Sonova Holding AG

Good afternoon, everyone in the room here. Welcome to the sunny Stefan to tease the people on the call. I hope they also have a sunny day. And thanks for joining for the full year results 2023-24 of Sonova. I'm here together with the IR team and Birgit. Birgit will later go through the financials and will be with me on stage with regard to the questions and answers. Regular disclaimer, everybody knows the content, therefore I'm not going to read it, but please take note. We intend to spend about 35-ish minutes or so on the presentation, then we have ample time for Q&A. You all had a chance to get the material which we uploaded, therefore lots of material in the background and the backup for people who want to dive deeper into numbers. From a summary for the last fiscal year, a couple of highlight items here to keep in mind. First, the hearing care market, has been for the full year, if we count the numbers in unit volume and assumptions on price, back to historical growth rates. So somewhere in the 4% to 6%, slightly higher in the second half. Significant regional differences. North America was clearly faster in growth than Europe, although in many European markets we've seen good growth, but Germany and France were more muted. U.S. In Canada, probably more year-over-year effect because the year before they really went deep under the high inflation environment. I think we're through the inflationary concerns on our consumers, at least for the hearing instruments and cochlear implants. I'll comment in a second on the consumer hearing business. From a Sonova perspective, when we met last time, we were at the end of the first half year and we said we're expecting to pick up in the second half year. particularly in the hearing instruments business, and that's what you're seeing in the numbers. We ended on a positive note. The Q4 was even a little stronger than the Q3 performance. We don't share it in numbers, but at least in the voiceover I can say that. And if you look at the numbers, the hearing instruments business and the cochlear implants business, with a significant acceleration from their growth, and then the hearing instruments, even if you take out the contract loss from a large customer, which only was relevant in the first half year. The audiological clear business continued on a strong growth rate, slightly lower. I'll comment why that is when I get to that business. And then the place where we had seen quite some difficult environment and headwinds was the consumer hearing business. And we'll get to the dynamics there between market growth and some product issues we had. I think everybody remembers our biggest Allow me to say rallying cry was needing to build back momentum in the hearing instruments business after 12 months, which were muted, not just the contract, but also some temporary challenges, we called it. When we look on the customer feedback and then also mirrored in the growth rate, even while we, quote, unquote, only launched additions to the Lumity portfolio, was pretty positive. And so I think we delivered on that dimension. Clearly, effects in the last year as in the year before. Significant headwind if you look at the revenue as well as the EBITDA in Swiss franc. Only positive, and you've seen that in the guidance for the year, a slight positive year over year in the way we enter into the new fiscal year. Obviously, it's hard to predict. Otherwise, we would be doing other things, I guess. But in general, clearly a better starting point than last year because there we could already see kind of the headwinds. From going into the fiscal year, I think coming with a good momentum out of the Q3 and Q4 momentum pickup we've seen, but also obviously coming to a year which in our normal cycle is the launch of a platform which in our eyes is a very significant step forward in the fiscal year. Highest level numbers, 3.2% on the growth side for the full year. Second half was 4.8. You see the acceleration there. You can see the significant impact here from the Swiss franc. EBITDA at 4.4, so slightly higher than the top line growth, showing a margin expansion of around 25. We had 20 in the first half, 30 in the second, in line with what we've done in local currency in the years before. We always try to achieve some margin expansion while we continue to invest into growth on the organic side. EPS better than the EBITDA. Now, important one, obviously, on the guidance and our perspective for the full year, we look at a 6% to 9% top-line growth. We look at a 7% to 11% EBITDA growth. Again, you see the ambition to drive a margin expansion, why we deploy efficiency productivity but also grow in a high-margin business but leave enough space for growth investments. Now, this is in line with the mid-term targets we have published. Assuming the market to be 4 to 6, that's our current assumption. Also, share gaining element here in the guidance. I will not go in all detail on the page. We like the page because it covers so much, but then we unpeel the onion later. Therefore, I'll only focus here on a couple of highlights. Hearing instruments, 0.7% growth in local currency. If you're correct, for the lost contract, it would have been 4%. But clearly the acceleration into the second half, stepping up to 6%. First half was 2.4, correcting for the lost contract. So you can see 2.4 like for like versus a 6. So the pickup we had expected. Audiological care 9.2, good balance between organic and the M&A contributions. Deployed another 100 million in the bolt-on status in line with what we've done the two years before. I found obviously not a bolt-on We're running normally at a 100 million capital deployment for network expansion in the markets that were already present. Consumer hearing, significant headwind here with a minus nine. Continued weak demand, but also a product issue, which I'll voice over later. And then on the cochlear implant, 3.6 for the full year, but that represents an 8.2% for the second half. So clearly a pickup there from a momentum perspective. More on the system sales. Keep in mind, processes follow a very different logic. When you launch a new process, people were waiting for it, so you sit on a high jump-off point, and from there, it decays to a degree. Hearing the instrument segment, you see the EBITDA performance for the 30 basis points pretty much in line with the whole organization, given that this is 90% of the total. You can see the size of the businesses here. I think on the segment profitability, because we don't comment on profitability by business, 30 basis points, despite what we called higher investment into go-to-market for the second half, which we did lead generation, some flexibility on pricing on the instrument side, but the continued focus on efficiency, also easing of transport and component costs, also a good impact from improving reliability, which ultimately translates to lower service cost at a positive impact here. Going to the hearing instruments business, 0.7, the four I said before, organic growth accelerated to six versus the 2.4, which it would have been corrected for the large customer loss. And we really followed the playbook and we benefited from the things we said when we met at the first half year results. Reliability improvements continued with new record rates on the Lumity, which I'll share in a second. Very strong performance on anything the customer worries about from a customer satisfaction in your delivery, but also approachability of your call centers. When I look at the Q4 versus Q3 dynamic, the market was stronger in the Q3 somewhat weaker in the Q4. I think there's some jump of point discussion because the calendar Q1 in 2023 was already a good number, but our growth in the Q4 was even better than the 6%. So you can see that we had a gradual share position improvement Q3 to Q4, which I think gives us some confidence coming into the new year that we fixed the issues and even with the current product, we're in a good spot. So some more insights on the issues. We voiced them over, but now we have some evidence on what's happening. Starting on the right-hand side from a reliability perspective, the Paradise, you may remember, we said was already better than the Marvel. And then we got to the Lumity. There was concerns in the market on our reliability. We did say for three months we had a little bit of a flare-up there, not that much. The Lumity was 30% better than the Paradise. And in the last year, we were even finding ways because we started to work on existing product for forward shipment, meaning we're making improvements on the technology even if the product is a year old. We don't do that as a field upgrade, but we do that for the forward shipment. You see additional 30% improvement of Lumity today versus Lumity a year ago. If you do two times 30%, you end up at almost 50% lower failure rate from Paradise Lumity today, right? So what you can see mindset wise we have changed the approach we're spending significantly more resources on before we launch but also when we have launched. And with that we do believe that we're in a very strong position with regard to reliability relative to our own products but also the market. On the left-hand side, you see the net promoter score over 12 months. This is the four largest markets. That's where we measure every month and other ones we do every quarter. And you can see that while 25 to 30 was not a perfect place, we're now getting close to the 50 in the U.S., but 60, which is based on many changes we've made from a process and a resourcing perspective. And for us, that net promoter score goes very clearly with our ability to win markets COMPETITIVE ACCOUNTS OR TO LOSE CUSTOMERS WHO MAY LOOK AT SOMEBODY ELSE. SO DELIVERED IN OUR EYES, MEASURED IN THE REVENUE PICKUP, BUT ALSO IN THE INTERNAL DRIVERS, OBVIOUSLY IT'S ENOUGH TO SUSTAIN A HIGH PERFORMANCE HERE. WITH THAT, I WANT TO MOVE OVER. THIS IS NOT A PRODUCT LAUNCH, THEREFORE I'M STILL NOT AT THE PLACE WHERE I'M GOING TO TELL YOU EXACTLY WHAT WE PLAN TO DO, BUT I JUST WANT TO GIVE YOU SOME CONFIDENCE AND SOME DIRECTIONAL GUIDANCE. We have invested over the last five years in run rate R&D spent about 60% more. That needs to go somewhere. It's not that we just spend it without an objective, right? And so what was a big focus of ours was accelerating, elevating the processing power of devices, the data processing, different type of algorithms, because in order to get to a significantly better speech to noise ratio, which ultimately makes the difference for hearing in noisy environments, we think we need a different type of technology available. And that's what we were working on for the last couple of years. So expect the launch to be very focused on significantly better hearing in noisy environment, which is relevant for all customer groups, and also some incremental improvements on the ease of use. With that, we feel we have something meaningful to launch in the fall. Obviously not done with the development, otherwise we would have launched it by now, therefore no exact date today, but certainly more to come and something we're excited and waiting for since quite a while. Moving on to the audiological care business. Talked about the numbers here. Unpacking a little bit the first half to second half. The first half was around 11, second half was slightly above 7. 2.5% of that is purely inorganic because the high sound came in, played for two quarters in the first half year, but only one quarter in the second half year. That was a meaningful size acquisition. The other 2% are mainly driven by China being strong in the first quarters after the COVID restrictions were taken out and a big positive in Germany from a revenue recognition perspective with the VDAC changes. But otherwise, if you look at the other markets, we're looking at similar growth rates first half to second half outside of China, Germany, and the high sound fading issue. Degeneration was higher. but in line with what we had expected. And I talked about the bolt-ons we've done in the AC business. Quick update on China. Obviously, the largest high-growth developing country, still in the world of 3% penetration. Obviously, more volatile right now, given all of the ongoing discussions and concerns on the macroeconomics. But if I just look at 3% penetration in an aging population and an increasing income per capita, still going to be an important market in our world. With our Hisound acquisition, we see good execution with regard to the integration. We now have a complete management team. All of them are local. Some came from Sonova. Some came from Hisound. We hired some from the outside. And they have brought the whole thing together, including the activities we had before. And when we look at the growth rate, we're clearly ahead of the market in our growth in Hisound acquisition. although we don't publish the number, we're in line with what we assumed at the acquisition. The market's a little bit lower. That's the volatility I talked about. And from here, it's about expanding the network, elevating the consumer experience in a way we think we can evolve the service model there. Coming to the more negative picture from a first half to second half, consumer hearing business, not expected to ask the second bullet point with regard to We had detected issues with battery for the MTW3, which is the largest revenue category. We, from there, because we didn't like the quality, stopped selling for a period. So for four months, we didn't have the revenue. The MTW4 was launched in February. That was in line with plan. But for four months, we lost the revenue, which the only positive in that one is, That will be helpful for this year because we do think that we will ship the MTW4 for 12 months. Problem is fixed. Change the battery supplier either way from one product to the other. We think we're in good hands there. In addition, the consumer electronics market has two dynamics. The one is a sell-in and then a sell-out dynamic. On the sell-out side, the market is... Whilst negatives in the first half of the year started to turn to flattish, we see that in the GFK data, which is the sell-out data. We're in line with that growth, even with the quality problem we had. But on the sell-in side, and I think you see that also with other people who publish in that segment, they all showed very negative numbers. I think what you hear from the channel is everybody was quite busy trying to get their channel inventory down, not just a Sonova issue. Positive in that, if the sell-out is better than your sell-in, that should be indicating that times will get better. When we look at market share outside of the true wireless, the MTW4 now, and the other three categories, audio file, the Bluetooth headband, and the TV listeners, we did win market share based on GFK data. So, not feeling bad about the product portfolio, but the market as well as our quality issue there. Second big Positive from first half to second half, our cochlear implant business, first half wasn't particularly strong. But if you look at the second half, growth was 8.2%, coming from minus one. 11% on the system side, which is a good number for that market. How did we get to the 11%? In some improvement in markets, We launched new functionality, most important, the remote programming, but also have seen continued progress on the lead generation through our own stores, but also Phonak loyal customers. Upgrades in accessories turned slightly positive, although for the full year, they're showing negative here. So probably a little bit of a reversal. They are coming to more of a stable level after two years post the launch, or two and a half years. And from a profitability perspective, The second half year was at 15.3, so getting to that 15% we talked about with the ambition to go gradually upwards from here. Quick note on remote programming. Very similar functionality as on the hearing instruments, but more relevant in the cochlear implants. You can do hardware checks. You can do all of the adjustments when you are apart. We're the only company who can do that in the market for cochlear implants. The technological capability we have because we're using the Phonak technology with the made-for-all phone and the Phonak in the background. Other people can't do that. And it's a bigger thing in cochlear implants than for hearing instruments. Why? People have to come a lot more often. You normally say six times a year. Pediatrics, nine to 12. And often longer distance. because there's far fewer specialized audiologists who can do cochlear implants. So very positive reception here, and I think it helps us to get more placements. Last area I want to go through quickly on the ESG highlights. I know it's important for everyone, and for some even more. Therefore, I just point towards the ESG report, which is quite extensive. 17 different KPIs, which are on our highest priority list. I want to highlight three here. Greenhouse gas emissions. Good progress, not just with the 28 versus 2019, but 12% year-over-year. On the social side, the second bullet point here of women in senior management and the middle management significantly improved. A lot of focus from us on getting more, quote-unquote, diverse or balanced. Do you want to call it balanced? And then the last one on the governance side, in two years we come up to needing to audit all of our ESG results. Mindset-wise, we want to be there next year so that we have some safety. Also, from the feedback we hear from the auditors and our maturity. Now, that's all interesting because everybody can publish numbers, so indices are also interesting. I think it's It's good to be able to share that we are comparing in four different indices, Dow Jones being one of them, and all four were amongst the top 2% in the medical device and healthcare environment. So we feel good about our progress, but also position. With that, I want to hand over for Birgit for the financials, and then I will come back to the outlook section.

Good afternoon also from my side here in Stever and also for the people on the line. Let me dive immediately into the financial highlights and I will keep it brief as I said we want to keep the presentation as short as possible so that there is more room for questions and answers. Sales at 3.6 billion as was already mentioned up 3.2% in local currency. And of that, when you look at the organic growth, we ended at 1.6% for the year in local currency. Now, if you're correct, for the non-renewal of the larger contract, that would have been 3.2% of organic growth in LC. Now, then looking at the profitability, so we are very pleased with the gross margin development. As you can see, we improved by 210%. basis points and I'll come to that later with with some more detail and then the EBITDA improved by 25 the EBITDA margin improved by 25 basis points also in local currency so here again as a result of our continuous improvements and is also what aren't already alluded to then EPS up 6.4%, so better growth rate versus the EBITDA adjusted that you see there of 4.4%, and that is primarily due to a one-time tax effect. Then you also see here very clearly the substantial ethics headwind, almost 10% decline in EPS, and we see that throughout all of the numbers. And just to give a perspective on the sales, This was 233 million. You'll also see it later, but that's really a big one here. And then on the EBITDA, almost or actually slightly over 100 million. And then coming to the operating free cash flow, there we saw an impact of 113 million Swiss francs, but here we were able to offset this. And so on the free cash flow, operating free cash flow you see that we slightly increased by 0.7 percent year over year then moving to the balance sheet our leverage ratio stands at 1.5 times and this is back into the target one to one and a half times and then um also in 2324 so we didn't buy back any shares but we do expect to resume a share buyback but more towards the second half of fiscal year 2024-2025. So then moving into the sales components, so here you see the 3.2% in local currency, the growth, and that is evenly divided between organic and M&A. And then if you look at the bottom end of the slide, you see that there is a significant acceleration in the second half, with 5% growth. And if you decompose that and you take two business units out, and it was mentioned already before, but hearing instruments was at 6% in the second half and cochlear implants at 8.2%. So you see a clear acceleration while AC was more balanced throughout the year. Then here you see the ethics impact. I don't need to go into that much. Any longer, let me quickly skip to the next slide. So then the gross margin development. Here you can see the 210 basis points, which is primarily organic. And you see that the items that you listed on the right there, you do have a residual impact from the price increases. This is more in the first half of the fiscal year 23-24. Then you also see the shift in business mix that always gives a positive impact. So here in 2023-2024, we had audiological care driving the substantial growth and the hearing instruments growing much less. And that always has a positive impact on the gross profit because audiological care has a higher gross profit and then has a negative impact on the OPEX development. And you'll see that on the next slide. So that's the shift in business mix. And then we also saw a big improvement in gross profit from repairs. And Arndt already talked about that. You saw the 30% improvement and also the continuous focus on that. And then we also improved on transportation and on component costs like every other industry and also many other companies. Then next, the operating expenses. So here you see an increase of 7%, and then you see the split between organic increase and the M&A increase. The organic increase is 5%, and that may seem on the higher side given our top line, but that is, as I explained already earlier in the previous slide, is due to the audiological care growth compared to the hearing instrument growth, and that gives a specific dynamic impact in the PNL, because it's mostly related to audiological care. Because if you look at the right-hand side, so there you see on the slide, you see the R&D expenses, they remained flat, and as a percentage to sales, that's roughly 6.5% to sales. If you actually take the R&D as a percentage sales on the hearing instrument sales, that would be closer to 10%, and that allows us to keep or to sustain these levels of R&D, investing in innovation, which you will also see materialize later in the year with our new launch. Then sales and marketing up 8%, so that's again due to the shift with audiological care having a higher share, and then G&A plus 11% and here equally primarily audiological care and investments in IT infrastructure That is what drives that position in the OPEX. Then moving to the EBITDA. So here you see organically we improve by 50 basis points and we believe that is a good statement of our ambition to always grow basis points organically and also obviously on the total but definitely also organically, and we were able to materialize that this year as well, and there is an acceleration in the second half as well, here, as you can see. Then on the adjustments, so the 47 million, so a big part of it, 24 million is restructuring. We also have the Mexicali, so the operations in Mexico, that's part of it. And then you also have some integration costs and then also legal costs included in there. Then the ethics here, I already talked about that, that's the 100 million. Then the cash flow development, which you see here, you see the 113 million that I talked about and going from 923 million to 809 million. That is the operating free cash flow before the changes in net working capital. And then you see the cash outflow due to the change in net working capital at 66 million. So that is an improvement of 18 million. And then you see also the capex at 129 million. That's an improvement of 25 million. And then you see some other items with 10 million improvements. you see that we end slightly better versus our position last year. And then the last slide here on the financial section, which is our total sale, return, and capital allocation strategy, remaining unchanged. So we are very consistent with this strategy. So first, in terms of capital deployment acquisitions, then attractive dividends, healthy balance sheet, and share buyback. And here you see, it was also mentioned earlier already, the cash out on M&A was approximately 100 million. Then on the dividend, we will stay around the 40%, and this time this year, it will be 43%, so in terms of Swiss franc, 4.30. And then the leverage ratio, again, I mentioned that already once, And then important on the share buyback is that we expect to resume in the second half of 2024, 2025. So with that, Hans, I'd like to hand it back over to you.

So briefly on outlook and the rationale. We have not changed the strategy. We still execute on it, although there's obviously adjustments as we go. But you've seen significant investments into leading an innovation on geological performance and consumer experience. You see expansion of the consumer access through the bolt-ons on the audiological gear side. Clear focus on how do we improve the value add and the perceived relationship with the B2B customers. not just on the interaction in a high net promoter score, but also through significant improvements in reliability, which ultimately, if you do that significantly better than the competition, becomes quite important to give you a number in audiology store. People spend 20 to 30% of their time just repairing stuff. This is an industry where you don't have enough staff. It's ultimately quite important, particularly for the large retailers. And then you've seen the China discussion, the high growth development. Guidance for the year in line with the midterm targets. We believe these are good midterm targets. We think the market is in a normal state, 4% to 6% at this point of time. And in that, we should be able to grow 6% to 9% to expand the margin. We went deeper on the key focus areas. So for the guidance for this year, market 46, North America coming down to a more normal growth level, not the elevated before some pickup in Europe, including France and Germany, which should normalize more. They had one-time events which had an impact in the last year. They should grow at least in a year out of the system. We expect to benefit from a strong platform launch. As always with platform launches, they do come in the fall. You have the launch cost in the first half year, and you have a product which over time gets a little older. So expect a stronger growth on top and bottom line in the second half than in the first. Restructuring and integration cost, 30 to 40 million, similar, slightly lower than this year. And then on the currency side, slight positive as I pointed out, at least if the currency exchange readers would stay where they were in May. Unfortunately, we can't predict it. But last year, you would have seen significant negatives coming into the year. With that, I think I would like to open it for Q&A. And Farid wanted to join me, I think. One more slide. So he wanted to do that before a Q&A, just from a marking your calendars. We do plan Investor and Analyst Day in person in Stefa, as we have done in many years. Before last year, we moved into not every year mode, but this year we'd like to invite you back to more update on our strategy. Now I can go to the Q&A. I didn't see that Q&A comes after the chart, sorry. Okay.

So we will start with Q&A here in the room. Please wait for the microphone so the people on the webcast and on the call can also hear your question.

Thanks for giving me the mic. I have a couple of questions and I will start with your restructuring charges. We've been looking at restructuring charges ever since 2016-17. And it bears the question whether you should really call it the restructuring charges or it's part of your operational costs, and it wouldn't be more transparent to guide on the absolute level of EBITDA. That would be my first question, please. My second question is you talked about the positive impact on gross margin from the lower failure rate. Is there more to come from that impact in 2023, 2024? And the last question would be on the phasing of growth. It's clear that a product, you know, a new product is going to accelerate growth, hopefully, and result in market share gains. But how big do you think the H1 versus H2 should be? What is your internal expectation? Thank you.

I can already take the... Refracturing charges. And yes, we've been looking at that. Because if you look at 24, 25, we believe it will again be like between 30 and 40 million. So you're right. I mean, it's slightly less, but it's around the same. So we've been talking about this together. So we'll look at it for the future, whether we can not just consider it as part of a regular number. So, valid point.

On the margin side from a reliability logically, if we continue to improve 20% a year, ultimately, yeah, your service cost should come down. I think we've seen that over the years. I think, therefore, we also expect that to go forward. We've paid also particular attention to the cost of repairs in the last two years. So some of the improvements were coming from there and should continue to pay into the gross profits. On the first half, second half, I don't have a specific number. I think if you go back here probably and go back to historic launches, it depends a lot on how competitive products are perceived in the phase while we don't have a new product and how the lift is at the end of the day. But I would venture to guess you're somewhere, and keep in mind the hearing instruments business is less than 50% of the total, right? So you're probably somewhere in the low single digit, perhaps at the upper end of that differences. Go to the mid single digit, but really hard to call. We don't give a specific guidance.

Also on the reliability issue, I mean, what is your learning curve, so to say, and in the new platform, how big is the risk or, I mean, are we in the direction like the car industry where you have recalls all the time or is that, you know, the first question?

First, we didn't have a recall. Yeah, sure. So I just want to be super explicit about it. I think what has happened to recap, we had an, and that was not coming from the launch. We had, after a couple of quarters, we had for a period of time based on some production volume, an increase of failure rate of 10%. Put that in perspective that over the years before, we reduced the failure rate by 30%, 40%. So I would call that somewhat of an increase, which you, a couple of months later, have gotten back down after you found the source for the deviation. I think we're getting better and intensifying our testing, which I think before was already good. I think if you go back to VOC from a couple of years ago, we tend to be one of the leading players, if not the leading player, in reliability. And I think the learning out of one and a half years ago, but also our ambition to get better. And we have significantly increased the testing. We've significantly increased the resources to also work on components during the product cycle. Keep in mind, we have every two years a new platform, but we tend to sell a platform for four to six years. And if you can feed that into your go-forward production, you have a lot of impact. So I think you will continue to see us drive down the curve. Our ambition is to drive it faster than the others.

And the second question to China. Can you remind us about the structure there? I mean, sales per shops are comparable to the Western world or probably lower because of a lower price, but they're more efficient. So some more color will be nice. Thanks.

So the Chinese market first is super diverse. I can find retailers who sell 30, 40 units a year per store. I can find retailers who are above 100. In the Western world, in a highly efficient market, you would be in the 150 to 200. So let's say the midpoint for the market is easily a factor two or more lower. Now, we said one of the reasons why we like high sound and we're happy when we could acquire it, that the high end of that range relative to any other player in China. And we have continued to be on that level, but it's not at the same level as we have in Germany or in the US. Pricing-wise, China is not such a bad market. It's somewhat lower in retail than Germany, which is the lower part of the European market, but not dramatically. So I think the way to a good profitability comes from the productivity in the store, coming from the lead generation capability and then the ability to deliver in the store. But right now, The Chinese market is the sum of all retailers, is significantly low on profitability. There's also players who are currently putting a lot of point of sales out and do a little bit of a land grab strategy, partially private equity fund. So I think one really needs to look on which segment, who has high revenues, who has high unit volume. We feel good with a high zone position, but we still have ways to go on driving the productivity and the lead volume per store.

We take one more question from the room and then we'll move to the phone.

It comes from research partners. Sorry, I have two questions. First question is regarding the tax rate because I was kind of puzzled because I thought it would go up this year we had and it went down again to 5.8%. Maybe we can give an outlook on 24, 25 on that. The second question is on the VA channel. You have markets. share of around 50%, although competitors are very interested to grab market share there. Any thought you have on where you feel like you could be in a year from now, also including the new contract that's coming on in November?

So what we saw This year were two elements. So one element was kind of $40 million related to the tax reform, the Swiss tax reform. So it's really to be considered as a one-off in 2023-2024. And then the second element is our DTA built up on the balance sheet. So these tax losses carry forward, actually. So that led to an effective tax rate of 5.8%, as you point out, which you would have expected to be higher. But going forward, we would expect a tax rate of 17% to 18%. And that would be normal because the majority of our profit is actually in Switzerland, and there the tax rate goes from 11% to 15%. And then the rest of the world is, let's say, more or less at 27%. So when you do the math, that's where you get to. So that's what you will see going forward.

On the VA, I think first, VA has a particular channel dynamic. First, the audiologist, if you're on the list and on the menu, the audiologist doesn't worry about the economics. So they can fit what's best in their eyes for their consumer. Keep in mind, VA has a higher ratio in severe to profound, which is because they have so many battlefield, quote, unquote, experienced consumers. So that helps us because we're stronger on the severe to profound side from a speech enhancement perspective. I think the VA is also interested in a high-fitting productivity They do probably three times as many hearing aids a day than a commercial channel. So many people to take care about. So all of that is kind of a little bit of our sweet spot. Independent of that, we're super happy to be 50% for three years, pretty much in a row, despite other people launching their product. Now, what's going to happen right now, new products came into the channel just a couple of weeks ago. That may give a little bit of a dip. I wouldn't expect a dramatic change. And then I think a new product with significant improvements with regard to hearing performance. Noisy environment will get us back perhaps a little higher than where we were always hard to predict. It's really down the alley on how we develop product.

So with this, I suggest we switch to the phone line operator. Can you please get the first question?

Anyone who wishes to ask a question or make a comment may press star 1 on their telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star 2. The first question is from Hassan Al-Waqil with Barclays. Please go ahead.

Hi, good afternoon and thank you for taking my questions. I have three, please. Firstly, could you talk about the audiological care business development from Q3 into Q4, and particularly into Q1, across some of your key markets? I know that France was called out as an area of softness from peers. And when we met last in March, you mentioned Germany was still muted. But how are you seeing these markets develop sequentially? And then secondly, could you talk about the building blocks of top-line care guidance by segment and geography and what is assumed from a share gain perspective from your launch and how much price do you expect over the course of the year. I appreciate the skew is towards H2, but I didn't catch what you said around whether you expect the first half to fall within the guidance range for the full year or not. And then finally, can you talk about the composition of the broadly 50 basis points of margin expansion assumed at the midpoint of guidance for this year? If you have a more normalized growth in the businesses this year with FX going the right way, how are you thinking about potential upside risk to margins? Thank you.

Thank you. On the audiological care, we have seen Stronger markets in Europe being the Scandinavians, the Netherlands, also the UK. Germany and France are still in markets, more on the muted side. I think we see a gradual improvement relative to where they were half a year ago, nine months ago. And I think the improvement will be gradual. I think in Germany you still have the headwind for six years. And I think in France, at least the ENT situation is still in both cases gradually. I think from the U.S. perspective, we've seen in unit volume, it's more in the mid-Singletary. A little bit on what the jump-off point is. Good. really more jump-off point discussion. If I look quarter over quarter, it's kind of a steady growth. China is a little bit more challenged as a market. Some volatility in there. The second question was on the... Was it the market?

On the top line, the components from the...

So good question, but we don't give guidance by segment and geography. But I would say clearly on the hearing instrument side in the second half year, given that we talked about a new platform launch, you should have a meaningful step up. I think audiological care was pretty steady over the last couple of quarters. We do both on set the normal level. We do see good organic growth, and that's driven by improvements in store conversion, but also degeneration. So I would find it more steady relative to what we've done in the consumer hearing. This is hard to call. As I said, it's good to see that the sellout data is higher than the sell-in. That should eventually come through the channel. And then cochlear implants, I think, Directionally, I think the second half year gave us some confidence to see us in that. On the margin expansion side, the composition, I think less of a price dynamic, at least relative to inflation. Let's keep in mind we are in still quite some inflationary environment, particularly on the compensation side. We're still elevated to historic numbers. You're talking 4% or more in average. So I need to make that up somewhere in the productivity. I think on the direct material, we're fine. We're seeing some procurement benefits year over year, as you would expect in the electronics. But keep in mind, we have a pretty big OPEX block, given that we have a large number of stores. So I think price will compensate for the headwinds we have from the salary increases or our magnitude. I think clearly the volume will generate some fall through, but we also do plan to continue to invest into our growth drivers and feed on the street and then in the innovation side. I think structurally you're going to have a positive starting to roll in from the new plan we have in Mexicali, which is now coming up to scale. And that allows us to shift significant part of work into really lower cost environment than what we have in the US or even in China.

That's very helpful. And sorry, just to clarify your comment on the first half, both top and bottom line guidance, I couldn't hear it clearly earlier.

Yeah, I was not giving a specific number on where we end up in the range. I did say that if you look at historical figures. You're somewhere in the low single-digit difference. You may get a little bit closer to the mid-single-digit, depending on the strength of the product launch. Keep in mind, the AGI business is, quote-unquote, only 45% of the total revenue, and the rest is more steady.

Perfect. Thank you. The next question from the phone is from Julian Ouadour with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. So the first one is, so I mean, your contract with a large US retailer, let's call it like this, had ended more than 18 months ago now. I mean, you haven't announced like returning to this channel today. Are you still working to get back with this customer or should we just conclude that just negotiation have stopped? And so is there anything included in the guidance for this year? Um, quick, uh, quick follow-up on, uh, Assam's question in, uh, um, uh, like audiological care. So we've seen a sort of more challenging lead generation in, like in certain markets in, uh, H2. So could you, uh, I mean, like reconfirm like in which market specifically, and I think one of your competitors also stressed that, but when we observe the global market leader in retail, I mean, the company performed pretty nicely and doesn't stress to have any lead issue. So how could you explain the difference? And the third question is that your main computers have launched a new hearing aids platform with a low energy Bluetooth protocol as opposed to your universal Bluetooth technology. So do you think it's the right moment for you to embrace this new technology as well, even if it could impact your connectivity advantage versus computers? And if not, I mean, should it take a bit more years before the device install base be compatible really with that? Thank you.

Thank you. On the large lost customer, there's nothing to be announced today, therefore I will not. Secondarily, I would be a bad leader of a business if I wouldn't have my sales team working on large opportunities. So in that regard, don't read anything into not having announced anything. Secondarily, what was the second question? I would need to write down more.

The second question is, is he challenging lead generation?

Yeah, we may not be explicit enough in our words. From a lead generation cost, we're looking at similar costs from 2022-23 to 2023-24. We had assumed we see lower lead gen costs because we thought that in a high inflation environment, it's even harder to get people to the store. So we haven't seen a significant increase, We're also optimizing our portfolio of lead generations. So in that regard, call it FLEP, but the reason why we made an adjustment towards the profit expectation was we had based the year on the assumption that we see already an improvement we haven't seen. That's pretty much the same number. Didn't want to create confusion there.

And the third question was on Bluetooth.

On the Bluetooth. For us, not actually the time to switch from MFA to AuraCast. I think you're well advised to be technically capable. That gives peace of mind to the person who buys. But in reality, the number of end devices which can connect to AuraCast is very limited. And we don't miss any major functionality. Now you can come to broadcasting, which is the only significant improvement of AuraCast versus what our MFA can do. But now in broadcasting, you're still stuck with, there's not a lot of cinemas or churches which have the repeater. So you're not in a world where broadcast is I walk into a building and it works with AuraCast. That will take a couple of years. And then you don't have many end devices which currently connect to Bluetooth, to low energy Bluetooth audio. So in that regard, I think we're in a very strong position. MFA works with almost all end devices you can imagine. It does have very good connectivity. It does offer all of the functionality. The hearing care professional does not need to lose sleep. When they try to sell a device, which by the way is not easy because many people choose to still don't buy it. And then I'm kind of trying to second guess, is this telephone working with it? Yes or no, right? I would just not like to have that in my sales process personally, right? So in that regard, we'll be a late adopter, but we will be ready. I am very convinced we will be ready at the moment where these curves are starting to become relevant.

Perfect, perfect. Thank you very much. And just for the first question on Costco, can you maybe comment about where the negotiations are at the moment? I mean, is it becoming a bit more constructive?

I don't think we're in a position where we would ever share any specifics on negotiations with any specific customer. I don't think you would expect that to be the way to handle negotiations. Sorry for being frank.

Perfect. Thanks so much.

The next question from the phone is from Gam Doyle with UBS. Please go ahead.

Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. Just to follow up to one of the questions asked in the room around these restructuring charges, just to clarify, did you suggest that at some point these do recur, they actually might just be put into the adjusted call space? And then the second one is just around the guidance for 2025. So you've obviously come in towards the lower end of the revised guidance for 2024, and it looks like competition is pretty aggressive this year, at least as everyone's guidance would imply. And the market feels a little bit in transition, given you've got a slightly softer U.S., or at least not the same momentum as last year, and a mixed European market. Where do you think you are in confidence levels for this step up in sales through the year versus, say, last year, which implied a sort of similar sort of guide? So it should be good to get a sense of what's driving that confidence and how do you feel versus last year? Thank you.

I think on the restructuring charges, we will find a way to navigate out of the way we're reporting at this point of time over the next period. I think you can see that we're giving already a direction on what we think it is this year. It's never exact because some of the things happen based on projects on certain timelines. You also need to keep in mind that when we start to talk about it, we have lots of internal people who ask us, what are you going to spend money on? And people are worried when you haven't started the internal communication. So this is a tricky one. But in general, we wanted to give some direction, right? I think at the end of that process, I think our current vision is that we will move that out of the way we communicate. That will be probably still an element of adjustment if it comes to legal cases and whatever may be quite fluctuating. But from a restructuring perspective, we're thinking through and how do we get out of that kind of situation.

Yeah, and when I mentioned the numbers earlier, the 30 to 40 million was on the total adjustments. That was not the restructuring part.

there's a component on integration elements still where we're bringing together on alpaca some of the back office which hasn't been fully concluded there's still some work on the high sound side which is running through and then there is a component on what we assume on the legal cost side you know we have certain situations with the um with the field corrective action and ci It flows to the numbers. And then we also have legal situations with regard to an open situation. Not all of that is restructuring. We assume to be the total adjustment. With all of the ambiguity and if something else happens.

The second question was on your confidence this year on the guidance versus last year.

I feel... And I think Birgit feels the same way. We feel pretty good about the market assumptions. I think our market, as long as the inflation doesn't spike up to 6% or 7%, which we do not expect, I wouldn't know how, although we didn't know two years ago, but allow us to, that would be kind of a single incident nobody's expecting. But otherwise, our markets are pretty robust, and I think we're running in this now since a couple of quarters. And yes, there's a little bit up and down in certain regions and whatever, but not something which would magically make the global number 2% higher or lower. On the own performance, I think going by the steady improvements we've seen in the areas where we were not satisfied a year ago with our performance, or six or nine months ago. Pretty good on the run rate. And then comes always, as we add into a year of a platform launch, how do you feel about the platform launch? You heard what I said about it. I think it's an important one. It's more important than the ones we've seen in the recent years. So in that regard, I would say our confidence is pretty good.

I would suggest if there's any questions in the room, we switch back to the room. Is there any additional questions?

Yes, there are other questions from the phone.

There's one from the floor.

Okay. Thank you. One of your competitors decided to go very selective on managed care accounts and not to provide the high-end brands into managed care. two questions to that level one are you starting to see a benefit from this decision on your volumes and the second question is um are you in a position where you would consider playing your brands more steady in a more dedicated way maybe with the large customer as has been you know discussed by engineer so we may have a different interpretation on

Managed care or the attractiveness of managed care. I think in our minds, we first need to understand where we have our own audiological care. But by the way, you get two parts of the equation. You get the fitting fee. You also get the wholesale revenue, which does come at a good margin, and I would say better than the average global market for pretty high volumes. And so in those cases, it's quite attractive. and if it's your own retail, and you're on the menu, guess what? In very much almost every case, you're going to fit your own device, right? And then you come to the part of the market where you're providing a product in a wholesale environment, and I think it is a good price for the product, at least if I compare to any other large customer, right? So in that regard, no intention to make a significant change to our strategy interesting that other people do that and that's good because different strategies lead to different outcomes I guess and then we will measure in two to three years and from a benefit perspective I think it's fair to assume that if somebody is off the formulary people still fit the hearing aids and somebody else picks up the volume and so I would think that's then volume gets distributed depending on whatever the independent or the retail store prefers over the one which is not listed anymore in terms of incremental volume. Now comes the other discussion you can have. Is that going to impact the market share of what the independents fit? I think that's the calculus on the other side. I think at the end of today, we feel good about our technology, and we think that the independents will fit our devices actually. So we end at a different place than other people.

Operator, I think we're ready for the next question from the phone.

The next question from the phone is from Veronica Dubaiova with Citi. Please go ahead.

Hi, guys. Good afternoon, and thank you for taking my questions. I have two, please. My first one is just to push you a little bit more on the question that I think Graham asked earlier, which is what does the guidance assume about the competitive environment? I guess If I listen to your commentary, Arndt, it seems like your expectation is very much once you launch the new platform, you would expect growth to accelerate meaningfully above market. Maybe you can kind of give us various scenarios that you're considering as you think about the product launches that we have seen most recently. And to what extent, you know, those are factored in, the low end versus the top end, and maybe just your general thoughts on intent in particular, since DeMont is the company that you often go most head-to-head. And then my second question is a little bit left field, but, you know, we've had lots of debates around this with regards to your peers, and I'm just curious whether you've remained committed to the consumer hearing business especially given that OTC hasn't really progressed in a meaningful way since the category was started, or at least it hasn't for you specifically. And I'm curious kind of how you're thinking about keeping this business with high degree of volatility and fairly low returns and profitability within the portfolio, given that we've seen one of your peers directly step away from that. Thank you so much.

Thanks for the long and confident questions. On the product launch, after launching a product with meaningful technology elevation, we would expect good market share gaining performance. With other product launches, I don't think it's a good comparison because we had our own set of issues in a market with reactions to price points and some other concerns on the reliability. So, we're into the paradise probably marble environment, you're kind of marble environment. So that was meaningful market share gain. Hope in the second half, you know, as long as nobody else comes out with a mousetrap, which is even better, right? I think with regard to the consumer hearing business, I think we feel good about the market share gainability minus the MTW3. I think, yes, we see a higher volatility. That's not something we necessarily like, but volatility doesn't mean the average growth rate is low. It may mean that it sometimes goes stronger up and stronger down. Right now, we can live with the volatility. Keep in mind, it's not the largest business we have. I think on the OTC and the early entry devices, as much as we were never the people who said this is going to take over the market in a storm, I would also not give up that direction in any shape or form. I think it was always logical to us, and if you listen to anyone who is in that market, there are consumers out there for whom self-fitting is a good early entry coming earlier to the category. I think we need to find out, call it as an industry, what is the right channel. Right now, it looks more traditional store, not so much online. If I look at lead generation costs, then you need to kind of build that muscle. You need to get into those stores. You need to have a good offering, and it's going to be a slower curve. But If in five years this is a meaningful number of people coming three years earlier, you would like to be their provider if you also have an audiological care network. So in that regard, I'm not worried about being able to produce a meaningful top and bottom line performance on the consumer hearing business, despite the revenue headwinds right now. And on the other hand, early entry devices, if you call them early entry devices, not just OTC, and by the way, then they're relevant for other markets, including China, right? Still an important thing to figure out at the end of the day. If it works, we'd like to be clearly in that. Excellent. Thanks so much.

We have a few more people in the question queue from the phone, so I suggest we continue with the phone.

The next question is from Hugo Solveit with BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.

Hi, hello. Thanks for taking my questions. I have three, please. First, on margin, could you give, please, some more indication on the fading of margins H1 versus H2, and is it likely or even possible that we see a margin flat or slightly down year on year for H1? Second, you mentioned share buyback. program uh returning uh you also mentioned that it would depend on uh any large potential acquisition can you maybe give us a bit of context around the size of a large acquisition for you and uh i think you still have over 1 billion of share buyback that still need to be activated what what numbers should we look at and lastly on the acceleration of growth um Just curious what you assumed for audiological care in France in terms of upside from renewals after the four-year period. That should start to kick in, I think, end of the year. Thank you.

The margin side, I assume you meant EBITDA margin, not cross-margin. EBITDA, yeah. On the EBITDA side, again, Don't want to be teased into giving exact numbers between half years because that's not what we published. But I think if you're looking at your first half year and you look at a somewhat lower revenue, you would expect that your margin expansion is probably not necessarily in the numbers, right? And then you get to the volume effect in the second half, hoping you would regard to the predicted full year margin expansion. That's just order of magnitude. On the SPV.

Yeah, the second question I did is on the SPV. So there was the expectations on the share buyback. So what we expect is that we may resume the share buyback in the second half of fiscal year 2024-2025. And I would say it also depends on... of course, the development of the free cash flow in fifth rank, because we saw that also for the past fiscal year, there would be one element, and the other element would be just absent of any larger acquisition, of course. But given the confidence that we have in the numbers, we would believe that, I mean, we would expect that we would be able to resume. I think that was the question, or was there anything else on the question?

I think that was also the question on the one and a half. So the way the procurement is structured is up to one and a half, but it was very clear boundary conditions. We said between one and 1.5 times leverage, absent of larger M&A, right? So don't assume we're now trying to get to 1.5 because the guiding rule is the leverage we feel comfortable with, right? So now you can run the numbers. If the FX stays at the same zip code where it is right now, we get a positive in free cash flow versus prior year because last year we lost more than 100 million just on FX, right? So that may be a good guide. Need to get to the bottom line guidance. On the M&A, your question was what do we define as a large M&A? I think if you just run the numbers, if we're getting into something like an alpaca where we deployed auto magnitude 300 million, then that's kind of the free cash you're generating, right? Or that's more than the free cash you're generating on top of the dividends. So in that regard, large would be something where you talk triple-digit number on top of the bulldog. Then you start to get into a territory where you start to have to think about it. I think the other big unknown is the FX. We're starting at a clearly better territory than last year because last year we already knew we have a significant headwind on the EBITDA. This time that's going to be at least starting point better, but it is volatile. And it did cost us last year $100 million on free cash. Thank you.

And maybe what do you assume in terms of renewal rates in France towards the end of the year?

I think the first one for us, France, fortunately and unfortunately, on the audiological key is not such a big business. There are many other players who have significantly larger audiological key revenues. I think the market has started to get into Fletish territory slightly positive from what I can tell out of the market data in the last couple of months. So that's the current run rate. If you go to the four-year time after the start of the new reimbursement, you're obviously getting a positive spike there from significantly larger number of people coming to your renewal customers, right? So you should expect when that happens, and I think that's in one and a half years, if I remember correctly, auto-magnetism, you would expect in one and a half years that you get another kind of growth spurt on top of what was the run rate in the year before.

Thank you.

The next question comes from the phone. It's from Oliver Metzger with Oddo. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. I have three. The first one is in hearing instruments. In H2, was there still some positive impact from price increase in the past? Second question is on your upcoming platform launch. So from a generation perspective, your new platform should consist also of a new chipset. So can you already talk about the architecture of the chipsets? And you talked about strong focus on hearing and noise capabilities, which is eventually also linked to the design of a chipset. So it would be great if you can make any comment whether it has been necessary to change the architecture or whether the design of a chipset is still sufficient or good enough that you can change to architecture in some years when you move from made-for-all to Bluetooth Low Energy. And my last question is about the internet-based distribution of hearing aids. So for years it was very on-vogue to talk about all the internet-based hearing aid sales. So it has calmed down as lead generation costs are high. But basically, you as global number two in retail, where do you see the market movement? Is it a niche? It remains a niche? Or what are your expectations in that? Thank you.

Thank you, Oliver, for the question. On the third one, I didn't understand what segment you're talking about on the retail.

Internet-based distribution.

Oh, internet-based.

I can take the first one. So you asked about... and whether that was more in the first half or the second half. So the lift that we saw in gross profit was primarily in the first half of fiscal year 2023-2024.

On the product, I don't want to go too deep into architecture, but a significant increase on processing power, as I have laid out, would kind of indicate that you need to have a container where that processing power can happen, right? So I hope that's sufficient as an answer there. And if you look at our roadmap over time, I think eventually we need to get to a higher processing capacity on the device. On the online or internet sales of hearing aids, there is no meaningful volume for a regular hearing aid online in any of the markets. I think if you buy a PSAP, One amplifier, sure, that goes online. If you buy a self-fitting device in the U.S. called OTC, yes, some of that goes online. The challenge there is the lead generation cost, as I said earlier, seems to be higher than in-store. So right now, more of the volume of OTC in the U.S., which is 3% to 5% of the total unit volume in value lower, happens more in-store in the best buys of this world than targets and whatever, because that seems to be more cost-effective than if I have to go through Facebook and Google. So in that regard, it is a leash. And where people do that, and we see this in some markets that somebody buys from the wholesaler the hearing aid, and then they sell it online, but then they don't have really a good service offering in the back, and then the consumer tries to find somebody for the second or third fitting We haven't seen anyone who has been able to set that up. I think the device is not meant to be that way. I think people want to have adjustments in real life. That's what our learning is, except for the people who really take a fully self-fitting device with all of the caveats currently on the volume in the web. By the way, just a historical fact. So Nova was, to my knowledge, the first of the large players 15 years ago who bought an online sales for hearing aids. And we learned a lot on that journey. And at the end, it became a lead generation engine for our own retail, but not a place where we do final sales.

Okay, great.

Thank you. I would suggest we take the last two questions from the phone and then last chance for people in the room before we finish.

The next question is from Robert Davis with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Most of them have been covered. I just had a couple. I just wanted to pick up on your comments earlier about the French and German market and the fact you're expecting some of the one-offs to roll away this year. Have you actually seen kind of growth trajectories improve in both of those markets already, or is that something you're expecting to see over the next 12 months? That was my first question. And then the second one was just, Maybe just circling back on the new product launch or the potential new product launch, I guess, just in terms of what has customer feedback been? You know, when you've done your market research of the sort of biggest sort of gaps in the market, there's been a couple of new products come, you know, been launched in the last six months or so. Has that sort of changed your course of thinking of what customers are wanting or what you're hearing from customers in terms of what they're not happy with? Thank you.

In the U.S. and France, it's a little volatile, but in general, we have... On what customers are looking for, it's interesting. The Holy Grail continues to be hearing better. And if we do VOC, where 95% of the people we ask always mark high is the five things we ask around hearing better in this situation, this situation. And I think the reality of our industry is everybody would say, hearing aids are so much better than 10 years ago. By the way, my mom wears them since 15 years, so I can ask her. And then she says, and other people say, there's still these moments where I don't hear well, right? So I think as long as that's the case, if we can advance speech performance going to be great? If it's a big step forward, it's going to be even better, right? On the rechargeability, on the connectivity, people have what they need, at least if they can connect their device. We have the advantage with MFA versus MFI. There are things where people would like to see less what they call dropped calls, things we hear, or connection lost because of the cell phone being in the pocket and the hearing aid on the ear, so more power or more connection stability is something people would appreciate. I think a big headache for the hearing care professionals is connecting with devices. It's the one thing we hear the most from hearing care professionals that they spend so much time having to help the person on connecting the device, figuring it out, and they get lots of different end devices and they don't know how to do that. The person doesn't often, the hearing care professional doesn't So, these are more the ease-of-use discussions, but at the end, I think the biggest moving item is significant improvement in noisy environments for all use cases.

Thank you.

The last question from the phone is from David Adlington with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

Hey, guys. Thanks for the questions. One clarification and one housekeeping question. So the housekeeping question first, I know there's likely to be some volatility around FX hedging, but I was wondering if you could give us any help on the net financial income line, please, and if currency rates stay as they are, how we should be modelling that for the full year. And the second one is just to pin down a little bit in terms of what's included in the guidance Does your guidance include re-entering into COSCO, or does it not? And if it doesn't, therefore, should we assume upside if you do manage to announce another contract? Thank you.

So you're talking about the financial income and expense line. So we do have some hedge costs in there, some interest costs indeed. And then we also, for fiscal year 2023-2024, had some valuation of financial assets and liabilities. There was also a portion, that's why it was a bit less than the normal run rate that we see in other years. That's about it if you talk about that line. But for instance, we do not hedge the P&L, but you were more talking about the line in the P&L statement, right?

Correct, I just wanted to give a quantum of what we might be using our models there.

Yeah, so it will be higher again, so in 24, 25 higher versus 23, 24, where we had some, where it was somewhat lower.

On winning large customers, no matter which one, I, if I'm not in a position to say that We have one customer we would not like to include them in the guidance. So therefore don't assume any major customers who are not yet customers of ours being in the guidance. How would I think about a specific customer? That's difficult because A comes timing, secondarily, what's the way of entering and so on. The only thing I can say, if I would be trying to guesstimate it, I would need to pick a date. I can't help you on that one. And then I would need to pick what share wallet doesn't anyone get, right? And so if somebody would have four manufacturers present, probably the prudent thing is to assume that it takes a while to get to your fair share. But that would be my advice I can give you. You need to pick the timeline. You need to know in that customer how many people you think will be available or suppliers. But I think also the experience you have if you get into a channel, it does take a while until you convert the fitters who've gotten used to the people they're using today. So I wouldn't expect a dramatic change bike, I would expect a good S-curve. But that's true for any larger. Especially if they're not steering. There are some people who are steering. There would be some large customers which are steering, but many don't. If that customer is known to letting it run, then you're going to have an S-curve.

So we come to last chance for any final questions in the room. Are there any more questions?

Just simply on the sales guidance, the 629, how much is M&A based on today's funnel? Maybe I've overlooked it.

The rounded center can be up to 1.5 or so, but if you look at the deployment and you look at the size of our business, you're in the 1% to 1.5%. Okay, thanks. Thanks.

Anyone else? If not, I give the word back to you for final words.

Oh, we're done? Thank you for your interest. Thank you for the active questions also from the people on the call. We have laid out when we plan to have our capital markets day in Stefa. We would love to see many of you come back. We're going to put good updates on strategy and other elements into the mold there. Travel home safely for the ones who came in person. Enjoy the weather. Thank you.