Hexagon Ab B Shs New

Thank you. And welcome, everyone, to this third quarter interim report. And if we start on slide number four, overview for the third quarter, we record sales, a sales increase of 23% in this quarter, and 7% are coming from structure, i.e., M&A activity. 9% is coming from currency tailwind, and 7% is organic growth. And we saw broad-based demand across all geographies and industries in the third quarter. As you might have seen from the gross margin, our product mix continued to improve, strengthening both EBIT and gross margins. And we expect a resolution of the supply chain pressure by the end of the year. We report an EBIT of 386 million, which is 24% stronger than the corresponding period of 2021. If we move to slide five, just a reminder that Q1 and Q3 are typically our weakest quarters in the year, followed by strong second quarters and fourth quarters. Slide six gives you an overview of the P&L statement. I won't dwell over it. I can only just state that we record 1320 million in sales, and that that corresponds to an EBIT margin of 29.3%, which is 0.5% stronger than the corresponding period last year. I think we'll skip slide seven. You got the year-to-date numbers there, and move straight to cash flow. where cash flow from operations amounted to 385 million, a bit more than 100 million more than the corresponding quarter of last year. And this corresponds to a cash conversion of 78%, which is quite normal for a third quarter. We had 79% cash conversion last year. Moving to slide nine, over the years we've reported on our working capital to sales ratio, where we're now back on the trend line at 5.9% working capital to sales. Market development, if we move to slide 11, that slide will give you an overview of the sales mix. for the hexagon group in the third quarter where we see North America continue to expand. The Americas is now 40% of group sales. We see a slight contraction in Western Europe in terms of mix and also in EMEA. EMEA, rest of EMEA excluding Western Europe is obviously driven by the reduction of sales to Russia. Slide 12, just a quick overview of the various markets and how they fare. We have strong growth in Asia excluding China. We have strong growth in South America. We have good growth in the more mature markets of North America and Western Europe and China. And we see a decline in Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa where the war is obviously the culprit to negative growth. Slide 13 is for your reference. It gives you an overview of what we saw in the third quarter per segment and per geographic region. But moving to slide 14, Emilia, Western Europe recorded 6% organic growth. We saw solid demand for both surveying and positioning solutions, as well as strong demand from the manufacturing industries across the continent. Power and energy also recorded strong business development in the quarter. If we exclude Western Europe, Russia is obviously the headline with significantly declining sales, minus 55% in the quarter. And EMEA excluding Russia is actually quite strong, where we see strong growth from the Middle Eastern region. Slide 15, Americas. North America recorded 8% organic growth. South America recorded double-digit organic growth, where the North American market saw solid demand across most industries. Compared to Western Europe, it was significantly stronger demand in North America. South America is driven primarily by expansion in agriculture, but also the mining industry. and power and energy sectors. Moving to Asia, slide 16. China records 5% organic growth, and this is in a market that is quite tough with lockdowns and weak construction markets. It was primarily driven by general manufacturing and automotive. We did see some weakness in the infrastructure and construction markets in our Chinese business. Japan, Southeast Asia, and India all record strong double-digit growth. It's supported by strong demand for both surveying and manufacturing solutions, so both infrastructure and the manufacturing sector is expanding. Mining Solutions recorded a very strong quarter in Australia. Reporting segments, if we start with geospatial enterprise solutions on slide 18, organic growth for this segment was 5%. Geosystems reports 4% organic growth on the back of a quarter this time last year where growth was 15%. So it's a very strong quarter in spite of the slowdown in organic growth. SIG reports 5% organic growth, and it's primarily driven by demand from defense. Autonomy and positioning saw 9% organic growth, and it's a combination of strong demand for defense solutions with autonomous driving solutions and The sales amounted to 642 million, and the EBIT margin was 30.7%, a slight reduction compared to the corresponding quarter last year, where we reported 31.3%. Now, if we move to industrial enterprise solutions, slide 19. Industrial enterprise solutions report an organic growth of 9%. Both divisions, MI, that grew by 8%, and asset lifecycle intelligence, that grew by 12%, saw strong demand in the quarter. We saw strong demand from all manufacturing industries, but we also saw growing interest in starting to invest in energy solution for ALI. Sales amounted to 678 million, and the EBIT margin improved by more than 2% to 29.2% in the quarter. Slide 20, our growth margin. Our growth margin for the past 12 months is 1% stronger than this time last year. We report 65%. And if we look at the corresponding EBIT margin on slide 21, we report 29.5% EBIT margin versus 28.7% this time last year. And with this, I want to hand over to our current COO and our incoming CEO, Paolo Gugelmini. and he will present what's happened in the quarter operationally. So, Paolo.

Thank you, Ola. Some highlights from the business development activities in Q3, starting with the acquisition of iConstruct that we announced just a couple of weeks back. The company was founded in 2009 in Perth, Australia. It's a great solution for the commercial infrastructure and industrial construction sectors. It's going to create opportunities across the customer base in geosystems and in ALI particularly. At the core, what iConstruct does very well is an automation tool that is utilized to pull and integrate information that is held within different BIM models into a single 3D model that really enhances accessibility control of the design and the construction pace. This solution strengthens our smart build suite of solutions for the AEC sector, just as well as what we have announced a couple of weeks back on slide 24, us joining forces with Avere. Avere, based out of New York City, the 50 employees team, very specialized in building platforms that leverage on-site reality capture data from a variety of sources. It could be scans, it could be images. That data ends up enriching and updating BIM models and therefore improving project workflows, schedule tracking, installation issue detection through analytics. And this is really us helping customers creating a constantly updated BIM through as-built conditions. If we move on to the major commercial wins from the divisions in slide 25, if we start from ALI, we see continued traction for our portfolio in those industries. We've had a very successful project with one of the largest global mining operators based out of Brazil. They provide iron ore, copper, silver, other natural resources, and they have standardized on smart land suite as the backbone for their engineering information management system to manage drawings and data documents all the way across the life cycle from projects to operations. The second commercial highlight on the slide refers to a win with one of the largest public transit agencies in the US. They are moving aggressively towards a zero emission fleet of vehicles, adopting electric buses, and they have adopted 30 different enterprise asset management EAM applications to drive operational performance, support auditing, compliance, and tracking. The third case In the last year, we signed with an EPC operating in 49 countries globally. This is going to become one of our largest SDX SaaS commitments to date, a large multi-year commitment that is showing continued momentum in the SaaS transition for the ALI portfolio. Moving on to slide 26 to our geosystems portfolio. In Q3, we have successfully installed an autonomous deformation detection system in Greenland. As you can imagine, this area sees tidal waves bringing instability to slopes, creating landslides, creating risks to the local population. This is a complex installation, of course, in harsh conditions, a system that is powered by solar and fuel cells. We have developed in this instance a collaboration with ETH, developed advanced analytics jointly. We're using sensor data from cameras, from geophones. And of course, we stream all of that data for processing through satellites. And if we move to railways in slide 27, we have announced a deepening of our partnership with Chorus. Cores is a French-based dynamic simulation company. They develop technologies for safety training of operators in railways. In this instance, we use our content program, our Metro HD program. We fuse all of that information with GoPro images that are captured by trains, and we build more rich environments for operators to train with them. These are great technologies that We're deploying across other industries and will be increasingly available and accessible through HXBR. Still staying within the railway industry, in slide 28, we refer to two commercial successes with Amtrak and one of our largest customers in Czech Republic. Amtrak is a very large passenger operation in the United States, of course. They are planning to build a joint operations center between their train operations and their police department, and they are standardized on Exagram OnCall for dispatch and OnConnect to integrate the digital records across the two divisions. In Czech Republic, this is a more widespread set of applications from our portfolio that support the state-owned company that is managing the national railways infrastructure. We help them not only managing documentation and managing the infrastructure from rail assets to utility assets, but ultimately building a complete digital twin of this infrastructure. Back to the AEC sector in slide 29, an update about OxBlue. joined Hexagon in 2020. They've experienced very strong growth with their portfolio of high-definition photography and live video streaming services to monitor in real time what's happening in a construction site. This is highly valuable for AEC stakeholders. In this case, a sizable contract with Wallbridge that is one of the largest construction companies in the US based out of Detroit. From an innovation perspective in RealityCapture, we have announced in the quarter the release of StreamDP, which is part of our high-end ground penetrating radar portfolio. Here, we capture data about underground utilities, cables, pipes. We enrich our RealityCapture data set in HXDR with this precious information, and this particular solution is unique in the marketplace in terms of ease of automation and depth of measurement. In slide 31, an update about Leica DNC4 release. This is the next generation airborne frame camera, offers increased productivity, optimized flight times, and of course feeds data into the content program and HXDR. And, of course, this data capture innovation helps support contracts like the ones that we have announced in the quarter in slide 32 with the USDA Farm Service Agency's National Agriculture Inventory Program. In this instance, we go and capture eight states at high resolutions, and we support agricultural applications, biomass calculations, farming programs, and the likes. Moving to our manufacturing portfolio, as Ola alluded to, we have seen strong growth across automotive, particularly with our software portfolio. In this case, we increasingly support one of India's largest automotive OEMs, not only through our structural simulation portfolio, but also in the design of their next generation powertrain component in approach to electrification. Staying within India that has seen good growth across the group, in slide 34, an update about our activities with India's largest space research center. In this case, they have adopted a broad portfolio of metrology equipment from high-accuracy printed circuit boards, inspection all the way up to jig measurements and NICA trackers.

Thank you, Paolo. And if we then turn to slide 36 in this pack, we announce some organizational changes on the 7th of October where David Mills, as of the 1st of July 2023, will assume the position as CFO for the Hexagon Group. And I want to take this opportunity to thank Robert Belkic that has been our CFO for 10 years and will leave the group the 30th of June for his services. So thank you, Robert. And with that, I think we've come to what you will wait for, which is the Q&A. And we are now open to take any questions.

Thank you. If you do wish to ask a question, please press 01 on your telephone keypads. If you wish to withdraw your question, You may do so by pressing 02 to cancel. Our first question comes from the line of Magnus Gruber of UBS. Please go ahead. I stand corrected. We are going first to Michael of Carnegie. Please go ahead.

Hi. Thanks for taking my question. Yeah, first of all, the question on asset lifecycle intelligence. which grew by 12% in Q3. Can you say something about the growth in different end markets, and if there were a large order driving this, and how it should, what this may be going forward if 10%, 12% is achievable also coming quarters?

That we can't say, but what we can say is that this quarter we did not have any large orders. It was a string of smaller orders, and we definitely see a sentiment change for ALI, especially with ETC, but also with owner-operators. So there is more investment plans for this part of the energy sector going forward. This looks quite promising.

Okay, good. Just to follow up also on Infor and ETQ, if you can say something about the performance for those two companies and the growth rate they are delivering and what type of EBITDA they have roughly.

Thanks. They're both performing better than the group average in terms of both sales and margins. They are positive contributors to both growth and margin expansion. Okay, thanks.

Our next question comes from the line of Daniel Dubai of Handelsbanken. Please go ahead.

Thank you so much, operator, and good morning, gentlemen. And my first question would be to Ola here. You have been a little bit ahead of the curve looking around the corner because you've been quite vocal about the need to adapt to a new geopolitical situation, especially between the U.S. and China. And my question is how this has panned out so far, i.e., the – and what kind of adjustments that might be needed ahead with Hexagon 2, you know, in terms of the – especially the hardware-related solution and ecosystem alignment, et cetera. Any comments there would be great.

think we have to adapt to a world where technology can't flow freely between continents and especially not between the United States and China. And Europe is probably going to take a similar stance as the United States over the long term. And that means that our Chinese operation needs to be self-sufficient when it comes to technologies and technology development. And we've been working on this for probably five years now to prepare the ground for this. And I think we're in a very good position today. And I think the organic growth numbers show that we are doing well.

Certainly, I agree. So no major... changes short term. So you've been working on this for quite some time. Yeah. Yeah. And another question, if I may, would be a little bit on overall visibility in the market. Obviously, we have a higher interest rate than it does inflation, et cetera. And do you see, and if you see, where do you see the impact on larger project decision making, i.e. delays or any changes in visibility in markets or segments would be great to know about?

I don't think anyone hand on heart has seen any big negative impacts on their numbers sitting here in October of 2022. But obviously we all watch the same stats. So if you look at the purchasing managers indices, they tell a very different story. So I think it's fair to say what we see right now is the manufacturing industry eating into its backlog. And that could continue through probably another quarter or two, and then we'll see what happens. When it comes to construction, we've seen a little weakness in certain markets for construction. On the other hand, there are a lot of infrastructure projects, so it's hard to see where the overall construction market is heading.

Perfect. And finally, a big thank you, Ola, and also Robert for an amazing journey here. And, yeah, you will obviously stay on.

Thanks. Our next question comes from the line of Alexander Virgo of Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Thanks very much. Good morning to you both. I'll just pick up on that last point, Ola. Thanks very much for all your help, at least, in understanding Hexagon over the last several years, and very best of luck. Thank you for the amazing roadshow. Well, long may that continue with Paolo. So I have a couple of questions, if I could. Maybe a slightly bigger picture on your SaaS businesses now. I'm wondering if you could just touch a little bit on strategy there. I know you've always adopted a fairly organic approach to SaaS and customers' decisions around how they choose to consume what you're offering. I wondered if you could just talk a little bit about how you're seeing those dynamics change, whether your strategy is evolving in that regard, and whether or not the transition from existing customers on licenses to SaaS is something we need to be thinking about in terms of factoring into our growth assumptions. That would be my first question, and I'll follow up with another one if I may.

Okay. No, you're absolutely right. So let's recap where we are at this moment in time. 60% of our business is software or services. 35% is pure software, and 20% is subscriptions. So those are the stats. What's happening is it's very difficult to take an old piece of software where you have established relationships and force customers into a subscription. But all new products that we launch or acquire are SaaS-based.

So if you look at EA... or ETQ.

They are pure SaaS-based businesses. And there is no doubt about that SaaS is the future for software. So it's really these old relationships where it might take some time to move towards SaaS, but we also see a push in the market from customers where they want to sign up for SaaS rather than So it's happening, and you should factor that into our growth.

Right, but I guess that's incremental growth as opposed to where we've seen it. Some of the other industrial software companies have talked about headwinds as they convert and have to adapt to accounting changes, for example.

Yeah, and no, it's going to be incremental, but it's going to have a negative impact on growth.

Okay. And do you have any indication as to how much headwind we should be thinking about, I guess, is the question, really?

I don't know. I mean, this is guesstimating, but I would say over the past two years, it is half a percent annually. Okay.

Yeah. Okay. Thank you. And second question was going to be on gross margins, which above 65% on a training 12-month basis for the first time, I think is a very strong performance. I'm just wondering if you could talk a little bit about the resiliency of that as we move into 2023 and have to face the various challenges. inflationary pressures that we have in the world today. In particular, I'm thinking from your perspective, wages.

No, I think we're going to have quite resilient margins. If you back out the extraordinary events that we saw in the quarter, we would have recorded an even stronger growth margin. So we're definitely trending in the right direction when it comes to growth margins and this is a prerequisite to be able to handle two things that are happening in opex first thing is that we're coming out of pandemic and our sales force is much more active our organization is much more active which is driving up travel cost expenses and so on And we're much more frequently visiting trade shows, which we didn't do at all this time last year. So that is on our own expense, so to say, that we're driving up cost. And then on top of that, you have inflationary pressure, where a very, very active pricing policy needs to continue to happen to mitigate inflation. the cost that we can foresee in terms of salaries and suppliers increasing cost.

Okay, great. Thank you very much.

Thanks. Our next question comes from the line of Sven Merck of Barclays. Please go ahead.

Great. Thank you for taking my question. Good morning. Maybe we can quickly stay with the topic on pricing. You just mentioned the cost management. Obviously, it's now broadly years since you talked to the first large price increases, but then you spoke in the past to potential further price increases. You just mentioned that prices have to be carefully managed. So can you comment if we should expect a step change in the tailwind from pricing over the coming quarters, or if this will fade away just gradually?

It's definitely not a step change. We started implementing price increases, as you correctly said, roughly a year ago when we saw inflation coming. And this has to be a gradual process because we need to manage our customer base in a professional way. So I would say if we guesstimate, I would say we have one and a half to two percent price increase in our numbers today. And that is going to continue to have a positive impact on sales going forward.

Okay, great. Thank you. And then secondly, could you also comment on your financial strategy if we would go into a recession? In the past, Hexagon has cut cost relatively early to protect profitability. But now you called out also in the release that the business has become more resilient and you're also closer to your midterm target. So does it make it maybe a bit less likely that you will cut costs to the same extent as in the past?

No, why? You always cut costs in a recession.

Maybe you want to continue to invest in future growth?

No, no, no, that's not how cost works. It's an opportunity in a recession to take out costs that you're not using and replace it with something more productive, and you should always do that. So we've already started planning.

Okay, great to hear. Thank you.

Our next question comes from the line of Joachim Gunnell of D&B Markets. Please go ahead.

Thank you. So on Amai and the encouraging comments in China, can you talk a bit or provide any commentary of the linearity of the improvement in that region, if you saw that already in the beginning or in the quarter or if it was weighted towards the end?

No, we saw already last quarter that Q3 would be stronger than Q2 in China. And it's a combination of factors. We have decentralized our organization in China. China consists of several regions, and we have regional offices all across China. Those regional offices are allowed to travel to customers in the same region, and that's why we could continue to service our customer base. So we saw already at the end of the second quarter that Q3 was going to be a stronger quarter than Q2 in China.

Understood. This has been a topic for the past quarters, but as you think about the potential for reshoring or increased domestic manufacturing, how has this played out for Hexagon thus far in terms of increased demand for certain solutions?

I think it's played a positive role. We can definitely state that it's not reassuring, but you do see countries in Southeast Asia benefiting from the fact that large US OEMs don't want to rely 100% on manufacturing in China. So they're not cutting back on their capacity in China, but they are expanding elsewhere. And I'm thinking about countries in Southeast Asia, like, for example, Vietnam. It's very hard to say what is reshoring and what is just good demand in Western Europe and North America. But with new technologies, we do see that maybe the cost advantage moving manufacturing to Asia is not as great as it used to be. So reshoring will definitely be a topic for the coming few years.

Understood. That's all from me. Thank you.

Thanks. Our next question comes from the line of NASA 9 of Berenberg. Please go ahead.

Hi. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for taking my question. I have two, if I may. Firstly, starting with the MI segment, the performance in there is actually better than what I expected, so very impressive. Just hope you get a bit more understanding on, you know, obviously in MI, it's more software-driven, but you also have the hardware elements, so if you could add a bit more color on where the good performance and strong performance is coming from, and then I'll leave the second question for later.

It was good performance across the portfolio, so we can't say that we're disappointed with software or hardware. I think they both grew quite nicely in the water for MI.

Perfect. Thank you. And then the other question is on the geosystem. Apologies if you've already covered this. You mentioned that a low group average worker in Geosystems this quarter because of the tough comp last year. But when we look at it actually, Q3 relative to H1 with possibly an easier comp, is that a fair statement to make? And any drivers that you will call out in terms of the performance in that quarter?

I think Geosystems had a really strong quarter. You can't complain if you're delivering above 30% EBIT margins and growing 4% on top of 15% this time last year. But one also has to be realistic, and Geosystems growth comes in spurts. So we have cycles with new development. And as we launch those new products, we typically get a growth spurt again.

Thank you very much.

Thanks. Our next question comes from the line of Nicholas Green of Bernstein. Please go ahead.

Hello, good morning. Nick Green here at Bernstein. Thanks for taking my question. Ola, I'm interested in your comment on the slowdown to come, that we may perhaps have a quarter or two period of grace before manufacturers finished working through their order books, and that you said Hexagon's already preparing for this. Now, Hexagon's quite a lot larger today than it was during the last couple of downturns. Maybe this gives more opportunity to take cost out, as you indicate. So can you just maybe give us some examples, talk through how Hexagon is planning for this? Maybe there's more material footprint synergies this time around than previously. Maybe just provide some more color, please.

Now, I think what you have to start with is to do the acid test. Can you deliver the same profitability applying a 10% salary increase and, let's say, a 10% volume drop? What happens to your business? And that's what any business should do in this situation. And we've applied that. We've discussed the realism of that scenario, and we've done the fuse. scenarios.

Thank you. And then a follow-on to that. Maybe then, again, because Hexagon is large and diverse, can you give examples of which of your businesses you expect to be effectively most cyclical, most impacted by the slowdown coming ahead? And also, which ones do you expect to actually be counter-cyclical, where you're hoping that demand will continue to increase as we move into a manufacturing slowdown?

I think if you put it like this, we got roughly one-third of our business in the broader construction sector. And if you look at the broader construction sector, what's likely to happen there? We do see a slowdown in, for example, residential housing projects. So that's an obvious slowdown that is affecting geosystems primarily, but also a bit EMP. But on the other hand, if you look at that broad construction sector, what's going to happen to infrastructure where we've seen a lot of governments talking about programs to improve infrastructure across both North America and Europe? So that's going to be a counter impact to maybe the residential housing market that might suffer a bit. And then you look at manufacturing, and that is obviously connected to the consumer spending. Right now it's almost impossible still to buy a car, so due to the delays in the manufacturing chain. Eventually that's going to be resolved, but how long is it going to take? Is it going to take three months, six months? No one knows. And what's the general economy and what's the shape of the consumer as those backlogs are gone? No one knows either. And we got one third there. And then our last third is the combination of infrastructure, energy, mining, agriculture, and defense. And that is the contracyclical third of hexagon that right now has a pretty good growth outlook.

That's very helpful. Thank you. I'll turn it over.

Before we go to our next question, may I remind everyone that if you wish to ask a question, please press 01 on your telephone keypad. If you wish to withdraw your question, you may do so by pressing 02 to cancel. And our next question comes from the line of Johannes Scheller of Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Yeah, thanks for taking my question. Good morning. I was just wondering if you could give us a bit more detailed update on the component shortage situation, maybe just quantifying the impact of this quarter and what you then expect in the next quarter, some of the actions you are still doing to mitigate the impact. And lastly, do you expect any residual headwinds on growth from component shortages next year? Thank you.

I mean, what's happening, we've seen an improvement across segments. In the report, we stayed minus 3% from component shortages. So that's the impact in the quarter. But we do see a lot of improvements, and it's coming in two ways. First of all, there is a increased supply from semiconductor manufacturers. And then there is a slightly weaker demand for silicon wafers. So it works in our favor. And whether we're going to see it or not, our best is that we're going to come out of this as of next year. But so many things can happen in the economy that it's hard to give you an idea. a good and precise answer at this stage, but that's our main scenario that this is over next year.

And in Q4, you would expect a similar impact like the 3% or should it be already quite a bit better situation?

We'll see.

Understood. Thank you, Ola.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Magnus Gruber of UBS. Please go ahead.

Hi, Ola, Paolo Magnusson with UBS. A couple of questions from me, but like others, I want to thank you all for your insight over the years. It's been an amazing story to follow. I'm sure it will be the case still under Paolo's governance. Thanks a lot for that. But first, could you give us a bit of color on the growth progress through the quarter, particularly in geosystems and how October has started? And sort of within that, also geosystems have obviously been there. most impacted by these shortages? And has there been some kind of catch-up effect in the quarter there, as sort of supply got more increasingly available? I mean, is the underlying growth actually weaker than before, or how should we think about that?

No, I think the underlying growth has been poor. I couldn't hear you at first. Did you ask about the gross profit, or...? No, no, just growth, just growth. Just growth, all right. And it continues so far. I mean, that's not a trend, but we do measure our growth every day in geosystems. So, so far we've seen a similar situation at the third quarter going into Q4. But geosystems is the one that we have to watch because it's an early indicator of a slowdown, as I said. with the construction industry, especially residential housing.

Absolutely. Perfect. Thanks a lot for that. And maybe returning to China, can you comment a bit on the outlook there and what you see sort of outside of construction? Construction obviously is still quite weak, but is there any sort of particular end markets you want to call out as sort of seeing a notable pickup?

I think what we've managed to do over the last four years is to move. There are two markets in China. There is the so-called international market, and there is the local market, where you need Chinese content to be able to penetrate it. So we've seen a weaker outlook for China in general. The Chinese economy has slowed down. But we've been able to start penetrating the local market, which is roughly the same size as the so-called international market, which has given us a lot of opportunities to continue to grow in a sequentially weaker market for China.

That's very interesting. Could you sort of comment a bit on how Your, shall we say, revenue exposure at this point is balanced between the international and the domestic?

International is hard to say, but I would say the international market is probably still bigger, but the local market is growing faster.

Got it. Thank you so much, Ola.

Thanks. Our next question comes from the line of Toby Ogg of JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

Yeah, hi. Thanks for taking the question. Just a quick one on M&A. Perhaps you could just give us a quick update just on the M&A pipeline and just give us a feel as well for, you know, how M&A dynamics and those conversations are changing, if at all, given the sort of the significant derating we've seen in the sector year to date and also the incoming recessionary environment. Thank you.

Yeah, we're going to spend $5 billion buying a company at PE80. No, just joking. I think to summarize the M&A market, you could say the sellers are still living in 2021 and the buyers are living in 2023. So it's a bit of wait and see in the M&A market. There are a lot of... Discussions going on, but very few closings of the deals. So eventually, I guess both buyers and sellers will live in the same year, and then you will see transactions happening again.

Understood. Thank you.

Thanks. And we have no further questions at this time, so I'll hand back to our speakers for closing comments. Right.

Thank you, everyone, for listening in. And I will not do this next time, but Paolo will. So have a great day, everyone.