Hello, welcome to the IMCD half year 2025 results conference call. Hosted by Marcus Jordan, CEO, and Hans Kooijmans, CFO. For the first part of this call, all participants will be in listen-only mode, and afterwards, there will be a question- and- answer session. If you wish to ask a question, please press pound five on your telephone keypad. I would now like to give the floor to Marcus Jordan. Mr. Jordan, please go ahead. Thank you very much, Alba. Good morning to you all, and a warm welcome to our 2025 half year result analyst call. I'm Marcus Jordan, and I'm here today with our CFO, Hans Kooijmans, for the 2025 half year results, which we published in a press release earlier this morning. The first half of 2025 was generally characterized by global economic uncertainty and tariff discussions across all regions, which had a significant impact on customer behavior. When looking at our numbers in the first half of 2025, they can be summarized as having a good start to the year, as you saw in the Q1 numbers. After this, we saw demand generally softening in the second quarter. You will find a summary of our financial results on slide four. Gross profit is up to EUR 634 million, + 7% on a constant currency basis. EBITDA is up to EUR 275 million, up 4% on a constant currency basis. Our free cash flow of EUR 173 million was lower compared with the first half of 2024, which was mainly due to higher inventory levels. These higher inventory levels are a result of the ongoing uncertainty in the market, and as I mentioned before, customer demand generally softening during the second quarter. This has resulted in the inventory levels we currently see being too high, and we are actively working to reduce these. Our CFO, Hans Kooijmans, will discuss working capital in more detail later in this call. Moving on to M&A. After mentioning a healthy M&A pipeline in the Q1 call, I'm pleased to share that we announced four acquisitions in the second quarter of this year. These acquisitions were well diversified across all three regions and business groups. To start with, two acquisitions in Spain in the food and nutrition market with Ferrer and Tecom. Our presence in Spain in the food and nutrition ingredients market was previously relatively small, and we're therefore very happy with these two complementary acquisitions. We also announced the acquisition of Apus Química to strengthen our offering to the advanced materials industry in Chile, and the acquisition of Trichem to accelerate our growth in the pharmaceutical market in India. In addition to these M&A announcements, we were pleased to also close the acquisition of Daikin in food and nutraceutical ingredients in China, and Wycam in personal care and pharmaceuticals in Korea. Both were already signed and announced in December 2024. We further exercised the call options to acquire the remaining 30% of Sunrise in China and Mega Setia in Indonesia. Having defined our six strategic growth pillars, which we presented during our Investor Day in Milan last year, I'm pleased to share some highlights of our progress in these areas. We are particularly proud of the further rollout of the sales assistant product recommendation tool to empower our people to easily identify the right solutions for our customers. This tool is now rolled out internally for all business groups and in a couple of our business groups externally via MyIMCD. As is a core strength of IMCD, we also continue to develop new business with a number of supplier wins and expansions during the first half of the year. After successfully developing our APAC region over the last three years, we recently announced the appointment of Andreas Eagle as President EMEA and Head of our Industrial Business Groups. We have created this new position to further drive best practices and growth across the region and industrial markets. To summarize, under challenging and unpredictable macroeconomic market conditions, I am assured by the resilience of our asset-light business model that we have been able to achieve growth during the first half of the year, and thankful to our teams for their hard work and continued focus. Whilst these challenging conditions remain, we are well-positioned for the future through our leading specialty-focused portfolio, diverse geographic and market coverage, and advanced digital and supply chain capabilities. I would now like to hand over to our CFO, Hans Kooijmans, who will give you an update on the numbers. Thanks for the introduction, Marcus, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I would like to start on page eight of the presentation, where you will find a summary of the key figures taken from the first half-year press release that we issued earlier today. As you can see, forex-adjusted revenue increased 6%, which is a combination of 2% organic growth and 4% resulting from the impact of the first-time inclusion of acquisitions. Forex-adjusted gross profit increase was slightly higher than the revenue increase, with 7% compared to the same period of last year. This increase was a combination of 4% as a result of the first-time inclusion of acquisitions and 3% organic growth. As Marcus mentioned, we started the year strong with 6% organic growth in the first quarter, followed by modest organic growth in the second quarter. As mentioned, we saw demand softening in the course of this year due to ongoing tariff discussions and related uncertainty, which had a significant impact on the customer demand. Further, the weakening of currencies like the U.S. dollar did not help and resulted in a negative impact on the absolute amount of revenue and gross margin. All in all, given the general market conditions, we are happy to report organic gross profit growth in this first half of 2025. If you look at the gross profit in percentage of revenue, that's improved by 0.2% point to 25.6%. This increase in the percentage was a combination of product mix, acquisition effects, changes in local market circumstances, and a continuous internal gross margin improvement process. The forex-adjusted operating EBITDA on the next line increased 4%. This increase was a combination of modest organic growth and a positive contribution of acquisitions of close to 4%. Operating EBITDA in percentage of revenue decreased to 11.1% in the first half of 2025. The conversion margin was 43.4%, a decrease of 1.1% point compared to the same period of last year. This decrease in the conversion margin is the result of higher gross profits being a bit more than offset by inflation-driven organic on-cost growth. Talking about cost, on the bottom of the slide, you can see that IMCD employs about 5,300 full-time employees. Compared to the end of June last year, we added 263 new colleagues, which is the result of acquisitions done in the last 12 months. As mentioned in previous calls, we have been and still are very prudent in filling vacancies or adding new people. On the next page, page nine, you will find a bit more color on the year-on-year development of gross profit, EBITDA, and conversion margin per operating segment, whereby the differences, as you can see, are split on organic acquisition and currency impact. EMEA, in the first column, reported 3% forex-adjusted gross profit growth, which was not enough to compensate for the on-cost growth in this segment. As a consequence, operating EBITDA and EBITDA-related ratios all slightly decreased compared to the same period of last year. Market conditions were difficult, and demand was soft across this segment. Despite these challenging conditions, we were able to keep our gross margin percentage in EMEA at 27.5%. This 27.5% is still way above the average of the group. In the Americas, we had a strong first quarter with double-digit organic growth, and then gross profit and EBITDA growth followed by a much softer second quarter. Weakening of the U.S dollar and other currencies in the region, combined with softer demand due to macroeconomic uncertainties, played an important negative role in this second quarter. Organic gross profit growth, combined with strict cost control, resulted in higher EBITDA and conversion margins. In Asia-Pacific, a bit of a similar picture, whereby a solid first quarter was followed by a softer second quarter. Same as in the Americas, weakening of the U.S. dollar and other currencies in the region, combined with softer demand, played an important negative role in this quarter. As a positive, we are happy to report that we were able to further improve gross margin percentage and EBITDA margin in this region. Holding cost in the last column was slightly lower than last year at 0.7% of revenue compared to the 0.8% last year. I mentioned the impact of currencies now a few times, and for a reason. Currencies have been volatile in the second quarter, whereby we see the impact of this volatility on various places in our numbers. As you can imagine, there is a currency impact when translating assets on the balance sheet held in foreign currencies to EURs, and that currency impact is then reported under net finance cost and OCI. I will come back on the finance cost a bit later. There is also an operational impact on revenue and gross profit as a result of a weakening of, for instance, the U.S. dollar. In various countries, it is, as you know, quite common to quote and price your products in dollars and then invoice in local currency. The weakening of the dollar versus the local currency then often leads to a lower absolute amount of gross profit as you get less local currency margin for the same U.S. dollar amount. This impact is, of course, less visible. It's also difficult to put a number on it, but certainly negative and not neglectable in this second quarter. What is more visible is the impact of translating foreign currency results into the EUR. Now, in the first quarter of 2025, this translation impact was neglectable. However, if you look at the second quarter, we lost about 4% of our revenue and EBITDA due to the translation of forex result into the EUR. This currency translation impact means that we lost about EUR 50 million of revenue and EUR 6 million of EBITDA only in the second quarter. Weakening of the U.S. dollar and the Indian rupee during the second quarter were the most important drivers. I assume that you, as an analyst, already made an estimate of our expected currency translation loss and impact on the remainder of this year to update your forecast. I realize that nobody can predict the exchange rates going forward, and neither our EBITDA for the second half of this year. However, to get a feel for a number, I could imagine, and to see that just as an indication of a translation loss for the second half of this year, you could recalculate the second half last year EBITDA at the exchange rates prevailing at the end of June this year. Based on this data, these data points that we gave you, you would arrive at a currency translation impact on our second half-year EBITDA somewhere between EUR 12 million- EUR 15 million negative. This would then come on top of the EUR 6 million already reported in the first half of this year. Currencies more and more play a significant role in this international and volatile environment. On the next page, page 10, a summary of the P&L lines between operating EBITDA and net result for the period. Net result is EUR 11 million or 7% lower compared with the same period of last year, and mainly as a result of higher net finance cost. Before I explain this cost increase, a few general remarks about the other lines: amortization of intangible assets, non-cash cost related to the amortization of supplier relations, distribution rights, and other intangibles. This increase is mainly the result of acquisitions made. There is EUR 7 million of what we in the past called one-off cost, and that could be split more or less 50/50 between acquisition-related cost and one-off adjustments to the organization. On the next page, page 11, a breakdown of the net finance cost. As you can see, changes in deferred considerations and currency exchange results are the main drivers of the reported increase. Overall, interest cost slightly decreased. Currency results are the negative result of translating monetary assets and weakening foreign currencies into the EUR. Further, it includes an IFRS hyperinflation adjustment related to Turkey. There are changes in deferred considerations that relate, on the one end, to a negative fair value adjustment of EUR 12 million for Bloomberg in Chile and ValueTree in India, and a EUR 4 million positive adjustment related to Sunrise in China. On page 12, a high-level summary of the IMCD balance sheet. Property, plant, and equipment, EUR 134 million. It's always a combination of, in this case, EUR 41 million of fixed assets and EUR 93 million of right of use assets, so the stuff that we lease and need to put on the balance sheet. The fixed assets are, of course, still relatively low compared to the size of our business, given the asset-light business model. You see the combination of intangible assets and the related deferred tax liabilities of about EUR 2.4 billion in total. These are the result of acquisitions done since our listing in July 2014 and our history as a private equity-owned company. On the financing side, there is EUR 1.5 billion of debt, and I will come back on that in a minute, and EUR 2 billion of equity. This substantial equity position covers about 56% of our capital employed, as you can see. The next page, a summary of reported working capital, and Marcus already referred to that. Total working capital at the end of June was EUR 963 million compared to EUR 907 million in December last year and EUR 843 million in June last year. The overall increase is a combination of, first of all, the impact of working capital as a result of acquisitions done. There is a bit of tailwind here from the currency impact, and we had some negative, what I would call, operational developments. When translating the absolute amount of working capital in days of revenue, we reported 69 days end of June this year compared to 63 days end of June 2024. This increase is not something to be proud about. When you look at the bottom of this slide, you could see that we improved on the debtor days. That came down from 64 last year, June, to 60 days end of June this year. The other thing you can see is that the main driver of the increase of working capital days is a combination of increased stock days combined with slightly lower creditor days. Most important, the increase in the stock days is partly market-related and partly created by ourselves. When I talk about market-related, I refer to increased stock days as a result of customers delaying their delivery days of already agreed orders. I referred to that already a couple of times in previous calls about the trend that we see more and more customers take the opportunity to get a later delivery date than earlier planned. Another aspect that became more and more important is the increased time that stock is on the water, and that mainly as a result of the situation in the Red Sea area. Also, internally, I think it's fair to say we should have been faster and more alert when buying stock to adapt to changing market conditions. Marcus and myself have taken corrective measures to actively reduce working capital levels, as Marcus indicated, to get back to a bit more normal levels there. On the next slide, a summary of our net debt position, leverage ratios, and maturity profile. As you can see, net debt increased in the first six months by about EUR 260 million- EUR 1.5 billion. This increase is, amongst others, influenced by a dividend payment of EUR 127 million, which we did shortly after the AGM, and considerations paid for acquired businesses of EUR 239 million. The EUR 1.5 billion of debt includes about EUR 1.3 billion of bonds. The leverage ratio end of June, based on IFRS and on our loan documentation, was 2.6x EBITDA, and this level was well below the maximum set in our loan documentation. On the right side of this page, you could see a healthy maturity profile of our debt position. I would like to finish this short summary with a cash flow overview on page 15. Free cash flow was EUR 173 million, a decrease of EUR 48 million compared to the same period of last year. The main driver, as mentioned before, is the increase and the higher working capital investment. This was, as mentioned before, mainly due to higher stock days. The capital expenditure of about EUR 5 million, largely in line with last year's spendings and primarily directed towards IT investments, a bit of office improvement and lab equipment. On page 17, you will find the outlook for this year. I assume everybody has already read the text in the press release, and therefore, I won't repeat it aloud. I would like to hand over back to the operator to open the lines for Q&A. Alba, the floor is yours. Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, we are now ready to take your questions. If you wish to ask a question, please press pound five on your telephone keypad. Our first question comes from Suhasini Varanasi from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Hi. Good morning. Thank you for taking my question. I have two, please. Can you maybe discuss the trends across verticals and by regions, and what exactly slowed materially for you in the second quarter versus the first quarter? Was it industrials, for example, the case segment that was the weakest segment, or was life sciences a little more resilient, for example? How do you see the recent news flow on tariff deals affecting customer decision-making going into the second half of the year? Would the incremental clarity basically help? Thank you. Thank you for the questions. Firstly, on the trends across the various verticals, maybe if we begin from a market segment perspective. If we start with, I would say, the strongest market. Following a soft year last year, the pharmaceutical market for us has shown resilience and growth across both of the quarters, followed by food and nutrition, which, again, we see as being relatively stable. I think if you look at food and nutrition, there are some trends specifically that we see. If you look at things like affordability, which has been a topic already for quite some years across the LATAM and the Asia-Pacific region, we're seeing that focus on affordability, particularly now entering the European and the U.S. market, combined with also a focus on health, especially from a North America and European perspective. With the U.S., of course, a lot of people talk about these GLP-1 type drugs. Looking at the supplements and the nutritionally enhanced products is very important. I think on those topics related to the food and nutrition, we see quite a lot of opportunity also from a formulatory expertise perspective. We're getting a lot of requests there through our labs. If you continue through the life science segment, I would say that the segment which has been the softest for us, following a very strong year last year, is the beauty personal care. What we see there is a lot of consumers trading down. I think that we all hear a lot about the impact of influencers and the contract manufacturers, and basically the big hit that's being seen from a premium beauty perspective. I think, again, positively for us, these influencers and the contract manufacturers, they're more reliant on external parties such as IMCD to help them from a formulatory perspective. As with all of these reformulations, it does take time. Moving on to the industrial segments, I think in general it can be characterized by generally having soft demand during the second quarter. If you look at things like the coatings and construction, particularly from a domestic perspective, things like the plastics industry, I think we all read about the automotive industry struggling, flexible packaging down. There are some bright spots. I think that if you look again at that plastics market, things like the medical market continue to be quite robust, as does the wire and cable. I think as technology and IT demands continue to grow, hopefully that gives you a good impression from a, let's say, a market perspective. I think if we then look from a geographical perspective, if we start with the Americas, where we saw, I would say, a very nice strong start to the year in Q1. Although it is important to note that the comparison, the comp for Q1 versus Q2, Q1 was a much easier comp. We did see a bit of a softness and slowdown across the region, I think for the reasons that Hans mentioned, related to obviously the ongoing general market uncertainty. That word uncertainty, we hear a lot from customers where they're basically, I think, really nervous to kind of forecast for the future, make any kind of commitments, particularly from their own perspective, looking at investments. That uncertainty we saw across the whole region, driven by tariffs, and of course, currency also having quite an impact. In Europe, similarly as APAC, all three regions, uncertainty. Europe, we saw quite a mixed bag. We saw some countries performing quite well and others performing quite soft. I think that really plays to the diversity that we have as a company, where we're not heavily reliant on a particular country or market. Moving to APAC, I would say the standouts there was, I would say, you know, better than expected performance outside of beauty personal care in China. India, whilst remaining a very interesting and important country for us, a little bit of growth slowed down. As Hans mentioned, it impacted there from a currency perspective. Does that answer your question? Yes, that's very clear. Thank you. Yes, it is very helpful. Thank you. If you think about the forward-looking, going into the second half, now that we've seen some news flow around tariff deals, have you seen any improvement on clarity, certainty from your customers? Thank you. I think it's a little bit early yet to really comment on that. Again, coming back to my earlier comment, when we speak to customers, the biggest concern has been uncertainty, particularly around tariffs. We've seen, obviously, particularly over the last few days, hopefully some certainty coming in. Let's hope and be positive that that will have a positive impact. I think a little bit early for us to be specific yet. Understand. Thank you very much. The next question comes from Anneliese Vermeulen, Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Good morning, Marcus. Good morning, Hans. I have two questions, please. Firstly, I think when we've spoken earlier in the year, we've talked about pricing largely stabilizing, partly on that, you know, volume starting to come back and showing some resilience. Given the weaker volumes you've seen through Q2, and so far, it seems a relatively volatile earnings season on the supplier side, could you comment on pricing through Q2 and into Q3 if you've seen any material pricing deterioration so far? Secondly, given again that weaker growth and operating profit through Q2, I appreciate the volume piece is difficult to predict, but perhaps you could comment on the cost base. Are you planning any adjustments for the second half in case of that volume weakness persisting? Thank you. No, great. Thank you, Anneliese. I would say from a pricing perspective, I'm quite positive here in that we see more general market type of conditions returning, where it really depends on a product-by-product basis. We see some products having price increases, and then some products also more on the semi-specialty, semi-commodity side having more pricing pressure. As you know, we're roughly 85% specialty, so we're not so impacted on that pricing pressure side. I think in general, we're seeing more normal pricing market conditions, I would say, in play. From a cost-based perspective, as Hans mentioned, we're being very prudent and careful on replacement of people when they retire and looking at things like exhibition costs, travel costs, etc. I think in general, across the business, really raising that awareness of cost consciousness. I think it's also important that we continue to invest. If you look at the digitalization and the IT investments that we make, for example, of which I mentioned things like the sales assistant product recommendation tool in my pre-speech, we believe that these are real differentiators. We believe it's important that being able to offer that true omnichannel way of working with the customer base and with our principals, it really brings the stickiness. We believe that it's a differentiator and something that's very important for our long-term growth. We do have the lever, of course, from a bonus perspective. That is something that we can continue to look at and to evaluate on a country-by-country basis. Very clear. Thank you. The next question comes from David Kersten from Jefferies. Please go ahead. Good morning, gentlemen. I have two questions, please. First of all, you highlighted the momentum in Asia-Pacific turned in the second quarter, maybe partly against a tougher comparison, but also relatively weaker than the other regions. Is that in line with what you're seeing in the overall market? Are you also seeing increasing competition increasingly from local Chinese distributors? The second question is related to the M&A spend. Hans, you highlighted EUR 239 million in the first half. That looks relatively high in relation to the acquired revenues of EUR 200 million. You also highlighted the exercise of the call options for Mega Setia and Sunrise. Can you quantify that effect? What would the multiple be excluding those call options? Thanks very much. Perhaps, David, I should first take the second one. Marcus is digesting the first one because I'm not sure if we understand the question totally. If you look at the call option that we exercised for the two acquisitions that we did, basically, this was already a debt position in my net debt schedule, a short-term debt, and we more or less paid for it. Coming back on your question for the multiples that we paid, basically always in the range that we shared with you before, somewhere between 7x and 11x EBITDA, no specific uptake or outlier. I think the only thing that we mentioned when issuing a press release is that we don't disclose the profit level of the companies that we buy. We often say to you that if there is no news in the press release about specifics on the financial side, you should assume somewhere between 8% and 10% EBITDA margin. We only made an exception there when we announced the Trichem acquisition in India that we said the revenue was EUR 16 million and about 1/3 of that revenue is commission income. That indicates that there is a profit level that is much higher than, on average, 8%- 10% of EBITDA. A bit of a long answer, perhaps still vague, but nothing special on the multiples. David, related to your question, when I was speaking about the easier comp, I was speaking about the Americas region. I think related to your question in terms of do we see increasing competition from China, China, of course, has always been, I would say, a fierce competitor. I think what the tariffs have done in some cases is changed maybe the location that we're seeing that competition. In some of the more remote countries, such as Brazil, as an example, I would say, again, more on the semi-specialty, semi-commodity products, we are seeing more Chinese competition. Our portfolio largely is protected again through that specialty focus and that need for the reformulatory approval, so it's not that products can be easily interchanged. Does that answer your question? Yeah, just maybe one quick follow-up on the EUR 239 million. To be totally clear, that's excluding the call options for the increased stake that you exercised in. No, include. Sorry, David. Because the amount was limited. To be brutally honest, I don't know the exact amount out of the top of my head, but it was part of the short-term deferred consideration net debt position at the end of last year. I don't want to guess a number in the call. I have a number in mind, but I'm not sure if that is the total number of the two. All right. Understood. Thank you very much, gentlemen. Thank you. The next question comes from Carl Raynsford from Berenberg. Please go ahead. Yeah, morning, Hans. Morning, Marcus. Three from me, if I may. The first one, just listening to your comments on stock days and delivery delays, does this suggest that those delayed orders are delayed rather than canceled, and therefore, you'll see the benefit in later quarters on the revenue side? If that is the case, is that a material impact? Do you view growth as lumpy throughout the year in terms of quarter by quarter? The second, just to go back to APAC again, if I can, please, but maybe you could clarify the sort of weaker and stronger end markets there in Q2 that were hit by customer demand. I guess I'm just trying to tie together the sort of negative organic gross profit level and the strong pharma growth you've alluded to. Lastly, in the Americas, just really sort of high level that if you can point to or give any color on the performance of Latin America and the U.S. as part of that larger region would be very helpful. Thank you. Yeah, Carl, your first question about the impact on stocks for customers delaying the delivery date of the order. We talk about committed orders by customers. We always give customers the flexibility to either break an order in two or to basically change the agreed delivery date. What we see in a period of uncertainty is that customers more and more use that opportunity. In very more and more frequent cases, I have to say, people then just delay one or two days or two weeks even their delivery dates. You can imagine we are the one carrying the stock for these customers, and that has an impact on the absolute amount of stock that we carry on the balance sheet. It's stock where we don't run an economic risk, and we only need to finance it. If you have customers that do that on a frequent basis, of course, when you set your prices to customers, you price that in. We hope to get paid for that. We hope also that it helps to build that healthy and strong customer intimacy and relationship with that customer to offer them that flexibility. Every now and then, for me, as a finance guy, it's annoying that it happens. Carl, related to your questions related to APAC and the Americas, maybe if we begin with the Americas, I don't want to go specifically into individual countries, but I think it's fair to say that you know, you can imagine that with the tariffs, the U.S. and Canada, I would say, were particularly hit with consumers not knowing what the pricing of their products were going to be pretty much the next day or next week. I would say that those comments around consumer confidence are particularly applicable to the U.S. and Canada. Latin America, it was pretty much a mixture there where we saw some countries performing well during the second quarter, but quite some softness in Brazil as an example. Again, nothing really specific to note there. With APAC related to the gross margin percentage, again, nothing specific to particularly note, more related to product mix. You mentioned there the pharmaceutical market, but also I did mention beauty personal care as an example being quite soft. You could imagine that the gross profit percentage of beauty personal care could be quite high. That's very helpful. Thank you very much. Yeah, perfect. Thanks, Marcus. Thanks, Hans. The next question comes from Luuk Van Beek from Deg roof Petercam. Please go ahead. Yes. Good morning. I have a question about the cost versus the revenues on an organic basis. If you look at Q2, then revenues were organically flat while the operational EBITDA declined. I was wondering, cost growth organically, and despite flat revenues, was that due to, say, seasonal fluctuations or any temporary effects? Are you seeing in general that it's quite difficult to offset the cost inflation with the rising revenues and gross margins? Yeah, Luuk, what you see in our cost structure, it's mainly people. That is the sales infrastructure that we have and the related support people. As mentioned by Marcus, we have been pretty consistent in being careful filling vacancies there, but we need to keep the sales structure in place. What you then see is that if you have a salesforce, basically what I could say is that we have a salesforce that could do more at the moment than what they did in the second quarter. You see inflation coming in. You have your annual salary increases and these types of things. To cover these costs that will stay there during the year, you need to grow your top line and you need to grow your margin. In a quarter where you have not sufficient organic growth, you see a decrease on your ratios. Let's hope that the second, that the third, and the fourth quarter that we will see organic growth again to compensate for these costs there. There is a bit of flexibility, as Marcus indicated, on the bonus lines that could kick in in the second half of the year. Let's see how that develops. I hope we need the full bonus amount that people make the target. I think, Luuk, just to add, if you look at the consolidation of the industry in general and the trends that we see with suppliers, we're very focused on long-term growth and really making sure that we've got the right organization in place, not only for today but to attract suppliers for the future. It is a balance that we really take very seriously from a cost control perspective, but also not looking specifically at it quarter by quarter. What do we need for that long-term growth and, again, attraction that suppliers want to work with us going forward? Okay, thank you. The next question comes from Eric Wilmer from Van Lanschot Kempen. Please go ahead. Good morning. Morning, Hans and Marcus. I've got a few questions. One of the bigger recent acquisitions you've done has been Spanish Ferrer Alimentación. I think judging from the portfolio, this primarily appears to be a dairy-based business, which does not appear to be a core area of your expertise. Could you perhaps highlight your rationale for this deal besides growing in Spain and perhaps your future margin profile in the region? What are your expectations for M&A in H2, especially given somewhat depressed valuations at the moment? Maybe lastly, to what extent are you sensing perhaps unsustainable underinvestment by your industrial customers? Is it really soft demand that's primarily driving? Yeah, that's primarily driven by weak overall end consumer demand. To what extent is it the consumer or perhaps unsustainable underinvestment by your customers? Thank you. Good morning, Eric. Thank you very much for the questions. Beginning with Ferrer Alimentación, I think that we were particularly happy with the acquisition of Ferrer Alimentación because, in general, our food ingredients and nutrition business in Spain was quite small. You're quite right. Dairy on a global basis for us is not one of our larger, let's say, line of business twos or subsegments within the food ingredients and nutrition space. At the same time, we find it a very interesting submarket. I think this was a good example of an acquisition where we achieved a couple of main objectives. The first one was really strengthening our team in Spain, giving us a very solid footprint to be able to then organically accelerate, grow in the food ingredients and nutrition space there. Also, from a global perspective, learning from Ferrer what they do from a dairy perspective, being able to understand that, and then hopefully cross-fertilize that knowledge base much broader. Ferrer for us, which also don't be misjudged by what you may see on their product portfolio, there's a lot of specialties within that product portfolio, which we'd be very excited to expand further from a geographical perspective. Looking at H2 from an acquisition perspective, the pipeline that we have remains healthy. I would say, in general, we're as active as we've ever been, certainly in terms of speaking with potential sellers, building those relationships for the long term. It is fair to say that in some cases, those discussions are taking longer because the valuation, as you can imagine, from our side, is a bit more difficult. As you have seen, we have been using earnout structures more and more, which we feel protects us, but also gives the seller the incentive still to potentially sell. Hopefully, when the business then increases, they get the upside. In general, the pipeline remains healthy. In terms of the industrial underinvestment versus demand, I think that it's really difficult to say at this stage because, again, speaking to various customers, it's just been such an uncertain period because of the tariffs that people have been nervous to invest. I think that we read that a lot in the press. Hopefully, as we spoke about earlier in the call, as tariffs become much clearer, more solidified, we'll get better visibility in terms of what investments will be made where. That's very helpful. Thanks, Mark. Thank you. The next question comes from Chetan Udeshi from JP Morgan. Please go ahead. Yeah, hi. Thanks for taking my questions. Marcus and Hans, this is a bit more a strategic question, which is not just relevant for IMCD, but also some of your peers. I think, if I look at your earnings development, we've seen earnings organic EBITDA decline last year. We saw organic EBITDA decline the year before, so 2023, 2024. It looks like, given what you've shown us in Q2, perhaps this could be a year of another year of decline in earnings, perhaps. I'm just curious, do you think the structural trends in this industry have changed? Because I suppose when you're spending so much OpEx, so much money on OpEx growth organically, your aim is to grow the business through the cycle, not just when things are booming, but also when things aren't great. That should be the aim. We don't seem to be seeing that, at least not in the last three years, consistently. I'm just curious if you think industry structure has changed. You alluded to more competition from China in some pockets of your business. If that is that structural change, how are you evolving your business in that respect? Good morning, Chetan. Thank you for the question. No, I certainly don't see, in general, that the industry structure has changed significantly. If you look at the distribution landscape in general, there continues to be the consolidation. I think maybe even more importantly, the consolidation from a supplier perspective, whereby, you know, both from a percentage of business that they're outsourcing typically is increasing, but also wanting to work with the larger players such as IMCD and moving away from, let's say, the small family-run businesses because they can't keep up with the digitalization topics, the sustainability topics, etc. I don't see a big structural change. I think that the momentum is still very much with us. Of course, you're quite right in terms of the decline 2023, 2024. Let's hope that's not the case in 2025. When you look at the reasons before that, it's been very different reasons, and I would say exceptional reasons. Let's hope that we don't continue to have exceptional circumstances. I think the business model very much remains robust and in place. I think the trends, which we've seen for many years, continue to build. I think that we're very well-positioned for the future. We just need, I would say, more generally stable macroeconomic conditions. Thank you. Does that answer your question? Yes. Thank you. Our last question comes from Nicole Manion from UBS. Please go ahead. Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Just one follow-up, please, on the cost base. I know that you've obviously been clear that you remain very careful around the headcount piece. I just wondered if you can give us any sense of how your own voluntary attrition has been evolving year to date, just given the wider backdrop. Thank you. It's very difficult to predict retirements when people want to leave us, unfortunately. As I said, this is something that we look at very carefully. I would say that we take every opportunity that we can, and something that we, as we move forward, will continue to pay particular attention to. We're aware of the importance of the cost base, being prudent there. Again, balancing that with also, as I mentioned before, making sure that we're really well-positioned for the long-term future and not just on a quarter-by-quarter base. Nicole and Hans, we don't believe in what I would call crash measures now to stop investing in the digital infrastructure for the sake of showing a nice cost reduction short- term. In the end of the day, this is really the license for our future operations. We need to put that omnichannel in the market. I think we are pretty advanced, very successful. You might have seen what we showed in Milan as this is what is in the pipeline. It's now up and running. We open up now in certain market segments already also for customers. We get quite some positive feedback there. We all hope that will translate in increased cross-selling ratios, so that we sell more products to the same customer and that the organic growth comes back quicker than the market growth. We need to keep developing here. That's very good. Does that answer your question, Nicole? Yep. Yeah, it did. Thanks. Thank you. It seems that we have one last question from Anil Shenoy from Barclays. Please go ahead. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my questions. Just one, please. I know you don't like to comment on the monthly trends in your business, but I was wondering, and this is because many of the industrial companies have been talking about a really weak June. Have you seen a slowdown, especially in June, or has it been like the slowdown in Q2 has been consistent throughout April, May, and June? The reason I'm asking this is obviously because if there was a slowdown specifically in June, and if it continues in H2, then that would probably imply that H2, there's a possibility that H2 could be weaker than Q2. Any color on the monthly trends would be really helpful. Thank you. Thank you for the question, Anil. If we look at the Q2 performance, we saw pretty fairly steady performance on a month-by-month basis throughout the second quarter. I think to give you a bit of comfort there, we didn't see a dramatic decline in June. It was very consistent between the three months. Great, thank you. That's really comforting. Thank you. Thank you. With that, I would now like to turn the call back over to Mr. Jordan for any closing remarks. Thank you all very much for joining our call this morning and for the questions. On behalf of Hans and I, we'd like to wish you a good remainder of the day. Thank you all.