Ladies and gentlemen, it's a real privilege to have you on yet another call by Purcari Wineries. Today, we are reporting that financial results as of September 30 of this year. Again, we are very delighted indeed to report another strong quarter, on which the team will elaborate in the following hour. You can maybe jump to slide four, where we have the presenting team today. So on our side, we have on call Mr. Victor Bostan, the CEO and founder of the company, Victor Arapan, the Financial Director, CFO, and we have our great investor relations team, led by Eugeniu Baltag and Victoria Moldovan. I, the Chair of the Board, will now pass the word to the team to take us through the presentation. Thank you, Eugen, the word to you. Vasile, thank you for the intro. So glad to see so many participants today, and our entire team appreciates your continuous support and interest in Purcari. With the intention to leave us as much as possible, as much time as possible for the Q&A session, the agenda for today is kept to three main points: third quarter operational results, guidance, wine stock evolution. So we have nine months behind of an amazing rally for our wines in a highly volatile environment, and one last quarter to go, the fourth quarter, which is seasonally the strongest by sales. As you may see on this slide, we have continued our growth, reaching at nine months, RON 252.5 million, which is a 26% increase year-on-year. As well, EBITDA reached RON 72 million, and net profit, uh, reached almost RON 44 million, by growing by 19% and 24% respectively. If to look at the third quarter alone, you may see that, the third quarter contributed by RON 91 million in sales, which is 20% increase versus the same period last year. So actually, in the third quarter, we have managed to achieve 36% of total nine-month sales. Both EBITDA and net profit in the third quarter showed an excellent evolution, reaching RON 27.7 million and RON 18.2 million, respectively. In terms of margins, we see a significant improvement in the third quarter in comparison with the second quarter of 2023. EBITDA margin reaching 30%, which is 3 percentage points higher than the last quarter, so it's 30% against 27%, and net profit margin reaching 30% against 14% in the last quarter. We had a strong contribution toward the top line from both volume increases as well. We had registered an improved mix of products sold, combined with the effects from the price increases, which have been gradually passed through during 2023. So actually, this volume effect on our growth is around 45%, and value effect is the rest of 55%. Again, Romania as a market and Purcari as a brand contributed the most to the group results. Thus, sales in Romania grew by 37% in nine months, 2023, and Purcari brand alone grew by 31% year-on-year. We know sales are highly important, but profitability is what drives the long-term success of a company. So we have managed to sustain strong margins with nine months, 2023 EBITDA margin and net profit margin being high at 29% and 17%, so both of them being above the guidance. We have noticed that and registered that cost pressure is easing. We have already seen the positive impact on margins from less expensive packaging. As well, we register a decrease of share, more expensive 2022, 2020 and 2021 bulk wine in total volumes. And here, of course, special thanks to our relentless commercial team, who work around the clock to deliver our wine to the table of a consumer. So in general, the nine months for in 2023 was a very good period for us from stock market perspective. We are number four best performing among companies in that index. With 56% increase in our stock price. As well, we have rewarded our shareholders and paid in August a dividend amounting 0.55 RON per share, which was a 6% yield on announcement date. So as well, we have high liquidity for WINE share. If to compare it to our market capitalization, then we have been maintained in FTSE Global Microcap Index as of August 2023 review. Another piece of good information or good news is that the European Union Commission recommended starting accession negotiations with Moldova, along with Ukraine, and this decision is to be taken by European Council on December fifteenth. If to speak about our developments at the latest acquired businesses, you may see that we have ongoing improvements for Ecosmart, which contributed at the group level with RON 22 million in revenues, additional RON 2.2 million in EBITDA, and almost RON 1 million in net profit. Still, we have plenty room for profitability improvements at this segment. Angel's Estate contributed 3% of a total group of sales. Still, it's loss-making, but we are implementing successfully the turnaround process. So we managed to finish our first phase. So we have doubled the harvest yields, we have restructured brand portfolio, renegotiated commercial terms with main, main players on that market, and managed to improve use new Purcari SKUs to the Bulgarian, to the Bulgarian market. So we had an overview of our operational activity in nine months, 2023, and next up, Victor Arapan, the CFO of our group, will provide additional insight on our financial performance. Victor, the floor is yours. Thank you, Eugene. Hello, everybody. As Eugene told, the group recorded a strong performance during these nine months of the year, with sales and financial performance above the top end of guidance range. So now I will go into a few details, so you can find the figures I will mention. Also, in our interim financial report, which is published on stock exchange and our website. So the group sales in Q3 continued to grow double digits. As a result, a great increase in revenue by 26% year-on-year for the reported period. Gross profit increased by 15% year-on-year, reaching RON 104 million. Gross margin is at 41%, slightly decreasing compared to previous year, as cost of production increased on use of stocks of expensive bulk wines of 20, 21 vintages, as well as due to more expensive packaging reserves made at the end of the previous year in order to avoid disruptions that could happen in the first half of 2023. Cost of sales is under pressure also because of high depreciation expenses, which increased plus 51% year-on-year or RON 6.5 million, which led to an increase in the manufacturing cost. We also should not ignore the increase of second business segment. Recycling services provided by our subsidiary, EcoSmart, which increased to a share of 9% of total sales in the reported period, compared to 6.5% last year, but which has a much lower margin compared to the main segment of the business. So we will see the details later on next slide. So, Eugeniu, go back to previous... Yes. So all these factors led to a decrease in the gross margin from 45% to 41%. SG&A expenses registered an increase as a share of sales to 22% compared to 21% for the same period of last year. In particular, we have a significant increase in marketing and selling, which is +46% year-on-year. And this is because last year, the trade and marketing activities were shifted to Q4 due to uncertainties relating to the war in Ukraine. So last year, 56%, of annual trade and marketing expenses, were made in Q4. So, we believe that the, at the early level, the increase in marketing and selling will be, coherent to, to sales increase. Other income and other expense, expenses show different evolution year-on-year during the reported period. That's why I will, I will go into more details, here. Other operating income experienced a significant decrease, mainly due to double of release amount of deferred income from RON 0.8 million to RON 1.6 million. This happened because last year, the group significantly increased the deferred income from business acquisition and started to release this income this year, and also because the group continues to receive significant amount of grants for capital expenditure. Other operating income also includes some one-off gains that you should consider from. I speak about 260,000 RON from write-off of trade payables due to expiration of prescription period, and 450,000 RON, it's surpluses of auxiliary materials and chemicals as a result of stock counting. So this will not be repeated in next quarter. Other operating expenses had a positive impact, actually, during this period, representing plus or having an impact of +RON 2.5 million positive impact on company's performance, or +RON 2.2 million year-on-year. Where this comes from? So RON 1 million, RON 1.5 million is adjustment to fair value of harvested grapes. Even this is an accounting adjustment required by International Accounting Standards. It reflects increased operating efficiency of agricultural division of the company, responsible for operating around 1,500 hectares of vineyards. So I would not consider this as a gain or loss, as it directly impacts further the cost of the production. RON 1.3 million is a gain from disposal of tangible assets. Regarding net finance cost, it decreased from RON 5.5 million in 2022 to RON 0.7 million for nine months period of this year. But if looking for separate per separate items, picture looks like next. Interest expenses increased by 57% from RON 3.3 million to RON 5.1 million, as our borrowings increased by 35% as at 3 September 2023, compared to 3 September 2022, and also because we have increased EURIBOR rate. As a result of the Moldovan Leu appreciation versus euro, the group recorded a net Forex gain of RON 4.1 million, while in the same period of 2022, it recorded a net Forex loss of RON 2 million. Here, it is important to mention that the appreciation of Moldovan Leu versus euro generated this Forex gain. But on the other hand, this had a negative impact on revenue and gross margin for all exported goods. So if the exchange rates would not fluctuate during this period, the reported period of nine months, our revenue and gross margin on export markets would be higher by +6%. So EBITDA net profit registered an increase of +19 and +24 percent respectively, compared to the previous year. And the margin of both indicators are above the top range of the guidelines we have provided earlier. Even in case we exclude the one-offs I mentioned above, the EBITDA and net profit margin would stay in the top or over the top of the guidelines range. Eugene, next slide, please. So in this slide, we can see the financial results and operational performance by business segments. More than 90% of the group business is represented by the sale of beverages, and the performance of this segment is almost represented performance of the whole business I have just described, and you saw on the previous slide. So I will mainly stay on the second segment. The segment of waste recycling management services, which is offered by EcoSmart in Romania, is still insignificant in the reported period without significant impact on what I have presented in the previous slide relating to the entire group. The gross margin of EcoSmart business is significantly lower year on year. You can see it's 17 compared to 20-25%. This is mainly because of increase in cost of recycling as national targets for recycling of the waste and package increased in average by 8%. The cost of sales is also impacted by increased depreciation and amortization charges resulted from valuation of the subsidiary as the acquisition date. The sales prices were adjusted later, beginning in June. But this is not enough to bring the gross margin to last year figures, as the company made a turnaround and now needs to regain customers. So we expect the annual gross margin for this segment of the business to be improved by +2 percentage points. However, it will be lower than in 2022. Regarding G&A expenses of this subsidiary, we note a small increase in pace with inflation, and we consider that we have a full control over these expenses after the successful legal and financial turnaround of the company. Next slide, please, Eugeniu. Here you can see, you can assess that the group continues to have a very strong financial position over the years. The increase in business leads to an increase of Net Working capital with some pressure on the liquidity. However, the company managed to maintain an optimal level of indebtedness and sufficient liquidity. We target a net debt indicator within the range of 1.5-2 times, so there is a room to sustain continuous growth. So with this being said, I give the floor to my colleague, Eugeniu, for a short overview of sales evolution by markets and by brands. ... Victor, thank you for the detailed information on financial figures. Now let's see how we have achieved those figures by jumping to commercial slides. So we had an excellent performance in Romania, and this performance comes from three quarters increase in volumes and about one quarter from better mix and price increases. Again, Purcari is an outstanding performer. We have strong dynamics for our sparkling, for our limited collections, for Nocturne, and of course, for our 1827 series. Crama Ceptura brand maintained a rapid growth by 31% in the third quarter alone, totaling at 26% growth year-on-year. So we continue to add new SKUs, to add new regions, to add new partnerships in Romania for our brands. If to speak about Moldova, the consumer confidence moderates, especially for mainstream brands. Nevertheless, Purcari continue to grow. There are a few aspects which brought, let's say, our growth in Moldova to only 3% year-on-year basis. So, these are mainly to changes in the duty-free channel as tax facilities being canceled. But, there were increases in excise duties in, which were enforced from January first for brandy products, thus affecting our Bardar performance. And the one gas station network suspended its operations in Moldova, thus reducing points of sales in the fragmented trade channel. If to speak about Poland, the high pressure in the mainstream wines market continues, including the entire Moldovan wine segment. Consumer confidence moderates, and there is high sensitivity towards price increases. But we continue to bet on premiumization because we clearly believe that all premiumization will help us to achieve good results here in Poland. Again, double-digit growth for Purcari in this country. If to speak about Czech and Slovakia, there are similar traits in consumer behavior as in Poland. To be mentioned additionally, but we've had a good performance with both of our brands in Tesco channel. And Purcari, again, double-digit growth. With Asia, which is mainly China, our first signs of economic recovery in China in the third quarter, still not reflected in the economic trade. Hope Xi Jinping visit to U.S. will bring positive effect in near future. So overall, the wine market in China is quite difficult and it's weak. We believe in this market because it's huge, and continue to invest and build brand awareness and local presence. Regarding Ukraine, the situation is difficult but stable. We had a very good results, so almost double, doubled the sales year-on-year, and we are marginally behind pre-war nine months, 2021 figures. In the rest, we continue the same strategy. We are maintaining the local team and increase our distribution in key accounts channels. Now, let's look to the same distribution, but the brands. On Purcari, our affordable luxury formula proved workable once again, and premiumization strategy continues to deliver excellent results. With Bostavan, there are some challenging conditions for the mainstream brands, but nevertheless, we prioritize margins over volumes, and we are seeking for new opportunities. Of course, we are working on expanding the brands on the Bostavan umbrella. As with Ceptura, the value for money is exceptional. We have strong demand from the consumers, so we have managed to increase our sales by 23% at 9 months, 2023, year-on-year. Of course, there are still opportunities from portfolio development and premiumization. With Bardar, I already mentioned in the previous slide some specifics of Moldovan market and what happened this year. But with Bardar, we are speaking mainly about grapes, oak, and patience, and patience is what we currently need in Moldova right now, which is our main market for Bardar. We managed to push through certain price increases. Nevertheless, we have registered some lower volumes, especially for five-year-old brandy. But again, we are optimistic here, and this will allow us in future to sell more of higher profitable older vintages. So the 5-year-old brandy, which was not sold, let's say yesterday, will be sold in 2 years as being 7-year-old. So with Bardar, we have strong growth in Romania, which is our second market by size, and we are expanding through channels. With Angels Estate, as I mentioned previously, it contributes by 3% to the total group of sales, so we are still working to make it profitable. But again, repeating myself, we have successfully implemented the first phase of a turning around plan. We have doubled the harvest yields, we restructured brand portfolio, renegotiated commercial terms, and of course, introduced new Purcari SKUs to this Bulgarian market. Okay, we can touch commercial part, and, of interest, of course, will be the harvest, information on harvest. We have registered the strong results, and good harvest. We harvested almost 15,000 tons of own grapes. So the irrigation system at Purcari proved its efficiency. We have high quality grapes and the good volumes, especially if to consider that the overall harvest in the Republic of Moldova is expected to be 10% lower year-on-year. Again, we have supplemented the stock requirements for future growth from third party grapes, so actually benefiting of good pricing environment. Thus, in total, we have processed 37,600 tons, which is 10% more than last year. Of course, if to look worldwide, there are expectations that the worldwide production will be the smallest in the last 60 years. So very weak harvest for Spain, minus 14% year-on-year. Italy, minus 12% versus previous year. So actually, these two countries are registering very poor harvest for the second year in a row. And of course, a real drama occurred for the wine industry in Greece. Their harvest decreased by 45% year-on-year. For us, the success comes from the fact that we are diversified. We have vineyards in Moldova, we have vineyards in Romania and Bulgaria. For example, Romania, this year, is the leader by harvest in the northern hemisphere. The harvest grew by 15%. In Bulgaria as well, the country, the harvest increased by 7%. I already mentioned that we have managed to double the yields at the Angel's Estate, thanks to our professionalism in agriculture. The fundamentals for lower COGS in future have been settled, so I will move quickly to some marketing slides. You know, the quality of a wine is the cornerstone of success in wine business, and we strongly believe in this. On current slide, you may see it's reflected in numerous titles and awards, which we have received in 2023, at Mundus Vini, at Decanter and other competitions. Of course, we are hungry and eager to get Purcari at new levels of success and to open new markets and channels for it. On this slide, you may see just few of our activities in 2023, in Japan, in Baltics, in even in Brazil. So our team has been in business missions on five out of seven continents this year, except Australia and Antarctica. Next, I would like to pass the floor to Vasile Tofan to continue our presentation with the guidance for 2023. Thank you. Thank you very much, Eugen and the team. Indeed, as you know, every year, at the beginning of the year, we announce a certain guidance. This year, we focused on four parameters we have been guiding on. That's total revenue growth, that's wine revenue growth, defined as the core wine business without EcoSmart in our case, EBITDA margin, and net income margin. As you can see on this slide, we vastly outperformed the announced guidance based on the three quarters of this year. I think the philosophy on our side has always been to be very prudent with the guidance and rather underpromise and overdeliver. However, given where we are in the year, we still decided to update slide our guidance by saying that we expect the full year to end at the top of the announced guidance range at the beginning of the year or slightly above it. We don't want to be more specific than that. And again, to explain why, as you just said at the beginning, Q4 is seasonally the most important quarter. Typically, it corresponds to about 35% of annual sales or even a little bit more. So depending on how the Q4 ultimately will go, I think this can have an important impact on the numbers. That's why we would like not to be more specific than this, and then saying that we're updating our guidance to the top range of the initially announced one or slightly above it. But again, our philosophy has always been to be prudent and rather underpromise and overdeliver. That's on guidance, and with that, I'm passing the word back to the team. Thank you, Vasile. So prior to jump to the Q&A session, a few words on stock performance. I will repeat myself, but, we are very glad that wine stock performance is 56%, year to date, ahead BET Index. Again, we are number 4 best performing among companies in BET Index. More than 7 million shares have been traded in 2023, so we are registering high liquidity. So with that being said, I think we can start Q&A session. Please feel free to address your question directly by turning your microphone and camera on, or just type your question in the chat, and the entire management team here will be glad to answer to your questions. Hi, good afternoon. Perhaps you might have mentioned this during the presentation, but can you provide a bit of color on what you see as outlook for 2024? And also, actually, if you could provide some color on the fourth quarter, because I see you maintained the guidance when you look at sales. But actually, sales growth in the first nine months was very high, was much above guidance when we look at wine sales. And so I was just wondering if you could provide some color here. Indeed, Juliana. So first of all, very good to see you on the call. Today is a busy day for calls, so we're happy you found time for our humble call. So as we mentioned, Juliana, we do update the guidance by mentioning that we expect to end the year at the very top range across all four parameters or slightly above it. And as I mentioned, we typically try to be prudent with our promises and rather we deliver what we guide for. But you don't expect any sort of slowdown in the fourth quarter? I mean, there was a bit of a slowdown, but not in Romania and the other countries, and I was wondering how you see Romania developing. Because right now, Romania is basically the engine for the group sales. So I was wondering how you see Romania in the fourth quarter. At the moment, we do not have indications of any material slowdown. Okay. And any color on the outlook? Are you still, I mean, any- For 2024, you mean? Yes, yes. We typically announce the guidance for the year when we report the annual results. So we'll do this, this year, too. But maybe to give you some qualitative observations, some of them were shared by Eugeniu. Again, as we mentioned, for now, we're not seeing a slow, a slowdown in sales yet, you know, at least for Romania, our core market, the one you emphasized. And second, we've had a very good harvest. I think this puts us in a good position on margins. And in contrast, the world and the key markets in Europe had a very weak harvest. Actually, the weakest on record for at least 50 years, if I have it right, and we're one of the weakest. We do expect that this may cause some of the key players to raise prices, which again, I think may have a positive impact on us as it would put us in a good competitive position. So we are, say, cautiously optimistic about 2024. Hello, this is Caius. Congrats for the results. Again, an exceptional quarter. I was wondering if you could say a few words about the quality of the harvest of this year, sugar content, et cetera. How did it perform on such a large volume in terms of quality? Also, if you have any comment on the French harvest. Yeah, Caius, hi. Let's start from the end. On French harvest, they have a good harvest this year. I think they have single-digit growth, I guess, last year, which was very poor for them. But France, for the first time, in the last 10 years, I think, they are number one by total amount of harvested grapes. So they exceeded Spain in this term. So, of course, France is a different kind of country. They have a lot of internal programs from the government, which allows them to maintain and to reduce the output production. So if in case it's overproduction, so we are doing the distillates and so on. But this year, this year, I think their harvest is quite decent in terms of volumes. Would you be so kind and repeat first part of the question, please? Yeah, I was wondering about the quality of the harvest of 2023, considering that the volumes are so high, in terms of sugar content and everything. Mhm. Oh, the quality is expected to be very good. Our, let's say, oenologist and technical people right now are working with wine, so we're expecting to have another good good vintage for this year, too. Thanks again. Do we have other questions? I see there's a question in the chat, and the question is, "What percentage are the production capacities filled right now?" and the short answer to that, and we always say the same thing, is that in wine making, it's difficult to put a number, you know, on capacity utilization, simply because there's multiple stages of production. For example, on the bottling side, we have ample room for growth. On the storage side, we typically add capacities year by year, not to have unused capacities, because this is a better use of capital. But as a rule, we always say that for us, the bottleneck is primarily on the sales side. So we always catch up on the production side to meet the demand of sales. So we are in the say good position to always be able to fulfill the demand we have. Yeah, thank you, Lucho. If no more questions, then again, thank you very much for finding the time and joining our call in this busy day for earnings calls. And on our side, we are very privileged to have you as investors. As you can see, we continue working very hard to deliver and hopefully over-deliver on the results, despite difficult circumstances. I think we keep emphasizing, we believe wine is at least our portfolio, we feel it's crisis resistant. We're especially seeing strong traction in our premium wines. So in that sense, you know, the lipstick effect that the economists talk about, I think, applies to our products. We don't take it. You know, we always say that we are very far from being self-complacent and self-sufficient. So yes, I think we have good results, but at the fact that at the same time, we have the right level of, you know, paranoia and hunger to keep this kind of constant sense of, you know, we need to work harder and harder and do more and deliver more. And please rest assured that that sense will remain on our side. Again, thank you for your backing, and we look forward to the next opportunities to be in touch with you. And the very immediate next one, I think, will be at the Wood Conference in Prague. We hope to see as many as possible of you there. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Bye.