It's now time to begin the Nippon Sanso Holdings Corporation earnings call for fiscal year ending 2026, third quarter. Thank you very much for taking time out of your busy schedule to attend today. My name is Ishimoto from the IR department of the Group Finance and Accounting Office. I will be the moderator for this conference. Thank you very much for your cooperation. I'd like to give you some information about today's conference. First of all, the conference materials are the financial results and earnings call reference that we have just released. I'd like all participants to have them at hand. Next, we have three main presenters today. Hamada, President and CEO, Draper, Senior Executive Officer, Group Finance, Accounting, Office, and CFO. Kubo, Executive Officer, Group Corporate Planning Office, Miki, Senior Executive Officer, CSR Group Sustainability Management Office, Yoshida, General Manager of Accounting, and Kajiyama, General Manager of IR, are also in attendance. As for the program today, at first Hamada, President and CEO, and then Draper, CFO, will present the third quarter financial results along with the presentation materials. Then there will be time for Q&A. Please note that today's session will be bilingual in Japanese and English. Using the simultaneous interpretation function via Zoom, please select the language you would like to communicate with us in the Zoom control panel. If you would like to participate in the Q&A session in English, please set the Zoom audio language to English. Hamada-san will now be starting the presentation. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I am Hamada from Nippon Sanso Holdings. Thank you very much for taking the time to join our third quarter earnings conference call today despite your busy schedules. Without further ado, let me briefly walk you through the key points summarized on this slide regarding our business performance. Following my overview, our CFO, Mr. Alan Draper, will provide you with a detailed explanation of our financial results. First, let me provide you an overview of our business operations. The overall sales trends, unfortunately, have not shown robust demand growth and have remained either flat or on the weaker side. On the other hand, in the electronics sector, generative AI data centers or growing semiconductor demand for data centers, sales are on a recovery trend across regions, which we view as a positive development. If we look at the macro environment, there are U.S. military actions in Venezuela and concerns over U.S.-Europe tensions regarding Greenland. After New Year, I don't know whether Japan was the cause, but there are uncertainties regarding Japan-China relationships. These are all concerns. China announces the tightening of the export restrictions to Japan and dichlorosilane, which is a specialty gas, has been announced that there's initiation of an anti-dumping investigation. We are currently assessing the potential impact on some of our business, and according to my experience, it should not account for a large volume. We would continue to closely monitor the trends as well as the actual numbers. During this situation, I think each of the regions are doing very well, thoroughly implementing price management and operational excellence or improving efficiencies, including cost reduction. As a result, our profitability has recovered more than we had originally expected. If I may give you the performance highlights. Later on, Mr. Alan Draper will provide you with a detailed explanation of the situation in each region and business segment. I here would like to briefly share the performance highlights for the third quarter, specifically regarding U.S. and Asia and Oceania. First, the U.S. business. As I mentioned earlier, volume-wise in gas, we cannot say that we have reached a full-scale recovery. However, we have continued execution of price management and thorough cost controls. These have been successful, and in the third quarter non-consolidated basis, Core operating income margin has improved up to 15.1%. From the fourth quarter onward, we have the full-scale launch of new on-site projects. It has been launched and ongoing price management is conducted. Thorough cost controls as well as productivity improvement initiatives will be worked on. We expect continuous improvement in profitability. As a matter of fact, with regards to the United States, we had been thinking that the industry itself will be more booming. The fact that the gas industry volume has not fully recovered, the manufacturing industry using gas has also not been recovering full-fledgedly. From our perspective, it is slower than our forecast. We were thinking that from the middle to the third quarter, the industry will be recovering and becoming more active in the U.S. There may be some geographical matters or political issues leading to this situation. Still, we believe that our company is doing very well. When it comes to Asia and Oceania business, as I have briefly touched upon, electronics, rather in Oceania, it's Asia, the sales to the electronic sector is on the recovery track. In the third quarter, non-consolidated basis, Core operating income margin improved to 10.7%, and EBITDA margin reached 17.9%. According to the current medium-term management plan, segment EBITDA margin target is 17%, we were able to exceed that. This means that it marks the first time that all segments have achieved this target on a quarterly basis. As I mentioned at the outset, electronics is for AI data centers impact is giving us a positive result. I may have said this before, we were expecting an early recovery. Finally, I think we are seeing that recovery is on track. Next, I would like to talk about the status of investment of our company. I earlier talked about that we will be monitoring the world global situation, and we'll be carefully listening to the customer's voices, and we have proceeded with capital investments carefully, taking those into account. We have actually stopped most of our capital expenditure because we have not known what will become of the tariff impact. The CapEx through the third quarter totaled to JPY 78.4 billion. Compared to the previous year, it is still at a lower level. In order to expand industrial gas business, we need to make investments. In the latter half of the year, we have seen more momentum recover. We would like to catch more of those CapEx projects. Still, there are investment risks. Seeing the uncertainty in the global situation, we would like to grasp for sure the growth opportunities so that we will be able to grow our business, capturing investment opportunities. I would like to talk about the backlog situation of CapEx later. Topics. First of all, we announced the construction at our Tsukuba laboratory at the Taiyo Nippon Sanso, that we will be making a R&D center for advanced materials for the electronics industry, tentatively called Advanced Electronics Materials Development Building, and we expect it to be completed in March 2027. This new facility, we aim to develop new products that address the not only gas, but liquid materials, new products that address the evolution of the electronics industry. We would like to also promote development through collaboration, both within our group and with external partners. As we have been mentioning from the past, the current midterm management plan will end this March, and a new midterm management plan right now is being reviewed proactively. NS Vision 2026, which is a current medium-term management plan, will end, as I mentioned earlier, this March. As for the new MTP starting from April this year, on March 30th, next month, we would like to conduct a briefing to explain about the new MTP, as our team has announced. We will have a venue near the Tokyo Station for the briefing. This will be held both face-to-face as well as online, a hybrid format. We welcome your participation. Additionally, our fourth quarter earnings announcement and conference call are scheduled for May 11th, and the earnings briefing, where we will explain our business plans for the next fiscal year and beyond based on this fiscal year's full-year results, is scheduled for May 22nd. Next, I would like to explain our future capital investment execution plan. As in previous presentations, the chart shows the composition of our capital investment plan by customer industry. Our backlog as of December 31st, 2025, stood at approximately JPY 150 billion, and no different from the second quarter. However, there are some replacements. We have added new projects, six of them. There were four completed projects. There are also foreign exchange impacts as well. However, as we mentioned in the first half, we have not been making normal CapEx at all. In the second half, we would like to make investments for these projects. Our industrial gases itself contribute to a sustainable society, and we are communicating this proactively recently, we don't know whether this is a good categorization. However, if I may, a new CapEx contributing to a sustainable society, according to our calculation, is approximately 38% of our total backlog, as shown on the lower part of this slide. Projects below JPY 500 million are not included here. Now I would like to hand over to the CEO, Alan, to walk you through the financial results. Alan, please. Holdings. Please turn to slide eight as I start my presentation on performance. Go to slide nine now, please. For the quarter, October 1, 2025, through December 31, 2025, revenue grew 5.7%, or approximately 2% excluding currency impact, compared to the same time last year. Core operating income increased by 12.3%, or 7.6% on a constant currency basis. COI margin improved to 15%, up 90 basis points, and EBITDA margin rose 150 basis points to 24.5%. As mentioned by Hamada-san earlier, this quarter marks the first time that all NSHD business segments exceeded EBITDA margin of 17%, and as a group achieved more than 24%, meeting our medium-term plan goal. Year-over-year growth and margin improvements were primarily driven by price management, operational excellence, productivity, and best practice initiatives applied across businesses and geographies, and also contributions from acquisitions. On the right-hand side of the page, we summarize the revenue bridge for Q3. Foreign exchange contributed 3.7%, primarily due to JPY weakness against major currencies. Price added 1.8%, while pass-through and surcharges decreased about 1%, reflecting lower on-site energy costs. Volumes declined -1.8%, and then the other category reflects positive contributions from acquisitions in Europe and Oceania, as well as strong equipment sales in Japan Electronics. There were no significant non-recurring items this quarter, resulting in operating income increasing 12.2% year-over-year. Turning to guidance, as shown on page 23. Today, we're revising our full-year revenue and profit outlook. Although gas demand remains soft due to ongoing macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainty, favorable currency tailwind and continued contributions from M&A, and sustained price and productivity actions supported an improved outlook. We now expect to exceed our original revenue forecast by 3.1%, resulting in JPY 1.33 trillion, and we expect COI of JPY 196 billion, a 2.6% increase compared to our original forecast of JPY 191 billion. The currency rates assumed for the revised forecasts are JPY 150 per one USD and JPY 170 per one EUR. In addition, we also expect to achieve our midterm plan EBITDA margin goal of 24%. This one we determined was one of the hardest ones to achieve, and it looks like we're going to achieve favorably. Please turn to page 31. Operating cash flow rose 16.5% year-over-year. Investing cash outflows rose 22%, primarily due to the Oceania acquisition. Free cash was slightly negative for the nine-month period due to acquisition-related payments. Now we'll review results by segment. Ten. In Japan, price management efforts continued in specialty gases and CO2. However, soft volumes more than offset the revenue growth. Industrial gas-related equipment and installation projects performed well, while electronics-related projects decreased versus prior year. Electricity costs remained stable with a slightly downward trend. The revenue for Q3 in Japan was JPY 100.6 billion, down JPY 0.2 billion, or -0.2% year-over-year. Core operating income of the segment was JPY 12.6 billion, up JPY 0.4 billion, or 3.4%. COI margin improved by 40 basis points to 12.6%. EBITDA margin improved by 70 basis points to 17.4%. Page 11. Revenue growth in the U.S. was supported by favorable foreign exchange, strong price initiatives, and solid equipment installation sales. Inflation headwinds remain, but due to price actions and productivity measures, COI increased year-over-year. Q3 revenue was JPY 92.6 billion, up JPY 2.1 billion, or 2.3% year-over-year, excluding currency impact. It was up 1.3%. Core operating income was JPY 13.9 billion, up JPY 0.4 billion, or +2.6% year-over-year. Excluding currency impact, COI was up +2.1%. COI margin and EBITDA margins were 15.1% and 28% respectively, representing an increase of 10 basis points on COI and 80 basis points on EBITDA. We continue to drive price actions, productivity initiatives, cost reduction, Also savings efforts to improve profits of this business. Slide 12. In Europe, on-site volume softness persisted. However, positive price performance, stable to moderate energy costs, and contributions from the Italian acquisition supported solid year-over-year growth and margin expansion. The revenue for Q3 in Europe was JPY 90.2 billion, up JPY 6.9 billion, or 8.3% year-over-year. However, excluding currency, revenues were slightly negative at -2.3%. Core operating income was up JPY 3.1 billion, or a 20.4% increase year-on-year. While the COI improvement was a more modest 8.6% increase excluding currency. The core operating income margin improved by 210 basis points to 20.6%. EBITDA margin rose 280 basis points to 33.5%. Next slide, please. Strong revenue and profit growth were driven in the Asia and Oceania segment, primarily by the Oceania acquisition and continued strength in specialty gases and electronics-related installation projects. Q3 revenue is JPY 55.5 billion, up JPY 10.3 billion, or 22.7% year-over-year, or an 18.1% improvement with constant currency. Core operating income was JPY 5.9 billion, +JPY 1.9 billion, or 47.2% year-over-year. Excluding currency, COI grew at 40.5%. COI margin increased 180 basis points to 10.7%. EBITDA margin was up 240 basis points to 17.9%. Next page, please. Thermos. Thermos experienced weaker results due to sales decline in its core markets of Japan and Korea. In addition, increase in procurement costs more than offset pricing actions and cost optimization efforts. Revenue for Q3 was JPY 7.6 billion, down JPY 0.4 billion, or -5.1% year-over-year. The decrease was 5.2% ex currency. For COI, it was JPY 1.3 billion, down JPY 0.3 billion, or 17.6% versus prior year. Ex currency, COI was down 19.2%. The segment COI margin declined by 270 basis points to 17.6%. EBITDA margin declined by 240 basis points to 23.2%. For your reference, please refer to pages 15-21 for the first nine-month detail. I will not cover that information today. As previously explained, we have revised our full year forecast to show updated financial expectations for this fiscal year. This concludes my comments and full year outlook. Thank you very much for your attention. Mr. Hamada and Mr. Draper, thank you for your explanation. We would now like to take questions. Points to note. As I mentioned at the outset, those who would like to communicate in English, please participate using the English audio line in Zoom. Please note that the Japanese channel will be broadcasting Japanese translation. Those who will be asking questions, we would like you to be mindful in your talking speed and tempo because there will be simultaneous interpretation. Next, I would like to explain the procedure for today's Q&A session. First, please raise your hand by pressing the raise hand button on the control panel displayed at the bottom of the Zoom screen when you ask questions. Click on the Q&A button and fill in your company name and your name. You do not need to fill in your question. Once you have been nominated by us, please tell us what your question is. When you ask a question, please tell us your company name and your name first, and then ask your question in one question, one answer format. If you wish to cancel your question, please press the raise hand button again and put your hand down. Please note that your questions will be posted on our corporate website along with your presentation and also temporarily with all your data. That is all the information I have for you. We'd now like to take your questions until the scheduled ending time. CLSA Securities, Mr. Tophies. I'm Cho, CLSA Securities. Thank you. I have a question regarding the European situation. The European margin is improving a lot in the third quarter. Was it the acquisition impact? How much was the acquisition impact? Towards the fourth quarter, the European margin, what is your outlook on the margin in Europe for the fourth quarter? Those are the two questions. For this, I would like to have Mr. Draper answer the questions based on specific numbers. Sure. Thank you for your question. This is Alan Draper. Overall, we don't disclose the performance, unfortunately, on a region or acquisition basis. You can see that in our walk, you get a fairly good sense of, we have a sizable portion that's due to Coregas as well as Kleenheat and Polaris. Overall, it's not a huge acquisition for Europe. The biggest driver was strong performance was due to lower power pass-through. At the same time, they had significant amount of pricing and productivity efforts that went through the organization. There was some benefit related to the acquisition, but it's not a huge impact when you look at Europe's EBITDA margins. Thank you very much. The fourth quarter, do you think that the margin will be similar in the fourth quarter as the third quarter? Yes. This is Alan again. Overall, margins, it was a good quarter in the third quarter. I think things will be probably pretty similar to what they were in the third quarter to the fourth quarter. There's always a little bit of movement. Power always is an unknown. If power costs go up, we do more pass-through, which is a little bit of a deterioration on your margins. If power costs go down, there might be a little bit of a benefit, but probably around that range is probably a pretty good estimate. We've been in that 31%, 32%, now 33% range the last year, so I expect it to continue in that same range. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. As for the second point, as for the Asian trend, segment margin Q on Q and Y on Y has been improving. The background of the improvement is, of course, Coregas acquisition impact. I think that is one thing. Excluding that, the largest is the semiconductor gas sales improvement. Is my understanding correct? Asia's third quarter margin is improving. I would like to know the background of that and also the fourth quarter outlook as well. Again, I would like to have Mr. Alan Draper answer this as well. Sure. Overall, we've been really working hard at the Asia Oceania segment. I think we hit a low late last year, beginning of this year. We had a lot of pre-acquisition and acquisition costs that came through that brought results down. We had some helium headwinds that while they still are a headwind, they're a little bit more, I'll say, modern, normalizing a bit. The underlying business is driven by East Asia electronics. That business is performing well. We're seeing good improvement, good electronics demand on both gases as well as on the equipment side. I expect to continue to see progress as we get into the fourth quarter into next year. I do expect to continue to see this level and even a little bit higher as we move into next year. Thank you. Understood. That is all for myself. Thank you very much. Mr. Chu, thank you very much. SMBC Nikko Securities, Shintani San, please. SMBC. I am Shintani. Thank you very much for your presentation. I would like to talk about the factor for the revision of the corporate performance. I'd like to check the detail as a positive factor effects, yes, depreciation or price management or productivity gain, and a new consideration factor. On the other hand, the volume, the reason of the negative factor. As much as possible, how much was the impact, the order, or the breakdown? Could you elaborate on that? Thank you very much. As for the forex impact, Alan Draper San presentation. We'd like to ask Alan San to respond to that question. Thank you. This is Alan Draper. Obviously, we're continuing to see the foreign currency benefit. That's by far our largest benefit that we have. Underlying volumes are a bit soft. If you look at it's really driven by the foreign currency being offset by a little volume weakness. We're thinking that in the fourth quarter, volumes are going to continue to stay at this relatively soft pace, maybe -1% in that range as a combined NSHD group. The currency's really offsetting that. Obviously, we're still driving price and productivity efforts. The major driver is definitely the pricing aspect, or sorry, the currency aspect. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Forex has been the major driver. The next contributor is price and productivity. They are on the equal footing, the same level? Yeah, this is Alan. If you take a look at the bridge walks that we have, and you look at the third quarter, it gives you a sense for what we're seeing when you look at revenue growth and obviously the profit side of things. I don't think we're going to have any major dramatic change from what the third quarter looks like to the fourth quarter. Fourth quarter sometimes is a little bit stronger with equipment sales, but I don't anticipate any major shift from that 3Q vision when we look at fourth quarter. That gives you a little insight as to the major drivers. Thank you. Understood. Thank you very much. That's all from me. Thank you. Shintani-sama, Shintani-san, thank you very much. BofA, Mr. Ino Enomoto, please. This is Enomoto, BofA Securities. I have three questions. Number 1, electronics improvement. I think the CEO referred to the improvement. Exactly, what is happening? Can you elaborate? For example, the demand or order in Japan is increasing for equipment or specialty gas recovery is gaining momentum, or what kind of field do you have, a live field? That's my first question. Thank you very much. As for electronics, it's not that this one particular gas has improved greatly. Semiconductor production itself is growing a lot, therefore our semiconductor manufacturing factory, we do have factories in various countries and regions, and so we are seeing great volume in all regions. Also, this is not reflected in the numbers. It's very detailed. As I have mentioned before, the installment of construction in Japan, we had the two largest projects, and we also have other projects as well. The electronics-related business has increased a lot. Therefore, a similar thing is happening in the U.S. as well. There is one manufacturer ordering us a part of their equipment installment, that kind of a project is increasing. Gas used as material and equipment to use gas, both are increasing. That is the situation of electronics. That's all from myself. Understood. Recently, it's not that you're seeing a sudden increase lately. It's not that you're seeing an increase in backlog all of a sudden. Well, as a matter of fact, in Japan, there are new construction projects, that is not reflected in the numbers yet. The improvement in numbers that you see is not due to some sudden project, it's that our overall volume is increasing. That's all. My second question is Europe, about European market. From this year, the Border Tax Adjustment carbon or CBAM, regulation has been introduced. Do you see any impact from that CBAM? For example, steel industry or chemical industry, the industry that would impact a CBAM. I think you do make a lot of shipments of industrial gas to those industries. If you see some sort of situation, then. Well, thank you for your question. I do not have a good understanding in it, maybe Alan Draper. Alan, if you do have any comment that you can make. Draper. We had our board meeting today, our president of the European business was here, he mentioned that we don't see any impact of this yet. Obviously, we don't know what is going to happen in the future, as of right now, we don't see any significant impact related to this. We'll keep monitoring closely, if anything changes, obviously, we'll let you know. Thank you very much. Tom. Thank you very much. Lastly, I'm sorry, I have a question regarding a special project. The Jamnagar India refining construction, whether the construction has completed from next year, I think it was a HYCO project. Is it going to contribute to your business, HYCO business? India, the HYCO project, has completed, yes, its construction. It has been delayed just a little bit than planned. However, we have made adjustments in the overall scheduling. On a timely basis, I think we have completed the construction, the actual operation will start shortly. Understood. Thank you very much. Mr. Enomoto, thank you very much. Our next, Mizuho Securities, Mr. Yamada, please. Elaborations. May I ask you several questions in English? The first one is basically the electronic specialty materials. As Hamada-san said that China seems to be probing the dichlorosilane, DCS, I think anyway, Japanese corporations are basically dominant in this field, hence the Chinese probe seems to have some side agenda. How are you planning to cope with that? Is there any strong or major implication or impact as a result of the geographical tension mounting between China and Japan in the administrative businesses? Please allow me to respond in Japanese. Currently, it is under investigation. What will be the impact or the magnitude of impact? As far as we can investigate is that what is the amount and the volume of this material to be shipped and to whom we are shipping to? That is what we study. The grounds for dumping investigation submitted by the other party is currently under scrutiny. Whether it will be a huge impact or a little impact, at this point in time, it is difficult to make such a judgment. As far as we know, first we have to study and examine and decide whether we will respond to this or not. First, we have to have a full study, and there is a deadline. Toward the deadline, we will solidify that examine the situation. I do appreciate the wise comment regarding accepting the pro bono. In relation to that, according to the backlog, the electronics rate backlog seems to be increasing. The overall amount seems to remain similar at around JPY 150 billion outstanding. Is this a reflection of the increasing demand in Americas as well as in other nations, or is this just basically reflecting the project progresses in Japan? Thank you very much for your question. First of all, what I can tell you is that in Japan, the major construction work or investment work for semiconductor was already completed. This is already completed, reducing the backlog. On the other hand, in the electronics area, there are some facility-related construction work available. However, details are yet to come. On our end, we have a high expectation. I sincerely hope that this will be added to the number. Talking about the overall capital expenditure, Americas and Europe in different parts of the world, they are on an equal basis. The major item was completed in Japan, and therefore, the ratio of the backlog of Japan has been reduced. However, as for the overall value, it has been flattish. However, there are six order intake and four completed. I cannot show you the breakdown in detail, there is an increase in order intake, including the bigger one and the smaller one. This is the number we are seeing right now. Last one. Regarding the company's estimated revisions. According to the information shown on page 23, the company's operating income estimate has revised up by around JPY 3.3 billion, whereas the net income after tax for parent shareholder increased much more. What's the gap between the operating income estimate increase and the net income after tax increase? Thank you. Thank you. On this matter, we'd like to invite Alan Draper to respond. Thank you for the question. This is Alan. One of the bigger items we have is in Germany, they changed the tax rule. They reduced their tax rate, that has a pretty significant impact on the quarter and also year to date. It was significant enough that you noticed that our taxes did not go up that significantly, our effective tax rate went down quite a bit, that's mostly due to the German situation. We always have little puts and takes through the tax line, but that's one of the bigger items, is related to the new German tax rules, it's going to continue to decline, I think, through the 2030, I believe the tax is at, what the government said. They're doing that to stimulate the economy and more growth and investment. Thank you for the question. Thanks very much for the elaboration. May we expect the European income will be subject to less taxation for next maybe two, three years time frame because of the German tax reforms? I think overall, when we did the entry, it's really a deferred tax item that comes through, it's what your expectations are. I think it considered what the future rates were as long as they were locked in. If the German and the legislation has finalized it would be coming to play, I think that was the case. I can't give you a perfect answer, but I have a feeling most of it's been taken into consideration this quarter as a result of view. Lovely. Thanks very much. Very clear. Thank you very much, Mr. Yamada. Morgan Stanley MUFG. Mr. Watanabe, please. I am Watanabe from Morgan Stanley. My first question is regarding the segment in Japan. If you can supplement a little bit. In comparison with the second quarter, this segment alone, margin is decreasing. Is it because of the completion of installation of some of the projects, or are there any other factors? As for the installation, you said that orders are increasing. From the fourth quarter, will they be contributing to the revenues in the fourth quarter? That's my first question. As for the margin of Japan for construction, margin is relatively good in Japan. With regards to margin in Japan, it's not only that the power cost has continuously been contained in a very good level, a slight decrease as well. Presuming from that, there is not much of a big change in the margin. The largest factor perhaps is that the CO2 gas volume and the balance of supply and demand, I would not say is deteriorating, but that could be causing a little bit of a difference in margin. That is my interpretation. In the fourth quarter, whether the construction projects, well, there will be some posting of revenue. There will be no major project completing in the fourth quarter according to my memory. It will be from next year onwards that large numbers will be reflected for the construction project. Thank you very much. My second question is about the U.S., the Americas. In the second quarter briefing, you said that the U.S. margin as of September is slightly below 15%. It has improved to close to 15%, said we can highly expect in December, I think that you were right. The 15.1% in December, the background, what has been improved from September? Is it the new plant operation or is it that profitable existing business? Are there any additional factors that we can factor in the numbers of January to March? Thank you very much. As for Americas, U.S., as I touched upon earlier, the first half was not very good, we had expectations that we will grow in the second half. In the third quarter, in the first half of the third quarter was not very good. As I mentioned, we have decided to be more active and aggressive in pricing and our operational excellence, the improvement of productivity or the improvement in transportation costs. We have thoroughly worked on these projects. These have been planned, when we compare the first half and what we had planned, there were great gap in the numbers. We have aggressively worked to correct that, those efforts have been reflected in the third quarter results. In that sense, the fourth quarter, we will see a further improvement. Is that correct? Yes. As for pricing, we will continue, we also are starting new pricing initiatives as well. If there's anything to add from Alan? Good question. Just one thing to add. We are expecting an uptick in the margins. You've probably seen in the news, there was a major winter storm that went through the U.S. I think it affected about three-quarters of the country. That obviously caused some headwinds, that'll be a little bit of a negative. We were expecting a pretty good improvement in the fourth quarter. We're still expecting an improvement in that quarter, the winter storm definitely caused some headwinds that we weren't expecting. I'm sure you saw it in the news, that's going to be a little bit of a headwind, we still should be seeing some positive momentum on margins. Thank you. Your plan does already factor in the winter storm. Is that correct? Our guidance that we provided of JPY 196 billion of core OI does include the storm. We did include that since it occurred about 10 days ago. When you talk specifically about the U.S., the U.S. probably shifted a little bit from what we thought it was going to do at the beginning of the month. Our forecast does include the winter storm. Thank you. Thank you very much. Mr. Watanabe, thank you very much. There was some trouble for five minutes. The English channel was not effectively working. Sorry for some technical trouble for English channel. Let me continue. Omura-san from the UBS Securities, please. I am Omura from the UBS Securities. My first question. Now I'd like to ask you about Europe, which was not so asked so far. The 20% or more, that is the margin for the third quarter, which is quite a high level. Only looking at the first half, it was quite high, but now the margin has further increased in the third quarter. What is the priority of running the European business? I would like to check that. The pricing or the cost reduction or the top-line increase, what would be the major factor for the margin? To how much extent would you like to see a margin increase to satisfy you as a company? Later, we'd like to ask Alan-san to supplement my comment. Rather than deprivatization, the maintenance of the pricing or the raising the price or as a manufacturer, cost reduction or the improving the operational efficiency. They are all facilitated in parallel, simultaneously. At the end of the day, looking at the results, there may be a difference in the plant utilization. Therefore, even if you take action, the end results may vary. There might be a margin of error. Should we first raise the price, or should we reduce the cost? It does not mean we are running the operation by having any prioritization. No, that is not the case. We are able to continue the decent margin level. That is because of the fact that we have continuously working on these efforts simultaneously. If you have additional comments, Alan-san, please. Thank you, Masa-san. Thank you for your question. Overall, when you think about the margin side, one of the things we've been trying to have a mindset change across the organization is that we can have continuous improvement across the organization. We're always going to be trying to push the organization for margin improvement in a sustained way. That's our goal. To get sustained growth, we'd love to see volume growth if we can. If we can't get volume growth, we're also going to be pushing on price and productivity. Our goal, as I've mentioned to many of the analysts and investors, is try to get at least 50 basis points of EBITDA margin improvement a year and make sure that we're growing our profit faster than we're growing sales. We're going to continue. It doesn't matter what margin level the European business gets to, we're going to continue to try to drive them further and make sure the president of the business continues to drive their organization further as well. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. My second question, Thermos business. What is your take on the Thermos business right now? Compared to other businesses, be it the revenue growth or the margin improvement, there might be a difference in direction and the magnitude compared to other businesses. What is your take on the synergy with the other businesses in the new midterm business plan? What is your positioning of the Thermos? Do you have any take on that? Thank you very much. We have explained the background or the history of Thermos. Setting that aside, for 30 years, as a B2C business, they have been operated independently. They have made their capital expenditure and are working on the productivity gain, marketing, and pricing. They are different from the industrial gas. The perspective or the angle is different. Thermos, in different parts of the world, for location, including Snowine in Japan, we have five facilities for production. They have their own business plan. And based on that, they will go ahead with their business. As a holding, we would like to support the Thermos business. We are not demanding the synergy with the industrial gas. We are not pushing that. In the area where we are running the industrial gas, we believe that the market is very important. We have to listen to the voice of actual users. From that perspective, even in the area of industrial gas, I think that Thermos has a good marketing methodology, which will be effective in the industrial gas. When talking about the Thermos business, the business is promoted together with a partner in different countries, Asia, Japan, and Korea, America. Well, the volume is not so huge, but Europe. We have the sales network in different parts of the world, and the situation varies from one country to another, and the user's preference and the orientation is different. Single-mindedly having a heavy production in one particular production site, rather than that, listening to the voice of the market, we will have a production in different sites. Currently, this does not require significant capital expenditure because we have a pre-existing plant with sufficient production capacity to secure sufficient cash. That is the nature of this industry. From that perspective, as a parent and a holding, we would like to render support to Thermos business. Will that do? Yes. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Omura. Next, Saga Asset Management. Mr. Hayashida. I am Hayashida. Thank you. I have a question regarding electronic gas. In the third quarter, the electronic gas revenue sales year-on-year, how much did it grow? That's my question. In Asia and Oceania, excluding currency impact, it grew 18%. Is it equivalent to that or not? That's my first question. And on a related note, as you've commented, I think you're starting to see a boom in this area. And towards next year, what kind of growth are you expecting next year? Just a rough image. Thank you very much. Right now, the electronic gas figures are not in my hands right now, so I cannot give you specific numbers. But maybe if Alan has some numbers, I would like to have him answer. But including memory, it is true that manufacturing is increasing. In particular, Korea is a large manufacturer, and a Japanese manufacturer, and famous manufacturers in the U.S. They are increasing gradually the production level, and as was mentioned, 18% is the number that we are seeing. It depends on the product, but similar to that level, I think, is being enjoyed throughout the world. The semiconductor manufacturing factory's process is largely changing recently. In some cases, they're using different gas from conventional gas. How much new gas they are going to use and how we're going to evaluate that, we would like to have such information, and how to respond to their request is something that we need to figure out. But it's not that all gases can be produced locally and used locally. Some may have to be manufactured in Japan and shipped out to the U.S., et cetera. How much gas is used where? Of course, we need to do some marketing investigation. That will be linked to the manufacturing capability of companies. If, Alan, you have the numbers, can you explain? This is Alan Draper. Right now, we are not disclosing. We don't disclose volumes by business segment. We just started disclosing volumes for the total company maybe two years ago. We're assessing as an organization whether we want to start disclosing more to the investors. We know it's something that everyone's asking for. We just want to make sure that we feel comfortable, and we may do that going forward. Unfortunately, we can't disclose that now. I will say the East Asia electronics business is doing a lot of the carrying when you strip out the acquisition. They're carrying the weight to get to positive volume activity. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for your question. With this, we would like to conclude the Q&A session. Prior to the conclusion, I would like to make some announcement. On the 30th of March, we will have the announcement for the new midterm plan. March 24th, we will have an announcement of a midterm business plan. If you haven't replied to your participation yet, please let us know. With this, we would like to conclude the earnings call. The contents of today's call will be made available on our corporate website, the IR page, later this evening. If you have any questions or require any further information, please feel free to contact our IR department. Thank you very much for taking the time to join us today. We truly appreciate your continuous support. Thank you.