Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Publication Full Year 2020 Conference Call and Live Webcast. I am Sandra, the call's co-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 Edwin van der Geest, Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir. Thank you very much, Operator. Hello everybody, and welcome you to our full year earnings call. Nice afternoon to the people here in Europe, and a warm welcome to the people from the West Coast who had an early start this morning to join us. I hope you all found our press release presentation and the annual report on the website. Maybe for some of you it was not so easy since the website is new. You have to find your navigation to the place. You have to look at another place as you used to do that. I hope you're all fine now. Before we start the presentation, we first go through the figures by our Chief Financial Officer, Thomas Reist, and then go through the business and the outlook by Jens. I would like to remember that after the presentation, the Q&A session, the questions can only be put by telephone. We don't have a chat function in the webcast, please join the conf call whenever you would like to put questions to Jens, Thomas, or me. Thank you very much. I would now like to hand over to Thomas to start the presentation. Thank you, Edwin. Also from my side, a warm welcome to this conference call. I start with the highlights and the key achievements 2020. Similar to many other companies, also Kardex was hit by the COVID-19 crisis, and this left crisis in the P&L throughout every level. The good thing of the story is that the relative profitability could be kept on previous year levels, and these are main three reasons. One is that the LCS business had the stabilizing element or proved the stabilizing element in the business model of Kardex. Also, LCS business was affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, especially in springtime, but in the second half, they catched up partially. The second element is that we have a high organizational flexibility. This means that, for instance, in the supply chain, supply chain was able to cope with the pandemic and implemented the protective measures immediately when the pandemic started. They coped also with the reduced capacity levels, meaning that they implemented partial short-time work. The third element was the strengthened cost management. We achieved to reduce the cost levels, because when the pandemic started, we announced a hiring freeze. We reduced the amount of temporary workers, but on this level, we also had windfall effects, meaning that travel costs were reduced, and we also got profit partially from state aid. Nevertheless, we believe in growth potential of our industry, and therefore we continue with our strategic investments, is mainly in supply chain, so in the U.S. factory, but also in our factories in Europe. We continue to invest in the technology. We put a substantial amount of money to our R&D activities, and we also invest into the digitalization, meaning mainly our SAP project at the Kardex sites. Besides the prices, the equity, the balance sheet, and also the cash situation remains very strong. Let's look together on the key figures of the past five years. Here we see that the ongoing growth path is interrupted based on the COVID-19 crisis. If you look at net revenues, the CAGR of this year, 8.7%, is reduced to 3.6%. The net revenues range between the level of the year 2017 and 2018. The operating results of the EBIT also there, the CAGR was almost cut in half. Last year it was 14.4%, now 7.7%. EBIT ranges between the years 2018 and 2019, so only one year back. The net cash flow from operating activities. There we can report almost CHF 50 million of net cash flow. This is the highest level since 2007. Net profit, CHF 40.7 million in 2020. This ranges also between 2018 and 2019. There, the proposed dividend of CHF 4 per share amounts to roughly 70% of the result of the period. Let's go to the financials, so the details, the income statement. There bookings were down by 8% compared to 2019. A bit different from the two divisions. Kardex Mlog profited a bit. They could report higher bookings. This was overcompensated by the strong hit at Kardex Remstar. The order backlog is slightly up by CHF 2.4 million or 1.1%. Net revenues, there we need to report reduced levels of 12%. There both divisions suffered. Good thing, the gross profit margin went up by 70 basis points. Last year we reported here 36.4% and now 37.1%. The main reason for this upswing is that the share of the LCS business has went up. Last year, the share of LCS business was 32%, and now it is 36%. This is the main contributor to the increased profitability. OpEx levels went down by CHF 10 million or almost 10%. There, mainly the elements travel expenses, but also marketing expenses and variable salaries were cut down and amount roughly one-third below previous year's levels. EBITDA margin and also EBIT margin are more or less on last level. EBIT amounts to CHF 65.5 million, and therefore 2019. The result, CHF -1.9 million. There to remember here, this is the main portion for this financial result in the interest expenses for pension liabilities we have mainly at Kardex Mlog. With this CHF 1.9 million, we are more or less on a normalized level. There last year with the CHF 3.3 million, we had a special effect with the accrued interest expenses. The tax rate went down. There we can report a tax rate of 34.1%. This is below our guidance. This mainly due to two reasons. One is that we were able to use tax losses carried forward, and the other effect is that we had adjusted tax rates at the holding company. Effect of the lower tax rate is that the result for the period of the net profit margin went up by 14 basis points to 9.9%. Result for the period is CHF 40.7 million. Having a look at the balance sheet, we see that there are also quite a lot of influences based on the COVID-19 pandemic. There the reduced business volume also left traces. Good thing is that the net working capital levels was reduced more or less in line with the business reduction or business level reduction. If you look into the details, the non-current assets went up by almost CHF 13 million. This is due to the investment activities we had. We will explain more in cash flow statements, and there we also reduced the inventory, so the net working capital. The current assets went down CHF 25 million. There two main elements are impacting the current assets. This is the accounts receivable went down based on the lower business volume, and also the cash level went down by around CHF 11 million. Nevertheless, the cash level with CHF 122 million is quite stable and at a good level. If you look at the equity ratio, there we have almost 63%. This is the highest equity ratio we could report in the past years. I'm not getting tired to highlight that on our balance sheet, we have no goodwill and with the according impairment risk. Looking at the cash flow statement, there we see that net cash flow from operating activities amounts to CHF 49 million, almost CHF 50 million. It is CHF 5 million above last year's level or 11%. There the reduced net working capital overcompensated the lower result of the period. Cash flow from investing activities, there you see had invested more than CHF 10 million more than last year. This mainly due to the supply chain, so we purchased machines, and we also bought the building for the U.S. factory last year. We also invested in the ERP landscape of Kardex Remstar, and we also acquired stakes in the two smaller companies, Robomotive and Rocket Solution. The amount in free cash flow is CHF 25.2 million and around CHF 6 million or 18% below last year. Net cash flow from investing activities, there we see mainly the dividend payment of CHF 32 million. We distributed early 2020, and we also bought some treasuries. Thank you for the interest. I would like to hand over to Jens Fankhänel now. Good afternoon, everybody. One year has passed very quickly. We are sitting here again with the annual report. I will highlight a few things about the divisions as usual. Then go into a short outlook, cautious outlook as always, for the group looking forward. If we go to the next page, we start with the Remstar division. Thomas already mentioned some of these things that we've experienced. We had a severe hit in our bookings in our first half year for Kardex Remstar, as we already mentioned in our half-year reporting. On the positive side, we saw some recovery with bookings on a global scale for Remstar. Especially some queues for orders, which also continues into the early parts of 2021. As Thomas mentioned, Life Cycle Services, we are very happy with the development there. It had the expected stabilizing effect, and we've been able to record things close to 2019 levels, which, given the situation out in the field, is quite an achievement of our teams in the world. Net revenues for Kardex Remstar, slightly less affected in the first half year due to the then strong start in backlog. However, based on the bookings, the weak bookings in H1, we then saw reduced net revenues in the second half year, which was quite the consequence of the bookings I mentioned. What happened in the first months of this pandemic was that we relatively quickly implemented contingency measures, very stringent cost management, which helped us counter the negative effects of lack of net sales, and helped us also to protect the relative profitability levels in Remstar. As you can see, with gross profits on one hand, but mostly with EBIT of 16.5%, slightly above the upper level of the target ranges communicated with 16.5%, close to the upper range of 16%, the ROCE, very healthy of 31%. The development in Kardex Remstar spread around the world. North America held fairly stable for most of the year. We saw some recovery signs in Asia Pacific. In Europe, it was pretty heterogeneous across these countries, from relatively solid in the northern part to fairly weak in the southern part of Europe. We may come back to this a little later in the Q&A. Next page, please. This is the summary of the developments. CAGR unfortunately dropped a bit with net revenues 13% below 2019 numbers. That had an impact on the CAGR of now 4.6%. The operating results, fortunately, only dropped by 8% to CHF 56 million, or 16.5% on EBIT margin. If you look at the revenues mix, you can see that Life Cycle Services took a better share of the business with 32%. It was less affected and obviously also contributed to the better-than-expected margin levels. The geographical split is no mistake. It's the same numbers as in 2019. It looks very strange. We had the same feeling when we looked at it first, but it is really the situation. We had different developments, some FX impact, which then effectively led to the same split as we had seen in 2019, with still the majority being in Europe, 68%, 23% in Americas, and the rest distributed between APAC and Middle East and Africa. Thomas, next page, please. Mlog. I think it's fair to say that Mlog had a mixed year in 2020. On one hand, there was a good recovery in bookings, new business bookings, after a fairly weak 2019. We have explained this already with the full year closing in 2019 and also with the half year closing. A fairly strong booking trend continued with CHF 90 million overall. Yep, CHF 90 million overall. We also saw a very healthy increase in Life Cycle Services bookings for Kardex Mlog, which I believe is a natural effect also of the sweat the assets trends with our customers who maybe stopped in some places to invest into new installations, but then invested more money into actually safeguarding their previous investments via extended Life Cycle Services. Net revenues, not as good. We had a drop of 7%. Mainly due to the low starting order backlog in new business going into 2020, and also relative to the lead times of these projects for Kardex Mlog. That was a knock-on effect coming into the year with this order backlog. The other element that we are not so happy with is what we already reported at the half year closing, is this valuation adjustment with the negative impact on especially EBIT, EBITDA, and ROCE in the first half year. On the positive side, however, Mlog was able to recover and also return to profitability levels that we had seen the years before in the second half of the year. Overall, we had to report an EBIT margin of 3.8%, whereas this was 6.8% in the second half of the year, and an ROCE of 17.9%. Next page, please. Net revenue development already mentioned, which now leads over the last five years to a slightly minus CAGR. Not too impressive. Operating results, also the drop, just explained it, from CHF 5.6 million to CHF 2.8 million. Revenues mix, we see a slight shift towards new business Sorry, to Life Cycle Services, and not a slight, a major shift to Life Cycle Services from 49% to 54%. Geographically speaking, we still have the major business in Germany and only a minor part of the business is 20% in the rest of Europe. Thomas, would you please go to the next page? We inserted a page that is relatively new, which is new initiatives on Group level. Next page, please. We would like to share with you our new initiatives that we already mentioned in some information to the market, but it's maybe worth mentioning here as well. On the technology side, we managed to acquire stakes in two interesting technology companies, one being Robomotive and the second being Rocket Solution. On the right-hand side, you see an example of Robomotive installation. Pick-and-place robots technology that helps excel in item picking, single item picking, but also in case picking activities. Orchid, we don't have a picture here, is the latest addition to our technology, which is ready for market launch next week. On March 9, there will be a market launch, then we will be able to tell the market more about the technology itself. Both of them are targeted to actually complement our portfolio and enter into the more item and case related technology from where we are today. Both companies are run independently, entrepreneurially managed market organizations. We use an incubator concept for the development of this innovative technology platform. We give them shield, we give them the security of Kardex, and on the other hand, let them do their job without imposing too much bureaucracy on these two youngish companies. Very lately, we also announced that we have entered into a global partnership with AutoStore. We signed the agreement in February 2021. Strictly speaking, this does not belong to the reporting year 2020. However, all of the preparation for this partnership, all the partnership talking, the strategic outline within Kardex, has been dealt with in 2020. The formal signing after the approval of our board of directors to invest into the build up of this business in Kardex, formally happened in the first part of the year, and therefore we thought it might be worth mentioning here as well. The major aim is quite obviously to extend Kardex's portfolio, technology-wise, with an established technology that is in the market for quite a few years. It's complementary to what Kardex is doing typically, and therefore, we believe that it will be a great addition to our portfolio, and we can actually offer to AutoStore our global network and our global customer base. I think it could be a very interesting combination of two companies focusing on high quality technology, reliable technology, and actually help our customers manage their logistics in a better way. Next page, please, Thomas. We've kept investing into other things as well. One of these we wanted to highlight is digital marketing. Our digitalization continues, and elements of it you can see if you look at our new website, extract of the website on the right-hand side. I would say a fairly modern presence now, presentation of Kardex, which meets modern standards. That was not the main target. The main target was to actually have the website that helps our customers interact in an easier way with Kardex, and therefore, also hopefully increase customer loyalty with Kardex. Make information easier to find, structure our knowledge, structure our presentation to the market. This was the main reason to introduce it, and we went live early February 2021 as well. We have also invested into digital marketing quite a lot in terms of demand, creation of our customers with very sophisticated marketing campaigns, social media usage, for covering all these needs of our customers. Last not least, partly driven by the cancellation of physical sales last year, but also partly because we had it on our strategic agenda anyways. We went to a now hybrid concept for fairs, where we will in the future, show up on fairs in a combination of physical and virtual. By doing so, we can also then make content that normally can only be seen on one fair, and then people are unlucky if they hadn't visited us on the fair. They can then also see it on the website or in a virtual platform, which I believe will make information provision and information gathering, even better than before. Last not least, we also communicated for the first time what we are doing in terms of sustainability and ESG. You can find the extract of it on our website, and we have also included it into the annual report. That, I believe gives a very good and comprehensive overview of what Kardex has done for many years already, and is also committing to in terms of sustainability and ESG. You are more than welcome to also have a look there and inform yourselves, and then I suppose, bring it up in our next Investor and Analyst meetings, as we go. Last page, please. An outlook. As typical what you expect, not many indications, with one exception. You will see it in a minute. I think what we really believe in is a strong recovery of our top line. Always, of course, under the assumption that COVID will hopefully soon stop to impact the business as much. I don't think it will cease to exist. I think it will accompany us for the years to come. I think the impact on the economy, the impact on our daily life should hopefully go down, and then we should go back to normal business operation and normal customer interaction very soon, I hope. We expect continued recovery in terms of booking and also then resulting in better net sales than in 2019. Kardex Mlog. I mentioned the slow or the weak starting backlog for 2020. It's the opposite going into 2021. We believe that Kardex Mlog, together with continued good booking levels, should see a fairly increased net revenues level for 2021. We also believe that both divisions should be able to demonstrate and deliver profitability levels in the mid to upper range of our communicated target levels. You know those, Remstar 8%-16%, then Mlog 4%-8%. We are cautiously positive about this expectation to be delivered. In line with our midterm, believe in the market intralogistics to come out the crisis faster than other industries. We continue our investments in supply chain, technology, and digitalization to position ourselves for the expected upturn for the market and prep Kardex as a whole for the future, for the next steps and the next levels that we want to reach with Kardex. Market conditions still affected. I think you're hearing this disclaimer in quite many of these calls. I wouldn't elaborate too much on it. Very clear that this could impact the short outlook. Mid to long term, we strongly believe in the industry, therefore our mid to long-term financial targets remain unchanged. With that, I would like to thank you for now and would like to hand back to Edwin. Thank you very much. Yes, thank you very much, Jens and Thomas, for the presentations. We would like to start the Q&A session now. Moderator, can I please hand over to you to start the session? Thank you very much, sir. 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 a queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested use only handsets while asking a question. Anyone with a question may press star and one at this time. The first question comes from Jörg Runge from AWP. Please go ahead, Sir. Yes. Hello, this is Jörg Runge. Could you tell me a little bit more about your clients. Where do they invest? Can you see a regional focus where companies are willing to invest in your technology and where you still see, let's say, a little bit of skepticism? Hello? Yes. Thought I could mute then, anyway. Okay. I try to answer your question. If I understood you correctly, you asked geographically whether we see a change in investment activities. Yeah. If you look at the orders, where do you see a pickup? Is it stronger in Asia or in Europe, Germany? No. You saw it's a different answer. For 2020, I think I mentioned that the regional distribution is the same as in 2019. Yeah. That has not changed. Okay. In terms of dynamics. Okay. For now, let's say the first part of this year, it's early to say. It's only two months that has passed. We see a fairly good development in the U.S. for now, which we expected. There were some delays in orders by the end of the year, I think partly linked to the elections and the, I would say, typical delay in decision-making in the U.S. This is not uncommon. If you look four years back, it was the same. There, we now see a bit of a relief on orders in terms of decisions being taken. We saw two, I would say, happy months in the U.S. in the very first two months of this year. Europe is a little heterogeneous. We see a fair, how should I say, reluctance not, but hesitant to invest in Germany. We see other countries coming out faster and stronger. In Asia it's the same, I would say. We had okay months in the first two months, but it's not like a superior uplift. Really, I currently would put positive focus on is the U.S. Okay. Can I ask another question or am I blocking other colleagues? Go ahead, Jörg. It's good. Well, I think it's okay. It's late. Yeah, go ahead. With the firms and partnerships you bought or went into in the last year, when do you see a sizable effect of these engagements? When do you expect that there's new products coming on the market that it can be combined with your offer and so on? Okay. I guess it's me again. Different answers. If I start with Robomotive, technology is ready to be used. We have a two-fold go-to-market strategy for the Robomotive company. One is serving the market as an independent market organization. They do not just offer their technology to Kardex. Their prime target is to offer it to the independent market and therefore prove the technology in terms of competitiveness, innovation, and so on and so forth. Find partners who integrate their technology in their solution. The second line is, within Kardex, what I call cross-divisional selling and implementation. We are in the process of establishing a standalone subsystem concept, where we use Robomotive technology together with a Remstar technology or even with a Mlog technology. This is in the process of being, A, designed, B, then also campaigned in the organization, first of all. It starts with the internal marketing, and then it's going out to the market to the Kardex customer base. In essence, if you ask me when do I expect an impact on that, I would say we should see the first relative impact in 2022. Rocket Solution, this is a new technology. Therefore, this is really early stages. I talked about the blend market launch in terms of sales launch next week. We, in parallel, already market to the market to interested parties, and also here we have a two-fold go-to-market concept, which is, again, independent to partners, independent of Kardex, I mean, and second, within Kardex. This is also in the preparation. In terms of size of the numbers, here we are a little more careful, and the reason is this is new technology for us and for the young company as well. We want to be a little cautious in terms of how many parallel installations we want to bring to the market. We want it to be okay, we want it to be mature before we go on a wider range to the market. Last not least, the buildup of the AutoStore business. I think 2021 and parts of 2022 are mostly business development and building up the business organization-wise and everything. Also here, I would think that we see the first true impact in 2021 leading into 2023. Okay. Does this answer your question? Yeah. Okay. Good. Edwin, back to you. Yeah, Moderator, I'm asking you for the next question, please. As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press star and one. The next question comes from Sebastian Vogel from UBS. Please go ahead. Hello, can you hear me? Yes, we hear you, Sebastian. Perfect. I got a couple of questions. I would ask them one by one. The first question is, if I look at the order intake at Mlog in the second half, the growth was really good, as you said in the presentation, year-over-year. The year-over-year number with Remstar was not that great, actually it was negative. I was guessing normally that the sort of trends that are favoring Mlog are eventually also the sort of the same trends that are serving Remstar, and I was wondering where this mismatch was coming from. Sorry. Can you repeat it again, please? Yeah. Essentially, Remstar orders went down by 4%, but Mlog orders went up by 30%. Why was Remstar still so much down? Also, I guess both are in warehouse automation active, and therefore should also benefit from similar trends. Yes and no is the answer. Two effects, I would say. Let's say Mlog is in the warehouse distribution market, and they also saw quite an interesting incline in the 3PL segment, the third-party logistics provider. This was a very interesting trend where before third-party logistics providers did not invest into automation or not much. They started due to also the impact of COVID and the lack of people to operate their facility. They started to take much more interest in the automation part of things, and that is where Mlog benefited from. Don't forget, Mlog had a very poor 2019. We should never forget that. It's not really like they had a normalized thing. What we typically look at is a two-year window for Mlog, because we quite often see that these projects in the sales phase have a pretty long lead time before they really materialize. Second, these projects have a very long lead time in realization. Normally, it's better to look on two-year averages than just on a year-by-year. Things could shift, by the end of the year into the new year, and all of a sudden you have a CHF 10 million or CHF 20 million project in the next year, which pretty much skews the averages. That's one element of the explanation. Second, Remstar, even though we've been okay with the U.S. development, it was below 2019. Be careful which year I'm referring to. Below 2019. Secondly, we had a negative effect also in the U.S. That had a double dip in terms of impact. Mlog, I said, is mainly dealing within the distribution warehousing industry, whereas Remstar has not managed to move towards this segment enough. Remstar is really not yet benefiting enough from trends in e-commerce, trends in the housing distribution markets, and therefore is still too dependent on the, I would say, traditional industry segments they're dealing in, like the machinery, electronics and others. We all know that these industry segments have been more impacted than the warehousing, distribution, e-commerce. Understood. The second question deals with organic growth numbers. I was wondering therefore, your acquisitions, into Kardex Italia and Robomotive, they did not add any revenue so far, right? Only costs. Only costs. With regard to the other point. No, organic. Yeah, no, understood. The other part of organic growth, the FX impact on Remstar, can you quantify that? Yes. Yes, I can take this up. The FX effect on top line, so net revenues, is around CHF 4 million negative effect. On Remstar. That makes sense. On Remstar and group, yeah. Yeah, makes sense. One last question from my side. Raw material prices are increasing, steel prices are increasing. I was wondering how well you see yourself prepared to pass that on, or how much you see as a threat for your margins in 2021. Thomas wants me to answer that. He's handing all the difficult ones to me. Different answer again. Some of it we can hand over or pass on to customers, and this is mostly for the Mlog business. When we're talking racking solutions, racking container wise, it's very interesting. That's an interesting market where these price increases can be passed on. For Remstar, it's a little different. We have challenges, and this is more on the competitive behavior than on us. We did try to pass on things, but this is a very challenging market when it comes to simply saying we have higher costs, so here's the increase, healthy increase on prices, to the market. We have to find means to actually compensate for the increases to some extent with productivity gains, but somehow also with added value selling, where we get out of the pure price wars for Remstar. That's a challenge in itself going forward. Understood. Many thanks. You're welcome. For any further question, please press star and one. The next question comes from Erwin Dut from Kempen. Please go ahead. Yes, can you hear me? Yeah. Yes. Excellent. Hi. I'm not sure whether this is difficult to answer, but do you think Remstar has gained or lost market share last year versus competition in the niches that it operates in? I wish I could answer that. We don't know yet. Because they don't disclose numbers, right? The direct competitors, Modula, Hänel, and some locals, they do not communicate their numbers so openly like we have to do. The only area where we normally see relatively reliable numbers is the U.S., where the community report, the competition report into one report, that is due to come out in April, May only. We will know by then. We believe that we did not lose market share in the U.S. Rather the opposite. In Europe, it's different by country. I believe Modula, the 50% of their business must have been very hard, hit very hard in Italy. We all know the situation in Italy. We believe that they must have lost quite a bit. Informal lines, I cannot quote those, informal lines in the Modula tell me that they also suffered by about 10% or a little more in terms of top line. This is informal lines into them, I cannot confirm straight away that this is true. We see them. We do have pretty comprehensive loss reports when we lose against Hänel and/or Modula. This is relatively comparable to previous year statistics. It's not that we all of a sudden lose more against any of the incumbents. Does it mean we see all of the projects, and do they win projects without us knowing? That could be the case, and that's the challenging part to assess. Okay. Did I manage to answer some of your question? Yeah. Erwin? That was helpful. Yeah. I have a second question. If I look at the gross margin in the Remstar, it went from, I think 38.1% in the first half to 43.6% in the second half, which is actually, I think, could actually be an all-time high, the gross margin for Remstar in the second half, 43.6%. Is that purely the mix effect of the services business being relatively high, or is there something else behind that very high gross margin for Remstar in the second half? Also, can you talk a little bit about whether that is sustainable into 2021 then? The mix, one you guessed already, which is LCS, but the other one is also gains in the factories. First half, I think pandemic and the impact hit us more than in the second half. Second, we also benefited from subsidies from the German government for short-term work, and that helped I would say compensate for some of the losses from the top line in the factories. I guess you can formulate the answer yourself to your question. Not all of it can be expected to be carried forward into 2021. The expectation is a little unclear. So far, the German government has extended the subsidies, I believe, until the end of the year. I'm not sure whether this is fully extended like they did in 2020, and we need to watch it, and then see how much we can compensate and how much will be a drop in this gross margin business. May I add something? Maybe, Erwin, may I add something from our former discussions? You remember that also 2019 was still negatively affected because we had this huge capacity utilization with three shifts, et cetera, and the extra cost that had a negative impact on the gross margin at that time as well. This also fell away. Just as a reminder. Okay. Yeah. Then maybe lastly, could you talk a little bit about what the U.S. factory will do from a financial perspective with the business? How much maybe cost benefit should come from that factory and maybe in terms of revenue uplift that you expect. Can you give a little bit of financial color around, if and when the U.S. factory starts up after summer? Well. I'm trying to understand to what extent is the U.S. factory is going to really change the profitability structure of the business. The U.S. factory, we had to postpone due to the COVID situation. We're expecting it in the later part of Q2, sorry, second half year, not Q2, of the second half year, rather towards the end of the year. For 2021, we don't expect much impact, either top line or bottom line. We will have a ramp-up period for the factory. It will only produce 10 of machines in the beginning to actually ramp it up in a moderate and well-managed way. That will mean that in 2022, we'll probably see a potential negative impact on profitability, in terms of overall supply chain, because we have an added capacity which is not fully leveraged on by then. Yeah. Utilized on. I see 2022 as a ramp-up year for the factory, and from 2023 onwards, I would expect a full effect. It's not just for efficiency and profitability. I know. That's why we did it. It's also to protect our market position in the U.S. With the ongoing political debate in the U.S., manufactured in the U.S., we need to have local production close to the customers and also be able to demonstrate to the market that we have a local manufacturing. It's actually two-fold strategy. It's aiming at satisfying this need for us as a company, second, in the longer term, then obviously also increase profitability. The main part is really defend and help support our local base in the U.S. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Operator, are there more questions to come, or are we at the end of the? No, gentlemen. So far, there are no more questions from the phone. I would like to thank you all to have joined us. You know we are happy to answer any further questions whenever you have gone through the whole annual report and figures. I would like to thank you very much, thank Jens and Thomas, and we hear as soon as possible. Thank you, and have a nice afternoon. Bye-bye. 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.