Welcome to the full year 2025 results announcement conference call for Budweiser Brewing Company APAC Limited. Hosting the call today from Budweiser APAC is Mr. YJ Cheng, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Chair of the Board, and Mr. Ignacio Lares, Chief Financial Officer. The results for the full year ended 31 December 2025 can be found in the press release published earlier today and available on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange's and Budweiser APAC's websites. Before proceeding, let me remind you that some of the information provided during this results call, including our answers to your questions on this call, may contain statements of future expectations and other forward-looking statements. These expectations are based on management's current views and assumptions and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors beyond our control. It is possible that Budweiser APAC's actual results and financial condition may differ, possibly materially, from the anticipated results and financial condition indicated in this forward-looking statements. Budweiser APAC is under no obligation to, and expressly disclaims any such obligation to, update the forward-looking statements as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. For a discussion of some of the risks and important factors that could affect Budweiser APAC's future results, see risk factors in the company's prospectus, dated 18 September 2019, the 2024 annual report published, and any other documents that Budweiser APAC has made public. I would also like to remind everyone that the financial figures discussed today are provided in U.S. dollars, unless stated otherwise. The percentage changes that will be discussed during today's call are both organic and normalized in nature, and unless otherwise stated. Percentage changes refer to comparisons with the 2024 full year. Normalized figures refer to performance measures before exception items, which are either income or expenses that do not occur regularly as a part of Budweiser APAC's normal activities. As normalized figures are non-GAAP measures, the company disclosed the consolidated profit, EPS, EBIT and EBITDA on the fully reported basis in the press release published earlier today. Further details of the full year 2025 results can also be found in the press release. It is now my pleasure to pass the time to YJ. Sir, you may begin. Thank you, Ari, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our call today. Our performance in China in 2025 was below our potential. We have been taking clear steps to enhance our in-home go-to-market, enrich our portfolio, and innovate behind our mega brand as we focus on rebuilding our momentum and reigniting growth. In South Korea and India, we continues to gain market share and increase EBITDA. We enter 2026 with clear strategic priorities. We are moving with speed, focus, and discipline to ensure that our business is stronger and better positioned to outperform over the long term. I will discuss more about our strategic priorities at the end of the presentation. With that, I will now pass it over to Iggy to discuss our financial result for the full year and fourth quarter of 2025. Thank you. Thank you, YJ, and good morning, everyone. In the full year 2025, total volumes decreased by 6% and revenue per hectoliter decreased by 0.2%, resulting in a net revenue decline of 6.1% for the year. Our normalized EBITDA decreased by 9.8% and normalized EBITDA margin contracted by 113 basis points. In the fourth quarter, total volumes decreased by 0.7%, impacted by ongoing challenges in China and industry softness in South Korea, partially offset by strong growth in India. Revenue and revenue per hectoliter decreased by 4.2% and 3.5%, respectively. Our normalized EBITDA decreased by 24.7%, impacted by our top-line performance, reduced grants and incentives, and increased investments. Our normalized EBITDA margin contracted by 425 basis points. Now, let me cover some highlights from each of our major markets. In APAC West, over the full year, volumes decreased by 6.7%, while revenue and revenue per hectoliter decreased by 8.2% and 1.5%, respectively. Normalized EBITDA decreased by 12.4%. In China, our volume and market share trend stabilized in the fourth quarter, in line with a soft industry that was impacted by shipment phasing from a later Chinese New Year. However, we faced incremental bottom-line pressure as we began to scale our investments in channel and portfolio expansion. Volumes in the fourth quarter decreased by 3.9%, while revenue per hectoliter decreased by 7.7%, resulting in revenue decline of 11.4%. Normalized EBITDA decreased by 42.3%. In the fourth quarter, we made significant progress in our channel expansion strategy, focusing on premiumizing the in-home channel and expanding our penetration and market share in the O2O channel. Over the full year, the increase in contribution from the in-home and O2O channels to our volumes and revenue has persisted. In the fourth quarter, we continued to invest in marketing campaigns and innovations to further bolster the brand power of our portfolio, connect with consumers across more occasions, and increase sales momentum. For Budweiser, we launched an extended Chinese New Year campaign, inviting consumers to run with Budweiser into the promising year ahead. Together with brand ambassador Jackson Wang, we introduced limited edition Year of the Horse gift packs across in-home and O2O channels, featuring bespoke can designs that embody specific aspirations, including health, wealth, and happiness. We also partnered with major O2O platforms to launch Chinese New Year campaigns. Centered on family gatherings and gift-giving occasions during the festival, these initiatives aimed to boost brand visibility through tailored online activations and offline advertisements in key transportation hubs, including airports and high-speed rail stations across major cities. On the digitization front, the usage and reach of BEES continued to grow as we focused on expanding our distribution coverage to more points of sale, as well as increasing our rate of sale per outlet. As of December 2025, BEES was present in more than 320 cities across China. We are continuing to leverage technology to further enhance our commercial capabilities, optimize our route to market, and strengthen our customer relationships. In India, industry momentum continued, and we gained total market share both in the fourth quarter and over the full year. In the fourth quarter, we delivered strong double-digit revenue growth, led by our Premium and Super Premium portfolio. In 2025, the Budweiser brand continued to grow ahead of the industry, with India representing one of Budweiser's top four markets globally. Our Premium and Super Premium portfolio represented more than two-thirds of our total revenue and delivered more than 20% revenue growth. In APAC East, over the full year, volumes decreased by 1.3%, with revenue and revenue per hectoliter increasing by 1.3% and 2.5%, respectively. Normalized EBITDA decreased by 1.2%, with our EBITDA margin contracting by 75 basis points. In South Korea, we outperformed a soft industry in the fourth quarter across both on-premise and in-home channels. Volumes decreased by low single digits, and revenue was flattish as we continued to grow net revenue per hectoliter overall, driven by our ongoing revenue management initiatives and a positive brand mix. Normalized EBITDA increased by low single digits, delivering margin expansion. We continued to invest in our mega brands to further strengthen their competitive position with several campaign highlights for the fourth quarter. Cass introduced its Olympic campaign to strengthen brand equity, accompanied by themed packaging for Cass Fresh, Cass Light, and Cass 0.0 ahead of the 2026 Winter Olympics. The launch coincided with Cass's sponsorship of the 2025 Olympic Day Run in Jeonju, the first in a series of activations aimed at celebrating athletes, uniting fans, and deepening consumer engagement. Stella Artois launched a collaborative campaign with Netflix's hit competition, Culinary Class Wars, Season Two, introducing a series of innovative marketing initiatives. The campaign leveraged one of South Korea's biggest cultural phenomena to reinforce Stella Artois' role as the beer that elevates everyday dining, strengthening the brand's connection with food lovers in a highly relevant and impactful way. Finally, we continued to maintain a strong balance sheet in line with our disciplined financial practices and capital allocation priorities. At the end of 2025, our net cash position remained above $2.8 billion, after decreasing by $39 million as compared to the previous year. Therefore, the board has recommended a dividend of $750 million, or $0.0566 per share for the full year 2025, in line with the previous year's dividend. With that, YJ and I are here to answer any questions that you may have. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, the floor is now open for questions. Please press star one to ask a question. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. In the interest of time, we ask participants to limit themselves to two questions and please ask one question at a time. Our first question is coming from Linda Huang from Macquarie. Please go ahead. Thanks, management, for this opportunity. And then, I have a two question. I will start it from the first one. The first one is regarding for China, because this is always the market focus. So I want to know, what is the latest demand trends in China and any updates of the, year-to-date or Chinese New Year preparation in China? And have you seen any, on-trade demand recovery? So this is the first one. Let me take this question, Linda. Thanks for your questions. Yeah, you are right. So China is a focus country in APAC for us. So for the full year 2025, the industry shows a sign of stabilization versus the previous year. In terms of on-premise recovery, we have not seen any significant improvement yet. So we see this in the past one or two years in continued growth in in-home consumption, and we are quite conservative to see the recovery of the on-trade. Our performance, as I mentioned, underperformed in the industry in 2025, and which is below our potential. However, the fourth quarter of 2025 saw some initial improvement momentum with the volume and market share stabilize. Through the, I can give you a few example, which is, bottle wise, power get improved through the investment in the channel and the portfolio expansion, and also a focus on In-home channel and market share in O2O getting improved and also premiumized as well. For the Chinese New Year, we should put this January and February together to see the trend, and it's too early to see the assessment. But I will see the momentum keep same momentum as what we have in the first quarter last year. I will call our first quarter momentum will play a role as a bridge, connect the year performance last year versus a stabilized momentum this year, what we put together. So we will continue to focus on what we can control, which is leading premier portfolio, accelerate expansion of our in-home route to market, and enhance our execution. So in China, it's very clear our priority is to reignite growth and rebuild our market share momentum. Thank you, Linda. Thank you, YJ. My second question is for dividend. And I also thanks, Iggy, that before your departure, you give us the dividend per share guidance. So we appreciate the management care, the long-term shareholder reward, and then maintain this good dividend policy, even during the time of the sales profit decline. So my next question is that, given that we are going to have a new CEO on board, so I'm wondering if the shareholder reward policy will be reviewed in due course, and what would be the new policy in the future? So this is for Iggy. Thank you. Thank you for the question, Linda. So look, I think at the end of the day, we're focused on driving long-term shareholder value in a sustainable way, and dividends have a relevant role to play in this, right? They're a part of the overall view. As we've shared in the past, we aim to do this first and foremost through organic growth. Of course, it could be supported as well by selective inorganic opportunities. And finally, of course, we give consideration to providing a competitive dividend. As you're well aware, we've been increasing our dividend amounts steadily since our IPO. And of course, we've shared in the past our ambition to be able to continue to maintain or grow this dividend over time. By the same token, you're referencing the dividend policy. It has been consistent since the IPO, right? We said we would maintain at least a 25% dividend payout. In fact, actually, since the IPO, our dividend payout has always been significantly higher than, than that commitment. The way we think about the dividend is, in preparing an annual dividend recommendation, we do a rigorous review of our cash balance, our future cash flow generation capabilities for the business as well, the plans that we have in place to fund, of course, our organic growth, any strategic and organic opportunities which we can consider. And with all of this in mind, right, in this context, what should be an appropriate direct shareholder return? That review process was used in full effect, of course, in 2025, and that's how the board arrived at the recommendation of a $750 million dividend, which as you mentioned, was in line with last year. What I can assure you of is that this rigorous process will remain intact, and you can expect YJ and Bernardo to be equally attentive to the process in the future. But I think it's too early to have a discussion around revisiting the dividend policy at this point. Thank you so much for the question, Linda. Yeah. Thank you very much. Thank you. Our next question is coming from Chen Luo from Bank of America. Please go ahead. Hi, YJ and Iggy. This is Chen from BOFA. And before I raise my question, I'd like to express, express my gratitude to Iggy for your hard work. We really appreciate all these few years that we worked together. So and now my first question is on China again. So actually, in the past 2 years and a half, we have seen a continuous volume decline. But it's good to notice that in Q4 last year, the volume decline has narrowed significantly from the previous few quarters. So what are we going to do differently in 2026 to turn around the business? And where are we now on the journey towards a volume recovery? Or in other words, when will China volume growth or sales growth turn positive? Is it going to be in Q2 or in the second half this year, or even later? and the side question is related to the World Cup. Do we believe that the World Cup this year could possibly boost the industry demand? Thank you. Oh, thank you for the kind words, Lucian, and let me maybe try and break this down into the different components you're asking about. Maybe the starting point is in 2026, our priority, our top priority in China remains to reignite growth and rebuild our volume momentum. So consistent with how we've been discussing this in the last year or so, this is the priority. We're confident in the strategy and what we're focusing on, and YJ has mentioned in the past is enhancing our execution in the key channels and geographies on this kind of path towards recovery. While we don't provide guidance, maybe I can give you a bit of color on how we see the work of the teams thus far and, you know, how we think about the key moments in, in the year. So I think first of all, it starts with Chinese New Year, right? As YJ mentioned, it's too early to assess. We tend to look at January and February combined, right? Given the changes in timing of, of Chinese New Year every year. But we do like at least what we see for now. We made it a point, with the teams this year to create very scalable campaign, and it's been good to see actually the excitement from our wholesalers, our customers, and our consumers thus far. So it's off to a good start. Probably the second thing that will be important this year is innovations will play a very meaningful role, as well for, for the, the key brands, right, the mega brands. Some of the innovations that we launched last year have performed very well, particularly in the fourth quarter. So you'll expect these to start scaling in 2026. On Bud specifically, this would include, for example, Magnum and some of the new primary packs, right? Which help us to serve different consumer needs, particularly in the in-home channel. Then, as you mentioned on World Cup, right? After we get through this kind of CNY and innovation period, we can take a look at our summer plans, which look very strong. Of course, it's too early for us to share details on those plans at this point, but we are very excited to have the World Cup as a mega platform and to be able to activate it fully in China and in other markets in a locally relevant way. And of course, the better we're able to execute this, the more meaningful the impact is gonna be for Budweiser and volumes overall. Beyond that, we're of course focusing on expanding in the in-home and enhancing, of course, trade execution to take advantage of those plans. And consistent with what we discussed in a previous call, the key for us to a successful in-home expansion is gonna be making sure we have a high-quality distribution network that we can expand to cover more points of sale. So we've been going wider and deeper, with some meaningful progress in the fourth quarter. So that's what gives us some level of excitement, that we can keep this progress or this traction going into 2026 as well. So I hope that answers your question, Lucian. Okay, thank you. That's very helpful. And my second question is actually still on China. So as you highlight previously, our top priority in China is to reignite the growth and rebuild the momentum. Is it fair to say that we are going to increase the commercial investment in China so that we might prioritize top line over profitability in 2026? Yeah, maybe I'll take this one as well then. Yeah, if you look at 2026, right, given the priority is top line in China, consistent with the comments in previous quarters, we need to, you know, put our money where our mouth is, right? So from that perspective, while we believe in the culture of and, and we wanna, of course, have the right top line growth and the right bottom line result. Clearly, the first priority is reigniting growth. Margin is still important to long-term success, but we're gonna prioritize this focus on top line. So to achieve this, we've given room to the teams to increase commercial investment as a percentage of net revenue, which is how we tend to measure it, to make sure that they can activate our brands and innovations in the in-home and within emerging channels as well, like instant retail and O2O in the right way. But of course, given the financial discipline that's in our nature, it's not a blank check either, right? We expect teams to test initiatives in the market first, and then the ones that pilot very well, they'll get a green light to scale, and then we'll provide them the added resources to do that. And that would hold even more true, right, with Bernardo here at the helm, who has a tremendous background in resource allocation and value creation. I think what's important, too, is that even as we increase commercial investment as a percent of net revenue, it doesn't necessarily need to lead to a significant EBITDA margin dilution. We have several drivers the teams can rely on, you know, and, and can activate, right, to support our EBITDA margin. That includes operational efficiency, cost management initiatives, and of course, hopefully, some incremental brand mix improvement as the teams continue to premiumize the in-home channel as well. So we're focused on, you know, giving the teams the right resources to drive that top-line growth. And with that, we expect we'll get to a better equation in 2026. Thank you for the question, Lucian. Okay, thank you. That's very helpful. Thanks again for your hard work and all the help in the past few years. Very much appreciated. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question is coming from Euan McLeish, from Bernstein. Please go ahead. Hi, good morning, gents. I've got two questions on China instant retail, because it seems to be the most dynamic channel in China beer right now. It seems, you know, in FY 25, Bud didn't fully capitalize on this, but you're obviously planning on trying to change that. Can you maybe give us a bit of a quantification of how much of your underperformance relative to other brewers is being driven by this lower instant retail exposure? And then maybe talk a bit about how you, the scale and the reach of your route to market for instant retail stands today compared to the beginning of the year, and where you think this needs to get to, before the summer season 2026 for you to really capitalize. Thanks very much. Thanks for the question, Euan. Yeah, so maybe the starting point is O2O, overall, and instant retail in particular, for sure, is one of, if not the fastest growing emerging channel in China today, right? And you're correct in that we're not yet fully capitalizing on this, which is part of the reason why we see this as a very significant opportunity for us in 2026 and beyond. We were under-indexed in the instant retail channels in the past, given our pre-existing footprint, right, in the way we built the business. But of course, with the increasing relevance of the channel, this under-index has been a relevant driver, of course, our performance in 2025. It's hard to give a specific split, but it's been a very relevant reason, right, for a difference in performance versus other brewers. For this reason, as the instant retail channel has accelerated, the growth has accelerated, we started to make a much more significant effort to increase our presence within it. This is part of the reason why we partnered, of course, with some of the major O2O platforms to further expand our penetration and market share in the channel. And actually, in the fourth quarter, we saw some good early signs of progress as well. So maybe a way to look at it is we exited 2025 with more scale and reach than we had at the start of 2025. And actually, in fact, if I look at the O2O channels contribution to our in-home sales, that increased in both the fourth quarter and the full year, right? So as we make progress to close the gap to fair share in the channel, we're seeing that actually pay dividends. We also see the channel respond well to premium brands, which I think is equally important. So we expect the contribution of instant retail to our volume and mix can evolve favorably moving forward. And then, yeah, maybe finally, I guess the comment I would make is, with this in mind, you should expect us to continue to invest in the channel in 2026, partner with the major platforms to deepen our penetration within the channel. Of course, our goal will be to do as much of this as we can before the summer to make sure we capture the summer peak season in full. Thank you for the question. Okay, so I guess following on from that, it's obviously been a source of overall positive mix for the industry, but there's a risk that this channel becomes a kind of a volume-focused land grab and a bit of a race to the bottom for the brewers just trying to grab scale. You know, do you see evidence of this happening so far? What are you doing to make sure that this instant retail growth is actually value accretive rather than overall value destructive as a strategy? Yeah, Euan, that's a very, very fair point. So I guess the starting point is the channel, and you're correct, the channel does skew more premium than some of the other channels, so it can be a source of overall positive mix. At least that's how it's structured today. From that perspective, we see it as potentially helpful in accelerating the premiumization of the in-home channel overall. And so I think that in and of itself is a good opportunity. I think the key, as you mentioned, is to do this in the right way. So we saw many opportunities to expand in the channel, but we've actually been quite selective in which ones we've pursued and what activation mechanisms we've applied. The reason for that is twofold. The first one, of course, it's a very costly channel to invest in. And the second thing is the goal will be, and has been, to provide perceived value to consumers without driving the type of deep and sustained promotional pressure that we've seen in some other categories, right? Where the discount weight or the discount pressure has been much higher. So for now, we don't see it as an investment venue or channel that is out of control. But I do think it's very important that we take a leadership position in how we manage the development of the channel. So from that perspective, we've evaluated very carefully what are the right portfolios, so which brands, what packaging as well, we should make available on the channel. The teams have very clear guardrails and standards on assortment, pricing, activation mechanisms, and even execution criteria for the channel. The goal here is to make sure that they play and win in the channel in the right way. So it's not enough just to be present. They need to be present in the right way. And our goal as we develop the channel, to your point, will be to make sure that it's profitable in the long term, which is also part of the reason why it probably took us a bit longer to get into the game in instant retail than maybe some of our competitors would have. And why you will see as, as we move forward, very specific decisions on packaging formats. They need to make sense for the channel, need to be engaging for our consumers. You'll see that we'll be very selective in which partnerships we pursue, with which platforms, and the goal here will be exactly that. So to bring consumers along in a value-accretive way. So yeah, this is very methodical, very planned out, and it'll play a critical role in our strategy in 2026. So thank you very much for the question, Euan. Great. Thanks again. Appreciate that. Thank you. Our next question is coming from Lilian Lou from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Sure. Thanks for the opportunity. I have two questions as well. I think YJ and Iggy talk a lot about the China priority for this year. So how would you see we track our performance throughout the year based on the strategy we lay out? For example, shall we look at the RTM build in in-home our SKUs, roll out the mega brands trend, innovation, these any qualitative KPIs we put out for our salesperson, distributor, and also as an outsider, how we track the progress? That's my first question. Thank you for the question, Lilian, and good morning. Yeah, maybe the thought process here is, since we're confident in the strategy, and as YJ mentioned, the focus is on enhancing our execution, the key priorities we have, the KPIs and the milestones that we're looking at, tend to tie to execution. There's maybe three major buckets here. One is around in-home route to market expansion. The second one is around this emerging channel presence building. And the third one is around the portfolio priorities we have, which obviously center a lot around core plus growth, around innovation and its contribution. BEES plays a critical role, but I would think of it more as a means to achieve these things, and in many cases, to maybe help us to accelerate our, our efforts in, in the buckets I just gave you. So of course, we're tracking many metrics, to ensure we get the right, level of traction right, across these areas. I'll give you maybe a few examples of, of some of the metrics that the teams are covering that we think are a very good, you know, proxy for doing the right things in, in markets. So in, in terms of in-home channel expansion, we look at the expansion of our distribution and coverage, so we measure actually the number of points of sale, that the teams are able to reach and that buy on a, on a high-frequency basis, so weekly, monthly, et cetera. We also look at the number of must-have SKUs. We have very specific portfolio assortment guidelines, right, by channel and sub-channel. So we look at the number of must-have SKUs that are available at these points of sale. And then, of course, we look very carefully at the acceleration of the speed of premiumization of the in-home channel, because, of course, this will help us to drive the favorable brand mix, right? That is a key underpinning really to our results. When you think about the emerging channels, right, and how we perform there, for O2O, for example, you could look at gross merchandise value or GMV. You could look at market share within the sub-channel, but also equally important for us, as I was mentioning to you in a second ago, we track this, this kind of adherence to execution guidelines, right? So what is the average selling price? What is the brand and, and SKU mix contribution? To make sure that we're not just winning, but that we're playing in the right way, right? So it's long-term value accretive. And then in terms of portfolio, maybe I'll give you two examples that I think are, are quite relevant given where we've pivoted from an execution perspective. One is price segment-specific, distribution. So think, for example, at the 8 RMB price point, with the importance of Harbin Ice and some of our other offerings, making sure that we're tracking distribution and volume growth there. Then for innovations, we actually track the growth rate, but also the percent contribution that innovation drives within our total business. And so these ones are just obviously a sample of the ones that are key for us. We made good inroads on these in 2025, particularly in the second half of the year. So to give you an example, right? If you're tracking in-home distribution, we exited 2025 with, directionally speaking, a mid-single-digit increase in the number of points of sale that we had in the network versus what we would have had at the start of the year. And so that would give us confidence, right, that our business is gaining momentum, and that we have a platform for growth, right? The teams evaluate these KPIs on an ongoing basis, and to be fair, given Bernardo is just arriving, I would give him some time to review before deciding which KPIs and milestones, if any, he thinks are best to be shared externally as well. Because as you can imagine, a lot of this data is also competitively sensitive. But I hope, Lilian, that gives you at least some context on how we think about the means that will drive the results for the business here. Yeah, definitely. Thanks, Iggy. That's a very detailed guideline. My second question is about South Korea because last year, obviously, we saw the South industry trend. So what is the latest demand situation into early 2026? And have you seen any changes or shifts in competition and the promotional intensity that's in the market? This one's interesting. I mean, total industry remained a bit soft in 2025, as you're well aware. It's a bit too early, much like in China, right, with the timing of the Lunar New Year. It's too early, I think, to have a view on 2026 yet, and so we'll likely wait until we have January and February results. So I think that'll be a much more interesting discussion at the end of Q1 earnings. But in general, from a macro perspective, we've seen mixed signals, I would say, over the past few quarters, right? CPI stabilized, consumer sentiment has been improving sequentially versus the previous year. But by the same token, we track the savings rate for consumers, and that's been on the rise despite inflation being under control, interest rates haven't been cut, et cetera. So it looks like consumers are still acting as if they're under some sort of pressure, and as a result of prioritizing essential spending, right? So food, utilities, et cetera, at the moment. This consumer frugality, if you translate it more towards overall consumption and kind of the alcohol sector overall, means that you have less of the long-standing structural trade-up that usually happens from lower-priced categories like soju into beer. But again, that's more seems to be more of a short-term effect, right? But much like anything else, there's still pockets of growth, right? If we take a look at the industry there, we're seeing non-alcoholic beer performing incredibly well. We're seeing flavored beer do very well. Some pockets of RTDs do well. So all of these are gaining popularity in Korea, which is similar to many other more developed markets, and given our portfolio presents a great opportunity for us. So in this context, I'd say we're pleased with the commercial results, since we continue to outperform the industry. The teams are doing what they can to offset that soft industry. And I think what it will come down to is, you know, reinforcing the investments and the focus in mega brands and innovations we did last year, this year as well, right? So in core, if you think about it, Cass starts the year with a very strong Olympic campaign. Obviously, it's designed to help strengthen brand equity, but it's also accompanied by very specific theme packaging for all the variants, right? For Cass Fresh, for Cass Light, for Cass 0.0, as the Olympics progress, right? And then we've continued to also increase our participation, so as many more consumers we can bring into the category via non-alcoholic beer, flavored beer, and some of the other liquid innovations. So you'll continue to see a focus on Cass 0.0. We have Cass All Zero as well, right? So a new variant there. That is very interesting from a functional benefit perspective. We've got three variants of Cass Lemon Squeeze in market, as well, so a zero alc version, a normal one, and a 7% that competes with the RTD space. And we've been playing with the texture, right, of beer products like the HANMAC Extra Creamy Draft Can as well. And then, of course, premiumization is still a big opportunity, right? So an area of focus for us in the industry. Stella Artois has been our focus there. The Netflix integration, right, that we've done for Culinary Class Wars, Season Two is off to a great start, and you know, the size and the scale of that programming. So we think that we'll have a great spill-on effect as well on consumption and kind of meal occasions. So I'd say we're very confident in the strong and healthy brand portfolio, the great RTM people capabilities we have, and we're excited to lead, hopefully, beer growth in Korea this year and beyond. I think that's my answer for the question. Thank you, Lily. Thanks, Eddie. Thanks, Iggy. That's very helpful. Thank you. Our next question is coming from Leaf Liu from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Thanks a lot for taking my questions, YJ and Iggy. For Iggy, I want to especially express my sincere gratitude for your contribution and partnership over the years. Wish you all the best in the future endeavors. And now regarding the results, I have two questions on China. I'll ask one by one. So first one, on inventory management, how would you comment on the current level of channel inventory in China and also the pace of the stocking in 2025? Will other inventory management measures we performed in 2025 lead to any benefits into the Chinese New Year shipment and also the first quarter in 2026? So that's my first question. Well, thank, thank you, Leaf, and thanks for the kind words. Yeah, so look, inventory management, I mean, we've been talking about it for almost too long, I would say, right? We've been proactively taking steps to adjust our inventory, given the current business environment, and we've been doing this to ensure the health of the route to market since late 2024, right? So it's already been more than a year. What I can say is that as we look at our inventory levels as of the end of the year, right, end of 2025, they're now lower than they would have been in the same period of the previous year. And that applies both in terms of absolute inventory, but also days of inventory as well. I think as we shared in a previous call, we would expect our inventories to be lower than the industry average today. I think we go into the Chinese New Year in 2026 in a better position than we did in the previous year as well. And of course, we're managing inventories is a continuous discipline, right? It's not a one-time exercise, so we'll continue to manage our inventories very attentively. So there'll always be small adjustments, right, based on sell-out trend changes, you know, by channel, by geography, et cetera, but we would not expect these to be as significant as the ones we've had to do over the past year. So thank you for your question, Leaf. Thanks, Iggy. That's very clear. My second question is on pricing trend. Following our strategic promotion of some SKUs in the second half of 2025, as we visited in Xiamen, for example, we saw some QR code scan bonus, but whether Magnum to consumers in the on-trade channels. Basically, there are some strategic promotion there, and we launched more SKUs in RMB 6-8 pricing range. How do we look at our pricing trend in China into 2026, comparing to the overall beer market trend? Thank you so much. Thank you, Leaf. No, the mechanisms that you would have seen, the intent behind that is we wanna make sure that we pass as much value in our promotions and our activations directly to consumers where we can. And yes, in the fourth quarter, a greater proportion of our investments would have gone to through the line campaign. So not just, of course, marketing spend for visibility, but also promotions like QR code scans, et cetera, that actually drive the value to the consumer. If I look at the quarter, the incremental investment was a combination of a few different elements. We had more of this focus on mechanisms that are passed on to consumers, which of course, reduces a risk of these investments kind of dying at the trade, right? Becoming just additional margin for points of sale. And this is particularly relevant for convenience and traditional trade, right, in-home channels, particularly when we do mega brand innovation investments. The second bucket would be wholesaler support, right? So we made sure, and some of these are called a one-time or non-recurring, right? A focus on supporting our wholesalers to ensure that they're best equipped to, you know, to scale up the in-home efforts that they have in mind. And of course, this dilutes as the volume of the business scales, right? So we did a lot of this in a small quarter, but if you think of it over time, as a wholesaler increases their in-home volume, then the level of investment required there becomes smaller and smaller. Then, of course, the third one would have been an increased weight of some of these O2O and instant retail investments. We had strong plans in place and wanted to make sure that we tested and validated that they work. Of course, so long as they continue to deliver on expectations, we would do that. In the fourth quarter, the net revenue per hectoliter decrease was a product of those incremental investments, as well as a bit of adverse channel mix, which translated, of course, altogether into a more significant net revenue per hectoliter headwind because of the small volume quarter, as I mentioned before. I think what's probably more interesting is if we kind of reflect on this and we take a look at what those takeaways might be for 2026. I think the first piece is our brand mix remains favorable, right? So the contribution of our premium and super premium portfolio to our total revenue actually continued to increase in 2025. So that's encouraging because of course, that's very important to our strategy. The second thing is a lot of the innovation launches that we've done recently, including Harbin 1900 and Lemon Squeeze, are offering consumers trade-up opportunities. So even though they're not necessarily premium or super premium, they help to trade consumers that are currently drinking at core and value to move up to the CNY 6-8 price point segment. And so we're seeing this is also accretive for net revenue per hectoliter, and if anything, just increases the consumer base, right? That in the future can trade up to premium and above. In terms of pricing, we don't have any news to share, but I think you can count on us to maintain pricing discipline, while we continue to invest, of course, to lead and grow the category. We monitor, of course, very carefully pricing at the, you know, province by province, brand by brand or segment by segment and pack by pack level. We, of course, will make dynamic adjustments whenever we have opportunities there as well. So thank you so much for the question, Leaf. Thanks, Iggy. That's super clear. Thank you. You're very welcome. Thank you. Our next question is coming from Wenbo Chen from CICC. Please go ahead. Hi, thank you for taking my questions. First, I want to thank you, Iggy, for all the fantastic work you have done, and wish you all the best in the future. My first question is that since the second half of 2025, we have increased investment in Harbin beer to align with industry trends. Looking to 2026, could you share how you will allocate investment across your brand portfolio and whether the increased investment in Harbin beer will continue into 2026? Thank you for the question, Wenbo, and for the kind words, as well. Look, we don't share necessarily an allocation by brand, right, or by price segment, but maybe what I would say is we're going to continue to focus on our mega brands. As you would expect, we'll leverage the mega platforms on those mega brands, and you would expect a more pronounced focus on investment in the in-home channel, for those as well, which requires a full portfolio approach. Budweiser continues to be our top priority. You know, we introduced new packaging innovations, for the brand. So you, you'll see different can sizes, you'll see a greater focus on Budweiser Magnum, in multiple packs, including the 1-liter pack. So I think there's a lot of exciting things happening on Budweiser, which I think will be very relevant. I think what's also important is if you think about the current consumption environment, the RMB 8+ price point has been the fastest growing price point, really, in the industry. And that's where Harbin plays a critical role, right? It allows us to play in the space and to trade up consumers, as I was saying in the previous question. So we're definitely allocating more resources behind it. Harbin Ice zero sugar was our first entry, right, in that space. It plays in the easy drinking lager, liquid type, right? So it was our first offering there, and you could expect it to play a growing role, this year in the portfolio. We also recently updated Harbin 1900, and so it's actually China's first classic lager, which originated in the year 1900, brewed with 100% full malt. It has a new image, right, which I think resonated very well with our wholesalers and customers when we recently introduced this. We're very excited for the role that this can play in our portfolio as well. And then sometimes we'll take learnings from other markets. A good example is we leverage the successful launches of the Cass innovations in Korea, particularly on the flavored beer side, to launch a Harbin Lemon Squeeze variant, right? And so this came out in online and retail channels, and it targets the growth opportunity we see in fruity beer, particularly among Gen Z consumers. Beyond that, what I would say is China is a very large country, right? So you benefit from having multiple brands and variants that can accommodate local preferences as well. And so we can complement our portfolio with, either other Harbin innovations that can be locally specific, or we can do regional brand innovations as well. And beyond Harbin, we have many local strong brands, right, that we can use in, in different regions. We have, Sedrin in Fujian, we have, Nanchang in Jiangxi, we've got, Big Boss in Jiangsu. I think what I'm forgetting here, Double Deer in Wenzhou, and Jinshibai in Jilin as well, right? So, and there's many more that I'm, I'm not including in the discussion here. So we can always invest behind those as well, and we actually have a very solid innovation pipeline, to support them too.... Then, if you translate all that, I would say from a brand and portfolio perspective, we're in a very good place. I think the key will be how effectively we can expand our in-home coverage and distribution, and how we can scale the quality of our trade execution as well. So yeah, I guess I would say you could expect us to continue to invest in our mega brands with differentiated campaigns and experiences, depending on the brand and the region. And this way, hopefully, we can connect with consumers across more occasions and increase sales momentum this year. So thank you so much for the question, Wenbo. Thank you, Iggy. It's very clear. My second question is about the COGS. We have seen the aluminum price going up recently, and how do changes in raw material costs, especially barley and aluminum, affect your overall cost structures? And what's your outlook for the total cost in 2026? Yeah. In full year 2025, our cost of goods sold on a per hectoliter basis remained fairly flattish. If I recall correctly, I think it decreased by 0.4%. Of course, we had slight commodity tailwinds and efficiency improvement initiatives as we do most years. But of course, we also had some operational deleverage with the volume decline. We've not really made any changes to our hedging strategy, so I would still think of us generally having coverage of around 12 months on most hedgeable raw and packaging material categories. When I take a look at barley specifically, barley pricing has been fairly moderated. If anything, it's been declining a little bit versus the previous year. So the last numbers I had in mind would have been low single-digit decline. Aluminum's gone a bit the other way, so actually, prices in the second half of 2025 started going up. They're already in the high 2,000s. Last we checked this week, it was closer to $3,100 per ton. So for sure, this has been an escalating commodity. But in the context of our hedging strategy, we would be partially insulated from that, of course, in 2026. Energy is a bit harder to predict and to hedge, particularly in the markets, in our footprint, but it's not moved too materially. So I think if you compare 2025 spot prices against 2024, and you apply this kind of simple hedge policy across the board, you probably would expect commodities to be a small headwind for 2026. But I would call this more a normal year than anything else. It's within the range that our operations teams will then work to offset, right? With these efficiency improvement and cost management initiatives. So it's kind of a normal year in that regard. And of course, if this pans out as such, then that should leave us hopefully with premiumization as ideally the most meaningful driver of cost of goods sold per hectoliter escalation in 2026. So yeah, thank you for your question, Wenbo. Okay. Thank you, Iggy. Thank you. In the interest of time, our final questions will come from Anne Ling from Jefferies. Please go ahead. Hey, hi. Thank you very much. Hi, hi, management team. Two questions on my side, switching to Korea and India. Let me ask the first question on Korea, in terms of the margin trend and also on the ASP side. So as South Korea is a high maturity market, so what is our long-term view on ASP trend as well as margin? That's my first question. Okay. No, thank you for the question, Anne. Yeah, so I mean, South Korea, our EBITDA grew by low single digits in full year 2025, and that was really driven by low single-digit revenue increase. So the main drivers as you're well aware in APAC East and Korea specifically, continued to be first from a margin perspective, first price, then operational efficiencies, and then mix. On pricing, in the last 5 years, what's changed is we have a more consistent environment. We've been able to create a more consistent environment for pricing with, you know, moderated increases every 1-2 years. So this allows us to make appropriate decisions within the context of the macroeconomic environment I described and the competitive landscape as well with consumers in mind. On operational efficiencies, I mean, it's a core capability, and we continue to implement cost management initiatives at a very similar rate year-over-year across the business. And then lastly, of course, as I mentioned before, we would expect, of course, the industry will continue to premiumize, as it's still significantly under index versus other mature markets. We're well positioned, of course, with the portfolio that we have there to capture an outsized portion of that growth. And over time, right, as we've done more and more differentiation in pricing between the premium portfolio and the mainstream portfolio, this creates, of course, a long-term mixed benefit opportunity. I mean, on top of that, the focus we have on increasing consumer participation via non-alc beer and other innovations can also be helpful, depending on the nature of the innovation we put in place. So if I think about this on a longer-term basis, I don't see any barriers to further margin recovery. I would still hold that the comments we made during the Investor Day, the Capital Markets Day in Korea in late 2022 still hold, right? We saw underlying structural margin tailwind from these growth drivers, and they still exist. So yeah, we're very confident in the strategy and the commercial capabilities we have, and we just need to execute in the same direction as we have been the last few years to try and drive margin expansion in the future as well. Thank you for the question, Anne. Got it. Thank you. My second question is, you know, would you share with us, on India, in terms of market update, how do we see the market competition and our strategy there? I understand that we are still focusing on, like, you know, gaining market share, but, may I know when the company will start to focus on profitability? Is it still too early, that the competition is still very keen? Thanks, yeah. I might take this question. So for India, we are focused on sustainable and meaningful top-line growth that can translate EBITDA and cash flow growth accordingly. Our India business has strong growth momentum. In 2024 and 2025 and the first quarter 2025, we gained market share. The premiumization will be continued, important driver for EBITDA performance as well, and which deliver strong results with double-digit revenue growth and a significant EBITDA margin improvement. Premium and Super Premium revenue, which is about more than two-thirds of our business in India. We have a strong growth and a double-digit growth in the first quarter, and also by more than 20% for the full year 2025. Otherwise, the brand continued to grow ahead of industry, and India is one of the Budweiser top four market globally. So for the industry overall, in India, it's continued growing in 2025, which will help us. And India currently has very low per capita consumption, which is an opportunity for us as well. So India, we are very confident about the future of the opportunity in India, which we see as our next growth engine. So thank you very much. I hope I answered your question, and- Yes, very clear. Thank you so much. Thank you. This concludes our Q&A session today. I would like to turn the conference back over to YJ for the closing remarks. Thank you, Ray. As I mentioned earlier, we enter 2026 with a clear set of strategic priorities. In China, our priority is to reignite growth and rebuild our market share momentum. Our momentum will be supported by the accelerated expansion of our in-home route to market and a leading premium portfolio, as well as by leveraging continued digitalization to enhance our execution and consumer engagement. In South Korea, we will continue to invest behind Cass, expand consumer participation through innovations, and premiumize the market. Finally, in India, which we see as our next growth engine, we remain focused on leading and growing the premium segment. Thank you all for joining us today, and I looking forward to talk to you soon. Thank you. This concludes today's results call. Please disconnect your lines. Thank you.