Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I am Mina, your Chorus Call operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Sarantis Group conference call and live webcast to present and discuss the Sarantis Group first half 2023 financial results. All participants will be in a listen only mode, and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a question and answer session. Should anyone need assistance during the conference call, you may signal an operator by pressing star and zero on your telephone. As a kind reminder, you may also join the webcast by clicking on the link provided on the invitation. Please be reminded that this presentation contains the formal disclaimer with regards to forward-looking statements. The presentation and discussion are conducted subject to this disclaimer. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Giannis Bouras, Deputy CEO, Mr. Christos Varsos, Group Chief Financial Officer, and Mr. Konstantinos Rozakeas, Group Strategic Advisor. Mr. Rozakeas, you may now proceed. Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. Thank you for your participation in today's conference call. Before we start, I would like to introduce so the new Sarantis Group management. As you are aware, exactly three months ago, changes in Sarantis Group management have been made. Specifically, Mr. Giannis Bouras, after three years of very successful holding position in chief, as a chief commercial officer, was promoted to deputy CEO, taking all the reporting lines on him, and of course, the responsibility to run the group. At the same time, Mr. Christos Varsos, with an attractive career path, joined us as the new group CFO. Recently, Mrs. Eleni Moustakidou joined us as a new IR manager. Following this short introduction, it is time to pass the speech to Giannis and Christos, in order for them to present Sarantis strategy, and of course, first half, the first half 2023 financial results. Giannis, please proceed to the presentation. Thank you. Thank you, Costa, for the introduction, and hello to everyone, thank you for joining the call and, over the next few slides, we are going to give you a little bit of more background around the half one results. Before we start with the hard numbers, as you already received from yesterday, I would like to have an update on the strategic priorities of the group and a general business update for the first half of the year. You know, Sarantis is a consumer goods company focusing on the consumers, so for us, it's very critical to remind or review a little bit of our story, because it is a very critical one and defines the role of Sarantis in the different markets that we operate. No question that Sarantis is a long-standing, reputable company, built on excellence and ownership, and humbleness, trust, and of course, sustainability. This is part of our new values of Sarantis Ethos that we have launched last year and define and differentiate Sarantis from the rest of the companies. It is also critical that Sarantis Group is consisted by a lot of passionate people, dedicated to our to our business, delivering and committed for maximizing the results for the company. At the same time, Sarantis is always nearby our our stakeholders and as indispensable partner, and this is very critical. It's one of the differentiators that I will explain to you later. Nearby means close mentally, physically, and business-wise with all our stakeholders. And nearby also to our local communities that work hand in hand, we are moving on with our journey, and by providing a better today while caring for tomorrow, which is also critical and differentiating for Sarantis, for Sarantis Group. And this is a big message for us, we care for the future the same way we care about the present, and this is part of the family culture that represents Sarantis as a group. Here I'm presenting a little bit about the scope of Sarantis and our competitive advantages, which are critical when we discuss about the business going forward. Our scope remains the key focus on our Central Eastern Europe territory, and of course, as you will see later, selected international markets and on beauty. We are focusing on home care solutions, on personal care and beauty, and as you already know from our recent, from our history, on bold own value assertive acquisitions. Also, tradition in Sarantis has been working with strategic distribution partnership, which is part of our portfolio, especially in beauty care. But what makes Sarantis different versus the rest of the companies? One big differentiator for us is the fact that we operate in a Central Eastern Europe region with very deep local consumer understanding. Consumer is at the center of our category design, and we design for the territory, which there are not many companies that are designed for that regional level. Also, we are digitalizers of local jewel brands. Through the acquisition strategy, Sarantis has inherited-... big reputable brands in the territory, that we have the skill set to revitalize them and make them even bigger in our markets. Critical also for making all these happen is our investments in the infrastructure in the region, because Sarantis is investing everywhere in the value chain, whether it's supply chain, whether it's commercial distribution, in all our countries, with people on the ground, working hand in hand with our partners. Critical for our household and home care solution supply chain is cost competitiveness. So significant investments went behind all this over the last years, and these are coming now to life with believe supportive great results for our future. I mentioned also before, our long-term approach and is part of the family culture. We care about today and tomorrow, the same way. Last but not least, we are frontline leadership as an approach. What it means, and this as a result, is a fast decision-making. As we're moving on into our future, Sarantis is a regional company that we don't want to become a small multinational, but more of a big startup in terms of mindset. So this is something that help us to make decisions faster, compete with our competitors in a different way, and differentiates Sarantis from the rest of the companies. Few things about our strategy. We have three pillars on our strategy, that also link with our mission that we have revised last year. A few things about our mission as a company, the consumers are at the center by uplifting the mood of them, right? With a simply beautiful simplicity. Simplicity is a key word that we want to define our next steps as a company. Making the life better every day, with having everyday products in our portfolio, and working very closely with our stakeholders to create value. The three elements of our strategy is, of course, the strong growth, whether that one is organic growth, because that's critical. We believe that's critical organic growth to create a sustainable organic growth system, and with acquisitions that are coming on top. A big part of our strategy, the simplification and efficiency, which means that we are unlocking value and release energy in the organization, and you will see a few more details later on. Of course, organization capability. If you want to move forward, you need to develop your organization, and this is what we are investing on, because people is the most important asset of the organization. And we need to ups the game and the leadership development at the same time. Moving to the first one, on the growth side. As you will see, we try to segregate a little bit the categories that we're working in a different way. That makes things much more simple and focused from our point of view, and for all of you to understand. So we are segregating our group growth drivers in four categories. First one category is the beauty and skincare. Second one is the personal care. The third one is the homecare solutions, and the fourth one is strategic partnerships. Private label, you will see later, is part of the home care solutions category, and I will explain more details in the next slide. As you will see, Sarantis has a significant number of reputable brands in every of the category. Brands that either developed by the company over the years, or acquired over the period, the last, the previous years. In the first three categories, beauty, skincare, personal care, and home care solutions, Sarantis also has a strategy, as I said, several acquisitions as a part of the to maximizing the incremental value. Now, few words about each of the categories. On the beauty and skincare, our objective is to disproportionately grow this category. And why? First of all, the category is high gross margin, which improving our portfolio mix, right? The second one is also we are being selective on expanding the category in the different territories. We are developing superior consumer propositions with the relevant communication, and we are backing up all these initiatives. We increase consumer investment to build trial, and we are very serious about the growth of this category. This category, in general, is in a growth momentum, even in our territory. Personal care is a core profit generator for us. We have traditionally been very big players in this category. We are focusing on distribution expansion, right? And we try to meet consumers in all channels. We are reaching younger consumer via innovation and brand building. As I said before, we revitalize local jewel brands as a competitive advantage, and in some of the categories, in the mass fragrance category, we are best in class. This is one of the categories that Sarantis started its operation many, many years ago. In the home care solution is a different game. Significant growth driver for us, with a lot of investments over the last years. Sarantis has a leading position across the region, and we have a category growth obsession, because this category is underdeveloped compared to other household categories in the supermarket, in all channels. Just to give you a perspective, penetration numbers are between 30%-60%, while in other categories, the penetration reaching 80%, which means category has a room to grow. Sarantis has to work on this category growth story via our brands and our mega brand approach that I am talking later, second point, to maximize the core segments of the category. At the same time, we're working in-store because in-store is very critical to navigate consumers and increase the penetration. Superior quality also is important as we innovate in this category for superiority compared to the rest of them of the players in the market, and at the same time working with communication to educate consumers about the use of the category and the solutions that we are providing. Private Label is part of the category, and Private Label has a role to play during the transition of our significant investments in supply chain over the last two to three years. The fourth one is the strategic partnerships category, which is providing market leverage. In this part, we are focusing more on fewer, fewer and more long-term strategic partnerships, and in most of the cases, they are complementary to our own portfolio to drive synergies and add value. The fifth one is, of course, acquisitions. They are complementary, they are building on top. Stella Pack is on the way. We are still pending the local regulatory authorities approval, and of course, we are exploring new acquisition opportunities inside growth strategic priorities, as I mentioned before. A snapshot of how we perform of the, of the first, first half of the year on this category, you will see that we have a strong growth in, the top priorities. In the beauty and skincare, I have to say we have a significant growth, both in volume and value, and it's almost 14% contribution to our sales. The personal care, more value growth, and with a strong momentum. In homecare solutions, value growth in a back-to-back, because we have significant growth over the last two years. The private label business at the moment is all 6.8% of our business. As I said, it's mainly garbage bags in the home care solution category and support supply chain recent investments. The strategic partnerships is a moderate growth, focusing on winning products and brand propositions. There are, of course, some like-for-like comparisons in terms of growth that we're doing better than we present here, as we have stopped some cooperations with some of the partners this year. This is a result of the overall 9.23% growth in the first half of the year. Now, I spoke about innovation before, and as you will see here, some examples that we're very proud of regarding our innovation agenda over the year. Starting from the left, Clinea is a new skincare brand, a first-to-market sustainable, clean, refillable beauty brand in the pharma channel in Greece. This is a product that we have developed in our R&D center here in Greece, and we're very proud about this launch. It's an international proposition with a lot of potential in our markets. On the skincare side, again, Bioten is one of our biggest brands. A lot of meaningful innovation to recruit new users. Significant investment on the brand communication, and we have selected geographical expansion, and we have a very successful launch of the brand over the last 1.5 year in Philippines and Southeast Asia, with great result and very promising results for the skincare brand of Bioten. Third one is another example of a core portfolio of a personal care portfolio. STR8 is a mass fragrance brand. We have launched a new brand, which is more about gamers. Gamers are a big community in our territory, and this initiative is a very strong, has a very good appeal into the market. It's a new platform that we're launching to penetrate the young, among younger generation, because this is also important to recruit younger consumers in our brands. Now, going to the home care solutions category, we are the first one launching a new garbage bags, which is Flex & S trong, as we call it, with a new technology, with three layers made from 100% recycled plastic. And this is giving extra strength to the product. It's first to market, and again, that means that we are innovating in these categories to create a difference and provide value to the consumers. And the fourth example, which is not only because innovation is not only product, is around the perfect store execution as we're talking about our home care solutions category. As I mentioned before, our objective is to drive the growth of the category by educating consumers and navigating consumers in store, where the decisions are made to pick the right products. So investing, touching with consumers, understanding the way they buy the categories, we are developing the stores in a way that consumers can get the navigation easier, and of course, make the life easier when they go in store at a minimum possible time. So this perfect store approach, we believe a lot, and we believe that this is a big driver for the growth of the category. Now, going to geographies-... You will see a little bit different now as we are looking at our geographies in eight different geographical clusters, which is Greece, International Markets, Poland, Romania, Ukraine, Czech and Slovakia, West Balkans, Bulgaria, and Hungary. Not every, as you will see later, not every cluster is the same size, but each cluster has a unique role to play in our growth agenda. One of the benefits of Sarantis is that we are creating solutions, tailor-made solutions, but with, with original scale, so we can develop something for one country that can be scaled up to the rest of the countries. Speak to market with decision-making and agility. It is also important the way we look at the market. Just to give you an example, these eight markets are working directly with me and the leadership team, so fast decision-making, quick decisions to get and capture all the opportunities from the market. And we have a cross-fertilization of knowledge and capabilities and innovation across the market, which is very critical to scale up all the benefits that we are seeing in one market to the others. Now, as you will see, all the markets are growing apart from Greece, but Greece, if you see like for like excluding Wella, business that we lost last year, even Greece is growing by 2.1%. All the graphs have a good growth. Some of them, growth is impressive. The size of these markets, of course, varies, but for us, it is important to understand that our strategy, our ideas, our ways of working, they are working across the market. This is a reconfirmation of our strategy, and that the strategy is working well. Now, we concluded with growth. Let's move to the simplification and efficiency, and we say release value and energy in the organization. Here we have two parts. One part is already in progress, and just to give you an update, we have optimized our portfolio, reducing the SKUs by 40% over the last two years. This has been an important element for, for us moving forward and now simplifying certain business, because SKUs is the complexity that we're handling in our, in our business. That is helping us to stock management, to better stock management and cost release, and you will see some numbers later. We're very proud that new Polipak plant is in full operation, and we believe we start seeing the benefits of that because it's one of the biggest and more modern factories in garbage bags in Europe. Innovation, as I said, I share with you a few examples. Innovation, fewer and bigger initiatives versus plenty of small initiatives. So that's a big change. That is helping us to focus more on our big initiatives and invest behind winning propositions. And the last one, which is, I would say, it's not only simplification, it's a growth, it's a growth thing. We talk about revenue growth management initiatives by focusing on promotional optimization in the market and the hero SKUs that you have heard maybe before. Hero SKUs are the winning SKUs in the market, has been proven over the years, that we invest more and more money to drive the growth because consumers love them already, and we know that, and give them the proper focus and investment to drive the growth further. We believe that out of this, we have, they have contributed to our growth in the first half of the year. Of course, we don't stop, and as we said, it's in progress. It means we continue the journey of the first five points, and we are ready to start now, in our more, digital agenda. As we are starting a new project of integrated business planning, including investments in systems and the new SAP version implementation that will start at the end of this year, beginning of next year, the design. Plus, plenty of other digitalization projects that they are helping us to simplify and make the business even more efficient. Organization capability, the last one, the last pillar of our strategy. It is, as I said, people is the most important asset of Sarantis. We need to embrace our the spicy, as we call it, capabilities, to support the business plans for the next day. And, as we did develop the values and the vision and the mission last year, embracing that one, increasing the awareness across the organization, it is important. Last year, also, we have invested on the engagement survey to take the pulse of our people and understand where the, the engagement level and how we're working and how we need to move forward. We are developing organizational design in a way that promotes agility and fast decision-making, as I said before. And this, we believe, is going to unleash the power of the frontline. Frontline means we're making the decision as close as possible to the market, to the point closer to the issue or closer to the opportunity. We are working on the investment of the capabilities of the development of tomorrow. And of course, all of this, we believe that we are shifting our employees' value proposition towards more meritocracy and diversity. I think this is a summary from our point of view. I will pass over to Christos Varsos right now to continue with financially. Thank you, Yanni. We delivered solid first half performance, growing both top and bottom line and expanding our margins. Our net sales grew by 9.23% to EUR 232.35 million, supported by our focus in our core categories, revenue growth management actions, and pricing initiatives at the end of the prior year. Our EBITDA grew by 27.26% to EUR 28.73 million, supported by top line growth, gradual normalization of the raw material costs, and control of expenses. Our EBIT grew to EUR 21.58 million, or 34.55% versus the same period in 2022. Finally, our earnings before tax grew by almost 60% to EUR 23.47 million, supported by better performance of financial expenses. The same strong picture is reflected in our margins, with gross profit margin improving by 190 basis points to 37.11%. And similarly, all margins are improving significantly. EBITDA by 175 basis points to 12.36%, EBIT margin by 175 basis points to 9.9%, and earnings before tax by 319 basis points to 10.10%. As of 30 June, the group maintained a net cash position of EUR 5.17 million, supported by the profitability, but also by the improvement of working capital by 11 days versus half year 2022. Moving to our full income statement, you can clearly see the growth across all lines. Focus on our core portfolio, growing our high margin categories of beauty, skin, sun care, and personal care, helped the mix of net sales, while our ability to capture growth opportunities and pricing initiatives that we implemented in the second half of last year supported our net sales growth. This, together with the gradual normalization of raw material costs and inflationary pressures, allowed gross profit margin to grow across our categories and geographical footprint. In absolute terms, gross profit grew by 15.18% to more than EUR 86 million, improving the gross profit margin by 192 basis points versus prior year, coming to 37.11%. The above and the control of expenses supported EBIT margin growth by 175 basis points to 9.109%. Except the strong operational performance reflected in EBIT line, we also achieved strong earnings before tax with the support of financial expenses, which improved versus prior year, mainly due to interest income or on deposits and effects. Earnings per share grew by 66.4% to EUR 0.2866, versus EUR 0.1722 in the comparable period. Moving now to the performance in net sales and EBIT by BU, split between the eight BUs that we will be reporting our performance from now on. We had a balanced performance across the eight BUs, with all of them having significant growth, both in top line and EBIT. In Greece, we see net sales reducing by 2.85% to almost EUR 75 million. The reason for the decrease is the termination of the partnership with Coty Wella, concerning the mass distribution of the latter cosmetics in H1 2022. Without this impact, on a like-for-like basis, the net sales in Greece would grow by 1.24%. At the same time, the EBIT and EBIT margins on a reported basis are reducing by 10% and 205 basis points, respectively. These were affected by the launch of the new Clinea brand, which Giannis described in innovation, in the beauty, skin, sun care category. Clinea was launched at the latter part of the first half, with investment backing the launch, whereas the revenues follow in the second part of the year. On a like-for-like basis, excluding Clinea and wella, the EBIT would grow by 3.24% and the EBIT margin by +13 basis points. Beauty skin care, as already mentioned, is the highest margin category, key to our core strategy for the group growth, so investment in launch in Clinea is fully in line with our strategy. The effect of Clinea is one of a timing nature and gets normalized on the second part of the year, with the net sales arriving without significant additional investment. In terms of our categories, as already explained by Giannis, we'll be reporting our performance in the following categories: beauty, skin and sun, personal care, home care solutions, part of which is private label, which, however, we report separately to support the understanding of the dynamics of the categories, our strategic partners, and lastly, other sales. Again, we see balanced performance across our categories, with strong growth in net sales and healthy margins, with significant upside, upside from prior year. In beauty skin care, the EBIT and EBIT margins are again affected by the Clinea launch, thus showing a reduction. Excluding the Clinea impact on a like-for-like basis, EBIT will grow by almost 21% and EBIT, EBIT margin by 62 basis points to more than 18% margin. As already mentioned, the Clinea impact has a phasing effect, and the second part of the year will be normalized. Moving now to our balance sheet. We have a healthy balance sheet, which provides firepower, firepower and flexibility to invest organically, to support the digital transformation of the group, and be able to fuel M&A activity. As of 30th of June, we had a stable financial position with net cash of EUR 5.17 million. The net cash position was achieved even after making large payments in the first six months, like the dividend of EUR 10 million, buying out the 20% minority interest in Polipak for EUR 5 million, and repaying in full Polipak's external debt of EUR 20.5 million. Cash position was fueled on the one hand by the profitability, but also by the improvement of operating working capital by 11 days year-on-year. The strength of group's balance sheet supports financing with better terms as we move forward. Finally, Stella Pack acquisition is on the way and will be completed by the end of the year. The acquisition will be funded by combination of cash and new debt, which has already been arranged. We enhance shareholder value. In the first six months of the year, we paid dividends of EUR 10 million, a 38% payout ratio to the full 2022 net profit. The earnings per share rose by 66.4% to €0.2866 versus €0.1722 in prior year. We have a share buyback program in place. We canceled treasury stock of more than 3 million shares on first of August, which we had acquired in previous years' buybacks. Moving now to our anticipation for the full year results. Given our strong results in the first half of the year, we would like to provide new guidance for the full year 2023. Net sales will be in line with the initial guidance we have provided earlier this year of EUR 480 million, which represents 7.8% versus 2022. Our new EBIT guidance estimates that organic EBIT will grow by 7.5% versus our previous guidance to EUR 43 million versus EUR 40 million initially guided. This represents a 33.37% growth versus 2022 EBIT. Actually, with the EUR 33 million EBIT we are projected, we are managing organically to come back very close to our 2021 full year results. In terms of margins, the EBIT margin for the full year will be 8.9%, an increase of 60 basis points versus the 8.3% of the initial guidance. The 8.9% reflects an improvement of 166 basis points versus 2022 full year EBIT margin. I would like now to pass it back to the operator to open the floor for your questions. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star followed by one on their telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, then you may press star and two. Please use your handset when asking your question for better quality. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. One moment for the first question, please. The first question is from the line of Natalia Svyriadi with Eurobank Equities. Please go ahead. Yes, good afternoon, and thank you for taking my question. I hope you can hear me. I have a question regarding the digitization projects you mentioned earlier. If you have a CapEx forecast on these, and if you have any inputs as to if any of these will be financed through the RRF funding or you're thinking some things, all the projects you said in investments and digitalization. And I also have a question regarding a guidance you gave us for the EUR 43 million in EBIT. That actually implies that in H2, we will see similar EBIT levels, and usually we see a higher H2. So I was wondering if this is just if you have any insights on this and the decelerating, you know, growth rate and running rates, do you actually see decelerating growth rates or not? Thank you for this. Okay. So thank you, Natalia. Regarding the CapEx of the, we have the infrastructure plus digitization, so it's two elements. We expect that over the next three years for both supply chain infrastructure projects and digitization, we utilize CapEx, except the normal CapEx, of EUR 35 million over three years. This will be funded by cash and debt, and actually we're looking towards specific RRF, as you mentioned. We are in the discussion to see also RRF funding, especially for the digital part and for the green part of the infrastructure element. Hmm. Yeah, that sounds really- Okay. Regarding the, hi, Natalia, regarding the H2 and the EBITDA margin, it is true that the first half of the year has been impacted positively in terms of margin because we have... There are two things. One thing is that the pricing that we took at the beginning of the year and last year has a more, a bigger cumulative effect for the first half. This is the number one. And number two is that the second half of the year, what we see, we see more intensive competition because, as Christos mentioned, we have a normalization of raw material prices across categories. That is making the competition more intensive, and in some categories there are some volume pressures. So that one is resulting a different balance between the EBIT margin from first half to second half. We also anticipate an impact from the inflationary pressures coming mainly from employees' cost as we're doing pay rises in May. So now we'll be citing a full second part of the year with this in mind. Hope this answers your questions in full. Yes, that was very clear. Do you have a sustainable level of EBIT margin, if I may, like, looking ahead, like 8%-9%, would that sound reasonable, to you in your, based on what you're changing, you know, on your SKU changes and everything you're doing, in the model? ... You see that this year, as you saw with our new guidance, is this a year clean from acquisition, so it is clearly the organic, organic growth. So yes, closer to what we guided for the full year will be the base moving forward, and our plan is to improve this as we move ahead with our different initiatives on the cost as well. Okay, very good. Have a good start. Thank you very much for taking my question. Thanks a lot. The next question is from the line of Dimitris Giannoulis with Renaissance. Please go ahead. Yes, hi, and thank you for the presentation. First of all, I would like to thank Mr. Rozakeas for what seems to be 20 years of interaction that we had. I wish to wish the new management all the best. Now moving on to a couple of questions. Following up from the last question about the second half, is it fair to say that you are budgeting for a lower gross margin compared to the first half of the year? Number two, wondering what the EUR 1.4 million interest income you booked in the first half, because against your cash position seems to me at least, quite a big rate. The last one about the parent cash flow statement, wondering what this EUR 34 million of acquisition money is about, if you could explain. Thank you. Can you repeat your last one? Current EUR 34 million of acquisition, what do you mean? Yes. In the company's cash flow statement, the parent level. Yeah. There is a EUR 34 million outflow for acquisitions, the cash flow statement, if I'm not mistaken. Okay. I'll, I don't see the EUR 34 million, but anyway, okay. We can take this separately if you want. Now, the margin. We see regarding the percentage margin of the second half of the year, as I said, as I said, this is resulting some pressure from the market, what we talked about the previous question about the EBIT margin. At the end of the day, the pressure is in gross margin because we need to compete higher in the market, right? So we see the pressure there, slight pressure that will resulting the overall the overall margin for the full year at a similar level with H1 or a bit lower, right? So that's the guidance we have today, anticipating the intensive competition coming for the second half of the year, and of course, the normalization of the price increases that we did. Right? So this is regarding the margin. Now, for the net income that we described, the EUR 1.4 million of interest income, this comes from our deposits in Poland and Serbia. So it is on a high, let's say, higher than normalized euro interest income. So you have a significant rates variation, and the time deposits actually produce a large base of the amount that you stated. Now, on the cash flow element, what you're describing, the EUR 34 million at the company, most likely you're talking about the investment in Polipak, by buying the minority and repaying the investment and repaying the debt of Polipak, which happened by doing from the parent company share capital increase, which we funded in Poland. Okay. Okay. Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone. Ladies and gentlemen, there are no further audio questions at this time. Excuse me, we have a follow-up question from Mrs. Natalia Zyriadis with Eurobank Equities. Please go ahead. Yes, I have a follow-up question regarding if you could share with us how Greece is doing in terms of volumes and the current trading condition, like Greece sales, I mean. Because we in H2, we don't have this extraordinary Wella discontinuation. So, how are we seeing this currently? Look, regarding Greece, especially Greece, is one of our most complex markets, with a lot of different categories and a lot of different brands. What we're expecting in the second half of the year, Greece will keep growing organically. We have the impact of the first half, as we said, with wella. Market conditions in Greece, they are better than we were expecting and we were expecting at the beginning of the year. The good things for us is also that in our core categories, we are winning shares. There are although, some categories in Greece, that they have to do with specific channels, like, B2B channel or some healthcare channel, which is in pharma, but the categories are facing an issue from a volume point of view, because of the post-COVID effect. Because some of the categories have been increased significantly during COVID, more than 60, 70%, and now normalizing to a different level. It's a bit complex to explain to you. We need to go category by category to explain. The good thing for us is that in Greece, in our core categories, we are growing significantly versus last year, and we're expecting that to continue. Okay, thank you very much for that. Operator, I think we have some questions from the Q&A, from the WebEx as well. Thank you. We will move on to the WebEx questions. The first question is from Mr. Emanuel Ribeiro de Figueiredo, with LBV Asset Management, and I quote: "Assuming the acquisition of Stella Pack is done, could you give an estimate on range of the net debt position at year-end? Thank you. Thank you very much for the question. Yes, we're working towards the Stella acquisition, as we already mentioned. The actual acquisition, as mentioned, will be partially funded by existing cash and debt. After the acquisition of Stella Pack, we expect that net debt will be around EUR 35 million. Net debt, EUR 35 million. Thank you. The next webcast question is from Shubhra Aggarwal with Goldman Sachs Asset Management, and I quote: "Can you give an update on the approval of Stella Pack? On Stella Pack, we are expecting the approval from the committee. We're still waiting. We don't have any worries about that. It's a matter of the process. It's true that the process has been a little bit slow, but we're expecting that concluded by the end of this calendar year. We have another question from Shubhra Aggarwal with Goldman Sachs Asset Management, and I quote: "Can..." I'm sorry, this was withdrawn. We also have a question from Thibault Mesne with Yellow Shark question, and I quote: "Regarding Stella Pack, I know everything is not under your control, but it's been almost one and a half years since you announced the acquisition. Could you please provide more details on the expected timing of the synergies which were expected to start this year? Thank you. As I said before, I mean, the update is what I said, that we're expecting the final approval. We know that Stella Pack is adding another EUR 70 million-EUR 75 million on the top line. We know that from EBITDA point of view is around EUR 8 million, and we have calculated the synergies at EUR 3.5 million at the range in 2 years' time. So these are the numbers. As I said, we just, it's a matter of time, it's a matter of the process. It's true, it's 1.5 year, and we have to, we cannot do anything more than that. We don't have any reasons to believe that something is not working, but it's a matter of time. This is what we have and we know until today. We also have a question from Moritz Wulff with Discover Capital, and I quote: "What is currently the biggest challenge for you? Thanks. I don't know whether this is a big challenge, it depends on the category, on the different parts of the business. And it's, I think, as I said, working with our people, we try to make even the biggest challenges manageable from ourselves. And I think at the end of the day, even the biggest challenge, if you have an action plan, is not the, it's not a big challenge anymore. Things that we cannot control can be the biggest challenges for us, right? Whether we have something unexpected, whether we have something that disrupt the market that we operate, like we had a year ago with in the war in Ukraine. These are the things that we cannot control, that sometimes can be the biggest challenges for our team. Nothing more than that. Ladies and gentlemen, there are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the conference over to management for any closing comments. Thank you. It seems there is another question, as I see on the Q&A. Thank you, sir. We also have a question from Stelios Morfidis from Proto Thema New Money. Where are you exploring new acquisition opportunities? Are we going to see any acquisition moves in half two? Thank you. At this moment in time, we are focusing on our current organic growth agenda, plus the Stella acquisition that is upcoming. Other than that, nothing, nothing that... We are always open, but nothing robust in our hands right now. A new webcast question just came in from Shubhra Aggarwal with Goldman Sachs Asset Management. Can you, and I quote: "Can you please give an update on M&A pipeline and any new potential distribution agreements? As I said, on the M&A side, there is nothing we can say about apart from Stella, or the new distribution agreements, nothing there as well. As I said, we are working on fewer and bigger and more strategic partnerships, and this is what we are focusing right now. So we're working with our current partner, partners to develop the business and their brands together with them. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, there are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the conference over to management for any closing comments. Thank you. Nothing from our side, apart from thank you all for participating in our call. Thank you for the questions, thank you for listening, and now we're always open for any further clarifications or any questions. So, our team is at your disposal. Eleni here is ready to accept any requests. So, and, also from my side, as a closure, I would like to thank Kostas for two things. First of all, helping Sarantis to become one of the most successful regional businesses in our sector, in our sector in the region, and of course, helping us, me personally, and Christos and everybody, for this, beautiful and nice transition. Thank you, Kostas. Thank you, Giannis, for your kind words. Thank you very much. And, all, all my best, all my best for the future to you and to the company. Thank you, Kostas. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now concluded, and you may disconnect your telephone. Thank you for holding, calling, and have a good afternoon.