Chocoladefabriken Lindt & Sprüngli AG (LISN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, and welcome, everybody. We welcome you to the press conference of the financial results 2023 of the Lindt & Sprüngli Group. I hope that you have enjoyed the tour through our home of chocolate. I've seen this one or the other of you have enjoyed it. And we wanted to invite you explicitly to this place because we are proud of the home of chocolate. It's in the meantime, the second best visited museum in Switzerland only after I think, in the third year. And so yes, we are proud to welcome you today here in this location. Let me start to guide you through our agenda for the coming 1.5 hours. I will guide you through the key figures, market trends, market insights and highlights. Martin, our CFO, will guide you through the financial results and sustainability agenda. And then I will quickly give an outlook for the year '24 and for the years to come. And then we are here for question and answers. We had some changes in group management this year. You have probably noticed, we have added a new role of Chief Human Resource Officer with a very experienced manager, Nicole Uhrmeister, this underlines the importance of people and culture in our organization. And as you've probably also read Rolf Fallegger after 27 years with the company, will retire mid of the year, and his successor will be Ana Maria Dominguez. She is currently running our Lindt U.S. business. She's originally Colombian. She has 30 years of experience in fast-moving consumer goods companies in South America, in the Caribbeans and also in the U.S.A. and in Canada. So we will have a more diverse and more international group management in the future, and we are happy to welcome Ana in our team. Coming to the financial key figures. You have read about our organic sales growth of 10.3%. We are pretty happy with this result in a very challenging environment last year. We were able to improve the EBIT margin by 60 basis points to 15.6%. Also this, I think, was quite an achievement with all the inflation that we've seen on the raw material side. Our volume mix with a positive 0.2% growth, also in line with our expectations, CHF 5.2 billion group sales, 9.2% free cash flow. Martin will elaborate on this is a bit below our expectations, but for good reasons. And we will increase our dividend by 8% or close to 8% in the 29th consecutive year in '24. Our sustainability KPIs at a glance. We have defined near- and long-term climate targets, which were approved by the science-based target initiative. So we have defined our net 0 road map for 2050. 72.3% of our cocoa products have been sourced through sustainability programs, most of it through our own Lindt & Sprüngli Farming Program. In the meantime, we have 131,000 farmers participating in our farming program. And we saw 66% of the cocoa volume from child labor risk countries where we have implemented a CLMRS program or have started to implement it. Our sustainability program has been awarded by the EcoVadis institution with a silver medal. This means that we are -- our performance is ranked among the top 8% in the food and beverage industry, also something we are proud of. We also made progress in diversity, 35.1% women in senior leadership positions coming from 33% also an improvement, and we have a target of 40% by '25, where we are more than confident to achieve it. We have also rolled out a DEI framework for the whole group. And we have also established a deforestation policy for the major raw materials, cocoa, palm oil, soya and pulp and paper-based packaging so that we are prepared also for the new EU regulation on deforestation, which trends do we see in the markets, the chocolate market has shown substantial growth last year mainly price-driven. The volume has been negative. Private label we're gaining. We also saw a shift partly to the discount channel, but also within the traditional trade, private label was gaining, consumers hit by inflation, tightening their belt and partly shifting to cheaper brands. This was not the case for our brands and also not for the premium segment in total. It was pretty resilient also under these circumstances. Cocoa price inflation. You all have read that the cocoa price is soaring at the moment. The reasons for this are fundamental. So we see a severe shortage of the yields in West Africa impacted by weather conditions, but also by plant diseases. And this combination drives the cocoa price. And in the last 3 years already we have seen deficits. So the yield has been lower than the consumption, and we hope that the yields will improve in the years to come again, which trends do we see in the market. We see still a global trends to premium products, especially with an aging population. We see people striving for higher quality products, not only in food and beverage. At the same time, we see dietary trends like better for you, sugar free, vegan, free-from, but also, of course, we monitor closely GLP1, the weight loss drugs that are mainly popular in the U.S. And we also see consumers being more aware of any sustainability issues and better informed also about sustainability, and therefore, we have to be more transparent and also beefing up our sustainability programs. Coming to the market insights, CHF 5.2 billion total group sales, I mentioned it already. The Swiss franc has been strengthening throughout the last year. So it took us some time to jump over this hurdle of CHF 5 billion. But finally, we did it in the last year. The sales figures are spread to the geographic regions like they have been in the past time because our organic growth was pretty evenly spread, 9% in Europe, in our biggest region, 11% in North America and 12.9% in the rest of the world. So we are happy that we were able to grow in all these areas. Coming to Europe, Germany still the #1 subsidiary, not only in Europe, but also globally, followed by France, U.K., Italy, Switzerland. Let's see how they performed. Germany, we are especially proud. The consumer sentiment there was very negative. The inflation was sky high. Also the outlook for the economy, not really exciting and we were still able to grow by 7%. The U.K., we were rather nervous about the HFSS regulation that was put in place last year and a growth of 10% was certainly above our expectations. Italy, we had a merger between Caffarel and Lindt & Sprüngli Italy. So for the first time, one sales force sells both brands, Caffarel and Lindt to generate and leverage synergies. And also here, with a growth of 11%, we can say it was a big success. Both brands contributed to the growth. Switzerland. For many years, we didn't see double-digit growth here in Switzerland, mainly driven by a recovery of tourism. So we did not only benefit here in the Lindt home of chocolate, but also in other stores that we have in touristic destinations, but also in the wholesale business, we could show us or could see a significant growth. CEE, just one example to manage. We speak here about 4 Central and Eastern European companies with continuous double-digit growth. And I think it's the further fourth year with more than 20% growth in this area. So we see that our market share are increasing continuously throughout Europe, East and West. I want to show you an innovation that we launched Choco Wafer is a product where we stretch out with our brand Lindt to a new category with the ambition to attract younger consumers. In the U.K., for example, we were able to get 44% of shoppers, which did not buy Lindt so far. So we really extend household penetration here, and I want to show you the TV copy that we aired behind this product. [Presentation]

Yes. And we didn't want to show you this mouthwatering advertising without giving you some samples. And therefore, please enjoy our new Choco Wafer product. You will find out it's not a normal wafer product, but it's full of finest Lindt chocolate cream, but also [indiscernible] cream and -- we did not only receive good test results also for this copy, but also the first sales results are very promising. And I would also say, forgive us, we are aware that this is a press conference about the financial results but as you took all the way here to our headquarter, I think it's also worthwhile to enjoy some of our innovations and also to see what's going on also in the marketing area in which new products coming to our portfolio. Okay. While you enjoy your chocolate wafer, by the way, you will also find it -- you have these bags on the table. These are supposed for you as goodie bags -- as giveaways as it is a bit more complicated to collect the product here on the shelves. So please feel free to take this with you later. Okay. I'm coming to the second biggest region, North America, generated CHF 2.1 billion there. Of course, U.S.A., by far, the biggest part of the region, followed by Canada and Mexico. And we saw double-digit growth at Lindt U.S., at Ghirardelli and in Canada. Russell Stover for us also an encouraging performance. We had double-digit growth last year. We saw nearly 6% growth in this year and further important for us, you know that North America is still lagging behind the profitability of the total group and we made a strong progress again by 90 basis points from 10.9% to 11.8%. And of course, the plan is that we want to catch up with the profitability also to the group level in the years to come. Lindt USA biggest product there clearly Lindor, also produced in Stratham. And here, we launched next to other new flavors also at nondairy Lindor Oatmilk with encouraging initial success. We also work on a significant build out of our factory in Stratham to extend capacity to be prepared for the future growth there. Ghirardelli with some new flavors in the snack format. Russell Stover celebrated 100 years of Russell Stover with a Guinness Book record for the biggest box of chocolates, I will show you in a second. Mexico, you see here a minus is a bit misleading. We had an issue with one of the biggest distributors there. He went bankrupt. So the performance on the market is okay. It's just in our NTS figures, a negative impact. Here, you see the biggest assorted product they ever made. We got a registration in the Guinness Book of records. And you can also see on our administration building of Russell Stover that we were celebrating last year. And what is also new for the first time, we had an advertising copy at the Super Bowl, the biggest media event in spectacle around the globe with 123 million viewers, especially as Taylor Swift was attending the games. This gave another boost to the audience. So I think there were more female viewers than ever there. And we were, for the first time, represented on this -- really on the big stage of advertising. So I think it's a bit the Champions League. We got a good ranking for our copy, and we reached 1.5 billion consumers and see the copy that we have developed for the Super Bowl. [Presentation]

Yes. As mentioned, objective was clear, Lindt in the U.S. is still a product a bit niche for special occasions, and we wanted to give clearly a signal that this is a product that brings indulgence and happiness also in every day's life of the consumers. So coming to the smallest region, Rest of the World. We had quite some good progress there. Japan, we are mainly there with our own retail stores, and we expanded the retail network with a 21% growth last year. Global travel retail, we are still not on the pre-COVID level. So we still see that passenger traffic on the -- at the airports is lower than in 2019, but you can see with 21 -- 20.1%, a nice recovery there. Our distributor business, we saw double-digit growth in Greater Europe, double-digit growth in Middle East and India, for example, where I also highlighted last year, we could double the business and we still have strong plans for India also for the future. Brazil, we were able to in retail and in wholesale. China was a bit disappointing with an 8.5% growth. You have recognized that the consumer sentiment and demand softened a bit in China, and we were also experiencing this. In Australia, we have a very strong market share and with 7.7% is one of the strongest years that we have experienced in the last decade. So that's some impressions from rest of the world. I want to show you also that we have ramped up our brand support in rest of the world. You will see later in the presentation of Martin that we have sacrificed a bit on the profitability because we have increased not only the organizational setup, but also the brand support. This is one example. We have produced a Lindor copy for Ramadan and Eid in the Middle East. [Presentation]

So we still see strong potential in Middle East and not only with advertising support but also with other initiatives, we will be more offensive in this area. Last segment I want to highlight is our direct-to-consumer business. You know that this is something unique, I would say, in the chocolate industry that we have next to our wholesale business, a very sizable and additional -- in addition, profitable direct-to-consumer business, we see it as a huge opportunity to build the brand also with these experiences in our more than 500 physical shops and 24 e-shops. We generated an organic growth of 16.5% last year and most important, at 12.5% comp store growth. So this was really a driver for the profitability of this division. We have rolled out also a new store design again in the flagship store in Opera, Paris, if you have the opportunity to be there. We've rolled out a new loyalty program in Germany and in the U.K. In the meantime, we have more than 1 million participants in this loyalty program, which doesn't only allow us to get access to first-party data and to study and analyze consumer behavior but also to activate these consumers via e-mail and CRM. And we have integrated a corporate gifting function into our online shop so that we do not only address end consumers, but also companies who want the solution -- a full service solution for the Christmas gifts or customer gifts. That leads me to financial results, and I hand over to Martin Hug, our CFO. Thank you.

Welcome as well from my side to the full year financial conference of Lindt & Sprüngli. We welcome everybody online. Welcome everybody here in Kilchberg. It's really great that you have taken the time to come and see us here. And I'm proud also to show you really a good set of numbers. Here are the key figures. Bert already talked about the organic sales growth. Top line was very strong at 10.3%. And actually, what I should also mention, it's above our guidance, right? We guided for 8% to 10%. We came in at 10.3%. So we overachieved against our guidance. The same can be said about the profit came in 60 basis points above our last year's numbers about -- above the 22 number at 15.6%. And we guided for 30 to 50 basis points. So we guided for 15.3% to 15.5% and we came in at 15.6%. And at the same time, we actually invested more money behind our brands in advertising, et cetera, should also bear that in mind. Despite that, we have been able to deliver a very strong 15.6%, which is an all-time high on the EBIT margin. Free cash flow margin, you always talked about 10% as our goal. It came in at 9.2%. I think it's important to bear in mind that we have -- and we mentioned that already in July, we have gone long physically not only on -- you can hedge the cocoa beans with futures, but we also have gone long physically in cocoa beans to have the cocoa beans in our warehouses because we anticipated somehow 1 year ago that there may be certain issues in the cocoa flow. I mean, I mentioned that also in July, issues with regards to higher demand and supply and because the cocoa crops are quite seasonal. So it's better to go along when even the cocoa is really flowing, right, between, let's say, December and March. So that's what we did. So we have physically about 40 million to 45 million more cocoa beans which means that if you exclude this impact, our free cash flow would be at 10%. So just -- I think that's an important clarification. And our free cash flow would be at 10% despite the fact that we also had a higher CapEx of CHF 300 million than we had in the last years. So I actually think the free cash flow, if you look a bit behind it, it's a very solid performance also with 9.2%. Then earnings per share is also at an all-time high at CHF 2,890. I think it's also a very good development. You will also see on one of my last charts, actually development over the last 5 years. So we have really strongly grown that. And net debt is at CHF 943 million. We have continued with our share buyback in '23. We are not too far away from finishing it. We bought back about CHF 600 million last year. So that led to the net debt position to increase. I mean, no surprise internally. I guess no surprise for you as well because we always announced that we will do this CHF 1 billion share buyback and that we will finish it in 2024. Shareholder return, ordinary dividend, we will propose 1,400 for the AGM. That's 100 more than the year before. And that's actually the 29th year in a row that we are increasing our ordinary dividend. So I think a very reliable business model with a very reliable dividend for the shareholders with no big surprises. I think that's the good news here. The dividend yield is at 1.4%. And the payout ratio, I always said last 2, 3 years that our goal is to go down to 50%. We had an extraordinary 80% and more between 2019 and 2020. And obviously, our goal is to go back to 50%, and that's we have -- that's where we are now in '23. I already mentioned the share buyback, CHF 600 million bought back. So right on plan or even slightly ahead of plan. And, yes, we will finish it now in the next few weeks. Then market cap and share price development. We had a market cap of CHF 24 billion at the end of '23 and if you look at development over the last 5 years, that's an increase of about 22% actually over the 5-year period from CHF 19.7 billion to CHF 24 billion. So I think it's also a good performance. In '21, we had an extraordinary valuation. I remember end of '21, actually, the PE was something like 60%. So yes, even if our share has historically had a high valuation 60%, it was probably one of the highest valuations we have seen. Sales growth over the last 5 years, we have had 3 years in a row double-digit growth. So we are coming from 13% in '21 about 11% in '22 and about 10% in '23. If you actually add this all up, it's about 35%. So I think a very impressive performance over a 3-year period of double-digit growth. If you look at the 5-year period to taking into account COVID also of the minus 6%, we will have an -- we have an average of 6.6%. So that's also right in the guidance of 6% to 8%, more or less in the middle of the guidance of 6% to 8%. And despite the fact that [indiscernible] mentioned, there are channels like Global Travel Retail, where we have not caught up quite yet to the levels prior to 2020, right? So we have still some room also to catch up further in certain areas. So I think definitely, this is a very good sales performance. In Swiss francs, we have had a very strong Swiss franc versus the major currencies, euro and U.S. dollars over the last few years. Most of the years, actually, our Swiss franc growth was less than the organic growth. We have now achieved the first time a number above the CHF 5 billion. We grew about CHF 230 million in absolute last -- or last year in 2023. And if you break this down, we have already talked about the price increase. I think in January, 10.1%. Volume mix, for me, the good news is it is positive volume mix. In July, when we had the half year, some of you asked, okay, so how is actually the volume doing, right, at half year? And I mentioned that, okay, Nielsen, it's about minus 1.5. So what we can say now, the good news is in the second half, we have actually seen an acceleration of the volume, not necessarily of the volume and mix combined, but the volume actually accelerated in the second half. I think that's also a very important news for you. Swiss franc, I already talked about, had a negative impact of 5.4%. Bert alluded to the different segments. I think kind of does not be said enough how strong our performance in Europe was with 9.1% and double-digit in important markets like the U.K., like Switzerland, Italy, Austria. The growth markets in Eastern Europe like Czech, like Poland, then also Benelux growing double digit. And all the other markets also growing either mid-single digit or high single digit. So I really think it is, again, a fantastic performance in Europe. North America, maybe not a big surprise for some of you that we did grow double digit. We have had price increases, linked U.S. and [indiscernible] have had fantastic performance also when you look at the Nielsen data. Russell Stover for me also very good at 6%. And if you look at the sugar free range in Russell Stover, which is an important additional portfolio we can really work with grew almost 10% -- grew above 9%. So that's for me, not a good indication that Russell Stover is really on a good way. Rest of the world, we invested more money. We have had difficulty in China, like everybody else in consumer goods, despite that we have been able to grow actually in China. Many others have not been able to grow. We have been able to grow high-single digit in China. We grew double digits in Japan, and we also grew double digit in Brazil. So overall, strong performance in Rest of the World. At the same time, we invested more behind brand support. We invested more behind the new organizations in Rest of the World so that we are prepared for the future. So we are very confident that in the Rest of the World segment, we are able to grow double-digit also going forward. So that was a short term here about the sales top line numbers giving you some more information there. Now let's move on to costs. Material costs that is definitely probably one of the most interesting cost categories when we look at the last 2 or 3 years. And for me, the good news here is, if you look at the ratio, how did that perform to the sales? And if you look at the ratio, we had 2020 numbers, of course, COVID. But on average, our cost ratio to sales was at about 33%. So despite the fact that in 2022, we have seen costs going through the roof, costs like energy, packaging, milk, other raw materials, we have been able to keep it at 33% in '22. And in '23, I mean, I will show you on the next chart, what happened with cocoa despite the fact that cocoa actually kind of went through the roof over the last 12 months. And sugar prices also stayed very high. We've been able to keep the expense ratio at 33%. So I think that is a very good achievement. We have been able to hedge quite early, also made early decision to go along on the cocoa beans that has helped. But of course, we have also been quite bold in terms of the price increase in '23 at the end of the day. And I believe the impact on the volume was -- we could control it, right? We have still been able to grow positively on volume mix, which is good. And the better news is even that in the second half, we have seen an acceleration. Cocoa, that's the big word in terms of the chocolate industry, of course, Bert, talked about it. We have a few interesting developments in West Africa. On the one side, we have diseases -- this swollen-shoot disease, which means that the cocoa tree has less yield, right? It goes down to something like 80% of the normal yield. For cocoa tree that is impacted by this virus. And at the same time, you have El Niño in South America. And that means that the temperature changes or the climate changes, at least during the time that you have this phenomenon of warmer water temperatures. For West Africa, it actually means drier climate and it's somehow -- it may rain, but it may rain at the wrong time, right? So climate and these diseases that did not help. And for 3 years in a row, there was a deficit in the crop so if you look at the stock levels, not our stock levels, but the global stock labels of cocoa, worldwide, typically, it's about 5 to 6 months. And because of the deficits in the last 3 months -- 3 years, this has gone down to something like 3 months. So that is still enough cocoa, right? There's still 3 months coverage. But of course, speculators and in general market participants, they prefer to buy. That's why you also see the future months. When you look at the futures months, the months that are earlier like 2024 months, they are much higher than the 2025 numbers. And because we are hedged, we don't need to buy 2024. We don't have to do hedging in 2024. It's all done. So we are not getting there if the market short term goes up to 6,000 or 5,500. The months we are looking at is the future months in 2025. So also when you look at cocoa and if you think about Lindt, look at 2025 futures. And those futures, they are still higher. They are double as high as they were 1 year ago. They had 4,000. But the front months, they're actually at 5,500. So there's a big difference between July 2024 future and a July 2025 future. So I think that's also very important for you to bear in mind. Going forward, it's really difficult to say. It's difficult to say what will happen. A lot will probably depend on 2 things: what happens with the crop 2024, 2025. That's the crop that starts on the 1st of October '24. What happens with that crop with regards to deficit versus -- well, with regards to production versus demand. And then it depends as well what the chocolate industry will do. I think there are lots of players who have already announced price increases in '24. We are also part of that group. And then the other question is what will happen in '25 with regards to price increases and demand, et cetera. We have shown in 2023 that even though we increased prices, we can manage price volume but this may not be the case for everybody else. So potentially demand may or may not come down in general, right? So that is the big question. So we don't want to speculate. It is very difficult to predict at the moment what will happen with cocoa market. I think we have controlled it as well as we can. We have time. We are not nervous about it because we have time and we can react accordingly. Personnel expenses is another one that is interesting to see. You can see really a very nice development down from 21.7% to 19.7% over a 5-year period. Again, here, we have had the benefit of this 3 years of double-digit growth in the last 3 years that has helped. We have had a very good performance on retail. Our comparable store growth was very healthy. We grew very nicely there. Retail in general, grew double digit. Our own retail has an overproportionate amount of labor rate of personnel expenses. That's why I'm mentioning it. And then what I should also say is we have increased the prices more than what the wage increase was in January. The average wage increase and salary increase was not 10% across the globe, but we've increased the prices by 10% last year. So that has also helped us. And then, of course, we have also worked in the factories, let's say, on efficiency programs, et cetera, et cetera. So I actually think this is a very good development from a cost management perspective. Operating expenses is a mixed bag. You have lots of things in here. Some of the big items is on logistics. I've talked a lot about logistics in this -- in front of this group, especially logistics in the U.S., where we have done a lot, where we have really gotten efficiencies over the last 4 years, and that has paid dividends. We were able to reinvest a lot of those benefits into advertising and brand support, especially in North America and in rest of the world. And that's why actually this ratio is going up because we have heavied up massively our advertising spend, which again will help us in the future to grow in markets like rest of the world, and it will help us to have a good volume development as well going forward. Depreciation and impairment. There's not a lot going on here, which is probably good news, right? And it's relatively flat at CHF 280 million. That means with a growing sales number that we have some operating leverage here. It's going down from 7% in 2020 to 5.4% in '23. In 2019, we had this extraordinary impairment in the U.S., you may remember, something like CHF 50 million at the time in 2019 impairment. So ignore that number or take CHF 50 million off to compare it with the rest. So quite a flat number and the positive development of the ratio. Operating profit going up by 9.2%, and we are now at CHF 813 million at 15.6%. I already mentioned that. So where is it coming from? I'm particularly happy to see that North America has a very healthy development. We talked about this many times with many of you, and 1 year ago, we announced 50 to 100 basis points improvement. And I think this is the proof that we were not just talking about, we have also delivered. At the same time, we have heavied up advertising so I think it's a very good development considering that we have been able to invest more money in -- also in percent of sales in advertising. I don't have the 2021 number here on this chart. But just as a reminder, in 2021, our profitability in North America was 7.7%. So I've been able to increase it actually over a 2-year period by 400 basis points. So definitely a good trend here. And going forward, we still target the same as I mentioned 1 year ago, it's 50 to 100 basis points. This was not just a 1-year guidance. This is a guidance really for the next years to come as well. So we expect it doesn't -- it's probably not always be 90, right, but we will be in this range of 50 to 100 basis points in North America. In Europe, we have also seen a positive development. And in Rest of the World, we talked about the additional support behind the brands, additional buildup of, let's say, of certain infrastructure in terms of personnel, marketing for future growth that's why we came down to 15% there, which is probably a healthier profit number as well, thinking about the future, right? Because it's -- rest of the world is really one of the key areas where we want to grow. And just as a reminder, if you look at the total chocolate market, Rest of the world is about 30%, 3-0, of the total chocolate market. And if you look at our sales on of the previous chart, it's much below that, right? It's more like 15%. So we have a lot of potential in rest of the world. So I think it's the right area to invest money behind the brand support. EBITDA was for the first time at CHF 1 billion last year, I mean, in 2022. Now we came in again above CHF 1 billion -- we were at CHF 1.1 billion. So very happy about that. The tax rate is worthwhile to explain, we had a one-off, which we announced already in January related to the 15% minimum tax and also related to the Swiss tax reform, which was implemented, I think it was in the beginning of '22 so this brought us a benefit of about CHF 70 million last year. Without that, our expense ratio would be 23.6%. Now I think important for you here in the room, there's a difference going forward between the tax expense and actually the cash flow because this asset that we have built up of CHF 70 million, we have to depreciate now over the next 7 years or so. So what I would like to make you aware of take about 2 percentage points of these numbers when you do your free cash flow statements. So the tax rate -- the cash flow relevant tax rate going forward will be 2 percentage points lower than what you will see here on the expenses. And what you will see here on the expenses is something between 23% and 25%. But your free cash flow calculations of your net present value calculation take rather 21% to 23% because of the depreciation. Net income. Here, you see the CHF 70 million. We have been able to increase net income by CHF 100 million. CapEx came in higher. Many of you may remember that in the last couple of years, I was standing here, and I was always -- a few months earlier, I had told you, I think CapEx is going to be somewhere between CHF 260 million and CHF 280 million, and then I stood here in March, and we came always in a bit lower, which is nice because it helped our free cash flow, et cetera. But now there's a certain catch-up. Big investments in Switzerland, in the cocoa mass production in Olten and also the big investment in New England in -- on the East Coast in the U.S., our New Hampshire factory of our big Lindt factory, right? Those are the 2 investments where we have made a lot of progress because we plan a nice volume growth going forward also in North America, so we need actually that capacity. So that's why we are now back to CHF 300 million. Going forward, I am expecting something like, on average, around 6% CapEx of sales, more or less on average over the next 5 years. It can be 1 year, a bit lower, it can be 1 year a bit higher, but I'm expecting something like 6% going forward. Free cash flow, I have talked about, right? So 9.2% take -- increases by CHF 40 million, if you want to look at, let's say, the impact without the higher cocoa bean inventory. And then non-diluted earnings per share up by almost 20%. Two drivers on the one side, the excellent financial results that I have just presented now and on the other side, also the share buyback, which -- where we made a lot of progress in 2023. So a very nice development. Of course, 2020 is not the best year to compare, but still since 2020, we have actually more than doubled the earnings per share. So it's easily a very nice development here as well. Net financial position, we have returned almost CHF 900 million to the shareholder last year. And if you combine this with the free cash flow and as well with the other items there, we are coming at CHF 940 million. If you compare this CHF 940 million with the EBITDA, our multiple is 0.86. So I still think it's actually a healthy multiple below 1. Also for the analysts in here that analyze bonds, et cetera, I think we are still below 1. So I assume you're also happy with that. Okay. Equity ratio, we are at 54%. Again, here, the main reason -- the main driver is the share buyback. But again, here, I think it is still very strong. Everything that is above 50%, I would say, is very strong. Okay. So that was a summary of our financials, very strong numbers on the top line, 3 years in a row growing double digit. Very strong performance also on the bottom line, healthily delivered in the sense that we were actually able to having up our marketing investments because sometimes you may also achieve your results by cutting back on advertising which may not hurt you in the short term, but it may hurt you in the long term. Now we have even able to do the contrary, right? We have been able to invest even more behind our future growth, which is fantastic. And I think also good numbers on some of the other KPIs like free cash flow, excluding this impact of net working capital and earnings per share. So definitely very healthy set of numbers. Now the next topic is sustainability. So bear with me 10 minutes or so, I will give you a quick update on sustainability as well. Sustainability is a key priority for us. It is actually also we consider it a driver of value. The Lindt & Sprüngli Sustainability Plan is our strategy for optimizing the social and environmental impact. And it's centered around 4 pillars: improving livelihoods, contributing to an intact environment, performing together and delighting consumers. In 2023, we published our near- and long-term science-based emissions reduction targets, and those were actually approved by the science-based target initiative. That's, let's say, the group that supervises all the companies or all the targets that the companies publish. And our long-term target is to be at net 0 by 2050. We also published midterm targets 2030. And we did not only publish the targets. We also talked about the road map and so behind this targets here, there's a lot of activities. And cocoa is the biggest, let's say, area of the biggest that causes -- has the biggest footprint of CO2. So some of the actions behind the cocoa is, let's say, to make sure that we are sourcing our cocoa from deforestated from -- not from deforestated area that you have -- alcohol is a supply chain that has no deforestation. We're also working with farmers -- with our farmers out of our cocoa program to make sure that they actually practice sustainable farming. Then there's the other raw material actions. If you think about milk, we work with suppliers to lower their footprint. And on other raw materials, where cocoa service supplies to the same. And in some examples, we may also exchange the one or the other ingredient going forward in case it's not possible to reduce the footprint. On the packaging side, we are redesigning products potentially or packaging solutions. Energy is another important area where we are sourcing low-carbon energy, and we are investing in energy-efficient CapEx, for example. Supply chain is another one, logistics. We are finding new models for logistics going forward. And in general, in the plant, we are trying to reduce the energy consumption that has a positive impact on the CO2 footprint and on our cost as well. So that is also a very important initiative. So you can see there's a lot of things going on in this area now but also in the next 5 or more years. And it definitely shape our company and it will have a big impact on the environment. So I think this is very positive that we have committed to science-based targets. And even more positive that we have been able to create a credible road map that we believe in and showing now also more concrete targets. Like every player in the chocolate industry, cocoa is our most important raw material. There are -- of course, there are challenges in the cocoa supply chain and the Lindt & Sprüngli Farming program is really the foundation for everything that we do within our cocoa supply chain. Some of the challenges are deforestation, risk of child labor and also living income, lots of the farmers that actually deliver cocoa to different players in the chocolate industry. They have relatively low income. So we are also trying to improve that. So our Lindt & Sprüngli Farming program really targets to avoid deforestation. We don't want to source cocoa from the deforestated area. So we want to make sure that we have a deforestation free supply chain. We want to lower the risk of child labor. And you want to make sure that the farmers have a higher income at the end of the day. And there are different ways of doing that. There are different initiatives. One for sure is around traceability, I think everything that the supply chain starts with -- that is sustainability starts with traceability. If as a company, you don't know where the cocoa is coming from, it's very difficult to have a direct impact. Once you know who your farmers are that deliver cocoa to you, you can also do something about it, right? You can really make sure you train those farmers, about child labor, you make them aware that children should really go to school, et cetera, et cetera. So training is the second important initiative and then also investments in communities, investments with the farmers, right? We have built more than 50 schools. We have built more than 50 wells. So there's fresh drinking water. And then last but not least, it's also very important to have an external party that checks with your suppliers that actually implement your farming program, right, because you cannot be there every day, yourself. So you want to have third parties that actually do unannounced quality check, to make sure that all the things that we want to do are also implemented by our suppliers. In the short run, we focus on 2025. We want to achieve 100% traceable cocoa beans and cocoa powder by 2025, if you want to roll out our CLMRS, the Child Labor Monitoring and Remediation System that will ultimately reduce the risk of child labor by 2025 in 100% of our farms. We are there now at about 65% or so. So there's still a lot of work to do until 2025. But we are not only focusing on 2025. We're already working on the plan for 2030 and beyond. So we are working on a cocoa strategy 2030. And in this cocoa strategy 2030, there will be a few changes. We'll work more with partners like NGOs to drive positive change in cocoa. In the area of human rights, we will launch a pilot program with 5,000 cocoa farmers to improve their income, right, the living income program with 5,000 farmers. We will do different initiatives within this program because we want to make sure what the best initiatives are is the best outcome for the farmers. So we -- that will also inform us for the future if and when we roll out this living income program, what are the best initiatives and the most beneficial initiatives. Then CLMRS, the Child Labor Monitoring and Remediation System. I've already talked about that, once we are at 100%, we also want to improve it. So we'll work with expert organizations like the ICI, for example, that will help us to improve the CLMRS further and help us to further reduce the risk for child labor. I talked a bit about science-based targets. So that goes hand-in-hand with the cocoa strategy because as I mentioned, Cocoa is the raw material with the highest CO2 emission and our CO2 footprint. So we are working on agroforestry projects. Those are projects together with farmers that are part of the farming program will help them, for example, to build up shade trees. So that will increase their yield because there is less sun in the farms. And those shade trees will also absorb CO2. So it's kind of a double positive impact. And then we will also work on for example, on reforestation, right? That is not necessarily on the cocoa farms, that's within the countries from where we source cocoa. We will do projects together with other partners to do a reforestation also. So that's not a big initiative, I think. So you can see a lot is going on in sustainability. And yes, we are focusing on the short term on 2025 because there's still quite a lot to do as well. We have targets there that we want to achieve, of course. At the same time, we also start focusing on 2030 or even 2050 with regard to science-based targets with regards to cocoa strategy. And you may have recognized or you may have realized that today, we also published our sustainability report that's actually for the first time that we published it so early. Normally, it was published in June. So for all of those, if you want to know more details, please go online and read through the sustainability report. I think it's quite well done, and we have made a lot of progress. So with that, I hand over to Bert, who will talk about the growth agenda and the outlook. Thank you.

Thank you, Martin. Well, we have seen the performance in the last 5 years. You've also seen that in the last 3 years, we achieved a growth rate of 35%. And Martin has also shown the nice economies of scale that we were enjoying with the strong growth in most of our ratios in most of our KPIs. And that's also the focus for the future. It's all about growth. So the whole organization has a clear focus, that's our growth agenda. And I want to give you a quick view on the outlook and also how we want to continue the strong growth that we have experienced in the past years. I called it building on our strengths, we have a track record of growing strongly. So first of all, we have to build on these strengths, the key markets and the key franchises. They are our growth engines, we have a success proven business model, and we have to make sure that this is functioning like it used to function in the past time that we fuel it also with more funds. And as Martin said, last year was not only a successful year in terms of top line growth, but also bottom line improvement. At the same time, we were able to increase our funds behind the brands, and that's the plan also for the years to come. At the same time, when we also see our culture, I think we differentiate rather from some of the big players in the market. It's our entrepreneurial culture. We try to empower our market managers out there. We have decentralized in our organizational setup. And we try to be close to the market, close to the customers and also lean and agile in our behavior. Then we have identified areas where we clearly have to adapt where we have to improve, mainly emerging markets where you have seen a shift in strategy also. But also, we have some sleeping beauties in our portfolio, the so-called secondary franchises also the whole gifting segment where we have seen now with the inflation with price increases that these segments are more resilient. Price elasticity is lower when it comes once in a year to a seasonal product or when it comes to gifting, we see a higher price elasticity in everyday consumption. So therefore, we also want to put more focus behind the gifting segment, which is also a core competence of a premium brand as Lindt. And then there are areas where we want to stretch out to new segments and to new markets like we have shown you with the wafer segment or also corporate gifting, et cetera. This translates into a growth agenda that we have to find in the group management. We have defined growth enablers like brand support, we want to free up money with RGM measures, but also efficiency programs. We want to exploit the secondary franchises, as mentioned. We have to build the premium of our brand by investing in our brand equity. We permanently invest in the quality of our products but also in the reputation of our products because as the price goes up, also the value of the brands have to go up. We want to surprise our consumers ongoingly with innovation. We want to cover new demand moments, reach out to new target groups. And of course, we also want to be innovative not only in products but also in processes, technology. We are working on a standardized ERP backbone for the company. We have evaluated where could we integrate use cases for AI and where can they deliver a nice return on investment. Sustainability margin has given you a deep dive and of course, as mentioned, our HL culture is something that we want to enhance and to foster with consumer centricity, speed to market. That's what makes us different from the big boys where we can win, and this is also for us, one of the explanations why we perform better than the big competitors, and this is what we want to deliver also in the years to come. So we confirm 6% to 8% organic sales growth for '24. This is in line with our medium-term forecast and the same applies for the EBIT, 20 to 40 basis points progress in '24. Also this is in line with the medium-term target of 20 to 40 basis points improvement of our operating profit margin. What is clear also, we want to return back to volume growth in this year. And of course, market share, again, this is another target that we have always been striving for. It was a bit tough in the last year with a headwind, but we see already in the development. As we have also mentioned, we saw a volume decline in the first half year, but we saw an acceleration already in the second half year where the volume was flat, and we clearly plan for volume growth in '24 again. That was our conclusion from our side. I would like to thank you for showing up. Thank you for your interest and attention and wishing you a good day. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.