Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Geberit conference call on the first quarter results of 2023. I am Sandra, the Chorus Call operator. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Mr. Christian Buhl, CEO. Please go ahead, sir. Thank you for the introduction, good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to our conference call on our Q1 results. Geberit delivered convincing results in the first quarter with a challenging top line but a strong bottom line development. Let me start with the key statements for the first quarter. A net sales decline in local currencies of 4% due to very strong comparison basis. Secondly, strong headwinds of -5% from the unfavorable currency development. Thirdly, a substantial EBITDA margin increase of 220 basis points to an EBITDA margin of 33.1% due to our consequent pricing management. The improved profitability led to currency adjusted growth of all bottom-line results despite significantly declining volumes. EBIT and net income grew in local currencies by 5% and EPS even by 9%, thanks to the accelerated share buyback last year. Let me now comment on our net sales development in more detail. Net sales in Swiss Francs declined by -9% to CHF 893 million. The unfavorable currency development affected net sales negatively by CHF 46 million or -5%. In local currencies, group net sales declined by -4%. This decline was caused by a volume decline of around 16%, which was partially offset by sales price increases of around +12%. The significant volume contraction was caused by a base effect of the very high volumes in Q1 2022, driven by the stock build up at wholesalers last year. A challenging sanitary renovation market due to pull forward effects during COVID-19 and the shift from sanitary to heating in selected European countries, and thirdly, the remaining destocking of wholesalers. We assume that all excess stocks in the channel have now been destocked. I come to the regional development. All growth figures refer to growth in local currencies. In Europe, net sales declined by -6%, with positive growth in Italy, Benelux, France, U.K. and Iberia. Approximately 1% of sales decline in Europe was driven by the exit from the Russian market after the invasion in Ukraine last year. In Middle East Africa, the strong growth of 2022 continued, with net sales increasing by 37% driven by the Gulf region and Turkey. Net sales in Asia-Pacific declined by -8%, driven by China and the challenging market environment in Australia. In America, net sales were down by -1%. Let me now comment on the sales development per product area. All three product areas declined year over year. Installation and flushing systems by -6%, bathroom systems by -5%, and piping systems by -2%. The better relative performance of piping systems versus the other two product areas was driven by stronger price increases and the further successful rollout of the piping system, FlowFit. I will now comment on the operating and financial results. The operating results decreased due to the substantial negative currency effect. However, in local currencies, all operating results grew versus the previous year. I start with the discussion of the EBITDA development. EBITDA in Swiss Francs decreased by -3% to CHF 296 million. In local currencies, EBITDA increased by +4%. The EBITDA margin increased by 220 basis points and reached 33.1% despite the strong double-digit volume contraction and cost inflation compared to the previous year's period. With this, we managed to turn around the negative margin trend of the last couple of quarters, triggered by the unprecedented cost inflation. The main positive margin driver were sales price increase. Lower energy prices, which were 21% below Q1 2022, and a one-time energy subsidy contributed also to the margin improvement. The energy subsidies delivered a positive one-time effect of around 1% margin on EBITDA level. Negative margin drivers were the operating leverage from declining volumes, raw material prices still being 6% above previous year's period, a wage inflation of 5.0%, and a slight adverse Forex effect, which was mitigated by our strong natural currency hedge. The EBIT margin increased in line with the EBITDA margin also by 220 basis points and reached 29.0%.Net income in Swiss francs decreased by 2% to CHF 215 million, driven by the negative currency effects. In local currencies, net income increased by 5%. Earnings per share increased disproportionately due to the accelerated share buyback last year and reached CHF 6.36. This corresponds to an EPS growth of 9% in local currency. The share buyback program was continued with 126,000 shares bought back in the first three months, for a total amount of CHF 63 million. Let me now comment on our outlook, which does not differ significantly from our outlook given at our full year analyst conference in March. We expect overall a very challenging environment for the building construction industry this year. Challenges for the sanitary industry emerge from a slowdown in building construction activities in the light of increased interest rates and cost inflation. Building indicators in Europe started to weaken since the third quarter of last year. Secondly, pull forward effects from the COVID-19 induced home improvement. Thirdly, temporary shifts from sanitary to heating related aeration activities in selected European countries. Positive catalysts for the sanitary construction industry emerge from the fundamental demand for renovation and new housing in several European countries, the structural trend towards higher sanitary standards and a quite positive market environment in several emerging markets, for example, in India or the Gulf region. On the cost side, we expect for Q2 sequentially stable raw material and lower energy prices compared to Q1. In the context of the aforementioned market challenges, we defined for Geberit two guiding principles for this year: strategic stability and operational flexibility. The purpose of this principle is to manage the volume uncertainties in 2023 with a maximum of flexibility, but without harming the mid-term potential of the company. This means that we continue to execute on our strategic agenda, for example, the execution of several sales growth initiatives or continued investments in R&D. The positive margin development in the first quarter, despite the significant volume decline, was a testimony for our operational flexibility, especially in the plant and logistics, and our further increased cost discipline. Short-term volume challenges continue in Q2 due to the significant base effect from the record high volumes in the second quarter of last year, when wholesalers built up their inventories before the extraordinary strong price increase as of July last year. Net sales in April were currency adjusted down accordingly at a somewhat worse rate than in Q1. The overarching objective this year remains to gain further market shares regardless of the prevailing market environment. To do so, we will focus on several levers and initiatives. For example, our focus on new product introductions, which proved to be an important contributor to growth over the last years. For example, the new concealed WC flushing system Alpha for the markets outside Europe or the piping system FlowFit, which we introduced in France and the U.K. this year. A second example is our focus this year on the full WC system to further penetrate the concealed system technology and to promote our new best- in- class WC flushing performance. A third example of our market share gain initiatives this year is prefabrication. We will put a strong emphasis on our prefabrication business in the DACH region to offer efficient solutions, while at the same time addressing the bottleneck of qualified installers. Let me close my introduction with a short summary and our key messages. Geberit delivered convincing results in Q1 with a challenging top line but a strong bottom line development. Despite a significant double-digit volume contraction, we managed to grow all currency adjusted bottom line results. EPS, for example, grew in local currencies by 9%. These results confirm our consequent pricing management based on our pricing power, our operational flexibility and our execution capabilities, for example, by introducing new products. For 2023, we expect again a challenging market environment. However, Geberit is well prepared to also master the uncertainties emerging from this environment, as already demonstrated several times during the past. Our confidence is based on the fundamental need for our products, our resilient strategy and business model, and our long-term focus and track record. Thank you for your attention. We are now ready to answer your questions. The first question comes from Daniela Costa from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Hi. Good morning. I have three questions, if possible. One is just a clarification. Did I hear you commenting on sort of April trends? I missed sort of what you said there regarding volumes into Q2. If you can comment on that. Second thing, pricing from here. I think at Q1 you said to not account for the April price increase, can you give us sort of like the carryover that we should consider and whether there's been any extra price increases done? The third one just on the one-time subsidy. Is that completely done or where you're still receiving subsidies in any countries? Can you maybe clarify where this came from and how the mechanics work if it continues or if you have to reverse it? Thank you. Thank you for your questions. Number one, net sales in April were currency adjusted down at a somewhat worse rate than what we have seen in Q1. Question number two, pricing. Nothing new. We do not plan any pricing actions at the moment. We still expect for the full year price impact of around 6%-7%. Question number three on energy. That concerns one-time subsidies in related to last year, we consider that as a one-off, we do not expect any material subsidies this year. Where was that? Say again. Where did it came from? It was mostly Poland and Italy. Thank you very much. The next question comes from Andre Kukhnin from Credit Suisse. Please go ahead. Mr. Kukhnin, your line is open. Maybe you are on mute. We will take the next question from Yves Bromehead from Société Générale. Please go ahead. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. I'll have two, if I may. Just going back to the April trends, can you be a bit more specific in terms of the country? Is there any, can you flag any sort of worsening trends that are more specific to any region or product area? That would be great. My second question, just circling back to your product area growth on the piping segment, which has been outperforming for quite some time now. You flagged that it was centered due to price increases in FlowFit. Can you give us any color as to if there's any other drivers and if the pricing should normalize as the input costs are also here seemingly normalizing and even coming down year-on-year at the minute. Any color on that would be great. Thank you very much. Question number one, the development in the month April with regards to geographies was similar than what we have seen in Q1. Question number two, the price increases which were stronger at piping systems compared to the other two product areas, that will vanish obviously over time, and that will fade out throughout the year, this difference. Thank you very much. The next question comes from George Speake from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead. Morning, gentlemen. Thanks for taking my question. I'll take two. Firstly, just on volumes, do you mind just commenting whether relative to your expectations at the full year, things are progressing better or worse than you expected? Just on the geographic mix, clearly some of the non-European geographies are performing very well, particularly, I think you called out the Gulf and Turkey. Do you expect that to continue? How is that impacting your investment decisions going forward? Should we expect these to be a bigger contribution in the overall mix of sales? Question number one, the volume development in the first quarter was in the range of our expectations. Question number two, short-term, we believe the strong development in the Middle East Africa region, driven by the Gulf region and also Turkey, will continue. We also continue to invest into these two regions according to our sales initiatives which we have implemented in these specific regions. Okay. Thank you. The next question comes from Arnaud Lehmann from Bank of America. Please go ahead. Thank you very much. Good morning, gentlemen. Just one question on my side, please. On the pricing side, you said you're not planning any more pricing action, which means no more price increase, I guess. The price increases last year were driven by energy and raw materials. Raw materials and energy are now down or stable to some extent. Are you confident that you can maintain pricing, as the year progresses, especially in the context of the lower demand? Thank you. The short answer is yes. A little bit more clarification. The raw material prices which we are facing are not coming down. They're more or less staying on this very high level. For example, in the first quarter, raw material prices were even slightly up compared to Q4 sequentially. Raw material prices are not coming down. Energy prices are coming down, I agree, obviously energy prices have a much lower impact on our P&L because energy is only or was only about 3% of our net sales for the full year 2022. Thank you very much. The next question comes from Matthias Pfeifenberger from DB. Please go ahead. Yes, good morning, Trans. Just an inquiry again on what you see on the underlying level in terms of weaker permit data. I think what we've seen in your core markets like Germany and the DACH region but also Eastern Europe, it's quite decelerating month by month. Is that already reflected in your statement on weaker sales dynamics in April versus Q1, or is that more an H2 issue, I guess? With the caveat that your visibility is low. Thanks. I assume you are referring to mainly building permits in Europe. Yes. -which are down since Q3. That does not have yet an impact on our April sales. As you know, there is a delay effect from a building permits of around nine to maybe 15, 18 months until we are hit by the building permit development. April was not yet driven by the decline in building permits in Europe as of the end of last year. Okay, thanks. The next question comes from Martin Flueckiger from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead. Yeah, good afternoon, gentlemen. Thanks for taking my questions. I've got two left. Actually the first one, can you just help us a little bit with the math here? Am I right in assuming that the 21% decline in energy prices accounted for a positive effect in the other cost effects category of around 60 basis points? That would be my first question. Then the second one, I appreciate your explanations with regards to, you know, the timing effects from building permits. At the same time, you're saying that the destocking wave in the among wholesalers in Q1 was completed. You know, at the same time also, when we look at your exposure to mature markets, like Germany, for instance, and others, you know, it looks like you, you should be. Your sales volume should be a little bit more resilient given that, you know, you're weighted so heavily towards renovation. My question to you is it not just new construction? Is it also renovation, that are dampening your volume output, or your sold volumes? Thank you very much. Question number one, the impact of lower energy prices in the first quarter. Energy prices were around 21% below Q1 2022, and the impact on the EBITDA margin was around 30 basis points, not 60 basis points. points. Question number two, the impact in the first quarter on volumes from the market was basically, what we said, a little bit destocking, but it was predominantly driven by a base effect, obviously from the first quarter last year. The new build market, we don't think had a big impact on the first quarter, but as we laid out in our introduction, a softer renovation market due to the fact that we have seen pull-forward effects during COVID-19. Also due to the fact that we have selected European countries a trend from sanitary to heating. We don't think that the new build market has been heavily impacted so far in the first quarter in our markets. Okay, interesting. Thank you so much. The next question comes from Yassine Touahri from On Field Investment Research. Please go ahead. Yes, good morning. A couple of questions. First, on renovation, we see a lot of headline on the banking crisis and interest rates increasing with some real estate investment trusts struggling with cash flow because of a higher interest rates and higher cost of running buildings. Do you see a risk on renovation for non-residential buildings in a context where the building owner are impacted by interest rates and higher construction costs? That would be my first question. First, I believe the risks, as you call it, are higher for the residential sector than for the non-residential sector. We believe that at the moment the residential market is more challenged than the non-residential sector. As I said in our introduction, obviously higher interest rates and the inflation of building construction industry in general for new build, but also for larger renovation projects. If you look at... My second question will be more about your strategy. Do you see an opportunity of this downturn in volume to streamline your operation or to make some investments that some of your peers cannot do in digitalization or automation and increase your midterm competitive advantage? We don't see any need to streamline our operations. If you achieve an EBITDA margin of 33%, I think we can state that we are rather efficient without being arrogant, so there's no need for streamline. The main priority in operations is flexibility, making sure that we can cope with this high volume volatility, strong decline, contraction in Q4 and also in Q1. This is the main focus in operations and not streamlining or any other restructuring activities. A very last question on the net debt. Your net debt increased by a couple of hundred million. Is it only seasonality or is there any other specific effect? The main reason is indeed seasonality. The main reason for the networking capital, which always in Q1 massively increases as Q4 is a low quarter with low sales and therefore low networking capital. Thank you very much. The next question comes from Remo Rosenau from Helvetische Bank. Please go ahead. Yes, thank you. You mentioned that raw material prices were still up even sequentially in Q1. Despite the weaker euro, you talked about Swiss francs here, right? That is the first question. Because you mostly buy euro, I suppose, there was a positive effect on the Forex, but still higher sequentially, even in Swiss francs. Going forward, the real hike then came last year as of Q2 and Q3. If you stay at these levels now, did I understand you correctly that the effect in the second quarter would then turn into a positive territory? Question number one, you are wrong. When I talk about raw material prices, I always talk about currency-adjusted raw material prices. The raw material price index, which we provide in our presentation on the last slide, is a currency-adjusted raw material price index. In local currencies, raw material prices were slightly above Q4 in the first quarter, only slightly. You're right, we have in Swiss francs, obviously a benefit then from the lower or negative currency development. The second question is, what would happen if raw material prices stay where they are at the moment? If they stay where they are at the moment, in the second quarter, that's what we expect, then the raw material prices will be slightly below Q2 last year, currency adjusted. Assuming that would stay and go on for the rest of the year in Q3 and Q4 as well, but we don't know, then the raw material price level in the full year 2023 would be on the level of 2022, always currency adjusted. Okay. Okay, great. That is helpful. Thank you. You're welcome. That's it for me. The next question comes from Marta Bruska from Berenberg. Please, go ahead. Hi, good morning. Thank you for taking my question. I was wondering whether you could tell us a little bit more about your social and governance within your ESG strategy. Basically, I was wondering, do you know this one-time effect, + 1% margin increase on EBITDA level, or a BPA level coming from the energy subsidies from Poland, where you were clearly not struggling to stay solvent due to the energy cost. Poland, as you know, is taking quite a lot of Ukrainian refugees. Perhaps the subsidies were a little bit more, perhaps aimed to manage this difficult time. I was just wondering how does this fit within your general approach to broader, you know, sustainability, please? Question number one about our ESG strategy. We have a comprehensive ESG and general sustainability strategy. By the way, a very intensive reporting on that, more than 100 pages. We have a strategy based on 12 modules for E, S, and G. We are focusing on various of these modules, sorry. A very important element is also this year, the CO2 strategy, which we have implemented last year, but I think it would be now too comprehensive to give you a detailed overview about our ESG- Yeah, I'm sorry, but I'm just asking about the social, please. Social. The S is social. It's like, there we have different activities. For example, we have set ourselves a target. In terms of inclusion, we have around 3.5% of inclusive employees in our organization, internally or externally with suppliers. We have set a target of around 5% inclusion in the coming years, just as 1 example, but there are various other measures which we have implemented. Your second question was very difficult to understand acoustically. Could you repeat your second question? Sorry. It was just one question. How the taking the subsidies, is, you know, fitting within your social strategy. Perhaps, we can take this offline at another opportunity. Thank you. Okay. Next question. The next question comes from Stephanie Salzig from Mirabaud Securities. Please go ahead. Yes. Hello. Good morning, everyone. I would like to know, or could you give us some color about the shift from sanitary to heating solution? Has this shift accelerated in Q1? Where do you think are we heading to in Q2, Q3? Is this slowly coming to an end, or where do we stand there? Maybe a second one, also on the installers in Germany, where are we currently in terms of backlog? A third one, could you give us some color about the German construction market overall? Where do we stand there? In what state are we currently in? Thank you. The first question is hard to quantify. We can't quantify how big the impact is from the shift from sanitary to heating. With regards to the dynamics, I would assume that this dynamic was the same in Q1 as we have seen in Q4, basically this shift is limited by the capacity of the heat pump suppliers, which is the big driver at the moment. This capacity limit is, I think also the limit in terms of dynamics. I think it hasn't been worse in the first quarter than what we have seen in Q4 last year. It also will continue. That is clear. That will not be over in Q2 or Q3. That will continue in the near-term future. The second question with regards of the backlog of German installers. The latest statistics is a new record high level of 20.1 weeks of order backlogs of German plumbers, very much driven by heating and not that much by sanitary. The third question with regards to the general environment in the German construction market, I think Germany reflects what I said for Europe at the beginning. It is driven by the fact of this shift from sanitary to heating. It is also more and more driven by declining building indicators. We talked about that just before. Building permits are down in Germany for residential, mainly since the third quarter last year. It's more or less what I said in general for you applies specifically also for the German construction market. Thanks. The next question comes from Cedar Ekblom from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Thanks very much. Hi, Christian. I've got a few questions. The first one's a bit of a more medium-term question. Considering the comments you make about the demand on installer, time linked to heating and how that is likely a long-term structural shift, how do you think about positioning your business, your product, in order to continue to attract that installer to your business relative to, say, a heat pump product over the medium term? Do we need to think about more marketing expenses? Do we need to think about more discounts on the list price? Basically how do we think about this relative to the margin over the more medium term? Then two more shorter-term questions. Should we be thinking about any sort of cost cutting or optimization for the business over the rest of the year, considering volumes are still pretty weak and you're flagging risks to the outlook, you know, linked to, you know, German permit data, et cetera? Can you just talk a little bit more about working capital? I appreciate the comments you make about seasonality and how it goes up at the beginning of the year. You've had a sales decline year-on-year, and yet you've had a working capital increase year-on-year, even taking into account that seasonality. Is there something else going on there? Are we sort of seeing production ahead of sales? Are we seeing inventory build up on the raw material side? Just a little bit of color to understand that would be helpful. Thank you. First question, how do we tackle the structural trend from sanitary to heating? I would say there are two main levers. One is obviously that we try to visit and to support these plumbers who are a little bit less affected by this trend to heating. We still have, for example, in Germany, 50,000 companies, as you know, plumbers, plumbing companies. There we have always different companies in terms of their focus. We try to focus obviously a little bit more on the ones which are still focusing more on sanitary than heating. That's one. The second one is that we have, especially since this year, even a stronger focus on prefabrication to ensure that we can support this bottleneck of installation capacity for heating and sanitary with prefabricated solutions. We do not foresee to increase our marketing spend with regards to these trends from sanitary to heating. The second question about cost cutting short-term. No, we do not have any plans to cut costs despite the volume challenges. The key word again is flexibility, and I think we have proven in the first quarter, also in the fourth quarter last year, that we are very flexible. This is the important focus, not cost cutting. However, we have increased our cost discipline, of course, also since the beginning of this year in various areas, but this is not a cost cutting plan. As far as the working capital is concerned, we have a business-related reduction of the core working capital, both accounts receivable and the accounts payable. We have a slight increase indeed on the inventories, which is due for various reasons, both raw material and finished products on certain areas. One big driver, which is always a bit a coincidence, is VAT payments, which also contributed negatively to the net working capital in Q1, but has no structural effect. All in all, it's a slight temporary increase on the inventory, business related issues and then coincidences on the cut-off period with special payments like VAT. Thank you. That's helpful. The next question comes from Charlie Fehrenbach from AWP. Please go ahead. Good morning, gentlemen. Thanks for taking the question. Can you tell us something about your expectations for your main markets, Germany and Switzerland, in the light of the declining building permits for the coming quarters midterm? Thank you. Yes. Germany is and will be more challenging than Switzerland because, as we said several times, building permits are coming down in Germany. That is not as much the case in Switzerland. Switzerland seems to be more stable also from a construction market perspective. We are more positive for Switzerland than for Germany at the moment. Thank you very much. The next question comes from Alessandro Foletti from Octavian. Please go ahead. Yes, good morning. Thank you for taking my question. Just on the pricing, you had 12% in Q1. You're guiding from 6%-7% for the full year. It means, in the next quarters, the pricing effect on a year-over-year basis will obviously be lower. What I was wondering, if it's the decline that we should expect is somewhat linear or more a step change, because you mentioned the extraordinary price increases in July. I was wondering if we should expect something like a high Q1, high Q2, and then low Q3, low Q4, or from here we go down linear. Thank you. No, you're right. It will be more step change as of the second half of the year because we did the biggest increase last year, with July, with around 7.5%. This kind of base effect then obviously brings down the price effect substantially in the second half compared to the first half of this year. All right. Thank you very much. The next question comes from Andre Kukhnin from Credit Suisse. Please go ahead. Hi. Good morning. Thanks very much for including me back in. I just wanted to start with digging in a bit more into this cadence of Q1, what you said on April. Could you help us quantifying or giving some idea of how big that destock effect was in Q1, whether there was anything else of one-off nature during Q1, like base effects? I think some companies cite a positive base effect in Q1. No, I can't help you because we can't quantify the destocking effect. The biggest driver in the first quarter for the volume decline compared to Q4, however, was the base effect. In Q4 last year, the biggest effect was the destocking effect. That is our feeling. Right. Was there anything else of kind of one-off, like base effect or? No, no specific one-off effects, but as I said in introduction, a more difficult sanitary renovation market in the first quarter due to the trends we have spoken about before. Thank you. April organic growth run rate is below the 4.2% that you've seen in Q1, despite Q1 being affected by destock. Is that the right interpretation or right read of what you said? Correct. Keep in mind that the base effect in the second quarter will be even stronger than in the first quarter, because the second quarter last year was the strongest volume, driven by this, just before mentioned, strong extraordinary price increase as of July of 7.5%, pulling forward, obviously, demand or wholesaler stocking demand into the second quarter last year. Yes. That's very clear. Thank you. If I may, just a couple of really quick ones. On labor inflation, you cited 5.0%. Is that the run rate for the year or should we think about something different? We expect for the year still a little bit higher rate of 5%-6%. Great. Last one. Did I hear you right that you said half the decline in Europe was due to Russia exit, and therefore that comes out soon? The impact of the exit of the Russian market impacted the sales with around 1% in the first quarter. That's very helpful. Thank you very much. The next question comes from Christoph Dolleschal from HSBC. Please go ahead. Good morning. Quick follow-ups, if I may. The first one is on price reductions. Did I understand correctly that they are ruled out for now? The second one is on your overall volume outlook for 2023. You're saying, price plus 6%-7%, FX probably 4%. The market is looking at flat sales, which ultimately means, round about 8%-10% volume decline. Are you, is that also your assumption? The last one on your margin outlook, because I think Q1 obviously had a very, very strong margin despite the volume decline. Do you think you can basically carry that on, even if we take out the, let's say the one-offs of the subsidies, we are still at, like, 32%. Is that repeatable? Question number one, we do not foresee at the moment any significant price reduction. Nothing is planned at the moment due to the fact, as I said before, that raw material prices are still relatively sticky on a very high level. Question number two and three both refer to an outlook for our sales and margin in 2023. As you know, we do not provide, at this point in time, any outlook for our sales and margin development. We will do that early with H1 in August this year. Therefore I can't give an answer to these two questions. The next question comes from Peter Testa from O-One Investments. Please go ahead. Hi. Thank you for taking the question. Can I just ask a bit on the flexibility benefit that you're getting? Maybe if you could give some understanding of what you've seen in terms of labor productivity and non-labor productivity in Q1 and help understand the steps you feel you can take for the balance of the year. The second question I have is just on the share buyback. Do you think you'd be will be continued at roughly the same sort of pace in Q2 or any other plans on share buyback? An important part of the flexibility is labor. Labor in the plants, in the logistics. We have started on this flexibility topic already in the second half of last year, latest in the fourth quarter, to increase flexibility, for example, also in specific agreements with labor unions, plant by plant. This is one of the big contributor why we have been able to react flexible in the first quarter on the volume decline. Question number two will be answered by Tobias. For now, we don't expect a continuation of the share buyback roughly at the same rhythm than on the first quarter. Okay. Just to follow up on the flexibility, when you think about those labor agreements, typically, they have a kind of hours bank nature to them quite often in Central Europe, and I was wondering if that's what's being used or, or to what extent you think this will be available through the year as a result of your agreement? Can you repeat? It was difficult to understand acoustically the question. Can you re-repeat? Okay. Just to make sure I understand on the flexibility and the benefit. Quite often in Central Europe, these are sort of hours bank related, agreements. I was wondering if you feel that that's what you're using typically, or whether you find there's other mechanisms as to make this flexibility available throughout the year. That's exactly what I'm referring to, that we have the hourly flexibility in terms of working hours, that people work more or even less than normally agreed, and that's where we work on flexibility. That's one of the major levers. Secondly, I didn't talk about this before. Obviously, in general, we try to work with temporary workers as well. That's another lever. If it comes to fixed employees, it's mainly about the working hours per week, which we try to handle in agreement with the employees as flexible as possible, and we increase this flexibility in this environment. That's great. Thank you very much for the explanation. Thank you. You're welcome. The next question comes from Christian Arnold from Stifel Schweiz. Please go ahead. Yes. Good morning, gentlemen. Clarification here. Christian, you mentioned before that Q2 faces the highest volume comps. I'm not... Yeah. Can you maybe quantify the Q2 2022? I mean, we had an organic growth rate of 9.6%, and I thought you would have had a price impact of 7%. That means a volume impact of 2.5%. Is that the figures I should think of for the base of Q2? I don't have all the numbers in mind anymore, to be honest. Keep in mind also, Q2 last year was a growth rate based on a very strong Q2 2021, because the second quarter 2021 was already a strong quarter where we were benefiting from the COVID-19 home improvement trend. Okay. Okay. Maybe, I mean, you're mentioning, mentioned that April saw a worsening organic growth rate versus Q1. Back in March, you said January, February was better than Q4. This worsening you have seen in April, have you seen that already in March, or was March in the same magnitude as January, February? No, March was already weaker than January or February. Again, it's difficult to talk about what is base effect and what is not base effect, because the base effect is also stronger in March this year because we didn't do a net price sales increase this year, as you know, but we did one last year as of April. We had a strong March 2022 due to the first pull or pull forward effect of a price increase of around 2.5% as of April last year. Higher than normal, not as strong as July then last year. Therefore, March was not unexpected, a little bit weaker than January and February this year. Okay. Thank you very much. We have a follow-up question for George Speake from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead. Hi. Sorry, just one clarification. You made some comments that large developers are under pressure due to rates and cost inflation. Do you mind just letting us know what your exposure is to those large-scale renovations that are done by developers compared to the smaller single-family kind of more private renovation? In general, the so what we call project business, where you have large projects, be it new build or be it large renovation projects, that's the smaller part of our business. The larger part of our business, residential or non-residential, is typically to smaller projects, daily business. It's a smaller part of our business is project related. Okay. Presumably, just one final question. Presumably, you didn't see as much pull forwards on the project side in renovation the last couple of years. That was more in the non-project side. No. What we have seen in projects, especially in our non-residential projects, was during COVID-19, that was very weak. We have seen some catch-up activities for non-residential projects after COVID-19. That was maybe the most important, not structural, but systematic, dynamic over the last two, three years. Okay. All right. That's clear. Thanks. Thanks, guys. You're welcome. The next question comes from Bernd Pomrehn from Vontobel. Please go ahead. Yes, good morning. In the past, you always stated that it is difficult for you to assess the inventory level at the wholesalers. This morning you wrote that you are confident that the destocking has come to an end, that it is completed. What exactly gives you this confidence? Thank you. Discussions and feedback from wholesalers. Obviously, we're talking to them and we are listening to them, and they tell us that the inventory levels for our assortment for sanitary products has come to a normal level again since now end of Q1, beginning of Q2. It's a qualitative feedback from wholesalers. Okay. Very clear. Thank you, Christian. We have a follow-up question from Martin Flueckiger from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead. Yeah, thanks for taking my follow-up question. From my perspective, the biggest surprise was your other cost effects category in the EBITDA margin bridge. I realize that it's, you know, it's a bucket for all sorts of various drivers. You know, I was just wondering whether you could give us a little bit of help here on how to think about this margin driver category going forward over for the full year. I realize you're not giving a full year EBITDA margin guidance, but just on these cost developments that are in this bucket, what should we expect for a net number in 2023? Thanks so much. Let us go briefly again through the other cost effect in the EBITDA margin bridge. The three main drivers why we had a positive effect was, number one, we had lower energy prices that had an impact of 30 basis points. That was your question before. Number two, this one-time effect from energy subsidies had an impact of around 1 percentage point, so that's a strong one. The third one was a negative one, was the wage inflation of around 5% in the first quarter, which was a negative effect. Other effects, like for example, marketing expenses or administrative expenses, travel, were pretty much on previous years' level, so they didn't have a strong impact on this other cost bucket in the first quarter. Okay, thanks. The next question is a follow-up from Mr. Remo Rosenau from Helvetische Bank. Please go ahead. Yes, thank you. When you mentioned that, due to your discussions with wholesalers, you think that the inventory levels are now on a normal level, might there be a risk that given the outlook, which is not that great, specifically in Germany, that wholesalers might even go to a below average inventory the next few months, you know? This could be a possible scenario. We don't have any indications or any feedback on that, but that could be a scenario. I agree with you. Okay. Thank you. It seems there are no further questions, so thank you for your participation, and we wish you all a great day. Thank you.