Good morning, and welcome to Electrolux Professional Group. Today, we are presenting our third quarter result. My name is Jacob Broberg, I'm head of Investor Relations and Communications, and as always, with me, I have Alberto Zanata, CEO, and Fabio Zarpellon, CFO. I leave the stage to Alberto. Please go ahead, Alberto. Thank you, Jacob, and good morning to everybody. So, Q3 is the third quarter of this year, third quarter, where we are still above 10%. And if I look at the nine months, so the year-to-date performance, we are still ahead of last year, both in term of sales and EBITDA. Going into the detail of the quarter, let me start from the cash conversion, because that is for sure the headline, considering that we had a strong cash generation with 135% cash conversion. Cash generation that give us the possibility to further reduce the ratio between net debt and EBITDA. Going at the sales, it is a quarter where we reported a declining organic sales slightly above 5%, and this decline is mainly driven by the performance in the United States. The decline of organic sales had also obviously an impact on the profitability, and our EBITDA decreased slightly more than 8% year-on-year. With a delta compared to last year of roughly SEK 27 million, slightly less than SEK 30 million. If I look at the decline of the profitability, decline of the margin and EBITDA in absolute term, as I mentioned, the first reason is clearly the drop of volume, the decline of sales, in particular, I repeat, in the United States. A second reason that is important, because the negative impact is even larger than the gap compared to last year, is the currency, the negative currency and transactions impact. We will detail a little bit more from which currency it comes, but the negative impact is around SEK 40 million. A third element that I want to mention, when we compare the performance of 2023 with the one of 2022, Q3 2023 versus Q3 2022, is that the comparison, between, particularly in Laundry, when in Q3 we started to invoice, the product or the order that we cumulated, in the second quarter of the previous year, of last year, and that were delayed or shifted to the second part of the year because of the missing component, and as a consequence, the unfinished product that we produced during that quarter. The total amount of this shifted order is around SEK 220 million, all in Laundry, so it is impacting the Laundry performance, is this one. I would say that, roughly, slightly less than a third was in Q3, and obviously, slightly more than two-thirds in Q4 last year. If I look at the, the dynamic, the sales, the loss of volumes and sales that we reported in Q3, in Q3 by geography, I already mentioned that the big drop is in North America, and it is both in Laundry and in Food & Beverage. North America, we had, in reality, the South America business going up, but it is so tiny compared to the North America, that didn't clearly compensate the significant drop of volume, that we had. The region APMEA, so Asia Pacific, Middle East, and Africa, reported a growth that was quite significant in Laundry and, slightly up also in Food and Beverage, if we exclude a large project that we had, last year. So like for like, we had a growth both in Food and Beverage, but significantly growth also in Laundry. Due to the fact that we have been commenting this, during the past quarter, a point about China, as you see, we are not noting any more China as the negative one because we see things moving. They are not back, to what we expected and what it should be, but we see things improving, in China, in the area. Europe is flat compared to last year, but also here we have two dynamics. We have the Laundry slightly up and Food & Beverage is slightly down. Slightly up and slightly down means 1-2 percentage points. Let's go into the detail of the two segments. If we talk about Food & Beverage, Food & Beverage, we said it, we have been down in Europe, and also here, we have clearly two speeds. We have the Nordic country, the Nordic market, that are reporting a softening of the demand, and they've been negative in the comparison with last year, while the Mediterranean region is still growing, both in terms of sales and in order intake. The big hit, you see, is in North America, and here you see the 10% in Asia Pacific, Middle East, and Africa, because again, I repeat, it was in particular related to the big order that we had last year. If I exclude that one, it was a very large order, and one-off, obviously, and if you exclude this one, the trend is positive in the region. A couple of words about North America, because I'm sure there are questions, and there have been questions also during the past months about the situation, about us gaining or losing market share in the market. In North America, the business is structured basically in three typology: the distribution, the institutional business, that are the big kitchens, that you can find in school, public sector, and the chain business. The distribution business is tiny, and it was the one that was affected by the destocking. Last year, we had a super good year in distribution. It was significant last year. Now it's getting back to normal. During the first part of the year, we basically, I don't mean we didn't invoice, but the invoice was tiny because all our distributor, they were selling the product that they bought in large quantity the year before. Now it's normalizing. In October, we see a positive order intake. It's the first time since the beginning of the year, so we believe that the destocking phase is over, and this should, should normalize the trend. Institutional chains are basically 50/50, of the remaining business. That is the big, big portion of, of our business in North America. If I look at the chain business, I would say that, what we see is that our customers, so the chain customer that are already buying our product, they didn't switch to other competitors, so we didn't lose customer. We clearly see this one, so they slowed down the, the order of new product. That means that they slowed down the opening of new restaurants, the replacement of existing product. They postpone the investments. The new customers, the ones that are testing our product, also in this case, we didn't lose any ongoing test. So we see that these customers are also continuing to test our product, both in the labs and in the markets, but they are postponing the decision. I believe the word postponing is a key one, because this is what we saw during the last weeks of September, when we reported also majority of the drop of the sales. The third part of the business in North America is the institutional, we said. That is majority of the legacy business that we had before the acquisition of Unified Brands. And this is probably where we had challenges. It is an area where we clearly had internal and external challenge. Internal, related to the integration, because during the quarter, we have been running the full integration of the system, including, sorry, of the team, including the merge from 3 to 1 IT system. But also, we had some external challenges with our reps and our representation in North America. So that is the area where we surely had more challenges in the market. Order intake for food and beverage, we see that with the dynamic related to Europe, better in South, little bit weaker in North America, sorry, in the northern part of Europe, is on the same level of last year, with the exception of U.S.A.. Laundry. If we go to laundry, again, sales have been up significantly in Asia Pac. They've been also up in Europe, slightly up in Europe. They've been down in United States. And now the comparison, in particular, with what Europe—for what Europe is concerned—has to consider, as I said, that last year, we had roughly a third of the EUR 220 million of business that was shifted from Q2 to the second half of the year. Roughly a third was in Q3, and it was in particular in September of Q3. So that is the big point of laundry. And we have also to remember that this shift of business was a shift of highly profitable business. Because we produced the product earlier, the fixed costs were there, independently if we were invoicing or not, this additional business. So it was, it was this shift of business impacted not only the sales, but also the profitability. The order intake, of Laundry was on the same level of last year. I believe with this said, Fabio, we can go into the financials. Thank you, Alberto, and good morning to everybody. As you have seen, Q3 was a solid quarter, with an EBITDA margin above 10% and SEK 290 million in value. Despite the decline in sales, as you heard from Alberto, primarily in U.S. and adverse currency translation impact, it is really worth noting that we have been able to further improve the gross margin by one percentage point, but also the value-added gross margin increase despite lower sales. Positive contribution continue to come from price, more than compensating the inflationary items like the labor cost, the labor cost. In the quarter, we also started to see a positive contribution from direct material, and the high-margin customer care business continue to grow more than total sales. A few words on the currency translation. As you heard from Alberto, the impact in the quarter was significantly approximately SEK 40 million impact year-over-year. Let me say, the big offender are the weakening of the SEK, both versus the euro and Thai baht, but also the strengthening of the Thai baht overall, not only versus SEK, but also versus the euro. Here are a couple of examples in Laundry. You know, we have a large production facility here in Sweden for Laundry that buys raw material and components that are euro-based in terms of pricing. So a weakening of the SEK has definitely an impact on the currency cost of the raw material. The same applies still in Laundry. We have a large production facility for Laundry and Beverage in Thailand, and despite the improvement that we are doing in that operation, the strengthening of Thai baht has a negative impact on the product cost. Moving outside the EBITDA area, was to report that finance net somehow increased compared to last year, due to the increase of interest rates. It was SEK 33 million in the quarter. I would say an increased amount, but it was to mention that it represent really a sustainable piece of our P&L. Tax rate in the quarter was 26%, slightly above the average, but I would say no change on the overall guidance of 25% tax rate over time. Cash flow was strong, definitely strong in the quarter, confirming that cash generation is now normalizing at the historical good performance that you see also in the chart here. EBITDA was over SEK 300 million, and this strong EBITDA has been combined with a reduction on the working capital requirement. A remarkable result I have to stress, that we achieve while you continue to invest in CapEx, both on the product development, but also in the automatization of our production facility. Operating working capital was SEK 2.2 billion at the end of September, reduced compared to the level we had in June this year, and 4% below September last year at the same currency. Receivable decrease in value because we generate lower sales compared to quarter two this year, but also quarter three last year in term of comparability. But, what I wanted to mention to you is a remarkable improvement that we have had, inventory. With the stabilization of the supply chain and the action that we anticipated to you and with discipline put in place, inventory was significantly reduced, and it is now 8% lower than September last year at the same currency, and further reduction are expected by year-end. We are definitely on the right track, to revert the operating working capital requirement on sales. Our financial position has been further strengthened, and we have now a ratio on net debt on EBITDA at 1.2 times. That is a significant reduction compared to 2.3 times that we have just three quarters ago. Cash availability was SEK 650 million. And here you have the graphs regarding the evolution of the ratio net debt on EBITDA. Worth to mention that this reduction has been generated thanks to a combination of increased EBITDA and a reduction net debt of roughly SEK 860 million year-over-year. Reduction that is, achieved after having paid a dividend for additional SEK 220 million. Looking forward for the future, I expect this trend to continue, meaning further reduction of the ratio net debt on EBITDA to continue. This is particularly important because our balance sheet is strong, and will be further strengthening going forward, and the reduction at debt is important, in particular, in time like this one, where the money is more costly than they were in the past. Last comment from my side on the financial development is about an important step that we did in quarter three. We launched a commercial paper program for a value of SEK 2 billion. We have issued SEK 600 million in September on the program, and we had really a pretty good and large interest from the investor. I believe that this is an important step in expanding our sourcing facilities. A step that, when you look at the combination of the normalized cash flow generation, this new commercial paper program, the EUR 200 million unutilized revolving credit facility, you clearly understand that we have definitely the means to support the business going forward, including also potential and possible many opportunities. With that, back to you, Alberto. Thank you, Fabio. Now let's talk about things that are... I, personal things make me proud of what we do in this company, in the meaning that beside the financial, we are also looking to make this company a better company in all the aspects, in particular, the sustainability. Our target to reduce the greenhouse gases has been approved by the Science Based Targets initiative. It is important, in my opinion, that they are confirming both our commitment, but also our capabilities to be impactful on the planet. Not only, I have-- I'm very happy to report that we are ahead of the plans that have been approved. We are ahead at August, and we believe that we can reach the target that we had, the intermediate target that we have in 2025, we can reach it one year ahead of our ambition. The second one, I'd like to report an event that we have been running all along October. It is an event that we call The Hive, and it is an event that was organized in the Center of Excellence, the big showroom or test kitchen that is located close to our factory down in Italy. It was an event that collected hundreds of key customers. Here, we are talking about dealer consultants, chain customer, that have been visiting us. They've been spending one or two days in our facility, getting a full immersion and understanding about the strength and the element that are making this company different from others. So talking about the full solution, because you can clearly appreciate the full 360 business that we can offer to customers, from food, beverage, laundry, but not only customer care and whatsoever. The themes were about sustainability, and in particular, the cost of ownership that, as I said, more than once, is becoming very, very relevant for our customer on these days, and the digitally connected appliances that we can offer, not only appliances, but ecosystem. It was very successful. It has been very successful, and obviously, we will close it at the end of October, and it is something that for sure will pay back during the future, in the coming months. With this said, to conclude and summarize, it is a quarter where we reported weaker sales and profitability versus last year. In particular, talking about the profitability, is a profitability that decline mainly due to the volume decline in North America. The negative currency transactions have impact, that was roughly SEK 40 million negative, that is larger than the gap of EBITDA with last year, and the comparison with the laundry business that I mentioned earlier. With this EBITDA decline, I think it's good to keep in mind that we improved the gross margin. We improved the gross margin, thanks mainly to price and material improvement that will continue to be there also in Q4. So this means that the EBITDA, in some way, besides the absorption, the volume, was also impacted by cost, clearly. And this is the reason why we already put in place actions to reduce the cost. All across the business area and functions, we have actions to mitigate and reduce the cost. The second element is obviously the confirmed capability to generate cash flow. To generate cash flow that is giving us the possibility to reduce the ratio between net debt and EBITDA. The third comment is about the order intake. The order intake is on the similar level of last year. This means that the order stock, the order stock is still a healthy order stock, is on a normalized level. That means a couple of months of sales that is there. So order intake on the same level of last year, with one exception, that is North America, that we see still suffering a decline of the demand. With this said, we clearly see recently developing a more negative customer sentiment. It is mainly in the U.S.. If we want to say in Europe, it can be in the Nordic country of Europe. With this sentiment, we put in place action to reduce the cost. We will see an improvement of the gross margin, thanks to price and material, continuing also in Q4, and we put in place actions to short-term reduce our discretionary spending, and this is in some way, thanks in particular to the good order stock, is giving us some comfort for the end of the year. With this said, Jacob, back to you. Thank you, and with that, we open up for questions. Please go ahead, operator. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on the touchtone telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered the queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star followed by two. Participants are requested to use only handsets if you're asking a question. Anyone with a question, press star and one at this time. Our first question comes from Johan Eliasson from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead. Yes, good morning, all. Thanks for taking my question. I was wondering, we see a very good cash generation coming out of, of the company, and then your net debt, this is rapidly coming down. I assume we are going into a bit of a slower environment as well, but, but we also have the fact that, valuations of potential M&A targets is probably, going down as well, going forward. Do you think there are any possibilities for you to, to, to do some action on the M&A front now when we entering the slower times? Or are you still sort of pretty busy with integrating the UB acquisition, as you highlighted, issues with IT integration and stuff like that, not making it possible for you to sort of take on another acquisition in the near term? Thank you. As I said, thanks for asking, first, because it's a good point in the meaning, that it is also one of the reason why we are on our own on these days, so to run acquisition, and, to grow inorganically, sorry. We have been, scouting the market, continuously scouting the market. So, the integration of UB, I would say it's been challenging and had some repercussion on the business, during the past months, but, from October first, we are running the U.S. operation under one IT system. We have only one legal term company, so we did the merge. These are internal, in some way, disruption, if you want to say. Externally, we have been also merging the teams, starting from the chain that was done earlier and recently also the one for the general market, for the institutional market, that was the one where we suffered, by the way. So I would say that with October, I don't mean there are no more challenges, but for sure, we have the possibility to eventually run an acquisition, if it comes. And I hope you understand that that is something clearly that we are working on, on everything as usual, as every month, but in this moment, we are not in the condition to announce anything, clearly. But, do you think price expectations for a potential sellers is still too high versus where you expect them to be, or what's the main issue right now? The main issue, if you want to say generically, is the fact that in any case, there are not so many available target. The valuation is still high. I remember during the COVID, when the market went down significantly, and that was the period where basically nobody had been able to run any acquisition, despite the value of the company, theoretical value of the company was low, is that nobody decreased the value, the valuation of the company. Because this is a business where you know that typically you are able to extract value. You can have a slowdown, yes, you can, but I mean, in particular, United States, that's a market where the decline is faster, but also the recovery is very, very fast. Yes, but what you have, obviously right now is significantly higher interest rates and also on the sort of long term, if you look at the 10-year bonds, et cetera. So that should have a negative impact on the price expectations, but you're not seeing that yet- No ... you think? No. No. Okay, thank you. Thank you. The next question comes from Gustav Hageus from SEB. Please go ahead. Thanks, operator. Thanks for taking my questions, and sorry, I was a little bit late into the call, so maybe you, you've already answered this. But starting with the FX impact on the 40 million SEK. Firstly, if you could remind us, what was that impact in Q3 and Q4 last year as a reference? And then I didn't really get the explanation with the Swedish-based factory, how that would be negative with the weaker Swedish krona. I assume most of those sales are non Swedish krona, so we'll be benefiting from a weaker Swedish krona. But perhaps you can just walk us through that, that would be helpful. Thanks. Thank you for the question. First of all, two part of the question. In quarter three last year, currency had a really minor impact on the profitability, while the major impact was this year, in particular, in quarter three this year, due to the weakening of the SEK versus, I would say, most of the currencies. I was bringing a couple of examples earlier related to our production facility in Sweden. We produce here a large portion, our laundry business, but we buy raw material and component with a euro-based pricing. Meaning that what we buy in Sweden and outside Sweden based on euro is going to cost in SEK equivalent much more. So what we manufacture in Sweden, and we sell in Sweden, you know that Sweden is an important market for, for the laundry business, has a significant negative impact related to the currency. The second example I was bringing today as the major offender is the strengthening of the Thai baht versus euro and versus SEK as a reference currency. Also here, the increase has been significantly year-over-year, and in Thailand, we have a large production facility that is serving both the laundry part of the product portfolio and the beverage part of the product portfolio. So despite the good activity that we are doing there in the plant, to continue to reduce the product cost, the strengthening of the Thai baht has been a negative offender on the profitability. Now, but just, perhaps I'm just not getting it, but, I mean, share of sales from laundry in Sweden must be, you know, single digits, right? And, I assume that the cost benefits from having production in a weaker currency country, and pricing mainly in other currencies would be a net positive, right? Although the gross impact from the transaction might be negative, but as a whole, it must be positive, right? Or am I getting it wrong? It was not. It was not, it was not for the full year, and in particular, it was not in the quarter. So there was an acceleration of the currency impact in quarter three. And by the way, Sweden domestic market is the second largest laundry market after United States. Even if the market in itself is smaller than many other market, for us, the laundry, the laundry market, the laundry Swedish market is the second largest. We have a 70%+ market share in Sweden, is a super high market share, so very important presence. And by the way, the famous shift of volume from second quarter to the third and fourth quarter was also with a large percentage, exactly in the Nordic region. Okay. Yeah, no, I thought it was, like, 17% maybe. But, then you had a comment on the reps in North America. I think historically, there's been discussions on whether or not you have been able to attract the most efficient reps in America, given your size there. But can you just go in a little bit on what has happened? Have you lost reps in America? What has happened? We had to change the reps, yes. We are talking about mainly the reps of the legacy of the, let me say, non-UB business. Some of them left us, some other have been also terminated to have an improvement. So when we change a rep, there is a disruption, no question, because you have to train the new reps, you have to have the product installed in their facilities for the demo centers. It, we cannot neglect that, we had to work, we had internal and external trouble during the integration, and this was mainly limited to the summer, I would say, pre-summer, after summer period. So, these are things that we are, and we will address, obviously, including staffing, training, support also from from central functions. So currently we have, let me say, the coverage with the reps is done, is okay. So we don't have a problem on that side, but we have been going through many changes during the in the past months. Is there any underlying reason to why the reps don't stick around, or is it just? There've been some leaving us, some leaving us, they've been also forced by competition. You know that this is something that is happening. Remember that during the past month, there have been a lot of changes in United States, also as a consequence of the merger of Ali Group and Welbilt. So there have been a move in the American market, so- The representation that we had, in particular, with the Electrolux rep, so the former, let me say, non-UB reps, was such that some rep they left. There was also uncertainty. I believe I said that my experience about integration with UB was very successful, and I have to say, because we separated on time, we integrated on time, we deliver the plan that we were supposed to deliver. Then the recent months have been faced. We had to face some challenges related to the external reaction, uncertainty, what is going to happen, something like that. We said clearly that we were not intentionally merging the UB reps with the Electrolux reps. This is what is happening, but evidently, it was a level of uncertainty that didn't work well on the Electrolux, former Electrolux, now UB reps. Okay. Yeah, that's helpful. And then if we could talk a little bit about price pressure campaigns. Obviously you have not been able to then offset high raw material prices with own price increases in Sweden and laundry in the quarter. But as a general view, I guess, price on components and raw materials are going down globally. Are you able to keep prices, or are there any price pressures in the market, and are you planning to offset some of this FX headwind in Sweden, specifically by introducing some type of price action about- The answer is yes to both, in the meaning that, yes, you saw that, gross margin increase, and the increase is related to the residual price increase, positive effect, and the increasingly positive effect of the reduction of the direct material. This is something that we saw in Q3, in particular, the material, it is what we started to see becoming significant in Q3, and it will continue in Q4. So this is the... So the gross margin is improving. The other part of the question is about specifically referring to the Swedish market, and in this case, I'm specifically referring mainly to food, where all the food product are produced outside Sweden, and due to the weakening of the SEK, they are becoming more expensive, and indeed, we already planned and announced a price increase in the Swedish market for this product. And in general, on a global scale, do you see any campaigns or price action from peers, in response to sort of weakening market and lower input costs? Okay, campaigns are always there. Nothing really significant and nothing really related to the raw material or anything like that. So nothing that is worth to mention, let me say. Then everybody's running some campaign, but we are, in these days, promoting every day combi oven, also because we have new features and in particular related to the washing system, the chemicals and the other stuffs. But I would not... Yeah, I'm mentioning this now because you ask, but otherwise, it's not not something notable. There's no price pressure in the market? I'm expecting that some pressure will come, in particular in the area where we are having a slowdown of the demand. With the market, let me say, or a demand that is coming a little bit down, there will be for sure, pressure. I'm not expecting a price reduction. Eventually, we will act with the specific actions, case by case. Finally, from me, you mentioned the cost actions that have already started, and you referenced discretionary spend part of it, but could you elaborate a little bit more on the phasing of these actions? If you could, give us an indication of the size and, if there are any one-offs that might occur, as a consequence of these, Now, look, we have, we had some one-off. In particular, we had the size of the production capacity in the factory in Italy, that is the largest and also with the largest number of employee. The cost has been already taken, but they are minimal cost that we are not even reporting as a item affecting comparability. So I would call it the normal things that we have to do to keep productivity up and efficiency up. The cost actions that I'm taking, in addition to the one that I just mentioned about the production capacity, are the one that normally you take when you see that margin is up and the fixed costs are still there, with this slowing of demand, to be ready, let me say, in case of... You take action on the discretionary spending. Discretionary spending is, I don't know, postponement of employment, reduction of travels, but it's not a travel ban, it's a reduction of travel that are not impacting the business. Whatever other costs that you can see in the day-to-day activities. We are not- Okay ... in a restructuring, if you want to say, mode. Okay, great. Thanks for answering all those questions, those formal questions. Welcome. We have a question from the web. Do you see the problems in the institutional business in the U.S. as temporary and fixable? Is the same business more projects heavy? Okay, first, first answer about institutional business, yes, I see it temporary. As I said, we had, we reestablish the network of reps. Some are new, some are the old one, let me say. Some are, by the way, the reps that are also representing Unified Brands, so it was not done on purpose, but it came. So we have a team that, we have been training in September heavily, to educate them. Most of them, they also have demo places, all around the country. So I'm it will take time, a little bit of time, but I'm not expecting it will take so long. I think I already mentioned, this happened during the financial crisis, 2009, during the COVID crisis, 2-3 years ago. United States is, has a characteristic, this market. It's going down quickly, but it comes up very quickly, too. So, it is temporary, what is happening, absolutely, yes. Then there is a question, I think, to Fabio. How was the EUR 40 million EBITDA impact, the currency transaction impact, split between divisions? And what are you doing to reduce that negative impact going forward? So when we look into the SEK 40 million that we reported in the quarter, I would say it has been fairly equally split between the two reportable segment, food and beverage and laundry. Clearly, the dynamic of the currency of the two reportable segment may be different, but the underlying two major factor that I mentioned earlier, the weakening of the SEK overall and the strengthening of the Thai baht is the main offender. Let me spend a few words on the pricing. Alberto already anticipated the measure that we are putting in place on price, but I would like really to remind you all that what we did on price in the last couple of years. If you remember, first, we had the increase of raw material and component cost. Secondly, we had, in particular, end of last year and this year, an increase of labor cost. The good strength of this organization of Electrolux Professional is that, we are really good in recovering. We have priced the inflationary item. We have proved it all along the past, but also in particular in the recent years, 2022 and 2023, we have a good and disciplined price execution. This development of the currency, we cannot predict how it will look like going forward, but clearly, as you anticipated, Alberto, we are putting in place, market by market, the necessary action to compensate this negative impact. Thank you. I leave it for the operator again. As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press star followed by one. Gentlemen, so far there are no more questions. Back to you for closing comments. Okay, thank you very much. I say thank you for today, and have a good day. Speak to you next time. Thank you and goodbye. Thank you. Bye. Thank you. Bye.