Welcome to the RWE conference call. Markus Krebber, CEO of RWE AG and Michael Muller, CFO of RWE AG, will inform you about the developments in the first half of fiscal 2026. I will now hand over to Thomas Denny. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Laura, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to RWE's conference call on our results for the first half of 2026. Thank you for joining us today. Markus Krebber, our CEO, and Michael Muller, our CFO, will start by taking you through the presentation. After that, we'll open the call for questions. Markus, over to you.

Thank you, Thomas, and a warm welcome to everyone. This year to date has been quite decisive and successful for us. I'm very happy with the continued progress we are making in strengthening our portfolio as well as in delivering our operational and financial targets. And with that, let's jump into the presentation. We have delivered an excellent financial and operational performance in the first half of 26 and therefore raised our earnings expectations for the current year and for 2027. For 2031, we had already elevated our guidance when we announced the Amprion transaction. Market fundamentals continue to remain strong. Structural demand growth, energy sovereignty, and the necessary grid build-out provide significant investment opportunities for us. We are best positioned to capitalize on these market fundamentals. We have further strengthened our platform through the increase in our stake in the German electricity TSO Amprion to 55%. Our strong project pipeline and our portfolio of attractive sites perfectly position us to capitalize on the further growth catalyst ahead of us and to deliver upside to our current plan. Our agenda is clear. Disciplined investments Based on financial strengths, we'll deliver long-term secured earnings and dividend growth. Let's have a look at our financial performance. We have delivered an excellent financial performance in the first half of 26. Adjusted earnings per share stood at 1.8 euros, up more than 60% year over year. mainly driven by strong operational development of all business segments and the compensation payment in the Netherlands. Our trading business is back on track and has delivered a strong performance in the second quarter of the year. Strong performance in trading continued in July and August. As of today, we have already reached the midpoint of our guidance range to 100 to 500 million euros. For the full year 26 and 27, we have raised our EPS guidance. The 26th target has been increased from €2.55 to €2.95. Our new 27 EPS guidance of €3.15 fully reflects our 55% stake in Amprion and higher power generation margins. Let's now look at what is ahead of us. The fundamentals in our business remain strong. Power demand is growing. In Europe and the US, demand is expected to increase by more than 10% on average by 2030. The key drivers are clear. Further electrification across transport, heating, and industry, as well as rapid growth in demand from data centers. At the same time, energy sovereignty has become a strategic priority. therefore intends to significantly accelerate electrification. The European Commission has proposed almost doubling the share of electricity in total energy demand to 46% by 2040. Additional generation capacity alone will not be enough. The entire power system needs to expand. A system with significantly more renewable generation requires additional grid infrastructure, storage and flexible generation capacity. In Germany, loan transmission system operators expect with investments of more than €360 billion by 2045. The conclusion is clear. These structural trends provide significant investment opportunities for us, and we are very well positioned to capitalize on these trends. We have superior delivery capabilities, a broad pipeline across regions and technologies, and a portfolio of attractive sites. Our investment program perfectly reflects this. In addition to renewable and flexible power generation across our core markets, it now also includes regulated grid infrastructure. From 26 to 31, we plan to invest 42 billion euros net across all core businesses. Our strict return criteria for new generation and storage projects remain unchanged. The IRR will be above 8.5% on average. For our grid investments, we target a return on equity of more than 8%. Our investment program will deliver strong and visible earnings growth with adjusted EPS growing at a CAGR of 10% from 25 to 31. Dividends will be increased in line with earnings plus 10% per annum. Let's now have a look at our strategic and operation delivery in the first half of 26.

In June this year, we took an important strategic step forward.

We increased our stake in the German TSO Amprion to 55% and added regulated grid infrastructure as a third pillar of our strategy. We closed the transaction at an attractive EV to RUB multiple of 1.07. And as we speak, We are in discussions to potentially further increase our stake. To be clear, this would not require an additional equity raise. Looking at our U.S. business, through the settlement agreement with U.S. administration for our offshore wind leases, we achieved a value-preserving solution. The settlement now allows us to release capital from projects without a realistic path forward. We redeploy it into U.S. energy infrastructure with an attractive risk-return profile. Our 900 million U.S. dollar financial investment in the energy terminal is backed by a long-term tolling agreement and is expected to contribute earnings from 2031 onwards. An upside to our current plan with fully secured contracted earnings. We are also progressing well on our U.S. flexible generation strategy. By 2035, we target to build more than 3 GW of gas generation capacity. The necessary grid connections will not be a constraint for us. Across our development pipeline, we have secured grid connections for up to 10 GW that could be used for gas projects. This will enhance our customer offerings with baseload PPAs or behind the META energy campuses. To accelerate our development, we have now entered into a $300 million turbine reservation agreement with GE Wernowa. Initial units can already be delivered for projects with commissioning in 2029. We expect to make the first FIDs by the end of this year. We also constantly streamline our portfolio. As part of that, we have sold our Swedish wind activities and our offshore wind project under development in the Polish Baltic Sea. And just recently, we announced the sale of our U.S. distributed generation business. and we achieved further progress on the operational side. In the first half of the year we have secured income for more than 15 GW of capacity with our successful awards in the UK AR7, in the British T-4 capacity auction and in the recent tender for capacity reserve in Germany. In addition, we have signed almost 1.1 GW of new PPAs. As part of that, we have secured a new 500 MW PPA for an existing asset in the US, the largest re-contracting in our portfolio so far. With our FIDs, we have also continued to secure attractive earnings. On average, the IRR for FIDs that we made since the beginning of 2025 was 9.9%. More than 750 megawatt of new capacity has been commissioned in the first six months of the year. By the end of H1, we had 10.3 gigawatt of projects under construction, with the construction program being on track. Let's now move on to look at further catalysts ahead. Investment framework in our core markets are attractive and provide upcoming investment opportunities. In Germany, auctions for new flexible generation are planned for 26 and 27. We are ready with more than 3 GW of gas new build capacity available to bid. The future German capacity market will create further opportunities for our then existing portfolio of more than 6.5 GW and potential new builds. In the Netherlands, more than 3.5 gigawatt of our capacity will be eligible for the capacity auction schedule in 2028. Earnings contribution from capacity markets both in Germany and the Netherlands will be an upside to our 2031 guidance. Also the UK remains an attractive market. We have more than 2.5 gigawatt of eligible new build projects for AR8, majority of which being offshore wind projects. And our portfolio of attractive existing infrastructure sites provide us with additional upside to our plan. We are further advancing the development of data center sites. Two sites are nearing agreement over the next month. In July, Two of our former nuclear sites in Grundremmingen and Biblis have been selected as fusion energy hubs by the German Federal Ministry. One for magnetic, one for laser fusion technology. Accordingly, we will optimize the decommissioning process of these sites to adapt the continued usage of existing infrastructure for fusion technology. Let me conclude. Our capital allocation is and will be disciplined. Our balance sheet is strong and we will maintain our leverage ratio at the lower end of our 3 to 3.5 times guidance range. Our earnings growth is highly visible and the acquisition of Amplium adds further regulated earnings and visibility to our growth profile. 75% of our 2031 adjusted EPS is secured. We will grow adjusted EPS by 10% annually until 2031 and our dividend will grow accordingly by 10% per annum. And now over to you, Michael, for more insights.

Thanks, Markus, and also good afternoon from my side to all of you. Let's now take a closer look at H1 2026 Financial. We delivered an excellent financial performance in the first half of 2026. Adjusted EBITDA stood at €3 billion. This is an increase of more than €900 million compared to the first half of last year. Offshore wind earnings increased by €167 million to €810 million. This was mainly driven by normalized wind conditions. Onshore wind and solar recorded an adjusted EBITDA of €1.02 billion. Earnings increased by 186 million driven by the commissioning of new assets. Flexible Generation delivered an adjusted EBITDA of 1.03 billion euros. Earnings were significantly up on the back of a 332 million euro compensation payment for the production restriction of our Eemshaven power plant in the Netherlands in 2022. Higher contracted capacity payments in the UK also contributed positively. Our supply and trading segment delivered an adjusted EBITDA of €134 million. After weeks start into the year, our trading business is back on track and showed a strong earnings performance in Q2. As Markus mentioned, the strong performance has continued and as of today, we have already reached the midpoint of our guidance range of €100 to €500 million. Adjusted depreciation increased to €1.2 billion. This reflects the organic growth and the commissioning of new assets. In addition, depreciations in the H1 slightly increased to account for hyperinflation in Turkey, where our Denizli gas power plant is located. The adjusted financial result improved to 56 million euros. This was driven by higher capitalized interest. For adjusted tax, we applied the general tax rate of 20% for the RWE Group. Adjusted minority interest increased to minus €216 million. This reflects Apollo's share in our Ambron stake and our partner's share in the better offshore wind results and capitalized interest. Year on year, adjusted EPS increased by more than 60%. Adjusted income stood at €1.3 billion and adjusted EPS at €1.77. Adjusted operating cash flow was minus 759 million euros at the end of H1, mainly driven by seasonal effects in working capital. Changes in operating working capital amounted to minus 2.7 billion euros driven by the seasonal purchase of CO2 certificates in the first quarter, an increase in accounts receivable and a decrease in accounts payable. Changes in provision and non-cash items amounted to minus 1.1 billion euros, driven by changes and utilization of provisions and the cash flow of all phase-out technologies. Net debt stood at 15 million euros at the end of June. Cash investments amounted to 6.3 billion euros. This includes the gross investments and 1.7 billion euros for the share of the Umbren acquisition that closed in June. The remaining stake of the acquisition will be closed in July, so additional 1.9 billion euros will be reflected in the Q3 number of this year. Other changes in net financial debt had a positive effect of 3.9 billion euros, mainly driven by our capital increase in June. Net debt at year end is expected at 15 billion euros, so on a similar level as at half year. Let me close with our earnings outlook. For 26 we've upgraded our outlook. Adjusted EBITDA is now expected to be between 5.57 and 6.35 billion euro. Adjusted net income is expected to range from 1.95 to 2.45 billion euro. The midpoint of adjusted EPS is 2.95 euro. Our guidance is based on commodity prices as of June 30th of this year. Our dividend target for the fiscal year 26 remains 1.32 Euro per share. This reflects our annual 10% dividend growth target. Let me summarize. We have delivered an excellent financial performance in the first half of 2026. Our adjusted EPS increased by more than 60% year on year. And we've upgraded our outlook for the year 26, 27 and 31. Now, let me hand back to Thomas.

Thank you, Michael. We'll now start the Q&A session. Operator, please begin.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. And if you wish to withdraw your question, you may press star 2. We'll pause for just a moment while waiting for them to queue for questions. Thank you. We will now take our first question from Alberto Gandolfi of Goldman Sachs. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Thank you and good afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions. I have these two. The first one is on your slide 9 where you seem to be talking about quite a lot of optionalities, particularly in FlexGen. I wanted to ask you how much of this slide 9 is included in your 2031 guidance. And can you give us a range? I don't know, if we look at 50 to 100 euros a kilowatt for capacity payments, there's quite a lot of capacity here that could be receiving compensation. And would you look at the capacity payment almost as a substitute to ancillary services, or do you think it would be incremental to your profits? The second question is, You can decide maybe to just reply to one part or the other, but there are two parts to the second question. It seems to me there's upside to the target returns that you are achieving both in renewables, where you talk about 10% over the past 18 months, your guidance is above 8.5%, and you're now talking about above 8% ROE on Amprion, which is a little bit more than what you said last time when you bought the stake, but it's still very, very much below what Elia or Tenet are reporting, which is more in the double digits. So I guess the question here is after this long introduction, If we were to mark to market renewables IRR to the current level of 10% and to double digit in line with the other transmission, could you give us a sensitivity in terms of million euro profits that we could see by 2031? Or can you give us the building blocks so that we can do it? Thank you.

Okay, thanks, Alberto. Quite a journey. So let me start with your first question. What is potential upside to the plan? So let me start short term. I mean, not only focusing on page nine, but In short term, we clearly highlighted that trading is going very well in Q2 and also Q3. So by today, we have already reached the midpoint of the guidance and the midpoint of the guidance is what is reflected in our EPS target. So anything else from now on is on top. Second, if you look into the backup of the plan of the deck, you see our prior power price assumptions for the EPS guidance. That was, I mean, by the end of June. Today's base load, 27 prices in Germany are more than 10 euros higher. Long term, I mean, what is not included in the plan, I try to highlight that in my speech is the US offshore settlement and the investment in LNG, where we now turn the, let's say, the stranded investment, the US offshore lease in cash returning investments. This is not included into the 2031 guidance. If we can manage to build up the Amprion stake, and I made clear we don't need additional equity capital for that, that's not included. and we have now a pipeline of more than three gigahertz for gas new bills to be bid into the auction. So far we have planned with three and the most prominent one where you asked for a number where I would like Michael to give you an assessment what that could mean is the capacity market income in the Netherlands and Germany and of course one of from potential data center deals. So this is the entire upside we see with the planet. I mean, we are typically very conservative, but you see us here very, very optimistic about our business going forward. Please understand that we don't update guidances real time. We do that when we either have an announcement like the Amprion deal or a strategy review, including the full governance cycle with our board as well. Michael, on the capacity market.

Yeah, so first on the capacity market, let's start with your last question. If that is kind of substituting auxiliary incomes or it comes on top, I would assume that comes on top, yeah? I mean, yes, there will be some offsetting effects, but largely that should come on top. I mean, if you do the math and you just for a moment assume what the last UK auction realized, and then convert that into Euro and apply that to the capacities Markus mentioned, to the 6.5 and 3.5. Obviously, since the German capacities also include batteries and pump storage, you assume some degrading factors. That probably brings you in the range 300 to 400 million Euros.

Then I take the other part again, Alberto, on the uplift on IRRs. First on renewables, we continue to see higher locked-in IRRs at FID compared to the 8.5% blended hurdle rate. Of course, the moment we lock something in, that becomes part of the earnings guidance. So it's only for the non-yet FID capacity where you can expect to uplift if the returns stay where they are. That is not the majority. I mean, at least I would say rough ballpark Gutfeld 70% is probably locked in when it comes to 2031. So there's only a potential uplift on 30% of the investment volume. On the TSO side, so the numbers you mentioned for ILIA and Tenet, these are historic ROEs and also Amprion has achieved historic ROEs in that ballpark. But we are now entering a new regulatory regime from 29 onwards. You know that that is under discussion and we are here on the conservative side. I think investments above 8% are valuable in regulated grid business, but what can be in the end be achieved under the new regime with different levels for our performance remains to be seen. So we don't want to stretch that too much, but we are confident we see above 8% now.

Thank you.

Our next question comes from Harry Wybert of BNP Paribas.

Hi, good afternoon, everyone. Hi, Markus. Hi, Michael. Thanks for taking my question. So, two, please. Firstly, on Amprion, you mentioned the state bill. Could you give us any colour on how much of an additional stake you are in discussions to take on? On equity raises, so noted that you said that would not need an equity raise. But if we extend the question more generally, clearly, the equity markets are being very generous right now. So would you consider equity raises for other operations, whether that might be greater opportunities in US renewables, other very attractive strategic acquisitions that are accretive, etc? Would you still look to equity markets as a source of capital from here? and then second one, on the Louisiana and the gas turbine reservations that you signed in the agreement last week, should we, just to isolate those, if we assumed a high single-digit pre-tax ROIC on that, you'd be looking at around about 100 billion or so of EBIT. Is that something you're willing, Michael, thank you, to give us a rough range for the capacity payments Could you help us a little bit with the agreement last week in terms of EBIT accretion that you might expect from that from 2031 onwards? Thank you.

Thanks, Harry, for the questions. Let me start with the easy one. The second, your assumption is correct. That is ballpark, the right figure. On Amprion, I mean, our aim is clearly to collect further stakes at the same valuation level than we have paid for the first transaction. Remains to be seen how many additional stakes we can collect. I'm quite confident about smaller stakes. Whether we can get bigger stakes remains to be seen. For the smaller stakes, that's probably part of the normal capital allocation. We have some headroom left on larger acquisitions. If they materialize, we will probably look for earnings accretive capital recycling. And that brings me to your second question. I currently don't see any strategic additional move which would bring us into the question whether we want to raise equity. And one battle after another, I think we now also have to digest the move this year so I can rule out for the foreseeable future any bigger strategic move or a capital raise.

Very clear. Thank you very much.

and thank you, Wilhelm Nobler, until the next question from Peter of Bank of America. Your line is open, please go ahead.

Hi, it's Peter Buschtiger here. A couple of questions from me. Firstly, on these upcoming journal CCGT auctions, I understand there's still some EU approvals that need to be finalised. Is that correct and are there any concerns that the timeline might get delayed at all? and also how are you feeling about the competitive dynamics because there's now kind of a number of players kind of lined up to participate here and you know across the two auctions you know just interested to hear how you think the sort of dynamics might play out and then also can you just give us a little bit more Was it Ion? Was it Ion?

Pete, thanks for the question. So CCGTs, I mean, it's not only CCGTs, it's a firm capacity auction. So we also expect OCGTs and turbines and other stuff to be bid in and being successful. On your question on timeline and potential derailment from the European approval side, we don't expect it. What we understand is that the current design which was taken to the Parliament was pleaded with the European Commission as just a formality to get the formal approval which needs to happen before the first auction results are communicated. No concern on our side here. Then the second question was on... What was this? Competitive dynamics. We are quite confident with our bids. We have started early. Thank you very much. When I look at the last auctions where we have participated, I think we always had a good read of the auction dynamics. So I think the flexibility, which is also provided with two auctions where you can play a bit with price levels, I think can be a very good outcome for us. I mean, Amprion is clearly a core segment, but your question was on E.ON, right? The last one, or was it Amprion? Yes.

Yeah, basically.

But Amplion, as we said when we announced the transaction, will become a separate segment from next year onwards, which is regulated grid business as a separate core segment. Aeon is not core. It's a financial investment. We use it as funding our lignite provisions. But you also know when you look at the numbers that we currently have an overfunding of 2 billion. So there is 2 billion headroom from the Aeon stake.

Fair enough, thank you.

Thank you and we will now move on to our next question from Ahmed Farman of Jefferies. Your line is open, please go ahead.

Yes, good afternoon everyone. Two questions for my side. Just coming back to slide 9 again and thank you earlier for your earlier response where you very helpfully outlined, provided some of the sensitivities around capacity market. I was wondering if you could give us a little bit more about The two data center sites, nearing agreements that you mentioned on that site as well, give us a little bit of more color on how we could think about the potential economics of financial impact of that. And maybe also remind us where is the sort of the overall backlog or pipeline of such sort of opportunities today from your perspective. So that's my first question. Secondly, just interested in your views on the Outlook for European Power and Gas Market. Markus, you already alluded to that your guidance versus where the forward curves are, there's a sort of a difference already. What is behind your guidance in commodity prices? But I'm just more interested in any views that you may be able to share, how you think the power and gas market may evolve as we move towards the winter. Thank you.

Thanks for the question. On the data center side, since it's a very competitive environment here, we don't want to give more insight, just expectation management that we are making progress. But in terms of sites, potential partners, and also economics, we will communicate the full details when the deals have been signed. On the overall question, I mean, we see strong demand. We now see the need to build what I like to call operational data centers in Europe, not to train the models, but which you need to have close to your customers to solve the latency problems. They are coming and big time. And also from new players, it's just a question of time. So we are We do one step after another. We don't want to rush into it. We take a very cautious approach. But I'm again very optimistic, like we already said in March this year, that we're going to do one deal after another here from our European pipeline. But I'm also optimistic about our opportunities to deliver U.S. energy campuses, where we also have lots of interconnection agreements with existing sites, existing development projects, and here the discussions are also progressing very good. EU power and gas, I have no view on fundamentals, whether the situation in the Strait of Hormuz is going to be resolved quickly or not, but to the level I have no clear opinion on. I think we have now for the next month before we enter the full dialogue in the European Commission, clarity about carbon markets and markets have calmed down. But going into winter, what I see is a very tight system. I mean, gas storages, especially in Germany, only filled to the level we have seen before in the war times with Ukraine and probably the low. We entered the winter with the lowest fill level over the last decade. We also see that hydro reservoirs in Scandinavia and the Alps are not filling like normal. that all hints into an environment where we should expect high volatility. Of course, we cannot predict how harsh the winter is going to be, whether we have a windy winter or not, and whether we have disruption on other supply sides. But I mean, we should be prepared for a rough ride, which is typically for our portfolio not a bad environment. Thank you.

Thank you, we will now take our next question from Pawan Mahbubani of JP Morgan. Your line is open, please go ahead.

Hi team, good afternoon and thank you for taking my questions. I've got two on offshore and one on onshore please. Firstly on offshore wind, I'm noting in your slides that your commodity sensitivity for offshore has decreased quite a bit between when you updated it last in March and today. Can you talk about what the And then my last question on onshore and solar is when I look at the midpoint of your guidance, it implies A slightly lower run rate in H2 versus already what you've delivered in H1. Can you talk me through what the dynamics are between H2 and H1 in terms of capacity additions and what would be offsetting that whether it's lower power prices or currency exposure that means that the midpoint is realistic or actually should we be thinking about something above the midpoint already today? Thank you.

Yeah, thanks for the question. Let me take the general one on PPAs and the marketing of our open position and Michael will go into the details. of the financial questions. So on PPAs, yes, we are for our German portfolio in discussions to contract significant more capacity. And I'm also very optimistic for the rest because I see the demand coming, especially from the tech companies. The moment they have decided to build a data center, they typically procure the green power to it. And when you look at the available portfolio across Europe, which is not contracted, it's not so much. And all the new projects enter into CFDs. So I'm very confident that we can contract the portfolio. That is also the clear objective. But we are not in a rush. We do it step by step. And you're going to see more PPAs for our merchant offshore capacity over the remainder of the year.

Let me take on the sensitivities. I mean, obviously the sensitivity for 26 incorporates that we are already half year through. So therefore the sensitivities for the remainder of the year are smaller. And then as we go into 2027, that's obviously then the ROC assets and also the commissioning of our new offshore assets that is included there. If you look at the full year or two halves of the year, I mean, first the statement is yes. So the guidance is basically reflecting the expected midpoint. Obviously, Markus has kind of explained that if trading outperforms, that is clearly upside. And also if commodity prices stay, and where they are or potentially a tighter window even leads to further increase that is clearly upside but based on the assumptions we have we based on our forecast on the guidance is very much in line with H1 because if you look at H1 what you have to take out obviously is the Dutch compensation 332 it's the E.ON dividend paid in the first half 230 or pre-tax and then that brings you basically then to a second half that is about 140 above in irony about the first quarter and that about reflects the higher capacity that we also see then in the course of the second half of the year and also Amprun is contributing higher in the second half since we then have the higher stake.

Great, thank you.

Thank you. We will now take our next question from Olly Jeffery of Deutsche Bank. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Thanks very much. And yeah, thanks guys. A few questions from me. So coming back to data centres, I appreciate what you said around what you can say is not a lot, but I'll try. So just drawing the dots between what you're saying on PPAs for offshore and secure syndicated positions. I presume your desire would be to potentially lock some of those into the data centre deals that you announced. Is that a fair assumption? And on the connection size, you mentioned the larger data centres looking to secure sites, so potentially could we see a higher grid connection size than what we saw in the deal you did in the UK, would that be a reasonable assumption? On volatility, highlighting that we can see more coming into this winter. Presumably that could make the midpoint flex generation guidance a little bit conservative. If we see more volatility, would you agree with that? And then one other question, which is just on Uniper. It has been in the press with Ard agree being a potential bidder. Could you put a pin in that notion or perhaps whatever you're able to talk to Thanks for the question. I fully understand that you try to get more information out of us on the data center side, but I think everything we want to say we have already said.

On the volatility side, yes, if markets are tight, typically, I mean, there's more potential for trading, but there's definitely also more potential to make some money on the commercial asset optimization side from the flexible fleet. But that remains to be seen. We don't know how the winter in the end goes. If it's a very mild winter and windy winter, you should not expect any upside. And that's why we have not baked anything into the EPS guides yet. On Unipa, yeah, I think that's a very relevant question. I mean, the situation around the government plans for Unipa are very dynamic. I would say it's totally unclear where that might go, what the government really intends to do. So if something very material happens in our core market, I expect our M&A team to be involved, take a look. And if it's necessary to have a seat at the table to notify, you notify. And in that case, you notify interest. But you should also not be surprised when I can now confirm the obvious that we have no interest and no intent to acquire Unipol.

I'm very clear on that one.

Thank you. We'll now take our next question from Rob Poulain of Morgan Stanley. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Hi, good afternoon. A couple of questions, if possible, and hopefully my signal holds. There's two auctions for the German CCGTs. I wondered whether you can make a comment on whether RWE is more likely to be successful in the September or the December. And I believe there is some criteria around bonus payments for plants in the South, if you could elaborate. And secondly, I had a little question. Given the guidance for 75% of your earnings to be secured by 2031, I was wondering what in the long Do you believe the optimal earnings mix between contract secured and spot merchant would be, i.e. is 75% perfect or is it going to be slightly different? Thank you very much.

Yeah, Rob, thank you. I mean, we're going to participate in both auctions, of course, and I think the auction design is split. In a way that you get the results from the first auction only, I think, a couple of days before you have to hand in the bids for the second auction. And it's an interesting play around tactics where I don't want to go into the details. But there is no clear, let's say, we could bid anything in the first auction, but also anything in the second auction. And that gives us a high degree of flexibility. On the 75% secured earnings, if you look at our investment program and where we have made very clear that we will only enter into new investments, be it on the renewable side with CFDs or PPAs, or be it on the flex-gen side with capacity markets or also PPAs or energy campuses deals, that other than the merchant batteries where you probably don't get a lot of secured income but have a very short payback, we only do contracted investments. And if you consider that, including the now increased investment plans in Amprion, you should expect that that 75% goes up over time. So I think in the 30s, we're going to reach 80% plus.

Thank you, Markus.

Thank you. Then I'll take our next question from Louise Bouchard of OWHR. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Yes, hi. Good morning and thank you for the presentation and for taking my question. Maybe two on my side. You increase indeed your footprint into the regulated grid infrastructure. You are becoming now more diversified across different streams. What would you consider being the optimal long-term balance in terms of in terms of capacity and for the three business lines and the three earnings category in the mid to long term. Also, additionally, I was wondering if you could provide maybe some granularity on your strategic visibility in the US market following the deals that you signed with the US offshore wind leases, now investing in LNG and flexible generation. How do you see your identity in the US evolving going forward? Thank you very much.

Thanks for the question. I mean, it's already a very long term one in the 30s for probably the next strategy update or the one after that. I think when you look at our investment plans, we have the full flexibility and this is the highest value of the portfolio. So it will always depend also on where the investment opportunities are and what the risk return profile is. But given the significant investment needs in regulated grid business in Germany, I would expect that that proportional share in the 30s will increase, which will also bring the overall portfolio more into that direction. On the US strategy, nothing has really changed. I mean, the offshore investments were not in the plan, which we announced in March this year, because we have already clear view that these investments are not possible anymore under the current administration. And the investments in renewables and flexible generation has also not changed. I mean, we have now done a gas The only thing which was on top was the LNG investments to fulfill the requirements of the settlement agreement with the US, which we saw as a very valuable, also secured infrastructure investment. But overall, our investment strategy in the US is more or less the same which we have announced in March this year.

Thank you.

Thank you. We'll now take our next question from Peter Dzioloski of Citi. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Hi, good afternoon and congratulations on the results. I have two questions. So first one, you gave the number for the TSO capex in Germany for the next decade and you also previously gave a capex like how much equity you will have to provide to Amprion by 2031. I wanted to ask you what is your view on the pace of a capex in the TSO? Do you think All of the companies, including Amption, will stop having a need for extra equity in the early 30s. So that depends on the currently developed grid development plan. So I'm basically asking, like, will you have to contribute extra equity to Amption beyond 2030, 31? So that's the first question. And second question, I wanted to ask you about your view on the German renewable law. What is the implication of this law for the market, renewable development pace and achievability of the target? And specifically on RWE, I know that German renewable is probably a very small part of your business or not that big, but energy use here would be welcome. Thank you.

Yeah, so I think the first one, yes, we expect additional equity raises also in the 30s because that is, in the end, our net investment into regulated grid business the moment we provide additional equity into Empreon. To what extent in the end depends on the update of the grid development plan. But as we said when we announced it until 2031 with the capital raise we did, the equity which is needed for EMPREON is fully funded by us and reflected in the CAPEX plans. On all the legislation we currently see in Germany, I think It's a heated debate, but the net effects on renewable investments we see very muted. Of course, with the redispatch topic, renewables have to take over more risk, but every good investor will bake that into his bid. And since we also have seen that the auction volumes, especially for onshore wind, have been significantly increased, I probably expect that what we save on the grid side, we probably spend more on higher auction prices in the renewable auctions or in two, three year times when the existing pipeline, which has already secured grid connections and doesn't fall under the dispatch rules, has been delivered. And what we now see with offshore is probably more relevant for us. The German government has tabled the first proposal draft legislation for the new offshore regime where they're going to move to CFDs as well if the merchant options fail, which everybody expects, and that would bring also then offshore investments back on track. The most relevant question for German offshore is of course what happens to the very expensive leases which were awarded in 23 and 25. Will they come back and be re-auctions via CFDs or are the companies willing to build at these prices? And as you know, we don't have anything in the pipeline which has any relevant lease payments. And that is a very favorable position because we expect our projects to be built and they're probably the only ones in that time period. Thank you very much.

Thank you. And we'll now take our last question from Wanda Cervinowska of UBS. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Hi. Wanda Cervinowska, UBS. Two questions for me. The first one is on the offshore wind auctions in Germany that you, Markus, referred to. In your future growth potential, you mentioned AR8, but you didn't mention German offshore wind auctions. So the question is why? Is it because you don't have projects? Is it because you don't want to commit or you are not even looking at given the merchant first requirement? And the second question would be on the heat wave. What do you see these days on the operation of your asset in the heat wave? Is there any capacity being shut down because of the lower river levels? Do you see FlexGen performing really, really well in trading? Any comments would be appreciated. Thanks a lot.

Thanks, Wanda. On offshore wind, we have not mentioned, of course, we're going to participate in CFD auctions. We have participated in the Danish auctions, but not at the price level where it was awarded. And we will also participate in other CFD auctions. We have simply not included it because there is nothing. It's nothing where you need to provide a pipeline. In the UK, you can only participate in the offtake auction when you have a pipeline. We have a great pipeline. In Germany, it's a one-step approach. Everybody starts from scratch. But we will participate and that is potentially also an upside, but beyond 2031 to be clear. And then on the heatwave side, we don't see any impact on our operations. So no limitations and we can run at full capacity. And of course, the current sometimes very tight markets provide opportunity for additional earnings from the flexible portfolio.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. That's all the time we have for questions today. I will now hand it back to Thomas for closing remarks.

Great. Thank you, Laura, and thank you, everyone, for dialing in. Thank you, Markus and Michael, for the discussion today. If there are any further questions from investors or analysts, do not hesitate to reach out to the Investor Relations team. And of course, I'm looking forward to seeing many of you Thank you. This concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.