H & M Hennes & Mauritz AB (publ)

Good afternoon and welcome everyone to the H&M Conference Call Full Year Report for 2023. For the first part of this call, all participants will be in listen-only mode during the speaker presentation and afterwards there will be a question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question, please register via the link in the confirmation email and then dial in and press star followed by the number 1. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. Today I am pleased to present Joseph Alberg, Head of Investor Relations. I will now hand you over to our speakers. Please begin.

Hi, everyone. Thank you all for joining us today. Welcome to this telephone conference in connection with the H&M Group's full year report for 2023. With me today is Helena Helmersson, Adam Karlsson, and Daniel Ervea. We will start today with the news that Helena Helmersson has decided to leave the CEO role and H&M Group and that the board of directors today has appointed Daniel Ervel as the new CEO. We will hear briefly from both Helena and Daniel before we start with our full year presentation. After that we will be happy to answer your questions. Now I'll hand over to you Helena.

Thank you so much Josef. Well as communicated this morning I have today informed the board my decision to step down as CEO and lead the H&M Group. And for me, this has definitely not been an easy decision as I've spent almost my entire professional life in the H&M Group. I am so proud of what we have achieved in this time. As you can see in today's report, we are gradually taking steps in the right direction and towards our long-term goals. The last few years have been very intense with the pandemic and several geopolitical and macroeconomic challenges. It has at times been very demanding for me personally, and I now feel that it's time to leave the CEO role to slow down a little bit and reflect. I will, of course, secure a good handover to Daniel. He is a very talented leader with a broad competence and experience in many different parts of the company. And with that, I hand over to you, Daniel.