Good morning, this is the conference operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining Mondi's Q3 2024 Trading Update Conference Call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the opening remarks, there'll be an opportunity to ask questions. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Andrew King, CEO of Mondi Group. Please go ahead, sir. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today to discuss the third quarter trading update. I'm Andrew King, your Group CEO, and with me today is Mike Powell, our Group CFO. I'm sure you've all seen the announcement this morning, so I'll just pick up a few points before happy to go into questions. Our performance in the third quarter was, as we expected, lower than the previous quarter, with an underlying EBITDA of EUR 223 million. As we mentioned in August, we moved some of our planned maintenance shuts from the second quarter into the third quarter. Combined with a normal shut schedule for Q3, this resulted in a higher impact of planned maintenance shuts in the fourth quarter when compared to the previous quarter. In addition, we advised of a likely forestry fair value loss in the second half of the year when compared to the gain that we booked in the first half. Together, for the third quarter, these resulted in a difference of 90 million EUR when comparing the third quarter result with that of the second. Seasonally softer demand and modestly higher input costs, mainly related to paper for recycling price increases and higher external energy purchases also impacted the quarter. Packaging paper price increases implemented earlier this year benefited our upstream businesses in the quarter, while uncoated fine paper and pulp prices declined in the quarter, following a recovery in pricing earlier in the year. Going into the final quarter of the year, trading conditions remain muted against the backdrop of an uncertain macroeconomic environment, but there are fewer planned maintenance shuts, and we do expect a normal seasonal pickup in demand. We are very excited by the progress we are making on our capital investment projects. Our two biggest expansionary projects, the paper machine investments at Štětí and Duino, remain on track for startup next year. While it can be difficult to stay the course on these investments in a down cycle, I firmly believe in our approach of investing consistently on a through-cycle basis to deliver strong value creation. Together with the recently announced acquisition of Schumacher's Western European assets, which we expect to complete in H1 next year, we are very well placed to capitalize on the structural growth in sustainable packaging. With that, Mike and I are happy to take your questions. Thank you. This is the conference operator. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star one one on their touchtone telephone. Please pick up the receiver when asking questions. We will now take our first question. Please stand by. And the first question comes from the line of Lars Kjellberg from Stifel. Please go ahead. Your line is now open. Thank you for taking my questions, and good morning. Just to be clear, can you please call out the fair value changes and the maintenance activity in the quarter, as there are pretty big items, and specify them? Also, if you kind of look at your underlying performance, excluding those items, it does look quite a sizable deterioration, and with a backdrop of somewhat improving demand, year-on-year at least, and with a significant part of your revenue base seeing progressive pricing, if you can walk us through the buckets there, if there was any particular negative volume movements in the quarter that you wanna call out? And you talked about modest cost increases. We know about OCC, but it does seem as if there's more than modest cost increases. But if you can put some color there, that'd be helpful. Thank you. Finally, what do you expect for fair value in Q4 and the total annual maintenance cost, please? Thank you. Thanks, Lars. Yeah, no, certainly. Let me give you some numbers, and then maybe Andrew can broaden out across the rest of your questions. Just recognizing this is obviously a trading update, and we will help you with that. In terms of fair value, as we've already said, there was about 50 in the first half, of which probably around 35 was in Q2. So if you think of the sequence, it was 15 Q1, 35 Q2. These are approximate numbers. At Q3, we have booked 15, and I think you also asked about where we'd expect it to land at the full year. Unfortunately, I don't know that, but I think you can expect at least the same as the Q3 number in Q4, sat here today. That number will change. I will be wrong on that, 'cause there's a detailed valuation done at the year end, and at the half year, as you know. But if I was to sort of think about where that number may trend, it's probably at least the same again, sat here today. Yeah, that was the negative fifteen. Correct. Thank you, Lars, for clarifying. So therefore, the delta, which I think was your question between Q2 and Q3, goes from a plus 35 to a minus 15. That delta, therefore, is 50. So I think that covers off the fair value. In terms of maintenance shuts, we guided at the very beginning of the year, and there's no change to that of EUR 100 million, roughly. 20 of that was in the first half, therefore 80 was in the second half. Of that 80, about 60 is in Q3, and we said that Q3 would be the heaviest quarter, and therefore I'd expect about a 20 number in Q4. Again, the Q-on-Q delta, because most of the first half was actually in Q2, the Q-on-Q delta from Q2 to Q3 is therefore about 40. If you add up the 40 delta for the maintenance, Q2 to Q3 delta, and the fair value delta for the same period, which I said was 50, that's the 90 that you see in the release. So hopefully that clarifies it, and Andrew, maybe we can touch on the business environment. Yes, I think, your broader question on the volume story, I mean, to be clear, you know, if you look at the overall industry numbers, and you also look at our numbers, we have seen a year-on-year pickup in demand. And clearly the first half in particular was also supported, should we say, by a restocking effect. Clearly that is over now, and one looks to the underlying demand picture. I mean, if you look at it, generally speaking, volume is, as I said, demand is up year-on-year, but I think it's also fair to say, the momentum around the sort of increase in demand is probably more muted than one might have anticipated earlier in the year, if I could phrase it like that. We are seeing a reasonable volume picture, but it's reasonable, not strong. I think, you know, if anything, one felt this year should have been more of a rebound year, off a pretty low base of last year. It's modestly improved on the demand front and certainly our volumes as well, on a year-on-year basis, but it's not the type of really strong rebound that one might have anticipated, certainly at this point. I think, again, as we say, you know, one doesn't want to blame everything on the macroeconomic environment, but it happens to be true that I think the consumer remains fairly reluctant and nervous, and that affects everything, you know, in terms of the different end users. But, you know, so I'm clear, it's, you know, things are up year-on-year, but the rate of growth probably is not as strong as it might have been, you know, if we'd sort of sat here at the beginning of the year. So I think that's the key, sort of, impact on the supply side. You know, in terms of our overall, our own demand picture, I mean, quarterly numbers are always very noisy, because of all the shut effects and things like that. You know, we try and quantify that shut effect, but it doesn't necessarily encompass all the knock-on impacts on, you know, on energy usage and all of the other effects that occur around shuts. You know, this year in particular, we are obviously also have got a few projects that are being commissioned and the like, and that makes it even more complicated. But I'm very, you know, confident we are well on track on all of that. We are executing very well on all of these things, but that does create a bit of noise in the numbers, certainly on a quarterly basis. In terms of prices, are you seeing any? I mean, we can see the index prices, but are you actually seeing any meaningful benefit from those prices into your P&L? Yes. I mean, so we, I mean, prices, as you know, I mean, again, and giving a bit more color by segment, as it were, in the containerboard grades, we saw prices recovering through the first half of the year and into the second half. They clearly are higher than they were on average through the first half. Clearly, you don't see that all booked in one, you know, in lockstep, as it were, because it takes time to filter through into your P&L. But we are, you know, we are seeing that, and there should be further effect of that into Q4. The only modest sort of decline we've seen is in the recycled grades. I think you can all see it in the industries, where we have seen some modest price erosion there. That's largely, I believe, because the PfR prices are now coming off a bit, having gone up. And of course, the cost support at the high end of the cost curve, in a muted demand environment, means that you see some price erosion at the top end of, you know, as a consequence of that, sort of, call it less price support, or sorry, cost support. So you are seeing a bit of price erosion in the recycled grades, but, you know, the virgin grades are holding well, and the prices are higher than they were in the first half. Kraft paper, it's a similar story. We're also seeing some price increases through the first half of the year, and continuing into the second, and some, and holding in the second half. And the uncoated fine paper, you know, there we saw price increases actually start back end of the prior year, into the first half of the year. We have seen a bit of price erosion there in the Q3. It's well documented, the pulp price declines, which of course does affect that business unit, because we do have open market pulp sales. But in addition, it obviously, I think, has contributed to some price erosion in the fine paper space because of the, you know, again, the lack of cost support at the higher end of the cost curve with the unintegrated producers. And so there's been a bit of price erosion in the fine paper space. So that, I think, covers the main paper grades. Thank you, Lars. Thank you. We will now take our next question. Please stand by. And the next question comes from the line of Cole Hathorn from Jefferies. Please go ahead. Your line is now open. Good morning. Thanks for taking the question, and I'd just like to have a little bit of follow-up on uncoated fine paper. I mean, I know it's a trading update, and you don't give the detailed splits, but it'd just be useful to understand, you know, which segment was kind of the relatively weaker aspect in the third quarter. Any comment you can give? 'Cause I suspect there was probably relatively more weakness in UFP and wider pulp, just considering price deterioration there. So any further comments you could add on that would be helpful, and then just following up on your comment earlier, which was, you know, we've seen waste paper costs roll over a little bit into the third quarter and we'll probably give back some pricing later today on that in Germany. But, how do you see virgin containerboard performing on that? We haven't seen wood costs easing in the Nordics. Do you think we could be in a position where, you know, the U.S. exports are, you know, supply/demand in the U.S. is a bit better, I suppose, than Europe, and we've got cost support up in the Nordics. Could we get a bit of a divergence in virgin and recycled containerboard pricing? Thank you. Thanks, Cole. I think just quick on the UFP question, I mean clearly, Q3 is always a more difficult quarter for UFP for a variety of reasons. I mean, some of it is because obviously we take the preponderance of the U.S. UFP shutdowns in Q3. UFP is the one that clearly where that fair value gain is booked or not. And then on top of that, there's the normal seasonal weakness, particularly in Europe, 'cause obviously in Europe, we see you know, everyone goes on holiday in August, and so there's no one's printing at their photocopiers. So there's a normal sort of seasonal weakness. I mean, that's obviously partly why we also take the shutdowns in that quarter as well. So there's a combination of factors, yes, whereby UFP would be naturally... I mean, on an annual basis, it's typically Q3 is its weakest quarter. It's been exacerbated this year by the, you know, the distortion created by that fair value gain. You know, the shuts have been pretty much all in Q3. Yeah. And on top of that, yeah, there's the normal seasonal demand decline. And of course, as we've already picked up, the pulp price decline, coupled with, you know, the now we're seeing some price erosion in the paper prices. What changes into Q4? Obviously, the shuts are behind us. There's normally a seasonal pickup, albeit the pricing clearly, you know, is not showing any signs of recovery in the short term. I mean, pulp prices, you know, frankly, who knows where they go next? On the paper side, you know, there's some modest price erosion into Q4, but, oh, well, it started in Q3, really, and it's into Q4. Obviously, when you're not selling a lot of volume into the quarter because you know you're down on your machines and the seasonal weakness, it's you know the price effect is there, but it's not particularly highlighted. And then sorry, on the second question on the containerboard and particularly the VC, virgin containerboard, you're correct in the sense that obviously the dynamic on the cost bases are quite different. You know, be it recycled containerboard, the paper for recycling is the key input cost, and of course, in a market which we're currently experiencing, where you know the demand is not extremely buoyant and you know, so pricing is effectively determined by the marginal producers. Then by definition, you know, when the costs move up and down, it does have an impact potentially on pricing, and we are seeing that in the recycled side at the moment. By contrast, the virgin grade, as you say, if anything, the cost base for the industry more generally, because obviously the Nordics are important players in this segment. Our wood costs are typically seem to be more stable. I mean, obviously, we do also have a couple of mills up in the Nordics, our semi-chem mill up in Kuopio and Dynäs, which is a kraft paper mill. But clearly, in terms of our relative exposures, it's relatively limited. So there is, you know, there is ongoing cost support clearly in the, on the virgin side. And yeah, it would appear that certainly there is some divergence taking place with the virgin grades holding in terms of pricing and some erosion in pricing on the recycled grades. Andrew, if I can just follow up, any big delta buckets that you're calling out into twenty twenty-five? I know you've talked about, you know, a EUR 100 million contribution from, you know, the major CapEx investments, but I'm just trying to understand if there's any other bigger moving pieces that we should be thinking about into twenty twenty-five, including, you know, maybe some impact from a recent fire at one of your mills or anything like that, that you can call out at this stage. ... I'm sure Mike can help us on that one with some of the moving parts. I mean, you mentioned the mills, Stambolijski, as you rightly point out. I mean, we mentioned the fact that that mill will be down at least for probably until the middle of next year. We are still assessing all our options around that operation. You know, it's an important contributor to our kraft paper offering, but it's obviously by far the smallest mill in our kraft paper suite with a 100,000-ton capacity. So it certainly is an earnings contributor to the group, but it's not material to the overall offering. In terms of the other sort of key moving parts, in terms of, call it, non-recurrings, for want of a better term, maybe Mike can help us. Yeah. So Cole, you talked particularly about the projects. Yeah, the way we think about the projects, and I think about the projects, you know, the build phase, that's on track, on budget, that's in good shape. As we've said before, we're very much moving into the commercial ramp-up phase. Clearly the converters always come earlier, so those are clearly in good shape. And then obviously the sort of the upstream paper making, commercial ramp-up phase, again, that's in good shape, but clearly, sort of high on our agendas, today, which is finish the build, do the commercial ramp-up. The 100 million you refer to is the number we quoted, as the mid-cycle returns on the capital investment. If you remember, EUR 1.2 billion at mid-cycle returns is about EUR 250 million in EBITDA, which splits 50, 100, 100, 50 in FY 2024, 100, 100. I will just say they are mid-cycle returns. And do I think we're at mid-cycle today? No, we're clearly not. What's the difference therefore, if build is on track, on budget, and commercial ramp-up is in good shape today? The variable is price, Lars, yeah. If the cycle's good, as we've always said, it will be more than 100. If the cycle remains muted, it will be less than 100. But we don't know where the price is. But today, we're certainly not mid-cycle in our view. So we'll clearly give a bit more guidance on that number as we get closer to next year, but if it was on today's muted markets, we're clearly not mid-cycle. Yeah, fair value, we normally use the 10-year average, which is sort of 40-60 for next year. Again, I can give more guidance for that as we get into next year. If you think, you know, what would I be putting into my internal thoughts, you know, it would be that sort of 40-60 range positive for next year, and therefore you're likely to get a small upside year on year, most likely, but relatively small. Hope that helps, Cole. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. We will now take our next question. Please stand by. And the next question comes from the line of Patrick Mann from Bank of America. Please go ahead, your line is now open. Good day. Thank you very much for the opportunity to ask the question. Just to ask again around containerboard. So, you know, you're saying kraftliner or the virgin grades holding up on costs and testliner rolling over, and I think the price has just come out and it's a little bit lower in Germany. I'm just trying to think how that feeds through to your box prices into the fourth quarter. So we usually have that lag between containerboard and box prices, but given that they sort of seem to be diverging now, and how should we be thinking about maybe box prices delta from here into the fourth quarter and then into next year? Thanks. Yeah, Patrick, I mean, we always use the rule of thumb, and it's a pretty good rule of thumb, that the box prices follow paper prices with a kind of three to six-month lag. So clearly, paper prices have been going up, and, you know, I think it's important to mention that. I mean, paper prices are up relative to where they were, kind of at the beginning of the year. But and clearly, in the short term, that gives rise to some margin squeeze in the box businesses, as they have to digest that and then look to pass it on. And so that, that's a sort of normal sequence of events that takes place. Clearly, if one starts to see some price erosion in the containerboard space, then it becomes a more complex discussion with your, your customers as to what is the new sort of price to be using as, as your sort of anchor for, for price negotiations in the, in the box business. It's fair, it's fair to say that the recycled containerboard price is probably the, is the most important, input cost for the, for the box makers relative to the, to the virgin grades, I mean, on average, across the industry, because in Europe certainly, you know, on average, every box is 80% recycled. So you know, it's very clear that that's the most important benchmark price for, for the price negotiations in turn on the boxes. So clearly, if we see some price erosion in the recycled containerboard side, you know, that could in turn translate into the negotiations on the box side. But it's also fair to say the box prices today, you know, are not reflective of the increases we've seen in recycled containerboard over the course of the first six months. That's right. of the year. So Got it. Thank you. And then if I could maybe have one more. When you say, I mean, trading conditions are muted, and, you know, we can see reports from companies in the sector and companies in other sectors in Europe sort of all warning on a more muted backdrop. Can you maybe give us a bit more color? Are you seeing it across the board? Is it in, you know, containerboard? Is it in corrugated flexibles, UFP? Is it worse or better in particular segments or sub-segments? Is there any kind of more color you can give us just on those muted trading conditions? Thanks. No, I think, you know, again, obviously there's always differences depending on the different end markets, et cetera. But, I think it applies as a general statement, if you look at across the board. And obviously focusing on our packaging end users, clearly, for example, you know, in Europe, construction activity remains fairly muted. I mean, clearly, we also see pockets of strength in our construction exposures in emerging markets, for example. But if one takes it as a more general sort of comment, generally speaking, it's still muted. We're seeing some modest pickup on a year-on-year basis, but, you know, I remind you, it's off a fairly low base. But at least it's encouraging that there is a pickup, as opposed to continued deterioration. In the corrugated business, again, obviously it serves a myriad of different end markets, and it's dangerous to sort of, you know, start going into every sub-segment. But more generally, again, year-on-year, the numbers are up, in terms of, you know, the demand numbers on an industry-wide basis, et cetera. But it's just not... You know, the rate of pickup is just simply not as strong as one might have anticipated earlier this year. You know, as I said earlier, because, you know, if anything, one expected to, one still expects some sort of rebound off the lower base that we saw from last year. It's modestly up, but not the sort of very strong rebound. But again, I don't, I, I'm very clear this is, these are cyclical impacts, not anything to do with the structural change in these markets. It's purely because, you know, when the consumer's anxious and they're not buying as much, they don't, we don't need as much packaging. So, hopefully with what appears to be the end of the sort of concerns around the inflationary environment, leading in turn to potentially sort of interest rate declines, and then, like all of these, do feed into consumer confidence, which in turn, drives demand for our, our packaging products. In the fine paper market, you know, we already said the beginning of the year was flattened somewhat by a restocking effect. That is clearly over. Long term, we've always assumed that that is a market in some mild structural decline, and that's what we plan for. We're well positioned within that, but clearly we are not looking to invest to grow capacity in that business. We continue to optimize where appropriate. You know, and we think we're well positioned within that, but it's a, you know, long-term structurally declining market, very clearly. Thank you. Thanks, Patrick. Thank you. We will now take our next question. Please stand by, and the next question comes from the line of Brian Morgan from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Hi, thanks very much. Andrew, in the past you've mentioned, I think most recently mentioned that you thought that 30% of testliner producers were cash negative. Do you... Is that number still valid, or have you changed that? I don't know what the precise number is, and hopefully, whenever I gave you that number, I clearly caveated by saying it was a, you know, it's a best guess. No, I mean, it's very clear that the top end of the cost curve, well, a lot of the cost curve, frankly, is under deep pressure at the moment. I think we've seen some sort of anecdotal evidence of that, with some capacity closures in certain cases. Obviously, some of these big projects are being kind of delayed and things like that as well, for, I suppose, a variety of reasons, but probably one of them being, you know, the challenge of being able to make a return in this, or make a margin in this environment. So, yeah, I mean, there's a little bit of relief, obviously, you know, with these sort of modest paper for recycling price reductions, which of course can just change things quite quickly. But I think despite that, you know, the industry average returns right now are poor, I would say. And certainly, you know, one has to remember over time, you know, this is a structurally growing product, and the world needs more of this product, and certainly there's no incentive to put new capacity in. Acknowledging that there is new capacity coming on, which you know, following decisions made in, you know, previous times, and that will come on in the short term, undoubtedly. I mean, there's a lot of sort of sunk costs in that. But it won't be long before no one's incentivized to bring anything else on, and I suspect that will lead to tightness in due course. So, you know, again, I remain extremely confident in the long-term structural growth in demand for this product, and right now the margins are simply not there, not only to not incentivize further investment, which will be required in due course, but also, you know, I suspect there's a lot of pressure to rationalize capacity in the near term. I can't say if and when that happens, but right now, the margins are simply not there. Thanks, Andrew. Why do you think that we haven't seen rationalization? It's been under pressure for quite a long time now. I mean, there's any number of reasons, I guess, why different players, you know, their relative positions. I mean, clearly, you know, I remind you, it wasn't that long ago where this market was extremely tight and, you know, margins were very good. And so I guess there's still a legacy of that. I mean, people always wait and hope, I suppose. But, I mean, every day that the current margin dynamic prevails, I suspect that, you know, capacity closures become more of a reality. And it's not to say there haven't been. I mean, I don't need to remind you of some of the closures that they have taken place. And as I say, I think it's very clear that at current levels, there's a lot of capacity that is in trouble. Cool. Thank you very much. Thanks, Brian. Thank you. We will now take our next question, and the next question comes from the line of James Perry from Citi. Please go ahead. Your line is now open. Morning. Thanks for the presentation. I just wanna ask about the forestry again. So to the extent that lower forestry valuation reflects lower South African wood prices, is it reasonable to extrapolate this to mean lower wood costs for your South African production, if it persists, or is that too simplistic? And secondly, actually, just on the 2025 projects. So as we approach the startup, are you able to give any more details on the timing of the ramp up? As in, should we be modeling much volume contribution for H1, or will it mostly be H2? Thanks. I'll take the first one. James, the simple answer is yes, 'cause it ends up ultimately in your cost of goods. So that's probably the simplest answer. Andrew? Yeah, I think, I mean, just on that, we have the perverse effect that in the first half of the year, the valuation went up because the external selling price went up. Yes. So that means in Q3- Yeah ... effectively, you get the negative effect of the higher cost of sales, even though your cash costs haven't changed at all. Perversely, when you get a value loss, by definition, in the next quarter, for example, you should have a lower cost of sales, even though the actual cash costs haven't changed at all through that period. But that's the joys of accounting for a long-term asset, as if it was a sort of, you know... as if it was a current sort of asset. But, That's why I said yes, James. Okay. I just had to get that off my chest as a past accountant. But yeah, and just in terms of Duino and Šteti, as we've already said, I mean, we are very much on track. You know, these will both start in H1. Šteti is very much first off the ranks. So I remind you, you know, Šteti will be 200,000 tons of low-cost sack kraft paper. And at the same time, we effectively liberate another 100,000 tons of pulp capacity, and then we'll be reducing our external pulp sales by 100,000 tons. So that's where you get the 200,000 tons of pulp you need to integrate, you know, to make this product. So, you know, we're delighted with the progress there. You know, as you could imagine, it's a complex project with building a new paper machine and all the modifications to the pulp line. But the team at Štětí is extremely experienced, particularly in making, you know, what is a very demanding product, being the sack kraft. It's the strongest paper you can make with the burst resistance required for these heavy industrial uses. From a market perspective, so that will start early in the new year and start to ramp up through the course of the year. Obviously, you don't just turn these things on, and they start producing at capacity. I mean, realistically, the ramp up period is a three-year ramp up period, albeit it's very front-end loaded in terms of the volume. And then, of course, you get you optimize it over a three-year period. So it will be contributing from next year. On the actual market impact, I remind you, it's roughly a hundred thousand tons of sack kraft into the market, plus a hundred thousand tons of specialties, because at the same time, we'll be focusing all our other machines that would have made sack kraft and specialties in the past into specialties. So you know, we have a lot of levers to pull in terms of the different sort of commercial offering we have. And again, here you know, we very excited by the ongoing growth in the new demand sources for these kraft paper products. This is where, these are the paper grades where you're using a lot of it into products which are substituting other less recyclable substrates. You know, so as I say, everything from our industrial applications to consumer applications. So when you're seeing more and more paper-based products on the supermarket shelves, a lot of it is these kraft paper products, which is an exciting growth area. And then Duino will be a bit later. So Duino is during H1, that we'll be, you know, switching it on. It'll then start to ramp up through H2, so it will have less of an impact, but certainly will start to contribute in more like the second half of next year as it ramps up. I just remind you as well, obviously, I mean, the other factor that for next year is the completion of our Schumacher transaction, which, you know, certainly we expect hopefully by the end of Q1 next year. That obviously brings both box capacity and of course containerboard consumption, which allows us also to forward integrate some of that Duino volume, which mitigates any near-term market risks around the containerboard side. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. We will now take our next question. Please stand by. And the next question comes from the line of James Twyman from Prescient Securities. Please go ahead, your line is now open. Yes, thank you very much, and thank you for all the detail. So I've got three questions, if I may. The first one is just quickly, are you clear that the impact of the Bulgarian mill is pretty minimal on EBITDA next year, on the basis that the impact is that any sack paper that you don't produce there will be produced elsewhere? I think that was the, well, implication. Secondly, the recycled containerboard price fell pretty sharply. We only saw the data today, but I think you may must have seen this a while ago, much more than the waste paper price fall. Are you confident that the kraftliner price won't fall as a result of this? You know, it normally does, but I'm just wondering whether there are any specific cases there. And then just the final question was, just in terms of demand for sack paper, specifically rather than containerboard, what are you seeing there in terms of domestic demand and export demand? That would be great. Thank you very much. Yeah. I mean, just quickly, I mean, we, I think I've already alluded to the impact of Stambolijski. I mean, we do have a big portfolio of kraft paper production, so we are working very hard to make sure that any impact on our customers in the short term is minimized by the effects of having to not be able to produce in Stambolijski. So it is 100,000 tons of sack kraft paper that we are currently not producing. But you know, we, as I say, we are in the fortunate position of producing, you know, capacity-wise, 1.2 million tons, soon to go up to about 1.4 million tons in total. So we are able to mitigate any risks to not being able to supply our customers in the short term through managing the portfolio. And so, you know, that has been a big focus of ours, is firstly, to make sure our customers are looked after, as, and as importantly, you know, in a very difficult situation for the local team. You know, we are fortunate that there were no injuries, as, of course, as a result of the fire. But obviously we're working very hard to support the local team, you know, in what is a very difficult period for them as well. So, I'm not suggesting it's not a blow because it's, you know, valued colleagues who've been working very hard for us for a long time. You know, it does make a contribution to the group. As to my earlier comments, in the context of the overall group net results, it's not deeply material. In terms of your question on the VCB, I think it's really sort of a, you know, VCB relative to recycled container board question. Clearly, you know, clearly there's always a correlation between recycled container board and virgin container board prices over the long term. At the same time, these prices do diverge at various times. Clearly, as I said already, there's a very different dynamic in terms of the level of cost support between the two right now. At the same time, you know, as I said earlier, the recycled industry is not in great shape at the moment in terms of the overall margins. So difficult to predict exactly what happens next on that front. But it's, you know, there's growing cost support again for the, on the recycled side, simply because yes, PfR prices have come off a bit, but it's not enough to, you know, make any real margin gains for the higher cost producers. Whereas clearly on the virgin side, the, you know, the cost support is there. If anything is growing, because of the pressure on pricing in the Nordics. And yeah, you know, these prices do diverge at different times through the cycle. And then finally, the sack kraft. I can't remember the exact nature of the question. It was around, Demand. Overall demand. In terms of the demand picture for the sack kraft, you know, as I said already, I mean, obviously one looks to the, you know, the downstream business, our bags business. Europe has been pretty soft, but it's nice to see that we are starting to slowly see a year-on-year improvement in demand. But, you know, as I keep emphasizing, it is off a low base of last year, and the improvement and the increased demand at this stage is fairly modest. What really matters, as I said earlier, is when the European consumer, particularly in the industrial sort of, building materials and cement and aggregates and these sort of areas, starts to get more confident in building that extension to their house and that. You know, we're seeing modest indications of that, but it's, you know, it hasn't taken hold to a great extent as yet. But it's encouraging at least to see an upward tick on a year-on-year basis. As I said already, in terms of the export markets, and by that we mean everywhere but Europe and North America, where we're also very present in bag converting. We are seeing a pickup in demand, which is encouraging. That's largely driven by cement. Cement growth in emerging markets is starting to look better, and we benefit as a result of that, as being a major producer to the cement industry. So, you know, we are seeing some signs of improvement, but, you know, as I've already alluded to in the earlier discussions, it still remains relatively muted, the recovery. That's very clear. James, thanks very much. Thank you. Appreciate that. Thank you. Thanks. Sure. I believe that answers... We don't have any more questions, operator, so I'll hand back to Andrew, just to wrap up. Thank you. Yes, thanks very much, everyone. Thanks for your attention as always. Appreciating it's a short trading update, but hopefully we've given you sufficient color around the current dynamic. As I say, you know, while we fully acknowledge the more muted trading environment that we are currently experiencing, we certainly see this as a very much a cyclical effect. We firmly believe in the long-term structural dynamics that we see in these markets and remain very excited by all the new developments we're seeing, particularly around sustainable packaging, and this is a growth area and one we're investing behind and are well positioned to capitalize from as we see some tailwinds from the macroeconomic side, so again, appreciate the interest. As always, if there are any follow-on questions, please get back to Fiona and team in the first instance. Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining. The conference is now over. You may disconnect your telephone.