Welcome to the ITAB Shop Concept Q3 Report 2023. For the first part of the conference call, the participants will be in listen-only mode. During the questions and answer session, participants are able to ask questions by dialing star five on their telephone keypad. Now, I will hand the conference over to CEO, Andréas Elgaard, and CFO, Ulrika Bergmo Sköld. Please go ahead. Hello, everybody. My name is Andréas Elgaard. I'm the President and CEO of ITAB Shop Concept. Warm welcome to our Q3 report presentation, and just a brief look at the agenda. I will start, as usual, to give you, if there are anybody new on the call, I will give you a short introduction to who we are, a little bit what we are focusing in our transformation efforts, what we're aiming towards, and then we will go into the interim report before we open up for questions and answers. Just a short introduction. We like to say that we are what we create together with our customers. So regardless, if it is a car salon, a pharmacy, a fashion brand, or a grocery, do-it-yourself, who we are and what we create together with our customers really defines the value that we add to the process. We are today a leader in Europe. We are among the three largest companies, and we are equal in size, the three leaders, and we have a global reach. So we have activity in 24 countries, and we are also sometimes helping customers outside those countries. The grocery segment is our biggest by far, followed by home improvement, fashion, and the other segment that we report is. I can say that pharmacy is quite important there. Consumer electronics is also quite important. Cafes, restaurants is popping up depending on the year. So this is who we are and what we do. We work with some of the biggest and most famous brands in Europe and across the world. At ITAB, we are trying to go from being a product supplier into solutions provider instead, and we are really helping our retail customers to co-create solutions that helps them to deal with the changing and the dynamic retail climate. Retail is really going through quite a large and I would say, fundamental transformation. It has been ongoing for quite some years, and the pace of change is not slowing down. It is constantly speeding up, but also you see some signs of maturity and some also deeper insight into what it will lead to. You could say that consumers' expectations on a retailer, on a brand, it's not only set by the normal competition, it's also set by what online players are doing, what other experiences that are being offered. Today, the consumers are quite demanding in when it comes to getting a tailored and personalized experience, having a very convenient shopping experience when that is what they want, or having a very inspiring shopping experience where they decide to invest their time. There's a lot of these expectations that are fundamentally challenging retailers and brands in how they are conducting their business, and still, many retailers are struggling to try to understand what it means for them. Basically, you can say that they have to be able to balance the growing disruption from online e-commerce. They need to do investments in their own digital channels, but also we have seen that those retailers that move their investments from stores to online, they have been, I would say, they have often suffered more than those that have had a balanced investment policy. So we see now that the amount of investments in total is going up, and it's becoming increasingly hard for retailers to decide where to put their investments. This leads to quite big demands on clear return on investment and also some longevity into the investments that they are doing. Many retailers are experimenting and trying to find their way in this changing landscape. We've also seen that the previous fear that COVID was going to accelerate, that everything was online. We have actually seen the opposite, that the online retail have the growing trend has halted and that the physical retail has come back, and it's quite clear that we, as consumers, we want to use all our senses when we're engaging with a brand and not just be online. Those who are doing it the best are those that can really master the multi-channel experience for their customers. What it means for us and for our industry is that we need to continue to transition from being great at supporting retailers' expansions into being great at supporting retailers' changing needs. That means it is more projects, it is more repurposing, it is more piloting, it is more testing, but also the frequency of change has increased at the retailer. So there is more work out there, but the frequency of the work and the size of the work is very different from what it used to be. So it's much more, I would say, engineering and overhead-heavy work today versus a couple of years ago when it was, you won a big expansion deal, and then you knew what to do for the coming years. That market no longer exists, unless it's at the discount retailers, where it's still basically the old world still. For us and for our whole industry, it means that we need to become much more agile, much more efficient in our operations, and we need to modernize through and through. As a market, we see clear signs that some of the smaller players are having a hard time, and there is an underlying need for consolidation, so you can get economy of scale. There's a lot of things that are affecting the market, and I will not go through all of this, but basically, you could say for a retailer, there is a dilemma of cost versus experience. Consumers expect improved and new experiences continuously, and retailers are struggling with their costs. They're struggling with the operating expenses, and they're struggling with the capital expenses. And if you're going to be successful in this industry and we as ITAB, then you need to be able to prove that you can add value that helps them to manage their investments and also reduce their operating expenses while satisfying the experience that the consumers are looking for. So there's a lot of things that is driving this, and for those that are interested, you can, you can read through and also contact us afterwards, and we're happy to talk about what's going on in the consumer and retailer market and at how it affects our industry. For us, the answer to a lot of this is that the market is more demanding than ever, and there's no need in trying to pretend that you know what will happen in the future. So instead, you need to build alliances, and you need to rethink how you do your business. And we call that to rethink retail and do that together. Together with customers, together with suppliers, and across, I would say, a wider ecosystem of players that support the retailing and consumer industries. Our ambition is to become the leading solution provider within our industry, and we have taken several steps the last couple of years towards that, but there are more things that we need to do in order to really come out on top as the leading solution provider. Our strategy consists of seven strategic priorities that are helping us to do this. And for those who have been around following us for a while, when we set this strategy, it was trying to address a couple of things. First of all, to stabilize our financial performance because we were in a tight spot at that time, that we have done. We have a very strong, I would say, balance sheet today, and we are kind of filled up with our capability to invest in modernization of our own business. So the first part was to stabilize, the second part is about building new capabilities, both internally and how we meet our customers. And the third one, third priority is really about driving growth in both organic way and in acquired way. So that is what we are aiming towards. And to do that on a base that is not growing, but that is more scalable. If we want to succeed with this, we talk about something we call our value proposition, and our value proposition is going from talking about how great our different offerings are, and instead, trying to target and understand what is the strategic dilemma that the retailer has. And for us, when we are doing that, we are really focusing on what is the desired consumer brand experience that they want to achieve? Every retailer, every brand, has some brand values that they want the consumer to experience, and in no place does this come to life as strong as in physical retail. So that is super important in whatever we do. We need to make sure that the built experience is living up to the brand values. And then to increase sales and increase conversion. So for every customer that comes into store, that you can increase the sales and also increase the size of the basket is super important for most retailers. At the same time then, you want to improve the efficiencies and the service level that you provide. And if you can do all these three things, plus add the fourth one, that is to reduce the operational cost, you are in a very strong position to be able to deliver to any retailer out there. And as a solution provider, we will strengthen our position in the marketplace and provide value to the customers. This means that our leadership position will come from how well we add value, which is a bit new way of thinking for our industry, and so far it has proven itself quite successful. And we have seen in the beginning of the year, when we had the world's- when we attended at the world's largest retail supply fair, that for the first time, our strategy took a concrete form and shape, and the customers were delighted. Also internally, it would became very concrete, what it is that we try to achieve. So this has given us a lot of confidence to, to continue to push through, and that's what we are doing, basically. But really, what you should expect of us is that we will build more strategic partnerships with our customers. We're going to increase our cross-selling, which means selling more to existing customers. We also want to penetrate certain key markets further, especially in Europe, there's a lot of things still to be done. Specifically, I would say, in Central and Western, Southwestern Europe, but also in Southeastern Europe, there is more that we can do. And then we are still close to our main, I would say, factories and facilities. We have probably the market's widest and the most sold retail technology portfolio, and that is something that we're going to continue to utilize and to cross-sell to more customers. We have an ambition to grow in services because retailers are struggling with all this change, and they need to be helped in designing it, installing it, making sure that it works, and to do that in an agnostic way across technology, across brands. Then our ambition is to see that ITAB will slowly start to drive growth also in the more recurring revenues than what we have done in the past. Today, our influence on the consumer journey and retail operations is kind of satisfied through our lighting, interiors, and Retail Tech offer, where we help retailers to deliver either a convenient or an inspiring consumer experience, and at the same time, drive efficiency across their chain. In the future, we believe that we need to continue to do that, but we also need to add more services, and we need to help the retailers to connect technology from us and others in a more agnostic way, so they can access data more agnostically, they can launch and decommission new tech in a more modular way. And also, that you-- it's no longer enough just to influence the retail's chain or the fleet of operations that the retail has, but also that you need to influence the value chain and the supply chain of, the retailer and the retailer suppliers. And this is something that we are working on doing. And then just to kind of get back to our strategy execution, I mentioned it before, the stabilized phase we did. According to what we had promised to the market, we delivered. Of course, the market is in a very dynamic situation. We know that there is a recession going on, especially in Northern, Central Europe. It's more signs of this coming also in Southern Europe, and we know it from across the world, that it takes different shape and form. We are, in a very focused way, building new capabilities. We are preparing to roll out the same ERP to all our 45 operating units and operating companies. And we are going to continue to build our market-facing capabilities in order to drive internal efficiency, but also in order to drive organic growth. And then we want to come to a place where we can expand ITAB by targeted acquisitions that helps us to accelerate our strategy execution and also through organic growth. And then in order to not kind of lose the focus on what we're doing, we also need to manage the different, I would say, challenges that world around us is putting in front of us, be it the cost of living crisis, cost of capital, or the political uncertainty, lack of critical components, et cetera. So far, we've been able to manage that and to balance that in a very really good way, and I'm super proud of our teams so far. We hope that things will become more predictable going forward, but the last couple of years has been very unpredictable, and what we have learned is to become very agile. So, these are... I just want to remind you guys, these are still full-year figures, so it's 2022, but we are well on our way. We're strengthening our most important sector, that is the grocery segment. We have increased the amount of retail technology that we delivers, and we have significantly lowered our net debt. And of course, we have improved our underlying profitability, which is very important. So we are really moving towards meeting the targets that we set out for ourselves, to become the leading solution provider. And there is a clear growth opportunity. Not only does ITAB, I mean, ITAB were in a situation a couple of years ago where we had to modernize. We had to look at ourselves before we could confidently look at some of our customers and be credible. So, but there is a clear growth opportunity, and it comes from a number of different opportunities. First of all, the market we are in is huge. So our opportunity to grow is substantial. And we like to say that there are three areas where we focus our growth, and we want to focus on more profitable growth. So of course, our core markets, where we want to cross-sell our products and services to the existing customer base and to sell more of offerings. Here is, I would say, a big and the core opportunity where we have the competence under our own control, we have the relationships under control, and here we need to be really focused and start to drive that in a better way. And then, of course, we can gain new customers in our core markets, either in our the segments that we're focusing on or in adjacent segments that are natural for us to step into. And then, of course, we think that it could be good to expand ITAB's growth also with new offerings. And here we are mainly looking at retail tech solutions, as we believe it's going to continue to fuel our growth, and also services, as I mentioned before. And then we see that maybe we should also expand to new markets and segments. I mentioned already Southwestern Europe and Southeastern Europe, but there could also be regions out in the world where we go with maybe parts of our offer, where we see a clear opportunity. One of those where we are seeing-... A lot of growth for the time being is in Australia, where we're selling a lot of loss prevention solutions, and we believe that we are having quite interesting opportunities also in North America. So we will come back to that, hopefully, in the future and talk more about that. So this is how we rethink retail, and we do that together. So if we now open up for the interim report, and I will hand over to Ulrika Bergmo Sköld. Yes. Hello, everybody. I will now give you an overview of the interim report for quarter three. Looking at our rolling twelve development, our EBIT is holding up on a level above 6%, despite the challenging market sentiment and declining sales. Rolling twelve, we have lost SEK 700 million in sales, but our reported EBIT rolling twelve is just SEK 20 million behind 2022, where we have increased gross margin and cost saving actions this year, partly mitigating the effect of the lower sales. Our operating cash flow is very strong in 2023, keeping the positive turn we saw in quarter four 2022, with stable levels of operating capital during this year. Our net debt is now on a very low level, and compared to quarter three last year, we are SEK 500 million below, which means we have a strong financial position in a somewhat uncertain business environment. We still experience a strong growth in retail tech, loss prevention solutions, and we continue to gain momentum from our strong position in this area. Growth in sectors such as pharmacy is also driving the increase in segment other, but most other segments, customer segments are in decline due to the fact that customers have been hesitant towards capital spend, and currency-adjusted, our net sales decreased 15%. We have, however, past few months, seen some indications of customers being more willing to invest in previously postponed projects, but the uncertainty remains high, given the economic climate we are in. Our gross margin continued to improve in the third quarter, mainly driven by our loss prevention solutions and the favorable conditions, market conditions in this area. And this has, as I said, partly mitigated the effect of lower sales in the third quarter. EBIT of SEK 129 million in the quarter, corresponding to EBIT margin of 8.5%, is well in line with our financial target. However, in comparison with the reported figures for last year's third quarter, which was the strongest quarter since 2017, it's difficult to show increased earnings trend with a sales decrease of over 10%. Our implemented cost savings, alongside the beneficial product mix, have had a positive impact on our result, but of course, the lower sales and capacity utilization in our production facilities had a negative impact. We will remain focused on operational efficiency going forward and continuously adapt our cost levels in all areas. Our cash flow from operating activities in the third quarter was SEK 229 million, and for the first nine months, 2023, we are on SEK 434 million. We saw a positive turn and decrease of operating capital end of 2022, after last year's challenges with the raw material and supply chain disturbances. We are now stabilized on a lower level, mainly driven by our actions to reduce stock levels. We now have more normalized inventory levels, but we will keep our continued focus onwards to increase our capital efficiency. I will hand over to Andréas again to take some main takeaways. So just to sum up a little bit what the main takeaways are from the Q3 report. So, I mean, we're meeting almost record high. I think it's this, last year, we had the second-highest quarter ever in ITAB, so we are still proud over that, and we should be proud also over this Q3 quarter because it's quite strong figures, given the market conditions and given the challenges. I think we deliver strong on cash flow, and we keep up margins in a very, very good way. So that is, I would say, the main takeaway. And of course, we see a mixed sales development to retailers. We are having a lot of successes when it comes to loss prevention, and this is one of the key problems that many, many retailers are struggling with. The cost of living crisis have put a lot of pressure on more consumers, and this transforms into more shrinkage, more theft from retailers. So, and there has also been some organized theft that many retailers are struggling with, and our solutions are really helping to deliver, I would say, better security in a non-intrusive way, so consumers don't feel that they're being hindered or being made into suspects. This is mainly then targeting those who are behaving badly, and so it's quite popular, the things that they have. And we have a leadership role within this field. Of course, sales are decreasing, and that is putting pressure on us. You all know that when your top line goes down, the remaining sales needs to pay for all the fixed costs and all the shared overhead. And of course, we have done a lot of activities to take cost out in a way where we think it's sustainable to do that. But also we have worked a lot on our capital side, we worked a lot on our margin side, and we have been also helped by the product and customer mix so far this year. We believe that we'll be able to keep up margin going forward. But with that also said, we see positive signs that maybe things are slowing up a bit, so we are looking a bit optimistic into the future. But again, I want to be very cautious because the market climate and the uncertainty in the world is bigger than ever. So it's more that we feel that we are in a strong position to balance whatever challenges that comes, and that's something that we should bring with us. And then just to go back to that, the trends in the market, they really underpin the areas of growth where ITAB is well-positioned. So we see opportunity, and we see that our strategy is attractive, and we are discussing with many of our customers, things that we did not discuss a couple of years ago. Because their awareness and their understanding of the situation that they are in, be it retail, loss, or be it efficiency, or be it, I would say, how to offer a better omnichannel experience, they are now realizing that they need partners to talk to and talk in a different way than what they used to do. So, we see more and more interest in building more strategic relationships and to co-create solutions on the dilemmas that the retailers have. And we believe that, ITAB is well-positioned going forward to be able to help them. And by that, I stop the presentation from me and Ulrika, and we go over to the questions and answers. If you wish to ask a question, please dial star five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial star five again on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Erik Sandstedt from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead. Hi there. Thank you. Erik Sandstedt here with Kepler Cheuvreux. Can you hear me, by the way? Yes. Yes. Yeah, perfect. Perfect. I have a few questions. I'm a little bit curious about the outlook comments. You, you state that you are seeing some signs of recovery among customers, but that the uncertainty concerning future development remains considerable. Could you just give? I know you touched upon it on the conference call, but could you give some, some more colors on that, and also perhaps how these comments compare to what you saw, let's say, a quarter or two ago? Yes. So, I mean, as you know, many retailers, they operate with quite, I mean, they have large volume, but they have low margin. And for them, when the cost of capital has increased so fast, it has put a natural hesitation in their eagerness to invest. And we can see now that that more customers are opening up to discuss investments because some of them were very, very careful. So we see that it's more that the sentiment is starting to change. That is what we are seeing. That the decline going forward is not going to continue at the same pace. That's what we believe today. And if we go back, not just one quarter, but if we go back a year, we said at that time that when we had our all-time high quarter, we said that we saw signs of a market slowing down. And at that time, so it is the same sentiment that we are talking about now, that we our tentacles that we have out there are kind of telling us that things are stabilizing a little bit more than what they have been previously during the year. That's how I would like to- Yeah ... Express that. Yeah. Perfect. Perfect. Thanks. Also, you comment about strong interest during the quarter in loss prevention solutions, but lower sales in more sort of traditional shop fitting. Could you give any numbers on the growth rates and declines, respectively? We don't communicate any more numbers than the one that we have presented in our reports, so I'm more giving the sentiment here. But it is. We are growing within these solutions, and we're growing significantly when it comes to loss prevention. And if you go on conference calls, regardless with which retailer it is in Western Europe or in U.S., they all talk about the problem of some call it loss, some call it shrinkage, some call it theft, but this is kind of the sentiment. So everybody is very curious into how they can be helped without then creating an intrusive consumer experience. And some of them are creating intrusive consumer experiences, and then you see that their sales decline rapidly.... So, I mean, some are putting alarm tags on meat, some are locking up more things in lockers within their shops, and then consumers don't bother. They go somewhere else and get if it is a bottle of wine or is something that is more kind of that comes at a greater value. So that's what we, that's what we're seeing. And then, of course, if you have a traditional renovation project of interiors, you're maybe not doing that. You're maybe waiting to see if things are calming down or if the interest rates will turn in the other way around. But at the same time, I mean, interiors is still our biggest segment, and each time you introduce a new piece of technology or whatever you do in the consumer experience, you always touch the built environment. So we are seeing a lot of projects where there's repurposing or change happening at retailers, and always the interiors are involved in that. So it's not that you cannot. When you look at data, you need to look at the totality, because we are really delivering total solutions at the majority of the times. Yeah, perfect. Thanks. Follow up on that, because I'm a little bit interested if you, if you have any comments about market share developments, because if we look at the grocery segment or the grocery sector, sales continue to decline double-digit there in the quarter, whereas it's stronger in other categories. But, but in terms of grocery, I suppose it's fair to assume that retail tech is growing in that segment, which would leave sort of shop fitting solutions falling, falling quite a lot. Could you say anything, have you seen anything in, in terms of market share developments or anything like that, or is it sort of equally tough for everyone out there? I mean, if I talk about, there are two aspects, I think, to keep in mind, that each retailer, depending on which retailers that you have, as a strong customer, your results may vary, because retailers are in this environment, they don't change their suppliers easily. They more do that when they are in a growth scenario. When they're in a hesitating scenario, they usually don't change their suppliers. So. And of course, some retailers are more successful than others, and we have been, I would say, we have traditionally been quite helped by that we have a strong discount portfolio at Axfood, and I think we're still being helped by that. We have customers like Primark, or brands that are more value for money, that are still attracted to consumers. So sometimes when you look at us, it's not equal to say that that is the sentiment of the segment. It could sometimes be the sentiment of the brand. And some of our larger customers are having different priorities that is affecting us, especially in the grocery sector this year, and it might affect us also in the future. We don't know that yet, but it doesn't mean that we have lost position or lost market share with those clients. Then when we look at—I mean, if I zoom out a bit and look at retail, I would say that grocery is quite stable. Do- it- yourself are having a tougher time. Pharmacy is stable. Fashion is still in a growth situation because they took such big hits coming out of COVID, and so they are still in a growth scenario. That's- so I know that, I would say, shop-in-shop concepts or more high street and fashion are, or so far this year, have been growing much faster than grocery, for instance. And we are mainly focused on do it yourself and grocery, that is more struggling. So, fashion is typically more volatile. It goes up and down more, more strongly. And I can also mention that last year we had quite large volumes to one of our fashion customers in U.S., where we changed all their lighting in all their states in U.S., and we changed to new lighting. Of course, that type of large projects, they only happen every five, six, seven years. They don't happen every year. So once you've done it, you need to move on and find another one. It's not recurring sales in those types of examples. Yeah. Yeah, thanks. Just two final financial questions, if I may, concerning the quarter. The gross margin is obviously very strong in the quarter, and you already elaborated on some of the reasons for it. But could you say anything about how you see cost inflation on COGS, both for this quarter and going forward? Is that easing a little bit now, or any comments on that would be helpful. I think that we are in a better balance now than what we were, I mean, during the very rapid cost inflation on that we saw, a year ago, or one and a half years ago, it began, I would say. So we are in a more balanced way, but I, but I do think also that you cannot relax and you need to be able to be fast in moving some of these cost increases forward to your customers. At the same time, some key materials, due to the recession globally, I mean, across all sectors, some materials are becoming cheaper. At the same time, customers are not buying the same volumes maybe as before, so it is not as easy-... As it was some years ago when volumes were stable, to say that my price should go down or my price should go up, depending on how material moves. So it is a bit more tricky to give predictions on this, and I think there are better players that should do that. But we are following this very closely, of course, and reacting when we need to. Yeah, thanks. And the final question from me, depreciation costs were quite low in the quarter compared to previous quarters. Was there any sort of specific reasons for that, or should we expect these levels also going forward? No, in the quarter, we did a deep dive and had some changes in the leases. So it's mainly the change in the leases and the time of the leases that affected the quarter. So yeah, you should look at the full year. So Would those, would those changes persist going forward, or was it more of a one-off in the quarter? It was more of a correction in some areas. Uh- Yeah. Oh, okay. So when modeling depreciation going forward, it's better to look at the previous quarters rather than this? Yeah, look at the full year's average. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, the full year. Yeah. The full year average. Yeah. So we did a re-evaluation, and we took that this quarter, but it's applicable. The re-evaluation is applicable for all- Yeah ... all three quarters, so the average is best. Yeah. Perfect. Thank you very much. The next question comes from Karl-Johan Bonnevier from DNB Markets. Please go ahead. Yes, good morning, Andréas, Ulrika. Congratulations to a good management in a difficult quarter, looking at all the moving parts here. Just want to come back first about the way you talk about the willingness that clients are looking at restarting projects again. Is there any particular segments you feel that are now changing for you, or any specific geographies or anything like that? Or is it the market that probably went down the fifth first, but is coming back, or is there something else happening out there? No, I would say that what we communicated was more a sentiment, so we are being a bit careful in putting a segment or figures to that. So, it's more, that's what we are kind of, what we're sensing in the relationships that we have with our customers across the regions. But you guys know just as well as I do that the uncertainty about if there, if this recession will be something quick or something more, with more longevity, is that's not known yet. Of course, we're all hoping for a quick recovery and that we could see some performance, maybe economic performance like U.S. are having. But, so we don't give any further details on that. We think it is too uncertain to do that. And when you look at it, also looking at, say, these kind of more postponed plans, so to say, that might have been commitments to you earlier and them coming back, is that any particular segment? I mean, it depends on the customer. I mean, we believe that we see maybe that some things in grocery have been halted that should be coming back. But, it's, I mean, you know how low margins grocery retailers work with, maybe, if we exclude one Swedish one. But across the globe, grocery retailers work with very, very small margins. So many of them have been struggling to find the willingness to invest CapEx if their return on investment is not really clear. And we are usually fortunate that we have quite strong ROI cases when we do our, especially grocery deliveries. I would say that many retailers stopped all investments because they needed to figure out how to do reprioritizations across their estate. So they invest where they have the strongest ROI in total. So they don't allow the kind of category purchasers to continue like they used to. So they've kind of took a deep breath last year, and we see now that some of them are starting to exhale and realize that they need to still operate in this environment. It will not be cheaper if they wait. They just lose some efficiency gains, or they lose some the opportunity to reduce their OpEx, and that is hurting them quite a lot. So we believe that grocery is the segment that has the biggest potential to bounce back first. That's what we think. Yeah, and I guess they can't, they can't postpone investment in in-store upgrades and similar- Oh, no ... kind of things for too long either, so. No. And grocery is very stable. I mean, it follows the growth of the population. We, regardless of the season or business cycle, people need to eat. It's just that there is a shift within grocery retailers towards discount chains. We don't see that as negative for us, but also within the consumers at the discount chains, there's also a mix towards a cheaper basket and more aware purchases. So some high-margin products at grocery retailers are being left in the shelves, and people choose cheaper options. ... Excellent. So thanks for the color. Looking at the whole One ITAB process, I see that you shrank the number of employees to about 2,500 in the quarter. Would you say that you have now taken down the footprint to the level which you envisaged when you started the One ITAB project, or is there more to come? No, I, I would say that the amount of people we have, I mean, I would be happy to see that start growing again. We have taken some tough actions this year to balance. I mean, it's quite big sales drop that we have seen. And so it's more I would say what you see now is more a result of the cost out activities that we've taken short term this year. But I think going forward, we will also use this as an opportunity to upskill and invest in more in the pockets where we see high margins and where we see a growth opportunity. And we are going to invest in more sales resources and some more maybe upskilled sales resources and product resources. We are probably also going to put our foot down in one or two markets where we have activities, but we don't really have a strong presence that is more consultative. One example could be U.S., that we're looking at to increase our presence on the ground. Today, the teams there are mainly busy fulfilling historic needs, and we are looking into creating new demand. That's what we are looking into. So we are going to invest. If you look at our balance sheet, there is plenty of room for us to invest. We just need to make sure that if we buy companies, that the price has been adjusted of those companies to the current interest rates. We don't want to buy at the price levels that we saw a couple of years ago. We want to buy at the price levels that factor in the current economic situation. And we believe there will be a couple of opportunities for us to acquire both organic growth through investments of our own, but also then to acquire maybe some interesting companies to help us grow. You basically answered my next question here, Andréas, already. But, I think when you're talking about maybe signs and stabilization in the market, and as you put it, your own house is in order, obviously, with a very strong balance sheet, is this the time when you would take the next step to, yeah, look at acquisition in the still very fragmented market? Is that the way, right way of looking at it? Yeah, I mean, we are. I mean, you guys know that when you acquire a company, it is news maybe to the market, but it's usually the process of building relationships over a long time. And then maybe you decide that it's a good time to do something. But we are working since quite a long time with a couple of targets that we believe would be really good for us. But we are building relationships, so we are seen as an attractive potential partner, and it could be both acquisitions and partnerships. But we are behaving like this in order to build something that is more long-term, and where we are not reacting because something is for sale, we are acting because it will strengthen us strategically or it will strengthen our position geographically, et cetera. That sounds very credible. That sounds very credible. Ulrika, just coming back to the IFRS 16 impact, did that have also a similar impact, the averaging thing out, so to say, looking at nine months number, maybe as a more better guidance for the full year, also on the cash flow? Yeah, we did a deep dive in all leasing contracts now in the quarter, and that had an impact affecting Q3. But still, I think you should look at the average. Average. No, thanks. Good guidance. Then you still have the Russian operation left, and I see that the business there seems to be deteriorating. Is there any risk that is gonna be turned around to you needing to close it, adding extra cost or anything like that when getting out of it? At this moment, we cannot answer that, because it is still too uncertain. We can communicate that we have done as much as we can in Russia, and we are waiting for approvals from the Russian government, and we have been in that process for, I would say, more than a year. The problem that we have is that the Russian government keeps changing the law, and so they put new requirements that we need to meet. Those of you out there that have had operations in Russia that you wanted to exit, you recognize what I talk about with fees and taxes that were not there before are popping up, and assessments that needs to be done by the state, that type of requirement. So, at the same time, we are looking into all sanctions. You know, there are American sanctions, there are U.K. sanctions, there are European Union sanctions, and we are, we are following all sanctions, and then also we need to follow Russian law. So that is what is behind, that we still have not kind of closed that chapter of our books. So we will come back to that when there is something to report. Thank you. And just finally, one on capital allocation. Obviously, we already talked about the acquisition opportunity that might be increasing going forward. You started the share buyback program here during the last month or so, and aiming for SEK 50 million, if I understand it right, in buybacks before the AGM. Looking at the pace I've seen so far in, say, October, it looks to be much lower than that. Is that, is there any practical reason behind that? I think that's due to the limitations when we do the buyback in safe harbor, we're only allowed to buy a certain amount of the total shares on the market. So that is limiting the amount of shares we buy. Yeah. And we—I mean, we are aware of the liquidity in our shares. Yeah. And that's also why we went forward with maybe SEK 50 million, because we felt that it would take some time before we had to consume those SEK 50 million. It would not have helped us if we went out with SEK 300 million or SEK 200 million, because the pace would be the same- Mm. Under this safe harbor. So we are kind of dependent on the total liquidity. Yeah. That's why. The signal from us was, of course, that we think it was a good time for the company to do this share buyback, because long term, it increases the value for all shareholders, and we have the balance sheet to do it. Yeah, and I think the reasoning sounds very solid, and I can understand the problem of implementing it, to be fair. If the SEK 50 million is not spent before the AGM, would you expect the mandate to be prolonged then, or how would you consider this being executed? Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's really up to the board to suggest to the AGM what to do. But if you look historically, this mandate has been. And it's a normal mandate that boards on the stock exchange have. So we are acting within the normal mandate that the board has had historically. And it's up to the AGM and our board to decide what we do going forward. But I would expect that there will be no changes in the mandates on this topic, but that's up to the shareholders to decide. Excellent. Thank you very much, and all the best out there. Thanks. Thanks. As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial star five on your telephone keypad. Okay. Should I take- There are no more questions at this time, so I hand the conference back to the speakers for any written questions and closing comments. Sorry, guys, that I interrupted the automatic voice here. My bad. So if I look at the online questions, we have one from Peter Lindvall, where he asks if we have any examples of new ITAB tech solutions or services that could be relevant in the future, and how are the margins on these new areas compared to the average margins that we have today? So I mean, I would say that I will not today in this call launch any new products. So we will do that when we think it's good and ready. But I could mention that the loss prevention solutions that we have today is a mix of traditional ITAB products like Gates and smart solutions, where you connect the self-checkout or the conventional checkout purchase signals, and you combine that with the behavior of people, so with tracking of movement of people. And then there is a computer behind that is calculating and comparing previous behaviors, and then it decides if it's a good idea to open the gate or not. Which means that it's very non-intrusive, because the gate only opens when the-- when it believes there has been a transaction, and then it doesn't open if it believes that there is not a transaction or if there is a need to maybe check something. So, this is very non-intrusive for most consumers because it is not the same as an alarm going off or somebody going up to you and questioning what you have in your bag. So it's done in a much more relaxed way. But I think for many to have an ITAB having an AI and combining that with different tech solutions, also other tech, and to do that in real time in stores, that is something quite cool. Another thing I can mention that we showed at EuroShop is that we have built also AI solutions where we compare the shopping in a certain store with the likelihood of those consumers than buying things in the café or the restaurant in the front of the store, and to do recommendations, live recommendations, not based on who you are, but based on the collective in that store, and that we can show uptick of sales quite easily. So we believe that we will see ITAB combining our traditional consumer and retail know-how with new tech, ours and others, with also the data and the insight coming out of that data. So that's what you should expect. And when it comes to margins, so far, we see that when we do more value add, we have higher margins. When we just react on demand, then we have lower margins. And it's actually the same, regardless if it is interior or if it's tech. Tech is easier to get higher margins, but also in interiors, we have quite interesting margins when we are part of creating the solution versus when we're just reacting on demand. So that's maybe the first question. So I take the next one here, that is, and excuse my pronunciation here. It's also from Peter, so Peter Dragarski. Looking at our strategy execution, it looks like continued focus to improve margins. What investments are you planning, seeing from CapEx and over the profit and loss to lift long-term margins? How will you secure operational leverage when organic growth returns versus your financial EBIT? I think I answered this in the questions before. So we are planning to do, I would say, two types of investments. Or three types. We are planning to invest in internal capabilities to increase our efficiency. That will improve margins long term. It will also help us to release more capital. The second type of investment that we want to do is more commercial. It is to acquire maybe capabilities in certain markets either by investing in new people or maybe buying could be consulting companies or service companies that do this particularly well, and then that can help us to speed up our own strategy execution. Or it will be that we acquire a more, I would say, a stronger company that has a strong market position, either within a field of competence or service, or it has a strong competence within its offering, be it shop fitting or technology solutions, et cetera. So those are the types of investments we want to do. And we have an ambition to build long-term, sustainable, profitable growth. We are not looking at acquiring companies that are on the brink of bankruptcy. We are not looking into that. So we're looking into acquiring profitable companies. That's what we are. So we will not do that. I hope that answered the question. And then there was a new one also from not Peter, but Peter Lindvall. So what about the extension of ITAB product range for the future? I talked a little bit about this today in the presentation, that we are looking into maybe extending our offering, and this could be like we do today through partnerships that we have, or that we invest in a certain certain new technology or a certain new offering. It's important to remember that ITAB already today, we don't produce everything that we sell. So, a quite large extent of what we are selling is a collaboration with our suppliers, which means that we quickly can bring innovation to the market that is proven and tested, and we don't need to take all the risks ourselves. But I do think that we will see not just physical products that, that we extend our offering with, but also service products. We are working on some service products that we see that gets quite a lot of attention. Then if we will get the trust to deliver these services or not, that we will see in the future. So by that, I think I've answered the questions that we got here from you guys online. And I remain open for additional questions, so does Ulrika and Mats, and you can always reach out to us, and we will try to answer that.