Welcome everyone, thank you all for standing by. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode until the Q&A session of today's call. To ask your question, please press star followed by one. Today's call is being recorded. If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this point. I'll turn the meeting over to your host, Kenny Chae. You may begin. Hello and welcome to AkzoNobel's Investor Update for the first quarter of 2023. I'm Kenny Chae, Head of Investor Relations. Today, our CEO, Grégoire Poux-Guillaume, and our CFO, Maarten de Vries, will guide you through our results. We'll refer to the presentation, which you can follow on screen and download from our website at akzonobel.com. A replay of this webcast will also be made available. There will be an opportunity to ask questions after the presentation. For additional information, please contact our investor relations team. Before we start, I would like to remind you about the disclaimer at the back of this presentation. Please note this also applies to our conference call and answers to your questions. I will now hand over to Grég, who will start on slide three of the presentation. Thanks, Kenny. Good morning to everyone on the call. Let's start with our Q1 summary on slide three. I'm pleased to announce that our Q1 results came in above our expectation, driven by better than expected volumes and pricing. We delivered revenue of EUR 2.7 billion, representing a 5% growth versus prior year. Volumes were down less than anticipated as Europe proved to be resilient, while China delivered organic growth as demand accelerated following Lunar New Year, benefiting both paints and coatings. Pricing was up 7%. The successful execution of inflationary pricing, along with pricing holding up better than anticipated in coatings, allowed us to deliver above our guidance range of 4%-6%. As a result, the first quarter showed better than expected margin expansion of EUR 60 million. Adjusted operating income came in at EUR 218 million, which is at a similar level to prior year. A return on sales of 8.2% represents a strong sequential improvement in profitability versus Q4 2022. Overall, our Q1 results provide a solid start and bode well for the rest of the year. Moving to our highlights for Q1 on slide four. Having entered the year anticipating a slow recovery in China, we are encouraged by the positive organic growth seen in Q1. We're also pleased to announce the intended acquisition of Sherwin-Williams Chinese Decorative Paints business, which encompasses the well-recognized Huarun brand. The product portfolio strongly complements AkzoNobel's existing premium focus Dulux brand and will further support our retail expansion strategy in Tier 1 to Tier 3. I'm sorry, in Tier 3 to Tier 5 cities in the second-tier cities. Volumes in Europe for both paints and coatings held up better than we expected. We touch more on that in the next slide. Along with the positive volume development seen in our Q1 results, we've secured a number of exciting wins that position well for the future. In coil, we are gaining share through our new customer wins, including becoming the sole supplier of an Asian player that we can't, unfortunately, name. We are also excited to be selected as a global supplier of powder coatings to leading electrical vehicle OEMs in the U.S. and Europe. AkzoNobel continues to lead the market in powder technology, and these wins are a testament to our competitive edge. We're seeing a recovery in our marine and protective business in China, as it gathers pace as we work on rebuilding that position in China, over the next few years. Finally, we continue to be recognized as the industry's leader in sustainability. AkzoNobel is rated as low risk from Sustainalytics. Sustainalytics, which I always struggle to say, and AA A from MSCI. In Q1, we received an improved score from EcoVadis, which puts us firmly in the top 1% of all companies assessed and well ahead of industry peers. Turning to slide five, we outline market developments compared to our expectations coming into the quarter. In Europe, demand was more resilient than we had anticipated. Q1 volumes were down but strengthened sequentially versus the prior year. We also saw minimal destocking as channel inventories remained stable at 2019 levels. Although we are only at the start of the painting season, the current trajectory anchors towards the upper end of our full year volume guidance of down mid-single digit percentage. This is for Deco Europe, by the way, to be clear. This is mid-single digit down for Deco Europe. As I mentioned earlier, we're pleased with the market rebalancing in China. This is particularly the case for our paints business, where volumes in Q1 were up mid-single digit percentage. Momentum in Paints China continued to improve throughout the quarter, and we now expect volumes for the full year to be up double-digit percentage. The better than expected backdrop in China is also benefiting our coil business, while the economic slowdown and lower residential starts is impacting negatively our wood business in all regions. While powder was impacted by the slowdown in industrial and architectural markets, we saw demand improving faster than expected, with volumes improving as the quarter progressed. Finally, the ongoing recovery in marine and protective markets continues to gather pace. We saw organic growth across all regions with the strongest performance in China, where the business is benefiting from a faster than expected rebound in activity. I'll now hand over to Maarten to dive into the numbers on slide seven. Yeah, thank you, Grég. Hello, everybody on the call. Our reported revenue in the first quarter was up 5% versus prior year and up 8% in constant currencies. As Grég mentioned earlier, the volume decline of 3% was better than anticipated due to demand in Europe and the rebound in China. The volume impact on revenue was more than offset by pricing of 7% in addition to 4% revenue growth from acquisitions, mainly related to Grupo Orbis. Adjusted operating income of EUR 280 million was largely in line with prior year. Revenue in Decorative Paints was up 5% versus prior year and 9% in constant currencies. Negative volumes in Europe were almost fully offset by mid-single-digit volume growth in China, as well as positive contribution from Latin America. Pricing in paints was up 7% and mix was down 2%, mainly driven by relatively stronger performance in Southeast Europe. Acquisitions added 5% to the revenue. First quarter revenue for Performance Coatings was up 6% versus prior year and up 7% in constant currencies. Volumes were 4% lower, mainly due to soft demand in industrial coatings, partly offset by positive volumes in marine and protective, aerospace, and vehicle refinish. Pricing in coatings was up 7%, with all segments contributing positively. Acquisitions added 3% to revenue. I'm pleased to report that both paints and coatings delivered adjusted operating income in line with prior year, driven by better than expected volume developments and stronger pricing. Turning now to slide eight. Adjusted operating income in the first quarter totaled 280 million, down EUR 12 million from the prior year. Pricing versus raw material and freight inflation came in ahead of plan at EUR 16 million, as pricing delivered a positive impact of EUR 183 million, more than offsetting a negative impact of EUR 123 million of raw material and freight inflation. The negative volume impact was EUR 35 million, reflecting 3% lower volumes in the first quarter versus prior year. The effect of mix, mostly in paints, had a negative contribution of EUR 14 million. Movements in currencies reduced our adjusted operating income by EUR 11 million, while the negative effect from hyperinflation accounting came in at EUR 12 million. The combined impact of changes in OpEx and one-offs was nil, although the underlying OpEx increased by EUR 15 million versus the prior year. Moving now to slide nine. During the first quarter, we saw a EUR 123 million impact on adjusted operating income from raw material and freight inflation compared to the same period last year. In the second quarter of 2023, we anticipate the impact of raw material and freight inflation to invert and show a modest deflationary benefit in the range of EUR 0 - EUR 30 million. Our pricing of 7% in the first quarter was ahead of the guidance range provided in the previous quarter. This represents a cumulative pricing of 26% over the past three-year period. For the second quarter, we expect pricing to land between 4%-5% year-on-year. Since the beginning of 2021, the cumulative impact from raw material and freight inflation has been EUR 2 billion, which has been more than offset with pricing. Turning now to slide 10. In line with our expectations, our working capital for the first quarter increased due to seasonality and lower payables. Our inventory level was stable compared to the fourth quarter as we prepare for the painting season in the second quarter. In the first quarter, as a percentage of revenue, our working capital stood at 18.6%. This compares to 16.5% for the same period last year and 16.9% for the fourth quarter of 2022. Free cash flow for the quarter was EUR -112 million, an improvement of almost EUR 50 million versus prior year. Lower reported EBITDA in the first quarter was fully offset by a lower working capital outflow as our inventory reduction plans continued. These elements contributed to our leverage peaking at 4.2 x in the first quarter versus 3.8 x in the fourth quarter, 2022. 4.2x in the first quarter versus 3.8 x in the fourth quarter. As we have indicated earlier, deleveraging is a key priority for AkzoNobel this year. To this end, we expect second quarter leverage to show a slight improvement to around 4 x. We remain committed to achieving a leverage ratio of below 3.4 x, including acquisitions, by the end of 2023. Turning to slide 11. Our Adjusted EBITDA for the first quarter came in at EUR 305 million, which was largely in line with the prior year. Adjusted earnings per share for the quarter was lower, mainly due to interest costs. We also canceled 4 million treasury shares during the quarter, bringing down our share count to 171 million shares. Now back to Grég to speak around the outlook. Thank you, Maarten. In summary, our Q1 results were better than expected, driven by volumes in Europe and China, as well as pricing. Despite this, we are still at an early point in the financial year, with macroeconomic uncertainty continuing to persist and the important painting season ahead of us. The start of the second quarter has been slow, especially in Europe, with Deco impacted by bad weather. We expect group volumes to be down low single-digit% for the second quarter. Combined with our price versus broad expectations, we anticipate our second quarter adjusted operating income to come in slightly above EUR 300 million. With this in mind, the 2023 outlook communicated in February remains unchanged. We will continue to focus on our four priorities for 2023, we expect to deliver Adjusted EBITDA between EUR 1.2 billion-EUR 1.5 billion and a leverage ratio of less than 3.4 x by year-end. I now hand over to Kenny for information about upcoming events and the Q&A session on slide 13. Thank you, Grég. Thank you, Maarten. Before we move to the Q&A session, I would like to highlight some of the upcoming events shown on slide 13. Our ex-dividend date for our 2022 final dividend is today, April 25th, and the record date is April 26th, followed by the payment on May 5th. Finally, we look forward to updating the market on our second quarter results on July 25th. This concludes the formal presentation, and we would be happy to address your questions. Please state your name and question when asking a question, and limit the number of questions to two per person so that others can participate. Operator, please start the Q&A session. Thank you so much. We will now begin the Q&A session. For participants, if you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by the number one. Please unmute your phone and record your name slowly and clearly when prompted. Your name is required to introduce your question. To cancel the request, you may press star and then the number two. One moment please, for any questions. Thank you. Our first question is from Charlie Webb. Your line is open. Morning, everyone. Thank you for taking my questions. Maybe first off, just on the raw material deflation. Thank you for the guidance for Q2. Any sense on how you see that shaping up in the second half? Obviously EUR 30 million relative to the amount of inflation you've seen is still quite a small number, in the context of the inflation you've seen over the last two years. Just, you know, how do you see that raw material deflation through into the second half? If you were to kind of take current pricing in the raws, you know, do you still see further deflation in 2024 as things stand today? That's the first question on the raw side. Just second on pricing. Clearly, you know, as you noted, coming in a little bit better, you know, expected on the Performance Coating side in Q1. You kinda previously talked about 50% of that sticking, or you would hope to be able to retain 50% of the pricing efforts you've got through. Just kinda trying to get a sense on, you know, is that still what you expect? Have you surprised yourself that you've been able to put through more pricing? You know, and maybe at what point should we expect that to... You know, if you are to give back some of that pricing effort, when would we start to see that materialize itself? Thank you. All right. Thank you for your questions. The first question on the raw material deflation. We see raw material deflation continuing in the second half of the year, but we're cautious about this because there are pressures pushing things in the other direction. If you see the reopening of China and you also follow the various headlines from European chemical companies about taking capacity out and mothballing, and there's been quite a few of those recently, particularly on the resin side and in TiO2. There are forces that would push raw materials up in the second half of the year. If you look at indices like IPEX, you know, IPEX has started picking up again. We're cautiously optimistic, but there's not a whole lot of visibility at this point for the second half of the year. We're not quantifying this. Once again, we're sticking to our strategy of defending our pricing and anything that we get as a further uplift from raw materials will be a bonus. To your question on pricing, end pricing stickiness. Pricing's been better than we'd expected in Q1. That part answers your question. It really stems from our ability to expand the pricing discussion, pricing versus raw, to more than just raw material inflation. Our customers understand very well that we're facing wage inflation, we're facing energy inflation, we're facing transport inflation. That has allowed us to essentially defend pricing above and beyond what we had forecasted. Also, you know, the debate is that long-term or is that delaying the inevitable? You know, time will tell, but at, you know, the starting point of answering your question is that we have been able to hold pricing higher and longer than what we had forecasted for Q1, and we hope that continues going forward. To your question of when does that stop, I mean, there are parts of our business where we have price indices, and it really is a factor of what happens to raw materials in the second half of the year. Does that answer your question? Yeah. That's helpful. Maybe if I could just follow up a little bit on the raw material side. I mean, normally you guys have a good three, six-month visibility. It does feel like albeit, you know, we came from a very tight environment where we had overstated demand and understated supply. It does feel like that's kind of reversed. We've got kind of, you know, much lower levels of demand with destocking and clearly a lot more available supply. Likewise, freight rates have really come off a long way now. Just any seaborne freight. Just trying to gauge, you know, what do you see into the second half? I clearly understand, you know, to remain conservative is the right way to be and, you know, you don't have all the visibility to 2024. It does feel, and when you're having those conversations with your suppliers, I mean, does it feel like there's a lot of available product at the moment? Or, you know, are there still some pinch points that you kind of alluded to? Is that still the case? Yeah. I think, what Grég just mentioned, I want to re-reiterate that, is that the situation for the second half is still pretty uncertain. We see some raw materials indeed still coming down, but we see also some going up. It has indeed to do with the dynamics in the overall supply chain between, on the other hand, China, but also the dynamics in Europe. We are pretty cautious, in fact, for the second half and what will happen to raw material. We have, of course, clear visibility for the second quarter, but it is also depending on the lag, the time lag that it takes to work through our inventories. Again, the second half is still uncertain, I would say. I'll add maybe one thing to give a little bit of flavor to our answer. If you take TiO2, for example, which was where prices had dropped significantly driven by China because the Chinese market had a lot of capacity and so landed in Europe, that was driving down prices. Prices have picked up again to some extent, but from a low level. In the discussions that we have with suppliers, they're still trying to secure longer-term volume commitments, which tells you the risk capacity in the market. The pricing trend is not as favorable as it was a few months ago. Still they're trying to secure, they're trying to secure volume from us, which tells you something. Does that answer your question? No, I appreciate that. That's very helpful. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question is from Christian Faitz of Kepler Cheuvreux. Your line is open. Yes. Thank you. Good morning, everybody. Two questions, please. First of all, can you give us a feeling for the bridge of how you intend to get towards the 2 x leverage level by 2024? The second question would be on Chinese demand. How is China demand performing at present, i.e. in Q2, both in Deco as well as in Performance Coatings? Has demand improved versus a rather slow pickup in Q1, I take it, after the end of the Chinese New Year? Thank you very much. Christian, on the leverage ratio, I mean, first of all, it's important to realize that this business remains highly cash generative. There are a couple of drivers. One driver is, of course, working capital and driving working capital down. That is in our plans for this year, and it will remain also a focus obviously for next year. That is one. Secondly, it's important to realize that for this year, at the end of this year, we still have to cash out for the Kansai acquisition. That's all included in our leverage ratio of 3.4 or below 3.4. Thirdly, the other element is, of course, the Adjusted EBITDA improvement, which is also a factor in the leverage ratio. These drivers will help us to bring our leverage ratio down. Absent from acquisitions in a normal situation, that is roughly one turn a year. Okay. Very helpful. And also- Thank you very much, Maarten. I'm sorry, go ahead. Your second question on Chinese demand. We've raised our volume guidance for the year in China to double-digit. You know, it's across the board. It's in Deco and coatings. The Deco market is particularly active right now. We see that continuing throughout the year. We hope to even strengthen our position by the integration of Sherwin-Williams business that we bought recently at, I think, a low point in the market in terms of volumes. Q1 looked good. Q2 is gonna continue, and we think overall this is a year for Chinese volume upswing at double-digit versus the lower guidance that we'd initially given. It doesn't mean that everybody is seeing it. If you talk to some of the chemical suppliers, they'll tell you that they see things are more subdued in China. If I answer on what we see, that's your answer. Thanks both, Grég and Maarten. Thank you very much. Thank you. Yep. From Matthew Yates of Bank of America, your line is open. Hey, good morning, gentlemen. A couple questions, please. Last year, we saw the cost base increase by about EUR 150 million or so because of supply chain inefficiencies. I see on your bridge that in Q1, that OpEx was basically unchanged year-on-year. Are you having success in unwinding that extra cost that was put into the business? Or is that simply being eaten up by other inflationary things? I appreciate you had guided for EUR 200 million of gross savings, but assume there would be some inflation offsetting that. PPG seemed a bit more vocal on their call that there's an opportunity to recover some of those inefficiencies over the last year or two to help drive the margins. The second question, particularly for Maarten, on working capital. That EUR 260 million outflow in Q1, despite volumes being down and raw mats essentially plateauing, it looks like you were really driving down the payables. How sustainable is that? I know you took on a lot of buffer stocks this time last year. Is that now, you know, back to normal or is it still elevated? Just curious if you have to reengage your own supply chain in Q2. Thank you. Yeah. Maybe to start on the last one, what you see in the working capital is that we are very much on track in terms of managing our inventories, and we will still see further inventory reductions towards the latter part of the year. What you see in the working capital at the end of Q1 is clearly a lower payable position. The lower payable position is driven by two parts. One is the fact that we are pushing the brake and buying less raw materials to manage our inventories. Secondly, you should also realize that everything we buy in terms of raw materials comes with a lower price, so automatically that also leads to lower payables. I would expect that by the second half of the year, our payable position in terms of percentage of sales, starts to normalize again to what we've seen in the past. This is kind of an, I would say, more temporary situation, which we see still in the first half of this year. That is the working capital question. On the OpEx, what we have indicated that we see this year an OpEx inflation of EUR 200 million. It's wage inflation, freight inflation, as well as energy inflation and auto inflation. We have programs in place to offset the EUR 200 million, and that's exactly to address these inefficiencies in terms of our productivity, specifically in Europe. We have also said that the focus is mainly for two-thirds on Europe in terms of the integrated supply chain. We are deploying these savings initiatives, but that goes, we have implemented these in Q1, so they will become more and more visible over the coming quarters. The underlying OpEx in Q1 is +15, and in fact, we are pretty pleased with the development. One thing maybe still to mention that, of course, from a wage inflation perspective, we will see wage inflation still, the impact of wage inflation to go further up in the second quarter because the wage increases are mostly for the first of April. On the other hand, our savings programs are also ramping up. It gives a little bit of color where we are and what we are driving. I'll add maybe a longer-term perspective to what Maarten explained very well for this year, which is that, you know, to your question of can we further drive out some of these inefficiencies and recover some of that cost advantage. We've been pretty vocal about the fact that the inefficiencies are mostly on the industrial side, essentially manufacturing and supply chain. We're working on simplifying our portfolio, our footprint, our processes. We said that we would be able to talk some more about that essentially after the summer. A big part of the target is gonna be on the Decorative side in Europe because we have a lot of complexity and some of that has been driven up by the supply chain difficulties over the last few years. Yes, there is an opportunity to work that back down. We will communicate targets probably right after the summer. Thank you both. Thank you so much. Your next question is from Chetan Udeshi. Your line is open. Hello? Can you hear me? Yep, we can. Hi. you know, I had two questions. One was just on China. I saw a commentary in the report saying that Chinese prices and mix both were down year-on-year. I was just curious if you can maybe just quantify how much declines did you see? I'm just thinking, you know, China was the first region to see deflation in second half of last year. Can we read through some of that, what is happening in China, in terms of pricing pressure in the rest of the world, given that we might see some of that deflation come through in the rest of the world, now in Q2 and maybe in Q3? Second question was just on mix. Mix was negative in Q1. Can you talk about how you see the mix in general in Q2? It seems some of the drivers for that mix may not be changing as much when we go from Q1 to Q2. Thanks. Your first question on China. Pricing year-on-year was negative in Q1, but it was negative at... Well, how can I quantify this? At a reasonable level, you're talking single-digit million euro versus last year. I wouldn't overstate that. I don't want to give you the impression that Chinese prices are crashing. It's just that if you, if you look at when raw materials peaked, it was in July last year. If you look at the lag of our Chinese business on the raw materials side, ours and anybody else's, it's about a month, give or take. Essentially, the impact has been felt early. There, there's a moment in a highly competitive markets that was hammered last year where some of our competitors have gone out a little bit more aggressively into the markets. I still think that it's not a catastrophic drop that we're talking about. If you refer to Nippon Paint's recent comments, I think they qualified that too. They essentially said that it's a pricing aggressiveness, but at a reasonable level. Does that apply to other markets in the future? I think the Chinese market is maybe a more dynamic market in terms of evolutions of market share. If you have a look at China over the last few years, there's been a significant aggregation of market share by some of the big players and the local historical guys getting squeezed out. It's really not the case in places like Europe, where the market share is a lot more stable and the brand recognition plays a larger role and distribution is a lot more established. I wouldn't extrapolate too much. Yeah, over time, as raw material prices drop and as we work through the lag, there will be more pressure everywhere. Once again, China is a very dynamic, very quickly evolving environment in terms of market share, where you can bounce up or down very quickly, and that lends itself to more aggressive and sometimes extremely aggressive pricing. We're not seeing anything extremely aggressive. We're seeing something which is just reflection of the market is picking up and people see opportunities, including AkzoNobel, by the way. We see opportunities, but we're certainly not the price leader on the way down. One of our competitors commented on that recently, [SKSHU], and they alluded to AkzoNobel's price discipline in China. I invite you to refer to their fireside chat if you want further proof that we're sticking to our guns. Did I answer your question? Yes. On mix? Yeah. Jaideep on your question on mix, I can be pretty short. What we saw in Q1, I think we will see a similar development in the second quarter. That's clear. I guess Jaideep is waiting in the queue. This was Chetan. Bye. Oh. Oh, I'm sorry. Apologies. Thank you. Our next question is from Peter Clark of Société Générale. Your line is open. Yes. Good morning, everyone. It's a quick one on the EMEA Deco, the first one anyway. You've been pretty clear with the guidance. You think that the volumes will be down mid-single digit. Obviously a very bad April. It's not stopped raining. It's actually sunny now, anyway. Effectively, you've got the cost cutting in Europe, most of the cost cutting anyway, certainly the hard cost cutting. You're against very soft comp, particularly in the second quarter. I think June, it collapsed in the U.K. Dulux. That implies to me that you're gonna get very strong EBIT growth, even if the volumes remain slightly depressed. That's the first question. I'm just wondering how you see EMEA Deco relative to your profit assumptions for the year. I'm assuming it's one of the stronger businesses in the second half, even if the volumes are soft. The second question about price, obviously up 7%. Just wondering the incremental price within that against the carryover, 'cause I would assume it was 1%-2% maybe incremental price you're getting, and you see most of that wash out in the second quarter. Thank you. I'll take your first question. Maarten will take the second one. I think your comments on EMEA Deco are directionally correct. It's give or take, it's about a quarter of our business. It is the business in AkzoNobel that has the longest lag in terms of our, the time we take between the moment where we buy raw materials and the moment where it impacts our bottom line. Lag is a bit below five months, somewhere between four and five, but significantly longer than the rest of our business. Therefore, a lot of the margin expansion due to raw mass is still to come. The pricing has been resilient. We're probably not looking at anything significant in further pricing increases in that part of the markets in the near future, because once again, raw materials are, at this point, settling, and we'll see what happens in the second half of the year. We've got the pricing carryover from what was done in the first quarter. We've got the not any significant further pricing in Deco Europe to be expected later in the year. There will be some price increases in some countries, but we're not talking about big numbers versus what we have in terms of carryover. The raw materials, the impact will start making its way to our bottom line in Q2 for Deco Europe. As you said, the cost actions are EUR 200 million. It's mitigation. It's, you know, it's two-thirds Europe, and it's two-thirds industrial, but we're mitigating inflation. That's more of a wash than an uplift. Hopefully, that gives you a little bit of perspective. You know, Deco Europe should be a significant contributor to our margin expansion for the rest of the year. Maybe on your pricing question, in the first quarter, the 7%. Yes, it's correct that of course, a main part of the pricing is carryover. We've also indicated that already when we went into the first quarter. We've also indicated that we have done still price increases during the first quarter. If you make a rough split, then, I would say that roughly 2% is what we realized as new price increases, and the rest is all carryover for the first quarter. Got it. Got it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Our next call is from Jaideep Pandya, On Field Research. Your line is open. Thanks. The first question I have is on marine. It's sort of a two-part question. Firstly, could you just help us understand sort of what was driving the 22% organic growth, and how should we think about this business sort of going forward for the rest of the year? The second part to that question really is, you know, Grég, you've alluded to the EUR 100 million sort of EBIT growth opportunity. Could you just explain to us, like, what is the timeframe of this? You know, whether this is on a 12-month view or on a 24-month view. The second question I have is around the acquisitions that you guys have made in the last 12 months. Could you give us some color on what sort of EBIT expectations do you have from Grupo or the Kansai and the Sherwin-Williams asset, you know, once these are integrated into the AkzoNobel family? Thank you. Okay. Let me take those questions. Maarten will jump in. On the marine protective side of things, there's significant demand in the markets. Shipyards have order books that are full. The investment level is quite high, and that is allowing us to grow with the markets. I think beyond that, there's an Akzo-specific focus on rebuilding our position in China. We de-emphasized China a few years ago because we felt that the margins on the pricing level on OEM paint, you know, the first coat of paint in a shipyard in China, we felt those levels were insufficient, and it was significantly dilutive. It's still a challenge to a large extent, but we have a better handle on how to compete on some of the more technical vessels and the more technical opportunities. Also, our performance in the marine market in the last few years has convinced us of something that we needed to demonstrate to ourselves, which is that despite the fact that the OEM market in China might be dilutive from a margin perspective, it's an important part to competing on the global level and to capturing first dry dock opportunities. Market growth plus a push in China, but a selective push in order to focus on the more differentiated opportunities that offer some pricing potential. The question on the EUR 100 million, I've said publicly that our marine business was a business that had the operating profitability in the high teens a few years back. That we've suffered significantly over the last few years and last year were closer to low single digits than the high teens. There's really no reason why that business can't get back to the teens. The EUR 100 million is based on essentially getting to something like the mid-teens. It's not a 12 or 24 months thing. It's probably more of three-year thing. We are already banking on a significant uplift in the marine business this year. We'll, we'll still be, you know, we'll move from the low single digits to something like the high single digits, hopefully we'll be able to cross into the teens next year, one step at a time. We do believe that there's EUR 100 million of bottom line value to be extracted from the marine business. International is still the best brand in the industry. We've got great products, we've cleaned up the issues that we had the last few years, we think we're in a very good position to grow that business profitably and get back to where we should be in the market. Acquisitions. We commented last time, I think we had. Yeah. A slide on acquisitions where we talked about Orbis versus the Akzo in Latin America and the gap and what we'll plan to be. Maarten, you wanna take that one? Yeah. First of all, we are very pleased with the Grupo Orbis acquisition. And indeed, once integrated, we have said that we would have the Grupo Orbis acquisition and the business performing at the level we are at it in Latin America. And that's, that represents, if I remember well, a 300 basis points improvement into our numbers. I mean, Kansai is a little bit too early to tell, but clearly we have a strong business in Africa with also good margins. And also there we see an opportunity to further improve as we integrate the Kansai Paint Africa business. For, for... From our perspective, these targeted acquisitions give really opportunities to drive synergies and to drive margin improvement. Great. Thanks a lot. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question is from Laurent Favre of BNP line is open. Yes. Thank you very much. I got two questions, please. Grég, I think you indicated that you were thinking volumes would be down low single digit in Q2. I was wondering what you had assumed within that for European Deco. The second question on M&A, I guess. I think based on the last call, some of us were expecting that the next announcement from Akzo would be a bolt-off rather than a bolt-on. I was wondering if you could perhaps tell us a little bit about, I guess, the progress you're making on portfolio analysis and your thinking around disposals. Could we see them this year, at least from an announcement standpoint, not necessarily a closing standpoint? Thank you. Thank you. Maarten will take the first question on volumes for Deco. I'll take the second. Volumes for Deco, we have assumed as part of the Q2 indication a mid-single digit down. We think, you know, this is weather dependent, but we think most of the negative impact will be in April. We're expecting that May and June will be a lot more robust, given the direction of the market until it's sort of raining continuously in Europe. You know, time will tell and weather will tell. To your question on portfolio bolt-ons versus bolt-offs, we did say that we manage our portfolio dynamically. We are looking at opportunities, both in terms of bolt-on and in terms of bolt-off, to use your expression in our portfolio. I mean, you know, I can't comment on The Sherwin-Williams Company China acquisition where I say, you know, this was a business which is a better fit for us, and it's a small position for them, and it's, you know, we're a good number two and that strengthens our business without also conceding that there are opportunities the other way around. Everybody has things that they wanna trade on and things that they wanna trade off. We've completed our analysis of what we wanna do in the next couple of years, and we are working on these topics actively. We really don't have a whole lot to report at this point because nothing's been launched per se or is public. If there's anything that progresses, we'll talk about it. I wouldn't expect that anything closes this year. You know, once again, we will look at opportunities both to buy and to sell. We fully understand that given our leverage ratios, buying involves also selling. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question is Bashar Chaudhri of Citi. Your line is open. Hi. Thank you for taking my questions. Just a couple, please. Just on the 2Q guide, I think you said more than EUR 300 million. Should I understand that as being quite close to EUR 300 million? When I put in the price volume rules guidance that you've given today, I get closer to the mid EUR 300s for EBIT. Just trying to understand where I'm going wrong or what I'm missing, that would be helpful. The second question is on volumes in China. Could there be some restocking happening that's helping drive the better than expected volumes ahead of the summer season? Do you think this is genuine demand at the moment? Thank you. To your question on China, it doesn't appear to be restocking. What we see is really demand increasing as people feel better about the economy, as the Chinese Government stimulates the economy. You know, they're not the Chinese Government is not pushing new construction, but they have given funding and they've given support to completing construction that had been started and had stalled. There's a lot of things in the market that actually correlate with real demand, and we've got enough channel information to feel that it's not restocking. We're comfortable that the trend in China should continue and will continue. On the guidance, Q2, slightly above EUR 300 million. Is that how I phrased it? We said slightly above EUR 300 million 'cause we meant slightly above EUR 300 million. Your question on if you do, kinda do the math, you get more towards the mid-EUR 300s. You know, once again, Europe is significant for us. Deco Europe is about 25% of our business. April has not been a good month. You know, I'd like to think that statistically there's a moment where the weather improves, but that's really hard to predict and some of those volumes you get back and some of the volumes you don't. If you take, for example, all the professional painter volume, you don't get that back because essentially professional painters have only so many hours that they can work in the day. If the month of April was a wash because it was raining and they couldn't work outside, these guys can't add working hours to do more of that in May or June. Essentially, that volume doesn't come back. There's an element of certainly of balance that we wanna introduce in terms of our guidance on Europe. We are pleasantly surprised by the volume performance in Q1, but the jury is still out about Q2 once again, April was not very good. Hence the fact that we're pushing you towards the lower th300 s rather than mid- 300 s. It's just a matter of being cautious with the volume developments which we see specifically in Deco Europe, and that is a reflection of the comments regarding how we currently see Q2. That's very helpful. Thank you. Thank you. Speakers who don't have any questions on queue, you may proceed. Thank you, Jackie. I think that concludes the Q&A session and our Q1 2023 Investor Update. Thank you everyone for participating. Operator, please close the call. Thank you. That concludes today's call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect.