Good morning and welcome at the Cabka N.V. Full Year 2022 Results presentation. With me today are Tim Litjens, CEO, and Frank Roerink, CFO. My name is David Brilleslijper, and I will be your host today. Before we start with the presentation and Q&A, I have some technical remarks. During the entire webcast, you're able to post questions via the Ask Question in your bottom right screen side of the screen. Afterwards, the full webcast will be on our website, investors.cabka.com. Having said that, Tim, please, can you start with your introduction and the highlights? Thank you, David. Glad that you're joining us this morning for this webcast. In my part, before I hand it over to Frank to take you in detail through the financials, I would like to introduce you to some highlights, but also to the business model as Cabka applies it and some of the commercial highlights, especially that we've booked in the last year. Let me start with this overview slide. Highlights for 2022. As you can see, we've posted a record growth. Our top line grew by 23% through a combination of volume and price effects, ending up at EUR 209 million. That sales has been achieved through bringing product to market that is consisting of 86% of recycled content. That's an absolute marker within the industry. Our operational EBITDA comes in at 11%, EUR 22.5 million. We faced a year in which our input costs, especially energy, and also raw materials, have seen very significant increases and also volatility. Despite the various rounds of price increases that we've applied, this has impacted the bottom line, especially because of the delay effect in passing on these higher costs. Our net working capital came in at 16%. That's well below the guidance, EUR 33.7 million, while our operational net income is EUR 1.5 million. As some of you may be new to this webcast and also new to us as a company, I would first, before going into more detail of 2022, take you through the business model as we apply it. What is it in essence that we do? We turn hard-to-recycle plastic waste into reusable transport packaging solutions. In this picture you see in one overview, essentially the value chain in which we operate. We start off with our feedstock. Our feedstock is consisting of post-consumer waste, industrial waste that we buy back from our customers when product comes end of life, and we recycle this waste ourselves. We recycle it into an intermediary raw material, which then, through our innovation efforts, we have an innovation center, as you may know. In Valencia, we moved into a brand-new building in 2022, further expanding and building upon these innovation capabilities. We apply material engineering on the recycled or recycled plastics. We do our own product design, and we apply our own processing technologies in order to really bring that hard-to-recycle material to a product. We do that through various injection molding and extrusion technologies, ultimately to bring product to the market and therefore to our customers. If product does come end to a life, the product is, through buyback programs, returned to Cabka, and we take this back into circulation. We truly close the loop. Zooming in a little bit more on the use of recycled material, because as said, 86% is definitely a marker for the industry. Nobody else is as high as us, not by far. That's something that we really take pride in. As you can see here, the 86%, the dominant part is being recycled in-house. We really start with the raw waste. Obviously, we also buy recycled plastics within the market, both in Europe as well as in the US. There is almost an only insignificant part of virgin plastics that we buy. These virgin plastics are bought because there's applications, for example, in food production environments, pharma environments, where simply by regulation you are required to use virgin. There is changes in regulations ongoing, we are also pushing the industry to, even in these environments, start using recycled. That is just a matter of time. Ultimately, these materials are worked into products that are really designed for reusability, so especially durability. We want for our customers to be able to maximize the use and therefore the value that they get out of our product. If we now look into the products that we offer on the left-hand side in the colorful tiles, you see our portfolio for reusable transport packaging solutions. These vary from very lightweight nestable pallets, as you can see in the left top, to highly sturdy, durable logistical pallets to containers and also customized solutions. It's especially these two last segments, the large containers as well as the customized solutions, that we've been focusing a lot on. A lot of development has happened, and as a testimony later on, you'll also see some of the contracts that came out of that. On the right-hand side, ECO products. These ECO products go mainly into the building and construction market and road safety. These products are positioned in a global market for reusable transport packaging that is, has a value of $86 billion. As you can see, the penetration of plastic is still relatively limited. The market share is estimated to be right around 9%. If we look though at some of the market trends, especially based on sustainability, the market trend of digitalization, the ever-growing need to rationalize logistic change, but also automation, you see that these market trends are clearly favoring plastic solutions over any of the incumbent solutions, may that be wood, steel, cardboard, et cetera. The market itself is a market that is already growing quite healthy at an estimated 5% CAGR. If you look at the positioning of plastic within that market, following those market trends, the expectation is that plastic will outpace that 5%. More relevant is how Cabka is positioned within that market. If you look at our integrated capabilities, following our backward integration, bringing material expertise, processing technology, and product design under one roof in our innovation center, it's putting us very, very close to our customers. We intimately develop products together. We go into the supply chain of the customer, we exactly understand their needs, we bring an offering that fits not only from an economic perspective, but also from a sustainability perspective. The testimony of that is really what you see in this in this overview. A wide variety of blue-chip companies, presenting a wide variety actually of different industries within the economy. Further testimony comes from the three contracts, or three major contracts that we signed last year and that we've also reported on. The first one is with Target, a major retailer, in the United States. With them, we've gone through a development of a customized large foldable container. It's been designed to exactly fit in their fully automated distribution setup. Target has been investing a lot in this, in this direction to become more efficient, and our so-called CabCube is an essential part of their solution. We started deliveries, as you know, last year in the third quarter, and deliveries are now continuing into 2023. CHEP, a company, which is the market leader worldwide in pooling of pallets and containers. Also, for them, we've developed a customized large foldable container. Outside of the fact that this container is designed for durability, which of course is essential in pooling, it gives a much higher return on investment for CHEP. CHEP has specifically chosen to do this development with us because of the use and the expertise of recycled content. First deliveries are expected in the course of second half of this year. Within automotive, we're proud to launch also there a new product developed together with BMW, which is going to be used by BMW itself, but also all of its suppliers. Again, a customized large foldable container. In this particular case, to replace the so-called metal Gitterbox. The alternative that we offer is much lighter, but it's also much safer. First deliveries here are expected in the second quarter of this year. As you can see, all three contracts, all three customers have moved to a large foldable container customized specifically to their needs. Referencing back to which are our strategic growth segments from a product perspective, these all three really hit the mark. The reason why these customers are with us and are buying products from us is simply for two reasons. We offer superior economics, and we offer superior carbon footprint. The value drivers here are the simple fact that we use recycled raw material as input. The product is designed for logistical efficiency. They're foldable, they're nestable, and they're designed to be durable. The customer can maximize the lifetime of the product. It can maximize the number of trips that this product can actually do. If the product in the end does come to end of life, then we take the product back, we recycle it, and we bring it back into circulation against a guaranteed residual value for the customer. Zooming in a little bit more into 2022. fair is fair, it's been a turbulent year for good and for bad. The year started off with our stock listing, which of course we are very excited about. 1st of March last year, we listed at the Euronext Exchange in Amsterdam, it resulted in a EUR 45 million cash inflow, strengthening our balance sheet. It also pushed us to drive various organizational improvements. We even implemented a two-tier board structure. We've gone through different management appointments, strengthening the organization at an executive level, and we've made good strides on our ESG and also risk framework. This has happened though against the background of rather impactful macro dynamics, all known to all of you. The geopolitical tensions, the war in Ukraine, has caused for energy prices to spike to levels tenfold of what it typically was. The overall global supply chain disruptions have also caused for material prices to spike to new highs. All of that against a labor market that still today is tight, and where the inflationary effects have had quite an impact on the overall cost of labor. That being said, though, we've responded very, very swiftly, very diligently to push all of these higher input costs into the market, and we've done so successfully. It's a proof of the pricing power that we have within the market, but also the relationship that we have with our customers. As Frank Roerink will elaborate on a little bit later, there's been a 15% overall price increase, price impact in 2022, which is obviously unprecedented. Unfortunately, but as already mentioned, in August last year, we also suffered a catastrophic flooding of our operating plant in St. Louis, Missouri, United States. The plant was out of operation. Meanwhile, we are starting up as we speak, and we are expected to be fully operational again by the end of the first half of this year. Nevertheless, we had to respond very quickly to take out all of our critical manufacturing equipment, outsource that to external manufacturing partners in order to assure that deliveries to our customer base could continue. We've done that successfully. We have our base to continue to grow in the U.S., and actually, despite this catastrophic event, we grew by 30% in the United States itself, which I think is quite remarkable, and which we also as a team take pride out of. Next to bringing the site back, we're obviously also looking into the necessary flood protection measures. We're doing this with one of the world's leading water management experts, in order to make sure that if such a unique weather event, which per the calculations only happens once every 125 years, may happen again, we are prepared. The ECO restructuring, also previously announced. We decided to close our site in Genthin, Brandenburg, just south of Berlin, and bring these activities or cluster these activities on the site in Thuringia. That has successfully been completed last year. Came with a restructuring cost of EUR 600,000, and obviously some downtime on the production itself, which has also impacted our ability to grow in the ECO segment. However, that was an investment, well spent because now we have not only the cost synergies, but also the expansion of capacity, allowing us to grow in 2023. Connecting all of this back to our midterm guidance, and our outlook, as said, growth comes in at 23%, well above the midterm guidance. Our EBITDA percentage, our operational EBITDA margin comes in at 11%. As you will see in the outlook, with material markets as well as energy markets coming down to lower levels, we are projecting an improvement here, going forward and on which I will elaborate in a little bit. CapEx spend on maintenance and replacement came in at 3.5%, so just below the guidance, so well under control. Net working capital, same thing, 16%, where the guidance was 20%. As with regards to our dividend policy, we propose a distribution of EUR 0.15. This distribution of EUR 0.15 will be split into EUR 0.05 cash and EUR 0.10 stock. To the outlook. Based on our strong fundamentals that we've proven in 2022, especially with all these advisories being thrown at us, we are confident to reiterate our midterm guidance. Barring any unforeseen circumstances, for 2023, we expect to deliver on high single digit top line growth with a recovery of the EBITDA towards 13%-15%. With that being said, I would like to hand it over to Frank and for Frank to take you through more of the details in the financials. Thank you, Tim. Indeed, I would like to take you through the financials, which have been distorted by three one-off events that had an impact on the numbers as well. What I'd like to do is take you through first what's the real business been doing and then show you the impact of these three one-off events on the P&L, therefore providing you a reconciliation to the reported numbers as we've done so far. First, the P&L. As Tim alluded to, we have grown 2022, we've grown with 23%, of which 8% is through organic growth, but also a staggering 15% came from pricing effects. This is the ability to translate these higher raw materials and energy prices into the marketplace. This led to an improvement of our gross profit of EUR 5.5 Million. Yes, you do see a decline in our gross margin from 51% last year to 44%. That's predominantly driven by these higher price increases that we saw in the feedstock and therefore translating into the market. That's what we call a dilution effect. If I would basically exclude from these price changes and cost changes, we would be still around the same 51% as we were last year. Our operational expenses grew in line with our sales, so a 21% increase there, predominantly driven by our growth. However, we also had to cope with significant inflationary adjustments in terms of salaries in Belgium and in Germany, that had an impact on the cost structure. Also we had to ramp up some of our costs post-COVID period, where, during the COVID period, we were not able to attend events or visit our customers. Fortunately, that's now possible again, and therefore it strengthens our connection with our customers, but it also causes us to spend a little bit more there on travel and on events. Lastly, of course, we had to beef up the organization, and we made some changes. Being a listed company, it clearly comes with further requirements of being in control of your processes and procedures. All in all, we stayed in line with the growth of the top line in our costs. When we look at the operational EBITDA, it did improve. We were at EUR 22.5 million in 2022, which is 11% of sales. Last year we posted 17% as the margin, therefore the decline, I want to translate that decline predominantly back to the 15% price increase. If you have a 15% price increase in your top line, that has an impact of about 3.5 percentage point reduction already in your operational EBITDA. The remaining 2.5% of decline has been driven by the lagging effect of when prices increase or costs increase, you're not able to translate that straight away into higher prices, there's a lagging effect that explains the remaining 2.5%. Overall, a steady and stable EUR 1.5 million profits generated from our operational business in 2022. Let me break down the sales of our business. A healthy 24% growth in our RTP business in Europe, so our reusable transport packaging solutions grew 24%, basically because of the strong growth that we saw in our customized solutions. It underpins our strategic focus, and we're happy to see that we're delivering there as expected. As Tim said before, the US showed a healthy growth of 30%, despite the flooding. The flash flooding had a major impact there on our business, on our production capabilities. With the swift transfer, still 30% up. Target clearly was an excellent performer there, where we are now delivering these foldable container solutions and a really strong driver of growth. Our ECO business, despite the 11 weeks downtime, we were able to deliver a steady, stable top line performance there. We're happy that that still remains stable. We're looking forward to 2023 because the 2023 we are gonna not see, have these restructuring impacts again. Let me zoom a little bit deeper into the key raw material cost and the key energy cost in our P&L. The market trends, as you can see, in the past we're looking at energy prices of around EUR 50-EUR 70 a megawatt hour. Due to the Ukraine war, both supply and demand as pressure on prices cost a significant amount of volatility. Prices even hit EUR 700 a megawatt hour. On average, the price points were about EUR 235 a megawatt hour. We were slightly below this. We have for 2022 been able to cope quite well with these increases. However, they did cause an increase in our total cost base. We do see that prices have been stabilizing now around the EUR 150 a megawatt hour, so we are looking to making sure that going forward, that we stabilize those. I'll get to that in a minute. Let me also focus on the right side of the slide, which deals with our raw material prices. You do see that virgin prices almost doubled in the last year. It's a basic impact of the pandemic, and the unfortunate part, more fortunate part, is that recycled prices are strongly correlated with these virgin raw material prices. There also we saw a increase in prices. As Tim explained, 46 of our recycled material we get ourselves, there we are not vulnerable to these changes and these increases in prices, that's a good mitigating strategy being backward integrated. Of course we do have 40% that we do source in, of recycled materials. There again as well, prices have stabilized in this quarter, it looks too that the major volatility has disappeared. When talking about energy and the volatility, of course we had to take a real serious look again at our hedging strategy, what we did basically, when we look at energy, there's basically three streams that we work on. One is making sure that we reduce our energy consumption. The second is about making sure that we use renewable resources. The third one is about hedging the remaining exposure. On energy reduction, you will see later on in our CAPEX program that we spend a lot of money on when we buy equipment, that it's energy efficient and that we modernize it so that helps to reduce the energy consumption. We've also introduced with a lot of our customers a very adaptive and transparent pricing mechanism to help deal with these price increases going forward. As you may know, Germany, there is an energy price cap in place, in Germany, our site in Thuringia is one of the largest consumers of energy in our portfolio. Having that energy cap in place will help us in 2023 as well going forward. The second block is about tapping more into sustainable resources. We operate ourselves now a solar park in Belgium, and we have contracted out some solar energy. In total, we are now able to secure up to 30% of our energy consumption in Belgium through the solar sources. We're trying to do the same thing in Germany, where we're in deep negotiations now on having both solar and wind solutions to also have similar levels of alternative energy supplied to the company. The remaining element of consumption, there we have a very good hedging strategy now in place, whereby we make sure that we not deal with the volatility marketplace, where we buy sites by region and by period are making sure that we cover our needs and we stabilize the prices. Let me talk about the elements that have caused a one-off impact to the P&L, and this is something which I wanna spend quite some time on because the impact is quite sizable. Our result that we shared with you was a + EUR 1.5 million of operating results. However, we do see that these one-off events do cause an impact on the P&L of - EUR 35.5 million. Let me start from the beginning saying that the majority of those impacts are non-cash. EUR 30 million is non-cash impact, and the largest component of that non-cash is in the, what we call the listing expense. Now here, this slide, I will take a little bit more time. This is something which some of my colleagues said you need a PhD in IFRS to explain. I don't have that PhD, so I'll try to explain it as basic and simple as I can. When we did the IPO, we received EUR 108.5 million in cash considerations from the shareholders from Dutch Star II. IFRS requires us to take first a financial liability in our books for the still outstanding warrants, the EUR 12 warrants and the EUR 13 warrants and the EUR 12 special share. That liability, accounting liability, is for EUR 6 million, a deduction from those cash considerations. It leaves us, according to IFRS, with a net cash consideration of EUR 102.4 million. IFRS looks at, so what did you get in as a company for what you've received from the Dutch shareholders in terms of, the Dutch Star shareholders? We've basically issued 12.9 million shares at a price of EUR 10.01. That translates to EUR 129.2 million. That difference in, if you would do a normal acquisition, you would normally put that difference on the balance sheet as goodwill. However, since we're talking here about a business combination, and Dutch Star TWO was not a business to the extent of IFRS, you're not allowed to put that goodwill on the balance sheet, but you have to take a hit in the P&L as a listing expense. It's a non-cash transaction. It has no cash impact, but it is a loss of EUR 26.8 million, as it's qualified as a service for, to providing Cabka with a listing. That's the EUR 26.8 million P&L hit that we take from the IPO. Clearly, of course, there's also some IPO costs to the tune of EUR 1.3 million in the P&L. You see on the balance sheet a EUR 2.9 million cost. In total, we spent EUR 2.9 million in terms of fees, for the banks to place the shares with the lawyers and the accountants. I think in all modesty, that is a very efficient IPO transaction that the company undertook. Let me zoom in into the capital expenditure for 2022. Tim already explained to you that we spend about EUR 7.5 million in CapEx on our replacement and maintenance, investing in energy efficient equipment. Of course, we also invested in the capacity in the U.S. to keep up with our growth. We spent about EUR 5.6 million in new equipment to keep up with our customer demands. We also, together with our largest customers, the programs that Tim alluded to with CHEP and Target, we have invested significantly in molds to be able to develop these new innovative designs for new transportation packaging material. That's another EUR 4.5 million that we invested to bring those molds to the next level. The restructuring that we had in Thuringia adds to EUR 3.7 million, and it's basically predominantly moving the assets and connecting the equipment to the site, but also installing some additional capacity to prove that we can make much more money on that business model. Also the fourth element, the net working capital, it did increase from EUR 27.4 - EUR 33.7. However, it's still at 16% of our sales. As you can see, it has predominantly, our working capital has grown in line with our sales, so we're still at a healthy level of 16%. Inventory levels did go up with about EUR 11 million, which is predominantly explained by the higher prices of our feedstock in terms of energy and material, but also by our increased sales, which naturally brings a higher level of inventory because we make sure that we can supply every time our customer needs one of our products. You see one element is the received prepayments of EUR 4.2 million. This is where you can see that our customers are joining us in this development of these molds. This is linked to mold investments, so that we're not doing this only on our own books, we're also getting the help of our customers to fund these type of investments. This all summarizes into a cash flow, as you can see on this slide. Basically, let me start from the top. We shared with you a EUR 22.5 Million operational EBITDA from our ongoing business. We have, of course, had to deduct a couple of components from the IPO-related costs and triggered costs, the increase that we had in our net working capital, all in all totaling to a cash flow from the operating activities of about EUR 0.5 Million. We invested quite significantly, EUR 26.7 million for our asset base, predominantly on growth. We had, of course, a positive impact on our cash flow from the IPO, whereby we gained EUR 45.2 million extra cash on our balance sheets that we partly used to repay some of the banking debts. Of course, we've also been smart in our funding to find additional lease lines to the tune of EUR 4.5 million. All in all, I think in cash, we've done a good job in getting to the right place. Let me get to the last slide of my presentation. There's two things I'd like to point out. The first one is I'm really happy that we can announce a Capital Markets Day on the 13th of June. This is gonna be a really good event whereby we can show you on one of our most innovative sites in Valencia, a nice place to be. We have a really impressive innovation center whereby we can show you what we're doing with our customers, how we're testing the material, how we're developing these new formulations. We'd be very happy to host you on that Capital Markets Day. Further detail will be explained through our website in the period to come. The other element to point out is that there's a change in the ex-dividend date. As Tim already explained, we have put out a dividend issue of EUR 0.15. However, due to the way we want to do this dividend payout, it's through a recapitalization repurchase, it's gonna be delayed until the 17th of August, and the dividend payment will debut therefore be on the 25th of August. This is purely a administrative process that takes a little bit longer than the original plan. All in all, this is what I'd like to say, and give it back to you, David. Thank you, Frank. Sorry for not introducing you properly because you are only six weeks with the company, and I forgot to mention it, and I think you did a great maiden speech clarifying our 2022 financials. Thank you for that. We can go to questions. If you want to ask a question, you can use the Ask a Question button on the right bottom side of the screen. Please do so. We have some questions already coming in. I'd like to start with you, Tim, on the first question. In the headline of the press release, you refer to sound fundamentals of Cabka. What do you base these sound fundamentals on? Can you elaborate a bit more on that? Sure. Yeah, sure. We primarily base this on our commercial strength. We've operated in a market where, yeah, the price increases that we were forced to bring to the market would typically cause for quite some headwind, especially when it comes to demand. Not only have we been able to successfully pass on these higher input costs and go through various rounds of price increases, at the same time, we've also been able to grow the business. It's just strong proof that the products that we bring to market are of fundamental importance to our customers, despite this headwind. Other than that, I would also like to say that I've seen within our own organization, and especially in the United States, being faced with such a catastrophic event that the response that we can do, the speed by which we do it, but also the, yeah, the resilience that is there makes me really, really proud of this organization. This is a fundament that we can definitely build on. Yeah. Thank you. Actually what you're saying is we've done great last year, despite it was a very difficult year, if you look at the results, if you look at how we responded, that is the solid fundamentals. Yeah. We're talking about. Thank you. another question, but this time on feedstock, also I think for you Tim Litjens. Could you elaborate on the availability on access to feedstock in Europe and the U.S., and to what extent could this be a threat to future growth plans? Yeah, that's a really good question. We've seen last year actually that also recycled plastic at some point became scarce in the market, therefore, prices were driven up, following also what the virgin material markets did. That's where you actually saw that our backward integration, as Frank also alluded to, gave us some protection against that, because the contracts that we have on taking in waste tend to not move with this market and give us stability. That being said, although markets have come down now, our view on the market is that in the future, the demand for recycled plastic will increase, driven by either corporate sustainability policies or governmental regulation. That makes it important to continue also to invest in this backward integration. That also makes it important to focus on what we call the hard-to-recycle plastic waste. There are streams out there in the market that require very, very little processing. Basically, anybody could do this. This is not what we will focus on. We are focusing on those streams that others find very, very hard to recycle or are even unable to recycle. I think that's also where we then maximize all of the knowledge that we've built over the last 30 years, because that's how long we've been in the recycling business, to secure that going forward, we have sufficient supply of material, but also at a cost price that helps us to economically push product into the market. I think that's an extensive answer. Thank you. We go into a bit more detail, I think now from the analyst, with a question on pricing. The question is, you increased pricing by 15% in 2022 and are guiding a 13%-15% EBITDA margin in 2023, helped by the past pricing initiatives and Cabka moving back into insourcing in the U.S. That's a statement. Now, the question: Could you give a sense on how much prices will need to increase further through 2023 in order to meet the midpoint of your EBITDA guidance? The midpoint of the guidance, I assume it's the 14% and not the up to the 20%. Thank you, David. Well, to answer in the most simple way, we don't assume that we will push through any further price increases. The reason for it, that we see stability now in energy prices and in feedstock prices. There's no need. We have a very strong relationship with our customers whereby we sell products based on the performance of the products, not necessarily on the price point alone. It's the combination of the two. Yes, in many of our products, it's a very competitive market. If prices, if the feedstock doesn't increase, then we should not do it any further as well. We also want to make absolutely sure we deliver value to our customers, and that's the way we want to go forward. In that sense, delivering on the price guidance, it's all about executing a plan about high single digit growth and having our cost well under control. Maybe if I can add to that? Yes, you can. Indeed, exactly as Frank said, energy costs have come down, material costs have come down. With the transparency that we apply towards our customers that will also lead to some prices coming down. At the same time, the inflationary effects, especially on labor costs and all of our, actually all of our fixed cost structure is still there and will continue to impact us also in 2023. In response to that, we've already increased our prices since the first of January by 4% reflecting this inflationary impact on the fixed cost. Elaborating a bit on this point, another question on the guidance and on the margin. Does your margin guidance for 2023 incorporate a temporary lag benefit, as input prices fall, or is your index price adjustment mechanism applied so rapidly that this impact is not expected to be material in 2023? Question to me? I think it's the question to you, yeah. Okay. Yeah, as you have a lagging effect when the market moves up, there's obviously also a lagging effect when the market moves down. Yeah, I think that's the most clear and crisp answer I can give on that question. It's a short lagging effect? We've kept the lagging effect when the market was up as short as possible. That also means that there will be some effect. It's not going to be long lasting. Not so rapidly that there's no impact at all. Correct. Okay. No, I think that should answer the question. Under your on the spare capacity, can you update what approximate levels of spare capacity are in the business currently as a percentage? We in the past, we spoke about 20%, I think. Yeah. What are we now? Yeah. Where are we now? Well, as Frank already mentioned, we've also been expanding on our capacity. Let me first start with the ECO business, 'cause that's where, through the investments we made last year in the site consolidation, we are pushing up our capacity by 20%-25%. As the market grows, that capacity will be filled up. When we look at the reusable transport packaging business, that's predominantly our injection molding business, with some of the investment that we've done in the United States, you see that there we've created quite some room for the anticipated growth. If I would have to really go to a 10-mile high view, I would say that we have right now, including some of the manufacturing efficiencies that we are after, we have around 10% headroom. Okay. We made it 20% headroom, actually. 10%. 10%, okay. 10%. From 20% - 10%. Okay. That's clear. Frank, turning to you now for the next question. Bearing in mind the high impact of energy on your business, why did you not hedge in 2022 to deal with the volatility? That's apparently that I've missed a statement there. We did hedge in 2022, but it was a different hedging strategy. As you may have seen in the slide, in the past, energy prices didn't show that amount of volatility that we see in the last year. The need for having a very accurate hedging strategy wasn't present. The company therefore did hedge, but on a much longer scale and a much more global scale. We've seen the dynamics in the market where Europe behaves differently than the U.S. in energy prices, that and even within regions in Europe, it requires a much more tailored approach in terms of geography. The Belgium energy price market is different than the German energy price market, and it also requires a different strategy on a time basis. It's different when you hedge for the winter than when you hedge in the summer, and that's where we've now basically fine-tuned and improved our hedging strategy to deal with the much more volatile marketplaces than what we did in the past. In that sense, it's not that we didn't hedge in the past, it's just a more eloquent hedging that we have currently. Okay. Clear. On backward integration, it's one of the main topics as well in your introduction, Tim Litjens. What do you mean with backward integration? Is it building exclusive partnerships or also share participations in these companies? I think the question is taken a bit different than you intended it to be, if I read this question like this. Yeah. Because. Sorry. But. Go ahead. I think backward integration, what we mean with backward integration is in recycling and not in partnerships or partnerships in companies, they're two different things. Maybe take the questions in two. First, on our backward integration, and second, on our exclusive partnerships with customers. Indeed, the backward integration means that we move backward in the chain all the way up to the waste. That's where our recycling capabilities come in. By the way, we do that also in partnership. May that there's different waste management companies that we work with. There's also different industrial companies that are looking for outlets for their waste. In that sense, you can still speak also of partnership in the perspective of this backward integration. Okay. Yeah. Clear. With customers, partnerships? Well, that's the partnerships that I alluded to, these three different contracts with Target, with CHEP, with BMW, and there's actually a few more. We intimately work together to develop the right product. As Frank also explained, customers are therefore also willing to put skin in the game. Through a joint development, the customer ultimately comes to a point where they co-invest in the product or sometimes even fully invest in the product, where we of course then have the exclusive rights to manufacture the product. It goes therefore truly through long-term partnerships and obviously also contracts. Okay. Thank you. Turn to Frank Roerink again. Okay. How much of Cabka's growth is price versus volume driven? Yeah. In 2022 we had 8% organic growth, and we had 15% price increases. Okay. Clear and crisp. Thank you. We go back to the flooding. Is there an anticipated CapEx cost to you for future flood protection measures, which are not covered by the insurance probably? What has or is being done, and, how do you reduce changes on new flooding? You mentioned something. Yeah. In your CAPEX I think before. Yeah. As said, almost immediately after the flooding event happened, we engaged with one of the leading water management companies in the world to study exactly what has happened, but also how, if such a unique event were to happen again, how we could protect ourselves. Basically this has resulted into two work streams, the first work stream being how can we protect ourselves as soon as possible, basically before the next rain season, if you like, yeah, starts in St. Louis. That basically means by this summer. The short-term measures have been detailed out. The investment that comes with that is anywhere between EUR 800,000-EUR 1 million. Yeah. And that will give us adequate protection for the short to medium term. Now we're talking about solutions that can last up to five years. Yeah? At the same time, there is a second work stream ongoing where we're looking together with this company into the more structural solutions. This obviously takes much more engineering time, therefore there we also don't have any reliable indications yet of what this would cost. We do have the guarantee that short to medium term we will be protected. Although EUR 800,000 is a lot of money, I think that's a very reasonable price in order to take these measures. Okay. Thank you. On the outlook, why do you expect only high single digit growth in 2023, given your strong growth in the EU and US in 2022, and inflationary effects of 6%-8%? In real terms, that would mean you don't grow at all. Is that true? No, that's not true. First of all, we've received this question also quite often in relation to our midterm guidance. We'd like to apply a principle where we underpromise but overdeliver. That's the truth. The same time, as said, we see a market and a positioning of Cabka within that market that is set for growth. Also going into 2023, some of the product developments that we've invested in are a solid foundation for that growth. As mentioned, we've also been pushing price increases in relation to inflation. That would come out of the pricing effect, obviously to an extent, depending on where material markets and energy markets may go, that could be offset by also price decreases, so us passing on some of these benefits to our customers. All in all, we do believe we are set for solid growth also going forward. Okay. Good. we go a bit to CapEx. Do you plan to undertake any large expansion CapEx projects in the coming year, in this year, 2023? We discussing 2022, but we are. Sure. Already in 2023. David, we have guided the market in terms of how much we spent on our replacement maintenance CapEx that will stay below the 4%. We invest, yes, we will continue to invest in growth. That's our strategy, it's very simple. The more we see customer demand or we see market growth, that's when we'll invest. We will not invest and then hope and pray that the market will come, we do it on sound fundamentals. If, like we've seen, for instance, the example of Target, there we see a clear demand from our customer, there we invest in additional capacity. It's a very straightforward strategy in continuing to invest in growth. On this CapEx guidance, CapEx was 3.5% of revenues in 2022. Pricing predominantly zero margin cost passed through impacted revenues by approximately 15%. Should we expect the 4% CapEx guidance to be maintained as input cost prices fall? Is that sensible level to assume for 2023? If revenues fall, does CapEx maintenance CapEx fall as well? Well, David, in our guidance, we believe in high single digit growth. We have no reason to assume at this point in time that revenues will fall. We are a very efficient and effective organization, hence if the need is there to be smart on capital expenditure, we will do so. We reiterate our guidance in terms of the spending on replacement and maintenance CapEx, that will stay below the 4%, and at the time, there's no reason to deviate from that guidance. Okay. Clear. Maybe switch to working capital. Question, very simple, very contained. Do you expect that low working capital is sustainable? Well, the guidance have been that we want to stay below the 20% of working capital, and is that sustainable? Yes, I think it is. It is lean, and I think in our industry, it is all about being lean. I think it's also fair to point out that there's two business strategic focuses that we have. One is on our portfolio business, whereby we sell nestable and highly attractive pellets. Then there are the customized solutions. I think it makes sense that you always differentiate between the two when you talk about working capital, and, I think that in the one, it's where we have inventories, which are really tightly aligned to the demand in the marketplace for the base business, the portfolio business, and where you have a inventory level which is tuned to the customized solutions. I think that's, there's no reason for us to deviate in the working capital guidance. We do believe that we've got the right strategy in place, both at inventory levels as we have in trade payables and receivables. As you've seen, we ask our customers to support the investments in those customized solutions, and for the time being, this is working quite well, and I think as an industry, we should always be careful where we spend our money, and frugal spending and work capital is, I think, always a sensible thing to do. Okay. Related to that, with the net working capital, are you still keeping higher safety stock? You said we have quite an increase, I think EUR 11 million in inventory. Do you keep, you tend to keep the higher safety stocks for 2023? Well, high is a relative term. I think they were too low before, with the portfolio that we have, we also will always want to make sure that when our customer needs a product, we can deliver. The most expensive loss is to have if you're not able to sell. In that sense, we will make sure that on the key products, and there the famous 20-80 rule always apply, also applies to our portfolio, that for all the key products, there's always sufficient inventory for our customers. When they order a product, we can deliver on the spot. Yes, we will continue to be efficient and effective so that you always have portfolio churn, so where some products are no longer in demand by the customer because we have simply launched a better solution, and then we will change over to that new product, and then we will stop the old product. In that sense, things will change over time, but working capital, in that sense, is no reason to change there for sure. Okay. Thank you. One on potential acquisitions, M&A. Mm-hmm. Haven't seen a lot so far during the listing. Do you still see opportunities to accelerate growth through acquisitions? Yep. Yeah, in that sense also, nothing has changed. We're still very much in touch with the market, exploring some of these opportunities. Of course, it also needs to be an opportune moment to do so. Last year has been a year where not just the stock listing, but also all of the, yeah, all of these macro dynamics, as I elaborated too, have kept us quite busy. That's the truth. That certainly doesn't mean that acquisitions are not an active part of our strategic agenda. Okay. On the agenda, but nothing to say at the moment. Correct. Okay. Thank you. If you have any other questions, you can still use the Ask a Question button in your screen to submit questions. Going to the next question. The question is, why is Frank Roerink still Interim CFO and not appointed yet? well, it's Not for you, Frank, but. If he wants to answer that question. No, the answer there is very simple. The formal appointment of Frank as our CFO, and therefore also as a member of the managing board, needs to move through the AGM. As we had to move rather quickly, there was some time urgency required with this change. We've chosen for this intermediate solution, let me put it that way. Okay. Clear. We will wait until the AGM. Can you tell us roughly, I think this one's for you, Frank. Sure. By in the meantime. Can you tell us roughly what proportion of your power requirements are effectively fixed by hedging and PPAs in 2023, and are you entirely covered? Our strategy of hedging is not about being covered for a full year. As I said before, we do this on a geographic and on a time basis. We do plan to hedge out the short term. We aim to secure 100% of coverage, and a little bit further out term, we reduce the amount of coverage to make sure that we don't miss out or that we don't lock ourselves in into fixed price points. It's over time, there's a gradual decline of hedging that allows us certain flexibility to follow the marketplace and not being outpriced at all. In the short term, we do cover 100%. Okay. Good, then. Then if I may. Sorry. One additional comment. Okay. I was quick. No, no, because I think one of the key things that people, you probably understand, is that in the summer period, as we give an example, solar delivers more energy than in the winter. The hedging strategy is therefore different in the summer period than it is for the winter because solar is just a bigger component in the summer period. Therefore, it's not only about hedging, it's also looking at the seasonality of the business where you have more solar or wind power de-derived to you. Okay. Now I can say it's clear. Good. Good. The growth driven by price increases. Last year we've seen it, of course. When did you implement the price increases, and do you foresee any carryover positive on impact on the price increases in calendar year 2023? I think you briefly commented on it, but. Yeah. Take us through again. Actually there's been multiple rounds of price increases last year. It started at the very beginning of the year, with the regular inflationary corrections that we that we work into our into our pricing. Then there's been iterations in the course of March, April, June, August, even all the way through September, responding to everything that happened both in the material market as well as in the energy market. As Frank alluded to, we've implemented a very transparent way of communicating the effects with our customers, which I think in the end was appreciated. Obviously, it's hard for any customer to stomach price increases at this at this level. The fact that we've done it in the way that we did it, has definitely helped us to push this through. To the second part of your question, how does that impact 2023? As far as some of these material costs, but also energy costs, let's not forget energy did not move back to the levels where it originally was. Energy was trading prior to 2022, trading anywhere between EUR 35- EUR 50 per MWh. Today, as Frank said, we're hovering around EUR 150. We're still at a threefold. That obviously means that difference is not being passed back because we simply can't, we're incurring these higher costs. We will continue to be transparent. That has helped us in the tough times. I think it's also only fair for our customer base to expect some of this in return if times are a little easier. Okay. Good news for us and for the customers, you would say. Absolutely. If any of the viewers still have a question, you can still submit them. I'll go to the next one. That's for you, Tim, I think. Mm-hmm. It's on the CHEP deal. CHEP was over 2022, quite often in the news stating that they would not move into plastic, and then you announced a deal with CHEP. How comes? Did you change their mind? I like to think that I did. Well, I cannot, and I will not comment on the transaction that CHEP was working on, particularly with Costco in the United States, because that's what this was about. It was a massive transition driven by the demand of Costco. In this case, that's relevant to understand. It was the customer asking CHEP to transition from their standard wooden solution to a plastic solution. CHEP, for various reasons, and it's not to me to elaborate on that, chose not to proceed with this in collaboration with Costco. That being said, CHEP did approach us for a large container. As explained, they specifically chose to work with us because of our expertise with recycling recycled materials. The fact that they didn't go with Costco is certainly not because they're not interested in improving their overall carbon footprint. CHEP very much has a sustainability agenda. That was at the essence of what we were offering. At the same time, the box that we bring is also very innovative. It does bring CHEP various cost benefits, efficiency benefits, and especially the durability, of course, is for a pooling company where the box itself is the asset on which they have to monetize is essential. Okay. This is one of the new large contracts. Yeah. Question is, are there more in the pipeline? Can you elaborate a bit on that? You gave a few examples for CHEP, why they picked for Cabka. Is that also true for these other contracts? Yeah. In the pipeline? This slide where I showed both the economic benefits as well as the superior carbon footprint, those are the two key arguments based on which customers seek us for a new solution. Yes, we have a pipeline of developments. We've also signed other deals last year outside of these three, but maybe not of the size and the magnitude that are worth a separate press release if you like. But we continuously work on making sure that we have a healthy pipeline. The testimony of that is what you saw in the CAPEX. There is around EUR 5 million being spent on tools, part of which is then funded by our customers to bring these new products to market. Yeah, that's of course also what our sales team is working on, finding new opportunities. Okay. Maybe we can combine that last point with a question on the US plant. Yeah. There was quite some explanation on the flooding and the, and the impact of that. Have you made any changes now to the U.S. plant as you're now coming back to the plant that will make further expansion easier in case of strong revenue growth? As I say, never waste a good crisis. We are using this opportunity to build the site back in a better way. The most tangible example is of course looking in the flow of the logistics on site is a good example. Same time, we are also taking the opportunity to replace some of the older equipment which may not be as efficient as the alternatives currently available in the market. We're also upgrading our recycling capabilities in the States, all of which will drive to higher levels of efficiency. With some of the new machines that are coming in, as also shown in the CapEx overview, yeah, we are utilizing the space that we have also to grow. Okay. Clear. I think we are coming to the last question. We spent over an hour in this webcast, and that's about the time we had for it. To end with I think the final question is, and that's on dividends. It was not a record profit last year. Why do you pay dividends? Do you pay dividend? I also heard something about, not about dividend, but about distribution. Strictly speaking, indeed, it is a capital distribution. Why do we remain with the EUR 0.15? The EUR 0.15 have been, I would say, committed to throughout our shareholder circular, but also our midterm guidance. We find it important to stick to this commitment, especially because the fundamentals that we have are stronger than ever. Despite some of the headwind that we've seen, we feel comfortable looking into the future, also reflected in our outlook. We want to stick to that previously communicated commitment. Okay. Thank you, Tim. Thank you, Frank, for answering all the questions. For me, a clear presentation, but maybe I knew a bit before as well. Here we, why we come to the end of this webcast, two technical things. The webcast is already posted on our website. We have a new investor section, investors.cabka.com, where you can easily find it and look back at the webcast. Second, if you close or just before you end, there will be a pop-up with a short survey, where you can rate this webcast and us. Please do so before you leave. With that, I wish you a very good day and looking forward to see or hear you again soon in one of our meetings. Thank you, and have a nice day.