Hello, and welcome to the Solvay third quarter 2023 results call for analysts and investors. Please note this conference is being recorded, and for the duration of the call, your lines will be on listen only. However, you'll have the opportunity to ask questions. This can be done by pressing star one on your telephone keypad to register your question. If you require assistance at any point, please press star zero and you'll be connected to an operator. Jodi, the floor is yours. Thank you. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Solvay's third 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. For today's call, we are slightly adjusting the format, given the amount of news published today. First, Ilham will begin with an overview of results and the progress on our separation project. Karim will follow with a high-level financial overview of the quarter and our full year outlook. Ilham will finish with some closing remarks before taking your questions. 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 very much, Jodi, and good afternoon, everyone. Today marks another exciting milestone in Solvay's rich history, as most probably the final earnings call before our planned separation into two independent companies. I'll start with a few comments on the third quarter results. As you know, the macro environment remained challenging, yet our teams focused on actions within their control. On a year-to-date basis, we have generated more than EUR 1 billion of free cash flow, and our underlying EBITDA is only 1% below 2022, despite a 20% decline in revenue growth. This speaks to the ongoing transformation underway and reflects the strength of our differentiated portfolio, our focus on value-based pricing and relentless actions to reduce costs. Together, this has enabled us to consistently deliver best-in-class results. As we are now in November and have a line of sight to year-end, we've confirmed that we remain on track to deliver our full year guidance. Perhaps more important has been the ability to manage both the short-term headwinds, while simultaneously investing to support our long-term growth, which will set a strong foundation for both future companies. And as I like to say to our teams, we have kept our eyes on the microscope and on the telescope, as we are now only a month away from separating into two strong industry leaders. As you know, we've spent the past year and a half preparing for the future and have successfully accomplished every milestone along the way. Since we spoke last quarter, we completed our liability management process, which Karim will summarize in more detail, and we published first half reserves for EssentialCo and SpecialtyCo to provide a better view into the two companies' performance this year. We also received rulings from tax authorities, confirming that subject to certain conditions, the transaction will qualify for favorable tax treatments for Solvay and its Belgian and U.S. shareholders. We are also making great progress on our strategic initiatives in both future companies. In EssentialCo, we just closed a deal to sell the remaining part of our energy business, which you may recall, provided energy supply to third parties. This was a necessary and voluntary decision ahead of our separation, which will help reduce volatility of the corporate cost and balance sheet exposures. I'm also thrilled to share that we have officially finalized our joint venture agreements with our partner, Orbia, to build a new battery-grade PVDF facility to serve the United States of America markets. This is a key milestone in our electrification strategy, emphasizing our commitment to sustainable mobility. And of course, today, we announce the executive leaders of the two organizations. The new leadership teams bring unique expertise to their respective organizations, and were carefully selected to match each company's distinct strategy, designed to unleash their full potential. I know many of you have been patiently waiting for this clarity. Here we are, and I look forward to introducing them to you live on November 13, when the new leaders will host a capital market days to share their respective strategies and midterm targets for Solvay and Syensqo. We hope you will join us in Brussels for these events. Of course, it will be webcasted as well, but those attending in person will also have an opportunity to meet us, to see some of next generation innovations presented by our experts in their fields. I look forward to meeting many of you at our event to share more about these exciting companies. Now I will turn to Karim, who will give you a review of the highlights of our third quarter performance. Karim? Thank you, Ilham. Good morning. Good afternoon, everybody. In order to be most helpful and to really allow time for the usual Q&A session, I'm gonna focus my financial review of the quarter at a somewhat higher level than usual, highlighting really the more critical elements before providing an update on the progress we made on matters such as the liability management process since we announced it at the end of August. At the beginning of August. And then we'll close with some comments intended to help you with your models and expectations as it relates to the two future companies. Starting with our Q3 financial performance, I will present figures on an organic basis, which means that constant scope and currency, unless I state otherwise. As expected, sales were down 20% organically in Q3 versus the record Q3 2022, which, if you recall, and I hope you do, saw a 30% year-on-year organic growth last year. Now, the decline in Q3 sales was driven by lower volumes and to a lesser extent, by lower pricing, given lower raw material costs and energy prices. That said, and I know that many of you are particularly attentive to that, we're really pleased that our net pricing power continued its positive trajectory, this time with a EUR 36 million positive contribution in the quarter. Turning to slide seven and looking at materials, what do you see? Volumes are 7% down against that tough comparable quarter of Q3 last year that I mentioned, and that was driven by weak demand across most markets. I include auto, electronics, and healthcare, and that impacted the sales of our Specialty Polymers business. Pricing was, how can I say, minimally impacted, yeah, and that was very much what we expected. In batteries, we are seeing some signs of recovery following the end of customer destocking, although year-on-year volumes continued to decline in the quarter. Sales and composite materials were higher, thanks to the continuing recovery of the aerospace industry, although higher growth was impacted by supply chain issues, which limited some deliveries. Now, despite the lower volumes, the EBITDA margin and composites were sustained. Segment EBITDA was 12% lower versus Q3 2022, due to the lower polymers volumes, while EBITDA margins remained strong at 33.8%, modestly lower than last year, and that shows the strength of our materials portfolio. Next, I'm gonna move to the solutions segment, because as you recall, materials and solutions really make up most of what will become Syensqo. And in solutions, the markets in which we operate remain challenged. Volumes were down about 19% in Q3. Pricing was down about 6%. The solutions we supply into agro, coating, home and personal care, food and fragrance markets all experienced weak demand, and our priority has been twofold: One, protect our margins. Two, adapt our costs to the lower demand. Those actions have supported 1% improvement in EBITDA margins to 18.6% on a sequential basis, and they're only slightly down year-on-year, so we're really pleased with that. Turning to slide nine, and in chemicals, what you see, and of course, as you know, chemicals represents a significant part of the future Solvay perimeter. In that segment, volumes were down 18%, pricing was down 8%. Weak demand continues to impact our major markets, and I'm really looking there at construction, electronics, textiles, and tires. All of the business in the chemical segment have been very diligent in managing their fixed costs. And together, in the context of the lower variable costs that we benefited from, not only did we protect our margins, but we actually grew our EBITDA margins by 5 percentage points year-on-year to 30.2% in the third quarter. We will continue to manage costs in a very disciplined way, especially given the current demand and the uncertain macros. That's what you expect. Year to date, we've delivered EUR 63 million of additional structural costs, and it takes the tally to EUR 530 million on a cumulative basis. On slide 11, what do you see? You can see that as you bring this together, the group EBITDA came to EUR 702 million, down 18% year-on-year, again, versus a record quarter last year, which did see a 40% growth. As you can see in the bridge on slide 11, our EBITDA performance in Q3 was primarily driven by lower volumes, partially offset by positive net pricing and fixed cost reductions. From an EBITDA margin point of view, we were slightly up year-on-year and sequentially at 25.6%, and that's despite lower volumes. There you have a good example of resilience. Profit's one thing. Cash is what it's all about, and on slide 12, you know that cash has been a major area of focus, in fact, ever since Ilham came here four years ago. So you're not surprised, maybe, by the fact that we've continued to make strong progress. Our strong cash flow performance and our enhanced balance sheet that we sustained over an extended period of time, has given us the flexibility to invest, to invest to meet future growth expectations, to continue on our journey to meet our energy transition goals, and to generate return to shareholders, and to deleverage. It's one of my favorite words, and, that's what we've been doing. Coming back to the third quarter, we delivered our eighteenth consecutive quarter of positive free cash flow, generating EUR 346 million, which benefited from strong working capital discipline. Now, frankly, the cash flow may even appear a bit stronger than expected at this time of the year, but keep in mind that this is also a result of CapEx phasing. On a year-to-date basis, CapEx totaled EUR 765 million, and we still expect to invest a further EUR 350 million-EUR 400 million in Q4, for a full year total of around EUR 1.1 billion. As Ilham referenced earlier, our free cash generation exceeded EUR 1 billion in the first nine months of the year. That's an increase of 11% year-on-year, and that's despite higher CapEx over EUR 200 million more than this time last year. And that's why we're so keen and so determined to invest in the future growth. In addition, the strong free cash flow has already surpassed our full-year commitment to deliver more than EUR 900 million, and we expect Q4 to be largely neutral, largely as a result of the phasing of the CapEx I referred to. On slide 13, you see a detailed overview on our major debt following the successful completion of the liability management. I'm not gonna go through all the details of it, but one of my takeaways is that debt investors understand and appreciate the strategic merits of our Power of Two project. But more importantly, I believe they also see the logic of the distinct capital structures, and they also appreciate the credit strengths of each company. Regarding net debt, we reported EUR 2.8 billion of net debt at the end of September. We still have one-time cash outs and pension deleveraging of around EUR 0.4 billion to make before year-end. So we expect the aggregated net debt at the time of the split to be below the EUR 3.4 billion-EUR 3.5 billion we indicated to you in June. The point that matters here the most is that we will make sure that the two companies have distinct and optimized capital structures. Also, as you know, keep in mind that both of them will be investment grade, with Specialty Co or Syensqo, having a credit strength, a couple of notches stronger than Essential Co. Finally, I'll make a few comments on the full year outlook on slide 14. First, and as mentioned in this morning's press release, we reconfirm our full-year guidance, with EBITDA at the lower end of the prior guidance range or approximately EUR 2.9 billion, current exchange rates. This is aligned with what we have shared since the last quarter, given the lack of volume recovery, so this shouldn't be a surprise. Second, given that this is our last reporting quarter under Solvay's current perimeter, I also want to spend a few moments with you to help you establish the baseline for your models in 2023. Note that the intention here is to provide you with what I would say are the guardrails for EssentialCo and Specialty Co, rather than a precise point estimate, because what we want to do is to give you an appropriate jumping off point as you think about the future growth prospects of both companies. For EssentialCo, which will retain the Solvay name, there will be two scope changes. The first is that we are phasing out the thermal insulation activities that were part of Special Chem. Now, this is aligned with regulatory requirements related to the phase down, the phase down of hydrofluorocarbons or HFCs, a process that began several years ago. The second scope impact relates to the termination and exit from our third-party energy supply business, which Ilham mentioned earlier. This business was reported within our corporate cost, and the decision to exit at this time supports the focus of the remaining activities in Solvay and actually will serve to reduce the volatility of our earnings and balance sheet exposures, some of you will recall back in 2021, so that's a really good step. Now, together, the phase out of these activities as expected, these activities generated about EUR 100 million of EBITDA in 2023, and neither will contribute any significantly to EBITDA in 2024. Next, I would like to give you an estimate on dyssynergies. Total dyssynergies related to the split are estimated to come to EUR 60 million-EUR 70 million, of which 25-30 for Essential Co. And EUR 35-40 million for Specialty Co. That said, and I can't tell you more today, but you will discover on the thirteenth of November, these dyssynergies will rapidly be mitigated. As you can see on slide 14, our full-year EBITDA outlook for Solvay implies an EBITDA of approximately EUR 2.9 billion. Assuming that day one of the separation was at the start of 2023, this slide provides our best estimates for the adjustments you may want to make for comparability purposes related to dyssynergies. And again, these dyssynergies reflect the costs related to new executive teams, to duplicate corporate functions, to public company governance, headquarter costs, and the like. And they will be embedded into the respective cost bases, as I said, as well as the scope changes I've referred to. I hope these estimates enable you to have a much clearer view of each company's starting point. With that, I'll transition back to Ilham. Yeah. Thank you very much, Karim... Now I'd like to take a moment to highlight the board appointments that were unveiled today. The board appointments of the future Solvay will be composed of 10 members, six of whom are independent, three represent the reference shareholder, Solvac, and the CEO, of course. They collectively possess a wealth of expertise in areas such as governance, strategic planning, corporate financial management, and business development. The ScienceCo board will also be composed of 10 members, including six independent members, three members representing the reference shareholder, Solvac, and the CEO. This board is a testament to diversity and inclusion, as well as globalization, representing our customers' footprints, including seven nationalities, and believe it or not, 60% of women with decades of complementary experience in governance, finance, industry, innovation, sustainability, and talent management. Together with the announcements on leadership, we've reached yet another important milestone, and with the governance structures in place, we are now ready to begin new life as independent companies. Before we close the call today, let me take a moment to reflect upon the incredible journey we have undergone over the past four years. One thing that I can say with complete certainty is that we are not the same company today as we were when I became a CEO in 2019. We have taken bold steps to transform the company on so many levels, while adapting to the ever-changing business environment that was filled with hardships and crisis. In the past years, we have made tremendous progress on our One Planet sustainability roadmap, advancing on our climate ambitions while bringing more sustainable solutions to the market. We were truly pioneer, taking a holistic approach to sustainability. We've delivered our growth strategy two years ahead of time, despite the pandemic, which included delivering on every financial metrics, from profitability to cash to returns. In many respects, we went from laggards to leaders. But what I'm most proud of is our people. I recognized very early in the journey that we could not accomplish our ambitious goals without the right people in the right roles. So we adapted our organization and made them top priority. We united around a common purpose, one in which we created together. We invested in their success, grooming talents at all levels of the organization. We enabled them to embrace change, model the right behaviors, and collaborate with their colleagues. The culture change was deep and very noticeable, and this brought out the best in them, and it shows in our high level of engagement today. I'm personally convinced this deep cultural change helps us to win. So I want to wish a heartfelt thank you to all of our people who are listening today. Thanks to you, we stand stronger and more prepared than ever to take this next step. I'd like to say a big thank you to all our stakeholders, not only employees, but also customers and business partners and our shareholders for making these past five years that's, you know, years that I will always remember. Thank you for your trust and dedication and unwavering support. Together, we can be all proud of what we accomplished, so let's get ready to create the next amazing chapter. Now, to finish with before your Q&A, I would like to thank few people, especially, thanking Augusto Di Donfrancesco, our COO, for the great collaboration we have had for the past years. He will stay with ScienceCo for a few quarters after the split. His contribution, wisdom, and impact have been invaluable, and many will remember his discipline, his focus, his business acumen, and now his friendship. Equally, I would like to thank Karim, who is present here. This may be our last quarter call together, Karim, at least we hope for the outcome of the project. Thank you for your contribution to Solvay, Karim. Upon the approval of the spin-off, Karim will leave the group after a ten-year tenure as Solvay's CFO. I'm very grateful for your contribution, Karim, and I wish both Karim and Augusto the very best in their future endeavor. And of course, all of this would not have been possible without a special person in my life, our chairman and president of the board, Mr. Nicolas Boël. We have developed some very special bonds over the years, and I would like to pause and thank him from the bottom of my heart for having offered me this opportunity five years ago. Well, he came to Charlotte, North Carolina, to interview and propose the job. No one of us could imagine what the future will bring. We spoke about transformation. We, in fact, disrupted. We spoke about social dialogue. We progressed even more. We spoke about legacy, founding members. We are publishing today, best-in-class governance, rooted in a human-centric legacy. On my side, I wanted freedom to transform this sleeping beauty, and while he promised to allow me to do so with care, this is exactly what we have done together and what he and the current board have allowed me and my team to do. We turned the sleeping beauty, simply, I hope, to a beauty. So thank you, Nicolas, for your wisdom, your guidance over the past five years, which were personally my beacon throughout this fantastic transformation journey. And Nicolas, you will be missed by many, but I know I'm gaining a mentor for life on the top of you being long-lasting shareholder and investor. So with that, I finish with those emotions, and I go back grounded into your questions and answer session, and Karim and I will be happy to take your questions. Thank you, Imad. Thank you. Moderator, I think we're ready to move to the Q&A. 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. If you change your mind and want to withdraw your question, it's star two. Please ensure your lines are unmuted locally, as you'll be prompted when to ask your question. The first question comes from a line of Chetan Udeshi from JP Morgan. Please go ahead. Yeah. Hi, thanks. I just wanted to start with the slide 14. I'm a bit curious about the scope impact, and I'm sorry, I didn't understand what is being phased out exactly, because I didn't even know that you guys were in the HFC market. I thought that was something you, you sold in the past. So what exactly are you phasing out, and is this essentially going to zero, or are you gonna sell it to somebody? That's the first question. The second question I had was just looking at the sort of Q4 trajectory. You know, I think, you guys previously had talked about flat net pricing in second half of this year, and clearly Q4 has— Q3 has turned out to be, positive, which is good, but in a way, you know, people are clearly worried about that as well. How long can it be positive when the volumes are so bad? So maybe can you talk about, Q4? How are you thinking in terms of dynamic between volume, net pricing, and also fixed costs, which were running negative until first half, have now turned positive, in Q3, so what is the outlook for that, as well? Thank you. Yeah. Thank you very much. Karim, you take the, the discontinued business, and then I'll take the Q4. Okay, sure. So Chetan, thanks for your questions. Obviously, as usual, very pertinent. So the thermal insulation activities we have is a small part of the fluorine business that we've got a special chem. It has products like Solkane 365 and associated blends from the hydrofluorocarbon family. Now, despite not having those and depleting potential, they have been subject to more stringent regulations, and they're being phased out. It's called, it's referenced as the F-gas Regulation 2014, if you want the technical requirements. So it's a natural, and frankly, we've been working towards that sunset for quite a while. We just wanted to ensure that at this juncture, you were made aware of that. And we anticipated this, and production was completely stopped, in fact, during the course of August or early September of this year. That's why we really wanted to give you that heads-up. Your second question, I think, was on Q4 and the trajectory? Q4. Yeah, I can take it. Well, historically speaking, Chetan, the fourth quarter is usually, as you know, the weakest quarter of the year. And look, looking at the lower end of our guidance, around EUR 2.9 billion, as Karim stated, and our nine months actual doing the math indicates that quarter four is expected to come below EUR 600 million, obviously taking into account the continuation of weak global macroeconomic environment, right? So nothing that we didn't expect. We were one of the first company or the only companies, you remember, in our sector earlier in the year, that still showed growth in the first quarter, and then we said that the first half, second half will evolve and, you know, happen like it is. So we'll experience lower volume, flattish, you know, net pricing. I think we got some positive in quarter three. We'll continue defending value pricing. We'll continue letting go volume which are not profitable, so we are looking for quality market share wherever it makes sense. The raw materials, the variable costs, obviously the raw mats and energy prices were down, so this is not gonna happen anymore, we believe in quarter four. So and as you expect, right, we will continue maintaining our cost and working capital discipline. Yeah. Maybe I'll take your final question on fixed costs. You're right. We're proud of the fact that our fixed costs decreased EUR 41 million quarter on quarter. There are three areas I'm gonna highlight, okay? One, structural cost reduction initiatives. I've talked about the cumulative EUR 530 million, where we're continuing to deliver, and that helps to offset inflation. That's the first point. The second point, as you would expect in an environment which is challenging like this, we've also continued to, I'm going to say, contain our, reduce our discretionary spend. And to have that really more than offset inflation. And finally, there is one other factor, which is we have the impact of lower variable compensation compared to last year, which was a record year, as you recall. So these are the three elements I'd like you to take note of. Thank you. Thanks. The next question comes from the line of Alex Stewart from Barclays. Please go ahead. Hi there, good afternoon. Two questions, actually, if that's okay. The first one, I just wanted to check something on free cash flow. You did about EUR 1 billion in the first 9 months. I think you said that Q4 would be roughly neutral, so let's say EUR 1 billion for the year. But Karim, I think you also said the CapEx would be EUR 1.1 billion, compared to your original guidance of EUR 1.25 billion. So EUR 1 billion minus the difference in CapEx means that you probably come into the year or end the year at about EUR 850 million of free cash flow. So the question really is, what happened in the second half in free cash flow that was worse than you expected, to come in, sort of on an adjusted basis below what you expected? The second question is, in solutions, you had 25% revenue decline and 25% EBITDA decline, which is highly unusual for an industrial chemical company. So I wonder if you could talk about the measures you took there to defend the margin. And then finally, just to clarify on Chetan's question, can you just confirm that the two businesses that you're phasing out, that there's no disposal value for them, in other words, there's no cash inflow? Just wanted to be clear on that. I think possibly you said at the beginning of the call, but I missed it. Thank you so much. I'll start with the very last comment around, no, no, we're not expecting major cash inflows from the phase out of those activities. To your first point on free cash flow, I'm not sure how you did your math. I struggled to follow, but what are we saying? We're saying, we've delivered EUR 1 billion. Our guidance was more than EUR 900 million. For us, it was almost stating the obvious, to say that we're gonna make the guidance now. And so the math, what I've said is, we expect Q4 free cash flow to be broadly neutral, and that's after taking into account the EUR 350 million-EUR 400 million of CapEx. And as rightly pointed out, it's a bit below the guidance we gave in big at the beginning of the year. Which kind of makes sense, if you think about it. You want the new capacity to come on stream in a period of, let's say, recovering and growing demand rather than lying idle. There's nothing more than that, more to it than that. On the solutions business, you wanna take that? Yeah, I can do that. Well, listen, Alex, I think you've seen obviously across the industries in the solution business remaining very challenging, both on the volume and the pricing. I think what we did is exactly what you told you. We'll continue, protect our margin and adapt our cost to lower demand. That's why you see some margin improvements. Basically, one third of the volume decline was compensated by net pricing and fixed cost, you know, discipline. You may remember, Alex, that we have made a lot of structural improvements in the solution segment in the recent years. And we have maintained this focus, with good operational discipline. I told you that we have a contribution margin surveillance almost at a pot level, at a reactor level. So in some product line with tough competition, of course, we are making selective pricing concession and only where it makes sense, such as where we have, for example, low raws, low raw material and energy pricing. But in the rest, I think we are also testing our value pricing, like we do in the material segments. And I'm very happy when you see our performance as compared to other peers, either who have recently profit warned or others. In the care segment, you've seen that not only we are doing better in the volume side, and in other cases, we are delivering better margins. So really happy with the, you know, what the team has been doing this summer. I invite you on November thirteen, if you are joining us, Alex, you will hear more from our GBU president, Mike Radossich, who has transformed the Novecare business, and now he will be leading, obviously, the whole research and consumer leg, and will share you more about how we're gonna build more differentiation in this segment. Thank you. The next question comes from a line of Wim Hoste from KBCS. Please go ahead. Yes, good afternoon. 2 questions from my side, please. First one is on one-off and cash out costs for the remainder of the year. I think in June, you two said, yeah, separation costs and other restructuring costs would be, yeah, more than EUR 500 million in total. Can you maybe shed a light on how much we should still expect to fall in Q4? That's the first question. And the second one would be coming back on an earlier question on volume trends in Q4. Do you see, apart from the usual seasonality that there is, do you see further weakening of markets, or do you see a stabilization overall, and can you maybe be a bit more explicit by sector or by end markets? Take the one-off, Yeah, please First, and maybe take the volume. Yeah. Okay. So Wim, hi. So you may recall, I think you did point out, but I'll just clarify the numbers. In our Q2 earnings call, we did say that we expected the separation-related one-time cash costs in 2023, of around EUR 250-300 million, and that's for the separation itself. To date, we spent EUR 100 million, and I expect us to spend in the fourth quarter, a further EUR 200 million. And that's split between taxes, financing, advisory fees, and a few more items. That's for a total, cumulative total, of EUR 300 million this year. Now, there will be a few tens of millions, of the order of EUR 30 million, maybe EUR 40 million related to taxes, where the cash tax outflow on those taxes, will probably occur next year, and a small amount possibly in 2025. If I look at all of that in combination, that really means, total separation costs, in total below 3% of total sales, which I remind you is about 3%-5%, the benchmarks. It's well below the benchmarks. So yeah, I think that's probably, the best I can give you today, and we've turned to volumes and the trajectory now. Yeah. I mean, if you look at the volumes, as I said, you know, I mean, we don't see the macros, at least short term, in quarter four improving. You know, we believe that the destocking is now mostly over, Wim, and we see today, what is reflected is a real actual weak demand environment, which is pretty broad across many markets and across regions. We are maintaining our leadership positions wherever we want it to be, in materials, in soda ash, et cetera. In some businesses, we are carefully prioritizing pricing over volume, typically in activities that are less profitable. So, in some areas, we have had modest market share, voluntary loss, like Aroma, for example, type of business. Some of the solutions in the Solvay Process, for example, and our strategy continues to be focusing on the quality of market share, which generates value. That's, you know, where we really continue maintaining Solvay's profitability, right? It's measured in terms of EBITDA margin, and we'll continue, you know, sustaining it. Yeah, that's all what I can tell you about, you know, the things. I mean, going forward to 2024 is really too early. I will invite you again to join us during the CMD day on November 13, with the management team to see the midterm plans, right? Basically, the two new leadership teams will give you more color in due time about 2024. Okay, I'm looking forward to that. Thank you. Thank you, Wim. The next question comes from the line of Peter Clark, from Société Générale. Please go ahead. Yes, good afternoon, and good luck, Karim. I'll probably see you at the CMD anyway. But effectively, the first question is around the sequential pricing, 'cause it looks like it's holding up pretty well, especially considering the energy surcharges coming off the indexation, et cetera. But materials, of all the three segments, seems to be under more pressure, so I just want to be clear what might be going on there. And then the second question is, it looks like your structural cost savings have picked up a little bit again. I know you're doing more restructuring for the de-merger. I'm just wondering if you're looking again at the cost base, given how the world is. Thank you. Should I start, maybe, or will you do it? Should I take the structural cost, maybe start with that briefly? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. You are very sharp. Well, first of all, thank you for your kind words. Your structural cost comment is very sharp, and I agree with you. The pace is picking up, but I hope you're not surprised. And what I will highlight is exactly the following, which is in Q1, we took a provision of EUR 78 million of cost reduction provisions, 'cause clearly, what makes sense in this environment, knowing you've got dyssynergies, is to get ahead of the curve. Otherwise, frankly, the dyssynergy figures I've given you would've been a good EUR 20-30 million higher, and that's exactly what you can expect us to continue to focus on. So I hope that helps you. But there's something more than that, at this point, at least. And on pricing, Ilham, and the comments on sequential strength? Yeah. It's right, huh? Yeah, it's absolutely right. And, you know, as we told you, we expect net pricing to be flat in the second half. That's what we've promised as a team, and that's what we are delivering. Obviously, quarter three was positive- Sorry, can I just follow up, Ilham, in terms of the material specifically? You mean on the material segments? Yes, specifically, 'cause that's the one that seems to be under more pressure sequentially. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We, well, I mean, here, I think we are coming from a very, very high, you know, levels in materials, that's what happened. You may remember on our batteries material, we told you that, you know, there were some concession here and there as the rules were, you know, declining. But looking at the materials specifically, we estimate that the volumes will be only slightly lower, in the near future. And if you look at the full year view, we expect the volume in material to be flattish versus last year, and we remain confident that over time we sustain our profitability levels as you've seen it in the past. Okay. Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Jaideep Pandya from Onfield Research. Please go ahead. Thanks, and yeah, good luck to Karim as well. We'll definitely miss you. PVDF on your new plant in Tavaux. Could you give us some timing in terms of, you know, what, what sort of ramp-up schedule? Are we looking for 2024, 2025? And, do you have already contracted customers in Europe, or even for that matter, from the U.S., and so therefore you're gonna sell a lot of these volumes, not in the Asian market, but in the sort of non-Asian market? And then the second question, I know Philippe maybe can't answer this right now, but you know, the famous soda ash pricing, any color on 2024 contracts, given there's a lot of moving parts, you know, you've done a fantastic job in defending pricing for the last two years. What should we now expect for 2024, given demand is not, probably, not as strong as it was in the beginning of this year? Thanks a lot. Yeah, thank you, Jaideep. I'll start. On Tavaux, the starting point for the new capacity will be around early 2025, right? And basically, this is for the European markets. I mean, we don't usually transport, you know, products over the ocean. We have enough Chinese capacity for our suspension grade for China, y ou know, the U.S. story, we signed a joint venture agreement with Orbia yesterday. I think we did another press release on that, which will be on stream in 2026. And in Europe, we have already existing capacity, and we've been debottlenecking and adding capacity, as we know that the battery value chain is gonna intensify. There are major customers who are building new capacities, and early 2025 will have, more, more product to support the high end, by, by the way, battery segments. What was the other question, sorry? soda ash. Still more on soda ash pricing next year. All right. We are in the season, right, of the pricing campaign and discussions. So, we just started to close few, you know, contracts in the United States of America, and now we are taking care of the European contracts. So, it's too early to tell you how it's gonna go. Obviously, we are doing what it takes to maintain our margin. Our customers are, you know, very close to us. They support our decarbonization efforts. They support actually to have a landed cost, a local product, supporting their own business and their own growth. soda ash doesn't travel very well between regions. I think back in 2022, when the pricing of soda ash was at its highest peak, you may have seen the publicly available information on Chinese imports didn't grow much. So I think, you know, we are very confident, and Philippe Kehren, the incoming new CEO of Solvay, is the GBU president of soda ash, and with his team, as we speak, are actually, you know, engaging and closing the pricing campaign. So be a bit patient. The new leadership will share with you the news anytime soon. Thanks a lot. Thank you. The next question comes from a line of Josh Mayberry from UBS. Please go ahead. Yeah, good afternoon, and thank you for the presentation. And Karim, thank you for all your help over the years. I just had two questions, slightly related. First of all, just looking at soda ash in Q3, obviously, you commented that prices were down. Could you say whether or not the price decrease came in the contracted price that you had? So your customers have come to ask for lower prices to the contract you agreed last year, or was it on the merchant portion of soda ash that you've got? And then secondly, on Specialty Polymers, could you just comment what the sort of volume development versus price development was in the 18% decline in Q3? Yeah, on soda ash, as I mentioned, right, I mean, we, we have two things. We have formula pricing, and you may remember that we, we baked, not only raws, but also energy, you know, in our pricing in soda ash back in the fall 2021, which was very helpful in 2022, and obviously when energy prices, are down, we, we correct it, and we pass it to our customers. So that's one. You're right, the merchant market as well is down, specifically the seaborne. Obviously, we play, in a very opportunistic way in that market, and we take, the volumes when it makes sense for us. We didn't participate few quarters ago, you know, intensively to that market because we've seen a lot of, you know, domestic, I would say, soda ash from China being dumped into the seaborne, even some Russian volumes coming in. So we let those volumes, you know, running in the seaborne, but this is where wherever we participate, there was some volume decline. What is the other question? I think your question on specialty polymers, I think, as you know, we don't normally get into the detail specific by business, and it gets a bit sensitive. What I can say to you is that the majority of the sales, the revenue decline you've seen is predominantly about volumes. Our pricing is really holding up well. Yeah. Thank you. This is where, you know, as we told you, value pricing is- Valued by our customers. Yeah. Yeah. Is the name of the game. Yeah. Sorry, could I just come back to soda ash? I appreciate that you had the energy surcharge for 2022, but my understanding, and maybe it was my error, that at the end of 2022, that you combined this energy surcharge with a base and price increase. So all of that was taken into 2023. So what I'm asking is- No. No, okay, my, my mistake. Go ahead. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. No, I explain. I think part of it, we put it in our floor pricing, right? But we still had an energy surcharge above and below. You see what I mean? So we took, we changed our base pricing, right? We increased it in 2023, right? But we still had, you know, a mechanism to correct energy pricing at the extreme ends, you know, high and low. Like a corridor. A corridor, yeah, exactly. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. The next question comes from a line of Sebastian Bray from Berenberg. Please go ahead. Hello, good afternoon, and thank you for taking my questions. I'd have two, please. The first is on the divested businesses. What stops Solvay from giving a sales impact on thermal insulation? And the reason that I, I ask this is that I assume, given that this business was being wound down, the associated CapEx was quite minimal... And another way of putting this question is: Did that EUR 100 million of EBITDA drop through at close to a hundred percent to cash flow? As in, is a EUR 100 million the right number to think about cash flow drag year-on-year to EssentialCo for 2024? Just to clarify, this second energy trading or other business that's being divested for what seems to be a rather negligible sum, that didn't generate sales, it just meant that the corporate cost line was less negative than would have otherwise been the case. My second question is on just energy cost outlook for 2024. If energy costs remain the same as they are today, including the impact of hedges, is it roughly flat year-on-year as a reasonable assumption for group for 2024? Thank you. Karim, you take the, Okay. Discontinued operation. I'll take, yeah. So fundamentally, I'd say on the phase out of the HFC business, I think this really is a business that is coming to an end. You're right, most of the profits that we made were basically straight to the bottom line. There was a little limited CapEx. The impact I gave you is for both businesses, by the way. Now, what I will highlight is on the energy business, we really focused hard on stabilizing and restructuring the business. And what we've done this year is mainly reversed some of the provisions, the prudent provisions we took last year. So we didn't get a how can I say, a cash benefit this year from that. So it's a bit of two different things here. So strong cash on a business that's coming to an end, and we closed it down to stop production in August, September. The energy business is predominantly one of reversal of provisions, and it's not really a major cash generator at all, but it's reduced volatility that we really appreciate there. We don't have a crystal ball on the energy cost for next year, but I think it is fair to state that given that we will maintain our prudent hedging approach for energy-related elements, I don't expect there to be a major positive or negative impact in 2024 compared to 2023. Yeah, we expect it to be stable. Given today's market. Yeah, exactly. Be stable, yeah. Yeah. That's a good assumption. That's helpful. Hope that helps you, Sebastian. Thank you. Just you. Just to clarify, the energy business had no sales? It was just EBITDA, or it did have sales. It was predominantly EBITDA. There was, had quite a lot of sales in the non-core elements. Yeah. Gross sales, yes, net sales, no. Net sales is one we've always focused on. And by the way- The IFRS results. We are very happy to get rid of this business because we are not the right owner, so I mean, you know it, and it's decreasing the volatility and our exposure. Yeah, exactly. I can tell you, this is something which was in my to-do list before the split, so I'm very happy with the team that we could do it. Yeah, glad to clean it up. Absolutely. Yeah. That's helpful. Thank you. Before we proceed to the next question, a final reminder. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star one. The next question comes from the line of Martin Roediger from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead. Yes. Good afternoon. Yeah, I've two questions. First of all, Karim, all the best to you for the future. Coming back to the energy business, I understood that this is the lion's share of this EUR 100 million EBITDA contribution of the two assets you are phasing out. Why was it not possible to keep it? Because I don't see anything but really clear reason why you want to phase that business out. And secondly, on the tax rate, which is 22%, would that be different when we look at the two successor companies, this 22%? And what is the best guess, assuming the geographical split stays as it is, how that will evolve for the two successor companies in next year? Thank you. Thank you for both questions. Let me start with the energy. Fundamentally, we're really phasing out the third-party activity, which is really, essentially, as we see it now, it's non-core. To your point, essential competitor, Solvay, the new Solvay, does still have quite a lot of energy intensity, so we're keeping the key capability, the expertise which really is top-notch, and that's really important. But we're simply not gonna start meeting the needs of other third-party customers. That's where a lot of that volatility that Ilham mentioned. It's regulatory driven, by the way so I would like everybody to understand that. Yeah. It was a normal sunsetting, and we would rather do it before this happened. So as far as your question on the tax rate, I'm gonna ask you to be a bit patient, and the answers are very straightforward there. One is I'd like that to be given in the context of the future profit trajectory, and as you can expect, the location of the profit pools, U.S., Europe, et cetera, has an impact on that. So I'd say that question we'd like to keep open for now. Great one to save for the Capital Markets Day, 13 November. Thank you. I'll make sure teams are ready to help you. We'll be there anyway. Well, I believe we have no further questions. That ends our session for today. As usual, thank you for your participation, and the investor relations team will be here to answer any remaining questions. Thank you very much, and have a great day. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Bye-bye. Thank you for joining today's call. You may now disconnect your lines.