Good morning, everyone, a warm welcome to our full year results presentation. Great to see lots of you in the room and many online as well, too. As usual, I'm here with Jez, our final appearance on the public stage together after an eight-year partnership. It's official now, Hugh Grant is retiring. A lot of people think he looks like Hugh Grant. His successor, Louisa Burdett here. Could have called you something else there, Jez. His successor, Louisa Burdett, is here today, and hope you get a chance to say hello and see her afterwards as well. She's looking forward to introducing herself over the coming months and formally taking over in three weeks as well. I'm very much looking forward to working with Louisa. She'll be great for Croda. Okay then. Usual agenda then. This morning with some overview comments from me before back by Jez on the numbers, and then back to me to get you excited about direction of travel for Croda in terms of our strategy. We'll, of course, be very happy to take any of your questions. Onto the results. It's been another milestone year for the group with a huge, huge amount of progress across all areas of the business. Strong growth in both core sectors and most geographies. After adding GBP 150 million of profit in 2021, we've delivered record set results again in 2022. We've added a further GBP 50 million of profit, and that's despite divesting our industrial business halfway through the year and much lower sales of Lipid Systems during the pandemic. It's a quite remarkable achievement. It demonstrates the strength of the organic growth in the business. It also shows our ability to navigate a challenging macro environment too, while successfully managing significant input cost inflation and supply chain disruption. A major highlight this year has been the further portfolio evolution in the group. We've exited cyclical industrial markets to increase our focus on faster growth niches in both Consumer Care and Life Sciences, bringing our business closer than ever with the exciting emerging mega trends that we see around the business. We've continued, as you'd expect us to invest in innovation, bringing new products to market whilst building our pipeline for continued growth in the years to come. The progress is driven by our operating model, the bedrock of our business. It's reinforced by relentless focus on commercializing people's knowledge. That's what we do. Alongside disciplined investment and strong execution. For the first time in Croda's history, sales increased above GBP 2 billion and profits exceeded GBP 500 million. Quite an achievement, that too. I've been really pleased with our ability to manage significant raw material cost inflation. We haven't seen that for about 15 years in the group. Sign of a strong business when you can move profits forward. Price mix was a massive 24%, reflecting the need to recover these costs. We've announced an 8% increase in the full year dividend, continuing our unbroken track record of dividend growth of more than 30 years. Turning to the sectors, I'm very pleased with the strong progress that we've made in our core businesses. Consumer Care is becoming ever more resilient, achieving record sales and profits last year. The renaissance in Beauty Care continues thanks to the strong demand for sustainable ingredients. Solar Care was especially strong, reflecting high demand for mineral sunscreens. While sales of eco, bio-based surfactants are a threefold increase as well. F&F is bringing great balance to the portfolio. Whilst our industry had to manage significant destocking in the second half, they posted their best half for two years, growing more than 10% in constant currency. Very strong growth there in emerging markets, supported by sales synergies building too. We continue to see a structural shift in consumer demand towards sustainable ingredients, and we're responding to this with a shift to bio-based and biotechnology across our portfolio. You'll hear a lot more of that over the next year or two. As expected in Consumer Care, the second half was impacted by customer destocking following strong demand in 2021, particularly in North America. It also reflects selective demarketing that we've chosen to do on low-margin products due to some capacity constraints. This is a classic destocking cycle playing out in the industry, so important to look at Consumer Care's performance through the lens of the year as a whole. Life Sciences has had another great year building on exceptional 2021, where we benefited from the strong demand for COVID-19 vaccines. Whilst Lipid Systems sales reduced for COVID vaccines, all other areas grew double-digit growth. Crop Protection was a standout performer as we continue to benefit from a growing demand for sustainable solutions. We made excellent progress in pharma, not least in growing our pipeline of non-COVID delivery systems. We've also repositioned the business to increase its focus on fast growth areas and empower further biologics delivery. As you know, we've got six strategic priorities, and we've made excellent progress, delivering against each one of them this year. We've continued to focus on strengthening Consumer Care and expanding Life Sciences, focused on fast-growing niche markets. We're continuing to see fast growth in Asia, where we now have over 1,500 employees, more than in North America. Our recent agreement to acquire Solus Biotech is going to further accelerate our progress, which I'll come onto later. We're scaling biotechnology with more than 100 biotech derived products now in our portfolio. Our scouting network is building our pipeline of potentially technology acquisitions. Lots of momentum and excellent strategic progress this year. We've been just as focused on delivering our non-financial targets too. You know, as you can see from the slide, with progress against all of our KPIs, we've delivered a 20% reduction in Scope 1 and 2 against our baseline year. With 81% of suppliers now engaged to improve the sustainability of our products. Crucially, we're taking the organization with us, with three-quarters of our employees recommending Croda as a place to work. We're also giving back to the communities that we work in. It's about impact, positive impact. The Croda Foundation has committed GBP 3 million to 21 grants across 19 countries, and it's impacting nearly 15 million lives, and we've just started. Many of these projects utilize the skills and expertise of our people. For example, we're helping to enhance the yield of seeds native to the Amazon so that indigenous people can use their land more effectively. All in all, a great year, and we're all set for the year ahead, which I'll come back to, and we continue to do the right things in Croda, and we do them very well. Now, let me hand over to Jez for a more detailed run-through of our financial performance. I mean, Jez. Okay. Thanks, Steve. Good morning, everybody. As Steve has highlighted, through consistent execution, the group has another record financial performance in 2022. Reported sales and adjusted profit before tax both increased by 11%, with sales exceeding GBP 2 billion and adjusted profit exceeding GBP 500 million for the first time ever. EBIT return on sales was broadly flat at 24.7%. Adjusted profit before tax increased by GBP 50 million to GBP 496. The effective tax rate on adjusted profit rose slightly over 2021 to 22.8%. That's still a bit below our medium-term guidance of 24%. Adjusted EPS was up 9% at 272 pence, and we've proposed an 8% increase in the full-year dividend to 108 pence. Free cash flow has started to improve with some softening in input cost inflation, with a 9% increase in 2022 to GBP 167 million. Turning to the IFRS reconciliation, exceptional items worth GBP 38 million, primarily an impairment of the goodwill acquired with the standalone Iberchem Flavours business in 2020, which is behind its acquisition plan. Intangible amortization was unchanged at GBP 34 million, and we delivered a profit on divestment of the PTIC business of GBP 356 million. As a result, on an IFRS basis, profit before tax nearly doubled to GBP 780 million. Turning now to the sales bridge. The chemical sector has seen significant inflation since the start of 2021, with our raw material basket increasing by 23% in 2022 on top of 17% in 2021. Encouragingly, this basket peaked in Q3 and has seen modest declines in Q4 and into the current quarter, although we do continue to see inflation in the other operating expense areas, particularly labor and energy. In response, our powerful operating model has allowed us to successfully recover these inflationary increases, including the benefit of new innovative products, price mix added 24% year-on-year. Organic volume in the retained business declined by 6% year-on-year. The impact of divesting the majority of the PTIC business in June 2022 resulted in a 13% decline in sales. That's the impact on total sales of not owning the divested business in the second half year. Acquisitions added 1%. We also benefited from Sterling's weakness, particularly against the U.S. dollar, which increased reported currency sales by 5%. You can also see on the right-hand side, what the impact would have been had we not owned the PTIC divested business at all during 2022. Sales would have been GBP 191 million lower than we're reporting today, that's the sales you need to deduct in order to arrive at the baseline number for 2023. This slide looks at the same bridge, but for adjusted operating profit. Organic growth in 2022 added GBP 53 million to adjusted profit with growth across all three sectors. This was an excellent performance, particularly as Steve said, given that lipid sales reduced by $60 million from the peak of 2021's COVID-driven demand. The PTIC divestment reduced operating profit by GBP 27 million, being the benefit we had in the second half of 2021 compared with not owning the business in the second half of 2022. There was again, a small acquisition profit benefit and currency translation added GBP 19 million. Again, on the right-hand side, you can see what the benefit was in the first half from owning the PTIC business pre-divestment. Operating profit would have been GBP 39 million lower than actually reported. Again, that's the profit that you need to adjust for in baselining the 2023 performance. Looking now from a geographic destination perspective, all regions saw good growth in sales and profit other than North America. Asia achieved a record year with strong demand, particularly in Life Sciences, and also delivered modest growth in China despite the pandemic lockdowns. Demand in Western Europe remained robust despite higher prices and energy costs, with strong growth, particularly in Crop Protection and in Beauty Care. Latin America enjoyed good growth led by demand in the regional Crop Protection market and supported by Consumer Care demand, including the new F&F operation there. Eastern Europe saw a negative financial impact from the closure of our Russian business, which overall represented 1% of group sales in 2021. In North America, sales were very strong in 2021 and peaked in the first quarter of 2022. Since then, demand has softened in Consumer Care and Pharma, the latter partly reflecting lower COVID-19 demand post-pandemic. We'll look at the global sector performance. Consumer Care delivered a solid performance with sales up 18% and adjusted operating profit 9% higher. Margin was, however, diluted by lower volume and an adverse business mix. 2021 had been an exceptional year in Life Sciences, it was very pleasing to see continued sales and profit growth in 2022. Sales reduced to 33.6% due to Crop Protection being a larger proportion of the sales at a slightly lower margin, together with a normalizing Lipid Systems margin. The new Industrial Specialties sector holds the remaining industrial businesses and the supply agreement with the new PTIC owner. Sales declined year-on-year due to the divestment, but were strong in underlying terms thanks to robust commodity prices globally. Despite the divestment, operating profits still increased year-on-year. return on sales was in line with our expectations, close to 16%. Looking at that 18% sales growth for Consumer Care, the sector saw the largest impact from inflation recovery with price mix 22% higher. Volume was 12% lower, which was driven by two primary components. We had seen very strong demand from customers back in 2021 to meet post-pandemic consumer recovery with customers also buying ahead to mitigate surging inflation and secure supplies in problematic global supply chains. In the second half of 2021 alone, personal care sales were 20% up year-on-year. During the first half of 2022, supply chain issues eased somewhat, and it became clear that there were significant excess stocks across both our customers and the retail supply chain. This led to destocking by customers in the second half of 2022, particularly in North America, which also has significant onward customer export to China, where retail sales were impacted by COVID lockdowns. Overall, destocking is estimated to have accounted for five percentage points of the 2022 volume drop. Second factor is that we suffered some capacity constraints. Earlier in the year, this was due to high demand in areas such as Solar Care and hair care. Later in the year, we suffered some plant downtime constraining supply from some of our sites. Both these factors caused us to demarket, which we hope to recover as 2023 progresses. This impacted sales by another five percentage points. In addition, we exited our Russia operation, reducing sales by one percentage point. Previous acquisitions added 2% to overall sales growth and currency added 6%. Across the four businesses in Consumer Care, Beauty Care and Fragrances saw the strongest growth with increasing demand for sustainable ingredients and a recovery in emerging markets benefiting Iberchem after the weakness it saw in 2021. Asia continues to be a strong growth market in Consumer Care. We're investing more resource there, as well as agreeing the Solus Biotech acquisition in South Korea. That will cement our presence in three key skincare technologies: peptides, retinol, and ceramides. Profit in Consumer Care grew overall through a combination of underlying sales growth and currency benefit. However, return on sales declined to 22.8%. This was impacted by operating gearing on lower volume, particularly in the 4th quarter, together with a weaker business mix as Beauty Care and F&F were the stronger performers compared with the higher margin Beauty Actives business. Just under one percentage point of the decline also represents the reallocation of dis-synergy costs following the divestment of the PTIC business, which will be recovered as proceeds are reinvested into more growth through acquisition. Following our outstanding year in for Life Sciences in 2021, with rapid expansion of the PhRMA business following the Avanti acquisition and exceptional COVID demand-driven vaccine, it was great to see further progress in 2022. Sales grew by 19%, with performance strengthening in the second half of the year. Price mix grew by 6% and volume was 8% higher, giving total underlying growth of 14%. There were no acquisitions during the period, currency at 5%. 2022's strong performance was achieved despite the anticipated 40% decline in sales of Lipid Systems due to lower demand from our principal COVID-19 vaccine customers. But the balance of the Pharma business, together with Crop Protection and Seed Enhancement, all grew sales double-digit percentage terms. Crop Protection was the standout business, benefiting from strong agricultural commodity prices and a good demand environment. Within PhRMA, the Nucleic Acid Delivery Systems business is developing its portfolio from the blockbuster 20 COVID-19 vaccines, which drove demand in 2021, to the new mRNA and gene therapy vaccines and therapeutic drugs for the future. 2022 sales in the business were approximately $170 million, a little ahead of our expectations at the half year, mainly due to higher COVID-19 vaccine demand in Q4, although sales are still well down on their peak of $230 million in 2021. More excitingly, sales outside the principal COVID-19 vaccine customers represented almost 40% of the 2022 lipid business and are expected to overtake COVID vaccine demand in 2023, when we still expect to deliver GBP 120 million of total lipid sales. Overall, 2024 lipid sales should be stable with 2023, we will see growth through applications in mRNA and gene therapy from the growing innovation pipeline thereafter. Turning to cash flow. EBITDA grew strongly. Working capital increased by GBP 134 million, reflecting the end of inflation on inventory and receivables values, which added GBP 82 million to working capital with an underlying increase of GBP 50 million in holding higher stocks and having higher receivables. With raw material prices peaking in Q3, working capital has started to reduce a trend which we expect to continue in 2023. CapEx was a little below our guidance of GBP 150 million-GBP 160 million. This is due to a delayed phasing with the proceeds from the PTIC divestment. Net debt reduced to GBP 295 million, which is a leverage ratio of half a ton of EBITDA. On that theme, this is a reminder of our capital allocation policy, particularly relevant given our low gearing level post the PTIC divestment. Policy remains unchanged from what I've shown previously, the divestment is allowing us to deploy more capital to support expansion in higher growth, higher return in Consumer Care and Life Sciences markets. Firstly, we're investing organic capital spend with a rich seam of growth opportunities in new capacity, products innovation and geographic expansion. Our typical CapEx remains around 6% of sales or GBP 120 million per year. In addition, we're partway through our pharma investment program to meet the growth in proteins, vaccine adjuvants, and particularly nucleic acid delivery. Croda is investing GBP 175 million in this program, with an additional GBP 75 million being provided by U.S. and U.K. governments. Secondly, we're committed to pay a regular and increasing dividend to shareholders with 2022's 8% increase continuing an over 30-year unbroken record of dividend growth. Thirdly, we're complementing our organic investment with targeted acquisitions in technology adjacencies in line with our preferred approach to buy and build. Recently, we announced the acquisition of Solus Biotech and continue to look at target technology platforms in both Consumer Care and Life Sciences. Finally, we monitor leverage against our target policy of 1-2x EBITDA, returning surplus capital to shareholders where that's identified. I'll now hand you back to Steve to talk about those strategic opportunities. Thank you. Thanks, Jez. Okay. As I said earlier, the portfolio evolution has been a major part of population and living sustainably, and that's what drives us. These are the mega trends giving us a greater demand for more sustainable ingredients and this move to biologics, which is just starting for us, and that's transforming medicine today, and will transform agriculture over the next decade too. We're planning ahead and, as you can see, we're reshaping our portfolio. Over the last five years with strategic technology acquisitions enabling Croda to meet the big changes that we're seeing. Following the successful sale of our industrial business in the summer, we're now a stronger margin, higher returning, less cyclical and higher knowledge-intensive business. It's about commercializing people's knowledge in Croda. We'll invest the proceeds from this sale, as we normally do on building our knowledge base all around the world and strengthen our market-leading propositions. We go to market via these seven businesses, dynamic businesses, highly focused businesses that you're familiar with. They all have managing directors running them, and they're enabling Croda to expand within each of these industry niches, which are growing fast, so much faster than others. What's even more exciting is these niches are all getting much bigger. The growth profile for Croda in the next four or five years are a lot different to the last five years. This underpins our confidence in being able to deliver more consistent sales growth across pharma, crop, and in Consumer Care over the next three years. There's a much greater depth and breadth as well to our portfolio. If you can see on the top right, very well balanced now, relative to three years ago. All these businesses have strong growth characteristics. They all should grow. This is reinforced by a very well balanced geographical footprint now. We're strong in all parts of the world. As we look to 2023, no surprise, but our six strategic objectives remain unchanged. It's all about delivery, delivering further progress in each of them. In particular, in Asia, we will move quickly to integrate Solus Biotech once under our ownership. We'll also launch a Scope 3 emissions index to reinforce our sustainability leadership in Consumer Care and continue to commercialize our exciting pharma pipeline in Life Sciences that we talked to you about in October. We'll focus on ensuring that our biotech investments delivers higher MPP too, expand our pipeline of potential acquisitions and deliver additional benefits to customers through automation as well. Coming back to each of the sectors then in turn, shining a light on strengthening Consumer Care. You know, the chart there shows how we're growing our business in Asia. It's been a top priority, we've been steadily increasing our investment in the region over the last few years. The personal care market is growing rapidly, as our technical marketing and sales network has evolved, we're generating strong growth in the region, as you can see from the chart at the bottom right. Within the region, China is growing fastest, no surprise there, we're very well established there, serving the domestic market through imports and local production. We are replicating our U.S. model too, increasing our ability to serve a growing customer base of indie brands. We've committed more CapEx to build a sustainable surfactant plant in India and scale up a site in Singapore to develop sustainable biopolymers, all about the shift to sustainable ingredients. Turning to innovation then in Consumer Care now, one of our big bet innovation projects is scaling biotech to harness its potential alongside our conventional chemical technologies. Croda is already a leader in biotechnology-derived Beauty Actives. Again, you've heard that from us before, and we're bringing more and more products into the market. These include on the left, Nautilus, an anti-aging active that makes skin look younger by enhancing oxygenation. One for our senior sales side in the room, analysts. Not looking at you, Mark. There's also Mona as well, which treats skin pigmentation disorders associated with menopause. Both are based on technologies we've acquired over the last decade. Biotech's potential extends well beyond actives, to things like animal keratin and also on hair care and microbial cleaners rather than chemical ones. You know, biotechnology for Croda is very much carbon reduction with great performance. As I mentioned, our strategy is to strengthen Consumer Care, and our acquisition of Solus Biotech in South Korea, announced earlier this month, will just do that. Very exciting for us. It's a global leader in biotech skin actives. It's been around for 30 years. It's got a lot of knowledge in the business. Solus brings a very exciting portfolio of ceramides, phospholipids, as well as an emerging capability in bioretinol as well. Effectively, we bought three businesses. That's how we look at that. Very exciting ones, too. The number of new personal care products containing ceramides, you can see in the graph, has doubled over the last five years. Principally for skincare, you'll see it as premium skincare, but increasingly for hair care formulations, too. Ceramides are essentially the glue that holds our skin cells together and keep our skin barrier intact and healthy. They have a big role underneath the surface of the skin. Whilst this capability opens up opportunities for us all around the world, the fastest-growing ceramide market is in Asia. This gives us a strong foothold in the region. Phospholipids are very exciting, too. They are natural and sustainable, filling a gap in our portfolio, which will bring real benefits to our customers as delivery systems for cosmetics. Under our ownership, we'll be able to significantly accelerate Solus Biotech's growth through access to our technical and innovation capabilities around the world, particularly in formulation and by leveraging our global selling network, still the most valuable thing in Croda today. We're targeting 5 x growth over the next five years. It's a strategic bullseye, as you can see, from the wheel. You know, it gives us a bigger portfolio of natural skin and sustainable active ingredients for our Consumer Care business. Products containing natural ceramides are at the luxury end of the market, you know, so it's premium skincare, Sederma 2.0. It will increase our exposure then. Solus also brings a GMP-certified plant focused on high-growth Asian pharma markets. Their natural phospholipids are an immediate plug-and-play into our excipients portfolio, providing important delivery system ingredients for injectable drugs and intravenous nutrition as well. They're also developing lipids which are complementary to Avanti's, there's real opportunity for us to accelerate nucleic acid delivery growth here as well. Phospholipids are very important for the pharma business too. It's Sederma 2.0, we'll help them deliver that, and it's Avanti 2.0 as well, help them deliver there. Importantly, the two premium franchises in the group, Solus will strengthen both of them and transform them to the next level. That's why we're interested in them. We'll also be able to establish a central hub from which to scale our biotech capabilities in Asia now. Their skills and knowledge will enhance our current activities and help us deliver on our ambitious sustainability targets. Finally, as our first manufacturing location in Korea, Solus accelerates our Fast Grow Asia plan, providing a springboard to premium and luxury markets across North Asia and beyond. A great deal for Croda. We're very excited. Great for personal care, great for pharma as well. Just turning to Life Sciences then. The opportunities here are also very significant across all three businesses. You know, remember, it's crop, it's seed, and it's pharma. In Crop Protection here, you know, conventional pesticides are by far the biggest market where sustainable delivery is a critical need. Croda is a leading innovator here in this area with technology to help our customers reach their new sustainability goals. For example, Syngenta awarded Croda its reduction in carbon supply award on the left here. Daniele in the picture there as well. Reducing carbon benefit. You know, we're creating value for customers by reducing carbon as well as giving them great products. We're also investing in systems for biopesticides as well that use microbials and RNA. They're starting to come on the market. It is a much smaller market at the moment, but growing much quicker. For example, here is a delivery system for a biofungicide that is far more specific than chemical equivalents. Again, our ingredients are driving the next generation of biopesticides. In seed enhancement, our range of microplastic-free seed coatings are generating successful results from field trials with all major customers across all regions. This is creating significant growth opportunities for the seed treatment business as well. Turning finally to pharma, our drug delivery technologies are generating revenue across all stages of the drug cycle. Working from left to right, excluding COVID-19 vaccines, the balance of the pharma business delivered good global double-digit growth in 2022. Our delivery systems play a key role in thousands of patented and generic drugs. This is really exciting and underpins our double-digit percentage sales growth target for pharma that we talked to you about in October. With the possibility of breakout growth clearly on top of that, if some of these hit the market with big blockbusters. The pipeline is fed by our relationships in the third column, the 5,000 companies and research institutes that we are working with. That feeds the pipeline into the clinical program. Finally, at the end, yeah, we have our own innovation pipeline that pulls it together, new technologies that haven't been launched yet. Overall, when you look at it all, you know, it's really exciting to see that it's the breadth and the depth of the program that we're involved in that's really exciting. That will support our GBP 1 billion pharma business ambition by 2030. Again, you know, you heard that from us before. Just to shine a light on some examples for you, on the left in operation today, Herceptin is the world's leading drug for breast cancer. It uses monoclonal antibodies to stop the cancer cells from growing and dividing, and uses our specialty excipients in its delivery system. On the market now, you know, we're saving lives with our products. You know, smart science to save lives. Also with only one commercialized mRNA application today for COVID-19 vaccines, not surprising that most nucleic acid delivery drugs are in clinical development or discovery. Interesting ones that are not far from the market are the ones where you use a combination of COVID and flu vaccines. We're in a phase 3 trial right now with a number of other flu projects behind as well. You know, a combination drug of COVID and flu not far from the market. How to deliver drugs to the brain is an important question when we look at drug discovery. You know, the blood-brain barrier, for example, does a great job keeping out unwanted substances, but also impedes drug transport to the brain. We're working with an Asian biopharma company, which has developed a carrier technology to solve this challenge, opening up the possibility of treating an array of rare diseases. In terms of our own innovation, we're working with a leading Danish health institute, research institute to develop two new adjuvant systems there too. These are for novel therapeutic vaccines that have huge potential for treating already contracted diseases. In summary and wrapping things up, we've had a good start to the year with the group trading in line with our expectations. In Consumer Care, customer destocking should end in the first half, supporting continued sales growth this year there. In Life Sciences, good sales growth in Crop and on our non-COVID pharma business should offset lower COVID lipid sales through the year. Overall, our performance is expected to be more second half-weighted, reflecting the divestment of our Industrials business in the first half last year and phasing of COVID-19 lipid shipments too. As ever, the power of our operating model and focus on fast-growing niches will enable Croda to deliver consistent, superior returns. There's a lot to be excited about. We feel like there's a growth machine in Croda, which is bigger than it was in the past, coming to you and to us. A portfolio that is more aligned to the fast growth megatrends, more opportunities that are getting bigger, a transformative pharma pipeline with increased resilience in Consumer Care, and a strong balance sheet to support continued investment to deliver this growth and value to you and our wider shareholders. Finally, I just wanna thank Jez very much for the role that he's played with me for eight years. We've been a great partnership and he's done a terrific job for Croda, and he leaves with our best wishes for a long and happy retirement. Thanks for everything, Jez. We'll stop the webcast there if that's all right, and then we'll take some questions. There is some bacon sandwiches or sandwiches of some description. We're staying with the Q&A. Oh, sorry. Sorry, I beg you pardon. We're staying. Yeah. Well, have a go. We're staying with the Q&A, yeah. After the Q&A, when it's finished, if people wanna stay around to see Louisa and everybody else. Daniele's here and Fitz is here as well. You're very welcome to have a coffee with us and a sandwich afterwards if you haven't eaten this morning. Let's start now. Come on, Gunther. We'll let you go first again. Thank you. Thank you, and thanks, Jez, for your communication to the markets as well and your role at Croda. Steve, if I can start with a couple, please. The first one, you mentioned softening in raw material costs you're starting to see. If there's a guidance you could provide for the full year, what are your planning assumptions for raw material costs and any guidance around energy and logistics, which you said is still increasing? Second of all, coming back to slide 17, - 5% for customer destocking. How do you calculate that? Or another way of putting it, what are the error bars around it, and what are the error bars around the guidance that this will end with H1? Yeah. Bonus question is, why did Croda not increase the dividend 30 years ago? Yeah. Do you know what? Do you know what? You've been with Croda for 30 years. I joined in 1990, so just before I joined. No, I mean, let's do raw materials. Interesting, raw materials softened Q4 from Q3 by 4%. We expect about similar figure into Q1 from Q4. We're not seeing a big slide of raw material increases, and we're not forecasting that this year. Still quite a lot of moving parts, and that's a positive because that means demand is still holding up pretty strongly. You know, proxy for that, a large portion of our raw materials are veg related and natural related, and they're a function of demand. You would see that come off if demand drops. That's reinforcing in many ways of this strength in demand, you know, which is, you know... we think this destocking is the main area there. Jez, on the energy cost. Because I'll come back to the demarketing in a minute. We will have a increase year-on-year. Energy costs in 2021 were about 2.4% of sales value. Last year they were about 3%. We're anticipating some energy cost increases, but of course, they look a lot lower now than they did just three or four months ago. We have hedging in place, typically on a rolling basis for about four to six months. We won't benefit from all of the recent reductions. I'd expect some increase, but I mean, we're probably talking up to 50 basis points of sales. We're in a relatively small sort of area. I suspect we're probably a little bit more focused on labor inflation 'cause that tends to be a bit more of a drag. I think logistics is settling down now. Obviously labor's quite big. Cost of living increases tend to go through a little bit obviously in arrears. I think in 2023 you'll see a bit more, you know, you'll see a bit more of that increase in labor costs coming through. But nothing that we haven't sort of planned for. As Steve said, in a slowly declining raw material environment, that hopefully allows us to just protect margin around the, you know, delayed inflation or these, you know, the later inflation that comes through those OpEx lines. Yeah. Just on the slide 17, demarketing. You know, we were out in the summer, and I think we messaged very clearly that we expected a correction in volume in the second half of the year, which we've seen. If we reflect on that though, it's quite mixed. You know, Asia's been delivered more positively than we thought. We thought the volumes would come down a bit more in Asia. We thought they would a little bit more in Europe as well. The big, the big slide has been in North America, and that surprised us on the downside. In balance actually, so this demarketing is not rife everywhere, right around the world. Yes, there is some volume moderation in Asia and Europe, but it's relatively small from what we expected in the middle of the year. The center of attention for us is North America, where you have seen this jolt. You can argue that you can look at that in different ways and say, "Well, they were first out of the pandemic." You know, America always spends its way out of problems. There's been a huge rebuilding of demand. Actually, when you reflect on it, probably quite a bit of that's gone into stock in the first part of this year. What you see is a big correction, and that's what we're seeing at the moment. In terms of defining that and how we measure that, is we look at patented products. What you can see with all of our product customer combinations is in destocking is they don't cancel orders, they just move them back. They move them back for one month or two months or even three months. We can map quite well in a geography, a certain part of geography, you know, how that's moving. Sometimes it moves forward, sometimes it moves out. If we see a restocking, you find that orders that were placed on the books for two months' time will come forward, and vice versa. We then... That 5% comes from a very close look at... We tend to look at patented products because, you know, the Croda products, they've got, you know, 100% patents. Nobody's gonna, nobody can... We're not competing with business or having two sources of in with customers. You find with that it's a pure look at, you know, our demand. You can get a good idea. Because we've got thousands of products and customers, you can get a reasonable assessment of that. That was our, that's our assessment of the 5% on demarketing. Your bonus question was 30 years ago, wasn't it? It was a What was the share price 30 years ago? Gareth will know. Probably about GBP 2, I think, I would imagine. 1.50 GBP. There you go. Yeah, I mean, you know, we think, we think half of that is is destocking. I know the industry's calling it destocking, if it's calling it destocking it's because it comes to an end sometime. You know, we're not calling it about I don't think anybody, we're not seeing it, this demand reduction or this attrition or this trading down. We're not hearing that from a lot of our customers. We're just seeing quite a lot of stocking points. What you're seeing is this unraveling. It's very hard to see when it comes back. My history would say, you know, we've gone through six cycles now, it always takes a little bit longer to come back. When it comes back, it comes back quite quickly because it, there's always an exaggeration at the ends of the cycle, whether you're going into the cycle or you're coming out of the cycle. You either have not enough stock or you have too much stock. Our assessment is that's why we're thinking it's more a sort of first half rather than a Q1 impact. Jez, anything else? I think that's fine. We do cross-check the broader product range, so we map obviously whether, you know, what the sales pattern for every product is and so forth, and do some data analytics against that. Then we compare that with the sort of customer relationship management system that tells us, you know, 'cause you always follow up with customers. I mean, the difference I think in our ingredients, which are relatively small quantities, is, you know, the customer's reaction to having too much stock is literally to cancel two, three months' worth of orders. You know, it's not like filling up a tank where you just sell a bit less to top up the tank. Stuff's moving more slowly in our case, you literally take two, three months out, and we've seen that, you know, most particularly in North America. It's fairly easy to track and so forth. Obviously on the demarketing side, it's relatively easier for us to do because that's a positive decision by us, because either we're very capacity constrained as we were in the first half, or because we've had to take some plants offline, as we saw in the second half, to catch up really and catch up with maintenance. We can map those. You don't get all of that business back straight away, but you work to recover that business, you know, with the customer. I think we'll get a steady recovery of the second half demarketed product. But it won't all come back in one go 'cause clearly in these are non-patented products and the customer has gone elsewhere because we couldn't supply them. Charlie. Yeah. Thank you. Charlie Webb, Morgan Stanley. Maybe just following up on the Consumer Care piece. As we look at 2023, you're talking about destocking, which is hard to necessarily see, when it ends, but you expect it to end at some point. How do your expectations look for Consumer Care in terms of growth, price mix versus kind of lagging or lapping positive price for inflation? Likewise also margins. Obviously, a very divergent margin performance first half, second half in 2022. How do you expect that to kind of expand or kind of go into 2023? That'd be the first question. Secondly, on Life Sciences, when you think about your bio-lipids, business ex-Pfizer and the developments you're seeing both in 2022 into 2023, and you look at your guidance 2024 kind of flat, but the COVID piece isn't moving all that much. Is there a chance you're being too conservative there? I mean, what are you seeing in terms of the orders, in terms of demand for sampling for new products, et cetera? Okay. Let me start then, and I'll get Jez to pick up margins and back to me on lipids. I mean, as we look through the year now, you know, a bit like the demarketing group, we look at data points. More of our data points are positive than the negative. I mean, they're not all positive, but they're more positive than negative. In terms of real data that we can see, China started very well for Croda, led by actives. You know, the premium skin market is coming back in China, duty-free, travel, borders opening up, you know, people spending on expensive skin creams. You know, we expect actives to have a good start in China. That should pull some volume to North America as well, 'cause people forget, but probably about 20% or 30% of the ingredients that we ship to America are formulated in America, then they go into China. You know, China should drive a bit of recovery in North America too. We're seeing that. We had a good start geographically in most regions. America's still soft, not getting any worse, and signs of the order books are improving through May, March, April in North America. We would expect that, and that sort of chimes with the China comment I've just made. If you look at the businesses, Life Sciences has had a very good start across the board. The FNF business is continuing to strengthen. You know, that's a good balance in the consumer portfolio. That's growing in emerging markets. Actives has had a good start. Actually, you look at it in the round, and it's really just the Beauty Care business for that to come back fully, which is when you work the math out is what? You know, 20% of the group or 18% of the group. Actually, most of the businesses have started reasonably well. Regions are fine. Our one area that we wanna see recovery is North America. That's where the area of focus is for the group. Jez, on margins? Yeah. In terms of if you look at the impact on margin in the second half year, really three factors. You've got reduced volume. You've got this operating gearing effect of significantly lower volume, you know, volume down nearly 20% in Consumer in H2. You've got a business mix effect because of Beauty Care and F&F being the stronger parts and Actives being relatively quiet. You've got the dis-synergy effect from, you know, which is really about regional and central costs that used to get allocated to the PTIC business. It's a sort of fixed cost. Until we deploy the capital in new businesses and they pick up their share of the cost, they've got to go somewhere, so they go to Consumer and to Life Sciences, basically. Those are the three effects. If you look at 2023 and look at how that could recover, we'd expect the volume effect to unwind progressively, obviously, as the destocking comes to an end. We've already got through our own capacity constraints and plants offline, so therefore, you know, that part's back up. Now it's all about market demand and the end of destocking. I think you'll get a steady unwind of gearing. On mix, as Steve says, Actives have started more encouragingly. Actives is usually the first to slow and then the first to recover, and we're certainly seeing some early signs of that. That should help the mix. The dis-synergy effect, which is, you know, a bit less than one percentage point of margin, across two businesses, will stay with us until we've reinvested that capital, you know, hopefully, later this year into 2024. I think we can get, margin-wise, you know, we do see Consumer Care as a business that should be averaging about 25% return on sales. You know, we're a bit below 23, in 2022. Therefore, I think we can probably get sort of halfway back in 2023, but it'll probably be 2024 before you see the full, the full recovery, given, you know, we know the first half is gonna be a bit slow. Back to lipids, you know, in good shape, as you said, the GBP 120 for 2023 is less than half of that now becomes the principal partner. If you think where we were two years ago, the majority of that was the principal partner. You know, you can't see that through the numbers. We've de-risked the principal partner revenue, and that's pretty, that's very firm, I would say. The nuances of the contract there are very committed. That second half, the principal partner is second half, in the second half, all of those sales. That's just because it's a bit like what we talked about, this destocking. You know, every government was running around trying to, trying to purchase things. We're in a normal, what I call a normal supplier-customer relationship where there's stock on the ground. It just so happens there's quite a bit of stock in the system. It's second half weighted because of that demand still there, but it's firm. Those orders are very committed. That, the principal contract is fine. As you say, the question is, the majority of the business now is lots of moving parts. People forget, we bought Avanti, it was $40 million of lipids. We paid the headline figure for the core business. We had the earn-out for the principal partner. The core business is growing well, and we shouldn't forget that. That's got a lot of growth in, and that's got, you know, core lipid growth plus quite a lot of the discovery into clinical programs and growing. I think, you know, 120 is fine. We're fine with that. We don't wanna change that. A lot will depend, as you know, there's moving parts. There's a few in clinical three. We really don't know when these hit the market, if they do eventually hit the market. If they do, you know, if we thought they were significant, then we'd, you know, we'd update the market on a regular basis. I think, you know, the interesting thing there is the COVID flu vaccine, which looks like it's not far away. Again, we're in a lot of different, pharma projects there, and we don't know which one's gonna hit the market first. The GBP 120 we think is still, is still, a very good guide for next year. The principal partners, amount in there is second half. Thank you. Of 2023. Sebastian. Thank you. Thank you. Sebastian Bray of Berenberg Bank. Two questions, please. The first is on the Avanti Lipids COVID-19 vaccine project. From memory, when the contract was announced in 2020 late-ish time, there was a 3-year period after which it would come up for partial renegotiation towards the end of 2023. What is up for renegotiation there? Baseline volumes or price? The second question is also on polar lipids or lipids more broadly, but it has a different tack. It's quite an ambitious sales target for Solus Biotech to increase 5-fold the number of sales over the next five years. Is it using Avanti capacity? Do you just take the technology and run it on the fermentation tanks in the U.S. and Europe? My thinking is, come 2024, 2025, unless there is a real pull-through of flu vaccine demand, some of that capacity, which will be newly built, will probably be a bit underutilized. Is the idea just to put personal care lipids in there to fill it? Thank you. In relation to Solus, yeah? Yeah. We'll do Solus first, and I'll come back to lipids. I mean, you know, Solus is, it's capital-light business. You know, we buy knowledge. We think, you know, as we grow this business significantly, it doesn't need a huge capital injection. Don't worry about that. They have biotech facilities and partnerships locally. It doesn't need to be scaled up in Europe and North America for us. One customer order with one contract can half that multiple. You know, there's some significant business to be had there. You know, we, I'd like to think we are very well known in the consumer industry. We have a number of our strategic partners encouraging us to buy things like this because they're single-sourced or they're just desperate to globalize these products. It's a bit like that plant stem cell business we bought several years ago, where one or two of our leading multinational partners could not formulate with them globally because they didn't have the strength that they could support them globally with the rollout. In this case, you know, Croda's number one in the world in sustainable actives, we know what we're doing. This is a great opportunity for us. Doesn't need a huge amount of capacity. The other synergies or the black box synergies will be, it opens up a biotechnology brain for Croda in the fastest growth area of the world for Croda, which is North Asia. We've got... You know, if you talk to Dr. Challoner, Dr. Layden, Professor Layden now, our issue is not launching products. We've got a lot of products to launch in Croda. The issue is operational scale-up. We see this as a vehicle for operational scale-up as well. It's got the potential for a pharma as well, as you say. We're fine with that. We've got lots of opportunity. 7,000 customers in consumer, and we haven't even talked about phospholipids yet. Everybody thinks it's a ceramide business. It is. Phospholipids, we've wanted to get into phospholipids for about five years, and this is a great vehicle for Croda to get into phospholipids. Phospholipids goes three different application areas in pharma and one big one in personal care. Phospholipids cuts across everywhere. Don't worry about capacity. In terms of your other question was connected with Avanti lipids. Yeah, you're right. I mean, it's interesting 'cause the relationship with our partner always changes. I mean, in the outset, it was just about supplying it. Now it's about partnering in lots of R&D programs because as you can imagine, mRNA now is in several applications, not just with Pfizer, but with BioNTech separately as well. I think our next generation contracts will reflect that. There'll be discussions around the existing business, but there'll be discussions more about the partnership potential of the future as well. If we've got anything to say on that, we'll let you know. Joseph? I think in terms of, you know, the key thing to remember that, you know, we did $190 million roughly with the principal customers in 2021. We did just around $100 million in 2022. You know, we're estimating $40 million-$50 million in 2023. Yeah, there is some, you could say, directly on that application, there is some uncertainty because there's only a framework ingredient for years four and five. But at that point, you're at $40 million-$50 million. We think there is residual COVID demand for vaccines, so we think that, you know, you could well carry on at that sort of level going forward. Clearly, you know, we have to put this in context and say that that's been the great surprise really of buying Avanti for the medium-term R&D development and actually getting this huge, you know, opportunity, which has clearly also helped pay for Avanti much sooner than we expected. Steve said, you know, we're managing that down to a level where it becomes a bit more noise, I guess, in the overall performance and the opportunities of the new areas. Yes, I think there's opportunities to carry on at that sort of level going forward on COVID specifically, but it isn't that meaningful in terms of then how the business performs going forward. On your point around capacity, I think, yes, we're very clear that on the pharma expansion on nucleic acids, it is unusual for us in that we are putting the capacity in before the market needs or at the time that the market needs, hopefully around 2024, 2025, the cusp there. Whereas we would traditionally probably see how a market developed. Get capacity in and maybe end up constraining the market growth. We're very clear that, you know, nucleic acids and lipids is so exciting, we don't wanna be in that position. There's a real first-mover advantage for having been the first company to commercialize the lipid delivery system. We believe that we need to be there offering these projects that Steve's talked about, the opportunity. Yeah, there could be a little bit of managing that capacity through 2025 as projects come on stream, but we're absolutely convinced the right thing to do has been to invest this GBP 175 million to be ready for that market real explosion in 2025, 2026. Thank you. Just to clarify, can you use Avanti capacity to make Solus Biotech products, or is that you don't know yet to this stage? Yeah, we probably can, but we're looking at it the other way as well, of course. We can use Solus site to make Avanti products. That's a better, a benefit and more exciting for us 'cause can we make mRNA lipids ultimately, potentially, or, you know, really high quality pharma ingredients in North Asia for North Asia? You know, you look at the China market and the North Asian market generally. You know, we see this has got a lot of opportunities for us. Sorry, Chet. I'll come to you afterwards. Thanks. Matthew from Bank of America. Maybe just to follow up on the Solus thing. You're describing it as a. It's completely incremental. Also what it does as well is Sederma is a great vehicle for indies in the world. You know, it entrepreneurial startups always start with pentapeptides, but they also start with ceramides as well into their formulation. You need them both in the same formulation. One reduces aging, the other one gives you rapid moisturization. Have a brilliant product out there when they're all in. You know, it's. You know, they're mutually exclusive in terms of competition, and they're used in the, you know, different vehicles for the surface of the skin. Yeah. It's the same. Maybe this one's for Jez. On the Iberchem impairment, the GBP 35 million or so, just be clear on this. You're saying this is principally on the flavors part rather than the fragrance part, if I understood correctly. Yeah? When you did the deal, there was a question over whether flavors was core and to be kept. Can you sort of update us, your thinking on that? Just from a sort of accounting nuance, why shorten the forecasting period from 10 years to five, which obviously aggravates any short-term changes? I'll take the first bit and then Jez. Yeah. I mean, they're a bit unlucky. I mean, we went down to have a look at them. I mean, the issue they've got is they've had a one in a 15-year event, which is 34% increase in raw materials. It's all on the flavors. The fragrance business is ticking along very well. What you've seen is a strong revenue growth, as we expected, in line with the management plan, but the margins are squeezed, so it's hit profitability in the short term. That was a question. It's a technical consideration in the math that say, "Well, how quickly can you get back to your management plan?" That was the. We ended up taking the decision that we did, which was just to give it, because we can't be sure that the raw materials are gonna rebound very quickly. You know, when we look at the business, it's a very good business. There's no structural change in the business. It's just had one of those 1 in a 15-year event. In impairment calculations, audit partner in the room as well, you know, that's what happens. You know, you have to take a view of that. I think you'll see that a lot in the industry this year for people who've bought recently acquired businesses that for some reason you got caught with a margin squeeze. Really, you can't, your best to take the, you know, the impairment and, you know, that can reverse in the future. That business, just to your second point about, you know, the future of it's, you know, it's a business that we like to really run for a while to better understand it, and it's got great growth trajectory. You'll see a margin improvement performance. You know, it's started well. It's got a nice geographical spread of its assets, and it doesn't really bother us at the top of the company. You know, it's growing. It's got good growth. Doesn't need much capital. We like to grow the EBITDA for two or three years and then take another view because, you know, I think it's a prize asset for people. You know, we want to improve the profitability after we come out of this big shock on the raw materials. Jez, anything? Yeah. Absolutely. Completely flavors, completely that standalone business unit. The fragrance headroom on carrying value of goodwill is over GBP 100 million. You know, we're very happy with where fragrances is performing relative to the acquisition plan. Of course, that's our strategic business within that. That's sort of 75% of that business. Very much standalone business and just taking a view around that recovery. In terms of the shorter period, that's basically accounting guidance. Basically, you should generally be using five years and then a terminal rate. You know, on new fast growth businesses, we've tended to use 10 in the past, but we've come into line with normal practice there. It's five years. As you allude to, you know, you do remove that, you know, outperformance that you would probably normally have in your model for years 6-10. That also provides some impact. It's the right thing to do to reduce the goodwill carrying value there. We'll see how that business develops, as Steve said. Okay. Matthew. Chet, you have your hand up as well. Chetan from JP Morgan. Two questions. First, maybe for Jez. You know, in terms of the split of profit between first half and second half, usually it's 47, 53. How are you expecting that seasonality or split this year? The second question was just going back to the discussion around destocking and capacity constraints in the consumer business. I was just looking at, maybe my calculation might not be entirely correct, but the volumes in the consumer business are down probably 6%, 8% versus 2019. I mean, clearly the market has grown in that period, so I'm just trying to understand why should there be any capacity constraints for Croda, and also how do we tie that destocking comment, given that since 2019 the volumes for Croda hasn't grown in that consumer business. I think those are the two questions. Yeah. Do you wanna start on the seasonality and split them? Yeah. I think, well, we'll be more second half weighted. I mean, the key thing is obviously when you do the comparisons, the two biggest are GBP 39 million profit that we made in the first half of last year on the PTIC divestment. We won't have that GBP 39 million, and then secondly, we'll across the year as a whole will be $50 million lower on lipids. You can put that sort of in a relevant sort of healthcare margin, and sort of get the effect of those. I guess that's the year-on-year comparison. In terms of the seasonality, we'll also be a bit more second half. The principal customer on the COVID lipid side has said that they don't wanna take the volume till the second half year. You know, they've talked publicly about, you know, inventory levels and so forth. It is firm demand, so we know it goes in the second half of 2023, but they don't need any in the first half of the year for the COVID vaccine. In terms of the Consumer Care balance, yeah, it'll be a little bit more second half weighted. I think we'll be, you know, something around 50/50, maybe slightly more of that in the second half year, than the normal seasonality of 53/47, as you say. Some year-on-year comparisons and then some seasonality, pushing that into the second half year, basically for COVID demand in Life Sciences and for the rate of Consumer Care recovery from destocking. Yeah. Andy, do you wanna kick off the second one? Yeah. Comparative part volume. I mean, Yeah. It's a good question. Need to go back and look at the comparative volumes. I mean, the thing, the key thing that was, you know, as well as the destocking effect, you know, we're in the position on the Consumer Care where we had been running flat out really for 18 months from the beginning of 2021. I mentioned on the slides that we had, you know, 20% increase in personal care sales in the second half of 2021. I mean, completely way above our cycle, you know, where we sort of expect about mid-single digit growth across the cycle as a whole for Consumer Care. There obviously initially you're working from. It's very hard for the chemical industry to react and do 20% more. You know, therefore you are using inventory to some extent, and you end up with a, you know, constrained inventory for the products that are selling really well, and you've always got more inventory of the products that are not selling so well. You know, you start to basically not have the capacity to meet the customers' service needs. The other thing is you need some downtime on the plants to do the essential maintenance and so forth. We just got to a situation in the second half where we had to have two or three plants offline for a period of time to do that maintenance work. You get a bit of an artificial constraint to the volume, which we do think comes back, although it doesn't come back straight away because you need to win that business back. Of course, the business you shed is the lower margin business where the customer can go to somebody else to get it. You don't shed the products that they're entirely reliant on you for. I think you've got that artificial break in the second half year, even though there's a big impact from destocking. There's a demarketing effect as well in there. We finished that work now, we're back fully on stream within that. Thanks. Yeah. Just add to that, I mean, the weakest part of your business is where that disappears is the bigger volume as well. Naturally for us as well, 'cause the, most of our This will be a good question from our head of IR. It's on behalf of Isha Sharma at Stifel. Isha asks, "Europe seems to be holding up well. Are you considering a possibility it might follow North America in destocking?" Her second question is, "What are your thoughts on Givaudan's acquisition of some of Amyris' ingredients and more generally on synthetic biology? Yeah, I mean, we're not seeing it. That's a question that we ask ourselves quite regularly. This is the Europe one about Europe destocking. Yeah, we've had a start, we had a good start. Again, with Croda, there's a lot of moving parts in Europe in each of the countries, so we've got a good set of data points there. We're not expecting that. We don't see that. We see it just is located in America, and we would expect that to rise. I mean, yeah, Givaudan, you're gonna see more announcements like this from Croda as well, in partnering with some organizations where they've got biotechnology capability. You know, we've all got probably great ideas and great products, but what sometimes we don't have is that capability to scale up quickly in the business as well. Amyris is one partner that we, you know, which we're very aware of, and there's plenty of others as well. Their products that they partnered with are not potentially competing products for us, but they're in a lot of those, probably similar formulations as well. That's on squalane, more than anything else. Yeah. You'll see a lot more for the industry, 'cause the industry has to move, you know, is moving to biotechnology, and it has to move pretty quickly. You know, moving to partnership agreements is one way of quickly commercializing your IP. We have in our strategy, we have a buy, build and rent model effectively. We need a combination of all of those. We'll be scaling up biotechnology in Sederma, in Korea, the U.K., North America, but we'll also be partnering as well. Our issue is we've got in our pipeline, we have a lot of biotechnology products ready to go. It's the handbrake is on commercializing them through scale-up, operational scale-up. That's prompted a few questions. Come back to you, Charlie. Thanks. Hello, it's Nicola Tang from BNP Paribas Exane. Actually, it did prompt some questions, Steve, 'cause there was a follow-up on that. I was wondering if you could talk about the broader sort of M&A pipeline and, you know, the areas that you're looking at or, you know, whether we should expect much to happen in 2023. Related to that around capital allocation, could you remind us, Jez, in terms of with that GBP 175 million of investment into pharma, how much, between 2021 and 2024, how much is left? Just to kinda confirm CapEx above the usual base, GBP 120 million for this year. Thank you. Yeah. I mean, you know, very active as you'd expect us to be on M&A, the priority, and you've heard this probably 1,000 times from the CEO, is we're interested in really great technology, intellectual property, clever people, provincial businesses really, in many ways. You know, they have the ability, or we have the ability to globalize these around the world. You know, Avanti is a good example. You know, Denmark, the vaccine business, now Korea, they've all got brilliant intellectual property. We diligence that really robustly, brutally in many ways, 'cause we have to be sure that technology can be globalized. We use the selling network to really globalize this. That's the type of businesses we're looking at. Daniele, he's got a scout, chief scout, we call them, works for him. We've got David Shannon, we've got chief scout for him as well. Their job is to hunt the technologies. You know, we have a list of technologies, which is probably the most valuable thing in the group. It's a list of technologies that probably not many will have on their list. We know what we're looking for. It's interesting, you know, the list is as you get focus in there, we put our best business development people on that, so they understand the technology. We'll see. You know, we'll see what happens. It's gonna be more in the, in the same line as the Avantis, the Solus Biotech. It's really brilliant technology that can be commercialized, around the world. On the... Yeah. In terms of the pharma CapEx program of GBP 175 million from 2021 through 2024, we're probably about halfway through the net spend, so we spent about GBP 90 million so far. We're probably a bit less than that because more of the government funding comes in the latter stages of the program. A bit less than halfway through sort of overall, I guess, in terms of progress. We were a bit behind, as I said, in terms of where we expected. I think I was guiding you around GBP 150 at the half year, we came out, you know, sub GBP 140. I think there'll be some catch up in 2023. I think for 2023, I'd be thinking GBP 160-GBP 170. That's sort of GBP 120 million of the base program. That's very consistent because it's spread across sort of 20 plants around the world. On the pharma program, I think, you know, we'll probably be spending more of the order of GBP 50 million. I think for this year, a bit of catch up from the 2020 or catch up to 2022 underspend, then complete the program in 2024. Yeah. Okay. Thanks. Sam Perry from Credit Suisse. Can I ask about the dynamics and expectations for crop care into 2023? Because if I look at the LatAm growth of 19% this year, and I think 2021 was also a very strong year, and compare that with the expectations across the crop technologies for sort of mid to high single digit, what do you expect in terms of demand destruction in 2023 and maybe pricing and ability to hold on to that as well? Thank you. I mean, yeah, our view is, I mean, it's had a great 18 months, you know, you can see that in the numbers. It should continue like that. I mean, it's got very favorable market around it. We think, you know, talk, the Crop Protection team, probably first half will continue very similar to what we've seen in the last 12 months, and then probably moderate in the second half to its normal growth level. You know, it's normally around a mid-single digit sales growth environment. If you look at it for the last, sort of 10, 15 years in Croda, it's, you get the volatility quarter-to-quarter, but actually annually, it normally trades around that mid-single digit. The model is a strong first half and a more normalized second half. You know, there's... You know, raw material prices are staying, you know, pretty high. There will be some discussions with customers around pricing inevitably, but it's, you know, it all depend. That could increase, depends on raw material, what raw materials do. You know, we're well, well-versed in managing those relationships. Does things like fertilizer prices coming off impact, or that's some sort of an alternative way to increase yield impact your ability to hold pricing or not so much? There's some macro drivers, but it's not really fertilizer. I mean, a lot of ours is innovation pipeline. You know, we're into some of the sort of next generational stuff. The most important thing for the crop customers is how do they get more bang for their buck on the field. Can they get products out that deliver X percent yield savings, you know, 5%, 10%. There's always an encouragement to launch new things. That you find with Croda, we're always in some of those. We're number one innovation partner in the industry now in crop. People forget that. They always see us as personal care and pharma. We're number one in crop. We have early sight of a lot of, and we have a lot of strategic partnerships there. I think with Croda, the work that we did three or four years ago is starting to bear fruit, 'cause it takes three or four years to get these to market. There is some macro. Don't get me wrong. It's not. I wouldn't peg it on fertilizers. There's a bit of everything really. You know, the growing areas that are really important to us are Europe, Latin America, and North America. All three for 18 months have been strong, and we expect those to continue certainly in the first half. Yeah. It's, you know, it's a really good business for growth. Charles, I am gonna come back to you, but seeing that you're next. Mubasher from Citi. Just a couple of questions on Iberchem. If you can update us in terms of how the synergies are going, how the margin development is going, especially with 2022, then what you feel like is the right number for 2023. Then a couple of comments on specialty excipients that had a quite a strong year in 2021. How has that developed in 2022, just a feel for the top line, please. That'd be helpful. Yeah. Well, you know, F&F are really pleased. You know, we've talked about the impairment question, on the flavor side, it's growing very well through the year. Don't forget it's emerging market exposed. Sorry, fragrances. Yeah. 83% of our F&F business is exposed to emerging markets. Fragrances has done very well throughout the year. Actually it's got stronger through the year, which is interesting and that's part of the reason we're buying the business because it's a nice balance to the chemical industry portfolio in Consumer Care as well. Synergies are developing well. I don't think we'll, you know, you might push us on a number, we're not gonna give you a number, it's moving in the right direction. We're capturing good synergies now. I think the big thing that's coming through in the synergies is our relationships with some of the, either the multinationals we call them or the regional dynamos where we didn't expect to pick up some business, but we're picking up business where, particularly where Iberchem assets are strong, North Africa, Latin America, Southeast Asia, and where they match the locations of our strategic partners. We're starting to win some, we'll win some business there. On the flavor side, I mean, it's going well. The issue is this, they've had a big raw material increase, so it's recovering that margin through this year. Both of them have got very good sales growth characteristics in the business. We expect, you know, we expect 2023 to be good for both sides of that business. Jez, do you wanna add anything? No, that's fine. Do you want me to talk about specialty excipients? Yeah. Yeah. Go for it, yeah. I think it's interesting 'cause if we look back, I think it was 2019, we did the capital markets event on the specialty excipient platform, which was obviously the sort of homegrown platform within what's now the pharma business, and sort of unveiled just how strong that was. We've consistently seen growth of 10%-30% across that delivery platform. That continues. You know, we're much more focused now, while we talk much more about vaccine adjuvants, which of course we acquired in 2018, in December 2018, and then of course the lipids platform for nucleic acid delivery acquired in 2020. Which as Steve said in his chart, are less mature and therefore more development growth opportunity. The biggest area of sales is still in those proteins, specialty excipients and, the growth is still very much there in terms of, you know, injectable delivery systems for drugs. Continuing to expect, yeah, 10%-30% growth across that platform. That's why, you know, you struggle to see that big drop in lipids post COVID-19 because the protein and excipient platform is growing so well and the vaccine adjuvant platform is growing well. Yeah, we're just building each of these platforms on in turn and getting more and more excited as we do that. Okay. Charles, been waiting patiently over here. Thank you. Just one follow-up from me. It's Charles from UBS. Just in the Life Sciences business, obviously you've got some headwind from a revenue perspective from the lipids business, but clearly crop seems to be growing well still, the healthcare ex lipids growing well. Are they growing well enough to offset the lipids business? i.e., will you grow organic sales in Life Sciences in 2023 as you see it today? Then maybe you could just talk a little bit about the margin expectation, 'cause I appreciate that mix is a negative on the margin. Could you help us versus that 33.6% margin in 2022, how the margin might look for 2023? Thank you. Jez, you wanna kick it off? Yeah, absolutely. And then. No, a really, really good question there, Charles. At the sales level, we would expect the growth in Crop Protection, Seed Enhancement and non-COVID lipid pharma to offset the $50 million decline. 'Cause if you put the numbers in the model, you know, we have about, you know, we've reported $680 million of Life Sciences sales, so it's about $550 of non, of the non-COVID part of that. That market should be growing between mid-high single digit, really. I think if you put that in, you know, we should be generating enough growth at the sales level to offset the lipid decline. I think overall, as we look at the year, we think Life Sciences is broadly flat. As you say, at the margin level, you probably won't quite get there in terms of profit because, you know, healthcare platforms tend to be a higher margin, a bit higher margin than the crop care platforms. As Steve said, it's still very much, you know, crop that's growing there. I think that we'll do well to keep the profit flat year-over-year in Life Sciences, but we certainly should keep the numbers whole in terms of Life Sciences sales. If that makes sense. Looking down the other, he's smiling gently, so I think I'm all right. Martin at the front. Thanks. Martin Evans, HSBC. Just back on Nicola's question really on M&A. I mean, the technology space generally has fallen, derated, valuations have come down, and yet in your particular niche, is it the case that price is still non-negotiable? I mean, Solus was, I think, roughly 10 times sales, whatever, and it's all to do with whether the seller wants to join the Croda group and not so much on negotiating the price down, or is it, or do you see valuations potentially this year as the cost of money goes up, falling? It's mixed. I mean, you know, just for everybody's benefit, I mean, when you look at really relatively small EBITDA businesses which have got brilliant growth and, you know, they're into sort of second generation or third generation, proven growth, but needs to be scaled, then of course we look at the multiple like we always, you'd expect us to, and we look at that probably more than most. The most important valuation to Croda is in our hands, you know, with this technology around the Croda world, what does year three and year five and year seven look like? We have to value these businesses on the strength of that. The other way of looking at this, if we didn't buy, this business and we wanted to buy in three years' time, it'd be a much bigger figure, and we probably wouldn't wanna buy it. We're trying to buy them at their early stages. Might look like they're big multiples, but for this type of business, you know, it's de-risked on the strength of, you know, the strategic bullseye where it ticks so many boxes. There's growth streams, everywhere. I think it will be different. You know, normally we would expect, you know, quite a lot of our businesses to be fit, you know, mid-teens in terms of multiples and things like that. You know, valuations are coming down in certain areas, but they're not in others as well, so I think it's a mixed picture. You know, there will be opportunities in the future to get things at relatively modest multiples. If there's something that looks really interesting for us at big multiples and we think for us and for you and for everybody else, we can create enormous shareholder value, then we'll do that. You know, you look at Avanti, it's a bit like the Avanti model. You know, we paid $175 million for that. You know, the, there's some of that value in our books now, and if we wanted to sell that, which we're not by the way, is a lot more than that, and that's the type of thing that we can do very well. We're more interested in rapidly growing brilliant technologies than we are at doing big deals. I wouldn't say for the sake of it, but, you know, but you know, big deals that are out there, that's not really where we see the direction of travel because we see a lot of good opportunities in that technology space. I think my point in summary to that is the valuation is dependent upon the individual business, it always will be, and we look at all of the right metrics to look at that. You know, the lens is always three, year three, five, and beyond as to how we turbocharge that growth. Well, can I also echo our best wishes to Jez for a long and happy retirement. I think, Jez, we first met in 1998, so that's... what is that? These, sort of 25 years. I can't do math, Martin. Yeah. at another chemical company... It's a quarter of a century. In Yorkshire. It's another age. In Yorkshire. Yeah, exactly. A lot of water's passed under the bridge. Thank you. No, have a great retirement, Jez. Thank you. Yeah. I think on that's a great way to finish. You know, thanks again, Jez, for everything you've done. Thanks, good questions. We'll stop the webcast now. Happy with that, David? Yeah. If people wanna stay around, hang around, we're upstairs for a second.