Good morning, welcome to Richemont 2023 Full Year Results Presentation. Thank you to those in person for coming to Geneva. Much appreciated. Also to those of you watching the webcast. I am Sophie Cagnard, and joining today from Richemont are Johann Rupert, Chairman; Jérôme Lambert, CEO; Burkhart Grund, CFO; Cyrille Vigneron, Cartier CEO; and Nicolas Bos, Van Cleef & Arpels CEO. As usual, the company announcement and financial presentation can be downloaded from richemont.com. The replay of this video webcast will be available on our website today from 3:00 P.M. Geneva time. Before we begin, may I draw your attention to the disclaimer on our presentation and company announcement regarding forward-looking statements as defined in the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. First, Jérôme will take you through the year's highlights and sales, and then Burkhart will review our business areas, the group's financials, and key ESG initiatives. He will then hand back to Jérôme for the conclusion, which will be followed by a Q&A session. I will now hand over to Jérôme. Thank you, Sophie. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining us today. I'm pleased to report that, notwithstanding the ongoing, volatile and uncertain environment, our financial results reached several new heights this year. Sales for the year rose by EUR 3.2 billion to close to EUR 20 billion, having increased by 14% at constant exchange rate and 19% at actual exchange rates. Operating profit rose by EUR 1.3 billion to EUR 5 billion, partially benefiting from lower one time items compared to the prior year. These strong results led to an operating margin of 25.2%, up 280 basis points year-on-year. Profit for the year from continuing operation increased by 60% to EUR 3.9 billion. Cash flow from operating activities reached EUR 4.5 billion, and our net cash position increased by EUR 1.8 billion from last September to EUR 6.5 billion. The strong result achieved by our group were broad-based. Sales increased across all regions, distribution channels and business areas with double-digit increase in almost all regions, led by particularly strong growth in Japan and Europe. Retail sales once again showed a marked outperformance with a solid double-digit progression, reflecting continued demand for the high-quality craftsmanship and excellence of our products. Our direct-to-client shares has increased overall to a present 74%, yet another increase versus prior year, highlighting the continued transformation of our business model. Finally, through our significant growth across all business areas, the operating margin improved across all continuing business areas, as Burkhart will detail shortly. The group further progress on its ESG journey. Let me share a few highlights. We have reinforced our ESG platform's foundation and strengthened our commitment to embedding ESG in our operation. This is evidenced by both our Chief Sustainability Officer and Chief People Officer and CEO of region joining the senior executive committee this year. We have phased out PVC, not our PVC. Phased out PVC from our products and packaging by our target timeline and reached 97% use of renewable electricity. We have been recognized as an employer of excellence in Switzerland, France, and China. Richemont was not only nominated for the third consecutive year as the winner of the 2022 100 Excellence Employers of China award, as well as the 2022 Excellence in Diversity and Inclusion award sponsored by 51job. Let me now walk you through the group sales performance, first by region, then by distribution channel. What we saw this year is the group's strongest performance in Japan and across Europe. Japan led the way with 56% increase in sales at constant exchange rate, with strong double-digit increase across all channels and business areas. Sales in Europe were 31% higher than the previous year, driven by outstanding growth in both retail and wholesale channel, a solid performance across all business areas, with strength in main location led by France, Italy and Switzerland. Sales included strong contribution from locals and benefited from inbound tourism, mainly from the U.S. and the Middle East. In Asia Pacific, mainland China and Macau were heavily impacted by health restrictions during the year. Excluding these two location and Hong Kong, sales in the region rose by over 30%, with significant double increase in Southeast Asia, most notably in Australia, Singapore and Thailand. Sales in Middle East and Africa region grew by 13%, driven by solid domestic inbound tourist spending, predominantly in Dubai and in Qatar. The largest absolute contribution to group sales growth came from Europe and the Americas, with each growing by around EUR 1 billion. Sales in the fourth quarter progressed by 22% year-on-year, with double-digit increase in all region. On top of that, what was a very challenging comparative with the highest growth rate generated by Japan and Asia Pacific. It is worth highlighting that the first quarter also showed a significant improvement compared to the third quarter in both America and Asia Pacific. The latter benefiting from a combination of the Chinese New Year holiday and the easing of restriction in China. Let us now turn to sales by distribution channel, starting with retail. At constant rate, where our directly operated store contributed to 68% of the group sales compared to 66% in the prior year. The solid 17% growth came from on top of a challenging comparative prior year. There were double-digit increase across almost all regions, notably in Europe and Japan, led by strong growth at the Jewellery Maison and the Specialist Watchmaker. Retail sales benefited from 23 new stores opening, mainly in Asia Pacific region. Fourth quarter sales posted a sharp 24% increase over the prior year period. The online channel, comprising the group's online sales directly generated by the group's Maison and Watchfinder, contributed 6% of group sales, broadly in line with the previous year. Sales rose by 6% with growth led by double-digit increase in America, Japan, Middle East, and Africa. Performance in the channel was fueled by a robust growth in the Specialist Watchmaker, which showed an increase in all region. Sales in the fourth quarter were slightly up year-on-year with previous year. Finally, wholesale sales comprising 26% of group sales. Wholesale grew by 8% with strong double-digit increase in all region except Asia Pacific, and it was driven by most business areas. Fourth quarter sales significantly increased year-on-year while facing a very challenging comparative in the prior year period. As a consequence, the group's proportion of direct-to-client sales, which includes sales in our directly operating store and online retail sales, increased to 74% of group sales. The Jewelry Maison continue to have the highest rate of direct-to-client sales at 83%. The Specialist Watchmaker had the highest progression in their direct-to-client sales from 51%-56%, sustained by the development of their retail and online capabilities. Burkhart will now take you through the year highlight by business area. Over to you, Burkhart. Thank you, Jérôme. Let me review our business areas with all numbers at actual rates and starting with the Jewellery Maisons. Sales increased by 21% for the year, with broad-based growth across all regions and channels. Sales were particularly strong in Japan, Europe, and in the retail channel. The fourth quarter saw a 27% increase in sales year-on-year, with very strong growth across all regions. The Jewellery Maisons operating margin reached almost 35%, a 60 basis point improvement over the prior year. This high margin reflects the good operating leverage generated by a combination of the sharp sales increase, increased utilization of manufacturing facilities, and well-controlled costs, while continuing to invest in distribution and communication. Let us now look at the main developments during the year. The year saw strong performance across all Jewellery Maisons, all product segments, and all price points, especially from our Maisons' iconic product lines. In jewelry, this included Panthère and Trinity at Cartier, Alhambra and Fauna at Van Cleef & Arpels, and Macri and Opera Tulle at Buccellati. In watches, there was notable performance from Panthère and Santos at Cartier and from Extraordinary Objects at Van Cleef & Arpels. In December, Cartier relaunched the iconic Grain de Café jewelry collection, which was originally introduced in the 1930s by Jeanne Toussaint, with early signs of strong demand. Van Cleef & Arpels has continued to extend its Perlée collection, both for jewelry and timepieces. Our Maisons are increasing their manufacturing capacity in order to support the strong demand they are experiencing with the opening of a new manufacturing site in Italy for Cartier and the expansion of two ateliers in Italy for Buccellati. Van Cleef & Arpels is currently investing in a new manufacturing facility in Lyon, with additional manufacturing sites to be added over the coming years. Cartier has continued its store upgrade program, with 51% of stores already under its new concept, a material increase from 38% at the end of the previous year. Recent reopenings include at Rue de la Paix in Paris, George Street in Sydney, and Maison Cheongdam in Seoul. Van Cleef & Arpels, with an even 11 net new store openings, reached out into new territories with a store opening in Auckland, New Zealand, and opened in new cities such as San Francisco. The 5 new boutiques in Buccellati included mostly openings in Asia. There have been several notable ESG initiatives during the year. Cartier's new manufacturing site in Torino assures environmental best practices. These include solar panels expected to provide 20% of the site's electrical needs and an investment into a hydroelectric power station that produces energy to power the facility in Torino, as well as a new facility being built in Valenza. Van Cleef & Arpels continued its De Mains en Mains initiative to support the transmission of know-how in jewelry. A few months ago, Buccellati achieved RJC COP certification and should be RJC CoC certified by December 2023. Let us now review our Specialist Watchmakers, where sales rose by 13% for the full year. These were double-digit increases at many maisons and across almost all regions, except for Asia-Pacific, which posted a slight reduction. By channel, both retail and online retail rose by double digits. Fourth quarter sales also increased by double digits, led by retail sales. The business area's operating margin was up 170 basis points to 19%. This 24% increase in operating result outpaced the rate of increase in sales, with this strong operating leverage largely due to the combination of double-digit sales growth, pricing power, as well as continued cost discipline. Let's now look at some of the key developments over the past year. There was solid performance from both iconic core collections and bestsellers, including notably Polo at Piaget, Reverso at Jaeger-LeCoultre, pilots watches at IWC, Overseas at Vacheron Constantin, Luminor at Panerai, and Lange 1 at A. Lange & Söhne. Continued increase in direct-to-client sales, now at 56% or 500 basis points higher than the prior year, underlines the successful retail transformation from having a majority of sales in wholesale to a majority of sales directly with end clients, including the franchise monobrand boutiques that are accounted for in, under the wholesale channel. Proportionate sales in the monobrand environment increased to close to 3/4 of sales as a consequence. There have been several flagship store openings aimed at providing an elevated client experience. Would be good if the prompter would advance now. Thank you. Which, at these openings include the new IWC Taikoo Hui store in Shanghai, where clients can immerse themselves into distinctive themed environments to discover the various product collections. Vacheron Constantin's reopened flagship store in the Dubai Mall offers the opportunity to interact with a watchmaker on-site or browse the Vacheron Constantin archives digitally in a large-screen format, among other unique features. The further rollout of the innovative TimeVallée multibrand boutique concept included 16 new openings during the year, bringing the total now to 38 boutiques. New openings have taken place in China and also in other key cities such as Doha or Lucerne. New formats are being tested, such as a new digital boutique in India and a first-ever opening on a cruise ship. This year, the Specialist Watchmakers have strengthened the role of their heads of sustainability, either through recruitments or upskilling, making these positions more strategic and embedded in business decision-making. All the Maisons went through an ESG skills development process, including at CEO level. Finally, let us move to the other business area, which primarily includes the group's fashion and accessories Maisons, the group's unbranded watch component manufacturing and real estate activities, amongst others. Sales rose by 19% year-on-year, sustained by strong performance by the fashion and accessories Maisons, while Watchfinder sales were negatively impacted by lower demand from the U.K. domestic clientele and a subdued pre-owned watch market. The growth in sales was led by very high growth rates in Americas and Middle East and Africa. There was strength across all channels. Sales in the fourth quarter recorded a double-digit progression equally led by the Americas and the Middle East and Africa. The negative Watchfinder impact was more than offset by the EUR 94 million profit generated by our fashion and accessories maisons due to higher sales, improved pricing power, and strong financial discipline. Overall, including all activities, the segment's operating result reached EUR 59 million. Let us now look at some highlights of the past year. We have seen strong growth from collections such as the Meisterstück writing instruments at Montblanc, the Crown Sport clothing at Peter Millar, and footwear at G/FORE, and from the Brillant and Tempête leather goods at Delvaux. Alaïa and Chloé have been acclaimed for the new collections presented during the year, leveraging the momentum gained since the appointment of their creative directors, namely Pieter Mulier and Gabriela Hearst. Another highlight has been the opening of the Montblanc Haus in Hamburg, dedicated to the maison's purpose to inspire writing and showcase the history and heritage of writing instruments. Sales have benefited from enhancements in the retail network, namely Montblanc's new boutique concept in Paris, featuring a new in-store experience. Key refurbishments at Chloé with improved performance in the refurbished stores. Alaïa and Delvaux have entered new regions with their first boutiques in the U.S., in New York, SoHo, and in the Middle East, in Dubai, respectively. Demonstrating continued progress in ESG, Chloé has introduced the Chloé Vertical Initiative to place a unique digital ID on product labels, enabling users to trace their items from field to finished piece and access their ownership certificate as well as care, repair, and resell information. Pieter Mulier has increased the use of recycled fabrics and upcycling unused products, while Chloé already used 62% of lower-impact materials in its spring/summer 2023 ready-to-wear collection. Let us now turn to the group's financials, starting with gross profit, which increased significantly by 23% to EUR 13.7 billion. This resulted in the gross margin rising by 200 basis points to an all-time high of 68.7%. The main drivers of the increase were a combination of more favorable geographical sales and channel mix, price increases, and higher manufacturing capacity utilization, which more than offset higher input costs. Let us now look at operating expenses, which were 17% higher than the prior year, while group sales increased by 19%, partly benefiting from lower one-time items. At constant exchange rates, operating expenses rose by 12% versus a 14% sales increase. I will now take you through the expenses by category. Selling and distribution expenses increased by 19% at actual exchange rates and by 15% at constant exchange rates, accounting for 54% of total operating expenses compared to 53% in the prior year. Most of the increase related to the development and enhancement of our retail network and the growth in retail sales, notably in Japan and South Korea, where many leases have variable rents. As a percentage of sales, selling and distribution expenses represented 23% of group sales in line with the prior year. Communication expenses were 17% higher at actual exchange rates and 12% higher at constant exchange rates to support sales. They represented close to 10% of group sales in line with a normalized 9%-10% range. At around 1% of sales, now that YNAP is classified under discontinued operations, fulfillment expenses increased by 19% at actual exchange rates and by 13% at constant exchange rates. Administrative expenses rose by 20% and by 13% at constant exchange rates, mainly due to a stronger Swiss franc and planned investments in IT. At 8.5% of sales, administrative expenses were in line with the prior year. Other expenses of EUR 103 million were EUR 96 million lower than the prior year, primarily due to lower one-time items in the year under review. As a reminder, prior year numbers included charges related to the suspension of commercial activities in Russia. This year under review, we incurred one-time charges of EUR 66 million net, the main element being EUR 55 million of Watchfinder goodwill impairment charges. The conclusion, net operating expenses as a percentage of group sales improved from 44.3% a year ago to 43.5% this year. Operating profit reached EUR 5 billion, a new high for the group. This represents a 34% increase over the prior year and outpaced the 19% sales increase. As a result, the operating margin rose 280 basis points to 25.2% compared with 22.4% in the prior year. Let us now review the rest of the P&L items below the operating profit line, starting with financial income. Net finance costs improved to EUR 314 million compared to EUR 841 million in the prior year. This EUR 527 million reduction was primarily related to the following items. Firstly, there were non-cash fair value adjustments of EUR 54 million compared to EUR 538 million in the prior year, a EUR 484 million difference. These charges are linked to investments in a Farfetch convertible note as well as an option over additional shares in Farfetch China, whose values are driven by the variation of the underlying Farfetch share price, in addition to the group's investment in externally managed bond funds and money market funds. Secondly, net interest expenses, excluding those lease liabilities, improved by EUR 46 million compared to the prior year level. Finally, a positive EUR 56 million year-on-year gain on mark-to-market adjustment in respect of hedging activities was partly offset by a EUR 43 million increase in foreign exchange non-cash losses on monetary items. Sales at YNAP, now under discontinued operations, proved resilience given the challenging environment for digital distribution pure players, rising by 4% compared to the prior year. The operating loss of EUR 3.6 billion was mainly driven by the EUR 3.4 billion write-down of YNAP net assets. Over the full holding period of YNAP, the sum of both positive and negative valuation adjustments on acquisition and disposal of NAP and YOOX investments amounted to a negative EUR 1.3 billion. As of today, there is no change to the timing of the expected closing of the transaction previously communicated to you, this being by the end of calendar year 2023. Let us now turn to the profit for the year. Profit from continuing operations progressed significantly, rising 60% to EUR 3.9 billion, with the profit margin increasing by 500 basis points to now 19.6%. The increase primarily reflected the higher operating profit and lower net finance costs just mentioned, partly offset by higher taxes. Profit for the year of EUR 301 million was impacted by the EUR 3.6 billion loss from discontinued operations. As indicated last November, our effective tax rate for the year for continuing operations was 18% on the lower side of our envisaged 18%-21% range, absent any special unforeseen items. Cash flow generated from operating activities was robust at EUR 4.5 billion, reflecting a strong operating profit from continuing operations, offset by increased working capital requirements, mainly due to higher inventories to support sales growth and our further retailization of the group's businesses. Let us now turn to gross capital expenditure, which amounted to EUR 981 million. As a percentage of group sales, this item reached 4.4% of sales, broadly in line with a year ago. 48% of gross capital expenditure related to point-of-sale investments, including internal and franchise boutiques, as well as external points of sale. Most of the spend was allocated to boutique renovations, upgrades, and relocations, notably at Cartier. This included renovations on Rue de la Paix in Paris, SKP Mall in Beijing, and Fifth Avenue in New York. Several additional maisons opened stores at the Chengdu SKP Mall in China, including Van Cleef & Arpels, Vacheron Constantin, and Delvaux, to name just a few. Other investments, which made up 33% of CapEx, mainly related to IT spend. Finally, manufacturing accounted for the remaining 19% of gross capital expenditure, related primarily to R&D, increased jewelry capacity and machinery, mostly at the Jewellery Maisons. Let us now turn to free cash flow, which amounted to EUR 2.8 billion. The EUR 213 million difference mainly reflected marginally lower cash from operating activities, higher CapEx, and the non-recurrence of the EUR 86 million proceeds from the disposal of an investment property in the prior year. These items were partly offset by lower acquisition of other non-current assets, given that last year's numbers included the investment in the China joint venture with Alibaba and Farfetch. Now on to our balance sheet, which remains solid, with shareholders' equity accounting for 47% of the total. Net cash amounted to EUR 6.5 billion at the 31st of March 2023, up EUR 1.3 billion over the prior year as a result of the items discussed on the previous slide, notwithstanding an EUR 810 million increase in total dividend cash outflow. The board has proposed a total dividend of CHF 3.5 Swiss francs per 1 A share or 10 B shares, made up of an ordinary dividend of CHF 2.5 Swiss francs per 1 A share or 10 B shares, up by 11% over the prior year, another special dividend of CHF 1 Swiss franc per 1 A share or 10 B shares, subject obviously to shareholders' approval at the annual general meeting on the sixth of September 2023. This proposed increase of the ordinary dividend and the additional special dividend reflected the group's strong results, significant cash flow generation, and robust net cash position. Let me now share an update on our ESG progress. In terms of external recognition, Richemont was acknowledged as an industry leader with an double A rating by MSCI for its low exposure and management of ESG risks, notably in terms of responsible sourcing and carbon footprint management. Richemont received a 13.9 risk rating score from the ESG rating agency Sustainalytics for its low risk exposure with strong management positioning the group among the top 7% of the 20,000 companies rated. The group was also recognized as one of the world's best employers by Forbes for the third consecutive year. On the environment pillar of ESG, Richemont has been acknowledged by CDP for its actions in water management, improving to a B score in 2022 for our second-year reporting. This year, for the first time, we disclosed our water withdrawal from surface water and seawater in aligned with GRI standards. A member of the RE100 since 2021, we have reached 97% of renewable electricity across all our sites. We are well on track to achieve our ambitious goal of 100% renewable electricity for 2025. We have met another key milestone with a complete phase-out of PVC, as discussed by Jérôme Lambert already, from our products and packaging. In line with our commitment to monitoring resource consumption and reducing waste sent to landfill decreased by 61% in 2022, amounting to a reduction of 870 tons. Finally, as part of our strategy to manage greenhouse gas emissions, we have successfully mitigated 89%... Sorry, migrated 89% of our servers to the cloud, reducing our energy consumption and optimizing our data storage. In terms of advancing our social priorities, we value being named one of the most attractive employers in Universum's national rankings for Switzerland, France, and China. These accolades affirm Richemont's commitment to offering a strong workplace culture based on trust and creating opportunities for our people. We are notably fully certified gender equal pay by the EQUAL-SALARY Foundation in Switzerland and France, two of our largest markets in term of headcount, and are on track to become 100% equal pay certified worldwide by next year. Our group has a healthy gender balance, the percentage of women reaching 57% of the total workforce, 40% of our senior executive committee, and 31% of our board. Now turning to governance, where we initiate a comprehensive changes across our group functions, regions, and Maisons to fully integrate ESG principles into our strategic and operational decision-making processes. Reinforcing the importance of this transversal discipline, we appointed Dr. Bérangère Ruchat, the group's Chief Sustainability Officer, to the senior executive committee. Taking compliance-driven approach, our ESG reporting is now in accordance with the GRI standards. We have added content to meet new EU and Swiss regulatory requirements, including the new Swiss conflict minerals and child labor due diligence and transparency obligations. Long, long title, I know. As well as the EU's Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive. We have further strengthened our ESG framework's foundations with priorities drawn from an updated double materiality matrix to best identify and assess ESG impacts. Finally, we upskilled our 250 business leaders, including all the CEOs of our Maisons and regions, with dedicated ESG trainings. We also rolled out a global training on the use of our new internal speak-up platform. As a next step, we will extend the platform to external stakeholders to allow them to voice their concerns and contribute to Richemont's ongoing commitment to transparency and ethical conduct. I'll hand back over to you, Jérôme. Thank you, Burkhart. Before closing, I would like to ahead of our calendar 2023. There is this exciting news that happened this other 20. We can start by speaking from Alaïa that has known a remarkable. Also from Chloé that has been a. It stability. What are you signing? Have you stopped rolling? Because of the sound, I guess. Okay. Thank you. Before closing, I would like to take you. Adjustment between sound and image. Now we have the sound. Okay. Now we had the image, not the sound. Thank you. As said, let me take you through some exciting elements happening this year with fashion and accessory. Indeed, this year, fashion accessory rebounded, not only rebounding strongly, but has reached record high sales at this time. This growth trajectory has been further confirmed this year with the new sales. Voilà. Thank you. Record for the category, posting solid growth and a profitable result for the first time since 2019. Looking at the FN Maison individually, as I was at the opportunity to present you just before, we had notable performance this year. I could say again this year, I spoke from Alaïa and Pieter Mulier appointment, since the Pieter Mulier appointment as creative director in 2021. It's amazing to see how our Alaïa is growing, both in term of sales, but also in term of desirability collection after collection. It has allowed Alaïa now to expand its retail network, with Alaïa coming back to the U.S. with a brand-new shop in Soho neighborhood in New York. Chloé, as I said, is also in a positive dynamic, since the appointment of its creative director in 2020, with new aesthetic across its product offering. Finally, Delvaux that is enjoying a successful journey since its integration into the group. This year is the first full year, in fact, within Richemont, and it achieved a very sharp growth since that acquisition. It has been, it's remarkable, the positive reception of the latest collection have been remarkable. It's true for Tempête or that L'Humour Brillant that you mentioned, but also for Lingualine that is being introduced this year. For Delvaux, it's also an important year in term of retail development, with a new shop in Dubai or in Tokyo, Omotesando. Not to forget the very strong sales momentum at G/FORE and at Peter Millar. In the case of G/FORE, supported by an impressive growth with a blossoming expansion into Asia, notably South Korea. As we said, Peter Millar is impressive by both its growth and size today. The success illustrates this Maison remarkable journey, capitalizing on their heritage, craftsmanship, creativity, combined as well with the infrastructure and backing of Richemont, our backbone. We'll continue to support all our Maison to enable them to flourish. If you allow me, let's focus maybe on the reason behind that success. Let's say that the success of this year is a first result of an unrelenting focus of the group for five priorities across all the Richemont Maisons. First, enhancing the desirability of our Maison. Here, it's the creative directors of our Maison that have been playing a remarkable role, and that creative capacity have been reinforced with the arrival of Pieter Mulier at Alaïa, Gabriela Hearst at Chloé, or Marco Tomasetta at Montblanc. There were already talented creative framework in place here at Delvaux or at Peter Millar and G/FORE, of course. The increased appeal of our LVMH Maison has translated into higher traffic in our stores and our website. It increased our pricing power. The second big focus of the category has been on local clientele, and that across all geographic. It has enabled us to manage the fluctuating trends at international level. They've been providing us as well a solid base for future growth. Delvaux has been a prime example of the success of this focus over the past year, consolidating a strong clientele base in South Korea and Japan, 2 major market for the Maison. Third pillar, our increased ambition in leather goods, symbolized by the successful, again, integration of Delvaux and accelerating building capacities across all Maison from the creative side, with their product development, but also through the manufacturing. Fourth pillar of effort, of success, the promotion of the strong focus on direct-to-client engagement, with two first element. First, the upgrade of our retail network, with strategic opening this year for Alaïa in New York, Delvaux in Dubai and Tokyo. Also, not to forget the new concept shop of Montblanc, reopened in Champs-Élysées boutique in Paris. Second, there is the acceleration of our strategy to create the ultimate omnichannel experience with our colleague of Helena. Finally, our ability to excel in our operation in order to offer our clients the products they desire at the right place consistently. Over the past year, we have strengthened our teams across the whole organization, reinforced agility and flexibility in our operation, and accelerated our time to market and manage our inventories effectively. We remain focused on these priorities. It's just the start of the journey. We raise the bar for all of them and as we progress in our ambition to drive a sustainable and profitable growth in the category. Now, a few more words to conclude before we move to the Q&A. Our strong operational and financial performance was highlighted by sales reaching close to EUR 20 billion, with double-digit increase in all business area. Operating profit reached EUR 5 billion, a strong improvement in profitability, with all business areas generating higher sales and profit. Our cash flow from operating activities was solid at EUR 4.5 billion. We have significantly advanced our journey in luxury new retail with the signing of an agreement last August with Farfetch and Alabbar, under which YNAP and our Maison will adopt Farfetch Platform Solutions. The agreement is subject to a number of conditions, including the receipt of certain major control approvals. Closing is expected by the end of calendar 23. By elevating both our Chief Sustainability Officer and our Chief People Officer and CEO of Region to the Senior Executive Committee, we have made an increased commitment to embedding ESG in our operation. We have further strengthened our ESG team at the Maison and at Richemont and will continue to step up our ambition as a group in this important area. We have a strong balance sheet, as Burkhart said, giving the group the flexibility and adaptability to nurture our Maisons to reach their full potential in a sustainable and responsible manner, seize opportunity as they may arise, and also weather economic cycle while delivering attractive returns to our shareholder. We are confident both in our resilience and long-term prospects. Our Maisons are strong, well-positioned to meet local demand and cater for future growth in tourism, including from a more significant resumption of travel by Chinese customers beyond neighboring markets. We have flexibility in our manufacturing facilities and newly added capacity at our Jewellery Maison. This give us the agility required to navigate today in uncertain macroeconomic environment. We are well-positioned to deliver profitable and responsible growth over time. I would like to close this presentation by thanking all our colleagues for their commitment, creativity, and resourcefulness over what has been a remarkable year in a very volatile and uncertain environment. Together, we craft the future. This concludes our presentation. We now open the floor to your questions. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Jérôme. Before you ask the questions, please clearly announce your name and company's name. I saw Susanne, and I think it was Ashley Wallace. It's difficult because more or less everybody afterwards, Louise Singlehurst. Then we'll start Rogerio Fujimori, and so on, because otherwise we'll too difficult. Please, Susanne, go ahead. And thereafter, Ashley Wallace. Thank you for taking my question. Susanne Buss from UBS. I have three. First of all, maybe would you be able to comment a little bit more about the performance by nationality or region? I guess just to give us a little bit of color around the Chinese consumer last quarter, because I presume they started to travel, so it would be interesting to know. Also the American class to Europeans, just broadly speaking, to know how various clusters are performing given more travel. Also specifically, it would be interesting to hear your thoughts about the Americans, because as you've mentioned during the presentation, there was some improvement last quarter versus Q3, which is in stark comparison to your peers. I would imagine you're clearly doing better, that the brands are doing better, you're more higher-end positioned, but just any thoughts on that would be very helpful. Could we just stop there? That was just the one question. No, by the time you get to three, we're gonna forget one. I promise the other two We'll give you two more. Sophie, she can have two more. Jerome shall we have one, and then two, and then three? Okay. I promise the two other ones are very short. Okay, ask the other ones first. Are they yes or no questions, sir? Well, the second one is kind of yes or no, sir. No. Okay, one. Pricing. Was it pricing or Okay, sorry, one. Pardon me? Pricing. Sorry, could we stop at one. I'll give you two and three. Okay, perfect. Thank you. Well, I think we all answer one. The general resumption of purchasing in the United States was quicker time-wise than in China. You will recall that, guess it's a year ago, we said that China will take longer to open, which was contrary to the popular belief. It was simply because we had more information, and I would say better sources. Even highly informed Chinese friends and colleagues and our partners at Alibaba were surprised by the sudden lifting of the restrictions. Apparently this happened because a great number of football fans watched the World Cup, and they heard crowds. Initially, it was only focused on the players. When they started seeing people sitting without masks, local disturbances broke out, and they lifted. I actually told some Chinese friends that they would not be able to stop Omicron and may as well use it to have a type of vaccination for the population, because even as efficient as they are, they wouldn't stop it. Remember, it was first discovered in South Africa. We have Mediclinic in East London. We had the data. When I made that prediction it would take longer, it was expected. The next thing that we've seen, it was very traumatic. The Chinese saved an enormous amount of money during that period. It was a traumatic experience. It was a total lockdown. Their first expenditure was just human going out for dining, traveling. It was more spent on services. We've seen individuals traveling, so individuals have come to Europe and Hong Kong and Macau, et cetera, but not the tourist groups. The expenditure is rising, but it is not risen as of yet as it did in the United States. A little bit more caution, because they, even though they've spent a lot, they have not gone and crashed their credit cards. No, it's important to note that their behavior has been more sober and but it's carrying on. We know in terms of traveling, because of the pre-booking and the airlines and the hotels, that we shouldn't expect a lot of Chinese tourists to come in groups to Europe before the end of summer. That's just data-driven. In the United States, I'm always surprised that we as humans do not like to predict any discontinue. Things that get better, we always think are gonna get better, that's why going worse, we think they're always going to get worse and carry on. In the history of what I've read about economics and finance, we've never had a sustained period of five, eight, 10 years where the cost of capital was zero or close to zero. This is bound to have an effect. You will recall in the past, I've criticized the central banks, and I've also said it's unfair, and it would lead to social unrest. Now they contracted. To move the funds rate by 500 basis points in a year, when all the liquidity entered the banking and non-banking, shadow banking business, and then to increase interest rates by that much was really quite reckless. Of course, the first people that got caught were the bad executives who didn't learn banking 101, which is match your deposits with your liabilities. Do not. This was exacerbated by the enormous liquidity that entered the system with lower economic with lower borrowing demand. What did these idiots do? Bought long-dated bonds, long dated securities. Even criminal was that the FDIC, a share price goes down by 60%. As my son said, you'd think that they'd go and pay them a visit. I mean, a major bank. I mean, if I had to be a regulator, I see the share price goes down by 60%, I would have been there. Their risk officer was working remotely. A big number of SVB senior executives were working remotely. They assume moral risk by bailing them out. Now every depositor can go interest shopping with the hope that they'll be bailed out. The FDIC was not constructed to bail out Harry and Meghan and Oprah Winfrey, who had $500 million with SVB. It was to protect smaller. To answer America, do not look at Richemont or luxury goods. Look at the aim of the Federal Reserve Bank, which is to restrict, to bring down inflation. For that, they'll have to restrict credit. The sadness is that the farmer in the Midwest who wants to borrow money for a tractor, he's going or she is going to be affected, but there's already a contraction of credit. The United States will not be as buoyant as a year ago. Will it return? Yes. Will it be soon? I actually think we're in for a harder landing than we hope for, because we do expect it. Will it affect us? Yes, it'll affect everybody. However, we're lucky, as we've said better for us a few years ago, we fly on five engines. One engine has a misfire, we've got four more engines. At the time that it may slow down, China is picking up. When, for instance, the COVID restrictions, we just redirected some of our high jewelry and stock to Japan, where it boomed. One must anticipate these things. Will it be a boom year? I suspect that America started slowing down in November. Our results do not look. It says, Mr. Arnault highlighted that Sephora did well. They didn't speak about the rest too much. We've also had one maison that I'm not going to mention that had a very well, a good first quarter. Generally, we sense a slowdown in the United States. Is that a fair answer? Fair answer, yes. Okay. Now the next two are binary questions, you said. you can Okay. Fair enough. enough. Fair. On pricing, that's a very simple one. Can you tell us, that's maybe for Burkhart or Cyrille, Nicolas, what's been the pricing, you've implemented in April, especially for Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels? I will answer that one. Which is they didn't increase prices by as much as I wanted them to. No, they felt that one has to look over the medium to long term, and that we shouldn't be using shortages, et cetera, to raise prices. We have generally not increased prices as much as our competitors. Cartier, for instance, only took an increase in April. Don't look at Cartier and think price increases. Was the price single digits? I mean. Sorry? Anna, just one point there. Was the price single digits? I think someone wrote 10 percent Yes. if I recall correctly. That is incorrect. It's incorrect. it may have been between eight to 10 on some items, right? No. Listen. Listen. It's in the medium single figures. Okay. Okay? Thank you. The last one, I hope you will like that one because it's a bit more long term, not the classic short-term questions we ask. Maybe if you could tell us a little bit more about what you're doing on production capacity, because we've seen in the slides you've been investing a little bit more. Obviously, demand is really strong, it's a nice thing to see that you're seeing growth, sort of you believe in the business obviously in the long, long term as you're investing more. Last thing, Burkhart, I wanted to say, we've noticed the special dividend for a second time in a row, because I know last year no one noticed it. I just wanted to say that's been appreciated. Thank you. Apropos the special dividend, we look at our capital requirements over the next three to five years, and where we feel we have the capacity, we will return the capital. I promised 15% 10 years ago, compounded, and we're around about just above that full cut. I didn't know how bad things were gonna get. I should revise that somewhat. We're also getting another CHF 1 billion in November from the warrants. They've been very profitable for those who kept them, but we looked at that. In order to pay the dividend, we have to look at our capital commitments and what we need to. Remember, the one thing none of you have written about is the bonds that we issued. The what's it's 11 maturity. Point two, yeah. 11.2 years maturity, 1.3%. We suspected that the easy money would change sooner or later, that interest rates would go up. We have that capital available as well. It's really making sure that the next five to 10 years. We got stress tested during COVID. We forget 3 April years ago, we lost EUR 438 million in a month. One month. That's when Burkhart and I stopped sleeping. Me, immediately I extrapolated this by 12. You know, you start getting panic-stricken. Luckily, we actually came through and this company was stress tested. I really hope we do not go through that again. It now makes me sleep a lot better to know that we had the resilience and the flexibility and that our colleagues, even though some had to be persuaded, should I say, the Anglo-Saxon people took it to more quicker and more readily than the non-Anglo-Saxons in our company, but everybody got online. The special dividend is what it is. It's a special dividend. Thank you. Burkhart Yeah. You see why I said make it a special dividend. There's a manufacturing capacity. Yes. Yes, absolutely. Manufacturing. Sorry. In manufacturing. When it comes to production and manufacturing, maybe today at Richemont, roughly more than every four person or every four colleagues is working in production of logistic. It takes time to train, it takes time to develop capacity. We keep investing in our capacity. Last year, we said it was roughly 1,500 new colleagues that joined us in production. This year, I was checking the statistic, we are exactly in the same volume number. When it comes to facility, same story. We have two or three facilities opening on a yearly basis, mid-size, huh? Because we are not in mega factory, we are in mid-size factory. This year will not be different. We'll have three to five new facilities that will open either in Switzerland or in close Europe, between Italy, France or Germany. Maybe Cyrille and I don't know if, Nicolas want to comment. Yeah. further. You have been following us for quite some time, so you know, from our fiscal 2020 or basically calendar year 2019, how much we have grown, both, Van Cleef and Cartier. This requires additional volumes, of course. We have facilities for Cartier in France and Italy and Switzerland, and of course we had to expand. We have just reopened a manufacture in Torino, but of course this was in the making for three years. The other one coming in Valencia was also prepared before. We need this capacity extension. We also have a network of partner suppliers who we're also encouraged to also invest. There is this very strong demand in jewelry, especially branded jewelry, and we expect this to continue to grow. There is competition, but it's also a growing pie, so it requires additional capacity basically in all we control. It actually leads the excess demand. It's actually quite concerning at times, especially in watches, where the waiting list on some Langes and some of the watches, Vacheron, some Cartier pieces, we have to close it to two years. I constantly have to explain to, let's use Lange, that in order to make some of the Lange watches, the ones, you know, the sports Odysseus, you must have been a lady or a gentleman, a watchmaker for at least 15 years, probably 18 years. They say 20 years, to be able to put this, to make this watch. Not 20 years ago, there were not too many young people queueing up to be watchmakers in Glashütte. When we tell them it's actually limited by artisanal skills and hands and eyes, and please visit the factory before you telling us we creating artificial demand, then they get it. There are some clients that already own 10, 15 million EUR worth of watches that cannot understand it. It's not creating artificial demand. I did tell them to calm down on the communication, though, because why do you communicate a watch that you can't get on a waiting list for? We have to expand, but both in Cartier and Van Cleef, it's also a question of a culture and a training. It's not just building a plot. For instance, Delvaux, we chose to go where there's a culture, where people already have the skills, which is one of the reasons why we so strongly promoting Homo Faber. To a lot of the great artisans of Europe have said to us, "The children are not really interested." When you visit them, you find out they're great artisans, but they don't even understand the internet. They don't have a website. Clients cannot find them. Only. That's why when you go to Milan, our Milanese and Roman friends, they show us things that we didn't know existed. They don't go to Rodeo Drive or Bond Street or Champs-Élysées or Montenapoleone. They've got their own people. We. It's not just press a button and open a manufacture. It's training. One of my big problems with work from home, which I'm going to have to address this afternoon with the town hall, I expected it was my son's generation who'd all say, "Nah, I wanna work from home. Stuff you." No. They are being deprived from learning from people who are 45 years old plus. Why, if we hire a very talented 25-year-old man or woman, should we allow his or her boss to sit at home? When Karl-Heinz Rummenigge's people go to work, the sales staff go, but us, who are really the overheads. I mean, if you're not in designing or manufacturing or selling, you're overheads. I mean, in reality, okay? We have this attitude, we'll work from home. How are you going to transmit the culture? Your question, that question is, I mean, we can build the plant, but who do we get inside? There's an inelasticity which is not easily met. Of course, it's very critical to us not to lose those skills. You will see more of a vertical integration. That is your real answer. Excellent, thank you. That's good to hear. You can give the microphone to Ashley. Remember. Thank you. Thank you very much, certainly. It's Ashley Wallace from Bank of America. First of all, congratulations on an outstanding result today. We don't hear you so well. Yeah, a bit closer. Thank you. Better? Yep. I have two questions. My first question is on jewelry. Can you help us understand how you think about the midterm demand for jewelry in light of increased competition, and how you plan to prioritize your investment in the brand as a result of that? My second question, if it's okay to ask now, is on specialty watchmakers, saw a nice margin development this year, up to 19%, so I think the highest level in 7 years. It's still down from the peak of 27%, a decade or so ago. I was wondering how we should think about the margin from here. Essentially, is there more room for improvement? If so, ultimately, where does that come from? Thank you, Ashley. I will start, and I guess Nicolas will continue. As I said before, there is a growing demand for jewelry and for the branded jewelry overall. As far the, there is a growth in the world wealth, there is growth for luxury goods, and there is increasing growth for jewelry. Even if there is more competition, there is much more demand, so there is room for many. In terms of international brands in jewelry, there are very few, not so many. There is room for growth. As far as we, if we believe that there is room for economic growth in the world, and there will be room for growth, additional in branded jewelry. That's why we have to be ready for that. Knowing there's also high volatility, as Johann mentioned, and so we can't expect just linear growth. We have to be ready for cases where we can have contractions and cases where we have rebounds, as we have seen in the past, now 10 years. I can only confirm, I think that as we know, and we repeat it very, very often, it's still a market where non-branded, you know, creations are dominant, so there is still room to grow for brands. There are not new geographies, but if I, thinking of an example like Thailand, for instance, which is a country with a very, very strong history of jewelry. It was a history of local jewelers and local designers. In the last few years, we've seen that market really opening up quite strongly to international brands, Cartier, Van Cleef, others. That's now becoming quite a significant market, which it wasn't for us even, you know, five or 10 years ago. We have many other examples like that. We're quite confident that it will take time, it will take additional investments, there will be cycles, but there is still a lot of room for growth, yes. Maybe, maybe when it comes to Specialist Watchmakers, just to keep in mind that, in 2017, well, if you want the demand of the chairman or instruction of the chairman, they call for a big reset of our, of the way we will be in capacity to develop our business in a more sustainable way, called true demand. With strict follow-up of what was the sellout, what was the sell-in. In parallel, the Maison has been investing a lot of energy and time, both in focusing on innovating within the icon and in quality. You saw the result. We had some difficulties while we had to readjust the model on the true demand. We absorb or buy back the stock years ago. The result- The human nature of over-extrapolating a trend. Watches were doing that. We incentivized colleagues on that, never thinking that democracy riots would break out in Hong Kong. This happened. You can tie it to, because it's the biggest watch market in the world, and like that, we found out excess watches, everybody, Rolex. Initially, it was us and Rolex who really acted soberly and just cleaned it up. Now we really monitor sell in and sell out. In somehow in a year like this year, it was very fragmented or had a lot of volatility in the heart of our clientele for the watches, meaning here China. You saw in the result a stress test. You saw through the COVID as well that despite all that, you had the leverage. Despite all that, you see an increase of the profitability, showing in somehow, the, if not the strength, at least already the sustainability of the model itself. That's gradual. It takes time. It's also the secondhand watch market is when it needs to calm down. The Odysseus, when Jérôme Lambert and his colleagues came and presented that steel watch to me, and they wanted to sell it at EUR 28,000. I said, "You're mad. It's too little." We settled for EUR 34,000. Four months later, somebody who bought a watch at Vespi, and we had quite a discussion with them, put it up for sale at auction. It sold for EUR 89,000. Another, rather a future non-Lange & Söhne approved client. He's for EUR 93,000. Now you would say normal economics would say, move the price to EUR 45,000, EUR 50,000. You know, we look at the input and the costs, and that's prepared to an early question, we think there's a fair price for a product. If you want your clients and their children to be your clients, then you treat people properly. That also means that there's a residual value for their watches that they don't buy. I mean, if you buy a new, think of Tesla. You go and buy a car for $60,000 or $20,000, Mr. Musk decides, "No, I'll sell it for $12,000." What do you think the guy who paid $16,000 feels like? Or the lady? You've got to treat people long-term. When you talk about margins on watches, it's not just let's take what we can get. It's building a long-term trust with a client. Which really does play into the pricing decision. Actually We have a situation where Cartier If Louise Did a limited edition of the Pebble watch, 150 pieces. On tomorrow, at the Phillips auction, watch number 71, which the lady must have designated the number, because she got her watch before I got my watch, having asked him, I asked him, "Please make this watch, 150." I buy full price. Exactly the same as all of you, okay? Before number 150 gets, she's putting it up for auction tomorrow. You can imagine the phone call that Cyrille got when I got the Phillips catalog. There's a craziness in the secondhand watch market and the speculation. Sorry. Louise, please go ahead. Louise. Great. Good morning. Hi, how are you? Very well, thank you. Good morning. It's Louise Singlehurst from Goldman Sachs. Thank you for taking my questions. Just thinking about the longer-term trend, I wonder if we consider, like, the Jewellery Maisons over the past 10 years. I wonder if I can ask Mr. Rupert in terms of how you did versus your longer-term plans back then. If we look at the numbers, I mean, you've grown more than 2.5-fold. In 1976, we paid $7 million. We still had an argument, was it 6 or 8? We settled on 7 for 33% of Cartier Monde. It's been, I've said to a friend of mine, he and I have been together that years with his last three wives, okay? In the eighties, Cartier didn't do very well at all. It's been up and down, but I would say, Cyrille, what would you say, from about the noughties, 2000, a steady trend has happened. If you do things properly, and you carry on doing things properly, Van Cleef. I suppose the question being It meets your very lofty expectations. I don't want to overextrapolate trends here as to your earlier comments. No. In terms of the next 10 years, I mean, can it be done again? Is it more of a demand or supply driven? Are women going to tell men, "I don't want that"? Please, you answer me. I'll take that as a no. Okay. I'll take that as a yes. Okay. Sorry. Um, and then jus Okay. It, and then- We've just got to keep brand equity high, that a teenage daughter says to her dad, like a friend of mine in New York, when he bought her another brand. The daughter said to him, "What have I done wrong?" "Why did," mentioning her friend, "Why did she get that watch? What have I done wrong?" He called me. He said he bought shares immediately after that. It's Philippe. He said, "I had to go and buy shares in exchange." You've got to keep brand equity and keep it going and keep desirability. But Do you know, Louise, some years ago in a conversation, I said if we need to grow by, let's say, 15% per year, it means we need to grow our cash flow by 15% a year, which means we need, in the end, we gotta grow our desirability by more than 15% per year and keeping the brand DNA pure. My nightmare is with TikTok and social media. I see every ad. Longe Peranne, with our colleagues, I see every product. Balenciaga would never, ever have occurred at Richemont. Trust me, Bud Light would not have happened. It's not our role to be social adjudicators. We have colleagues, shareholders, commercial partners of all sexes, races, religious beliefs. We, as I say, I don't have a dog in that fight. We just want to have stayed true to the culture of Cartier, stayed true to the culture of Van Cleef, Lange, all of our products, and not get greedy. Don't go and pick low-hanging fruit. Just grow within yourself and keep the brand's equity top of the mind. In 10 years' time, yes, I expect Cartier and Van Cleef and, yes, and hopefully we'll have then Delvaux, Buccellati, and grow them. We've been able to do it up till now. Van Cleef, we don't wanna give you the figures, but Van Cleef's been a phenomenal success. We've seen first signs at Buccellati, we've seen signs at Delvaux, and they mentioned all of the heroes, the designers. We've got a gentleman, Massimo Giannulli, who is G/FORE. He's a genius. He's an absolute genius. L.A., it's his third business. They've moved G/FORE. Now, Scott Mahony bought G/FORE. I don't get the credit for that. It was a psychographic. I said to him, "I'll never wear that stuff." I mean, those green and brown, it's too young for me. Now, it's the only shoes I'll wear because you can put them on, walk for 10 miles without getting blisters. He's a genius. In Korea, they've moved him in the department stores from the sportswear to the luxury goods floor because his turnover and profit per square meter equals that of Chanel. It's not me, it's not any of us. It's a slightly crazy genius, lovely human being who lives in L.A. Our luck was to get him as a partner. Don't believe all the stuff you hear. A fair measure of it is pure luck. In order to have luck, you've gotta believe in luck. You've gotta be ready when the luck comes. Hopefully we'll continue. I think it was Mrs. Arpels who said, or Jacques Arpels, huh? Jacques Arpels. Jacques Arpels who said, "To be lucky, you've gotta believe in luck," correct? Yes. I have really the positioning of Cartier and Van Cleef and Buccellati, it's so clear. Chanel is clear. You look at the successful, it's a very clear positioning, that's, my colleagues have successfully managed to maintain that. That gives us a very favorable look in terms of the growth outlook. I wonder if I can move to Burkhart. Yes. talk to you about the 35% margins. We're back to actually where we were, I think it was around 35% back in 2013. Obviously the business and Jewellery Maisons has changed phenomenally in terms of scale and distribution channel. Over the next 10 years, obviously very good growth prospects. Can we think that the margins, are they mid-30s? Is that now a good reference point? No. No. No. He's prohibited from making the mistake that Jan du Plessis made. Alan, when was that? Oh. 22 years ago. Alan and I are sitting there, and the next moment Jan du Plessis starts talking about the projected margins, and Alan and I. No. I tried. Okay. You know, You know my answer, but I could say we're happy with where we are, as you can imagine. The second answer would be ask me in 10 years. Yes. You'll get a concrete answer. Yeah. Thank you. You tried. Yeah. Patrik, may I answer again? Yeah. Thank you. My first question on the growth margin, you have reached a new record level also because of strong brand equity. What do you think here in the mid to long term? Is there any further improvement because of our even strong brand equity and also scale effects? Or would you say you're now happy with this margin? That's my first question. Second question regarding the Chinese consumer. What was the exposure to the Chinese consumer before COVID, so including tourists, and what is it currently? Uh. Thank you. Obviously, we try to have operating leverage, but you know, it's containing costs. You know, as we've said, if you look at the goodwill that we wrote off in the non-cash charges, you briefly referred to it. Our online investment over 20 years was about EUR 1.3 billion. That's the cost that we wrote off. We've spent CapEx in leases five point, four point, what was it? Point three. 4.3. On the network, yeah. On the network. We want to increase the asset turnover per boutique. I think that's the best way of describing online. When a customer, he or she gets into a boutique, wherever we've done it successfully, the client conversion ratios jump through the roof. Your asset turnover will go up if you properly know exactly where all your stock is. It's visibility, it's data. We will hopefully get there through better physical stock management based upon better data. Not only data looking back, but where everything is, what is where, but also being able to predict where it will be needed. None of you have asked about ChatGPT, and where will that fit in. Because trust me, if I were you, I'd seriously worry about ChatGPT. It's going to affect a lot of people that don't quite expect it. Where will it fit into the Farfetch module? I was fortunate to meet Microsoft's head of Quant. That fell under him. He lives in Seattle. He's an Austrian who studied in Switzerland. Last September, they just tested it internally to see what are people going to use it for, because they were worried. The people were writing novels. People were writing poetry. It was love. It wasn't bad, because we know it's gonna get into bad hands. They released it December, 100 million people. Today, it's 200 million people. When you ask me how the tech advances, I cannot tell you, except we'd better know how to use it when it appears. In terms of what you're really asking is, how can we continue to improve efficiency? Is that a fair? Because that will increase the profit, the operating leverage. Can, can I I wish, I wish I could answer you, except we answer ourselves every day. Yeah. Also brand equity, right? I mean. Yeah. it's already at a very high level, but Brand equity, today you go and ask ChatGPT, "What do you think of Cartier? Patrik, just let me just be specific Yeah. No, no guidance. I'm just trying to explain why we also are very reluctant to give guidance, even indications, right? That is, if you look at the gross margin specifically, you mainly have, or basically have four elements in there, right? That influence the way the gross margin goes. Two are under our control, two are not under our control. Those that are not under our control is exchange rate is, let's say, input prices, which is commodities, you know, gold or diamonds, whatever, and is labor, right. Both have been volatile, in availability and in pricing. We cannot control that, and that has always been the case. In recent times, if we think about the volatility of diamonds that we have, of diamond pricing that we've had, or the availability of skilled labor. It's not just bringing them in, but it's also upskilling them over very long periods of time. Yeah, hang on. Just. Russia invades Ukraine. That's what I'm saying, yeah. 50% of our businesses, the pavé, the small diamonds, come from Alrosa. K. K markets. I'm saying at that time. Ah. We shut our businesses the morning of the invasion. We didn't wait four days for all the stock to clear. We shut it. We immediately said we're not buying diamonds from Alrosa. Suddenly, I had some very interested colleagues, so we went to another major supplier immediately. Luckily, we had very good relationships with them. They rejigged their business system to help us, so we could act morally. Now, you tell me, please, what's gonna happen in the next three years. Then we can have a long lunch, and I can tell you what my answers may be with my colleagues. Every day, Burkhart, we speak obviously all the time. Who would have thought of COVID? Who would have thought of the Russian invasion of the Ukraine? We've just got to be flexible. What I'm really happy about, we've got a team of people really working on our IT system now that will give us flexibility and speed and transparency. We can't promise you margins, but what I can promise you is the same questions you ask of us, we ask ourselves. It's better to be invested with people who worry all the time. Okay? That's true. Okay. Yeah, we do. Now, Patrik, just to tie it up, the elements that we manage- Sorry is our pricing. What? Within the limits of our fair pricing. What changed? Approach and policy, right? Which is geared for the mid to long-term stable client relationships and productivity in our operations, and that is what we worry about, and that's what we focus on. All right, four elements, two are in our control, sort of, two are not, and that's why making lofty predictions one way or the other are difficult to uphold over time. Thank you. Just the nature of the business. Thank you. Regarding the Chinese consumers. Sorry? The Chinese consumers before COVID, what's the exposure roughly, including the tourists, and what was the? It's very difficult because we don't go Chinese consumers, Japanese consumers. We know where people buy. But if you say ethnic Chinese people, a lot of ethnic Chinese people bought products in Paris. But it varies year by year. What? A very powerful percentage of our consumers. Let's say third, third. You know, APAC, Europe, the United States. That's been for the last 20 years, then it changes. I mean, pre-COVID, we all know the numbers. They're out there, not ours, but let's say across the industry, we were talking about 33%-36%. Yeah More or less of Please, do not get this stuff, because we don't know. No, no, but it's out there. in a year's time. It's, no, that's why I'm saying pre-COVID. You can back solve when you look at our financial statements that our Chinese, and we call them residents now or by residency, were 24%. That is a snapshot, let's say- Yeah in a balance sheet sort of approach, where you look at a snapshot end of last fiscal year. Yeah. How it's gonna play out, what the weight is gonna be in a year's or in five years' time, I have no idea. I have an idea. Countries that study STEM, science, technology, engineering, mathematics, who don't spend all their time debating woke issues on campuses, will be bigger buyers of our products in five to 10 years. My biggest fear is how will the West react to the inevitable growth of China? It's inevitable. The people are smart. They work, study like hell, and they work like hell. This, by the way, I said 10 and 15 years ago. Those people tend to get richer. Okay. Expect them to get richer. Share that with us. Yes. Patrik, if you can hand over to Edouard. Thank you. Yeah. Afterwards, I think Carole and Rogerio, are you. Maybe we'll end afterwards. Thanks. Edouard from Morgan Stanley, thank you for taking my questions. Just sorry to follow up on Chinese, China and Chinese nationals. It seems that so far this year, I mean, year to date, calendar year, that the growth in terms of luxury spend is driven rather by high net worth individuals spending more rather than the middle class participating Yes So recruitment. Is that what you're observing so far? If you could please tell us, you know, on a two years basis, i.e., versus 2021, are you seeing an acceleration in terms of the trend in April, May, versus the first calendar quarter of the year? Or are things more or less stable? Just qualitatively, I know you don't want to play things. The second question, I'll do them in order, tell me, flagships. You know, you've spent a lot of time talking about how you've renovated, invested in your network and indeed the Rue de la Paix store, Cartier is very impressive. Some of your friends and peers are investing also massively, and not just in hard luxury a few weeks ago, but also in soft luxury. In their flagship, they're putting restaurants, café, museum within the flagship. Do you think the bar has been raised in terms of flagship and there might be an inflection point to expect from you guys? That would be my second one. Lastly, on M&A, your balance sheet is indeed incredibly strong. Your return in capital to shareholders, you've announced that this morning, but obviously you have the balance sheet to make acquisition. I know, you know, no one knows, you know, what to expect over the long term, but what would you say is the probability that you make a material transaction over the next 12-24 months? Could it be in fashion rather than the goods, if that's the case? Thank you. Okay. I came from M&A. I tend to find in my past that the companies are easy to buy. The companies that you buy, normally there's a reason why they're easy to buy. You always underestimate the difficulty of fixing it, and the most difficult thing is inevitably the culture. That takes a lot longer than anything else. We have been more successful in buying even smaller companies with great culture and then empowering them. If there's a financial meltdown, yes, maybe we'll look at bigger companies that are not performing because of exogenous factors, external factors. Yes, then we look, at this stage, the terrible thing is the companies that are really nice are not for sale. Okay? That's across the board. To get back your first. Is about VIC. Sorry? VIC clients we're talking about. Yes. I tried to allude to that. Sorry, it was in the press this morning. I said the first sales here are happening, but it is wealthy, I wouldn't say high net worth, wealthy individuals that are traveling. There are no big groups that we've seen or on the horizon. So they've bought in China related, in Singapore, in Macau, in Hainan, Thailand. Hainan, Macau. Yeah. Thailand. Macau. Hong Kong, Macau. Yeah. Hainan. Starting in Singapore. Thailand. It's initially been high net worth individuals, if you wish to call them. that, in terms, I am a skeptic about taking a Maison's name and getting into food and beverage. You cannot control the quality. You change the chef and hotels, the hotel, I owned a hotel. It was the most stupid thing I ever did in my life. They never call you to say they had a great time. Boy, let the chef be late or something, you get your. At Leopard Creek, Southern Sun managed it. They didn't know that. Hotels are particular businesses that should be left to hoteliers. The Belmond Group, I knew the previous owner, he was a genius, okay? It's good. For us to start hotels and restaurants, no. Uh-uh. We've got enough problems with our own dining facility here. These people eat the most incredibly boring food, the Swiss here. I mean. It's healthy. I know it's healthy, but. We have good Cartier champagne, so. Eh? We have good Cartier champagne, so. No, I know, but no, food and beverage, no. Yes, they're lifting the bar, but are we going to be opening restaurants and food and beverage at Cartier or Van Cleef? No. When it comes to flagship, let's see, we have renovated most of them. There are still some coming. With the Rue de la Paix or Fifth Avenue in New York or Maison Cheongdam in Seoul or Taipei 101, they have been incredibly well received. We don't believe that a luxury jewelry should become a department store. Some believe differently. Don't go that far. We think we have to be exclusive, yes, inviting, and to make it as most beautiful as we can. They have been very, very well received. Yeah. I think we have done what was right for us. Thank you. Thanks. Rupert. Carole, yes. Go ahead. Thank you. Thank you. Hello, Carole Madjo from Barclays. two question, please. The first one on the jewelry segment. you mentioned that there is a bit more competition now on the sector, and I was wondering if you were also seeing that in terms of retaining talents. Do you see now a bit more war of, you know, competition to attract the talents and to keep them at the headquarters level, stores level, et cetera? That's the first question. The second one was on the Chinese market, and most of all, on the island of Hainan, which you also just mentioned before, and which of course is becoming a bigger point of focus lately. Can you share a bit more insight on how you view this market? How big is your exposure in Hainan today on your key brands, and how many stores you expect to open going forward? Last point on that, I think when we think of Hainan, there are still concerns about discounting gray markets or weak infrastructure. How do you tackle these challenges in order to avoid brand dilution? Thanks. I can try to answer on the first one. Yes, there is increased competition in jewelry. Not so much because there are so many new brands. I think at the end of the day, you know, if you think of, you know, major American brands that have been there for a very, very long time. Of course, now there is major reinvestment into them. As it was mentioned several times, we are really working in activities where building expertise, building culture takes a lot of time, and probably more time than the speed of development or the pace of development of that market and that industry in the last few years. That calls for, yes, competition over talents in the workshops, in head offices, in design studios, everywhere, which is healthy to some extent, it forces all of us to be more attractive and to find the ways to better train, better retain, better motivate our teams, you know, across the board. This is probably something that we're going to see for, you know, some time, because once again, it will take years to really train, you know, the next generations of craftsmen, the next generations of designers. This is going to be, you know, the case, and we deal with it. The, the world of luxury is a rather close world where everyone knows everyone. If we see also the balance of who we have attracted and who has been, you know, taken or wanted to have a follow-up in the career, it's quite balanced. We don't see that there is a kind of talent questions and we mean retention, but also recruitment, training, development. I think, you know, we need talent and we recruit them, and some of our colleagues also sometime prefer to take different direction to their career. As far as things are as they are now, it's quite fine. We have to train, develop. You know, Cartier has been for the kind of 20 years a kind of school where many of the jewelry maison have people coming from Cartier at some point or another. You can look in the profession, those who at some point were either here or in Van Cleef, you know, we can see it's been there for quite some time. It's not so different now than before because as Nicolas said, basically it's the same brands. They just have changed hands. Okay. On Hainan. The nice summary is we have a product committee meeting. In Cartier, they'll come regularly, Van Cleef, everybody, and we'll meet. The new products and new campaigns, it's now been going for decades. Whenever anything goes off code, and we know before Cyrille, there were quite a few that don't sell. How do we know it's off code? Because you look at it. The clients look at it and they see this is off code, and then they don't buy it. I don't care if you've got $1 trillion, if you try to imitate that code, the clients are too sophisticated. When you look at Van Cleef, you know it's Van Cleef. Other people have copied the Alhambra. They try and copy Cartier, the clients know. The strongest protection against people, I don't care how much money and I don't care the sizes of their buildings, is that we stick to our DNA and our codes. If we sit there, Cyrille and Nicolas, and we know it's slightly off code, the client sure as hell are gonna know it. That's our protection. It's very difficult. We've tried it, to buy something that is at a lower price category and in a lower category, and to lift it up. It's easier to buy a Buccellati and democratize it by making it more accessible than it is to do the reverse. We just stick to our knitting. No restaurants. On, if I may, on Hainan. Just on Hainan, first, the number of visitors of Hainan for this year and last year is expected this year to be something like 87 million. It's 3 to 4x Dubai. You know it well. It's an important place for tourists, shopping, like many others. There, our maison are present with a local partner. As you know well as well, you cannot operate directly there. It's not what it used to be still today, which is fine. It represent a fraction of our business in China. You know as well, the big characteristic of Richemont is that our products is numbers, so we can follow our products, and we can ensure then, that, their distribution is done in a qualitative way. No, no concern in term of exposure because it's a fraction of China, of the rest of China, let's say it like that. Nice recovery. Will it be as big as it used to be a couple of months ago or quarter ago? Let's see. You know well as well that online is set to be a more and more resort business or shopping practice, regular or standard business practice. Nice to have, nothing to worry. Thank you. Thank you, Rogerio. Rogerio Fujimori from Stifel. Thanks for taking my question. I have 1 follow-up on the mix dynamics at Jewellery Maisons and a follow-up on watches. I think you've mentioned that you have been less aggressive on pricing than competitors, so out of the balance of the very strong growth in Jewellery Maisons in the last three years, the last 12 months, how mix has contributed to growth given the success of iconic models and the brand equity getting stronger and stronger? Just interested to see how average selling prices are moving. On watches, as China recovers, the U.S. slows, and the European, Japanese markets seem to be holding up well, have you seen any divergence in terms of category trends with watches being a little bit more exposed to wholesale when the pre-owned market, as you've mentioned, cooling a little bit, slowing? Appreciate watches are much more DTC and much more geographic balanced than before. Thank you. That's your category. Yeah, I can start by the watches. Thank you for your question. That's indeed a very interesting one, and it underlines well as well what was said by the Chairman as well before with the change of business model during the last 10 years and accelerated during the last five. Indeed, the Maison are, have been more and more operating either in their own shop, and we have seen 56% for Specialist Watchmakers, or with our partner, because ultimately you're working with good partners all over the world, as being behind the development of our Maison for centuries. If you take the external boutique plus our internal boutique, you have already more than 3/4 of our total sales. That capability of developing qualitative or in time or for long-term relationship has been changing our business approach, therefore much less exposing us not only to wholesale, I would say to stock of wholesale, if I may. Because the biggest exposure in this case is not so much that you work with a partner, but that between you and your partners, somewhere there is an imbalance between what you sell him and what he sells out, and then when it reduce speed, you don't have a factor of 1:1 in effect, but a 1:10. The stress test that we've been through during the last three years have been showing us that organizing our model around true demand was an absolute necessity, if not the only solution. For the time being, again, it's not a, a wholesale exposure that will cause a, a breakdown of the model. As, again, as the Chairman was saying, now the watches, before it was more for the jeweler and the five-engine, while our watch business was powered with by one-and-a-half engine, now the watches are also powered by five-engine. I also think that we had a change of strategy/philosophy, whereas some of our major Maisons would launch a new type of watch like every three to five years. Massively push that. Whilst the previous massive boost still had stock in wholesale. Guess what happens? You make your own products obsolete by making this new one the watch to have. We stopped that and said, "No, you must concentrate more on classic watches that will not. No planned obsolescence anymore. If you look at Audi resale values, you can't really see when an Audi was made. Porsche 911, you've gotta be like Frank Vivio, who's a lunatic, to say that's a 1967 or 1994, but then he doesn't know how many liters is in his car. Which was quite astonishing. I mean, I asked him the size of his engine, Don't ask somebody if you don't already know the question, so. Some people have managed to contemporize without. Take an Audi A8 versus a Maybach. Who the hell wants to be seen in a Maybach? A Rolls-Royce Cullinan? You've gotta be. Audi, you don't quite know A6, A8, et cetera, They don't radically change. There's a residual value to the cars. If you change all the time, you buy something for your daughter, your wife, yourself, and three years later they say, "Oh, you've got last year's model or three years ago's model." Look at, for instance, to get an example, the IWC Pilots. My hero was Günter Blümlein, the man who really built. Genius. There was an IWC Pilot's Watch, still made by him, that I spotted that came up for sale, and I bought it, and I wear it. IWC watch people would say, "Oh, that's interesting." They look at it. They didn't know it was done in 1991, but it was recognizable as an IWC Pilot's Watch. If you look at IWC Pilot watches, if it's two years ago's model, the retailer doesn't have to go and discount it at 40%, because there's still a demand. It's an art. When you ask about kind on gray markets, what you asked earlier on the watch market, we would design a new watch, pump it, push it, reward the people for selling it in, incentivize. It's a lot different, and we want to be able to have that residual value with the client. You won't see a huge launch and then taping down. It's with a big basic philosophy behind it. It's a different philosophy. By the way, as much as we try to add value here, our best sellers were done 30, 40 years ago, and we've just tuned them. The Tank, the Love Bracelet, Alhambra. It's very difficult to tell creative people. There was a famous German architect who said, "The best is always simple, but simple is not always the best." It's hard to tell creative people, "Do not try to be too creative because you're gonna jump off piste." Nicola, I mean, especially you, Cyrille, to have to tell them, "Listen, just remember this is Louis Cartier." That's where we have previous management, current management, and hopefully future management, and we interact to keep that corporate memory and DNA, because that's what the clients want. on the other question on. Yes. Yeah. Mix, volume pricing. Yes, no. When we are mentioning mix on the commercial margin, I think that you have different type of mix. You have the mix between categories and, if I you know, speak for Van Cleef, for instance, this has remained quite stable. Basically, the growth that we've seen or the development that we've seen have been in the different categories from high jewelry to more day wear jewelry and watches. It's a more the mix by network that has slightly evolved, where even though we are a retail company, we also operate some external stores that where basically the sales are wholesale sales at wholesale price, and that channel has not increased at the same pace as internal retail or online sales. The respective weight of full price, you know, retail sales is higher. This is where you have a mix effect, as far as we are concerned. I would say in our case, we have three components saying, of course, increase in volumes, but the increase is value has been stronger, meaning there have been a higher increase for higher price point. Not only for high jewelry. For instance, on watches, we have a very high demand for gold-on-gold Panthère, for instance. We have difficulty to supply, so it's meaning it's shifting the average price point higher and basically in all regions. Then, of course, price increase had also added, but this part is, like, the minor part. I saying higher average price point and on top a little bit of price increase. I say the price increase was mostly to carry on for the inflation that came from gold, from diamond, from Swiss franc that we had to take over and take into account also currency fluctuation that last year were very strong, so we could not increase at some moment in dollar or maybe it was very high. Things shifted again, so we could rebalance in a different way. Okay. It's already 11:31 A.M., so I don't know whether you want us to take questions online. There are. A lot of them have been answered already. Maybe a very short one, a quick one to answer relating to the A&P rate. Why the 20 basis points reduction from a 9.9% represented to 9.7%? I don't know, Burkhart, if you want to reply to that one. There's another one. Well It's on the communications rate. Yeah, I. A&P I can answer that. It's a very quick answer. Yeah. Don't read anything into it. I mean, 19% sales growth, 17% A&P growth. Exactly. It's close to EUR 300 million additional communication spend compared to the prior year. Don't read anything into it. No shift in strategy whatsoever behind it. I shift. Okay. I said shift. You Germans. Okay. I should draw it out more, yes. I'm glad for this possibility. I should draw it out more, yes. We have a question on F&A Maison. Whether the group's F&A Maison's are benefiting from the quiet luxury trends? Whether That's maybe more for Jérôme. quiet luxury we've been preaching for five years. You have all heard that we're saying less bling. The Audi example. Yes, quiet luxury. We believed in it. Style, not fashion. I guess this concludes today's presentation. Thank you very much Thanks For your participation. For those of you here, please join us upstairs for some refreshment. Sorry. You know, those of you who've been here long enough, when Joe Kanoui was chairman. What did he hate? Meeting with anybody and analysts, because he had a particular difficulty in pronouncing focus. For half an hour before, you'd practice focus, and then it'd get here and start. Every now and again, there'd be a line where you have to focus, and Joe would go... Any case, bless you. Thank you all for coming. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much.