As it is, scheduled time, we'd like to start the earnings call for the Q1 of the fiscal year ending March 2024 for LIXIL Corporation. This earnings call is streamed live on the internet. I'd like to explain the presenters for today. First, Mr. Kinya Seto, Director, Representative Executive Officer, President, and CEO. Hello, everyone. We have Mr. Sachio Matsumoto, Director, Representative Executive Officer, Executive Vice President, and CFO. Ms. Kayo Hirano, Senior Vice President, leader of the Investor Relations Office and leader of Corporate Accounting and Treasury and Tax of the Finance and Treasury Department. My name is Kawai, from the IR unit, and I'll serve as the MC of this session. The materials used for this presentation is uploaded on our web page in the IR section. Please allow me to explain the procedure for today. To begin with, Mr. Seto, the CEO, will first explain the Q1 results for fiscal year ending March 2024. After that, we'll have a Q&A session. If you have a question, please use the Q&A button on your screen and enter your company name, your name, as well as your question there. We ask that you only ask 2 questions at a time to start with. We will receive questions throughout the session, and we are scheduling to conclude the session at 6:00 P.M. Tokyo time. Mr. Seto will first give the summary of result for the Q1 for the fiscal year ending March 2024. Over to you, Mr. Seto. Hello, everyone. The Q1 for the fiscal year ending March 2024, and please allow me to give the overview. As for the result of the Q1, it wasn't a great result, but from our perspective, we essentially landed at numbers that were very close to what we had anticipated three months ago. The installation for a renovation in Japan, this materialized earlier than we expected, but what was worse than what we had anticipated was the weak performance of the European market, particularly in regards to our international operation. In regards to the situation concerning the European market, I will give some more commentary in the next session. In regards to the European market, we feel that the state is probably the worst in 20 years. We had European crisis in the past, the collapse of Lehman Brothers, we had the COVID situation. Even compared to those, the situation, the industry considers the year to have been the worst in the 20 years, even compared to those. Our competitors, we have those companies that went under. Many of the dealers and distributors are facing very difficult environment, and our competitors are also in a very difficult environment right now, based on what we have learned. Please allow me to give the summary. The first point is that the housing equipment and the building material demand of the world, including Japan, remained generally sluggish in the Q1. In Japan, the new housing starts have started to drop, and the owner-occupied houses, which is our core market, is weak. This is becoming somewhat weaker. This type of situation for us means increasing fixed costs, which is an issue from profitability perspective. In regards to variable cost, the raw materials the price in particular has stabilized or even coming down. That is becoming positive year-on-year. Because of these two con, track, the, the, confronting, the, the factors, the, the gross profit has pick up slightly. The, the decline in variable cost was positive, but overall, the current economic condition has led to the difficulties in terms of our profitability for this quarter. If you look at the Japanese market, on a standalone basis, when the, the costs continued to increase in the past, we were ahead of others in increasing price optimization. Despite the decline in demand, the, the competitive, the landscape remained quite tough. The, the situation that we were the only company with a higher price, this has essentially has ended in this quarter. For the next quarter, from July onwards, we are starting to see the market share recovering slightly. The overall demand is low, and so, we are not able to see that clearly in numbers as yet. As I've explained at the outset, the Japanese demand for insulation, for renovation, this started to pick up earlier than we had expected, and is already starting to make contribution positively to profit. In comparison to the slowdown in demand in Europe, this factor in Japan was able to offset those negative impact in Europe. When we look at the international market, I talked about Europe, but the U.S. is not all that good. Competitors are not all that good either. Also in China, as you're well aware, the situation is not that good, both for China and U.S. We are starting to see some signs of recovery here and there, but overall it is still weak. We are taking this as an opportunity to enable us to generate good numbers once the demand recovers. We are intending to use this opportunity, if you like, to implement structural reform internationally. We've done the structural reform in Japan a number of years ago, but we intend to do the structural reform for international market at a pace which is faster than what we did for Japan. Based on this type of environment, for our full year numbers, we're expecting recovery to come in the second half of the year. In fact, about 80% are off, the full year core earnings is expected to be generated in the second half of the year, as we explained 3 months ago. The JPY 3.7 billion of core earnings in the Q1, in the Q2, we're expecting about JPY 4.5 billion of current core earnings. When we say JPY 4.5 billion, we are implementing one-time cost such as for structural reform and also for future investment, and we're expecting to spend about JPY 3.5 billion for this purpose. If we exclude this factor, the profit would have been about JPY 8 billion. As for profitability, the Q2 is almost twice the level that we saw in the Q1 in terms of the expected level of recovery. What I want to communicate to you today as a news is the trend in regards to the market in Europe. For us, Europe is an area with high profitability in addition to the revenue levels. We had our expectations, in comparison to last year, this year was probably even worse. Particularly for Germany, France, and Holland, we had difficult type of the negative factors. For us, Germany is particularly important, but for other markets in Europe, and if you consider the market for Europe overall, there weren't many positives that I can speak of. Why are we saying the market have been the worst in 20 years? The situation is different from the past, and it is different from other regions, and it is also different from other type of products. Why is the case? First of all, the amount of the housing loan outstanding, vis-à-vis the GDP level, the level is very high in Europe. Say, for example, more than 100% in the case of Holland, 65% for France, 55% in Germany. In Japan, people tend to think that there is a high level of, the, the mortgage balance, but in the case of Japan, it's only about 40% of the GDP. When the housing price starts to come down, then the, the, the, the, the, the mortgage balance, tends to look even, heavier. If you look at the ECB policy rate, this has, increased quite rapidly and, sharply risen to around 4% from around 0% in a very short time. Despite the fact that the housing prices have come down, energy and the food and other, the commodity prices are, are continuing to increase. What's happening in that regard, and the amount of the money one can spend, the disposable income, rather than buying in the future, it's better to spend now because of the inflation. In regards to the housing price, there is a possibility of the price coming down in the future, vis-à-vis today, and so, they are withholding the payment regarding housing. Given the limited disposable income, people are spending for those where the price is expected to increase. You know, Lehman and the issue when there were economic crisis in Europe, everything went differentially, not just housing, but all the others come down. It wasn't just for the housing area. When we look overseas and say, for the US, the price for housing continued to increase, and so there is still that motivation to invest towards houses. In that regard, if we look at the situation vis-à-vis other countries, we've seen that type of deterioration in Europe. Added to that, in Germany, as I've been explaining before, because of the increase in energy costs, there has been great demand for heat pumps, and there is quite a bold subsidy being provided for heat pumps. For consumers and also the installers, who were doing the piping work in the past, they are now doing the heat pump-related work these days. That has also led to declining demand significantly. For other countries as well, like Sweden, where the housing loan is pre-predominantly made from variable rate, then the interest rate increases will also link to increasing the, the, the interest quite significantly. In the case of Germany, m-more people tend to go for fixed, but this is likely to increase going, going forward as well. UK or Italy, these countries are also, you know, seeing situation deteriorate as well. Maybe a matter for just one or two months for a very short time, but Middle East, which had performed extremely well thus, so far, we are seeing some worsening, maybe destocking-... That has also led to a the environment for Europe becoming quite negative, which have impacted us negatively. Other than that, LWT business in Japan, we saw bathroom units recover first. Price-wise, the competitors price increase was clearly slower in regards to kitchen and also for toilet. We saw the business environment remaining tough, but for toilets, the competitors have started to increase our price as well, which is leading to signs of recovery. Kitchen is likely to recover post-October. Toilet is likely to be a little bit earlier than kitchen in that regard, but the full recovery is unlikely to occur until October for both toilet and kitchen. The competitive environment is starting to normalize. In terms of market share, we should expect a recovery from third quarter onwards. If you compare the new versus renovation, the renovation is still somewhat higher, and the new has come down to an extent, but there is a certain level of bottom. If you look at the international operation for water technology, LWT, as I said before, Europe, the situation is quite slow. This applies to our competitors as well. In the case of Americas, true, the customer demand remains sluggish, and the Home Depots and so forth, I understand that they are facing quite a tough situation as well. Our policy was to switch product to more profitable product, and that type of conversion is making progress quite steadily. In that area, we have a sense of market share increase in vis-a-vis competitors, so we're not too worried there. We are also seeing the inventory level come down steadily as well. Asia Pacific had continued to perform well, but in the case of Vietnam, on entering into this fiscal year, they've kind of entered into economic adjustment. In the Asia and Pacific area, the Vietnam, India, Thailand, and Indonesia are the four major markets in this region, and Vietnam was in fact the driver of the region, so slowdown here was somewhat painful. In China, the real estate market remains to be quite weak, but as been reported recently, the Chinese government is starting to think that they need to support the real estate market somewhat. The newspaper is also carrying articles that mentions the information that the real estate are for living, not for investment, but starting not to really talk about that. LHT, we have had the subsidy for the advanced window becoming quite impactful. Not just windows, but overall, the renovation is performing quite well. We increased price last year, in the Q1, market share may not have been all that good, inclusive of the new houses, but we are starting to see the market share recovering to the Q2. We are seeing decline in the, the, the new houses. Despite the market share recovering, the, the, the new houses are slow, so this being somewhat sluggish, more so than we had expected. As for the, the building business, as we have explained many times, we decide on the price in certain year, and that contract will continue for several years. For those, we have entered into a contract in the past, and due to the increase in cost recently, has led to us generating losses in last year and the year before. These two, we have been working on price optimization, and the cost has stabilized. From this fiscal year, we are starting to see recovery in terms of profitability quite, and notably, from this fiscal year. If I try to sum up, the timing of economic recovery is difficult to assume. Europe is likely to be the last, but inclusive of recovery in Europe, we are expecting normalization by the end of December. For other region, from the third quarter, Europe, maybe the fourth quarter, would be the timing where we can start to see normalization. Based on this, majority of the core earnings we are forecasting for this fiscal year, about 80% is likely to be generated in the third into the fourth quarter. Based on this, we should expect to see a good year next year. The trend in the Europe, the business condition, this has been worse than we had anticipated. The sales of the high insulation product for renovation in Japan, being stronger, were able to offset that to an extent. We are starting to see a recovery market share, based on due quantity, due to normalization, continued environment in Japan. Because of the decline in new housing start, we have not been able to enjoy benefit from mass production. This is inevitable in one sense, what we need to do is to work on capturing greater demand for high insulation and environmentally beneficial product. As for the cost of raw material, it has stabilized or is starting to see some decline, but some smaller vendors, the impact has been slower, or the impact for them has been somewhat slower, because of the national instruction or requests from the society. We need to make some rational decision in accepting some price increases in regards to those. That could result in some increase in cost. An important point as the management for me going forward, is that it's at these tough times that we should implement the structural reform to enable improvement in productivity. In that regard, we've done this in Japan several years ago, but for international markets, we tend to do this with greater speed, and I think that is quite important. This is one of our important management challenges this year. If we are able to do this, then we should be able to make next year into a pretty good year. I have made the decision to work on this type of cost reform this fiscal year. Highlights of our performance for revenue, year-on-year, a JPY 1.1 billion decline. Not a significant decline, but international markets, if we exclude the exchange impact, minus 13%, so it was quite a poor performance. What was the reason here? I've been say this already, including Europe and the U.S., the market itself had slowed down. Based on the numbers announced by our competitors overseas, I don't think we were a standout in terms of the weakness. For us, if we compare year-on-year, we saw a decline here. Regarding core earnings, LHT has made a steady recovery, but LWT we saw weakness particularly for international market, and so these numbers. For the profit for the quarter, we have the absence of last year's gain on the transfer of land and other assets, and we also, the increase in the financial cost, it wasn't a great result, but we will make effort next year. For the consolidated business results, as I have mentioned before, regarding the gross profit, the volume has a decline, but cost-wise, there was a reduction, so that saved us. Numerically, it's about the same numbers. However, the content, the essence of it, has changed or improved largely. SG&A, in the international market, there's a great inflation, and within that situation, the SG&A was kept at this level. Repeating myself, at this situation, in order to have a more sound core earnings, we have to conduct a large-scale restructuring, is what I'm thinking now. This time, I'll be repeating, but LWT was struggling, especially in Europe and in Americas, and that is leading to this quarter's result. Due to the foreign exchange impact, the total asset is increasing and the interest-bearing debt has increased, and the equity ratio was at 33.8%. From here, including the inventory side as well, we are going to put full efforts in to bringing this back to the ideal numbers. It's not when we think that the economic situation suddenly worsened, so in line with the economic recovery, bringing back to the ideal level is something that naturally will happen. As for the cash flow, unfortunately, because of the government's request, we have the Declaration of Partnership for building partnership. For our vendors, the trade payables are being paid in a shorter time period, is what we made a commitment to. Because of that, the profit before tax was lower. Year-on-year basis, the cash flow has shown a decline, but we will put our efforts to recover this point as well. With this, I would like to take plenty of time for Q&A. Therefore, the remaining content of the materials, I would like you to read them at your leisure, and we would like to go to Q&A. Thank you. From now, we would like to go into the Q&A session. For those of you who have questions, please press the Q&A button at the bottom of the screen, and in the input screen, please write your company name, your name, and your question. I would like to move on to the first question. Goldman Sachs Securities, Mr. Okada, we have received two questions. The first question, regarding the subsidy of the insulation renovation, there's a high possibility that it's going to end this fiscal year. Within this fiscal year, we believe that there may be a reaction, to that. What do you think the impact of that will be? Regarding the insulation renovation, currently, compared to the prior year, the window renovation product is selling at a threefold the speed. The demand is heating up. That is effect on a shipment basis right now. From the shipment base that is announced from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, it is 40%, so progress within the subsidy. If that is so, the subsidy or, sorry, the shipment of the subsidy-based product will probably end around November. However, regarding this point... ... the Kishida administration has their policy, and even looking at the government statements, they will have to do such a thing for three years, not limited to window, but meaning insulation work or the insulation measures in terms of economics of the houses is something that needs to be done. For subsidy, there is a possibility or higher possibility that it is going to continue in this area. Once one subsidy concludes, what will be the time period for the next subsidy to start? That we don't know yet. However, what's clear is that it's not because the subsidy exists, but rather right now, the energy cost has hiked to this level, and also, this extreme heat is continuing recently, and the window needs to be replaced anyway. Towards that, we are seeing a different trend than the conventional trend. Therefore, moving forward, the interest towards this area is going to continue. As for the Japanese government, by 2030, they have a target and a commitment to reduce the CO2 emission. Therefore, what is going to be the means for them to achieve that is the positive impact of insulation. Therefore, this is probably going to continue for a long term in some sort of form. The second question from Mr. Okada. United States and Europe, both, you're expecting a positive growth this fiscal year, but currently it's a negative. During this fiscal year, is the market going to recover? What is the grounds that you are expecting a recovery? For the United States, there are several factors. For us, depending on the product, there is a fluctuation, but the products that were newly launched, it is showing a positive growth. We are seeing positive, multiple positive signs. Overall, United States, the population is increasing, and as for the housing market, though the interest rate continues to increase, the housing market is also continuing to increase. It's quite of a solid situation, is how we look at it. As for the European market, for this fiscal year, there are people who are making expectation, not sure if it's going to turn positive. However, looking at the current situation, as I've mentioned before, regarding housing in Germany, the newly built scheduled for this year is 200,000, but the demand is 400,000. This 200,000 demand or forecast, the interest rate increase and material cost increase, that is why the actual forecast for the new building starts for houses is lower. Of course, the- there is a gap, and the German government wants to fill in the gap, and there are a lot of resources that are taken up for the heat pump replacement. At some point, this heated up the demand of heat pumps. Once that settles, we believe that the market is going to recover to the normal level for housing. The grounds I have is that compared to Europe, looking at the current business, excuse me, the current business situation, is difficult in Europe. Looking at the past, we never experienced this depth of the decline. Because of that, we believe that that is going to continue into a recovery. Next, next question is from Nakagawa-san, from Mizuho Securities. What are the measures you're thinking of in regards to the structural reform for the international business? Could you be somewhat specific to the extent possible? Well, unfortunately, yeah, the, the, the extent to which I can talk about is very limited because this is quite a sensitive matter. So I can only ask you to trust what we have done in the past and trust us for being able to generate outcome in the short term, term. It's not the case that we have a, an extraordinary measure that, that we're going to be taking. You know, normal thing that you would do in this type of situation will be done in this instance. Next, from Nomura Securities, from Fukushima-san, we have received two questions. The first is that you were saying that you will conduct a structural reform in the international markets in a speedy manner, but specifically speaking, what are you thinking? What measures are you thinking? I will be repeating myself, but regarding this question, I would like to refrain from answering. The next question: in the United States, American Standard goodwill, impairment risk, what do you think about that? How are you thinking about that? Well, at this point, regarding American Standard, it is becoming a better. Up to now, we did not have to have an impairment of the goodwill. Basically, we're not thinking of recording such an impairment. Matsumoto-san, I would like to add the comments. On the securities report, we have stated about this in detail, and regarding this point, in the last end of fiscal year, there was no risk for impairment. Regarding this, from the auditing firm, we have received the unqualified opinion. For the Q1 situation, it's the situation has not changed largely. The inventory level is being reduced, which means is that for this risk, it is a positive factor, is how we look at it. To take it. Next, question is from Kawashima-san from SMBC Nikko Securities. We have two questions. The first question is that in regards to the impact of the purchase market, you had expected JPY 27.1 billion for the full year, but was JPY 5.6 billion for the Q1. I think the plan had expected the increase in price of the components to be more significant in the first half of the year. The negative impact has been suppressed more than the plan? Yes. For aluminum, certainly the price has been lower than we had expected. At the same time, what we had expected too, was, and something that I mentioned before, is for the small suppliers. For those small suppliers, there is a delay in terms of asking for price increase to be implemented. For the smaller entities, we had a plan for price increase to be accepted. The application for price increase has been slower than we had anticipated, or their increasing price, say for example, for the aluminum, that mentioned before, may not have been all that large. Though there's been a delay, we do expect some impact going forward as well. This is particularly a kind of situation where we are likely to see for the Japanese operation of LWT. The second question, the, the window renovation business, I understand to have contributed higher than expected in the Q1, but the, the, the entire budget has not changed. In other words, the, the contribution for the full year remains unchanged. The, the tough environment in Europe was made up for by the window renovation business in the Q1. For the full year, how do you intend to achieve recovery? Not just the renovation for the window, but the renovation for the higher insulation overall is quite significant. Not just window, but the renovation, but the, the heat insulation, the renovation overall has been quite strong. We have a low carbon product, which is called PremiAL, and that has attracted a higher interest. Environment-related product has been performing better than we had anticipated, which is likely to lead to overall recovery. Hi, Susan. Next from Jefferies, the securities of Fukuhara-san has 2 questions. First question, is LWT international business, the 1st quarter was showing a loss. For the 2nd quarter, is this trend going to continue? For the full year profit plan for the international markets, should we be paying attention to downside risk? On the other hand, LHT had the mixed, product mix improvement and generated JPY 8.4 billion and already achieved 1/4 of the full year plan. The LHT profit improvement trend is not going to lead to upside for the full year plan? I don't know if it's appropriate to answer at detail at this level, so I'd like to answer in a general perspective. Overall, LWT issue is the economic situation, and this is something that has a difficulties for us to have full visibility. However, on the other hand, the structural reform that I have mentioned before, we will be working on this and moving this forward. The result of the structural reform will start to show from the mid of the fourth quarter, or I can say start from the fourth quarter. In that sense, for us, in various ways, the annual profit plan, we would like to achieve that. On the other hand, as for LHT, the profit improvement trend is very clear, and that is because the insulation business overall is recovering and also the beneficial product for the environment is selling. The second question from Fukuhara-san: Regarding the window renovation business, temporarily, there were talks of the delivery delay, the improvement of this delivery delay, and what are the changes at the actual site? Currently, it is still delayed. For us, for the business, we were prepared to have 3 times of the production, it started, when we started this, it was 8 times the demand. If the subsidy may stop very shortly, there were some places that stopped selling it, there was a lot of confusion. The current situation is that around this November or so, all the subsidies will dry up or be used. Probably around September, October, it will come back to the normal delivery cycle. Next, we have two questions from Teruoka-san from Daiwa Securities. One question was related to structural reform, so we only take one of the questions. Until last fiscal year, the maritime transportation cost was a significant burden, but how much of cost reduction for this fiscal year in this regard? Well, I, we don't actually disclose those details, but for this fiscal year, the cost has come down for sure, and where there were large costs in the past that translated to inventory. That would be one of the factors for reducing cost for international business going forward, at least these factories. Mitsui Sumi. Next, the Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Asset Management, Takegawa-san, has given us 2 questions. The European market being sluggish, I do understand. However, it's not you are handling a large-scale of products, but I think there will be a replacement demand of the faucets, and even that is not increasing. Is there other factors than the market situation? What, do you mean that any other reason other than just our factors? Regarding the European market, all of the players are struggling. The competitors Dornbracht. There's a company as such that went bankrupt, and I myself, 2 weeks ago, I visited Europe, and I've met with the wholesalers, and they were saying that it is the worst situation in the last 20 years. Therefore, the reality is that the market situation is the factor. It's not that we're handling large scale products, is what you have mentioned. However, especially in Germany, the heat pump subsidy and the factories that are handling the faucet products, they are, were handling the heat pumps, and that is the one fact. On the other hand, the faucet product, it's not just a replacement demand, but overall the bathroom renovation will happen. There is still the demand for a large investment. Also, another demand is generated from projects such as hotels or non-residential demands. In this area, the demand has stopped. Lastly, for the faucets itself, as you said, till now, it has not experienced a decline that much. In other words, GROHE is a business. Up till now, there was not many times that it's shown a large decline. Given that, we did feel that there's a special factor or reason, and we started to feel that several months ago. In that sense, it's something that occurred for the first time in the last 20 years, and that is not an exaggeration. However, on the other hand, for the household facilities or for the construction materials, it's not that bad of a situation, and this is a different topic. The other day, the so-called the construction material in the window with the European company, I had a discussion with the CEO of a European company, and what they were saying is that as an experience of a CEO, not limited to that, from including experience of working when he was young, he was saying that the current situation, the worst situation he has experienced. Therefore, the European construction materials or the housing facilities industries for the several last quarters was experiencing a bad situation. This is second question from Takekawa-san. Within a situation that you're not cannot expect profit improvement regarding the dividend to that, maybe, you don't have to maintain the dividend, but go convert into the payout ratio basis. It's not that we are trying something that's difficult. Next question is from Mochizuki-san from CLSA Securities. The 2 questions are, and to CEO for Mr. Matsumoto. The result for the Q1, was it in line with the company plan? The, the deterioration of performance in Europe, can it be made up for by other regions as well as based on reduction of cost? As I'm being asked, allow me to provide a response. As to whether the result was in line with our company plan, well, in the very first page, Mr. Seto explained that we had started the year expecting 80% of the earnings to be generated in the second half of the year, 20% in the first half of the year. We were more or less in line with those numbers. Can we actually make up for the deterioration of performance in Europe by the performance of other regions or cost reduction? Well, first thing that we need to work on is achieve improvement in Europe. On that basis, as we've been explaining, the LHT business in Japan has been performing quite well. Inclusive of that, and also for the company overall, we will certainly do our utmost to make efforts. The second question: in regards to the Q1, the American Standard saw the business loss based on local currency, and we are seeing decline in the sales level, so we are concerned about the trend for profitability. Is there a risk for in a good goodwill impairment? When do you expect the ASP to start generate a profit? In regards to the goodwill impairment, we have made a quite a detailed disclosure in our securities report, so please refer to that for the details. But at this point in time, we don't feel that there is a risk of impairment, so we have not recognized the impairment. As I've been saying, we are seeing the inventory level come down, and that has contributed positively, positively to the cash flow. As Mr. Seto explained, and in regards to the product, we are going to make them a more profitable product. Also for the channels, we are converting our business strategy to focus on those with a higher profitability, and so we just need to persevere for a little bit more longer. Next is from Morgan Stanley MUFG Securities, Watanabe-san. We have received 2 questions. The first question is that the demand weakness of the customers in United States, is it correct to understand that the background is the weak used home markets due to the hike of a housing mortgage? Is there any other points that we should consider? In the United States, same as Europe, the demand for our products, the renovation demand is larger than the new house builds. Even the new house builds, the interest rate increasing is becoming a major factor. In fact, Home Depot grows, those type of retail sales numbers are currently declining as well. In that sense, overall, the United States economic situation itself is in a way that towards the inflation, people's salaries have not caught up. Also, the demand towards the housing-related products is declining. On the other hand, when we think about the inquiries that we are receiving, as I have mentioned before, we are starting to see good signs. We feel that the U.S. market is gonna recover quicker than the European market. The second question, this is regarding the situation per product, Japan domestic. Bathroom unit is a positive, kitchen and toilets were negative. Is there any differences in the sales activities recently, other than the timing difference of increasing the price? As for the toilets last year, our competitor, Toto, there were issues they faced, such as the issues in China and et cetera, and they were not able to ship their products. That is why our products sold, and there is a difference in that sense. It seem- Toto took back about what they lost last year. On the other hand, regarding the kitchens, for sure, within the difference of the price optimization, the reaction of the competitor was to, in order to secure volume, they lowered the price, and that is why we probably were not able to gain the business. On the other hand, for the bathroom units, our activities that were started early stage, was showing a positive effect, and we were able to launch attractive products as well. Next, question is from Yagi-san, from Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities. Is there a difference in terms of demand situation for product in each of the regions of Europe? Well, where it started to deteriorate first was Germany and France. In fact, for France, we have started to see some recovery trend in the Q1. It's Germany and Holland and Sweden and Nordic countries, and except for Finland, which is strong. The, the, the countries that I mentioned is particularly bad. For Finland, the housing loan was somewhat controlled by the national government. Last year, Eastern Europe, that performed relatively well last year, is also seeing deterioration right now. In Southern Europe, they were slow in deterioration, but deterioration is starting to worsen. Southern Europe had been quite well, but is now starting to actually become somewhat slow, inclusive of Spain. Middle East, they are kind of going through destocking right now, and against a very strong the performance recently. For Egypt, because of the foreign currency issue, the LC cannot be issued, which has also had some impact as well. Citigroup Securities. We have received 2 questions from Miki-san. The first question is regarding the international business. This fiscal year, you have planned at the beginning of year of an increase in profit JPY 5.2 billion, but after the Q1, it is -JPY 7.4 billion. That means that you have to recover JPY 12.6 billion from Q2 onwards. It seem that the business environment for the international business is not so good, but can you show a recovery from here? In China, the April to June period, sales on the local currency, year-on-year basis is a -7%. Last year, there was a lockdown, so the hurdle that you had to go over was low, but is the individual company factors weak? I cannot mention the specific company name, but towards our competitors, it's in the international market, competitors in China, there's about 5 companies that have a certain amount of market share. Other than 1 company of that, our market share is more than theirs. In that sense, it's not, there's no individual company-related factors, I mean, that we have the weakness against competitors in China. Last year, due to the supply chain problem, not able to give out the products. Other than that, there's no factors. From here, we recover, and I will be repeating myself, but moving forward, we may be impacted by the economic and market situation. Towards the second half, we are seeing good signs, other than the European market. The remaining is what are we going to do about the European market? Also another thing is that. We need to do what we can do first, and as I have mentioned before, this year we are going to have a bold structural reform, and the effect of that structural reform is going to start to show up next year. Some of them may show this year, and the ones that we can bring about early, we will. However, in terms of recovery of the situation, the structural reform will have a positive effect, but it will be more next year. The second question from Miki-san, regarding the goodwill. The overseas business environment is worsening, and in Europe, it is the worst situation in the last 20 years. The European subsidiary companies, there's no risk of their goodwill to be impaired? This about is stated in detail in the securities report that was issued 3 weeks ago. Regarding our European market, we still have plenty of headroom. It is okay. Next, is 2 additional question from Takegawa-san, from Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Asset Management. Is it possible for you to consider disclosing a KPI and midterm management plan so that we're able to understand the situation from the outside? Yes, we'll consider. The next question: Is it possible for you to disclose the KPI, like ROIC, for each of the segments for different countries, and also to consider making disclosure in such a way that we can understand from the outside regarding the past and also the future changes in that regard, and also in regards to strategy and the BTC? Well, given the fact that we compete in many other countries, to provide this type of information at this level is not a wise decision, given the fact that the, the competitors are not disclosing these numbers. In this regard, to a certain extent, we'd like to, you know, make disclosure at a level that matches the disclosure level of the other companies. That is what I'm thinking at this point in time. Up to now, we were able to answer all the questions that we received. We still have some time remaining, so we would like to continue to receive the questions from you. For those of you who have questions, please click on the Q&A button and input your company name, your name, and your question. Thank you. It seems that there are no further questions, so with this, we would like to conclude the Q&A session. With this, we would like to conclude the Q1 results for the fiscal year ending March 31st of 2024 of LIXIL Corporation. We seek your, our continuing support and understanding of LIXIL Corporation. Thank you very much for your participation.