Good afternoon and good morning to everyone. Welcome to the Nestlé Q1 2023 sales webcast. I'm Luca Borlini, Head of Nestlé Investor Relations. Today, I'm joined by our CEO, Mark Schneider, and CFO, François-Xavier Roger. Mark will begin with our key messages and discuss the full year 2023 guidance. François will follow with a review of the Q1 2023 sales figures. We will then open the lines for your questions. Before we begin, please take note of our disclaimer. Now I hand over to Mark. Thank you, Luca, and a warm welcome to our conference call participants today. As always, we appreciate your interest in our company. We are pleased to report a quarter with strong organic sales growth, resilient development of volume and mix, as well as solid progress on our various strategic initiatives, in particular, portfolio optimization. After three years of extraordinary challenges and market gyrations, from the pandemic to the war and the surge of inflation, we're seeing a gradual easing on a number of issues. This allows us to devote more time and energy to what counts in the mid and long term, and that is continued strategic progress on our various key initiatives to propel, transform, and future-proof our company. Slide four summarizes the key messages for this quarter. The performance for the quarter fully confirmed what I'd mentioned in our February call. We had a strong start to the year. Our responsible approach to pricing has not changed, and the significant amount of pricing in Q1 reflects the input cost inflation we all witnessed over the past two years. Real internal growth, the sum of volume and mix, was still slightly negative but came in stronger than expected. As a reminder, real internal growth for Q4 2022 was -2.6%. The Q1 sequential improvement in real internal growth was particularly strong in zone North America, as well as in zone Asia, Oceania, and Africa. Out-of-home saw increased real internal growth versus Q4 2022, in particular in zones North America and Greater China. We're still having some capacity constraints that are impacting our real internal growth, in particular for pet care, coffee creamers, and Perrier. We continue to work on our portfolio optimization program and can confirm our earlier estimate that this program will have a net negative impact for the H1 of this year and a slightly positive impact for the full year 2023. We are seeing the first expected benefits come in as planned, in particular, higher service levels for the company overall and for our high rotation items in particular. In addition to such portfolio management at the SKU level, we are also looking for more strategic projects and refill our pipeline of M&A transactions, both on the buying and the selling side. This gets me to slide five in our creation of a frozen pizza joint venture with private equity firm PAI Partners. The transaction builds on a super successful in-house role model, the creation of our Froneri ice cream joint venture with PAI Partners in 2016. This transaction, which created enormous value for Nestlé and our partner, could have been a business school case study for what a well-defined private equity partnership can do. Step one, target efficiencies. Step two, massive investments to increase competitiveness and growth. Step three, successful premiumization. Step four, market share gains leading to significant growth and value creation. We will deploy a similar approach here for our pizza business. The transaction will allow us to participate in the growth and value creation over time and gives us full optionality when it comes to the future of the European frozen pizza business. I know some of you had asked about our U.S. frozen pizza business in the context of this European transaction and our recent exit from the Canadian market. Please note that our situation in the U.S. is very different, and our prospects there are much brighter. There, we are enjoying a significantly larger market share, have material synergies with our large frozen food business, and benefit from successful premiumization over the past decade. While the U.S. business has had some temporary growth issues due to inflation and the lapping of strong pandemic quarters, we are convinced of the long-term prospects and intend to maintain full ownership. While we are on portfolio management, let me confirm that our Palforzia review process is fully on track. We expect to complete this review over the summer. I would also like to draw your attention to the recent announcement that the pharmaceutical company Merck would acquire Prometheus Biosciences for $10.8 billion. It is a little-known fact that we have a minority stake in this company, which gets valued at close to $700 million under the terms of the transaction. We got that stake as part of divesting the Prometheus diagnostics business in 2019 to a firm called Precision IBD. Electing to be paid largely in shares. Prometheus was an early Nestlé Health Science acquisition from 2011. As our Nestlé Health Science business evolved over the years, it was no longer supporting our strategic focus on consumer health and medical nutrition. With the right long-term vision as we divested the company, we have been able to make a gain of about CHF 300 million on our investment. On slide six, you see a summary of our sustainable packaging efforts over the last year. We're making steady progress on this important issue, which will help to mitigate plastic pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. I'm particularly proud of the fact that over the past years, we have eliminated all plastic straws from our beverages and moved to paper-based solutions. No small feat. We're talking about 4.5 billion straws per year. Challenges remain in two areas. One is flexible multilayer pieces such as sachets. We made progress in this area, but the technology is not quite ready yet for giving us sufficient food safety and shelf life in all geographies and for all types of food. Combining those requirements with affordability and full recyclability is a true technological challenge. The second one is reuse and refill systems, where we're seeing slow consumer acceptance to date. We're still searching for safe, convenient, and cost-effective solutions and are currently running 20 pilots in 12 countries. Do not doubt our strong efforts and good intentions in this area. While in-store reuse and refill systems are slow to take off, we are expanding the use of consumer refill systems as an important stopgap solution. A good example is our Nescafé refill pouch. It is fully recyclable and was launched in Europe in Q4 2022. This brings us to slide seven and our guidance for the year, which we fully confirm. In volatile times like these, I ask you to keep your expectations within our guided ranges. Our Q1 has come in stronger than expected, but it will be prudent to review Q2 trading levels before making any adjustments to our outlook for the year. While we cover the guidance, I would like to raise a housekeeping item, our marketing spend. During our investor meetings that followed the full-year results, many of you requested more visibility in this important area. We listened and saw that you have a point. Starting with our H1 2023 financial report, we will break out our marketing spend for you in the spirit of greater transparency. We will lay out the scope of this line item and discuss in detail latest in our H1 conference call. This concludes my part of the presentation. Let me hand it over to François now. Thank you, Mark. Good morning, good afternoon to all. Let me start with the highlight for the first 3 months of 2023. Organic growth reached 9.3% with pricing of 9.8%, reflecting ongoing actions to compensate the significant cost inflation received over the last two years. RIG was -0.5% impacted by capacity constraints and the effect of portfolio optimization initiatives. Demand elasticity and consumer downtrading remained limited in the context of pricing actions. Net acquisitions increased sales by 0.3%, largely related to the acquisition of Orgain. Foreign exchange had a negative impact of 4% on sales growth. Total reported sales for the first three months were CHF 23.5 billion. Turning to the distribution of growth between developed and emerging markets, organic growth in developed markets reached 8.6% driven by pricing, and growth in emerging markets was 10.3% led by pricing with positive RIG. In the Q1, RIG improved versus Q4 2022 to -0.5% despite the continued impact of capacity constraints and portfolio optimization actions. The key contributors to the improvement were Zone North America and AOA. In Q1 2023, volume development was impacted by active and deliberate choices to reduce the number of low growth and low margin products. We are starting to see the first expected benefit of this program with higher service levels for the company overall and particularly for high rotation products. As guided in February, we expect the program to have a net negative impact overall for H1 2023 and a slightly positive impact for the full year of 2023. Demand elasticity remains relatively limited in the context of pricing taken. In the H1, we expect our group RIG to be slightly negative with an improvement in the H2 overall. Let's now look at the result of our seven operating segments, beginning with Zone North America. We saw 11.6% organic growth. RIG was -0.8%, recovering strongly from the 4th quarter of 2022 with broad-based improvement across key brands and channels. The negative RIG still reflects the impact of portfolio optimization as well as Perrier capacity constraints. Growth was driven by pricing, strong operational execution, and continued momentum in e-commerce. The zone saw market share gains, particularly in e-commerce, led by pet food, frozen meals, soluble coffee, and Gerber baby food. By product category, the key growth driver was Purina PetCare. Nestlé Professional and Starbucks out-of-home solutions reported double-digit growth. Beverages and frozen also saw a robust sales development. Water reported a sales decrease following temporary capacity constraints for Perrier. Shifting to Zone Europe, organic growth was 9.7% with broad-based growth across most geographies and categories. RIG was -1% with some signs of demand elasticity in the context of pricing taken to offset significant input cost inflation received over the last two years. Growth was supported by ongoing pricing actions, sustained e-commerce momentum, and a strong sales development for out-of-home channels. The zone saw market share gains in confectionery, pet food, and infant nutrition. By product category, the key growth drivers was Purina PetCare, confectionery and Nestlé Professional reported double-digit growth. Coffee posted high single-digit growth and Nescafé Farmers Origins, a range of coffee capsules for Nespresso machines, more than double its sales. Moving now to Zone AOA. The zone reported double-digit organic growth with positive contribution from all geographies and categories. Growth was driven by pricing, improved mix, and continued momentum of out-of-home channels. RIG remained resilient in the context of pricing taken. The zone saw market share gains in culinary, coffee, and ice cream. By geography, the largest growth contributors were South Asia, the Middle East and Africa, as well as Oceania. By product category, infant nutrition was the largest growth contributor with double-digit growth. Sales in culinary grew at a double-digit rate based on distribution expansion and strong execution for Maggi. Coffee posted high single-digit growth, reflecting continued robust demand for Nescafé and Starbucks products. Next is Zone Latin America, which maintained double-digit organic growth for the third consecutive year, with broad-based contribution across categories and geographies. Growth was supported by pricing, strong operational execution, and continued momentum of out-of-home channels. The zone saw market share gains in infant nutrition, pet food, and portion coffee. By geography, Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia were the largest contributors to growth. By product category, confectionery was the key growth driver, reflecting continued momentum for KitKat and seasonal products. Dairy posted double-digit growth based on robust demand for fortified milks and home baking products. Sales in infant nutrition also grew at a double-digit rate across most segments, with particular strength for NAN functional products and infant cereals. Turning to Zone Greater China, organic growth was positive based on solid pricing. RIG was negative, partly impacted by the timing of Chinese New Year. Growth in Zone Greater China was supported by strong operational execution, e-commerce momentum, and continued innovation. By product category, infant nutrition was the largest growth contributor, led by NAN specialty offerings and Illuma. Nestlé Professional saw mid-single digit growth supported by innovation and distribution expansion. Confectionery posted low single-digit growth led by increased distribution for Hsu Fu Chi. Purina PetCare posted double-digit growth with market share gains driven by Purina Pro Plan Dry Cat and veterinary products. Next is Nestlé Health Science. The business posted organic growth of 2.8% with pricing of 5% and RIG of -2.2% following extraordinary growth over the last three years during the pandemic. Growth was driven by pricing, e-commerce momentum, and geographic expansion. The business continued to gain market share. Consumer Care reported a sales decrease as positive growth in active nutrition products was offset by negative growth in vitamins, minerals, and supplements. This sales decrease should be seen in the context of recent category trends. As a reminder, the U.S. Consumer Care market grew by around 31% over the last three years during the pandemic, with our business consistently gaining market share over that period. A slowdown in market growth following such a strong increase in the prior three years was expected and is not a cause for concern. We are starting to see signs of market growth picking up again. On a separate note, the integration of The Bountiful Company continues to progress according to plan. Medical Nutrition reported continued double-digit growth with strong sales developments for pediatric and allergy products, as well as acute and adult medical care products. Overall, as indicated at the Investor Seminar Day in Barcelona, we expect our Nestlé Health Science business to return to a high single-digit growth rate in the H2 of 2023 as the base of comparison eases. As a reminder, the strategic review of Palforzia is expected to be concluded by mid-year. Finally, let's turn to Nespresso, which reported low single-digit organic growth with RIG of minus 1.1%. As a reminder, comparable sales for Nespresso are around 30% higher than in 2019. We believe that the post-pandemic normalization of consumer behavior and its impact on Nespresso's growth is largely behind us. Growth was supported by continued broad-based momentum for the Vertuo system. Sales for out-of-home channels saw strong demand driven by increased adoption of the Momento system as well as innovation. By geography, North America posted double-digit growth with continued market share gains. Europe reported a sales decrease, and other regions combined saw low single-digit growth. Let's now look at product categories. Organic growth was broad-based, supported by pricing across all categories. Within powdered and liquid beverages, coffee saw high single-digit growth. Growth was broad-based across brands, segments and geographies, and led by continued momentum for out-of-home channels, which grew at a strong double-digit rate. When it comes to Nespresso, it is relevant to look at the total ecosystem, including brands such as Starbucks by Nespresso and Nescafé Farmers Origins, which we sell in retail channels. On this basis, organic growth for the Nespresso ecosystem was mid-single digit with positive RIG. Cocoa and malt beverages reported continued high single-digit growth, driven by strong demand for Milo and Nesquik ready-to-drink formats. Petcare posted continued strong double-digit growth despite capacity constraints. Science-based, premium, and veterinary products saw strong sales developments. Growth was also supported by pricing, continued e-commerce momentum and innovation. Nutrition and Health Science posted 8.2% growth. Infant nutrition reported 12.4% organic growth with broad-based contribution across geographies, segments, and key brands. We have already covered Nestlé Health Science. Prepared dishes and cooking aids saw 6.8% growth, driven by strong sales development for Maggi and Stouffer's. Milk products and ice cream recorded 8.1% growth. The key contributors to growth were coffee creamers and affordable fortified milks. Growth in confectionery reached 13.5%, reflecting strong demand for KitKat, seasonal products and key local brands. Sales in water grew by 3.1% despite temporary capacity constraints on a high base of comparison in 2022. S.Pellegrino and Acqua Panna saw strong demand, particularly for out-of-home channels. To complete my presentation, just a few words on market share. Overall, we continue to see that more than half of our business sales are gaining or holding share. Our market share has been impacted by capacity constraint and deliberate decisions on portfolio optimization to reallocate resources towards high growth and high margin products. In this context, we think it is relevant to look at the performance of our billionaire brands, which account for 70% of our sales. For Q1 2023, billionaire brands saw 12% organic growth with positive RIG and close to 60% of business sales gaining or holding share. Let me now hand over to Luca, who will manage the Q&A. Thank you, François. With that, we move to the Q&A session. We open the lines for questions from financial analysts. Please limit yourself to no more than two questions. The first question is from Céline Pannuti at JPMorgan. Please go ahead, Céline. Yes, thank you so much. Good morning, good afternoon rather, everyone. My first question is on pricing. I think you landed more pricing in Q1. Can you talk about, would that have an extra impact in Q2, and where was it done? Are you largely done in terms of pricing at this stage? The second question is on gross margin. I think at the full year stage, you said that the outlook was for gross margin to be decreasing in H1, and I wanted to know if that is still the case. We've seen that there's been easing costs from a commodity standpoint. Are we expecting now to see gross margin up for a full year? Thank you. Thank you, Céline. François speaking. Good afternoon. Let's start with pricing. Indeed, we had still a reasonable level of pricing in Q1. You could see that, by the way, our pricing has been at the same level for about three quarters and plateauing around 9% now. We will probably see pricing moving down a bit as we progress further into the year, given that we are lapping a higher comparable base last year. We did do pricing, I would say, across geographies with probably a little bit more in Europe, given that we had probably a bit more to catch up to compensate for the input cost inflation that we received over the last couple of years. As far as gross margin is concerned, usually during the Q1 call, we don't comment on the P&L. Let me just give you a few words exceptionally on the gross margin. We have started to see our gross margin improving in Q1 over the H2 of 2022, as we expected. We may still land H1 gross margin possibly at a lower level than the same period of last year. We do expect indeed to see an increase in H1 as well over H2 last year. Next question is from Guillaume Delmas at UBS. Please go ahead, Guillaume. hello, Guillaume. Are you connected? Hello? Can you hear me okay? Yes, we can hear you now. Please go ahead. Can you hear me better now? Yes. Yeah. The two questions, the first one on RIG. In Q4, François, you talked about temporary factors, of around 160 basis points weighing on your RIG performance. I was wondering if you could quantify the impact or. Looking at the Q2, are there any factors that would incrementally weigh on your RIG performance, or would it be sensible to kind of extrapolate the trends seen in Q1? My second question is on Nespresso, and particularly Nespresso in Europe, because the business declined in the Q1. Is there an issue with Nespresso in Europe? Because in the last three years, the business has been down twice and only up mid-single digit once, I think it was in 2021. Anything to fix, or should we think about Nespresso as part of a much broader ecosystem in Europe? Thank you. Okay, Guillaume. François speaking. Let me take the first question on the RIG in Q4. Indeed, we had mentioned three items without quantifying each and every single of them, as having some negative impact on RIG in Q4 last year. One of them was portfolio optimization, which was still relatively strong last year. It is still the case in Q1 this year with about the same impact. We had a second one, which was the capacity constraint that we have on water. That was the lower one in Q4 last year, which is still having an impact as well in Q1 2023. The third one that we had, which was relatively significant as well, was the out of home normalization, where we had seen a little bit of softness in Q4 last year for out of home, and that has significantly improved given that it had basically no impact in Q1 2023. As far as Q2 2023 is concerned and the RIG, and the extrapolation, we don't want to guide on Q2 to start with, so I would be very careful there. We are also very cautious looking forward, given that we see some pressure on consumption level and consumer reaction we see in some markets, and more specifically in Europe, for example, volume of consumption being in negative territories. We are on the very cautious side for Q2, more specifically. Guillaume, this is Mark, to get back to you on the Nespresso question. A few thoughts and comments there. One is to take a look at the wider system sales, because, as you know, we also sell the Starbucks by Nespresso and Nescafé Farmers Origins. When you factor that in, we're at about mid-single digit organic growth. Clearly, when you take that wider angle view, and given that Nespresso Farmers Origin, for example, very much started in Europe and is focused on Europe, and Starbucks also has a strong presence here, I think the situation changes a lot. Nespresso, you know, on the inner perimeter, just under the Nespresso brand, that pattern that we're seeing somewhat lower growth rates, in some cases even negative growth rates in some European markets, and then strong growth overseas, in particular North America, but also other overseas markets, that is nothing unusual. I think as COVID came and went, clearly, of course, there was a strong tailwind as there was more at home consumption, and now we're essentially going through some quarters where we have a headwind and hence that European situation becomes more visible. Timing-wise, we believe that starting from this summer, you should see the situation turn again, and then I think, we have some of the strong lapping quarters behind us, and then the true underlying growth of Nespresso should be shining through more strongly. Next question is from Warren Ackerman at Barclays. Please go ahead, Warren. Hi. Hi, everybody. It's Warren here at Barclays. I've got two as well. First one is on the SKU program. I wonder if you can tell us how many SKUs have you actually reduced since the start of the program, and maybe could you elaborate on growing the head piece? You talked about higher service levels, higher rotating items. Can you give some examples of what you're seeing? Would be really helpful. Am I right in thinking the Canadian frozen food exit only starts in the Q2, would that mean that the SKU impact would then be worse in Q2 before swinging positive in the H2? The first one on SKUs. The second one, just on nutrition. Just listening to your comments, François, you're sounding pretty bullish about nutrition in most regions. Latin America, up double digit. Asia, ex China, up double digit. China, driven by NAN. You know, obviously given where we were last year, what's driving that? Is that birth rates recovering post-pandemic? Is it market share gains? Is it RIG driven? You know, Are you driving RIG within nutrition, or is it all just pricing, a bit of mix? Just interested to know what the sort of split of that nutrition number is between RIG and pricing and what's behind this sudden renaissance of nutrition this year relative to last year? Thank you. Good afternoon, Warren, François speaking. This SKU optimization and portfolio optimization program that we have, we continue to be very active. It had a negative impact on RIG in Q4, again in Q1, about to the same extent. Obviously, the most interesting part of that program is also what we do in order to redirect and reallocate resources to high volume and high rotation SKUs. We had said that over time, we would expect to get some positive benefit that would, to a large extent, and even in the second part of the year, fully offset the negative impact of terminating some SKUs. We were very happy in Q1 to see already that this part of growing the head and reallocating resources had a positive impact as we gained a few percentage points of service level in this high rotation SKUs across geographies. It really started to deliver interesting results. I would not be able to give you an exact number at the end of Q1 on the SKUs that we have eliminated, but we will certainly come back to you later in the year, not necessarily on a quarterly basis. The Canada frozen business that we will discontinue, it will be spread over 18 months. Actually, this is what we had announced initially. It has started to have a little bit of an impact, but it will certainly increase as we progress during the year. Nutrition, you saw that for two quarters in a row, at least we had very strong momentum there. This is essentially driven by market share gains across geographies, and premiumization as well. We had some interesting development as well in China. As you know, it's one of our largest market, and it is not only driven by pricing, but it is also driven to a lesser extent by positive rig. Next question is from Jon Cox at Kepler. Please go ahead, John. Yeah, good afternoon, gents. Jon Cox, Kepler Cheuvreux. Couple of questions for you. Just back on this SKU rationalization and potential constraints. I just wonder if you can just give us a figure on that, because I think in Q4 you said of that 2.6, around half was food service. Is it right in thinking then that with, you know, food service is swinging positive, you know, over one point or so is still a drag on you, and if you excluded that, you would actually be up in RIG terms by half a point or so? That's the first question. As a bit of an add to that, in Europe, actually, the RIG decline looked far better than anticipated, given some of the data points out there and some of those markets where you're seeing up to mid-single digit volume declines. Wondering if you can just talk a little bit more about Europe, particularly in the context of what you were saying, that as you go into Q2, you'll even brace for maybe a bit worse in Europe? Just a cheeky add with regards to the joint venture with PAI on your frozen business or frozen pizza in Europe. I'm just wondering what. You said all options are open. Could that include an IPO down the road, potentially with the frozen pizza business being sort of rolled into the ice cream business and some sort of like, you know, combo IPO package in the next few years? Thanks very much. Okay, Jon. Good afternoon, François speaking. On the SKU, indeed, SKU rationalization optimization program, it has continued to be a drag in Q1. We don't quantify it. The number is a little bit lower than what you mentioned, though, just to provide you some indication. On Europe, you are right that, okay, we have been quite active in terms of pricing to compensate for the input cost inflation that we have received over the last two years. Given that you saw that, for example, in 2022, we had a very material decrease of our gross margin, given that we had not passed entirely everything that we had received, and we have a little bit of catch up there to do. Indeed, our RIG was relatively resilient in Q1. Be aware of the fact that some of the pricing that we implemented in Q1 has been implemented not necessarily at the very beginning of the quarter, but during the quarter. Indeed, you may expect a little bit more pressure probably on RIG in Q2. Jon, this is Mark, regarding your question on pizza. Full optionality really means the full range of choices, as you know, choice means value. This is good. This just gives us lots of opportunities down the road, and that includes potentially an IPO. Don't see it too much as a combination play between Froneri and pizza. This is one of the option, but it's not the overarching logic here. The reason we selected PAI again for this here is that we had fantastic experiences with them as part of Froneri. They do understand corporate partnering. There's a deep understanding in that firm when it comes to governing fast-moving consumer goods assets. We saw that at work, and we saw it create value as part of the Froneri joint venture. They were a very good partner to go to when it comes to pizza. Again, full optionality, but don't see it as an automatic combo here to the ice cream business. Next question is from Bruno Monteyne at Bernstein. Please go ahead, Bruno. Hi, good morning. My first question is still coming back to RIG in quarter one versus quarter two. I noticed how the confectionery sales was very high in quarter one. Now, I was trying to understand whether, let's say, last year's Omicron could have weighed onto your seasonal sales, particularly around Valentine's and Easter coming a week early. Is there any kind of link to that seasonality that would mean quarter one was materially boosted, and we shouldn't expect that to come back in quarter two? Related to that also, clearly the Nielsen data does look weaker. Do you feel there's any amount of sell-in being higher than sell-out, so that there's more stock, inventory in the channel than usual? That's on volumes. The second one is on this private equity deal. Clearly, Froneri has been very successful, I'm not doubting that. Mark, when you were talking about those four steps of the business model, what was it? Like cost-cutting and reinvesting in growth. Again, a nice little four-step process of value creation. That sounded identical to what Nestlé does all the time about in its businesses. What I didn't understand from your four-step processes, what does the private equity firm bring that you can't do on your own? What do they bring above and beyond those four steps that you already do as a normal course of business? Thank you. Thanks, Bruno. very good questions, and let me start with the second one, which I think merits a bit of discussion. Then let's segue after that with the first one, and I'll share the answer to that with François. On private equity, you're absolutely right. Some of these elements I mentioned are part of what we call the virtuous circle. You know, this is also how we develop our business. The difference is about how much reinvention and reimagining does it take to reposition a business. I think where a large company like us is best at is when it comes to the patient scaling up of businesses that grow in a stable fashion over long periods of time. Think about pet care, think about instant coffee. Those are areas where I think in a very patient manner, systematic manner, year after year, we're putting down the investment, increasing volume, increasing scale, increasing market share, and then we build these fantastic global brands over time. When a business requires, in a short period of time, a significant amount of reinvention and a stronger type of makeover, I think this is our assessment of where the frozen pizza business in Europe is, then I think a more creative approach that is supported by private equity and strong incentives to reposition the business is better suited. We've seen that at work in the ice cream business. Again, we are much better off with our lower ownership stake in the ice cream business that we have now than we were with the full ownership prior to 2016. We see a similar situation arising now with frozen pizza in Europe. A lot just has to do with, you know, is it just a few tweaks on the marketing things, on the marketing positioning, which we can do ourselves, or is it a more fundamental process that needs to be reviewed? As I look at the industrial landscape and footprint, as I look at the failed attempts in the past in frozen pizza in Europe to premiumize, I see opportunities here with a more creative and more radical approach that usually is brought by private equity. You're right. In many cases, we intend to create this value ourselves. In these more extreme cases, I do believe that partnering with a private equity firm that understands corporate partnering, does make a lot of sense for Nestlé shareholders as well. When it comes to Q1, I'll share this answer with François, but clearly here on confectionery, we see, especially on KitKat, I think a solid drop on market shares. This is not so much driven by seasonality. The sell-in for Easter is typically a Q1 matter. Whether Easter occurs two or three weeks before or after, in this case, doesn't change very much. There, I think, don't be afraid here. The seasonality has been providing a one-time push. We have seen, as you know, and this is not just referring to confectionery, 1 more trading day in Q1, but that applies to all of our peers as well. Other than that, I didn't see much seasonality impacting confectionery. Let me hand it over to François, also for the sell-in, sell-out question. Yes, thank you, Mark. Bruno, I can only reinforce what Mark is saying. You know, in our industry, there is not much difference between sell-in and sell-out, maybe with the exception of a few emerging markets and with the exception of China, for sure. Retailers don't really increase or decrease materially their inventories from one month to the other. It may apply for retailers, probably for discretionary items, but not really for food and beverage. It may happen in a very limited way as well when we announce price increases, but we have seen that it is usually very limited. We don't see any major differences between sell-in and sell-out. One other way to look at it is to compare the pattern between our sales growth and our market share development. There again, we see exactly the same trend with both of them evolving positively. I take the occasion, by the way, to say that because we seem to have from time to time, a little bit of different views, as far as market share is concerned, that when you take the traditional panels like Nielsen and Kantar, their coverage is actually relatively limited. I would say maybe only half of our sales. We do ourself, we are in a position to be able to cover maybe around 70%, seven zero, of our sales. The traditional panels cover reasonably well, I would say, the grocery channel, and more specifically in North America, in Western Europe, maybe in some other markets, but their coverage is usually relatively limited in emerging markets for direct to consumer by definition and for e-commerce. Next question is from Pascal Boll at Stifel. Please go ahead, Pascal. Yes. Hello, everyone. The first question is on PetCare. The RIG of 3.5%, what was the reason behind that? Is it strong demand and also that new capacities that have came online allowed you to grow further? Is there still a huge constraint and you could have even sold more? That would be my first question. The second question on plant-based food. I saw that in the U.K. you pulled out of the market with the Garden Gourmet brand as well as with Wunda. Now, when I reflect back to the capital markets day in Barcelona, you were very enthusiastic about the opportunities in plant-based. Over the last month, has anything changed here? Especially in strategy, how Nestlé wants to win that market. Thank you. Pascal François speaking. Let me take the 1st question, Mark will take the 2nd one. On pet care, indeed, very strong growth. Again, I think for the 4th year in a row, I think we are double-digit. This is clearly linked to a strong demand, if we did not, if we had not had capacity constraints, obviously even the RIG would have certainly been higher. That strong demand is largely linked to two underlying, strong underlying trend. One of them is the caloric, calorific coverage in emerging market, which is a number of dogs and cats that are taking processed food instead of food leftover from the family table. That's one of the strong underlying trend, as well as the 2nd one, more in the developed world is about premiumization. To that, you need to add the fact that we continue gaining market share as well. Very strong demand for pet care, and we have no signs at all that this is going to slow down. As you know, we are investing significantly as we speak, and we expect to get some additional capacity coming in mostly in North America by the end of 2023 and more specifically in 2024. Pascal, let me comment on plant-based. We continue to be very enthusiastic about the mid to long-term growth prospects here. I think the two examples that you cited, those were more tactical moves that don't take away from our long-term enthusiasm. Specifically when it comes to Garden Gourmet in the U.K., Garden Gourmet is super strong on the continent here in Europe, and I think the recipes and the product presentation is very much geared towards continental European tastes. We were struggling with a below-scale presence and shelf presence in the U.K. as a late entrant to a highly competitive sector there. Also a sector where you look at, when you look at the product presentations and recipes, a lot of that is geared to Asian dishes and our products were not so much made for that. Clearly we were struggling for a few quarters and we felt that there is no immediate path to success here and hence we retreated. Wunda, we still believe very much in the product. We still believe very much in plant-based dairy, but that straightforward low shelf presence, one or two or three SKU, path into the market clearly is not working. Hence we're looking other ways to reach the consumers, either through specialties or through our professional distribution channel. Again, this is not taking away from the long-term growth prospects of this, but U.K. market definitely does have a very competitive environment for plant-based, and it just turned out that our current go-to-market strategy was not best geared to that. Next question is from, Tom Sykes at Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead, Tom. Yeah, good afternoon, everybody. Firstly, just on pets, are you able to split out the growth between North America and non-North America? At least allude to perhaps the gap in growth in either rigor or pricing. I know that it's quite early, given that your usage, you know, obviously reported your pricing remains high, but there obviously will be some countries where food inflation is beginning to come down more and pricing is coming down by less, or it's coming down. Are you beginning to see some sort of elasticity move the other way at all? Or is it too early for that? Any implications of slowing inflation in those countries where it is occurring would be very interesting. Tom, François speaking. On pet care, I mean, the growth was very consistent between the different zones. I mean, we saw strong momentum in North America as well as in Europe and in other emerging markets. I mean, if I think of Western Europe or Eastern Europe or Latin America as well. It was across the board, very consistent with what we can see at group level. Tom Sykes, commenting on inflation here, obviously, we're talking about massively different situations depending on what market and what category, you're looking at. It's very hard for us now specifically to comment on a country market or category without getting into competitive signaling. I think one of the strengths of the Nestlé system is that we do have a lot of decentralized decision-making to be sure that we take a good look at what the local competitive situation is like, what the local inflation situation is like, and then to see how to decide in the best interest of the company. At this point, probably too early to describe any patterns yet. As you know from the full year results, when it comes to our consolidated numbers and when it comes to our zones on a consolidated basis, we're still in the process of catching up with some of the price inflation hits that we've taken over the last two years. That is still one of the overarching situations. It's important not to confuse short-term spot market movements with year-over-year situations. In many situations, we're still on a year-over-year basis above last year's levels. Next question is from Emma Letheren at RBC. Please go ahead, Emma. Hi there. Good afternoon, and thank you for taking my question. Could you please comment on private label trends? You indicated before that private label has been gaining a little bit of share in some markets and categories, but that's really it just returning to pre-COVID levels. Wondering if that's still the case? Secondly, you aim to increase marketing as a proportional sales going forward. Given the exceptional sales performance of this Q1, are you still expecting that to be the case for 2023 as well? Emma, François speaking. Let me take the first question. On private label, indeed, they gain market share in 2022 in the food and beverage industry for us, against us as well. However, so far, private labels have essentially regained the market share that they lost during the pandemic. More recently, we have seen the rate of private label share gains slowing down. Inflationary pressure, by the way, impact all players in the industry, including private label, the pressure is typically more pronounced for private label since input costs typically represent a higher proportion of their sales. As a consequence, we have seen that private label had to implement significantly higher% increases than branded products like ours, while obviously their price points remain at a lower level than branded products. Emma, commenting on the marketing spend, wanted to confirm that there is no change, no intentions from what we told you as part of the full year. First of all, starting with H1, we'll give you a bit increased transparency and visibility when it comes to marketing spend. Just because Q1 came in stronger than expected, there is no change in plans here when it comes to our marketing spend going forward. I think we discussed in a lot of detail as part of the full year disclosures that what we did last year was a highly tactical and pragmatic reaction to the prevailing situation that we saw, and that was, for example, many supply chain constraints. Hence, it was unusual. From there, of course, as a marketing company, we intend to increase that spend going forward again. No change of plans for 2023. Now we have the last questions from David Hayes at Société Générale. Please go ahead, David. Thanks, Luca. Good afternoon also to two from me. The first one, can I just push you a bit more on this comment that you've made throughout about the better quarter performance? Is that just on RIG or was pricing holding and achieve more than you were perhaps expecting? I guess just on the RIG, it feels like EU resilience was sort of maybe a key area for you. Any other areas that you talk about where you are noted to be better than you were thinking? I thinking maybe perhaps the squeezing the head element, is that come through quicker than you expected? Is that part of the reference that you're making there? The second question, just to follow up on the Nespresso EU performance. Is there been little to no pricing in Nespresso in Europe as of yet? Is that strategic and/or will the pricing in Nespresso Europe contribute more through the next couple of quarters? Thanks so much. Thanks, David. On the second question, as always, we'd love to be helpful, but I can't go into any price guidance here on a specific product and region. I hope you understand. Regarding the Q1, again, we're not pounding our chest, but it's also pretty clear and pretty evident that it came in more strongly than expected. I think when it comes to RIG, I pointed to two geographic zones in particular, and that is North America and Asia, Oceania and Africa. I think it's also fair to say that compared to some of the fears that everyone had going into the winter, the European consumer has held up better than expected. I think now, as François pointed out, we're still seeing some uncertainty through Q2, but also no specific signs here that things are headed down. Again, this is where we believe that having the Q2 come in and then seeing where we are and adjusting our outlook for the year is probably the best way going forward to judge the situation. Okay. Thank you. We have no further questions, so we come to an end to our session today. We thank you very much for your interest in Nestlé. As usual, if you have further questions, don't hesitate to contact our investor relation team. We wish you well. Stay safe and healthy.