Good morning, welcome to the second quarter 2023 earnings presentation. My name is Jonas Samuelson, with me today, I have Therese Friberg, our CFO, Anna Ohlsson-Leijon, our Chief Commercial Officer, and Sophie Arnius, our Head of Investor Relations. I'd like to mention that this session is recorded and will be available on our website as an on-demand version. Before we go into our performance in the second quarter, I'd like to take this opportunity to say a few words about the announcements we made earlier this morning. As a pure consumer appliance company, after the spin-off of our professional business in 2020, we're continuing our work to sharpen our strategic focus to grow profitably in home appliances in the mid and premium segments, primarily under our main brands, Electrolux, AEG, and Frigidaire. We have therefore initiated preparations to divest non-core assets with total potential value of approximately SEK 10 billion. This includes Zanussi and other non-core brands, water heaters in Egypt and South Africa, and also certain non-strategic real estate. Although the water heater businesses in Egypt and South Africa have developed well and are profitable, and the brands we are now looking at divesting are all well-known in their respective markets, these assets do not have sufficiently strong synergies with our core strategy to warrant the required focus and investments from Electrolux. We believe in the opportunity for greater value creation and growth under different ownership. In addition to an increased focus on core brands and categories, as well as complexity reduction, the intended divestments will provide resources to execute our strategy at speed and scale, as well as supporting the work to optimize our capital structure. We're currently experiencing a challenging macro environment in which focus and strategic portfolio management are more important than ever. Therefore, we also evaluate further structure simplification and complexity reductions in order to execute our strategy with focus, scale, speed, and lower costs. This requires us to make tougher choices on where to invest in innovation, manufacturing technology, digitalization, branding, and distribution, and where to reduce or exit. It's too early to communicate on what choices we will do, and it's vital that this review is done thoroughly. We will not rush it, even if the intention is to keep a high pace in our work. We will share more information once ready to do so and cannot speculate on timing, areas impacted, et cetera. Let's go into our performance in the 2nd quarter of 2023. The market environment continued to be weak, with lower consumer purchasing power. As a result, our volumes dropped significantly and our organic sales declined. The market was particularly challenging in the key category, built-in kitchen in Europe. In light of this, I'm pleased that we managed to keep mix flat in the quarter, thanks to our attractive offering. Price was somewhat positive, as the contribution from this price increases last year tapered off sequentially, and promotional activity increased significantly year-over-year. Despite the significantly lower volumes, the underlying EBIT was in line with last year. The group-wide cost reduction and North America turnaround program continued to progress well and generated a substantial step up in savings sequentially. Our number one priority this year remains to deliver on this program, and I will later in our presentation, come back on the progress more in detail. Raw material cost was neutral year-over-year, but deteriorating currency and higher cost inflation from labor and energy resulted in a combined headwind from external factors that, to a significant extent, was offset by price. EBIT included a non-recurring item of SEK 643 million negative, mainly related to a provision for the French antitrust case. Therese will now take us through the main drivers behind the change in operating income. We had a negative organic contribution to earnings in the quarter, driven by a significant volume decline year-over-year, as a result of large demand drop in most of our main markets. Price was positive year-over-year, despite that promotional activity was back on normal levels, and this was based on price realization, mainly from increases during last year, which also means that the year-over-year increase sequentially reduced compared to the first quarter. We managed to have a flat mix in the quarter, despite consumers mixing down to lower price points and specifically weak demand in built-in kitchen in Europe. Mix was still back, flat on the back of strong product innovation. Our investments in consumer experience, innovation, and marketing decreased as a result of implementation of the cost reduction program. We saw very positive cost efficiency in the quarter, with strong traction on the cost reduction program, where Jonas will come back on the progress on the different components. Price was almost offsetting the negative external factors. External factors here, besides raw material that was neutral or slightly positive, is impacted by the negative currency and headwinds related to labor inflation and energy cost increases. Also, for the external factors, the effect was less negative year-over-year compared to what we saw in the first quarter. Now let's take a deeper look at our price and mix developments. The EBIT margin accretion for the group from price and mix was 2.2 percentage points. This was mainly a result of positive price year-over-year, while mix was, as mentioned, essentially flat in the quarter. If we look at the business areas, in Europe, we had a positive price on the back of increases done during 2022, and some additional increases implemented going into 2023 to offset the inflation. Sequentially, the year-over-year increase is reducing. The positive mix from focusing on our premium brands and strong product innovation is in the quarter offset by consumers mixing down, which is generating a slightly negative mix. In North America, the promotional activity was high, and the effect is more than offsetting the positive effects from the price increases made during last year. Mix was flat in the quarter. In Latin America, the price development was positive, mainly related to price increases done during 2022, and continuous increases in Argentina. In Brazil, the promotional activity continues to be back on a normal level. Mix is positive based on successful product launches and growth in aftermarket. In Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa, we had a positive price year-over-year related to increases during 2022, and additional increases in Egypt to offset the inflationary pressure. Mix was slightly positive, driven by product availability being fully recovered compared to a year ago. The group-wide cost reduction and North America turnaround program is progressing well. Jonas will now give an update on the progress. As indicated, we are ahead of plan in terms of cost reductions, with cost reductions of SEK 1.6 billion impacting the second quarter. We had very good progress on supply chain cost, both through better efficiencies, much lower express logistics, and significantly improved rates, particularly on ocean transportation. Production output is now generating generally stable with improved efficiency, and 82% of targeted blue collar reductions have been implemented. The big task right now is scaling up the new cooking factory in Springfield, where most of the new products have been launched and are scaling up while we're ramping down the old factory in the H2. Our structural cost reductions are also progressing to plan, with most headcount reductions implemented or announced. We're therefore confident that the year-over-year positive earnings contribution will be at least SEK 5 billion in the full year 2023, an improvement compared to our previous view of SEK 4 billion-SEK 5 billion. We're accelerating cost reduction activities to achieve above our SEK 7 billion target for 2024 compared to 2022. Let's have a look at our cash flow and liquidity first. Cash flow after investment was positive, SEK 3.1 billion. This is positively impacted by the finalization of terminating the U.S. pension plan of SEK 0.9 billion. Also excluding this one-time effect, the underlying cash flow is materially higher than last year. As you remember, we significantly reduced the inventory level in the fourth quarter and have been focused on stabilizing the inventory levels from there, which is proceeding well. Our aim is to have a positive cash flow after investment for the full year of 2023. Looking at our liquidity and maturity profile. From a balance sheet perspective, we have solid liquidity with SEK 30.2 billion in liquidity, including revolving credit facilities as of the end of June. We have a well-balanced maturity profile, and we have no financial covenants. The target remains to maintain a solid investment grade rating by delivering on the cost reduction program, generating a positive cash flow after investment in 2023, as well as divesting the mentioned non-core assets over the coming years. Anna will now go into the business areas performance in Q2, starting with Europe. The European business had significant volume decline in a contracting market due to the weaker consumer demand, and our strategically important built-in kitchen categories were especially hit in a market with declining residential construction and remodeling activity. This negative product mix resulted in a slightly negative mix for the quarter. Further, what we see is the consumer mixing down in discretionary categories and a connection with distressed purchases, and this is also putting pressure on the mix. Price was up, mainly driven by previous list price increases, while promotions increased. Price in the quarter did offset the headwinds of external factors, mainly driven by energy and labor cost inflation. All in all, the organic decline was close to 11% in the second quarter. The group-wide cost reduction program contributed positively to the bottom line. Excluding NRI, the EBIT for the quarter increased to SEK 297 million versus SEK 142 last year. Now, let's look at the European market. Market demand in Europe continued to decline throughout the second quarter and was down by 12%, excluding Russia. We saw the Western Europe decline by 12% and demand in Eastern Europe by 13%. Compared to the pre-pandemic levels, market demand declined 9% compared to the second quarter of 2019. The consumer confidence remains low, with the consumer demand being negatively impacted by geopolitical tensions, the high general inflation, and the increased interest rates. As mentioned earlier, we also continue to see that the reduced purchasing power result in more consumers shifting to lower price points and postponing purchases in discretionary categories. The promotional activity increased year-over-year in this weaker market, with consumers searching for deals and lower price points in general as a consequence of the low consumer confidence. In addition to this, the declining residential construction and remodeling activity have resulted in weaker built-in kitchen demand. This is most significantly impacting the kitchen retail channel, as they're more exposed to renovation compared to the electrical retail channel, mostly selling built-in appliances for replacement. When it comes to retailer inventory, we assess that these are on the high side as a result of sell-out being slower than sell-in, especially in the beginning of the quarter. This stabilized towards the end. Let's continue with our business here in North America. In the North American business, we had an organic decline of 12.3% in the quarter in a market that was slightly down. In the beginning of the second quarter, we saw some negative volume timing effects of the high sell-in in some of our key customers at the end of the first quarter. We are in the midst of the transition of our cooking manufacturing to the new facility in Springfield, and we're now in the ramp-up phase of these high-volume freestanding cookers, which continues throughout the year. The transition hampered our ability to follow the demand fully. The mix for the period was flat, and we saw significantly higher promotion activity in the market comparing year-over-year, and this resulted in a negative price development in the quarter. Summing it all up, there was a negative organic contribution in the quarter. The turnaround program is of highest priority for the team in North America, and is now well underway. In the quarter, there was a significant contribution from all these efforts and a substantial step up in savings sequentially. To conclude, the EBIT for the quarter was a loss of SEK 160 million, versus a loss of SEK 270 million last year. We will take a look at the U.S. market. The industry shipments of core appliances in the U.S. decreased overall by 1%, with variations between categories. Refrigeration and cooking appliances declined, while laundry and dishwashers were up. Compared to the second quarter of 2019, the industry shipments were up 10%. Consumer sentiment continued to be negative, negatively impacted by high general inflation and increased interest rates. However, compared to Europe, we see that U.S. consumers being financially resilient still, with unemployment at low levels, which, in combination with high promotional activity, contributed to a relatively stable overall market demand. Market demand for all major appliances, including microwave ovens and home comfort products, decreased by 6% year-over-year. Let's move on to Latin America. The trends of the consumer demand continued in the quarter, with a decreasing market in Brazil and Chile, and growing market in Argentina on the back of the highly inflationary environment, although at a lower pace than in the first quarter. In Brazil, we estimate the inventory levels at retailers have increased in the quarter. Our price was slightly positive, we also had a positive mix, as our laundry ranges were driving growth in the quarter. Another positive mix contributor in the quarter was the aftermarket business. To sum it up, the total organic growth was 5.6%. The Latin America business benefited from the group-wide cost reduction program, while the external factors were negative, mainly from currency and labor cost inflation. The EBIT for the quarter was SEK 333 million, in line with last year. We turn to Asia Pacific, MEA, and Africa. The consumer sentiment in Australia weakened considerably early in the second quarter on the back of increased cost of living and interest rates, as mentioned in the earnings call for Q1. This resulted in a market decrease in the quarter. We estimated the retail inventory levels being at normal to low levels. In the SEA market, we noted low consumer confidence and an overall market decline, with some differences between countries, with Vietnam, in particular, being very weak. On the back of lower consumer confidence, consumers gravitated to lower price points in general. The mix was despite this positive in the quarter, partly on the back of growth in the multi-door category, with recently launched innovation, as well as contribution from cooking categories. Our price contribution was positive and offsetting deteriorating currency impacts. The organic contribution in total was a decline of 10.7% in the quarter. The EBIT for the quarter came in at SEK 200 million, versus SEK 426 million last quarter. Now I will hand it back to Jonas to give our market outlook. We expect consumer sentiment in 2023 to be negatively impacted by high inflation and interest rate environment, although with regional differences. In Europe, although energy inflation has not been as high as feared, overall inflation is running above prior assumptions. In the Asia Pacific region, where consumer sentiment first weakened considerably in Australia a few months ago, we recently have seen the same development in other markets, such as Southeast Asia. The housing market, a key driver for appliance demand in mature markets like Europe and North America, is expected to decline in 2023. In the H2 of the year, forced replacement is expected to remain the main demand driver, since the reduced consumer purchasing power is not only resulting in more consumers shifting to lower price points, but also in lower remodeling activity and postponement of purchases not deemed necessary. On the back of this, we maintain our regional market outlook for Europe, North America, and Latin America, and expect demand for appliances for these regions in 2020 full year to be negative compared to 2022. We revised the demand outlook for the Asia Pacific, Middle East, and Africa region to negative from neutral. Let's look at our business outlook. Based on our market outlook, with negative demand in all regions, we estimate our volumes in 2023 to decline year-over-year. In addition to the general weak market, we expect lower residential construction and remodeling activity to also, in the H2 of the year, lead to weaker market demand, with the built-in kitchen category mainly impacting us in Europe, where we have a strong position in this category. This, in combination with postponed purchases of certain appliances, such as dryers, we expect a less pronounced positive seasonality in the year, in the H2 of the year, which normally is a stronger period for us as a group than the H1 of the year. We continue to expect the volume decline to be partly mitigated by mix improvements from our strong offering, where 2023 is another launch-intensive year. This challenging demand environment, with more consumers shifting to lower price points and driven to a large extent by forced replacement, is, however, assumed to limit our ability to fully drive mix improvements. Looking at price, we expect a positive impact for the full year, though not large enough to offset the negative impact from external factors. The price dynamic is very different for the H1 of the year compared to the H2. As we highlighted previously, the carryover from list price increases implemented a year ago has mainly benefited the first month of 2023, and was the main driver for the positive net price impact in the H1 of the year. As we saw in Q2, these carryovers were largely offset by promotions, while net price ended up only being slightly positive. Due to lower consumer demand and resolution of supply chain constraints, promotions are expected to remain high also during the remainder of the year in all major markets. However, the magnitude of promotions going forward is uncertain, as it is much linked to the macro environment and the health of the consumers in different parts of the world. Historically, the H2 of the year is a more promotionally heavy season compared to the H1, especially in North America. Given this, we expect net price to turn negative from the 3rd quarter and be negative for H2. As mentioned, we expect external factors to be negative for the year, driven by energy and labor inflation, as well as currency headwinds. Although we foresee benefits from lower raw material costs, the positive impact on earnings is reduced as a higher share than normal of raw material procured at last year's rate was consumed in 2023. This lag from entering 2023 with higher inventory levels of supplies than normal, has predominantly impacted Q1 negatively, and to some extent, also Q2, resulting in flat raw material costs in Q2, year-over-year. The outlook for external factors in H2 of 2023 remains somewhat negative, driven by currency and inflation, while raw material cost is estimated to be slightly positive. I'm pleased that the group-wide cost reduction and North America turnaround program is progressing well. Given the Q2 significant step up in sequential cost savings, we are now, for the full year 2023, targeting a positive earnings contribution from cost efficiency and reduced investments in innovation marketing combined, of at least SEK 5 billion. This is an improvement compared to our pre-previous view of cost savings of SEK 4 billion-SEK 5 billion. In 2024, the aim is to further accelerate cost improvements to achieve over SEK 7 billion target compared to 2022. Investments to strengthen our competitiveness through innovation, automation, and modularization continue in 2023. We revised our total capital expenditure for the full year and estimate it to be approximately SEK 6 billion, compared to previously SEK 6 billion-SEK 7 billion. To sum up the quarter and the strategic drivers we've been delivering on, our number one priority this year, the group-wide cost reduction and North America turnaround program is progressing well. We had a significant step up in savings sequentially, and most prerequisites for stable operations are now in place. Our attractive product offering allows us to keep a flat mix in the quarter. This, in a very challenging market environment with reduced consumer purchasing power, which shows that our user-centric consumer experience innovations under well-established brands are appreciated by consumers. In the current macro environment, focus and strategic portfolio management are more important than ever. The initiated preparations to divest non-core assets are part of our ongoing work to sharpen our strategic focus to grow profitably in selected home appliance categories in the mid and premium segments, primarily under our main brands, and increase speed and scale. We're also evaluating further structural simplification and complexity reductions. Once this comprehensive review of our operations is complete, we will provide an update. With that, I leave the word to Sophie. Thank you, Jonas. We will now open up for questions, and as always, please limit it to one question per person, so all of you are able to ask questions and have time for that. If time allows, of course, you are more than welcome to enter the Q&A queue again. With that, I leave the word to our operator. Thank you. We're now going to start our question and answer session. If you want to ask a question, you'll need to start, press star one one on your telephone keypad and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. We're now gonna go to our 1st question. The first question is coming from Akash Gupta from JP Morgan. Your line is open, please go ahead. Yes. Hi, good morning, everybody, and thanks for your time. My question is on divestment. Maybe if you can update us with where do you stand on the carving out these businesses, and when do you expect this process to be finished? If you can provide a bit more granularity on how do you arrive at this SEK 10 billion valuation tag, which I believe also includes the real estate portfolio. I mean, you say its revenues are SEK 7 billion last year. Can you also provide some color on the profitability and how that profitability has trended in this year? Thank you. Yeah, thank you. The preparation for this announcement has been ongoing for some time. These assets are fairly easy to separate as business units. There's always, of course, work required. The reason why we went public now is we of course now need to do more extensive preparations for these investments, which then requires us to announce at this point. It's not very complicated to extract these assets. Now the process starts. We've appointed a financial advisor, and we will now accept interest, let's say, indications of interest and so on. Having said that, of course, there is a preparation period now ahead of us to ensure that we have the right information and so on for potential buyers. The due diligence material and so on, will need to be prepared. This will take some time. Also, we are not in a rush. We need to make sure that we have the right buyers with the right plans for these businesses. On the business side, operations both in Egypt and South Africa are quite profitable. They've developed well and also are developing well in 2023. We think that these are quite attractive businesses for the right buyers. As mentioned, we don't plan to continue to invest in water heaters, and that's why we're divesting that part of the business. You know, the Zanussi brand portfolio is also not the, let's say, segment of the market where we're investing in. Most or a very large majority of the appliances that we manufacture and sell in Egypt are Zanussi branded. They're positioned well for the Egyptian market and are doing well. Again, since we are, you know, then planning to leave the Zanussi brand, that comes along. You know, well-performing, attractive businesses in our view, some work to prepare. When it comes to the Zanussi brand position in Europe, the... This position in the market is not profitable for us. We have been, I think, communicating for a long period of time that we are reducing our focus on the mass end of the market in Europe and increasing our focus on the mid and premium under Electrolux and AEG. That's been our strategy for the last 10 years, 11 years. Now we're at a point where, you know, these brands are still well-recognized by consumers. They're well-known, and they have a value, but it's kind of the right point in time for us to say, "Look, if somebody has the desire to invest and play in this part of the market, that can probably generate more value than it does, under our ownership." That process is now kicked off. Again, we'll take some time. We have time, so that's why we're saying over the next couple of years. Of course, we're progressing with high speed right now. Thank you very much for your question. We're now gonna move on to our next question. Our next question is coming from David MacGregor, from Longbow. Your line is open, please go ahead. Yes, good morning, everyone. Jonas, I was wondering if you could help me better understand the organic decline in North America, the 12.3%. You cited a few factors there. There was the pull forward from 1 Q, but also, you know, the cooking market share seems to have been an issue. You know, the core six versus the microwaves and the home comfort, it seems like there may have been some dynamics there, obviously price. Can you bridge for us the North American business, just addressing some of those factors so we get some sense of magnitude in terms of which were the most influential versus which may have been a little more tangential? As usual, you're very well informed in your questions. I'll give it to Anna. Yeah. No, exactly, to your point here, we saw a slightly declining market in the core categories, we were having this on the volume side, timing effect from the 1st quarter, where we did see high volume levels of selling into some key account retailers. Of course, that impacted the first part of the second quarter. On the promotional side here, of course, year-over-year, we did see significantly higher promotional level. Of course, this is starting from a higher starting point versus looking at pre-pandemic levels. But we would say that this was a high level here in the quarter. Those were the main drivers. To your point on cooking, yes, we have, of course, this transition in Springfield, and we couldn't really follow demand fully here in the quarter. Of course, this is of highest priority that we continue to have a stable transition according to plan. That's our highest priority versus following the market. That's, those are the main explanations. Is there any way to quantify that first quarter pull forward? No, we don't give that detail. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for your question. We're now gonna move on to our next question. Standing by. Our next question comes from James Moore from Redburn. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Yeah. Hi, everyone. Thanks for the time. I have a question on the bridge, if I could. In your net cost efficiency, could you say how much is savings so far, cumulatively versus the plan in North America? On external factors, you've done SEK 1 billion, SEK 3 billion in the H1. I think I heard you say less, a slight negative in the H2. I've got minus SEK half a billion. Is that the right kind of magnitude? Any help on that would be great. Thanks. Starting with the last part, I think the numbers you mentioned are correct. Of course, given that raw material is turning favorable in the H2, and we don't have this negative effect from, let's say, material bought at higher prices earlier, you know, there is a positive there. On the other, on the flip side, the negative effects from labor inflation, from energy inflation, and in particular currency, continue in the H2. We do expect a somewhat negative number for H2. On the, on the bridge, or cost bridge, you know, I, it, I guess the simple way to put it is that all, you know, all of these savings are due to the cost reduction program, that we initiated, and a significant portion of it is in North America. I have to be, I have to say we're extremely pleased with the progress there. We're really stabilized operations. We've, we've taken out a lot of the excess cost and excess headcount that we accumulated during the, the post-pandemic challenges, so some very good progress there. We're not at the point where we can say that we're operating at full productivity, especially given the ramp up and ramp down of Springfield, and the fact that we're sort of only back to stability, not to full sort of operating efficiency yet. On a year-over-year basis, it's a very, very significant improvement. Thanks a lot. Thank you. Thank you very much for your question. We're now gonna move on to our next question. Our next question comes from Johan Eliason from Kepler Cheuvreux. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Yeah, hi, this is Johan Eliason at Kepler Cheuvreux. Thanks for taking my questions. I was just curious about the price you indicated for the assets you've now announced to be sold. It sound, if it were just for the properties, it seems like this is basically what you paid for Kwikot and Olympic over the past years. Is that a realistic assumption to get back those price levels, considering where you are in the market right now? Secondly, I thought this presentation, the sharpening the strategic focus on core portfolio, further structural simplification and complexity reductions evaluated was quite interesting. Do you have any timing of those further actions to be announced going forward? Thank you. Thank you. On the valuation, frankly, we've just done a, as you would expect, a valuation of all these different assets based on market assumptions together with our financial advisors. This is kind of the midpoint of the range for all of these different assets. Of course, there is a range around that, and we wanna be clear about that. Of course, it also assumes that we actually choose to sell all these assets, assuming that we get attractive enough offers. I will not go into the case by case, because, of course, then we kind of, yeah, we preempt negotiation. I will not do that. We are pleased with the development of our businesses in water heaters and in appliances in Egypt. We're not selling them because they're not performing. We're selling them because we're shifting our we're on an ongoing journey to shift our strategic focus to really our core. You know, maybe just to spend two words on that. You know, as we've talked a lot about, you know, we're investing in global modular architectures, where we need which give us global scale and speed of innovation. We're investing in digitalization to improve the consumer experience and increasing the ability to connect directly with consumer to leverage the consumer journey, which is a profitable part of the offer for us, that we want to grow, as we've talked extensively about. This requires speed and scale in investments, and that requires focus. If we then, you know, look at the parts of the business that we're now talking about divesting, they don't meet those criteria. As we then go forward and look at further sort of structural simplification, it's all along those lines of saying, finding- Mm-hmm ... and it's not unknown to us, but really kind of sharpening our decisions around where do we double down, invest to grow? We have our the SEK 8 billion re-engineering program. Those products are fantastic. We want to invest in further leveraging those, and again, driving digitalization, consumer journey, and so on. Then there are some categories, and maybe some parts of the world where we don't see those opportunities, and we need to then invest less. All of these actions are now kicked off. We're in progress, and we will take the necessary time. We're not under, let's say, pressure. We're delivering on our cost reduction program that we already announced and everything like that, so that's progressing well. Now it's about, okay, which further strategic choices do we make inside of our existing strategy to further increase speed, scale, and cost competitiveness? Okay, thank you very much. Sure. You're welcome. Thank you very much for your question. We're now going to move on to our next question. The next question comes from the line of Martin Wilkie from Citi. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Yeah, thank you. Good morning. It's Martin from Citi. Just a question coming back to promotion activity. Obviously you've talked about how normally the industry has more promotion in the H2 than the H1. Just to give us some sort of sense relative to history, is promotion activity now sort of typical as to what we would have seen pre-pandemic? I understand that there are many moving parts within promotions, but just to get a sense, are we now at a normalized level of promotions, or just how we should frame that in a historical context? Thank you. Yes, thank you for the question. It's. Of course, it varies a bit market to market, and of course, we have a higher starting point with the kind of inflationary pricing activities we've seen across the regions. We would say that, as we pointed out for North America here, we are in the second quarter at a high level. You know, it has been normalizing towards 2019, and here we would say that it's, yeah, slightly higher, but in the quarter, it's we would say high versus that level. Thank you. Sorry, I cut him off there. We're gonna move on to our next question. The next question comes from Akash Gupta from JP Morgan. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Thank you for taking my follow-up. I have a question on the channel inventories and distributor, if you can provide a bit more color. On the same topic, you said early on that you don't expect the seasonality that we typically see with strong H2 versus H1. Can you also comment on your rate of production? Like, do you need to increase, or do you need to stay at the current levels? Like, anything on rate of production would be good. Thank you. Yeah. So on the market, as we indicated across region here, it's negative, and we see less of the kind of seasonality, stronger H2. So that kind of, that seasonality trend we see, not as explicit as we have seen before. Of course, you know, we need to follow in terms of production levels, volumes, follow that, and especially when we talk about North America here, for example, you know, the turnaround program is definitely important to create stability in our production volumes, not incurring additional cost and volatility. That's of course, a key part. I think there was a 3rd part to the question, or did that answer your question, or was there a 3rd element? I was curious to know if you need to increase your rate of production or just keep at the same level or need to reduce it further. Yeah, no, we're running at the right rate right now to meet demand, and we don't see any significant changes going forward. Maybe to provide a little bit of light on the seasonality question, because I can understand if that's difficult to read. The reason why we have seasonality to a significant extent is because of discretionary purchases, such as tumble dryers in Europe when the rainy weather starts, you know, to take one fairly significant example. This is then a, you know, an outlook we don't know. Of course, since consumers are holding back right now, they're delaying discretionary purchases and so on, you know, that's then our forecast that, yeah, it will probably be a bit weaker. That's what's behind the statement about softer seasonality than we normally see. Thank you. Thank you for your question. I'm aware that I might have cut Martin Wilkie short from Citi, so I'm just going to bring Martin in again. Martin Wilkie from Citi, your line is open in case you had another question following up. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Yes, thank you for letting me rejoin. Yes, it was really just a follow-up on the normalization of the promotion activity. You know, obviously, as you mentioned in North America, you know, around Black Friday, Thanksgiving, so forth, we normally have a lot of promotions in the H2 as well. Obviously, it's, you know, way too early to perhaps predict what's going to happen there. Is the sense that the industry in the H2 is then back to a normalized level of promotion relative to 2019? It seems like inventory in the resale channels has begun to normalize, so it's not as if you're overstocked or anything. Just to get a sense on that promotion activity for the H2, is it sort of normal relative to history? Thank you. I think, I mean, your assumption here, we concur with. Of course, this is very uncertain, as we say, right? Of course, driven on the back of the consumer confidence, and, you know, and unless something significantly changes in the macro trends, I think your assumption is fair. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you for your question. We're now going to move on to our next question. Our next question comes from David McGregor from Longbow Research. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Yes, thank you for taking the follow-up question. I guess, a two-part question. Number one, on the promotional levels, just because that seems to be what we're focusing on here now. How much of the elevation is due to market conditions versus maybe retailers expecting to extract a little more from Electrolux just due to, you know, Electrolux-specific fulfillment challenges? Then secondly, if you could just update us on the revised thought around the North American savings. You're now looking at SEK 5 billion+, previously SEK 4 billion-SEK 5 billion. Can you just talk about why you're raising that expectation? Is it a better realization around the freight and logistics? Is it maybe an accelerated headcount reduction progress there? Maybe it's the acceleration of the move from Memphis. Just talk a little bit about why you're taking that guide up. Yeah. Let me take that one. We don't have any fulfillment challenges in North America. Our service levels are back to where they need to be, since last six months or so. You know, the only area, as Anna mentioned, that we have a transition in is in cooking, where of course, that is well, as I planned for and agreed with our trade partners. Yes, I mean, the cooking transition is causing us to not be as aggressive in the cooking category in terms of participating in promotions and so on, but we don't have you know, supply challenges per se. That was the case a year ago. It's not the case right now. Just I want to be very, very explicit about that. Our factories are operating normally. I would say that, you know, and obviously, this is more Anna's point, but the promotional levels are high, as mentioned. I think the, you know, lower cost environment with lower freight rates and lower steel and lower ocean logistics, of course, allowing players to get back to normal sales incentives and promotion practice. You know, if you remember back to 2019, levels were high then as well, right? Normalization in this case means high, and we don't see any significant change to that trend going forward. Right. On the cost savings. I, I just- Yeah. Go ahead, sorry. I'm aware that, you know, people are getting back to container discounts, and there's a lot of those kind of promotions going on. I guess my point I just wanted to identify is, these elevated promotional conditions you're talking about, they're not specific to Electrolux. No, no. More promotional. Okay. If anything, we're, you know, lower than the market. Yeah. We're not pushing this. Got it. On the cost savings, yeah, I mean, we obviously we are delivering ahead of plan here in the second quarter. This is, we've talked about it, this is our number one focus, and we are seeing good traction, not just on ocean logistics, because that was already known, let's say, or predicted that those rates would come down, but and they are. Also in other, just pure supply chain efficiency, whether it's inbound logistics and outbound logistics, manufacturing and productivity, material cost savings, and so on. It's. Headcount productions progressing very well according to plan. As you're aware, there's always uncertainty around the ability to execute that on in Europe, for example. You know, how long it takes to actually get the cost reductions or the headcount reductions to happen, and all of that is progressing very well. We're not changing the program at this point. We're not necessarily expanding it either. We're just executing even better than planned. Thank you for the detail. Sure. Thank you for your question. We're now gonna move to our final question. Our final question comes from James Moore from Redburn. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Yeah. Hi, everyone. Thanks for allowing the time for follow-up. Well, two questions really. No warning? I in the past, you've sometimes made a comment coming into the results. I wondered what your thinking was this time to not do that, given your EBIT was kind of half expectations. The second one is perhaps a bit more complicated. It's some questions on the disposal assets. I wondered if you could help me understand the perimeter a bit. The SEK 7.1 billion, my assumption is SEK 5.6 billion for Zanussi and SEK 1.5 billion for Olympic, and I'd love some help on whether that's the right level. On the margin here, I wondered if you could scale that, because you said Zanussi is booking, like, -2%, low single digits, -8%, high single digit. I think Olympic fell from an 11% margin to 8% back in 2010 to 2011 when you bought it. Is it broadly the same? If it is the same, I'm guessing the overall margin is a loss for the whole perimeter of the 7.1. Why 1.4x sales, when Electrolux trades at 0.5x sales and is a more profitable, better asset? Thanks. Yeah, it's a lot of, a lot of assumptions there in what you just said, so I'm not gonna go in and dissect them. So 1st on the market communication, you know, we always kind of monitor the development that we have vis-à-vis the communications we've had to the market and the outlook that we've given to the market at any given point in time. Then, you know, we assess whether there's a need to do further communication or not. We don't see that we've been in a situation like that in the second quarter. But it is something we, of course, continuously monitor. You know, if you go back in Q1, we had a similar amount of overperformance versus the market consensus. Clearly, it is a volatile period, as we've communicated, and the consensus reflects that both over and below, let's say, actual performance. We didn't see anything that in our performance that contradicted our previous communication. Then on the perimeter of the assets, we do provide some information on that in the press release about, you know, how much of this is sold in Europe and how much is sold in APAC, EMEA. Of course, what's sold in Europe is the mass brands that we're selling. There, we are just selling the brands. We're not selling assets or products. It's just immaterial assets around the brand. It's not really relevant to talk about profitability for that, because we're not selling the business there. In Egypt and in South Africa, as mentioned, we have very good profitability and solid businesses there, but I won't go into the specific numbers. Maybe if I could just follow up, because I now don't really understand, because Olympic was like a billion and a half SEK when you bought it, which I would struggle to see is now SEK 7 billion, or maybe it is. You, No, it's not. It's not. The Zanussi business in Europe is not sold out of Egypt. It's produced in all of our European factories. That the European part of it is not Zanussi. It's not Egypt, sorry. It is Zanussi, it's not Egypt. Sorry. Okay. Thank you very much. Thanks. Sure. Okay, thank you very much for good questions, hopefully we've clarified a bit more where we stand and how we see the business and the plans we have going forward. In the challenging times that we are experiencing, it's vital to continue with this strategic portfolio management, to be able to provide attractive and relevant consumer experience innovation under our strategic brands. Efficiency is a prerequisite. Our number one priority this year remains, is to deliver groupwide cost reductions and North America turnaround program and further accelerate our cost improvements. Thank you very much. Look forward to talking to you all soon again. This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.