Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the earnings call of 2G Energy AG regarding the first half-year figures of 2026. I would like to welcome the company's CFO Friedrich Pehle, who will guide you through the figures in a moment, followed by a Q&A session via audio line and chat box.

With that, I hand over to you, Friedrich.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, a warm welcome also from me to our presentation of the results for the first half of 2026.

From many conversations I've had, I know that investors are currently very interested in the data center market. Not exclusively in this market, of course, but it is clearly the main focus.

That is also why we are switching from a presentation in German to English. Germany remains our home market.

It is a highly diversified market, covering CHP systems based on natural gas, biogas, and many kinds of special gases. We also offer a complete portfolio of large heat pumps and, of course, peaker power plants.

The US market is becoming much more important very quickly, driven above all by the rapid growth of the data center segment. As a result, both our power plant business and our capital market activities are becoming much more international.

From now on, the presentations will be in English. Let's start with the very strong order intake.

Here it is. For the first time, a customer has allowed us to speak openly about an order.

Energy Vault in the US has ordered and made a down payment on containerized gas-fired power plants with a total output of 275 MW. Delivery is scheduled for Q4 2027 to Q3 2028.

As always, the units will be pre-assembled and tested in Heek, and delivered ready for installation. This will provide fast, reliable, and flexible power for highly variable AI loads.

The customer, not 2G, will combine the systems with battery storage and control items. The order also includes long-term service agreements.

Service, as will support high availability and recurring revenues throughout the full life of the plants. Obviously, 2G sees data centers as a strategic growth market.

That is why we are significantly expanding our production capacity in Heek. The state-of-the-art assembly hall we have been reporting on for some time is due to be completed by the end of 2027.

I could now show you a chart of order intake by quarter, but I believe it would not tell you very much. Q2 and Q3 would literally tower above the other quarters, making the prior-year bars almost meaningless.

Order intake in Q3 was clearly above €400 million, which means Q2 was not a one-hit wonder. I think the visibility of our order book is more relevant for you.

You may have seen this in our press release today: for deliveries to data centers, we are now fully booked into the second half of 2028. Please keep in mind, we have reserved enough capacities for our traditional markets and products, including heat pumps.

We will certainly not neglect these business areas; they are fundamental to 2G's commercial success and stability. Even so, it is fair to say that 2027, and basically 2028 as well, will all be about execution.

We are very, very well booked. We can still take orders for biogas, heat pumps, and, let's say, more European products.

Given this strong order situation, we are in close contact with our key suppliers basically every day. They understand what is needed and are fully prepared.

Together, this gives us the confidence to raise our guidance for next year. Until now, we considered revenues of €570 million to €620 million possible.

That would have meant a growth of around €100 million compared with the likely outcome for revenues for 2026. We now expect revenues to be above €600 million with certainty, and we are raising our revenue guidance for 2027 to €600 million to €650 million.

That means growth of around 25% to 33% from 2026 to 2027, depending on the final timing of shipment and invoicing in both years. When we look at the data center projects we are working on, add further information to validate them, weigh them, and discuss the results with our suppliers, then, yes, we are confident enough to say today that revenues will continue to grow rapidly in 2028.

More precisely, to €750 million to €850 million. Revenues will double from '25 to '28.

I cannot and should not give a firm guidance for 2029 at this point, but the €1 billion mark is at least coming into view. This is because data center orders always come with full service agreements, as we also explained in the press release on the Energy Vault order.

One point is important here: because these power plants operate 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, they require a very high level of service. A great deal of service is needed to keep them running reliably and efficiently.

For data center orders, we expect service revenue over the full lifetime to equal 80% to 90% of the original capital expenditure. Without putting a euro value on it, 80% of 275 MW is the equivalent of 220 MW.

That alone would represent another major, major order. As you already know, our order book includes only machines, and it includes only firm machine orders for which we have already received down payments.

Service agreements and reservations are not part of the order book. We are still somewhat cautious on the EBIT margin for the next 2 years.

The whole supply chain will need time to settle into the new rhythm. For now, we therefore continue to expect an EBIT margin of at least 11% next year.

We are confident this will also be the minimum case in 2028. Now let's look at the first half of this year.

Here, as always, the short overview: net sales, output, EBIT, and liquidity. Net sales is clearly below last year, but you will see there's a good explanation for this.

Output, by contrast, is only €9 million below the prior year's. I will explain it in a moment why that is still a good figure.

EBIT is down, that is logical when revenue recognition has not yet reached full speed. For revenues and EBIT, the same has been true for many years: the second half of the year delivers the results.

That will be the case again this year. Then there is the cash position: at €29 million, it is, of course, very encouraging.

This is remaining cash from customer down payments after we made substantial down payments to our own suppliers. Now let's look at the details.

Here again is the split of revenues between new plants and service. Revenues from machine were €53 million, well below the prior year's figure of €83 million.

Last year was quite unusual: in the first few months of 2025, we delivered a very large number of machines to Ukraine. You may remember the so-called winter support, Winterhilfe, provided by both the German and US government.

This year, we did not have deliveries on a comparable scale. The Ukraine effect alone is therefore around €33 million and explains virtually the entire shortfall in revenue recognition.

You might ask why 2G did not simply deliver to other customers instead. The answer is, a typical customer for a CHP or heat pump normally expects deliveries at the start of the heating season.

You cannot call a hotel manager or hospital director or whoever and say, "Hey, we still have some commissioning capacities available, we will therefore deliver the CHP units which you ordered for autumn already in Easter." That is simply not possible.

Indeed, new plant revenues in H1 2026 was below the same period of last year. It was still quite close to the first half of 2024.

By quite close, I mean that already one additional CHP unit would have closed the gap. First half 2026 was within the normal range of first half 2024, and therefore at a traditional level.

As always for many years, the second half will be decisive. This year, our ambition and prospects for the second half are exceptionally high.

We will soon start delivering the first machines for data centers, and we will recognize revenues from data center machines as soon as they arrive at the customer's warehouse. The power plants do not need to be commissioned at the customer site, and no formal acceptance is required at that point.

The start of data center deliveries marks the beginning of a new era for 2G. To be precise, the second half of 2026 will be significantly stronger than the corresponding second half 2025.

This is partly because H2 '25 was weak, but it is also because we will see permanently higher revenue levels with a much better balance between the first and the second half of the year. Data center systems, and later peaker power plants, will be delivered independently of any heating season.

Service, by contrast, is fully back on track. It is almost at the prior year's level and clearly above 2024.

The frictions from the ERP transition in service have largely been overcome. In the second quarter, service revenue was once again above the same quarter of the prior year.

That is how it should be, and that is the normal pattern. To some extent, I have already covered the split between the domestic market and the international market.

We see this second perspective here. Germany, in dark green, was affected by uncertainty around the Biomass Package.

Of course, there was a breakthrough in the legislation, followed by a clear improvement in order intake, but these new projects could not yet contribute enough revenues in the first half. That will definitely change in the second half.

The oft-mentioned slowdown in service following the ERP rollout mainly affected specifically the German market. International service revenues, by contrast, grew by almost 10%.

That makes sense because the ERP issue affected only service in Germany. Looking at machines outside Germany, we were largely missing the Ukrainian business, as I mentioned.

The other market and regions showed some fluctuation, but were positive overall; even so, they could not fully offset the decline in Ukraine. Overall, the export share fell by 3 percentage points, but as long as we are looking only at the first half, that is simply a statistical effect.

Let's look at the income statement. We have already explained the revenue figures.

The reason we are not too concerned about a relatively weak EBIT is that the factory performed in principle very well. Although net sales were below last year, production remained reasonably solid.

This can be seen in the significant increase in inventories, which was well above last year. This also results in a total output close to the prior year's level.

If we add, for comparison purposes, a corresponding margin to the additional inventories, normalized output would be practically at last year's level. The shift in mix towards service is also reflected in material costs because service involves significantly more labor and less material.

As a result, material costs were 58% of total output, as I find it, an encouraging improvement on last year. Labor cost is a good next point.

Personnel costs increased strongly again by 11% to €49 million, compared with €42 million in first half 2025. Part of this increase came from consolidating new members of the 2G family.

In particular, this means our two new subsidiaries, Cavitec in Germany and Celsius and Watt in Belgium. Together, these two companies contributed €1.6 million to the total increase of around €7 million.

The other part was the increase in personnel costs within the existing 2G group, amounting to €5.7 million. That sounds a lot, but please remember we significantly strengthened sales activities to make the data center business possible.

The same applies to procurement, logistics, and quality control. We are continuing to build up the heat pump segment.

This is not only about sales and procurement; we also need R&D engineers, service specialists, shift supervisors, technical trainers, and so on and so on. We are hiring these people step by step.

Of course, we need to monitor the rising personnel costs closely even, but they mainly reflect our preparation for the very strong revenue growth we expect from the second half onwards, and then at a rapid pace from next year. It would be clearly completely crazy not to prepare for this wave of orders.

Now let's take a look at depreciation. Here you can see depreciation of the new IT system has started.

This effect will stay with us in the coming years. Other operating expenses increased by just under €4 million.

The main drivers were consulting costs related to the ERP project and related to the data center orders. We also spent more on advertising, trade fairs, and travel expenses.

This is not yet visible in revenues, but it is clearly visible in order intake. For IT consulting costs, we should also remember these costs were still capitalized until end of June 2025.

Overall, the first half ended with EBIT of €0.8 million, compared with €5.7 million in prior year. We have €25 million more in inventories, all backed by firm customer orders, but no margin from these orders.

Seen in that light, the EBIT shortfall is much smaller. As I explained earlier, the additional personnel costs are largely a very specific and well-founded investment in capturing major opportunities.

This applies not only in the US, but also in Germany and Europe, and not to forget, in the very attractive mining segment outside Europe. Now let's turn to the operating working capital.

It went down by a substantial 33%, and this was despite a 71% increase in inventories. This unusual picture is explained by the €204 million in customer down payments on our balance sheet, €204 million.

At year-end, the figure was only €81 million. Customer down payments increased by €123 million.

The source of this positive development is clear, obviously: the two data center orders already announced at the half-year stage were backed by down payments, as explained several times. Reservation fees were added as well.

We gave a large part of these down payments directly to our suppliers; more specifically, inventories increased by €85 million. On top of that, we made an additional €28 million in down payment to our suppliers.

In total, inventories and down payments on inventories required €130 million in funding. That matches very well, almost perfectly, with the €123 million cash inflow from customer down payments which I just mentioned.

Just a quick word on the few remaining items: trade receivables fell by €24 million, and for once, this has nothing to do with data centers; it is simply because total machine deliveries were down by €30 million in the first half of 2026. Trade payables finally, they increased by €10 million.

This, in turn, has, of course, to do with preparing for the data center business, but also for our other markets. After all, we expect an extremely strong second half, in fact, a second half that would have counted as a full year only 2 years ago.

Overall, it was a very active first half, even if this is not yet reflected in machine sales. These activities are clearly being financed in advance by our customers and clients.

I think this is a very good point to underline our own claim: ready for takeoff, and perhaps I should add, ready for takeoff self-funded. There's one point we have been asked about several times in recent weeks.

Let me be crystal clear: we are currently not planning any capital increase, and we see no need for such move. There's a structural shortage on reliable baseload-capable power generation worldwide.

We do not need to make any painful compromises, specifically on payment terms. Those of you who have followed us for some time have heard this many times before: strong order intake means, at least for 2G, strong cash inflow.

The first half-year is in itself a perfect example for this hypothesis. That is what we expect for the years ahead as well.

Please don't forget the corporate news from this morning stated clearly, also the latest data center order was backed by a substantial prepayment. Let's now look at the drivers behind this positive cash development.

We have already discussed EBIT, we have also discussed depreciation and amortization, we have just discussed the tremendous change in operating net working capital in detail. This also shows clearly, in the first half of 2025, also last year, we had an increase of €16 million, and therefore a substantial funding requirement.

The cash outflow from other operating changes, that is inclusive provisions and income tax, are slightly lower. However, this is purely due to technical effects.

Overall, cash inflow from operating activities is at a pleasing level of €40 million. Last year, we still had a cash outflow of €25 million.

It's worth noting that last year, this calculation started with a very good EBIT of almost €6 million on top of this overview. This year, the starting point is much lower, at just under €1 million, which means our payment model with its strong advance payments turns the calculation positive.

In my view, this makes clear why we wrote the corporate news of today, that EBIT provides a good basis for our ambitious second half. Of course, EBIT of €1 million is weaker than EBIT of almost €6 million, but this reflects the preparation for what is ahead.

We have already a clear indicator about what lays ahead: our cash position today. Based on massive prepayments for future revenues, and I do not need to explain this to you, cash is king, obviously.

2026 has been and will remain an excellent year for liquidity. Still, before the first large advance payments arrived in May, we also increased our credit lines with our core banks.

However, we increased them only to a completely normal level for such companies, for a company that plans with revenues well above €600 million next year and €800 million the year after. We also invested.

We are no longer capitalizing costs for the ERP system. We are still investing in it, of course, but this line here refers to the capitalized costs, and we have not capitalized any costs further since summer of 2025.

However, we have two physical construction projects ongoing in Heek: a, the new production hall, which was completed at the end of March and which is already 100% or more filled with orders for data centers; and b, the new multi-storey car park that we are currently building. Both buildings are, as I find it, quite impressive, and can be visited the day after tomorrow during the CMD in Heek.

To finalize the list, cash outflow from financing went down to mere €2 million. The dominant reason for this change is easy to explain: in 2026, we paid the dividend not in the first half of the year, but only in August.

All this ends up with a massive cash-in of €29 million versus a cash drain of €35 million during the first 6 months of last year. Finally, this brings us to a cash position of €25 million, that is compared with €40 million 1 year ago.

With this very positive cash position at the end of the first half-year 2026, I would now like to move to the Q&A session. Warm welcome for further questions.