Scandinavian Tob Grp Ord

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Scandinavian Tobacco Group conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during this session, you will need to press star 1, 1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 1, 1 again. If you wish to ask a question via the webcast, please use the Q&A box available on the webcast link anytime during the conference. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Torben Sand. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning and welcome to the Scandinavian Tobacco Group's webcast for the first quarter results 2025. My name is Seth Torben Sand and I am Director of Investor Relations and External Communications and I am joined by our CEO, Niels Fredriksen, and our CFO, Marianne Roslug-Bock. Now, please turn to slide number three for today's webcast agenda. Nils will start the presentation by giving you a brief background on the adjusted financial expectations for 2025 that we communicated to the market yesterday, before turning to an overview of the highlights of the quarter and an update on our key strategic achievements. We will then switch focus to an update on development in our cold product categories. Miami will take over with an overview of the financial performance in our three reporting positions before turning the focus to key financial developments for the group, including an update on cash flow, leverage, and capital allocation. After this presentation by management, we will, of course, conduct a Q&A session where we will be pleased to take any questions you might have. Before we start, I ask you that you pay special attention to our disclaimer on forward-looking statements, which can be found at the end of this slide deck. Please turn to slide number five, and I will leave the work to those.

Thank you, Torben, and welcome and good morning to everyone on the call. Yesterday, we released the interim report for the first quarter of 2025, and at the same time, we adjusted our financial expectations for the full year. In a moment, I'll get back to the financial performance during the quarter, but let me start by giving more details to the adjusted expectations. Despite a slow start to the year in the first quarter, the underlying business trends as communicated in the March results announcement remain largely unchanged. Therefore, the adjustment of our expectations relates primarily to the weaker U.S. dollar and as well as the consequences of the tariff increases on imported goods by the U.S. government, which were announced in April, and their expected related impact. For SDGs, the increase in our cost base driven by the tariff increases is primarily relevant for our handmade cigar business, as we import cigars from the Caribbean and sell them in the U.S., The effect from the beginning of this week, we have introduced price adjustments to offset these cost increases. Secondly, the impact from a lower U.S. dollar exchange rate impacts our results for the full year. The U.S. market accounts for approximately 45% of the group's net sales. And since the release of the 2025 financial outlook on 6 March, the U.S. dollar has depreciated by nearly 5% against the Danish kroner. This negative translation effect on reported figures will only be partly offset by the price adjustments we've introduced. And as a result, the group now expects reported net sales for 2025 to be in the range of 9.1 to 9.5 billion kroner, adjusted from the previous range of 9.2 to 9.7 billion. We have adjusted the upper end of the range more than the lower part of the range as the current market dynamics made it unlikely to meet the upper end of the range. The group's EBITDA margin will, as a result of the tariff-related price adjustments, be negatively impacted by slightly more than a half percentage point. To reflect this impact and to maintain full flexibility to protect our market shares and our business, the range for the full year EBITDA margin expectation has been widened and revised to a range of 18% to 22%. In other words, we see a significant increase in uncertainty for a large proportion of our business, and we want to retain the flexibility to react to this without having to worry about a too narrow range for the EBITDA margin. Free cash flow is now projected at 0.8 to 1 billion kroner and has been narrowed from the previous range of 0.8 to 1.8 billion kroner. The adjustment to the upper end of the range reflects the lower EBITDA outlook, while the unchanged lower end of the range underscores the group's commitment to preserving cash flow throughout the year. Adjusted earnings per share has been revised downward by one kroner to reflect the adjusted EBITDA expectation and is now expected in the range of 10 to 13 Uncertainties to our base assumptions for the year remain higher than normal. These include volume and price developments for our core categories, cost inflation, and supply chain stability. However, we remain committed to strengthening our platform, which is important for future growth, although this may temporarily impact profit margins, cash flows, and return on invested capital. Now, please move to slide number 11. Overall, the first quarter of the year was soft and slightly below our expectations. The sales in the first quarter is lower than in the remaining quarters of the year, making the fluctuations in earnings high. Reported net sales was up by 1.3% driven by the acquisition of McBarn and continued strong growth for our nicotine pouch brand, XQS, where organic growth decreased by almost whereas organic growth decreased by almost 9%. The discontinuation of the SIM distribution in our U.S. online business explains about 3% of the organic decline, whereas lower sales of handmade cigars and some phasing in our machine world cigar business explains most of the risk. In a moment, I'll talk a little more to the drivers behind these developments. The EBITDA margin, decreased about 1 percentage point to 16.1%, and was impacted by the lower sales of cigars and mixed changes with more sales of nicotine pouches as the main reasons. Our continued investments in long-term growth opportunities, which includes our growth enablers and strengthening our market positions in the core categories, also affected margins. The free cash flow before acquisitions came in at almost 300 million kroner stronger than than during the first quarter of the last year at 156 million kroner, primarily driven by changes in working capital. I'll now give you an update on some of the progress we are making with our strategy rolling towards 2025. Please turn to slide number eight. We continue to make good progress with our strategy. In addition to the comments I gave in relation to the full year results announcement in March, I can add that The integration of McBarn is moving ahead according to plan, and we have taken significant steps in the United States where we have closed the acquired pipe tobacco factory and have consolidated all U.S. distribution in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Further, as part of our omni-channel offering, all acquired online sales channels have been migrated into one single streamlined website called Pipes and Cigars. Finally, we have reduced the geographic footprint for the nicotine pouch brands ACE and GRID to reflect their lower priority in our portfolio. Overall, the integration is progressing well. We've not opened new retail stores in the quarter, but the retail channel continues to deliver strong double-digit lead sales growth to our business, emphasizing the value of the investments we are making in this growth enabler. And thirdly, we remain committed to invest in our business, whether in strengthening our nicotine pouch brands with launches into new markets, or by investing in increasing and protecting our market shares within the core categories. Our work with updating our strategy beyond 2025 develops well, and we still expect to announce the details during the fourth quarter. Please turn two slides to slide number 10. The market for handmade cigars in the U.S. remains challenged by negative consumer sentiment and down trading, and the introduction of 10% import tariffs from our major cigar producing locations in Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, and Honduras have further increased uncertainties. Organic net sales for the category decreased by 9.1% during the first quarter. However, when differentiating between business-to-business developments and business-to-consumer developments, there are important differences. Our sales to wholesalers and distributors experienced double-digit decreases, partly impacted by the timing of the large annual premium cigar trade show, which took place in April this year versus in the first quarter of last year. Sales was also partly impacted by bad weather conditions and increased caution in the trade, given the currently weak consumer sentiment. Stable data indicates that part of the weak performance in the first quarter is facing. Our online sales of handmade cigars were down about 5%, and the sales of handmade cigars in our retail stores have delivered double-digit growth rates, driven by new store opening and slightly positive like-for-like growth. We have implemented tariff-related price increases earlier this week, but we still don't have the full overview of how other industry players will deal with the new tariffs. Therefore, it is important that we retain full flexibility to react to market and competitive developments and protect our market shares. We continue to see cautious consumer behavior and more down trading, and we are also experiencing the need for higher promotional activity, which are putting pressure on the overall price mix for handmade cigars. Please turn to slide number 11. The total market for machine world cigars in Europe in our key markets is estimated to have declined by 2.2% compared with a full year decline rate of 3.5% during 2024 and a 2.8% decline during the fourth quarter of last year. So although the quarter development could be a sign of more modest decline rate within the category, I must remind you that the first quarter is a small quarter so it remains uncertain whether this is only temporary or a sustainable improvement. We will be wiser during the next few quarters. The initiatives and investments we have made to recover market shares continue, although the first quarter delivered a temporary setback to the improvement we have made over the past couple of quarters. Our market share index for the first quarter of 2025 declined to 26.9% compared to 2018, 0.1% in the fourth quarter, and 27.9% for the full year 2024. Shipments were delayed as a result of the SAP implementation we executed during the quarter in our European factories. And in April, shipments have normalized, and we are recovering market shares also into May. Smoking tobacco delivered a 44% increase in reported net sales, mostly driven by the inclusion of Marfan, but also driven by a 7% organic growth, reflecting a strong performance in particular for fine cut tobacco. With this, I'll turn to slide number 12. Moving on to next generation products. And during this first quarter, the category delivered an 18% decrease in reported net sales and a 43% decrease in organic net sales. Importantly, our global drive of nicotine pass brand XQS continues to impress with high double-digit growth rates, up 41%, driven by market share growth in Sweden, which now has improved to more than 11%, and the rollout in the UK and Denmark continues, albeit at a lower pace. The reasons for the overall organic decline in net sales relates to the discontinuation of the SIN distribution agreement in the U.S., and to streamlining the nicotine pouch portfolio we took over from McBarn, where we reduced the geographic footprint for the brands Ace and Grid. With this, I will now leave the work to Marianne for more details on the divisional performance. Please turn two slides to slide number 14.

Thank you, Nils. We will now turn the focus to look at the financial performance, which will report through the three commercial divisions. I will start the overview with Europe-branded. Reported net sales for the first quarter increased by 11% to 687 million kroner, with organic net sales decreasing by 4%. The acquisition of McBaron impacted reported net sales by almost 15%. The main drivers for the development in organic growth are decreasing sales of machine-grown cigars and handmade cigars, unchanged sales of smoking tobacco, and a continued strong double-digit growth in next-generation products, in particular the XQS brand. As mentioned earlier in the call, the implementation of SAP in our European factories did impact shipments of machine-rolled cigars negatively in the quarter, though we are back on track. Every day before special items decreased by 17 million kroner to 66 million with an everyday margin of 9.6% compared with 13.8% in the same quarter of 2024. The first quarter is traditionally a small quarter for Euro-branded, and minor changes to net sales impact the margin. The margin development is driven by changes in product mix, with net team pouches outgrowing the core categories and continued investment in sales and marketing, to regain our market positions in machine-rolled cigars, and to support our expansion within nicotine cultures. Please turn to slide number 15. In the quarter, reported net sales for the commercial division North America Branded and Rest of the World decreased by 2%, despite a positive contribution to net sales from the acquisition of McVaron of almost 10%, and from exchange rate developments by more than 1%. As a result, organic net sales decreased by 13% in the quarter. The main drivers for the organic development were double-digit negative growth from handmade cigars to external wholesalers and distributors, partly as a result of the move of the annual trade show from the first quarter last year to April this year. Bad weather conditions and a temporary decline in sales of handmade cigars to our international markets. EBITDA before special items was unchanged with 210 kroner with an EBITDA margin of 31.4% compared with 31.2% in the first quarter last year. The unchanged margin is a result of the negative impact from lower net sales of handmade cigars and machine-rolled cigars being offset by the net sales growth of the higher margin product category, smoking tobacco, as well as by lower OPEX ratio. I'll now turn the attention to the financial performance in our North America Online and Retail Division. Please turn to slide number 16. Reported net sales for the first quarter decreased by 5% compared with 2024. The inclusion of Rick Barron impacted reported net sales positively by 2% and exchange rates by almost 3%. Excluding the impacts on acquisitions and exchange rates, the organic growth was negative by 9.6%. The discontinuation of the SIN online distribution impacts organic growth substantially. The impact was close to 8% in the first quarter, implying underlying growth was negative close to 2%. The second quarter of this year will be the final quarter being impacted by the discontinued thin distribution. In contrast to the double-digit decline in net sales to our business-to-business customer, the decline rate in net sales to our direct-to-consumer business, the online businesses, is at 5%, and to our consumers in our retail stores, we have achieved an unchanged same-store sales development. EBITDA before special items decreased by 9% with the EBITDA margin decreasing to 11.9% from 12.5% in the first quarter of 2024. The declining EBITDA margin reflects an increase in the OPEX ratio as a result of a scale impact from the discontinued thin distribution businesses. I will now move to an update on group financial performance. Please turn to slide number 17. The 1.3% increase in reported net sales, which we delivered in the first quarter, was driven by an 8.5% contribution from the McBaron acquisition, a 1.6% positive impact from exchange rate development, and an 8.8% negative organic net sales growth. The organic growth was impacted by about 3% from discontinued thin distribution agreement, leaving a more like-for-like growth negative by close to 6%. In the updates by our categories and commercial divisions, we have talked to the key drivers for these developments, and in summary, all three commercial divisions delivered negative organic growth in the quarter. In a moment, I will talk about the developments in EBITDA and the margins. Special costs for 70 million in the quarter relating to the SAP implementation, the integration of McBaron and reorganizations, which includes costs for establishing a new service delivery organization. Net profit for the quarter declined to 52 million kroner, while the adjusted earnings per share, which includes special items, decreased by 20% to 1.5 kroner per share. The free cash flow before acquisitions was positive by 156 million kroner, impacted by a positive contribution from working capital compared with a negative free cash flow in the first quarter of last year by 126 million. Let's go to slide number 18, please. I will now comment on the development in the EBITDA margin. The EBITDA margin before special items with 16.1% compared to 17.2% in the same quarter of 2024. The EBITDA margin decreased a 1% point compared to the first quarter of last year. It's driven by a combination of product and market mix, including nicotine pouches and investment in regaining market share in machine-rolled cigars in key European markets. Measured by divisions. The development was primarily driven by the lower margin in Euro-branded, which declined by 4.2% to 9.6%. The decrease in the margin in Euro-branded is mostly driven by mix and impact from lower volumes caused by the go-live of SAP implementation in outdoor factories in the quarter and price decisions to improve market shares for 20 purchase sites. The EBITDA margin in both North America branded and rest of the world and North America online and retail was almost unchanged versus last year. Now, please turn one slide to slide number 19. During the first quarter, the net interest-bearing debt decreased by 0.2 billion kroner to 5.2 billion. The key driver for the development The key driver for the development is the positive pre-cash flow generation for the quarter. As a result, the leverage ratio decreased by 2.5 times compared to 2.6 times at the end of 2024. We still expect leverage ratio to clip up. Our leverage target is 2.5 times by the end of 2025. By the end of the second quarter, the leverage will be impacted by the statement of dividends in April. This concludes our presentation for today's poll. I will now hand the word back to the operator, and we are ready to take any questions you may have.

Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star 1, 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 1, 1 again. If you wish to ask a question via the webcast, please type it into the box and click Submit. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. We will take our first question. And the question comes from the line of Damian McNeill from Deutsche Neumis. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Hi. Morning, everybody. Thank you for taking my questions. The first question is on U.S. handmade. And thank you for the comments that you've made. But can you just clarify the quantum of the tariff that you're facing into? I think I think is it just the 10 percent or are there incremental tariffs from those countries where you're sourcing tobacco leaf? And then just if you can provide some color on what level of pricing you've already taken in the marketplace and whether you've seen any competitive prices. I think you sort of said you're still unsure about how the response is going to be. So first question. Second question is on US retail. Can you provide some color on how the sort of how that sort of the newer stores are performing in the overall portfolio and whether you're changing your thinking about the strategic direction for the US retail business? And then the last one is on ERP. I think, Mariano, you said that you're now back on track in Europe. Is the SAP implementation now complete, or are there some more countries that you need to deploy it into? Thank you.

Yes, thank you, Damien. I'll start with the US handmade and the retail side. The tariffs we are currently looking at is 10% across all three main sourcing units, the Dominican, Honduras, and Nicaragua. The initial announcement included an 18% import duty from or tariff from Nicaragua, which was subsequently reduced to 10%. So right now we are assuming that the 10% is across all three countries, but we continue to have uncertainty on where each of the countries will end. We are not seeing other increases apart from what we see in general on input cost for labor and tobacco and so on. So what we are taking into account for the pricing we are implementing now is the 10% price tariff increase, and we are responding with what is on average about a 5% increase price increase, but think about this across a portfolio that really ranges from quite inexpensive products to very expensive products where the tariffs, of course, have a different impact. The dynamic that has been in the market so far is that about a handful, a little more, of smaller players announced price increases related to tariffs already around 1st of May We went earlier this week as the largest of the players in the U.S. We've seen one competitor follow, but we still don't have a full overview of the remaining players. It is still our base hypothesis that we will see price increases across the range because this is a real and tangible additional cost for all players. If I move on to U.S. retail, we opened three new stores in the fourth quarter of 2024, and these stores are off to a good start, but it's still too early to kind of call them either in the higher end or on the lower end of our, let's say, store performance. But I think it's important to emphasize that overall we are quite pleased with our retail expansion. All stores are practically profitable from from day one and they also quite quickly get to become margin enhancing for the group at the EBITDA level and deliver a good return on invested capital when they've been in operation for three to four years. So we are happy with that, and we are not really changing our strategic direction. We are continuing with due consideration for capital investments needed, and then we are continuing to work on optimizing both the stores that we have, but also the selection of new locations. And then maybe over to you, Marianne.

Yes, and hi, Damien, and thanks for the question. So let me start with... The go-live that we did first of February this year, the go-live covered our full production of handmade or machine-made cigars in Europe. So that means our factories in Belgium and Holland, sales companies in Holland, and also part of Indonesia. It was a huge go-live. And let me start by saying it went very well. The issues that we had for about four to five weeks was our ability to ship products fast enough because the process is new. We had some complications and also some burning of our people doing the shipping. After four to five weeks, we were back to delivering normal levels of shipments. We still have a few waves ahead of us. We will, end of this year, we will implement in Sri Lanka and Indonesia. And beginning of 26, we will implement in our Caribbean factories. And also in 26, it is the plan to bring our online business on board as the last one. So we still have... few more waves ahead of us and I can also mention that here 1st of June 1st of July will go live with the remaining sales companies in in Europe that's great thank you very much very clear thank you once again if you wish to ask a question from the phone lines please press star 1 1 on your telephone

Your next question, please stand by. Your next question comes from the line of Sebastian Graves from Nordea. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Good morning, guys, and thank you for taking my question. So first on the guidance, to be fair, it seems the US service and FX meaning external factors, and they explain much of the downgrade here yesterday. However, you also include a negative tail scenario with accelerated down trading and price pressure. My question here is really, what is your base case in terms of volumes here going forward for the U.S. market, and have you in any meaningful way moderated these assumptions on the back of sort of this changed market environment? That would be my first question.

So thank you for the question. I think that I should point out there is external factors driving this downgrade. And we, of course, have looked at various scenarios. And some of these scenarios certainly include lower volumes on the U.S. side. I think that what we're also seeing is that the wider band on the guidance reflect both the increased uncertainty And this is not only consumer behavior, but also retail behavior. And then our need for flexibility. So we have been the first major player to go up with pricing pieces. We are confident that people will follow. But we also need the flexibility to make the decisions needed to support our market shares. When we look back over the past years, we have been too hesitant to defend market shares. And going forward, this will be a key priority for us. So you can think about the scenarios and the band around EBITDA margin as not necessarily the most probable scenarios, but scenarios that we need the flexibility to execute on.

And, Sebastian, maybe I can add here. So you're asking about our base scenario. Our base scenario does include a higher decline of volumes in the handmade category from the U.S., And it is based on what we have seen so far, but also the surveys on consumer sentiment and the down trading we have seen. We are following, you can see what we're following is consumers' level of discretionary spending. We also follow KPIs as credit card debt to try to estimate how consumers will react, but it is very uncertain at the moment.

No, no, sure, I fully understand that. I'm just looking for, because to my understanding, your base case assumption was also, I mean, in the original guidance that you saw, accelerated volume declines in the US. I just want to try to understand the base case, you can say, delta from the original guidance to the new guidance? Have you put in extra decline from the original guidance or the base case still the same in volumes?

We have put in accelerated decline from the base case in March.

Okay, sure, thanks. And then my last question, Niels, you alluded to the pricing efforts here. I just want to try to understand a bit better the the feedback loop around these efforts. So how fast are you really able to respond to this dynamic and changing consumer environment? Also, especially, I mean, thinking of price elasticity here in the short term, which is likely somewhat elevated from consumers. So how fast are you able to respond if you are to now pass on price increases? If that means that you are losing market share, how fast are you able to sort of correct that and lower prices again if that is needed?

Yeah, that's a good question. So let me start by saying that on the current portfolio, we of course have the ability to react quite quickly and also to see whether the initiatives are working. And I want to emphasize that it's not like we are price repositioning some of our brands, but we are having to promote more to support the volumes. But when you think about having to introduce new products or new brands in, for example, the more value for money segment, it must take time to develop these products, and this is what we have been doing over a while, and we are responding over the coming period also to, let's say, the increased demand in those segments. So some things we can do fast. Some things take time simply because we need to ensure we have tobacco or we need to ensure we deliver products quality products, and so on. Then you can say that a price increase that we implement for the business-to-business side takes effect immediately. So when we raise prices for this week, the purchase price is higher for retailers. How retailers end up passing this on to consumers is their personal choice, and we do not control that. We do think in most cases that they will pass it on, but not all do that. And the area which is more difficult for us to control is online, where, again, we pass on price increases to online customers. But online customers can decide to bring that on to consumers slowly because they're already carrying some inventory they bought at a lower price. And hence, you can say when you think about the online channel, it's more of a sliding price increase that hits consumers, depending on the strategy of the individual online customers. Does it make sense?

No, it makes great sense. And maybe just last follow-up, could you maybe, Niels, talk a bit around your visibility on what other companies are doing here in the B2B channels? So what prices are they quoting to the distributors, et cetera?

So the visibility is high, but in the sense that these, let's say, price increases are being published, But the timing or the decisions being made in the different companies is, of course, not something we understand. And this is where we end up in a scenario where some larger competitors are postponing price increases. That's a scenario we then need to decide what we do to counter that.

Okay, cool. Thank you so much for taking my questions.

You're welcome. Thank you.

Thank you. Once again, if you wish to ask a question from the phone lines, please press star 1 1 on your telephone. If you wish to ask a question via the webcast, please type it in the box and click submit. We will take our next phone question. And the question comes from the line of Damian McNeill from Deutsche Neumis. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Yeah, thank you. I just got a follow-up question on your strategy. I'm just wondering if you could provide a little bit more color on why XQS growth or your rollout of XQS has sort of slowed down a little bit. And can you provide some more detail on where you've streamlined the ACE and GRIP brands as well, please?

Yes. So let me start by saying that when you look at the Nikosin pouch category, almost all companies are putting their efforts behind one brand globally. So this can be a Sin from Philip Morris, a Velo from BAT. And for us, that brand is Excovest. Now, with the acquisition of McBarn, we acquired two other brands, Ace and Grid. And When we looked at the geographic footprint of the markets where this was selling, it was selling in way more markets and with way more distributors that we were not familiar with than we thought would be right. So we have basically scaled down and concentrated our efforts on Asian Grid around a few markets where they have a good performance or they at least have a reasonable market position. Everywhere else, we support XQS. And if you look at why are we successful with XQS in Sweden, you can say that XQS has a very strong position in what we call the more flavored side of the nicotine powders. Now, all nicotine powders are flavored, and the largest segment is mint and menthol. And then there's a large market in flavors as well. But in particular, in Sweden, we are, with more than 11%, we are actually already the market leader in the flavor side of the segment, and we are concentrating on building a portfolio on the mint and mince side. So these are the dynamics on the pouch side. A lot of the movements on organic net trails here is about decisions we have taken to support XKS, and you should see quarter-on-quarter that XQS hopefully continues to grow, and I would focus on that rather than I would focus on what happens to, let's say, the portfolio for a while, because we will have thin affecting numbers until end of second quarter, and we will have ace and grit numbers affecting the full 2024.

Okay, thanks. It's a scope to move XQS into some of those markets where ace and grit are already present to try and sort of have a, a one-brand strategy, or is that not an option at the minute?

They're doing that as well. So we are looking at the market where Asingrid is doing well, and we're deciding market by market whether we are better off trying to migrate customers to HVS or whether Asingrid has good traction and should be supported.

Okay, very clear. Thank you.

You're welcome. Thank you. There seems to be no further audio questions. I will hand back for the webcast questions.

Yes, thank you. And we do have one question, which I will read out here. And that's regarding the market share trend in Europe branded and more specifically machine-built cigars. Over time, SUG loses market share in its main European markets for mass market cigars and quite consistently. And in prior quarters, this was addressed as being in part due to price adjustments not being followed by competitors. This quarter saw another loss of market share, this time attributed to the implementation of a new information system. Back in 2016 to 2017, market share in the five main European markets stood around 33% to 34%. Now it's down to 27%, and that even includes acquisitions like Arjo. What are your views on the possibility of a more fundamental problem regarding the company's competitiveness in Europe machine world markets?

Yeah. And thank you for the question. I think that the starting point to understand is that we have a declining machine-rolled cigar market in Europe, and we've had so for many years. But there are parts of the machine-rolled cigar segment which is developing positively or at least less negatively than the total market. And this is, for example, the flavored and the flavored filter segment. And the relative strength of STG in those segments are less. We have our strength in the traditional where we are by far the market leader, which means that just the underlying segment development is putting pressure on our market share. So that's one important thing to understand. And when you look at the development over the past five years, you're absolutely correct in pointing out that we have lost market share and that we have a competitiveness issue in Europe. Now, some of the competitiveness issue we have created ourselves because when we merged the various factories around the arch of transaction, we ended up in a situation where we were struggling to supply the market adequately. That cost us some market share. Subsequently, Some of our competitors took way less pricing than we did, and that also cost us a market share. And now we have kind of drawn a line in the sand, and we actually assess the situation as if we stabilized the market shares in Europe. We did that towards the end of 2024. Going into 2025, you are right that our first quarter market share is not strong. But when we look at the recovery in April and into May, they support that we do have a stabilization of market shares in Europe. And when you look at the updated strategy we are working on, this is one of the key questions we are asking ourselves. What is it we need to be doing better and differently to protect those market shares in Europe? Because they are very important for us as a company.

And I think that basically answers the question also from the webcast. And there are no further questions from the audio. Okay, thank you. But then basically it leaves only for us to say thank you very much for your interest and participation in this webcast, and we wish you all a continued good day. Thank you.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.