Welcome to the 2024 Ordinary and Extraordinary Annual Shareholders Meeting of Sartorius Stedim Biotech SA. My name is Joachim Kreuzburg, and as Chairman of the Board, I will chair the meeting. I would like to thank all shareholders who are personally attending today here in particular. I also would like to thank all shareholders who cast their vote remotely ahead of this shareholders meeting, and all participants in our webcast. We have once again opted to provide a live webcast due to the positive experiences made with the combined physical and virtual shareholders meeting in previous years. In particular, it allows us to better reach out to our international shareholder base. With me today are Mr. René Fáber, member of the board and CEO of the company; Madame Pascale Boissel, member of the board and president of the audit committee; and Mr. Olivier Guitard, head of controlling of the BPS division. I now need to appoint the officers of the assembly. Is there any shareholder who would like to volunteer as a scrutineer of the meeting? If so, please remind it that scrutineers will have to stay after the closing of the meeting to sign the minutes of the shareholders meeting. As we do not have any volunteers, I would like to appoint Madame Pascale Boissel and Mr. René Fáber to act as scrutineers, which they accepted, and Mr. Olivier Guitard as secretary of the shareholders meeting. French interpreters are also present here today. I will now continue with the formalities of this shareholders meeting. I will start with the quorum that allows us to hold this combined shareholders meeting. The quorum is 93.44%. The final percentage of the quorum will be available after the final counting by the bank. With regards to the convening of the annual combined shareholders meeting, the agenda and the text of the resolutions are available here and have been published in all the standard documents and publications, like the Bulletin des Annonces Légales Obligatoires (BALO) and the legal newspaper La Provence. No draft resolutions or new items on the agenda were requested, and please refer to the Universal Registration Document (URD) for further information. All documents required by law, which you may have received from Uptevia or your financial intermediary, are available here during the meeting and on our website. The attendance list has been signed at the beginning of the meeting. It includes the number of shares and number of rights of the shareholders present, as well as the number of shares and rights represented by proxies, which we received before the meeting. After reading the agenda, we will proceed to the vote, and I will present you the preliminary results of the votes for this shareholders meeting. I will now proceed with the agenda of today's annual combined shareholders meeting, and I will focus on the main lines and the bullet points, I think, and the details you have in front of yourself. So, under the competence of the ordinary shareholders meeting: first, reading of the three reports of the board of directors, second, reading of the three reports of the statutory auditors, third, approval of the financial statements for the financial year ended on 31st of December 2023 and discharge of all directors, fourth, approval of the consolidated financial statements for the financial year ended on 31st of December 2023, fifth, allocation of the financial results for the financial year ended on 31st of December 2023, and then eight resolutions is the sixth point concerning the remuneration of the members of the board will follow in compliance with the Say-on-pay doctrine as described in our URD. There are respective resolutions attached to those agenda items, of course, and we will come to that later, so I don't read out the different numbers of these resolutions now. There are 4 resolutions under the 7th point concerning the renewal of, or end of terms of mandates, and then 8 is the authorization granted to the Board of Directors to enable the company to trade in its own shares, and that is then the last and 16th resolution of the Ordinary Shareholders Meeting. Under the competence of the Extraordinary Shareholders Meeting, there are another 10 resolutions, and this reflects then 4 agenda items. The first one of the extraordinary shareholders meeting is the ninth in total, reading of the two reports of the board of directors. The tenth is reading of the special report of the statutory auditors. The 11th is the amendments to the company's articles of association relating to board meetings and shareholder meetings. And then under 12, there are then nine delegations of authorities granted to the board of directors in relation with the shares and capital of our company, and these are then another nine resolutions. Before proceeding with the voting process of our combined shareholders meeting, I would like to ask our Chief Executive Officer, Mr. René Fáber, to explain the 2023 annual financial statements and the development of the company, including information about our sustainability strategy, as well as to show the prospects for the future. René, please. Thank you very much, Joachim, and welcome also from my side to this year's annual shareholder meeting. I will be talking about the 2023 results, the last year results, as well as our focus areas and the guidance we have for the current year, and also give you an outlook how we see the midterm development of the market and also what our midterm guidance is about. So starting with the 2023 year looking back, it was a year which was unusual for the whole industry. It was a year which was challenging for the whole life science industry and by that also operationally challenging for our Sartorius Stedim Biotech business. We have been moving through the normalization after the pandemic. In 2023, our customers were consuming their inventory levels which they have built during the pandemic to secure materials to be able to make vaccines, corona vaccines, and other drugs they have been supplying to patients. This main impact of post-pandemic effect, the destocking resulted in a decrease of our revenues in 2023 by 20.5% to EUR 2.8 billion. The profitability declined by 35.7% to EUR 785 million, mostly driven by lower volumes, but also a shifted product mix to more equipment, lower profitability equipment business. The resulting EBITDA margin was at 28.3%. Putting that bit in perspective, looking at five years development from 2019, a pre-pandemic year until 2023, we are looking at almost doubling our revenues over this five years and 86% increase in EBITDA profitability. So overall, actually well on a growth trend, but looking again at the dip and the temporary normalization dynamics last year. Having a bit more detailed view on a quarterly basis, you see here the quite volatile environment. On the yellow line, you see order intake picking up in the mid of the pandemic. And then, around mid of 2022, we started to see this normalization, customers ordering less because of consuming the inventories until Q3 of the last year where we have seen the first signs of getting back to the growth trajectory. And in Q4, we have recorded for the first time since mid of 2022 a book-to-bill ratio slightly above one and again increased order intake and revenues. Now, the destocking was not the only even was a major factor impacting our 2023 business, was not the only one. Customers have been or started to further adjust their inventory levels down to protect cash and capital. We're reluctant to spend money investing in equipment, and we have seen a drop in order intake for equipment by one-third last year. Overall in the sector after the pandemic, China market significantly slowed down. The funding environment, the financing, was muted, not only in China, but particularly also in the largest market, biopharma market in the United States. Macroeconomic factors were not positive. Economic slowdown we have seen across the globe and in rising interest rates as well. We have stopped our activities and business and discontinued business in Russia. That also had a negative impact on our results, and we have noted also ongoing decoupling tendencies which added to these overall factors. Yet after strong increase of resources we have done during the pandemic to be able to supply our customers. Last year, we started to correct back according to the business development. Overall since 2019, however, we added more than 4,500 new jobs. We have almost 60% of employees are with us for less than five years, so it's a fresh workforce we have. And we also have seen quite a positive and dynamic internal job market where we have been able to fill the most of the positions, more than 70% with internal management positions with internal candidates. We are international. We're getting more diverse. 84% of our managers are non-French. We have an average age in the company of 40. It's a young, relatively young team, and you see also we have well-balanced age structure, with young but also long years and experience employees with us. 39% of total workforce were women last year. On the first and the second management level, we have 24%. We have here a target to achieve one-third by 2025. Now looking at the share price development last year due to the dynamics I have described, the share price decreased by 20.8%. However, again, putting that into perspective and comparing to relevant biotech or life science tool indices, we have recorded a well above average growth of the share price over the last five years since 2019 to 2023. Due to the lower profitability, EBITDA margin, the underlying earnings per share decreased to 4.19, and we had a payout ratio then of 17.4%, which was on a similar level than the previous previous year. Now I would like to move to the current year, what are our priorities, focus areas, and the guidance, how we see the year developing. We are still going through the normalization. It's ongoing. We have guided and expect to see a rather moderate or weaker first half of the year and then pick up in the second half of the year. So our outlook is positive. We expect profitable close in 2024. And again, shifting the focus and the priorities from during the pandemic, building quickly, expanding quickly, not only the capacities but also resources, people, and building also inventories to be able to supply our customers. Now shifting to efficiencies improvements, adjusting back to the current business development, deleveraging and managing working capital closely. And last but not least, putting our focus more on own organic development and innovation, bringing faster new products, innovative products, to the market to help customers get their process developments done faster and also their manufacturing processes, at lower cost and more efficient. One trend we are closely following and acting on is selling our new modalities which are becoming more and more relevant in our industry. We are coming from biopharma industry which has been dominated by proteins, monoclonal antibodies, modalities. Since a few years, we have seen increased dynamics and innovation in areas of cell and gene therapies. Today, one out of three new molecules which are in development by our customers is either cell and gene therapy. There are more than 6,000 new candidates in the development which offers an excellent opportunity to participate in that innovative market. We also have seen that approvals of these innovative drugs are getting more and more, five times increase of the approval rate, since 2019. Those dynamics will drive an above average market growth of in that segment, 20% compared to, like, the core monoclonal antibodies growing at around, 10%. So, very innovative and promising dynamics. We have been working strategically on building a portfolio for cell and gene therapies. Last year, we have closed an important acquisition, an important milestone and building block into our cell and gene therapy, acquisition of Polyplus. Polyplus brings a complementary, innovative, and strong market position in transfection reagents that's used for gene and gene-modified cell therapies applications. They are specified in large number, large portion of those therapies which are being developed. It's, again, complementary. It adds new skills, new competencies into our portfolio and workforce. And we expect significant synergies and positive synergies with the other technologies we have been adding to our portfolio. And those you see here since several years we have been building this technology platform for cell and gene therapies, adding critical materials like growth factors, recombinant albumin, media, and other supplements, which altogether when properly adjusted to work as a solution will provide to customers significant improvements in their processes and decrease the costs. In combination with our broad core bioprocessing portfolio like bioreactors, filters, and innovative technologies we have also added in for purification or process analytics. I think we are very well positioned to win the majority of the new drug specifications in development. Meanwhile, we have recorded a bit more than 10% of revenues coming from the products used in cell and gene therapies applications. In addition to inorganic additions to our portfolio, we continue and strengthen our focus now also, as I mentioned at the beginning, on our own developments. We are looking very much at technologies which help customers to speed up their process development. We are looking at technologies which intensify the processes, meaning customers allowing to build smaller facilities with higher output, reduce the investment costs, automating the workflow not only in process development but also in manufacturing. So new automation technologies and also software solutions which allow our customers to use their data in a more efficient way for better results here. On top of that, a more and more important area which we are looking at and currently have on our agenda and executing on is making our products sustainability-friendly, making them as much as possible recyclable. We have been working with partners in the industry, and showed that we have the first film, plastic film actually in the industry which is recyclable using available industrial recycling methods. We are working on reducing the use of plastics in our products significantly. Last but not least, also looking at innovative technologies which allow for reducing environmental footprint from transportation, when customers moving their drugs from one location to the other, as an example here. We continue to invest in our infrastructure as well, to build and prepare for the future growth. I will talk in a minute about our outlook, midterm outlook, improving our strengthening our global resilience, getting more redundancy in our manufacturing sites and getting them also closer to our customers. The major programs we are running in Aubagne here, investing in, expanding manufacturing of single-use bags but also investing in R&D infrastructure in Songdo, South Korea, the hub for contract development and manufacturing with the largest installed capacity. Meanwhile, in the world, we are building manufacturing and services facility for most of our consumables, filters, bags, and cell culture media and also process development and service labs for customers in the region. We will supply from there and cover the Asia-Pacific region outside China in the future. In Freiburg, it's a CellGenix site. We are expanding our GMP manufacturing of critical components for cell therapies, cell culture media, and in Göttingen, adding membrane filter and also R&D infrastructure. This year, we expect in 2024 to spend roughly 13% of our revenues into the expansions I just mentioned. Beginning February in 2024, this year, we have successfully conducted share capital increase of 5.15 million shares at EUR 233 per share price. Sartorius AG participated one-third to this capital increase resulting in EUR 1.2 billion gross proceeds. This capital increase will help us to accelerate the debt deleveraging and put us quicker into again a overall strategic flexibility which we need moving forward as we are looking at a very innovative, you know, and dynamic market, looking ahead. So, looking at the guidance for 2024 overall, again, a positive outlook. Still going through the normalization. It's ongoing. We know that not every customer yet consumes the inventories they have built. So this is still ongoing. Step by step, we will see the recovery, resulting in a H2 stronger increase in revenues we expect. 2 percentage points will be contributed from the Polyplus acquisition to the growth and our EBITDA margin in 2024 we see to be above 30%. I mentioned the CapEx ratio 13%. And thanks to the capital increase and a strong focus on organic working capital optimization, the underlying net debt to underlying EBITDA is anticipated to be slightly below 2.5 by end of 2024. Now, with that, I move to the outlook, midterm outlook, how we are looking at the market, the market trends. We see them and the fundamental drivers for growth being intact. We have set ourselves ambitious midterm targets from now to for the next five years into 2028. So what are the market fundamentals we are talking about for our market? Of course, first of all, health remains one of the most important relevant global topics. The population is growing but is also aging. By that, there will be increased need for medications. The medications which are innovative which provide cures which provide better treatments. And those are increasingly becoming the biologics. So the biologics portion of the new medicines is increasing and will be increasing. And that's the focus area of Sartorius Stedim Biotech. It's a biopharma biologics development and manufacturing. And this will drive a growth of that industry that market expected at 10% per year. So a solid fundamental drivers are in place. I mentioned we are seeing quite a dynamic innovation going on since 2010s and 2020s. We have seen first very innovative cell and gene therapies being launched during the pandemic. Very new modality RNA became available and modality for vaccines and for corona vaccines. And new are coming. And this trend is gonna continue moving forward. Yet there is the majority of the cancers are not well treatable today. There are 400 million people suffering from rare diseases, sometimes devastating rare diseases where there is no efficient treatment available. One in nine people over the age over 65 suffer from Alzheimer's disease also without an appropriate treatment. And we know that our customers are heavily working and innovating to address those challenges. So the new innovations are coming. Cell and gene therapies are showing being effective. They didn't bring the promise to cure diseases. They demonstrated that. Yet the manufacturing is cumbersome. They are very expensive. In some cases, a one-treatment cost, a cure treatment exceeds even EUR 1 million level. So, the customers need suppliers and partners like Sartorius to help them improve the efficiencies. And on the right side of this chart, you see how that improved or how that happened in the area of monoclonal antibodies when they started in the 1980s. The efficiencies and manufacturing was similarly unproductive or inefficient. But with the help of new technologies and evolvements of single-use, for example, what happened with our help as well, we could show a significant increase. And this is what we expect to happen also for these innovative technologies now moving forward. We have put a portfolio together which is very much suited and will be helping customers to achieve exactly that. On top of that, we have set ourselves ambitious sustainability targets. We want to by 2030 decrease, or until 2030 decrease, our CO2 emission intensity, which is like gram CO2 emissions per euro revenues by decreasing that by 10% for the Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions for Scope 1 and 2, which are directly in our influence. We target zero avoidable emissions. We want to use 100% electricity from renewable sources by 2030. I mentioned that we are working more and more on design of products, selection of materials to make our products recyclable. So more than 75% of our revenues by 2030 will come from products which are recyclable, also with or without zero waste going to landfill. By 2045, our ambition is to achieve together, of course, that's necessary with our supplier partners and with our user customer partners a net zero emissions from our supply chain. In 2025, next year, first time we will be reporting then also in accordance with Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive on our progress with this achieving these ambitious targets. Now, mid-term outlook, again, looking at robust solid market fundamentals for our business, we are projecting to grow low- to mid-teens range from now to 2028. One-fifth of that growth will be contributed by acquisition. That's our expectation. And we want to increase the margin from the target this year, which is slightly above 30% to above 35%. And that includes also expenses for the mentioned reduction of company CO2 emissions of around 1% of our revenues of our sales. With that, thank you very much for your attention. But to summarize our position, Sartorius Stedim Biotech, we see ourselves extremely well positioned in a strong market with strong fundamentals, with a team which is ambitious, which is very customer-focused and skilled, equipped with a highly competitive portfolio, broad product portfolio, integrated product portfolio, guided by clear strategy and ambitious ESG agenda and supported by ongoing investments and infrastructure in production and R&D. Thank you very much for your attention. Happy to take your questions later. Thank you. Thank you very much, René, for your presentation and the detailed explanations. Gentlemen, we are now continuing with today's agenda topics. We'll start with topic one and two of the ordinaries. Shall this meeting? Topic one relates to the three reports of the Board of Directors. I won't read out those reports because they are available in our URD and on our website as well. So the three reports are the management report of the Board of Directors and the Group Company Management Report, the Board of Directors report on resolutions for this ordinary shareholders meeting, and then the Corporate Governance Report. Topic two of our agenda relates to the three reports of the statutory auditors, which are published on our website as well. It's the report on the financial statements, the report on the consolidated financial statements, and then the report on the regulated agreements. Our statutory auditors from Deloitte and KPMG are not present with us today and excused for not being here. Their reports have been made available to you in accordance with the law and are posted, as said before, on our website for your easy reference. We will now continue with the vote of each resolutions, each of the resolutions, of the ordinary part of the meeting. This relates to the shareholders here present in the room. So for your information, as said before, I would like to inform you about the final quorum. It's 93.44%. And concerning the voting procedure, I ask the shareholders present to write your vote for each resolution on the certified paper form that has given to you at the time of signing in either by ticking for, against, or abstain. The paper form will be considered as proof. You don't need to raise your hand to express your vote. The voting form will be collected after the voting session. We will share the results resolution by resolution with you at the end of the shareholders' meeting. I will now go through the resolutions one by one. After each resolution, I will make a pause and you will have to fill in the certified voting form in accordance with the explanations received at the entrance of the meeting. So, as said, tick the respective box. So first voting, first resolution, and we will proceed to topic three and vote for the first resolution. This is the approval of the company's financial statements for the financial year ended on the 31st of December, 2023, and the discharge to all directors. So first voting. Second voting, second resolution. We will now vote for the second resolution, approval of the consolidated financial statements for the financial year ended on the 31st of December, 2023. We will continue with topic five of the agenda and the third resolution, allocation of the financial result for the financial year ended on 31st of December, 2023. Now we will continue with topic six of the agenda, which comprises 8 resolutions. They are clearly linked, one to the other about the remuneration of directors in compliance with the Say-on-Pay doctrine. These are the fourth voting related to the fourth resolution, fifth voting, sixth voting, seventh voting, eighth voting, ninth voting, the tenth voting, and then the eleventh voting, related to the eleventh resolution. Resolution number 4, approval of the remuneration policy and determination of the amount of the total annual remuneration to be allocated to the Board of Directors for the 2024 financial year. Resolution number 5, approval of the information mentioned in Article L. 22-10-9 of the French Commercial Code concerning the remuneration paid or awarded to the corporate officers for the 2023 financial year. Resolution six, approval of the fixed, variable, and extraordinary components of the remuneration and the benefits of all kinds paid or awarded to the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer from January 1st, 2023, to March 27th of 2023. This is the sixth voting. Resolution number seven, approval of the fixed, variable, and extraordinary components of the remuneration and the benefits of all kinds paid or awarded to the Deputy Chief Executive Officer from January 1st, 2023, to March 27th of 2023. This is the seventh resolution. Then the approval of the fixed, variable, and extraordinary components of the remuneration and the benefits of all kinds paid or awarded to the Chairman of the Board of Directors from March 26th to December 31st, 2023. This is the eighth voting. Then the resolution number nine is the approval of the respective remuneration components and benefits of all kinds awarded to the Chief Executive Officer from March 28 to December 31, 2023. Ninth voting for this. Then resolution number 10, approval of the remuneration policy of the Chairman of the Board of Directors for the 2024 financial year. And the approval of the remuneration policy of the Chief Executive Officer for the 2024 financial year is then the resolution number 11, respectively the voting number 11. Now we will continue with topic seven of the agenda and go through the resolutions 12 to 15 and the respective votings as these are closely related topics, dealing with the mandates of the board of directors and of our statutory auditors. Resolution and voting number 12 are about the renewal of the term of office of Mrs. Susan Dexter as director. Number 13, renewal of the term of office of Madame Anne-Marie Graffin as director. Then number 14, acknowledgment of the expiry of the mandate of a statutory auditor and appointment of new statutory auditors in replacement. It's 14. And 15 then is the appointment of a statutory auditor to certify sustainability information, 15th voting. And finally, resolution number 16, that's the authorization granted to the board of directors to enable the company to trade in its own shares. So, with that, we have come to the end of the voting process for the ordinary shareholder meeting. So we therefore now can start the voting process of the extraordinary shareholder meeting today. These are first about the topics nine and 10 of the agenda. Nine refers to the reading of the report of the board of directors on the proposed resolutions and on the complementary report, of the, that is, pursuant to the respective provisions of the French Commercial Code. And ten refers to the reading of the statutory auditor's special report. The board of directors' report on resolutions and the complementary report and the special report of the statutory auditors submitted to the extraordinary shareholders' meeting have been made available, as per the conditions prescribed by law and are described and are disclosed, sorry, in their entirety on our website. And therefore, again, I will not read them out today. We now continue with the vote, voting for those resolutions corresponding to the topics 11 and 12. And the voting process is just as described before for the voting and the resolutions before. So therefore, the seventh voting now. This is regarding the seventh resolution. This is about the amendments to the company's articles of association relating to board meetings and shareholders' meetings. Topic number 12 then concerns nine resolutions. And these are those from 18 to 26. They cover several delegations of authority granted to the board of directors in order to act on the shares, securities, and on the share capital of the company. So these are the resolutions and votings 18 to 26. And now I will briefly mention those nine resolutions. Delegation of authority granted to the board of directors to issue shares and/or securities giving access to the share capital of the company and/or securities giving the right to the allotment of debt instruments with preferential subscription rights of the shareholders. This is the 18th voting or 18th resolution and the 18th voting about that. Then I would like to continue with the resolution 19 and give you time for the 19th voting. That is the delegation of authority granted to the board of directors to issue shares and/or securities giving or capable of giving access to the share capital of the company and/or securities giving the right to the allotment of debt instruments without preferential subscription rights of the shareholders through public offerings other than those referred to in Article L. 411-2 of the French Monetary and Financial Code. So, 19th voting. I continue with resolution number 20. This is the delegation of authority granted to the Board of Directors to issue shares and/or securities giving or capable of giving access to the share capital of the company and/or the issuance of securities giving the right to the allotment of debt instruments without preferential subscription rights of the shareholders through public offerings addressed exclusively to qualified investors or to a restricted circle of investors as defined in Article L. 411-2 of the French Monetary and Financial Code. 20th voting. I continue with resolution number 21, delegation of authority to the Board of Directors to increase the number of shares and/or securities given or capable of giving access to the share capital of the company to be issued in case of share capital increase with or without preferential subscription rights of the shareholders. 21st voting. Resolution number 22, delegation of authority granted to the board of directors to decide to issue shares and/or securities given or capable of giving access to the share capital of the company as consideration for contributions in kind in shares and/or securities given or capable of giving access to capital without preferential subscription rights of shareholders. 22nd voting. Resolution number 23, delegation of authority granted to the board of directors to increase the share capital of the company through the capitalization of reserves, earnings, or premiums or any other sum upon which capitalization would be permitted. 23rd voting, please. Resolution number 24, delegation of authority granted to the board of directors to issue shares and/or securities given or capable of giving access to the share capital of the company reserved for members of company savings plan without preferential subscription rights of the shareholders. Voting number 24. Resolution 25, delegation of authority granted to the board of directors to grant free new or existing shares to the benefit of employees or corporate officers in the limit of 2% of the capital. Then finally, that is the 25th voting. Then resolution number 26, delegation of authority granted to the board of directors to reduce the capital in accordance with Article L. 22-10-62 of the French Commercial Code. This is then the last and 26th voting, please. I thank you for having cast your votes on the delegations of authority to the board. This was the last resolution vote for the extraordinary part of this shareholders' meeting. We will now collect your voting forms. Please make sure that they are completed. I now will announce the voting results of the resolutions of the ordinary shareholders' meeting corresponding to topics three to eight. If you allow, I will not read the resolutions out loud again because I did this before, during the meeting. Taking into account the votes received by correspondents, the proxies granted to the chairman, and the number of shares held by the shareholders present in the meeting room, we can state if these resolutions are adopted or rejected. The final exact percentage for each resolution will be available after final counting by the bank. They will be at your disposal for consultation in this room and on internet. So that means I will not give the precise percentage now, but just whether it's accepted or rejected. So the first resolution is accepted. So is the second accepted as well. And also the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth resolution. So all the resolutions of the ordinary shareholder meeting have been accepted. Again, exact percentage is available in this room later. I will now announce the respective voting results of the resolutions corresponding to topics 11 and 12, another 10 resolutions, and the 17th, 18th, 19th, 20th, 21st, 22nd, 23rd, fourth, fifth, and 26th resolution all are accepted as well. So all the resolutions of the extraordinary shareholder meetings have been accepted as well. So now I can move to the question and answer session and the general discussion. I would like to ask you to summarize your questions, if possible, so that we can make efficient use of our time here. And I would like to ask you that you are present here in the room for any questions with regard to particular topics of the agenda. We try to speak in English. I try to improve my English, but it's very difficult for me. I have one question concerning CellGenix. CellGenix. What is the hope for the patient? And And what is the perspective of business for our society for CellGenix? I think it was written it was expensive. So maybe better margin. I don't know. And I have another question concerning the acquisition of Polyplus. And usually when you have an acquisition, you have cost of integration and you have synergy. And maybe what is now the result of the cost of integration and the synergy from what you expected? And there was also another acquisition in December 2022. I think it was a minority in BICO, maybe. Can you explain what happened from the acquisition and what are is the future? I didn't understand very well. The acquisition of Polyplus was EUR 204 billion, and the capital increase was EUR 102 billion. Now the structure of the bill is now okay. Sorry. All right. Thank you very much for the questions. I take first and second. As I understood your question regarding gene therapies, right, what is the promise of gene therapies for patients, for the society, right, and how we contribute to that? You mentioned that they are expensive, yes. So in gene therapies, in simplified words, gene therapy tried to fix a gene defect or missing gene in the patients, in the body. And by that, with the potential to cure a disease. The expensive, the high price tag and so and what does it mean for patients? There will be medicines to cure diseases which were not curable before. They are expensive because they are new. There is the manufacturing processes are not industrial processes. It's like getting out of research lab and trying to do the research work in manufacturing. And that makes that therapy is very expensive. And of course, it's also to consider that curing a disease has a significant saving impact on the healthcare system compared to treating repeatedly a disease and not curing it, right? We have built a portfolio which will help our customers to get this cost down of their manufacturing. These reagents have a quality and performance where customers will reduce their manufacturing costs. Polyplus. Polyplus was your question is one of these companies. And you asked for synergies from Polyplus acquisition. We see them mostly in three areas. One is in sales, in our teams which are going to customers and helping them to implement these new technologies, synergies with companies and sales teams from Albumedix, from Xell. We have acquired the companies before, Biological Industries, as well. So strong synergies in on the sales side. Then in operations, we see synergies rather in harmonizing quality systems. These reagents are manufactured according to so-called GMP quality systems, which is new to our company. We got that level of GMP quality with the acquisitions. And across with CellGenix or Albumedix, they also run their operations according to GMP quality. So there we see synergies there as well. And maybe mid-term, long-term, most important is in the innovation. How we will be able to adjust these reagents to work even better together when cell culture media and transfection reagents are developed as a system together, they will provide even better saving to our customers. Maybe, to answer also your, I think, third and fourth question, the third one, I think, was on the acquisition of a minority stake in the Swedish company BICO. This was taking place in December 2022, so not the most recent fiscal year. Maybe more importantly here, it was not an investment by Sartorius Stedim Biotech, but an investment by the majority shareholder Sartorius AG. Nevertheless, as this is in the public domain, I can just briefly say this is in the field of manufacturing organoids, for example, which is an interesting, yeah, let's say, cell culture construct that can be used in both drug development as also in regenerative medicine. BICO has some interesting platform technologies that are used for that. Therefore we have acquired this minority stake alongside agreeing upon a technical cooperation with that company. And then your fourth question was about the, yeah, the ratio between the share price that we have paid for the acquisition of Polyplus, which have been EUR 2.4 billion, and the capital increase of Sartorius Stedim Biotech that we made earlier this year. This was EUR 1.2 billion euros. And you I think your question was whether we have a healthy debt ratio now and how we would see this. And we would consider the debt ratio of the company now to be on a already very healthy level. And more importantly, we have a strong organic cash flow. I think our CEO, René, just also described the focus that we are having on reducing debt further, improving working capital positions, etc. So we are quite confident we'll have reduced net debt to EBITDA ratio, which is typically a strong indicator here, below three by the end of this year. Are we having further questions? Please. Could you elaborate a little more about China? And second, there is a lot of words about AI, artificial intelligence. And. Sure. Or the software. But is there any interest for you specific to doing that? Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So, first of all, on China, going back to the pre-pandemic time, what we have seen in the industry in China was strong investments and increase of investments into pharma and biotech. China started to not only develop and manufacture biosimilars, which are like generic drugs for biologics, but more and more invested in innovation, developing innovative drugs by themselves. That got even further boosted during the pandemic where a lot of money has been put into China markets, into new companies, new biotech, new contract development and manufacturing companies. They have built new facilities, capacities to serve the, you know, this growth in China biopharma space. During the pandemic, China faced, as all other regions, shortages in supply. And that triggered also a rise and, yeah, development of local suppliers. So companies which started to provide bags, filters, equipment locally. And Chinese customers started to prefer those to secure the supply due to the security of supply. Then after the pandemic, this boom, the need for vaccines declined significantly. So that we've seen that in Q2 2023, really in Q1 still, you know, the market was expecting that it's coming back, but it didn't. On top of that, we see Chinese government to put pressure on drug prices, which also makes that for our customers more difficult to further invest in development. So now we believe we are kind of at the bottom of this correction of the market. We don't see and expect that this is gonna improve anytime soon. Not this year. We don't see at least any signs of improvement yet. On the long term, however, we believe that due to the simple fact that China has a huge population that is in need of such medicines, it will come back. The innovation will continue. And then also that will provide a market, an opportunity for us to participate in this China market again. Of course, we see also geopolitical issues which play a role here. So still, a yet to be seen recovery for China. Okay. You asked also for AI tools, the usage of AI tools in our business. Indeed, we have a number of activities and developments going on. Give you a couple of examples on the bioprocess side. We are working with external collaboration development partners to create, like, AI models or simulations of a cell culture process, for example, to predict the performance better, and by that reducing number of experiments our customers need to do to understand how to scale up, for example, a manufacturing process. So we are active there. And another example from the other division, from lab, is using AI tools for image recognition of images of living cells. We are selling providing equipment for live cell analysis. And AI tools can improve very much the outcome of such analysis or use of the data of such analysis. We are working with, again, a very prominent institute specializing on artificial intelligence to develop these AI tools, moving forward. Yeah. Thank you, René. Are we having further questions? There's one more. I'm sorry, but my English is not very good. So I risk my question is in French. The first question. Even if your debt ratio seems quite low, it seems according to financial auditors that your latest acquisition was way too expensive. That was my first question, if you want to answer now. And then I'll ask my second question. You will not be surprised that we have a different view. We definitely agree that the multiples that you have to pay when you want to win in very competitive auctions are quite high in the sector. There is no doubt about that. But the company Polyplus is an extraordinarily well-positioned company with a very significant share in a workflow and with a technology that is essential for manufacturing gene therapies. And as René already said, there are substantial synergies also that allow us to gain market share also in the adjacent fields. And I think what is important also to keep in mind that the relevant multiple is the one related to the profit of a company and not so much to the sales revenue. The profit that Polyplus has achieved so far and is continuing to achieve hasn't been disclosed. I can say it's a very profitable business. Therefore the profit multiple that we have agreed to pay, almost a year ago, has been in line with comparable transactions. No, madame, madame question. My second question concerns the weakness of the dividend and the EUR 0.64, if I followed right, regarding the rate of the share with 0.2%. If you trust the future of what I understood, you could at least have rewarded the share the individual shareholders and keep the dividend at the level it had the previous year to show that you trust the individual shareholders. I don't know if there are very many here. It's a gentleman and myself. I think like fixing the level of dividend is always a consideration where you have to balance different interests. A lot of shareholders are also encouraging us to not pay any dividend because they are saying you are a technology-oriented, very much growth-oriented company. A lot of companies, particularly in the North American market, for example, never pay dividends during such phases. We try to balance this in a way that we say, okay, we determine a reliable payout ratio. I think René referred to it. It was roughly 17.5% of the underlying net result that we are paying out. That is very much the same payout ratio that we have paid out over the last couple of years. We believe it's a fair balance, and also a very predictable and reliable number because we keep this payout ratio pretty much constant. So that is the consideration that is behind how we proceed here. Are we having further questions? Did not understand. The future growth is 1 digit or 2 digit in terms of revenue or in terms of. It's difficult, very difficult to have an idea what the future is. But in your mind, if you have the information. Yeah. So, as I explained during the presentation, overall biopharma market growth we expect at 10% moving forward like next five years. We are guiding and expecting our business growth above this 10% growth. We are saying low teens to mid-teens. So 11, let's say 14, 15%. Right? That's what we expect to grow. Why above the market growth? On one side, we see still single-use technology usage is increasing, especially new drugs which are coming to the market, which are low volume, which can be manufactured using these more flexible single-use technologies. This is where we are strong and market-leading. We expect to gain further market shares, especially in North America. Moving forward, we will see what China will bring after recovery. We also, now by having built a portfolio, relevant portfolio for these cell and gene therapies where we expect the market growing 20, 20%, and above that we will also that yeah, that will drive our above-market growth, as well. So that's the. What's your market share in cell and gene therapy? And are you depending on the bigger market share than the average company has? Because it's, So cell and gene therapy is, honestly, a very young market. Okay. So when talking about market shares, there are approved drugs, few of them, and yet volumes are not large. So that from a perspective of revenues of biologics of these cell therapies compared, for example, to, to for example, to monoclonal antibodies today is a very small market. I showed that the majority in the market segment is happening in development today. And there you look at the market share by in how many molecules, our products being used and specified. And, as Joachim mentioned, and I mentioned that during the presentation, for example, Polyplus has a very strong share in being used in these developments, like has CellGenix, like has Albumedix. So we see ourselves in this development being very well positioned. And now it's coming about; it's about these drugs getting approved. Right? We'll depend which drugs get approved and which not. But that will drive our short-term growth a lot. We continue to specify these products. I mentioned the synergies cross-selling with Polyplus and other CellGenix, Albumedix, specify them as much as possible into new drugs which are coming into development. So we believe in that area of these reagents and critical materials and cell culture media, the portfolio we've built, we have quite a strong market share already today and will be increasing now in the future. What is your main challenge with this? Mm-hmm. Long year? Yeah. Mm-hmm. So, it's a bit different competitive landscape than in the core business. In the core business, there are like four main competitors. Here we have a larger number of smaller competitors. The main competitors are active as well, but larger number of smaller competitors. So it, and by area, it's different strengths and, and, you know, and, market position. So it's quite a, quite a, diverse, broad range of smaller players. Looking at the, the portfolio we have built together, such a comparable portfolio, we don't really see, a competitor having that. So we, we try to position ourselves in that space, in a different. As for consumables? Yeah. There are some of them that are stronger in equipment, for example, in cell and gene therapies. We are stronger now in these consumables, critical materials. So it's a different per technology category. So ladies and gentlemen, I would like to remind us that we have a shareholders' meeting here. I invite everyone to have direct interaction here with management after the meeting. Or I encourage everyone also to contact investor relations. Yeah, because I really appreciate your interest. Honestly, do. But I think within the scope of a shareholders' meeting, I think we should stick a bit to the agenda items that we are having. So therefore we will not run away after the closing of the meeting. So then we can have further discussions if that is, if this is needed. So thank you very much for your questions. I consider that all questions related to the agenda here today are completely answered. Further, I would like to inform you that no questions were raised by shareholders ahead of this annual shareholders' meeting. I therefore will now close the question and answer session. So far we have reached the end of our today's combined ordinary and extraordinary shareholder meeting. Therefore I would like to close our 2024 combined shareholders meeting of Sartorius Stedim Biotech SA. Thank you very much for your participation and for your interest in the company. Thank you very much.