Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the D'Ieteren Group 2023 full year results conference call. Throughout the call, all participants will be in a listen-only mode, and afterwards there will be a question and answer session. Please note, this call is being recorded. Today, I'm pleased to present Francis Deprez, CEO, Édouard Janssen, CFO, and Nicolas Saillez, CIO. Gentlemen, please go ahead. Well, thank you very much, and a good evening to everyone, or good afternoon or good morning, depending on which part of the world you're in. We have three messages today concerning the results of 2023 for the D'Ieteren Group. One is on our normal profit before tax group share KPI, where we have strong 2023 results, reaching EUR 970.8 million as a number. You recall we guided for EUR 960 million, so we're a good EUR 10 million above that, and that's an increase of 28.1% versus last year. We've also generated over EUR 600 million, EUR 605.4 million, to be precise, of free cash flow group share, and that's about 12 times more than in 2022. That comes, among others, also from D'Ieteren Automotive, which you may recall last year did not have a positive free cash flow. That is now, it definitely is the case. And then the third key message is that our guidance for 2024 is to continue to grow our PBT Group share, and we anticipate a mid- to high-single-digit growth in that KPI. So these are the three key messages I would say of today, and let me give you a little bit of flavor more on how we got to those results. It's really been driven by a strong operational performance of several of our businesses, and also the full-year scope effect of PHE, which we, as you recall, only had 5 months of in 2022 and now have 12 months in 2023. At Belron, the adjusted PBT group share improved with over 17.5%. Actually, we ended up with a margin improvement of 226 basis points. You recall, we got it for 200 basis points at least, and so we're a bit above that. And so we passed the 20% margin mark, landing at 20.5%, to be precise, in 2023. At D'Ieteren Auto, we had, of course, a lot more car deliveries coming in, which allowed us to invoice them and to gain market shares. And so we posted a record, adjusted PBT group share, that grew 36.6% compared to the year before. We also reached return on sales of 4.2%, which is actually slightly better than the year before. We had guided for a slightly lower one, but we delivered a slightly better one than 2022. In PHE, we have a contribution of about EUR 138 million in our PBT group share, so a sizable number, for the first full year, I would say. It was a solid level of activity at PHE, with both price evolution and also good cost control. PHE recorded an adjusted PBT group share of around EUR 75 million. It's 24% less than the year before, and it's of course the result of the cyber attack on the one hand, because that had a temporary interruption for a number of weeks, but we also had some adverse foreign exchange effects, and we had some softer sales in the months afterwards, and we fully took out Russia, by the way, as well, now in 2023. Then last but not least, Moleskine. The story is similar to what we had been telling already at the half year. Destocking policies at the retailers and e-commerce platforms, and restricted corporate gifting budgets have continued to weigh on Moleskine, but they've improved their margins, and so we landed it with a PBT group share of EUR 2.2 million, but at a higher operating margin of about 18%. Maybe also important to note is the growth dividend that we will recommend to the General Assembly at the end of May is gonna be EUR 3.75, so it's about 25% more than the EUR 3 of last year. When I was guiding mid- to high-single-digit growth for the PBT group share for 2024, it's also important to note that we will be calculating that starting from a number where we have aligned to different foreign exchange rates to the rate of December 31, 2023, and so the starting number will not be the EUR 970.8, but it will be EUR 962.4, to be precise. I think Stephanie asked me to clarify that number from the start, so I don't forget to mention that. So a little bit more flavor to some of the numbers in terms of top-line growth. You see it on page 4, +43%. The bigger growth contributors, the biggest one is clearly D'Ieteren Automotive, with almost 47% growth. Both Belron and PHE had attractive growth rates as well, 13.1% for PHE, 8.5% for Belron. TVH has a flat revenue development and Moleskine a slight decline of 9%. The translation of that in bottom line was also close to 40% increase, so +37.6%, to be precise. We now landed over EUR 1 billion, EUR 1.184 billion, as adjusted operating result group share in total. Belron, of course, being the biggest contributor, they increased their profit with 22%. Auto increased it even more than the top line with 52%. PHE has now a nice contribution of EUR 232 million. TVH did suffer, giving this flat sales, and we continue to invest in the future growth, a somewhat slower margin, and so we have a 16% lower adjusted operating result. And Moleskine could actually really, despite the -9% in the top line, almost hold its absolute profitability number with only a 1.7% decline there. The adjusted PBT, EUR 970.8 million that I mentioned before, you can see the decomposition on page six. We have three sizable contributions beyond Belron. Belron, of course, remaining the biggest one with over EUR 500 million, but three sizable ones with over EUR 211 million, with PHE EUR 143.8 million, and almost EUR 40 million, EUR 75 million, sorry, for TVH. The other two being more minor. For free cash flow and net debt, I hand over to Édouard, who wants to maybe give a little bit of flavor on page seven and eight. Definitely. So strong free cash flow generation in 2023, roughly 12x on 2022 cash flow generation, and strong contribution from all our activities, in the sense that all of them are positive. D'Ieteren Automotive, probably we should flag that it's the third year that they are fully autonomous, and they have done a significant effort to remember that they were negative in 2022, so EUR 139 million of positive free cash flow generation. Belron, Belron remains, of course, a strong cash contributor with a strong cash conversion, and we see that with EUR 350 million for us. And to be flagged as well, PHE, TVH, and Moleskine have also contributed to this number of EUR 605 million of positive free cash flow. And let's again highlight that working capital improvements at Belron, Auto, and TVH were significant to allow today that number. Now, if we move to slide 8 on the group's debt structure. Most of our entities had stable levels of net debt and leverage. Hence, let me focus on the corporate and unallocated cash position. Of course, so we finished the year with a net cash position close to EUR 1.2 billion, and this is mainly thanks to the dividend received from Belron. You remember a dividend recap in April and an interim ordinary dividend in December, but as well as dividends from Auto and interest paid from Moleskine on their shareholder loan, so EUR 1.2 billion being the total. This amount includes EUR 272.4 million of shareholder loan to Moleskine, and a position of EUR 94.8 million of investment reclassified in non-current assets, being invested in the Credit Suisse Supply Chain Finance Fund. That fund has been put in liquidation, and we wrote EUR 90.6 million off of that position in order to reflect the provisions taken within the fund for the liquidation process, as well as a discounting due to uncertainty on the timing of recuperation. Hence, at the end of 2023, a position of EUR 94.8 million. To give a little bit of background here, we actually invested in that fund in a period of negative interest rates. These EUR 95 million represents some 7.7% of our treasury position, the rest being placed besides the shareholder loan to Moleskine, mainly in bank deposits and rated commercial debts, which are yielding decent short-term returns at low risk. More broadly, we use part of the cash received to pay a dividend to our shareholders to acquire treasury shares, notably as part of our share buyback programs. The first one, as you know, which ended in May 2023, and the second one of EUR 100 million, which started at the end of 2023. Finally, to be highlighted, in May, we acquired some additional Belron shares from the employee benefit trust, which brought our fully diluted stake in Belron to 50.3%. Now, if we move to our ESG progress, important to flag that the group and its businesses made solid progress in that field in 2023. Very recently, at the end of February, D'Ieteren Group had its own objective validated by the SBTi, and this implies that on top of reducing the emissions of the holding by 30% in 2027, we are asking all our activities to get a validated SBT target by that year as well, 2027. The activities are working with that aim in mind. With regards to CSRD, the European Directive on Sustainability Reporting, our preparation is ongoing, and businesses have all proceeded with a double materiality analysis, involving, of course, their stakeholders throughout their value chain. This has enabled the thorough identification of material ESG aspects for each of them, which will help them to refine their respective sustainability strategy. Important to flag as well our three ESG ratings. The new one this year was a Carbon Disclosure Project, where we obtained a B score, which is good for a first time, and we maintained our double A rating from MSCI and 11.5 from Sustainalytics. I will now hand over to Francis, who will talk about the Belron performance. Thank you, Édouard. On Belron, I suggest I go right away to page 12. That gives a little bit of detail on the sales evolution and the growth drivers. As you can see on the table on the right, the 8.5% that we have in top line growth was not really helped by foreign exchange, because we have -2.4%. It was a little bit helped by acquisitions, 1.9%, but the main portion, of course, has been 9% organic growth. That organic growth has been across the board. If you look at the geographical splits, it has been particularly strong in what we call the rest of the world. That's UK, Australia, the Nordics, and a couple of countries like that, 16.4%. The Eurozone-... Close to 14%, and it's actually mainly been in North America, where the top-line sales has been the least, with a 5.1 organic growth. You may recall that we somehow had a lesser winter in early 2023, and that actually had some impact on the overall organic growth level in North America. There was overall a volume growth of 2%, as a combined number, I would say. You may recall it was about 1% in H1, while it was about 3% in H2, so on average, we ended up with 2.1%. We've continued to do recalibration, of course. We are now at 36.4% penetration of windscreen replacement jobs that also require a second recalibration job, so six percent higher than a year before. In VAPS, we did not make much progress, to be honest. We remained at 22.1%, slightly below the 22.3% from before, mainly because actually the U.S., as you may recall, had lots of issues on technician retention, on building the right capacity, on training the right amount of people, and so they deprioritized a little bit to the VAPS attachment rate, and that's the main reason why we didn't make progress there, but they'll definitely pick that up again in 2024. Now, the adjusted operating profit on page 13 for Belron, that's how you can see, the evolution from 18.2%-20.5% margin, and so a good fall through that we had. It's linked to good cost mitigation, to good pricing mitigation against inflationary pressures, which, of course, are still very present in 2023. We've continued to invest in a transformation program. It was about EUR 124 million spent, of which EUR 57 million has been classified as adjusting items, and so an amount which is similar to 2022, a little bit lower, I would say. And so beyond the margin improvement of 226 basis points, we of course also had some additional finance costs, and so given the new debt issuance in April, you can see that the adjusted net finance cost reached about EUR 222 million in 2023. All that leading to the 50-odd% that we have of the EUR 1 billion adjusted PBT of Belron, so EUR 511 million, which is 17.5% higher. In terms of adjusting items at Belron, the usual suspects, we have some amortizations of customer contracts. We have a bit of numbers on the restricted share units of the long-term incentive program that we have to all the employees in the company that we had the last couple of years as well. In the other adjusting items, the main component of the EUR 93.5 million are the fees to systems integrators, which were exactly the EUR 57 million that I mentioned before, next to a couple of other items. The free cash flow and the debt at Belron, well, a significant increase in free cash flow from EUR 300 million to EUR 700+ million, thanks to EBITDA, of course, but also thanks to a very positive working capital development. The extra stock levels they had held on in 2022 when there was some supply chain issues, they've actually brought it back to more normalized levels, and that really helped a bit, about EUR 135 million. They spent a bit less on acquisitions. You recall the high number of EUR 160 million in 2022, while it was closer to EUR 56 million in 2023. Still about 17 acquisitions, but smaller acquisitions. Then, some other, of course, lower cash outflow items, linked to the transformation program. The net debt in itself is, of course, linked to the additional financing that was done in April 2023. So now we land at about EUR 4.6 billion-EUR 4.7 billion as net debt at the end of December, which brings us and keeps us, despite all these dividend payments, below the 3x leverage ratio. So we're at 2.95, to be precise, at the end of December for Belron. In ESG, highlight a couple of points. Glass recycling, very important, of course, for someone who repairs and replaces glass. We're at 97% now, a very good number, very happy with that. We have now validated SBTi targets at Belron, a year ahead of what they actually tried to achieve. We have a very ambitious program and safety and health going on in the organization with a consistent set of standards, and where we have lots of hopes on to continue to reduce the number of work-related injuries and therefore, well-being of our people. We've done 39 procurement audits as well last year. In the good old Belron tradition, giving back to society, they have continued to do that with almost EUR 9 million. They have great people engagement scores, above 89%, sorry. They have great NPS scores, above 84%, 84.7. The CO2 emission numbers we're still waiting for; we'll get those in April, but I'm sure they will also be, well, developing in a good direction. Brito has been around for almost a year, actually for a year as we speak, because we have already passed March one this year. He spent a lot of time in the field, multiple times in almost all the countries around the world and has really driven a new level of energy across the organization. Maybe a couple of points to mention as well is the investment grade rating. So we had already S&P; we now also have Fitch that puts Belron investment grade rating, so one to go. We have Belron acquisitions; I talked about that. Transformation program is progressing well; I talked about that as well. Maybe a bit on the outlook for 2024. What is our outlook there? Well, we are guiding for a mid- to high single-digit sales growth number, of course, driven by continued price mix, continued recalibration, normalized pricing and normalized inflation rates, and a bit of volume, of course, as well. We continue to improve our margin, so we want to continue, or we guide on a margin improvement, which is very much on track to reach our ambition of 2025, yeah, the 23% objective we mentioned in April 2022. So we hold very much onto that, and that's where we're on track to do that. In transformation, there will still be some spends less than in the last couple of years, but still around EUR 90 million, with about a third in adjusting items of that. And we do anticipate the free cash flow that will, is expected to remain at high levels. For D'Ieteren Automotive, I will still continue to talk a bit before handing over to my colleagues for the other activities. Again, I will immediately go to page 20, where you see the market. The car market in Belgium had, of course, a fantastic year last year, with +30% in matriculations. We at D'Ieteren Automotive have been very happy to be able to grow our market share in that better markets to 24.2%, so an increase of 170 basis points. Very nice. The year 2023 you can compare almost to the years 2012, 2013, 2014. A more normal year, I would say, since the last three years that were quite abnormal. In terms of mix of cars sold or registered, we are at almost 50%, to be precise, 49% of new energy vehicles. Not surprisingly, hybrid still being the highest, all driven, of course, by orders that were done before the 13th of June, because they had a fiscal change at the 13th of June last year. So lots of orders in H1, a lot less in H2. However, the fully electric vehicles have taken over, and so we are now, for the entire year, at a 20% share of full electric. And so, hybrid plus electric together is bigger than petrol, I would say, for the first time, in 2023. It's still very much, and even more so than ever, a B2B market in Belgium, 69% that we have reached last year. And it's also, more than ever, an SUV-driven market, where we're now at 54%. But of course, many electric vehicles are also seen as SUVs. Our specific market shares for D'Ieteren Automotive brands you can find on page 22. I'm not going to talk too much about it. It's basically an increase with all brands, and then Porsche a little bit down, but that was an abnormally high number in 2022. We are very happy with our overall electric car market share, which is 28.1%. So that makes us the largest in Belgium, if you take the combination of all our brands. So we have quite some brands that did very—quite some models within our brands, sorry, that did very well. In terms of margins and profits on page 23, you can see that we did slightly improve for 4.1 return on sales to 4.2 return on sales. We delivered close to 125,000 cars ourselves, which led to a sales increase of close to 47%, a profit increase of 52%. There are, of course, some adjusting items as well, but when you look at the overall PBT number, of course, also a very nice increase of 36.6% overall. There was a little bit less contribution of VD Fin, by the way, because with the increasing interest rates, not surprisingly, their contribution has been lesser. And that is something you see also included in the PBT, which you may not have necessarily seen in the EBIT as such. And then, on free cash flow for automotive, I already told you it's a positive development. Now, the higher EBITDA helped, but at the same time, the change in working capital from -155 to +24.4 is, of course, a very significant contributor to this. There was some CapEx, similar to the year before. There were a bit more acquisitions for EUR 28 million, a bit more taxes paid, a bit more interest paid, of course, because they have a little bit of debt at Auto as well for EUR 14 million. The sum of all that together led first, well, to, to EUR 139 million as a free cash flow number, for D'Ieteren Automotive. What else worth mentioning in latest developments? We started the year or ended the previous year with 58,000 in our order book. That's still a high number, by the way. That's more or less double what we have in a normal year, but of course, lower than the 100,000 or so we had the year before. We're working a lot on CROSS, a big IT program in Auto that's being rolled out to all our different dealerships. It's a dealer management system. We've been working on that for a couple of years, and now it's going live, and we expect some increased efficiency from that, which I think is always good in times where the downstream, let's say, of car distribution needs to be as efficient as possible. And as you also may recall, we have acquired one more dealer in Belgium. It's called Garage Jennes, in the Leuven area, between Brussels and Leuven, and completes more or less our Brussels to Antwerp access of dealerships where we have an ownership ourselves. The market outlook is about the same as the number of last year, so about 480,000 new registrations expected in the market. What do we guide in terms of top line? Well, not a specific guidance, I would say. We have a good view on H1, thanks to our high order backlog. We have less visibility on H2, so no overall guidance there. We do guide, however, that the overall margin is expected to slightly erode. I thought we had guided already last year, but we did better. This year, we do anticipate, given that we go to a more normal mix of cars, and we have some of those IT projects to have a slight erosion in the margin. But we do anticipate the free cash flow to continue to improve beyond the number that we've delivered at the end of 2023. And with that, and I have some ESG developments at Auto as well, 22% of sales were electric cars, more than 8,000 charging stations installed, more than 200,000 square meters of solar panels installed at people's homes and at companies. Our bicycle operation has now 19 stores in total, so it's becoming a little bit of a national network, not entirely yet, so some white spaces still, but, nice development. We've done over 1 million trips with Poppy, so the car sharing activity that we have in Brussels and Antwerp, et cetera, that we have worked on. Add to that, good people engagement scores of 83%, a bit lesser customer satisfaction scores, given that delivery times had been long and were quite unpredictable last year. People have given us that feedback, "Mm, we didn't like that that much." Sales and after sales customer satisfaction was a little bit down compared to the year before. CO2 emissions have gone a little bit up because we have a lot more activity, of course, but we're on track to improve on that in the years to come as well. With that, I hand over to Nico for PHE, Parts Holding Europe. So PHE, as a reminder, we're consolidating PHE since August 2022, so in the first year we have it fully consolidated for the entire year. Very strong year at PHE. The company had revenue increase of 13.1% versus 2022, driven by 5.9% organic growth and 3.6% from M&A, from acquisitions. We've seen both France and international growing by more than 9%, plus 9.7% for France and plus 9.4% for international. On the back of, let's say, favorable price-pricing environment, certainly in the first part of 2023, and gain in market share, which is something that the company has been able to do in almost all geographies throughout 2022. The adjusted operating profit margin was record high at 9.1%, again, driven by this, you know, favorable pricing environment and then and cost control. Adjusting items are at EUR 65.2 million, mainly coming from amortization of intangibles, that's a technical element following the purchase price allocation finalized by ourselves, by D'Ieteren Group, and also some expenses relating to the LTI provisions that we already discussed, I think, at our semi-annual results. So adjusted operating results were at EUR 231.6 million, and adjusted PBT group share at EUR 137.6 million. Just mentioning that because it's also something Stéphanie insisted upon. There are non-controlling interests in some of the subsidiaries of PHE. When they did several acquisitions, they only acquired 75% in order to leave a local anchor, a local flavor, culture, and motivation. That's what you find in the non-controlling in this small amount of EUR 8.9 million of non-controlling interest. In terms of free cash flow, free cash flow with the strict definition was EUR 36.9 million. Trading cash flow was EUR 100 million, EUR 101 million, really. And I just remind everyone that the free cash flow was impacted by a negative working capital requirement worth EUR 104.5 million. That comes from a conscious decision of the company to save on interest costs and not draw on non-recourse factoring and rather use the cash they had in hand from the divestment of Mondial Pare-Brise in order to do that. CapEx was at EUR 1.8 million, so quite reasonable as they have shown over the past years. Net debt declined slightly. Net debt to EBITDA ratio to lenders is at 3.6 times. The latest developments, I mean, I just again remind everyone that the company is on track to consolidate more of the market they're already present in, specifically in Spain. They did three acquisitions in 2023, and they are looking at other acquisition today. In terms of financial leverage, we had the very positive news of an upgrade from S&P to BB-, and Moody's also confirmed its positive outlook with a B2 rating. On the back of that, in early 2024, we decided to refinance. Actually, we need to refinance the entire existing TLBs, which had two different maturities, and so we had a very good and strong execution, a good book, and we were able to refinance the entire debt structure with a new TLB, 7 years, EUR 960 million, at LIBOR plus 375 basis points, so quite happy. We also took the opportunity to increase the RCF, which is today at EUR 242.5 million. In terms of outlook, PHE expects this year mid-single digit organic revenue growth, again, driven by this constant ability to take market share and a more normalized pricing environment. We expect adjusted operating result margin to be similar in line with their record high that they achieved in 2023 at 9.1%. And again, the non-controlling interest that I just mentioned are expected to be around EUR 10 million approximately. In terms of ESG, start to say that the company is not the most advanced among the portfolio companies. Or certainly not in terms of beliefs and mindsets, but more in terms of processes. But we are working in close collaboration with them, and they're really eager to catch up with the rest. So we are completing a double materiality assessment as we speak, which is, you know, as you know, the first step for to get CSRD approval. And then we also like to mention that the company very recently hired a young, promising group environmental director, which certainly is gonna help us and our teams to accelerate the effort in ESG. Customer satisfaction, well, it's not an NPS because they measure it differently. But let's say that the both scores on a total of 5 came at 4.56 for B2B and 4.61 for B2C, which are deemed to be quite strong, and on the people engagement front, 90%, which again, is quite strong. All right, let's move to TVH, Édouard. Yeah, absolutely. So as an introduction, let's remember, of course, that 2023 was a tough year for TVH, with the cyberattack, which occurred on March 19. Operations were down until April 5 and fully operational again on April 17. So it was communicated earlier, around 4 weeks of downtime and EUR 85 million of lost sales. Important as well to flag that in 2023, TVH stopped its operations in Russia, which, if we compare to 2022, generated a lost sales of up to EUR 15 million. So all of that led to a sales year-on-year decline of -0.96%. If we move to the next slide with the PNL, we see that this -0.96 is composed of flat organic growth, 0.07% of external and acquisitions. Actually, two acquisitions were made by TVH in construction equipment parts, which together with the full year 2022 acquisition, contributed to 0.7% of top line growth. Finally, there was a negative effect, translation effect of 1.6%, leading to this -0.9%. It is important to flag that one of the consequence of the cyberattack was the fact that TVH didn't really lose any client, but lost some share of wallet at some clients. Logically, these clients wanted to diversify the supplier base from a risk perspective. We then entered into a lower volume growth environment in some areas, notably in materials handling, in which TVH is, of course, a very strong player. We ended the year with flat organic sales. As we said, some small acquisitions were done, and throughout that year, TVH continued to invest in future growth, and advances were made throughout the year on several IT tools, aiming at better operational efficiency, mainly in e-commerce, in HR management, or in enterprise performance management. As we said, we impaired the activity in Russia, and these activities were suspended. This is why, of course, the adjusted operating result of EUR 217.9 million experienced a 16.1% decline year-on-year, with a margin of only 13.6%. Because, like we said, TVH continued to invest both in increased personnel and, of course, to the G&A cost, including the transformation program. If we move to the next slide, the cash flow and the debt situation, we can flag a nice improvement on the free cash flow of TVH with which was negative in 2022 and was positive at EUR 85.6 million in 2023. This is mainly due to working capital improvement and focus. You might remember that in 2022, we were facing supply chain disruption, and TVH voluntarily increased its inventory levels. That situation has since been normalized, and hence, we had a positive working capital reduction in 2023. As we said, lower EBITDA generation, driven by the cyberattack and also partially driven by higher cash interests due to higher interest rates in 2023 versus 2022. Capital expenditures have remained significant and broadly stable at 5.9% of sales. These CapEx were mainly related to the transformation program, notably, as we said, on e-commerce and also on various logistics projects, including in Waregem, the new WB3, which is an impressive automated warehouse. And finally, to be flagged on the free cash flow and net situation, net debt situation, is to be said that TVH has reimbursed the shareholder loan of EUR 100 million at the end of 2023, out of which EUR 40 million for D'Ieteren Group shares. ... If we look at the latest developments and the outlook, so given the perspective that was given, you can re-guide towards restored volume growth in 2024 versus 2023, of around 10%. This will be, of course, in a normalized inflation environment. Yeah, but a restored growth, volume growth. From a margin perspective, we expect an improvement of around 100 basis points versus the 13.6% level recorded in 2023. On the free cash flow, we expect free cash flow to remain good, although somewhat lower than 2023, mainly because TVH continues to invest for its medium to long-term growth, as we said, on working capital and on various types of capital expenditures. On the ESG side, TVH has made significant progress. It has performed its CSRD double materiality analysis. And there is progress or close to stable or progress on all three of its group ESG KPIs. Nice improvement on people engagement. This has to be flagged. In an environment with the cyberattack, the fact that the people engagement increased, definitely there was a strong, which can be. They can be congratulated with this very strong positive reaction of the organization. It's probably a reflection of the strong culture as well, that they were really all together, let's say, fighting against this cyberattack, and it reinforced the people engagement. And on customer satisfaction and CO2 emissions, we see stability or small progress. All right, let's move to Moleskine, Nico. So Moleskine had an interesting year. On one side, we had a revenue decline, but we had a strong improvement in margin. So revenue declined by 9.1% year-on-year, or minus 7.5% in constant currency. The two underlying explanation were really driven by the pervasive uncertain economic conditions that we observed throughout 2023. On one side, de-stocking at retailer that we've seen in the U.S. has affected many other consumer companies, and among them, Moleskine. And another effect was the restriction on corporate gifting that we've seen across the board in all geographies. Despite this negative sales evolution with the company, was able to increase its adjusted operating result margin to 18% from 16.6%, and benefit also from a very high cash conversion. The company was able to pay EUR 20.1 million of interest to the D'Ieteren Group, as interest to our shareholder loan. So the net debt declines slightly at Moleskine to EUR 269.3 million, and that's the shareholder loan, the shareholder loan from D'Ieteren Group. Rapidly, there is not much change in terms of breakdown per channel. The only thing that I'd like to mention is that we've seen it throughout 2023 and at the end of the year, quite strong development in direct channels, which are retail and e-commerce. For adjusted operating result, as I said, was 23.4 million, so 18% margin. There were some adjusting items amounting to EUR 3.5 million, reflecting from one side a full provision reversal of the LTI, and on the other side, and a provision for an exceptional cash bonus that has been granted to management and the team for their efforts this past years. In terms of latest development, we continue to work together with our management team to reinforce the brand, this brand. We also, Moleskine has opened six permanent stores and multiple pop-up stores throughout 2023. This is a strategy that we intend to continue, specifically in the geographies like the US, China, and Japan. The important milestone were also reached in terms of supply chain nearshoring to organize alternatives to agent sourcing around Turkey for Europe and Ecuador for the US market. In terms of outlook, the sales are expected to grow by low double digits compared to 2023. Again, as you know, the seasonality of Moleskine is heavily tipped towards the second part of the year, and we think this is gonna be, we're gonna have the same pattern in 2024. And the adjusted operating result margin should again improve by at least 150 basis points, reflecting the strong supply strength and the cost control of the management. In terms of ESG, so Moleskine, their emission reduction plan has been validated by this SBTi. So the main tool that will drive the carbon emissions down are renewable energy, indirect scope, strategic sourcing, logistics, and product innovation. In terms of circular economy, the company recycled 250 tons of products, so much higher than last year, and representing 36% of unsellable stock, which is quite a high level, and their FSC certification was again renewed for 5 years. In terms of people engagement, the company reached 71%, roughly stable, and I already commented on CO2 emissions. Thank you very much, Nico. Corporate and allocated? Allocated briefly. So corporate and allocated mainly includes the corporate and real estate activities of the D'Ieteren Group. We already touched upon one adjusting item in the net finance costs with the EUR 19.6 million impairment charge recognized on our outstanding investment in the supply chain finance and managed by Credit Suisse. And Nico also touched upon the fact that Moleskine repaid an interest segment financing interest of EUR 20.1 million, which explains the increase. All right, so before opening up to Q&A, closing remarks. 2023 was another strong year for us as D'Ieteren Group. We made progress on many, many fronts, and we anticipate further growth in our group's KPI in 2024. We're very comfortable on track to reach the ambitions that we set in April 2020 Investor Day, and we continue to be very committed on the ESG front, to also do our contributions on that front. With that, I open up the floor for any questions you may have. Thank you. If you do wish to ask an audio question, please press star one one on your telephone keypad. If you wish to withdraw your question, you may do so by pressing star one one again to cancel. Our first question comes from the line of Michiel Declercq from KBC Securities. Please go ahead. Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. I have two questions, both on Belron. Francis, you already mentioned for the volumes that there was some pressure in the U.S. because of the seasonality and a bad winter. I was just wondering, is there anything more to it, besides the volumes? Because if I look at the second half, it was only up about 3% organic, but if I look at the group volumes, they were actually quite good. And then also in Europe, you see a bit the opposite effect. So just a bit more color on that, on both the U.S. and Europe, just if there is anything more than a soft winter. And then, my second question would be on the outlook for Belron. I was maybe, yeah, expecting a bit more detail on the margin improvement. I was just wondering, is there any reason why you're not a bit more specific in terms of margin improvement? And maybe if you could, can you already give some comments on a potential positive impact from the transformation plan that you expect this year? So it was 200 basis points by next year, and I recall, if I recall correctly, you already expected some basis points positive this year. So I was just wondering, can you give a bit of a rough idea on this? And if we look at your EUR 90 million transformation costs for this year, will this be offset by potential positives? Those would be my two questions. All right. Well, on the U.S., Europe in H2, well, in the U.S., as you recall, the capacity of technicians has continued to be something they've been working on throughout the year. So, you say, is there anything else than volume? Well, they were a bit volume constrained because they didn't necessarily have always all the technicians. That's one of the reasons why they, by the way, kept a bit more technicians toward the end of the year. I think we've talked about that before as well. But there are no other specific things that happened in the U.S. that somehow... What did play out in H2, and I think this is something we have been telling already since six months, is that the pricing through effects that we had had after the cost inflation, of course, started to reduce in effect after the summer of 2023. And so when you have-- and that is an effect that you clearly saw in the US as well. But I think this is nothing new. We had said that before, and that has been behind what we saw in H2 versus in H1. On your second question for the outlook of Belron, well, we're now at 20.5% in the year 2023. We want to reach at least the 23% in 2025. That gives us two years to go, and we're on track to work towards that. So I think that is relatively specific without being a specific number. It's, I think, specific enough to give you an idea what we're talking about. And on the transformation benefits, yes, we are starting to see more and more transformation benefits, of course. First, you see corporate operational KPIs improving, then you see financial results improving. If you're now asking what the specific bottom line effect is of the ninety million spent, but of the previous spend and where they compensate the benefits. Well, in the margin improvement, you will somehow see the transformation effect, of course, yeah? But it's not something that you can suddenly add or use to kind of sink away the EUR 90 million. The EUR 90 million is something we will spend, and so this is something we will spend. Okay, but, but in the past, you did say that you have 200 basis points positive, right? By, by 25, so- But you see that those effects, part of the, part of the margin improvement of 2023 is already attributable to transformation, and part of the margin improvement in 2024 will also be attributable to our transformation. But to put this precise number on how much of the margin improvement is business as usual and how much is transformation, to be honest, that ends up being a theoretical exercise that we regularly have with the finance teams of Belron, but you end up in a theoretical debate. So for me, what counts is that the margin goes up, and that we reach our medium-term targets. Okay, that's clear. Thank you. Those are all my questions. The next question comes from the line of David Vagman from ING. Please go ahead. Yes. Hi, good evening, everyone, and thanks for taking my question. I hope you can hear me well. I've got two questions on Belron and one on Auto. And so first on Belron, I'll come back on the margin guidance and just about on the wording, and maybe I'm just being a bit picky. In the press release, you say you're reaching or you're on track to reach the 23% EBIT margin. I thought it was at least 23%. And I think you also made clear during the call that you're comfortably on track or very comfortably on track to reach this guidance. So just to be sure that we're not missing anything here. Then secondly, on the US, if we can zoom on indeed on the slower organic growth and the tactical move you did to keep technician on board, could you quantify the negative impact this has? So keeping the technician on board, while actually the volume was not that great, the winter was not that supportive, and vice versa, what it could mean in 2024. If you could give us some early indication how the winter has been in the US and whether Belron having these technician on board is helping in terms of productivity and volume constraints, et cetera. And last question then on Auto. And I know, okay, that there is no revenue guidance, let's say, for 2024, but still I'm trying to, let's say, put together a bit the pieces of the puzzle. So you've got, we've got this Belgian market, which is flat. Then, okay, I think you clearly want to gain share, that's the objective of, you know, unveiled at the time of the CMD in 2022, and EVs are helping. Now, okay, you, I think you also want to grow clearly outside of Auto and also used cars, et cetera. So if you could help us a bit, let's say, to understand where especially looking at the very, very strong sales in 2023, how we should think about the revenue level of 2024 for Auto? Also taking, of course, into account the price mix with, with maybe some more rebates or discounts, but on the other end, the EV mix, progressing, very, positively. Thank you, and sorry, it's a, it's a long question, Jasper. Thank you. Okay. Well, on the wording of Belron, yeah, it is what it says in the text, and I think there's no, no, let's say, divergence between what we say and what we write. So both are valid. Technicians on board at the U.S., we're talking about a couple of hundred people here, that they basically kept on board, that in other situations, they may have not kept on board. And some of them, of course, are also taking some holiday during the winter break because we know there are less volumes and so on. So if, again, I don't have a specific number to quote on what the impact is. I think you may have noticed, that also in H2 2023, the margin of Belron has continued to improve compared to H2 of 2022. So in that sense, it has been not in such a nature that it has had a negative impact on the margin. Margins continue to improve. But again, I don't have a specific number to give you on that today unless, Maybe just one element to add a bit of perspective- Yeah. On these U.S. technicians, is that the you know that turnover has been high recently, and so turnover has declined to 34.7% compared to 42.2% in 2022, lowest it has been in two years, which is a positive result, of course, and implies sufficient capacity going into 2024. And yeah, so maybe I'm saying something you already know, but I just wanted to highlight it because it's clearly a conscious choice taken also by Brito and Belron. To say much about the winter, it's too early days to really say much about 2024, so there have been winter storms, of course, in the U.S., and then during the storm, people can't move that much, and when the storm is over, they get out carrying the thing, so it's a bit early to give you a flavor of the winter to date. You'll hear more about that when we give our Q1 updates in May. And then also the top line revenue level, well, the drivers that you mentioned are of course the correct ones. So price mix, we have seen a beginning of a normalization already last year compared to 2022. Yeah, we're not only the premium models and the premium brands, et cetera, was a more normal mix. What we have continued to see is a lesser discounts. So I would say that in the order book that we started the year with, we also don't have any major discounts yet, and I think it's more the competitive dynamics of the months to come, that will determine to what degree there would be more or less discount. But you have to keep in mind, that even if there were to be a bit more discounts on particular models or particular cars, that doesn't necessarily affect our margin directly, because these are typically programs that we of course align with the factories of the different brands. And to the degree that they want to push certain models, we pass it along to the customer. So it's not necessarily something that eats directly into our margin. So, these are the drivers behind that. The volume, that's I guess where we have a little bit of the lack of visibility for the full year. We have a good visibility for the first year half, given that we have a good order book, and it will depend a bit on, like in a normal year, by the way, yeah? In a normal year, we don't have that visibility entirely, and so that's why we have refrained from giving a top line guidance also. Thank you. Maybe one just very quick follow-up on Belron. Any negative elements we should have in mind this year in terms of cost inflation or any other headwinds? No, nothing particular to note. It's a relatively normal year, again, in terms of inflation dynamics. Okay, thank you. Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Jeremy Kincaid from Lansdowne Partners. Please go ahead. Good evening, gentlemen. I have three questions as well. Just the first one on Belron free cash flow. With your guidance statement, you're saying free cash flow is expected to remain at high levels, which is obviously slightly different from some of the other statements, like around auto, where you say you expect it to improve. You know, that's against the backdrop of widening margins and improving revenue growth. I was just hoping if you could talk to the moving parts between EBIT and free cash flow that we should think about. My second question is just on TVH. Could you also just provide a bit of a update on demand or activity levels in each of the key end markets there? And then just finally, on the EUR 95 million Credit Suisse supply chain fund, could you just give some guidance on when you expect that to turn from an asset into cash again? All right. Maybe I'll take the second question, and then maybe ask for the first and the third question. I don't know whether it's something Édouard is more comfortable to talk about. But on TVH, demand and the different verticals, I think we had mentioned that before, in the fall, that as of the summer, we had a more differentiated picture in terms of overall demand in the different sub, so vertical/regions. And that has actually continued to play out until the end of 2023, I would say. Where we saw a couple of European markets, for instance, in the construction industry, where you saw demand being impacted. Now, fortunately, TVH is still a relatively small player in the construction equipment market, and so could—was not actually suffering much from that, but you really did sense that the demand overall and the utilization of equipment in the construction industry was lesser. We've also seen that in some of the forklift MPA markets, the online activity and the warehousing activity somehow drives a little bit the use of these types of equipment, of course. And these have also seen in the U.S., for instance, a little bit of lesser activity there. And in MPA, we are, of course, a little bit of a stronger player, and so there we have a bit more cyclical effect during depending on what happens in the demand side. In the agricultural, verticals, I think it was not a lack of demand, it was more about price sensitivity. So people have been more price sensitive, and, and that in some instances helps, by the way, TVH, because we have some, let's say, I wouldn't say generic, but, similar in quality to the OEMs, but not OEMs. And so to the degree that agricultural people, which typically are very loyal to the OEM brands, are willing to try a cheaper component that can help us, but in the degree that they stick to the, to the brands, of course, it doesn't necessarily help us. And so, that has been some of the demand dynamics we've seen in several of the verticals, at TVH. For the CS funds? Yeah, for the CS fund, so about the timing. So in our impairment, we took a hypothesis of a three-year discount, meaning that it is possible within that time frame. However, it's important to flag that Credit Suisse has talked of a 2031 deadline in some of their communication, so which would be significantly longer, of course. So basically this has been moved to non-current assets, because we lack clarity on the timing. But we could say that we took three years in our time value of money discount, and so, yeah, so I'm not very precise because honestly, we don't know very precisely. And then, on the free cash flow, Belron remaining high? ... particular to notes. No, I mean, if you want a simple example, acquisition level of Belron in 2022 versus 2023 has been very significant. So we don't have specific elements. The cash conversion has been strong in 2023, but of course, that level may depend on acquisition opportunities. Great. Thank you. That's very clear. All right. Yeah. Eventually, we could add an element also on the interest charges and, yeah, I mean, I don't want to make hypotheses on, but you know the history of dividend recaps and, and, yeah. So that could have an impact potentially on interest charges year-on-year as well, and on free cash flow. But we have increased the debt of Belron in 2023, right, at some point, so it was in May, and so you will have the full effect of that debt being geared up, so slightly higher interest expenses. Yes. I mean, and you have seen the leverage ratio at the end of 2023, right? And so, yeah. Okay. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Alexander Cremers from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please, go ahead. Hey, good evening, Alexander Cremers from Kepler Cheuvreux here. So yeah, first off, congrats on the nice set of good results to the team. Yeah, just picking up on that last item that you were discussing. So, yeah, leverage for Belron, I think the target leverage was 3.5 times for year-end 2024. Right now, you're at 2.95. So you'll probably arrive around 2.3 times, 2.5 times by year-end 2024, actually. So that does give some potential for more upstream at Belron. Is this really on the higher table or, sorry, is this on the table? Because you've been discussing already some interest charges impact. So I assume that maybe there that you are already in discussion, or given the higher rate environment, you might opt to not go for additional upstreams. Then, second question from my side would be on TVH, because I'm trying to square that guidance that you gave. So you expect 100 basis points margin increase versus 2023. But I think on the mid-year figures, you mentioned that the cyberattack cost a direct cost, EUR 35 million alone. And if we add back this to the results of last year, in the first half, you quickly arrive at a 17% margin versus the first half, and that is excluding the operating leverage coming from restored volumes that you mentioned. Could you please explain us and help us to square this guidance a bit? Then the third question would be on PHE. You guide for a stable margin, but I thought from the past you expected efficiency gains from the organic and inorganic growth activities, such as coming from areas such as procurement, et cetera. Are those efficiency gains now not expected anymore, or how do we need to look at this? Thank you very much. Well, on the leverage with Belron, I mean, really nothing special, eh? So, all the conditions have to be around there for us to either do something or not do something, like in all the previous years. And so at some point in time throughout the year, we may sit around the table with the different shareholders, look at the cash needs of Belron and the plans that they have, look at the market situations, look at the ratio, which is, as you rightly point out, 3.5 in 2024, and then either do something or not do something. And so in that sense, nothing special to note. It may or may not happen, but we will definitely sit at the table at some point in time throughout the year, as we have done in all the previous years. TVH, 100 basis points, and the 35% effect of the volume, to be honest, I don't have a particular point of view on that. I think, yes, of course, we will recuperate parts of the losses linked to that we have. Now, there have been some continued cost inflation, of course, here and there at TVH. We will continue to invest in different programs at TVH. But what you don't have anymore in 2024, at least less in 2024 than you had in 2023, is the effect of price through. Of course, price-through works into the bottom line right away, whereas other elements don't work in a flow-through right away. So part of the margin that you may read in our guidance or our caution of guidance on the margin is that it's less a top-line, price-driven growth and a bit more of a volume-driven growth, so it comes with a certain variable cost. So that should help to hopefully triangulate your calculations. And on the stable margins for PHE? On PHE, well, it's true that we still expect some improvement in margin in the future years. What is also true is that the jump that they were able to achieve in 2023 was quite strong. And so from that basis, because of the slightly inflated cost basis that the company is facing today, we think 2024 is probably gonna be evolving sideways in terms of adjusted operating margin. But yeah, I think the comment that we had at the time of the acquisition, I think that we would expect a gradual, slight improvement in margin still hold for future years. Okay, thank you very much for that. Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Pallav Mittal from Barclays. Please go ahead. Hi, this is Pallav Mittal on behalf of Gaurav Jain from Barclays. I have two questions. Can you talk about the long-term impact on your auto business from the rise of Chinese EV companies? And, you have said that margins are expected to erode slightly in the business in 2024. Can you give some more color on that? And the second question is on TVH. The free cash flow is expected to decline in 2024 due to growth-related investments. Can you please outline these investments? All right. The long-term impact on also of Chinese EVs. Yes, this is of course, one of the newer forms of competition in Europe. I think the competition of Chinese EVs for the moment in Europe has still been relatively limited. If I look at the market shares in 2023, they're really still single digit, I would say. Now, of course, in the years to come, that may clearly change, and it will partly depend on when the EVs are becoming more of a mass market phenomenon, we will, of course, also have more mass market models of EVs, which in so far we had less of. We have more premium models of EVs. Now, as mass market models of EVs come in, I'm sure the Chinese brands or several of the Chinese brands will try and position themselves on that very much as well. And then will be a matter of at what price will they offer and how competitive will, let's say, the European brands, which of course we have from the Volkswagen Group, will be able to offer that. There may or there may not be some impact of tariffs. We don't know that of course. We'll see how that plays out. But I also don't make myself any illusions. Chinese manufacturers will of course also open plants in Europe, and some are already working on it. Some of those cars will be produced locally, and so they will then also have the input factors that we know here in Europe as well. And so in that sense, I would say we always welcome competition. We also welcome Chinese competition, and we'll do our best that the Volkswagen Group has models in place at attractive enough prices to keep defending or growing our market share that we have. In the very long-term impact, honestly, it's pure speculation, I would say. Whether it will fundamentally change the dynamics between what are today the larger groups in the world, versus what may be the larger groups in the world tomorrow. That is really, for me, difficult to project. We know the Volkswagen Group has some collaborations with one of the Chinese players in China for the moment. Who knows, that may take on different dimensions going forward. At the same time, we as D'Ieteren, we are in a very strong partnership with the Volkswagen Group, but we're not married to the Volkswagen Group. Let's see if there are certain models that the Volkswagen Group is not offering, certain categories, certain segments, we can actually try and import those from other manufacturers as well. And we're already doing this in micro mobility today, where we have an Italian-produced Swiss-branded Microlino. Well, maybe in the future, we could have other segments that are not well covered by the Volkswagen Group and say, well, those we can source them, for instance, in China or for instance, in other parts of the world. So that is not to exclude for us as an importer either. So the long answer to that first question, you then asked the question about the margin erosion at Auto that we anticipate. It's really driven by a normalization of the mix of vehicles that we will be offering, or that we will be delivering, so to say. And the fact that we have some IT projects going on. For instance, a dealer management system that we talked about that is being rolled out to all the dealers. That costs a bit of money. Now, we will also charge for that a little bit, so it's not a pure, pure increased cost. But I think the... We had always said that that if Auto can bypass the 4% return on sales, that would be a nice medium-term target. Well, they've actually bypassed it last year, and they've even increased it slightly this year with 4.2%. So in that sense, we are not necessarily anticipating that they will keep being able to keep growing that margin every single year. And that's why we've highlighted a guidance of a slow, a slightly lower margin. There are also, as they've been, very successful in 2023, and we hope to continue success in 2024, some, long-term incentive plan charges that may also have an impact at some point in time, in... But this is really not at the, at the ROS level. That's more at the, at the adjusted level, below the line. And then the third question on TVH, free cash flow growth? Yeah. So on TVH, simply two main buckets, right? Working capital and CapEx. If you take 2023 as an example, on the CapEx side, two main types of CapEx that are likely. One on the transformation side, the other one on real, warehousing, development, automation, et cetera. So, and on the working capital side, if we take a step back, remember that TVH is, we guide towards around 10% of growth, and before that, in 2021 and 2022, they were experiencing strong, strong growth. So the goal is for them to go back to strong growth, and, there is an element of, of, of cautiousness there as well. Where will they finish in terms of working capital? That's why just we are guiding towards a slightly more prudent free cash flow in 2024, to say that the goal is to generate growth in 2024 and in the coming years through working capital and CapEx. Thank you. Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Kris Kippers from Degroof Petercam. Please go ahead. Yes, good evening. Thank you for taking my questions. A couple of small ones remaining. First one, looking at your solid free cash flow in 2023, and given the guidance of the different units, it does seem that your cash position is going to increase much further in 2024. So how will you spend it? Because we've seen a nice dividend increase, but it won't save the day. Would you consider, again, ongoing M&A capital reductions or buybacks? Because that would be helpful, of course. Second question, a bit on Belron sensor part. If you look at ADAS penetration, there recently has been a launch of Volvo's electric EX90, which seems to have the sensors outside the window. But personally, I don't think it's a nice solution for the time being. But is there a risk this would become more of a standard? And then third question would be working capital. It had quite an improvement in 2023. What is a normal level for 2024? I mean, generally speaking, are there still hiccups to be expected, or should we anticipate a further normalization given the fact that raw material flows or logistical hiccups are less and things like that? Thank you. Well, logistical flow hiccups, there have been some, of course, this year around the Red Sea again, so I would be prudent- Sure. To say that everything is normalized all the time. And I know that Belron, for instance, has of course been in very close contact with its overseas suppliers to make sure that that doesn't lead to much delay or problems of providing glass at the right moment, at the right time. So, you never know what happens with supply chains these days. On the ADAS penetration on the outside of the windscreen, no, this is really not a trend that we see pervasive. I won't talk about the aesthetics of it anyway, but apart from the aesthetics, I also don't necessarily think it's a practical solution. So no, we don't anticipate that. In all our discussions with the OEMs, the glass OEMs and the car OEMs, it's really such building on, on the type of fitting that we, that we know and that we see today. On pre-cash, how to spend it, that's a capital allocation question, so maybe perfect, question for, ... The dividend that we announced, the share buyback, the program is on, and the rest, we're always looking for, you know, new investment opportunities. Actually, we also look for investment opportunities within our portfolio companies. We're always, you know, eager to reinforce, if it's possible, their capacity to do potentially larger transactions. And we also look at different investment opportunities at group level. We've been doing so for quite some years. We're still doing it, doing it today, we'll do it tomorrow. And so, you know, we have a very strict and well-structured governance and investment process. And who knows, in the next future, we might indeed make several new acquisitions. Yeah, it's possible. Okay, thank you. Once again, if you do wish to ask an audio question, please press star one one on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from the line of David Vagman from ING. Please go ahead. Yes, sir, thank you. One follow-up on the Moleskine p ayment of inter-segment financing interest, the EUR 20 million. It seems quite high. Could you explain the logic and the accounting rationale? Thank you. It's based... It's a standard shareholder loan with actually market-based conditions. But- They have some cash. And you know, the shareholder loan is quite significant, right? Yeah, it is. It's EUR 380 million, so you do the math, and you will quickly, you know, estimate the interest that they paid is actually quite standard. Yeah. They had cash, you know, the pre-cash flow generation was really strong in 2023, and so we decided to ask them to pay the interest in cash. Earlier they had repaid their bank debt, and so they had cash indeed. So yeah, quite simply. Okay. Okay, thank you. Since we have no further questions, I'll hand the conference back to you, speakers. Well, then, thank you very much, I would say, and, have a great evening, and if you have any follow-on questions later on, you know where to find us. So wishing you a peaceful evening to all of you. Thank you. This now concludes our presentation. Thank you all for attending. You may now disconnect.