Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to Uponor's third quarter 2022 results briefing. My name is Franciska Janzon from Uponor's Investor Relations and Group Communications. We will start with a presentation from our President and CEO, Michael Rauterkus, on the development on group level and our strategy execution, followed by a presentation from our CFO, Markus Melkko, on the financials during the quarter. After this, we will open up for Q&A. With this, I hand it over to Michael. Good afternoon also from my side. Welcome here from Helsinki. Good afternoon. I'm very happy to share very good Q3 results. Actually, the front page of this picture is very relevant for today because it shows a recent project we have completed of our Infra business, but more details later. As always, we start with people first and how we're doing, and as you know, we have a great program on this People First agenda. What we always share first is how we are doing on LTIF. As you have seen, we have really made great progress over the last three years. This year, I must say on a cumulative basis, it looks a little bit more stable. We have a lot to do in the last quarter to improve our results because Uponor's target is really zero accidents. I'm very happy we have also the new CTO on board because now every accident, he gets the message within 24 -hours on his iPhone to follow up. We have a great progress here to make this happen. People first, but now coming to the results, and the results look pretty good. As you see, we have finished Q3 with a growth of 13.3% to EUR 364 million, and the operating profit has even grown 17.9% to almost EUR 45 million. That's really a great result, and it gives us a good year-to-date performance. Cumulative September, it's up 12.8% in sales and 6.6% on operating profit. How did this happen? We had really a strong quarter for Uponor Infra and Building Solutions - North America. The strategy execution progressed as planned. Also, as you know, we have really completed the management transition. We have our new Chief Technology Officer and member of the Executive Committee, Thomas Fuhr, on board. He is now always on his way to see factories and help us to improve innovation and productivity. We have a new leadership structure in place in Europe with Goran Kovacev. He is a very, very senior member and well equipped to run the commercial operations in Europe. I'm very, very happy with the latest changes we have made. Also, we have started activities to enhance resilience to improve our productivity and capacity in the near future. We come to this in more detail in a minute. Let's talk a little bit about, you know, how the numbers look in detail. The group net sales growth is +13%. Organic growth was 11%, and as I said, strong growth in Uponor Infra, and they had really a perfect quarter in many ways. Not only sales went up, also mix went up. North America was strong as well. They could really reduce the backlog and improve the service level, and Europe was more stable. In all the divisions, we saw really strong price realization, and I think what the company has done really well and the people have really done well and I'm really proud of, they took the price increases all in one go, so not in slices, and we really see the benefit we took. You know, it was a big effort, but they really focused to get this done, and I think and now we see this in our numbers. The price realization has been really strong. They have held the line and not giving up on these current price levels while, of course, raw materials have gone down a bit. What we have seen, as you know, our U.S. business is really significant. We have seen favorable currency movements, especially from the U.S. dollar. The operating profit has increased 18%, again, driven by pricing actions, but also, overall the sales mix has improved, versus the comparable quarter. Therefore, the operating margin went over the magic 12% - 12.3% from an 11.8% to the comparable quarter. I think what's very important here for this audience, the guidance statement for 2022 remains unchanged. This is a bit of a perspective. I know you know this number, but I just wanted to point out to the lower graph on the right side, it's the cumulative operating profit for nine months period, for 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022. We are now landing at EUR 143 million. Those of you who watch this session many times know EUR 143 million actually is the operating profit of a full year 2020. I think, in this environment, with all things going on, this is a remarkable result, and I'm very proud and really thankful to our team and to our customers. I think this is, in the context we operate, a fantastic result. Let's go a little bit into detail, also on how we did by market. You see on a cumulative base, all markets are in growth. The United States, you need to know this is in euros, not in dollars. In dollars it would look a little bit different because we have a positive currency effect. Let's take Germany, 6.3%. With all things going on, I know what I'm talking about, I'm German, this is a remarkable result also versus what I've seen, what our competition is doing. Finland up double-digit, also a bit driven by a good result from Infra. Sweden, 20%. Next is Canada. Netherlands, a bit flat. They had a bit of a weaker Q3, very strong until Q2. This also explains a little bit of this mixed challenge we have seen in Europe. Overall, you see all the markets are basically in growth. Poland, just one comment here, of course, half of the growth is organically, the other comes through the acquisition of Capricorn. This time, and if you would ask why do you grow with Infra? Because usually this always comes at latest at the presentation, because I really want to point out that Infra has done a fantastic job. Not a good job, they have done a fantastic job. We have come to a profitability level here we haven't seen for a while. Operating profit went up 83%, so everything went in the right way. I explained this a bit in detail. Sales mix, pricing went up, and of course, they have really looked at improving operational efficiencies. Net sales went up 16%. You see really, in this environment, achieving a 10%+ OP, I think is a really fantastic result. We have looked at measures in place to adjust market-specific capacity. What you have seen also, we have announced we closed the smaller factory in Denmark, in Middelfart, affecting 40 people. It's the right thing to do to adjust the capacity. We have looked at this for quite a while. What I want to say here is Infra has done, let's say, a good mix of driving the productivity, driving sales, driving the right mix, and the business is in really good shape. I want to share with you a few highlights, and you remember on the right side, this steel plant picture from the opening chart. What we always try to do at Infra is improving the mix and moving, don't want to say commodity, but now I say it, from a commodity more, let's say industrial product to solution and system selling. Here what you see is, three examples of, design solutions, three projects we have completed. We have completed, the value is roughly EUR 10 million, in the last quarter. A project in Ottawa in Canada, and you ask, you are only operating in Nordic, but we don't need necessarily produce all the products. We work with partners. The concept and the service is coming from Uponor Infra in Finland. We had a big project finished in the mining industry in Sweden and also a steel plant. Here we offer not only a product, we offer the full service, the installation, the super-supervision services, and all the related works, and this equips us really to increase our margin in a specific sector. This is what remember at the Capital Markets Day my colleague Sebastian Bondestam was talking about when he said, "Okay, we need to really change the mix and move into this sector." Now we see for the first time really it comes through very nicely and helps really the overall performance of Uponor in Q3. Congratulations to the Infra team. Europe on the other side had a stable result. Also, given all the challenges, I think this is really remarkable. They could really hold the line, and we haven't adjusted these numbers for the so-called Russia effect. Giving, let's say, all the external factors, holding the line on sales is a good result. We had some mixed effects, partly driven by Russia on product, and this of course affects the overall profitability, but they could end the quarter with over 10% OP as well. By the way, the sale process in Russia continues, but it's not up to us. It's of course up to the Russian authorities. So far everything is underway. North America. North America had again an exceptional quarter. Net sales growth was up 30%. This was driven by strong price realization, sales mix, and product availability. Remember, we were always talking about product availability constraints. Actually for quite a while, our products were on allocation to our customers. I got personally a lot of calls where they say, "We need product." Of course, our people have done a lot of good work to improve the situation, and more and more we could release the products and come to a more normal service level. Of course, this helped in the last quarter big time. Service level come back to normal, backlog is reduced, and this is, of course, helping the overall situation. The operating profit therefore was really strong, up 31% through price, but also cost management, sales mix and increased operational efficiency. You know this chart since March. It is a robust strategic plan to deliver performance in all the divisions, in Europe, in North America, in Infra. Number one, maximizing the core. This time, I give, again, a new example what this really means, a bit more specific. Last time I was talking a bit more about the core markets we focus on. By the way, last time, the markets I mentioned, if you would bucket them, they are all up double digits on a cumulative basis. Attention to detail matters. That's maximizing core. I also will talk about innovation. Of course, the development to net zero benefits us because now we are moving in the world where really not only from a sustainability, but also from an energy efficiency point of view, we need to change. Of course, many customers and consumers now will look at more energy-efficient solutions, and we are right there. Of course, last but not least, people first. We continue with, I think, a fantastic initiative, really winning as one, as a global Uponor team. Here we are. It's really a strong leadership team, and we have really, with Thomas Fuhr joining, completed the global leadership team with Markus Melkko, you see in a minute, running finance. Jennifer in the U.S. Actually, she spends at the moment three months in Finland also to get to know the European business. Thomas Fuhr has joined. Sebastian running Infra business. I was talking about Andres had a flying start in the U.S. Really, I enjoy working with all of them. Then Goran doing a fantastic job in Europe, given the challenging environment. Reetta legal and Franciska you just saw, doing corporate communication. That's the team. That's my dream team. We continue also to focus on innovation. I'm very happy, and you saw the announcement, we could convince my old friend Torsten Meier to join us as Chief Innovation Officer. I've worked with Torsten for many years, and I know he's one of the top shots in the industry to drive innovation. He has a lot of experience back to Daimler-Benz, DaimlerChrysler. He knows how to develop from an idea to a product to a system, and he's very happy to join Uponor first of January, and he will report to Thomas. A great commitment also to drive innovation of Uponor. Now a few examples on strategy execution. What does maximizing the core really mean? What you see on the picture is not a part of a spaceship. It is what we call AquaPort. It's a product which is in our product line in Europe for quite some time. It's really interesting. The benefits are really outrageous because it helps to reduce the hot water energy use up to 35% versus centralized domestic hot water systems. No reason not to buy. Of course, this is an industry, I call it very often the best-kept secret industry, so we need to promote these products much more than we have done in the past. Also we need to give all the countries access to these ideas and the products because they are already there. The U.S. team has taken a European product, tweaked this a bit, and launched it in Q3 at the ASPE 2020 Expo in the U.S.A. I think that's a great example. We take a product which is already there and maximizing the core, selling the same product de facto in more markets. This is an innovation highlight we announced today from the Infra colleagues. This is exactly when you remember, when you followed the Capital Markets Day presentation, Sebastian at the time said, "We will move from components at Infra to a full system," and here we are. We are really the first one in the industry who delivers a 360 solution. A system, a water treatment system, not only that prevents pollution of water, but also manage efficient flooding prevention. We are the only one in the market who now have what I would call a 360 approach. One source, one contact, it is Uponor, and we deliver a world-class system here. It helps really the environment big time because there's no point after flooding, you know, without filtration, the water is just getting into a lake, a river, or sea. Really congratulations to the Infra team here again. There's another part, innovate the core, because you know we have also celebrated, we had the celebration of 400 years of the factory in Virsbo, but the other celebration we had was 50 years of Uponor PEX pipes being launched 1972 by a German genius who developed the formula at the time. Since then, PEX-a pipes have replaced copper, and this was really a run over years, and it's still an innovation in many markets in many sectors because it's fast and easier. You can do this famous cold expansion technique, and it's really durable. We have over time shipped 6 billion m of installed PEX-a pipe so far, which is basically, I think, 150 times around the Earth. It's really a huge business. Our responsibility is then even to think about not only, you know, is this a better performance for water, cleaner water, or when you use it for underfloor heating, of course, 20% reduction of energy. We have, as you know, the first bio-based PEX pipe in our portfolio. I was just attending a few weeks ago a presentation of our partner Borealis, who has basically developed the raw material, and they see this as one of the most important, if not the number one innovation in the plastics industry from their side. I was really proud to see that this is really highly ranked in the sector. I think we need to continue to be at the forefront of innovation. Innovation of the core is so important. Now this is basically a reflection of what we do and execute the strategy. Of course, we get now many questions and say, "So what's happening in the mid-term?" Number one message is really we stay the course because we're in a great industry and all the long-term KPIs I believe are intact. At the same time, we have managed over the last two or three years a lot of headwinds, right? Pandemic, don't forget every company was struggling with this more than two years. Supply shortages, raw material, cost inflation. I think we managed them well and still stayed the course and be clearly on target. Now we have a bit of a new rising enemy, and the rising enemy is rising interest rates. Of course, what is irritating the market is the dynamic of the interest rate spikes or the rise of the interest rate in such a short time. Of course this will impact our industry. How much? I don't know. How long this will take? I don't know. Therefore we need to really improve our resilience, readjust capacity or plan for readjusting the capacity. We have done some work, as you heard with Infra, but at the same time also, we need to also look at the bright side. There will be always demand for safe water supply. There will be an increasing demand for more energy-efficient system, and there will be growth in selected segments. Therefore, we need to have the right balance and see through the crisis and do the right thing here. I said the other day to my team also when we were thinking, "Okay, so how do we adjust here?" I said, "Okay, we need to maybe readjust here and there, but at the same time also, I don't want to be in a position like airline industry and in six months, we are all queuing up and don't have the capacity." Therefore, the only recipe is being more agile and more flexible. The good thing is now with the changes we have made, I think, the best team now on board. I have really all confidence that we can sail through the next months and deliver good results. With this, I would like to hand over to my colleague, Markus Melkko. Thank you. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, also on my behalf. I will share a bit more details on the Q3 financials, but before actually going into the numbers itself, I'd like to elaborate a bit on the sort of flexibility topic and the resilience topic that Michael just highlighted. I mean, just to give you also a bit of flavor, so what does it mean in practice? Resilience for us means in a way being more flexible and being able to adapt. We have actions planned in sort of two major categories where the one bucket is margin management. As part of margin management, Michael already talked about a lot the pricing actions and the pricing realization that we've done, and managed to achieve over the past 12+ months. We feel that the work is something that we keep on our agenda also going forward. The pricing elements might be a bit different than what we saw, for example, with the high raw material inflations. There is still underlying inflation going into the new year. And then also there are other elements, especially in the overall trade term flexibility perspective that our teams are looking into. Also on the margin management side, we've initiated during the third quarter procurement excellence program. Our procurement professionals colleagues are looking into not only short-term opportunities, but especially on sort of mid to longer term opportunities to really drive value and help the teams to sort of achieve sustainable benefits through the procurement side. On the cost and capacity management side, cost management includes elements that I'm sure many of my colleagues in the other companies and industries would be looking into as well. Our teams have done great work in looking into discretionary spend and so forth. Especially the teams are now looking into how do we prioritize the initiatives that it actually helps us to drive this resilience going forward. On the capacity optimization, the purpose there is to really find ways together with our teams to increase flexibility as well as to drive productivity that we have and we're going forward in our utilization in a way, right products at the right capacity at the right price for our customers. That's in the sort of improving resilience part. With that, I'd like to take a look back and refer back to the Q3 results. Michael talked a lot about already the performance year- to- date as well as the Q3 results, and especially on the net sales part, most of the topics were discussed. Just highlighting here that we had a positive net sales growth in all three divisions, and it's really mainly driven by successful pricing strategy. On the bottom chart there on the left-hand side, the year- to- date comparable operating profit bridge is something that I'd like to spend a bit more time on it. That gives us an indication of, in a way, how the situation now evolved during the course of this year, where the gray bars, obviously, especially the change in raw material, but more and more what we see is also the cost inflation impacting some of the other elements apart from raw materials like components we acquire for our products or then even though we're not an energy-intensive production as such, but still any business that sees energy inflation numbers like we do, it does carry also an impact, and that's why we continue to focus on our margins. When you focus on the blue bar there, on the bottom chart, one to eight gives you an indication of the impact of the really strong work that our teams have done with the pricing during this year. That's an evidence of the dedication of the team. I'd like to thank every Uponorian who've been working on, in a way, either to mitigate the costs or to drive the pricing up. It's a great job. On the other bucket there that as you can see, it's mainly driven by the change in the overhead costs and there is a pretty logical explanation to it, mainly driven by the fact that the comparison period still, I continue to repeat that during the course of 2021, the activity levels because of the pandemic and the sort of cautiousness after that were quite low. We've seen a bit more activity this year. Also, in accordance with our strategy, we've also invested a bit more capabilities and competencies to drive our strategy development going forward. Overall positive development on the OP side, EUR 143 million, like Michael noted, happens to actually be the same number as for the full year 2020. Looking into more of the margin development, the gross profit margin at 36.4% it now is higher than the one last year, Q3 2021. Obviously, like I said already with the previous slide, we've seen increasing input costs. Thanks to the pricing actions, we now also see that the four-quarter rolling gross profit margin, like I said already after Q2, now it continues to gradually go up. Meaning that now we've sort of managed to, in a way, overcome the catch up with the input prices. Like Michael noted, it's very much thanks to the fact that the teams put in pricing actions quite decisively and in a way then move on with the life. Moving over to net working capital. Now during quarter three, we saw the cash flow and the net working capital development kind of like normalize. If you remember, you were listening to us late July while we posted the H1 results. During the first half of this year, we saw the buildup of the net working capital that mainly was due to the inventory values going up. There were two reasons in the beginning of the year for that. First of all, stabilizing a bit and normalizing the levels, but then at the same time, the inflation driving the value of the inventories up. Now, like I said, during Q3, as you can see as a comparison from year-on-year, last year, the Q3 cash flow was roughly EUR 50 million and now it's roughly EUR 60 million during Q3 2022. The investments during Q3 are mainly related to our typical maintenance and sort of efficiency improvements, but also some technology upgrades then for upcoming product launches that we do in accordance with our investment strategy and the whole innovation strategy that we are driving forward with. From the financial position perspective, net debt on quarter three did increase year-on-year. Still the gearing and the net debt growth is attributable to the working capital development that I mentioned already. Gearing at 9.9% at end of September is clearly below our target level of 40%-80% gearing that we've set ourselves in our financial targets. I'm happy to confirm to everybody that there is no change in our financing positions, so no dramatic change, basically no change in the debt position of the company. No short-term debt utilized, so only the long-term financing arrangements that we have had in place for some time. Moving forward to the earnings per share development, I'm also happy to report that during the course of 2020 and also during obviously then Q3 2020, we've seen an improvement in the EPS over year-on-year. Now at Q3 2020, the earnings per share were EUR 0.40 per share compared to EUR 0.35 per share a year ago. Now the year-to-date EPS stands at EUR 0.0119 per share, up EUR 0.09 from last year. In accordance with our AGM decision from spring this year, dividends were paid in two installments, where the first installment was paid in March, and now the second installment was settled in September in accordance with our dividend decision from earlier this year. Finally, from the financials, I'd like to highlight again, hopefully this is a slide that the ones who follow us for a longer period of time already recognize. These are the financial targets, how we articulated it in accordance with our updated strategy in our Capital Markets Day, March 14th. The financial targets are two-phased, where the first face of the targets is for the years of 2022 to 2024, with a sort of combined thinking of organic growth in sort of mid-single digits, then combined with an OP margin of comparable OP margin of 12%. Our commitment is to revise these targets then moving forward from 2025 onwards. While we now build on our innovation agenda, while we now build on our productivity improvements, our ambition is to accelerate the growth rates and then in a way improve or even increase the OP targets going forward. Year-to-date achievements you can see there on the left-hand side column. With this, I would like to hand it over back to Michael for the outlook for 2022 as well as then the concluding remarks. Thank you very much, Markus. As you have seen, this was a really good result for Q3. Also, we look as much as we can into the future. We have confirmed our guidance for the year. The short-term outlook is as follows. We expect, of course, the market conditions to become a bit tougher in Q4. No surprise. Basically, we are very consistent with what we said when we met last time. The uncertainty is still high. It's very volatile. As you know, gas prices come down, but who knows what will be mid of next year. At the end, the answer is really we need to be very, very agile to manage. I think the last quarters have really shown the company is in good shape to withstand these challenges. Material cost remains high. On the other hand, availability overall has a bit improved. What we have pointed out is the rising interest rates, and they expect to have a negative impact in the demands next quarter and also, of course, the following year, especially in the new build sector, which means there are some other sectors not affected as much. This is how we see the short-term market outlook. As Markus said, the guidance statement for 2022 remains unchanged. With this, I'm very happy, or we are very happy to take any questions. Thank you very much. If you wish to ask a question, please dial star five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial star five again on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Anssi Raussi from SEB. Please go ahead. Thank you, and, hi, everyone. I have a few questions, and I go one by one as usual. The first one is about the demand, and you mentioned weakening market, and I guess everyone is expecting the construction market to get worse. Are we talking about 5%-10%, 20% volume declines in your businesses or how do you see Q4 and early 2023? That's the first one. Thanks. Mm-hmm. Yeah. It is the A question, and let me answer like this. We really try to get a better visibility not only on what I would call our internal data, but also more importantly, to really understand what the sell through is with our customers. Take Europe as an example. We saw a very stable result. At the same time we saw and have for the first time also really good data on what's happening at retail. Customers have reduced the stock. Then we saw, you know, demand has a bit more stabilized. You gave a bit of a range here. For sure we see weakening demand. I would not go to your extreme scenario. At the moment I would—w e are more on the, let's say, on your higher scenario here. Of course we monitor very closely and at the same time also we try to adjust here with our portfolio and moving more into the direction where we still see growth. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Great. The second one is about pricing. I think your growth was purely coming from the prices. How should we think about your pricing going into Q4 and 2023? Is it the same kind of growth from prices as in Q3, or are you still trying to catch up increasing costs? No, I would say, you know, of course we have taken a massive price increase in two years, basically most markets. I think the level of price increases will, from today's perspective, look a little bit different, but we will increase prices because some other input factors will go up if it's salary, some energy price, et cetera. We will continue to have price increases in all markets, but of course a bit more moderate than we have seen when raw material was going up double-digit. Clearly we need to protect our margins and we don't make any compromises on this. I think also more importantly, what I've seen in this industry sometimes, it's also important to hold the line and not give back on prices. To be fair, we haven't seen so far any pressure from our customers to do so, which is also a good signal. Okay. Clear. As you mentioned that we could expect that volumes will come down in 2023. Like, what kind of gross margins you would be happy with next year? Like current level higher or a bit lower due to volumes? Master question. Can I answer this? Yeah, of course. I— If you give the right answer, you can answer this one. I'm happy with, like I said in one of my slides, I'm focusing on margin management, so perhaps that gives you an understanding that at least from my perspective, I think in a way we need to defend our margins in a way. That's in a way my starting point here. This is also the, let's say, this is more to be very clear, the focus, how we manage really the company. It's the absolute focus on keeping our margins and if needed to do some cost adjustments. Also you saw the Infra example. If you manage the mix right, if you create demand, if you are the winner in this market, because I always say the strongest brands win share in tough conditions, not when the sun is shining. Therefore, with this perspective, I also say, never waste a good crisis. Okay. Those were good answers. The last one from me is a more simple one. Like, what is your mix between residential and commercial in both Europe and North America at the moment? Yeah, I mean, it's roughly. I mean, we are more on the residential side. Now I don't have the exact figures in front of me. Globally it's 50/50. It's Europe roughly 50/50. For the North America it's say 60/40 for the residential. Okay, thanks. That's all from me. Thanks, Anssi. Thank you. Thank you, Anssi. As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial star five on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Pam Liu from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Thank you. I have three questions please. The first one is, in your Q3 press release, I read that you said the operating profit in Building Solutions - Europe was driven by unfavorable country and product mix. Could you please provide some color on that? Which countries and which product have yielded lower profitability? Why is that the case, and what are you planning to do to improve that? The second question is, I'm interested in understanding how your sales force continue to push for pricing from here. First of all, I'm actually surprised to see raw material still as a headwind in your presentation page 17. If I look at the PE or PVC spot prices, they're actually at par or even below Q3 2021 level. Is it right to assume that, raw material cost inflation actually is no longer a supportive argument for further price increase? Obviously I'm interested in how the pricing conversation with customers go, after they have destocked. Does it reset the pricing discussion? You said that you haven't seen customers pushing back, but how about your competitors? Do you see competitors start to lower their prices in order to get a bit more shelf space after the destocking at the customer's end? The final question is, could you please tell us a bit more about the development in indoor climate product category, please, given there's so much stronger demand in low-carbon heating that we are seeing in some of your key European markets such as Germany and the Netherlands? Thank you. Okay. I think I had four questions, Pam. The Building Europe country mix, then the sort of drivers for the pricing was the second one. In a way the sort of pricing in the market was the third one, and then the fourth one, the indoor climate. Yeah. Yep. So— Perhaps I can start with the two first ones, the BLD-E mix question. What we can see in the numbers is that if you look into the Q2, our press release or the interim release, we saw a good quarter for the BLD-E division and then in a way now we saw less demand from those countries in Q4. There was a bit of, say, destocking effect in the Q3 numbers for the European part. The margins change a lot between product categories and so forth, so I don't have the opportunity of going through that. From the country's perspective as well, depending a bit on, in a way, what type of orders we get, there is obviously a change there. Some of the countries that we've actually highlighted as our focus countries, for example, just to give you a flavor on the development, Michael mentioned in the previous Q2 results, some of the sort of focus countries for Europe, they're now in year- to- date in double-digit growth. I mean, the focus helps there. That's about what I can say on the country mix. On the pricing elements and, you know, what's driving the price, that was exactly the reason for this purpose, Pam, that I wanted to highlight on page 20 of the presentation was this bridge that in our business and in our product categories, obviously raw materials play a role. There are other elements as well that do actually in a way get impacted under this inflationary environment. We buy components to our products from third- parties and these guys are also, in a way, seeing the sort of inflationary impact. It's not just the pure raws, the plastic resins or the metal bars that we buy for really the sort of in a way the core products, but then for the components we see that as well. Also, I mean, like I said, even though we're not an energy-intensive business, but I mean, the impact of energy or the salary inflation that we see now sort of coming through in all of the markets where we operate, in a way, do play a role, and that's the reason why we also need to manage our margins going forward. Perhaps on the pricing on the market, I don't know, Michael, if you have a view on it. Yeah, first of all, clearly, I don't know exactly what's the competitive situation on prices because we don't talk to competitors, but of course we get feedback from our customers. I would frame this a little bit differently. As a brand, I don't want to talk with my customers about input prices and even, you know, decrease price. I mean, in a way we are a bit in the same boat. If, you know, we are forced to lower prices, they need to lower prices as well and change the inventory values. This is usually what wholesalers don't like. For me, the measurement is another one really. We need to defend our margins, as we said in the whole session. That's key. It is so easy to give up on prices. We are a brand, and we deliver value. This is not a commodity business. This is a branded business. When I looked on the data, available data on the first nine months, how we are doing in the market, it looks actually we're really doing well in terms of how we perform versus competition. Because of course we want to, in this situation, win share, and this is what really counts. Therefore, I'm super cautious on any price activities. We have enough in the portfolio to drive value. This comes also to your last question. You're absolutely right. There are segments in the market which are super highly attractive. Unfortunately, a little bit, this indoor climate is at the moment a bit less profitable than other segments, but the growth prospects are pretty good. Therefore, we are at the moment working on all ends, driving productivity, increase margin, and change the mix and drive innovation, if this answers your question. It's really for us holding the line on prices. Of course, some areas will go up next year, and therefore our mandate to the markets is we will continue to increase prices, but of course, on a different level so far. I mean, we had to change our ingoing position in terms of prices. I mean, basically we look at this every single month as we had to last year. As we explained in the Q2 results, we have now the ability to execute prices basically every single quarter, which gives us the flexibility, and that's the big theme. On pricing, we are now well equipped. If we need to go up 10%, we will go up 10%. If we don't need to go up 10%, it might be 5%, as an example. This is of course not the number for next year, but we will stay agile. Just a follow-up question. Just on talking about branded products, do you have any statistics that can track on the percentage of, you know, what you consider as a branded offering, that is, out of your entire product portfolio? Yes. I mean, when people talk about PEX-a, they think Uponor. How much is PEX-a in your whole piping business? We don't disclose that, but it's huge. Okay, thanks. Yep. Okay, thanks. The next question comes from Paul de Thierry from Arke Advisers. Please go ahead. Yes. Good afternoon, and thank you for taking my questions. I've got four questions, and I'll take them one by one if that's okay. You talked earlier to a previous question about the exposure to commercial and residential in Europe and North America. Could you just in the Building Solutions and divisions, what is the exposure in Europe and North America to new build and then to renovation, please? Yep. I can start, then you can, then in a way continue. For our European business, the split between new build and residential is more balanced, and we're closing more on the sort of, say, 60/40, 50/50 type of approach. Whereas for the North American part, it's more on the new build side. Having said that, the North American business obviously consists of both U.S. and Canadian business. For example, for our Canadian business, it's 80 commercial and 20 residential. New build is more the focus for the U.S. business. Okay. Yeah. Thank you for that. My next question is in the Capital Markets Day, you talked about a sort of step up in R&D and sales and marketing to drive growth going forward. I mean, given the current economic outlook, are you changing the magnitude of this step up that you talked about? No, absolutely not. Because I think at the end, you know, if there's anything, our customers are talking about, it's innovation. We go to the fairs to show innovation. The number one topic when I'm meeting customer is, "Okay, what's coming next?" Clearly, we look cautiously at any spending. Of course, I mean, we, when we look at our R&D, we absolutely need to make sure at the end of the day, what we develop and the millions we spend on R&D have good results and we can launch a really a fantastic product. This is why I hired also somebody who understands the process from getting an idea to a significant, and significant means we need an innovation of, you know, double-digit millions of sales, to launch in the market because this, the innovation needs to be a contributor, also in the future. No, we are not slowing down. Actually, in these times, at least my experience is you must not forget on the demand side. You need to strengthen the brand, drive innovation because one day, the, let's say this, whatever you call this crisis period of challenge, whatever, will be over and then the question is how you come out of the crisis. In an innovation process in this industry takes three to five years from, you know, idea to a proper product. Therefore, this is a mid- to long-term strategy anyhow. This is also why we split it. Remember this first phase, second phase. We did exactly like this. We never promised a hockey stick. We said, "Okay, we need to do the right thing, and then we have a chance here and we'll accelerate. Thank you for that, for that explanation. My third question is on a related topic then. In July, on innovation, you launched this Uponor IQ Blue, the stormwater pipe product that, you know, reducing the carbon footprint significantly. I mean, can you talk a little bit about how that's been accepted in the market and what progress have you seen in terms of any demand since then? What I can say, and I refer to, when I meet customers, I was at a conference organized by one of our suppliers, and I must say I was personally surprised because for me, this is, you know, this plastics industry is somewhat a new industry, and I was really surprised this was the number one topic being discussed. I must say, it give me an indication that we're really at the forefront of innovation and also do the right thing. The challenge introducing this, of course, is there is a bit of a higher price. It takes a lot of convincing of the sales force to make sure we keep our margin because, you know, this innovation is a bit more costly. That's the challenge, but the demand is there. Actually, more and more of our customers have the demand. When you think of the project business we talk about or what you call the commercial business, some of the commercial projects in the future you actually can't do without, you know, having these type of products. You would be basically out of the market. For us it's not a question of if we do this, it's a must-have. Therefore, for me, this is out of question, and this is also why we set the target that in by 2025, 50% of our products will have a CO2 neutral alternative. It is absolutely evident, so I think it's no question. Great. Thank you. My final question is, you know, given that, you know, valuations now have come right down over the last few months. Yeah. What are the M&A opportunities presenting themselves? What are you looking at in terms of sort of countries or products? Yeah. No, you're absolutely right. I would phrase it a little bit different and say, you know, a lot of products are inflated. The only thing it's really at the moment at lower price, of course, is our shares. Now, but clearly this opportunity now is of course looking at M&A and actually we have also changed a bit our setup internally now that Markus takes the lead on the M&A opportunities. What we are looking for is either geographical expansion or, of course, complementary technology. Of course, as I said before, never waste a good crisis. 12 months ago, probably we had a lot of opportunities, but clearly didn't make sense. Outpriced. Now this looks much more moderate. Also, I'm saying I'm not buying something because it's a bit cheaper. I would buy it— Mm-hmm. —because it has value. Yeah. I would pay the price. If I get it a bit cheaper, that's fine, but I would buy value first. That's the trigger because in the long run, great value, great technology matters. I wouldn't look at a bit of a discount. If we get, it's fine, but that's not the trigger. The good thing— Yeah. —is, for us probably there are more opportunities now than probably 12 months ago. Great. Yeah. That's all for me. Thank you so much for answering the questions. There are no more questions at this time, so I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments. Yes. Thank you very much, from our side. I really enjoyed the conversation and also I would like to thank you for the very specific question. As always, we want to continue with this dialogue, and every time we show you Uponor on stage, give you the new news on how we are doing executing a strategy and, I think we are really well equipped. Thank you very much and see you next time, and have a good afternoon. Thank you. Thank you for joining.