Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to the Q1 FY2024 earnings conference call of United Breweries, hosted by Investec Capital Services. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the Conference Call, please signal an operator by pressing star, then zero on your touch-tone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Harit Kapoor from Investec Capital Services. Thank you, and over to you, sir. Thank you, Jacob. On behalf of Investec Capital Services, we'd like to welcome all the participants and the senior management of United Breweries for the Q1 FY24 United Breweries post-results conference call. From the team at United Breweries, we have Mr. Radovan Sikorsky, Director and CFO, as well as Mr. Robin Ashton, Head of Business Control and Investor Relations, on the call today. I'll now hand the call over to Radovan for his initial comments, post which we'll open the queue for Q&A. Over to you, Rado. Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone on the call, and thank you for joining us today. I'll give an update on quarter one, 2024. Let's start with the highlights. Volumes were down 12% in the quarter, impacted by some route to market challenges and changes we've done, supply chain challenges, and we also had some lower interstate sales. Excluding the route to market, our volumes were down around 4%, driven by Telangana and Haryana. In premium, we were down 20% in the quarter, whereas volumes were flat, excluding the route to market changes. We did see some good mid-teens growth for the Kingfisher Ultra Max brand for us and some promising also growth for Heineken Silver, which we continue to focus on. Now, Silver is now contributing to around 30% of the total Heineken franchise. Net sales were down around 7%, driven by the volume decline, but then offset by, you know, healthy pricing coming through. The pricing we've taken across multiple states, which continued, you know, with our commitment to drive this via our revenue management initiatives. Gross margin during the quarter was lower as compared to the prior year, which we've been discussing, you know, in our previous calls in terms of the inflationary pressure. But, you know, for versus Q4 2023, there has been quite a bit of an improvement, and we are down around 196 basis points versus last. Well, we're up, sorry, we are up 196 basis points versus last quarter. EBIT margins contracted slightly this prior year, you know, significant improvement versus the last quarter, which is nice to see as well. You can see we've added two additional slides in our presentation, one on the volume progress and the other on the margin trajectory. You know, as you can see in the volume development slide, where we have broken it up into April, May, June. April, May was really a tough period for us. In April and May, particularly, you know, we had quite a bit of challenges in supply chain in Karnataka, in terms of getting dispatches out of breweries. This has improved significantly in June. You know, our June volumes were up 44% in Karnataka, which is great to see. We continue to see this, you know, strong volume performance going through into July overall for our volumes. That's good to see. In terms of the margin development slide, you can see we are observing a reversal of the previous downward margin trends, as mentioned earlier, our gross margins improved 196 basis points versus previous quarter. Our EBIT margin also improved versus the previous quarter, which is good to see. You know, the initiatives and some of the drives in savings in the supply chain are starting to, starting to come through as well. In terms of the outlook, you know, we see a bit of softening of the cost of sales, but I mentioned as well in the press release, there is a bit of volatility still, right? As you all know, there is quite a bit of pressure coming through also on rice, in, into the back end of the quarter. Generally, we see a bit of a softening. You know, we for sure see improvement in our gross profit margins or your net contribution margins going into quarter, into the next quarters. We should see that. You know, we'll continue to focus on growing the category, you know, and pushing the premium as well, going forward. You know, yeah, we remain quite optimistic in terms of, you know, going forward over the next quarters, that there should, there should be an improvement on our gross profit margin. That is my short summary, we can open up to the Q&A. Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question is on the line of Abneesh Roy from Nuvama Institutional Equities. Please go ahead. Mr. Roy, your line is unmuted. Please go ahead with your question. Yeah, thanks. I've got three questions. The first question is on slide seven. I have seen that there is a good recovery in June versus April in terms of volumes. Wanted to understand in RTM, if you could give more clarity in ex of Karnataka, what are the issues? Karnataka, is there any pipeline filling? Because in the first two months, there was obviously lower inventory. Karnataka is a good growth coming back in June. Is there some bit of one-off also there? That was my key question, that is this impacting also your other competitors? For example, when you saw, say, -22% volume and -13% volume in April and May, would your competitors in those specific states also would have seen such a sharp dip? Okay, let me start with Karnataka, and then we can go to the route to market. In Karnataka, I think I can say that in April it was more our own challenges, versus then competitions, that our volumes were down. Okay? We was having some administrative issues to get our dispatches out, in April, which caused, you know, quite a volume decline for us in the month of April, and it flowed into April, also due to the elections that were taking place. We were probably impacted more than our competition, and we did lose share within Karnataka in those months. Quite a bit, you know, quite a bit because of those two reasons. In, in May, in, in the back end of May, it started improving a lot, and in June, like I said, we were up over 40%. That was. Yes, there was pipeline filling into primary, so for sure, but we also saw our market share go back up again quite a lot. We see it continue, the good volumes in Karnataka for the month of July. It's, it's not just about pipeline filling, but it's, it's really a good recovery in terms of our volumes going back to, you know, trying to get back to the place where we were before. That's, that's on Karnataka. On the route to market, what we mentioned specifically is the volume decline that we have had, particularly in Q1 in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. We have seen quite a bit of improvement, particularly in Tamil Nadu, as of the back end of May into June, and we continue seeing good volume in July for Tamil Nadu. The other one, of course, is Delhi, where we have lost quite a bit of volumes, and that's generally also more, you know, we see some of our bigger competitors also have lost volumes there. You, you know, there we know that there have been some issues around the Delhi market, which, which we continue to see, going forward. Sure. A very quick follow-up here. You mentioned in Karnataka, you have seen very good recovery in volume. You also said, large part of the market share loss has also has been recouped. My question was on the leftover market share loss, when do you see in Karnataka that coming back? Second is, some of the other spirits players, not beer, they have really curtailed or exited Tamil Nadu. Would you also have some kind of thought process on Tamil Nadu? Would you want to continue medium long-term here, given the specific issues of the government, control, which is much higher than a lot of other states? Like I've mentioned in my previous call, we, you know, we changed our route to market, in Tamil Nadu. You know, we are, we are working on that route to market currently to continue in the current structure that we are in. So far, we've had volumes recover quite nicely, during the season. Whether those volumes will remain is yet to be seen. We are doing, you know, we are working through that as a business to see if it will be sustainable or not. On Karnataka? Karnataka, for sure, we, we are recovering on our market share. We recovered significantly in May, and into June. Sorry, we recovered strongly in June for what the losses we had in May, and in July, we are also increasing share. We are still below where we would like to be in terms of market share, but, you know, we, it will take a bit of time to get back to the levels we wanted, you know. It takes some time, but we are not far off where we were in the past. Sure. Thanks. My last question is on the inflation. Already 196 quarter-over-quarter. If you could tell us on barley, malt and glass, how is the situation in glass? I understand there is a correction in the prices, but if you could take us through how do you see in Q2 and H2 in terms of glass and barley both? Like I said, you know, the barley pricing has been good. The new crops have come in at good prices, so we see softening coming through there, and we should see that coming through into quarter two and quarter three, also into our cost of sales. On the glass, it's a bit less so, to be honest. Through the end of the year, we sort of see not that much softening, or if any. Going into 2024, potentially there could be some, in terms of if some of the main commodity prices related to glass production come start coming down a bit, which there seems to be some signs of. The issue, of course, is that there is, you know, limited capacity in the, in the market for glass, so that tends to play against that in terms of demand and supply. More soft- I see it more on the barley side than on the glass side in terms of, in terms of softening. Sure, thanks. That's all from my side. Thank you. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, in order to ensure that the management will be able to address questions from all participants, please limit your questions to two per participant. The next question is from the line of Latika Chopra from JP Morgan. Please go ahead. Yeah, hi. Thank you for the opportunity. My first question was on top-line momentum. Is it right to assume that due to market changes in the states of Tamil Nadu, Andhra, and to some extent, Delhi, you will start getting into the base from the, like, the current quarter? Does it imply that the volume growth trajectory will now start to normalize for you in mid to high single digit growth? Chopra, I did. your, your voice was a little bit unclear on, on some of the question. Could you just repeat that again once more slowly, please, for me? Sure. Is it better now? Yes, a little bit better. Yeah. Okay. My question was on volume growth momentum. Is it right to assume that route to market changes in four of the states that you're seeing, will start getting into the base, you know, from the September quarter, which is the current quarter? The base will be lot more normalized, hence, volume growth recovery should also move to normalized levels for you? Yes, some of it should do, 100%, in terms of volumes in Delhi. In Tamil Nadu, more so at the end of Q3, so around November, December, we should see that we start cycling some of the impacts of route to market in 2022. That's correct. Yes. That's, that, that's true. Sure. The second question that I had was on, Timon, you talked about supply constraints in Telangana and, perhaps even in Haryana. What are you doing to address these capacity constraints? Okay. On Telangana, two things. What happened is we did not manage to get permission to do Sunday shifts, or they were canceled, for a couple of months in Telangana. Because we, the Sunday shifts were canceled, that gave us capacity constraints in Telangana. You know, we are working through that going into 2024, that there will not be such a recurrence of this. So that, we should, we should get through that. The other thing that we have been doing, and I've mentioned it also in my summary, is lower interstate sales, right? That means sales between different states. You know, you need to get certain various permissions, but also you need to pay certain export fees to you know, transport between states. When we looked at the profitability of some of these interstate sales that we were doing, right, they were negative in net contribution for us. We said that we made a call on that, that we will not continue some of these, unless it's from a strategic angle, for example, premium. We would not do these interstate sales at loss-making, you know, numbers. Therefore, some of our volume decline has been, you know, due to these type of things, and that also includes Telangana, where we didn't, you know, push volumes into Telangana when we had some capacity constraints. Thank you. Does it mean that, do you need to do more CapEx, you know, to ensure that you're not capacity constrained, though, coming year? Or do you think tying up with, you know, contract you would end the cost? We look at our capacity, investments across the different states. Telangana is on one of them. You know, I think it's more to drive more efficiencies within the breweries at this point with Telangana, but we also look at potentially future capacity based on the growth there. You know, if we can get some of these administrative issues like, you know, having Sunday shifts and these things sorted out, then, you know, then we can cover some of these peaks. All right. For Haryana also, it's correct to assume there were similar issues, or there was something else happening in that state? In Haryana, we also had some, you know, administrative issues, in terms of supply and in terms of getting licenses issued, for production. Therefore, we had some of the volume decline there as well. We also, you know, have managed now to get permission to export into Delhi, particularly our premium brands like Ultra, so that, that will also help sales out of, out of Haryana. All right, sir. Thank you so much, Randall. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Jay Doshi from Kotak. Please go ahead. Hi, thanks for the opportunity. Could you provide us some update on the CEO on appointment? How is the hiring process going on? Can we expect some updates? Yes. In terms of on the CEO question, we are, you know, much closer in terms of, you know, the recruiting process, and, you know, we will be able to give much more info to you, sort of in the middle of September, end of September, through the appropriate channels, you know, that we, we disclose this information. I think, you know, mid-September, end September, we will definitely have the communication around that. Understood. Second is, you know, when I look at your operating performance, are there expenses per case has, you know, declined when I compare it with, you know, earlier summer's peak season, that is pre-pandemic? Is this a structural reduction in cost structure, in terms of will other expenses per case more or less remain in this range even when gross margins recover? Will we see a spike in the costs as gross margins recover? There's a couple of things in this. Some of it is already coming through in terms of the efficiencies that we are driving. Some of it in the operating expenses that you see there is also because of lower freight, and that's a combination also of the things we are doing, like I've mentioned, on the interstate transportation. These are, you know, drives that, that should stay and, and help us with margin. Some of them would be... They are some volume related, that there will be some more increases coming through in costs, you know, as, as our volumes are now improving going into, you know, the other quarters. Right. In terms of, you know, your notes to accounts, mentions that you aspire or your intent is to bring, you know, restore the volumes in the states that have been affected by RTM. I heard your comments on Tamil Nadu and Delhi, I mean, it's sort of anybody's guess, but what is your sort of, you know, approach for Andhra Pradesh? Do you expect some recovery in volumes in that state, or that state will sort of, you know, is remain at current levels? We are, we are expecting some recovery of volumes there as well, yes. Okay. So- Between it... Understood. Between AP and Tamil Nadu, I think, in the first quarter, when the volumes were impacted after Heineken's review and decision to change the operating model, if I remember correctly, the volume impact was high single digit or 9% to 10%, which, right? When, when you're able to normalize these volumes or restore these volumes, what would be salience of AP and Tamil Nadu, to your overall volumes? Where do you expect it to settle? It's difficult to say, to be honest. You know, like I said, I'm quite cautious about Tamil Nadu, long term at this point, or in the medium term, if I can put it this way. At the moment, our volumes are looking nice in Tamil Nadu. In Andhra Pradesh, we're expecting to get to, to grow. I think Andhra Pradesh will not recover to the volumes of 2000, prior to 2019, really, because the total market has actually declined. Also with, you know, the closure of some retail outlets, et cetera, that happened there. Definitely there will be an improvement there going forward. You know, it's- we remain cautious on Tamil Nadu. We are doing what we believe are the right things in Tamil Nadu. Let's see how it, how it goes. I think we all need to just monitor it as we go along into the next coming months, and then we see. You know, we're, we're really trying to do what we can there. You know, in the right way. Thank you. A final bookkeeping question. The recent price increase in Karnataka, what does it mean in terms of increase in the retail price for consumers and increase in realization for you? You mean the excise duty increase, I assume, yes? Correct, correct. In Karnataka. In terms of, you know, the price increase as such, it was around, you know, on the shelf, I think. Robin, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it's around 4-5%, right? Yes, 3%-5%. 3%-5%, yes. Yeah, so that is, the impact for us. Spirits were impacted more, as you know. We are, we are quite bullish that that should help the category in the medium to longer term. Did you see, did you manage to get any price increase? You know, your net sales realizations are, are improving, or the entire increase on shelf prices is, you know, will be captured by the government. We've also done a price increase in Karnataka. We are getting a better, you know, better per case, realized sales as well in Karnataka. Possible to quantify the magnitude, whether it is low single-digit, mid single-digit, or better than that? Robin? The earlier price increase that we did, it was around May. It indeed increased our realization with around mid single digits. The price increase that was taken in July did only improve our realization to a very limited extent, depending on the SKUs. More important to mention on Karnataka, is that the relative pricing of beer now is better compared to spirits, as it was previously. Yes. Compared to what it was previously. Perfect. Thank, thank you so much. Thanks, that's it from my side. Thank you. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Avi Mehta from Macquarie. Please go ahead. Hi, sir. I just wanted to continue on that Karnataka bit. The understanding and just clarification on that, the understanding is that despite taking a price hike of about mid-single digit, you still are, at a consumer level, relatively more attractive, beer is more attractive, which should help growth to that extent from a volume perspective, is the way I should kind of look at this. Is that understanding correct, sir? That's, that's correct. This should be more attractive for beer, you know, the, the way the price increase has gone in terms of the excise, you know, so that is good. That should be good for the category. We're gonna be monitoring that as we're going forward. Perfect, sir. From a market share trend perspective, and if I heard your comments, while the industry growth should normalize from third quarter, as a company, you should now grow ahead of the market or continue to see market share build, and that trend is sustaining in July, which, that is what we should expect going forward? That is the aim, yes. You know, we went through some difficult times in April, May, and this is gonna happen, right? I mean, it, it will be volatile as we, as we, you know, you know, change certain things in our strategy and in our approach. There will be a bit of volatility up and down, you know, but we may, w- we have to say, we may- remain resilient on these type of things. Some of the calls that we make are profit calls, right? That's not to say that we are gonna give up on our market share. Let me, let me put that right. We might lose some basis points in market share, and that's okay. That's fine. We are not gonna sell, we're not gonna sell at a loss in terms of per case. We will make those calls where we see that if we are not making a profit, like I mentioned about the interstate, we will, we will make that call, even if it causes us to lose a couple of basis points on market share. Karnataka is a key state for us, and we will, you know, we will ensure that we, we recover some of the market share declines that we've had over the couple of months. Definitely, that is a, it's a big focus area for us. Okay. So the last bit was, as we approach, you know, the election season, state elections are also due in December, the state elections, anything that you would be worried about for the comment of normalization of volumes? Anything that you would want to highlight? Because, you know, with Rajasthan, for example, coming up, elections, et cetera, do you see that as a concern or the other states are not that big an issue as we speak? At this point, you know, we are monitoring that. There can always be some impacts on, on that. You know, on certain days you cannot, for example, some of the outlets are closed, et cetera, like we had in Karnataka, which had some disruptions. Particularly if you have a big share in the state, that can, you know, cause you temporarily some, some declines. Then, you know, like I said, that is temporary, and then, you know, if, if you got your right basics in place, you should get through those. On Rajasthan, you know, might be some disruptions, but it's not something we are too concerned about at this point in time. Got it. That's all from my side. Thank you very much. Hello, I'm done. Sorry. Thanks a lot. Thank you. A reminder to all participants, to ask a question, you may press star and one. The next question is from the line of Krishnan Subramanian from Nirmal Bang Institutional Equities. Please go ahead. Yeah. Hi, everyone. Maharashtra seems to have reported positive volume growth. Now, this has been a difficult market for about four or five years. Anything that's changing on the ground? On Maharashtra, yes? Yes. Yes, sir. Yeah, the category per se has, has had some difficulty. I mean, we, you know, we still have a strong market share there, which is, which is good. We see, you know, we need to push more premiumization there. We see quite a lot of opportunity around, particularly around Mumbai and Pune and these type of areas. There, I think it's important that, you know, there is, there is a better playing field in terms of the excise regulation between spirits and beer. As you know, the, the, the excise on, on beer is significantly higher than on spirits, which you don't really see anywhere in the world, okay? That is something that we are working on in terms of, you know, leveling or, you know, making sure the beer category has its right space at the right and being taxed at the appropriate levels, going forward. Okay. My second question is on, on this positive sales mix that you witnessed for this particular quarter. As Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Delhi, come back, to a more normalized level, would you, would you agree that there could be a reduction in the positive sales mix that you saw in Q1? A reduction of the positive mix as we saw in Q1, you're saying? Yes. There can be some impact, but then we also see Karnataka improving as well. Yeah, it's, it's, it's difficult to estimate at this point. As, as we've mentioned in the past, you know, it, it does impact when some of these big states grow like a Telangana. Yeah, I wouldn't, I wouldn't like to forecast that at this point in time. Sure. Just 1 final question. Anything that you can dive in terms of CapEx for the current year or the next, given the constraints that you faced during the summer quarter this year? Sorry, you mentioned, is there any constraints on CapEx? I didn't fully get that. Any increase in CapEx that you have in mind, given the constraints that you faced in the summer quarter this year? Yes. We are definitely looking at that, in terms of our CapEx plans already now for going into 2024, because the lead times, you know, can be quite a few months. We will be reviewing of how much capacity we need to expand if needed. Also, you know, our relationships with the contract brewers, that there is enough capacity in place, there as well. 'Cause we had also quite a bit of struggles in the northeast part of India, in terms of capacity and some breakdowns at some of our contract brewers had there, we want to make sure that this doesn't happen going forward. Anything that you can quantify for now in terms of CapEx for the year, or you'll get back later? The, the CapEx for, for 2023, we communicated last time. We are not changing that, that, that amount like what we communicated last time. Got it. Thanks. That's it from my side. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Himanshu Shah from Dolat Capital. Please go ahead. Hello? Hello. Yes, Mr. Shah, you're audible. Please go ahead with your question. Okay, thanks. Can you just let us know what would be the share of the RTM markets, TN, AP, Delhi, in this quarter volumes, and last year, same quarter, what would have been their share in the overall volumes? What would have been our share in Tamil Nadu, Delhi and AP? Of the total volumes, what will be the contribution from TN, AP and Delhi? Within the volumes, it's per se, yes? In total, or what do you mean exactly? Robin, do you understand the question? Yes. You want to see the salient basically of the RTM states? That's right. Well, that's lower than 10%, but I think that's already enough detail. Okay, what would have been the same number last year? Well, I think based on disclosures that you have in our report, that you can triangulate that. I will, I need, I need to have a detailed look, and I will get back to you afterwards. Sure. Can you just let us know what would have been the AMP spend, advertising and promotion as a% of revenue, current year and last year? Robin, you have that, no? Sorry, can you repeat the question? Advertising and promotions spend as a pecentage of revenue in the current quarter and in last year's same quarter. Yeah. Well, what we can say is that, marketing spend basically went down versus last year in the same quarter, and that followed more or less the same trend as the volume drop. Okay, sure. That's it from my side. Thank you. Thanks a lot. Thank you. A reminder to all participants, to ask a question, you may press star and one. The next question is from the line of Prashant Kothari from BSET. Please go ahead with your question. Yeah, hello, sir. I had a couple of questions. One was, the excise bill for us for this quarter seems to be kind of growing at 8% versus last year, while the volumes have dropped by 12%, which means kind of an increase of 20%. I understand there's a state mix and all of that, if you could help us with kind of the general, maybe like to like, what kind of excise increase are you seeing in the business? Yeah, so it is a bit of a state mix impact because, you know, the excises within the different states didn't really move that much. Of course, in some it did, like, for example, now Karnataka. It's primarily a state mix impact that is happening there. Like for like, you know, I, you know, I, I, I wouldn't want to quote exactly how much it is, but it's probably a lot lower like for like, and that's due to the state mix. All right. Okay. Then you mentioned in a couple of states you lost market share. Would you be able to give us some idea of the overall market share which the company has now? We lost single-digit market share in India. Like I said, Karnataka was one of the ones that, where we've lost share. Of course, in the routing market states that we, that we mentioned, like, the likes of Tamil Nadu, Delhi, and these states, we lost share. Yeah, I think, I think that is, that is about a good summary of it. I don't know if anything else on that one, Robin, huh? I think those are the main impacts, really. Yeah, exactly. Maybe we could just, excluding the RDM change, it was really only in the low single digits that we, that we went down. Despite some, some market share headwinds in a state like Karnataka, we also see some very positive market share developments in other important states for us, like UP and Rajasthan. Right. How much is the overall market share we have in the market after all this? Obviously, there are different states having different shares, but overall basis on pan-India level, what's our market share? Well, that should be around 50%, excluding the RDM states. Understand. Understood. In, in, in a couple of states like Haryana and also maybe Karnataka, you mentioned some of the administrative issues kind of impacting our performance. Is there some execution issue that we need to kind of smoothen out in the business? I mean, if you can expand on that, what are the steps being taken so that admin type of issues don't really impact our business performance? Ladies and gentlemen, we have lost the line for the management, so request you to stay on hold until we get the management reconnected. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for being on hold. We have the line for the management reconnected now. Mr. Kothari, you may proceed with your question. Thank you. Sorry, I, I, I'm not sure when you dropped out, but the question was, that in some of the states, administrative issues are kind of impacting our performance. Just expand on what is the problem and any kind of internal execution that we need to smoothen out so that these issues don't impact us in the future. That would be very useful. I, I, I guess you're referring to some of the dispatch issues that we were having, particularly in April and May in Karnataka, yes? And also in Haryana, you mentioned there are some administrative issues. In Haryana as well, yes. Well, I think we've, we've, we've fixed what needs to be fixed in Karnataka at this point in time. We hopefully that should be, that should be positive going forward. In Haryana, we seem now to be also on the right track there as well. That should be fine as well. You know, with Haryana, it could be that we still run into some things in terms of some of the approvals that we need, but we work through those as, as they come. You know, for me, primarily Karnataka. Can, can you hear me? Sorry, am I still on the call, yes? Yes, sir. Yeah. You, you are, Deval, yes. Sorry. Yeah, so like I said, the Karnataka is, is for us key. That has been, you know, fixed, and, and the volumes are looking good, going forward. Okay, thank you. Just the last question is on the non-alcoholic beverages, where the revenues for this quarter were 0, as reported. Just trying to understand, I mean, what's the priority of this business for us, and is it a business that we are maybe potentially getting out of? Yeah, the 0.0 business is something, you know, that, that we see potential in the, in the, in the longer term. We will continue to, you know, work in that segment. The volumes, yes, like you rightly say, are very small at the moment. We, but we'll continue with Heineken 0.0, and we'll look at other innovations to, you know, to go into that category as well. All right. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, a reminder to all participants to ask a question, you may press star and 1. The next question is from the line of Harit Kapoor from Investment. Hi, good afternoon. I just had two, two questions. Welcome connected. One was on glass. You know, there are some, you know, you did mention that, because of the demand-supply issue, you know, it would take a bit longer for the glass price benefit to come in. You know, the, you know, typically some of our, you know, contracts, I remember historically, used to also be, you know, where we were trying to make them into, you know, a formula-based contracts where, you know, a de-escalation in cost could also give us a benefit. I was just wondering, wouldn't that at some point kick in a little earlier than, than expected, you know, as compared to the ones where you have to, you know, really, go on and negotiate? So that's, that, that should be the case on some of the bigger contracts. You're correct. If some of that does come through, hopefully, that should come through in quarter four, for our pricing. So if, if, we have what we refer to a PAF, a price adjustment formula. Yes. built in, in some of these contracts, and, you know, if there, if there continues to be the softening in some of these production, costs, if I can put it that way, such as energy and soda ash, and these type of costs, then, then there should be some, you know, some softening going forward. Yes. Hopefully that does come through. I wouldn't like to, you know, say that that is, that is 100% definite now. 'Cause it's, again, it's the balance of the supply and demand as well, you know? True, the some of these price adjustment formulas can trigger it. Got it. Got it. My, my second question was on, on premium and, and mass. You know, you obviously have been growing, the premium portfolio has been growing at a faster clip. This time, obviously, because probably because of one-offs, there has been, you know, you know, some challenges there. Even. Yes. even if we exclude the one-off, premium's growing faster. I just wanted to understand, you know, now that, you know, the, the, the, the excise cycle in a lot of states is over, the price increases across the board are done, how are you seeing the, you know, premium versus mass or premium versus mid-to-mass segment growth trends? Is it, you know, what. Do you still see premium growing at a much faster pace on a normalized basis? I just wanted to get your sense on that. Yeah, definitely, we still see a lot of opportunity in the strong premium growth, you know. I mean, we, we still believe that, you know, over the coming years, the premium segment should be, you know, between 18%-20% of the total beer category over the next five, six, seven years. For sure, We remain fully committed to premium, and actually more so. We are gonna definitely ensure that we, you know, we go and aim to have our fair share in premium going forward. That ambition has not changed at all. Mm, got it. Got it. One, one last question on, on, on CapEx, really, you know, if, if, if you look at, you, you did mention that, you know, some of the, interstate sale movements that were happening in the past were not profitable, and hence, you were, you kind of re-looked at that. My question was, were, you know, were these, products that were, were moving interstate largely in the mass and mid segment? Because I assume that premium would still have been profitable for you to move? 100%. What we do is we assess it on a mainstream and premium segment basis, you know. If, if the interstate for premium is low contribution, we will still do it just from a strategy point of view on premium. But it's more a call on the, you know, the lower mainstream brands, where we, where if they're in a loss-making situation, we made a call not to, not to do interstate, you know? At that point in time, then you assess your local capacity levels to say, "Okay, is it worth for me," to the previous question of, you know, doing something around capacity to curb that you don't need to do that interstate transportation. Understood. My last question was on, on the, you know, the rollout of the premium product. You know, over the last 18 months, you know, you added Kingfisher Ultra Witbier, you added Heineken Silver to the premium portfolio. Just wanted to get a sense of, you know, are the rollouts in the markets that you want them to be in now complete? Is there some more scope on the distribution side yet left? No. Definitely we are looking at some other new launches, and as they come through, definitely you'll be aware of them. Also in, in other segments, we've also now testing Kingfisher Mango as an innovation, which is doing actually very nicely for us. You know, with flavor. We have really. I spoke about it actually last time, you know, we have really now starting to form a nice innovation funnel. We've got a strong cross-functional team working on that. There's definitely more to come from UBL in terms of innovation. Great. Those are my questions. Jacob, if you could check, the queue, please. Just a reminder, if there are more questions, you can press star and one to ask a question. As there are no further questions, I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Harit Kapoor from Investec for closing comments. Yeah, thank you, Jacob. On behalf of Investec, we would like to thank the management of United Breweries to give us this opportunity to do the call and spend time on this one, and also like to thank all the investors and analysts and the community who joined on the call. I now hand over to Radovan for his closing comments. Over to you. Yes, thanks. You know, it was a difficult Q1 for us, like I said, and particularly April/May. But, you know, we, we remain, we remain really positive on, on this beer category going forward. You know, there will be a bit of volatility like we've experienced, you know, April/May, but, you know, we're here for it in the, in the long term, in this, for this business. You know, we still believe in strong category growth going forward. You know, driving also our premium share, that is, that is a priority for us through Kingfisher Ultra, the Kingfisher Ultra brand family. You know, focusing on our revenue management activities to drive margins, be it in the cost of sales or be it in the top line. Today, you saw some examples of it, like, like on the interstate and also the pricing that we, we are giving. I think, yeah, that's, that's how I'd like to end. You know, thank you everyone for your participation. Thank you. On behalf of Investec Capital Services, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us. You may now disconnect your lines.