Hello. Welcome to the IMCD's First three months 2026 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 key 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, you all and a warm welcome. I'm Marcus Jordan, and I'm here today with our CFO, Hans Kooijmans, for the first three months 2026 results, which we published in a press release earlier this morning. I'm going to keep my opening brief to allow sufficient time for Q&A as we have our AGM immediately after this meeting, and so have a hard stop at 10:00 A.M. Our first quarter of 2026 delivered solid results against a strong Q1 2025 comparable, and I'm happy to report an increase in free cash flow and a robust cash conversion margin. During the previous full year call, we referred to positive conversations with our suppliers and customers regarding the demand outlook and green shoots potentially coming our way. Since that full year call, a lot has happened as there have been some reversals in tariffs following the court ruling that deemed the tariffs illegal, an introduction of other tariffs, the conflict in the Middle East, which has created further uncertainty and quite some changes in the market dynamics. Focusing on the Middle East, since the conflict began, we have seen a significant amount of price increases, which can be broken down into two categories. Firstly, the direct impact of fuel increases on transportation costs, secondly, an increase in the cost of the product itself as the cost of the raw materials and energy costs needed in the manufacturing processes of both risen. As we have done in the past, we are able to quickly identify and pass on any of the increases we receive. With the large number of increases we have and are receiving, the situation is quite often compared to what we saw post-COVID, I think important to highlight that those post-COVID increases were primarily driven by pent-up demand, which is not necessarily the case now. During the first quarter, we didn't observe significant pre-buying. We do see some indications of this as we enter the second quarter. The increase we see is, however, relatively modest as we believe our customers learnt some lessons from the post-COVID years in which they pre-bought too much inventory at a high price. The key question going forward is how will the conflict impact end consumer confidence and thus demand, which ultimately is the biggest driver of our business. We are therefore cautious in the outlook. Moving on to the first three months of 2026 numbers, you will find a summary of our financial results on slide four. We reported gross profit of EUR 312 million, up 1% on a constant currency basis. EBITA was lower than last year at EUR 130 million, whereby our lower cost in the first three months of 2026 could not fully compensate for the decline in reported gross profit. I'm happy to report that we increased our free cash flow to EUR 121 million, leading to a cash conversion margin of almost 91%. If we now look at M&A, we completed two acquisitions in the first three months of this year. Firstly, Dong Yang FT in South Korea, a company active in beauty and personal care with 14 people and EUR 34 million in revenue. This is our second beauty and personal care acquisition in South Korea within a year. It further strengthens our position in one of the most innovative and largest beauty and personal care markets in the world. The second acquisition was Willows Ingredients in the U.K. and Ireland, a company active in food and nutrition with 26 people and EUR 30 million in revenue. This is an exciting acquisition as it strengthens our capabilities in specialized health, sports, and animal nutrition. To end my part of the introduction, in these unpredictable times, it is critical to remain a reliable partner for both customers and suppliers and to ensure that we quickly adapt to changing market conditions. We remain focused on the things that we can control to deliver long-term growth to our partners and stakeholders in the years ahead. 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'm happy to give you a short summary of IMCD's first quarter trading update. I'll start on page 6 of the analyst call presentation. Marcus already referred to challenging market conditions and comps of last year. As explained during our 2025 full year analyst call in February, these challenging conditions coincided with significant currency headwinds. As shown on this slide, the negative translation impact of foreign exchange is reflected in a notable difference between reported and Forex-adjusted figures. You may also recall that when comparing Q1 this year with Q1 last year, the weakening, particularly of the U.S. dollar, had an adverse effect on sales values across several regions. Given these conditions, we are certainly not satisfied with the reported outcome. However, it represents a solid start to the year. As you can see, Forex-adjusted revenue increased 6% and gross profit increased 1% in the first quarter of this year. This gross profit increase was a combination of 4% organic decline and 5% as a result of the first time inclusion of companies acquired in 2025 and 2026. The gross margin percentage in the first quarter is 24.6%, and as you can see, it's 1.2% below Q1 last year. About half of this decrease in percentage is the result of recently acquired companies with on average lower gross profit margins. This first quarter gross margin percentage, the 24.6%, is slightly higher than the 24.2% reported in the second half of last year. This increase in% compared to the second half of last year was a combination of changes in product mix, changes in local market circumstances, but also internal gross margin improvement initiatives that helped to further increase the margin%. Forex adjusted operating EBITDA that decreased 2% to EUR 130 million, and the operating EBITDA margin decreased to 10.2%, and the conversion margin dropped to 41.6%. Lower organic own costs in the first three months of 2026 could not fully compensate for the decline in reported gross profit. When talking about own cost reduction, you could see on the bottom of this slide that we increased the number of people with 112 employees, an increase of 2%. This increase is the result of acquisitions. As anticipated by Marcus and myself on previous calls, on a like-for-like basis, we slightly reduced the number of employees compared to last year. Forex-adjusted net result decreased 3% to EUR 63 million, and later I will come back on free cash flow, which is really healthy for a first quarter. Q1 cash earnings per share is EUR 1.46, a reported decrease of 6% compared to last year. When normalizing for Forex impact, the cash earnings per share would have been similar to last year. The next slide seven, you will find a few key figures from P&L per operating segments, and as usual, with a focus on gross margin and EBITDA development. I already mentioned the currency headwind, and as you can read from this slide, the negative translation impact is most significant in the Americas and APAC. EMEA is the only operating segment reporting modest gross profit and EBITDA growth. The gross margin in EMEA decreased by 0.9% to 26.6%. When it would normalize for the impact of the recent acquisitions in EMEA, the gross margin percentage would have been slightly higher than the first three months of 2025. Organic own costs in EMEA were slightly lower than last year in Q1, and the small organic decrease in EBITDA in EMEA was as a consequence, the result of differences on other P&L lines, like doubtful debt provisions, other operating income, and slightly higher third-party costs. As a consequence, EBITDA-related ratios all slightly decreased compared to the same period of last year. In the Americas, there we report a substantial negative organic growth on gross profit and EBITDA. It's among others, a combination of the more industrial and volatile business mix and a very strong Q1 in 2025. You might remember last year, Marcus and myself had to explain how we could grow our EBITDA in the Americas more than 20% organically. I'm a bit afraid that you will ask us now to explain the 20+% decrease during the Q&A. You can imagine that I prefer to explain a double-digit growth here, but unfortunately, that's not the case so far. The Asia-Pacific in the third column, where you can read that the positive impact of acquisitions is more than wiped away by negative currency impact. Organic EBITDA growth profits were more or less stable compared to last year. In the last column, you will find under holding companies, all non-operating companies, including the head office in Rotterdam. In Q1, we spent 0.6% of revenue on holding costs compared to 0.8% last year. On page eight, a summary of IMCD's free cash flow. As mentioned before, free cash flow in Q1 was EUR 19 million better than last year. When taking into account the typical working capital cycle during the year, a Q1 cash conversion ratio above 90% could be considered very healthy. The decrease of adjusted operating EBITDA of EUR 11 million was more than compensated by lower working capital investment. CapEx of EUR 1 million was slightly lower compared to last year. Page nine, a short update on net debt and leverage. Reported leverage ratios and leverage ratios based on the definitions in the loan documentation were similar to 2025 year-end numbers at 2.8x and 2.7x LTM EBITDA. Last but not least, on page 11 you will find our outlook, and I assume you already read it yourself when reading our press release. In summary, what Marcus also mentioned, we are positive but cautious. Far, the short summary of our financials, and Marcus and myself are happy to answer your questions. Back to Bart Jan. Ladies and gentlemen, we are now ready to take your questions. If you wish to ask a question, please press pound key 5 on your telephone keypad. Our first question comes from Anil Shenoy from Barclays. Anil, go ahead. Hi, good morning, Marcus. Good morning, Hans. Thank you for taking my questions. Just the two from me, please. The first one is, if you could give us some color on the outlook for Q2. The reason I'm asking this is one of your competitors mentioned last week that they've started seeing supply chain disruptions in the system, and they expect this to benefit their financials in Q2, and it did not benefit in Q1. They also said that they've not seen the benefit yet, but they expect it to come sometime later in Q2, and probably the full impact will be seen in Q3. Do you kind of agree with this, or are you seeing something similar? If you could comment on that, please. That's my first question. Second question, on a related note, even without a supply chain disruptions, many of the European producers have increased prices for their chemicals, BASF being the latest one. They just mentioned in the call about an hour ago that they've increased prices and they expect this again to hit their financials in Q2. Even without the disruptions and just these price increases, I would expect IMCD and Azelis to benefit because, you know, because of the opacity in the pricing model. Would that be right? If, if not, you could give some color around that. Thank you. Good morning, Anil, and thank you very much indeed for the questions. As you can imagine, we're not gonna give too much detail on, let's say, the Q2 outlook as a whole. What I can say is that we've seen a solid start to the quarter. I think if you look at supply chain disruptions, whether it be IMCD or one of our competitors, supply chain disruptions are really one of the skill sets that we have. You know, as a distribution company, we're agile, we're fast-acting. We've, of course, got the inventory, in stock on a local basis. You know that we're very used to now this just-in-time delivery and being the partner of choice, whether it be to both the customer or the supplier. Whilst the Middle East crisis is, of course, terrible, the market disruption, I would say, is something that if anything, as a business, fits into the wheelhouse that we have. Really then, as I said before, really focused on the things that we can control. Yeah, you know, I think that the teams are very busy. That kind of leads then onto to the second point in terms of absolutely we can confirm the very high level of number, and some cases, the absolute amount of the price increases that we've received. This kind of started, to be honest with you, relatively slow, because quite particularly the European manufacturers, they'd spent a lot of time and effort either maintaining or growing their market share over the last one to two years. When the Middle East crisis started and it was thought to be short-term, quite some suppliers were holding back on the increases, even though they themselves might have, might have been incurring additional cost. As the crisis has then continued in time, we have seen the number and level of those increases increase quite significantly. I think it's fair to say that it's more, I would say the exception than the rule to have not received a price increase. If I was to break it down into the regions, I would say it's at a lower level from a North America perspective than the other two regions. Yes. Thank you for that. Just a quick follow-up. I mean, can you confirm that these price increases are beneficial for IMCD? I think that you've seen in the past that when there's pricing volatility, as a distributor for a variety of reasons, we typically perform well. It's of course always a balance with making sure that we continue to be, as I said, that long-term partner with both the customers and suppliers. Yeah, it's really a case-by-case basis. Yeah, wherever possible, we try to take the advantage. Yeah. Thanks a lot, Marcus. That's very helpful. Thank you. The next question comes from Annelies Vermeulen from Morgan Stanley. Annelies, go ahead. Hi. Good morning, Marcus. Morning, Hans. Two questions, please. Just firstly, a quick follow-up on those price increases. Can you quantify how substantial they are? Are we talking 5%, 10%, 15%, or is this 30%, 40%, 50%? I appreciate it will vary enormously by product type and probably end market, so any kind of range would be useful. Secondly, also on the supply chains, are you seeing any supply issues or shortages as yet? Any products that you're already seeing some pressure? Is it fair to say that you expect to see more shortages through Q2? Thank you. Annelies, the first question is very difficult to answer because as you say, it's really very much product specific, and I think that you can read in the press from many of our suppliers the levels of the increases that are being made, and it does range extremely broadly, mentioning pretty much all of the numbers that you just said. On the supply chain issues and shortages, we haven't yet experienced shortages. It's fair to say that the volume of the narrative around potential shortages is beginning to increase. I think important to reiterate that even some of the very base chemicals, and we all hear about methanol as an example, which is a pure commodity, which of course we're not involved with. Methanol being a solvent is very short, particularly within the Asia Pacific region. A base solvent such as that goes into the manufacture of a lot of specialty products. Whilst we were in in-cosmetics Global the week before last, some of our Asia Pacific suppliers beginning to talk about methanol shortages, and maybe there being an impact in the future on their ability to manufacture their specialties. I think at the moment, it's a case of we don't see it, but people are becoming more concerned as the conflict continues. Okay. Thank you. The next question comes from Suhasini Varanasi from Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. Suhasini, go ahead. Hi. Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. My first one is on the organic GP declines of -4% that you reported in the quarter. Can you help us understand maybe how the declines evolved over the course of the quarter? Was March maybe better than January, February? If it was, then which geographies or verticals did you see the most material change? I appreciate that you don't give any guidance on 2Q per se, but is there any color that you can give on whether organic GP inflected to positive territory yet in 2Q? My last one is on working capital investments. Given all of these concerns around product shortages, do you anticipate higher requirements on working capital inventory, perhaps, just to make sure you can navigate the next few quarters effectively? Thank you. Thank you for your questions. The breakdown over the first quarter, I mean, as you know, we don't give a lot of breakdown month by month. I think it's fair to say that we had a softer than expected start to the year, particularly that we had quite a soft end to 2025. Then, you know, a nice increase as we went through the quarter. The Q2 outlook, I think that I've said as much as I really want to say there. On the working capital levels, it's really a case of making sure that we've got the right inventory in place to be able to fulfill the customer's demands. As you can imagine, the forecasting from the customers is very short term or in some cases invisible. It's working very closely together with those customers to try and make sure that we've got the right inventory in place. Also working with the suppliers to make sure that we don't also over-order product from them that then creates the shortage for the future. It's very much about communication, and again, being agile and fast acting on everything that we do from a supply chain perspective. I think, Hans, we're pretty comfortable with the working capital. Yeah. Suhasini, I really hope to report much higher working capital at the end of Q2, driven by much higher debtor positions because of higher sales. That is, of course, the ideal scenario. I'm happy to report a higher working capital position. If I look at the end of Q1, we never disclosed the specific numbers on working capital positions, but it's fair to say that our stock days were similar to what we reported at year-end. The little bit increase that we saw was related to increased debtor positions because of stronger sales in March. I hope that that continues going forward. I'm happy to report a bit more working capital due to higher debtors. Not because of higher debtor days, but because of more sales. Understood. Thank you. Our next question comes from Matthew Yates from Bank of America Corporation. Matthew, go ahead. Hey, good morning, everyone. Hans, I actually wanted to follow up on that working capital comment because we don't have the balance sheet, I was gonna ask you about the breakdown. Firstly, a little bit counterintuitive that your free cash flow is very good despite working capital days being up by three year-on-year. Any other moving parts that would explain that? Secondly, in terms of that working capital, if you've seen better momentum through the quarter and order intake, as you've suggested on the receivables, why has that not come through in the inventory position yet? Were you, I don't know, trying to clean up older stock, and that's maybe offset some of the extra buffer that you may have been securing supply or to fill orders? Thank you. Yeah, Matthew, as you know, we typically report a full balance sheet twice a year, and we see the Q1 and Q3 really as a trading update to give you a feel where we are. If I look at working capital days, well, I already mentioned stock days are more or less flat. We are very cautious in handling our stock, as Marcus already mentioned. What we see at the moment that there is supply chain issues, that we also can more quickly turn stocks, right? Could quickly get it out of the warehouses again. If we look at the days that we would have reported and will report, mid-June, or sorry, in on the base of our half year figures, I don't expect material changes there. I come back on the point that I made previously, I hope to report a higher debtor position because of higher sales with similar debtor days. We don't see collection issues or these type of things. It's just in the ordinary course of business. The other thing you need to realize is that a working capital position at a month end or a quarter end is just a snapshot of a certain moment in time. Not paying a creditor just before or just after a quarter end could have an impact on these type of days. Got it. If I can ask a follow-up, Hans. If we think about the sort of prior supply chain cycle coming out of COVID when we had a lot of price inflation in the industry, to what extent does something like inventory revaluation have a meaningful impact on numbers very short term? Yeah. We are not in the business to take speculative stock positions whereby we bet on future price increases. We base our order pattern on often confirmed demand by our customers. As a consequence, at the moment that we then fix prices with customers, we also try to fix that with suppliers. Where we could benefit a bit is where we have old stock in the warehouse that we can sell off. Old stock bought at a lower price and now sell it off at a slightly higher price. That is, in most cases, immaterial compared to the total margin that we generate. I think you could see this more in the more commodity businesses where people really take a position and start now betting on shortages in methanol, as an example, take a position and then hope to sell it at a higher price. That's not the business that we are in. Okay. Thank you both. The next question comes from David Kerstens from Jefferies. David, go ahead. Yes. Good morning, gentlemen. Thank you for taking my questions. I wanted to focus on the return to growth in the Asia Pacific region with 3.5% organic revenue growth. The first question is, are you already seeing any relief from fading competition from Chinese suppliers in semi-specialties in Southeast Asia and maybe also in Brazil? Secondly, I think you talked about the reversal of some of the tariffs. Have you already seen any signs of an improving performance in India? I remember Signet was quite hard hit by tariffs in the third quarter of last year, also impacting gross margins. Do you see any improvement in that situation already? Thank you very much. Good morning, David. Firstly, related to India, and the Signet business. Yeah, I mean, as we mentioned it in the full year call, we anticipated kind of the more normal ordering pattern to return during the first quarter, and I can confirm that that was the case. Tariffs in general, I mean, I think that it's become a bit more of a muted point because of the Middle East conflict, but of course, that is still, I would say, to a certain extent, a concern in the background, because there is uncertainty, not only in terms of the original tariffs that were imposed and, you know, are there rebates now given, but also the new tariffs that were then superimposed, and when those end. I think those tariff discussions, we shouldn't underestimate that there is still some impact there. In terms of the APAC question and potentially, I think your wording was failing China, it is fair to say that we have seen restrictions and hear more of restrictions of exports out of China for particular product groups. We have seen in countries like Brazil and Southeast Asia, certainly more requests coming through, you know, the beginning of the second quarter, more requests from customers for, let's say, more of a local to local supply. I wouldn't say that there was an impact in the first quarter, but again, the narrative is beginning to build in terms of availability issues out of China, and that could also benefit us potentially. Great. Sounds good. Thank you very much. Our next question comes from David Symonds from BNP Paribas. David, go ahead. Thank you. Appreciate your comments on April and what you can say there and the comparison to the post-COVID period. I guess the post-COVID period was split into 2021, where you had very strong demand, and 2022 when we had Russia, Ukraine, an energy price shock and a kind of gradual decline of demand through the year. Just trying to kind of get us an idea of the scale of the benefit you could see from the disruption we're seeing. How comparable is this to 2022, which was, I guess, a bit more similar from a macro perspective? Then on the OpEx side, how are you running with the organic headcount reduction that you provisioned in Q4? Have we worked through those provisions yet, or is there more to come through the rest of the year? Great. If you look at the similarities or dissimilarities related to COVID, there was certainly a huge similarity from a supply chain disruption and the level of pricing increases, both in terms of the number and level. As I mentioned prior, I think that really fits into the skill set that we have as an organization. Super important that, you know, we get closer to the customers, and there are then opportunities also that come out of it, when we prove what we can deliver also from a supplier expansion perspective. I think that there's a lot of positives there. I think underlying that is the question mark in terms of, you know, consumer demand going forward. I don't think that any of us really know the answer to that. I was at in-cosmetics Global two weeks ago, there was still a lot of positivity at that show. I think in general, you know, there's still positive talks, you know, the longer the conflict goes and, you know, the market dynamics can change. I think in general, David, you know, again, we focus on the things that we can control. Yeah, you know, I would say the teams are fairly upbeat at present. In terms of the organic headcount reduction, I think Hans spoke about that a bit in the full year call, where there was still some impact coming into this year. I think in general, we're very happy that we've got the right people in the right places. As I also mentioned on the previous call, we further invested in the commercial team that we have in place, both from an internal and an external perspective. We're happy with the organization that we have. Maybe if I could, just ask a quick follow-up, actually, which occurred to me. The digital sales tool that you've been rolling out through 2025, what's the uptake of that been like in the, in the sort of early part of 2026 and since the disruptive effect of the Iran war? Have you seen people increasingly sort of adopting that tool, or are they jumping on the phones as a kind of first point of call? The sales assistant tool, as you know, we rolled out fully internally to begin with during the course of last year. We're very happy with the uptake, let's say from an internal perspective from the commercial teams looking to how do we increase the cross-sell rate and be able to offer the right product first time. We've only relatively recently, during the course of the end of last year and completed during the end of Q1, rolled out this tool externally. We're very happy with, I would say, the uptake from customers on the MyIMCD platform, but ultimately, we still want to be speaking to the customer. It's still very much a combination, but we're pleased with the uptake of the tool and the ability to be able to, I think, certainly offer a wider range of products first time. Got it. Thanks. Our next question comes from Tristan Lamotte from Deutsche Bank. Tristan, go ahead. Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. The first one is, I wanted to ask your view on kind of overall demand. You said Q2 started relatively well. Has there been any pre-buying, do you think? One chemical producer implied March was very strong, but then April much softer. Is that the same kind of trend that you've seen, or do you think as it distributes to the trend is a bit different? As I mentioned before, we didn't see really pre-buying during the first quarter. I said we'd had a solid start to the second quarter. I do think that there is some pre-buying at the beginning of the second quarter, as I also mentioned before, I think it's very muted relative to what we may have expected from the past because I think customers have really learnt the lesson as they came out of COVID about bringing in too much inventory at a high price. The customers, when we speak to them, I think that if the Middle East and when the Middle East crisis finishes, you know, you could then see some material price decreases. Again, the longer that the conflict goes on, I think the longer that the longer-term supply chain disruptions will last, even when the conflict finishes. Even if the conflict was to finish the end of this week, I think it is still quite some months it would take to then re-recover. Thanks. Second question is, I was wondering if you could comment a bit on your performance in the Americas, which is quite soft versus the other regions and softer than your peers. Maybe could you split out the performance of some of the sub-businesses there? Yeah, sure. I mean, in LATAM, it was generally a challenging market in the first quarter. I've mentioned on previous calls with Brazil, in particular, having a higher percentage than the group average on the semi-specialty side. It's fair to say that particularly at the beginning of the quarter, we were seeing quite some pricing pressure there from China, for example. As I mentioned earlier in the call, that is a country where we have seen a bit of a shift coming through the beginning of Q2. Also some currency headwind. I mean, you know, the translational side, but also still some operational currency headwinds there. From a North America perspective, you know that we're a bit more industrially focused there, still a softer demand in the coatings and construction housing market, for example. Also some moving parts there from a supplier perspective. As you know, within the U.S., we really try to work with suppliers on a coast to coast basis. Sometimes we need to make supplier changes where some suppliers only want to work with us maybe in one or two of the regions within the U.S. Sometimes we make some difficult decisions there to then work with new partners coast to coast, and there's a bit of a timing impact. That was a bit of the case there in the Q1 numbers. Of course, you know the biggest impact was related to the, as it was explained by Hans, the very strong comp for Q1 last year. Right. You also might have seen that, Tristan, if you compare with our peer, we never mention the name, but we all know who we are talking about. We reported last year in the Americas plus more than 20% organic growth, and this year more than 20%-. They did better this year also with a minus. Last year, they also reported the minus on the organic growth, so their comps is also slightly different than our comp. Nevertheless, it's not good what we reported. and we will work hard to get it back to more normal. That region is, at the moment for us, a bit more volatile than the other parts of the group, and it has sometimes the positive impact and sometimes the negative impact. Unfortunately, we are now on the negative side. Got it. Thank you. Our next question comes from Chetan Udeshi from JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chetan, go ahead. Yeah, hi. Thanks. Morning, all. I was just wondering if you can give us some color by end markets. I remember last year you were seeing a more difficult environment in your beauty and personal care market. You know, as we sit today, based on all of the, you know, volatility, have you seen any notable changes across any of your key end markets? You know, just broadly speaking, it's quite interesting I find these days. You know, when I speak to Marcus, you guys or some other distributors, I mean, they say, okay, you know, we've not seen any supply shortages. Then at the same time we see these huge price increases that are happening in the industry. There is clearly something off. You know, either there is supply shortages that maybe, you know, you are not seeing, some of your competitors are not seeing, but somebody else is, or people are just anticipating those shortages and, you know, trying to or willing to pay higher prices, which perhaps then creates a risk that, you know, if the supply is actually not short, things can unwind quite rapidly. How do you square that from your perspective? Thank you. Good morning, Chetan. Let's begin with the second question first from the price increase side. I mean, this is very much driven by raw material cost pricing. The energy costs associated with manufacturing, of course, has gone up dramatically. You also see the cost of some of the base hydrocarbons, which is driven by basically crude. It's certainly not driven, I don't believe, by opportunistic price increases at present. It's very much driven by raw material costs. In terms of the end markets, as we mentioned before, I think if you look at the life science side to begin with, Pharma. Pharma pretty much normal resilience. The Indian Signet business we already spoke about returning back to a normal type of ordering pattern in the first quarter. Food and nutrition had a very strong year last year, so a bit of a difficult comp, but we're happy with the performance on food. Beauty has been a bit of a softer demand market in general. You know, the commentary at beauty at the in-cosmetics Global show was pretty positive, so let's wait and see there. I wouldn't say anything material changed for, from what we spoke about on the full year call on the industrial side, which is generally a bit softer, particularly way within the coatings and construction space. Got it. Thank you. Our next question comes from Nicole Manion from UBS. Nicole, go ahead. Good morning. Just one follow-up question, please, on some of the previous ones around volumes. Given you saw limited pre-buying, it looks as though there was some underlying volume improvement in Q1, but then in the outlook for Q2, maybe you're seeing kind of more risks to underlying demand, understandably given the geopolitical situation. I wonder, can you help us unpack that demand weakness a bit, as it seems as though stock levels are quite low at customers, if anything, and have been actually for some time, and maybe we're about to get some shortages on top of that. How should we think about that volume softness? You know, is it literally just less product going out the door? Is there sort of less innovation going on? Any extra detail there would be great to hear. Thanks. I think if you look at, let's call it demand rather than the volume, we spoke about, you know, the potentially green shoots coming and more narrative around that at the beginning of the year. And I think that as we were coming through the first quarter before the Middle East conflict, we know, that messaging was really being reinforced. I think that consumer confidence and demand was generally expected to steadily increase during the course of the year. It's very difficult at the moment because of the Middle East conflict to really say, where are we in terms of that consumer demand confidence. Unfortunately, it's a little bit wait and see. As I said, it's clouded a bit by what I believe is a bit of pre-buying at the beginning of this quarter that we have seen. Again, nothing like we saw in the past. I also agree with you that the stock levels downstream with the customer are light and lean, which is where, again, I think us as a distributor plays a very important part because we are seen as that reliable partner being able to deliver just in time. This inventory management that we've touched on a few times, it is extremely important. Thank you. Our next question comes from Quirijn Mulder from ING. Quirijn, go ahead. Yeah. Good morning, everyone. I have two questions. The first question is about the M&A in EMEA. It had a negative impact on your gross profit margin, as we understand. You said excluding these acquisitions, we had a positive development of the gross profit margin. If I look at these numbers, then it looks like that Tillmanns is Tillmanns in Italy is the deciding factor here with gross profit margins below, I would say 18%. Is there any explanation for that low gross margins? Is that normal for this company? Are you going to recover that in the coming period? My second question about the U.S. still, what is then the reason that your gross profit margin is so much under pressure compared to the revenues? That's a serious difference here. We see it's 200 basis points loss in your gross profit margin. Maybe you can a little bit explain that? Yeah. Quirijn, perhaps I should for sure take the first one. If you look at the acquisitions that we did in EMEA, we had Tillmanns, we had Ferrer, we had TECOM, so food businesses in Spain. When we publish acquisitions, then we often indicate something about revenue and number of people that we buy, and there's also a bit of a standard way that if the EBITA margin deviates a lot from what we typically do on average, then we also mention something. Now, there was no information about EBIT margin. What you see now in the numbers is that the combination of these three acquisitions, all at a decent EBIT margin with a much lower gross margin percentage, that has to do with partly the product mix that they sell to the market, the type of products they do. It also offers us an opportunity that if we do well, that we should be in a position to bring gross margin percentages in areas of that portfolio where that is possible in the current market conditions, that we could improve the margin percentage. That is also why I mentioned in the introduction, that we have also internal projects to improve margin percentages. One of the things that you might have seen is that the gross margin% in the first quarter of this year is already slightly higher than what we saw in the second half of last year. For us, it's, if you buy something with a lower gross margin, partly product related, difficult to change, but there where we can change, we do, and you see that happening. The drop in gross margin% in the Americas, looking at markets, I think. Shall I? Yeah. I think the main thing there is that a couple of changes in the product mix that we had there having an impact on the overall margin percentage. Marcus has referred to a change in supplier setup, a timing difference there that played a bit of a role. Another important thing is the way we need to deal with currency volatility in that region, having a negative impact. A lot of moving bits and pieces having an impact on the margin that we make there. Yeah. I think also important that we, I mean, of course, gross margin percentage is a good indicator, but as I've mentioned before, you know, we incentivize and really focus internally on the absolute amount of gross margin. The reason for that is also making sure that as a company, we don't miss out on incremental new wins. You can imagine that trying to incentivize our sales team to go out and to win new business, quite often that new business can start at a lower gross margin percentage than the group average that we have. A drop in the gross margin percentage doesn't necessarily mean poor business performance. It's important that we remember that. I think to reiterate Hans' overall point is, you know, we're focused very hard on improving the performance of the Americas as a region. Yeah, more to come. Okay. Thank you. Your conversion margin is also now below 40% for that area. I can imagine that is a little bit concerning for you then. Room for improvement. Yeah, no, that is a bit concerning, but also room for improvement. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. With that, I will now turn the call back to Mr. Jordan for any closing remarks. A big thank you from Hans and myself to you all for joining the call this morning and for the questions. We wish you all a very good day. Thank you all.