[Operator Instructions] Steffen Hoffmann : And the first question goes to Tim Rokossa from Deutsche Bank. Tim Rokossa : First of all, I think it was very important that you made the turnaround on the margin side in cars, and you made that relatively clean. I have 2 questions, please. The first one maybe to both of you, not sure. Ola, you said the macro is quite tough, it is not getting any easier. I think most people would certainly agree with that. Looking at the stock price development of autos in the last few days, the big debate here seems to be normalization of returns. Investors fear that returns go back to where they historically were. And you are in this industry even longer than I am. And we all know that, that number was much lower historically. You seem to believe you can counter that trend with new models and cost control. So maybe to both of you, is that the answer when people ask you what has changed as Mercedes to make sure that returns do stay higher than they were previously? Is it new models and cost control? Is there anything else? And is this a downhill battle from a return perspective, you being relatively less worse than others? Or should the market be more optimistic here? And then secondly, related to this, when we talk specifically about the pricing element in cars down year-on-year in Q2, pretty stable Q-on-Q, you say stable for the full year. We are seeing that pricing in luxury is clearly resulting in lower demand because a lot of people have overdone it on the pricing side. Is there really across from that, that we should still be more optimistic on your end? Is it also again because of the new models? Is your order intake supporting that more optimistic pricing assumption? Ola Kallenius : Maybe I'll start, Tim. I think it's difficult to compare the current period to previous periods because there's so much change going on. I mean it's not just a transformation from ICE to BEV, which is the fundamental once in a 100 years type of transformation that everybody has to deal with. But I think the marketplace is also different. The Chinese market is different. There are more players in the Chinese market, many more players in the Chinese market than there has previously been. So to make a straight comparison to where were we 5, 10 years ago and where are we today, is difficult. Having said that, since you have followed Mercedes for a long, long time, the last 3, 4, 5 years, in terms of free cash flow, shareholder return, we have delivered solid results on average, quite significantly above the period that we had maybe 20 years preceding that. And yes, this is a very tough market environment. Yes, the Chinese economy, the consumer sentiment in the biggest car market in the world is subdued. So it's not easy, but as we showed here in Q2 in such an environment, we produced a good return. We produced very decent cash flow and that will be our goal. I don't think you can ever stop training. I mean if you're playing this football match and you're playing in a tough environment, keep on training, work on the efficiency, work against some of those macro trends that you said, deliver new technology and new product in the second half year. I think maybe that's part of the answer to your question. We want to sell more Top-End vehicles in the second half of the year than in the first half of the year. Yes, it's driven by some new launches. No, we don't expect a general tailwind from the market on that. Yes, we also observed that across any industry really right now, if you want to buy a luxury handbag, a watch, a car, what have you, that there is pressure in the market across industries. So far, we have dealt with that quite decently. And we also carefully try to manage in that environment, the price versus volume equation, which I think we have also demonstrated that we did in Q2. I think it's kind of my answer to both questions. Harald, please add to that. Harald says that was the answer. So I hope that's okay for you, Tim. Steffen Hoffmann : And with that, we continue with Stephen Reitman from Bernstein.

Yes. There's been some press reports, particularly coming from China talking about some of the premium general manufacturers stepping back from some of the discount activity maybe reducing pressure on the dealers to sell volumes at previous levels. Do you have any comments on that, please? Ola Kallenius : So if you look at figures that are published in China, not just on volume, but studies on pricing rebates, et cetera. And we add the data that we collect ourselves. I think it's fair to say for the first half of this year, the Chinese market in all segments has experienced price pressure -- increased price pressure in all segments. In that environment, if you look at the studies, in the relevant competitive set, whereas we have been affected as well, we have been the ones that have held on to relative price stability more than the relevant competitive set. You cannot completely insulate yourself from the market and say, I'm operating in my own universe, and it doesn't matter at all what the others do. It does matter. If other market participants choose to go more in our direction, I think that could lead to a little bit less pressure. We will see -- we will have to see how that plays out, but we will try to maintain our game plan. Steffen Hoffmann : And we continue with Patrick Hummel from UBS. Patrick Hummel : My first question is also UK. If we take a step back and look at the big picture, how should we think about Mercedes' way forward in the China business? Some of your competitors are talking about rightsizing the business or even restructuring, one could ask the question in the entry segment. Is this a place Mercedes wants to be in the long term in the Chinese market, but of course, in the end, scale does still matter to your business. So I'm just wondering if you take a step back under the assumption that China will remain a very, very challenging market. Luxury at some point might recover, but the structural shift in competition are happening. How do you think about the China business in terms of what is the right capacity, what are the right products for the market? And also in that regard, is it realistic if China doesn't recover to grow the [TAF] share from here in a global context? And if I may, second question, on the ICE product side, you have a busy launch pipeline, true, MMA is multi-energy, but MBEA is not, that is BEV only. Are we heading into a period where we might see shiny nice BEV products, but a little bit of a lower cadence level on the ICE side? I guess the answer is no, but what exactly are you doing against that? How do you keep the ICE products fresh also bringing MB.OS into the vehicles in a timely manner? And what does that do to your investments? Ola Kallenius : Yes. Thanks, Patrick. If we take a step back and look at what's going on in China, I think we're experiencing three things at the moment. One is the general transformation and the technology race for the future. That's a race you got to be in, there is no ifs or buts. That is why we're investing into a complete from the ground up new eDrivetrain that we will start launching next year, and then we'll launch in all products following that, which will be very competitive. The same thing goes for the digital side, what processing power do you have on board? What sensor set? What software stack? What can it do? What's the digital experience? No compromise, full force even if maybe not every single conservative Mercedes customer needs, every single use case there. Don't forget how young the average Mercedes customer is in China. So that technology race is on, and we're in it, and we intend to be in the leading group of that technology race. Without forgetting what makes Mercedes-Benz a Mercedes-Benz, I'll just make one single little anecdote to illustrate the difference between the Mercedes and many of the attackers. Spoke recently to Chinese customer who bought an EQE and say, why did you buy the EQE? Is that where it's the only electric vehicle, you don't get C/SiC in. I don't you get C/SiC in it because the calibration of the power delivery of the powertrain, even though you have torque or mass is done right and that combined with a chassis with the right hertz frequency, yes, you don't get C/SiC because we have been doing this for a decade, and we know how to do it, and it doesn't feel like a go cart. So new technologies paired with the strength that we have that we will do, number one. Number two, the current macroeconomic environment in China is subdued. I think everybody knows that since we came out of the COVID restrictions beginning of last year, consumer sentiment, it didn't come back. It just didn't come back and you feel the pinch across the board, but also in the luxury segment across the industries. How long will it take for the Chinese consumer to regain confidence and start buying again? One piece of it, I am sure, is related to the real estate sector. The savings for upper middle class people has been that additional buy-to-let apartment that was just going up and up and up and up and up. That whole industry has been in restructured for years now. It feels a little bit like an American customer's 401(k). You look at your 401(k) and if you feel flushed, you will buy a car. If you don't, you don't. And there, you have the real estate sector in China. We don't know how long it will take, what it will take for China's consumers to regain that confidence, for China's entrepreneurs to regain that confidence. It is affecting us. It is affecting others. The cautious view that we take now is that's not going to change quickly. So we have to count on this being the marketplace here maybe in the next at least 12, 18 months, we shall see. Then comes the third piece, and that goes into your strategic, how do you play it strategically. You have more than 100 players offering BEVs. I haven't looked at the latest numbers, but I would guess more than 90 of the BEV players are burning cash, not generating cash, maybe it's even more than that. Then you have the SOEs. They're also burning cash, but they, of course, have a different financial backing in the background. How long will it take for that to shake out? Also nobody knows. Do you stay in that game? How do you stay in that game? That's your question. What size do you pick for that game? It is true that your overall volume worldwide does affect your fixed cost aggression and scale. So you don't step out of the segment lightly. You have to weigh your options. And I believe at this stage in the game, it's too early to make a definitive decision. You have to stay flexible and agile and watch this while you work on the fundamentals, which is, again, get the cost down, make sure that your product is attractive, et cetera, et cetera. I know it's not a clear answer to the question that you asked. But at this stage in the game, I think it's too early to just say you're going to go completely left or right. With regard to the ICE and I think this has been the case for Mercedes forever, and it will continue to be the case. If you walk into a Mercedes showroom and you look at this fantastic lineup. It needs to be coherent, okay? Maybe you have the latest car that was just launched, and there is another car in the showroom that was launched 3 years ago. That exist has always been the case. But we have been a company that very quickly have proliferated new technology that we have developed for the latest cars into the other cars. Here, we have no discrimination against the eyes on the contrary. The new MB.OS innovations that we are bringing, of course, we will bring those into the ICE cars as well as we go along here in the next few years. So thinking about the customer, the customer expects a coherent offering from Mercedes and will get a coherent offering from Mercedes. Harald Wilhelm : And maybe as you pointed at the investment level, Patrick, we are well advanced on the EU 7 on the powertrain renewal and -- which means with the smart engineering, we do believe that we can have, I mean, the best of EV and ICE products moving forward at the same time, but the investment level, I mean, over time is still feasible to come down. We're at the peak probably '24, '25, I mean, that's what we said since a while. But post '26 or maybe somewhere in '26, you could say, we can see the investments to come down from the level where we are today leveraging the elements Ola just pointed out before. Steffen Hoffmann : And we continue with George Galliers from Goldman Sachs. George Galliers : Obviously, very good to hear Ola about your experience with the Level 2 system. And that's what I wanted to really focus on with my first question. This isn't new, but when we look across the equity market, we see different companies getting different market valuations for that effort with respect to ADAS. And for some, it's clearly seen by investors as a huge revenue opportunity, but for others, such as Mercedes, I don't think investors fully understand what the financial implications are. Could you perhaps help us better understand how you see the financial implications from advanced ADAS features? Is it something that will create material incremental revenues in coming years? And if that's the case, is it something that can be forecasted, quantified and disclosed? Is it something that doesn't create incremental revenues, but it just allows you to continue to command a healthy price point on your flagship vehicles like the S-class or is it something that is just a cost really in order to hold market share and volumes and stay in the game? Or maybe we should think about it completely differently, but I'd be very interested in hearing your thoughts and maybe just on the topic of ADAS, could you perhaps say a word on the progress of your work with NVIDIA on the next generation of MBOS? Ola Kallenius : Yes, George. I think we need to talk both technology and financials because they do go hand-in-hand, of course. Having worked on assisted driving, autonomous driving, I mean, really since the 1990s when we launched as the first manufacturer, the first assistant systems. This has been a process that it's not like a new phenomenon for us. It's been there for a long, long time. And it's always been following some core principles in terms of our technology strategy and go-to-market strategy. One core principle is safety. When we started developing these things, we developed them to make the driving safer. It was a little angels in the background that stepped in and took over if God forbid, you made a mistake. That philosophy has not left us. But now on the -- in the beginning of the year of autonomous drive, the other piece of it is, of course, convenience. So it feels like convenience in terms of the customer value is going to take over, but it should not be convenience at the expense of safety. It should be convenience and safety. Both of those things. That's just a general philosophy. So you know why Mercedes is doing this. The current generation that we have is very sophisticated, one of the leading systems in the market. And of course, we have many times highlighted also that we are the first ones that have also delivered a Level 3 system, yes, up to 60 kilometers an hour. We're working now on the kind of 90 kilometers -- around 90 kilometers an hour to get that done end of this year, beginning of next year, just to demonstrate that it can be done and then take a step beyond that. So that once you have put a flag on the moon, you start building a colony on the moon. But there is a very significant thing happening for us, and this dovetails into your NVIDIA question, starting with the CLA next year and the first MMA vehicle. From that point forward, every single vehicle that we will launch will have a supercomputer on board, a capable supercomputer on board that can do a lot of things whereas today, we have a more staggered approach. You have maybe a very entry type of offering that is the minimum that you need to get the 5 stars and those types of things up to very sophisticated things at the top end of the S-class. We are, in a way, upending that strategy now. And since the CLA is the entry position of the fleet, if you're going to put a supercomputer in the CLA, naturally, you're going to put a supercomputer into every car. But that supercomputer alone is not going to do it. It has to have a comprehensive sensor set. That sensor set needs to be able to look in all directions around the car. It needs to have redundancy in our humble opinion. That's why we have redundancy in the sensor set and it also needs to look inside the cars, it knows what you're doing. Every single vehicle is going to have that. And then the missing piece is a software that knows what to do with it backed by cloud infrastructure, needless to say. That significantly enhances the capability and the potential user experience for every Mercedes customer going forward. Can that be monetized? I am convinced that it can be monetized. But if you think back to the MBOS capital markets event that we had a couple of years ago, 1.5 years ago or whatever it was, you probably remember that we were maybe a little bit more cautious than some others in the industry in terms of what we think the earnings potential is. I don't think it's a cost burden. Of course, I believe it's a revenue pool and a profit pool that goes beyond the money that we're making already today with our assistance system. It's actually think Mercedes is probably one of the brands with the highest take rate for sophisticated assistance systems today. And of course, we make money with it. I believe we're going to make more money with it, but I don't believe we're going to make more money with that than we're making with our cars. That is just our expectation going into the second half of this decade. But I'm excited. I very recently drove the latest version of that next gen that I've been talking about. I should have driven it on Friday, but there I was in Serbia looking at the lithium mine. But Harald and the colleagues drove it on Friday. I can say this, it works, and it works also in China. So once we get ready to launch next year, we will let you drive yourself and you can make up your mind. Steffen Hoffmann : We continue with Jose Asumendi from JPMorgan. Jose Asumendi : -- yes, it's great to see the auto margin back in the double-digit level. A couple of questions, please, Ola. Can you talk a little bit around the plan to meet the CO2 emission targets in Europe? And if we don't see a meaningful pickup in BEV demand because consumers maybe are not there yet, what are a little bit at the tools that you have to hit those CO2 emission targets? And then Harald or Ola, UK, as we think about the second half, what are the assumptions in terms of deliveries and also in terms of powertrain that you have for the second half of the year when it comes to China? Ola Kallenius : I'll start with CO2. We kind of guide our xEV mix, which is more or less the same for the rest of the year. For 2025, we need to take a step up in Europe. We will take a step up in Europe. Should it not be enough, then you would have to look at pooling solutions, but that's too early to tell. But you don't just look at Europe, you look around the world on this. So gradually, we are ramping up our xEV share. If I look at our product plan, we start with MMA in 2025, then we roll out MMA kind of in the following 24, 30 months after that. But very, very importantly, in 2026, as you already know, MBEA comes with the electric C-Class and GLC, which at the moment for premium luxury manufacturers is the biggest segment for EVs. So the faster ramp-up of the BEV and the EV comes into play when we fill up our offering of products, that's what we're doing there. In terms of China, I think similar dynamics in the second half of the year as in the first half. Harald Wilhelm : Yes, when you see in a full year -- second half of the year, I mean, we have a bit more sales. Where is it coming from? Basically, it's more coming from the market dynamics, which we see in the US and a bit also in the -- called overseas markets, whereas UK, we keep a rather cautious view, which is -- which means H2 roughly at the level of H1. In terms of powertrain mix, no change in H2 compared to H1. The fundamental change is going to come with the products '25, '26 with MMA and then electric C-Class and GLC. Steffen Hoffmann : And we continue with Philippe Houchois from Jefferies. Philippe Houchois : Again, glad to see double-digit margin number sales again. I have a couple of questions, if I can. One is on the agency business model you put in place. I know it's only part of the organization, but I'm just trying to think with the experience of having implemented that for a while. Is there a meaningful difference in your margin today as a result of that? Or in other words, would your margin be lower today if you hand on agency in your distribution part of the European business is my first question. The other question is, I think we're all trying to figure out what China will look like for carmakers in a few years. My understanding is your business in China, like all the others is in joint ventures, do the joint ventures have a term? And I'm trying to understand when does that term expire? And is that an opportunity or a need to actually rethink or reorganize the structure of your business in China? Ola Kallenius : [indiscernible] it's difficult Philippe to make kind of a before and after because you don't know what would have happened if you would have stayed in the old model. There are some basic assumptions around the agency model. I had the opportunity last week to visit one of those markets, UK, second biggest market in Europe, where we have been live now for about 1.5 years. And the first thing I did was I asked, can you show me the customer satisfaction studies? What's the rating of the sales experience? And equally, there are ratings from dealers, how do the dealers rate the manufacturers? What do the dealers say? Because you are working with partners here and you're playing in the same team. And indeed, on both, the numbers had gone up actually on customer satisfaction quite significantly. So I asked the team, I have my own hypothesis, I asked the team, why did that happen? What is it? On customer satisfaction, actually, one of the main thing is it's a psychological one. If the price negotiation is not the main point of the sales discussion because you know you will get the same price at every Mercedes outlet no matter where you go. So this shop around 3 different Mercedes stores, it doesn't make any sense because you're going to get the same answer wherever you go. For many buyers, that takes anxiety out of that moment. Many people don't like to negotiate. Some people love it. Many people don't like it. So we believe that through managing -- eliminating the intra-brand competition compared to running the other system that the net-net of that effect is positive, even though it is difficult to know what would have happened if you wouldn't have done it. The other piece, and I think that one is long term, even more important is we're now starting to know the customer directly. So we are collecting a digital file with the approval of the customer, obviously, privacy is important to us. So we know you directly, and that file gets bigger, and we can serve you better. We're not working next to the dealers. We're working alongside the dealers and can now help manage a market region holistically with better data. And then I think inventory management, brick-and-mortar and those types of things, if you look over a longer period of time that you will have cost advantages as a whole distribution system for it. So I would call this so far so good. Has there been 0 issues? No, that would be unfair to say, to get your IT systems right, to get used to this, to move mentally from being a wholesaler to a retailer, there are a lot of processes you have to go through as a manufacturer to do this. So I'm not going to pretend that there have not been any growing pains, but if you would ask me again, would you do the same -- would you make the same decision? Generally, I would say, yes, I would make the same decision. Harald Wilhelm : And Philippe, quickly on the JV in China. I think where you said it quite often, we're very happy to have a strong partner in the long side in China. It's the way we look at it also moving forward. For sure, with a contractual terms, however, I mean, they are confidential. But what I can clearly say, we're rather talking about new products to be installed in the JV, which go very well into the future -- building the future also for Mercedes in China and I think that's the perspective of both sides as we speak. Steffen Hoffmann : The last question goes to Tom Narayan from RBC. Tom Narayan : Tom Narayan, RBC. So a lot of carmakers this past week, well two of them in particular, are kind of worrying the market on dealer inventory position in the US Just curious if you could remind us what your position is in the US on a day’s basis? And where you want it to be? It is a worry obviously that pricing will have to come down dramatically to clear this inventory. The second question has to do with the Daimler Truck stake. Could you remind us as to kind of how you're thinking about this and the time line of a potential monetization here? Obviously, the shares there are pulling back opportunistically. You could be losing some upside of a monetization as that cycle turns. Harald Wilhelm : So quickly on the US dealer side, we watch that very carefully, obviously, on a permanent basis, week-by-week and just in case there is a need. I think we need to bear in mind that in July, we had this service supplier issue, which was an impact at the dealer end, which probably led to some spikes in short-term inventories. But that should come off. I think that is definitely not something which would justify any commercial action. So again, we're watching that. We're adjusting the supply to the demand level. And as I said before, we rather see some further momentum and potential in terms of sales in the US for the second half of the year. And on the Daimler Truck stake, well, another 6 months to go in terms of the soft lockup which still gives us some time to reflect, what to do moving forward. I think we said several times we're not in a hurry here, no decision has been taken on what to do in terms of do we stay or do we go and if we go, what could be the shape and form. I alluded to some personal preferences, but in the interest of time and not to fuel further speculation, I stay absent on that in this call here. Steffen Hoffmann : Ladies and gentlemen, with that, thanks for your questions, for being with us today. Also thank you very much to Ola and Harald for answering the questions. As always, IR remains at your disposal if there are any further questions you might have. So to all of you, have a great morning, great afternoon, great evening, great weekend. Thanks and goodbye.