AAK AB (publ.)

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Q3 2023 Earnings Call for AAK. It will today be me, Johan Westman, the CEO of AAK, as well as my colleague and CFO, Thomas Bergendahl. We will run this presentation as we normally do. The agenda for today we have on page number two. We'll first run through some highlights. the quarter even though we did release results early preliminary but now the full report is out. We will also go through some selected events as well as the business and financial update and then concluding remarks and as usual happy to take any questions afterwards. So with no further ado let's go right into it on page number four. As we release preliminary now confirmed We do see the continued strong trend that we have seen from earlier this year with a profit growth, a strong profit growth. We're up 39% versus last year or 35% that fixed FX. This strong growth is driven by continued sales and focus on our speciality solutions with a high value added content and a good value proposition for our customers. As well as continued productivity improvement, call it internally focused improvement activities, as well as a better portfolio and price management. This has been a bit the tone of the voice as you've heard throughout the year, but we really get traction in our strategy in the way we implement that. When we look at the operating margin, it was also strong in the quarter. So, of course, volume is down 5% if you compare to last year, however, Looking at it a bit more sequentially, we see volumes being up 5% versus the second quarter this year. But all in all, the strong result for Q3 was driven by margin expansion. Last but not least, we also have a strong operating cash flow. Operating cash flow at 1.2 billion SEC, and that combined with also a strong result leads to a return on capital employed. Let's go through the some of the events this quarter. As a company we on page five we continue to invest for the future and one example is regarding health and nutrition where we are engaging into projects in this case linked to type 2 diabetes. Just to mention and exemplify some of the things we're doing on the more long-term horizon. The second message here is a bit more of a sad one. We tragically, as you've seen, lost our dear chairman, Jero Brunström, earlier. And he has now been replaced with the election of Patrick Andersson. Patrick Andersson knows AK well, and we know each other well. Patrick has been on the board of directors since 2019, and we are off to a good start. With that, let's go through the more details in our different business areas, starting with food ingredients on page six. As you can see to the right on this page, the strong trend continues upwards. We are growing our operating profit, and that is on the back of margin expansion or continued margin expansion. Our operating profit per kilo is up 59%, and operating profit is up by 55%. So all in all, a continued positive trend for food ingredients. When we dig one level deeper into this, we continue our optimization program in bakery, somewhat weaker performance in special nutrition and food service, but growth on the other hand in dairy. So all in all, we're executing our strategy and at the same time impacted by some of the market developments that we see across certain industry sectors. With that, moving on to chocolate and confectionery fats. Again, another strong quarter for chocolate and confectionery fats, a continued positive trend, both earnings growth and margin expansion. Operating profit up 58% year on year. And sorry, operating profit per kilo up 58% year on year, which is driving the operating profit, which was up 41% or 32% at fixed effort. When you look at volumes, volumes are down and they are down 11% year on year. But that is again from a high level last year. So Q3 in 2022 was quite high. If you do a comparison a bit on the longer term horizon, we are actually up 14% versus pre-COVID level. So a bit on the longer term horizon, not too dramatic, but down versus a high last year. All in all, a very strong quarter for Shopify. With that, moving into page eight, and technical products and feed. In this area, we see a bit more of a volume loss linked to a combination of what is happening around us, a bit on, call it inflationary pressure into certain sectors, and a bit lower volume in technical products and feed. On the other hand, if you look at this on the long-term horizon, still on fairly good levels. When you look at the profits per se, we had lower volume in technical products and feed and somewhat lower crushing margin. That in total leads to pressure on the earnings. On the other hand, when we look at candles business, for example, which is a promising area combined with replacing the mineral oils and other sectors that were growing in the candles business. So underlying trend around the opportunities for using plant-based oils and fats is still positive, positive in the short term. positive on the long term, but the volume reduction in technical products and feed was driving the change in result of the reduction in result versus last year. With that, I hand it over to you, Thomas, to do some more comments on the working capital and further details on financials.

Thank you, Johan. Good morning, everyone. Continuing on slide nine, moving into the cash flow for the quarter. Q3, we continue to see positive underlying trend that we've seen in the past three quarters with a strong cash flow. This quarter, mainly driven by the earnings. The quarter generated a positive operating cash flow of 1.2 billion, free cash flow of just north of 900 million SEC. And year to date, we have an operating cash flow of 4 billion SEC and a free cash flow just north of 3 billion SEC. We continue to see a positive contribution to the cash flow from inventories in the quarter as you can see. And this is mainly driven by reduced inventory levels due to the reduced volumes as well as a favorable inventory mix. Payables continue to contribute on the negative side and again mainly driven by the reduced inventory levels and volumes. Interest cost was Slightly increased compared to Q3 22 at around 100 million SEC mainly driven by higher interest rates and Mitigated to some extent by a reduced debt level the average tax rate was 24 percent during the quarter other non cash items as you can see at a positive slight effect of 86 million mainly driven by unrealized hedging contracts of materials and CapEx very much in line with last year at two hundred and seventy million SEC. And continue to be related to production improvements. We're talking the bottlenecking capacity optimization and so forth. And our guidance for the CapEx for the full year of twenty three is at one point two billion SEC. Very similar also to last year. And we continue our focus and efforts to effectively manage our cash flow through different programs internally within the organization. that so far has yielded good results. And we remain committed to maintain momentum on our networking capital also going into the future. Moving on to the next slide, slide 10. As Johan mentioned, return on capital employed reached 17.2% in the quarter, which is up from 15.9% in Q2 this year. And as Johan also mentioned, driven mainly by the improved profitability. And we're up from 14.5% at the end of 2022. And we're also now above the last peak we've had in December 21 of 15.6%. So at a very good level. Next slide, slide 11, net debt EBITDA ratio. This was further reduced, as you can see in the quarter, ending up at 0.73%. down from 1.01 in Q2 and down from the peak of 2.03 in mid 2022. And we're now well below the level that we saw before the impact of increased raw material prices at the start of the pandemic. The improvement again here is driven by strong profit development driving the cash flow and which has resulted in a reduction of our net debt position. as you can see as well. Johan, back to you.

Thank you, Thomas. Concluding remarks before we go into questions and answers. Strong profit growth, including sequential volume improvements. We did see a year-on-year reduction in volume, but again, positive compared to the second quarter this year. Our strong profit growth was driven by improved profitability, and that as a result of the focus, continued focus on speciality solutions, our internal improvement programs, one being around productivity, and also the portfolio and price management that we systematically have worked with for some time now. That combined also with a strong cash flow driven by increased earnings puts us in a good position for the future. We have one financial guidance as a company and that is to grow our absolute EBIT by 10% year-on-year and that has not changed. However, following a year in which our performance clearly have exceeded market expectations substantially and with two reversed profit warnings in this year, we believe it's important to make a one-time effort to better align So last but not least, as a concluding remark, we anticipate a finish to the year in line with the average performance of the first nine months. And with that, we are happy to take questions.

If you wish to ask a question, please dial star five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial START5 again on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Alexander Jones from Bofe. Please go ahead.

Great. Thanks very much for taking my questions. Three, if I may. The first on margins, clearly another very strong quarter. Can you give us a little bit of color on what you're seeing in sort of new contract signings and your discussions with customers? Is there any pushback towards lower margins or is this trend sustainable into next year in your view? The second question linked to that, can you talk a little bit about how you incentivize the local teams and salespeople? And in particular, did anything change around that in terms of margin emphasis? when you gave the target to double EBIT per kilo by 2030 at the CMD last year, just wondering whether that's driving or not the trend that we're seeing this year. And then third quick question, just to clarify on the guidance, when you talk about sort of similar trend in line with the average in Q4, are we talking about year-on-year EBIT growth, or is there any other particular metric that we should be thinking about in that context? Thank you.

Thank you so much. First question, Ron, EBIT per kilo, new contracts, pushback, and so forth. I think, first of all, let's remind us about the fact that we're living in and we're acting on a global market in serving several industries within food ingredients, everything from infant nutrition to dairy to bakery, and we have chocolate and confectionery, we have technical products. I mean, there's a variety of industries that we serve, and that's the strength the company we have a broad platform a broad customer base many legs to stand on i want to just make that clear before we go into to this question and with that obviously there is different dynamics in different industries and we are not free from competition we know that we have a small position we know that we're a very knowledgeable company that offers solutions to our customers often in a combined co-development setting around product development and new value proposition. That is the strength that we have. Then we have entered into a period of a lot of volatility, a lot of inflationary pressure, raw material dynamics, etc. And of course, we as a company have worked hard to make sure that we understand our business, understand the dynamics, take the necessary actions to to develop and at the same time we've had a strategy on the line which is targeting margin expansion targeting improving the way we operate and the way we go to business and coming from in absolute terms and let's not forget that our industry in general comes from a low margin position so if you look at our absolute EBIT margin it's still moving into decent territory so not dramatic per se but when you look at this from an ebit per kilo year on year yes very strong improvements so i take it in that context and in that context i would say that we see a structural positive trend with regards to us and others in our industry being able to price products to take into account what we deliver the risk that we have in our portfolio the dynamics around us and i think that's very healthy So that, I think, has an element of structure to it. If you look at where we are contracting now, is there a pushback? Of course, customers, consumer goods companies are looking at price reductions, improvements on their end, but also them have been successfully moving this forward. So I think I wouldn't say it's too much drama and what company would not go for asking their suppliers on, better deals better productivity moving things into pricing we've had that well 10 years ago we had it five years ago we have it now uh but we as you see in the numbers that we have delivered throughout 2023 there has been elements of this already a year ago and there's been elements of this in q1 there's been elements of this in q2 and we have still been able to deliver so yes there is pushback yes We are able to contract more, to sign new contracts at good margins, but we also sign contracts at slightly lower margins to balance, you know, really strike the balance between volume and margin. And that is our focus going forward, how to strike that balance. Number two, did we, with the new updated aspirations, clearly targeting margin expansion as well as growing volume in our selected industries? Did we change incentives? Did we make anything there that would push our sales people? No, we did not. But we made it clear to the organization that this is the strategic direction. We have implemented our strategy with critically enabled projects, et cetera, targeting portfolio management, product management, price management, understanding our business. So yes, there is an underlying positive momentum in our organization on understanding our business better, leveraging our opportunities better, including pricing our products the right way. But it's not like we have gone out and say, just focus on price, price, price, no matter what. But we have been very, very agile in terms of making sure we cover for inflation and so forth. When you look at the aspiration, I think it's key to keep in mind, it's not all about the margin. It's a margin expansion combined with volume growth, which over time eventually leads to an absolute increase of earnings over time, and with that, shareholder value creation. So we have not yet delivered on our volume and impact targets that we have. So strong start with regards to margins, but we also have a lot to do in terms of growing the volume. And if you look at that absolute EBIT, if you anticipate where that would be 2030, still some way to go. So just keep that in mind with regards to incentives and so we try to really manage the situation. Last question, our indication of perspective on Q4. As I mentioned, we did this one time in order to align expectations. And our guidance is not a guidance, it's just an indication. But the indication is, as we have said, and we have it in the report, anticipate that we will run Q4 at the average performance of the first nine months. And I would look at average from an EBIT perspective, meaning combination of volume and margin. But also, let's be humble enough to say that in our business, like many others, there is some volatility. Everything is not a straight line curve. So there might be ups and downs to the margin, ups and downs to the volume. But the indication is linked to average performance first nine months and looking at that from an EBIT perspective. Thank you.

The next question comes from Oscar Lindstrom from Danske Bank. Please go ahead.

Good morning, gentlemen. A couple of questions from my side. First off, I mean, volumes in the quarter were down in bakery, special nutrition, food service, and still EBIT per kilo was driven by bakery, special nutrition, and dairy. But Could you walk us through the dynamics? Is it only better pricing or more efficient production? I've seen your list here of what's driving earnings, but could you be a bit more specific as to what it is that has achieved the quite substantial earnings and profitability improvement that we've seen so far this year? That's my first question. Should I go ahead with my second question as well? Yeah, that's fine. Please do. My second question is also regarding earnings growth. You've historically grown EBIT by around 10% per year. Should we expect the exceptionally strong growth that we've seen at least so far this year to detract from the 2024 earnings growth? Or is, you know, sort of 2024 starting from a fresh base level? So that's my second question. Maybe they interconnected it, actually.

So, yeah. Thank you. I'll take them one by one. So please feel free to chip in there, Thomas. But if we go... As you rightly saw, yeah, volumes being a bit pressured, however, not that much in food ingredients. So stabilizing, if you will, and the bakery optimization is moving to the end. But I think if we're starting bakery, it's a good example of what we have as a strategy as a whole. If you look at, there is some background noise. Could you please mute? Thank you. If we start with Baker and then extrapolate that into the other parts of the business, Baker has been the champion of our critical neighbor projects around product management, price management. And in that as a whole, we have not only consolidated production units, which saves cost, if you will, but also works structurally through the portfolio, back your products throughout the world. And with that focusing on the products with higher value, repricing products with low or even negative profitability, where we find that, and systematically going through our portfolio, but also establishing an ongoing practice and process for how to run this better in AK, which hasn't been our strength in the past. So call it us finding really good opportunities for driving our business even more professional. So that's the beat, if you will, which started a lot in bakery. And we've highlighted that, but it also goes into dairy. It goes into chocolate and confectionery. It goes across AK, and there's more to do. I think that's how we should look at food ingredients, that, okay, you have it in bakery. We have it in dairy. We have it also in special nutrition. Now, there are market dynamics in these sectors that puts pressure on volumes in special nutrition, but on the other hand, we're also focusing on really how to manage the portfolio products. with a combination of consolidating volume in bakery where we lose volume because of that, but we're on the other hand gaining good contracts with good margins in the parts where we are producing and delivering to the bakery industry. We're also gaining momentum in dairy, but also if you remember a bit one and a half year ago and forward, special nutrition we were also sitting with longer term contracts where we could not adjust for or inflation early but we had to come in and do that later on the yearly renewal of contracts and that also has a positive impact into the volume we do deliver despite absolute volume being pressured so it's really the sun of a lot of things combined that leads up to a position of a good profitability or a margin expansion. And of course, on top of that, being able to have a price discussion linked to volatility risk, quite a significant impact to many industries, including ours, has benefited us in a way where we can have a professional conversation on what is an appropriate price, how do we take into account this volatility, and trying to structurally uh capture that also going forward but having said that of course there is always a risk for for pressure from customers but that's that's the name of business if we then go into uh the last question which is okay uh with a very strong uh 2023 uh what is the how should we think about your overall guidance i think that is important we have put a 2030 aspiration that targets uh margin growth it targets growing faster than the market in the in the speciality markets that we target including getting an even higher impact and recognition for that impact those are the three things on the long term that we focus on even though uh margins has been very strong in 2023 look at it what is the type of absolute ebit that we want to deliver uh long term and that is then linked to the more short-term uh long-term outlook which is uh generating 10% year on year EBIT for AK. And what does that say about 2024? Well, we're not giving guidance, but we are, of course, also saying that it is after a very, very strong year. Look at it in a bit more longer perspective. Let's see where we go. We are certainly targeting as an organization to continue to grow. But might that be maybe too high of an expectation to take a very, very strong record year and then you just put another 10% on top of that? Or is there maybe a consolidation phase versus continued growth where we need to strike the balance between margin and volume? Yeah, again, I don't have the exact crystal ball, but I think it's worthwhile having a bit of a humble view on business dynamics in general.

Thank you.

The next question comes from Joan Lim from BNP Paribas Exane. Please go ahead.

Hello. I've got two questions. So maybe just to build on the previous questions, On FY24, do you still see all three growth drivers that you had mentioned, the better portfolio and price management, productivity improvements and higher sales of specialty solutions? And are they all contributing equally to it? So that's the first question. And then my second question is, given the higher cocoa and sugar prices in the market now, have you seen customers moving towards using cocoa butter alternatives? Thank you.

Thank you. So the first question was growth drivers. And again, let's separate maybe what is a year-on-year, year-on-year, year-on-year versus what is an absolute strong performance. Us focusing on products with high speciality content or more value added product. That is part of our strategy. That is going to continue. Us working through our product portfolio, optimizing how we load our plants and what kind of products we deliver. That's going to continue. And it's already established a good position, if you will. So in that, yeah, we believe that trend will continue. That is not the same thing as I am forecasting another doubling of EBIT per kilo in a short timeframe. I mean, certainly, you know, our aspiration is strong, but we do believe that some of the established absolute levels that we have achieved, we're going to be able to keep that momentum. What we're going to focus on is striking the balance between pricing and volume in a way that we drive absolute EBIT over time. And that, again, is to make sure we deliver absolute EBIT growth and with that absolute shareholder value creation through moving that through cash flow and valuation at the end of the day. So I think that is the comment to the outlook that I can give. Do we believe that we have achieved a lot? Do we believe that there is still momentum in our improvement program? Yes. And we continue to focus on productivity, internal optimization of how we load the plants. And we're going to be super agile in the market by striking that right balance together with our customers. And that's going to be the tone of voice for 24 and forward. If you then go to the second question, what about sugar? What about cocoa? Well, certainly with prices moving upwards, that doesn't make, I mean, that's call it positive in a comparison to our alternatives to cow cow butter for sure. But we have also, we have long-term experience within the industry. And I think it's fair to say that the most important thing for AAK is that we have a market demand from our customers, meaning the customers producing chocolate and confectionery, that is strong. And for that to be strong, they need to sell their product to consumers. So if prices are too high, then consumers might be starting to look at, I don't want to buy that much. So we've always said that we don't want that price to be too high because we still have a very competitive offering versus cocoa butter. So I think look at it from that perspective, what is driving consumer demand? We will still have a beneficial value proposition for a customer to use as much of our product as possible versus cocoa butter when they see that opportunity. I think the other piece is to see there has been some shrinkflation in our industry. I'm sure you've read about that and heard about that. A product that used to be maybe 100 gram now is 80 gram and so forth. That has, of course, impacted volumes. And again, as I mentioned in the call, if you look at chocolate and confectionery for AK, we're still up 14% to pre-COVID levels. So as an industry, still, my view is on the long-term trajectory of growth. And certainly our type of products are well positioned. So I guess that's a way to look at it. Maybe not just looking at CB, our cocoa butter equivalents or alternatives to cocoa butter, but rather what is driving the overall market. And are we maybe at the point now where Strangulation have had it to go, where destocking have had it to go, and from here we grow with consumer demand. Let's see. But I think it's worthwhile looking at what is the absolute increase of price on the shelf for consumers rather than talk about it versus alternatives.

Okay, that's helpful. Thank you.

Thank you.

The next question comes from Aurora Tigerskjold from DNB Markets. Please go ahead.

Hi, Joan and Thomas. Thank you for taking my questions. I know that you already kind of touched upon this, but I was wondering if you would get a little bit more color on how we should to think about the EBIT per kilo development for the rest of 2023 and 2024. And given that you have already achieved your EBIT per kilo target already in Q3, will you be updating your guidance? Any more comment on that would be great.

Sorry, could you repeat question number two for us?

Yes. So question number two. Given that you've already achieved your EBIT per kilo target,

will you be updating your guidance? Thank you.

Thank you very much for your questions. When we look at the EBIT per kilo into 2024, we don't give guidance on this, as you know. And as you've seen, we have grown our EBIT per kilo quite dramatically over the past couple of quarters. But we are looking at this long term, back to our aspiration again that we want to double our margins by 2030. But that's not the only target. It also goes back to volume and the combination thereof, right? So I would say we've had one quarter now above two sec per kilo. But this is, of course, not an indication that that will continue forever at a very stable level. Things move. And it is the combination of volume versus margin. So I would say that going back to what we indicate for Q4, when we say that the average performance of 2023 is what we expect for the last quarter, without giving any further guidance on 2024, That is where you can lean back on, if you will.

And then to the second question, which was a very relevant question. So now when you have achieved it, and I guess it might sound like a broken record, but yes, we're very happy. We are proud of the fact that we're able to drive margin, that we're able to move AAK and an industry perspective into a more decent margin, absolute EBIT margin. Again, we're not excusing ourselves at all for the absolute EBIT margin that we have. We're moving it into healthy territory. Again, very happy for what we have achieved. Now, as Thomas said, there is a bit more to do, striking the balance between margin and volume, as well as driving impact and getting recognition for that. But to your point, if we continue to perform on a faster pace in total, with regards to total EBIT generation, total EBIT growth, and we start seeing an absolute long-term trend being even higher than 10% year-on-year EBIT growth, then we will also review our financial targets, and we will review our aspiration. But that is not something we do in quarter three, just because we had a very strong delivery on one of the KPIs. But certainly as we come into the second half of next year, if things continue to materialize in a very positive manner, we're happy to adjust our aspiration and to raise the bar and to raise our targets even further. But let's not jump to that too early. Let's rather applaud what has been achieved.

Perfect. Thank you so much.

The next question comes from Alex Sloan from Barclays. Please go ahead.

Yeah, hi. Thanks for taking the questions. I've got three, if that's okay. Firstly, on the price management element of the margin improvement, Johan, if I understand correctly, the message seems to be that in some areas of the business, you think that your historic margins maybe were were too low based on the value of your offering and so maybe there's a structural opportunity to hold on to more of the COGS tailwinds versus passing back in pricing in some areas. I appreciate that's not a shift across the entire portfolio, but maybe you could help quantify what percentage of the portfolio you see now as cost plus versus more value add pricing I guess, how should we think about potential renewed inflation pressure in that context? Will it be any harder for you to pass through inflation, given you haven't passed all of the deflation back this time? That's the first question. Second one, just on CCNF, on the volume decline, I fully appreciate you're nicely above pre-COVID levels, but In terms of the decline in quarter three, do you think that's destocking or could that be share loss for AAK? I think minus 11 is lower than the market decline. So interested on your thoughts in terms of the key delta there. And then just finally, I mean, much longer term, but GLP-1 weight loss drugs have been making a lot of news, a lot of headlines. Do you have any early thoughts on how AAK's end markets might be relatively impacted? Thanks.

Thank you, Alex. And to the first one, yes, to your reading of that, I think you're reading it right. Is there a structural opportunity to price ingredients, high-valued ingredients, like oil and fats on a more fair, decent territory as an industry, including AK. Yes, I think so, since I came into this company. But let's not forget that is absolutely not all of it in this. This is a lot about also optimizing the portfolio. And we speak a lot about what is, so if we dig one level down, what is optimizing the portfolio? It's going, for example, through our one by one in projects we call deep dive, where we look at how can we release capacity? How can we optimize how we load the plant? What type of products are we running in that plant? And that is sometimes optimizing portfolios versus bakery dairy chocolate, but also within the chocolate portfolio. So there is a lot of improvement activities that leads to this. So there's also a mixed element portfolio, element where we sell more of certain products versus others where the absolute price increase is not uh you know extreme just on that product but rather that we sell more of a certain product and have release capacity on lower margin products that is also a piece of it and then overall productivity and improvements but and also making active decisions and certain contracts where we see that we don't have

what we would consider to be a good enough margin. And it doesn't mean we exit the segment, but we either renegotiate the contract or leave that contract to make the capacity available for better contracts. And just from an average point of view, you take something out that's below the average, that will increase the average, of course. So that's a big part of this change as well. pricing in the market is competitive uh we can't set any price that we would like we work innovation we work with the offering of what we contribute with to the customers and product so there is some value cell in that and we can probably get a lot better at that process but it is a very competitive market so what you see is back to what you answered internal efficiencies but also that

active selection on volumes and margins uh a lot better management than what we've had a few years ago in that area and then to the last part of question one which is so so if you are here now is there a possibility to manage inflation going forward yes there must be We are, again, I repeat myself, if you look at the absolute margin in our industry and where we are today, that's not an extreme margin at all. Rather, going into a decent territory. And that's our dialogue with customers as AK and as industry. I mean, there must be an appreciation for that long term that we manage risk, we manage volatility. And we need to manage raw material fluctuations. That's part of our business. But certainly as a company, and I'm speaking for AK now, we are going to continue to professionalize our organization and to optimize our portfolio. So again, I want to take away the focus. The word price is probably mentioned a bit in balance to the total picture. This is professionally working with a market with our offering and how we stack up against competition. Second question on CCF volumes. Is there a bit of destocking? Is there a bit of market shelves? I think it is both, probably. Because I read the same numbers as you do. And that's coming back to striking the balance on price and so forth. Of course, when we do optimization of portfolio, when we do, as Thomas said, looking through our portfolio, what type of offerings do we want to send our customers? What type of products? Are we focusing on when we're releasing capacity by letting some business go and so forth? There is that element of sometimes actively losing market share for the benefit of a better mix. Sometimes also, of course, losing market share because of our price being higher than competition. That's the name of the game. So I think it is when you see the volume that you see, yeah, we probably lost some market share. But on the other hand, we have improved the portfolio, the total profitability of that portfolio. And coming back to what is the key focus going forward? Of course, it's not to lose too much volume, but keep the margins right. And that's a balance. Of course, striking the balance between price and volume while continuing our improvement projects internally. And that's going to be the focus for the coming years.

And just as an additional view there, I think if you exclude Russia from the CCF volumes, and I agree with you on, we probably quarter of a quarter in Q3, we probably have lost some shares. But if you look at Q3 from 20 to 21 and 21 to 22, we have an annual increase of volume of 11% per quarter comparison. And I would argue that was higher than the market growth at that time. so if you look short term yes you will see some volatility in our volumes versus the market where we gain volumes or we lose volumes but over time going back to again pre-pandemic a 14 increase i think we uh hold our own in terms of market share thank you so much and last question was around overall future demand i guess for food linked to uh

new innovations and and pills medicine that that one could use right i you know this is the big talk at the moment we've seen uh market reactions to that from my point of view and and this is often the question right my point of view is will we as human beings dramatically shift our behavior on eating something treating us with something having that pleasure of having a dinner together, having a bit of snacking. I think there's no doubt that these kind of solutions has probably a positive impact on obesity and so forth, which we need to see as a positive, right? From a totally history perspective, from the health of the population of the world, I'm very positive. Let's applaud that. But when you look at total demand and total demand for sustainable food solutions for the future. I think there's no doubt that we need to look at the world where we reduce the animal-based ingredients, reduce the eating of meat, and we see a long-term positive trend for the offerings that we have in our portfolio, which is based on plant-based oils and fats ingredients. Be that continued replacement of a bit of animal-based ingredients in certain products or be that even a dairy and meat alternative in the future and including new technology where AK again is investing and well positioned. So while these type of medicines, drugs could have an impact on the absolute intake per capita, yes, but we also have a growing population. We have a growing demand for a growing middle class that is going to eat more produced food, etc. Personally, I think it's an overreaction in the short term. I think it's a positive really on the long term for the population of the world and health. But there is no doubt, I think, that the world will continue to eat and snack and treat ourselves. And with that, there's going to be a continued demand for sustainable solutions where AAK is well positioned. Again, I don't have that crystal ball, but that's my personal take at the moment.

Thanks for the answers. You're welcome.

There are no more questions at this time, so I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.

Thank you. Thank you all for listening. Again, very good to have your questions and the ability to fine-tune and debate some of the movements in our industry. We're closing a strong quarter and with that, thank you for listening. Looking forward to talk to you again soon.