Good afternoon and good morning. It's a great pleasure to be with you today, and I welcome you to our next webinar. This time it's all about our Consumer Health division. With me on the webinar today are Patrick Lockwood-Taylor, President of Bayer U.S. and Head of Commercial Operations for the region North America for Consumer Health. David Evendon-Challis, Head of Research and Development, and Patricia Corsi, Head of Strategic Marketing, Digital, and Information Technology. Oliver Rittgen, the CFO of the Consumer Health Division, will be joining our Q&A session after the presentation. As Heiko Schipper, President of the Consumer Health Division and member of the Board of Management of Bayer AG, cannot be with us today, my special thanks goes to Patrick, who was so kind to take over his part today. Today, we will give you an answer on why our consumer health portfolio is well positioned to drive superior growth in the future. The presenters will showcase our plans how to continue growth momentum, further develop on our competitive strength, and give you insights into our science-based innovation approach and our commercial capabilities. Instructions how to raise your questions during the Q&A session are available in the Zoom chat, and I also remind you later on. To ensure best audio quality, please be so kind, I ask you to use a speaker or a landline for asking questions rather than headsets or mobiles, because that's not good for the audio quality. Before we begin, I would, as always, bring your attention to the forward-looking statement included in the materials today as also currently presented on the screen. With that, with no further ado, I will hand it over to you, Patrick. Thanks, Oliver, and a very warm welcome to our investor webinar. Dave, Patricia, Oliver, and I are very much looking forward to reviewing our Consumer Health business with you. It's a very special business for us at Bayer. It's home to Aspirin, an iconic brand celebrating its 123rd anniversary this year. Consumer Health is the business by which our corporate Bayer brand directly connects with hundreds of millions of consumers around the world. With our science-based products and trusted brands, people trust our Consumer Health business to take care and improve their everyday health. We believe that we are very well placed to win in this market. Inspired by Bayer's purpose of science for a better life, we draw on a unique combination of science-based innovation, world-class branding capabilities, and executional excellence to help us outperform. We really do understand the consumer health market, and today we want to show you our exciting plans to continue performing at the forefront of the industry. Let's start by looking at our portfolio, both geographically and from a category perspective. We've carefully built a balanced portfolio, and we see good opportunities to grow our business across geographies and categories. Our balance keeps us from being too exposed to short-term volatility. It is also valuable as we partner with key customers to deliver a more complete offering across over-the-counter medicines and nutritionals. Geographically, we have good positions across all four regions, which allows us to quickly pivot and capture growth opportunities when they arise. We've strategically built this balanced portfolio over the past two decades. The consumer health market is often fairly widely defined. It includes OTC medicines, vitamins, minerals, and supplements or nutritionals. It also includes oral care, sun care, foot care, and others. At Bayer, we've decided to focus on what we call core consumer health, which comprises over-the-counter medicines and VMS. This core consumer health market is more regulated. It requires stronger scientific, clinical, and medical capabilities in combination with strong brands in order to be successful. Since 2019, we've strategically shaped our portfolio, divesting businesses like sun and foot care. We also made several important acquisitions to strengthen our portfolio in the core consumer health market. We entered the personalized direct-to-consumer nutritional segment through the acquisition of Care/of in the US. We also made strategic moves in Europe to build up a leading pure-play e-commerce business with the GloryFeel and Natsana transactions. In OTC medicines, we have insourced our first Rx-to-OTC switch with Astepro, which is the first non-steroidal antihistamine nasal spray that starts working faster than competitive products in the U.S. Our core consumer health focus is aligned with our core competencies. When you talk about Bayer's core competencies, you have to start with science. We take science seriously, and science-led innovation is what drives growth in our core categories. That's why we invest 4% of net sales into innovation, putting us in the upper tier of the industry. It's why we lean on our world-class medical and clinical teams with deep insights on how to translate medical needs into solutions for consumers. Over the last two years, our regulatory and medical teams have worked with key opinion leaders and regulators to generate 1,200 new claims that highlight the efficacy of our products and help bring them to markets. This scientific and medical expertise enabled our recent switch of Astepro, for example. It's also the reason for our top scores with healthcare professionals. Consumers have also taken note of our scientific acumen. A recent survey asked consumers the question, "Which of these brands are based on science?" As you can see, Bayer received top scores among industry peers. Quite simply, Bayer is a company with science built into its DNA. It's what we mean with our purpose, science for a better life. To truly deliver that purpose, you have to apply science in a way that meaningfully connects with consumers. That's where our brands come in. Our portfolio is home to 15 power brands, including some of the most trusted brands you can find on pharmacy shelves, medicine cabinets, and online shopping carts. These brands represent each of our core categories. Many of them have decades of history, and we keep them relevant with innovation and world-class brand building, as you'll hear from Dave and Patricia later on. We've transformed the creative behind our brand from one-size-fits-all advertising to modern, sophisticated precision marketing. Take Aspirin as an example. Everyone knows Aspirin as the legacy Bayer brand. It's been a staple in our portfolio since 1899, when the company began selling Aspirin to pharmacies in 250-gram glass bottles. For more than a century, we've innovated behind the Aspirin brand, offering new formats and faster pain relief. We also invest in marketing that evolves the brand's strong legacy and keeps it preferred by consumers. This year, for example, one of our Aspirin campaigns was recognized at Cannes Lions, the premier award festival for creativity. This makes Aspirin the only brand I know of that's associated with both a Nobel Prize and a Cannes Lions. It's exactly this combination, leading science and world-class brand building, that will sustain our success in consumer health. Another driver of our success is our management team. With eight nationalities and experience across the pharmaceutical and consumer goods industries, we're a diverse team that knows what it takes to win in consumer health. This is a team that has fully bought into our strategy. From launching innovation to building our businesses in new channels, we've proven that we can execute with excellence. We're focused on setting up this business for success today, tomorrow, and the years to come, and we're investing significantly in upskilling our organization through talent attraction, retention and development. By the end of this year, for example, every leader in our organization will be trained in new digital technologies and how they can create value for our business. Our ability to execute has consistently delivered impressive business results. For three straight years, we've grown top and bottom line. Today, that leaves us well positioned to meet the guidance shared at our last Capital Markets Day in March 2021. In that context, we continue to carefully monitor and mitigate volatility around natural gas supply. We've also made tremendous progress on cash generation, which we've highlighted as a focus area during that session. In 2020, we established a dedicated program to optimize our working capital. In its first year, we improved our trade working capital as a% of net sales by 180 basis points. In 2021, we decreased it by another 220 basis points, and in 2022 we're continuing this strong trajectory and expect further improvement on cash generation in the future. These results have translated to continued outperformance relative to our peers. In 18 months, we moved from an underperformer to an outperformer. In 2021, we delivered our third straight year of outperformance, beating our peer group by 180 basis points. This track record gives us confidence we can sustain this strong performance and continue to deliver superior growth. We have a clear plan to help us do this. Strong execution of our game plan is what drove our rapid turnaround and outperformance. Now we've refined our strategy in order to take the business to the next level. Guided by science for a better life, which we see as our true differentiator, we have the clear ambition to grow ahead of the market and improve our margin. Our game plan expresses how we aim to do that. Later, you will hear from Dave on growth-focused innovation and from Patricia on modernized marketing and sales, two essential pillars of our game plan. Before doing so, I will highlight a few focus areas in version 2.0 of our game plan. The first is where to play. To grow above the market, we're doubling down where the growth is. We know we can win in the high opportunity categories, markets, and segments where science makes a difference. Take medicated skin as an example. Last year, we launched Bepanthen Derma, a lotion for severely dry skin that repairs and protects skin at a cellular level. We've rolled the product out now to 11 markets across three regions and have seen consistent growth in our derm category as a result. We see similar opportunities in healthy aging, stress and sleep, and many others. More than half of our pipeline is focused on truly winning in the highest potential growth segments. Another opportunity we see is in further Rx-to-OTC switches. We're working on two additional switches over the midterm. Like Astepro, these planned switches will drive incremental category growth for us and for our customers and provide access for unmet needs for our consumers. Geographically, we already have a strong foothold in Asia. We want to leverage this position, and we've increased investment in Asia to gain share in a few key markets, including China, ASEAN, and India, a market worth more than EUR 2 billion today. Since our last Capital Markets Day, we have restarted our business in India, which is seeing rapid growth in its first year as an independent business. Finally, we're investing in digital health platforms and e-commerce. E-commerce has seen exceptional growth recently and makes up about 10% of our sales today. We aim to expand its share in the future. Through M&A activity like our acquisition of GloryFeel, we are building a true e-commerce powerhouse, which will drive growth across our portfolio in this high potential channel. Looking at new digital health platforms. Over the past year, we have piloted a partnership with Ada Health to help consumers better understand their symptoms directly on our brand websites. This partnership gives consumers more information to make more informed health decisions and drives engagement behind our brands, opening up the potential for a digital health ecosystem in the future. We firmly believe in growing our business, but we do so in a way that's good for people and good for the planet. That's the spirit behind our 2030 sustainability commitments, which address access to health and a changing climate, the two most pressing issues of our time. First, we want to expand access to everyday health. We've committed to putting self-care in the hands of 100 million more people annually in underserved communities by 2030. Three years into this commitment, I'm pleased to report we've already reached 59 million people annually, including millions of underserved women and their babies, with our portfolio and our strategic partnerships. Our second commitment is environmental. In two years, we've reduced our greenhouse gas footprint by 40,000 metric tons. That means we're more than a third of the way on our climate neutrality plan with more than seven years to go. We're also transforming our packaging. By 2030, the packaging for all of our products will be recyclable or reusable. We know that human health and the health of our planet go hand in hand, and we're committed to supporting both by a business that delivers sustainable inclusive growth for generations to come. Before handing it over, I'd like to quickly summarize how Bayer aims to win in consumer health, creating sustainable value for customers, consumers, employees, and investors. First, we're totally focused on growing the top line ahead of the market. Second, we strive for profitable growth. We aim to continue to expand our margin to our stated guidance of mid-20s% by 2024. Finally, we will continue to step up our focus on cash generation. We have dedicated programs to advance each of these dimensions and aim to be a sustainable cash engine for Bayer. Now, I thank you all for your attention, and I'm happy to turn it over to David Evendon-Challis, who's gonna share what world-class innovation in consumer health looks like. David Evendon-Challis, over to you. Thanks, Patrick, and a warm welcome also from my side. Today, I have the pleasure of walking you through our approach to delivering growth-focused innovation and why we believe that embedding sound science is so vital to earning and maintaining our consumers' trust. I'll also update you on how we are embracing this shift to self-care, as in the wake of the pandemic and with the rise of accessible digital information, managing and maintaining our own good health is more important than ever. Let's begin by taking a step back and looking at the consumer health industry. The imperative to innovate is clear. Innovation is the number one growth driver in a very crowded marketplace, and I believe that the key to differentiation and above-market growth is science and creativity. You know, without it, products can be lost in a sea of sameness. The reality within the consumer health industry is that innovations really haven't been bold enough. Despite a steady stream of new product developments entering the market, almost none of it is what would be considered game-changing innovation, and high-quality innovation is in decline. Today, I want to talk to you about what we are doing to change that. Firstly, we have created an outstanding R&D capability. As you can see, we invest about 4% of our net sales annually into R&D, which is upper quartile in the industry. That investment is amplified through our world-class innovation network, built to elevate science in everything we do, from the earliest stages of ideation and discovery to supporting in-market growth. We have significantly expanded our partner network in recent years, and in fact, more than half of our innovation pipeline is enabled via these partnerships and external deals, and I think this is a great strength. Our nine internal innovation centers have specialisms in our core category areas, and these innovation centers house our real strength. Brilliant people whose diversity reflects the customers and the consumers that we serve. We have strong expertise across all of our categories at every stage in innovation and across the disciplines, from strategists, tech scouts, designers through to formulators, analytical scientists and packaging engineers. We are investing in developing and enhancing this skill set for the future, building digital expertise, end-to-end enterprise thinking and brilliant scientific storytelling. Now, the second way in which we are setting out to deliver game-changing innovation is through the adoption of ambitious growth objectives. We do this by embedding differentiated science that's very much in line with our purpose, science for a better life. This is important for consumers who are increasingly interested in taking more ownership of their personal health, but who find a confusing environment of information and misinformation to help them do so. They need to trust the brands and the companies behind them who are helping them to manage their health. We have developed five core principles which are critical for science-led self-care. Let's start at the top left. The science of the human. This is about understanding the medical unmet needs that innovation can solve for. Next, the science of regulation. Navigating and influencing a complex and fragmented regulatory environment, ensuring our products are safe and compliant. The science of discovery is about tapping into new insights, new science and new technologies. The science of collaboration, joining forces with other like-minded organizations to bring better solutions to more people much faster than trying to do it alone. Finally, the science of the consumer product experience. This is about ensuring that products are easy to use, that they deliver on their promises, and even that they delight people in the process. We apply these principles to our pipeline, and we also focus on creating the right balance of innovation that allows us to strengthen our existing brand positions, to expand them into new areas within their categories, and also to transform the categories themselves. Core innovation will always be important, but we are investing more in brand adjacencies and transformational innovation than the classic 70/20/10 model seen in some of the other industries. Let's take a look at a couple of examples about how that all comes to life. We will start with the strengthening of Redoxon. This is a brand that launched in 1934 as the world's first vitamin C product. The process was invented by a future Nobel Prize-winning scientist, Tadeusz Reichstein, and over the decades it's grown around the world. Moving to the present, immunity and disease prevention have become very much top of mind for almost everyone over the past few years as we dealt with the pandemic. More and more people are actively taking steps to improve their health regardless of whether they feel ill. This includes strengthening immunity in times when they feel risk is higher. We have invested in medical research to better understand the factors affecting immunity, especially the role that nutrition plays across the three lines of defense. First, the physical barriers like skin and mucosa. Secondly, the cellular defenses, which is our basic immune system. Third, our adaptive responses, acquired immunity and antibodies. This resulted in our best formulation ever developed by our VMS experts in Gaillard, France, with 11 key components targeting those three layers of the immune system, backed up by seven clinicals, which supports the credibility, especially with healthcare professionals. We've also launched this formulation under other brands like Berocca and Supradyn to scale the innovation globally. We're applying this platform thinking across our VMS portfolio. Moving to how we are expanding our brands. Talcid is a brand known for its upper GI products that contain hydrotalcite, and it was launched in China in 1997. We know that gut health is complex, that many people suffer with both diarrhea and constipation in a cycle that is sometimes hard to break, and it's connected to the amount of water in the bowels. Too much in the case of diarrhea and too little with constipation. We also know that the microbiome has a key role in this continuum. Think of things like diarrhea caused by antibiotic usage, where the drug disturbs the natural balance of bacteria in your intestines. There are a lot of products out there in the world that are not grounded in science, that don't have the evidence to support their claims, and there are those that are not designed with the people that need them in mind. We have worked with China's leading university on probiotics, developing patented probiotic strains from the Chinese human gut. Not only do the products work, they're helping us to expand Talcid into important and growing adjacencies. Finally, we are investing in new areas that transform entire categories. Rx-to-OTC switch is one of our main ways of doing this, and one where we have had a lot of success over the years, like with Claritin, Aleve, MiraLAX and Canesten, among others. Our newest switch is Astepro, the first and only OTC antihistamine nasal spray in the U.S. It starts working in 30 minutes and is long lasting for 24 hours on symptoms of allergic rhinitis. In allergy, fast relief is the number one need. The medicated nasal spray market is predominantly intranasal steroids, even though a strong proportion of sufferers would prefer not to use steroids if given an alternative. The nasal delivery of the antihistamine azelastine in Astepro offers a faster mode of action than both steroids and of oral antihistamines due to the local effect on the histamine receptors in the nasal cavity. While launching switches is an important step in opening up new markets, we consider it a first step, and we work to build new innovations on top of the initial switch offering, and you can rest assured that Astepro will be no exception there. While we aren't at a stage where I can share details yet, I can tell you that we have a number of other really exciting switch candidates in our pipeline, led by expert switch team, which has a unique blend of science, consumer behavior and commercial expertise. Another transformation that's occurring is sustainability. Earlier, Patrick mentioned our sustainability commitments, and I wanted to add how we are deploying our best strengths, science and innovation to meet these commitments. We have developed an approach called Sustainability by Design, which embeds our sustainability commitments into all of our product developments. For example, we recently launched our Bepanthen dry skin range with a great new design. Sustainability by Design thinking ensured that our bottle is not only appealing and practical, but also refillable. In a category where refills aren't at common, the large and stable bottle with a wide neck makes refilling easy and convenient. The refill pack uses 80% less packaging by weight. We've also lightweighted the bottle by a further 9% for our most recent launch. Turning to access. Our ambition and our challenge is to innovate science-based solutions at an accessible price point for low income consumers. For example, our CardioAspirina range provides life-saving solutions in Guatemala, where cardiovascular disease accounts for one-third of all deaths. We have re-engineered the product so it can also be sold in individual sachets, thus lowering the daily out-of-pocket cost. The sachets come in strips of 100, making them really easy to display in mom-and-pop stores. Each sachet also includes a QR code to access all of the medical information about the product and ensure its safe usage. This approach we're replicating across other categories and geographies. To take our access commitment to the next level, we have invested in a comprehensive global study to understand the socioeconomic determinants of low-income consumers' health outcomes. This study, which we will publish soon, supports the identification of unmet medical needs in often overlooked populations. We're embedding these insights into our category and medical strategies so that we can deploy our science and innovation engine towards developing products that meet these unique needs. Now, the final transformation, which I wanted to touch upon, is maybe the biggest of all, and it impacts the entire consumer health industry. There is a consumer demand to take more control over their own personal health, and this is converging with advanced digital tools and the ability to personalize offerings. We know that during COVID, 44% of people started to use new devices and apps to help manage their conditions, that 60% of people want to use more tech to communicate with their healthcare professionals, and 30% of people are now getting treatments at home instead of the healthcare provider's office. Add to this the 200 billion health-related searches on Google each year, and I believe that we are entering the era of precision health in self-care. With this emergence of precision health, it's really changing the healthcare journey. What was once a simple problem-solution journey is shifting to one of more continuous care as access to diagnostics, assessments, education, and medical solutions give people the constant ability to take action on their own health. For us, it means an increased opportunity to bring patients value through each of these phases. You take care of, for example, a personalized DTC nutrition company, which we completed the acquisition of this year. It's super simple to participate. You take an online questionnaire, you let the algorithm create a personalized offering based on your needs, combined with the research available on different supplements. You receive personalized daily packs to your home, and you join the digital ecosystem to continue your health journey. You know, on top of this, as Patrick mentioned earlier, we're working with external partners like Ada Health, AI-based health assessment platform, where we provide symptom assessment in the areas of pain, IBS, and women's health via our brands Aleve, Aspirin, Iberogast, and Midol. I passionately believe that digital health and digital products are relevant for all of our categories and brands across the consumer journey, from awareness to education, to assessment to action and continued engagement. We see unique possibilities to building tight ecosystems around key medical concerns for everyone. To conclude this section, we know how to differentiate ourselves through our science and innovation, and we know how to translate this to bigger, better, and more unique innovation. I'm really happy to say that our approach is bearing fruit. One important metric, which is the sales contribution from new products launched in the last three years, has doubled from 8% in 2018 to 16% in 2021, reflecting our focus on innovation and brilliant in-market execution. Over the same period, we have increased the value of our innovation pipeline by a third, while also increasing the profitability of that pipeline. Our portfolio mix has become more ambitious, and its quality has improved. Thanks to our approach that prioritizes unique, ownable, and sustainable innovation, more than half of our pipeline is either transform or expand versus a fifth previously. When we look to the future, my whole team and the broader innovation community are focused on driving scale, synergies, and the progression of some really exciting early-stage work into our formal innovation pipeline. I now hand over to Patricia to talk to you about how our brands and commercial capabilities are accelerating our growth. Thank you, Dave, and good morning, good afternoon to our audience. It's a pleasure to be here sharing an update on how we at Bayer are taking the great innovation that Dave just presented and connecting it to consumers and customers through strong brand building and excellent sales execution, as mentioned by Patrick. May I ask for the chart to be changed, please? Thank you very much. Over the past three years, we have significantly accelerated our capabilities in these two areas, and we have been an important source of our growth. Going forward, we are confident in our marketing, sales, and digital programs that will continue to be a driving force of growth behind our brands and expanding our business. Our commercial strategy has a clear focus: modernizing our marketing activities and driving customer-centric sales growth. On the marketing side at Bayer, we have a treasure box of iconic brands, as you have seen and heard from Patrick, from Aspirin to Bepanthen, Redoxon, and Claritin, among others. Over the past three years, we have focused on unleashing the potential of these brands in three main pillars. Purpose, creativity, and data. We showcase that our brands stand for, bring it to life with excellent creatives, enabling its success in a consumer-centric way with precision marketing and best-in-class digital tools. On the sales front, our programs focus on customers, their needs and opportunities. We work closely with partners across channels, with other pharmacies and digital customers to build tailored programs and strategies that win and build value in our categories. We have doubled down on e-commerce, which is projected to deliver more than half a billion EUR in sales in 2022, and we are focused on continuing to grow our share in this channel. Our initiatives in strategic pricing and trade excellence are supporting the business to realize margin opportunities, an essential priority in an inflationary environment. Next slide, please. Let's start with our iconic brands. Our portfolio is home to science-based innovative brands that consumers trust. Our power brands deliver 3/4 of our sales, and that's where we have the most focused efforts in the past three years. We have modernized and transformed brands like Rennie from a single tablet to a go-to solution against indigestion, helping our consumers to bring back the joy in eating. We have made Berocca the protagonist in viral social media campaigns in Asia, encouraging millions and millions of consumers to dance while learning how to keep their energy levels up during the pandemic. We also have activated a brand well-known for its quality and science-backed ingredients, Bepanthen, as the new aftercare choice for people who have a tattoo. These are just some of the examples on how we have expanded our brand footprint geographically in new categories, as well as entering in winning and digital channels. Our brands have incredible potential, which is exactly what we want to unleash with our marketing and sales ambition. Our brands exist to help people in some of their most precious and important moments. Take Elevit as an example. Our prenatal vitamins with the Every Beginning campaign helped more than 7 million women and babies in underprivileged communities to get their best start in life. Canesten, with more than 40 million views just on TikTok in Brazil and our Vagina Academy campaign that takes shame out of intimate health. We managed with this campaign and this platform to uncensor the word vagina in TikTok in Brazil as well as in the Meta platform in Italy, and it's now expanding to other regions. Finally, let me talk about Claritin, our largest brand, that is working to encourage kids and adults to get outside and enjoy the wonders of nature without having to worry about complications of allergies. These platforms don't just resonate with consumers. They act as powerful examples of our broader Bayer purpose, science for a better life. In order to connect our purpose-driven brands with consumers, we have to transform the way we think about creativity. Self-care is not really traditionally perceived as a particular creative space, but there is no doubt that we can imagine a more important industry for creativity to make its mark. By delivering powerful narratives and imaginative campaigns with our brand, we can inspire and bring access and education to consumers, allowing for better informed health decisions. Gaming is one of these areas that we are developing. We found this opportunity during the pandemic. We used this channel to introduce our immunity brand, Redoxon, which you have heard from Dave, to younger consumers. We used their medium and their language, and the Redoxon Defense Squad was launched. We partner with a team of expert gamers in Latin America who help to defend players across the globe with their weak game defenses. This draw a clear parallel, and with that, educate on how Redoxon protects us and our immune system in real life. We have also launched campaigns that address topics like gender inequality with Supradyn in Turkey that together with Aspirin was recognized by Cannes Lions. These efforts break down social taboos and build new and deeper connections with consumers while increasing health education, engagement, and brand love. Work like this set a new standard for our industry, and that's why we have published a white paper calling the broader consumer health industry to join forces and step it up its creativity. We truly believe that the more creativity in consumer health that we can get is not only good for our business, it's good for our consumers. It will drive them to make better informed decisions on personal health, while it can also democratize well-being for consumers around the globe. Great campaigns alone are not enough. Neither is creativity. To unlock the full power of our brands and creative efforts, as well as maximizing our investments, our campaigns need to reach the right consumers at the right time with the right message. This is where data and digital technologies come in. We use data to better understand our consumers, increase the effectiveness of our creative work. Working with industry leaders and strategic partners such as Google and MediaCom, as well as upskilling our own organization, we have turbocharged our efforts in precision and data-driven marketing. We have increased our share of digital media, upped our investments in data-driven marketing, and significantly raised our share of personalized creative. These efforts deepen our consumer understanding and inform where we position our brands. Our goal is to meet consumers where they are. Whether it's a dating platform like Tinder or talking to their virtual assistant, Alexa, we are there. This is also where our consumers are. With the right message and content at the right time. We are experimenting and learning with speed so we can quickly scale up the best ideas. We additionally use data to help consumers make better everyday life decisions. As an example, we share pollen data with our Claritin U.S. consumers to help them prepare for the day ahead. Now let's look at our sales strategy. Customers want us to work with them in close collaboration, co-developing tailored go-to-market plans that add value for shoppers and jointly drive growth in our categories. Our partnership with key customers like Walmart, CVS, Walgreens, just to mention a few, independent pharmacies and pharmacy chains allow us to create customized business plans that help both us to grow categories and improve our share of sales. Just recently, this partnership with key customers was vital to secure retail visibility and promotional space for the launch of Aspirin, which you have heard from Dave. Our relationship with independent pharmacies have allowed us to showcase important innovation from brands like Redoxon and Supradyn, which are in high demand categories during and after the pandemic. An area which has seen exponential growth is digital commerce. With consumers increasingly moving to e-commerce, especially in key categories such as nutritionals, we have doubled down on our digital sales presence. E-com now represents over 10% of our business and continues to grow. We work with large platforms and also small online pharmacies to increase share on this attractive channel, serving consumers in different moments of their shopping journey. As you have heard, we have also consistently invested in new digital commerce platforms and models. You have heard about Care/of, the direct-to-consumer personalized nutrition business in the US. Also, we have recently strengthened our presence in EMEA with acquisition of GloryFeel and partial ownership of Natsana, two leading e-commerce business in nutritionals. With our arm, venture Leaps, we are partnered with Ada Health, which you have heard from Dave, a really great symptom check app that help consumers to quickly and accurately assess their symptoms by offering them educational content and helping to connect with their nearest pharmacist. These investments not only strengthen our presence in key markets like Germany, they also help us to quickly build important new capabilities internally. Another important pillar of our work with customers is our strategic pricing strategy. We are focusing on delivering solutions in multiple categories at a range of price points from premium propositions to value offering, democratizing our products and solutions to consumers. This strategy ensures that the value of innovation is captured and that consumers of different backgrounds have access to our science-based products. These combined efforts grow our brand's presence and penetration across consumer segments and supports an optimized top and bottom line growth. They also drive joint value with our customers who can cater for the needs of the consumers in a more meaningful way. In closing, Bayer has built a strong set of commercial capabilities that position us well to sustain growth in consumer health. We own a portfolio of strong, iconic brands, delivering game-changing, proven creative and acting on consumer needs, as well as growing in data and digital capabilities. We have focused on our customer relationships, e-com capabilities, and the right priorities to drive growth with our customers. Powered by the innovation of our products and solutions that you have seen previously today, we are confident that our commercial engine has what it takes to win in consumer health. Over to you, Patrick. Thank you very much, Patricia, and thanks to Dave as well. I hope you agree that we are building out some world-class capability in our innovation, our brand building, and our go-to-market. Many of us come from many large FMCG companies, and our judgment is these benchmark very well amongst the very best. Outstanding work. Now, thank you to all of you for your attention. Before we actually take your questions, though, I would like to close with just a few key messages. We hope that we've shown to you that we've got a portfolio that's balanced across regions and core consumer health categories, really focused on where Bayer can win, where it plays to our competencies and the difference that we can make. We have deep scientific insight, a strategy that our entire team developed and is fully bought into, and a track record of executing with excellence. We've outperformed in the past. We go from strength to strength, and it's our strong belief that we have what it takes to keep winning in the future. Thank you very much. Great. Thank you very much, Patrick. Thanks also to Patricia and David. Very much appreciate the presentation, your comments, and the remarks. With that, let's go into some Q&A if there are questions which we reserved some time for. Before we start, you know, as last time, some housekeeping items on the Q&A from my end. If you have questions, please click on the raise your hand icon. If your question has been answered, if you wish to cancel your request, please click on the lower your hand icon. When you will be called to ask your question, you first have to unmute yourself by confirming the corresponding prompt that will appear on your screen. If you have joined the conference by telephone, the process is slightly different. Please press the star followed by the nine on your phone to queue for asking a question, and when you're being prompted to ask your question, please press the star followed by the six to unmute yourself. Please indicate, if possible, at the beginning, when you ask a question, whom you'd like to address your question to. That helps us maybe also a little bit to coordinate the Q&A. With that, I would like to open up the Q&A session and let me see. If I'm correct, the first question comes from Richard. Richard Vosser from J.P. Morgan. Richard, you're first. Thanks, Oliver. Hopefully this works. Basically two questions, please. First question is just, we've seen the cost of living pressures increase even significantly since the Q2 results and maybe certainly throughout this year. You know, are you seeing any impact from that on your business and how you think that impact might go forward? I mean, we've already seen Nutritionals slow down in Q2. So how should we think about those pressures on your business? And then the second question's on margins. I think even with the target to get to 25% EBITDA or mid-20s, the margins of Bayer Consumer are slightly lower than peers. Just your thoughts on why this is the case and whether we should expect further margin gains beyond 2024 in the future and what you can do about that. Thanks very much. I think, Oliver, do you want to take those? Of course. Happy to do so. Thanks, Richard, for the question. Let me start with your first question then on inflationary pressure. Indeed, I mean, fully true what you say. We see inflationary pressure during the entire year already, and we see it especially also accelerating in the second half now. At the same time, of course, the industry and also ourselves, we are taking pricing behind the innovative and science-based products that we have for our consumers. As you can imagine, pricing alone is not sufficient to cover for the inflationary impact that we see. We have already in time kicked off a very comprehensive cost and cash flow activity program to optimize our cost structures. That helps us at the end then to drive the margin and also to stay with our commitments that we have updated in second quarter and also to the commitments that we have given in the CMD meeting. Your second question on margins and the mid-twenties that we defined as a target for us. You saw in the presentation of Patrick also the value creation triangle, as we call it, that we always follow when we manage the business. We want to accelerate the growth because this is what we believe is the value driving factor on an asset like ours at a competitive margin level. The mid-20s%, when you look at the different margin levels, you see in the industry, we feel this is quite a competitive level. We want to optimize or drive also cash acceleration. For us, it's having a competitive margin profile and then accelerating growth and cash productivity. Great. Thank you. Thank you, Oliver. Thank you, Richard. I think the next question comes from Emily. Emily Field from Barclays. Emily, you're next. Hi, thanks for taking my question, and I guess maybe this is for Patrick and Oliver, perhaps. First question is, you know, obviously, the market has been very focused on U.S. litigation risk specific to OTC across a couple of products. I was just kind of asking in a broad fashion, sort of is your view of that, of, you know, litigation risk or regulatory risk in the United States changed at all in recent times, or should we think of just more of this as a cost of doing business to a degree? And then, secondly, you know, this year the business is gonna be growing at well above the rates from the 2021 CMD on the top line. You know, I'm not asking you to guide for 2023, but how you're thinking about guidance over the next couple of years 'cause it looks like you're sort of on track to well exceed that or maybe any early comments on this year and the next year's cough, cold and flu season. Thanks. Very good. Thank you for the question. I'll take the first one, as U.S.-based, and then Oliver on your second question. As you well know, the U.S. is a highly litigious market. I haven't seen any significant change in that profile over the last few years. It is a cost of doing business. I think a couple of thoughts. Number one, that risk has to be assessed thoroughly in early product stage just to really understand that risk return. Secondly, we are fortunate in Bayer in that we have outstanding scientific capability, be it regulatory, be it clinical, be it medical, be it safety. We go through extremely robust legal review as well. I think through that process that helps us to a degree derisk versus potentially some other competitors who may not have the same capability or thoroughness that we do. So it's an area that we're thoughtful about, but I do not see it abating. We just need to manage to derisk it through our own approach. Over to you, Oliver. Thank you, Patrick. Thanks for the question, Emily. I mean, let me take this a bit broader because you know 2023 guidance we're gonna give early in the year when we also present the full year results. Maybe a few comments on how we look at the market and also the development in the coming years. I mean, we talked already about the inflationary environment and pricing activity that is coming with this, of course, in the market and potentially also some of the volume elasticity that we see with that. We also continue to see this year and for sure also next year, still some volatility in supply and demand. Therefore, we believe that the market will trade in a wider range than what we usually see and communicated of 2%-4%. We might see a wider range actually, given the uncertainties. I would add here right now, of course, also the gas situation in Europe. At the same time, I believe as an organization, you have to be prepared for that. I talked already about the cost and cash productivity programs that we are running. You need to have a compelling innovation pipeline as an organization to compete in the market. I think we have outlined today that we brought these components in place. When I look at the growth, how is this composed? We will grow the core. We have material expansion in digital commerce, like Patricia outlined. We have very good innovation and Switch pipeline, like Dave already talked about. We feel good about the growth at this point in time. As you know, in the last three years, we always met our targets and commitments on top and bottom line. Of course, our intention is to do so also in the future. Thank you. Thank you, Oliver. Thanks, Emily, for the questions. Our next question comes from Dominic Lunn, Credit Suisse. Dominic, you're next. Hi. Thank you. You talked about a step up in the number of partnerships that you've entered into to try and drive a bit of that future innovation, to use that as one of the ways to kind of differentiate yourself. You also obviously guided to margin expansion into the midterm. I guess my question is, as more products come to the market that are driven by partnerships, could you get to a stage where it becomes harder to maintain this margin expansion because of having to share the greater portion of the economics of these products? Oliver, do you want to comment on that and maybe Patricia? Sure. I can give it a shot, and Patricia can add then. Yeah. Thanks, Dominic. Indeed, that requires, in our belief, a good phasing also of the different businesses that you either bring in or the innovation that you develop internally that you want to bring to the market. This is. I always come back to this triangle that we were showing before in terms of growth, cash, and margin profile. Obviously, you need to manage the entire triangle. Therefore, it's a lot about how to phase the different things into the fiscal years that we are looking for. With all the plans that we have outlined now in digital commerce growth, innovation growth, Switch, that will not impact our margin commitments. It's a lot about phasing these expansion into the businesses. Perfect. Thank you. Thank you, Dominic. Two comments. As you have heard from Dave, we are not using the traditional 70/20/10 model, and we are working a lot on adjacencies as well, which helps us to manage well, in terms of margins as well. One of the things that I've shared in my presentation is really this focus on opportunities that we have to bring value-added products and innovations, both on premium as well as upper mainstream. We have a range of opportunities to do both things with our innovation. Thank you very much. Thank you, Patrick. There is at least two more questions I can see. I think next one is, Christian. Christian Faitz from Baader Helvea. Christian, you're next, please. Yes. Thank you. Just press the angle button. Thanks for having this webinar. Two questions, if I may. First of all, one to Oliver. He alluded a bit to it already, but I mean, how does Consumer Health cope with the cost challenges as of late? Also, I guess there are substantial cost challenges, raw materials/gas, as you mentioned, but also sheer availability of key components such as packaging. The second question would be, can you highlight some of the synergies you see between Consumer Health and the pharma segment? Thank you. Very good. Oliver will take the first one, I think, on the synergies. We can respond to that. Maybe Dave, some of your perspective from a sort of regulatory capability, clinical standpoint, also technologies that we think to switch. Also in response to the question, there's also potential synergies through the Crop Science and nutrition and how nutrition meets self-care. We can probably expand on that a little. To respond to the first question, over to you, Oliver. Thank you, Patrick. Christian, I think these are two questions in the first question, so to say. One is cost and one is availability. We face both at the moment. Yes, there's indeed a tight supply situation. That's of course also affecting supply situation in the different markets. Here, it's a lot about also building up inventory in time when we think about the upcoming gas situation that we face in Europe. We feel we are prepared for that with our own production sites in terms of energy coverage. As said, we are building inventory up for this to have also availability of finished products. At the same time, we talked about the cash productivity. We drive the other components of our trade working capital even harder, to still deliver the cash commitments that we are having, but to ensure, of course, availability of our products. At the same time, we also see that, going into next year, the supply situation will improve. This year was definitely quite a challenge, but next year, we will see improvement here. In terms of the cost situation, I think I cannot add much to what I said before. Because we knew this would be coming, we put programs early in place to be ready for that. The programs that we have in place, we have levers there that allow us also to push here for the right margin profile, as I said before. Thank you. Hey. I can add on the group and the collaborations with pharma. I think I've got two things to add. I think the first is around the industry. I think there's a blurring of the lines, increasing blurring of the lines between Rx and OTC, which is accelerated by digital health. There's plenty of opportunities for our teams to work together, especially in areas where prevention and treatment are both very relevant in areas like cardiovascular health. What's more, I think we have an amazing group of scientists across all of our divisions and enabling functions. You know, we have an R&D council as well, which allows us to discuss trends and technologies, to exchange talent, and to develop our scientists, which keeps strengthening our expertise and capabilities. It's something that a lot of our peers don't have. I think there's some great strengths there. Thank you very much. I was just gonna add a couple more sort of tangible examples on these synergies. We have a database in Consumer Health of almost every consumer in the U.S., and we have a very good analytical ability to really understand their habits, their behaviors across their healthcare journey. The healthcare journey obviously includes prescription drugs. Every patient is a consumer. The pharma division has outstanding data on healthcare providers who are increasingly involved in the self-care industry as well, to the point that Dave was making. The sharing of data and analytics to get a more complete understanding of the patient and consumer. Pharma has a lot of technologies that we will look at potentially to switch. Also they have very good capability in clinicals, in regulatory, in legal reviews as well. There is an increasing sharing and appreciation of these capabilities and this scale that we can share across the group. I'm very happy to go offline and talk about some of that scale opportunity that exists as well. Final one is some of our customers. Walmart, for example, about 30% of the produce they sell comes from our seeds. We're a huge supplier. They have $hundreds of millions of consumer health business with us as well. Of course, they dispense $100 of millions of our pharmaceutical product. In combination, we're a very big supplier, and we're starting to understand what that means as each of the divisions goes to market with a single customer. I hope that gives some illustration. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you, Christian. Next one is Sebastian. Sebastian Bray from Berenberg. Sebastian, you're next. Hello, good afternoon. Can you hear me? Sebastian, we can't unmute. Yep, now we can. Perfect. Good afternoon, and thank you for the seminar and taking my questions. I would have two, please. The first is, when referring to growth in the consumer health market, the default assumption is that it grows 4% forever. Given that the U.S. is relatively saturated, what is this assumption based on, and how does it break down by geography? That's my first question. My second question is on the historical performance of the consumer health business, because it's changed segment structure of Bayer a few times in recessions. When consumers feel less at ease economically, what do you think the price elasticity of vitamin demand and some of the other categories is? Do consumers treat these as discretionary items or as medical items where they're more inclined to cut other spending first? Thank you. Excellent. I think, Oliver, maybe take the first, and then combination of Patricia, Dave, and I on the second one. Obviously, this is an area of great focus for us over the years. We do think we have robust strategies as we go into economic downturn, and we can certainly expand on those. To talk about, global growth, regional growth, maybe Oliver, you could provide some commentary here. Yeah, sure. Sebastian, yeah, indeed. The average growth that we always see in the industry, I would say, is somewhere between 2%-4%. It depends a little bit on the year, but I would agree it's somewhere in that range, what we usually see. Also this year, the growth in North America is quite a lot. Even more so in the other geographies that we have seen. We're not observing right now, and we do also not expect a different change in market dynamics across the different markets or different geographies when we look at it. There's a lot of growth potential still in Asia-Pacific. We see solid growth momentum in EMEA. We also see similar in North America and Latin America. We're expanding at the same time as an industry, I would say, in different need spaces. We talked about it before, age well, sleep well. There's different areas where the businesses are expanding, and therefore we see this growth trends also continuing on that level. Of course, with fluctuations. That leads probably a little bit into the second question, and then Patricia's gonna go a bit more into this. Of course, next year, with the continuous inflation, consumption behavior might be a bit different than the last two years. We are talking about long-term trends. Long-term trends in terms of GDP growth, economic value that is generated in the different geographies, purchasing power that we're seeing with that, and then a rising middle class that obviously is very keen to consume some of our products or products of that industry. We see that long-term growth trends still intact. With that, Patricia, over to you. Thank you. Thank you, Sebastian, for your question. Reflecting on the downgrade comment, I think it's important to mention that we keep monitoring if there's any shift between branded products and private label, and so far we haven't seen a big movement there. This is the number one. Of course, we are seeing that consumers, as inflation becomes higher and we see the purchasing power diminishing, they're going to be every time more conscious about what they buy. That's why it's so important to provide options in terms of price points and size counts to our consumer, especially on the most needed categories that we have seen in the past year. So far, not a big change in there that we have seen versus what would be the normally expected, but we keep monitoring it very closely. Why? Making sure that we have options, especially because in many geographies, when people have less cash, they tend to go to their trusted brands because they cannot afford to waste that money in products that they do not know, they do not have a relationship with that before. They go to the products they know, they are trusted and have a rich heritage of performing with them. Sebastian, I'd only add just a couple of things to what's been said. Typically, I think Bayer is well positioned in any economic downturn to actually grow share, and to hold that share as the economy recovers. Fortunately for us, we're able to continue to invest in innovation. We won't change our pipeline, we won't change our innovation rhythm. We're also able to continue to invest in building brand equity, advertising our brands, better connecting them with consumers. If there is more sensitivity in an economic downturn, it's people may participate less in prevention categories, but they tend to participate less in treatment categories. We in Bayer have a very balanced portfolio between OTC treatment and prevention, and to some degree, that also helps to insulate us as well. For us, really, it's largely business as usual and continue on a shared expansion program. Thank you very much for taking my questions. Oh, thank you, Sebastian. I think we have time for one or two more. Next one is from Pete, Peter Verdult from Citi. Pete, you're next. Thanks, Ollie. Thanks for doing this, the webinar. Apologies, I had to join late. So if some of these questions have already been answered, bat them away and I'll read the transcript. Three quick ones, please, for the team. The Astepro Rx-to-OTC switch, have you during the first half of the webinar, did you divulge any sort of commercial aspirations for this asset, or could you comment on how it's going? Secondly, more generally on Rx-to-OTC switches, does all the recent sort of U.S. litigation around Zantac, and I trust it means PPIs, as a group, does that make Rx-to-OTC switches as a sort of management group, does that make that sort of less attractive for you going forward? Lastly, I heard you at Pains arguing that there were synergies from being a consumer company within a pharma group. That does put you somewhat in the minority when I think about my conversations with other industry players. I just can't help but think about, you know, publicly traded peers of yours generating 13x-15x EV multiples. You know, are you really saying that these synergies are worth billions EUR of potential value? Because, you know, you're obviously within Bayer at sort of 7x-8x. There seems to be a very big significant valuation disconnect there. If I could just push you on what those synergies really are of being part of that wider group, that would be helpful. Thank you. Very good. I'll take Astepro. Maybe Dave, you can comment on the attractiveness and importance of switch in a US context. Then Oliver, maybe strategically and financially, you can talk a little bit about the synergies that we see as consumer health being, you know, one leg of the stool as Bayer, as a leading life science company. Pete, on Astepro, so far, so good. We've launched, we're in market. We started shipping in June. Shelves are full, displays are done, consumer uptake and acceptance has been good. Advertising is running, and we are pleased versus our bucket commitments of how that's performing. We're just entering the fall season now. That will be another test. Then, of course, the fall season early next spring. I can say so far, so good. We take nothing but confidence from it. Dave, on the U.S. switch pipeline and our confidence. Yeah. I think switch has long been a core capability of ours, you know, and it's driven a lot of growth. I think it has this huge potential still to kind of grow and create new categories. You know, when it comes to safety, these are products that have been used, for years in an Rx environment with a proven safety track record. Safety is fundamental to us, you know, including continued safety assessments, as well as detailed studies as part of this switch process to ensure, not only the safety of the product, that people can use that in an OTC environment. There's a very robust process that goes behind this. You know, that gives me great confidence of the role of switch continuing, in the US going forwards. Thanks, Dave. Oliver. Hey, on valuations and being part of Bayer. I think Patrick talked a little bit about it already, Peter, so I won't repeat everything that he said. Obviously we feel with Bayer as a life sciences company, we have three attractive businesses. This is attractive growth prospects. There's earnings and cash potential in all the businesses that we have. We see that our businesses are complementary and tie up very well to the global mega trends, health, nutrition. There's a growing population, there's climate change, there's an aging population. With us in Consumer Health, we feel particularly well there in the preventive self-care area. Consumer Health as a part of the group, paired with the successful execution that we have been talking at the beginning of the session about, obviously we add quite considerable value to the Bayer group. Now on the multiples, of course, you can argue from a market perspective how some of the competitors are trading. At the same time you can also argue whether the Bayer share as we are trading right now is whether that's the right multiple. You know, us arguing, it's not. We should have a very different multiple on the valuation of the Bayer share. Of course, the picture looks a little bit different. From the cash and investment allocation that we receive as a consumer health business within Bayer, obviously we can do and run the business very successfully as we have shown. Therefore, I think that question on our side is not as prevalent as it might seem. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you, Oliver. Thanks to the consumer health team. Thanks, Patrick. Thanks, Patricia. I don't see any further questions. I agree with Oliver, I'm more than happy to review the multiple discussion when we reach the price target that Citi actually has. Other than that, I really appreciate you guys taking the time. I hope everybody externally appreciated the update that we were able to give on strategy, on business development, on innovation, on commercial capabilities that we're seeing for the consumer health division. Really appreciate it. We will talk to you soon, and we'll keep you updated. Thank you so much everybody for participating. Thank you. Thank you.