2026? You mean my priorities or for the company? Mine. So for myself, my role is basically split in two parts. One is I'm responsible for all new technologies. So we have a whole program ongoing for further improvements of the aircraft's capability, which means lighter engines, lighter battery packs, new battery cells, upgrades. This is the one part. And the second one is more around fundraising and communication topics, as well as some cultural elements in the company. So one thing that's interesting, you showed even the potential for longer range, 2,000 km flights. Where do you see the opportunities for continued innovation beyond this sort of first form factor you have here? Should we think about eCTOLSCTOL or something like that? How do you see this evolving longer term? We see ourselves as an electric aviation company broadly because it's always the same technologies, regardless of which platform we're talking about. Here, we see our bet in two segments. One is the electric vertical takeoff and landing regional segment, which is the aircraft we have on the screen. The second one, as a successor, will be a conventional takeoff and landing regional airliner, 50 seats, 70, 80 seats, something in that category. We've not decided, but it'll be the same technologies. That's where we think there's a big market to grow. Just coming to the technology in a little more detail, so Lilium is unique because it really is using kind of a, I'd say, a next-gen battery technology. And I think long term, you're going to see more players as the battery technologies evolve. But I guess, just can we dig a layer deeper on the battery design, the manufacturing strategy? What are the requirements that are unique for your jet in terms of the takeoff and landing that require such advancements in technology? I'll maybe start with the latter. This aircraft is a jet airplane, which means it draws more power at takeoff and landing, but it is more efficient in cruise flight. And that means it lends itself very well for that regional business model, which we are targeting. If you want to do a 10-mile flight in a city, we can do this as well. But a propeller aircraft would be more efficient doing this. Very specifically, we're drawing roughly twice the power at takeoff and landing compared to a propeller aircraft. And that means we need batteries that can provide this power. And here, we have been working together with our suppliers over the last couple of years. InoBat is the company that developed this technology with the silicon anode batteries. And we have a manufacturer in Germany, Custom Cells, who already have a line running. But we always said we want to have at least dual supply, potentially multi-supply for those cells. And hence, we have built up also a partnership with InoBat, also a European company from Slovakia, who recently had a big investment from Gotion, one of the largest battery suppliers worldwide, from China. They also supply a huge amount of batteries to VW, who is an owner of Gotion. And here, we can scale because InoBat and Gotion are building a 4 gigawatt-hour factory in Slovakia, from which they will then also supply our growing demands. But our intent is very clearly to keep at least two suppliers because the battery is critical. If there are no batteries, you cannot even operate the fleet for longer than a year because the existing fleet has aging batteries. And hence, that's critical. What we have seen was that when we selected this technology, some people said, "Well, you're betting on one technology alone. So isn't this a big risk?" At the time, there was very few who could deliver this power and energy. Meanwhile, there are more and more silicon anode batteries coming on the market. And from what we see, there are also several chemistries that can deliver similar power and energy capability. That was something we had expected. But it's good to see that materialize in the market. Yeah. So I guess, what else needs to be solved or proven at this point from a battery point of view? And look, you guys had a great callback, and I can't remember, September or October, where you really shed a lot of light on the battery programs. But silicon anode, nonetheless, still has fears about swelling and cycle life, things like that. So how do you rate the maturity at this stage, and what else needs to be solved? Yeah. So cycle life is one of the key questions for any novel chemistry, which is why we have done extensive testing on that very successfully. Our target was to achieve at least 800 flight cycles to make the business model work. We've been able to show in lab tests that the cells we are buying can achieve up to 1,500 flight cycles. So there's some decent margin in the design right now. This is on cell level. We have also done a lot of testing on pack level because this is where the safety comes into play. So for the regulator, we need to demonstrate, for example, that we can safely contain cell failures up to pack fires. And here, we have done a lot of extensive testing. So what remains, basically, from our perspective, is the integration in the aircraft. That is happening over the next couple of months and then, obviously, doing the final flight demonstration in the flight test campaign. Let's pivot to certification. So Lilium's accelerating its flight testing program, manned flight expected by the end of this year. What happens needs to happen between now and then and then between, let's say, flight testing, manned flight testing, and then entry into service in 2026? So we're targeting a total of 800 to 1,000 flight hours in the flight test campaign with a total of 6 test aircraft, which is very much comparable to what you would see in an airliner certification program. This program is planned out in very much detail. We can do this because the regulator in Europe, EASA, has given us regulatory clarity in terms of which test points we need to demonstrate. That allowed us to do the test plans, to build the aircraft, to freeze the design, and to do those tests. There will be those 800 to 1,000 hours of flight testing until we then finally can obtain the type certificate. In parallel, during the last 2, 3 months before type certificate, we're starting to ramp up production for our customers. So digging a little deeper, so you and those in the webcast won't see it, but you can see here in the room the various partners. So what percentages, I guess, is, I'd say, owned from a certification perspective by your partners? And you talked there was one slide earlier about propulsion, batteries, and then, of course, assembly. So who owns what, and how does that look like between the partners and then yourselves? So at Lilium, we only do final assembly of those components for the engines, the battery packs, and the aero structure. But we buy all the parts. And there's a good reason for that. We do not believe at all that it is possible to do a deep vertical integration in aerospace for something like this because you would basically have to build not only a novel aircraft manufacturer. You would have to build up an aero structures company doing composites. You would have to build a company for airborne electronics. And if you look at companies like Honeywell doing avionics or like Aernnova doing the large aero structures for us, these companies needed decades of improving their processes, demonstrating compliance to the quality management systems. And this is why we rely entirely on a tier one aerospace supply chain. We believe that helps us both obtaining a certification in a smooth way because these companies can deliver the documentation we need for that. At the same time, it helps us ramping up our production. For those who are familiar with aerospace production, it's an entirely different world than ramping up automotive production. This is also hard. But in aerospace, the level of quality and traceability and the dealing with nonconformances is incredibly complex. This is why we said several years ago, we want to work with the best of that sector and do this in partnership with them. Yeah, this is, I think, one of the big reasons of success for the assembly, which we have right now. I'm going to pause for questions. It is being webcast. If you do have a question, please wait for the microphone. All right. You mentioned earlier, but I think this is actually an important point, achieving this sort of DOA, which allows you to do more work, I guess, internally. I guess maybe you could expand on that. Also, where is EASA? What are they taking on? And then what are you going to be taking on by having this ability to do more testing internally? So having the Design Organization Approval means we are an aerospace company that, of course, creates credibility among customers and our suppliers. But very practically, it means we have delegated authority to do a lot of certification tasks in-house with so-called Compliance Verification Engineers who are on our payroll but accountable towards EASA, the regulator. And that makes us, to some degree, independent of resource constraints and regulated timelines. Not entirely. Of course, we are still depending on the regulator in the end. But we believe it will help us to speed up that certification process. Great. You spoke to some markets, really all over the world. So I guess, how did you go about determining those markets? I know that Seb's also been on several calls and webcasts and things like that. But what does the competitive landscape look like? I'm guessing it'll be supply constrained for pretty much everybody in the markets in the earlier terms. But maybe just a little bit more on the market strategy and, I guess, maybe even tying in why sales over network, at least in the coming years. So one of the things our team has been focused on, and I think we're very differentiated there, is obviously the product but also the product support. So for an airline, it doesn't help to put an aircraft on the tarmac. They need spare parts supply. They need training for the pilots. They need all kinds of services that come with the aircraft. They need a credible model for performance and for operating costs. And I think here, we are very strong in terms of being able to deliver to our customers the support functions around the aircraft. And in terms of the markets and the competition, yes, I think we're going to be supply constrained for quite a few years in that segment. On top of that comes that our product is probably the most differentiated one in the electric aviation sector as a jet with a large cabin, with the technology inside, with the range that the aircraft achieves. In the premium sector, at the moment, we are the only eVTOL company really serving that market. That's, of course, very attractive for us. If you look at the geographic selection we are making, there's a couple of constraints we're having. For example, the initial aircraft do not have icing capability. Icing doesn't mean ice on the ground. The aircraft can fly with ice and snow on the ground. It means icing clouds. So you basically fly in those clouds, and then you accrete ice on the surface of the aircraft, which requires a specific heating system. The later versions will have that. At the moment, no eVTOL has that, to my knowledge. That means, initially, we are more focused on the southern markets in Europe, in the U.S., and in other parts of the world, like the Middle East. In the second step, there will then be icing capability. That enables also airlines to operate in the northern hemisphere with a very reliable service. Hence, this is an important topic in the second step. I want to pause again to see if there are questions before moving on, see any last chances there. One of the unique things that you guys are bringing to the market, well, it's focused on premium, but you're also, as part of funding, you have an opportunity to execute on pre-delivery payments. So as we think about transitioning from MOUs to binding agreements, what are some of the things that you're working on or maybe KPIs that they want to see before taking that next sort of step in terms of committing to the product? It depends on the type of customer. In the premium segment, we have already secured 45 binding contracts where we guarantee performance of the aircraft and the production slot. In return, the customer agrees to a pre-delivery payment scheme, which means there's a certain portion of payment upon signature of the contract. Then there are further installments with program milestones such as first flight of the airplane or in the end Type Certificate. If we look at the airlines, what they are looking at is the support I mentioned. They're usually spending at least a year to investigate in detail how they would operate the aircraft, how they integrate it in their existing operations, how they do MRO, how they get spare parts. This is the process we are, for example, in with Lufthansa right now, where we have made an announcement about this, but also with a couple of other airlines. Saudia is another one who are public. We are very much in detail looking into this. Then, of course, our target is not very much to increase the number of MOU pre-orders, but we're focused on increasing the number of binding contracts. We expect for some of them to come, certainly, through the course of the year. Then there's probably being a nonlinear step or increase of momentum as you have the first flight of the certification aircraft in December this year. So more in 2025 following the successful flights. Maybe my final question, infrastructure is one that's kind of it's really important, right, because you could have existing heliports, assuming you could electrify them. But you also made an announcement today. So maybe you could speak to this announcement with Atlantic, which is U.S., Florida, Southern California, New England, or sorry, Northeast Corridor in Texas. What's the importance of infrastructure and the importance of this announcement? So for the existing market we are delivering into, there is largely infrastructure existing. When we replace helicopters, there's pilots and landing sites existing. When we are talking about the airlines using our airplane as a feeder into airports, then those airports need to be fitted out with vertical takeoff and landing infrastructure, including chargers. Florida is one great example for that. We've been in discussions in the region for a very long time, for a couple of years, for those who have been following us. This is an important element, I think, to see that this infrastructure is being built. It's being permitted. There are organizations investing into that infrastructure. That gives investors and us as a company also some kind of an outlook in terms of how we should assume revenues, how we should plan our production, how we should manage our supply chain in terms of ramp-up. I think infrastructure permits and then subsequently builds is a good indicator for how quickly that second mass market among the airlines is taking off. The premium market is one into which we can deliver over many years and can de-risk the company because there is a risk that the mass market with airlines comes a year later. Nobody can plan that. For that reason, we deliberately decided to also go into an existing market and de-risk the company there. Well, Daniel, I really appreciate the update. We'll look forward to following the progress of the company here in 2024. Best of luck on that. Thank you. Thanks, Bill. Pleasure to speak.