Hello and welcome, everyone, to the Barry Callebaut Q1 Key Sales Figures Fiscal Year 2025 and 2026. My name is Becky, and I will be your operator today. All lines will be muted throughout the presentation portion of the call, with a chance for Q&A at the end. If you wish to ask a question in this time, please press star, followed by one on your telephone keypad. I will now hand over to your host, Sophie Lang, Head of Investor Relations, to begin. Please go ahead. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our three-month Key Sales Figures Conference Call for 2025-2026. I'm Sophie Lang, Head of Investor Relations, and I'm joined today by our Chairman, Patrick De Maeseneire, and our CFO, Peter Vanneste. Given our additional announcement this morning on the CEO transition, Patrick will join us for the first 15 minutes of the call only to share a few words on the transition and to take a few questions. Peter and I will then proceed with the usual Q1 presentation, followed by Q&A. I'd like to remind you that the session is focused on our Q1 volume sales update, and we will keep that Q&A session focused on discussion of those key figures. As usual, please limit yourself to no more than two questions. I'd also like you to take note of the disclaimer on slide two and remind you that the conference call and webcast are being recorded. I will now hand over to our Chairman, Patrick De Maeseneire. Please go ahead, Patrick. Thank you, Sophie. Good morning to all of you, and thank you for joining this call. You indeed received our press release this morning about our CEO transition effective January 26. A couple of words to this change. Peter joined Barry Callebaut, our CEO, in April 2023 with the clear mandate to transform our company into a simpler, leaner, and more agile organization. Next to leading BC Next Level, Peter has navigated our company through the perfect storm with unprecedented cocoa bean prices, market turbulence, and a challenging geopolitical situation. Now, with this unprecedented cocoa crisis behind us and BC Next Level nearly completed, it is time for us to embark on a new chapter of growth, value creation, and industry leadership. The board and I are therefore happy to welcome Hein Schumacher as our new CEO. With over 25 years of experience in the industry, Hein is a clear veteran in the food sector. Hein is indeed a seasoned and decisive leader with a unique blend of expertise in food, business-to-consumer, business-to-business, and ingredients, as well as a proven track record in creating significant shareholder value from two CEO positions with Unilever and Royal FrieslandCampina. Hein has lived and worked in various countries and regions, including the U.S., the U.K., Europe, Singapore, and China. In other words, he has experience from developed and developing countries. We came to the appointment of Hein after an extensive search process. During his time as CEO of Unilever, Hein implemented a comprehensive growth plan that allowed the company to sharpen its focus, increase execution discipline around power brands and key geographies, and achieve shareholder value growth. Prior to Unilever, Hein led Royal FrieslandCampina as CEO during times of very volatile commodity prices, and he strengthened the company through major restructuring initiatives, which resulted in a more focused business and a significant revenue increase. Previously, Hein worked for Kraft Heinz for a decade, first as Chief Strategy Officer before moving to Heinz China, and later on as EVP of Heinz Asia-Pacific Region Business, where he did a successful turnaround of the business, which spanned China, Indonesia, India, Japan, and Australia. While our business continues to navigate market and volume pressures, we have a clear opportunity for future growth. Barry Callebaut is the world's largest chocolate and cocoa ingredients producer, supported by unmatched scale, a deeply integrated value chain, a strong innovation track record, and close customer relations. We agreed with Hein on the following three priorities. First, return to growth with increased customer focus to re-energize also Gourmet and go for a bigger share in the emerging markets. Second, drive the people agenda to create a customer-centric and winning culture as the engine of that growth. Third, strengthen further our balance sheet. The key word here is, of course, deleveraging. As said, Hein will start already next week, Monday, January 26. To ensure a smooth handover and continuity, Peter will be available for the transition to Hein. More than 30 of the 36 BC Next Level initiatives have been implemented, and the last steps are targeted to be completed by the end of the fiscal year. Last point, the board wants to thank Peter, who will pursue other career opportunities for his immense work and leadership during challenging times, and wishes him all the best for the future. Before leaving the call now and handing over to Peter Vanneste for the update on Q1, I'm happy to take your questions on our CEO transition. Operator, please go ahead for the Q&A on this session. Thank you. We will now move to the Q&A for the CEO transition. If you would like to ask a question, please press star, followed by one on your telephone keypad now. If you feel your question has been answered or for any reason you would like to remove yourself from the queue, please press star, followed by two. When preparing to ask your question, please ensure your device is unmuted. Our first question comes from Alex Sloane from Barclays. Your line is now open. Please go ahead. Yeah, hi. Thanks, Patrick, for taking the questions. I guess from my side, you know, while the next-level saving actions, as you've laid out, are largely complete, the fruits of those actions are kind of yet to accrue to the bottom line. So is the CEO change and pivot to focus on growth and customer service maybe an acknowledgment that some of the actions that have been taken have gone too far from a customer service level perspective, and reinvestment might be required to reignite that growth? I guess, put another way, the message on the conference call in November at the full-year results was, you know, there was likely CHF 100 million of net savings that could accrue in fiscal 2027 from Next Level that weren't visible yet but were going to accrue. Do you think that's still realistic, or do we think that, you know, maybe some of that will need to be reinvested? Thank you. Alex, thanks for the question. I wouldn't say that this change will require reinvestment. I would say it's more a shift of focus in the organization. As you know, we have gone through, and I mentioned it, through the biggest transformation in the history of the company in the past more than two years, and what we had not foreseen was, of course, these cocoa market price increases and volatility and a difficult, very geopolitical environment. That required a lot of focus internally into the company, and I would say the focus will now, with Next Level, almost being totally completed, like I said, with 30 of the 36 work streams being done, with, I cannot say, a bit more stable environment, but at least on the cocoa side, we have a much more stable environment. We can really shift the focus now outside, being closer to our customers, increasing volumes with our customers again, and that's absolutely the objective of this change. Thank you. Thank you. Our second question comes from David Roux from Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open. Please go ahead. Thank you very much. I think much of my question was actually answered there. I think I would just be quite interested in terms of timing, whether we should expect, given the fact that we're coming to the end of the Next Level savings program, whether we should expect or when we could expect another strategic update. Would that be over the course of this year, or do we wait until next year for potentially a CMD, et cetera? Thank you. David, as I said, we agreed with Hein on three priorities, and of course, there are always many more in the company, but the return to growth is our first priority, driving the people agenda our second one, and strengthening the balance sheet. That's more in the camp of our CFO, Peter Vanneste, but he's working hard on that one. So those are our three priorities. So I don't think that there is much need for a different strategy or a different focus. It's just that we're shifting the focus from the inside to the outside. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from Jon Cox from Kepler Cheuvreux. Your line is now open. Please go ahead. Yeah, good morning, Patrick, and guys. Hope all well. A couple of questions of my end. One on just the overall shape of the group. There's been the reports about maybe the owners have been looking to split the company into maybe cocoa and chocolate components. And clearly, the management have been very public saying we prefer being integrated. And I'm just wondering if this had any part of the reason for the change in CEO, and potentially Mr. Schumacher would be more interested in a group running a group focusing on the chocolate more on towards an FMCG rather than the sort of commoditized cocoa business. That's one question for you. The second question, you know, it's Peter Feld's bailing out, you know, not yet completed this savings program. When it started, your EBIT was around CHF 650 million odd, and you said you're going to be giving CHF 250 million savings over a few years, of which CHF 188 million would be dropping into the EBIT line. I'm just wondering where we are on that whole program because it looks like you're saying he's gone. Now we're focusing on growth. Does that mean we shouldn't expect, you know, this CHF 188 million to come down anytime soon? And actually, maybe we're looking at, you know, half of that amount coming through. You know, this year consensus is like CHF 720 million. I think next year is about CHF 770 million. And then just lastly, on that, you say a growth strategy. You had these sort of weird targets about, oh, you know, post the whole restructuring, you're going to grow low single digit mid, and then EBIT doing low single digit mid. Do you think you're going to give any clarity on those targets now that you're going for growth in the future? Thank you. Thank you, Jon, for your questions. On your first question, Barry Callebaut has since going public and since the merger with Cacao Barry being a fully integrated company, and we have the absolute intention to stay that way. When I was, of course, aware of the Reuters article that went out there, and we immediately stopped that internally or contradicted that rumor internally saying we've been always a fully integrated company that gives us a tremendous cost advantage. It gives us full control over the quantity of the beans, the quality, the sustainability, the traceability. We have, as one of the few companies, our people on the ground in the origin countries to ensure that quantity, quality, sustainability, traceability. So there is no reason, absolutely no reason why we would change that model. It would give us a competitive disadvantage if we would change that model. So no difference on that one. On your second and third question, if I would be the CFO, I would redirect you to the first half results, but I'm not a CFO, so I am handing over to Peter. Yes. Hi, everybody. Good morning. I mean, in Next Level, basically, as Patrick already said, I mean, the majority of the projects have been hardwired in the organization. They have been implemented. It's more about now making it part of the running business. You know, GBS, just to give an example, GBS is in place, so it's in the four hubs that we have. So now it's really about standardizing, ensuring the effectiveness and the efficiency. We do the BCOS program in the efficiency and the KPIs. So the factory is about rolling out and embedding it again in the daily running operations and having additional SKU reductions behind us. But it's, of course, as we generate new SKUs through innovation, it's, of course, getting into making sure we apply the discipline of the one in, one out. So it's more about finalizing and embedding it. In terms of savings, which was part of your question, as we already also addressed at the year-end communication in November, these initiatives are delivering savings. I mean, we have been, just an example, BCOS and the GBS centers are clearly having those savings. At the same time, we also face some exceptional costs more related to the market disruption in cocoa, which we are very focused on cycling out to make sure that we can make those steps into the direction of our long-term ambition in terms of stepping up the profitability. You know, we'll come back on that in due time, but that's, I think, what we are working on. Thank you. Our next question comes from Tom Sykes from Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open. Please go ahead. Morning. Thank you. Morning, everybody. Morning, Patrick. Just one question on your IT and digital, because it's been a relatively small amount of BC Next Level expenditure. And as you become more customer-centric, and those customers will have spent a lot on their IT and digital transformation themselves, do you believe that you've spent enough on that to be a modern business dealing with the volatility that you're likely to see? Because it does feel like quite a low amount that you've spent on that side of the transformation, please. Maybe I'll take that one. I mean, it's not that much of a low amount. I'm not sure where you get your information from, but we've stepped up very significantly on the digital spend and investments as part of this whole program, the OPEX that we have reinvested, but we have invested in Next Level. Barry Callebaut does have an important digitization journey ahead of it. It's been part of the pillars of Next Level, and we are going to continue on that journey, obviously, you know, focused in the direction, as Patrick has been mentioning, in terms of internal versus external focus. But it's clear that, you know, that is not leaving our agenda. It's almost doubling in both CapEx and OpEx. So it's really a substantial investment. I guess it's just as a proportion of that spend in absolute amounts, it doesn't feel that large given the size of the business, but I take the point on the percentage increase. Thank you. Thank you. The final question that we have time for on this topic comes from Ed Hockin from JP Morgan. Your line is now open. Please go ahead. Hi, all. Thank you very much for taking my last question. It's really on the BC Next Level program. I think that when it was communicated at the time, there was a growth agenda embedded in that program as well, with the focus on growing in Asia, focus on growing in gourmet, and focus on growing in compound chocolates discussed recently. So what I wanted to clarify was why was Peter not the person to lead this second part of the Next Level program and to embark on that growth agenda? And should any of those priorities on growth, be it Asia, gourmet, compound chocolate, is any of that changed? And is it just a refocus, or will there be some other tangible changes in the growth agenda as well? Thank you. I would say there's no change, but like I said, we went through the biggest transformation in the history of the company. Didn't foresee the volatile geopolitical organization, nor did we have, or did we foresee at that moment that cocoa prices would grow above GBP 10,000 per ton. And so you have to take that into account. And as a consequence, as you have seen, the demand, the consumer demand also went backwards. You know, putting leaders in a position, what people often forget is the right leader in the right position at the right time. And the right time is often forgotten. And doing a transformation requires a certain profile of leader. Going for a growth trajectory requires another profile. And that's what we have been looking at since a number of months. And that's what we have also openly discussed with Peter. That's why we came to this conclusion. Okay, thank you. Thank you. I will now hand the call back over to Patrick to continue. Thanks again for attending this call. If you would have more questions, you can always contact me either over Sophie or directly, and with this, I would like to leave you now in the good hands of our CFO, Peter Vanneste. Thank you all, and have a great day. Thank you, Patrick. Let me start with a short summary of the quarter one key figures. As anticipated, we started this fiscal year softly. Our global chocolate volumes were in line with the declining and challenging markets, and additionally impacted by the production pause in our Saint-Hyacinthe factory in Canada, which we informed you about in November. At the same time, volumes declined significantly in global cocoa due to negative market demands and the continued prioritization of our volumes to higher return segments within cocoa. Overall, our group volume therefore landed at -9.9%, with more resilience in strategic areas like Cacao Coatings and AMEA. Importantly, we see resilience in strategic growth areas, and we believe that the continued lowering of cocoa bean prices is an encouraging sign for market stabilization. In that context, we reiterate our guidance for the fiscal year and are very focused on preparing for return to growth. Let me get into some more details, starting first with an update on what has been happening in the cocoa markets. Cocoa bean prices have come down significantly, as no doubt you've seen over the past months, with prices 30% lower since the start of our fiscal year and even falling below GBP 4,000 last week and some more yesterday. Importantly, the structure of the cocoa futures market has also improved significantly. The forward curve is now in a flat to slight carry structure. This means that the cost of buying cocoa today is the same or cheaper than buying cocoa in the future. This contrasts with the steep backwardation we saw in the market this time last year, which significantly increased the rolling cost associated with our hedging. Importantly, the flat curve also incentivizes our customers now to book today rather than wait for lower prices in the future. The 2025/26 crop is developing in line with our expectations, with strong early arrivals in Côte d'Ivoire and Ecuador. Since cocoa farmers outside West Africa have been benefiting from higher cocoa prices, we also have seen those origins increasing investments in items such as fertilizers and seedlings, which is clearly positive for future supply. Alongside weak cocoa bean grindings, this is helping to bring some replenishment of global stocks of cocoa, and the market should be entering its second consecutive year of cocoa surplus. Of course, these movements in the cocoa market have been creating a knock-on effect on both the B2B chocolate market and also the B2C market. The historic cocoa bean prices of last year resulted in a significant B2B pricing in fiscal 2025, and in turn, our customers have been reacting through destocking, pack sizing, reformulations, and et cetera, to prevent and protect the consumer from the full price increases. Some large brands have also reacted to their volume pressure by filling their own excess capacity first. Now, with bean prices lowering, our pricing at BC has also started to sequentially lower, and in fact, we already passed our pricing peak in quarter two last year. This is positive and for stimulating future B2B demands, and we are starting to see early signs of that through our forward bookings. As you know, we contract several months in advance with our customers, and we have seen our customers more willing to book further in advance again. At the end of November, our future booking portfolio was at 20% higher level than at the same time last year when the cocoa bean prices were spiking. At the same time, it takes customers some time to price through to end consumers, which has now happened with Nielsen data showing that global cocoa pricing, chocolate pricing, I'm sorry, in the market are now more than 30% higher than the pre-cocoa market spikes. As a result, there's clearly some price volume elasticity given the extent of pricing. However, we believe consumers will adapt and adjust to these new price levels and ultimately continue to buy chocolate given the high engagement of the category. The category has seen a similar short-term reaction like this in the past. We also see upside because our customers have mostly priced through higher bean prices, and with bean prices now lowering, this will incentivize category reinvestments and promotions, which should help to drive back consumer demand and volume. After those market dynamics, let's now move to how those and other factors have been impacting our quarter one performance. Of course, we faced short-term headwinds in quarter one. As discussed, the market dynamics have been very challenging, with Nielsen B2C market volumes declining by 6.1% in our first quarter. In addition, volumes were impacted by the temporary pause in production at our Saint-Hyacinthe plant in Canada due to a technical malfunction with one piece of roasting equipment. This factory is a significant contributor to our overall North American production and was closed for around three weeks in September-October, with the issue now resolved. In global cocoa, we sharpened our focus on returns to prioritize volumes within cocoa to segments where we see the better returns, and that, of course, in the context of our agenda of deleveraging. At the same time, it's clear also that our growth foundations remain resilient. Our compound business, which we now call Cacao Coatings, saw flat growth overall within a declining market. We've continued to support our customers with innovation and reformulation, with around 600 R&D projects currently underway on Cacao Coatings. We're also exploring non-cocoa solutions with ChoViva, the chocolate alternative without cocoa, with the phased international commercial rollout in process. The AMEA region saw positive growth well ahead of the markets and with good expected momentum ahead of us. Finally, as mentioned, across all regions, we're seeing our customers increasing their forward bookings, which is an encouraging sign for stabilization and future growth. Now, let me dive into our volume growth in a bit more detail by region and segment now, starting with global chocolate, where volumes declined 6.8%, largely in line with the 6.1% decline of market volumes as per Nielsen. First, to the left of the page by chocolate region, Western Europe saw a 5.2% volume decline as demand continued to be impacted by higher prices and knock-on effects on customer behavior that were relatively a bit larger in that region. Central and Eastern Europe declined by 2.7%, significantly better than the markets, as local accounts saw solid growth, especially in Turkey, while the large food manufacturer customers saw some challenging environment. North America reported a decrease of 14%, heavily impacted by the St. Hyacinthe plant closure, as I just discussed, as well as a continued challenging customer and macro backdrop. Latin America saw slightly negative development at -1.4% ahead of the markets, as strong momentum in gourmet was offset by large food manufacturing navigating the impact of the higher prices. Finally, in APAC, volumes grew by 0.6%, with improved demand in China, continued momentum in India, and additional business secured in Australia, partly offset by market pressures we've seen in Japan and South Korea. To the right of the page by segment, gourmet, while the gourmet market has been more resilient, also now it has been impacted also by the higher prices and knock-on customer demand impacts, with customer reducing elevated stock levels, and there was also here some impact from the St. Hyacinthe closures. Meanwhile, as we have discussed, food manufacturers were impacted by customer behavior shifts in the context of those significantly higher prices, and global cocoa I already talked about. Now, as this is a sales and revenue update only, I will not go into reporting beyond that, but I briefly wanted to talk about leverage, given that this is one of our key focus areas yesterday, today, and tomorrow. We are certainly working further on the key actions we have already started to implement last year, and then I talked about the November communication. In particular, first of all, reducing working capital, especially inventory, with key actions to maximize our bean blending capabilities, diversify to origins with shorter cash cycles, working on the underlying processes. Secondly, enhancing our financial agility with less cash-consuming solutions for margin goals that we have established with the network credit facility and making progress on inventory financing solutions, and also several end-to-end value chain projects like demand planning improvements and contracting flexibility. In the first quarter so far, we reduced our gross debt by prepaying the EUR 262 million term loan in September, as well as reducing our commercial paper outstanding and bilateral facilities. As we already discussed in November, we do expect a temporary step up in leverage in half year one due to the fact that this is the peak buying period given the cocoa seasonality. Historically, we have seen bean prices, you know, when the bean prices were back at 2000 range. We saw around a 0.4 times historic leverage step up in H1 versus the end of the prior fiscal year, again linked to the seasonality. Of course, with higher bean prices, that increases that magnitude of this step up. However, obviously also offset by the operational actions we are taking to reduce working capital every single day. Through this initiative for the full year, we do aim to reach below three and a half times leverage by the end of August 2026. And finally, we have reiterated our guidance for fiscal 25/26. Let me remind you of the volume elements in this particularly, given this is a sales update. We do expect to see the mid-single digit decrease at the group level within global chocolate. In global cocoa, we expect the mid- to high-single-digit decrease as the business enhances its focus on higher return segments, especially powder. The first half year is expected to be challenged as customers and consumers continue to manage the high prices in a soft market, and we're expecting improvements in the second half, with lower bean prices being an encouraging sign for market stabilization, as I mentioned before. Let me conclude with the following key takeaways before opening for Q&A. First, our key focus is on returning to a growth trajectory with strong customer focus, as you have understood from Patrick as well. Second, what we see in the cocoa markets today is already starting to reflect in increased forward contracting, which is an early sign of market stabilization. and third, we are driving innovation and enhancing customer experience to further that future growth. On that note, thanks a lot for listening. We will now move to the Q&A session, and I will hand over to the moderator to start that Q&A. Thank you. We will now have our Q&A for the Q1 key sales figures. If you wish to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad now. If you feel your question has been answered or for any reason you would like to remove yourself, please press star followed by two. In the interest of time, we ask that you limit yourself to two questions today. When preparing to ask your question, please ensure your device is unmuted locally. Our first question comes from Daniel Bürki from ZKB. Your line is now open. Please go ahead. Thank you very much and welcome everyone. Regarding pricing, it was still pretty significant in the first quarter. When do we expect your pricing impact, let's say, go into negative territory? Then that's the first one. And then regarding the volume recovery, what phasing do you expect? Do you already expect positive volumes in the second half, or we just have to think about the 2026, 2027? Thank you very much. Thanks for your question, Daniel. On the first question on pricing, as I mentioned in my presentation, we have seen our peak pricing in the second quarter of last year, which was then 70% up versus the year before. We've seen a sequential slowing down in Q1. Our pricing is still 25% up versus, again, same quarter last year, but prices will be coming down in absolutes. You know, as we are typically contracting several months in advance, we expect to turn negative at some point during quarter two, the existing quarter, assuming again the bean prices stay at the level or go down versus the level that they are today. Therefore, we do expect H1 pricing to remain positive in general, but H2 should be in terms of pricing negative versus H2 as we, you know, follow the market in a forward selling mode. So that was your first question. Your second question on the volume recovery, as I mentioned to you, we have reiterated our guidance for the full year with mid-single digit volume decrease. There is still some consumer reaction in the market today. We do believe that this is temporary. As I mentioned, we've seen this kind of pattern before, maybe a bit less disruptive than this time around, but the market recovers after consumers have adopted and customers in terms of promotions and so on have adopted and accepted the hiccup. We do expect some customers to start reinvesting in the category. We see our order book and forward selling book improving. So in Q2, we do expect an improvement versus Q1, but still in a soft market. And H2, we will see a further improvement versus the first half for sure. To the extent of which, of course, we'll have to, well, we'll go back later. We're still in a bit of uncertainty on how the market will react, but certainly an improvement versus H1. Thank you. Our next question comes from Matteo Lindauer from Vontobel. Your line is now open. Please go ahead. Yes, thank you very much. Good morning, everyone. I have a question on the bigger picture of Barry Callebaut. My question is on customer relationship. Could you tell me how is the sentiment with your large outsourcing contracts? Because you said you want to increase volumes with customers. And my question is how you try to tackle them because we have been analyzing potential upcoming renewals, and I would like to get a view from your side. Thank you very much. Yeah. Thanks for the question, Mateo. On the large customers and the outsourcing, I mean, this has been a bit soft over the last, let's say, year, year and a half across the whole market, our customers. The whole markets have obviously been focusing a lot on the disruption pricing and the volatility that has been happening in the market. So big shifts. So, admittedly, the focus has been a bit less on the short term on outsourcing. Now, we do see that it's still quite high on the agenda and the top of mind and the trends in outsourcing. The long-term trends for outsourcing in our view and with the discussion that we have remained very intact because the underlying dynamics have not changed. If anything, they have been aggravated or enlarged with what's happening in the market. It has become an even higher capital intensive environment with the bean prices in our mind there to stay at higher levels than they have historically been. And some of our customers do have other priorities than investing in the next chocolate line. On top of that, the complexity of the industry is really not decreasing. Sustainability regulation, EUDR, despite the changes in the timing, I mean, these complexities continue to increase in terms of assortment as well. Specialties, innovation, cacao coatings, the industry becomes more complicated, which is where we can play a key role because of our scale and reach and all of that, so the topic is absolutely not off the agenda for the next years, but admittedly, of course, it's been a bit off focus in the last year and a half, and you've talked about contract renewals. Obviously, this is part of general business, right? We have long-term contracts with key partners. We have a lot of key partners. So it's a normal course of business that every so many years we have a renegotiation happening on some of those contracts, which also is an opportunity for us and for them to adjust to the new market reality. Thank you. Our next question comes from Samantha Darbyshire from Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open. Please go ahead. Morning. Thank you. I just want to stick with the outsourcing topic. Can you talk a little bit more about the pipeline itself? You've given some really good ideas about structural reasons why outsourcing should still be a priority for customers. But given we've had a lot of disruption in the last few years, there have been disruptions at your factories as well. How are you thinking about customer appetite working with Barry Callebaut specifically? And then also just kind of coming back to the stabilizing trends in H2, what are you seeing in terms of visibility for customer contracting? The last couple of years there's been less visibility as customers haven't committed as much further out. You have said the cocoa curve dynamics are more conducive to those longer-term commitments. But where are we at in terms of visibility in those commitments versus what you might have had, say, three years ago? And then just kind of sticking with that as well, when you think about customer pricing, cocoa is now significantly below GBP 4,000 a ton. In theory, could we see some customer promotion starting to step up in H2? So not just thinking about the brand investments from marketing, but in terms of consumers seeing lower prices as well. Thank you. Thanks, Samantha, for your questions. I will also look at Sophie to give me answers to the different questions that you asked. So if you forget one, let me know, Sophie. The first one, I think, was still on the outsourcing. We have been making, and you were referring to some of the, I guess, same type of incident that we had. We've been making very significant investments into a new quality rigor, and we certainly have leveled up our game with the Next Level investments when it comes to product quality and product safety. The tightened regimes and firewalls that we have established for our customers, they work. We handle those potential issues with a lot of prudence and take the actions to measure, protect our customers at all times. Sometimes that lead to layered shipments. Sometimes that leads to some hiccup. But overall, I think we are proving and we're getting very good feedback from our customers on the massive progress we're making there. At the end of the day, I think that will give a strong asset in the continued discussions we're going to have on outsourcing with our customers. In terms of visibility forward, we have seen a very significant improvement in customer coverage levels and forward bookings during the quarter as the bean price has been lowering. You will remember me talking about the opposite more than a year ago as we saw the bean price going up in a very backwardated market, consumers, customers holding back on ordering, holding stocks lower. We've seen the opposite right now in our November portfolio. It's been 20% higher than the portfolio in the same time a year ago. So this is a very encouraging sign for next quarters as we believe the market is going to recover, which is also a bit back to your third question, right, around the 4,000 barrier on the market that has been reached. As I mentioned, the customers on average have priced up 30% versus the peak cocoa prices, which is on average, again, I'm not going to talk about the individual customers, which is on average, again, sufficient to cover price levels where they are today. That will give oxygen to the business and the chocolate market, so we do believe we will see some increased activity promotion in the market together with, again, customers adopting and adjusting to the increased prices, so that's part of the increased momentum that we see happening towards the half year too. Thank you. Our next question comes from Joern Iffert from UBS. Your line is now open. Please go ahead. Thank you very much. Two questions, please. The first one is coming back, what the industry is doing to stimulate the chocolate market volumes? According to your market intelligence, I mean, would you be surprised if we structure lower list prices of the consumer players in the next one or two years, or would you expect really more its marketing budgets going up and you see here and there some temporary promotions? This would be the first question, please. And the second question, if you allow me, sorry, I was a bit late to the call and sorry when you've elaborated on this, but the midterm targets after the CEO change, I mean, are the midterm targets confirmed or could also be the case that maybe here and there some contracts are not prolonged in outsourcing, that there's a setback first before the midterm targets could start to kick in again? Tha nk you very much. Thanks, Jürgen, for your questions. On the first one, we have a very diverse group of customers, as you know very well, from artisans to the big FMCG companies. I am not going to talk on their behalf of what they can or should be doing, but I do expect, as I mentioned, that they will continue to put investments into the chocolate category. I mean, at the end of the day, even if some promotions were dialed back, chocolate is a category where consumers react and respond on promotions. So once the margins have been restored also for them, I'm sure they will reorient to those categories that are the most engaging for the consumers. How and which tools and levers, I mean, I think I will leave up to them. In terms of the midterm guidance, we absolutely believe, and you will remember that in the past we talked about the 3%-4% market growth and then a 10% EBIT margin. The 3%-4% market growth, we absolutely believe we're turning back to that. The question, of course, how fast now, but I do think we do believe that the turn has been set there. So we certainly believe that we're going there. After the delay, of course, we've seen in the last few years, year and a half. In terms of profitability, this business absolutely can step up profitability. There is no change in that belief or ambition. Now, when you talk about the 10%, of course, we have to nuance the metric a little bit because we used to be a year and a half, Barry Callebaut was a CHF 8 billion company. Now we're a CHF 15 billion company. So as a percentage, of course, that has a different meaning. So it's also important to look at the EBIT or profit before tax per ton. But the profit step-up ambition is certainly still there. There is a lot of opportunity in this business to move ahead, and that's one of the things I have in mind as well as we are navigating through the end, hopefully, of the market disruption as we've seen it. Thank you. Our next question comes from Antoine Prévot from BofA. Your line is now open. Please go ahead. Yeah. Hi. Good morning, everyone. With cocoa price falling down, how are you seeing in terms of your ability to pass on financing costs still to your customer? I mean, ultimately, your bonds and balance sheet have kind of a long duration, right? And so with cocoa price falling, is it still kind of an easy discussion? Pass on those financing costs. Thank you. Yeah. As you know, we have in the majority of our business, we have a real-time costing, and financing cost is part of what we are pricing through. That counts both ways, right? That counts up and down. So as we are decreasing our debt and our exposure on that front and our financing cost, that obviously has also repercussions there. And that's so you can imagine that we continue to do that going forward. Yeah. And at the same time, we are working with our customers, and that's probably the most important thing. We're working with our customers really to work on the cash cycle in general, which is where we really have the big wins working on bean blending, diversifying origin mix for both us and our customers. The differences in differentials, the differences in cash intensity of different origins has increased over the last year and a half. So there is a key optimization to be done by being more flexible on origins and on blending, and that's where Barry Callebaut absolutely has a big advantage as we are present as a market leader in all the origins. We have been stepping up our bean blending capabilities. So that's, first of all, the first lever that we play and discuss about with our customers to seek that win-win from that angle. Thank you. Our next question comes from Alex Sloane from Barclays. Your line is now open. Please go ahead. Oh, yeah. Thanks for taking the question. Just one, Peter, you referenced a few times customer orders being 20% higher. Do you mind just explaining what exactly you mean by that and when and how that translates to your kind of reported volume growth? And then just on the free cash flow, I appreciate you're not going into detail today, but you historically gave that rule of thumb, GBP 100 per ton moves, circa CHF 75 million change in working capital. I mean, if we applied that to the kind of current spot levels, it would look like the free cash flow for the full year could be quite a bit higher than the guide you gave in November, maybe closer to CHF 2 billion versus that CHF 1 billion guide. I appreciate that's going to be H2 weighted. But is there anything else we should consider with regard to that rule of thumb as to why it might be different this year? Thank you. Yes. It was around how the customer coverage being higher translates in. Oh, yeah. Sorry. Yes. I forgot your first question. Sorry. Yes. So as you know, we are forward-selling business, right? So we have basically six months, you can say, forward-selling, and then we close contracts with our customers on that horizon. Now there's no longer with the flat market basically now. So the forward prices, six, 12 months from now, are at the same level as the nearby prices. So there's no incentive for our customers to wait for lower prices. We've seen this increase of portfolio that I have been talking about. So that's the visibility that we have. Of course, there is still some flexibility to call off orders. There's some flexibility in the market with our customers to do that. So this is part of the answer. Calling it off is then the next step in doing all of this. But that's how it basically then translates in the actual sales that we are having forward. But it is for sure an encouraging sign of the future market and sales evolution for BC. On your question on cash flow, I obviously was expecting that. Now, this is a sales and revenue update, so I'm not going to get into a lot of new details. But yes, we've guided the market to CHF 1 billion positive cash for the fiscal year, assuming a price range close to the 5,000 range that then should deliver us this leverage below 3.5 in combination with all our efforts that we're doing that I talked about in the call as well. We also said that half year one would be negative free cash and half year two would be the moment where we generate the positive free cash. That phasing is still there, obviously, because the seasonality is certainly there. We've been buying a lot of beans in November, December, and right now. Now, with the bean price going down, obviously, that helps, right? So that will improve that position that we've been talking about before. It will also improve to some extent what we had forecasted for half year one, be it that there's a bit of phasing, right? It doesn't happen immediately. And we have also this letter of credit facility that I talked about before, which helps to smoothen the impact of cash when it goes up. We're no longer exposed to margin calls when the bean price goes up to an immediate magnitude. It also phases a bit backwards when the bean prices come down. But overall, I mean, yes, the rule of thumb and the lowering of the bean price obviously helps in reducing especially our inventory values. Thank you. Our next question comes from David Roux from Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open. Please go ahead. Hi, Peter. I've got two questions. So the first one is just on the impact from the factory closure in North America. Can you quantify the volume impact from the Saint-Hyacinthe closure? I mean, my understanding was this was limited to three weeks, and the factory has about 300-400 kilotons of annual chocolate capacity. So suggest to me that excluding the impact, North America volumes were actually closer to flat. Perhaps you can just confirm this. And then the second point is just going back to your comments around the guidance, which, as you pointed to, was underpinned by an assumption of the bean price around GBP 5,000 per ton. I mean, given that we're now near a GBP 3,000 level, is there not upside risk to this guidance? I mean, notably on free cash flow and also profit before tax. Thanks very much. Thanks, David. On the North American volume, yeah, it's still high. I think it's probably about half of what we've seen in North America in the quarter has been driven by the decline that we've seen in North America. So remember the - 14% year on year in quarter one. About half is linked to this temporary pause of the Saint-Hyacinthe plant, which, again, as I mentioned, is behind us. So we don't expect significant impact in Q2, maybe some residual effect of ramping up with some customers, but it's mainly been in Q1, about 50%. Don't forget that the North American market as such is also still down. If you look at Nielsen, it's about 6% down in the first quarter. So you could argue that without Saint-Hyacinthe, we're more or less in line with the market in North America. So about half is Saint-Hyacinthe, but the other half is more general market and macro, which continues to be complicated still in North America. On the second question, I think you came back on the free cash flow guidance for the full year around the 5,000 level. I mean, I can just repeat maybe what I mentioned before, right? I'm not going to give a more specific guidance at this point, but obviously, we do see that as a tailwind that will help to get our inventories down, be it with a bit of phasing and again with the bulk of our cash flow generation being in the second half of the year. Thank you. Our next question comes from Tom Sykes from Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open. Please go ahead. Yeah. Thank you. So just on the volume guidance, what are you assuming about the Nielsen market sellout, if you like, and what are you assuming about customer inventory levels? I mean, you've said before that some customer inventories are low, and then you say that Gourmet is coming off high levels of customer inventory. So if you do see an improvement in restocking, do you think that'll be in food manufacturing? Interestingly, do you think that'll also be in cocoa? And then could you just help in terms of the SG&A reduction? Because a lot of the temporary increase in SG&A was because the pricing was going up so quickly, and you needed people to reprice contracts. So given that the price is falling so quickly, why do you not need those people to remain in the admin position to reprice things on the way down? What is it you're not doing on the way down that you were doing on the way up, please? Yeah. Thanks, Tom, for those questions. On Nielsen, yes, in general, we have seen lower stock levels at some of our customers, which is probably also linked to having people like me as their CFOs trying to keep stocks down when the value is really up. So I don't think they will immediately go back to that. And long story short, I'm not calculating that we're going to have a big effect from stocking up again, but much rather from the market turning into more positive territory and consumers, again, adjusting to the bean prices that are now translated into the market. In Gourmet, indeed, we had a bit of a slightly different story or situation where some of our Gourmet customers really had high stocks, and then cycling them out has impacted the Gourmet business a bit over the last few quarters. But yeah, I think that's what we see. So looking forward at Nielsen, it's really about consumer adjusting to the higher prices and our customers having and seeing more space given the lower bean prices. On SG&A, yeah, I mean, we had some offsetting costs, as I did mention in previous calls, in some of the saving programs that we had that were needed. I think fundamentally, our pricing mechanics are similar: pricing up, going down. But there's, of course, a few elements that have been quite disruptive over the last year. And I just want to quote two. One is the whole tariff situation in North America, which required exceptional interventions. Now, I assume that's not going to be the same in the next year than it has been in the last year. Secondly, also, we had to do some upgrades in the way we do it and to make our systems and our process a bit more robust to enable the frequency of pricing up or down in some of those extra areas. So there's a few areas that I believe we can—we've implemented that we can cycle out. But obviously, we have similar dynamics in pricing up and pricing down in general. Thank you. This concludes our Q&A session for today. So I'll hand back over to Peter for closing remarks. All right. Hey, thanks to everybody for joining our call today and for your questions, both on the part that Patrick presented and myself. Appreciate that. The IR team is available for any further questions you might have, as always. And we are looking forward to seeing some of you at the Innovation Day we have in Wieze in a few weeks from now. So thanks for your attention, and have a good day. This concludes today's call. You may now disconnect your lines.