Fielmann Group Ag U/Adr

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and a warm welcome to today's analyst and investor call of the Fielmann Group AG, following the publication of the half-year financial figures of the first half of 2026.

And with this, I'm happy to hand over to Fielmann's CFO, Steffen Betjag. Please, the stage is yours.

Thanks a lot. Thanks a lot, Ingmar, and welcome, everybody. Well, Craig, that was very, very fast. Thank you very much. We come to that later. You know the rules. Two questions per head. Welcome to our half-year results poll. We obviously published interim results and preliminary results already on the 9th of July, so the numbers are more or less well-known. So let's go through that at speed. Before we start with the overall summary, and you can go to the summary, Niels, thanks. Obviously, you all noticed last week that we issued an update to our guidance for the year, and it was obviously a downward correction. Well, you know, let's address that before we start about those numbers. When Niels and I started taking over investor relations for Fielmann, we talked to a lot of you and we stand for honesty and transparency and reliability and we feel that we already guided you based on our June numbers, we already guided you towards the lower end of our expectation and when we saw July and August coming in, we felt necessary that we update our guidance because It became apparent that it might be the lower end, but it might be below the lower end, and therefore we updated our guidance to you guys. It was a year, let me say, full of surprises. Who would have thought that we have an Iran war and a scarcity in crude oil and exploding prices all over again? who would have thought that eight months ago. We definitely didn't and we need to reflect that in the consumer sentiment and we see that being reflected and therefore we adjusted our guidance. We specifically chose a slightly broader range. We chose a range not just a 2% range but the 3% percentage point range, 2 to 5 percentage points or percent growth. We also softened the language around the EBITDA margin going from around 23% to 22% to 23%. The only reason is that, quite honestly, it's not my favorite thing to give you a guidance update and I'm good with doing one for the year and therefore we chose a slightly broader range. I think the important thing is to note that this is a temporary demand trip. It's not, you know, there's nothing fundamental going on in our cost structure. You see that our gross profit margins are super intact. We see actually that July and August have already increased in terms of growth pace. So we're confident, definitely confident that this is the last guidance update we've been giving you. in this year and hopefully for the foreseeable future but you know just to be on the safe side once we do it we said we want to give you a broader range so that whatever surprises all those people and presidents and whoever has out there for us in the making we're basically covered it would be probably stupid of me to say this is it and a hundred percent but I can you can rest assured that all the internal models point in the direction that we're definitely within you know if if the world continues as it does today we're definitely very comfortably in the range that we have given you now with that let's move into the half year number one figures we say that despite our U.S. customers feel because of the uncertainty We still deliver growth and we continue to grow. We grew at 2.3% at constant currency. We see an acceleration in the growth rate in our international markets. It's the same pattern that we've seen over the last two years, that the further away you are from Germany, the better you grow. Unfortunately, Germany is our home market and our biggest market, but we've seen that Germany has been struggling and we'll come to that later. we've seen that Germany has been struggling but you know while we had a lot of you know weather and uncertainty impacts in our other European countries we see that they have you know gone away and for example Spain is back to their usual nine almost ten percent growth rate for the year our EBITDA margin is very stable at We continue obviously to do cost management. We invest into growth. We do that through increased hirings because the more opticians we have in our stores, the more customers we can serve. And yes, we still have an issue with not serving all the customers that we could serve. The more doctors we have in the United States, the more exam capacity we open up. and the more exam capacity we have, the more glasses we sell. So there is an investment going on into personnel expenses. But other than that, we're still very much on a cost-conscious travel. You see the European margin at 25.1% for the first half year. The U.S. dropped by 2.5%. That's mainly due to personnel expenses and building up the capacity. Adjusted EPC margin is stable. and we expect a improved growth dynamic for the second half year. I said July and August, we already see that trend. We're pretty significantly above Q2 numbers, but there's also some seasonality always going on over the summer months when people are on vacation and all that. But we're hopeful because fundamentally we are accelerating our rate at which we open new stores. Tried and tested and over analyzed way of growing for us. We do targeted hirings. As I said, we still send away customers who we can't serve. So if we hire an optician in those stores, then that will immediately increase our top line and productivity gains, mainly the AI by space reflection. I talked to you about that many, many times. Half year 2 should be better than half year 1 in terms of growth and profitability is still intact. Those numbers we talked about, 2%, 2.3% growth, 1.7% organic. You know, we did a small acquisition in Luxembourg. We disclosed that in our appendix. We added 10 stores and adjusted EBITDA margin on same year level and adjusted EBT and margin at the same level as well. I mean, that sounds like, oh, these guys are only growing 4 million in adjusted EBITDA, but please bear in mind that last year was a record profitability year for this company. So whilst with an updated guidance just a week ago, I should be careful, and Nils always says, be careful and tune it down, but I'd say it's still... It's less than we expected, but it's still pretty good that we're beating a record year, at least on the half year.

Next page.

Yeah, total consolidated sales. We said that 1.8% versus prior year. You still see the U.S. dollar impact. You remember Liberation Day early April last year, the dollar tanked. And we're translating about $300 million in revenue into euros. If the dollar tanks, that's not good for us. The dollar has been stable since roughly June last year, so that effect will taper out. 2.3 in constant currency is our growth. Swiss franc works on the opposite. Swiss franc appreciating against the euro, and those two level each other out. 0.5% uptick from the dollar weakness that we have here. Well, the growth, which is great, is still across all our product categories, so we're not a one-trick pony. We're actually accelerating our growth in audiology. We're good on sunglasses. Well, there was a lot of sun, and therefore sunglasses are great. Adjacent healthcare services grow. Prescription or Rx eyewear not growing as much as we wanted to, and that's the reason why we felt the need to communicate and update the guidance to you. Last week, contact lens sales is down by 4%. Reason is very simple. I think we talked about the price development of branded contact lenses, competitive environment, which is going up quite significantly. The competitive environment in Europe where you don't need a prescription to buy contact lenses so our biggest competitors are Amazon for example you can just order them online and that's a pricing game that we cannot win and therefore we're focusing more and more on our private label contact lenses Atria which have a slightly higher margin or significantly higher margin we see that actually a positive margin development but obviously we're selling a lot less because they're also cheaper and therefore we have a minus four percent but that's Part of our contact lens strategy and is totally as planned. Countries are growing as well. You see Germany here at 1% for the half year, 0% in the second half year. So a reversal. The first quarter was weak because of weather and strikes. The second quarter was weak because of consumer sentiment. You see, and that's what you see. You see the half year numbers and you see the Q. 2 down there, so U.S. you see half-year growth at Consoncurrency 3%, second quarter was 5%, so an acceleration of growth. The same for Spain, 7 overall, 9 in the second quarter, and then you have Switzerland and Austria, and the others which are primarily driven by our acquisition in Luxembourg. You know, the other countries are slightly down. Compat a prior year because we're adjusting our market approach to to Italy You know that it's been an ongoing story first was you know, let's try and bring this back to profitability Italy is now with teens evita profitability So, okay, not great, but okay And very good compared to where they come from but we're still working on the product market fit and we're cleaning out Our store network and we have a new managing director for Italy. So the Spanish guy is also running Italy and and all that is going on and that's why Italy is down half year about 3% Compared to prior year. That's the main driver here. Why the others are slightly if you rip out the acquisition why the others are slightly slightly lower overall we see other than Germany and improve growth dynamics. So it's great because it proves that diversifying into several countries, diversifying into the U.S. into the U.S. is the largest optical market. It's really something that pays off because, you know, we're not so dependent on Germany anymore. Next slide. Yeah. Profitability talked about that profitability four million higher in absolute numbers and margin more or less where It was last year, which we think is a good achievement, given that typically lower sales translate into the lower expected sales turn into a margin impact. But you see here that we keep it all relatively stable because our cost control is still ongoing. Next slide. Yeah, it's a half year, so we got to talk about balance sheet as well. We have a quite significant cash position of 265 million. After dividend, we still had about 150 million in the bank. And yes, we do have plans what to do with it. Our leverage including leases is at 1.1, excluding lease liability is at 0.1. So you might call this a somewhat underutilized balance sheet. were working on that equity ratio went up two and a half percentage points almost to 42.8 so balance sheet is not our issue balance sheet is healthy you know we spending a lot of time in the board thinking about how we can bring the money to use and expand further and we come later to that we're really accelerating our expansion in the markets because we feel that's a great way of growing the company, it's a very safe way of growing the company and we calculated basically the IRRs for every store opening of the last 15 years and I can tell you the IRRs are also very good so it makes all the sense in the world to take the money and spend it on new stores, new openings and additions, smaller tuck-in acquisitions to actually increase our market share as we did, for example, in Luxembourg, where we're now number one. Looking at the cash flow statement, cash flow from operating activity is slightly lower. Cash conversion at 188 million. Cash conversion was impacted by some temporary working capital impacts. We built some inventory. That's a seasonal thing, but it sometimes happens. You know, on this side of the end of the end of the half year, sometimes it happens on the other side of the of the half year. We have a slight increase in in our new stores and in our sorry, in our audiology sales. So there we have more upstandings to to the people who actually get the money from the health insurance for us So this is all more or less a seasonal pattern that will normalize over the course of the year. Investing activities is impacted by accelerated store expansion and also by the acquisition that we undertook in Luxembourg at 23 million. And financing activities are slightly lower negatives than last year. The biggest item is always leases. You know, the IFRS 16 rent payment, so to say, or part of that. We didn't take any new financial debt. You remember that last year at this point in time, we refinanced the short-term acquisition debt for the U.S. acquisition into a long-term debt and paid down 25 million. That was one big impact. And then we took over the remaining 30% of our Slovenian entity and paid out the owner at 11 million. So that's ours now as well at 100% and that gives us a lot more control and we can integrate much closer with them on a lot more also operational things like, you know, lenses, frames, etc, etc. So overall, cash flow statement, balance sheet, very happy with that, very cash generative. And that's not, you know, that's not the first focus point, obviously. How do we accelerate growth is the main focus point of this company at this current point in time. Next slide. Capital market guidance, we just issued it last week, so we don't have any changes and obviously confirm it. 2 to 5%, 2.5 billion to 2.5 billion, adjusted EBIT 560 to 580. adjusted EBITDA margin probably around 23 but you know giving you because of the year of surprises as we call it a slightly broader range to make sure that we're not gonna need to come back to you and communicate again now one is enough as I said one guidance update adjusted EVT margin should be around 12% our customer satisfaction definitely around 90% we don't see any dip in any customer satisfaction so really working on that, and as I said, July, August already with some favorable trends going forward. Now, this is the normal slide deck that we show you because you're probably interested what's going to happen in the second half. You know, we're going to accelerate our growth rate. Why is that? We do have accelerated expansion, and I have a slide on that. We are also going to increase productivity. Okay, let's talk about accelerated expansion. Okay, Niels, I do that. Why don't you go to the next slide then. So, this is the number of net new stores that we're adding to our footprint. As I said, we analyzed new stores of the last 15 years to depth. We looked at the IRR. The IRR is extremely double-digit nice, so it makes a lot of sense. We had a lot of discussions on the board where basically I said, you know, let's talk about it because the IRR is great, we have the money, we have the management teams, you know, we have a great market position, we have great EBITDA, so let's do a little more and our sales board member also said, you know, I have the teams and I have a very clear view of where our white spots are. So why don't we do it? So we got together and basically the teams opened a lot more new stores. You see 2024 we opened 10, 2025 we added net 22 stores in the full year. We are now at 37 already in the first half year that we added 11 of those acquired and 26 and we have in the pipeline another 33 stores for the second half year that we're going to open that's excluding any acquisitions so this is pure store openings across Europe and the US so every country does something this is this is a this is a push for expansion that's not just you know singular in terms of we only do it in Germany or GSA or the US we do it across The company, every store obviously adds immediately revenue. We typically have good brand recognition. If we open a store, they tend to be full. We have, you know, they turn them profitable depending on the country and their repurchase interval is between, you know, one and three years before they turn profitable, which also explains the slight margin dip from from the expansion but you know once we build that and once they turn profitable as I said the return on the capital invested is quite significant positive and that's why we do this because we're building a foundation that will carry us into the next decade so 33 more stores and then we have about 70 open this year which would be a significant acceleration compared to 2025 and you know we're currently in budget discussions for 2027 and sneak peak would be more. So let's see how many more we're going to do. Besides accelerating the expansion, we're also increasing our productivity. I talked a lot about AI-based refraction that's now in many, many hundred stores in operation and it's a day-to-day thing. Basically, as I said, I did it. It cuts down refraction time by about eight test time from about 15 or 12 minutes by about four minutes, which opens up a lot of productivity for our opticians to then serve more customers. And then we're going to expand eye exam availability, and that's mainly through hiring doctors, through hiring opticians, so that we really have The capacity in Europe, we're adding the capacity that's needed to serve customers that are coming anyway. In the US, and that's why you see the margin dip, we're adding capacity so that customers get used to, hey, this is a different experience. if I go to a SHOPCO and SVS in the US then to another optician because we have the capacity but off of that we first need to build it and then people need to realize it and then it will pay off but that might take a while but that's the dip that you see in our margin from the expansion of that capacity

With that, I'm done with H1 and Outlook H2.

And with that, I think we go to Q&A. I think we already have a few people who now need my answers. I think we already have two people who asked their question.

Yes. Please feel free to raise your hand if you have a question and want to share it with us. And Mr. Abbott, Craig Abbott, he already raised his hand before the presentation really started, so we hand over to him. Mr. Abbott, please unmute yourself and ask your question. You're still muted. You have to unmute your microphone so we can hear you.

Craig, this is becoming a running joke.

Can you hear me now? Oh, yeah. We can hear you. I finally found the mute button. Thank you. Very good. Yeah. Hello, Stefan. Yes, I will limit myself to two questions. The first one, you very kindly gave us an indication a couple of times in your presentation that you trading trends in July August that indeed you are seeing improving trends which is obviously very encouraging I just wondered if you could if you if you can indicate whether you are also seeing this acceleration in any kind of meaningful way in Germany that's my first question and your second question yeah I'm a second question I guess would be to go over to the US And I was wondering if you could give us an update on, say, the Fielmann branded stores in the U.S. You know, things like are you investing materially in marketing to establish the brand locally? Is this where most of your focus is right now with these doctor new hires? If you could just maybe just give us an update on how you feel about how those Fielmann branded stores are developing.

Sure. So acceleration trend, yes, we see that also in Germany. Be mindful, some of the occasions, et cetera, et cetera, but Germany looks a little better than it used to look in Q2 and Q1. So we see an acceleration there. But then again, it's two months, and it's been very difficult. I mean, you live in Frankfurt, so you know how difficult the sentiment is in Germany at the moment. But yes, we see an acceleration there and let's wait and see for the Q3 numbers in early November. The U.S., well, we opened the first kind of Fehlmann branded stores around Northern Illinois and have been trying those. We've been seeing that the U.S. markets basically or the U.S. stores, the Fehlmann stores in the U.S. are still lacking a little bit. They're not really, from the whole setup, they're not really transporting what Fielmann stands for. So, you know, you know it, you're in Germany, you go into Fielmann store, you know, without, you know, knowing the logo, you know that you're in a Fielmann store. We don't have that experience in the US that yet. So we actually piloted one more store, which we opened about a month ago. in McChesney Park in Rockford, Illinois, where we have one Fehlmann store that's really done from the bottom up as if really the first fully fledged Fehlmann store with training, with a vision guide, you know, software-based and tablet-based consulting so that we can take the optical retail associates that we have in the US rather than the opticians that we have in Germany, helping them to to better consult our clients and you know first numbers are great but first numbers are always great when you open a new store and everybody from Hamburg is looking onto it so we're monitoring this and we're still you know adapting how we're going about but that's where the focus is at the moment the focus is on the brand promise the translation of the brand promise into store design and definitely the translation of the brand promise into How we interact with our customers and that's for us the biggest thing and that's the training task that we have ahead of us. But that's where the focus is other than last year where we were really about let's bring these two companies together and build one. We're now really building, we're starting to open a few stores also in the US which we didn't do so much last year. So, There we are embarking more on the normal course of business, not yet on the accelerated growth path. So if you see the full year numbers, you're not going to see that jump into, you know, reaching the billion that we want to reach by 2030 is not going to be a straight line. It's more going to be, you know, we need to find our way and then we're going to very aggressively grow. So that's where we stand on the U.S. So building the capacity, and making sure that we have the right footprint and then trying it out and very carefully looking at it and analyzing it and then driving the growth. Ingo, I think, has the next question. The U.S. has a considerably more demanding litigation and compliance environment than Germany. Given Fehlmann's history of internal control issues, how confident are you that the company's current compliance framework is sufficiently robust for its expanding U.S. operation? that's a great question that I don't really relate to because internal control issues I'm not totally aware of that we had any product or treatment related issues in our European footprint so and obviously we tightened up a little bit on the compliance and regulatory framework in the US but as you all know who followed us for quite a few time SVS and SHOPCO both are active in the US business for more than 50 years. We have a very good general counsel and a legal team there, so you can rest assured that we are not losing sleep over that. Hi Stefan and Nils. Here are my two questions, please. A. The midpoint of the revised adjusted EBITDA guidance implies a circa 5% decline in Half Year 2 of the various pressures on profitability, notably retail expansion, unfavorable geomix and lower operating leverage, which do you expect to be the largest strike on the margins? RX Glasses were up only 2% in Half Year 1, correct, are presented as likely reflecting softer trends in Germany, correct. Have you seen any signs of deferred purchases that could lead to pent-up demand in a few quarters? Thanks. Take the second question first, because it's easier. People are wearing their glasses longer than they used to. The repurchase interval has increased basically in Germany, for example, by half a year. If you convert all that, somebody took 17% out of the market. And when you look at the numbers, so the German Association of Opticians, you're going to see that the German market is shrinking in absolute terms. We're actually holding steady, and that's not too bad in a shrinking market, but it's obviously not what we want to do. So I don't think it's deeper purchases like, damn, I need a new car, I don't want to do it this month, why don't we do it next year? Because that's not how purchasing glasses works. I think it's an overall feeling of, I better be careful with bigger ticket items and bigger ticket other than tourism and bigger ticket items is a pair of glasses because yes you can get very very very good glasses from us at 19 euros but if you are in a you know if you want medium quality progressive lenses you're talking 300 400 euros and that's a lot of money for a lot of people and they say well why don't I wear them a little longer so we're not gonna expect like this magic switch that something happens and then everybody floods our stores unfortunately we need to wait for overall consumer sentiment to come back and that will only happen most likely next year because the GDP recovery that we see in Germany as small as it is is not consumer driven but it's defense and infrastructure driven so that translating into consumer spend is going to take a little longer and that's basically the big difference to Spain where you know we see that yeah first quarter was not so great because of weather and a lot of uncertainty but there the GDP growth is a higher and b it's it's driven also by consumer spend and that's therefore you have a more direct Transition into our P&L and therefore we need to hold our horses a little in Germany and open stores and hire the right opticians and you know do what we do best which is treat our customers in a nice and great way and give them the right product at the right price and then they will come to us as Almost 60% of German customers do. Second, the midpoint, the second question is the first question, the midpoint of the revised guidance implies a 5% decline. We do have some phasing issues in spend, especially in the biggest portion here is marketing spend. We're probably going to spend, you know, in that pattern, much to your delight, I can assume, but that spend pattern in Germany, you know, in marketing shifts, year by year is not seasonally stable. But sometimes we say, big campaign and, you know, the first half year, not so much in the second half year. You know, and then you remember two years ago, we didn't do any anything in the first half year that we did a big brand equity campaign. Your Glasses in the second half. And this year we're probably going to spend as much marketing in the last five months as we did in the first seven. And those effects, those, you know, some projects that are running and consulting spent and some marketing expenses, that's basically leading to a smaller or lower margin on an EBITDA level than in the first half year or in the first seven months. the first seven months EBITDA margin is basically the same as in the first six months so that's great that's stable but that might happen and that's the reason why we updated the guidance I'd also said you know the 22 and the 23 I wouldn't really necessarily look at the midpoint because you know the 22 take it more as a very very cautious measure on our end because we just don't know What surprises this year holds for us. The 2019 incident in Hamburg. I wasn't here in 2019, so maybe somebody can remind me of what the 2019 incident was. But yeah, maybe we take that offline.

Thierry. Hi Stefan and Niels.

Are the 2030 targets maintained on revenues and margin and if maintained is there a higher portion of M&A than before and a lower estimated growth rate organically? When do you expect to start M&A in the US? As you told us that a series of targets were already identified and it is part of your ramp up to the 4 billion sales. Well, in football terms, speaking in the 19th minute, this is, you know, it's still 0-0, but we're not giving up on winning this game, so no, our 20-30 targets are fully maintained. It's way too early to translate a temporary demand drop into a long-term, you know, doomsday scenario, and therefore, you know, the growth is not going to happen. When do we start? We're planning to start with M&A, well, probably next year, the year after, but it's going to be very small tuck-ins. If we do something bigger, you know, if we could choose, it will be 2028, 2029. Unfortunately, with M&A, you know, it's not only the buyer who can decide. Sometimes the seller also says, well, now I want to sell. And then we need to look at it and act on it. and that's what we're going to do but so far the 2030 target strategy is still intact and we don't see a reason to change that and if we do then we let you know. Thomas, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. Fielmann's lease payments declined by 11% to around 49 million in the first half while the store network increased. Can you please provide some information of the drivers of the decline. The decline is from $58 million to $49 million. I think that's the investing cash flow, right? That's the financing cash flow. Niels is opposite me. Sorry. When I look like that, I mean Niels. That we need to take apart for you, and we can post that later on this. We put an addendum page to the queue. to the Q2 notifications and posted with the presentation on the website. And could you please remind us how much total capex is being spent on Comotov and what the distribution looks like over the years. Comotov is about a 75 million investment. And then we're spending about 20 million on top for the operational backbone, OVB, which is the full, you know, we're basically ripping out the full order and Supply Chain SAP R3 that we still have and putting in a very modern standardized S4. That's going to run all the way to the year 2028, end of 2028. The biggest part in Kamatov is implementing a so-called shuttle, which is a fully automated, an extremely automated warehousing and distribution I think that costs about 40 million. I've been in Komatov last Thursday, and it's actually there, and it's standing there, so that part has been spent already, so 40 of the 70 has already been spent. The rest is now putting in some glazing, so putting together glasses, some glazing equipment, and getting the operations up and running, and connecting it to the IT networks. and then the OBB as well. And we're going to go live with Komatov for our e-commerce by mid next year. And then we're dealing with the brick and mortar business for another year and then we take that live again. And that's basically the spend. So 50 million has been spent in total already on Komatov and the remaining 40 we're going to spend over the next two years. Are you able to provide an update on market share dynamics and the competitive environment in the U.S.? Is this evolving in line with your expectation from a year ago or so? Our growth is still lower than the growth of the Warbees and the Asylors of this world. As I said, at the moment we are really working on finding the right approach to the market rather than growing aggressively in the US that will take a little bit more time as I said the first fully fledged store is now open including the training we now have people from Europe on the ground in the US so it's starting but before we reach out and change things in 225 stores in the US we want to make sure that We do the right thing and until then we're growing at 3-4% in the US but hope to accelerate that obviously from probably mid-27 onwards. There are six notifications, but the question is... Oh, these are the old questions.

There is one last participant with a raised hand. Michael Kuhn, you should be able to unmute yourself. Switch on your microphone and ask your question. Please, Mr. Kuhn, go ahead. So we still can't hear you. You should be able to unmute yourself.

It doesn't work. I think that sums up our first half year. Michael, you want to just type it and then I read it and then we take it. We can wait. Same-store growth versus new opening versus Lux M&A. As we said on page One of the earlier pages in the deck, 1.7% organic growth, 0.6% from Luxembourg. New openings, I don't have that number off the top of my head, but new openings, even 33, I mean, we have 1,299 stores. Adding 33 stores within the first half year that are not all open on the 1st of January, but over the course of the month is... that growth impact is relatively limited, and therefore I'd say chop off 0.1% and you're on the safe side.

Profitability impact this year from, I like that, you know, like bang, bang, bang, spare the niceties.

Profitability impact this year from new store openings this year. Again, so far H1 numbers that we're talking about, Very limited, typically, as I said, the first year is negative, but we're not losing tons of money on a new source. So, again, relatively limited, 0.2 percentage point margin at max.

Thanks for your question, Michael. Mr. Kuhn typing his last question. If that's the case, we'll wait a few seconds. and from over and out.

All answers, thank you. Well done. Great. Okay, well.

That was the last question and that was the last answer by the way. We have no more questions on the line, so this concludes this call for today. Thanks to all the participants for your showing interest in the Fielmann Group and with this from my side, I wish you a lovely remaining week and say goodbye and hand over to Mr. Becher for some final remarks.

Well, thanks a lot. Hey, everybody. Thanks very much for your continued interest in our company. As you know, we're doing whatever we can to grow this company, but grow it carefully and not do, you know, strange or difficult things. And, well, you know, summer is over, so I'm going to see a lot of you probably over the next two months on, you know, in Paris, in Munich, and... or in Frankfurt on these conferences so stay tuned and again thank you very much for your continued interest much appreciated and thanks for you very much for your questions in this call today have a great Thursday