Good morning, everyone. Thank you all for joining us here in London for Clariant's Investor Day. Over the past four years, we have undertaken a significant transformation at Clariant, creating a strong platform for future growth. We have streamlined our portfolio to become a focused specialty chemical company, with an increased exposure to consumer markets. We have implemented a new customer-centric operating model, which facilitates the implementation of differentiated segment steering across our businesses. We have significantly reduced our cost base through successful execution of our performance improvement programs. We are well on track to achieve our increased savings target of CHF 175 million by 2025, with over 90% of savings already achieved. Innovation remains at the core of our strategy. Our market-driven innovation and focus on developing products that are leading in sustainability have been key drivers of our growth. These efforts position us well to benefit from the exciting opportunities presented by global megatrends. We are more focused, more efficient, and more innovative than ever before. Looking ahead, we are confident that these fundamental changes strongly position us to outperform the chemicals market, securing our future as a top quartile specialty chemical company. At the center of our growth strategy is our purpose: greater chemistry between people and planet. Given the relevance of the chemical industry in our daily lives, we have the unique opportunity at Clariant to make a truly meaningful impact on society. For us, greater chemistry stands for innovation, enabling our customers to improve their sustainability profile through our leading products. Greater chemistry between people stands for our culture of teamwork, diversity, inclusiveness, mutual appreciation, and empowerment, values for which we are also recognized in our interactions with our customers. Finally, greater chemistry between people and planet reflects our commitment to a sustainable future, putting innovation and sustainability at the forefront of everything we do. We have made significant progress in all these areas. Our customer satisfaction, measured by our Net Promoter Score, has increased substantially. Last year, we delivered a new record of sales from innovative products. We will discuss our leading innovations later today. Clariant has been at the forefront of sustainability. We are committed to maintain this leadership, and therefore we have further upgraded our sustainability targets. Richard will share more details on this later today. And finally, our employee engagement has improved significantly over the last three years, serving as the key driver for progress in all other areas. We are well on track as a company to achieve our goal of top quartile employee engagement. Now, let's take a closer look at our portfolio transformation. Since our last Capital Markets Day in November 2021, we have significantly strengthened our position as a focused specialty chemical company. Since 2021, we completed 10 acquisitions and divestments, with at least two transactions every single year. We now have a strong set of high-quality businesses across Care Chemicals, Catalysts, and Adsorbents and Additives. Each business has strong market positions with attractive growth and margin profiles, supported by a strong sustainability offering. We recently acquired Lucas Meyer Cosmetics, a leading high-value Cosmetics ingredient company. Later today, Antonio Lara will present the Lucas Meyer Cosmetics business. Antonio has successfully led this business for many years and will continue to do so under Clariant ownership. We have implemented a new operating model with a leaner and more customer-focused organizational setup. We appointed a new, more diverse leadership team, with our business presidents no longer based at our headquarters, but in the regions with the largest customer bases and the highest growth potential. Today, you will hear how our team will deliver against our strategic priorities. Our new operating model has been live since January 2023. The new setup of global segments, which are aligned to our global businesses, has been very well received by our customers. Global segmentation gives us better transparency, and this setup allows us to drive performance at an individual segment level and to effectively execute our differentiated growth strategy. As part of this shift, we have reduced management layers from 11 to a maximum of six, and we streamlined our portfolio by decreasing the number of business units from five to three. This new, delayered, and simplified organization has been well received by our employees. They now have more meaningful roles with greater empowerment and higher accountability. I am proud that this shift in our model has delivered tangible results, with significant improvements in both our customer and employee Net Promoter Scores. This operating model has also resulted in substantial cost savings, which we will outline later today. The business units that form Clariant's portfolio each consist of high-quality specialty chemical businesses. Our Care Chemicals business unit operates across a number of attractive market segments, serving both consumer and industrial applications. Our catalyst business is one of the market leaders for petrochemicals, syngas, and specialty chemical catalysts, based on a unique set of technology partnerships. Our Adsorbents and Additives business unit consists of an attractive niche specialty minerals business, as well as additives for plastics, adhesives, and coatings. Our additives business has faced challenging market conditions over the last 18 months, but is now on a strong recovery path. Our new business unit structure and the underlying segmentation allow for differentiated steering of the global businesses. Today, you will hear from our three business presidents who will explain how we plan to maximize value from the opportunities in each of the segments we operate in. We are exposed to attractive end markets, with strong demand for innovative and sustainable products. As of Q3 2024, our sales from consumer-facing end markets have increased to around 44%, up from 36% in 2021. Home and personal care is our single largest end market, and it accounts for about half of our consumer end market exposure. Within industrials, none of the end segments accounts for more than 10% of sales, giving us an overall well-balanced end market exposure. We benefit from a global footprint with a strong presence in all key regions, supported by technical support centers and R&D hubs. With our global footprint, we are well placed to provide local content for our global and local customers. Our sales in the Americas and in the Middle East and Africa have grown since our last CMD in 2021. Our presence in Asia-Pacific has remained consistently strong at around 30% of total sales. In both regions, we are well positioned for future further growth. Sales in Europe have declined to around 30% of the group total, reflecting our growth and focus on other regions. In terms of our capital allocation, we have spent around two-thirds of our CapEx this year outside of Europe, with CHF 80 million invested in Asia-Pacific and CHF 60 million invested in the Americas. Recent initiatives showcase our commitment to innovation and growth. Major investments in North America include the acquisition of the Attapulgite business assets, as well as the capacity expansion for mild surfactants in care chemicals. Investments in China include our Daya Bay capacity expansion in care chemicals, our new Flame Retardants plant, and our new catalyst facility in Jiaxing. With these investments, we are well positioned to capture profitable growth in these regions. Now, let's take a look at how we are planning to drive the next phase of profitable growth. Clariant is well positioned to address the key global megatrends, which will impact both our industry as well as our customers. You will hear from our business unit leaders that we are well positioned with our global footprint to address regional shifts in the global economy. This capability is ever more important given the current geopolitical developments and the potential for increasing tariffs on international trade. Our growth in Asia-Pacific and the Middle East is significantly outpacing Europe. The chemicals market in these regions is expected to grow at around twice the pace of the rest of the world for the period to 2029. Health, wellness, and sustainability are becoming increasingly important for our customers. Sustainable products typically grow at twice the rate of our other products. Changing demographics will influence demand dynamics, with an expected 66% growth of the elderly population over 65 by 2030. Digitalization offers exciting opportunities for innovation and improved efficiency, with a projected $80-140 billion GenAI productivity gains in our sector. Finally, decarbonization is a key topic for regulators and for our customers, with the chemical industry contributing around 7% to global carbon emissions. All of these trends provide an opportunity for Clariant to capture value. We have a balanced global footprint with increasing exposure to high growth end markets. Around 40% of our 2023 sales were across Asia-Pacific and the Middle East, and we expect to invest more than CHF 80 million this year in this region. Our acquisition of Lucas Meyer Cosmetics positions us as a leader in the highly attractive cosmetics ingredient space. This business achieved annual growth of around 10% in recent years and is expected to continue growing at a double-digit rate versus market growth of around 7%. In our Pharma business, we aim to increase our market share through growth initiatives, and we are targeting high single-digit sales growth during the period up to 2027. We will be deploying GenAI as a strategic enabler across sales, R&D, and operations, with our own in-house developed AI called Clarita. Already, 36% of our employees are using AI solutions. Our utilization is increasing at double-digit rates quarter on quarter. Finally, our catalyst business is well placed to play a critical role in the emerging hydrogen economy, including green and blue hydrogen, ammonia, and methanol. This area represents a revenue opportunity of more than CHF 100 million per annum expected by 2030. Throughout today, you will hear more about our specific industry-leading initiatives to capture value from these exciting opportunities. Our profitable growth is driven by megatrends, and we have analyzed our individual segments according to clear criteria, including market attractiveness, financial performance, and our competitive strengths. We have implemented differentiated segment steering for our businesses. Each business has its own strategic mandate to optimize its individual value creation. Our five strategic mandates drive differentiated target setting as well as differentiated resource allocation across our businesses. For boost segments, we will allocate resources to rapidly accelerate growth and to increase our market share. For segments with outgrowth potential, we will leverage our strong competitive position or scale in attractive markets to drive growth. For segments targeted to grow at market, we will secure our long-term market position and ensure sustained value contribution to the group portfolio. For underperforming areas, we will focus on turning around businesses primarily to enhance their profitability. And finally, the harvest category includes areas where we will extract value from our current asset base while primarily focusing on cash flow generation. This slide illustrates where our segments are positioned within those key strategic steering categories. We have identified pharma as a boost segment with an expected annual growth rate of 9% over the next years. Our outgrowth businesses are cosmetics, mining, renewable fuels, syngas, and fuels. We expect these businesses to grow by an average of 7% per year in the coming years. In the grow-with-market category, we expect businesses to grow sales in line with the overall market at an average rate of around 2-4% per year. Turnaround businesses include coatings and adhesives and Polymer Solutions with a strong focus on margin improvement. Base Chemicals categorized under harvest are managed for cash generation. And how does this all translate into our financial and non-financial targets? In terms of our financial performance, we confirm our medium-term targets, which we aim to achieve by 2027 at the latest. Specifically, we are targeting 4-6% local currency sales growth, a reported EBITDA margin of 19-21%, and growth around 40% in our free cash flow conversion. Regarding our non-financial targets, we aim to maintain our top-quartile safety performance, and we strive to achieve top-quartile employee engagement. We have raised our targets for emission reduction and will now commit to a one and a half degrees SBTi trajectory. And finally, we aim to increase female representation and the number of leaders with national origin outside of Europe by 2030. Building on the strong progress we have made, we are confident in our ability to achieve these targets, which will reflect our position as a top-quartile specialty chemical company. From our projected sales of around CHF 4.2 billion for 2024, we are targeting annual growth of around 4 to 6%, aiming for sales between CHF 4.7 billion and CHF 5.1 billion by 2027. Our market growth assumption, including normalized inflation, accounts for 2% growth under conservative assumptions, with an upside scenario of up to 4% growth. We are planning to deliver an additional 2% growth above market growth. Of this growth, around three quarters will come from our innovation arenas, and one quarter will come from our geographic expansion in Asia and the Middle East. We intend to improve our expected 2024 EBITDA margin of approximately 16% to our medium-term target range of 19%-21% by 2027 at the latest. Our projected revenue growth will benefit from significantly better operating leverage, resulting from our reduced cost base due to our restructuring programs in recent years. In addition to our growth-driven margin improvements, we will achieve further improvements from disciplined segment steering, incremental cost measures, and productivity improvements. These self-help actions are expected to deliver around 80 million CHF in run rate savings in full by latest 2027. Overall, we expect around two-thirds of the margin improvement by latest 2027 to be driven by growth and around one-third to be driven by self-help measures. To conclude, let me reiterate that we are fully focused on executing our purpose-led growth strategy. We aim to drive profitable growth with a clear focus on our people, our customers, innovation, and sustainability. We have implemented a new operating model and streamlined our portfolio to focus on specialty chemicals, with an increased consumer exposure across attractive end markets. We are implementing differentiated segment steering across the business units to maximize value creation. Our market-driven innovation and leadership in sustainability positions us to outgrow our markets. The transformative steps that we have taken position us for future growth. We are excited about the opportunities that lie ahead. With that, I will now hand over to Richard Haldimann, our Chief Technology and Sustainability Officer Thank you. Hello everyone, and a warm welcome from my side to the 2024 Investor Day. I am Richard Haldimann. I'm the Chief Technology and Sustainability Officer, as Conrad just mentioned, and I am excited to share with you the Clariant Sustainability and Innovation journey. Over the next 30 minutes, I will share this journey by developing three key themes. Number one, consumers and legislators are increasingly demanding industry to come up with solutions to address the multiple sustainability crises that we face. This creates huge opportunities for the chemical industry to create positive impact and to drive growth. Two, to be successful requires sustainability leadership in combination with innovation. And three, Clariant is uniquely well set up to address these challenges that will drive growth already in 2027, with an even greater potential beyond. So let's dive in. The urgency for sustainability transformation of all industries is clear towards climate neutrality, circularity, protecting biodiversity. We are now reminded almost on a weekly basis about the need for this transformation. On the front pages of newspapers, just look at the recent news out of Valencia or expositions like the series Fixing Our Broken Planet by the Natural History Museum in London. This is increasingly driving consumer behavior and is finding its ways into policies and legislation. With 96% of all manufactured goods directly touched by chemistry, the opportunity for the chemical industry offering sustainable solutions is huge. So let's take a look at how we are transforming our operations and portfolio to take advantage of this opportunity and drive positive change. At Clariant, innovation and sustainability are core elements of our purpose-led strategy alongside customer focus and engagement. It goes without saying that sustainability in the chemical industry is no longer negotiable. I no longer see any chemical company that is not talking about sustainability. However, it is when you take a sustainability leadership position that you put yourself into a position to drive the necessary sustainability change, and that particularly is the case if you combine it with innovation. We have increasingly embedded sustainability in everything that we do, and in the process have become a leader in sustainability within our industry. Over 80% of our sales is generated by a product portfolio consisting of sustainable products. We've achieved leading greenhouse gas emissions intensity among peers and are creating massive positive impact for our customers, and we are on track to reach the top-quartile Employee Net Promoter Score to continue to drive this performance. To maximize our impact of our innovations, we are focusing our innovation efforts on what we call the innovation arenas that you just saw Conrad introduce a minute ago. I will introduce them in more detail in the coming slides. Health and sustainability-conscious consumer and brands is the first one. Energy transition is the second innovation arena, and circularity is the third. But let's start by focusing on sustainability and taking a closer look at our leadership in sustainability. I think it's good to start with an outside-in perspective and see how the ratings agencies are seeing Clariant. Now, a disclaimer here: ratings agencies take different perspectives. They have different metrics. They have different weightings, so the results differ. But overall, if we look at these leading ratings agencies, Clariant is well established within the top quartile. If we go into the sector-specific ratings, then Clariant has a leadership position. In sustainability, for example, in the chemical industry, we're in the top 4%, as well as in the specialty chemicals area. EcoVadis, we're in the top 2%. I think this is a good indication of the leadership position as perceived by external stakeholders. I think it's more interesting looking behind the scenes and seeing what is actually driving this sustainability performance. We have set priorities on the most material dimensions for sustainability, and we look at these from two sides. One is reducing our footprint in our operations, and the second one is creating a portfolio of sustainable products that help our customers to achieve their sustainability goals. These priority topics are fighting climate change in our own operations and providing customers with solutions that help to reduce their emissions, increasing circularity in our operations, and providing products that help in the reuse and recycling of products, continuously reducing waste and pollution in our operations, as well as in our customers' operations, fostering a sustainable bioeconomy by switching increasingly to bio-based raw materials, sustainable bio-based raw materials that transform our fossil carbon in our products and provide our customers with renewable carbon in their products, and then create social value for our employees and for the value chains that we operate in. At the center, however, you see safety and safety of our employees and safety of our products is the foundation for our sustainability journey. Without safe operations, we do not have the right to talk about greenhouse gas emissions. Let's take a look at our safety performance. Here you see the development of the DART accidents. This is the Days Away, Restricted, or Transferred work. I'm happy to say that we have seen a significant improvement over the past few years by making this a top management priority, including it in all of the messaging that we have, and then increasing the capabilities of the organization and improving the tools that we're using. I'm proud to say that as of 2023, Clariant is in the top quartile of the chemical industry when it comes to this metric. Let's move to our portfolio. Here, the key lever for our success was the implementation of a systematic sustainability risk and benefit analysis across all of our products, which we, as a frontrunner, implemented in 2012. This has been driving our innovation to continuously increase the sustainability of our portfolio, and the impact is evident. More than 80% of our sales align with our sustainability aspirations, which means that they have a sustainability benefit compared to the market standard without any significant sustainability risks. This holistic sustainability assessment allows us to stay ahead of regulatory changes and meet the emerging market demands for greater sustainability products. A notable example that I would like to highlight here through this continuous upgrading of the portfolio is that as of December of last year, we phased out the last two PFAS products or PFAS-containing products so that our portfolio is completely PFAS-free as of now. Another way of looking at sustainability is looking at our greenhouse gas emissions. To make ourselves comparable with other companies, we took greenhouse gas emissions intensity by sales. With our low greenhouse gas emissions intensity and our greenhouse emissions reduction targets that you see below, with the upgraded 46% for Scope 1 and 2 and 28% for Scope 3 upstream, we are already in a leadership position. And through these upgraded targets, we intend to stay in a leadership position when it comes to the greenhouse gas emissions intensity. But leadership and sustainability is not only about setting ambitious targets; it's about executing on them. And I'm glad to say that we are ahead of the targets that we had set in 2020 when it comes to our greenhouse gas emissions reductions. In Scope 1 and 2, we are with 29% reduction compared to the baseline of 2019, three-fourths of the way towards the target, already at halftime for the emission reduction. And on our Scope 3 emissions reduction target, we have exceeded the original target of 14% already now. And this means that we have a good conscience and a good idea of how we're actually going to and why we believe that we can achieve also these upgraded targets. I'd like to point out that by reducing our greenhouse gas emissions across all scopes, this is reflected then in the product carbon footprint of our products that is going to be decreasing over time and make us an attractive supplier for low carbon solutions. So our ambitious 2030 sustainability targets are upgraded by our greenhouse gas emission reduction targets in line with the 1.5 degrees Paris Agreement mandate. We will be submitting the upgraded targets to the SBTi by the end of this year. We are convinced, as I mentioned, that this very strong performance so far is the best justification for upgrading our targets. It's not all about greenhouse gas emissions. In 2019, we set a comprehensive set of environmental targets to make sure that we are decreasing the emissions along all material dimensions. I'm happy to say that also here, we are either on a very good track to meet our 2030 targets or have already achieved them. Then finally, we are developing a new biodiversity target that we will be communicating in due course. This all indicates that we are not simply focusing on one dimension of sustainability at the detriment of another. Let's focus now on innovation. When sustainability is the goal, innovation is the key driver to take us there. Our job is to provide the innovative solutions that help us match the need for sustainability with the performance and the affordability demands that the world around us has. We do this by leveraging cutting-edge chemistry to help customers across various industries transition to more sustainable practices. That is why innovation for us is not only about developing new products. It's about enabling the transformation of entire value chains towards sustainability that we operate in. So where do we stand here? Again, I would like to start with an outside-in perspective. In 2023, we conducted our annual customer survey, and the survey shows that over 50% of the respondents rate Clariant with a 9 or 10 out of 10 when it comes to our ability to develop new products, services, and applications, as well as our ability to cooperate to bring these to market with our customers. That is an outstanding result and proves that the value that we are bringing to the market is recognized by our key stakeholders, namely our customers. Such feedback is not accidental. It is the result of leading technology platforms and a company capability for innovation. Since 2012, we have implemented a company-wide innovation process from identifying unmet market needs and trends, developing value propositions of new products, finding the right customers, and piloting the product to commercializing it for wide-scale market introduction. Our innovation process ensures a systematic approach across the group for which we have trained over 330 people. This innovation process integrates sustainability approach at every step of the way and ensures that the products that we're developing also are going to meet our sustainability demands that we have. We also have been increasingly digitalizing the process over the past years, more recently implementing AI to accelerate and increase the impact of our innovations. The outcome is impressive. As of the third quarter of this year, for the last 12 months of sales, products commercialized within the last five years have accounted for 17.4% of total sales. That's about CHF 700 million. With the growth that we're intending to achieve now, with a focus also on the innovation arenas, we're expected to increase this share of the sales from innovation to 20% by 2027. Now, AI, and particularly large language models, is going to be a key lever to realize these targets. Implemented just over a year ago, Clarita, our own large language model that we've developed, is already transporting multiple areas of Clariant's operations. She is supporting our sales teams, pulling information from customer relationship management tools, SAP, and the customer's websites to prepare on a press of a button the information that is required for preparing for customer meetings. Our Catalysts customers are increasingly using Clariant, which is a step change in technical service support using real-time catalyst performance data. You'll be hearing more about this afternoon by Jens Cuntze. Absolutely fascinating innovation. In silico screening and machine learning is used to eliminate hazardous products early during our R&D process, and Clarita functions also as a research assistant. She has been fed with 30 years of R&D reports and data and is helping to unearth long-lost insights for our R&D colleagues. One third of our employees already is using Clarita and driving efficiency on a daily basis. Three arenas are going to be delivering the majority of our growth in the coming years. These are the innovation arenas that we're focusing our innovation into. We focus on those market segments that are overproportionally growing, supported by the megatrends that you heard Conrad introduce earlier, and where we already have a leading technology offering that we further intend to strengthen. These innovation arenas are going to generate 70% of the growth contribution in the time period 2024 to 2027, fueled by innovation. I will introduce each of the innovation arenas and explain what they are about and why we have the right to win. Let's take a closer look first at the innovation arena, health and sustainability-conscious consumers and brands. Now, Gen Z and Millennials are purchasing products differently than their parents. Less brand loyal, they're looking also to the sustainability story, and they're expecting proof points for the claims of such products. Market research shows that personal and Home Care products with a strong sustainability claim are growing twice as fast compared to those that don't. You heard Conrad talking about the strong growth of the 65-plus year people entering into retirement. These new retirees are very different than the previous generations. They're doing more sports, they feel and look younger, and they soon will be the cohort with the largest portion of disposable income. They are looking to maintain their health and looks as long as possible. This will drive the market for healthcare products as well as our cosmetics products. The actives innovations, which will help maintain their youthful looks, are enabled by world-class R&D capabilities in finding and developing natural actives as well as formulation aids and testing them in vitro and in vivo. Antonio Lara of our actives business will give you an excellent overview in our innovation capabilities in actives. These innovation capabilities have already been awarded six innovation awards this year and still counting. Our surfactants and functional polymers platform is fueling our range of excipients in our healthcare business, building on decades of experience in this technology and many years of being an established pharma-grade polyethylene glycol supplier. I mentioned that we had phased out our PFAS-containing coating materials. Our technology and deep experience in sustainable polymer solutions has allowed us to develop products that are replacing these as PFAS-free alternatives. The need for these solutions is apparent. Our PFAS-free powder coating, for example, launched earlier this year, is growing rapidly through the push by leading brands like Akzo, who themselves have a strong sustainability focus and are driving their portfolios to continuously increase in sustainability. This is how you can move from having a sustainability risk to a significant business opportunity. You'll hear more about the exciting PFAS-free product platform this afternoon by Angela. Let's move to the energy transition platform. The energy transition is creating opportunities for Clariant across all of the businesses. Decarbonization of hard-to-abate industries like the airlines industry is driving the production of sustainable aviation fuels, which in turn requires our adsorbents to clean used coconut oil and fats that are used as raw materials from this area. Here we leverage decades of experience and technologies developed for the edible oil purification that we've been doing for the past decades. Another hard-to-abate sector is steel. Decarbonization of steel is creating opportunities for our Catalysts business. In fact, the 40 million tons of avoided CO2 you saw at the beginning of the presentation comes in significant parts from the Catalysts for the manufacture of low-carbon steel via the direct reduction of iron. 40 million tons of CO2 is the same amount emitted by the whole of Switzerland in 2023. The special quality of this steel also has an impact on our mining business and is driving opportunities there where we leverage our strength in surfactants and functional polymers to address these specific quality needs as well as higher safety and sustainability requirements by our customers. The energy transition is also a driver for the adoption of electric vehicles where we have the leading non-halogenated flame retardant used in connectors and batteries. Looking at 2027 and beyond, we are extremely well positioned to take advantage of the developing hydrogen economy. With leading catalyst R&D capabilities that we have built over decades and the production of ammonia, methanol, we are tweaking these and developing further to develop tailored catalysts for blue hydrogen, e-methanol, and blue and green ammonia. This has allowed us to win the supply for nine blue ammonia projects and are the catalyst supplier for the largest e-methanol plant in the world in Kassø, Denmark. The energy transition is an extraordinarily interesting opportunity for Clariant across all of the businesses: Catalysts, Adsorbents, Additives, as well as Care Chemicals. The third innovation area is circularity. Circularity is both an environmental as well as a business imperative. According to a McKinsey survey of packaging purchasers, 75% of corporations have sustainability targets for packaging, but only 30% say they are ready to meet these targets, while regulatory pressures are only increasing. Over 60 countries have implemented bans on single-use plastics, and the EU is increasing mandates for recycled content. As industries increasingly turn to renewable and post-consumer recycled materials, we see enormous opportunities for products designed around this circular approach. We offer solutions like Licocene for recycling applications and will be launching a novel natural product-based antioxidant that is particularly developed for the mechanical recycling of polyolefins. Through these innovation solutions that extend product life cycles and allow for recycling of products, we support our customers to meet their circularity and sustainability goals. These examples demonstrate Clariant has a clear and tangible growth map with our innovation arenas being a key growth driver and contributing over 70% of the group sales growth, equivalent to 1.5% market outgrow per year. Within our three innovation arenas, health and sustainability-conscious consumers and brands, along with the energy transition, are expected to contribute the majority of Clariant's top-line growth until 2027, while we see an acceleration of the growth in all of these areas and the first real circularity contributions in 2027 and beyond. In summary, Clariant is taking a leadership position in sustainability and has a clear path to remain in that position, lowering regulatory and market risks in our operations and in our portfolio. We are pursuing a holistic integrated sustainability approach, one that we see reflected in the value that we can bring to our customers, for example, with our product carbon footprints. The three innovation arenas that we have defined will be generating over 70% of our profitable growth by 2027, providing a tangible roadmap to outgrow the market by 1.5% per annum in the midterm. Thanks to our innovative solutions, technological platforms, and sustainability leadership, we are uniquely positioned to achieve these targets. Ladies and gentlemen, the future is built on innovation. With our clear approach towards sustainability, backed by innovation platforms and sustained by our purpose-led strategy, we ensure that Clariant is uniquely positioned to serve market trends resulting in profitable growth and to shape the sustainable world of tomorrow together with our customers. Thank you very much. Yeah, so my name is Christian Vang. I'm the president for Care Chemicals Business and Americas, and I'm super excited to be here. And I look forward to talking you through some of the exciting opportunities ahead for Care Chemicals. So I will be, yeah, happy to try to dive into what Care Chemicals is and what Care Chemicals means to me, but also hopefully give you a little bit of insight into what makes Care Chemicals so exciting as such. So Care Chemicals is, as you probably know, Clariant's largest business with around 2.2 billion CHF revenue and a margin of 19% and a customer strength of more than 5,000 customers. We are covering a number of vertical market segments exposed to both consumer and industrial, resulting in a resilient business performance leveraging on a common technology and global asset platform. Moreover, managing these businesses together enables us to make optimal financial decisions through our integrated business planning, optimizing working capital, and using our assets in the best possible way. Now, if you look across our segments, we are present in fast-growing markets and see exciting growth opportunities in both consumer and industrials. You see it here in our specialty industrial applications, our Mining Solutions, Oil Services, Base Chemicals, as well as cosmetics, pharma, home care, Crop Solutions, and coatings. We are exposed to a wide range of very attractive markets in both the consumer and industrial end markets, with an accelerating demand for sustainable products across the whole space of our vertical segments. Now, looking at our consumer business in more detail, we have five key market applications, and with customers across the world leveraging both our global players as well as what we call local heroes. Our consumer businesses are truly differentiated. We are selling chemistry solutions with an appealing story to our customers, which helps them differentiate their offering with our leading technology positions. Just to highlight a few, cosmetics, where we have a leading position in active ingredients, rheology modifiers, and preservation solutions, is a very fast-growing market. Here, our acquisition of Lucas Meyer Cosmetics significantly expanded our reach into this high-value space, with stronger synergies already visible with our overall cosmetic portfolio. Pharma, where we have a leading position in our laxatives and are expanding in excipients. This is also a very attractive market, and I will come back later on how we plan to capitalize on that untapped opportunity. Similar for industrial businesses, we have a leading position across our key applications with support of our unique technologies. With an expanding total addressable market due to the increased focus on sustainability, we are well positioned to take full advantage of this. There is a huge spectrum of opportunities here, and we focus on segments where we know our chemistry is superior. And for this, we are well positioned to take full advantage of it. We view our global production and R&D network as a clear strength to support our customers in their regions, with very high percentages of localized production across our geographies. In Americas, for example, we have 94% of what we produce in America for Americans, 82% of what we produce in India for India, and 90% of what we produce in Asia for Asia. These global footprints provide us with resilience as our customers regionalize their supply chain to minimize risk exposure to supply chain disruption due to natural events like the recent Red Sea disruption, as well as the supply challenge as an outcome of the recent COVID pandemic and/or geopolitical uncertainties, which currently is on the rise. Our innovation platform underpins the uniqueness of Care Chemicals' business. This is the glue that binds our market segments together and creates innovation synergies across. We leverage this platform to develop solutions for multiple markets from a shared technology backbone with inspiration from market exposure from all segments. That's where we get a lot of cross-synergies from an innovation point of view. We expand our reach in high-value actives space with the acquisition of Lucas Meyer Cosmetics to become a leader in this area, as already mentioned. Our unique strengths in biocides and green preservation systems provide safety to several of our market segments. Our EOD platform, or ethoxylation derivative platform, combined with our joint venture in India, makes us the biggest supplier of segregated green ethoxylates from bioethanol rather than fossil fuel, for which we see more and more market traction, and similarly, synergies from our other unique chemistry platforms of functional polymers, mild surfactants, esters, and amines, where we have applications across both consumer and industrials. Importantly, we have commercialized. We have already commercialized green options for the majority of our ingredients, and we will continue to do so. Since 2021, we have delivered strong results with organic local currency growth of 5% and a margin expansion of 50 basis points to 19% covering the last 12 months counting, and we remain focused on expanding this margin further. This will be supported by our self-help action, which comes with run-rate savings potential of CHF 30 million towards 2027. Our self-help levers include capturing efficiency in productivity across our value chain through our differentiated business steering with an optimal go-to-market model, thanks to our commercial transformation, which we are in the middle of. Excellence in procurement for structural raw material cost saving and new supplier development. Asset footprint optimization to drive operational efficiency with support from our integrated business planning and strong inventory management. Moving to the differentiated segment steering for our Care Chemicals segment, which is absolutely key. Referring to the mega trends Conrad mentioned earlier, Care Chemicals is very well positioned in three in particular: health, wellness, sustainability, changing demographics, decarbonization, all plays differently to each segment. Shortly, I will talk you through how we aim to capitalize on the opportunities present by these megatrends with three case studies on Lucas Meyer Cosmetics, pharma, and mining solutions. Looking at our dedicated strategic mandate for each Care Chemicals segment, you see a very positive picture in terms of growth outlook. Pharma is our boost segment, an untapped opportunity, and we are very excited about the opportunities ahead. The strengths that come from our shared chemistry platform really give us the right to win here and grow significantly above market. We expect to grow this 9% versus 5% market growth towards 2027. Cosmetics and mining are our outgrowth segment for which we expect to grow sales at double the market by 2027. Our other segments will grow fully in line with the market, and our base chemicals is our harvest segment, which we absolutely manage for cash. Our differentiated strategic steering will enable above-market growth, and our innovation pipeline is fully aligned with our segment strategies to capture that. Now, let me walk you through one of the case studies on pharma, our boost segment. The market backdrop is very attractive, with growth driven by long-term structural tailwinds like changing demographics. We are confident in our right to win and the advantage that our shared chemistry platform gives us. We have a leading position in laxatives, which provides the basis for our ambition to accelerate and multiply our share in the excipient space. We expect a growth rate of 9% towards 2027, supported by our key growth initiatives. We are going to boost excipients with a strengthened portfolio of new formulations and continue to grow our laxative business as well. This will be supported by our commercial transformation. Here, we are taking advantage of the new operating model with a transformed go-to-market set up with dedicated new business development. We are expanding our production with focus on Asia to address the fast-growing demand there. And we will further build our infrastructure, including our research and development capabilities to support this growth. Here's an example of our sustainability-driven innovation, which shows you how we use our shared technology platform and insight in the pharma industry to create further value. Using our cosmetic technology platform, in this case, the VitiPure range of products, we have further innovated on the production through a patented refining process and created a superior range of products of pharma excipients. This supports our customers in the highest purity quality requirement for sensitive APIs, active pharma ingredients, especially suited for, for example, the mRNA technologies, which leads to attractive sales at maturity in that space. Moving on to mining or the industrial segment, let me take you through a case study on mining solutions, a segment where we enjoy top quartile Net Promoter Score. In the mining industry, there is a clear demand for more sustainable mining operations and for higher-grade metals linked to the energy transition. We are very well positioned to capture the upside from this and outgrow the market as we focus on sustainable mining solutions, using safer chemicals to manage waste and reducing energy and water consumption. We also supply chemicals which improve processing and yield of metals and minerals necessary for electric vehicles and renewable energy like lithium and copper. We deliver improvement in biodegradability for iron ore beneficiation, which also was mentioned by Richard earlier. We are confident that through these initiatives, we can outgrow the market with a 4% growth towards 2027. Here's an example of how we innovate in mining to meet customers' operational and sustainability goals. The mining industry is transforming how it stores tailings, replacing ponds with dry stacks, which is further reducing the ecological impact. Fine particles like slime limit the amount that can be processed for tailings management today. So we have, in collaboration with our customers and with the use of our unique technology platform, developed a patented solution which now allows our customers to add those fine particles to the tailings, and we're recovering thereby the processed water of up to 95%. This is creating new attractive business opportunities for us, but also for our customers. And with this, I would like to hand over to my colleague, Antonio Lara, who can give you a much better insight into the case study of Lucas Meyer Cosmetics. So, Antonio, can I invite you up here? Thank you. Thank you. So thank you, Christian, and good afternoon. My name is Antonio Lara. I'm the head of Lucas Meyer Cosmetics by Clariant, which is the result of the fusion between the acquisition of Lucas Meyer Cosmetics and the active ingredient portfolio of Clariant. I've been in the cosmetic industry for almost 20 years now. I started Lucas Meyer Cosmetics and was part of the ownership group that originally sold the business to IFF and then came along through the transaction with Clariant. So I'm happy to talk to you about Lucas Meyer, what the future of Lucas Meyer, and Lucas Meyer by Clariant will be. So let's start with our product portfolio. A little bit of a context of what our product portfolio looks like. We have 75% of our ingredients that are active ingredients. Those are the ingredients that provide the desired effect to the cosmetic formulation. They are sustained by our technology platforms, peptides, biotechnologies, and actives derived from botanical extracts. We cover most of the traditional, both skin and hair care applications. 20% of our portfolio is functional ingredients. Those are mostly emulsifiers based on our phospholipid technologies and our new launch of the quinoa starch technology. I am very excited to talk to you about what that technology means in the future. It is a patented technology that will be a disruptive influence on the formulations and on the formulation world going forward for cosmetic ingredients. As we move along on the presentation, I will be glad to give you a little bit more details on that. Then there's another 5% of our portfolio that is mixed between botanical extracts, pure botanical extracts, and encapsulation delivery systems that leverage the technologies from our functional ingredients, both the phospholipids and the quinoa starch materials. So now let's talk a little bit about the market. On this slide on the right-hand side, you see numbers for the market for personal care, the personal care market as a whole, about $6 billion on a yearly basis, of which $1.6 billion is our addressable market. Now, moving forward, our plan is to grow at 12% from now to the 2027 deadline. That is supported by a 7% market growth and a 5% growth from initiatives both on synergies and innovation that I will be talking to you about moving forward. It is also sustained by our historical performance. You can see in this slide that from 2014 to 2015 to 2024, our performance was, on average, 10% per year. And that includes the years of COVID and post-COVID turmoil. In fact, if you go down even further from the beginning of our history to 2023, our average growth rate was 12.8%. So now let me talk to you about what do we mean by innovation. This is a very heavy slide. I do apologize for it. The right-hand side is our graphical depiction of what our innovation flywheel means. The right-hand side has the four pillars on which we base that innovation. And so what I want to convey with this slide is that we see innovation in a holistic manner. For us, innovation is not just about the technical and/or scientific foundation of our ingredients. Although, so claim substantiation is a key element to the delivery of our value proposition. We go above and beyond that claim substantiation into the marketing story of the product. In the cosmetic ingredients world, the story about the product is as important as the claim substantiation of the ingredient. So we work with our customers to develop that marketing story. We also developed an R&D that is as flexible as possible to go and look for solutions where the solutions can be found, rather than trying to just maximize the knowledge that we have internally. That means we come up with solutions that might be different for different aspects of our portfolio, which requires a supply chain that is very flexible and allows us to manufacture products from different technology portfolios for use in a relatively agile and flexible manner. In addition to that, we leverage regulatory constraints and quality constraints and turn them into opportunities for innovation in order to provide solutions to our customers in an ever-changing regulatory framework. We train our sales force to sell on value. We don't sell on price. We sell on value. And that is an important key component of our formula to value creation. So as you can see, we look at innovation in a holistic manner. It is the composite of all of these contributions that makes us, in our humble opinion, different. So how does that reflect into our future and into what we are going to be developing in the years to come? Here you see three main megatrends that we will be addressing in the years to come: regenerative development, redesign, clean beauty, and holistic awareness. Let me address each one of them individually. Let's take regenerative design and drill down into the active ingredients components of our portfolio. What do we mean by regenerative design? Well, on the peptide side, what we mean by that is we are going to be using the biomimetic properties that we understand peptides have in order to develop greener, cyclic peptides that answer the needs of the market. On the natural side, we will be looking at consolidating our biotech knowledge between the knowledge existing already in Clariant and ours to provide what it's now more and more called a clean beauty, clean label type of product. In addition, we will be looking to upcycling to add value to the biomass available from different industries in order to bring ingredients that are more sustainable and in line with the mandates of the industry. On the clean beauty side, let me drill down to the functional ingredients and talk to you about the phospholipid side. What does clean beauty mean on the phospholipid side? It means concentrating our efforts in making sure that our supply chain provides us with the best possible raw materials that comply with the trends in non-GMO materials, soy-free, palm-free materials that ensure that our products are compliant with sustainability standards. It also means developing green extraction and solvent technologies that allow us to make our products even more sustainable. On the quinoa starch side, this is a new technology, proprietary technology that, in my humble opinion, is one of the most exciting introductions into the industry in a while on the formulation functional side of the equation. We have launched six weeks ago the first ingredient out of this technology platform that has already received very good reviews by our customers. It is a different way to formulate, and it will have an impact not only on the sustainability of the formulation, but also will help us reduce the number of chemicals included into a cosmetic formulation. That means adding value to the customer. That means cost reductions for the customer and that is value added for all, so we are very excited about the potential that this quinoa technology will bring forward. Finally, on holistic health, we are looking at the intersection between well-being and beauty. We know that there is an intrinsic relationship between how people feel and how people look, and we're looking at how we can bring those two together into a holistic approach. We're also looking at ingredients that protect and defend the microbiome that exists in your skin and your scalp because we know that a healthy skin and a healthy scalp translates into a more healthier environment, which means a better look and feel. We are working all the way down into how those nutrition contribute into this overall well-being feeling and this improvement into the way you look. And we actually have today one ingredient that could be defined as a nutraceutical that contributes through nutrition to the better well-being and therefore the better feel of our end consumers. So let me give you a quick review of a case study of what do we mean by innovation. This is an actual example of a customer who came to us asking for an anti-aging ingredient of natural origin. It will have been easy for us to just go ahead and provide that customer with a list of natural ingredients that had that anti-aging activity. But we had to drill further down. So we used our marketing skill to figure out what will be the value creation that we could contribute to that equation. The value creation that we identified was a trend that exists for a while now called immediate effect. More people are looking more and more for an immediate effect on the cosmetic side. And that is the trend that we were going to use in order to value add the proposal that we were going to make to our final customer. So our R&D team went out there and looked for a natural ingredient that had this immediate effect and found it on what it's called a kangaroo paw that you can see there. It's an Australian plant that has a very beautiful flower, and the nectar of that flower has molecules that have this desired immediate effect, so based on that, we built the story about the plant, about the immediate effect that the nectar had, about why that immediate effect was created in order to provide our customer, in order to convince the customer about the value of the ingredient, but also to provide the customer with the story that they can then use to sell the final product. While we are working with the customer in building the story that the customer will use for the final product, we are also working on ensuring that the supply chain is mastered, that we can provide this material on a sustainable manner, that we meet all the regulatory requirements that are necessary in order to sell this material around the world, and that we can provide them with the quality that the customer is expecting. At the end, we work with the customer on putting together the story for the final product. You can see here that images, videos, the story of the ingredient that we built was actually transferred into the story of the final product that the customer sells today to end customers. So we work with them to bring value all the way across the value chain and therefore creating additional value for both our end customer and ourselves. So where is that going to take us into the future? And how do we see this value creation helping to improve our position in the market and deliver on the promise of growth that we had made on our strategic plan? And as I said before, I was going to tell you where the additional 5% of our growth was going to come from. And here is where it's going to come from. It's going to come from end-to-end innovation, which means taking the raw materials, the ingredients, the value that exists in the current Lucas Meyer portfolio, both in Beraca, in Brazil, and in the Lucas Meyer portfolio in Switzerland, and value adding those materials into our formulas so that we can get higher value for the ingredients that we already have. It also means commercial regionalization, means expanding our network into areas where we feel we are underrepresented, and a good example of that is Asia-Pacific. We feel we have great opportunities to a better representation of our portfolio into Asia-Pacific, and here, the structure that Clariant provides to us with the breadth of scope that Clariant has in the Asia-Pacific countries, particularly in China, it's a great boost for our opportunity to sell and upsell our materials moving forward. There are also opportunities for us to value add synergistically both the portfolio, not only the portfolio of the ingredients of Clariant, but also the portfolio of personal care that exists within Clariant, bringing combined solutions that provide better value to the customer, and that, again, will generate value. Finally, through the operational integration, what we are trying to do is look beyond what the commercial regionalization means. Because as I said to you before, our approach is a holistic approach. That means providing the customer not only with a commercial interface, but also a scientific, technical, formulation, regulatory, customer service, logistics interface locally so that they can be supported in the development of their ingredients, so that means putting in place the infrastructure necessary to be able to provide this complete value chain to the customer, so with that said, that's my short introduction to Lucas Meyer. I hope you enjoyed it. Now I will cede my place to Christian for the conclusion. I guess you can all see why we are so excited about having Lucas Meyer as part of our business now. It adds value to a lot of things we are doing. It really complements a lot of aspects we are doing within Care Chemicals. Yeah, I'm super excited. Thanks, Antonio. Let me try to come to the last part of it, the key takeaways from a Care Chemicals point of view. To wrap it up, let me reiterate the attractiveness of Care Chemicals. One thing which is an important part of what we are doing is our differentiated business steering, especially with our commercial transformation, which will drive the profitable growth going forward across our vertical market segments. Our common chemistry platform or chemistry backbone, if you want it, gives us a unique advantage to develop truly innovative solutions and with a clear focus on sustainability. We have a strong specialty portfolio, and we will continue to build our regional footprint in the fast-growing markets, including North America and Asia-Pacific, and our specialty capabilities through selective M&A opportunities. The integration of Lucas Meyer Cosmetics is well underway, as you have seen, and we see significant top-line synergies potential already now in our customer relationship management pipeline. In the long term, we continue to focus on shifting our portfolio towards more attractive specialty segments, supporting our customers in their sustainability transformation. If you have been following the journey of Care Chemicals over the last 10 years, you will have seen exactly that. And with that, I would like to hand over to our business president for Catalysts, Jens Cuntze. Jens, the floor is yours. Thank you very much. Unlocking value from complex chemical process data streams is key to optimizing Catalysts' performance, enhancing plant operations, efficiency, and safety. Clarity, Clariant's digital service portal, drives operational excellence through enhanced efficiency across diverse plant operations. Clarity's global implementation spans all major regions and applications: 120 plants onboarded, more than 450 users across 30 countries. And our target is by 2030 to go fully digital and serve our customers only through Clarity. Further advancing services with our new Clarity Prime, which features advanced predictive tools, interactive what-if scenario analysis, Catalysts-specific benchmarking capabilities, and more. The Catalyst performance prediction tool, for example, empowers customers to optimize cycle lengths, enhance operational stability, and strategically plan turnarounds. Plant data are stored for instant access so that desired projections can be made by simply choosing a time frame. Key output parameters are then instantly derived to support rapid decision-making. From instant data access to smart predictions, Clarity Prime leverages AI and machine learning to power your plant's future. Giving Clariant customers the edge to stay ahead of the competition. Discover Clarity's transformative impact today, So welcome to the world of Catalysts. We hold a sizable Catalysts business with around CHF 850 million sales last 12 months, EBITDA of 18.8%, a well-balanced global footprint, and over 2,000 dedicated colleagues. We have three segments: petrochemicals, comprised of the ethylene and propylene value chain, syngas and fuels, and specialties. Now let's take a closer look at the segments. In petrochemicals, we hold leading positions both in the ethylene value chain and propylene value chain, where we compete. In ethylene, we basically see growth in crackers being built in North America, Middle East, and China, and in propylene, with our leading propane dehydrogenation technology, we have seen very strong growth in new builds over the last years and project utilization rates to normalize going forward. In Europe, we see an ongoing consolidation in the petrochemical industry relating to the new operating environment. In syngas and fuels, we hold strong positions in our key applications, being ammonia, methanol, hydrogen, and Fischer-Tropsch. We see continued stable growth in the Middle East and North America primarily, and we're very excited about the mid and longer-term strong opportunities from the energy transition, where we are extremely well positioned that relates to green and blue ammonia, green and blue hydrogen, ammonia, methanol, and sustainable aviation fuels. In specialties, we cover several different applications. Three of the large applications are maleic anhydride, butanediol, and fatty alcohols, where we all hold strong positions. We expect especially attractive growth in new specialized areas such as purification catalysts for the hydrogen economy, hydrogenation catalysts in general, and custom catalysts. Custom catalyst is our offering, where we take catalysts that have been developed by others and use our technologies to scale up and commercialize these catalysts. As mentioned, we have a very well-balanced global footprint. When it comes to our production capacities, we have about 30% of our capacities in the Americas, 30% in EMEA, and 40% in APAC. We have both operations and R&D centers around the world. When we look at our sales into the regions, we're also very well balanced. We have about 30% of our sales into the region APAC, excluding China, and roughly 20% each into China, the Americas, and EMEA, and around 10% into Europe. That positions us very well for differentiated regional growth going forward. Having the leading technology position is paramount to our business. To be a technology leader in the catalyst business, we need strong partnerships both with process licensors and academia. We are a pure-play catalyst player, so we do not license technologies but do that through our licensing partnerships. Here you see some of the top partnerships we have with companies such as Lummus, Technip, KBR, Linde, Air Liquide, Casale, and Midrex. In the technology field, we have a broad network in working with academia, including the Munich Catalysis in Munich, the ETH Zurich, and the Tianjin University. Again, our technology leadership is built on our own innovation and the cooperation with licensing companies and academia around the world. Now let's look at how markets are currently developing. You see on the left some of the growth rates in building capacity in the past and the future projections. Especially the area of on-purpose propylene has shown tremendous growth in capacity over the last years. As a leader in this technology, we have profited. These rates are expected to normalize more towards 4% going forward. When these waves of capacities normalize, that shifts a bit our business share from first fill to refill. About a decade ago, we had a strong first fill business based on shale gas. More recently, a lot of the first fill business was supported by the capacity growth in China. And we basically now come to first fill ratios of about 10%, 15%, whereas that was previously 30%. And what does that mean for us? The share of refill becomes more important, and we are excellently positioned to compete in the refill business. Here we compete based on the strong cooperation with our technology partners, our strong R&D, our proximity to customers around the world, not just in sales, also application technology to be very close to customers. And we have the leading AI-enabled tool that Richard already alluded to earlier, and I will go through that in more detail a bit later. The next capacity expansion or wave can be expected based on energy transition beyond 2027. Now let's take a closer look into our leading tool, Clarity. This is an AI-enabled machine learning-based tool, which has been a tremendous success, and we see ourselves as leaders in the industry. Here we offer our customers direct feedback on how the catalyst is performing, and this also includes projections on future performance of the plants. We've launched this in 2021. We already have over 120 plants onboarded, over 450 users around the world. You see some customer feedback here on the screen. But maybe to make it even more tangible, let me share a brief video on this technology. Unlocking value from complex chemical process data streams is key to optimizing catalyst performance, enhancing plant operations, efficiency, and safety. Clarity, Clariant's digital service portal, drives operational excellence through enhanced efficiency across diverse plant operations. Clarity's global implementation spans all major regions and applications: 120 plants onboarded, more than 450 users across 30 countries. Our target is by 2030 to go fully digital and serve our customers only through Clarity. Further advancing services with our new Clarity Prime, which features advanced predictive tools, interactive what-if scenario analysis, catalyst-specific benchmarking capabilities, and more. The Catalyst performance prediction tool, for example, empowers customers to optimize cycle lengths, enhance operational stability, and strategically plan turnarounds. Plant data are stored for instant access so that desired projections can be made by simply choosing a time frame. Key output parameters are then instantly derived to support rapid decision-making. From instant data access to smart predictions, Clarity Prime leverages AI and machine learning to power your plant's future. Giving Clariant customers the edge to stay ahead of the competition. Discover Clarity's transformative impact today. All right. Hope that gave you some insights. Now let's go to our financial performance. In 2022, our margins were substantially impacted by the unexpected and unprecedented short-term surges in raw material and energy prices. Through our margin management and cost initiatives, we have quickly recovered and currently stand at 18.8% EBITDA over the last 12 months, which is a substantial improvement versus 2022. Now let me share how we intend to further increase our profitability. We will take a proactive approach over and above the operational leverage that we have to improve based on self-help actions. We basically have defined CHF 20 million of run rate savings by 2027, half of them in operational efficiency, about a quarter in procurement savings, and another quarter in SG&A savings. So that is the impact we will have based on self-help actions. On top, we see, of course, the operational leverage, which we have gained when we come back to stronger growth. Now let's look at our strategic steering according to the innovation fields that Richard introduced this morning, and here we have a lot of exciting opportunities in catalysts. First of all, the area of decarbonization. Our business is particularly well set up to profit from the decarbonization of our industry. We have strong growth in energy transition, including ammonia, hydrogen, methanol, as well as sustainable aviation fuels. An important topic to note is when the industry shifts from crackers to on-purpose products and also to what I call more small molecule chemistry, where you start building up the chains, the amount of catalyst that is typically required is substantially higher, so this presents very strong growth opportunities for us in the area of digital optimization, we have the leading industry tool, Clarity, that I just introduced in this brief clip. There we are excellently positioned to better serve our customers across all catalysts. When it comes to regional shifts, our strong regional setup will help us capture differentiated growth across regions. When we come to differentiated steering within our catalyst business, the area of syngas in fuels, we aim to outgrow. We are well positioned. We see strong growth, especially in the more mid and long term, and we'll foster this business to make sure we can outgrow the markets. The other areas, specialties, ethylene and propylene, we intend to grow with the market in line with our strong positions going forward. The main growth drivers are energy transition. In ethylene, besides the existing business, we have a breakthrough technology that I'll introduce in a second, oxidative dehydrogenation. We have areas such as custom catalysts where we develop catalysts for our customers to commercialize them. In petrochemicals, in the area of ethylene, we have a stable market and expect that the crackers will continue to be built over the next years, and in the field of ethylene, we have a new technology, ODH, that I will introduce in a second. In the area of propylene, we have a strong position. We have had very strong growth in on-purpose propylene over the last years, and the strong new builds over the last years will yield a strong refill business in 2026, 2027, where we are well positioned to participate both through our technology partners and through the improved services we provide to our customers based on Clarity, and let me introduce a breakthrough technology to you in the field of ethylene. That is the area of oxidative dehydrogenation. This is a breakthrough technology that we are working on with our partner, Linde. This is a very strong development in the area of decarbonization. It's a technology that will be competitive in terms of CapEx and OpEx. It basically takes ethane to produce both ethylene and acetic acid at much milder conditions or lower temperatures than a conventional cracker. It offers the opportunity to save around 70% in energy and 60% in CO2 emissions. Beyond that, it is ready for full electrification to further improve the footprint. As you can see on the flow chart, there is a dedicated stream of CO2, which can be captured and further used to further decarbonize this value chain for the petrochemical industry. It's particularly interesting for companies who require acetic acid and ethylene, so producers of EVA, PTA, acetic acid, and acetate esters. In syngas, we are very well positioned. We expect growth in syngas, where we want to outgrow, to grow by around 3%. The reason why we project 3% growth is that in syngas, we had a solid base in 2024, whereas in petrochemicals, our growth rate of 6% is based on a lower base in 2024. We are particularly excited about the longer-term prospects, which will lead to stronger growth based on the energy transition, and we basically, in the next years, will continue to further develop our core positions in ammonia, hydrogen, and methanol based on our improved products. This field also included, what Richard introduced this morning, the area of DRI, basically direct reduction of iron, which is a very impactful way to decarbonize the steel industry. Let's take a closer look at the hydrogen economy. Basically, we see the hydrogen economy as a very big opportunity for our business. In the midterm, blue hydrogen is expected to be a very important transition area. We're well positioned, and we basically see in the midterm that both ammonia and hydrogen will grow, especially ammonia in the area of low carbon and hydrogen in the area of clean hydrogen, and we are positioned well in all of these areas. We have a catalyst portfolio where we have also specialized applications. For example, in the area of blue ammonia, we have a partnership both with Air Liquide for blue hydrogen and KBR for ammonia. We have won first projects and have a very healthy pipeline of new projects both in the area of blue and green. As Richard mentioned this morning, we've already won the largest green methanol project a while ago here in Europe. In the area of specialties, we also expect strong growth of 6%. That includes starting from a fairly low base in 2024. We're a co-leader in maleic anhydride, butanediol, and fatty acids. We serve many customers around a number of different applications. And one strong growth area is the area of custom catalysts. And for the broad customer portfolio we serve here, our Clarity tool will help improve the catalyst performance and provide superior service to our customers over the next years. Let me come to the key takeaways. First of all, we have clearly improved our profitability very rapidly since 2022 in a currently weak market environment. Important has been our strong margin management in combination with innovation and cost containment. We do see substantial growth until 2027 in two segments a bit stronger because we have a weak base in 2024. We basically stand currently at 18.8% EBITDA over the last 12 months and see an increase in profitability both based on operational leverage by coming back to stronger growth and the self-help cost measures that are introduced with roughly CHF 20 million sustainable year over year, and where I'm particularly excited is also the opportunities we have beyond '27 to drive the energy transition with the whole breadth of our portfolio. We see very strong business opportunities and also see a strong impact we will have on our customers and ultimately society to help decarbonize. Richard showed this morning just two of our catalysts, ODH and DRI, already help decarbonize the equivalent of 40 million tons of CO2, which is a huge lever sizable as mid-level country emissions, and that will provide strong opportunities for our business going forward. Thank you very much. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Also from my side, a very warm welcome, and let's look into the BU Adsorbents and Additives. We start with a snapshot, and we generated in our Q3 2024 about CHF 1 billion revenue evenly split across consumer and industrial markets, complementing each other. Our EBITDA margin is, after exceptional items, at around 13%, and we employ about 2,700 people there in our teams, and we have around 34 production facilities around the globe. When we look a little bit closer, then we see that we are positioned in many attractive markets. In adsorbents, we look at the purification markets, at foundry specialties, and also Cargo and Device Protection. The addressable market is above CHF 2 billion, and the CAGR 2027 is slightly above GDP, then we also have the additive business. We target here two markets. That's polymer solutions, coatings, and adhesives. Here, the addressable market is larger, 6 billion, and the CAGR 2027 is also higher. It's above GDP. I will share more information around these applications later with you, but let's have a high-level view on all our end markets. You see it's many, and we are well positioned with both adsorbents and additives here. What's really great here is that most of these end markets have the drivers, sustainability, and decarbonization. It's either due to regulatory pressure or, in many industries, our customers position themselves as players and want to be leading in sustainability. That's, of course, great for us with our sustainable portfolio offering because it's accelerating basically our markets. I would like to take you with me and showcase a little bit in one end market how we have synergies between our different segments, and it would be food and agriculture. In food, we have edible oils. Our customers are producing edible oils out of seed, and you need to take out all the impurities. And that's where our adsorbents come in. When you think about all the increasing health standards in that market, it's an increasing market for our adsorbents. When you think about agriculture, also here, sustainability plays a part. You don't want to have any polymeric synthetic materials out there. So in fertilizers, you use adsorbents to, for example, stabilize the formulation, or they act as a carrier for active ingredients. In seed coatings, you have them around the seed particles to basically allow easier handling or to retain the moisture during the germination process. And last but not least, you use additives in all sorts of agricultural films, like greenhouse, for example, that allows you having products growing all around the year. And maybe from here, we have a closer look at adsorbents. We are targeting purification, foundry specialties, cargo and device protection. And you do see that we are basically the leading number one player in most of our applications. And why is that? Because we have a unique setup. We start with the mines where we source our clay, and it's down to the end application at the customer. That makes us special. I already talked about the edible oil. Another large market for us is renewable fuels. And here, the role of adsorbents is similar. Renewable fuels are used in diesel applications, but also aviation fuels, and they are made out of used oils. So you can imagine there's a lot of impurities. And this is, again, where our customers are using adsorbents. And typical customers would be Neste, would be Eni, or Diamond Green Stifel. We are working with them. A large market of ours is also Foundry and Specialties. Here, we position our adsorbents for the casting of metal iron parts, and here we would work with companies like Aisin, suppliers of automotive components, or with Brembo, a company that is producing and supplying brake systems. This market also contains the agricultural market I talked about earlier. Last but not least, cargo and device protection. This is a broad market, and it's basically our desiccant business. You do need desiccants to maintain stability and quality of products during transport, but also during storage and all sorts of products, basically food. Here, we would work with companies like Conagra, and then also electrical systems. We would work with Texas Instruments or ABB, but also health and personal care products like Procter & Gamble and 3M. Maybe one more sentence around adsorbents: how we truly differentiate in the market is that we are a global supplier, so we can really leverage our teams not only across regions, but also across all the many applications that we have. Yeah, with that. Looking at additives in general, a highly attractive business. You can see here, just alone from the picture, many attractive markets. And there's two things that we basically can distinguish versus many other peers is that we do have a high technology, a strong technology position, and we also have the application know-how in the team that we can work with our customers down the value chain. So if you just look at polymer solutions, halogen-free flame retardants, where we are also the leading number one player, we have basically the know-how to work even with the brands. So take Apple as an example, or also BYD, understand their pain points, and then work in the chain also with their tier suppliers, and of course, with our direct customers. That would be companies like BASF or Celanese. They produce the polymers. And then when you do that, you can really have the best solution offering, and that makes us so strong. In these markets, we also supply our stabilizers, our waxes, and then they end up in many applications. Packaging is one application, also high-performance textile and also construction. And our focus is always enhancing the sustainability when our customers are producing their products as such, but also the finished product for enhanced durability. It's very similar in coatings and adhesives. In adhesives, we position ourselves specifically in non-textiles, in fabrics, in nonwovens, in fabrics, and in wood applications. Here, our focus is on replacing traditional adhesives with sustainable bio-based Licocene materials. This will give our customers the advantage of having a much lower carbon footprint while having the right adhesion performance. In coatings and inks, we have also the product portfolio of flame retardants, stabilizers, and waxes. Here, again, it's always about the sustainability and enhancing the performance of coatings and inks. When you see the map for the Business Unit A dsorbents and Additives, then you see we are well positioned around the globe in the Americas, in EMEA, and also in APAC. We supply almost 70% of our products in the Americas, 100% in EMEA, and almost 60% in APAC from products that we produce in the region for the region. This is possible because we do have the 34 production sites in four continents, in four countries, and that is very important for us. I mentioned earlier, in Adsorbents, we control the value chain. It is because we have 59 sites and mines around the world where we source the valuable clay that we then activate, and then we supply it to the sites of our customers. This is an important aspect because, number one, you have low transportation costs, and number two, we need to ensure supply security for our customers. That's why we want to be close to them. The same is for our technology centers. We have also nine around the world to work in the region with our customers. Financial performance, if we look at that since 2021, then you do see that we had 2% organic local currency growth, showing the resilience of that business in a challenging market environment. Apart from the inflation and deflation that we saw in 2022 and 2023 because of the raw materials, what we had in addition to that in the additives business, we saw that our customers were increasing inventories in 2022. That was because there was a challenge with the availability of additives in the market in general, and that was intensified through a force majeure situation of phosphorus material in 2021. And that certainly impacted the flame retardant market. So customers, and not just customers, but all players down the chain ensured that they had enough inventory because everybody wanted to be prepared for the strong demand that we had at that point in time. In 2023, markets became soft, and companies, again, all down the chain started to destock inventories in combination with a demand that got softer in 2023, and that certainly impacted our margins in 2023 negatively. Most importantly, we are on it to improve and to recover the margins. You do see that we already have a 2% increase in the margins. And when you just compare Q4 last year with Q3 this year, then you will see 9.6% improvements. So that is our turnaround that we started, and it's in full swing, and we basically implemented several measures across the organization. Number one, we adjusted and right-sized the headcount. We also improved our operating cost structure. That was important, certainly an important factor for us. When we also adjusted and took out complexity of our product portfolio, and not just the product portfolio, we also took out complexity from the organizational structure and the processes in line with the new operating model that we launched for Clariant in 2023, and then we also improved our go-to-market structure, so we looked at the customer groups that we are targeting, adjusting the service levels to allow sustainable business growth, and of course, also very important as a technology leader, we enhance our innovation capabilities because only when they are strong, then we can truly differentiate it in the markets that we are serving. We generated already CHF 30 million, more than CHF 30 million in savings, and we have another CHF 20 million defined, and they will be executed until 2027. Now we are looking at how we steer our business. So we talked about the strategy and how do we go about that when we steer it. You already saw in Conrad's, but also in Richard's presentation, the megatrends that we are having, and you also see that for the BU Adsorbents and Additives, most of them are relevant, which is very good for us because it's a basis for the differentiation of our products. And I will specifically refer to three case studies. One is around PFAS-free materials based on the megatrend health, wellness, and sustainability. Then for flame retardants, it's around the megatrend decarbonization, but also automation and digitalization, and then also renewable fuels based on the megatrend decarbonization. In adsorbents, we are extending our leadership in renewable fuels by expanding our capacity, leveraging the acquisition that we made in Quincy. Conrad shared that with you earlier, and that allows us to outgrow this attractive market. We are also tapping into new opportunities where we are today not present or we were just starting, like in agriculture. That would be something, and then we grow with the market in edible oil, in foundry and specialties, and also in cargo and device protection. In additives, it's certainly about the turnaround. This is our mandate, and that is very important for us. At the same time, our markets are very attractive, so it is essential for us to pick and choose the right opportunities and ensure that we can grow at the same time, so that would be the example of PFAS-free material for polymer solutions, but also for related coatings and inks applications. Another one is the replacement of traditional adhesives that I mentioned with our Licocene product line. And last but not least, it's about our flame retardants, our bio-based waxes in all our target applications that I shared with you. So I think that's a good moment for the deep dives. Renewable fuels, I already mentioned, this is a market that is supported by the megatrend decarbonization, and there are many regulations out there issued by governments. There's initiatives, there's mandates. And if you just think about Europe as an example, from next year on, all aviation fuels must contain a minimum of 2% of sustainable aviation fuel. So this is a market that is truly attractive. And we do have a competitive advantage. We are leading these markets today. We work not only with our customers, but also with engineering companies. We work with co-suppliers and are positioned in these markets already. So we do have a brand recognition that is very important because when you think about these large companies, refineries, they want to have a smooth production. They cannot really accept any technical issues. They must rely on their suppliers when it comes to the adsorbents, and they know they can count on us, and this is why we are so strong in these markets. And that's why we are confident that we will achieve the 13% CAGR that we planned until 2027. A lot will come from the Americas because this is where these markets are already quite developed, and our growth pipeline consists of fully validated customer projects. And important for us will be to launch the products out of Quincy that we acquired, that we continue expanding our capacity for that, and that we continue expanding and making sure that our teams have the right technology expertise. Yeah, I already talked about Quincy. I don't know if you know where it is. It's in the north of Florida, and we acquired it late 2022 from BASF. Why is it so special for us? There's basically three elements around this acquisition that are very important. It is a very valuable clay, attapulgite, that is really well suited for the application of renewable fuels. Number two, it's a huge size of land. It's 17,000 acres. It's the size of Manhattan. So that's big reserves that we have, and the location in the north of Florida, it is close to our customers. For example, some of them are, of course, in Texas. This acquisition came with production capacity, but what really helps us unlocking the value of that acquisition is that we expanded that capacity with our know-how, and then only then we can now activate the clay that is required before you can really supply it to customers that they can use it for renewable fuels. At the same time, this attapulgite clay is also very important and attractive, opening new opportunities for us in the markets, and that's what we are doing in parallel. That's a very exciting opportunity. Another one would be in flame retardants, totally different. You can imagine that flame retardants, that the demand is increasing because there's more and more regulatory. It's either safety or sustainability. Just currently, we receive, for example, many requests from the construction industry for sustainable flame retardants. Today, I thought I'd share with you a little bit more about flame retardants for consumer electrical applications, industrial electronics, and also electric vehicles. You might remember earlier from the chart. This is an interesting growth market from a pure market perspective, 6% growth, and we are planning to outgrow that with 9%. Why are we confident that we can do that? Because our flame retardants fulfill all the expectations from the customers. That would be number one aspect of sustainability. So many of these plastic parts in the electronics products, they must be recyclable. That means all the ingredients in these plastics, they must maintain their properties after the recycling process. The dosage of the added recycled material becomes bigger and bigger, and so you need products that still have the right quality afterwards. Secondly, toxicity, of course. We must ensure that the end consumer is not having any health issues. That's why halogenated flame retardants that are still being used out there, around 30% of the material out there is still halogenated. That must be replaced, and regulatory is already in place and is getting more stringent in addressing that, giving us also an opportunity for further growth. Then electric vehicles, everything in electric vehicles, there's areas where you have high voltages, and the plastic parts must withstand these high voltages. And this is also where our flame retardants come in, so in a nutshell, our flame retardants, the patented DEPAL OP technology is fulfilling all these demands, and that's why we find them basically in all the applications. If it's battery housing, if it's connectors, if it's the charging infrastructure, you will find our DEPAL technology in combination with all the main polymers, if it's polyamides, if it's polyester, or if it's epoxy resins. And 20% of our customers' formulations is the flame retardant, so it's not just a small additive. It represents a critical part of the formulation, and that's why we are strategic to our customers. That's why they work with us. And since we have opened our flame retardant capacity in China last year, it made us attractive for that fast-growing markets and the customers in Asia. So we are very happy with that plant that helps us open markets down there. So this brings me to my last case study. It's about PFAS. You heard about it earlier from Richard, but I'm sure you heard about it in the press as well. There is PFAS in consumer applications, in industrial applications, and since they are forever chemicals, we have to make sure we remove them. And if you just think about packaging, so polyethylene for food packaging, here alone, the opportunity for additives PFAS-free is larger than 200 million. And that's why customers came to us. We worked with them, and it's very important that you understand and work with the customer what is really important for you. So in food packaging, it's of course the speed, how you produce the films. Then, of course, you must have really high aesthetic films, high functionality, complying with all the health standards. And that's what we did. And as we collaborated so fast and strongly with customers, we were able to launch a product relatively fast and see that we have the properties that are equivalent or better than the next best alternatives. So that's really good news. And that brings me to the end of my presentation today. If I wrap it up, the turnaround is in progress. We already executed some initiatives that resulted in concrete savings, and we have further measures defined that are in progress. Number two, strategic steering. I think you see that we are steering the business strategically. We outgrow the Adsorbents' core by focusing on renewable fuels. In Additives, we maintain our specialty position while improving the profitability. We serve attractive markets. I think the three case studies showed that. And portfolio and footprint, we are further enhancing it. And for the footprint, I think we have a very solid position. However, we will localize our Additives footprint further. And last but not least, we offer a unique technology. And in combination with the know-how of our teams, we are able to help our customers achieving their sustainability targets. And with that, I would like to thank you and Andreas. So as I just said, we are in the home stretch. You will have to listen to me for about 15 minutes, maybe a few seconds shorter, and then we will get into the much-anticipated Q&A section. I would say, personally, let me also thank all of you for being here today. I'm very, very happy to see so many familiar faces in the crowd. So again, thank you for coming and being part of our Investor Day 2024. I would also like to extend a huge thank you to Andreas Schwarzwälder, our investor relations team, FGS, and Morgan Stanley for everything that you have been doing to help us get ready for this Investor Day over the past few months. It is quite an undertaking to pull all of this together, and it has really been a Herculean effort. So thank you very, very much to our team. All right, so over the last several hours, you have heard quite a lot from Richard, from the BU presidents, from Conrad about the technologies, the innovations, the segmentation that we have within our Clariant organization, and what I would like to do now is basically try to bring all of that together in terms of what does it mean for our financials for the next few years. As we get into that, though, maybe we take a second to take a look at where we've been for the last three years since our Capital Markets Day in November 2021. I would say that from a sales perspective, we have achieved a very solid local currency growth of 4%, which is really a phenomenal achievement over a very difficult period, which, in fact, saw our peer group with a 1% decline in revenues over this period of time. Now, as you know, a lot of our revenue growth over this period has come from increased selling prices, which is very reflective of our ability to pass on raw material costs, logistics costs, energy costs to our customers. Finally, if you look at our figures on a reported sales perspective, you can see the impact of the very strong Swiss franc, given that we are one of the few competitors that is actually Swiss franc functional. The appreciation of the Swiss franc has actually brought down the overall growth rate on a reported perspective. But from a local currency perspective, we're quite happy with the development. If we look at it from a margin development perspective, our margins have been very resilient over this three-year period. Since 2021, we've seen about half a point decline in our overall margin. But when compared to our peers, they've seen about a three percentage point compression in margins over the same period. So again, even though there's a slight decline, we're very pleased with our relative performance. When you look at the key elements, cost inflation has been a very significant impact for us over these past three years as we've gone through the COVID period and post-COVID period. We've already noted that from a raw material perspective, we've been able to pass that through from increased pricing. So we've been able to offset that entirely. We've also been very successful in balancing wage and other cost inflation through our cost savings programs. We'll come back to that in a little bit, but we're very proud of our achievement there to make sure that we're balancing that out over the cycle. We've also had a positive impact from M&A, both through our acquisitions as well as through our divestitures, resulting in this relatively flat margin development over the course of the past three years. Conrad mentioned it at the very beginning, but I think it's important to come back to our targets in this closing part of the session. We remain fully committed to our financial targets that you have, well, all of our targets, exactly, but I'm the finance guy. We remain fully committed to these targets through what is really going to be 2027 at the latest, and that's a piece of new information we'll come back to in a little bit, so specifically, we intend to grow local currency sales at 4%-6% per year. We aim to achieve an EBITDA margin of 19%-21%. We are almost there, free cash flow of around, free cash flow conversion of around 40%. Our commitment to these targets has been unwavering for the last few years, and it remains as such, and we have a concrete path on how we'll get there. Starting with the top line, our top line target is underpinned by a market growth assumption of between 2%-4 percentage points. Then on top of this, we expect to drive above market growth through the innovation arenas that we've talked about today, through the geographic expansion, and specifically focused on health and sustainability, energy transition, and circularity. We're quite excited about all of the innovation that is occurring within the company today. It's clearly linked to the megatrends that our BU presidents talked about earlier today. So we're very confident that we should be able to get this above market growth through these innovation arenas. If you look then also at the geographic expansion, I mean, we've made quite some investment over the course of the past few years in capacity in China and other parts of the world, and we expect to be able to fill that capacity over the course of the next coming years to be able to help fuel additional growth on top. So when you look at the market growth, when you look at the innovation growth that we'll get from the innovation arenas, when you look at the geographic expansion that we'll have coming in through our investments that we've made recently, this then brings us to the targeted sales growth of 4%-6% on average per year. From a margin perspective, well, no, no, hold on. Sorry. When we look at, hold on, sorry, did I skip a slide? No. Okay. When we look at our savings, we are very, very proud of our savings achievement over the course of the past few years. We originally came out with an estimate of CHF 110 million of savings at the Capital Markets Day in 2021. We've not only achieved all of that, but we have increased the target by 60% to a new target now of CHF 175 million. We've achieved through the end of Q3 this year CHF 162 million. We should see another CHF 6 million or so in Q4, which would bring us up to a target by the end of this year of CHF 168 million with the CHF 7 million balance, CHF 8 million balance in early 2025. That then effectively concludes this savings program, and we'll come back to a new savings program in just a few moments. Now we get to the margin. So we've discussed our margin ambitions in a lot of different forums over the course of this year. First of all, talking about 2024, 2025, and the big question was, well, okay, when are you going to get to your margin ambition that was announced in your Capital Markets Day in 2021? So we're very pleased to say that we firmly intend to reach our target by the end of 2027 at the latest. So starting from our base of around 16% in 2024, we expect the top line growth previously mentioned to drive operational leverage, capitalizing on the cost measures and productivity improvements of the past few years. We have done a lot of work in the company in the last few years to completely reorganize, to implement the new operating model, to make ourselves a leaner organization so that when the growth is coming, we'll have enormous operating leverage. It's also important to talk about the impact of our new operating model, and we've talked about that a lot today, as well as in other forums. We are a fundamentally different company today than we were five years ago in terms of how we manage the business. It's really centered on this global segmentation and steering, and through that global segmentation and steering, we do fundamentally expect to see a market improvement in the underlying margins within each of those segments. I've used the example in several other forums about our oil business. It's a business that a few years ago had very low margins, and they've done a phenomenal job of really reevaluating every single element of how they do business, and that's the exact type of thing that we're trying to drive in all of the segments today, putting very clear targets and regular follow-up with each of the segments on how we're going to drive that margin, then coming to our new savings program, we will achieve an additional CHF 80 million in savings over the course of the next three years. Each of the businesses has already talked a little bit about how they will generate some of this savings. It will come largely from procurement initiatives, asset optimization initiatives, as well as further centralization efforts of further integrating activity into shared services, for example. As a result of this, we fully expect that two-thirds of our margin improvement from around 16% to our range of 19%-21% should be fully realized from market growth plus the innovation work that we're doing, and one-third should come from self-help measures. Turning to capital allocation, let me say first that this is an area that I'm exceptionally pleased with. We've done a lot of good work here over the past few years to make sure that we're really focusing on cash flow within the company, that we're taking the capital that we have and we're allocating it to the right businesses and to the right activities within the company. Our capital allocation strategy is actually underpinned by four pillars. The first of those is this organic differentiated steering that we've been talking about today. We've changed the CapEx allocation process within the company to ensure that capital is funneled to those projects that have the highest returns and that fit closely with the strategic intent that we're trying to drive within the company, with a strong focus on projects that actually generate real cash. The second pillar focuses on using bolt-on M&A to complement existing segments and technologies. The third pillar is really around the dividend and making sure that we're able to continue to provide a reliable, sustainably growing, and funded dividend to our shareholders. And finally, the investment-grade rating. We are firmly committed to maintaining that and by our sound management of our debt profile, we think we're moving very clearly in that direction. If we dig into these a little bit further and starting with CapEx, our growth in the future is really a function of the investments that we're making today. And in fact, 60% of our CapEx is actually earmarked for expansion and sustainability projects. If you look here, whether you're talking care chemicals, catalysts, additives, and adsorbents, we've identified specific projects in all of these business areas to drive the geographic and innovation growth that underpin the growth profile that we mentioned previously. So the way we analyze, the way we define, the way we deploy capital within the company for capital expansion is much different than it was in the past. If we turn to M&A, with the implementation of the global segmentation early last year, we've really done a lot to reinvigorate our M&A process. We're really focusing on targets that have attractive market positions that are accretive to our margin and ROIC ambitions and bring a technology focus on complementarity and sustainability to our organization. Our acquisition of Lucas Meyer Cosmetics is really a fantastic example of that M&A criteria at play. If we look at our dividends, we have for the last few years had a very stable dividend of around CHF 42 per share, which constitutes about a 40% payout ratio. Going forward, we will continue to focus on dividend stability, obviously with potential upside as our earnings increase. With regard to the investment-grade rating, we have leveraged. We've operated at a fairly low level of leverage for the past several years, which I think is a very prudent approach that we've brought with the increase in our leverage only increasing recently with the acquisition of Lucas Meyer. As we look forward into 2025 and 2026, our focus is very much on deleveraging and getting our leverage profile below 2% to prepare ourselves for the possibility of future bolt-on M&A. Can't promise anything, but we want to make sure that we have a balance sheet that is sufficiently strong to withstand that when those opportunities come. And as such, and I think because of our sound management and fairly conservative profile, we will maintain our investment-grade rating going forward. So to wrap it all up, our performance since the 2021 Capital Markets Day has been stable despite a challenging macroeconomic environment, outperforming our peers on an operating basis. We today reinforce our midterm financial targets with profitable growth that will be driven by innovation and continued self-help actions. We have a disciplined capital allocation policy based on clearly defined criteria that supports our profitable growth trajectory. We have an investment-grade rating that is stable with an intention to deleverage back to our target below 2 times EBITDA in the near term. With that, again, thank you very much for joining us today. I hand back to Andreas for the Q&A session. The first question comes from Christian Faitz. Thanks. Two questions, please. First of all, in your care chemicals activities, my understanding, or you said actually that home and personal care makes up 50% of care chemicals. How much do your top 10 customers within home and personal care make up of that 50 percentage points? And then the second question on catalysts, your EDHOX catalyst for the Linde technology, can that also be retrofit in ethane-based crackers, or is that just for new builds? Thanks. Yeah, let me just, so first and foremost of our top customers, we don't have a customer representing more than 2% of our turnover. So no customer more than 2%. No. And when we said that home and personal care was not 50%, it's the consumer-facing business, which is 50%. On the ODH question, this is a technology for new builds. It's not for retrofit. So how much new builds do you think the world needs for ethylene, given all the flood of ethylene crackers we had over the past 15 years in the U.S., for example? We don't have a projection yet on how many ODH plants will be built, but right now we have developed this technology, and commercialization is expected to start in a few years. Got Sebastian there. Oh, no. Thank you. Sebastian Bray of Berenberg Bank. I'd have three, please. The first is on the presentation touching on sustainability and the reference to Clariant's usage of AI being above the sector average. Can you talk a bit about how that data was gathered and what the sector average is, please? I think it was on slide 36. From memory, the Clariant figure was given as 34% within that. The second question is on Lucas Meyer, $1.5 billion accessible market out of a $6 billion market for the wider high-end actives. What are the parts that Lucas Meyer doesn't touch, and could that accessible market be expanded to come closer to a $6 billion figure? And my last one is on the infrastructure assets at Clariant. What percentage of the total net income of the company currently comes from this, and is it just in the associates line, or is it included in the EBITDA? The reason I'm asking is that there's periodic speculation around these assets being sold. Thank you. Okay. I'm actually just looking for the slide. I didn't hear you. What is the benchmarking that you're referring to? I believe there was on slide 36 a reference to the percentage of Clariant's workforce who are engaging or using AI. The 36%. Yes. What was the sector average, and how exactly is that figure calculated? Could you give some color on that? Okay. The operational definition of this 36% is employees at Clariant that are using on a weekly basis Clarita. For privacy reasons, we don't know exactly who's using it, but we know that 36% of the Clariant employee base is using Clarita. I have not seen any sector-specific data about the use of, and Clarita is our large language model. I haven't seen any sector-specific data on the usage of large language models in other chemical companies, so I wouldn't be able to give you any information on that. I think what we can say is that Clarita, the 36% of the people that are using and the projects that we're seeing, it already has a significant impact on the way that we're doing our business. But I guess that we'll see in the future, we're going to see additional data coming out. Now, on your question about Lucas Meyer and the addressable market, traditionally, the personal care market is divided by specialties, semi-specialties, semi-commodities, and commodities. And it is a value chain definition. So the $1.6 billion has to do with our technologies and our product portfolio and how those technologies and product portfolio fit within the specialties and semi-specialties. By specialties, I mean mostly our active ingredients, and by semi-specialty, I mean mostly our functional ingredients. We do not go below that because the value chain creation is not a good fit for us. So we could expand our $1.6 billion by adding either technologies and/or product portfolio to our breadth. And then on your final question about Infraserv, that was it? The infrastructure assets as a whole, so Infraserv and the other chem parks within that. Yes. Okay. Stating what's in the annual report, we run about probably 35-40 million of dividend out of Infraserv on an annual basis. Obviously, that goes up and down depending on how much Infraserv actually makes. Thank you. Yep. Hi, Ranulf from Citi. Thank you for today. One question is really just on the growth drivers that you outlined: health and sustainability, energy transition, circularity, and the geographic expansions, and the rate at which you expect those to start contributing to growth. So do we think that that adds 1.5% per year from next year, or is it back-end loaded? And to follow on from that, will you be disclosing annually the contribution for accountability? Thank you. Yeah, maybe I'll say first a thing, and then Richard can add with some more detail. So if you look at the contributions to our annual growth, where we actually have guided for a 4%-6% growth rate, we've also said next year it's going to be like 3%-5%. So naturally, it's going to be more back-end loaded. I don't know if you have any more granularity as far as the different growth drivers. If we look at the when what is actually coming, we're going to have already in 2025 a significant contribution from the health and sustainability-driven consumers and brands. That's going to accelerate slightly over the period. Energy transition is also already going to contribute in 2025, whereas circularity is minor and is only really kicking in after 2027. We're going to see slight increases in the speed at which we're going to have these contributions over the three-year period, but we expect that already next year we're going to see a material contribution. We've backed up this growth in these innovation arenas with strategic growth initiatives, so we know exactly where and how we're actually going to be experiencing this growth. That's it. That is basically a pipeline, and you've also seen that reflected in the target setting where last year we were running, or this year we're running, roughly 17% of sales as new innovation sales. And then towards the end of the planning period, we were ramping that up to 20%, right? Yeah, of innovation sales as a percentage of total sales. Georgina. And then Neil. Thank you. It's Georgina from Goldman. Good to see you all. Thank you for the presentations. I've got a couple of short, quick-fire questions. What is normalized inflation that you've assumed, and therefore, what's the price versus volume in the top-line growth you're forecasting? I noticed that you do have an interesting kind of higher weighting of CapEx into the Middle East and APEC that you're highlighting for the emerging market kind of growth opportunity. Can I ask why Europe is still such a high percentage of your CapEx if that's somewhere you're not expecting to grow so fast? And then a bunch of questions on the ESG side. What percentage of your products do you already have a product carbon footprint for, and are you anticipating a higher level of cost associated with the new accounting or reporting standards from the ESG side? Yeah, Well, why don't you take the inflation question? So, inflation normalized for us is more back in the 2%-3% range. I mean, we've had just enormous inflation over the past couple of years, but it comes back to a normalized 2%-3% for us as we go forward. Like we said, we expect to be able to offset that fully with our further cost programs. When it comes to raw material prices, I mean, as the economy starts to pick up, we should start to see some degree of raw material inflation coming through the system, but we expect to fully offset that with pricing. Yeah, and Richard. Then with regards to the product carbon footprints, we expect to be covering 75% of our sales with product carbon footprints by the end of this year. With regards to CSRD reporting, the way that we've set it up is that we're integrating all of the requirements of the CSRD reporting into the business processes and like that, integrating it into the way that we work and then sort of aggregating this back out again. Our goal is to implement this reporting after project costs so that we don't have any cost increase in operational costs going forward. Yeah, and Georgina, your question on CapEx, we have seen a shift in allocation towards Asia, as well as to the Americas, by the way. So Europe, in terms of gross CapEx, has gone down in terms of its share, but it's also fair to say that we have an installed asset base in Europe, which is fairly large, and that does require quite a bit of maintenance CapEx, which we're doing, as well as sustainability CapEx to actually lower the carbon footprint of these sites and make them more sustainable. But it's not so much related to gross CapEx in Europe what we're doing, but it is very much maintenance and sustainability CapEx. Yeah, thank you. Hi, Tristan Lamotte from Deutsche Bank. One question on the consumer space. There have been some recent warnings. What's your visibility on the consumer end market, and is there a risk of slowdown there next year, and how does that kind of outlook split across Lucas Meyer and the more commoditized parts of the business? So if I can answer for Lucas Meyer, what we are seeing is a shift on consumption from traditional channels and markets to a more indie brand virtual market. So we have seen that shift. The large brand owners are still working on the process of adapting to this new reality, but at the same time, there are opportunities for mid-size, regional, and indie brands, which are growing strongly in particular markets. So we see a shift of this, and we are, of course, focusing ourselves on following that shift to maximize revenue. Yeah, and let me add that the strong representations we have with local heroes, as we call them, or indie brands, as we call them in some of the Lucas Meyer Cosmetics business, with our strong representation there, we are, of course, kind of a little bit weird against what happens with the bigger players as such. And with the less dependency, as I talked about before, that's kind of how that plays into the resilience we have in the consumer-facing business. Angela, you wanted to make a comment about it as well, or? I would say from an additive perspective, considering the number of end markets that we have in both consumer and electronics, I'm sorry, in consumer and in industrial, my expectation is that it is complementing each other and that we will not see a specific impact of that. Yeah, so I think if you look at consumer confidence overall, there's clearly some weakness in the China market right now, and you saw that with some of the luxury brands reporting their reduced sales. I think we're relatively immune if you look at specifically the products that we have for anti-age creams as well as haircare. That's a segment that's less vulnerable for this kind of sort of luxury brand segments, which are suffering. More broadly speaking, what you see is in the composition of GDP, there is actually a shift back already to durable goods spending by consumers and semi-durable. So we have the first year this year that we see, for instance, cell phone production up around 5%. Last year, this was clearly in negative territory. We see actually notebook computer sales up again. We still see actually decent growth for electric vehicles, about a 20% growth. The expectation is following the interest rate cuts that we're seeing right now, that durable goods spending and semi-durable goods spending by consumers actually will pick up next year. And as a consequence, you'll see industrial GDP becoming a larger percentage of GDP as opposed to services GDP. So for us in the chemical industry, that's actually a positive development. So the consumer confidence will actually reflect a shift in spending more towards semi-durable and durable goods spending. That's what people are forecasting. Matthew. Yeah, thanks, Andreas. And thank you to everyone for your time today and the presentations. Three questions, if that's all right. The first one, you've got two businesses in the turnaround bucket. That's Polymers and Coatings. Can you just elaborate a little bit more on what's gone wrong, how you fix those? Could they possibly be disposal candidates in due course, or do they fit within the portfolio you're trying to create? The second question just around healthcare. I wasn't aware laxatives were such an important product for the company. Is this some sort of GLP-1 byproduct that people are not getting enough fiber as increasing demand for laxatives in the U.S.? Or why are we talking about this all of a sudden? And then the third one, just around the energy transition. So you've sort of calculated that as 50 basis points or, I guess, CHF 25 million in real money. Can you just help me understand how you've sort of framed what potentially is such a huge opportunity into such a specific sort of quantified target growth contribution? Thank you. Okay, so maybe Angela, you can first comment on the two additive businesses that are in turnaround. They clearly are not divestment candidates. They actually are very attractive businesses in very attractive markets. Then I think, Christian, you'll comment on the healthcare opportunity that we have, including laxatives. And then, yeah, Jens, you can talk a bit more about the opportunity finally in catalyst that you see. Yes, so thank you, Conrad. I think we are very happy with the cost measures that we are implementing across the organization. And it's not just one thing. It's adjusting and right-sizing the headcount. It's improving the operational cost. That is, of course, very important. We are looking at our go-to market. So we adjusted that in line with the customer segments that we are targeting. That also helped us. And then we are also investing further into innovation to make sure that we keep our specialty provider position in the market. With that, I think we demonstrated that we already did achieve quite some savings. It's run rate CHF 30 million, more than actually CHF 30 million. And then we have the next measures until 2027, more than CHF 20 million helping us to improve our margin. So we are very confident that we have enough attractive market opportunities ahead of us. And as a result, we will be in the range that we are guiding as a Clariant Group to also be within the 19%-21% range. When it comes to the laxative business, we are one of the three global suppliers of laxatives. And it comes from our strong technology platform on polyethylene glycol. And that's where it comes from. So we actually have done this for quite some years. What we have done recently as one of the investments we made in China some time back is now actually strengthening our position also in the Asian market. And that was a deliberate decision we took some years back, which is now, of course, helping us further expand that. And I think most of this comes, of course, from an aging population and more health concern. And it's not only, what can you say, what happens in North America or what happens in Europe, but also what happens in other parts of the world. And we are well positioned playing in that. And because we are recognized already within the pharma industry because of our very strong position there, that's kind of given us already the access with the rest of our technology platform. That's kind of how we see it. On the energy transition, this is a fairly broad topic. This includes both green and blue hydrogen, methanol, and ammonia, but also the shift to synthesizing larger molecules starting from small molecules such as Fischer-Tropsch, ODH on purpose, or sustainable aviation fuels, and the catalyst required for synthesizing larger molecules starting from small ones or producing molecules on purpose is simply a big opportunity for catalysts, and Richard, maybe you want to add to this also from your angle. Yeah. No, I mean, I think if you look at the energy transition, then obviously it's heavily impacting or going to impact the catalyst business, but not only. I mean, we have energy transition that is impacting the mining business. We have energy transition that is impacting also the flame retardants business. And we have the energy transition that is impacting the sustainable aviation fuel and the biodiesel business for our Adsorbents business. So there's a number of different areas that are already being driven today significantly with growth. That's why I was also saying that the growth is not going to be extremely back-end loaded. We already have growth that is coming out of these areas today. It's just going to shift from one of the businesses to the other businesses over time. Chris. Yeah, thank you. My question is to the segment heads, actually, because I think we've probably asked Conrad and Bill this question before. But so the segment heads, what I'm interested in is you've each presented often different end markets, different chemistries. So you being a part of Clariant, what does Clariant bring to you to be able to achieve these targets, considering there appears to be pretty limited overlap in each of your operations? Angela, why don't you take this nice question first? And then Bill and I are in listening mode now. I would say it's certainly the technology leadership. So originally, I'm also coming from the technology part. I'm a chemist, and I truly believe, and I hear that from our customers, that we have the technology leadership. That's where we are really strong. But it's not that alone. It's also the application know-how that I think that is important to truly work with the customers in their end application, because that's what takes a lot of time to really achieve and come to a solution. I think that makes us really special. Yes. When it comes to the catalyst, main growth is driven off innovation and sustainability-driven innovation. I think having the leading catalyst technology-wise is the paramount topic to be successful in the market. And we complement it, of course, with our network, with licensing companies and academia. If I look for commonalities across the business, I think we are truly well-positioned in the area of sustainability, both our own CO2 emissions, as Richard showed, but also how we enable our customers to decarbonize. And that, for me, is a common theme across all of our three businesses. Yeah, I think first and foremost, with the new operational model, we have slimmed down, so to speak, and given more empowerment into the segments as such. The segment operates, of course, very independently, but leveraging exactly what Jens also said, the sustainability aspect of what we do as a company as a whole, but also on our shared services, right? So on the financial services, our global business services, where we also see some of these self-helps coming from going forward. That's kind of where we see some of those positive synergies coming out of. Yeah, I think it's important, if I can add one thing, that we have a coherent specialty chemical portfolio now. If you look where Clariant came from in the past, it was a hybrid between commodity chemicals and specialty chemicals. And that's actually a model that doesn't work so well because the business model is very different for these two businesses. And now, today, we have truly specialty chemical businesses within the portfolio. So I think it is a very coherent portfolio because I sort of alluding here a question about the portfolio and how sustainable is the portfolio. We're very pleased actually with the current portfolio, with the specialty positions that we have in each of the businesses. Andreas. Andreas Heine, Diesel. Three questions were raised. The first is on the cycle. If you say you want to grow 2%-4%, if I look on the three segments, and I would say care chemicals is already doing quite well when it comes to the cycle, additives and catalysts not. So usually, we would expect in a cycle that we see some kind of rebound. If I look on the growth you present from now to 2027, then I can't see in your prediction any rebound. So that's the first question. Whether you can comment why the growth you expect is ongoingly slow? So in other words, is the current environment for you quite normal that we won't see a rebound, or what is the reason? The second is in Catalysts. I would like to understand a little bit more. You have three different divisions within the Catalysts. Are the prospects in growth in margins over this time horizon of three years the same for all of them, or are there differences? And the last one is on segment. If I look on these 19%-21% margin you have on the group, actually, each of the divisions has reached that once. Not every year, but in Catalysts you were in that, you were in Additives in that, and in Care Chemicals you are already close to that. Is the target when we go to 2027 that all of the three segments should be in this range or some over-delivering compensating for a segment which will under-deliver? Okay, well, Jens, why don't you take the catalyst question first? Okay, the first question was around cyclicality of the businesses. So the catalyst business, what we call a late-cycle business, and the growth on catalyst or market growth is driven off how many new builds you have and how well capacity utilization at our customers is. When capacity utilization is lower, catalysts run later, run longer, and exchanges happen a bit later. Regarding the dynamics of the different segments, they are a bit different depending on which value chain you're active. For example, our ethylene business is relying on how quickly or when crackers are being built. Our propylene business is mainly dependent on the pace at which PDH plants and refills are done. So they all differ a bit. And for the refill, it's important to see how long catalysts last until they are exchanged. Most of our catalysts last around three to five years. So when you have a new build activity that's strong in a certain year, you can expect the refill business to be accordingly strong subsequently. Yeah, so Andreas, your question on sort of where are we in terms of a rebound and where are we in the cycle, we are seeing the rebound actually in our businesses. We're not seeing it in catalyst yet. So if you look at our Q3 numbers, for example, we actually were in local currency up 5% in terms of the growth in our Care Chemicals business. So now 4% came from Lucas Meyer, but we were seeing a +1% at least in Care Chemicals. If you look at Additives and Adsorbents, we were up 7% year on year in the third quarter. So we are seeing actually that rebound in Additives and Adsorbents, particularly in Additives where the growth was actually even higher than the 7%. It was double-digit up. So the challenge for us is that this is not visible because of the -20% growth that we reported in Catalysts. And as Jens mentioned, this is a late-cycle business. So what we're now seeing this year is the weakness that actually the industry saw in 2023. So that is actually represented now in the prolonged refill cycle in Catalysts. So if you sort of look then at the growth trajectory moving forward, next year, 3%-5% growth, that is what we feel very comfortable about. That does represent a further pickup in markets like additives, where we benefit from the pickup in consumer electronics, in semi-durable, durable goods, furniture, mattresses, all these items that we basically supply into. That does assume a further pickup in the care chemicals business, and as we said in catalyst, we feel we have bottomed out in the second and in the third quarter, so that is sort of how to look at that growth and the breakdown in the different BUs. Looking at margins, your question on the 19%-21% and how is the individual contribution from the three different business units, they all will sit in that range. Some will sit higher in that range, some will sit lower in that range, but they will all sit in that range. And actually, they will structurally sit in that range. You have seen that already in some of our businesses that even at a lower revenue number, the EBITDA margins are actually structurally up. You could see that very well in the catalyst business in the third quarter. So this 19% to 21% is a new level, a new base from which we want to even continue to further increase moving forward in the future after the 2027 target. Yeah. Alex. Hi there. Thank you for the interesting presentations. Some of the markets you're investing in and will drive hopefully your growth over the next five years are quite competitive biofuel catalysts, functional ingredients for cosmetics. I mean, these are very attractive markets, and as a result, lots of people are going for them. Historically, your predecessors in the executive team have commented that in order to compete in some of these markets, you need to have a certain scale because scale allows you to invest in R&D and innovation. And ultimately, that was one of the justifications behind the failed merger with Huntsman seven years ago or six years ago, whatever. Do you think that's still the case? Can you go head-to-head against DuPont or BASF or any of these bigger competitors? And if so, why has that changed in the last six years, seven years? Why has your perspective on that changed? Although I appreciate it's a different management team. Thank you so much. Yeah, I think it's important here to distinguish between commodity chemicals or even petrochemicals and specialty chemicals. So whereas in commodity chemicals, in petrochemicals, scale is absolutely a prerequisite to be competitive and to have your lowest possible manufacturing cost. In specialty chemicals, this is actually all about market size in an individual market. So it's about market share within an individual market. And if you look across our businesses, in the businesses, we typically have number one, two, or three positions. So we have leading positions within the defined segments. With that, we actually have a leading service offering, footprint, R&D platform to supply our customers. So while your point is right that if you look at some of the end markets, they are very competitive, including even renewable fuels, we as a specialty chemicals supplier supplying into these segments have actually very unique technology, and we have actually a very strong competitive position. So I think it's important to distinguish between commodity chemicals, petrochemicals on the one side where you need that scale, vis-à-vis specialty chemicals where you need scale at a segment level. So if we increase the overall size of the company by acquiring, for instance, a business in paper chemicals or a business that is basically unrelated to the others, we would increase our overall revenue, but we wouldn't increase the competitiveness of the individual businesses. That's very much determined by our market share within the individual segments. And here we're actually in a very strong position. I would also add, if I may, that in the past, the company had a size ambition. So the argument that you just mentioned was probably aligned with that size ambition. And if anything, I think the new operating model that we've put into place in the last two years makes us much more nimble, more dynamic, and much more customer-oriented. So being bigger doesn't necessarily make us a better player. Having the right size in the right areas, as Conrad just mentioned, and being more customer-oriented, greater intimacy, these are things that help us, I think, play a bigger role as we go forward. I think a great example is Lucas Meyer. I mean, we disclosed some of the financials for this business, right? CHF 100 million business, high 40s% in terms of the EBITDA margin. Highly profitable, consistently delivering a 10% CAGR a year. Well, that business wouldn't be helped to be sort of a CHF 10 billion business, right? So it is about market share within a defined market segment. If I can comment on Conrad's contribution, when you look at, and you refer to functional ingredients, and it is true that there are functional ingredients within the functional ingredients space, you have commodities, semi-commodities, semi-specialties, and specialties. We do not claim to want to play in the commodity, semi-commodity space because that's large volumes being driven by pricing. We are playing in the specialty portion. So within our segment, it's mostly high-level emulsifiers. And in that case, volumes are less important than value creation. Okay. Lisa. Hi. Thank you for taking my two questions. I just wanted to come back to the energy transition opportunity. There's a number of players, Repsol, Ørsted, Yara last week, they've all shelved some of their green hydrogen ambitions and their CapEx programs. I mean, can you just share why you're confident that this growth can be delivered by Clarity and it can capture growth in there? That's the first question. Then just on Bolt-on M&A, I mean, you touched upon it in the capital allocation section. Can you just highlight in which subsegments you would consider bolt-ons and what areas are of interest in terms of technology add or, yeah, basically where you would look to add technologies? Thank you. I can perhaps start with the Green and Blue projects. Yes, there have been some Green project cancellations. However, we do see the Blue technologies, Blue Hydrogen, Blue Ammonia. We see that as the more promising short-term opportunity. Our pipeline gives us confidence that we will play a strong role here. Yeah, we're playing with the catalysts that convert hydrogen into ammonia or into methanol. And we're actually agnostic whether it's green hydrogen or blue hydrogen. It's true that a lot of the green hydrogen projects have been canceled or even delayed. But for us, actually, if it's blue ammonia, blue hydrogen, it's equally interesting because you need the catalyst to convert the gas into the liquid. In terms of M&A, I think we're actually all of the businesses we consider to be core businesses right now that we have, if you look at the segment level. So we would be interested in M&A across the portfolio. It's also fair to say some are more consolidated, like in catalyst, there is fewer opportunity because we would only be interested in the segments where we play. We're not necessarily interested to bring in refinery catalyst, for example. It would be petrochemicals, syngas, or specialty catalyst where we have already very strong market positions. So some are more consolidated than others. Catalysts is more consolidated definitely than our Care Chemicals business or than our Additives business. But basically, yeah, if in these core segments opportunities come up, we'd be interested to look at it. Question in the back. Hello. Hi. Hello. Yeah. It's Robert Casoni from Petrus Advisers. I have one question because most of the others, it's a follow-up question actually because most of the others have been asked already. I mean, I've seen that around 40% of the questions were basically on the ability of those divisions to be part of a single group and what is the contribution of the holding to every single division. And you gave good answers, but no specific examples. So why don't we start with specific examples? And I take Lucas Meyer as one and the only example. For example, Lucas Meyer, you have been growing 12.8% during your past whatever years. And now within the Care Chemicals, not even Clariant, the Care Chemicals division, you are expected to grow, surprise, surprise, 12%. So can you give us a sense of what is the actual contribution of being part of the Care Chemicals division instead of being, playing solo? Thank you. Sure. So if you look at the 12% that we have announced, that is composed by a 7% growth market, right? And another 5% contribution of these synergies we talked about. So what does Clariant contribute to our fold? What it contributes, it's, as I mentioned earlier, an important portfolio of ingredients that we have an opportunity to leverage through our innovation process in order to increase their value proposition to the market. What Clariant also brings, it's a regional infrastructure, much larger and well-established in areas where we are not present. Earlier today, I was talking about our presence in Asia-Pacific. We estimate our market share of the addressable market in Europe and North America to be around 5%-6%. But it is only 1.2%-1.5% in Asia-Pacific. So we feel we know we're underrepresented in Asia-Pacific, and we are going to be using the infrastructure that Care Chemicals has, in fact, in particular, the personal care infrastructure that Care Chemicals has in order to leverage that and grow in the market because we believe in similar circumstances, we will win our fair share of projects. Just those two examples help us elevate the projections for our growth moving forward in a market that is, again, different than the 2014, 2015, 2024 cycle where the market growth was more impactful. And let me just add to this, what is Lucas Meyer Cosmetics bringing to the rest of the cosmetic portfolio? Back in 2014, 2015, we decided within our cosmetic portfolio, we need to upgrade it. We need kind of to go on a higher level. And we tried to acquire Lucas Meyer Cosmetics at that time. We failed, obviously. So what we did is we started our own organic development of our active ingredients in Toulouse, coincidentally neighbor to Lucas Meyer Cosmetics. But that's what we did. And of course, so now when we finally have Lucas Meyer Cosmetics as part of it, of course, what we have been doing the next four, five years, I'm not saying we are as professional as they are, but definitely take now that portfolio we have and further upgrade on that. So it's really kind of completing what we have been doing. So I really think it really is a super fit. Okay. Thank you. Andy. Just an add-on question on that. I still don't understand why you have been growing 10%, 12% before, and now inside Clariant, despite having a low market share, you're not growing faster. I mean, you should grow faster. And your very high margins tell me that you obviously have great, great products. So why is it not 20% growth and your market share jumps to 20% in a few years? The market dynamics have changed, and the way the market is moving has changed. We traditionally grow somewhere around 1.8% to 2 times the market, right? But at the same time, there is a limit to how much value we can extract to the Lucas Meyer portfolio product ingredients. We need additional value in order to, we need additional targets in order to generate this value. And what Clariant brings is this additional portfolio of ingredients that we can then leverage in. There is a limit to how many peptides you can sell to the same customer. So by adding fuel to the machinery, we can generate value. And that's the part where we see interesting value. We have done that in the past through smaller acquisitions. Right now, we inherit a large portfolio that we can play with. And that helps us counterbalance the slowness of the market that you see in results from announcements from cosmetic companies out there. So you're also telling us, or correct me if I'm wrong on that, that your addressable market, $1.5 billion, was not $1.5 billion before you joined Clariant. And with everything that Clariant brings in, your addressable market is getting bigger too. I'm actually saying that with the contribution of Clariant, our addressable market, and we need to work on their portfolio, but our addressable market may go from $1.5 billion to maybe $1.8 or $2 billion. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. But Andy, we take your challenge. So you want to raise the bar, and we definitely, I think, are committed as a minimum to deliver the 12%. Thank you for helping our budget discussions in a couple of weeks, Andy. Yes. No pressure, no pressure whatsoever. There's another question. Hi, Thea from BNP Paribas. Two quick follow-up questions, more specifically on the M&A question. So you spoke about M&A as a growth lever in care chemicals more specifically. Can you talk about any of the end markets you're looking at? And as a follow-up to that, I'm conscious your balance sheet is more stretched versus where it has historically been. Is there any limit to that or a threshold that you're not willing to exceed? Yeah. I think Bill can comment on the balance sheets. Christian, you can maybe provide some color on M&A, both on M&A, which segments you would prioritize within care chemicals. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. You want to start, Bill, or? Well, just the simple answer to your question on the balance sheet is I really wouldn't want to see us go over three times net debt to EBITDA. I mean, and that was one of the things that we were really looking carefully at when we did the Lucas Meyer acquisition. And where I think we put it in the documents today, around 2.4 on the last 12 months trading basis, we're going to deleverage down to below 2 maybe by the end of next year or maybe 2026. But it's important for us to get back down to that so that we've got that headroom to be able to acquire more for whatever Christian wants to acquire. From an M&A point of view, of course, we are looking at technology bolt-ons. So we continue doing that. We're screening the market for that. We're also looking at if there's footprint opportunities with technologies, combining with technologies in both the Asian and North American market. That's kind of where our focus is. Hello. Yeah. Is it on? Yes, it is. Oh, sorry. I can hear you. Angelina Glazova from JPMorgan. Thank you for taking my question. I had a follow-up on innovation because that has basically been the center topic of today. And I was hoping you could talk a bit more about the R&D expense because what we've seen historically is that it's been quite stable at 3%-4% of sales. And in order for you to deliver on these growth targets, will we need to see a change? And also as a follow-up to that, could you talk a bit more about the structure of the R&D spend? How much is spent on process innovation versus product innovation? And what is, so to speak, the biggest emphasis within product innovation? Because you were talking about those innovation platforms delivering results at slightly different points in time. So will this also be true of the phasing of the R&D expense, if we can say so? Thank you. Do you want to comment on it, Richard? Sure. Yeah. So we don't intend to actually change the R&D expense. Actually, we're going to see some of the R&D expense go out because we have exited biofuels, and there was a significant R&D expense that was associated with the development of the biotechnology all around the biofuels. However, we're protecting the R&D spend within the business units to make sure that we're going to be able to deliver the growth that you have seen. Now, R&D expense and the impact of innovation is always a little bit difficult to say, right? Because what we're developing today in the lab is going to take five years until it actually reaches the market and then starts to generate revenues. So there's a little bit of a disconnect, the timing disconnect between the R&D expense that you see and between the impact that you see. A lot of the growth that we are projecting over the next few years are from products that are now just being introduced into the market or have just recently been introduced into the market and are going to be driving growth over the next few years. That doesn't directly align with the R&D expense. That being said, the world doesn't end in 2027. So we're obviously developing the products that are going to drive the development beyond 2027. Yeah. Maybe on the spend itself, we're spending a little over 3% of our revenue on R&D, if that was your question. We haven't disclosed what we spend by business, but it is actually differentiated, where Catalysts would be a bit higher, where Adsorbents would be a bit lower, where Care Chemicals more or less sits around that figure. With that R&D spend of slightly over 3% of revenue, we are well ahead of most of our peers, and we have no intent to bring that down. But we also feel that this is a healthy level for us to deliver the whole pipeline of products that we have presented today. We can also use this as a plug for our internal generative AI because actually R&D is one of the areas that is really, really ripe for being able to leverage these large language models. I mean, what we've done in terms of uploading years' worth of lab notebooks, lab notes, for example, and allowing the generative AI model to basically make the connections and help us with the research. I think that's going to be really, really important for us going forward, which, I mean, as the finance guy, I quite like to see that because we can actually do that without significantly more investment in R&D going forward. You couldn't see me happier than the finance guy saying this, so. Yeah, I know. I know. Yeah, but it's very much positioned as increasing the output of R&D, right? So I think we are. Looks like we answered all the questions. Thank you very much. So I'll hand over to Conrad for the closing remarks. Yeah. Thank you, Andreas. Thank you all for your participation and for our lively discussions, also actually during the breaks. I would also like to thank our leadership team for the insightful presentations and joining in this lively discussion. I think our presentations, as well as the discussions today, have shown that Clariant is well positioned for future success, continued success. Over recent years, we have streamlined our portfolio, and we've created a true specialty chemicals company. We have strengthened our leading positions in attractive and growing markets. Our new customer-centric and more agile operating model facilitates differentiated segment steering. We are positioned for innovation-driven, profitable growth. At the same time, we will continue to drive efficiencies through our self-help actions. We have elevated our ESG ambitions, maintaining our position as a sustainability leader in our sector. Our innovation arenas will allow us to deliver growth surpassing the chemicals' market growth rates. All of this gives us confidence in achieving our medium-term targets, to which our leadership team and myself are fully committed. In conclusion, Clariant is positioned for an exciting future as we execute our differentiated, purpose-led growth strategy. Our goal is clear: to establish Clariant as a top quartile specialty chemical company, delivering value for all of our stakeholders. I thank you for your attention and participation today. We wish you all a safe journey home. Thank you very much.