Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the DKSH full year results 2021 conference call and live webcast. I am Alice, the conference call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in listen only mode and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star and one on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press star and zero. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Till Leisner, Head, Media and Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir. Thank you, Alice, and good morning or good afternoon, everybody, wherever you are seated. It's a pleasure to officially welcome you on behalf of DKSH. As Alice said, I'm Till from the investor relations team, and I'm very happy to have today with me Ido Wallach, our CFO, and Stefan Butz, our CEO. Before we start, please, as usual, have a look at the disclaimer of the presentation regarding forward-looking statements. For those who do not have the presentation in front of them, you will find them on the webpage under the investor relations section at dksh.com. With that short introduction, I'd like to hand over to Stefan. Good morning and welcome everyone to the presentation of our full- year results 2021 on this wonderful sunny day here in Zurich. As Till said already, Ido is joining me here today during the presentation. Let's first have a look at today's agenda. I will begin with an overview of the 2021 highlights and then talk about the updates in our four business units. Right after that, Ido will provide you with the financial details of our results. At the end, I will provide an outlook before opening up the Q&A session. Let's first focus on where DKSH stands after closing the year 2021. Disciplined execution of our strategy, people agenda, and operational objectives delivered strong 2021 results despite the ongoing mobility restrictions in our markets and the Q3 lockdown. The key takeaways remain. Our business model is asset light, resilient, and highly cash generative, and delivers solid GDP plus growth in Asia Pacific. We further transform our business to expand our leading positions in our industries. We consistently strengthen our culture of trust, empowerment, and connection, and our leadership team. Our financial performance improves with good progress in terms of margin- accretive growth and strong cash generation. We create sustainable shareholder value through our operations, M&As, and consistent dividend distribution. The proof point of our established strategy are our 2021 results. Our committed team and our strong operational performance, coupled with the agility and resilience of our diversified business, enabled us to strengthen our balance sheet and deliver a strong performance in still volatile times throughout 2021. Net sales at constant exchange rate grew 5.4% and ahead of comparable GDP of 3.2%. Core EBIT grew double digits and margins increased. Profit after tax was up 39.6%, excluding the one-offs, still very strong, 25.1%. Further, earnings per shares increased by 42.6%. RONOC increased to 19.8%, and free cash flow was up 24.5%, reaching more than CHF 260 million. In sum, all business units have increased their net sales as more and more clients choose DKSH to be their partner for market expansion and value-added services across Asia Pacific. In our unrivaled geographical span, deep omni-channel reach and expertise in multiple categories scale up to a compelling value proposition to clients and customers alike. We have a purpose-driven organization that operates with ESG values at the core to position us for long-term success. What equally sets us up for future success is an increasingly important part of our strategic growth, namely acquisitions. They provide us with access to attractive business segments and expand our market position. In 2021, we successfully closed seven companies across all four business units, especially in our Performance Materials business, we secured several bolt-on acquisitions. With SACOA in Australia, Right Base Chemicals in China, and HTBA in Spain, we strengthened our foothold in the specialty chemicals and ingredients distribution industry in Asia Pacific as well as in Europe. The integration of the companies is proceeding very well, and we are confident that these acquisitions will further strengthen our business and market position. Our strong future M&A pipeline and balance sheet provide ample opportunities to accelerate growth further this year. Our convincing results and strong M&A track record allow us to continue our progressive dividend policy. Our confidence in the future is supported by strong cash flow performance, which led the Board of Directors to propose a 5.1% increase in the ordinary dividend to CHF 2.05 per share. This is in line with our progressive dividend policy, under which we have paid a higher ordinary dividend since the IPO in 2012. Let me now continue with an update on our business unit, starting with Healthcare, please. Results are ahead of last year's level with an accelerated performance during the second half of 2021, notably despite the impact of COVID-19 on the Healthcare industry in Asia, the lockdowns seen in the third quarter and the difficult market environment in Myanmar. Our purpose of enriching people's lives came into full effect in 2021. We played a key role in supporting governments by supplying the public with COVID vaccines and test kits. In total, we have distributed more than 80 million of COVID doses, such as from AstraZeneca, as well as test kits across the region. In line with this division's outlook we provided exactly a year ago, we continued to monitor our expenses, expand our digital channels, and advance in higher value segments and services. Lastly, on the M&A side, we strengthened our geographical footprint by acquiring MedWorkz in Singapore and Hahn Healthcare in Australia. Moving now to the business unit Consumer Goods. Here we strongly improved profitability with EBIT margins reaching the 2.2% mark again. In our fast-moving Consumer Goods segment, we are harvesting the benefits from the transformation of the division. EBIT increased double-digit for the third consecutive year, thanks to an enhanced service portfolio driving gross margin expansion, a leaner and more agile organization with a very strong leadership team, a consistent strategy execution across all markets, and first-time contributions from the acquisition of Australian field marketer, Crossmark, in 2020 and STP in 2021. In the Luxury and Lifestyle segment, we see a continued gradual recovery, albeit from a low level. However, in view of the Omicron variant, travel will remain limited. The watch brand, Maurice Lacroix, further improved their positive results. Let us turn our focus now on the business unit, Performance Materials, where we recorded another year of strong performance with double-digit sales as well as EBIT growth. As you all know, 2021 was marked by global supply chain constraints and shortages. However, the strong technical expertise of our team, the value-added services, wide market coverage, and focus on digital marketing we provide in our Performance Materials business helped us to overcome these challenges. The industrial business increased sharply, and the Life Science business, including food and beverage, personal care, and pharma, performed well across key markets. In addition, we successfully signed the before-mentioned three value-accretive acquisitions, thereby taking further steps toward consolidating the specialty chemical distribution in the industry in Asia Pacific and in Europe. Based on our scalable business model, strong business development pipeline, and consolidation potential, I am very confident for solid future growth opportunities in this business unit. Concluding our business unit update with Technology, I can highlight that we grew sales organically as well as through the Bosung acquisition in Korea. We have to bear in mind that the pandemic-related movement restrictions impacted the service business and product mix and supply shortages delayed equipment deliveries. From this perspective, the EBIT was slightly behind last year. Overall, the business unit is on track with implementing its focus strategy and digital transformation. With that, I now hand over to Ido, our CFO, who will walk you through the financial numbers in more detail. Ido, please. Thank you, Stefan, and welcome everyone also from my side. I'm pleased to provide you with further details of our 2021 results. Let me start off with our net sales. We achieved 5.4% growth at constant exchange rates. This growth has met our objective that we call GDP plus. It describes our mission to grow faster than economic growth in the markets where we operate. We do this by winning market share for our existing clients, as well as winning brand new clients. Organically, that is before M&A and FX, our net sales increased 4.6%, with all business units growing. In 2021, we successfully executed our strategy of scaling our platform, not only organically but also through M&A. We have stepped up our efforts in this front in half two, adding four new acquisitions to the three already accomplished in half one. In total, we acquired seven margin- accretive companies in 2021, deploying as much as CHF 91.5 million at competitive multiples and across all business units. As mentioned by Stefan, we pursued two main priorities in our capital deployment strategy this year. One that is specific industry-focused and the other one geographical. First, we continue to drive consolidation of the specialty chemicals industry with the acquisition of SACOA, RBC, and HTBA. Those three follow the 2020 acquisition of Axieo. Secondly, we continue to grow disproportionately in Australia and New Zealand with the acquisition of Hahn Healthcare, STP, both joining SACOA in 2021. These acquisitions follow the acquisition of Crossmark, CTD, and again, Axieo, to a total of six accretive deals in Australia and New Zealand in the past 30 months alone. Our M&A strategy is already bearing fruit. From a category perspective, we have strengthened our number one position in specialty chemicals in Asia Pacific. From a geographical perspective, today, we can offer a wide and meaningful array of extension services across all our business units, not only in Asia, but also across A and Z regions. In total, these acquisitions added 0.8% to our net sales. Finally, our net sales have adversely been affected by -2% following the strengthening of the Swiss francs against several Asian currencies. Let's turn our eyes now to the development of EBIT. First of all, I'm very pleased with established EBIT's growth. It is up organically 10.1%, triggered not only by sales growth, but also disciplined cost optimization and control initiatives that delivered margin gains. M&A added 2.4% and was consistent with our strategic markets being margin-accretive. Similarly, to net sales, FX had a negative impact of -2.4% on our EBIT this year. As a result, core EBIT, which excludes one-offs, reached CHF 283.4 million. Now, let me explain these one-offs in more detail. First, we have a one-time non-cash gain of CHF 10.3 million as we extended our partnership with aCommerce. As part of our omni-channel strategy, over recent years, we have built a successful B2C platform to complement our B2B offerings. At the same time, and as early as 2015, DKSH has made a strategic investment, taking a substantial stake in aCommerce, a leading eB2C specialist in Southeast Asia. Over time, we have successfully developed an operational partnership between aCommerce and DKSH. This partnership has reached a level in 2021 that made us confident to shift our eB2C fulfillment to aCommerce in Singapore, Thailand, and Malaysia. We have done this in exchange for an increased stake in aCommerce, which now also entitles DKSH to two seats on the Board of Directors of aCommerce. The consideration for this transaction paid to us in aCommerce shares was valued at CHF 10.3 million. Related to this, but not displayed on this chart and not part of our EBIT, is the + CHF 33.8 million non-cash revaluation impact of our investment in aCommerce. This revaluation is reflected for aCommerce's stellar results in 2021. As for the second one-off you see in the chart, we recognize a CHF 9.1 million non-recurring and non-cash share of loss in an associate in which we hold a minority share. Excluding the one-off effects, PAT is up 25.1%. Let us move on to review cash generation in the period. An important part of our strategy is our asset-light business model. We typically lease our offices, we lease our distribution centers, and even our transportation fleets are leased when they are not fully outsourced. As a result, our capital expenditure in 2021 remained at the low level of 0.5% of net sales. This figure is not only low, but also includes a catch-up effect for some projects delayed from the early pandemic waves of 2020. For example, a move into a new and modern distribution center in Taiwan. Accordingly, CapEx stood at CHF 55 million in 2021. For 2022, we expect CapEx to remain at 0.5% of net sales. In conjunction with our accelerated M&A strategy, we continued to focus on working capital optimization in 2021. For a second consecutive year, our cash generation was well ahead of profit. Free cash flow in 2021 was CHF 261.6 million compared to CHF 210.2 million last year. Cash conversion, measured as free cash flow over profit after tax, was 134.8%. This disproportionate cash generation follows 135.4% conversion achieved in 2020. Going forward, with the various working capital components now largely optimized and structurally asset-light model, we expect future cash conversion to be closer to our long-term objective of around 90% of PAT. However, it should be noted that we may on occasion choose to put our strong balance sheet to work on a short-term basis. For example, when specific growth opportunities arise or when clients offer us material discounts to advance our payment to them. Let us now move to our balance sheet. It continues to show its strength overall and by many individual components. Here, I wish to highlight three things. First, the net cash position at the end of 2021 was CHF 367.3 million. It is up CHF 25.1 million compared to the same period a year ago. This is after topping up dividends to CHF 126.8 million, accelerating M&A investment to CHF 91.5 million. Second, working capital, defined as trade receivables plus inventory minus trade payables, is at CHF 1 billion. CHF 33.2 million down versus a year ago, despite our growing sales. As a percent of annual net sales, working capital is down 60 basis points to 9.0%. But not only that our working capital is down in absolute for a second year in a row, its quality has improved, also for a second consecutive year. The level of our excess aging stock, as well as our receivable overdues, are all at multiple years low. This is a result of the relentless and passionate work of our business teams that have been able to increase customer order fill rate this year while working with leaner inventory and collecting receivables faster. Third, our equity ratio is at 35.3%, up for a second year in a row. It provides with ample room for leverage. Leverage we can engage at the right opportunity to continue to grow our platform through industry consolidation. Before we return to Stefan to elaborate on our prospects, let me provide you with some financial indications. In terms of M&A, we estimate our recent acquisitions will contribute 0.6% to net sales in 2022. On the FX side, assuming that current rates prevail for the remainder of the year, we expect a full- year FX impact within -1% to -2%. Tax rates, we estimate it will remain within the mid-range of 27%-29%. Capital expenditure is expected to remain at 0.5% of net sales for the full year. With that, I would like to thank you for your attention today and hand over back to Stefan. Thank you for this financial review, Ido. Before wrapping up, let us focus on the outlook. In view of our strong results in 2021, which prove our diversified and resilient business, we expect further EBIT growth in 2022 and deliver GDP plus. This outlook is based on the following three assumptions: economic growth in Asia Pacific, weighted by our footprint. Currently, it's forecasted to grow from 3.2% to 4.5%. Stable exchange rates for the remainder of the year and excluding any unforeseen events. Factoring in these indicators, we remain very confident about the long-term potential of Asia as the dynamic growth region of the world, which is expected to account for roughly half of the growth in global consumption over the next decade and driving the rise of the middle class. We are very well-positioned to benefit from favorable market, industry, and consolidation trends. Notwithstanding external factors, we will continue being the trusted partner for our stakeholders, reliably supplying essential products and building a better company in 2022. Thank you very much for your attention. Now I would like to open the Q&A session. Thank you. Operator, could we have the first question, please? We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question or make a comment may press star and one on the touchtone telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered the queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use only one line for asking a question. Anyone who has a question or a comment may press star and one at this time. Our first question comes from the line of Andy Grobler with Credit Suisse. Please go ahead. Hello. Good morning, everybody. Three questions, if I may. Firstly, on Performance Materials, where operationally was very strong last year. Pricing has been strong across the industry, given those supply chain constraints. What are your expectations for the sustainability of that pricing through this year and I guess in the medium term? Secondly, in terms of M&A, you talked about a strong pipeline. Could you talk through market conditions? I'm thinking particularly actually of Performance Materials, where there is a lot of competition for those assets at the moment. Then thirdly, just within consumer or sorry, within Healthcare COVID vaccines, what was the impact on growth and profits in 2021? What are your expectations for this year? Thank you very much. Okay. Thank you very much for your questions, Andy. Indeed, I mean, the conditions and Performance Materials were, you know, very favorable, and prices also due to the shortage of product or availability, you know, played a role in the performance, you know, of our PM business as well as I think with all the competitors. You know, we expect that if you look at the numbers that, you know, around 80% of what's coming from volume and a little bit more than probably 20% was coming from, you know, price increases. So far, we have not seen any material price decreases. We do expect that over time, the situation is going to normalize a little bit more. On the other hand, I mean, the sector in total and the chemical industry is still facing some tailwind. We expect a good outlook here, not only for 2022, but also beyond this year. The market consolidation or M&A activity is indeed. It's very active. It's you know, it's also competitive. On the other hand, if you look into the BCG study, there are still over 20,000 you know, players available globally to you know, to be consolidated. You don't, you know, you should not expect that in every target we look at that we are continuously bidding against the other three to four big consolidators in this you know, in this world. You know, sometimes there is one in there, sometimes there are, you know, two in there. Prices are indeed. They increased in 2021. I expect that in 2022 and 2023, you know, the price level or the multiples will come slightly, you know, down again. I think there are a few indications. Our pipeline looks very strong in Asia Pacific, as well as in Europe. You know, we also have, you know, some targets in the pipeline in North America. We do expect that we can show this year even more activity on the M&A market than last year. The third question I hand over to Ido. Thank you, Stefan. To answer the question, the impact of COVID-19 on the CG in the Healthcare business. Overall, we've seen consumption increasing versus previous year. It is not yet at the levels that we experienced before the pandemic, of course. One of the main reasons that tourism and general mobility across the region have not yet come near to where they've been in 2019 and before. We expect some improvement in 2021, but sorry, in 2022, but we see that at least short-term, there's still considerable restrictions across the region. In terms of business related to the pandemic, we are very proudly serving vaccinations in five countries, helping the overall effort to combat this pandemic and also participate in distribution of testing kits in several other markets. The overall impact on our P&L have been relatively minor as this is a business that we also do with a certain courtesy to the people of Asia and not necessarily for profit generation. Excellent. Thank you very much. Thanks, Andy. Next question, please. The next question comes from the line of Pascal Boll. Please go ahead. Yes, good morning, everyone. I have also three questions. First of all, in follow-up question, you now reported higher net cash again, thanks to nice cash generation. I think many people are asking, are we gonna see that piling up over the next years? Or will there be something larger you acquire, which would then meet those cash? Or are we gonna see more of those smaller add-on acquisitions? And then it maybe comes up the question if we should not see, like the cash out, the return of cash to shareholders in form of share buyback or something similar. This is my first question. Secondly, touching on Consumer Goods, you have improved the margin materially. If I remember correctly, there was a target of 2.5% you were aiming at in the past, but you haven't given any other outlook for. Can you give that some too? Finally, you have posted a strong free cash flow with another record in cash conversion for the second consecutive year. I think last year you said this is not sustainable. This year you even exceeded the level of cash conversion this year. Do we see a reversal here? Thank you. Okay, thank you. Thank you very much. Maybe I start with the CG question, and then I hand over to Ido for the you know, cash related question. Yes, indeed. We gave guidance that the objective is, or was to achieve 2.5% margin in the second half of last year. Obviously, there was a significant uncertainty because of COVID, and I think that uncertainty was there rightly because the Q3 lockdown was not foreseen. Despite this lockdown in Q3, we had a very strong Q4, and we, despite everything and anything, we did achieve the 2.5% margin in the second half of the year. We will continue to strive for margin enhancement also in the year 2022 and the years moving forward. Let's see how far we get there in the year 2022. The focus is on to further improve the results and also step up our market performance and deliver, you know, sustainable growth. Ido, would you like to? Okay. Yep, hi, Pascal. Happy to answer the two questions related to cash. I think the first one was more about the future usage of cash and the second about the rate of accumulation. At the moment, as Stefan said in the previous question, there are many deals that are being discussed, there are many targets out there, and we believe that there's a good chance that we will even intensify our deals, our M&A acquisitions in 2022. Of course, there's never a guarantee, and as we've seen in the past, a deal can fall in the last minute. We're certainly planning to put our larger cash pile this year to work harder for us as we increase the M&A spending in 2021 to CHF 91.5 million versus around CHF 62 million we spent in 2020. With regard to the sustainability of the cash conversion, we continue to claim that over a longer period of time, we cannot produce more cash than profit, no business can. Yes, we have been more successful than we even believe in the second half year back in the first half. Our collection was very strong, and so was our inventory management. We did benefit a little from some inventory shortages. Especially inventory that came from North America or inventory that had to reach Australia had some supply shortages, which helped us to keep inventory low and demand high. Over time, we retain that we cannot produce cash ahead of PAT, hence the guidance to go down back to around 90% of PAT over the long term. Maybe a follow-up question here. I mean, is there also a risk? I mean, you're talking about, just-in-time delivery. Is there also a risk to run these low levels of inventory? I didn't hear you clearly. I apologize. Look, at 9% of net sales working capital, it's not a race to zero. We cannot run the company with zero working capital. There are occasions, there are seasonalities where we can go below. There are occasions in which we will have to go up. Overall, we believe that right now we're at the very optimal level of working capital and do not expect it to improve as a% of sale significantly from here. Thank you. Next question, please. The next question comes from the line of Gian Marco Werro with ZKB. Please go ahead. Yes. Good day, Stefan P. Butz, Ido Wallach, and Till Leisner. Congrats to the strong results. Three questions from my side, please. The first one is also pointing out to your Consumer Goods business there. I'm also impressed about the margin improvement in the second half of the year. Can you give us a bit more flesh to the bone there in relation to the luxury business? As I understand, this is usually margin accretive. But do I understand correctly or I assume correctly that the luxury business is still performing quite poorly, and therefore, this margin improvements that we saw now in the second half of this year was mostly from your fast moving Consumer Goods, Consumer Goods business? That's the first question. The second question is in relation to Healthcare. I'm also positively surprised about this, acceleration of growth that we see here. Does this also have to do with an improved consumer sentiment, mostly also in Thailand, Malaysia and Taiwan? Maybe you can elaborate a bit more about the background of this growth dynamics in this kind of business segment, please. Then just also for net working capital levels. We definitely have to assume now, I can expect, that especially your trade payables will also come down meaningfully. As I just saw in your balance sheet, this number helped you strongly during the last half year. Do we assume correctly that the trade payables mostly need to go down again, also going forward? Thank you. Thank you very much, Gian Marco. Let's start with the Consumer Goods, please. Yes, your assumption is right that the strong drive of the, you know, strong EBIT development was coming from FMCG. You know, as we stated in the announcement, luxury and lifestyle is improving from a lower level. Again, obviously the lockdown, for example, in Q3 and still some, you know, travel restrictions, et cetera, is not going to help the, you know, retail market at this point of time. But we see a very strong performance in FMCG by the team, you know, overall and some room for even further improvement also in terms of the, you know, the margin, as I said before. In Healthcare, yes, you're right as well. There was an acceleration, you know, of growth in in H2. Not that much in Q3, to be honest, again, because of the, you know, lockdown scenario we were faced with. In Q4, actually 60% of the business, as you know, is going into, you know, into the hospital channel, and that is where the majority, you know, of the growth was coming from across most of the countries because the restrictions were lifted and hospitals, you know, went again, you know, back to normal level of surgeries, et cetera. It was not that much the over-the-counter business. It was more, you know, big pharma, hospital channel delivering those results. The last one, I hand over to you again. Yes. Let me give you some more meat on the bone on net working capital. It is true that at absolute level, accounts payable are higher versus last year. There are several effects here at play. First of all, this has always been our business model. In most of our contracts, our payment dates are higher than our receivable dates. In certain, I think we've been victims of our own success of collecting quickly and AR being flat despite growing sales of several mid-single digits. None, we don't have AP overdue, so this is not a tool that we use in order to lend a number or anything like that. Okay. Thank you so much. Yeah. Thanks, Gian Marco. Operator, please, the next question. The next question comes from the line of Stefanie Scholtysik with Mirabaud. Please go ahead. Yes, hello. I have three questions. One is on EBIT, coming from others. Corporate costs, they increased from CHF 50 million to CHF 67 million. Can you explain or share with us from where this increase is coming from and what we have to assume going forward is that the new corporate cost? On Consumer Goods, the organic growth was 1.5%, which was a bit lower than what I expected. I mean, one reason is certainly that you carved out certain products. Is this process going to stop or is this going to continue in 2022 or until when will it be finished? The third one on Healthcare, I mean, just very strong organic growth. That's very impressive. when I look at the margins, they were rather stable. I mean, I'm missing here a bit the operating leverage. Can you explain why the margin did not increase with such a strong organic growth? Hi, Stefanie. Let me start with commenting on the increase in the non-BU expenses. We have made significant investments this year in IT and digital, also in the area of cybersecurity, to strengthen our company in that front. Some of this is also impact of catch-up effect from last year with non-BU has decreased from CHF 54 million in 2019 to CHF 50 million in 2020. We also made some investments that are non-BU specific in supply chain. I mentioned some of the DCs earlier. Here we also being a little bit victims of our own success again, because of the incentive plan increasing costs due to the share price increase over the past year. Okay, Stefanie, I will take the question regarding CG 1.5% organic growth rate. Yes, you're right. I mean, we're still in the process of, you know, client and SKU rationalization and weeding them out of the portfolio. This is a drag around, you know, 2%-3% or was a drag of around 2%-3% in, you know, 2021. There is still something going on, and there's always something going on. I think as we explained in the past, I mean, it never stops. It's always going in, going out. But there is still a little bit of one-off to be expected in H1, but not to the same degree as what we have seen in last year. So that means a 2%-3%. If you just, you know, as a benchmark here, if you look across Asia, the, you know, same store sales of CP that are the 7-Eleven stores or Big C, I mean, those parties or players were faced in Q3 with a decline somewhere between 7%-9%. If you then compare our performance against those sales, you see that the team is doing a pretty good job, you know, on the ground. Regarding Healthcare, you know, margin development or the stable, what is missing there at this point of time is really the business being sold, over-the-counter business sold to, you know, tourists, as well as across pharmacies, which is a little bit lower. That is the reason why you see right now no economies of scale, you know, despite some growth. We are obviously also, you know, investing in, you know, our e-commerce business as well as expanding our footprint into, you know, more countries. Okay. Thanks a lot. Thank you. Thanks, Stefanie. Operator, please next question. The next question comes from the line of Pascal Furger with Vontobel. Please go ahead. Hello, thank you for taking my question. First of all, on Consumer Goods, just a follow-up. Did I understand correctly, due to basically your SKUs and client rationalization, this year you will still sort of grow below the GDP growth forecast of 3.5% you mentioned is currently expected for the region. If you could just at least confirm that. Also in terms of regional performance, question here on Thailand. I actually derive almost 4% organic growth, which is quite okay and implies also substantial acceleration in the second half of the year. In your view, has the consumer sentiment improved? Because looking at the political environment, it appears rather uncertain. You also mentioned the luxury and lifestyle business has still not fully recovered in the absence of tourism. If you could just give us some more flavor there. Then last question, on your e-commerce business. So you shared some numbers at your last investor day with quite some bullish statements. Can you just please remind us what the contribution in millions CHF terms was for 2021? Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much, Pascal. Yes, in CG, I mean, the focus is still on, you know, building a better, you know, business before, you know, just a bigger business. We do expect a higher organic growth rate in 2022 than in, you know, 2021, you know, coming close to the, you know, GDP rate you did mention before. In terms of consumer confidence, I mean, you know, the uplift is not coming from tourism. I mean, we all read the news and, you know, the sandbox and the different opportunities they gave tourists to come in were not really leveraged. The amount of tourism is still, you know, close to zero. It is indeed, you know, primarily the consumer, you know, sentiment locally of the people who are going back to the stores and buying, you know, which is supporting the numbers, but as we said before, you know, from a low level. In terms of our e-commerce business, yes. I mean, we have seen over 40% growth in our, you know, e-commerce business in 2021 and we now deliver more than CHF 300 million in e-commerce. Did that answer your questions, Pascal? Yes. Thank you. Perfectly. Okay. Thank you. Operator, please next question. The next question comes from the line of Nicole Manion with UBS. Please go ahead. Hi, everyone. Thank you. I think mine mostly answered, to be honest in the Q&A, but maybe just one more then from me. I wanted to ask if there's any more detail at all that you can give on the FMCG versus luxury lifestyle breakdown at the profit level. Because we know that FMCG has been sort of doing really well now for two to three years in terms of the recovery. That's obviously been mitigated by, first of all, issues in the luxury lifestyle business and then the pandemic, but it's difficult to split out the moving parts. Then you've got food service, which is kind of in the FMCG bit as well, but what seems to have been a bit, you know, not really discussed since the Auric acquisition. I wondered if you could give any more numbers or at least maybe some kind of indication of, yeah, of how that splits out and how everything is kind of doing within that. Okay. Yeah. With pleasure, Nicole. The luxury and lifestyle business is, you know, around 5% in terms of sales of the overall business. You are right, it's if you look at the gross margin, it's, you know, margin-enhancing. It is a profitable, you know, business ahead of the core business in terms of margin. We see, you know, some good development making progress, but on a very low level. What is not a surprise since, as I said before, you know, if the stores are closed, it's really hard for the people, you know, to spend money. As soon as the lockdowns are being released, people go back to the, you know, to the stores. We do expect that in 2022, you know, we will see a, you know, further uplift in this. Business is moving in the right direction. It's a profitable, you know, cash- flow positive business. Again, coming back to the capital market day statement, there's also some business in there that we are just harvesting, you know, a contract, especially on the luxury side, because strategically we don't consider that business as core and are phasing a few of those contracts out. Okay, great. That's clear. Anything on food service, particularly Auric? Yes. I mean, overall, if we look at the Auric Pacific, you know, business, again, despite those, you know, lockdowns where restaurants were closed and hotels were empty, we are ahead of the business plan, which we signed off during the acquisition process. Yeah, it's a good, nice, profitable business where we are in a leading position in Malaysia as well as in Singapore. We are rolling this business into new markets and expect a gradual improvement, you know, over the months to come as soon as the stringency index across Asia is being further released. Yeah. Okay. Great. Very clear. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Nicole. Over to the next question, please. As a reminder, anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on touch tone telephone. We have a follow-up question from Mr. Grobler with Credit Suisse. Please go ahead. Hi. Hello again. Just two quick follow-up questions, if I may. Performance materials, going back to that. Margins were up very strongly in the first half, but flat in the second half versus last year. Could you talk through why that's the case? And then secondly, just a bit of clarity on the central costs. You talked through why they had gone up. What are the expectations for this year and ongoing? Is the 2021 number the new normal? Thank you very much. Okay. Yeah. Maybe I start with, you know, Performance Materials. I mean, you know, first of all, the comparables for H2, you know, were higher than, you know, the year before. We were faced with the lockdown in Performance Materials, as well as in the other business in Q3. Then we had, you know, some additional, you know, significant M&A costs in there. That is the reason why you see that the margin development was, you know, slowly, slightly below H1. As for the non-BU costs in terms of our investment, yes, we as I said before, we had a catch-up effect this year. I expect in the future the clients to grow slightly behind net sales growth. We continue to invest as we grow, but slightly behind. Of course, this is the part that we completely own and spend. The part that relates to our share price will also depend a lot on your valuation. Okay, great. Thank you. Thanks, Andy. Thanks, Andy. Operator, do we have any more questions in the call? Yes, we have a question from Mr. Cameron Robson with Northcape Capital. Please go ahead. Yes, thanks very much. Just interested to hear a bit more about aCommerce. Could you elaborate on what, if anything, is changing with the aCommerce relationship? You mentioned that you've now moved to their fulfillment in some markets. Just can you give us a sense of how quickly your sales in partnership with aCommerce are growing? Is it similar to the 40% growth rate you mentioned for e-commerce? What kind of growth can we expect from aCommerce and e-commerce going forward? I understand aCommerce is planning to list on the SET this year. Do you intend to increase your strategic stake further ahead of listing? Thank you. Okay. Thanks, Cameron. I mean maybe just for a better, you know, understanding. I mean, you know, our strategy is to offer our clients the best omni-channel experience within the region. As we said before, I mean, we are seeing some very high growth in this segment as to other market players. We are very strong in the, you know, B2B segment where we are selling, you know, products onto, you know, platforms. But our strategic partner, aCommerce, you know, is much better in delivering B2C. At the end of the day, right? I mean, our infrastructure and our processes are not perfectly built to, you know, send out, you know, $5 and $10, you know, packages. There are others out there in the market which can do that significantly better. aCommerce is the leading e-fulfillment provider, you know, across the region, of six countries. The biggest and most important country for them as well is Thailand. You know, they have around 700 people and, you know, very well branded, large, multinational, clients. At the end of the day, by moving, you know, this, you know, relatively very small B2C business, you know, into the hands of our strategic partner, we can offer, our client a better B2C experience. Obviously, we also do expect that we are going to see even a higher growth there, comparing to what we delivered, you know, i n the past. In terms of their IPO. Yes. I mean, we can't comment on that. We know there are articles around that this IPO process is in the making. I'm sure at one point of time the market will be informed about the progress in this regard. We hold the 21.6% of shareholding, which you can see in the annual report. At this point of time there is no intent to change that moving forward. Excellent. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Cameron. Operator, please. Next question. We have a follow-up question from Miss Stefanie Scholtysik with Mirabaud. Please go ahead. Yes, thanks a lot. I have one on your outlook. You state that you expect EBIT to grow in 2022. I mean, that's nice. What should happen that this sentence read, "EBIT is going to grow strongly in 2022," especially when I look at the consensus numbers. These actually are implying that your EBIT should grow stronger or very strong and not just grow. Or can you quantify this growth a bit? Okay. Yeah. Thank you very much, Stefanie. I think, you know, our 2021 results showed very strongly that despite the headwinds we are all facing, you know, due to COVID, we can deliver, you know, GDP plus growth. We are very confident that we can also do so in 2022, on, as we said before, on an accelerated, you know, GDP forecast, you know, across the, you know, across the region. We have to put also into consideration that there are still some restrictions of COVID, and Asia is a little bit behind on the curve in terms of the relief of those restrictions. If you look at the stringency index, you know, for example, I mean, it only came down from 58 to 55. This is comparing Q1 last year to Q1 2022, you know, comparing to a stringency index of like 30% in the U.S. or numbers around 40% in Europe. We have to face reality that in Q1 the brakes are still a little bit on. I do expect that as what we see here, you know, that this is going to be released. With the strong track record we have, we will again deliver, you know, GDP plus growth rates. On the other hand, please also put into consideration we have seen very strong EBIT uplift in CG and Performance Materials north of 25%. We can obviously also not repeat that, you know, year after year. We are very optimistic looking into 2022, you know, and we'll deliver again a stronger EBIT. Great. Thanks a lot. Thanks, Stefanie. Operator, next question, please. We have another follow-up from Mr. Werro with ZKB. Please go ahead. Thank you. Just a quick follow-up again on the performance material, EBIT margin. As I understood, thanks for highlighting these M&A costs that you had considered also in the second half of last year. Can you maybe quantify these M&A costs roughly? Or if I just ask the question differently, can we then still expect an EBIT margin to be possible for the ongoing business of let's say 9.3% or well above 9%? Thank you. Let me take this question. I think we had several activities related to M&A and the impact for the second half year was around 30-40 basis points of the PM margin. The region of 9% over the long term, the area of 9% EBIT margin is probably where we believe we're gonna stay in the next few years of current market conditions. Okay, thank you. Very helpful. Thanks, Gian Marco. Next question please, operator. The next question is another follow-up from Mr. Boll with Stifel. Please go ahead. Yes. First question regarding food service you mentioned before. For what food service exposure do you have in the CG business? And the second question is regarding Healthcare and medical tourism. I think prior to pandemic, that was quite an important business. Do you expect that to fully recover, maybe let's say 2023 on or whatever? Or do you believe that people have received treatment in other countries and there is now a change in behavior, or what is your view on that? Thank you. I mean, in terms of, you know, food service, this is, you know, under 5% of the FMCG business, so it's not material, but it's a nicely growing and margin- enhancing business. In terms of your, you know, Healthcare question, yes, it's, you know, medical tourism as well as over- the- counter product. In 2022, I think we can expect that, I mean, from a very low number, that tourism is going to increase. I don't know if you have seen the headlines right now there are some discussions between Thailand and China to probably create a travel bubble to make sure that Chinese tourists can come back to Thailand. If that is going to materialize, that would be very nice for the country of Thailand. Let's wait and see. There are still probably, you know, many hurdles there. I mean, over time, I not only expect that the numbers, you know, are coming back to where they have been before, I think there will be even a catch- up effect. I would be surprised if in the long run people will travel less because of COVID. I think people were, you know, now two years they were locked up and couldn't really travel, especially in Asia, right? I mean, here in Europe, we still have the luxury to be able to visit, you know, Italy or Spain as an example. Over there, I mean, tourism was completely frozen for the last two years. I'm optimistic there is a catch up and, I'm sure that, you know, maybe in, you know, more like, you know, 2023, 2024, we might even be able to see higher numbers than what we have seen before the pandemic. Thank you very much. Thanks a lot, Pascal. Operator, do we have any more questions in the line? That was the last question, Till. Back to you for any closing remarks. Yes, thanks. Thank you very much, everybody, for all of the questions. Enjoyed the session. We look forward to speaking to you and staying in contact. If you have any further questions, please contact the investor relations team. We wish you a very good day and see you soon. Thanks a lot. Yeah. Thank you very much. See you on the road show. Bye-bye. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now over. Thank you for choosing Chorus Call, and thank you for participating in the conference. You may now disconnect your lines. Goodbye.