It's a pleasure to welcome you on our call presenting the first half and the second quarter financial results for Purcari Wineries. I'm very glad to be joined by our team here. We have Victor Bostan, CEO, on the call. We have Alex Filip, Deputy CEO. We have Anatol Belibov, the incoming CFO, also Victor Arapan who's transitioning his work towards Anatol in a very organic way. We're very grateful to Victor for this transition. We also have Victoria Moldovan, who's our Investor Relations Officer. We have a wider team on the call though, I'm very excited actually that, you know, our company continues investing in people, continues strengthening the team. You may have read the news over the last few weeks and months that we have made quite a step up in terms of our team. Since Alex Filip has joined us as Deputy CEO from McKinsey, he worked on bringing new, fresh blood to Purcari, new energy, new competencies, because we understand that, you know, 10 years ago, we were doing $10 million in revenue. Today we're doing nearly $100 million in revenue, but we understand that what took us from $10- 100 million is not necessarily what will take us from $100 million to much bigger numbers. I'm very excited that also today with us on the call, we have a much wider team, the new team. We have Bogdan Băian, you know, who joined us from Heineken as the Commercial Director. We have, as I mentioned, Anatol Belibov, who joined us as CFO from Nestlé and AkzoNobel. We have Anton Fortunatov who joined us as Chief Information Officer to up our digital game, who joined us also from McKinsey. We have Stefan Catrina, who joined us as the Head of Transformation and Strategy, you know, gluing all these transformation projects together, who joined us also from McKinsey. Quite a few McKinsey people, but we negotiated very good income levels with them. I mean, very decent. I mean, not exaggerated salaries, pushing most of the conversation in stock as we like to do. We also have Mr. Chirițescu with us, who joined us as marketing director, you know, who from, McCann Erickson and Ogilvy and other great names. A long way of saying that this is a new chapter in Purcari's development. We are very excited about where we are as a company at the moment, and today will be a presentation of the second quarter results and first half results. I really want you to take the bigger picture, and I hope will give you a sense of where we want to take this company going forward. I think the pinnacle of this is going to be on October 4th, when we'll invite you all to our investor day at Purcari, where we're going to reveal in much greater detail what is next for our company. You know, we like setting high bars. We like setting a very high level of ambitions, and we're going to reveal this in much greater detail on October 4th. Without further ado now, apologies for this long, long intro, but I just wanted to set the scene in a proper way so that you get a big picture. I want to pass the word to Alex Filip, who's going to take us through the operational results for 2Q and first half. Thank you, Vasile. Hello, everyone. I'm happy to present the results for the first half of the year. Vasile mentioned there are a lot of changes in the team and we're building bigger plans, but we're also focused on delivering day to day. Here what we're about to share with you on the performance so far. We've shared and we'll go into further details in a second. Overall results, group revenues grew by 3% year-on-year. Focusing primarily on the core business, wine and brandy sales + 12% for the first half. You know, the situation for EcoSmart. We've discontinued the operations and hence the overall growth revenues have grown at a slower pace than core revenues due to the fact that EcoSmart revenues are no longer contributing. This is an important factor. Premium brands are performing, you know, continue to performing best within our portfolio. Purcari growing across the markets. Also, Crama Ceptura growing quite nicely, we're happy to see that we have multiple growth engines. Good traction across several of our key markets. Romania, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, we're, you know, we're building an important success story for us as a group, turning around Angel's Estate, we're happy to see that the commercial traction is there. Also an important market for us and not an easy one, Asia, growing quite nicely as well. We have also very good profitability numbers, and we're very happy, very proud of our ability to generate, and, you know, continue to improve the profitability as we have indicated in the past. You know, gross margin at 51%. EBITDA numbers for the second quarter, I would say quite impressive numbers for us and a high watermark for us to observe going forward. Investor Relations, you know what we have done in the recent months. We have expanded our share capital by issuing additional shares. We paid the dividend at the end of July. Going forward, Vasile mentioned the Investor Day on October 4th, we will also be in Bucharest at the beginning of September. Happy to meet as many of you who will be there for the Frontier Investor Days. In terms of operational and management changes, I will not go through the changes that Vasile mentioned already. I think two more important points for our development, we have established a small digital hub, if you want. A venture that is supposed to accelerate our digitization. Building in-house the key competencies that we consider crucial for our development, while allowing us to manage effectively external vendors for our development. An important piece of news that we released yesterday evening, we have just signed an acquisition for an important vineyard in Dealu Mare. 51 hectares, plus land that will allow us to expand the winery that we have in Crama Ceptura, an important element for us to continue to develop our Romanian entity. Yes, these are big, big, you know, big developments for us. Happy to go into details with each of them, and we will go right away. Also we'll take questions at the end. If we go into the financial results, Anatol, if you wanna go. Thank you, Alex. For sure you already mentioned about +3% grow in H1. For sure it's very important to go by segment by segment. In the core segment in wine, we grew by 10% in Q2 and 12% in Q1, overall +12% year-over-year. Also HoReCa delivering good single strong digit, +6%. For sure it's very important to mention that like-for-like turnover now is highly impacted by discontinuation of recycling segment. In H1 2023, recycling have a share of close to 10% in revenue. For sure now this +3% is highly impacted by discontinuation of recycling business. For sure now I think it's important to mention the positive part. Here I would like to stress your attention about gross profit. You can see that we have a very good journey. Now H1 is close to 47%, and Q3, Q2 2024 is close to one of the highest level of 51% gross margin in revenue. In absolute you can see that we grew by 17%. The reason are a lot, I would like to start with let's say top line improvement. Here we're speaking about pricing because we managed to increase pricing in part of our geography in Bulgaria, Moldova, also export country. Also we already told to investor that we are focusing premiumization and looks that we are in the right direction. Our Purcari brand, our premium brand increased by 16% year-over-year. Increasing the share in the total portfolio. For sure we make a good job in terms of pricing and premiumization. Also geography mix, it's help us to improve gross margin profitability. Country with high price per liter like Romania, like central Europe, have higher parts of growth versus another, and this help us to improve also profitability. Cost of sales, it's also impacted by, let's say correction of COGS rates. Here we are speaking about cheaper bulk wine from 2022 which came in production. Also very important that already we have the positive impact coming from lower price for packaging. Here especially we are speaking about bottle, which is impacted by correction in energy price. For sure, EcoSmart. All in all, we have this positive impact on gross margin. Going down in OPEX, here we are saying that marketing and selling expense, yeah, grew up by 24%. Like for like, let's say like as percentage in revenue, they increase from 12%- 13%, it's one percentage point. Here the key impact or, it's people cost. Increase in people cost, like here where, as already we mentioned previously, that we invest in the team. Also we invest in the new project. For sure, our focus now is to keep the growth path. That's why now we start to invest in different marketing project. General and administrative cost grew up by 7%. As percentage in revenue, it's mostly flat. Here the impact is coming from people cost. Taking into account review of the salary and also traveling and other professional fee. Positive impact coming from other income. Here we have the positive momentum in collection. We start to reduce the provision for receivable for bad debts. In this line we have this post-tax effect from EcoSmart. Net profit for H1 ends to 18% in revenue, or RON 29.3 million, EBITDA also delivering a very strong H1 and also Q2, ends up to RON 55 million or 33% in revenue. In the bottom, you see that this net profit from discontinued operation, which is RON 1.7 million, it will be covered during the next slide. We would like to stress your attention that with this one-off, which we expect that after finalization of this procedure with EcoSmart will be reversed. That's why like for like or let's say normalized, our EBITDA is 33.3% or 32% and our net profit goes up from 18 to sorry, from net profit from 16%- 16.5%, 25%. For sure, this will be the level. All in one, very strong performance in terms of gross margin and cost control. If no question, I would like to pass the word to Mr. Arapan in order to cover segment reporting. Thank you. Thank you, Anatol. First of all, the investor and analysts, let me also welcome you to this second quarter results call. When we show this slide, you see now, we used to talk about our operational performance of our business segments. As you know, by 2020 the group had a single segment, production and sale of alcoholic beverages. Later, with the acquisition of subsidiary EcoSmart Union in 2021, a second segment related to waste recycling management services appeared, which during the years has not been a significant one. At the reporting date, the group do not provide any more for waste recycling management services. I will talk more about not the performance of the second segment, but on the accounting approach for this event that took place during the second quarter. As you remember during our last calls, you may know that the group were disclosing as a contingency the potential penalty from AFME. Below, you can see a scheme of evolution in time of the litigation between EcoSmart and AFME. The most important event that impacted operational activity of EcoSmart during 2024 was on 16th April, when the High Court of Cassation and Justice granted the appeal filed by AFME against the decision pronounced by the Bucharest Court of Appeal. As a result, on 29 of April 2024, AFME issued an enforceable title for the collection of the fine amounting RON 22 million. Since this amount was disproportionate to the revenue and the profits of the EcoSmart, the management decided to cease operations. The group management considered that under this condition, its subsidiary cannot operate anymore, and on 30 May 2024, the AGM of EcoSmart unanimously decided to initiate a simplified bankruptcy procedure. On July 2nd, AFME submitted to Bucharest, a court, a request to start the insolvency. What is the situation on accounting treatment as of June 31st? A s the group is still holding the control over the subsidiary, as there is no court decision empowering a third-party administration of the EcoSmart. This means that all assets and all liabilities of the subsidiary were consolidated as at 30 June 2024. The accrued debt of RON 22 million was recognized only as in the individual financial statements of the subsidiary. Neither the parent company nor any of its subsidiary has an obligation to AFME arising from its risk of execution. The group management decided not to provide EcoSmart with any financial support. As a result, at the consolidated level, the debt, the debt to AFME was not recognized since there is no probability of an outflow of resources, including economic benefits to settle the respective obligation. At the P&L level, the entire activity of EcoSmart during six months of 2024 were treated as discontinued activity and disclosed in the statement of comprehensive income as a single separate line with a positive impact on the consolidated net profit amounting RON 1.7 million. As soon as the court will decide to initiate an insolvency case, and this is gonna happen in November this year, the group will lose control of EcoSmart Union. Will not consolidate it anymore. The group will not recognize this result from discontinued activity, and will have to calculate the gain or loss from loss of control. It is important to know that in financial statements for the consolidated financial statements, ended December 31st of 2023, the group made a provision of RON 1.7 million, which is equal to the group's share in EcoSmart net assets at the time. This provision will help the group to net against any loss from loss of control if such a loss will be. This is the situation about EcoSmart update. On next slide, you can assess as usual that the group continues to maintain a very strong financial position over the years. The company managed to maintain an optimal level of liquidity, gathering cash for the dividend payment that took place on August 16th. The dividends payout will not influence its liquidity, only with some impact on the net debt is expected. Even the net debt increased due to more loans required to sustain the growth of the business and continuous capital expenditures. The gearing ratios and indebtedness ratios are still at comfortable levels. Since we target a net debt to EBITDA indicator around 2x, there is still room to sustain continuous growth. This being said, I give the floor to Alex for a short overview for sales evolution by markets and by brands. Thank you very much, Victor. Going into the commercial part, the usual picture that we provide, breakdown by country and evolution by country. Overview, you see we're growing across most of the markets, with the exception of Poland, where we slightly decreased year-on-year for the first half, and Moldova, where the growth is slightly lower than the rest. Good performance in Romania, sustained by several growth engines, so it's not just Purcari, it's also Bardar, it's also Crama Ceptura, it's also Domeniile Cuza. Multiple elements that support our growth and our ambition. Moldova, we are facing a specific situation. We're growing nicely double digit in key accounts, driven by Purcari primarily. We are seeing volumes in the duty-free channel, lost due to a new taxation model. These we assume are actually volumes that are lost by the category, by the market, rather than gained by other competitors. We see a specifically challenging situation in the brandy segment, where there is a fierce competition in pricing with very aggressive promos from, you know, most competitors. We have indications also from key accounts that, you know, large volumes of the category sales are actually happening in promo. There we are taking a long-term perspective, trying to protect the profitability of our sales, but also the price perception, the quality perception of our brand, and we'll discuss about Bardar in a second. Poland, we see pressure in the mainstream segment, which accounts for the bulk of our sales there. We see growth in the second quarter offsetting the initial weaker start, but still, there we are, pushing as hard as we can for profitability, which sometimes means that we pass on sales opportunities because we again take a midterm perspective that we need to build profitable brands and we need to invest in those brands that can deliver this profitability to us. We are investing in Purcari and we're growing the premium segment in Poland, but from a smaller base compared to the mainstream segment. Bulgaria, it's a very happy development for us. We continues to continue to develop the market both with Angel's Estate and the local brand portfolio, but also by accelerating the listing of Purcari brand both in key accounts and HoReCa. By now we're happy to see that Purcari is already contributing to 10% of the local sales, which is the direction that we wanna take the sales mix there. Good performance in Czech Republic and Slovakia. Challenging environment in terms of pricing there. Primarily our mainstream brands are performing there and growing despite the challenges that we have. We're happy to see after several years of investments and uncertainty that our sales in Asia are picking up from a small base, but are picking up and we have third consecutive quarter with growth and we continue to invest in developing not only China but also South Korea and Japan are also two important markets for us. Rest of the world, you see there is 10% of sales and growing. There we have a mix of commercial efforts from Purcari, Bostavan and Bardar delivering nice profitability despite the small share of sales at the moment. If we move on. On a brand by brand basis, you know, strong sales for Purcari as mentioned, not just in Romania, but across several of our key markets. Bostavan, you see there a slight decline, driven primarily by this weaker results in Poland and the Baltics. There we are focusing, and it's gonna be most likely a midterm effort to turn around the portfolio and build stronger, more profitable brands than what we have now. Crama Ceptura, strong performance as I mentioned before, across the different ranges that we have. We are developing further the ranges. There are price segments where we're not as competitive as we are in others, we're investing in capturing those opportunities as well. For Bardar, as I mentioned, the bulk of the sales historically came from Moldova, where there is fierce competition for sales and the loss of the duty-free channel. The strategy there for us is to protect the profitability and the premium perception in Moldova. Also, taking into account that brandy, even more than wine, ages well and gains value with time. There is no rush for us to sell cheaply now something that we should be able to sell at a higher margin next year. There we're careful managing the aging of the portfolio while we're developing export markets. I mentioned Romania, but also Nigeria and other markets where we are developing export opportunities, profitable export avenues for Bardar. Angel's Estate, strong growth year- on- year. This is due to the also investments that we've made in expanding our commercial capabilities. If we move on. Yes. In Investor Day, I don't know, Eugeniu, 'cause you're the master of ceremony for this, do you wanna briefly talk about it? Hello, everyone. Indeed, we are planning our second Investor Day on 4th of October, and you are welcome to come there. We will have a full agenda covering different topics. First of all, you will hear about our strategy. You'll be able to see with your own eyes how our wines are done. You'll see processing how we are processing grapes. You'll see the vineyards where we are growing our exceptional grapes. Then, of course, we'll have wine tasting. There is a lot of things to see and taste during the Investor Day. Please register. Registration are open till 6th of September. We are welcoming all of you. On this slide, you may see some snapshots from our last event, which was held in 2022. As I said, you'll learn about strategy, you'll meet our team, you'll taste our wines. Yeah, we are waiting for you. Okay, let's move on. Otherwise, you know, on the things that don't show up directly in the P&L but are important for our performance, we have continued to reap recognition for our wines across multiple highly reputable competitions, and we are very proud of this. As you know, we take this very seriously and it's part of our way of working to benchmark ourself against the best. We're happy to see that we have achieved it this year. I think for us also an important reflection of our work and our philosophy, you see there on the top left corner of the page the fact that we have achieved several Decanter World Wine Awards, not just for our wines from Moldova, but also for the first time for our wines in Bulgaria. You see there, the name Stallion, from Bulgaria, and this is what we aim to do across our different wineries, and we're happy to see that this is working out well. If we move on. Yeah. I think, an important topic for us, the revised guidance. Before I go into details, let me tell you that we don't take this topic lightly, and we've spent quite a lot of time figuring out what is the best outlook that we have and what is what we can deliver for the rest of the year. This is how it looks like. We know that we have disappointed on the revenue growth, and we will explain in a second. Ecosmart, it's clearly something we did not expect at the beginning of the year, and we showed the revised update at the previous call when we knew that we had the negative court ruling. On the revenue on the core wine revenue, despite the slower start, we were hoping with the shift of the Easter holidays, the second quarter would prove much stronger than it did. We had retained in the previous call the guidance. It turned out that the pricing price competition was too fierce for us, and we decided not to push the sales for the sake of volumes to deteriorate the margin. We also understood that we need to take a midterm view, as I mentioned before, to the development of our brands and the profitability of our brands. We have stopped investing additional money in trade marketing, communication behind brands that do not give us the comfort that they can grow midterm to the profitability level that we wanted. This is the reason also why we're revising the guidance for the second half of the year. We wanna make sure that what we grow and the markets that we grow give us a sustainable basis for profitable growth going forward. We are confident that we can deliver the numbers that we are indicating here. In terms of profitability, we are confident that we can deliver these numbers. We are also aware there are several sources of uncertainty across some of our main markets affecting some of our main brands that may still deliver variations versus the current plan. We are confident, and for these ranges, we have a high level of comfort. I guess some of you will ask us why we have not increased the profitability guidance, given that we don't have EcoSmart anymore. We are being conservative because we do not like to disappoint you, and we believe that it's best to go for what we have high certainty we can deliver. If we move on. Yeah. That being said, we have covered the first part of our meeting, and now we're moving gradually to a more dynamic part, the Q&A. Please feel free to address your questions either directly, through unmuting yourself or via the chat. I think we have first question. We have a chat from Daniella Popov. Daniella, we really enjoy your voice. I propose you to read the question, and we'll answer to you straightforward. I guess we can go also with the written question if Daniella has troubles with the microphone. Victor or Anatol, do you wanna take this question? Yeah. I think here it's matter of how we read the numbers. For Q2, yeah, you are right with the revenue is close to RON 84.3 million. Yeah. The cost of goods sold for Q2, it's RON 41 million, I'm not sure about the number of 86.7. I think here is some technical error, Daniella. We're in Q1 with the revenue is RON 81 million, and RON 46 million cost of goods sold. Q2, it's RON 84 million, and cost of goods sold is RON 41 million. It's just, let's say, it's not the RON 86 million cost of goods sold. I think here it's better to check the numbers once again. I hope I covered your question. Yeah, yeah. Check once again the numbers. In Q2, yeah, for sure we have a significant improvement in gross margin driven by correction of raw material, but also we have the impact of putting out EcoSmart in this post-tax profit. Okay. Thank you, Anatol. I see a hand raised by Mark. Mark, do you wanna go ahead? Yes. Thank you all. You mentioned that you're redefining the focus on brands. Which brands have the best potential to reach your margin targets? Which brands, you know, specifically are going to be your focus, and what level of profitability can you get them to? Like, what's your hurdle rate sort of level of profitability? Where do they stand today? I mean, I know Purcari is by far the strongest, and I don't think you break down the profitability of just the Purcari brand, but it's much, much more profitable. Sort of, where do the others come below it, and how far can you get them up? Yeah, which ones are you gonna be focusing on? Just sort of more color, please. Okay. I mean, I think there is a point on which brands, existing brands we focus on and which new brands we build. Okay? For us, let's say the rule of thumb is that across the portfolio, we wanna operate at 50% gross margin, 30% EBITDA margin. This is what we're striving for. Hence, we're looking at any combination of brands and geographies that fit within this picture. We are working towards building a brand portfolio that delivers the combination of that. Some brands might have smaller volumes, higher margins, others might have the opposite. The challenge for us is to build new brands or strengthen existing brands that have a higher pricing power, that allow us to increase profitability across the portfolio. At the moment when we look, you know, out of 100 units sold, across different countries and markets, we see that we have some of them that are diluting the average margin, and hence we're trying to develop other, either strengthen those to the point that we can also improve the pricing power that we have, or build new ones and uncover new geographies where we can do that. I cannot give you a specific timeline, because I think this will be an ongoing project, but throughout the next one or two years, we should see a significant revamp of the portfolio. Okay. In addition to, as you can imagine, Purcari as a premium brand, commands a higher margin. Spirits, you know, Bardar, also the category command a higher margin. These are things that we will continue to develop and try to accelerate the sales. We're trying to build additional brands that have the right combination of price and cost structure that give us the profitability that we seek. I hope it was clear, Mark. Let me know if not. Okay. Otherwise, I take the first, or Eugeniu, you're DMC. We go first with the raised hands so that they don't keep them up too long, then we take the chat questions. Yeah. I think, Ruben, please address your question. Hello there. In the beginning of your presentation, you said that you issued new stock to compensate the employees, to pay the employees. That is diluting me as a shareholder. Do you have any plan of maybe buying back stock, and in the future also use the capital in buying more stock back? This is how respectable companies do worldwide, which respect their shareholders. That's my question. Yes. With your permission, I will take the question, and thank you for this. I speak here also as a shareholder, so we are the second largest shareholder in the company. Of course, we are most of all interested to prevent, say, dilution that is destroying shareholder value. In this case, we approved at AGM, again, stock options plan for the next 4 years. We believe this is critical for several reasons. One, we need to attract talent, and we need to attract top talent. We don't want to pay them big salaries. We don't want to pay them big guaranteed bonuses. We are a company that believes in aligning incentives between shareholders to management. We believe that the dilutive effect of that stock allocation is by far inferior to the value created by these people. Because you understand when you run the numbers and you have a dilutive effect of, say, kind of low single digits percentage points, but these people can create value that helps the company expanding many times over, I think these are incomparable things. In designing our stock op... our share incentive programs, we like to set high targets. Meaning, that the bulk of these share allocations are in form of options with high strike prices. Again, as approved by AGM, we presented the plan in great detail. There are three tiers for the stock options. The lowest one starts at RON 15 per share. This is about where the company's stock is trading at the moment. The next tier is at 20 RON per share. The next tier is at RON 25 per share. The management makes money only if the stock goes above, and they make a lot of money if the stock goes much beyond RON 25 per share, because otherwise they are underwater. Again, please rest assured, we are quite greedy when it comes to stock. I think we set high targets for the management, they are going to make money only if we, as shareholders, make money. Maybe the last thing I'll say, the management on this call is witness to that. Often the interest of shareholders and managers are misaligned. For example, when a manager comes and wants to increase the salary and say like, "Look, I want to increase my salary. The inflation was high. I want like 20% bump to my salary or 30% bump." My answer is always the same as chair of the board, "Think as a shareholder. Most of your value is in shares, it's not in your, in your salary." This is the mindset we're trying to get with the company. By the way, this doesn't apply only to the top managers. This applies. This is a deep program. We have about 30 people covered by this program. This is heads of agricultural segment, heads of wineries, you know, winemakers, people in the finance department, people in the sales department. This is quite a deep program. We want these people to think as shareholders, not as managers who want to take the highest salary possible. Sorry for the long answer, I think this is key to our culture we're trying to build here. A culture where the interest of management, including middle management, are aligned with the interest of shareholders. They only make money if we as shareholders make money. Thank you, Vasile. Moving to the next question. Are there any other live questions before we take the ones in the chat? I think we can take Adrian Hornea question from the chat. Anatol, please be prepared. The question is for you. Can we expect COGS to stay low in the third quarter, assuming that the effect from the costly bulk of the 2020 and 2021 vintages are close to zero? Thank you for the question. You are right. Our guidance for a full year include already this assumption that cost of inventory, including also in wine, we expect to go down. Because we already start to use the older stock. In the meantime, we have other costs, including revised people salary, and also other overheads, which have driven by inflation grew up. All in all, net will be the same trend. COGS decreasing rates, we plan to improve, continuous improve margin Q3 and Q4. Thank you, Anatol. Yeah, moving from operational performance to commercial activity. Alex, I think this one is for you. Yes, I can, I can cover it. Alex, just it was participants asked to read loud the question. Okay. This will be useful for digital option. Okay. The question is, following the acquisition of the distribution company in Turkey, how much did revenues in Turkey increase? What do you estimate by the end of the year? Sales in Turkey have followed historically a pattern where we have several very large deliveries throughout the year rather than a continuous flow of smaller deliveries, and this has to do with the complexity or the challenge of logistics to Turkey primarily via sea. Yes. We as such are now preparing a new delivery of, you know, large shipment towards Turkey in the third quarter, covering a large part of the sales for the third and fourth quarter. So far we have not had sales in the first half of the year, but we will have a large dispatch in the third quarter. Okay. How is grape production for 2024? This is a rather complex topic because we need to define where. Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova. It's for everyone to take note, we operate vineyards across these three markets, and we source grapes from multiple places within these geographies. As such, we have the benefit of hedging to a certain extent. That being said, the bulk of what we do is in Moldova, so we can focus on that. We are in, you know, at the beginning of the harvest. We need to understand that harvest is actually started last week, and a lot is to be done. Yeah. What we see now is across Moldova, there is a challenging environment for many grape producers, primarily due to drought. We have the benefit at Purcari, we have 300 hectares irrigated, and hence our productivity there is to a large extent insulated against drought. We have also the benefit of a diverse base of grape suppliers, we have also proactively expanded this network by tapping into new producers located in more diverse geographies. We are confident that we can secure the supply needed for our forecasted sales for the next couple of years in a tough environment. To a certain extent, we believe that many of our competitors locally will struggle to secure enough supply. All in all, quite complex in Moldova, but we believe we have secured our supply, and we are investing further in expanding irrigation, we think that we mid-term, we can mitigate this risk. There is a question on if we tried, there is a strategy to enter the U.S. market. The answer is yes, we have tried. We are working actually with several large wholesalers in the U.S. We have started to list primarily Purcari products. We are now with a new commercial team redefining our commercial strategy for the U.S. market. We are also considering hiring a dedicated person for the U.S. market, which we did not have in the past. This is something that we will prioritize as a development given the market potential for the next months and years. How many hectares of vineyards do we have in each country? Eugeniu, do you have the numbers at hand? Using round numbers, we have in Romania as of yesterday, because we have acquired additional 51 hectares. We have 100 hectares in Romania, one circa 100 hectares in Bulgaria, and the rest of them are located in Republic of Moldova in different, in different sectors. We have increased our vineyards this year because at the beginning of the year, we have acquired Timbrus Purcari Estate, so we have added additional 130 hectares of premium vineyards near Chateau Purcari. Literally now we have around 430 hectares of mature vineyards near Chateau Purcari. We've own grapes. As well we are working with third-party partners to balance the needs for grapes. Okay. Thank you, Eugen. Further questions? Okay. If no more question, I want to reiterate my invitation for the October 4th event. We'll also arrange an online version, but I think it's really good to have you there in person. Maybe as a preview of what we plan to do, for the first time, we'll plan to announce a midterm strategy, not beyond the annual guidance we do. We want to share with you how we see the development of Purcari for a midterm period. We will try to make it a tradition to share with you a midterm guidance too in addition to the annual guidance. The team is working on, you know, finalizing all the details. There's tremendous momentum, you know, at Purcari, you know, with the new team, so there's tremendous energy and, I think it's a great time to be an investor in Purcari. At least we as Horizon Capital, you know, as second-largest shareholder, Mr. Victor Bostan is the largest shareholder, we believe in a very upbeat future for the company. Thank you for being with us today, and hope to see you October 4th at Chateau Purcari. Vasile, sorry to still thunder, there is one final question we can take very quickly. Any plan for M&A in Europe short term? I don't know, Mugurel, what we define short term. Within this horizon that Vasile described, M&A will be a growth engine for us, We are exploring constantly several targets, both in Romania, Bulgaria and Moldova, but also in new geographies, primarily within Central Europe. I trust this answers your question. On my behalf, looking forward to seeing as many of you at our Investor Day. Also an opportunity for you to meet not only me, but also the rest of the team who has joined. Hopefully this will intrigue you as well to see who's gonna push behind the strategy that we'll present. sorry. It's Alex here, [Fierer. Yes. Hi. Hi. How's it going? Good. Hi, Alex. Great with you. Good. Yeah. Yeah, I just had one quick question. I just wanted to clarify on the guidance. Mm-hmm. Slide. The revenue or the growth year- on- year, is that excluding, is that stripping out EcoSmart from the 2023 base, or is that, does that include EcoSmart? Sorry. We do not expect any additional revenues from EcoSmart, Alex. Uh, so to [crosstalk]. Yeah. I think I got the question, if I may. Alex, we announced two revenue growth figures. We announced the group revenue. Say the total revenue of the group. The answer to you, that figure does not exclude EcoSmart from 2023 comparative base. If we would have excluded, of course the growth would have been larger. The second revenue target we announced is the wine core wine segment growth target or guidance, and that one indeed normalizes for EcoSmart because it takes EcoSmart out of the equation. Got it. Okay. That is clear. On the EBITDA margin, obviously the EBITDA margin the first half is higher than this range. You mentioned just now that you're hoping to see sort of incremental improvement in the gross margin in the second half. Is it fair to assume that that EBITDA margin likely is sort of fairly conservative, or is marketing expense or some sort of SG&A expected to increase in the second half? Okay. I think there is a, there is a certain seasonality element both in the margin and the OPEX side, Alex. The numbers that we show there are numbers that we are confident we can deliver. There is, as we mentioned, a potential that we exceed them. We just, you know, wanna avoid under-delivering again, and would rather make sure we deliver and perhaps even exceed expectations. Got it. Okay. Very clear. Thanks a lot. Cheers. Yeah. Thanks. Oh, Ruben. Sorry. You're seen. Go ahead. Yeah. I have another question. We just saw that the Romanian economy is not performing as expected in the first semester of the year, and obviously your largest market is Romania. How is this impacting your guidance? Not only for 2024, but maybe first half of 2025? Mm-hmm. Okay. That's it. Okay. Good. I think Romanian economy is growing slower than it used to. That being said, in terms of consumption, if you take a look at the different elements of the GDP, you see that consumption is actually continuing to grow. As such, we do not see in the market any reasons to be concerned of our revenue growth for Romania in the second half of the year. Overall, if we look midterm, we believe we still have ample space to grow in the Romanian market, and we are well-positioned to do that. There are several opportunities for us, both in expanding distribution of existing brands, also developing new brands for a segment that we have not catered to until now, that give us enough ammunition to go and continue to grow in Romania. Maybe to add to this, Alex, I think you covered it, but I tend to repeat. We still, market share-wise, we're still not very large in Romania. We're below 20%. Second, segment-wise, we are weak in sparkling, very important segment. We are weak in brandy, very important segment, so there's tremendous growth opportunities in both of these segments. Third, here I'm going to speak super speculatively, but Romania is entering an election cycle that is going to be quite long. All the signals we get, at least as, let's, amateur political observers, is that the government will keep pumping money into by raising minimum salaries, you know, by pushing the budgetary expenses. While this may be bad for some segments of the economy, you know, making the economy maybe less competitive, if you look at net exports and other drivers or investments, other drivers of GDP. On the consumption side, as Alex says, you know, this is actually beneficial to us because the Romanians keep buying, and the consumption numbers are still very healthy. Okay. Shall we close the session? Thank you all for spending an hour of your precious Friday time with with us. We look forward to seeing you on October fourth or on the next calls. Thank you very much. Have a great weekend. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.