Hello, and welcome to the Akzo Nobel investor update call. Throughout the call, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. Afterwards, there will be a question and answer session. If you have a question for the speakers, please press zero one on your telephone keypad. Today, I'm pleased to present Lloyd Midwinter. Please go ahead with the meeting. Hello and welcome. I'm Lloyd Midwinter, Director of Communications and Investor Relations at Akzo Nobel. Today, our CEO, Thierry Vanlancker, will briefly outline Akzo Nobel's recent announcement and then take some time to answer your questions together with our CFO, Maarten de Vries. For additional information, please contact Akzo Nobel investor relations. Thank you, Lloyd. Thanks for joining everybody. First of all, best wishes for the new year in 2021, and hopefully things normalize on the pandemic area during the year. Definitely stay safe and stay healthy. As you've seen today, we made a proposal to acquire the Finnish company, Tikkurila, and create thereby a superior and sustainable value for all stakeholders. The proposed combination of the two companies would create a very strong platform for future growth in that sub-region, be better able to serve the customers with more innovative and sustainable solutions, and also building very much on a Northern European heritage. The proposal of EUR 31.25 per share or around EUR 1.4 billion represents a premium of 113% to Tikkurila's volume weighted average share price for the undisturbed three-month period ending December the 17th, 2020. It is 13% higher than the current offer that was made on January the 5th, 2021. The natural combination of Akzo Nobel and Tikkurila would build on centuries of industry experience in both companies to create a really significant value for customers, employees, shareholders, and all stakeholders. Bringing together our premium decorative brands and leading portfolios would really provide customers with a wider range of innovative products and services, including the most sustainable paint and coatings solutions out there. To obtain merger clearance and ensure deal certainty, we have agreed with Hempel key terms for the sale of assets, including our Decorative Paints business of Akzo Nobel in the Nordics and the Baltics. The Nordic culture and the strong presence of Tikkurila in Finland would continue to be reflected also in our combined organization. The main offices and production facilities of Tikkurila in Finland would become the vital hub in the Baltic Sea region, and substantial investment would be made in production facilities to supply future growth. Employees and management would benefit from new and exciting career and professional development opportunities in Finland and the wider organization, all within a European company context. Akzo Nobel and Tikkurila have a common approach to sustainability. It's embedded in the way we operate on both sides, and we are widely recognized as the leader in the paints and coatings industry also on that front. Joining forces would build on the sustainable purpose of Tikkurila and continue to make a difference for all stakeholders, including local communities. Our complementary geographic profiles would create superior value compared to any other combination, including growth opportunities for the company and its employees. Our collective procurement capabilities, expanded production, and combined sales and distribution channels would deliver substantial value creation. The transaction as proposed is expected to be EPS accretive in 2022. It is aligned with our capital allocation priorities we indicated earlier and will be financed using existing cash and credit lines. We will continue our current EUR 300 million share buyback program and maintain our target leverage ratio of 1x-2x net debt over EBITDA. Akzo Nobel and Tikkurila would have an exciting and sustainable future together, continuing the recent positive momentum and performance improvement as a global frontrunner in the industry. Maarten and I would hereby be very happy to answer all of your questions. Operator, please start the Q&A session. Thank you. If you do have a question for the speakers, please press zero one on your telephone keypad now. Our first question comes from the line of Gunther Zechmann from Bernstein. Please go ahead. Hi. Good morning, gents. Can I just ask two questions to start, please? One is on the antitrust side. The Deco side seems pretty straightforward. Regarding Performance Coatings, 17% of Tikkurila sales, do you expect any concerns on the wood industry and on the protective coatings where you'd also have to make some divestments? The second one, you say you expect the deal to be EPS accretive by 2022. Can you share the assumptions that you use in your merger models or acquisition models to get to that accretion, please? Can you also comment what it means for deal ROIC? Thank you. Gunther, thank you for your question. The answer on your first one around are there any potential antitrust issues on the Performance Coatings side? The answer is no. It wouldn't change any of those positions. That is not an issue that we had to deal with. It's a short answer, but I think it probably answers your question. Two, on the EPS accretion, before I hand it over to Maarten to get you there, I just want to put a context of the offer here. If you look at alternative combinations versus an Akzo Nobel, Tikkurila, there are two sets that we have to look at. One, since we do take the measures that would allow high deal certainty, it's mostly situated, or it's all situated in the, what Tikkurila calls their Region West. That's the Baltics, the Nordics, as we have announced. There, we would have the optimization similar to what other offers could be making. It's around the raw materials, it's around the embedding in our SAP S/4HANA, which is together with the SAP platform from Tikkurila, is the normal efficiencies. There is actually, since Tikkurila has a pretty nice logistics set up in Scandinavia, in the Nordics, but also in the Baltics, it would also basically enable part of our Performance Coatings to go to that channel. In that sense, it's pretty similar. Where we're very excited about is the other 50% of the company, that is basically countries outside, I would say, the Nordics and the Baltics, where we do have very strong combinations, either by having smaller market positions of Tikkurila being embedded in our significant market position. That gives immediate efficiencies similar to what we've seen with Fabryo in Romania or at Titan in Spain, et cetera. There, in fact, we not only have the, I would say, traditional ways of creating value, but there is really market-wise, offering-wise, how we task the joint production facilities we have, there is actually a significant step up. That actually has been the background of the calculation, which has really been very disciplined here. Maarten, you can probably address specifically the EPS question. Yeah. To build on what Thierry said, we've spent ample time to really detail out the business case for this potential transaction. Indeed, looking at the, on the one hand, the overlaps and the potential antitrust issues, which Thierry just mentioned, but also the potential value creation and the potential efficiencies and leveraging indeed our systems, our processes, but also the growth opportunities in the different products and the distribution channels. From that perspective, I think there are two areas to look at, is indeed the EPS accretion, as just mentioned, but also the overall value creation. If you look at the value creation, we believe that from a midterm perspective, and that is kind of in the three to five-year period, this is value creative for us. Maybe to add from a multiple perspective, because it will come up probably also in the call. From a multiple perspective, if we take the total business case, including the potential synergies, we see that this deal is below our current Akzo Nobel multiple. Does that answer your question, Gunther? Maybe you can comment on the deal ROIC as well, please. On the what? The return on capital. On the return on capital, that is just what I mentioned. From a midterm perspective, the three to five years, we see this as value creative. We've basically looked at all the different areas from a multiple perspective, from a value creation perspective, of course, a DCF perspective, to work this out in highly detailed level. Okay, thank you. Okay. Thank you, Gunther. The next question comes from the line of Peter Clark from Société Générale. Please go ahead. Yes, good morning, everyone. Clearly a rarity value with this sort of asset. I'm just wondering, your multiple is now pushed up beyond Valspar, close to DuluxGroup, I think higher on an EV/EBIT. Clearly, a lot of this is going to be about growth, because I think you've indicated on the cost savings, you get raw materials, a bit of overlaps, but this is more about a growth story. I'm just wondering if you can go through how you see the growth here, perhaps overlapping with your Performance Coatings portfolio, obviously with the emerging markets exposure, et cetera. More on the growth side. Thank you. Yeah, Peter, thank you very much, but I have to correct you here. There is really no rarity value that we put in there. It is really a very dry spreadsheet on what we really see as clear, not just made up, but clear efficiencies we see in the logistics. Hopefully, the answer on the previous question made it clear that for, I would say about half of the revenue of Tikkurila, we should be able to make a similar offer as anybody else. We do have much more of our Performance Coatings that in the Nordics and the Baltics would benefit from having a stronger local presence there, also in the warehousing, logistics, et cetera. That's it. If you go to the other 50% of what is currently Tikkurila, I would actually want to correct you that this is not only based on over-enthusiastic growth situations. It is actually around really dry, boring, but pretty obvious efficiencies. Russia is being a good example of that. The China business, we talked about 50% of the business that really drives through efficiencies. Therefore, again, this is not around trying to outbid anybody. This is not around a rarity value. This is really a dry spreadsheet that gets us there. Hopefully, in the last three years, we made it clear that is how we take the decisions. This is not around size or anything. Talking about the growth opportunities, I'll give a couple of examples. First of all, if you look at the Nordics and the Baltics, first of all, Tikkurila has a very strong position there. We have good positions there, obviously they have higher market shares, and therefore, that allows much more ways to actually have other parts of our offering, our distribution wood coatings business, for example, to go along where we have a strong position in other parts of the globe. I give just some concrete examples. Tikkurila have a pretty nice positioning for a small part of their portfolio in China, it is as a premium brand that goes completely alongside. It's a product that actually gets distributed over thousands of miles before it gets to China, where we have a big organization. We are alongside. We have numerous production facilities in China. That's clear if you want to talk about a growth opportunity. The same as in Russia, a sizable country where we have very good qualitative business. We see the same, in fact, for Tikkurila. If you now can put in the distribution channels or sales channels, that combined offering, you really get, first of all, in a much more efficient spread across a huge country. You also can just tailor your offerings much more to medium premium, et cetera. I can assure you, these are not just wishful thinking because we want to grow, because it doesn't necessarily such a big growth add to the company. It really, for us, is as similar as what we did with Fabryo in Romania or the other acquisitions we did. In some of these regions, we may be the bolt-on or they may be the bolt-on in us, and hence create much more value. We do believe there's going to be growth, but it's actually much more based on demonstrable operational efficiencies in the whole area. Okay. Does that answer your question? Yeah. You've made it very clear on the cost side. Can I just ask the specific question, would raw material savings be the biggest part of that cost side, or do you think other things together would be at least as big? I think the raw material efficiencies would be a good part of it, but there are significantly more. Want to point out we have systems that are now completely compatible. Just want to point out that for the whole region that we talk about here, where Tikkurila is operating in, we actually went months ago to SAP S/4HANA. We have the most unified but also the most advanced system. Logistics is a very big part of it. Transporting through difficult geographies and big geographies is a big other part of it. I would say raws are probably half-ish of what I would see as efficiencies, but not much more than that. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Go ahead. Thanks. The next question comes from the line of Charlie Webb from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Morning, Thierry, Maarten, and Lloyd. Thank you for the time to ask some questions. Just following up on the ones we've asked, is there any chance you can provide some sort of scale of the proposed asset that you would look to divest? Just a kind of order of magnitude, maybe at a sales level. Maybe second question, just around synergies. As we think about, as you laid out, obviously a very complicated process, lots of different moving parts that come into this. Again, what order of magnitude type of synergies would you expect from such a deal? How does this compare to other coatings deals? Lastly, just on that cost to capital returns question at the start of the call, just over what time period did you say it would be value accretive? Is it two to three years? Just clarifying that would be great. All right, Charlie, let's start tackling the questions one by one, and then Maarten, you may comment on the last one. On the size of the divestiture, we would actually prefer not to comment on that because frankly, it is dependent on a variety of scenarios, and it's also, I think, would not be fair. This is actually between the Hempel and us, so it would not be fair to give details at this specific time. I'm sure that you can do your triangulation to get a feel for it, but there's obviously different scenarios. I would actually decline to comment on that. On the synergies, you talked about the synergies for the deal from us for Tikkurila, I presume. Charlie? Yes, yes. Just for Tikkurila. Yeah. The kind of as a percentage of sales or some sort of order management. I think I wouldn't necessarily go to percentage of sales, but I hope that the description I gave in the answer of the previous question says that the baseline would be the same for any other offeror that would come in. In addition to that, for about half of the revenue for Tikkurila, and I described it in the countries that are outside of the Nordics and the Baltics, we are obviously the one that can create much more value, and this is around efficiencies or whatever you want to call it. I would decline to give a percentage on that since we're still at a very early phase in this process. I can assure you, and then I'll hand it over to Maarten, that if we walk to that, and this is not just stuff that has to go from one region to another. If you just look on the ground, our business case makes a lot of numerical sense, as have we brought forward. By the way, we will only be engaged in this as long as it makes numerical sense for us, just as a caveat up front. Maarten, you maybe want- Daniel, your question on value creation. I mentioned it earlier. Basically, the value creation aspect is in the midterm. You should think of a period of three to five years. Charlie, does that answer your questions? Just maybe one following up on that point you just mentioned. You'd stay in the process as long as it made financial sense. What are your expectations here? It clearly seems like there are potentially multiple parties involved, and as we see, obviously your price now comes in ahead of PPG's second raised offer. Do you expect this process to continue to be competitive, or do you think you offer enough in terms of, as you say, perhaps stuff that's not just financial, that makes it more attractive to Tikkurila and their shareholders? Charlie, I think we made a rational offer. Besides all the soft elements, it's a very rational financial offer for us, and we believe for Tikkurila. By the way, Maarten would not allow me to do anything that even smells irrational. That also means that we very much know what the value is of the asset for us, that we can create real, so not just fluffy stuff that we have around it, and we will be engaged in the process unless that continues to be true. Then it's actually up to Tikkurila on how they position themselves around it. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you, Charlie. The next question comes from the line of Mubasher Chaudhry from Citi. Please go ahead. Hi. Thank you for taking my question. Most of them have been answered. Just a quick one on your comments around Tikkurila's position in China. Is that large or sizable enough to push you up the rankings within China for your market share, or is that quite a small position compared to your own position? Just some context around either your position or their position, and how that moves your footprint within China. That probably would be really helpful. Thank you. Well, I think probably have to see the more detailed data. We assess it's actually a mid-single digit percentage. It is a high premium offering they have, and it is an offering, of course, that fits completely alongside our products. In that sense, it would be for us a very convenient and a very value-creating addition to the portfolio. I don't think it would necessarily change the rankings in China. It would probably be a nice addition to the already very high value of our China business in there, but it wouldn't change the ranking there. Does that answer your question? Yeah. Just another one on the timing. Were you looking at Tikkurila, the potential acquisition, pre the PPG bid or the PPG bid that started the process internally to carry out your own numbers and make the bid? I guess I'm just trying to Were you aware that they were up for sale pre the PPG bid? Of course, as you might imagine, we had very regular contacts with the Tikkurila organization there. There was always a stark interest. The feeling was until pretty recently that they were not necessarily contemplating a strategic change for the company. Despite having had the obvious attraction for what the value creation would be, we knew we had a deal certainty issue if it ever came up, given our positions in some of the markets where Tikkurila is active in. Frankly, when we saw the PPG move, who in fact has no overlap and therefore maybe also a value creation deficit, we went to work to see how we should be the better owner for this asset, that we should be able to create significantly more value from the combination. That's when we went to work to find a solution for what was probably our Achilles' heel in this whole thing, which is the deal certainty. We were able to resolve that. If your question is, were we involved in that whole process as it unfolded, we saw the first offer being made, then we saw a second increased offer, we were not involved in that at all. We were busy doing our homework to make sure that we could come with a credible offer, and we were not involved in any intermediate steps there. Thank you very much. That's helpful. The next question comes from the line of Laurent Favre from Exane. Please go ahead. Yes. Good morning, all. Two questions, please. Hi. The first one, Thierry, is on Poland. I'm surprised that everybody seems to assume that the deal is an easy one now on antitrust, as I believe you're bigger than PPG in Poland. Can you maybe comment there on the way you think about antitrust or the way you think the EU will think about antitrust? The second question is on the M&A pipeline more generally. I guess now we have to wait what the board does on the Tikkurila side. Can you maybe talk about how you're looking at the pipeline otherwise beyond Tikkurila in terms of other bolt-ons or bigger bolt-ons? I think you qualify Tikkurila as being a big bolt-on. Thank you. On the Poland question, Laurent, if I'm well informed, the position of PPG and us is about the same, I would say, in Poland. We would not talk about being able to assure high deal certainty if we hadn't analyzed that very thoroughly and found ways to deal with it. I think there we feel pretty comfortable around it. Maarten, maybe you want to talk about the M&A pipeline? Yeah. As you know, we are pretty active to look at potential bolt-on targets. What you said is right, this is kind of at the upper limit of our bolt-on targets in terms of size. We just closed a deal in North America with our yacht business. We are, this quarter, basically in the process of closing the Titan business in Spain, and we still have quite a pipeline of possible bolt-on opportunities. As you know, we have kind of mapped out for ourselves, in our different performance segments, where are the possible white spots or where the possible opportunities are. This is kind of the focus we give on our bolt-on pipeline. In fact, the interesting thing is that this offer for Tikkurila is also really in the sweet spot for our Deco EMEA business, in one of our strategic mandates. It very much fits in our bolt-on strategy and our bolt-on pipeline. It is very much in the context of what we have been looking at and what we have been busy with. If you allow me, Maarten, to build on that, I think our motive for making this proposal is really in the same spirit as what we did in Romania, what we did in Spain over the last two years. It's really deepening our market positions in those markets and creating efficiency. This is not driven by size, it's not driven by anything else. It's a bigger bolt-on, I would say. It's really driven with the exact reason of how can we deepen the profitability and the return of the countries that we operate in. It fits completely in there. Does that answer your question there, Laurent? Yes. If I sneak in the last one, I understand you don't want to talk about profitability at a country level, once we've done the triangulation on sales of the Hempel package, can you maybe give us a hint on profitability of those assets to be disposed of, compared, for instance, to your Deco margin globally or to Tikkurila's reported margins? I would say, Laurent, I think that you're right. We don't give that information. Those countries are in the similar profitability as the rest of the Deco EMEA business. Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Alex Stewart from Barclays. Please go ahead. Hello, good morning. A couple of questions. Thanks for taking them. Both of you talked about needing to put some investment into the assets once you've acquired them. Would you possibly try and quantify what sort of CapEx would be required there? Secondly, if the deal completes and you acquire and consolidate Tikkurila, what are the two or three financial metrics, Thierry and Maarten, that you would look at that you think best track the success of the deal over the next three to five years? Finally, I know this has been kind of asked already, but Tikkurila has traded below EUR 20 for several years now. What was the reason that you didn't make an approach in the past, and instead waited until there had been other bidders to push the price up to an amount you were intending. Any color or additional color? If you've already gone through it, that's fine too. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks, Alex. I can take the first question, the last question, Maarten, you can talk about the metrics. On the investments, for us, in fact, in those geographies, we're doing actually quite well. To be honest, a lot of the investments that we here indicated are investments we could probably do in our own infrastructure. Sorry. I think this fits. The investments would probably be, and I've alluded to that, if I take places like Russia, for example, Tikkurila has assets, we have assets, and this is both on manufacturing but also on logistics, et cetera. Now all of us make it in a spot, Russia is a gigantic country. In fact, if we can just make sure that we use the assets in more rational ways, we use the warehouses in a more rational way, or rationalize the warehouse network, but that often comes with investment. Also, if you do some changes in raw materials, you often have to do some investment. I think it sits in the category of making sure that the hardware and the assets really fit, and actually that we have much more flexibility between the two. The same is for our, if we have a much more dense market position, then of course that allows some really logistical end production optimizations also with some of our Performance Coatings products that we distribute in those regions pretty heavily. I think I've alluded to that in previous calls, that the Nordics is a very interesting region. Frankly, it's a big geography, so if you don't get to a certain critical mass of market position, you lose a lot in just getting stuff from A to B. If you count in Russia, that's definitely the case. In total amount, Alex, it's not overwhelming, but I think it would definitely have a much bigger return on what our investments are to actually make the best out of the two networks. Let me then address your last question before Maarten talks about the metrics. This is why didn't we approach? In the industry we've had conversations, of course, in the past. They were quoted lower before, but until very recently or until we actually saw the announcement, we, and we're probably not the only ones, felt there was a clear signal that they were not contemplating a strategic change. To be honest, who keeps proposing to somebody who doesn't want to get married? Obviously when the announcement came out, the first announcement, it was for us, since we knew the situation quite well, the markets and the lay of the land, that was for us to basically in high speed to start working at resolving our potential deal certainty issues we might have had. There's not much more to the story than that, to be honest. Yeah, maybe on the metrics, I think it's a pretty simple answer. We've spent quite a bit of time to underpin this business case for us. Ultimately, we look at the same metrics we look at internally for our business, which is basically the top-line development. It's the return on sales and, of course, the cash generation linked to working capital and last but not least, return on investment. It is very much the same metrics we look at internally which will apply also for the metrics we look at this case from an operational management perspective. Alex, does that answer your question? Yeah. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Jaideep Pandya from On Field Investment Research. Please go ahead. Thanks. Hi, both. First question is around just the logic behind this deal. Essentially, if I'm not wrong, what you're doing is buying Tikkurila's Deco and selling your own Deco in the Baltic and the Nordic region. Basically, just want to understand how deep is the M&A pipeline that you have to go for an asset, who has already a bid? Essentially, if I back out your Deco business from the deal, then we are looking at a deal for which you have to do a lot of work not to move the needle too much. That's the first question. The second question really is, very simply, given that you're going to, if everything goes well, spend a decent chunk of money buying Tikkurila, when will you start buying shares of the lovely paint company, Akzo Nobel, again? All right. Jaideep, thank you for your question. The logic, this seems to be a misconception. The overlap is only a part of what we get in. It's not just we sell one and we buy one. We sell part that is overlapping with a part of the activities of Tikkurila. I just want to be clear there that it's still a significant step up or delta that actually comes to our bottom line. You say, well, if the view were to climb, well, frankly, we wouldn't, and I think you got to know this, Jaideep, that there's a number of deals that we let go by. I just want to remind people, the Dulux one, for example, New Zealand, Australia said, "No, thanks." It was actually several the same multiples as we talk about here. We felt there is no credible story to create synergies in this whole thing or to create value. Just for the emotional reason of just having Dulux, the whole brand together, that was not strong enough for us. I just want to remind you all, these are the same people who do the offer here. The reason is that we feel that, sure, any M&A is work to get done. That it actually is addressing it. It is actually a quite nice value accretive opportunity that we have. On the M&A pipeline, I think we feel pretty comfortable on what we have there. This is just one. It's not often that assets like this come on the market where we have for a long time felt this is kind of an obvious one to create a value, and we should be the better owner of this. On the share buybacks, I think I'll let Maarten talk about share buyback versus something else. I just want to remind people before we do that we are continuing with the share buyback that we have. I think it shows you probably also the cash generation that we have currently in the company. We feel pretty comfortable around that. I think, Maarten, you can probably explain how it fits in our priorities. Yeah. Overall, I think this fits very much in our capital allocation priorities. We are continuing with the current share buyback of EUR 300 million. In the meantime, we are announcing this potential deal. It is basically firing on all cylinders in terms of capital allocation priorities, and that's what we said we would do, and that's basically what we are doing at the moment. Jaideep, for us, it was pretty clear on any of the deals we did, are we better off spending the money buying our own shares, or are we better off doing the M&A? That's where we landed on this one. Just a follow-up. God forbid, if the deal doesn't go through for Akzo and that lovely company from the other side of the Atlantic goes crazy on the offer, what is your plan B, given that they will clearly then become number one in the Baltics and the Nordics? Is there a plan B where you already have a strategy that if there's a change in the owner with obviously change in culture and heritage angle, you will ratchet up your marketing to gain market share? In the Baltic. I'm just trying to understand if the other guys win it's still actually not so negative, Akzo. Well, first of all, Jaideep, I'm not sure if I would use the words God forbid. I think we're going to be very disciplined in what we offer. If it goes to a level where we feel, no, we can't create value on that, then frankly, may the force be with whoever buys a company. I think in that sense, we'll be very disciplined. For what we're concerned, I think I've alluded to that. I think we're doing the other momentum in those regions, the sub-region here from EMEA, we're actually doing quite well. The business is now very healthy. I think we're having good growth in those markets. The plan B would be, all right, we just continue to build on that. We would probably more invest in that region as we were planning to do. I think we're pretty comfortable around the growth momentum. It's going to be less of a quicker step up because you have to do it then organically, and then we'll move on to other M&A targets. In this sense, it's a very rational decision. This would just be an opportunity we think would accelerate things. Does that answer your question, Jaideep? Great. Good luck. Yeah, absolutely. Good luck. Yeah. Thanks. The next question comes from the line of Geoff Haire from UBS. Please go ahead. Good morning, thank you very much for the opportunity to ask some questions. Most of mine have been asked, I just have two remaining ones. First of all, have you talked to any of the major shareholders of Tikkurila about this offer you've made? Secondly, I haven't had a chance to read through the offer document of PPG for Tikkurila. Is there a break fee that you will have to fund effectively if your deal goes ahead, given that sort of Tikkurila board have already recommended this to their shareholder? Yeah. Geoff, on your first question, we have some joint shareholders between us and Tikkurila. Those topics, of course, have come up in the past, but I'm stressing the word in the past. In this specific episode now, we have not talked to the shareholders. The answer is then no. Before we go into break fees and what would happen, et cetera, I think the PPG offer has some details in it. We have spoken to the Tikkurila board. They're assessing it, I would probably not want to comment on what other elements that they might bring up in an answer. I think stay tuned, I would say. Okay. Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Chetan Udeshi from JP Morgan. Please go ahead. Hi. Thanks. Can I just clarify two things? First one, in terms of divestments to Hempel, is it going to be essentially from SBU West of Tikkurila? I mean that those countries in SBU West, I know you don't want to give a specific number, but should we assume at least less than half of the revenue of Tikkurila in that region will be essentially divested? In terms of what you get from divesting some of these assets as part of the package, can we assume the multiple that you get would be similar to what is the multiple you might be paying for the rest of the business of, or the whole business of Tikkurila? Thank you. Okay. A couple of questions here, Chetan, I'll have to disappoint you up front that some of them we will not answer on that. On the multiples given or obtained, I would say we refer to a win-win, and that's how I think both Hempel and us think about it. I think that suffices. It probably gives you an idea on, or at least some feeling on where we came out on both sides. I think we feel pretty comfortable that we have a good deal on both sides on that. On the size, I'd rather not go in there because that's slightly dependent on the different scenarios that come out. Yes, if this were to go on, there would be in that SBU West, there would be a significant step up in top line. I'm not going to go more quantitative than that. Last but not least, if you talk about the steps we would have to take to make it happen, most of the deal certainty questions revolve around not all, but some countries or subregions in SBU West. Yes, the steps we were preparing for relates to the SBU West. Thank you. Does that answer your question, Chetan? I know it's a disappointing answer, but so be it. Yes. Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Matthew Yates from Bank of America. Please go ahead. Hi. Good morning, everyone. I think we've covered most of it. I did just want to come back to governance and the chain of events here. You're arguing it's a very logical deal and you are the right owner. Could you not have been more aggressive in the past in presenting such a combination to the Tikkurila board? I mean, clearly you've now found yourself in the midst of a bidding war offering over 100% premium, and there's the risk here that you have to continue to go higher. Is there anything you can say about access to information or additional due diligence that you would like to get from Tikkurila in order to help you fully form your offer? Matthew, good questions. I've addressed it before, I think in the previous context, until relatively recent, I think we were led to believe that the company, Tikkurila, was not considering a strategic move. We have high respect for the assets of Tikkurila, and because we thought this is really a very good combination, we weren't necessarily going to push it. We were somewhat surprised about what came out in view of that there was obviously a change of heart in the board of Tikkurila. I object against the word bidding war, however. I think for us, what came out when we saw the first announcement of the offer in December, for us, it was just a signal, Tikkurila is in play, and then we just basically could crank up all the work we had done, including then accelerating how to get to a deal certainty as part of the package. I can only refer to on the bidding, we've done our homework. We know what the value of the asset is for us in a very realistic and achievable value creation, and that's the only thing. There is no bidding arm wrestling going on here. This is what the asset is worth for us, and we believe the combination would be very powerful. I don't know if you want to address on the other question on where we want, that Matthew had. On the process going forward, of course, we will ask access to information equal to the access PPG has had in terms of due diligence, and therefore, make sure that we validate and confirm all the assumptions we have taken so far, and that will lead maybe to further review or sharpen our pencils. That will be the steps going forward. Just want to point out, though, Matthew, that in many of the markets, we are alongside Tikkurila in the market, so we know their market positions, their distribution channels, their logistics setup. We know it quite well. I think the diligence would be limited to more central information. We have the advantage. That's also why we can create these efficiencies. We know in quite a level of detail how their positions are and how they operate in countries. If I can just. Was that the question? Yeah. Sorry. Just one quick follow-up, though. In terms of the change in tone or strategy, if you will, from Tikkurila, do you think that is purely a financial consideration that somebody's been willing to put up a very high premium that creates more value for its shareholders than it could organically? Is there anything in the broader industry and its structure that's suggesting that there is a sort of consolidation trend that maybe they thought their relative competitive position was going to come under threat? I think, Matthew, the consolidation trend in the industry is pretty obvious, and I think in 2020, for a large part of the year, it was a bit calm given the COVID restrictions, et cetera. People probably tended to go to the assets they knew best for some of the deals that happened. I think the consolidation is very clear. On what the inner motives are of the Tikkurila board, I frankly think you should ask that to the Tikkurila board. Not sure if that is for us to comment on. Thank you for taking the questions. Yeah. The last question comes from the line of Martin Evans from HSBC. Please go ahead. Yeah. Yes, thanks very much. Again, just going back to Tikkurila's market position. Obviously, you see a lot of operational efficiencies and potential on cost savings. What would you be getting in addition to that in terms of their exact market position? Because if we look back to the days of ownership by Kemira, and then when the business was subsequently spun off, the messaging was very much that the business was number one in the Nordics, and also at the time, I seem to recall number one in Russia, too. Has the business maintained those very strong market positions, which are obviously massively important on the Deco business, where brand leadership and local loyalty is hugely important. Would you be essentially buying a number one position immediately in the Nordics and also in Russia, to which you could add your own operational cost savings and so on? Thanks. Yeah. Well, just to answer the question, it's pretty clear, yes. Tikkurila has, in the markets they operate in the Nordics, Baltics, and then Russia, et cetera, they have a leading position. That hasn't changed at all. I think in the last three to four years, and we've commented that in previous sessions, I think, we've been pretty busy on getting our Nordics business really operationally healthy and also financially healthy, and that has been quite successful. We've actually crept up across that whole sub region, including Russia. I think we've been creeping up in market share. Yes, with this deal, there are very strong market positions that come, and that makes it so attractive. In certain areas, the reality will be that it's a bolt-on, but reverse, I would say, where we can have our business becoming part of what Tikkurila has built, and therefore, create the efficiencies and the stronger market impact that way. They've kept definitely their position correct. Great. Thanks. Great. Thank you very much. That's about all the time we have for today. For additional information, please contact Akzo Nobel Investor Relations, and we look forward to speaking to you again soon. Thank you. Thank you. This concludes our conference call. Thank you all for attending. You may now disconnect your lines.