Delighted to welcome Nestlé to the stage, and CFO Anna Manz. Thank you, Anna. Every year, you are very supportive of our conference, and we really do appreciate that. Lots to discuss. I am probably going to kick off maybe big picture, talking about your favorite topic of real internal growth, and the ambition to get to the 2%. In the first half, you are kind of tracking, you are sequentially improving. I think you are at 1.5%, and you have still got some headwinds from U.S. Pet Care, Europe. Maybe you can just share your confidence that you will be able to get to that kind of steady state, 2% algo. Maybe which businesses are you happiest with are tracking and which of them are maybe furthest away from that kind of 2% level? Maybe a good place to start. You are right. RIG is my specialist subject and a huge priority for us because obviously driving growth drives margin, drives cash, drives all of it. We are making really good progress. We have now had four solid quarters of RIG-led growth, and you see Q1 to Q2 improve from a 1.2% RIG to a 1.8% RIG. If you look at our performance in Q2, we are actually above that 2% number now in coffee and pet, and we are right around there on confectionery, food, and snacks. The thing that is holding our RIG performance back is nutrition, and that is largely the infant formula recall. There again, we are making really steady progress in terms of recovering that business, and we are on track. Looking forward, what gives me confidence around sustainable RIG-led growth, firstly is the resource allocation that we are doing. The work that we have done to really describe those categories where there is structural growth well ahead of the rest of the category, so those sub-category areas. 30% of our business sits in those areas, and there in the first half we are growing over 7%, and that incremental investment in that space should see us accelerate. That resource allocation is important. I think the other thing that is important with respect to RIG-led growth is execution. Yeah. There again, absolute focus on if you have got the right taste, the right price versus the competition, the right distribution and visibility, the right media, then we are gaining share and growing. There is not any bit of our business where we have not got those things right where we are not growing. Yeah. That is what gives me confidence moving forward to be above 2% on RIG, but to be consistently over 4% on organic growth. But I guess within that, North America is your key geography, 35% of revenues, and the RIG, I think, was flattish. Yeah. I think you described that as not acceptable. Yeah. Clearly, you need to do more to get to the 2% of the group. As you look across the North American portfolio, what is your kind of outlook for the U.S. consumer? And then how much of that kind of gap, I guess, the flat versus the 2% is kind of explained by category headwinds versus internal execution? Because I guess getting that North America piece really moving is going to be a key unlock. Yeah. No, we weren't happy with performance in Q2 on North America. More to be done. The consumer was not the drive. I mean, the consumer is weak in North America, but it hasn't deteriorated. It's consistent. There's kind of three things going on in North America in the quarter. Firstly, you've got weak category growth in frozen food, and I'll talk about that for a minute. You've then got a couple of areas where we are underperforming the category. So that would be Gerber and Creamers, and I'll come back to those. Then you've got a third bucket where there's a bit of phasing noise in the quarter associated with retailer inventory levels, timing of price increases. That I'm not at all worried about. That's just timing phasing. You can ignore that third one. Yeah. So maybe then just to focus on the first two. Firstly, the category as a whole is in slight decline. It plays to the more challenged area of the consumer. Equally, there are big pockets in that category that are growing much faster. The sorts of trends that where we're seeing that faster growth is around world cuisine, around high fiber, high protein, around actually the very small pack sizes or the single pack sizes, and then the big family value packs. So it's about making sure that we're playing in the right places in the category to really take advantage of the growth that is there. We are doing a better job of that. Our performance is improving. There is more to do to be consistently growing. Gerber, we've talked about before. It is a journey to turn that around. The proof point on Gerber will be really the Q1 shelf reset. Yeah. For those of you that haven't followed the Gerber journey, but I suspect most people have, we've been talking a little bit to the yoga mum versus the busy working mum. So, not glass jars, we need pouches, we need the formats, the flavors. We've got that right now. We've been working on that with retail over the last year. We've got the product in production, but the annual shelf reset is really when we should regain our shelf space. Then the third one is Creamers, and that one annoys me. It annoys me because some of our issue in the quarter was production, and that really isn't acceptable, so we've made the interventions there. Really good momentum on the fast-growing part of the category. A bit more to do on Coffee mate, but good progress. In short, the U.S. consumer, we're not seeing material change. It is all about our execution. We are making good progress with coffee and pet, and there are a couple of areas where we know we need to do better, and we are intervening, and you are seeing that improvement, and you will see it come through. Maybe just double-clicking on U.S. pet food because it is your biggest. Yep Most important sell, and you talked about a temporary sort of destocking because retailers no longer need as much safety stock, given you have got wet cat capacity. How can we be sure, I suppose, it is a one-quarter issue? At the same time, we are seeing more generalized destocking happening across U.S. retail because U.S. retailers are taking a more cautious view about the outlook for the U.S. Just trying to understand, do we just look at the sellout of cat and dog and then conclude that if it is a one-quarter issue, it should marry up in the third quarter as the sellout data that we can see on cat and dog? I am just trying to sort of. Yep You say it is like a bit of a non-issue, but I think for the market, people are still a bit worried that it could continue. Yep beyond one quarter, I guess. Yeah. Let's unpack that. I would point you to the sellout data because that really tells you what consumer offtake is. Yeah. That really tells you around the momentum and the health of the brand. You are seeing very strong sellout performance through Q2, but for those of you watching the scan data, that strong sellout in cat is continuing. Firstly, cats are growing 2%-3% as people go back to work post-COVID. Cats are an easy pet to have. Cats are, from a CFO's perspective, they are brilliant because you premiumize in cat because your cat enjoys the experience, and you can see your cat enjoying the experience, or you are getting better connection with your cat. The lovely thing about cats is they are super picky eaters. If you give them a better food, they will not go back and eat the old food. That is why being able to innovate into the cat space is wonderful because it gives the opportunity for the consumer to trade up. That is what you are seeing actually drive the wet cat category now. It is growing kind of 7%-ish. The fact that we have got capacity and we are bringing all of our flavors into it, that is what is driving it. Yeah. You see the momentum. In terms of the stock issue in the quarter, there is a slightly broader retailer desire to manage cash flow and stocks, and you see that more generally. Yeah. We had a bit of a double whammy on pet food specifically because when you've got a product that you are being inconsistent around supply, the retailer algorithm seeks, particularly if that product is a product that has got great consumption and is being pulled off the shelves, the retailer algorithm looks to try and get more than its fair share of that product. They order more. You see the order volume go up significantly if you're in poor supply. Retailers hold on to safety stock. What you've seen is that situation reverse. As we've come back to full capacity and we're now supplying very consistently, the safety stock has fallen out of the system. So it's a correction. Your market shares in U.S. pet, are you happy with them? Growing nicely. Yeah. Okay. Interesting. Maybe moving to coffee because coffee has delivered pretty strong growth for you guys over the last two years, driven by pricing. But as coffee prices moderate and pricing contributes less to growth, what does the kind of coffee growth algo look like? From the volume data we can see at the moment, it does look a little bit softer. I know you took a high single-digit price increase from Starbucks at the end of the quarter, so you would expect some kind of elasticity from that. But has that continued? Is there anything around coffee on volume that is causing any angst, or is it very much in line with how you see it tracking? Maybe just to deal with Q2 specifically, Sure and then I'll talk a bit broader about coffee. So Q2, I think, we saw slightly weaker volumes in the U.S. To unpick that, Nespresso grew very nicely with high single-digit growth and volume growth. Nescafé grew very nicely with, again, high single-digit growth and volume growth. There was an impact in the quarter, specifically with respect to Starbucks, where we took price. Yep. The way to think about coffee is, and I always think about my mum when I say this, most people have coffee in the cupboard as well as out that they're using. When you take price on coffee, the first time the consumer goes shopping and they see the higher price, they think, "Well, I've got coffee in the cupboard. Yeah. I don't need to buy more this time. Let's see if it's on promo next time I go shopping. You often see a couple of weeks of that cycle, then as the stocks dwindle, you then buy more. That's why you see an initial volume reaction right after a price increase. We've seen it again and again, then it normalizes. So that's what we're seeing in the U.S. More generally speaking, good structural growth in coffee. Okay. What we're seeing is coffee move beyond the traditional need state of hot and first thing in the morning into refreshment, indulgence, functional. We're seeing convenience, so RTD, and experimentation with the younger population really growing. All of those things are structurally driving coffee. With respect to us, we are really focused, therefore, on those areas of the category that are exhibiting faster growth, specifically cold. Yeah. There's much more cold coffee drunk in coffee shops than at home, so really driving the offerings to capture that opportunity. RTD coffee, so it's a convenience. Driving portion coffee because we have a small share of portion coffee in the U.S., which is a significant opportunity. Then continuing to drive penetration of Nescafé across the emerging markets. That will systematically drive the category. To your innovation question, it is all about innovation. To give you an example, to take coffee into the refreshment space, we've launched a Starbucks Refreshers Concentrate, which is a clear, fruity concentrate made with green coffee, so it has some caffeine. It doesn't taste of coffee. It's a fruity drink. That takes that cafe refreshment moment into the coffee aisle. The recruitment that we're seeing with that product, huge purchase intent in that much younger generation that don't necessarily make their way into the coffee aisle. Then great refill. So that's how we keep recruiting into the category. I'm going to maybe switch gears, Anna, and talk a little bit about emerging markets because so much focus on the U.S. Your Asian RIG has been super impressive, and quite broad-based, it seems. Yeah. Some investors sort of think maybe that's you benefiting from supply chain challenges from local players, maybe you can hit that. Or is it just that the underlying food and beverage markets are just in quite good shape in those regions? Maybe you can kind of unpick a little bit, what's happening on the ground. Maybe which brands are contributing and sustainability, I suppose, of this, I think it was mid-single digit RIG in the region. Just if you can help us a little bit unpack it. We've got really, really good broad-based growth across the emerging markets. I'll put China to one side because that's probably a different question. Yeah. That's across both LATAM, Asia, as well as Africa. I think one thing, because people always ask about China and India. China's 5% of sales, but we have six or seven markets that are in that 2%-4% of sales size. Yeah across the region. Brazil, Mexico, Central and West Africa, the Philippines, Malaysia. Really, really broad-based exposure. What we are not seeing particularly is a change in the underlying economy. It is not consumption driving growth. It is market share led growth, which is a good thing. That, frankly, is coming from this consistent improvement in execution that we are driving across the group, coupled with an improvement in our innovation pipeline. Okay. That is what is allowing us to sort of very consistently execute. You said, Anna, that China is a different story. Yep Of course, it is. I think we are about a year on from the China reset. Maybe you could share your thoughts with how it is going, how you feel about the work that you have done on the ground in terms of route to market and making it much more consumption led rather than distribution sort of push. Yeah. A year ago, we said we needed to drive a consumption led model in China because for a good number of years, we had been driving growth in China by driving distribution of our brands from tier 1 to tier 4 + cities, and we hadn't done a good enough job of driving the consumer pool. What you've seen us do over the course of this last year is firstly, revisit our route to market. Consolidate distributors where we had a few places where we had too many, take some stock out of the system, where in some cases it was a bit aged. We've also reviewed our own sales forces. You've seen us do things like combine what was effectively three different infant nutrition sales forces across the illuma, NAN, and the specialty brands into one very targeted sales force. You've also seen us do things like reduce our SKU count. China is a very fast-paced market. Innovation is really important. We had done a lot of innovation, but it had meant that we'd ended up with a proliferation of SKUs. Actually what we've done is focus it right down so that we're bringing the right pace of flavor innovation, for example, in coffee. Where we're bringing the sort of rapid flavor innovation, but we're doing it on a rolling basis with real focus on which SKUs we're driving. That is helping us move from a place where we weren't seeing volume growth, for example, in RTD, and we are now. We've also been very thoughtful about what influences and what things our consumers are particularly focused around. For example, Shark Wafer, which is a confectionery product. Linking up with some games and doing some special edition packs has really connected with the consumer group that consume that brand. Being really thoughtful about how we're doing brand marketing and influencer marketing. Good progress overall, but more to do. I would say the end markets are still challenged. Our categories in China are still declining in value terms 2%-3% as a category. It's going to take us a little bit of time to go from a share loss situation to consistently holding share and then outperforming our categories. Though obviously, now we're through the destock, we're going to have a period of easier comps. Comps aside, I'm really focused on our market share and performance versus the category, where we're seeing stabilization and some improvement. One of the interesting things, covering it for a while, that seems interesting is how Nestlé's de-averaging portfolio choice. Yes. You had 10% that was high growth initially. That's now 30%, and you're skewing your investments. Yep. It's really nice to see you breaking out the marketing spend between the high growth and the core. Yep. So we can see that skewing. Can you talk about that journey that Nestlé's been on to kind of de-average the portfolio? Because can that 30% get to 40%, 50%? And how do you do that while still protecting the other 70%, the core? Yeah. Because it seems like that's a massive change in the way, since you've been CFO, how you're allocating capital within the business. De-averaging is a really good phrase because we did tend to set the same target for everything. We are being really thoughtful about resource allocation and being really clear on where those pockets of growth are. You are absolutely right. We are then putting disproportionate investment there, and we are tracking those business cases. Not on an annual basis, which was the historic way of doing it, but quarterly, and we are reallocating capital as we go. If there are subcategory growth areas where we are seeing really good traction, then we will be putting more money behind it. If we are not getting the traction, then we will go back and revisit why. That is absolutely helping us. Now, when you think about that 30% of areas where we have got really high category growth, so things like cold coffee, RTD coffee, therapeutic pet diets, et cetera, they are all with the same brands as we are selling in the core. Yeah. It is not some brands are winning and some brands are losing. It is that we are using the same brands to both deliver against the needs of the core. In my case, I am a lifelong Nescafé drinker, and I will continue to drink it. At the same time, the cold variant or Nescafé Espresso Concentrate is bringing in that new young consumer, and my kids are coming in. Because it is the same brand, the investment helps both. Yeah. We were talking about our kids going to university earlier. My daughter has just gone to university. She had been drinking Nescafé Espresso Concentrate and making these wonderful creations at home. But when we did her back to university shop, she bought NESCAFÉ Ice Roast, so standard Nescafé soluble, to take to university with her. That is an example of how being in these growth areas actually is an investment in the brand as a whole. That is exactly how we think about it. It is not just about resource allocation. It is also about AMP effectiveness. Yeah. And that's the other area then we've made quite a big shift to make sure that we are then tracking those metrics to understand that we're getting the returns on the investment. So, for example, non-working was in the high 20s. It's now sub 20. We need our investment to go into working media, not non-working media. Yeah. We need it touching the consumer. We've reduced the number of brands that we're actually putting media investment into from 400 to 120. That's not because we are damaging those other brands. They are things like Carnation Milk. You don't need media on Carnation Milk. You need brilliant in-store promo. Yeah. You need brilliant activation, but not media. So getting super clear on what needs what, and then as we've taken the data set that we have to really drive detailed sort of marketing resource, econometric tools across the group, that allows you for each brand in each country to look at what the appropriate marketing mix is to optimize performance and really make sure you're investing in the right places. So those two things together, resource allocation at the big level, and then marketing mix optimization at the local level is what's really helping us be much more effective about where we put- As well as CFO, Anna, you've got the other hat of M&A as well. So you've been pretty busy on that front as well. Now, you've obviously made big moves on ice cream, partnering in water, the exit of VMS. Would you say now that the portfolio changes are largely complete, or do you still see scope for further simplification? And I guess equally on the other side of the equation, I know big deals are out, but in terms of bolt-ons, are there any sort of specific technologies or sub-sectors which you are kind of interested in. And the M&A landscape generally, how do you see it? I know the priority is organic, but I'm sure you're always looking outside to see what capabilities you could potentially bring in. So are we done on the disposals and then on the bolt-on side, what's interesting? You're right. We are always looking outside to make sure we've fully understood the environment that we're in. Actually, that's one of the things that Philipp really actively calls out around driving an external focus in Nestlé, because we can be too inward-looking. That does see us look across the landscape, in every way. In terms of focus at the moment, while we've announced Waters and VMS recently, the workload for the business isn't done until we actually close those transactions. While in your mind we're done Yeah actually there's a lot to do to now carve these businesses out and work through that. I say that because one of the things that Philipp brings, which I really enjoy, is an absolutely razor-sharp focus. The single biggest way for us to drive shareholder returns right now is organic growth, accelerating growth, improving margins, improving cash returns. When we've got the business we own really motoring, that puts us in much better shape to do bolt-ons. It also means if we dispose of anything, we're disposing of it at higher value. So where we are at the moment is working through the 6% of sales that we currently have underway is frankly about the limit of what we can do without distracting the business, while we really focus on driving that underlying piece. In terms of the future, as I say, we continue to look at the broader environment, and we will continue to take action if we don't think we're the best owner. In terms of bolt-ons, I think having reviewed 10 years of transactions, we are at our best when we are bolting on things that are relatively close to our core skills. Yeah. That are of a size that have an impact in more than one country, where we put great resource around seeing it through. Think Starbucks. You will see us look for transactions where we are super confident that we will deliver returns. I am going to move to large language models and product discovery. If the next generation of consumer choice is determined by AI agents rather than traditional advertising, what is Nestlé doing today to win that battle for recommendation? What gives you confidence that Nestlé can actually outperform in a large language-driven model? I know it is, again, it is an area you are doing a lot of work on, but love to get a little bit of sense of where you are and, the journey never ends, but how you are feeling. It is a really interesting area, and large language models, we track on a daily basis the extent to which large language models are interrogate-- AI is interrogating our websites rather than humans, and it is growing by the day. This is an area where we and everybody else is very focused. Think of it as, firstly, it is really important to understand the context. What I mean by that is having the data to understand how consumers are prompting in our categories is really important, and what prompts they are using. We work with third parties to do that. It is not always obvious. Yeah. The prompts that you think your consumers are making as a marketing director is not always the same as what the truth is. Live tracking of that is really important. Then knowing how that you show up against those prompts is also really important. Again, we are now measuring that consistently. Not just that, making sure that we make available the data sets that we have out there to show up well. Because it is not just about showing up well as a brand name, it is also about being one of the cited places that the LLMs go to for information. This is where years of R&D research and all of the data that sits behind our brands- is actually super valuable. So whilst what I've just described is simply understanding how the consumer is prompting and then optimizing how you show up, what it takes to do that is a few things. Firstly, understanding that, but then having the clean labels, the data to make available so that as the LLMs are looking for research in those subjects, we're making available all of our knowledge that will make us cited in those areas. I think, years as a Nestlé is, there's emotional marketing and then there's substance-based marketing. Our depth in R&D means that we have a huge amount of deep knowledge and data that we can provide. You put all of that together, it is quite an exciting area. The other big topic, I'm sort of jumping around here, Anna, apologies, is Sure is margins. Yep. I think on gross margin, Nestlé is still quite a long way below pre-COVID levels for lots of different reasons. Going forward, yes, cocoa and coffee have gone back up again on El Niño, but presumably you've covered lower down, so that actually, despite the short term increase in raw materials, that's not going to be, this is my assumption, a near term impact in the second half. Can you talk a little bit around how we should think about margins, particularly around the raw material story? Clearly they're moving hugely dynamically, and then when you overlay that, you've got a lot of cost saving running through Yeah the margins as well. How confident are you that actually we do start to see that, A, that gross margin moving back and then that UTOP margin actually getting to that 17%, which still allows you to fund the AMP to drive the top line. I know it's a long question, but in terms of the margin, the raw mats versus the savings, I guess, are the two sort of the deltas maybe you can touch on. Yeah. I think there's three different things in there. I'll start with, I'm confident. Okay. Maybe just on the first one, short term coffee, cocoa, ups and downs. Just very quickly on that point. To be honest, the way we're managing it is we have agronomists on the ground pretty much all over the world. Yeah. Yes, there's a lot of speculation in coffee. I'm far more interested in what I'm hearing about how the flower is developing, which is the data that we are getting back that allows us to have a view through to the underlying harvest and through the medium term, rather than have to sort of manage our way through the daily ups and downs in trading. In terms of H2 first, and then maybe I'll talk about the longer term. Just how to think about H2 margins. There are a lot of moving parts. Maybe before I jump into H2, just to remind you, the guidance that we've given on margins for the year, we've said that UTOP margin will be better in 2026 and in 2025. We've said that H2 will be similar to H1, and we've said that growth margin will improve. That guidance we gave without any tariff refunds in there. If we do see tariff refunds in the second half, that will be on top. Yeah. Just kind of clear on that. Hello? Can you hear me? Yeah. Yeah, you're back. I'm back. The moving parts on H2. Firstly, we'll see a slight benefit on coffee and cocoa coming through the second half. We do see more of a headwind around fuel and energy around the Middle East because we were well hedged in the first half, but we see that impact coming through in the second half. Tariff refunds aside are neutral because we're lapping a period where we already had tariffs. Advertising spend will be at similar levels, H1, H2, just to shape that for you. In cost savings, we had about CHF 600 million in the first half. We're confident that cumulatively we'll be on track for our CHF 2 billion in the second half, which means naturally we should see a little bit less in the second half. That said, if we're making good progress on cost savings, we won't limit ourselves to the CHF 2 billion. RIG leverage will come through. Pricing as we roll over, as we move past some of the rollover pricing from last year will be lower. As you see it all flow through, those are the moving pieces of H2 which underpin H1 and H2 being similar. Your bigger question around where the margins go. We have great brands that we are investing in. We are innovating consistently margin accretively. We innovate, and we are investing to drive our pricing power. Overall, our brands should continue to maintain the margin levels that they always had. Though in the short term when we see some headwinds because of inflation, it takes a little while to adjust and a little while for it to come back. There's no reason why it shouldn't come back. So medium term margins, I am confident of. Our route to being consistently above 17%, it's just about doing more of what we're doing. Yeah. I'm very comfortable of that. As I say, we've always said 17% is the floor. We won't be limited to that. But through the cycle, we should be consistent. How should we think about that RIG leverage? Because obviously the RIG is 1% or 2% or 1.5% in terms of the drop-through to the margin, because I guess that's the bit that sometimes us analysts, it's easy to underestimate coming from a place where volumes have been negative historically, when you start to see the volume- Yeah really picking, I guess it depends on where the RIG's coming through. Yeah, I can't give you a rule of the thumb, but RIG leverage is very helpful in our business. Yeah. Within RIG volume. Yeah. You are seeing us accelerate RIG and improve the quality of our RIG. We are seeing that volume come through as well, all of which will help support consistent margin improvement. That is why you should obviously expect our business through the cycle to be consistently above 17% UTOP. Final question, Anna. If you get through this period, and you look forward to 2030, and you have got through the fixing the execution, simplifying the portfolio, rebuilding growth. If you and I sort of sat here then, in 2030, and Nestlé has been successful, what would look fundamentally different about the Nestlé then compared to Nestlé now? I know it is a bit of a crystal ball type question. Yeah. Just interested to know, given your time as CFO, how far through getting back Nestlé to, what is the word, the financial reference point of the sector that you historically always were and aspire to be going forward? I do not know how to answer that one because I do not have a crystal ball. Maybe just to give you a sense of where we are in our journey. Yeah. I think we are really confident of the journey that we're taking. If I go back 2.5 years ago, there wasn't confidence in the organization that we could consistently grow market share, nor was there confidence in the organization that we knew how to drive cost efficiencies, nor that we could accelerate RIG. I think where we are on our journey now, as an organization, we are really confident that we know what to do. When we have the right price, the right taste, the right distribution, the right media, we gain share. When we invest behind those areas that there's higher category growth, guess what? We grow faster. Sure. When we lean into taking on simplifying the organization, we deliver efficiencies. So we've now built the playbook. We're a long way off of executing that perfectly at scale all the way down the organization yet. We're in 180-some countries, and so it takes time to build both the capability, the shift, the clarity all the way down. So I think what we've got is a really clear playbook. We know the playbook works, and there is a lot of value left yet to be created. We are pretty early on our journey Yeah to that value creation, and that's what's exciting. Well, listen, Anna, thank you for your time. I think we're on the buzzer. Anna's going to be doing a breakout, so if anybody wants to join and hear more about Nestlé, room next door. For those staying here, Danone is on next. So you can choose either. Thank you very much, Anna.