Dear analysts and investors, welcome to Solvay quarter two 2023 results. Solvay, the floor is yours. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Solvay's second quarter 2023 earnings call. I'm Jodi Allen, Head of Investor Relations, and I'm joined today by our CEO, Ilham Kadri, and our CFO, Karim Hajjar. Today's call is being recorded and will be accessible for replay on the investor relations section of our website later today. I would like to remind you that the presentation includes forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties. You may refer to the slides related to today's broadcast, which are available on our website. With that, I'll turn the call over to Ilham. Thank you, Jodi. Good afternoon, everyone. Our results this quarter and for the first half were aligned with our expectations. In early May, we shared our view that volumes would remain down, and we expressed confidence in our ability to maintain strong margins. Despite the continuing challenging macro environment, we continue to deliver on our forecasts. Navigating this environment is not easy, and I'm proud of our teams who are staying the course, focusing on all actions that are within our control and staying close to our customers. When you look at the details of our results, you will see the tangible impact of their efforts on our pricing and costs. Sales were down 9% organically versus second quarter 2022, contributing to a 13% decline in volumes, while pricing was 4% higher. We remain confident in the sustainability of our performance, resulting from multiple actions over the past few years as we improve the portfolio mix and provided differentiated, highly valued technologies to our customers and held onto strong margins while we strictly controlled costs. In fact, we have just surpassed EUR 500 million of structural cost savings since we launched the target in November 2019. All of these actions enabled us to consistently deliver best-in-class results, and this quarter translated into EUR 790 million of EBITDA, down only 2.6% versus quarter two 2022, versus a 9% fall in revenue. The quality of our earnings continues to improve thanks to these concerted actions, and this is evidenced in the EBITDA margin of 25.6%, which is 0.7 percentage points higher than quarter two last year. Now, let me give you some color on the lower volumes. In food, flavors, and fragrances, which impacts our aroma business, lower demand was driven by customer destocking and strong competition from China. In the agro market, the speed and size of destocking by our ag customers was notable. From what we read and hear, it has been a common experience across the industry. Construction markets remain soft, and this impact was noticed in the technologies we supply to the coating industry and to a lesser extent, in soda ash. In chemicals, the most noticeable volume decline was in coatings, as we anticipated, as the business returned to its normal cycle from its previous high points. Finally, in batteries, the customer destocking continued in quarter two, though we believe that this trend has run its course. On a regional level, in our main markets, Europe sales were flat versus quarter two last year, while U.S. sales were down 6%. The decline was related to batteries and consumer markets. Moving to cash, this is our 17th consecutive quarter of positive free cash flow. We laid the groundwork for improving our cash generation when I joined the company back in 2019. As a reminder, we put in new incentive structures and enforced discipline processes across the organization. You may recall that we used the COVID crisis to accelerate our delivery and truly change the culture. Here we are four years later. The practices we introduced have become habits, and the cash culture we built is now deeply embedded, delivering EUR 556 million in the second quarter. We have consistently delivered our commitment of a free cash flow conversion ratio around 30%. This is something we are all very proud of, not least because it further reinforces our financial foundations and our credit strength ahead of our Power of Two projects. Before I turn to Karim, as usual, I'd like to share some recent updates as we continue to bring new innovations to the market and strengthen our customer partnerships. While we were busy delivering this performance, the teams were also busy making progress with our innovations. These investments enable us to further reinforce customer intimacy and indeed help us to sustain our profitability and leading market positions. Just to name a few, we launched new bio-based polymers for hair and skin in personal care. We launched a new PEEK compound for electric motors. We announced a plan to produce green hydrogen at our site in Rosignano, in Italy, through a partnership with Sapio. We also announced a strategic collaboration with Spirit, focusing on advancing production rates and costs of future aircraft processes. We launched a polymer collaboration with Zotefoams to extend the reach of our polymers into the aero market. Finally, we are helping to enable the EU energy transition by providing a large-scale clean energy storage solution for compressed air or hydrogen in the form of our salt caverns. These innovations and partnerships are directly aligned with the respective focus of our two new future companies. Now, since we last spoke, we had several other important announcements. I'm really pleased we reached a settlement with the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection on PFAS. This marks an important milestone in de-risking our operations and follows the successful innovation of non-fluorosurfactant polymers in New Jersey, which was the first step in our journey to become fluorosurfactant-free. In June, we also published important information in relation to the capital structures. From the very outset, we explained that we would be creating two leaders, two champions. We worked closely with the rating agencies and helped them to understand the sustainability of our strong performance. The conclusion of the exercise is that our shareholders will own two investment-grade rated companies with capital structures that enable each company to pursue their distinct strategies, delivering superior sustainable growth on one hand, and high margin, resilient results on the other. I would like now to pass the floor to Karim to discuss the segment's financial performance. Karim? Thank you, Ilham Kadri. Good morning. Good afternoon, everybody. As usual, today I'm gonna present to you figures on an organic basis, and that means constant scope and constant currency, unless I state otherwise. By way of example, in the second quarter, scope and foreign exchange impact related to the divestment of RusVinyl, which was in the chemical segment, and exchange rate changes, which equated to, in total, EUR 53 million or 6% of EBITDA, just to give you some context. Starting with the material segment on slide five, what do you see? Sales up 7% in the second quarter to EUR 1.1 billion. Once again, 9% higher prices were the real driving force behind this growth, more than offsetting pretty small reduction in volumes for the segment of around 2%. Specialty Polymers delivered sales increase of 4.7%, driven by higher prices, whereas volumes were down 4%. The continued positive pricing momentum in Specialty Polymers demonstrates both the investment in our capability that we're making, for example, to the value pricing, and more importantly, it demonstrates the fact that our customers appreciate the differentiated technologies that help to make them sustainable at a lower total cost of ownership, and we share in that value creation, value pricing. Specialty Polymers volumes were up in electronics, specifically in semiconductors and in industrial applications, but this was offset by continued destocking in EV batteries, and that impacted PVDF volumes. Now, I invite you to take note of the fact that our PVDF business is diversified, as we serve many markets, including EV batteries, of course, but as well as oil and gas, electronics, construction, healthcare. PVDF volumes, other than EV batteries, of course, have shown resilience in the first half. When you consider the total PVDF view, as we look at it, I can also confirm to you that we maintain the contribution margin percentage in batteries, whilst we have grown our contribution margin percentage in the non-battery markets. Turning to Composite Materials, this business continued its gradual recovery from the lows of the COVID crisis, really steady growing. Sales are up by 16% this quarter, driven both by increased volumes and prices. The volume increase is driven by high build rates in both commercial aircraft and in defense, and this is despite the ongoing supply chain issues faced across the whole industry. As a result of the high pricing in both businesses in that segment and higher volumes in aero, the material segment, EBITDA increased by 9.4% in the quarter. Moving to slide six in chemicals. As I mentioned earlier, you will want to take note of the fact that the comparative 2022 numbers included the contribution from RusVinyl, which was a 10% impact last year on the segment's EBITDA. That's a good example why we speak about organic growth, because we want everybody to understand performance on a comparable apples to apples basis without distortions. Really important. Sales were down 9% in the segment, all businesses saw lower demand, with some markets or regions being more impacted than others. That led to volumes down 14%, again, pricing was 5% higher. Soda ash demand remains subdued across its markets, including the construction and detergent sectors, and we continue to prioritize pricing over volumes, particularly in the seaborne markets. That is what creates value. Now, as a result, soda ash and Silica posted solid profit growth, supported by those high prices and by the lower variable costs. Peroxides was resilient, although was slightly down because the competitive environment in some markets, especially actually the pulp and paper markets, weighed on the business. Finally, and Ilham alluded to it, Coatis, while have improved sequentially, was really comparing itself against its best quarter of 2022, and so year-on-year results were significantly down. All in all, the chemical segment delivered an EBITDA margin of 30.4%, 2.2 points higher year-on-year, thanks to the pricing, which is offsetting the lower volumes. This is a solid performance. It really is another good indicator of the resilience as we look forward to the future EssentialCo. Turning to solutions on slide seven, you will note that our businesses in this segment are operating in markets that are currently more challenged than elsewhere because of exposures to end markets such as agro, consumer, construction, and there, as you know, demand is significantly lower and customers continued to destock. Our priority here is to protect our margins. It's to serve our long-term customers, really protect those long-term customer relationships. On the one hand, on the one hand, we continually look for ways to adapt the fixed cost base as well as we navigate this challenging environment. That's on the one hand. The other hand, we balance pricing and market share, because we're looking to optimize our mix. We want to preserve profitability with real discipline, and that's what you see. Now, that balance helps us to ensure that we remain, we remain really poised to benefit from an eventual volume recovery, leveraging on the foundations that have been built in the last few years in this segment from portfolio and cost optimization, as well as, of course, as continuing to upgrade and enhance the valuable technologies that we have. As a result, the current 17% EBITDA margin is lower than in the past, than previous levels, and that reflects the effect of lower volumes on a stable fixed cost base. If you just take a step back, you may remember as well that we were actually at very similar levels of profitability, 17%-ish, in much more normal market conditions back in 2019, for example. 17% in today's challenging market shows you what? It shows you the benefits of the optimization that's been driven over previous years, with the divestment of lower margin businesses, the improvement of our product mix towards more specialty solutions, and of course, unrelenting structural cost reductions. It also means, as you look forward, that as volumes recover, this business has the potential to improve EBITDA margins significantly. On slide eight, we included a bridge, by popular demand, for the quarter, to show you much more clearly. Excuse me. To show you much more clearly the translation of all the elements I've described into the EBITDA for the group, and that's on slide eight. The EBITDA, as you know, amounted to EUR 790 million. Again, that's only 2.6% down versus Q2 last year. Why do I say only, and why do we think this is really quality? It's because our teams have worked really hard to sustain pricing with real discipline, and we benefit from a positive portfolio mix effect. EBITDA is 6% down sequentially versus the first quarter. Frankly, that was a little better than what we said in mid-June. That reflects that June volumes were better in the latter part of the month than we expected when we spoke in some of our markets. Ilham will come back to that point when we discuss the outlook. You also see our net pricing of EUR 209 million in Q2. That brings the total for the first half to EUR 500 million. Net pricing peaked in the second half of last year, and you remember that. Therefore, we are targeting to keep net pricing approximately flat as we look forward to the second half of this year. Slide nine shows you that we have now surpassed the EUR 500 million cost reduction milestone. Remember, this was a structural cost savings target that was launched in late, I think it was in November 2019, and we've achieved it. We're surpassing it 18 months ahead of schedule. This is despite the fact that fixed costs are impacted by inflation this quarter as well. It goes without saying that we will not stop here. You can count on us. You can count on us to continue to manage our costs in a very disciplined way, particularly in a macro environment like the one we're all going through. We also have, this is important, we also have our eye on the growth ball. So we're absolutely invest in a very selective way to make sure that we are positioned to serve our customers for growth, because demand will recover and will be there. Slide 10 shows the free cash flow bridge. As a reminder, we started the year building inventories in Q1. We wanted to invest, and we've been working down those inventories in Q2, and that helped to contribute to the strong cash generation. Now, our strong cash flow also enabled us to continue our planned CapEx projects. You know that we have a lot of projects that will increase our capacities to meet future growth expectations, and also to continue our energy transition goals. While we are ambitious and we are convinced that this is the right moment to invest, we will continue to monitor demand and adapt, if necessary, our phasing, our ambitions to the reality of the market and the needs of our customers. As of today, we still aim to invest around EUR 1.25 billion of CapEx this year. Cash generation has been a major focus area for us since the arrival of Ilham, I know you've all seen it. The good news is that the momentum that you've become accustomed to is continuing. The bridge on page 11 shows a reduction in leverage, reflecting the combination of operational cash generation, as well as proceeds from the timely divestment of our 50% interest in our Russian JV, RusVinyl, in the first quarter, and the payment of dividends. Our leverage ratio is now 0.9x. I actually took a quick look this morning, and I actually couldn't find the time when it was that low. As Ilham indicated, if you turn to page 12, that we've also settled with the State of New Jersey in relation to PFAS, and therefore, we've updated our analysis on one-time costs and investments that you will see on slide 12. You'll see there that the investments we're making for attractive returns, and you'll also notice the fact that our separation costs are below benchmarks. With that, I'll now hand the floor back to Ilham, who's gonna cover the review our outlook for the remainder of the year. Ilham? Thank you. Thank you, Karim. First, let me start by confirming our full year guidance. As a reminder, following our strong start to the year, you may remember we raised our EBITDA guidance last quarter to be in the range of +2%, which would reflect a recovery in volumes, to -5%, which would reflect volumes remaining stable. We had, in fact, a strong end to June, yet July sales were soft and demand remains volatile. Our order books for the remainder of quarter three indicate that demand will not recover in the quarter. If volume recovery doesn't materialize, the second half will likely be consistent with the current full year official consensus. The same focus and discipline that sustained our performance in the first half will persist in the second half. Staying close to our customers, ensuring we drive the right pricing for our offerings, and maintaining cost and cash discipline internally. We may not be able to control demand, you have seen what our teams can achieve, even in challenging markets. These are the factors that give us confidence to reconfirm our full year guidance. On cash, our discipline management of cash will continue. We expect to deliver at least EUR 900 million of free cash flow for the full year, this is despite the current growth investment cycle. Remember, we are investing now to support the future growth plans in SpecialtyCo and EssentialCo. Preparations for the launch of the two new companies continues as planned. In fact, on July 1st, our IT cutover took place, which was basically an operational split for our IT system. This occurred without any major incidents. We must highlight the exemplary mobilization of more than 300 employees, mainly from the IT, SBS, finance, human resource departments, who contributed to the completion of this successful cutover. We are now about four months away from starting these new chapters, which we are confident will unlock significant value for our customers, our shareholders, and our employees. With that, Karim and I are happy to take your questions. Thank you, Ilham. Moderator, can we please start the Q&A session? Yes, sure. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question or make a contribution on today's call, you can press star one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star two. We'll take our first question from Jaideep Pandya from On Field Research. You can go ahead now. Your line is open. Thank you. Hello, thank you. The first question is just on net pricing. You know, you guys have done a great job through, even in difficult volume, to achieve net pricing results well above EUR 200 million. As now volumes sort of drop and go in a negative zone, could you give us some color about, you know, how your pricing contracts work? What is the outlook for net pricing, you know, for H2 2023 into 2024? You know, how much of the pricing will you be able to maintain, and the raw material benefit that you've got this year, will you be able to keep? That's my first question. The second question is for you, Ilham. I mean, you've done a phenomenal job with Solvay since you've arrived. You know, you're also splitting the company into two. Just wanted to know your thoughts about, you know, whether you will go to SpecialtyCo, and whether you will, you know, be committed on a longer term basis to this journey, or, you know, is, is being a CEO of a smaller company then lesser of a challenge for you? Therefore, you will look for a bigger challenge after, you know, the first year of putting SpecialtyCo to bed. Thanks a lot. Yeah. Thank you very much, Jaideep, for your questions. Well, on pricing, yeah, I mean, the net pricing and, and, I told you back, if you remember, in the fall 2021, that we will be training the muscle core pricing in the company as part of the big growth transformation. At that time, I told you as well, if you look back at the records, that we have been reopening thousands of contracts inside the company. If you look at what happened, like last year, net pricing, and to us it means pricing net of variable costs, obviously, all three business segments delivered positive net pricing across the group. If you look at pure selling prices in the first half, obviously, Material, Chemicals did a great job. Solution as well delivered positive pricing, although Solutions was slightly down in quarter two. At the business level, most businesses sustained higher selling prices in quarter two. A few exceptions, we told you as well, and this is not a surprise, is Coatis, where we anticipated the business to normalize this year, and this is exactly what happened, and it was based in our forecast. We had some modest reduction in Aroma, some in Novecare, less differentiated the products and, and some in oil and gas. As you, you know, you know the variable cost as well. I'm talking about pricing, but you look at the variable cost as well, are down all over the place, all right? I mean, Q2 was the first quarter in memory since two years, and I'm looking at my financial teams in the eyes, probably nine quarters, where we have a positive variable cost, slightly positive one, right, impacting our P&L. With the exception, by the way, of Composites and Aroma, they still had a reddish red variable cost. Yeah, so I mean, that's what, that's what's happening. I remain confident in our ability to sustain net pricing. I told you as well as, in our portfolio, half of the portfolio is supply demand driven. Some of the businesses have contracts, contracts are linked, very often to formula prices, which is linked, which are linked either to raw material, raw, and when the raw they decrease, the prices decreases, or we baked in energy since fall 2021, like in the case of soda ash. The other part of the portfolio is obviously value pricing. I kept telling you, right, since now a few years, that the best is yet to come, specifically in areas like Specialty Polymers, where I truly believe that, you know, we need to share better the value we create to our customers. A customer needs, you know, performance, a lower total cost of ownership, but not automatically a lower price. If they get performance, security of supply, and you have differentiated with IP, et cetera, like in lightweight, in automotive and other application in electronics. Yeah, I mean, we are starting to, to really train better and better in this value pricing. Yeah, the second question, interesting. I, I would like you to be a bit, you know, patient. You know, I, I'm humbled to, to lead this company since four years and a half, and thanks for the comments on the performance. I'm so proud of our team, and probably this is the fastest and the deepest, transformation I've ever run in my career. I'm also an investor. I have skin in the game in this company, right? I tell you, it doesn't happen often in my life to really deliver two good codes, right? Which are leaders in their segments, in their portfolios, leaders in regions, in sectors, in markets, in pricing. They also have a beautiful roadmaps and path, which we will socialize with you during our Capital Market Days, during the fall, all right, with the leadership teams in both companies. They are very strong, and we will share the names in due time. Please be patient. We will say more in the fall and not before. We are focusing now on standing up the two companies. By the way, the two companies are up and running, both separated in the IT perspective, but also internally till N, N -1, being the CEOs, all right? It's, it's amazing to think that since July 1st, and you can imagine, we were, we were managing the quarter, we were doing the capital structure, we were preparing for, for, you know, the, the, the rating agencies engagements. At the same time, we were, you know, splitting the companies, you know, internally. You know, it's, it's just amazing what has happened, and so proud to take the opportunity to thank our team. Thanks a lot, and looking forward. Thank you. We'll take now our next question from Chetan Udeshi from JP Morgan. You can go ahead now. Your line is open. Thank you. Yeah. Hi, thanks. The first question was more a confirmation because I was a bit confused, Ilham, on your point about the, the trajectory of volumes. You said June improved or was stronger at the end, and then July weakened, and then you said you are expecting or you're not expecting a recovery in Q3. When you say you're not expecting a recovery in Q3, are you implying that volumes in Q3 will be similar to Q2, or are you actually saying because July probably was weaker, you are actually expecting Q3 to be weaker in terms of volumes versus Q2? Yeah. I think my, my core of the question is, you know, today we see a big step down in, in consensus in Q3 versus Q4, you know, sorry, Q3 versus Q2. I guess that just keeps this concern alive, right? We are seeing a step-by-step normalization at Solvay in terms of pricing. I'm just curious how you're thinking about that step down from Q2 into Q3 based on consensus, which clearly seems quite steep. The second question was, I think it was Karim, who mentioned that you expect to keep the net pricing flat in second half. If I then back out what you, what that means in terms of volumes for second half, it implies sort of mid to, you know, high single digit volume decline second half to deliver the midpoint of that guidance. Mm-hmm. Given you already had a sort of, you know, more benign volume base last year, especially in Q4. Mm-hmm. I'm just curious, at what point do you start to debate whether pricing needs to be flexible? Yeah. enough to make sure you don't end up losing volumes materially? I guess, you know, it's a fair concern... Yeah. that people have, right? At what point does- Mm-hmm. pricing power fade, if, if the volumes don't come back? I mean, clearly we can see in your Specialty Polymers business, you are, you are keeping the, the volumes, even with higher pricing, but it's not the case across all the divisions. Last question, if I may, was in the, in the cash flow line, you are now starting to show the CapEx associated with the, with the separation. Can I confirm that CapEx is part of the separation cost that you had already given? Because it's quite a material number, as I see in Q2. Or is there going to be an additional leakage on top of the separation cost number that you had given? Thank you. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Thank you, Chetan. Karim, you may take the, the, the cash- Sure. I will start with probably the guidance. Yeah, I mean, I didn't want to confuse you. What I was trying to say, I guess, Chetan, is that demand is volatile. June was a very strong month, right? I mean, you remember, I, I even guided you guys on quarter two sequentially versus quarter one, and I told you at that time, and I'm looking at my team eyes, -5%, -10%, right? Somewhere in my road shows, and we ended up -6%. The quarter, the June month really finished very well, but then July is probably one of the lowest months we've seen in term of sales since 2021. You know, the order book so far remains very soft, right? That's what, you know, our peers, most of our customers, they have been telling you, right? Frankly, I'm extremely comfortable with the guidance we have given you earlier, and we confirmed today. You know, I don't have a crystal ball. If the volume starts to recover, right, I mean, we, we still have a scenario where we can reach the higher end of our range. If the re, re- volumes remain stable, Chetan, I'm talking stable versus as they were in quarter one and quarter two, because we had the same decline year-on-year in the volume. I think it was - 12% and - 13%, right? Then we will be at the lower end of - 5%. That's what the guidance implies, a reduction in the second half versus the first half. You know, again, demand is still volatile, and I look at it with prudence and caution, but also with great confidence, right? You talked about pricing. Yeah, it's a great question. I think this company and people would appreciate this in the coming years more than now. When we started, you know, working on our pricing, and we, we still unveiled many things in this, the first half, understanding better the portfolios, we, we serve, how we serve our customers. Obviously, as I said earlier, we have this supply/demand type of price-volume elasticity thing from our contracted through formula pricing. I'm not gonna get back to this. The second one is value pricing, and, and, and I, I told you in the past, it's probably 50/50 or 60/40, to be more precise today. That 40% of value pricing, we want it to be sticky. It should be sticky because we are sharing the value creation with our customers. This is what our sales team, the thousands of our colleagues, are trying to do and really get sticky. We will see every quarter will come back, and obviously as we go to the capital market, this will give you a bit more color on each company, SCo and ECo, you know, type of pricing strategies going forward. You're right. I think you talked about there is a call between volume and pricing. We call it business management, Chetan. You're right, I mean, the margins have never been a problem in this company and definitely not this quarter. I think the good news with us, for us and for our people, is that we want them to stay disciplined, not give away pricing and value where they should not, specifically that our customers value it, and they can, you know, extract their own value. At, at the same time, we can, you know, practice some smart pricing strategies, right? On some limited price concession, because we can afford it if we need to, right, to gain back volumes in selected markets or, you know, that's we, we, we are not, you know, pushing back on this if it makes sense, right? You know, I will finish with that example because I'm so proud of them. You remember that the solution, you know, Pillar had a return on capital employed, which, which was below WACC when I joined the company, and our return on capital employed as a company was WACC when I joined the company. We double it in four years and a half. It's amazing. Solutions started, for example, Nov ecare, to name them, to fill their pots with a better product mix, mix. Be it, be it products, be it customers, et cetera. So there is an arbitrage we are doing every day, every day, every day, we are doing that, and our people are doing it. I can count on our strong business leaders, you know, and you will see many of them, by the way, on the road during the Capital Market Days. We'll be very happy to, that you to meet those invisible heroes. To the part of the question on cash flow. I really appreciate you asking the question, and I'd like to take the opportunity to go maybe one step back and give it, give a bit more context, because I think there have been, in some eyes, not many, some misconceptions and some misunderstandings. The context is this: We always seek to present our results, our profits and our cash, adjusting them for distortions. When it comes to matters that have got nothing to do with normal operational activities, be it pensions, deleveraging, you remember, and any effects of portfolio moves, be they divestments, acquisitions, or in our case, as you rightly point out, this demerger. You'll also be relieved to see, and I'm really happy you spotted it, is that we always make sure that we give you very clear reconciliations to IFRS figures, and every single thing is both transparent and audited. Onto the specifics. Look at this year, what happens on the free cash flow? We've excluded, because it's portfolio, the proceeds over EUR 0.4 billion from divesting RusVinyl, and that's what you'd expect. The flip side of the coin is when we invest for projects associated with the demerger, we also remove it. Absolutely consistent. What are we talking about, this CapEx? We're talking here actually of the acquisition of a new headquarters for one of the companies. That's it. The advantage from my standpoint is not only are we acquiring an asset, and it's associated with the demerger, let's be clear. We're also saying this asset, this new HQ, will have a better environmental impact, and it reduces operating costs by 2/3 compared to our cost today. I see value coming through from that on both ends. That is why we're doing it. Finally, what I will say is this is very much within the forecasts that we gave, and if you look at page 12, slide 12, you'll find a more refined and complete analysis of where we're investing our monies, and this is completely as we forecast in June. Does that help? Yeah, that's, that's helpful. Thank you. Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question or make a contribution on today's call, please press star one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star two. We'll take now our next question from Geoff Haire from UBS. You can go ahead now. Your line is open. Thank you. Yeah, good afternoon. Thank you for the presentation. I, I just have one question. I, I appreciate the comment Karim made around the fact that your Solutions business is in a better margin position than it has been historically. It's also probably the most, one of the most volatile parts of the margin story within, within Solvay. Therefore, is this really, as it stands, a business that you want to take forward to try and boost the rating of the SYENSQO business? Do you feel that you need to slim down or change the structure of the Solutions pillar? Yeah, I mean, I can, I can take it, Karim. I think first of all, I remind you that the Solutions business, starting with Novecare, did a really a great job improving the portfolio. You may remember that we separated with amphoterics and the low-end, you know, solution and products we were supplying to the market. We've done, you know, frankly, a Herculean job inside the company, and I, and I say it because I know many of our business leaders are listening to this call today, and they've done a great job into really pruning the portfolio and even the customer's portfolio. This quarter and H1, they did a great job maintaining pricing. It's actually very straightforward, as Karim said, and, you know, the, the, the 17% margin are actually, you know, if you compare to the best peers, the formidable peers, is actually more than decent, right? Having said that, Karim tried to tell you that we worked on our fixed costs, and as soon as there is the volumes are back, you will see this margin getting back, you know, efficiently, you know, back to up 5%, the right level. That's what we are telling you, right? The rest, the question of Chetan as well, we will balance pricing and market share to optimize our mix and preserve profitability, obviously, with discipline and good business management. We are doing a lot in that pillar to bring more bio products, which customers are asking us to bring, right? There is a value for innovation in the biomaterial, right? Really happy with the history back from rationalization of the asset, the portfolio clean up, and the best is yet to come. Now, on the portfolio itself, frankly, it's too early to tell you how SYENSQO will evolve. I think the beauty of EssentialCo and SYENSQO, by the way, is diversification. Look at us compared to other peers, right? I think I hope and I trust that shareholders. And you like also diversification, it's de-risk in your investments, right? We are serving different industries, different sectors, the regions is balanced, 1/3, 1/3, 1/3. In my seats, I like such portfolios, right? Which can help, you know, between EV batteries, if there are destocking, you have Composite Material, which is, you know, just the volumes are increasing. You know, 25% of our business in material is Composites, and between civil aviation and defense, it's really doing well. The other side is mainly consumer or resources, right, driven, if that industry is suffering, you will see it, but it's, you know, very different than balanced compared to Composite Material and Specialty Polymers. Back to you. Thank you. We'll take now our next question from Wim Hoste from KBCS. You can go ahead now. Your line is open. Thank you. Yes, thank you. Good afternoon. A couple of questions from my side as well, please. First, coming back to the volume discussion, can you maybe shed some light about, yeah, from the -13% volumes you saw in Q2, in Q2, how much roughly is destocking? Then also, yeah, what's your take on destocking going forward? I think you mentioned for the battery, destocking is probably mostly over, but what about, yeah, maybe other businesses that were impacted- Mm-hmm. -by destocking in previous quarters? That's the, the first question. Second one, would be on the market dynamics and, and supply demand situation for both soda ash and, and aroma business. Can you maybe elaborate a little bit on, on those businesses as well? Thank you. Yeah. Thank you, Wim. Yeah, it's, it's a great question, Wim, between destocking and, and, weaker demand, it's, it's actually very difficult to differentiate, to be honest with you. We have a dashboard by business unit, by region, but very tough, and to differentiate, because there is limited visibility on inventory levels across the value chains. You know that during COVID time, the best thing which happened to us is because we didn't have, I didn't have a compass at that time. We started building a central tower, right? Just trying to not only manage our own inventories in the region, and you've seen how good we are becoming in inventory management quarter -to -quarter, but also across the value chain with our customers. I really expect the two new companies later on to build more ERP to ERP, and with all this AI and what's going on, I really believe that the best is yet to come in understanding and having visibility on inventory. To give you an idea about destocking, two main areas, Wim, EV batteries in China was impacted. Obviously, there was a big destocking in China, which impacts the Specialty Polymer sales. You know, frankly, since you've seen it as well, material did really well, including Specialty Polymer. Sales of polymers in other auto applications were stable, and we grew volumes actually in areas like industrial markets and electronics, for example. In agro, it's well known that the major producers have had high inventory, right, build up due to logistics issues and due to delays in the 2023, you know, corn crop season. This impacted Novecare in 2Q. Specifically, the crop protection volumes were down in the quarter. But again, this is in line with our peers, right? I mean, you've seen it, peers, you know, either competitors or our customers. That's why Solvay, we did destock aggressively, right? You remember in January, we started, I told you at that time in my 1Q earning call, that we, we built stock and inventory because it was an investment and we had no clue how the year will go. As soon as we had some color, right after quarter one, our whole team started destocking. Frankly, they exceeded my own expectation. That's good news. Beyond that, Wim, we saw demand softness in other markets. You've seen aroma, low volumes, this is synthetic vanillin. We've seen destocking, but also stronger Chinese competition because the China domestic market is very weak. Obviously, they are, you know, taking, you know, products outside China, but the natural volumes remain resilient. Novecare, demanding construction impacted their coating business, so this is the paint and coating, the decorative paints, given the high interest rates and the slowdown in investment in construction, lower sales in home and personal care as well links to consumer spend. Special Chem volume declined due to the weak demand in electronics mainly, but they did do very well, you know, overall in oil and gas, lower drilling activity in the U.S., as you've seen the strong decrease of the natural gas prices, right? You talked about soda ash. The global demand in soda ash was soft, in flat gas, again, construction and detergents in some aspects, and BICAR, specifically BICAR used in Solvay. This is the depolluting, you know, a product for air in maritime application in North America and in Asia was down. Coatings, we told you that was weak in Europe, U.S., and you remember we anticipated that normalization. It was part of our forecast from day one. Peroxides, we had some demand across all markets, including in merchants, right? Karim talked about pulp and paper. Silica. I think, despite the softened demand, we continue to see good performance. I mean, you've seen the tire industry and their forecast most probably, and we benefit there from indexation and base prices increases. All in all, the exception, again, the volumes were positive in Composites and driven by the continuing recovery in the aerospace market. You know, aside from the volume decline specific to EV batteries, as I mentioned, there were some bright spots here and there. We have grown polymer in other areas as electronic, so proud of what also the Specialty Polymers team has been doing outside of letting the destocking. Karim, I hope, explain our PVDF story. We've got many questions online and offline. Very happy to see the contribution margin of our PVDF technology business, you know, expanding actually. Expanding in non, you know, in non-batteries application and actually remain stable in the batteries business. Back to you. Okay. Thank you very much. We'll take now our next question from Peter Clark from Société Générale. You can go ahead now. Your line is open. Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. Yeah, I've got, three little questions, I hope. Talking about the, the balancing, obviously, of the pricing strategy against the volume side. On the solutions, I know year-on-year, you were down, but when I do the cumulative to 2020, it looks like you were pretty flat on the first- Mm-hmm ... quarter, which implies sequentially, you had a lot of pricing. Well, you kept your pricing, and obviously the volumes were hit very hard. I'm just wondering, was that some of those businesses where you're losing a good share? You talk about the Chinese being very aggressive in Aroma Performance? No ... of course, and then, and the volumes were hit very hard there. That's the first one. The other one, obviously we know most of the other charge now with the PFAS agreement, but you did mention that there would be a little bit more restructuring, a bit of pension deleveraging. I presume we have to wait for that, but any, any light on that would be great. Then the final one, just to clarify, obviously, you've given us a net pricing number, but you haven't given us the split between the variable costs and the pricing this time. Were the variable costs up or down on the second quarter? Thank you. Mm-hmm. Thank you. I think on pricing, the margins are holding up very, very well. As you mentioned, I think your maths are really good. Year-on-year, it is what it is, but back if you compare to, you know, 2020 and before, obviously we are holding on pricing and our mix is much better than years before. We look at Nov ecare, specifically what we did since 2020, when they start restructuring their assets, we have a view on contribution margin per reactor even, right? This is just amazing because now we have that visibility and granular monitoring of our product mix, of our portfolio management at the product SKU level, which allow us to take the, the right arbitrage, as you mentioned, right? Because in some areas where we are less differentiated, we have to make that call between price, and volume. Yeah, the, the, the margins holding, contribution margins are holding up, right? The fixed cost, we already pruned it, and as Karim said, when the volumes are back, you will see the EBITDA margins also back. There was another question. Yeah, the other charge. quarter two, the.? The other charges. You obviously, you've given us the bulk of the other charges. Yeah ... with the EUR 300 million-EUR 400 million, with the PFAS. Yeah. you did say- Absolutely ... when this, that there would be some more restructuring and some more pension deleveraging. I'm just wondering if you can enlighten us on any of that, or do we have to wait for that? I'm happy to do that. In fact, you may wanna look at, slide 12, which I alluded to, but I didn't go into detail precisely because, you know, when we gave you that information on the June 16th, we hadn't settled with, with the State of New Jersey, so we were kind of limited what we could say. Now you'll find there's a lot more information that I think you'll find helpful. Let me just go you through it with you step by step. First and foremost, there are what I would say, are normal, typical separation costs, and they comprise things like taxes, IT, professional fees, and here we're looking at EUR 250 million-EUR 300 million. That is absolutely below benchmarks, because typically these range, and I'm sure you've done the homework, you know, you look at 3%-5% of sales. Beyond that, we're looking at investments with returns. What does that mean? It means EUR 150 million, as what I would describe as transformational costs. These are value creative in their own right, and the rest of the project. I mentioned the new asset we bought, the new headquarters, that's part of it. Another one is restructuring costs. There's about EUR 70 million of restructuring costs. This is essentially trying to get ahead of the curve, anticipate, and reduce future normal dyssynergies. That's why you can see that. If I go further, I'll go back to your point, spot on. We are looking at making more deleveraging of pensions in the U.K. and France. We're looking at EUR 100 million-EUR 200 million there. Frankly, we will do that no matter what. What this means is, it'll be on top of the EUR 1 billion of deleveraging of that nature we've done in the last three years. Frankly, the extra EUR 100 million-EUR 200 million will bring that particular program to an end. We're just really motivated to get that done before the split, and that's, that's why you see it there. It's really attractive. Finally, to bring you back to where you started the question, that's around with the settlement to the State of New Jersey, we're anticipating a payment of $175 million. Which are to PFAS. I think frankly, at the time we did it, we thought maybe before year-end, more likely to be early next year. Nevertheless, we'll have the resources available to make that happen. I hope that helps. Yeah. The last one. Yeah, there's more color there. I think you, you also asked Peter on the variable costs, and as I said, in quarter two was lower than quarter two last year, right? For the first time since probably COVID times. They are down. I didn't do. Okay. Yeah. That's what I thought. Two years, obviously. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. We'll take now our last question from Andreas Heine from Stifel. You can go ahead now. Your line is open. Thank you. Yeah, actually, three questions. Thanks for squeezing me in. The first one is on Novecare, which had quite a steep decline in the second quarter. Was that continuing in Q3? When you talk about July being weaker, is that particularly also true for Novecare? That's the first one. Secondly, in Specialty Polymers, only a clarification: Is it right that sequentially prices in Specialty Polymers were still up? Then the last one is on the provisions. The provisions were up EUR 450 million in your bridge, and half of that is the PFAS settlement. What is the other half of that? Thank you. Yeah. I'll, I'll take the first one on, Was it solution on Novecare? Novecare. Novecare. Novecare. Specifically. I think as I mentioned, Novecare suffered from few things. I think the agro, and you've seen the agro customers again, you know, outlook reflecting a weaker than expected demand and destocking, which will continue, in my view, in quarter three. Coating, I mentioned it, you know that we have three pillars, agro and then Coatis, Materials. This is interior decorative paints, waterborne paints. That also suffered from the construction indexes, which have been falling short globally. It's not only here in Europe, but also in the U.S., et cetera. We can, and we expect the same downward trend on the upcoming results in quarter three as well. Then the last one is home and personal care, and I think you've seen the consumer spending, right. Except the luxury segments for some people who have with defying gravity. I mean, the rest has been also, you know, in decline. Many of our actually, you've seen peers, right, and customers have even issued profit warning, for their quarter two, right. Nothing here, which is different from the markets. I think what... The underlying performance is actually keeping our, you know, net pricing. It's really keeping our value for pricing where we can and making the right arbitrage, as mentioned in several questions, and I do agree, in the arbitrage between price and volume, which we call smart pricing inside the company. I think we'll continue doing that, ensuring that there is no cost creep, continue innovating and changing the mix and the portfolio to ensure that Novecare not only builds on the cleanup of the assets and the portfolio, which they have been doing very well and improving their return on capital employed, which you can see on the company, you know, returns. Also will continue now, you know, bringing new innovation, which will allow them, right, to further grow their business profitably. Next question, Karim? Well, I think, Andreas, to your question on provisions, you're absolutely right that the PFAS segment is the bulk of that provision increase of EUR 450 million in the first half. There are a couple of other big ones that I think, or significant ones, I guess, that you could worth highlighting. One is, there's normal updates to provisions, but environmental provisions, which are about EUR 30 million-EUR 40 million, but nothing particularly significant. Pretty much normal. Where I would say you've got some bigger impact is on the restructuring I talked about in respect of the cost reductions we're gonna try and accelerate as well. We saw that provision being made predominantly in the first quarter, as you recall, as well as a few legal and other small provisions. There's also a relatively modest non-cash impact in relation to small changes in employee benefit charges. That's really the combination. Yeah. There, there is one more question I didn't answer. My... the team is just telling me, Andreas, is on Specialty Polymer pricing. We had strong the strong pricing was maintained, Andreas, and sequentially, quarter two prices are slightly above quarter one. You know, again, I think that, that's, I'm, I'm more of a lady, you know, I need to see to believe it, as you guys probably, but more internally with the team. They have been practicing their value pricing, and where they couldn't, like in some EV batteries, right, the contribution margin were maintained. That's exactly... With raw mats, by the way, declining. I mean, for those who know the 142b story. Really glad that Specialty Polymer strong pricing was maintained. Thank you. Thanks a lot. Thank you. I think that brings us to the end of today's call. Thank you for your participation, and as always, the investor relations team is available for any follow-up questions. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for joining today's call. You may now disconnect. Thank you.