Well, Magnus, thank you for coming here today, and to come back again for the Barclays Consumer Staples Conference in 2023. Thank you for those in attendance here. Also, I know we'll have the webcast people online. Thank` you for your interest in Essity and Barclays. There's a lot to touch on. Very busy in Essity in the last 12 months, and I think a good place to start may be the strategic review, just on where we are in the process with Vinda and maybe the private label business. Absolutely. Yeah, we are, as you know, looking at Vinda and the private label business in consumer tissue in Europe, and the strategic reviews could include also divesting these businesses. When it comes to Vinda, I think it's quite well known now that we have a process running, and the process is running well, but it will be another couple of quarters before we see how that plays out. Private label is maybe in an earlier stage, still finalizing some details on the carve-out that we've been working on for a couple of years, but also, in this case, quite a lot of interest in a review and what could come out of that. It's all progressing according to plan. If there are potential divestments of Vinda and the private label business, would you revisit your financial targets? Have you thought about maybe getting rid of any further consumer tissue brands? I think it's too early to talk about revising the financial targets. This would improve our return on capital employed, but to what extent, I think, remains to be seen. That's regarding the targets. The remaining consumer tissue business, we definitely tend to keep NCS a core business for the future. It's very value-creating, strong brand, strong market positions, gives us a lot of leverage with our customers, the retailers. It typically helps us being one of the top 10 suppliers to retailers in Latin America and in Europe. That's definitely something we will continue to develop to create more value, just like the other parts of the business. Okay. So maybe thinking about capital allocation, again, going to a potential situation of a divestment, is there a priority risk between reinvesting back in the business, further M&A, debt paydown? Yeah, I mean, so far, we have always worked towards our growth target of 5%, which includes approximately, on average, 2% of contribution from acquisitions, because that's typically what we've been able to fund on our own balance sheet. So of course, that could definitely be an opportunity. We could also see opportunities to deleverage, share buybacks, maybe not something we have done historically, but that's not impossible, or a combination of all of these could be possible. Again, it's early days, but we would consider all of these different ways of creating shareholder value. Okay. Maybe, maybe frame it a different way, just because I think, you know, for investors out there, it would be good to understand, you know, beyond the strategic review, what would the priority be? Is deleveraging maybe more important in this interest rate environment compared to M&A? I know you have the 5% target, 3% organic, 2% inorganic. So you—maybe M&A is more of a priority, but what's the balance between, let's say, M&A and deleverage? Is there more of a preference towards one or the other? It's definitely, or it's... I can't say because it depends on the opportunities, it depends on the prices on potential acquisitions. And of course, with the higher interest rates, it doesn't make it easier before maybe, you know, multiples come down on acquisition targets also. So, so I actually foresee that it will be a mix of all these in one way or the other, depending on the opportunities. So, also adding to that, I expect us to have a strong cash flow both throughout the remainder of this year and last year. So we will... Next year, so we will also deleverage just based on that over the next years. So looking forward to having a very strong kind of firepower for whatever we want to do here within the next, you know, 12-18 months. Okay, that's interesting. I guess thinking about, you know, let's say, move away from the strategic review, what would be the priority once that's out of the way? I'm sure you're so tired of talking about this ever since you broke it, you know, earlier this year. But what, what's the vision for Essity beyond the strategic review? So, taking a step back, we split from SCA about six years ago. We have acquired a medical business that's doing really well now after the pandemic and a lot of hard work. If I look forward two years, I believe we will be a, have a much more balanced portfolio than what we've had today. Today, 40% of our business is consumer tissue, we and parts of it, the ones we are looking at in our strategic review, are quite volatile and capital-intensive, and without them, I foresee an Essity which will contain 4 equally sized businesses. So 25% consisting of professional hygiene, which is doing extremely well. I believe it will continue to do extremely well. 25%, health and medical, and then splitting the remaining half and half, half consumer tissue and half, the personal care category is feminine care, baby care, and incontinence care. So a much more balanced portfolio. We will reduce our pulp purchases, which contributes to volatility in our case, by half, from 3.3 million tons to 1.6 million tons. We will reduce the part of our overall business being consumer tissue from about 41% to then approximately, you know, one quarter of the business. So a much more balanced portfolio and then to continue to invest both organically and with when the opportunity arises, primarily then in, in medical and wound care, in, In continence care, to the extent we find opportunities, that's more tricky. And definitely in professional hygiene, which is doing so well in small adjacent categories like skincare, soaps, industrial wipers, and so on, as we have been doing. And we have been making acquisitions in these areas over the last years, and we're all performing really, really well. And actually some exciting acquisitions also in consumer goods, where we acquired Knix and Modibodi and leakproof apparel. So, I mean, that, that could also be an opportunity. Maybe not specifically leakproof apparel, but kind of future-oriented businesses. So, I think we have a good track record in doing that. And of course, our starting point, already this year, before all this has happened, is that I expect this year to be the highest sales, the highest operating profit, and the highest earnings per share we ever had. If you actually look back eight, 10, 10 years, you will see that there's been a positive development, more or less every year for the last eight, 10 years, with the exception then of the pandemic, the following, raw material, of course, shock that we encountered, and then, the bottlenecks in supply chain and so on. That impacted two years out of these eight years. If you look back, we've actually been growing top line by approximately 5% a year, year over year over year, and 10% when it comes to operating profit. This is because of just managing the business, building strong brands, innovation, investing in, staying ahead with, our competitors, of delighting consumers and customers. And we tend to forget that there are so many moving parts, but that's kind of the underlying hard work that's going on all the time. And we will see by the end of this year that we're back to that very positive trajectory again, that was kind of put off temporarily by the pandemic and the war, I forgot to mention, and other terrible impacts like that. So a very good starting point, I think, for a more. I think we've done the biggest parts then of the restructuring after the strategic review, and then we can build on this very, very strong base that I just described. A lot to discuss there. I mean, one interesting point you made was the consumption of pulp will fall by half. Can you just outline maybe some of the other benefits that will bring? Another benefit is that, and one of the reasons why we are including Vinda in the strategic review, it's a fantastic company. It's very well managed, strong brands, of course, a growing market, but it's also very, very capital intensive, because the way we've been growing there on the tissue side is by just adding more capacity, and that's really, really capital intensive. So we will be able to reallocate not only opportunities for M&A, but also capital expenditure to the other categories and drive even quicker growth in some very exciting, kind of, basic areas we've been growing for years, like in the strategic parts of the professional hygiene, with the PeakServe dispenser range, with the Xpressn ap dispenser range. That actually is 50% of the napkins in the U.S. are dispensed through our PeakServe dispenser, and we achieved that in 20 less than 20 years, which is quite amazing. In continence care, where we're just growing the pants business year over year, installing more and more capacity. We will be able to reallocate to growing those basic but very, very high gross margin and businesses with an underlying growth rate, faster also. Okay, you know, talking about the faster growth trajectory, you know, the current algorithm now is 3.3% organic, you know, 2% inorganic. Is, you know, is there any uplift on the, let's say, the organic side, excluding Vinda or the, and the Private Label business? Well, in the short term, or if you look back historically, Vinda has contributed very positively to the growth, of course, because Vinda has been growing double-digit year-over-year. That's not what we see this year, and maybe not what we see in the next couple of years either. But of course, we will have to replace that growth engine as part of this equation with something else, and I believe the way is to really double down in areas where we are already growing. So it's kind of a lower risk strategy, and we will be able to maintain those 3% organic, which means that we also keep growing our global market share slightly year-over-year, which we didn't do during or after the pandemic, when we raised prices dramatically, of course. And we had a small dent in our global market share, much smaller than I had expected, considering the price increases, actually. But in the longer term, of course, that's also very, very important for us to continue to keep the number one or number two positions wherever we are present, and that we also grow those market shares year-over-year, slowly, step by step. Okay, that leads me on to my next question about pricing, which I know you probably expected. It's the topic of the last year for many companies in staples. But now as we kind of head to second half of the year, that's rolling away, you know, can you just talk about the pricing environment in Europe, considering if we look at, you know, retailers across the U.K. and Europe, there's some deflation. We saw CPI numbers in France and Germany showing prices were falling for tissue products recently. How is that impacting Essity? And my second question would be: When retailers are cutting prices, is that impacting the pricing you're putting through, or is that coming out of retailers' pockets? So, actually, right now I'm not so concerned about the relations with the retailers and those negotiations. I don't see that there's anything specific really to mention. That's kind of business as usual. What we have, what has been a little bit of a concern now, the first half year, are overall volumes, and if that's due to consumers consuming less, which we've never seen before in our categories. Our categories are typically very, very resilient, since it's essentials and necessities, or if that's something that will remain, I think it's yet to be seen. But regarding our negotiations with retailers, there's nothing special. I feel that the retailers are having sufficient margins, so there's some additional promotion, there's some down trading, but nothing that we can't really manage. And of course, this is very much now related to consumer tissue in Europe. When it comes to our other consumer categories, femcare, skincare, baby care, there's less price pressure, and we're actually, in some cases, still on a price increase journey, especially with femcare and to some extent with incontinence retail also. And in, then let's not forget the 40% in business to business, we tend to forget them. We always talk about consumer tissue Europe, and in health and medical, we are still increasing prices, and we'll continue to do that for the remainder of the year, even though we're now starting to see declining costs also in this area with a lag compared to our other business areas. In professional hygiene, we have been incredibly successful in raising prices. We feel that we're in a quite good spot right now and kind of recalibrating, focusing on growth. But this is a category where we're so strong that the pricing pressure is not the issue for us. It's just to continue to grow in our way with healthy gross margins. So just a very positive scenario for professional hygiene. So it's quite different between different parts of the business. Yeah, it's always the headlines always come to consumer tissue. Yeah. But, um- And of course, after the strategic review, I guess, Yeah ... that focus will be different. I'm very much looking forward to that. Yeah. You mentioned something there very interesting about femcare and incontinence care, about pricing still coming down the pipeline. I mean, how long should we think about that? Is that going into 2024 as well? It's difficult to say. Right now, we're seeing the costs coming down also on these oil-based products. I had some questions today regarding oil prices moving up. I think it's too early to say if that will impact oil-based products, because it's not only the oil price, it's also the processing cost and so on. In general, going forward, I mean, you mentioned that this equation was having 2% on average organic growth. Typically, historically, we said 2% would be volume and 1% would be mixed, because prices were always falling- Yeah. Like half of per year for, like, 10 years or 20 years. But now I think there will also be an inflation component in there for sure. I mean, we need that because even if raw materials will be up amount, there will be some inflation, you know, in labor cost and in other ways, coming into our costs going forward. So we will manage for that as well, like everybody else. Fair. I mean, I think the one narrative investors are always talking about, and you mentioned, I think since Q3 last year, you saw some down trading in LatAm, a bit in the U.K. It's a price gap between you and the private label players. Has it remained relatively consistent, or has that started to widen a bit? Yeah, and of course, we're also a big Private Label player so far, still in Europe, which is under strategic review. But having said that, the price increases on Private Label were almost higher over the last year because gross margin is lower, so they need more, and the kind of content of the overall cost and the overall value is higher, so energy. So the gap narrowed, actually, and now some retailers are promoting Private Label a little bit more, and we're seeing some down trading. We're also seeing a down trading within brands, and that's something that we are working hard to make sure that we have a very attractive value offering also in our brands, so that we don't lose consumers from the brands. If they stay, if they trade down, they stay with our brand. So that's a very, very strong effort. The premium segment is still quite okay, actually. It's not declining, it's people who have been buying in a good, better, best scenario. The better products are moving down to good products. And also, of course, demographics, that they are moving to hard discounters and the new formats that we're starting to see in Europe and here, the super hard discounters. How does that impact you, the move to the hard discount channel? I mean, is that, is that even more of a channel shift concern? Yeah, we didn't have a channel shift for many years until recently. The hard discounters, the ALDIs and Lidls of the world, they become more similar to normal retailers, so it doesn't impact us that much. Now, we see new formats coming in kind of below them, like Action, for instance, I guess, or dollar stores and so on. Let's see how successful they are. Some of them seem to have also some trouble with their financials because of the price pressure they are trying to create then, and trying to grow volume. So I'm not too concerned about that. We believe that building strong brands, providing a tactically proven performance to our consumers year over year over year, is the winning formula for the long term. So even if we see some small shifts back and forth, typically, historically, we've also seen that consumers down trade for a couple of quarters, and then they come back. Because the benefit of down trading on costs is not visible maybe for many, and kind of the lower quality or people just prefer the brands they're used to, and they typically come back. So that's what I expect in this case as well. Okay, so for our focus, and I mean, that's also the reason for one of the reasons for the strategic review is we aim to have a bigger and bigger part of our sales from our own brands, and reducing our dependence on Private Label also in Europe. If we're thinking about the consumer environment, then big picture, I mean, has anything changed over the last few quarters? I mean, Q3, I think, is again when you called out the downtrending. Has there been an improvement in that trend, trends for you guys? I know. It's not really. It's—I think it's fair to say how this is going to develop, also depending if we see kind of a soft landing or a recession environment. Again, typically, our categories have been very resilient, and considering all this, again, we were looking at an operating profit in the second quarter at 50% higher than last year. So I mean, overall, our business is doing along very, very nicely. We had a little bit of a negative surprise from Vinda, but overall, the business is doing really well, actually, in almost all categories. So I have an optimistic outlook in spite of risks that we saw. It's nothing new for us. It's something we've always managed, and being here in the U.S., where maybe Private Label is something less prevalent and, and so on, I mean, this is something we, we're used to since, since 30, 40 years, and we're also, you know, supplying Private Labels. So I think we'll manage this. We always did, and keep on innovating, keep on. We have a very exciting launch program in, in all our categories and, you know, making our consumers happy and choosing us for value, for money. So even it's a proper product, and also the sustainability offering that we have and, and, you know, the, the whole package, and I expect it to continue to be successful. There's no reason for us to make any drastic changes from that perspective. Okay, so one thing you've talked about in the last few calls has been the Cure or Kill program, which, in other words, is it kind of an SKU reduction program, I guess, across your business. Can you just comment on how that's going, maybe the impact you're seeing to volumes? And, you know, what's the positive elements you're going to see in the next six to 12 months from this exercise? Absolutely. So Cure or Kill, we've been running that for quite some time. Had a very big impact six to seven years ago when we took out a lot of underperforming baby business and some underperforming tissue, consumer tissue businesses as well. After that, it's been more or less a system that we've been running that's been highly efficient in always having the 10% of the business that's the least performing in some kind of intensive care, where we follow those category country combinations, and set the target for them to improve in 18 months. And if they don't, we will restructure. That's the kind of Cure or Kill premise. And this has become more relevant now after the raw material shocks and kind of changes in overall gross margin development in different categories and so on. What we've done recently that we announced in the first quarter and then the second quarter is restructuring of our professional hygiene business. That's already doing extremely well, but we said this, we shouldn't allow that to hide the underperformance. You know, if you look at just the overall professional hygiene business, looks really well, but even here underneath, we have businesses that are very low gross margin. We're just keeping machines running because we have them and so on, doing some significant restructuring. It will add 2% of the margin to professional hygiene business year-over-year. So a really, really important step. So that's 0.4% for the overall group. So that's, that's maybe the most recent, the bigger example. But then we always have, it could be, I don't know, consumer tissue in Chile or something, that they know that they're in intensive care, they have to improve, or we're going to do something. It's a very efficient management tool that we've been running over the years. Some more visible impacts right now, this year, are these two in professional hygiene. Just thinking about, because you mentioned the volume headwinds this year, you know, can there be an uplift for 2024? Because we talk about pricing coming off, and therefore, 2024 across most companies and staples will be about volume growth or volume mix. Should there be a visible uplift next year from it? Well, I don't know. I mean, this is what we're aiming for, always having a positive volume development, because it's good for cost efficiencies. It shows that you're winning in the market, of course. It's typically also a consequence of growing market share. So definitely, that's something we want to see. Historically, we always have positive volumes in Essity before the fourth quarter of last year and then the first two quarters this year, and it actually has come as a little bit of a surprise to me. It's partly an impact of us taking decisions, especially in incontinence care, in professional hygiene, to step out of underperforming contracts, in some cases, restructuring, like I just mentioned. But in other cases, we see kind of a soft demand, which is very surprising to us. We never saw that before in toilet tissue or in feminine line or baby products. We still think that it should eventually normalize. Let's see how that develops. But let's put it this way, we're always aiming for volume as part of our overall growth, for sure. But I think everyone's now kind of uncertain because of the development over the last few years with the pandemic and everything. I mean, before the pandemic, we knew, and this is still the case, that incontinence care is always growing because of aging populations, people suffering from chronic conditions, you know, diabetes, obesity, cancer survival, and so on. We know that feminine line is just quite stable. It's fully penetrated, diapers and pads. Toilet tissue was going 0.5%-1%. It was super stable year over year over year. Professional hygiene was growing maybe 1%-2%, depending on the market. It would be surprising if it and baby care was very flat due to birth and falling birth rates. It would be very surprising if we don't get back to that. That's, that's how I see it, but we, we've had some, of course, upsets over the last couple of years. So is that- It's what I would expect going forward. Is that those factors you just outlined there, are those the drivers you think behind the soft demand you just quoted there? Because you've said you've never seen soft demand in the last few years, the last eight, 10 years, in the category or ever, really. So these dynamics, you know, lower birth rates, maybe the impact from COVID, are those the drivers, or is there anything else we should be thinking of? We don't know if this is gonna happen yet, so the and why we have slightly negative volumes this year. It's to some extent, again, self-inflicted kill. We have to remember that, and that will, of course, show in the comparables next year. But again, we're doing this for the long term, it's the right thing to do, and we're very happy, and it helps us on our margin journey, and we're gonna use those resources to focus even more on growing faster, the high gross margin parts of the business. Then when we talk about the underlying demand, I'm sure there is positive growth for many of our categories, for all the underlying reasons I just mentioned. People are-- There are lower birth rates, but people are also living longer. They have a higher disposable income. They want to remain active. They want to be out playing golf when they're incontinent, and when they suffer from chronic wounds and, and so on. So I mean, many of our categories fit perfectly with this, and they want to use premium hygiene. Hygiene becomes more important. They want to use premium hygiene products. All of that I think underpins a growth case definitely for us in the next couple of years. But for next year, let's see. Okay. So, you know, you talked about a few interesting kind of drivers of category growth within hygiene, and we talked about inorganic M&A before. What does the ideal asset maybe look like? You know, expanding on, I know, wound care, the U.S., they're all attractive areas for growth, but is there a certain category that you think you need to penetrate further? And then I guess also, is there any multiple that you'd be looking at, you know, in terms of an ideal framework? I know we looked at Knix and Modibodi, and you've given some examples before of maybe a lower multiple to pay for some targets, but is there any kind of template we should be thinking of? A good template is the acquisitions we already made, as I mentioned, including Hydrofera and Abigo, the two advanced wound care companies that are doing really, really well. Good margin, scope, growth, also here in the U.S. If we could do more of that, that would be ideal. Then, of course, outputs and so on, you know, this will change now with increasing interest rates and also depending on how those businesses are developing in those categories going forward, so I don't think I can speculate about that. And we have to look at case by case, of course, how attractive the company is in terms of growth and margins. But that's very attractive to continue to grow then in these very value-adding adjacent areas. In professional hygiene, we're always so successful with the program, like industrial wipers, I already mentioned also, sanitizers, soap, and so on. Definitely, I, I see opportunities also in the personal care part of consumer goods. There are a few opportunities in incontinence care, where we are the, the global number one, of course, with 20% global market share. To build a bigger position in the U.S. would be a dream. It's the biggest hygiene market, it's the biggest incontinence care market, but there are a few opportunities really for inorganic growth. Maybe we will see in the future that we kind of put more efforts into organic growth, because in many cases we have fantastic products, we have really strong brands and good innovation planning, but that could also be a very value-creating way of growing. But still a Knix. Acquisitions, you can't predict it. You never know when you have the opportunity or if it's big or small, or how attractive it is or what's the right price. Okay. You mentioned margins there, and I just kind of want to circle back to return on mostly capital, which, a 17% target for 2025. The question is, you know, do you still think that's on track? And, I guess, you know, the, the target EBITDA margin is about 13.5% or thereabouts. How confident do you feel with that 17% target? Yeah, I'm, I'm very confident. So we need another 3% of margin, because most of the road towards that target needs to come from margin enhancement, maybe 0.5% or something from, from, you know, more efficient capital employed than-- You know, we, we're working on our working capital, which is very high right now, and, and putting some other levers, but most of it come from margin improvement. We've come a long way now. We were at, yeah, 10% or 7% margin in, in the second quarter from just the price increases and managing the short-term situation. But we know, if we look back again 18 years, that we've had a nice margin improvement of 0.5%-1% per year, just from the hard everyday work that I mentioned now several times. We keep forgetting because it's been so volatile here for a couple of years of just investing in innovation, but also in digitalization, in cost efficiencies. And we lost a few years of cost efficient fitting our supply chain when it was more or less closed to the outside world during the pandemic. And now we're seeing lots of opportunities. Of course, we are working to reduce our purchasing costs, working with procurement in more efficient ways, machine efficiency improvement, energy savings, all of those opportunities are still there, and we lost a few years of that, and I think we can accelerate that now. And so all that just hard work in different areas will help us to reach 17% return on capital employed. And then always, of course, balancing that with having a reasonable volume growth, we need market share positions and so on. And, and this will look very, very different, different from category to category and from country to country. But this is, this is still our ambition. Absolutely. You kind of left the door ajar there on the efficiencies you can gain for what could a ROIC look like post Vinda and Private Label? And I promise that's the last question I'll ask you. Yeah, yeah. Any- I think that's speculation, but it's clear that without, and I think we showed that without Vinda, or the packaging division in the second quarter, which their operating margin would have been 12.5 instead of 10.7. In that specific quarter, of course, so it kind of shows now it was a very bad quarter for Vinda, you know, but we tied up a lot of, capital employed also in those businesses. So it would have a positive effect, how much, I don't-- I think we will see when this is finished, but it will be a positive contribution, even though the 17%, is that of course, before we set, we decide on these strategic reviews. And always with the caveat that we need to manage the overall balance, we're not gonna, you know, do something drastic, just because of the ROIC target. It's a very important target, but the growth target is also very important, and overall target is also to generate cash flows and develop the business, gain market share, are also important targets for us. Is there one that priority? Is it top line growth? In the end, I think it's the return on capital growth target and the growth target. They're both very important for us. Okay. Just because I'm conscious we're running out of time, one last question I wanted to ask was on the topic of sustainability. Essity is one of the leaders in Europe on sustainability from a disclosure perspective, also performance. Moving away from pulp-based products is gonna, as we talked about, health. Can you talk about how that's gonna help your, you know, say, sustainability score and how that's gonna help in terms of your emissions? Yeah. I don't have the numbers, but of course, almost all our greenhouse gas emissions comes from the tissue business, basically over 80% or over 90%. The personal care factories typically run on green electricity, you know, and that is where we use steam, mainly produced through, you know, gas-fired tissue machines. But we're converting them out to biogas, and we have some really exciting stuff going on. We use hydrogen level, Germany, biogas in Sweden and so on. But of course, without assuming beyond this strategic review, those numbers will get better. Then any other interesting innovations you're working on, sustain- We have so much sustainability innovation going on. Of course, something that already launched a few years ago now is, it's the wheat straw plant growth in Mannheim in Germany, where we source some fibers from, farmers, who actually operate around our Mannheim tissue plant. It's our biggest tissue plant in Europe. It replaces wood pulp that comes from typically the Finland or the Nordics. So we avoid one step in the transporting and processing of this pulp, because the wheat straw goes straight into the process, and it's highly renewable because you have this, so far, wheat straw coming out in the fields every year. It doesn't have any value currently for the farmers. And 15% of our consumer tissue in Germany these days comes from this wheat straw source. And of course, also a way for us to replace fresh fiber for sustainability reasons, but also to be less reliant on these big pulp suppliers. We are collecting paper cups from McDonald's in Europe. We're collecting Tetra Pak bricks all over Europe and recycling them. So recycling our own hand towels in 10 countries in 10 towels in Europe. So many new sources, which are much more sustainable of fiber also is another example. That's fantastic. I can talk about this for a long time, but I know we're running out of time. We are. I appreciate it. Thank you, Magnus, and thank you for everyone who's listening in. Appreciate it. Thank you.