Danone S.A. (BN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everyone. As we welcome all of you present in person or following us online. And before we start the formal proceedings of this capital market event, I wanted to say a few words on the dramatic events unfolding under our eyes in Europe. There are no words to express how sad we feel, how deeply affected we are to see so many people, so many of our colleagues, our friends, our partners personally impacted and drawn into something we had hoped never to see again in Europe, a full-fledged war. You will have seen the very public position we have taken on this last Sunday through our General Secretary, which I believe says it all. We had seriously contemplated, in light of current events, to scale down this event and hold it only in a virtual setting. I finally decided not to do so for a number of reasons. There is no better way to judge the strength and the resilience of the team and the company than do it in person, especially when the sea is rough. And we thought we owed it to our colleagues directly impacted to tell the story of our company on their behalf. So we will. And on that, Mathilde, over to you.

Hello, everyone. So welcome to Danone Capital Market event. We are very happy to host all of you today for the following speeches. You'll hear our Chairman Gilles Schnepp on governance; then Antoine de Saint-Affrique, our CEO, will present the strategic framework; and Juergen Esser, CFO, the value creation model. Bernie Pankinati, CEO International, will present you how Danone's fit for growth and Vikram Agarwal, Chief Operation Officer and Operation boring growth. We'll have 4 breakout sessions and then a Q&A session at 12:00. And before we start, I draw your attention on the disclaimer related to forward-looking statements and definition of financial indicators we'll be referring to during the presentation. And now I leave the floor to Gilles Schnepp, Chairman of Danone.

Thank you, Mathilde. Good morning, everyone. Of course, Board is in full support of Antoine's comments, as you can imagine. So good morning. Welcome to Evian for those who are in person, and welcome also for those who are online. It's not necessarily during a Capital Market Day that a Chairman of the Board would act as a speaker. But we thought that as governance has been a topic last year at Danone, it was good to share with you what we have done so far and what we intend to do. Before that, I would like to share on the next slide, thank you. The conviction that we have that if we put the right fundamentals in place, we're going to be a contributor, an important contributor to write a successful new chapter of the fantastic story of Danone. And the fundamentals are first to be fully aligned on the vision that we have for Danone, which is really specific having a focus on, obviously, performance, financial performance, which is driven by innovation and execution. And the very specific DNA of Danone, which is for almost 50 years, based on its appetite for ESG. And this -- the awareness that we have of this combination is very important in the vision that we have to build sustainable growth and profitability future for Danone. Now with this vision, we are also very conscious of the role of the Board in this respect to be creating continuous and very fluid dialogue with Antoine and the management team on all strategic topics, and this is what we have been creating and to be in support for all decisions that we will have to make. And for this, we need a strong and independent governance. The third fundamental is to be fully conscious and aligned on the key priorities that we have. And for Danone, first of all, the Board has to work on the renewal of its Board, and this is in process, and I will come back to that in a minute. We should make sure that the committees are working in a proper way. And very important, not only working on the financial performance and governance, but also listen to outside, listen to all stakeholders and among which, of course, very importantly, shareholders. And this is what want to do. Now we've been quite active last year. And you see on the slide the 3 main milestones that we've achieved during the period of March to July. The first event was to split the roles of Chairman and CEO and to name an independent Chairman, myself, so since almost a year now, to be in a search for as CEO, and we were fortunate to attract the best talent of the industry with Antoine, and I want to take this opportunity to thank Véronique, Shane and Juergen, who have been driving the boat, waiting for Antoine's arrival with great success, as you can see as we've been delivering 2021 performance as planned or even slightly above performance as far as top line is concerned. So congratulations to the 3 of you, but more generally to the 100,000 Danoners that continue to work as we were working on this. In July, the Board collectively and unanimously decided to renew its composition, having a new Chairman, a new CEO, we thought it was appropriate to also renew the board, and this is what we have launched in July. The board that we want to build will be a compact board. We are aiming at a board of 10 plus 2, 10 plus 2 workers representatives on top of which we have a representative of the Economic and Social Council. We would like this board to be diverse, to represent various nationalities to be independent and to have a blend of expertise to really help the management in its mission. And for this, industry expertise is important. Health and ESG aligned with our purpose is important. Experience of very large listed companies as CEOs or ex-CEO, is also an important factor and international successful track record is also one of the criteria that we have retained. So this is where we will stand if you vote the resolution that we proposed for the next shareholders meeting of holders on April 26. So I say and you have the ratios that are on the right-hand side of your slide, you know, 12 members. We are coming from 16, 80% independence, 60% with the experience of a CEO or ex-CEO, fully balanced as far as gender is concerned and 40% international, although I'm a bit embarrassed to say that Antoine, Valerie and Michel, the 3 of them having spent most of their life outside of France in their roles as CEOs or management positions are considered as non-international. So my reading is more 70% than 40%. But formally, based on passports, it's 40%. I want to take this opportunity to express gratitude to all existing board members. I want to testify that they've been acting in a very professional, dedicated, committed, engaged way, looking solely at the collective interest of the company, and I want to formally thank them for this. This has been a very important element of our capability to deal with the situation last year. And I want also, of course, to express my thanks to those who are going to leave the Board by April of 2022. So in 6 weeks' time, Franck Riboud, Clara Gaymard, Isabelle Seillier, Gaëlle Olivier, Lionel Zinsou-Derlin and Jean-Michel Severino. A special thanks to Jean-Michel Severino because, as you know, he has been acting as a Lead Director and Chairman of the Governance Committee, and you can imagine that those 2 responsibilities during the period of last year was quite a challenge. We are continuing to work. We have in the coming year, 4 more replacements to organize. And this will be done by April of 2023. And we may even have some anticipation, as you have seen in the press release this morning, Cecile Cabanis has decided to leave the Board by June 30 at her request and a replacement is already identified. And I want to express also to Cecile my thanks for her continuous work of course, as an executive of the company as well as the Board member and Vice President of the Board. The work is not over. We're working on a number of other topics. Committees are important at Danone. We are going to have 2 important changes, Chairs of 2 committees, the governance committee, which will be chaired by Valérie Chapoulaud-Floquet. And she will also take the position of Lead Director. So taking both responsibilities of Jean-Michel who is leaving the Board. And Gaëlle Olivier will leave her position as Chair of the Audit to Géraldine Picaud, and Serpil remains for another year. So she keeps her position as Head of the Engagement Committee. So you may see that on March 8, which is the of the day of the women's rights. Danone shows up a committee organization with 3 committees, all of them being chaired by women, and we are proud of this. You may ask why 3 committees and not 4? We've decided collectively that strategic topics should be dealt with at the Board instead within a committee. So we are not pursuing the strategic committee from the date after the general meeting of shareholders. And finally, we're working also on bylaws and board rules, and we are going to revisit and this is more formal the way the Chairman and the Lead Director interact. And we're also going to work and to propose to the shareholders' meeting to extend the age limits for both the Chairman and the CEO to allow for visibility as far as governance is concerned for Danone. This is it. So in 20 seconds just to share with you that we are quite proud collectively at the Board of the progress that we have made over the last 12, 14 months. and thank you for the support of shareholders that we've been exchanging with during this difficult period. We are -- and I'm quite impressed by the attractivity of Danone, having been able to attract talent such as Antoine and also great candidates for the Board, and I'm looking forward to continue to exchange with you. With this, I leave the stage to Antoine.

Thank you. I never travel without my Evian bottle. Thank you, Gilles. And once again, a warm welcome to all of you. As I hope you will have concluded from Gilles's presentation, we are moving fast. We are going deep. We are upping our game, but we are also getting back to the fundamentals. We thought there was no better place than Evian where it all started to share with you on -- more on the next chapter of our company's history. Roots are our key in what we want to share today, not only because they define large parts of our company's culture, but also because those roots once revived and expressed in today's world are more relevant than ever. Danone has always been a story of pioneers, a story of innovators who have been constantly reinventing their business model. People building iconic brands, inventing new categories and are creating incredible products. People obsessed with consumers, with customers and with products. When Danone Yogurt was created over 100 years ago, it was all about health, naturalness and taste. Health through food has been our mission statement from the beginning. It's our DNA. Our products have given people all over the world, access to healthy foods for decades. That mission to bring health through food to as many people as possible has become even more relevant in today's post-COVID world. Danone is also the story of performance and social and environmental responsibility, not fighting against each other, but feeding each other to the benefit of both. If you haven't done so, you should read the Marseille speech given by Antoine Riboud in '72. It is visionary, and it is still extraordinarily relevant. The roots are still here at different degrees. Some are hidden deeper than others. I want to start the day sharing what I've been seeing during the last 5 months. I've been speaking with hundreds of Danoners, I've been visiting stores, I've been visiting factories, chatting with our salespeople and shopkeepers. I met a large number of our partners, our suppliers, our customers across the many geographies I have visited since I arrived. And of course, and for some -- before I took the job, I also met with and listened to investors and analysts. Out of all of that, I formed the view on what works. And I can tell you, they are really good things, but also on what doesn't, and as I said already in the past, I will not shy away from them. So let me start with the good as there is, as I was saying, real good. And actually, the good was so appealing for me that it led me to change all my planned move from the other side of the lake to this side of the lake. So changed country, changed the place where I was living to take the helm of a company, which is a one-of-a-kind company. First, I've spoken of the roots and how much strength there is in there. So let me not repeat. What is probably as important as the roots are the categories in which we operate. There having listened to many diverse and sometimes opposing views in the market, I decided to go back to hard facts simply. Well, the first fact is striking. The categories where we play are on trend and they are growing. The second fact, by the way, is no less interesting. We have a portfolio which is focused on healthy categories. We are the leader in the product profile of Access to Nutrition Initiative as 90%, let me repeat, 90% of our volumes sold are in healthy categories. I don't know many that are at that level. If, as are many others, each of our categories has its own set of sustainability challenges, we are pioneering in resolving them as Henri will share with you later. We are on track to become the largest B Corp in the world. Evian, where we are, is carbon neutral. 84% of all our packs are already reusable, recyclable or compostable. And I could go on and on, but Henri would hate me if I was stealing your show -- where is Henri? So I clearly see opportunities in our categories. I also see opportunities with our brands. We have an amazing mix of iconic global brands and strong local ones, which allow us to cover the entire landscape of consumer and customer demand. Besides our brands and their heritage, we have genuine capabilities and knowledge assets around gut health, which is turning to be a very rich territory, around fermentation, which is not only relevant for dairy, but also for broader proteins, around our infant nutrition, allergies or food-based oncologic support. Having said that, there are also a number of areas where we are far from where we should be. While this gives us, obviously, key opportunities it will also require some hard work to improve our positioning. I think firstly, we haven't been growing at the speed of our categories. Put simply, we haven't seized the full -- their full potential. And there, I will get back in details on why I believe this is and what we intend to do about this. Secondly, we have been inconsistent in our guidance and delivery of results, and many of you told me that when we first met. Over the last years, we have changed guidance several times with numbers that were not necessarily consistent from one year to another and on which anyway, we didn't deliver for any kind of good and bad reasons. In this regard, I'm very happy that we are aiming for predictability, for boring consistency and openness on what works or not. I want Danone to deliver consistently over time. I see this as a condition to restore your trust, to restore Danone's sparkle and ultimately, to restore the value of the company. Last, but certainly not least, we have been changing our organization too many times over the last years. This kept our management and team incredibly busy, and people are working extremely hard at Danone, are working extremely hard on our transformation rather than focusing on consumers, focusing on customers and focusing on our competition. With people changing jobs too often, we lost continuity, we lost knowledge, often talents but also, and more importantly, accountability. Now let me deep dive on the point I was making earlier on our underperformance versus category and peers as I believe it is an important one, but it also offers real opportunities. Over the last few years, between '17 and '19, our categories have been growing between 3% and 4%. Against that backdrop, we were growing on average during the same period at 2.7%. Last time we were growing above 3% was in '14. We have structurally underperformed our markets, losing our shares to competition, allowing new entrants to establish and build position across categories and geographies. So the issue is not just our level of growth, but it's also the composition of our growth. We did not manage to deliver volume growth over the last years, even in '21, while we delivered with a good mix contribution, our volumes were down again at minus 0.6%. Volumes and mix are key for the resilience of a value-accretive FMCG model. We have to progressively improve the makeup of our growth. Last but not least, we need Danone to become, over time, more resilient, less dependent on a few country category sales, reducing our actual overreliance on a few categories, geographies and channels like SN, China, but also modern retail. When you see the strength of our brands and the underlying momentum of our categories, how do you explain our underperformance? Well, it comes from a mix of factors. To start with, we let our core lose relevance by lessening focus behind it, but also by the lack of consistent discipline on execution from the way we look on shelf to the quality of our service levels. In doing so, and not owning our categories development as much as we should have as category leaders, we have created the conditions of our own decline. On innovation, we have launched every year a large number of subscale and often, I must say, underperforming products. While we have also produced a number of genuine innovations, and you will see some of them later, they're really cool. And while we have real pockets of our best practices, we certainly have not been fast and decisive enough in rolling them out. We were known in the past, and hopefully, we will be known in the future, not only for our being an innovator, but also for being a fast follower. There, we have let some of our agility disappear, and we need to rebuild it. And as said, we have been for years structurally under-investing behind our brands, the number on the charts speak by themselves. Next to the way we drive our brands and categories. There are also a number of areas where I think we can do better. While we have a very sound base, our data and IT tools and processes need a thorough upgrade with more automation, centralization and harmonization to create the conditions for becoming a truly data-driven and AI-enabled company. On the operations side, the plant, source, make and deliver, there are clear improvement opportunities as well. But rather than me talking about it, I leave this in the capable hands of Vikram, who is in the first row, and you will hear from him in a moment. On our organization and while we have our very strong local teams, instability has taken a toll on our central brand marketing capabilities. There, we have new leadership, and we are rapidly rebuilding small, but senior and our impactful team. More importantly, our performance culture is not where I want it to be. In the past, Danone always had a culture where our results orientation was the norm and where our purpose and performance were going hand in hand. Some of it needs to be restored. Without a clear vision of how success is defined and rewarded, meritocracy and accountability are not at the level where they should be. And finally, and a number of you told me this, including, by the way, yesterday night around a drink, our purpose has become somewhat disjointed from our business performance. There, let me be clear. I am convinced that our sustainability is at the very heart of who we are and should be a key driver of our performance. It is, in some cases, by the way, and you'll see that later, but not always. We need to be more focused than we currently are to be able to -- to be more impactful on the planet, on health and on the business. So we have quite a bit we can improve to bring down on to the next level, which is, in some way, as I said, good news as it also means upside opportunities. But I think very importantly as well, next to what we can and what we will improve, we also benefit from a number of distinctive strengths. As I already said, and you'll hear me say it again and again, we have a very strong portfolio with a strong base of powerful global brands and local brands, allowing us to play at all price points, across all channels, covering a wide array of our consumers and customers. We benefit from a broad geographic footprint, offering one of the most balanced exposure to developed and emerging markets in the industry. We are global #1 or #2 in each of our categories and where we play and we tend to command very strong market shares. And obviously, it doesn't stop there. We get consumer trends, and we play at the heart of the healthy food movement, which is a portfolio of categories which is smack on where those trends are going. And that's fundamentally important. With COVID, health and immunity have never been more important. And there, more and more people realize that you are what you eat. That gut health matters, that freshness makes a difference and that small things like Actimel can bring powerful benefits. Our categories also address the needs of a globally aging population and the increasing prevalence of more serious conditions. The rise of cancers, and the support it requires with products like Fortimel or the many consequences of age, which we address with products ranging from calcium-rich yogurts and everyday protein shots to the more sophisticated Souvenaid. The same applies to our sustainability. It has now become something very concrete in the life of people. They want it with no compromise. They do not want to trade off taste for health. They want global quality delivered locally at a competitive cost, indulgence without guilt, real options rather than false choices. This is where being a sustainability leader matters and we are. Together with aging, urbanization in emerging countries is a long-term trend with major impact on consumer lives, access to safe water, access to affordable, healthy and fresh fruits are becoming more of a challenge. Women are working but do not benefit from the same support than in more rural communities, needing more support to feed their infants. And obviously, digital is accelerating, but you all understand everything about it. So looking at our macro trends, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the categories in which we play offer major opportunities for today, but also for tomorrow. So if I put it simply, I believe the trend is our friend. The trend is our friend. Let me illustrate that with a few concrete examples on our categories. With Dairy, we have an essential role in people's lives. We bring health, nutrition, but also indulgence. The relevance of the dairy category has clearly accelerated, thanks to COVID-19, and we believe that these trends will structurally stick in the coming years. We anticipate the growth of the dairy category to remain solid as consumer's understanding that they improve their health and immunity through what they eat, is here to stay. Those trends have helped the more value-added part of the dairy category, the brands and products that bring a specific benefit to the consumer. This is now the majority of our portfolio. More than 60% of our dairy revenues come from functional segments like immunity, gut health and performance, but also indulgence. We enjoy a leading position in those areas with a powerful mix of our global and local brands. Moving forward, we will further fuel the momentum we see around immunity and gut health and leverage our strong portfolio of probiotic and protein products. And the same is happening around indulgence products, which are needed more than ever. And as we do this, we also need to further optimize the management of our essential and traditional portfolio, both in developed and emerging markets. While we lead in dairy, we are also doing so in plant-based and may I say, doing so in a sustainable and profitable way. Plant-based is a category we see sustaining its growth momentum in the coming year. It addresses the increasing demand for alternative protein and is driven by the continued rise of flexitarian diets. Our versatile portfolio allows us to uniquely play across category from our beverages, to yogurt, to cheese and infant formula and across ingredients. Today, 60% of our plant-based revenues are in beverage, but we play a leading role in adjacency such as our yogurt, ice cream or cheese. In all segments, there is still an important penetration potential, meaning higher growth perspective. There, the critical mass we have built and the R&D knowledge we have, give us a solid base to build from. In some countries where we were historically strong, we need to sharpen our mix, also our execution. And there, may I say local first will help us while we further accelerate on innovation and expansion front. Floris who is somewhere out there on the second row, will tell you much more about this in a moment. Specialized Nutrition. Specialized Nutrition plays a very special role for all of us, not only because we have mothers with their babies every day, but also because we make a real difference in the life of our people at a point when they most need it. About 40% of our revenue is in highly specialized products, going from our tube feeding to our protein shots to support cancer recovery to our infant milks formulated to address significant allergies and other medical conditions. And there, we have deep knowledge and we have deep science. While birth rates are slowing down in geographies like China, even if market still offers room for growth and consolidation, we see in parallel regular increase of allergies or simply as a combined consequence of urbanization and working women, as I was mentioning earlier, with sustained need for parenting support. So we certainly believe that our Specialized Nutrition has a strong term -- a long-term future. On Waters and that's why I'm never traveling without my bottle of Evian. Let me start with something that is obvious, but often forgotten. Water is the purest and the healthiest form of hydration. In this category, we have made a clear and focused choice. We provide safe drinking water in emerging markets, and we focus on premium mineral waters in developed countries. We benefit from a very well-balanced geographic mix between emerging markets and our developed markets. We have strong and iconic brands and well organized access to markets across our geographies. The water category is a growing category. It delivers more than 2% in our developed markets and higher than 5% in emerging markets. We see sustained growth over time and believe the category offers further opportunities that we have not yet fully leveraged like for example, a broader channel access in developed countries or direct access to consumer in emerging markets. And I appreciate that many of you may have concerns about sustainability issues in this category with our exposure to plastics. I got the question yesterday night, as well. As you will hear from Henri later on, we are actually turning this challenge into a competitive advantage. So I hope that at this stage, I have convinced you with the strong potential of our categories and with my deep belief that they are uniquely geared towards our key consumer trends. I believe that our performance challenges are, therefore, not so much a matter of where we play, but much more so a matter of how we play. As the title of the presentation today suggests, it is all about renewing Danone. As I said, we have our solid assets, be it iconic brands, strong sustainability credentials, broad geographic exposure and deep R&D expertise. We must certainly do a better job at leveraging them. That means significantly stepping up our innovation game and the quality of execution, but also reinvesting into our brand support and capabilities. For that, in order to achieve the renewal we are targeting, a reset is needed at all levels. At a cultural level with a return to a genuine performance culture, at an execution level, driving obsession for perfect execution, but also at a financial level, as we need to reinvest behind our brands and capabilities. Juergen will come back later on the financial reset. This is one of the key slides I would like you to remember from today. It is all about our fix, seed and accelerate. The name of the game for us is as a first step to move over the next 2 to 3 years from underperform to perform in line with our markets. Over this period, we will basically fix what needs to be fixed while seeding for the future of the company. This entails a strong focus on the basics of the business all across the value chain, from the way we build our products, the way we source them and manufacture them, all the way down to the in-store execution. It is also about clear choices on where to invest or not, what needs fixing and what can be speeded up, but also active portfolio management. I believe that only when we have delivered on this will be credible to talk about further acceleration. This doesn't prevent us, by the way, from seeding and preparing for the next stage already now. And there, we also have plenty of opportunities we can further address. We have a unique knowledge around gut health and fermentation. Where do we leverage it. We have minimal presence in South Asia and Africa. How do we address it. We have already a pretty broad channel footprint, but how far can we take it? all valid questions we have started working on, but first things first. So let's focus on our plan to renew Danone. For the next few years, our ambition is to renew Danone's momentum and together with the 100,000 Danoners, create the conditions for a sustainable and competitive growth, one where purpose and performance go hand in hand and one which consistently delivers value for all. Our plan moving forward is predicated on reigniting organic growth in a consistent 3% to 5% range, progressively moving from underperforming to overperforming our categories with a better balance of volume, mix and price. The improved quality of our growth, more focus on asset utilization and optimization associated with discipline in the way we manage our fixed costs once local first has delivered, should allow us to reinvest properly in the business and through sustainable growth. It should enable us, having reset our '22 margin to the appropriate level, and Juergen will also come back to it, to consistently grow our recurring operating income faster than top line through the combination of actions we are taking. This restored financial growth algorithm is the first step towards value creation. Combined with the appropriate capital allocation discipline that Juergen will also detail. It should enable us to sequentially improve our ROIC over the period of our guidance. And finally, from now on, our dividend will be either stable or grow as it should always have. The point of my rather exhaustive diagnosis in the introduction was to highlight where I believe we need a rapid shift. Striking the right balance between local and global, agility and leverage as a local first doesn't mean local only, reigniting the quality of execution and fostering a different sense of urgency underpinned by a genuine performance culture, regaining innovation and marketing leadership, driving greater discipline on all accounts to start with capital allocation. We have translated this into a very focused strategy which you see here and is the other key chart of my presentation. Very simple, 4 priorities, 4 key enablers. Put simply, it is all about winning where we are as we work towards regaining competitiveness in our core categories and geographies, expanding where we should be as we selectively deploy our current portfolio in the geographies and channels where we have legitimacy and a tangible ability to win, seeding for the future as we explore and seed for future growth platforms, managing our portfolio or being more agile in rotating it through a mix of bolt-on acquisitions and targeted disposals. These 4 priorities will be underpinned by 4 critical enablers, restoring a meritocratic and performance-driven culture, rebuilding strong functional capabilities, reuniting performance and purpose and driving a culture of cost leverage and frugality. Let me now briefly dive into each of our pillars, starting with winning where we are. As I said many times, and you'll hear me say it again and again and again. So by all means, please use -- get used to it, there is nothing wrong with the categories we are playing in. They have grown historically 3% to 4% while we have not. So the only question is how we close that gap. And there -- it is a matter of seizing opportunities and investing in them, facing the issues in order to solve them promptly, making clearer choice but also being, as I said, obsessive with great execution. When we think of winning where we are, the picture is pretty clear. More than half of our revenues are generated in core platforms that are fundamentally healthy businesses and which operate in growing categories. Roughly 1/4 of our revenues are generated in challenged and underperforming platforms, which need to be addressed. And finally, about 20% of revenues are generated in areas that are growing fast and where Danone has a structural competitive advantage. When you look at this, the choices and priorities are pretty straightforward. We will put greater focus and support on the core with the right level of A&P and R&D investments, but also with a different attention to the way we deliver on the basics. We will do our best to fix the underperformance with a clear sense of urgency. And if they cannot be fixed, we will look at different ways of creating value. We will more systematically boost the winners of our portfolio, rolling them out faster and supporting them consistently over an extended period of time. Let me give you a few examples of each. There is probably no better example of driving the core than what has been done in the past year with Actimel. And by the way, this shows in the numbers. It is about taking ownership as a category leader of nourishing the category relevance and driving the category growth. It is about a disciplined approach to brand and portfolio management, anchored into deep consumer, customer and channel understanding. It is about tracking the right KPIs in a systematic way. It is also about striking the right balance between global leverage. The pack is everywhere the same, and so is the core technology and local relevance. Taste are difference, ingredients have different consumer meaning, competitive and legal context are different. It is about consistent investment behind the brand all across consumer touch points. And ultimately, it is all about great execution. The acceleration of dairy in the U.S. is another great example of that, but I'm not going to talk about it because Shane is going to do it a bit later in one of the breakout rooms. So let me show you our latest Actimel advertising, which I think is a good example of that, and it will give me the opportunity to drink a little of Evian. [Presentation]

I like it because it brings the brand and because it sells and both at the same time. So winning where we are means also fixing the underperformance. Over the last few years and given the concentration of our portfolio a few underperformers have had a disproportionate impact on our performance, be it in terms of growth and/or profitability. There, we have been often too low in facing to the reality and found it hard to uncover the real root causes, leaving space for competition to grow and making our problems bigger. We are now in full swing, looking at every part of the mix of the execution with a clear goal to bring them back on a value-creating trajectory. For some like Mizone, we see some very encouraging signs with our stable shares and growth. On some others, not yet. And there, let me be clear. There will be no taboo. Either we can bring them back on track in the not-too-distant future or we will consider disposing them. Finally, when we think about our win where we are, we're also blessed with a number of clear winners, which accounts for about 20% of our portfolio and are far from having reached their peak potential. When it comes to products, we see the great potential between -- behind our high-protein ranges of plant-based and of our assets in medical and adult nutrition. If I take high protein, we launched only slightly over 2 years ago, and it already accounts for close to EUR 400 million, of which half under YoPRO, and it's growing at very strong double digits. On digital, few people realize that our e-commerce is now over 10% of our turnover, growing mid-teens consistently. We are doing really innovative things there as well. We have groundbreaking pockets of digital excellence as our Véro, but also Bruno will show later. There, we have a clear opportunity to further leverage and scale up, and we will put much more focus on it. The same applies to our direct-to-consumer business led by waters in emerging markets. It is a great business model, which gives us direct access to hundreds of thousands of consumers every month. It is growing, it is profitable. It contributes to our channel resilience, but can also become a formidable consumer data source. I was talking about protein, how it is booming, as it addresses both the needs of younger people, the likes of my sons, and people like me as muscular mass reduces with age. So let me show another great example of advertising and an example on how Shane and the team have hijacked the Super Bowl this year and created massive buzz. So please roll the video. [Presentation]

I love this advertisement. It's really good. So to conclude on win-where-we-are. Next to being clear with what has to be done by brand and categories, we will also make clearer choices on where we spend and how much we spend. In a nutshell, the key drivers will be investing in product superiority, being clear on what really drives superiority or not and by the way, simplify what can be simplified. Focusing on the core and on key innovation at the expense of more anecdotical activities, having a tight control of nonworking costs to fuel consumer and customer-facing activities, in the end, everybody and everything must sell or help sell, drive greater discipline around our ROI from CapEx to innovation or advertising to name a few and reinvest in core and future-looking capabilities. The second pillar is to expand where we should be. Clearly, we have further or we have an opportunity to further expand in our geographies, channels or segments where we are structurally underrepresented and where we have the ability to play and win. We will strive to capture our growth opportunities and build structural resilience into our business by looking to expand in sensible adjacencies. First, by covering our product segments we do not cover like sparkling water with Evian, I hope you like it, it's really good, or by opening new innovative formats like what we do with Actimel tablets. Second, by entering new categories in some of our existing markets to broaden and diversify our sources of growth and profit. For example, we will enter at some point, plant based in China with what we believe to be an exciting mix of products. Third, by further broadening our channel footprint, lessening our dependency on retail. Local first will help us further deploy our plant based into out-of-home, leveraging our water distribution. We will also better cover pharmacies and proximity stores. And we still are underrepresented in our food service. Last but not least, by accelerating our efforts in digital, going beyond e-commerce and quick commerce, and leveraging some of the assets we have, like the ones I mentioned in China. So as you can see, there are many opportunities we can go for. We will go at them in a focused and selective way, making sure that we make the most of the one we pick and go deep building for the long run. Our third pillar is obviously to seed for the future. While we believe our first 2 strategic blocks offer enough opportunity for us to deliver consistent growth in the range of 3% to 5% over the next 3 years, we must start now seeding future growth platforms for them to deliver the midterm. We will do so with our 2 main objectives in mind. First, sustain our long-term growth momentum, expanding to fields, product, categories, services, which leverage some of our capabilities, are generally a natural expansion to our current business and are aligned to the company's mission. And second, structurally improve the resilience of Danone by lessening its dependency on mass retail and by broadening its pool of growth and profit. There are currently a few exciting seeds in our portfolio with our successful entry into brewed coffee in the U.S., building on the back of our coffee creamer business or our foray into home care service in Poland and the U.K. as a natural extension of our adult hospital nutrition business. There are also more things around health and healthy aging that we certainly can do. So when we think about seeding for the future, we will do this properly, and we will do this in a systematic way, exploring, testing, scaling, and we want to go at it from various angles. Starting with leveraging the JV and partnership we have, for some since decades without really making the most out of them, then refocusing our venture funds on what we believe is key for tomorrow. And our finally further stepping up our partnerships with key universities, but also with our suppliers. And there, I can tell you from first-hand experience at Barry Callebaut, we are only scratching the surface. So the appointment of Henri with a clear mandate on strategic business development and the one of Isabelle, who comes with deep experience and broad links into wide ecosystem of partners are, if it was at all needed, a clear indication of where we are headed to. Last but not least, let's talk portfolio management, the fourth pillar in our strategy. We will actively manage our portfolio through a mix of selected disposal and bolt-on acquisitions. As earlier mentioned and as I will keep repeating all along, we believe our category portfolio is sound and focused and those offer material growth opportunities. We remain, therefore, committed to all our categories. This being said, we plan over the coming years to dispose over time of structurally value-destructive activities as well as to drive bolt-on acquisition to strengthen some of our capabilities, fill some geographic white spots or further expand into future strategic fields. We ambition to rotate the equivalent of around 10% of sales of our overall portfolio. We will do that with 2 main objectives in mind: First, having a strict control on value creation metrics to make sure everything we do is consistent with the overall objectives of the company. Increase growth, improve profitability, step-up value creation. And second, staying as objective as you would expect us to be with no sacred cows, and with the only criteria being the best interest of the company. We're also doing whatever we have to do in a way which is respectful of Danone values and of the Danoners themselves. So we have covered the 4 pillars. Now when it comes to enablers, things are pretty straightforward as well. By the way, it doesn't mean they are trivial to execute or unimportant. Culture is an obvious one, and I will come back to it on the next chart. As we all know, our culture its strategy for breakfast, so bear with me for a minute. I will also come back in more details on our sustainability. So a lot -- let me not dwell on it now. Besides driving the right culture, we need to strengthen some of our capabilities, and we have started doing so with a renewed IT and data leadership team with the progressive buildup of our shared service centers, with the appointment of our new category leaders and are more visible to you with our new leadership in and greater focus on operations and R&D. When it comes to cost leadership, the teams have done an amazing job in '21, delivering high productivity and driving costs down with local first while delivering on growth. Moving forward, we need to keep our costs under control, double down on productivity, especially in an inflationary context, and improve our asset utilization. This requires a culture of leverage and frugality, but also, in some cases, further transformation and simplification or technological upgrade. Juergen and Vikram will say more about it. All of this we will do the Danone way, which brings me back to our culture and capabilities. Danone has always been known as a company with a unique culture, one that combines our genuine entrepreneurship with our social and environmental responsibility. A culture of brilliance at brands, brilliance at innovation, but also execution and delivery, a down to earth, can do, get good culture. Danone has always been also known for being a very special talent breeder, which attracts, develops and retains the best. We still have many elements of this culture, but we want to renew all of it and more. This is something we are committed to as a team. Speaking of the Comex team, and you've met a number of them yesterday, we have completed and strengthened it over the last months by significantly stepping up our functional capabilities. We have separated the role of General Secretary from the one of our CHO and appointed Laurent -- where Laurent is at the bottom end over there. Laurent was an experienced Danoner as our General Secretary. We recruited Roberto, and Roberto is in the second row, so that you can see him as our Chief -- or as our new Chief Human Resource Officer. Roberto is, as you've all seen, a top-class professional. Another top class professional who's going to be soon on stage, Vikram, joined Danone as our Chief Operations Officer and will help us raise the performance of Danone's operation but also, importantly, make it future-ready. One thing that is new is we decided to bring innovation back at the core of what we do, creating a position of Chief Research, Innovation, Quality and Food Safety Officer that of Isabelle, who is not yet with us, will assume starting from April. And we also put our sustainability together with strategic business development in the hands of a business person with a strong experience in Danone, Henri. You have seen that, hopefully, for those that were around [indiscernible] in around dinner yesterday, I believe in the power of teams. I believe this makes for a very strong team. But I'll let you judge because you will have many opportunities to interact with them. Making sure I don't forget everyone, besides the one I've mentioned, I think most of them are in the room or at least those that could travel. You know Juergen, who's going to speak right after me. You know also Vero, who is our CEO, International. Shane, who is our CEO for North Am; Bruno, who heads China and North Asia; and Floris who heads Europe. You also have in the room Nigyar, our Chief Growth Officer; and Jean-Marc, our Head of SN. I showed the team because I said I believe in teams, I believe in the power of teams. We, as a team, are committed to drive genuine meritocratic and performance-based culture, one that is rewarding strong business delivery achieved in a sustainable way, and our strong leadership. Part of this will be delivered through different long-term and short-term incentives with our simpler KPIs and more upside potential. Short-term incentives are now mainly based on sales growth, level of recurring operating margin and a cash-related target for the economic component, together with a set of more individual targets. As for long-term incentive, after introducing our TSR in performance metrics last week, we will recommend to the AGM to put -- to change the like-for-like sales growth for EPS, which better reflects our commitment to deliver profitable growth. I was just mentioning our very unique culture based on a long history of combining entrepreneurship and social and environmental responsibility as first formalized by Antoine Riboud and now expressed in our mission statement of bringing health through food to as many people as possible. Sustainability is at the heart of what we are doing. It is obviously part of our DNA. It is a key factor of attraction and retention of talent. It is a field where we are amongst the industry shapers and are the industry leaders, as you can see from all the rankings, be it from CDP ATNI or other MSCI ESG index. But it needs to be, and it can be, as I have proven in my prior life at Barry Callebaut, a strong business or differentiator and a competitive advantage. Those of you who are in evian today and will visit evian [indiscernible] later in the day, we'll certainly see a glowing example of this. This is why Henri as Chief Sustainability Officer has a clear mandate: to unify, to streamline and to refocus our sustainability efforts with the ambition of having even more impact where it truly matters. We will remain a global ESG leader, focusing disproportionately on what either makes us stronger, today and in the future, or protects our license to operate, hardwiring performance and purpose. In the end, I am convinced that our sustainability will only be sustainable over time if it is truly impactful and economically sustainable. So with this, I hope that you have a clear understanding of where we start from and where we are heading to. I think you will be convinced, I hope you will be convinced, after the other presentation today, that the team here is confident that it can renew Danone. And on this, I will leave you in the very capable hands of my friend, Juergen. So Juergen, over to you.

Thank you, Antoine, and good morning to all of you. Also from my side, a very warm welcome to our Capital Market Event here in evian. It's a great pleasure to share with you this morning how our new strategy is going to translate into concrete and tangible value creation. I will be guiding you through following sections, as you can see on the screen. First, to walk you through our new profitable growth algorithm; in the second step, to explain our ambition for returns and cash generation and the way we want to enhance our financial policy; and then last but not least, to conclude by giving you visibility on how our financial disclosure is going to evolve from this year onwards. Let's start by looking into our profitable growth model. As you have seen and heard from Antoine, our plan is about putting the consumer back at the heart of everything we do. It's about a company with passion and appetite for growth. Reconnecting with sustainable value creation must start with accelerated growth with an organic growth model. The value and volume play a balanced role in addressing consumer needs. This organic growth is what is going to build operating leverage, a key driver to improve again our gross margin. It will allow us to consistently invest behind our brands. It will enable us to play our role to grow the categories we are operating in. And for this virtuous circle to translate into sustainable value creation, there's no secret, you need 2 things: consistency and discipline in the way we commit to the different strategic building blocks, as well as a true execution-oriented organization to turn great strategies into tangible success. You will see the company with that mindset, and that starts by making the conscious choice of kickstarting our reinvestment immediately as early as this year 2022 to start capturing opportunities the market is offering to us. So 2022 will be a foundational year to us. We will use the entire savings, 100% of what is generated by Local First to fuel our reinvestment, to catch up on a number of areas where we have fallen behind over the last years. We will reinvest into product superiority and differentiation. We will, of course, and importantly, reinvest into our product and brand visibility into A&P into the expansion of our distribution reach. And finally, we will also invest into stepping up our core capabilities like operations, R&I, global marketing and data and IT. Our decision to kick-start reinvestments will obviously have an impact on the shape of our financial equation in 2022. And this is the inflation context you know. However, we are 100% convinced that it's now to start investing into the future of our company. There's a lot of uncertainty looking at year 2022, and visibility remains very low, with inflation trends persisting, currently accentuated by the direct and indirect consequences of the war in Ukraine. Let me try to summarize the different moving parts of the year. Input cost inflation is expected to reach a low to mid-teens level, as we discussed some 2 weeks ago, up from around 8% last year. Based on what we know today, we shall expect inflation to land in the upper end of that range. And of course, we need to recognize that global commodity markets are extremely volatile in this particular moment. We do not know for how long it will last and what shape it can take. In that complex environment, we are preparing ourselves for another year of record-high delivery of COGS productivity. We did around 5% in year 2021, and we intend to further step up our game, delivering more than 5% in 2022. We will continue to leverage pricing and revenue growth management to address the inflation. We will seize all opportunities to price, leveraging the power of our brands. But let's also be extremely clear. We will use pricing to the extent that it does not jeopardize the competitiveness of our positions. In summary, we are aiming to deliver pricing ahead of the levels achieved in Q4 2021 where we reached as much as 2.5%. Finally, and as I said, 2022 will be a foundational year for us. We have decided to reinvest the totality of the savings generated by Local First, 100% of it, to kick start a sustainable journey of profitable growth with maximum value creation over the mid- and long term. Our guidance for 2022 is, therefore, reflecting our clear commitment to reinvest consistently and intentionally to rebuild our growth momentum while navigating through a moment of high inflation. It's articulated around the 2 pillars you see on the screen. Our organic growth is expected to be between 3% and 5% versus previous year, and this growth is definitely expected to be price-led. And our recurring operating income is expected to be above 12%. Needless to say that this guidance is built with what we know today, especially when it comes to the direct and indirect consequences of the war in Ukraine. Now this year, 2022, is obviously only the first year of the new chapter which we are opening. And we are clearly working for the long-term year. Let me walk you through the different parts of our equation. Let me start with organic growth. Over the last few years, we have underperformed our categories. Antoine was mentioning it. We have been growing at below 3% most of the years. We will accelerate organic growth, shifting from being a structural underperformer versus our categories to become progressively a true outperformer, growing sustainably in the 3% to 5% range. And not only do we ambition to accelerate organic growth, but we do also strive for a more balanced model, where volumes, price and mix, each of them, plays a key role. A higher and more balanced growth means that we will be able to better utilize our assets, stopping the erosion of our gross margin, driving true profitable growth, thanks to better leverage of our fixed costs and assets. This virtuous circle continues with investments. A balanced growth model and operating leverage will let us grow again our gross margin. It will enable us to consistently invest behind our brands, behind our growth, behind our commercial plans. And finally, fixed cost and overheads, Local First will definitely allow us to adjust them down to a level that is consistent with industry standards. And this is where we wanted to be for the mid- and for the long term: competitive and just focused on the right capabilities. And all of this together enables us to grow our recurring operating income faster than our top line in a way that is sustainable, one that creates predictable, long-term value. Let's go a little bit deeper in each of those 5 building blocks of our aforementioned model to give you some more perspective. The growth bridge, which you see here, illustrates the drivers of our future organic growth. Let me just insist you on the illustrative dimension of that bridge. In other words, the size of each box is not necessarily reflective of its relative contribution to our growth acceleration. We conducted, over the last few months, a deep and holistic review of our portfolio that allowed us to clarify the state and the role of each of our portfolio sets. As explained by Antoine, a bit more than half of our portfolio is considered as core. And here, the intention is very clear. We want to get more out of it. Accelerating growth in the core will be about putting greater focus with the right level of A&P, the right level of R&I investment, but also with a different attention to the way we deliver on the basics. We've had some early successes over the last months, as you know, with brands like Oikos, Actimel or Aptamil, but we must and we can do much more. Second, we're going to boost our winners, which represent around 20% of our revenues. They will benefit from a significantly higher weight of investments to fuel faster growth and support accelerated rollout initiatives. High-protein brands and Dairy or our specialized pediatrics in Early Life Nutrition are very good examples of winners that we're going to boost over the next periods. While we are going to push the winners of today's portfolio, we will aim also to develop or acquire others with high level of precision. Finally, accelerating growth is about addressing the underperformers, especially considering the relatively concentrated portfolio we are having. We are going to change the gears here, Antoine mentioned it, tackling those challenges much more proactively and with determination, a must as this is an important building block. We will not harvest the benefits from driving the core and boosting the winners if their growth is offset by a few dilutive underperformers. We will, therefore, address the underperformers with [ noted ] boost. There will be no sacred cows, which means that for those that we cannot fix organically, we'll be looking at other ways to create value. All combined, these 3 blocks will allow us to accelerate organic growth within the 3% to 5% range, bringing us from a situation of past underperformance versus our markets to one of sustainable competitive growth. Sustainable competitive growth means also a more balanced growth model. As I mentioned earlier, we have been focusing too much on the value part of our growth and have been paying too little attention to the underlying volume part of it. And as a result, our top line has been structurally declining in volumes, mostly driven, as you know, by our Dairy category, but not only. Moving forward, we will progressively restore the volume dimension of our growth model. We are, as we speak, recovering volumes in Waters. We will focus on restoring also progressively volume growth in our largest category, as mentioned, Dairy. Mix has been, over the last few quarters, an important driver of our growth, with some of it thanks to the post-COVID recovery. And we have definitely room here to step up the sustainable contribution by getting our innovation model right, focusing on fewer and bigger innovations that will translate into better contribution from mix, both on the top line but also on the bottom line. And with stronger contribution from volume and mix, we can, in fact, rely less on pricing. Pricing will remain an important driver, navigating through inflation, like the moment we are in today, but shall overall provide a much more balanced contribution in the past. Stronger contributions from volume and mix also mean that we will be able to grow back our gross margin. I will be brief on the chart because Vikram, our Chief Operations Officer, will dive into it in a few minutes. Reversing the trend on volumes will make us better sweat our existing asset base where we have significant headroom to leverage installed capacities. In parallel, we will continue to drive our efficiency agenda, confirming the productivity ambition, which we revealed in November 2020. As I mentioned earlier, we're having concrete plans in place to deliver 2022, a new record level of productivity that's more than 5%, and we have the ambition to keep it at comparable high level also in the future. Concluding, we will be obsessed and focused on operating leverage and efficiency to key drivers of our value creation model. Moving to fixed cost, and let me be short and to the point. The Local First transformation is enabling us to adjust our fixed costs down to a level that is consistent with industry standards. We will make frugality, cost consciousness part of our culture and natural behavior with the aim to preserve post Local First, a competitive cost level, while of course using, Antoine mentioned it, the opportunity to rebuild key capabilities to drive profitable growth. This is of the essence because those savings in fixed costs, the EUR 700 million, are the springboard for our reinvestment journey, which we are going to start as of now, as of this year. Now where are we going to invest? It starts with the competitiveness of our portfolio and the value we bring to the consumer. Concretely, we will reinvest into the superiority and the sustainability of our products in their formulation, in their design, in their packaging to future proof our core. Around EUR 200 million will, therefore, be reinvested here to ensure that we always have the best product from a taste, from a texture, as well as a look and feel perspective. Then it's about capabilities. We will also invest here another EUR 200 million in stepping up core capabilities in global and local functions. Let me highlight here especially IT and data, where we have the opportunity to make our business decisions truly data-enabled. What does it mean concretely? It means that we will double down on fueling our e-commerce teams, leveraging the first- and second-party data, which is in our hands, to better understand the consumer journey. We will also digitalize our end-to-end supply chain. We're going to use artificial intelligence to further enhance our forecasting accuracy as well as to develop real-time route-to-market capabilities. Last but not least, we will reinvest around EUR 300 million in brand support and go-to-market. I think Antoine was saying, it's extremely clear in his diagnosis, we have been underfunding our brands, running on too little A&P. We will make sure that our brands get at least their fair share of voice. And we will create the visibility our brands deserve to communicate on their superiority and differentiation. Our investments in that area will enable us to catch up to become, again, competitive in the marketplace. Here, again, let me be very clear. This envelope will not be sprinkled democratically across the portfolio. We make clear choices and allocate resources in a way that it maximizes value creation. That concludes into the profitable growth model shown before and leads to our midterm financial ambition. As we are rebuilding a sustainable model, we need to go at the right speed and in the right order. After rebuilding the foundations in year 2022, we will focus in '23 and '24 on establishing our balanced organic growth model. That means investing significantly, not only behind the short term but also behind the midterm plans, especially on rebuilding an impactful innovations pipeline and stepping up our excellence in execution. During this first phase, we are going to grow our margins faster than the top line, yet with a more moderate magnitude of margin expansion. This will create the condition post year 2024 to start outperforming the categories. We will, in this second phase, materialize the benefits from the enhanced operating leverage but also get the P&L -- but also get into the P&L the results of our portfolio management. This combination will drive an accelerated margin expansion towards a mid-teens level. This overall ambition is then translated into the formal guidance for year 2022 to 2024, as already displayed by Antoine -- '23 to '24, sorry, with organic growth between 3% to 5% and our recurring operating income growing faster than the top line. We also guide on our ROIC with sequential improvement over the period and the dividend stable or growing year-on-year. But let me come back to the latter 2 elements in just 1 minute. And just let me take a sip of evian before we go to the next part. This next session is exactly about our ambition on capital returns on the way we will drive cash generation in our financial policy. Let me start with capital allocation priorities. We will put discipline on increasing our returns at the center of our company. We are now since a couple of years, and you know that, traveling at the high single-digit level of ROIC, ending last year with 8.7%, which we can definitely not be happy about. We have the clear ambition to sequentially improve the situation towards double-digit territory, and we are very clear on the drivers and the priorities. Priority #1, and I trust we were very clear this morning, is to significantly invest into the enablers for accelerated profitable growth. But we will also change the gears on portfolio management, the way we'll intentionally and this impact [ rotate ] our portfolio. And last, we will restore focus on cash generation, making a rigorous management of our CapEx and working capital a company-wide topic rather than only a topic for the finance community. This results into a clear financial policy where we will deliver consistently attractive shareholder returns with stable or growing dividends year-on-year. And finally, we maintained a healthy balance sheet, protecting our strong investment rating to ensure value creation and financial flexibility. When it comes to investing into profitable growth, we will be paying strong attention on how to allocate our capital, with the right balance between boosting short-term performance and building midterm growth avenues. Disciplined business case management and commitment to returns will be the name of the game. This is true for our P&L investments where we are going to invest -- reinvest the full EUR 700 million arising from Local First. But this is also true for the nonrecurring investments, which are mainly now about executing the remainder of Local First. As you know, our categories are not very capital-intense. And we believe that the level we have spent over the past years with a maximum of 4.5% is just right. However, we've been much more demanding on returns and allocate higher proportions behind growth projects. Let me be a bit more clear and concrete on the ways we will allocate our resources to maximize value creation. First, we are going to prioritize and fund sufficiently our winners, no surprise; we'll then ensure a competitive level of support for our core while selectively investing into seeding for the future. On the other side, we'll be much more demanding than in the past when allocating funds to our underperformers. Our focus here will be to fix the situation while not to burn resources. Return on investment will become the single most important KPI, but it's not only about the way we allocate our cash. It's also about tracking the delivery on business cases and commitments. And here, we will be extremely rigorous, strengthening our processes where it matters. We have, for example, just recently implemented the central control tower to validate and track all significant global and regional transformation projects. This delivers already the first results. We have decided to supercharge 25% of critical programs where we have deprioritized or shaved some less impactful ones. We have also tightened the governance for CapEx authorization with a CapEx Committee, allocating annual budgets according to business cases and monitoring returns at different stage gates. This is not about overprocessing our company; it is just about creating discipline and focus on performance and returns. A quick but certainly important word on portfolio management as this is a key building block of our strategy. After having completed an in-depth analysis, which confirmed the relevance of our global category portfolio, we see scope for rotating around 10% of company sales. That means that we will prune our portfolio much more actively than in the past, while we will aim for selected bolt-ons and some seed investments. And here, the criteria are extremely clear, and we will, with Antoine and with the Board, be vigilant in the strict application. On the disposal side, we will build on the holistic portfolio review we conducted. We will dispose of assets we believe do not fit with our strategy, assets that are dilutive to our company's growth and margin prospects, not contributing to our value-creation agenda. On the acquisition side, words are also crystal clear. We are talking about primarily bolt-on acquisitions that must be value creative and have a clear contribution to our midterm guidance. An acquisition must bring something to the table, tangible, strengthening market positions, bringing new access to new markets, adding new capabilities, technologies or brand investments. We will complement our activity also with some selected seed investments to build progressively the foundations for future growth avenues. We will execute this portfolio rotation over the next 3 years with determination and there's no taboo, Antoine mentioned that, while taking the time to maximize the value creation from this stream. And last but definitely not least, we will manage the level of cash generation much stronger. As year 2021 has been demonstrating a disciplined management of CapEx and working capital can enhance significantly our cash conversion. We will, therefore, maintain the capital expenditure level, as I said, at below 4.5%. However, we make sure that we are getting more out of the spend by focusing on projects with predictable, attractive returns, supporting our growth and efficiency agenda. At the same moment, we aim to further expand our working capital, optimizing our operating cycles, aligning objectives and targets across the organization, especially in close cooperation with Vikram. We believe we have opportunities here for sustainably higher levels of working capital. To conclude, first, we will drive capital allocation, portfolio management and cash generation with discipline and rigor, aiming to sequentially improve our ROIC over the period towards double-digit territory, starting from the 8.7% we have finished last year with. Second, we are committed to sustainable and predictable shareholder returns, maintaining our dividend flat or growing year-on-year while securing a healthy balance sheet with an EBITDA or net debt ratio of below 3x. Before concluding, let me finish by an important element. We are obviously very conscious with Antoine and the whole executive committee that we need the right KPIs, not only to monitor our performance but also to entertain the right discussions on how to improve it. And so in that spirit, we are going to adapt our financial disclosure so that we can have better discussions with you, our shareholders, with the whole financial community in January. Starting from our next publication, Q1 '22, in just a few weeks from now, we are, therefore, implementing several changes. First, we will adapt our financial communication to the new geo-centric company organization. That means that we will report our performance with granularity on 4 macro zones, which I will show you in just one second on the next chart. And by moving into a geo-led financial reporting, we will maintain the existing global category reporting on both top line and on margins for EDP, for Specialized Nutrition and for the Waters category. And finally, we will also adopt the way we report our organic growth. The mix component will be grouped with volumes instead of with price as up to now. When it comes to our geographic performance, thank you for putting the slide, we will, starting from Q1, reported performance of those 4 macro zones, which are here on the screen of Europe, North America, China with Northern Asia as well as the rest of the world. The rest of the world zone comprising basically our businesses in more emerging markets across Asia, CIS, Africa and Latin America. And you'll see our indicative numbers for 2021 on net sales and on margins, and Veronique will, in the next section, go a bit deeper into the characteristics of each of those zones. You will also find the metrics behind those zones in our categories in the Appendix of the documents, which have been shared today. We believe that the totality of those changes will enhance transparency, give better clarity on our performance and will reflect the improvements we start to implement in the business as we speak. We are very much looking forward to open this new chapter for our company to put our new strategy into actions and create tangible financial value. With those final remarks, I would close the financial part of the CME and hand the microphone over to Véronique. Thank you very much.

Hello, everyone. I'm Veronique Penchienati. I am CEO International and very happy to be with you today. You heard from Antoine and Juergen how we intend to reconnect to sustainable value creation. And I want to illustrate a bit more in detail how we will win where we are. First, we operate as one, leveraging the benefits of our Local First transformation to deliver more growth and more efficiencies. Local First is now implemented in countries, in zones, in global function. Teams are in place with renewed energy and eagerness to win in each market. Our 4 macro zones that Juergen just presented are Europe; North America; Greater China, Oceania and North Asia; and Rest of the World, 4 Danone powerhouses with leadership position across categories, building on unique assets. North America. Shane will explain later the Transform to Win journey started 1 year ago. Europe. Our business was born in Europe more than 100 years ago. So it is natural that Europe is the most balanced zone from a category coverage point of view. With EUR 8 billion turnover and a margin above 16%, we are profitably leading the Dairy, Plant-based, Water and Specialized Nutrition categories with our iconic brands, Danone, Actimel, Activia, Alpro, Aptamil and Nutricia, to name a few. In Europe, we will accelerate our profitable growth journey across categories, fully leveraging our new organizational backbone. And you will hear from Floris later in the breakout. Our Greater China, Oceania and North Asia region is obviously a very important one for Danone. With sales above EUR 2.5 billion, it is our most profitable zone, building on a unique presence in infant nutrition, adult medical nutrition and functional beverages. Bruno will share with you how we intend to maintain our growth momentum and resilience in this strategic region. Finally, our Rest of the World zone regroups activities in Asia, CIS, Africa, Middle East and Latin America. This is an important zone for Danone as well with high growth prospect but very high volatility as well. Leveraging our unique mix of categories, our leading local brands and the versatility of our operation across categories will allow us not only to step up growth but also improve profitability. As we deploy Local First, we strive to find the right balance between local centricity, which give us consumer and customer proximity, speed of execution and as well cost efficiency, while at the same time, leveraging global scale and expertise with one unified organization in each marketplace operating across categories and across channels and supporting by strengthened global expert function. We benefit from scale, synergies and expertise. And therefore, we are stronger, more resilient and more impactful in our execution. Our products will be more widely available across channels. Our innovation will have more impact on revenue and profit, and we will accelerate in digital as a driver of growth and efficiencies. And we are seeing already very concrete proof points. Let me start by delving into commercial execution. First, in Germany, early '21, we have decided to merge field force in retail for our Dairy, Plant-based and Waters portfolio. This has allowed to step change our in-store execution. More stores are visited by our teams. And as a result, we increased our numeric distribution in all categories, and as well, we significantly improved the quality of our presence with, for instance, more secondary placement. This has translated into solid growth and share gains, Danone being the fastest-growing FMCG company in Germany in 2021. Second, in the U.K. We have a EUR 1 billion-plus business with a balanced presence in Specialized Nutrition, Dairy and Plant-based and Water categories. In Water, we have a strong distribution model in fast-growing channels like convenience stores. Operating now as one team in the country for all Danone categories allow us to start using our Water route-to-market to expand the distribution of our Plant-based beverages. Indeed, our leading Water references are distributed in 75% of convenience stores versus only 50% for Alpro beverages, a unique opportunity to fill numeric distribution gap. Same goes for food services and coffee chains where Alpro will benefit from the established position of evian and Harrogate. My last example is Mexico where we have 2 strong and sizable business in Dairy and Waters. 50% of our business is sold in traditional trade with 1 million-plus proxy outlets where we have a 50% national numeric distribution. We tested in '21 the opportunity of merging sales force and route-to-market for Dairy and Waters in small cities. And results are extremely positive, allowing to increase the number of outlets selling 2 categories instead of one by 38%, delivering 10% cost efficiencies by merging our route-to-market and warehouses and increase our overall total numeric distribution by close to 20%. Growth, competitiveness and category expertise will guide us in the regional deployment of this approach, merging sales force where it adds scale and impact, mainly small cities, while keeping dedicated sales force per categories in our stronger regions like Mexico City, for instance. Besides commercial execution, the second topic I want to address is innovation. Antoine mentioned it, the innovation model over the last few years has not had enough impact. We have over-innovated, launching too many innovation to enter spaces which are not sizable enough and not being patient and consistent with our investment to grow them to scale. At the same time, in some growth spaces, we were too slow and not disciplined enough in focusing on scalable bets that can build sustainable growth momentum year-on-year. As part of our new operating model, we have started to deploy a new innovation approach in all countries with enhanced discipline, aiming to drive less but bigger projects, deliver bigger, higher mix and higher profit and balance better our innovation pipeline between short-term and midterm horizon to expand where we are and seed for future. And this starts in 2022. We are putting greater focus on driving competitiveness of our core business. We are reducing the number of projects by 20%. We are focusing on scalable big bets. More than 60% of our innovation in 2022 will be multi-country platforms. And we are delivering innovation with higher mix and margin versus company average. Let me share with you some of our 2022 big bets, truly key for our value-creation journey. Not milk, plant-based beverage. It is a key innovation to continue leading and reinvented the plant-based category, moving from ingredient-based to benefit-based proposition. It was launched in Germany in '21 with strong consumer and customer response, and it proved to be a true category builder with no cannibalization on our Alpro ranges sourcing consumer mainly from milk. It will be rolled out across Europe and Americas in 2022. Another trend we are capitalizing on is protein. Our journey start in 2019 with the launch of YoPRO in Australia. Today, YoPRO is close to EUR 200 million turnover, present in 17 markets with a higher net sales per kg and margin versus Dairy average. Priority is to continue increasing penetration on the core business, also rolling out in new markets and building selected new usage occasion-based food forms like pouches, for instance. What is interesting as well is that beyond the protein for performance platform, we have as well experimented in some markets, high protein for health and wellness like the launch of Skyr under Danone brand. This had very promising results. And here again, Skyr formats will be rolled out further in many countries under Danone, light and free, Activia with relevant 2 brands proposition. Water. On Water, we will double down on sparkling. We started the journey in 2021, expanding the strong equity of our plain Water brands to the fast-growing and profitable sparkling segment. We will resolutely accelerate in 2022 with the extension of our premium global brand, evian, into sparkling that you can test during the presentation. We will do that in the U.K., in North America and key export markets. We will also continue the expansion of our local brands from plain to sparkling in Spain and Poland notably. Last, Specialized Nutrition. In 2022, we are rolling out a new platform for our $3 billion- plus worldwide brand, Aptamil, combining both renovation of our core and consumer-centric innovation supported by leading science. This platform started to be deployed successfully in 2021 with Aptamil Classic Palm Oil-free renovation and Aptamil Organic launch. 2022 will be the full deployment worldwide with new integrated communication platform, new visual identity and 2 major science-based innovation to best serve the needs of our men's and babies, a unique formula for mix feeding and a dedicated formula for babies born with C section have enhanced higher risk of allergy. This new competitive platform executed with excellence and supported by increased A&P investment will allow us to fully capture the [ fast-growing ] momentum regain on the infant formula category we are experiencing notably in Europe. We are as well preparing the innovation of tomorrow. We are testing ideas in a number of markets in a way that allow us to nurture and prove them against clearly defined success criteria before we scale them across geographies faster than before. Let me take Aptamil as an illustration. We are seeding in some markets new food form with premeasured tabs, a unique and breakthrough technology for a simpler and more convenient usage. Nutritionally complete kids milk formula, great opportunity to extend Aptamil immunity franchise to preschool or school-age kids. And for the first time, blended with the base of Dairy and Plant-based ingredients. The new Dairy and Plant formula will be launched in the Netherlands. And last but not least, beyond piloting innovation, our global scientific teams are preparing our next patented scientific innovation, supported by clinical studies, which will be shared with the scientific community mid-2022 in [indiscernible], so more to come later. Let me now spend a couple of minutes on digital. The speed of digitalization in our industry has increased exponentially over the last 10 years, COVID with [ knock out ] being an accelerator of changes in consumer behaviors. We have built some pockets of excellence in Specialized Nutrition around 4 priorities: number one, consumer engagement and health care professional engagement. Before COVID, 95% of our contact with health care professionals were face-to-face. Today, 50% of our interactions are digital, allowing to cover 50% more health care professional. This was enabled by a full upskilling of our teams supported by a strengthened data and tech backbone. Number two priority, always-on analytics, tracking the ROI of our investment to make smarter, data-driven resource allocation. Number three, direct access to consumer health care and first-party data. We collect them through our Aptaclubs in 28 countries, through our care lines fully integrated in our brand engagement ecosystem and through personalized services we offer to consumers beyond our products, like growth immunity digital tracker that Bruno will detail in the China presentation. Last but not least, e-commerce acceleration, which is today more than 20% of our Specialized Nutrition turnover. The digital transformation of our Specialized Nutrition business is instrumental to our profitable growth journey and will be pursued with determination and speed. In parallel, we will leverage relevant expertise for our total Danone portfolio. I will close the digital part with e-commerce. Our online sales are now exceeding EUR 2 billion, accounting for more than 10% of total Danone turnover growing double digit. It was achieved by a significant acceleration across all categories, making e-commerce a key contributor to the overall growth of the company. Over the last 2 years, we have engaged into a deep transformation and acceleration of this business and have achieved leading position in our categories in many markets. Beyond growth, it gives us as well more direct relationships with our consumers, understanding their needs, getting their feedbacks and offering them as well full experiences and services. But we can do more, and we will do more. The new organization we have put in place include a step-up in e-commerce capabilities. In all countries, we have now dedicated e-commerce team working for all categories and gathering multiple function, data, search, sales, content, supply chain. Since 2021, the number of Danoners dedicated to e-commerce has increased by 20%. With the support and expertise of the global e-commerce acceleration unit that is in place today, these teams will focus on 2 priorities: continue stepping up in execution, omnichannel campaign effectiveness, performance tracking, perfect online execution and as well, steering new partnerships and new business model, be it fast delivery players, acceleration of direct-to-consumer or experimentation in B2B. At the same time, we will double our e-commerce media investment to continue leading in that crucial channel. Before I close, let me say a few words on investment in general. Antoine and Juergen said it. Fueling reinvestment on our brands is in the most priority to propel us back to the growth and share gains trajectory we want. We will spend more, and we will do it with discipline, both at the company level and at country level. It's a combination of clear portfolio strategy and choices at company level, together with clear commitment to execution and disciplined reinvestment on our core portfolio and our winners that will translate into growth and market share gains. At country level, we are also bringing a much more focused approach to resource allocation through the lens of efficiency and effectiveness, allocating our investment in each country to brands and channels with highest potential, focusing our media investment behind more efficient integrated campaign. Step-changing our working, nonworking E&P ratio by leveraging the scale of our global brands and our in-house digital assets production capabilities. In 2021, despite flat E&P overall, we managed to increase media on some brands NGOs, and it worked. More media behind our Water brands in Europe, behind Actimel worldwide, behind Aptamil in China, all this translated into accelerated growth and significant share gains. To conclude my part, our priorities to win are clear starting now. We are leveraging our new organization for growth and efficiencies. We are stepping up the quality and the impact of our commercial execution. We are driving fewer, bigger and better innovation. We are accelerating on digital and e-commerce with speed and determination. And last but not least, we are kickstarting our reinvestment behind our brands immediately. Altogether, this will put us best to the virtuous circle of growth-driven value creation. Of course, our growth will be powered by strong efficiency programs in operation, and I invite Vikram to tell you more about it.

Thank you, Veronique, and good morning, everyone. Speaking to you -- speaking to all of you for the first time, a brief word to introduce myself, Vikram Agarwal. I took over as the Chief Operations Officer of Danone in January this year. Prior to that, I have a 30-year career with Unilever in working in various parts of the supply chain in different parts of the world. And then Avon Cosmetics, Dole Foods Company and private equity funds Cinven and Clayton, Dubilier & Rice. In this role, I carry direct responsibility for all operations, plan, source, make, deliver. And I also manage the end-to-end design to deliver coordination as we call it. Antoine and Juergen and Veronique has spoken about driving sustainable, profitable superior growth. It is my role and my team's role to power this with brilliant execution, bringing more predictability, more consistency, less surprises. So in the next 15 minutes, I would just like to share with you our context and our priorities. So I'd structure this session in 2 parts. The first is acknowledging the 2022 global context that is particularly relevant to supply chains around the world. How is Danone uniquely poised to tackle this? What are some of the short-term battles that we have in this year as we speak? And what are the foundations we are building for the future? So this is what you know already. You've seen it in media. You've seen it in other investors meeting. We are living in an age of challenged supply chains in a volatile world. We have seen our suppliers' factories and our suppliers' supplier factory getting disrupted from multiple shutdowns, and that, of course, has a whiplash effect down into our supply chains. We are aware of the global container scarcity, the seeds of which were sown in 2020 with a mismatch between new container manufacturing and scrapping and then compounded by the bottlenecks in China. We have seen numerous bottlenecks in trucking. The chart that you see here is about Europe, about the congestion points which are existing in Europe in truck transportation. And lastly, manpower shortages all around. Example here is of truck drivers, particularly relevant to North America, where we find that the supply of drivers has now significantly fallen behind the new fleet acquisition by operators. On top of that, we also live in a challenged operating environment. The food safety standards in most of the countries are being actively reviewed. We are seeing taxes getting more into how you operate, for example, plastics; for example, CO2 emissions; and import tariffs coming out of agricultural protectionism. And lastly, the geopolitical situation. We have still not uncoded completely, the world has still not uncoded the Brexit code. We are having economic meltdowns in Turkey and parts of Latin America. And lastly, and very recently, the Ukraine war. All this has manifested itself into a highly inflationary environment. We experienced high single digit, about 8% inflation in 2021, and this is now accelerating into low to mid-teens. And this is driven by a broad-based acceleration of inflation across our key spend categories, which is milk, packaging, ingredients as well as manufacturing and logistics. So what is helping Danone to uniquely mitigate this? First, Antoine talked about the new constitution of the Comex. And you see in the picture over there, my ex colleague and friend, Isabelle, who is one of the leaders in R&I in the foods industry, soon to join us. And that's me, which are allowing me to single-mindedly focus in my core area of operations. We have got a very clear role defined of the various subfunctions of design to deliver. Design is our powerhouse of science and innovations. Plan is our big integrator. Source is our competitive advantage. Make is our efficiency machine. And Deliver is our customer response. But beyond the organization, let's get into some specifics. Danone is benefited by having a very widely distributed manufacturing network. 80% of what we produce -- of what we sell in the countries is produced in the country. This insulates us from foreign exchange fluctuations because we earn in the same currency as we spend. It insulates us from import tariffs. It insulates us from high volatility in sea freight because we don't move materials long distance. The second is our deep distribution network, which is designed in a way that we can reach, in most places, our customers in a maximum of 2 days' time. We serve over 1 million outlets. And you see in that example, the map of Mexico, which is a direct-to-store model, where alone, we serve 600,000 outlets. So it's a huge number of customers which we have the ability to serve, and this allows us to respond to them with much greater agility than many others would. We have got dedicated R&I centers located around the world. They've all become centers of excellence in their particular categories in Shanghai, in Singapore, in Europe and in North America. Not only can they deliver innovation with agility to the local market, but they also have the ability to translate these innovations across these centers into another region where relevant. I talked about 80% being local-for-local, but here's the balance 20%, which is our global sourcing hubs. Wherever we can achieve upstream scale or we have a story around the[ origin ], like in this place with evian water. Or we have a high-technology product, which we would want to centralize and contain in one hub, particularly, some which are particularly subject to regulatory changes, for example, Early Life Nutrition, there, we have been able to create global sourcing hubs and manage the products for all over the world from there. All of the above give us multiple points of control to uniquely manage the volatility that I spoke about earlier. Here's a short 1-minute video of one of our factories in hubs, the newest and the largest factory that we have in Holland, which makes Early Life Nutrition. [Presentation]

Okay. So what are the short-term battles that we have, as we speak, this year? The first priority is to secure supply and to deliver excellent customer service. We have seen that it became necessary for us to get more directly involved in having control on the upstream feedstocks for our suppliers, wherever we could have significant scale, and we could create a better control on the supply than water converters could. And this has seen us leveraging to go directly into feedstocks like paper, like plastic resins, fruits, palm oil, besides milk, where we have always been significantly upward integrated. Secondly, it's about robust contingent sourcing. So we have tested multiple lanes to act as contingent sources in the event that we have a disruption in the primary source. And we have had quite a bit of success in it, but this success is now being accelerated by our drive for simplification, which sees much more uniformity in product design, so that these switches become smoother. I talked about reaching deeper and reaching wider with our vendor base. Now, I will talk about reaching wider as well. We are reaching out and creating more multi-sourcing options behind our key materials. We are also making our formulations more flexible, so that material, if challenged, can be substituted by another equivalent material quite quickly. This also applies to the way that we are looking at transportation from a scenario where we would be depending on very few transporters for our -- as contracted providers, we are now enlarging the universe to get a better hold on the truck availability market. Secondly, our COGS productivity. As inflation has risen, so has our COGS productivity. Last year, against an inflation of 8%, we delivered the productivity in the region of 5%. This year, with inflation going up, we will certainly do much more than last year. All of this is aided by the strong funnel that we have built over the past few years. And that funnel has created a sort of a blue funnel for us for 2022 and 2023, which enables us to populate these programs. So the task now is more about accelerating these programs and getting the best out of it during the course of the year than really us needing to go back to the white paper and finding new ideas. Our -- we call this -- our relaunch program is called Horizon. And as part of this, we are looking at it much more structurally at 4 blocks: specification management; formulations and packaging; sourcing and manufacturing; and the route to market. And within these 4 blocks, we are picking and identifying opportunities and accelerating them. Thirdly, Juergen talked about it, but a much more disciplined process around how we deploy CapEx to maximize our return on assets, putting CapEx behind our growth categories with precision, at the same time, ensuring that there is a discipline on the financial metrics around it, ensuring that execution is flawless, once we get into the project execution stage. Besides this, operationally, what we are bringing into it, is frugality of CapEx with maximum performance, more from less. This has enabled us to divert more of our CapEx to efficiency and to capacity creation, even while we have reduced the overall envelope of capital investments. So I now come to the last section as to how we are building up capabilities for the future, how we are making Danone operations fit for the future. First, and I've talked about it earlier also, it is imperative to build a resilient and a strategic supply base. Now, I call it resilient, which means about going wider, but I also call it strategic because while we do this, we have to be sure that the strategic relationships with the key suppliers, who are providers of technology and the forward thinking to us, is protected, and we become the preferred supplier -- customers of choice for them. Secondly, an efficient yet flexible manufacturing footprint. I take this in two parts. The first part is what I call the 4-wall efficiency, doing better within the 4 walls of our factory, inserting our assets to the maximum, improving our operating efficiencies, improving our factory yields. And secondly, looking at how our footprint is placed and whether that is still in tune with the growth mix that we have between our categories. For example, Plant-based, certainly investing in more capacities behind it. Third, consolidated and e-enabled logistics. Why do I call it that? We come from a history where we have -- we had 4 supply chains operating in our market. And with Local First, we are now being able to consolidate it into one route to market. Veronique spoke about what is happening on this in the sales side, but then supporting this is the same effort on the distribution side. This helps us harness the synergies, and this also allows us to invest some of these synergies into investing in capabilities in a logistics system, which are suitable for the e-commerce age, being much more responsive and being much more granular in the way we deliver our products to our customers. Lastly, none of this can happen without an end-to-end digitalization of our operations. This is the turbine, which will power everything which I have said. As a part of this, we are looking at powering our factories with digital manufacturing, bringing in new capabilities over there to make our assets perform more optimally. We are now setting up control towers for integrated end-to-end planning, not just within our own operations but linking back to our suppliers and linking forward to our customers. We are also applying digitalization in the way that we innovate and the way we manage our innovation funnel, and we take it forward and bring it to deployment. All this will help us manage our S&OE processes much more optimally, with much more dynamic trade-offs. It will enable us to reduce our working capital, and it will enable us to do real-time tracking of our logistics, leading to higher customer service. So I'll conclude over here with a note that coming into Danone, I see a very rich and a very high-quality asset base. The task is now to accelerate it, to turbocharge it into great performance. Thank you. [Break]

Good morning, everyone. My name is Shane Grant, and I'm pleased to be here with you today, and I hope, first and foremost, that you're all safe and well. I have the pleasure today to talk to you about our North America business, specifically the work we've been doing to redefine our growth strategy, to reignite our market-centric culture, to reattach Danone's largest market to growth. I plan to share this with a specific look at a key, as Antoine described, example and the #1 country-category-selling Danone Yogurt in North America. First, some brief context on the North America business. Noram represents approximately 20% of group revenues, from Yogurt to Creamers to Coffee to Plant-based. The portfolio is balanced across scaled growth segments. It has quality leadership in key categories and is a strong challenger in others. Our footprint is geared to growth from gut health to protein, to permissible indulgence, to flexitarian scale, to the rediscovery of at-home. Underneath the categories are positive structural drivers. Many of these trends have become amplified, and we believe will continue to power more occasions with more U.S. consumers. These trends, together with the strategy for growth for new competitiveness, gives us humble confidence in the sustaining potential in North America. A business with a powerful footprint, strong assets, uniquely geared to consumer trends but also a business that had a clear case for change. The business was underperforming, underperforming our categories, underperforming our peers, underperforming our own expectations. Until 2019, the North America, the business delivered low growth, led by slow or declining performance in core categories. The business had eroded competitiveness across key segments. The business had underinvested in brands, the culture through a hard-fought WhiteWave integration, was too inward-looking. Our goal was to reignite the potential of a powerful North America platform against this diagnosis. To do that. Our focus has been and is 4 things: first, a simple but not simplistic growth strategy, consumer-centric, geared to the right revenue pools with clear portfolio choices; second, a determination of growth opportunities in channels and customer leadership and then ramped commercial execution; third, reinvestment in growth, in our brands and in sustaining capabilities; and finally, repowering our culture towards the market, towards empowerment, towards local accountability, towards purpose as a fuel for our performance. Those imperatives for change led us to 4 growth strategies, 4 areas of focus that frame our actions across all that we're doing: first, growing leading consumer-centric brands, brands with purpose as a source of competitive advantage; second, serving the food revolution with customers, driving commercial excellence with our partners; third, investing in targeted capabilities to sustain and repeat; and fourth, unlocking the power of our people and empowering them to co-own our future. Next, to our growth levers, we're also clear on the definitions of winning for different parts of our portfolio, driving for outsized growth and renewed competitiveness on Plant-Based beverages, focus for sustained winning levels of growth, led by our two biggest segments, Yogurt and Creamers, with scale-up potential in Specialized Nutrition and sustaining market leadership with disproportionate margin progression than organic milk. Finally, Transform to Win, an organization-wide initiative to power strategy to execution. Let me talk briefly about Transform to Win a program that, for North America, encapsulated the principles of Local First in bringing our businesses together, also a program that was executed earlier, April 1 of last year, but foremost a program to enable our strategy and create a market-centric culture. Several focus areas. First, a market-centric organization, one where we aligned category teams to segments, Greek, wellness, plant-based, for example. We will realign customer teams from regions to channels and where we delayer the business. One, where we integrate businesses in a fit-for-purpose manner, Water joining a beverage business unit for scale, Nutricia as a connected but not integrated business to respect a unique model and unique expertise; second, investing in new growth capabilities, digital and e-commerce, revenue growth management and a multiyear plan to modernize our supply chain; third, dedicated emphasis to simplify the business, fewer routines, 20% fewer projects, a more focused pipeline, a multimonth pull-forward of our planning cadence, the fundamentals of ready to sell and ready to execute for co-creation with our customers and better execution outcomes. Fourth, revitalization of our leadership behavior has been clear on the behaviors of a market-orientated culture for our incredible team. Last, a multiyear cost rebase for reinvestments in our business. The first outcomes in North America, the signs of market grip for our strategy and our transformation are encouraging. We have today the strongest levels of both growth and competitiveness, since the known and WhiteWave came together in 2017, a few specifics. Undoubtedly, a COVID boost in 2020 and a business that adapted to compete in that moment, category, package and supply chain adaptations, channels and customer shifts, a business that's been able to accelerate again in 2021 in growth and in competitiveness. A focus on the core, our two biggest and margin-accretive categories, Yogurt and Creamers, has driven solid outcomes. Acceleration from newly integrated SN and Water, it's really important for us in the change year. Also, an unfinished business, all segments growing again, but still a key competitive challenge and Plant-based to address. And finally, our core Yogurt category. Dairy has been our #1 strategic focus, #1 in the sequence of a North America reset. It's back to growth, accelerated in 2021 and winning share. It's this business that I would like to focus on for the balance of our time together. Yogurt is an $8 billion segment in the U.S., the largest revenue pool in our business, the largest profit pool. Our Yogurt business was not growing, not winning, and the category was not vibrant. In 2020, we got clear on the focus areas to shift this result. Our diagnosis showed clear strengths but also some clear opportunities. First, with a unique portfolio, we had leadership in probiotics, kids and plant-based, but we were slow and not sufficiently challenging in Greek. While we had market-leading channel reach, we had commercial execution gaps on pricing, on pack formats, on core availability, on channel segmentation and on customer leadership. While there were multiple-trend tailwinds, gut health, low sugar, high protein, these trends were not fully harnessed in our brands or, indeed, in the category. While Yogurt sustained a deep and loyal user base, category recruitment had stalled with key occasion losses to convenience or health-focused alternatives. We spent the last 18 months deploying a new strategy, leveraging our portfolio with more precision, modernizing key brands, launching more scaled innovation, targeting new commercial growth levers and addressing execution gaps, reinvesting in key capabilities for product differentiation, for efficiency, for selling and mobilizing a newly focused organization with a will to grow the category and win. Early results are strong. The category has accelerated to its highest growth since 2015, and our business has accelerated further, shifting from declining sales and share loss to mid-single-digit growth and share gain. It's our conviction that Yogurt is a growth category and that this is repeatable. Let me share a bit of detail on what we've done but also what's next. Our strategy reboot was and is founded in the consumer. We understand the drivers of Yogurt consumption for specific functional needs, for a balance of taste and health, for fuel or for reward. We know the detailed profiles and consumer segments. We have rebuilt this consumer closeness in line with our category leadership and in line with a consumer-centric culture. Danone has a unique portfolio and one that reaches all major segments in Yogurt. With this, we established clear multiyear portfolio roles. First, challenge and redefine Greek: challenge because the segment is clearly the biggest today; and redefine because of the imperative for us to be more competitive. Our actions here and have been to compete head-to-head with newly differentiated offers but also shift the segment, redefine it with more contemporary benefits, simple ingredients, lower sugar, higher protein and contemporized brands. Second, strengthen clear leadership and wellness. From nutrition for growing kids to gut health for adults, this is a Danone stronghold and a focus for us to drive new relevance. Third, lead the next category growth engine of Plant-based. Easily the fastest-growing segment in Yogurt, on track to be $1 billion, a segment that has grown at 10x the category and where we have 10x the share of the next player and where we can absolutely lead growth. As Antoine described, this is a place to see the future. Finally, everyday basics. The original Yogurt, the original brand Danone with significant latent equity, a segment we think has the opportunity for rejuvenation as a category entry point. So a strategy that starts with deep consumer understanding and a unique portfolio to leverage. Let's look first at Greek and two strategy-to-action examples. First, Oikos. Our strategy here, compete head-to-head on core Greek and shift the segment, shift it towards lower sugar, higher protein. We've executed three things: first, launched a newly restaged, differentiated core Oikos, a lower sugar, superior taste, creamy texture, 50% more fruit, co-developed with our biggest customers; second, our restaged Oikos Triple Zero, a 15-gram protein, zero added sugar, zero artificial sweetener, 0% fat proposition, new packaging, accelerated investment, vertical screen-to-shelf commercial pressure; third, the launch of Oikos PRO, perhaps our most assertive segment shift in action, a category redefining 20-gram proteins with zero added sugar and the lead for a stronger-makes-everything-better positioning. The results to date have been strong for the trademark, a double-digit shift in growth and winning share. Early for Oikos core but trial above Two Good at the same time in its launch: for Triple Zero, high single-digit retail sales growth; and for PRO, category-leading trial and repeat, with 60% of that growth incremental to the brand. Next, three things: continue to invest, equity and awareness building; second, broaden reach, expanding formats core from 0% to 2% to 3%, new varieties, PRO with new flavors and package diversification, new entry and upsized formats; and third, grow occasions PRO with drinks, with potential beyond Yogurt. Antoine shared already the Oikos PRO work. Let's look at some Triple Zero work from 2020 and 2021, when Oikos was an NFL sponsor. [Presentation]

Second, Two Good. A brand created and launched only 3 years ago and one that has established a 2x leadership position in the low-sugar segment. Two Good, over the last 2 years, has become the fastest-growing major Greek Yogurt brand in the U.S. It is the single-largest core Greek category growth driver. The category reframe here is great taste with only 2 grams of sugar. Our strategy: boost the winner, invest and expand, invest behind a compelling proposition, expand with more customers, more channels, the availability runway alone can double the business, expand with new package formats and expand the product. The product you see here, Good Save, is a customer-specific extension. It's the Two Good promise but made with verified, rescued fruit at a key customer target in the U.S. This became the #1 SKU in the segment, accelerated total brand velocity, and as a proposition, we will expand nationally in 2022. This is our model for the integration of purpose and performance. From Greek to wellness, a segment where we have clear leadership, #1 in kids, led by Danimals, #1 in adults, led by Activia. With an objective of kids recruitment and adult retention, we have and are focused on three areas: first, strengthening Danimals' leadership. Here, we're executing fundamentals, strengthening our winning proposition, mom-accepted and kids-loved scale and key retail events and extending strength in drinkables with new formats. Second, extending the #1 organic milk brand in the U.S., Horizon, into a white space for our Yogurt business organic kids. And third, restaging our #1 Yogurt brand globally, Activia. The reemergence of probiotics is clear, and we've modernized the brand with contemporary gut health positioning. We have just launched new equity-enhancing innovation, with a specific focus on immunity and Activia+, and we're building occasion reach in on-the-go with Activia Dailies. Results are strong, with more runway ahead. Danimals has accelerated leadership in kids with consistent mid-single-digit retail growth. Horizon is early, but has velocities approaching that of the segment leader with much more scale potential. Activia growth is robust, consistently high single digits since the restage, led importantly by a new younger users and is on track to become our #1 U.S. Yogurt brand again in 2022. Let's take a quick look at Activia. [Presentation]

Finally, on brand segments, Plant-based. Behind the scaling flexitarian movement, continued product upgrades in what we call Plant-based 2.0, this is a category that reaches more than 1 in 10 U.S. households and has doubled penetration in the last 4 years. This is a category in strong double-digit growth. Our strategy here is to first own the development of the category. We have the top-2 brands: Silk, to drive mainstream trial and So Delicious for plant-based committed. That strategy flows through to price tiering and channel availability. Second, Dairy-like. Dairy-like product solutions, both in segments, where we have Dairy opportunity and in the fastest-growing dairy segments, two examples, Silk Greek and So Delicious low sugar, both reaching into key Dairy growth opportunities but with plant-based. Then Dairy-like execution scale in share of voice and in store. Here, our dual scale, in Dairy, in Plant-based, provides advantage, practically. When we co-merchandise our Dairy Yogurt with Plant-based Yogurt, we see velocity lifts in both. Beyond the specifics of the brand segments, we're very focused on upgrading execution fundamentals. We've made real improvements, and there remains material growth opportunity with customers and in our commercial execution. We have growth opportunity on core availability. Not one of our top-5 Yogurt SKUs is yet at 95% availability. That same opportunity exists across our top-25 packages in North America. We're executing assertively to change this. We have growth opportunity on shelf space. We are accelerating again our quantity of space. We're also unlocking the quality of our space. We're substituting smaller subscale innovation for scale bets. We're pruning our portfolio, rotating more than 20% of our SKUs in the last 18 months to create the space for core. With these actions, we are using space more efficiently, driving velocity per SKU to growth again for the first time since 2016. We have growth opportunity in optimizing and innovating our package formats. We're optimizing pricing strategy on our single-cut portfolio. We're expanding against the growing tubs-at-home occasion. We're also preparing innovation to enter entirely new package segments. Our commercial push is enterprise-wide. We are segmenting the market with more precision by category, by channel, by customer. Our growth algorithm is becoming much more focused. From this, is coming more execution precision. Today, for example, to drive outlet-level growth, we are tailoring our brand and package offerings to specific shoppers in 13 specific channel typologies. We're building revenue growth management capability. We have proven in 2021 that we can drive volume and price mix. Our next evolution is innovating on packaging with the same intensity that we do on product. We have clear growth, user base, margin opportunity and new packages that drive both new brand entry and premiumization. We're making progress towards our top-tier customer leadership ambition. We're partnering in line with our customers' priorities, our new scale and competitiveness in e-commerce and omnichannel being just one example. And our customers are seeing progress. In the Advantage Group rankings, we've moved from bottom 10% of all CPG to the top 30% and the top 5% in key attributes like strategic alignment. These commercial and customer capabilities are and will be key to our growth. Let me conclude by proudly stating that North America remains absolutely work-in-progress. To address our final two strategies, we have progressed growth capabilities like digital, like revenue growth management. And we have supply chain and customer service volatility to navigate, a supply chain to upgrade, a next wave of productivity to deliver. On our people agenda with Local First executed globally, we will now leverage a greater networked organization, pulling on new capabilities and operations in R&I and in category expertise. In our brands and commercial actions, Plant-based beverages are growing but not winning. We have plans to take on that challenge. We've yet to modernize some core brands, Light & Fit is not but can be a growth engine. And we've got significant commercial execution runway. We absolutely, in North America, remain constructively discontent. North America has new growth, new competitiveness. I'm confident that our growth story is unfinished. The team is focused on the market, capable, hungry and together for Danone. Thank you for being part of the session, and I look forward, later in our time together, for any questions you may have, and I hope you enjoy your other rotations with my colleagues.

Good morning, everyone. I am Floris Wesseling. I'm President of the European zone, and I'm here to tell you about the huge growth engine we have across Europe in Plant-based, a category in which we have been a pioneer but one that hasn't touched the limits of its potential by far. In the next 20 minutes, I'll be taking you through the opportunity we see in the Plant-based space. But before going into that, I would like to share with you, in a glance, how the newly established European zone is positioned for strong growth. We have strong historical routes in Europe, with leading positions in all our main categories and have a strong geographical coverage throughout all European countries. As laid out by Veronique, Europe is also the largest region for Danone, with around EUR 8 billion in revenues, combined with a healthy profitability. The transformation we have gone through under Local First, has created a unique model in the way we operate and organize ourselves through a balance between autonomous business units in the countries, combined with highly integrated support structure to drive scale and efficiencies. For example, we have built a strong European D2D organization to fully leverage our scale in manufacturing. Besides that, we have pulled the majority of our R&D resources, allowing our expertise to serve all the markets. The new organization has also allowed us to move our field salesforces from a category-based organization to a channel-based setup. We are well positioned on high-growth categories. We own iconic brands, and our teams are ready to deliver solid growth. A few words on our performance in the different categories. Firstly, Dairy and Plant-based. It remains to be our largest category. It represents about half of our European revenues. It consists of roughly EUR 3 billion in Dairy and EUR 1 billion in Plant-based. In Dairy, we have brought the business back to growth over the recent years, after a decade of decline. This has been done through a stronger, collective focus on our key growth platforms such as immunity with Actimel and high protein with YoPRO. In the majority of our markets, Activia is now contributing to our growth. We continue to fix some of the underperformance in our portfolio, and we're making good progress on that. We, therefore, see potential for continued growth in Dairy, based on our leading position in most markets and continued acceleration on key growth spaces. In Specialized Nutrition, we have a leading position in Infant Milk Formula and Adult Nutrition. On IMF, we have a positive outlook on the back of improved birth rates and stronger category momentum. We are also well positioned on our value-creation journey through our strong innovation pipeline that we are deploying in the markets as we speak. Our unique pediatric portfolio with a leading [ energy ] brand like Neocate also allows for continued growth. Adult Nutrition remains to be a very strong asset with steady growth in aging societies that will play an even more critical role in the future. In Waters, where we are effectively in 5 European markets -- 5 major European markets, we are winning share and capitalizing on a positive post-COVID market recovery. We see potential to continue to lead the category, fully-embedding sustainability for performance, capturing accelerated growth opportunities in small formats and sparkling on all our leading brands. Finally, Plant-based. We've doubled our Plant-based business since the WhiteWave acquisition through strong growth in our historical core markets, the U.K., the Netherlands and Germany, while rolling out Alpro throughout the European continent. We have grown the category that Alpro has invented in the '80s, unlocking Plant-based out of the vegan niche into a booming flexitarian lifestyle, driven especially by younger generations. We are now on a truly pan-European scale and operate profitably well above industry standards. We see continued double-digit growth potential, building on the heritage of the Alpro brand and the power and scale of Danone in the new organizational setup. We will deep-dive now to share how we intend to continue to capture this growth opportunity. As you can see from this chart, the Plant-based category in Europe has tremendous potential for continued growth. There is a momentum to seize with a very visible acceleration of the penetration in recent years. See here the example of Germany, where category penetration has gone from 20% to 35% in the last 3 years, while it took 30 years to grow from 0% to 10%. Yet, despite the acceleration, the category remains largely immature, with significant headroom for growth in our core markets but also in the markets where we expanded to, more recently. Actually, we do not consider any country to be mature yet. With the penetration of around 30%, it means we still have 2/3 of the population that's not yet buying this category. Besides that, if we look at frequency of buying, it's clear that there's an opportunity to better route plant-based products in the daily habits. As we say internally, we are not looking for a few perfect vegans. We are after many nonperfect ones, and those are the vast majority of our consumers. Thanks to our leadership in this category, our pan-European presence and the new organization, we are best positioned to capture this growth and outperform the market. The category is dynamic, and it has been evolving to a new phase of growth. We see two main changes in the market, recently. On the one hand, we've seen the rapid emergence of oat as an ingredient. This has resulted in oat becoming the #1 ingredient in beverages in only 2 years. Although we are a leader in the overall Plant-based category, we are not yet leader in the oat segment, and this is being addressed. On the other hand, the competition has intensified, with many newcomers attracted by the growth potential. This will help to build and develop the category further. We classify different types of contenders, as you see here. However, the private labels, which have become the #2 on the beverage market, requires our strongest attention. Just as oat, this is being addressed now, and I will come back to that later. In short, these new dynamics are impacting the category and the role we play. There are areas where we need to adapt. However, none of these new players is anywhere close to our scale, geographic coverage and portfolio. Acknowledging the changes in the category dynamics, we are and remain to be the undisputed profitable leader in this category. We have been maintaining our market share of around 40% over the recent years. However, we also realized that we have missed some opportunities lately, with 4 main challenges to act upon. First, on our Alpro brand, we've been challenged by the new entrants on brand differentiation. And in the new competitive environment, we will need to increase our investment levels to maintain our leadership. Secondly, we have not been leading the recent evolutions of the category. The proliferation of our innovation led us to defocus from the core, and we need to catch up. Third, we are not at the leadership level we used to be in commercial execution. We are facing challenges on our in-market executions such as the distribution of our core range. We need to catch up in revenue growth management to master price tiers and formats, as we do not yet leverage the full spectrum. Lastly, as Vikram mentioned, we have recently faced challenges in our operations, caused by several disruptions in our supply chain, leading to service-level issues. However, we sustained our strong share leadership, thanks to gains in rollout markets, which has been a priority, while stabilizing our share in core markets. As Antoine described, as our priority, here, we clearly have to fix a few things. Therefore, we have defined a clear action plan to step up our game with 5 key levers to optimize our business model. This will allow us to drive profitable growth and securing our leadership, going forward. It's about brand leadership, innovation and renovation of our portfolio, stepping up the quality of our commercial execution, excellence in operations while continuing the rollout to all European markets through a bespoke model. I will elaborate on all 5 levers mentioned here. But before we go into more details of the 5 levers, I want to emphasize the importance of the powerful and unique assets we have that are the foundations of our success. We will capitalize on these assets to continue to lead. We are the inventors of the category. And over the years, we have built a uniquely integrated model to operate this category profitably at scale. We have a very strong brand. It's one of our jewels. Alpro is the reference of the category and is by far the best known by the consumers. The Alpro brand has very strong resonance and heritage and is well positioned to serve existing and new consumers looking for a superior product with high nutritional value and a great test, an offer that is appealing for the whole family. For example, our growing-up milk for toddlers in the U.K. has one of the fastest rate of sales in the shelf. We are, by design, fully in tune with the sustainability developments, and this belongs to the roots of the brand. We are the only player with true vertical integration of the value chain from upstream expertise and downstream scale, allowing us to have control, agility and efficiency to operate this business above margin standards in the industry. Finally, we are the only truly [ multiplay ] company in the category. We operate multi-ingredients, multi-categories with beverages, yogurts and desserts. We operate multichannel, and we're the only player with a full pan-European presence. Now, I would like to take you through the concrete actions we're taking on our 5 levers. As mentioned, we're stepping up on our communication to drive brand preference and differentiation. Let me show you one of our latest advertising to show you what I mean. [Presentation]

In our communication, we are also able to leverage the strong link we have between our brand equity and our sustainability purpose. Alpro is good for you but also good for the planet. Sustainability is an intrinsic element of the brand mix and has been like that consistently for a long time. Our products are good for your health but also good for the planet. This goes hand-in-hand in everything we do. On our product and portfolio, we will regain leadership in the mind of our consumers through better, bigger and more focused innovations and renovations execution. First, on our existing ingredient-led proposition, which we continue to renovate and innovate, we are catching up on oat. We have improved our relative market share by 10 points in the last year and steadily growing across markets. Another recognition of the strong impact of our oat renovation initiatives is our oat Barista formula that is ranked #1 in blind taste test in the U.K. We are constantly renovating our core, see here also the new look of the fresh beverages range that has just been brought to the market in the U.K. Meanwhile, we are exploring new distinctive ingredients for the future, see the example of Creamy Rye that we will be launching in our Scandinavian market soon, creating uniqueness through a new locally relevant ingredient. Beyond that, we see a clear strategic opportunity to move from simple ingredient-based value propositions to benefit-led ones that are more ownable and able to drive more uniqueness and superiority. We believe that benefit-led propositions will allow us to continue to drive value-up for the category and differentiate versus competition. We show here our two recent examples, one on protein and the other, which we call Not Milk. As mentioned by Veronique, we have launched the Not Milk proposition in a few markets at the end of last year, with very promising results and impact on penetration. For example, Not Milk in Germany sourced over 50% of consumers from conventional milk, and 20% of the consumers are new to the category. As we are not present in milk in Europe, this provides an enormous growth potential without any cannibalization on our business. We're leveraging our European presence and skill to deploy a full rollout throughout Europe in the first half of this year. Meanwhile, we're also preparing the future and continue to lead the way and build the future of the category. We see the opportunity to leverage our expertise to deliver plant-based alternatives to our consumers and patients in our Infant and Medical Nutrition categories. These propositions are being rolled out in the second half of 2022. The other area we need to fix on things is the quality of our commercial execution in all our channels. On our way to commercial excellence, we have opportunities to close distribution gaps, drive perfect execution in retail and expand in other relevant channels. E-commerce is a key opportunity. As most of our portfolio is ambient, we can fully exploit the growth of the online channels. Revenue growth management is another area where we will step up. We will do this by playing with the full-packed price architecture, launching formats to drive penetration and frequency. We still have remaining geographies, where we can enhance our go-to-market model. For example, Spain, where we are transitioning from a distributor model to our own managed route to market in the first quarter of this year. We will capture the benefit of the power of our Spanish organization while removing the cost of the value chain by eliminating the distributor. And lastly, and as already mentioned by Veronique, thanks to our new organizational setup, we are better equipped to expand channel coverage through our field salesforces by leveraging existing Waters and Dairy route to markets in core markets like Germany, U.K. and Spain. It will be important to capture the bounce-back of the away-from-home channels that we expect to see soon. As Vikram mentioned, we are collectively strengthening our end-to-end operations as a company. This will certainly also play out in our Plant-based business. What remains to be a key differentiator versus our competitors is our vertical integration. Thanks to our unique [ sowy ] process, we win on test and have the most integrated process from farm to pack, enabling the most competitive cost. We are currently expanding similar expertise in oat, which will allow us to optimize cost while ensuring consumer preference. We will optimize our manufacturing through leveraging our total European network while building flexibility with a mix of in-house and co-manufacturers. This allows us to continue to efficiently build capacity to support the growth and fix our service-level issues. As a result of our new European organization, we are also optimizing the European logistics network. Our ambient beverages can benefit from the scale we have in Waters, and our chilled products are able to fully benefit from our vast chilled logistic network, thanks to Dairy. This way, we can better utilize our trucks and drive further efficiencies in our value chain. Considering the maturity level of our markets in Plant-based, we have developed differentiating strategies by clusters of markets, as you can see here. In our core markets, we will continue to capitalize on our broad portfolio, brand equity and investments and drive leadership. In our accelerate cluster, we have opportunities to gain share through our core portfolio, stronger execution and overinvesting behind our brand. For the emerging market cluster, we will focus more on establishing the category relevance and instilling our brand. I started sharing with you the strong position we have in Europe throughout our different categories and the opportunities that provides for Danone. It's clear that Plant-based continues to provide tremendous growth opportunities for the future. We know this business best. We are the inventors of the category. We are the undisputed leader. We have built a model to operate it profitably at scale. In a changing world with new competitors and many new opportunities, we are clear on what needs to be fixed, and we are doing that now. Through our 5 steps action plan, we will capture the growth opportunity that plant-based provides in Europe. Thank you.

Good morning. My name is Bruno Chevot. I'm in charge of the China, North Asia zone. Today, I will walk you through the progress we've made and the reason we remain very confident on China potential for Danone. One of the main objectives of this presentation is to share how we have spared no effort to shape a resilient Danone ready to capture growth opportunities in China. You will see that we have built 3 solid business platform with distinctive assets. And now that we are pivoting to Local First, we are creating even better condition to leverage our cross-category strengths to innovate, generate demand and go to market. In this presentation, we'll allocate a fair amount of time to share our perspective on the formula category dynamics in China because we all know how important it is to our success. With China concentrating 20% of the world population, more or less the same in GDP terms, we will all agree that being at scale in China is critical to sustain global leadership. China is not only large but continues to premiumize as urbanization keeps on boosting middle-class growth. It's a marketplace where we can bring added value proposition. Consumers are hungry for innovation, ready to pay more for healthier food and beverages. We have a strong presence on highly valorized large categories. The infant formula, of course, which is half of the world consumption taking place in China, but also the very large ongoing beverage category; the Medical Nutrition, which may look smaller in comparison but growing fast and expected to accelerate further with the growth -- the growing aging population. When putting this in perspective, it's certainly not a surprise that Danone China makes a material contribution to the company top and bottom line. As hinted before, we have built 3 solid business platform with unique assets, and we operate at scale in China with a very compact, tight brands portfolio. The Early Life Nutrition is our largest platform with Aptamil, a mega brand used by millions of Chinese babies. Aptamil is the second largest brand overall and the most successful global infant formula brand in China. We are a digital native business, one of the few sizable businesses, which started as a pure e-commerce model 10 years ago. It certainly explain why we can come from leading digital asset to better engage with consumers to generate local real-world scientific evidence and to do that fast. Our second platform, the beverage China, is hyper-efficient model. The Mizone brand is consumed by more than 350 million urban Chinese. It's the #1 brand in vitamins water and occupies the fifth position within the very large beverage category. With a massive manufacturing footprint, delivering industry-leading productivity and cost-efficient road to market, serving convenience stores, traditional trend, we have a platform which is ready to be stretched into multi-category health portfolio. And finally, our Medical Nutrition business is the undisputable leader on 2 very targeted and highly relevant therapeutic areas; the other 2, feeding in hospital and the pediatric allergy. Present in 90% of top-tier hospitals, we serve more than half of total China hospital patients with a strong reputation among authorities and scientific experts. Let's take a closer look at our beverage platform. We have heard some of your concerns about Mizone, and let me tell you something first. Mizone is back to growth in '21. The market share has been stabilized. The brand is extremely resilient. It's consumed by more than 40% of urban adults who are enjoying the unique sensory profile of Mizone. The brand renovation, the very disciplined in-store execution, combined with our relentless focus on limited SKUs is allowing Mizone to punch with the major players in China and hold a respectable fifth position in this highly competitive market. Our well-controlled and efficient route to market is securing Mizone's presence in more than 3.6 million point of sales. Our industry-leading manufacturing productivity is creating the room to invest behind the brand. We are now ready to stretch Mizone franchise, and we'll invest starting '22 behind zero sugar and sparkling value proposition to recruit new users, tap into new occasions and to put Mizone on a sustainable growth trajectory. I should not forget at this point to mention that we are investing to future proof the model, driving carbon neutrality of our 6 factories and being at the forefront of PET recyclability in China. Let's now take a look at the Medical Nutrition platform, which is well positioned to address prevalent health issue in China. The team has gained respect of health care professional thanks to our leading brands with authoritative expertise in adult tube feeling and pediatric allergy management. Nutrison is the leader of enteral tube feeding, and the brand is present in most of the top-tier hospital. This part of the business belongs to drug very specific category. It is produced locally, ready to harvest the demographic dividends from an aging population. More predictable than fast moving consumer goods, it has delivered consistently double-digit growth over the past years and has potential to expand further, reaching out to more patients in smaller hospital and to create post-discharge, self-pay adjacent categories. Neocate is the leading brand in pediatric allergy. Doctor recommendation is the first point of entry in the category, and then parents are self-purchasing the brand in mothers and baby stores for the rest of the journey. With allergy becoming a growing concern in urban China, we have a unique opportunity to expand our portfolio into winning and older babies to holistically support kids' allergy management journey. I will spend now more time to expose -- to discuss Danone Early Life Nutrition China, which has evolved from a pure e-commerce start-up 10 years ago to being the first multinational player. Aptamil with 9% market share is our mega brand asset. Aptamil commitment to global science made relevance through local evidences, proven track record to support babies' immunity is leading to significant share gain in both China label and international label segments, as you can see here on the left part of the screen. With 25% share, we are very dominant in e-comm and social commerce. Our strong grasp of China digital ecosystem has helped us to disrupt the off-line road to market using data and machine learning for cost-efficient solution to lower tier cities expansion. As an example, we have designed our own business-to-business digital ecosystem enabling independent retailers to transact directly with us and supporting our distribution drive in lower tier cities to become quickly and cost efficiently present in more than 2,000 cities. Reaching now 60% weighted distribution, we put all our focus on vertical growth, and we have improved in-store productivity by 21% last year. Another point of competitiveness comes from our marketing team capability to leverage data to precisely reach consumers at lower cost versus competition. We keep on investing in new capabilities such as content factory, grassroots influencers academy, first-party consumer data to enhance the relevance of our brand to Chinese consumers. This has helped our brands to enter into a virtuous circle, creating the right condition to dramatically premiumize Aptamil and better meet expectations of Chinese moms. As you can see in the top right of the slide, the sales contribution of our premium range is now at 72%, and that's more than double in 3 years. Creating conditions for being trusted by customers and independent retailers at the same time is at the heart of our commercial plans to unlock well-balanced growth across channels. Probably one of the things we do better than most is to balance carefully trade inventory to protect profitability of our customers. We all know how volatile and fast changing China can be. To deal with such a challenging business environment, I believe there is no other option than patiently building strong, resilient and stable organization capable of anticipating and quickly adapting to fast changing market conditions. Our China Early Life Nutrition business in its current scope is born only 10 years ago. And I had the privilege to be part of the journey since the beginning. But more importantly, our local management team has more than -- has been more than stable and has collectively accumulated more than 70 years of Early Life Nutrition business experience in China. Looking back, we can find several proof points of our team ability to anticipate, to be quite fast at pivoting ahead of the pack and absorb external shocks. We anticipated the demand for imported products at the early stage, being the first to ride the wave of e-com platform fast development. We embrace off-line opportunity in a step-by-step controlled manner, carefully managing our cost base. We anticipated the rise of China pride and the importance of reassuring production to China. You see on the right-hand side of the bar chart, COVID indeed created hiccups for our international label business and has slowed down our performance recently. But we pivoted to design in China proposition, and at the same time, we launched our first made in China label less than a year ago. In our experience, anticipating future trends is as important as understanding underlying drivers of performance. We have leveraged our capabilities in data and digital to create a unique, ownable algorithm to forecast category shifts. This starts by understanding and predicting China newborns, deep diving into female cohort, marriage rate, uptake of second plus children. Then we project the per capita consumption so the assessment of the category penetration, which is linked to urbanization length; the consumption journey; and finally, forecasting the pricing and the mix shift to project value growth. The model is now delivering up to 98% accuracy 6 months ahead, including at China and international label granular level. This is a true competitive advantage, critical to our ability to manage demand cycle, strengthen control of the trade flow, improve inventory freshness and adjust the production planning for maximum efficiency. Much has been mentioned about category headwinds, collapse in birth rate and the lack of attractiveness of the IMF category in the future. We don't fully share that view. Despite the double-digit newborn decline over the past 2 years, the urbanization and the increased penetration have helped the category to stay flat in volume and slightly positive in value. We expect the challenging 2 years in '22 and '23. With the recent birth shortfall rolling and fully impacting the 0 to 3 years child population. The category will turn negative in volume and stay flattish in value. However, by '24 with a fertile women core that is stabilizing, multiple birth incentive, continuous penetration gain, we expect the category to stabilize in volume and come back to modest growth in value. We have heard many questions on pricing. Whilst we do believe that like-for-like pricing should not increase much, with the continuous appetite of Chinese parents for added value innovation, we expect premiumization mix effect to continue. This is even more true for lower-tier cities parents, who traditionally choose more premium formula and will drive the category future growth. That's why we are ready to act. There are 2 horizons. And that's why we are ready to act in the first one, the '22, '23 to defend our share, investing now to amplify our existing momentum and to emerge stronger post new China regulation. We will keep on driving superiority and the relevance of our mega brand, Aptamil. We will turn international labels into an asset with designed for China innovation when planning new GB regulations is hindering most China label innovations. We will leverage digital and data for highly efficient consumer engagement and vertical growth in lower tier cities while defending our position in e-com and China mother and baby stores. In parallel, we'll go full steam on renovating our recipes and securing China label innovation with the new GB regulation, which is coming and which has been announced in February last year. By '24, we believe that the category will enter a new cycle and experience a significant consolidation. We are preparing ourselves to emerge as one of the most China-relevant player and accelerate growth thanks to an outstanding portfolio and money can't buy teams. The time to invest is now, and we have built hard-to-replicate data and digital capabilities to strengthen our position. We are investing in Aptamil mega brand superiority, leveraging our Shanghai open science and research center. We are investing in Aptamil's superior portfolio, harvesting the innovation we seeded in the past 2 years, such as Profutura and Essensis. And we are investing in driving share of mind and physical availability of Aptamil to become brand of first choice of more moms across China. Let me share some concrete examples. As you know, we succeeded to open the science research center in Shanghai in the summer '20. This has been instrumental to our ability to localize mega brand Aptamil. And in the short 2 years, we have already issued 15 publications, filed 2 patents and organized 6 evidence studies. Our rapid prototyping digital lab has enabled us to innovate in digital services. More than 1 million Chinese moms are using our health tech tool for [ modernizing ] their baby's nappies to measure immune strengths to coaching breastfeeding by optimizing lactating position, and we are using a technology, which is normally used in gaming to leverage DNA and machine learning to optimize pregnancy diet for baby's future health. All of this to strengthen Aptamil's superiority, to ensure that the brand is seen as the most scientifically advanced with proven health impact on millions of Chinese babies. Probably more than words, let's watch a short video on Aptamil in China. [Presentation]

There are a few challenges ahead and complying to new GB regulation with only 2 years grace period is a complex exercise for any players. We have fully mobilized our global and local cross-functional teams to make it happen. We believe that early submission and meaningful innovation supported by science is key in the process. Having supplied plan fit for China, regulatory requirement is essential. We have taken all the steps to ensure our manufacturing footprint is following the China GMP standard, which is now considered as the most demanding in the world. Local production is becoming critical to increase innovation speed to market, and we have taken an accelerated path to build a local supply network. You are probably aware that we have already acquired one local site, which started production less than a year ago. And today, I'm glad to confirm the recent acquisition of a new one in Changsha within the Hunan province that will accelerate our ability to bring to Chinese consumer an outstanding China label assortment in full GB compliance. Talking about international label now. The foreign label have been a key success factor for Danone, allowing us to bring the best the world can offer to Chinese parents. We have worked relentlessly to create conditions for sustainable performance and take direct control of international labels while accelerated the China labels business. As you can see from the bar chart, we have now more than 80% of our China business on direct channels from only 36% 5 years ago. We are now well equipped with a unique launch pad to introduce global innovations designed with Chinese consumer in mind. The recent renovation of the full overseas Aptamil Profutura range and the recent launch of the ultra-premium Aptamil Essensis means our international label premium lines can dramatically gain share in that segment, demonstrating Chinese parents are recognizing the superiority of our Aptamil innovation no matter the label. The awareness and equity we are building will contribute to see the launch of our future expanded Aptamil label portfolio. And finally, I would like you to take away a couple of things. The first one, our leading position, the complementary of our platforms across Early Life Nutrition, beverages and Medical Nutrition are providing unique opportunity to expand into new promising categories at scale. Most importantly, it's the quality, the experience, the resilience of our 8,000 Danoners in China that will enable us to accelerate and bring value to Chinese families, to Chinese society and to investors all over the world. That journey has already started. I will close the session with a short video to share our first move into healthy aging as a market test. Video. [Presentation]

Thank you very much for your attention. I'm very much looking forward to discussing further with you later today. See you. Thank you.

Good morning. I'm Henri Bruxelles, Chief Sustainability and Strategic Business Development Officer. I've been serving Danone for the last 35 years. During that time, have operated businesses in different geographies around the world and in different categories. I led the Water division between 2017 and 2020; and more recently, operation, procurement and R&D before handing over to 2 seasoned experts, Isabelle and Vikram. So Danone, I joined 35 years ago, was built on the pioneering vision that economic performance and social impact go hand in hand and serve each other. Antoine Riboud always said that in the dual economic and social project, the most important word is actually the and. Danone uniqueness rely in the deep belief that the social environmental performance is tied with the economic one, one serving the other and vice versa. Danone as a company has gone through favorable transformation from glass manufacturer to healthy categories. With an ambition to make our business always stronger and more robust, but very importantly, all this transformation have been conducted with sustainability at the core. This is the Danone Way. Three sustainability pillars have been underlying our short-term and long-term performance. First, the health impact, designing an always healthier category portfolio. Second, the people impact with a leading way to run open dialogue and support value creation in our ecosystems. And finally, major impact, where Danone initiated decades ago programs, together with partners, like the collection of our packaging and the carbon accounting and reduction. In a way, Danone was pioneer in applying the double materiality concept way before it even existed. In recent years, as Antoine de Saint-Affrique was sharing, sustainability became somehow disjointed from the performance. And today, I want to show you how Danone is a leader on each of these dimensions with tangible achievement but above all, how we will reunite sustainability and performance, leveraging our pockets of excellence. Let's start with health. Today, the food industry is often questioned on its contribution to the growing nutrition-related human health issue worldwide. In Danone case, our portfolio positions our company as part of the solution to these issues rather than part of the problem. In 2021, we have continued to improve our health positive impact. Our portfolio is unique with 90% of volume of products sold in healthy categories. 89% of volume of products sold are achieving Nutri-Score A or B. And 83% of volume of products sold are without any added sugar. This enables Danone to be ranked #1 in ATNI product profile assessment. While we have relentlessly improved the nutritional superiority of our portfolio, doing it always a superior sensory experience, we are actually intentional in making health impact a differentiation driver, and we have some good examples. In Germany, Mexico and the Netherlands, the sugar reduction in our Danonino range enabled us to outperform competition on Nutri-Score and achieve superior endorsement, like Stiftung Warentest, the golden star in Germany. This drove competitive growth and market share gains, both through additional shelf space granted by our customer but also through the nutritional superiority recognized by mothers. In Indonesia, where around 1/3 of Indonesian children are suffering from stunting and anemia, we renovated our full SGM range to increase iron absorption with iron C. This superior and improved nutritional profiles enable market share growth around 290 bps in 2021 versus 2020. In 2021, we have also continued to improve our environmental footprint. In December 2021, CDP confirmed our AAA score. And we are 1 of the 14 companies out of the 12,000 scored being recognized for our combined effort to fight climate change to secure water and to preserve forest. Behind this score is our performance. We are continuing our carbon intensity reduction journey with 27% reduction of full scope emissions, like-for-like since 2015 and reaching 2.4% reduction in 2021. We have also reduced by 50% our water consumption in operation this 2000. Finally, 84% of the packaging used is already recyclable, reusable or compostable, progressing 3 points this 2020 and paving the way to reach the 100% ambition, while we actually display a very pragmatic approach on what is the best solution to reach it in each category and geography. As for health, we are intentional in making environmental performance a differentiation driver for our brands. And we have also good examples to further scale up. In the U.K., we switched some of our Activia lines to 100% recyclable pot with an exclusivity at Tesco. This helped deliver superior high double-digit net sales growth at Tesco while growing middle single digit nationally. In the United States, the unique Bee Better certified almond origin helped our Silk brand to grow, thanks to unique Costco partnership, driving exclusivity of our brand on almond beverages, leading to a superior growth and record net sales last year. And finally, on the pillar relative to people. Through these years of pandemic, we are convinced that our long-standing conviction of addressing people engagement and social impact in the most responsible way is an incredible retention driver but also help the resilience of the ecosystem around which we are building our business. Internally, we keep improving our track record on health and safety. Workplace accident frequency rate is reaching lowest ever with 1 point frequency rate. We also accelerated our full commitment to increase in diversity, being part of the Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index for the fourth time in a row and ranking #1 in France in Equileap, continuing to deploy our parental policy in all subsidiaries, improving again our gender pay and inclusive diversity ratio. This is enabling superior engagement and higher employee experience. On the external ecosystem, we continue to deploy responsible sourcing policies on our key ingredients. Through the Danone Ecosystem Fund, we reinforce the resilience of our supply chains with 90 projects deployed and more than 73,000 people empowered. Across country, this is again materialized through solid business strengthening examples. Let's take the example of Mexico. We achieved 24% of milk supply diversified to local small scale producers at competitive price and improved quality. Ensuring more resilient local farming systems, 3,600 farmers family member positively impacted by revenue increases. And we made it a differentiation driver for our core Danone yogurt line in Mexico. In Egypt, we developed a local soybean supply, increasing yield and working condition of almost 3,000 farmers. Through this, we ensure reduction of carbon emission, prevent deforestation, protect from price volatility and make it again a consumer driver. All this illustration on health, people and nature have one thing in common. They have a measurable impact both in terms of sustainability but also on our business performance, be it in terms of securing the long-term resilience of our model or accelerating our growth. And this is what we want to systematize. Let me now walk you through the most striking example of sustainability driving performance in actually the most challenging context that we consider our benchmarks. With evian and Volvic, we could humbly say that we are best in classes in sustainability, as we are the only 2 leading FMCG global brands to have achieved carbon neutrality full scope. In our biggest and most competitive markets in Europe, we have leveraged that excellence in sustainability as a key differentiating point with consumer. And in both markets, we have achieved significant economic performance. Starting with Germany, the second largest mineral water market and actually a very competitive one with many local and global players and a very high consumption per capita. German consumers are expert on water taste, the highest in eco consciousness and having very high expectation on recyclability. We have, therefore, embedded strong sustainability action into our Volvic nature strength value proposition, adapting it fully to the German markets. At the core, claiming unique raw fresh taste, volcanic minerality and leveraging watershed protection as a key element of uniqueness. We moved to 100% recyclability and 100% recycled material in a country with well-established deposit return scheme, claiming full scope carbon neutrality, namely with 100% renewable energy. In parallel, we restated our portfolio, deploying environmental and health conscious aqua drinks with lower sugar but also launching a returnable glass range through local sources with the minerality and the taste aligned with Volvic profile. All these, while Danone Germany reached B Corp certification. Let me show you Volvic German communication. Video please. [Presentation]

Embedding sustainability at the very core of the brand led to very solid growth in 2020 and in 2021. Volvic is reaching its highest ever volume and net sales in Germany, gaining 130 basis points of market share with significant brand power increase, especially reconnecting with younger targets. Also, Volvic improved profitability as sustainability action went along efficient cost management. We adopted the approach to the U.K. U.K. is a younger, middle-sized market for water, where consumer value purity, origin with high eco consciousness especially with sensitivity to plastic topics while the recycling infrastructure is still to be improved. We have adapted the sustainability actions, embedding into our evian brand proposition, claiming the purity of the French Alps origin, highlighting, first, the evian unique carbon neutrality achievement while implementing 100% recycled material on single formats, leading together with local NGOs visible recycling initiatives culminating the Wimbledon tournament. Also restating our portfolio with the launch of evian sparkling in can and 100% recycled material, future-proofing our business. All these while certifying the entire company B Corp. That led to very strong results in 2021 with high double-digit net sales growth and 120 basis point market share gain, reaching highest market share level over the last 5 years and also with significant increase in brand power. For the last 50 years, we have been acting as a leader in pioneering transformation for a more sustainable business. We have done a lot of progress and concrete action that now need to be better leveraged in our brands for our consumer and customer. Now we want to focus and accelerate with a key objective to maximize impact and make it more tangible within our brands. It's actually a strategic imperative that will contribute to our performance that will drive in our categories the market norms and practice upwards. And that will ensure our categories and supply chain resilience. It's also a competitive imperative. As we saw through these examples, sustainability well executed can be a powerful differentiation driver for our brands and a performance driver for Danone. We will leverage it for unique opportunity of partnership with our customers, enabling competitive presence and visibility. We will drive innovation opportunities, as we saw in Germany, to evolve our business model. And finally, we will strive to make it a positive cost impact being more efficient and future-proofing this extra financial materiality impact. Finally, I believe it's a true people imperative, inspiring purposeful brands and internal engagement. We are convinced that concrete action at local level built with our stakeholders is a very strong asset to keep making Danone one of the best place to work. We have a solid framework with our Entreprise à Mission status and with our B Corp ambition. We stand by our ambitions of maximizing health impact, of reaching net zero carbon, of packaging circularity and of social responsibility across our value chain. There are areas where we need scaling and acceleration. There are areas where we need to be more focused in order to reunite sustainability and performance. We are working on the most material sustainability drivers for impact for each of our categories. We are a worldwide leader in plant-based, and plant-based is seen by young generation as a sustainability spearhead both in health and environment. So we will continue promoting flexitarian behavior, alternative protein consumption, and we are prioritizing further work on the sustainable and local sourcing of plant-based. Dairy. Dairy is an incredible health and nutrition provider for all generations with a unique profile in terms of protein and fermentation. And dairy is deeply rooted in local agriculture. We continue to work systematically on the resilience of local farming system, on promoting regenerative agriculture and reducing the methane footprint of dairy farms. In waters, we saw it. We have 4 work streams: promotion of superior healthy hydration at the moment where consumer are sugar and sweetener sensitive, superior packaging recyclability, watershed protection taking care together with local communities of our 74 impluviums and access to safe drinking water. Finally, in specialized nutrition, we are pioneering ESG topics with parenting support, packaging recyclability innovation and aging well. To conclude, we learned through evian and Volvic how to ensure sustainability meet with performance, leveraging all internal and external resources. We will deploy that way of working with a newly appointed organization, acting as an accelerator of sustainability and performance for each category and geography, working between the global expertise center on health, nature and people, the categorism brand identifying [ sweat ] and [ shield ] topics with a local and global value chain but also with partners to help us frame the most impactful action. All this, we steam in charge of measuring, modeling and reporting with integrated extra financial performance, materiality and risk analysis, systematic data auditing, competitive benchmarking of impact. Improving our impact will require a precise category and geographical adapted approach to identify the best action for impact with a systematic and database approach, being truly intentional to ensure impact both on economic and extra financial performance in a precise and financially disciplined way with both a macro and local micro approach and with local collective engagement of all relevant stakeholders. With this, we will ensure sustainability has a positive impact on our growth, on our cash and will future-proof our business. In order actually to reconnect with this virtuous circle where sustainability is at the service of our business performance and where our business performance is also at the service of sustainability. We will come back to you in October 2022 for the 50th anniversary of the Marseille speech with more detail on our major programs and priorities globally by category and by geography. With this, thank you for your attention.

So welcome back in the main room for -- the plenary room. Sorry for the delay first. I hope all of you learned a lot during the breakout sessions. We'll start now the Q&A session, so you have the number on stage and some of them also in the room available for all the question you may have. We are taking question in the room and on the phone. [Operator Instructions] So now...

Bruno Monteyne from Bernstein. Antoine, it sounds very reassuring and sensible the strategy. But I'd love to play devil's advocate to some of the claims you make, and also your CFO, if I may. The first one is in terms of your -- I have to stand up.

Sorry, Bruno.

I don't want anything thrown at me.

There is no risk.

In terms of your strengths, you said you had brands that could cater for all your consumer needs. Now one of those consumer needs, I think, that is there is premiumization. And with premiumization, you're not talking about your protein with sort of new functionality, but being reassuringly expensive, the best ingredients, the best taste, whatever you like. And I don't really see that in your brands. I mean there was a bit of a mention in the U.S. one. Is it Horizon? Would it look distinctly a 1990s kind of brand rather than reassuring the expenses? So can you really claim to cater for premium consumers wanting to pay a lot more for the best product? And a similar claim you made on localization. You sort of say it's a trend and you have great trends for it. And you mentioned some local varieties. But for most consumers localization living in the U.K. would be some Welsh cows providing the milk, the berries and the apples from Kent. And that's genuinely localization of premiumization. I don't see that. So on your claims, I would argue, localization and premiumization is you've had little evidence in your current capability and brands to be able to execute that. To the CFO, my devil's advocate question would be, you're aiming for below 3x net debt over EBITDA. I mean all the high-quality compounding names you're competing with have net cash positions, if you obviously adjust for the financial stakes. I mean that gets them true predictability and resilience. Are you really aiming high enough or low enough with the 3x? It really doesn't seem like a pretty predictable, resilient target to have.

So Bruno, I'll take the first one and the second one is to my friend. On premiumization, I mean I can give you a number of examples. The first one is just before us. I mean it's [ Avion ], which is an absolute premium brand, which you find in the best tables of restaurants. You find examples of premiumization, although it's not necessarily consumer premiumization, but you find it in what we do in our Specialized Nutrition, where you have products that are extraordinarily high value, extraordinarily scientific. When you tackle our issues that are allergy issues or severe disease with infants, you talk of product that are extremely high added value. So that we certainly have at many places in our portfolio. When it comes to localization, no, it's not the apple from a barrel of Kent, for sure. We have some examples of that. I mean if you take -- and I think you've seen it in the U.S. presentation, when you see Two Good, it is something that is, by the way, both premium and at the same time, very local. We are talking of something that is organic, that is sexy, that speaks to the local consumer. The other way of doing localization is relevance on your global platform. So I was talking about Actimel. When you talk about -- I mean when you talk about Actimel, it's short for immunity. The way you perceive immunity is driven also not only by the reality of it, so by the formulation, but also by some of the ingredients that you are putting in there. In some countries, it might be vitamin D because vitamin D is a symbol of this. In the same way, taste localization with things that are specific to a given countries are a way to customize. So indeed, it's not the apple coming from a barrel of Kent, although we have some of them [indiscernible] in France, but more finding the way to leverage global platform in a way that is extraordinarily locally relevant, trying to reach the best of both worlds. Juergen?

I believe that the financial policy we have been describing this morning is very much in sync with the overall value creation frame we have been describing. You have seen that we have been deleveraging quite a bit 2021, again, EUR 1.5 billion. So we are today, in fact, at the 3x multiple already. But if we want to be serious about value creation, if we want to be serious about driving our ROIC and our EPS, we believe that the first and foremost priority is really to reinvest into organic growth of our business. And this means reinvesting into our brands, everything we have been describing this morning. Reinvestment for us means also to complete the Local First program, which is part of the next 12 months where we are going to spend another EUR 700 million. And so rather than being obsessive about deleveraging further, we're investing into the different components, organic growth, Local First into CapEx as we have been describing, but getting the best out of it. And combining that with the level of debt, which should stay more or less where we are today, is the best way for value creation. So I would not look at our financial policy isolated from our overall value creation framework.

Next question from Laurent.

Laurent Grandet, Guggenheim. I'd like to come back to your -- I mean 2 questions. The first one is about the global growth. I mean you say your categories you are playing in are growing 3% to 4%. You are aiming for 3% to 5%. So we could look at this, I mean, 2 ways, I mean it's not overly aggressive or based on the past, it's reassuring. Now I'd like to understand maybe by segment of the -- you're playing or regions. Where do you see the regions or segments you've got the most upside to category growth and thus where there is a bit more risk? That's my first question. The second one is about margins, more on the plant-based versus dairy. Still about similar, but gross margin in there is a bit lower. Now that the household penetration in plant-based is getting higher, so maybe you would have a less A&P to spend to drive that household penetration. When do you think you will get kind of switch and more margin coming from plant-based than dairy if it comes?

So I mean let me start with the growth question. I think Juergen will address the margin question. I think you may recall, one of the slide I said is one of the 2 most important slide, and it was about fix and seed and then accelerate and moving fundamentally from underperform to perform to overperform. If you look at -- and I said it, if you look at the last couple of years, our categories were growing 3% to 4%. We were growing, on average, 2.7%. So we have been losing consistently shares, not everywhere, not to the same tune, but we haven't performing to the tune of categories. So first, getting back into the game, into performance is what we are aiming at in the coming years. Then as we are seeding, we will strive to overperform. I think the growth -- without being specific by segment or by country, the growth is -- I mean can be driven in different buckets. You've seen that about 55% of our business, we're growing give or take at the speed of the category. So there, name of the game is -- one, is to keep the momentum. Two is making sure that as in most of those cases, we are category leader, we keep driving the category growth, which is something that we haven't done. We said about 20% of the business, and we talked about protein. We talked about our Medical Nutrition, just to give you a bit more specifics. We were growing there much faster, but there is still acceleration to be seen. I'm sure that you've seen with Bruno that in Medical Nutrition, we are doing great things, but we can do more. There, we will accelerate. It's 25% of our business, which, frankly speaking, we are not doing a good job. So there, that's why we said here, we fix or we sell. So I would look at the lens through the core. How do we drive the core and make sure that we show our categories? They are fast growing. And how do we accelerate those? And the fix -- and then we need to fix the dispose.

When it comes to margins, Bruno, and let me start maybe with dairy. I mean Antoine has been showing today this chart, which was about volume decline over the last 5 to 6 years, and everybody of us knows that this is mostly talking about dairy, right? So when we talk about the margins and profitability of dairy, the name of the game is to fill back our capacities and to get operating leverage into our P&L. And it is exactly the name of the game, which we are going for over the next couple of years. This will be combined with 2 elements. It will be combined with investments into A&P because also Antoine showed this morning that we have been defunding especially our star brands in dairy, and we need to get back to invest into them in order to drive what we have been seeing, for example, on HiPRO, but it means also investments into [ Renaya ] in order to develop the hero SKUs of tomorrow. And so yes, we will go back into margin growth for dairy as soon as we are getting volumes back in our factories. Plant-based is a different ball game, definitely, yes. I think we are very proud of the fact that we have built a plant-based business, which has a sustainable P&L with a gross margin, which, in fact, is relatively close to our dairy gross margins. And we want to nurture, we will, because we truly believe in the power of this model, because it will give us the ability to deliver sustainably into plant-based. Here, we will invest into [ Renaya ] and I think everything we have been showing on driving now more benefit-based innovations rather than ingredient-based innovations is of the essence, but we also need to invest into capacity, which is to the contrary of what we are having in dairy, right? And so we are investing into capacity in Europe. We are investing into capacity into the U.S. And I think here, we are in the midterm really investment journey. And so in that sense, I think the next 3 to 4 years, we will look slightly different for dairy versus plant-based. But ultimately, I see margin expansion potential for both of them.

By the way, a good example of what we're doing is we've just converted or we're in the process of converting a dairy plant in the southwest of France into a plant-based, which is a great way of using your assets, using the knowledge of the people but are turning towards our markets and rebalancing your assets.

This is Warren Ackerman at Barclays. First one is on plant-based. In the old regime, there was a target of EUR 5 billion of revenues by 2025. There's no mention of that EUR 5 billion number today. So I assume it's no longer a target. And if it isn't a target, can you maybe outline what you think the plant-based portfolio can do by 2025? And how quickly can you move the portfolio away from soy and nut-based towards oats? Does it need inorganic growth to do that? Just trying to get a sense of what's happening on plant-based because the growth has massively slowed down over the last 2 quarters after 7 quarters of double-digit growth. If you can outline that, that would be great. And then the other one is on the kind of brand and marketing support point. You put a slide up pretty quickly, but I thought I saw a number, minus 20% on brand and marketing between 2017 and 2020. You talk about EUR 300 million going back into brand and marketing. How do we know that's the right number, that it's not EUR 500 million or EUR 700 million. I mean that's just a number for 2022. But beyond 2022, you haven't given us what the baseline of advertising is to be able to assess whether that is the right level of reinvestment spend. So it would be really helpful to get your thinking around the benchmarking work you've done around advertising.

So we'll do probably a jet with Juergen on the second question. On the first question, I mean, currently, our plant-based business is about EUR 2.3 billion. So it is unlikely we will get to the EUR 5 billion number. And while we will drive the category as hard as we possibly can, we will not get after a number for the sake of getting after a number. Winning in plant-based, and we've seen that, is not only a matter of moving from soy to oat. But doing what we are starting to do, which is moving from ingredients to benefits and moving also from our beverage into other adjacencies. You've seen -- I mean your growth, I mean, offering plant-based alternatives. You've seen proteins offering plant-based alternatives. So it is about moving into an approach which is answering the needs of the flexitarians. We still see lots of -- I mean we still see lots of potential. The penetration is very low. The markets keep growing. We do believe that being flexitarian will become the norm and that offering the balance will be a key growth driver. So -- and by the way, we have the critical mass and the R&I to do that. On the question on brand marketing support, it brings us back into the game, but that's the start. But Juergen, maybe you want to...

Yes, just to complement on what Antoine just said. Basically, the exercise we did is we looked at our winners, which you saw on the clusterization, and we looked at our core. And what is very clear is that for the winners, we need to over-proportionally invest. And for our core, we want to be at least with our share of voice at the level of the share of market, if not going beyond. That's the way we have been coming to the EUR 300 million of recurring investments, which we are going to put in place over the next 24 months. And we believe, as Antoine said, that's a good first step in order to become, again, competitive in the market. First, what is very important is to make sure that we are getting returns also on this EUR 300 million. As I think Véro showed quite good results from the reinvestments we did very selectively and very targeted over the last 6 months. And so we want to execute this reinvestment with the same level of, I would say, rigor and discipline to make sure that we are getting the benefits from this investment before going to the next level.

Just maybe one question on line from Jon Cox, Kepler Cheuvreux.

Questions for you. Just go back to this benchmarking your overhead and sort of cost structure against peers. I wonder if you can just give a bit more sort of like thought and discussion on that. Because if you look at, say, I don't know, groups of peers, your SG&A costs look like 10 points higher than some of your other peers in the food and FMCG space, also within the COGS as well. You mentioned gross profit has been under pressure. It's really a question about feeding the machine going forward and what sort of levers do you think you have? Is there a couple of points that you could get out of these lines to put into A&P and investments in the future? And then just on the sort of like longer-term margin guidance, and I suspected you wouldn't give any margin guidance today, Antoine. I thought you would do an EBIT growth ahead of sales type target. So you say by 2025 you'll be approaching mid-teens, which would be 14, I would guess. And then just looking at it mathematically from 2022 to get to 2025, it looks like you're implying 50 basis points per year from the reset this year. Is that a correct way to look at that?

So I think Juergen will take both, actually. On the longer-term guidance, I can tell you, Jon, well, first, you know me well, so you could predict things. We didn't say we would be at mid-teens by '25. We said as of '25, we would progress towards mid-teen, which is a different thing. And there, you can relook at the presentation. So I take that one away from you, Juergen, the other one is for you.

And maybe just to complement on what Antoine is just saying, I think when you are looking at our portfolio of today, waters, dairy and plant-based, each of those have the ability to expand their margins for -- with all the conditions we have been discussing on the question of Laurent. And this is really about our operating leverage. Specialized Nutrition, as you know, we have a pretty good margin -- and this is not only about our Early Life Nutrition business, it's also about our business in the diet and specialties. Each of them are in an environment which offers very nice profitability levels well in the 20s. And so what we are doing is basically to invest into our level of competitiveness to make those margins resilient. What is important for us when we look in the midterm and when you talk about the mid-teens levels is that we want to go at the right speed and in the right order and not rushing just in order to make a certain target happen by '24, '25. I believe that would be the wrong element to do. We want really to go first and invest into the foundations of our business in the short term, into boosting short-term performance, but also into building what we need to build in order to accelerate growth in '24 and '25 because we believe that this will give us a much more solid foundation to really sustainably deliver mid-teens margins. When it comes to the second question, which is about fixed cost management, I think we did a very conscious choice some 18 months ago when we launched Local First. It's true that our SG&A, and we look at it at the level of 2020 and 2021, it's not competitive. Local First is giving us something like 200 to 250 bps of extra margin, which we are going to reinvest as we speak. I believe that brings us back into a field where we are more or less at par with our peers. There's no meaning and there is no reason for us to cut more down to the bone. I think we have been busy in occupying the organization, enough novice restructuring. Now the name of the game is to go for growth and to go for profitable growth, and this is what we want to do.

I think you've heard probably a number of time, but we talked about leverage and frugality. So don't let it go back, make sure you start feeding your growth so that you can move in increments because you grow.

John Ennis from Goldman. I wanted to ask about portfolio review and how you'd think about managing these synergies because you referenced a few dairy brands within the underperforming list. Can you just talk me through how practically it would work to plausibly carve those assets out, how you would manage the synergies? How can you actually separate those assets from the broader dairy portfolio?

So John, I'm not going to comment on this asset or this asset and you -- and how you entangle it. What we said very clearly this morning is either we fix the underperformers or they will go out. We said it's -- we expect a rotation of about 10% of assets or sales are actually -- or sales. And what we said also is we want to do it in a value -- in a way that is value creating, which means that if you need to disentangle something in whichever category, you want to do it in a way that doesn't throw the rest of the category in a chaos, but in a way that is properly thought of. So that the dissynergies you're getting, the unsheddable, are being compensated by something else, which is why when we do those kinds of things, it's not fire sale, but it's done in a very methodical way. Otherwise, you destroy value rather than create value.

Celine Pannuti, JPMorgan. So my first question is on dairy. What is the growth of the category. And I think the category has a bit of a renewal or rejuvenation under COVID. How is that going to stay or stick as people are going to be a bit less home and tempted to open the fridge every hour? And like if I look at your -- you and the category, I mean, you have a big competition from private label. How you feel that being, one, investing more in this category will maybe shed you away from the competition on private label in those innovation? That's my first question. My second question is on the guidance. So first of all, I think on the 3% to 5% top line for this year, it sounds a bit low in, a, the event of recovery in your water business mix and volume; and b, as well in inflation. So how should we look at that? And the second one is on the margin for '22. How -- if I compare to '21, there's a gap. Do I think that all that gap is from gross margin? Because you said that the reinvestment with -- I mean all the Local First saving are in reinvestment. Is there more investment beyond Local First? I.e., is it all in gross margin? Or is there that beyond Local First, the SG&A will be under presure?

Thank you. So we'll do a trio on the first question with Véro and Shane, and then Juergen will take the second one. I think Véro can take about the overall category growth. I think Shane has a glowing example, and you might have seen that, on how actually we regain momentum in dairy and you beat actually everybody, including the private labels to the market. So maybe Véro and Shane.

Yes. So I will start. I think the first thing is that the turnaround of our dairy portfolio started even before COVID. Because remember, the last quarter of 2019, our dairy portfolio started to be back to growth. And that's very important because it shows as well that many of our brands find a way to recognize with our consumer base and as well attract new users. That's the example of YoPRO that I explained. Really able to attract new users into the categories. Now it's clear that COVID trigger several shifts in consumer that were tailwinds for our categories around immunity, home consumption and all that. But we believe that this trend will structurally stick because it's really about people believing that what they eat has an impact on health. And that's what dairy is about. So on that, our strategy is very clear. We have 60% today of our portfolio, which is positioned on health or indulgent product, where we see strong growth potential around good health, immunity, protein and indulgence as well. Then on the more traditional and I will let Shane explain because I think what are being done in the U.S. is a fantastic example on how we take the core business and we're able to rejuvenate it and put it back to growth.

Thanks, Véronique. Yes, Celine, I think, firstly, we've got really strong conviction that dairy is a growth business. And I hope you saw some of that in action specifically in the yogurt business in the U.S. I think at least the way we've approached that as the market leader is that we have to lead the development of the category. So yes, we want to be competitive, and we always hold ourselves accountable to that competitiveness. But we can and we should lead the category development. And underneath the rejuvenation of the segment, at least in the U.S., has been, for sure, some good structural momentum pieces around yes at home, but way beyond that, gut health, immunity, low sugar, high protein, we are going to harness those benefits, attach them to the category and then the portfolio in a very meaningful way, we think has real stick with the category momentum. And I think specifically on your private label question, as the category has rebounded and our competitiveness has accelerated, we really have not seen private label emerge as a driver of that in any kind of down trade way. In fact, we've seen uptrading based on injecting more meaning into the brands. So we do think that's repeatable. Of course, it's going to be mixed with good commercial levers, too, and good commercial discipline. But I think we've got very good conviction around the sustaining potential in dairy.

And then when it comes to 2022 guidance, the 3.5%. Starting with the top line, 3% to 5%, yes. 2022 was the first year where we delivered more than 3% since 2015. And I think we all know that this has been done with a great dynamic, but also on a base which has been beneficial in some parts of our categories. So in a way, 2022 is the real first year where we are going to deliver more than 3%, in a corridor between 3% and 5%. And what we're going to see is that all our categories are going to contribute to this growth, which I think is a very important factor. Second element, which is important, is that we need to expect that this is price level. This is all what we are doing today. The fact that we are pricing across all geographies, it just means that we cannot expect volumes to grow. We need even to be prepared for volumes to short term, at least, react negatively on our price increases. And I think that mix that we can expect the top line to be in that bracket between 3% and 5%. When it comes to the margin guidance, when we were discussing 2 weeks ago our 2022 margin development, you saw that our gross margin has been suffering in '21 and has been suffering as the inflation on our COGS was not completely offset by the pricing mix and productivity we put in front of it. We have been able to mitigate part of it in '21 because of a relatively lower level of investment and the savings of Local First. Looking at 2022, I absolutely confirm what you will say, Celine, which is that, yes, we are going to reinvest 100% of what we are getting from overhead savings. And at the same moment, we know also that the inflation pressure will be fierce. I mean you have heard me talking about low to mid-teens on inflation. So we will put in front of that aggressive pricing. We will put in front of that a new record of inflation. But we need also to productivity or mass productivity, but we need to get prepared for a gross margin decline in 2022 very clearly.

We'll take a question on the phone from Guillaume Delmas, UBS.

Two questions for me. The first one is more a point of clarification on margins. Juergen, when you talk about recurring operating profits growing faster than sales in 2023, 2024, are you effectively signaling not margin expansion for 2 years? So in other words, priority will remain on reinvestment until you get to 2025. So any hypothetical benefit from deflation or incremental savings would be, first and foremost, reinvested as opposed to [ going to ] the EBIT line? And then my second question is on digital and your digital efforts. In your presentation, you referred to e-commerce being more than 20% of Specialized Nutrition sale. So basically, that would mean that online is slightly less than 6% of the turnover for EDP and Waters. My question on this is, are forensically the EDP and water categories not lending themselves well for online? And as a result, how should we think about the first-party data opportunity for these 2 categories?

So let me take the second one probably together with Véro, and I'm sure Juergen will provide a clarification on the first one. On digital, we are playing on the full keyboard. So obviously, our SN business is very prone to digital. But e-commerce doesn't stop there. And well, they all will illustrate. But in all categories, be it through our big customers, be it through quick commerce, but also, I'm sure we all talk to it with our direct to consumer, we have plenty of opportunities. But Véro, I don't want to steal your thunder.

Okay. So yes, definitely, e-commerce is super strong in Specialized Nutrition, 20%. It's strong as well in Waters, because as well as the carry of the water pack and the fact that buying it online makes sense. And we have been lagging on dairy for years, but we are catching up. And that's everything that we've said that in dairy, that where we have seen over 2020 and '21, the fastest growth acceleration on e-business across geographies, in the U.S., in Europe, everywhere. So we were late, we are catching up, still a lot of potential to grasp, but definitely, everything that we have said, that means the fact now that we're organized as one team in each country with dedicated e-commerce team working across all categories, using as well the expertise that we have built over the past in some categories, plant-based and Specialized Nutrition, to the benefit of a larger portfolio is really an asset that we will continue leverage and accelerate.

Maybe just a quick build on that and experience from the U.S., which is clearly a large EDP-dominated business. The e-commerce component of the EDP business in the U.S. is now 10% of the mix, and that was 3% 18 months ago. So it's really ramped, and that's been obviously a deliberate effort to grow it, but also become more competitive. I would add one other nuance just to build on Véronique's point on Local First. One of the experiences given transformed to when it was executed in April 1 was how we use digital expertise in different parts of the business to average up our capability. And I would point to a small bit of a very special business in the U.S. called Happy Family where half of that business is digital. And that capability, we have very quickly exported from Happy Family to the big EVP business to really build the capability. So just to build on Véronique's point.

So the start of the journey, but we're going to keep accelerating.

And the start of the journey is also in terms of margin year 2022. So we talked about the margin reset being above 12%. In a way, 2023 and 2024 is really the Phase 1 of going back into a true organic growth model. So yes, we will have margin expansion. But also, yes, we believe that this will be with a more limited magnitude for a simple reason is that we really want to invest not only for the short term, but really also for the midterm. You want to implement very robust and solid foundation. That's very important for us. We don't know what inflation is going to bring '23 and '24, let's be very clear. And we do not want to commit to give a number for this first phase of rebuilding and renewing Danone.

Jeremy Fialko, HSBC. I've got a follow-up question on portfolio change. From the way that you're describing, it sounds like portfolio change is mainly a way for you to exit some of your underperforming businesses. But I think there are also other drivers of portfolio change, which would be to simplify your business and just make it more streamlined and easy to manage. And then also portfolio change in terms of getting out of businesses where actually, there's another owner that would be able to create more value or have certain synergies from that asset that you might not be able to get. So what I wanted you to talk about is those other drivers of portfolio change and whether you think those are kind of relevant to the business at the moment or whether it's strictly a case of managing out some of the underperformers. And then just also to clarify, this 10% figure, that would imply selling 10% of your turnover and then acquiring circa 10% of your turnover.

So it's the rotation of -- a percentage of our sales in rotation, which is a mix of acquisition and disposal.

So it could be 5% and 5%?

Yes, I don't give a specific number if you allow me not to. I mean, obviously, there is a dimension of managing the underperformers. There is a dimension of managing the footprint. And let me give you a very concrete albeit small example. We sold recently Aqua d'Or in Denmark. Fantastic brands, actually are quite profitable, but we didn't have the critical mass. It didn't make sense. So we found a better owner for it. So it is not mono-dimensional. But as we said, I mean the core of one of the problem we are facing in terms of completeness is underperforming of some assets, which have been underperforming for a long time. So we will be very determined. If we cannot fix them, we will sell them. And then we have no taboo or we have no sacred care. So once again, not monolithic. We have proven it and we'll keep doing it. So a mix of both, but certainly a focus on underperformers.

Martin Deboo, Jefferies. Two questions. One, again, on margins, I'm afraid. One on countries. The big revelation and the new disclosures this morning is you're making 31% margins in your new Super China region, which, to me, strongly implies you're making in excess of that out of China infant formula and that region is contributing 1/3 of group profit. What is assumed in the margin guidance about the trajectory of margins in that region? That would seem to me to be the critical risk to the guidance. And the other question is Argentina was up for sale. Is it still? And what are you going to do about Morocco, where even though the crisis is over, you must be constrained in your ability to take price in that market?

So let me take the second question, and Juergen will take the first one. We had put Argentina under strategic review, which doesn't mean, by the way, it was up for sale, but which meant that we were looking at all the options. We keep looking diligently at them with what we said earlier, which is with a discipline, which is what is going to be the best value-creating option for the company. So that's the lens at which we will look at our strategic review. Our Moroccan business, used to be a large problem, is coming back on stream, but we do look at it in quite a bit of details to make sure, as part of fixing things that are underperforming, that whatever spring we see is a lasting one and not something that will vanish again.

When it comes to China, I think it's not a surprise that this is for us a very important business in terms of size of net sales, but also in terms of contribution on profitability. When you look at it, all 3 businesses we are having in China, I think Bruno was able, I hope, to convey it earlier today. We have 3 very strong businesses. Each of those 3 businesses operating in a field with a very nice margin profile. Each of them in the recent past, either holding their market share or even growing their market share. And so far as, obviously, the name of the game is not to reinvest in order to grow our positions in China very clearly. If I make the bridge to our overall IMF level of profitability, you have seen that in 2021, we have been closing our IMF profitability at 23.5%, very resilient despite all what we are discussing about inflation, despite all what we are discussing about competitive pressure, especially in China. And I think it's just a very good proof point that we have the right assets, the right teams and the right plans in order to maintain a good level of profitability in this very important region for us, but it's the region for reinvestment clear.

It's James Targett from Berenberg. Two questions. Firstly, just on this 25% of the portfolio where you think it's underperforming. Maybe you could give us some of the brands or areas where you think that you have the easiest wins to turn around in that 25%. And then secondly, just on, Antoine, your comments on restoring a meritocratic and performance-based culture, I just wondered if you could maybe talk about what culture is right now, if it's not meritocratic and performance-based.

That's a good question. So let me start with the underperforming and probably do it with Bruno on that. I mean we have a number of different assets that are not performing at the level. I mean I mentioned or you could see on the chart some of our assets in Russia with Tyoma, which hasn't been doing well, some of our traditional dairy. Mizone had been mentioned. I also mentioned that Mizone recently had stabilized the shares and was moving forward. So back to growth. The name of the game for us in each of the cases, and it will, by the way, bridge later on to meritocratic culture, is to really have a hard look at things, go to put all the issues on the table, do a deep root cause analysis, so go to the bottom of it, and then see whether we can really fix it or not. And that's the name of the game. So it's being much more methodical. It's making sure that we capture the issues as they arise and not much later, and not shy away from calling a spade a spade. And that's what Bruno and team have been doing on Mizone. And when you do that, you can see the results. Maybe you want to say a word on Mizone, Bruno.

Yes. Thank you, Antoine. Actually, we shared that earlier that Mizone is a very good example of our initiatives to focus on basics and fix before we seed further. We have been able to bring Mizone back to growth through our renovation of the proposition to make it more relevant, especially to the young urban adults in China. And then we focus all of our energy in order to drive a very efficient model, be it in route to market, delayering the organization, so we can be more efficient at reaching more than 3.6 million outlets in China, and reinvesting behind the brand. We are not yet saying that we are at the end of the fixing period, but we can really see some light and which allows us as well to contemplate some new initiatives to expand the franchise of Mizone going into new territory. I mentioned sparkling, I mentioned zero sugar. So we can really put the brand back on a sustainable growth trajectory. But at the end of the day, it's about renovation, being relevant to consumers, leveraging a mega brand that was already preexisting and focusing ourselves on brilliant basics executions.

So when it comes to the culture, let me come back to things that I said at the beginning. I mean there is -- I mean there are extraordinary gems in Danone's culture. I mean you have the heritage of being a brand company, an innovation company. It's a company with a very, very strong purpose, I mean, anchored into the history of the Marseille speech. The Antoine mission is something that is very important for us. So you have things that are right below the surface in the roots that are extremely strong. I think and a number of you asked me the question what surprised me the most when I joined Danone was, well, you get into a company that has been, in some ways, battered with a very public governance crisis, with a CEO living with a massive restructuring. And you field people, you find people in the organization everywhere with a fire in their belly and a passion that is limitless for the company. And that's really what the culture is about. The reason why I was saying the meritocracy and the performance culture is not where I want it to be. It's because when you have a company that is changing organization regularly over a reduced period of time, when everybody is changing, boss is changing job, you lose continuity, you lose accountability, you lose focus on what really matters, which is the consumer, the customer, so the external market, which is why refocusing on execution, refocusing on the consumer, refocusing on the shelf is the name of the game. And then you measure the outcome of that. And the outcome of that is called brand equity. It's called market share. And ultimately, it's called profitable growth. So that's what I mean.

So we'll take the next question from David Hayes, Societe Generale, on the phone.

Two for me, one on China and then one on the crisis in Ukraine and Russia. So just on the China side, I think, Bruno, you mentioned earlier the regulatory change. When you talked about it, you all sounded like it's a positive change of events, but I just wonder if I could press you to go through what the extreme scenarios might be in terms of being a positive or, I guess, a slight negative, depending on the process and the outcomes at the beginning of next year. And then on the Ukraine-Russia situation, I mean, can you just give us an update on where you are with that? And I guess thinking forward, is there a risk that you continue to incur fixed costs in that market, but suspend selling product in that market and that becomes a profit headwind through the rest of the year at some point?

So maybe Juergen, you want to take the Ukraine-Russia and then Bruno will take the China one. On the China one, things are very clear. I mean we have been moving from day 1, and the process is pretty much under control. But I'm sure Bruno can say a bit more. But maybe Ukraine-Russia...

Maybe about the very tragic situation we have in Ukraine and Russia. As you know, we have a pretty big business in Russia. It's around 5% of our net sales. Having said that, it's running at a profitability, which is below company average. So we talk about the profit contribution, which is below 3% of company profitability. I think we had been describing at the last occasion that this is a business which is pretty local. So 90% of our sourcing is local. We produce locally. We ship locally with our own distribution arm. So we have a business which is really cash generative in rubles in local currency, which is also self-financing itself. The way we are looking at it is, obviously, we are monitoring very closely the evolution of the consumer demand to anticipate any signs of downtrading. As of today, demand is very strong. In fact, you know that we are offering very essential food, dairy, early life nutrition to the population. We are working obviously on mitigation plans for the sanctions which are implemented. This is, of course, on supply together with Vikram to make sure that we find always the right level of supply for ingredients and packaging, but also to make sure that we are managing our limited foreign currency exposure. Here, we are fortunate that we have been hedging a vast majority of the 2022 exposure when it comes to the U.S. dollar, which, on one side, gives us the ability to access dollars because we have been forward buying, but it gives us, secondly, also the excess at a very beneficial rate. Third point probably to mention is that we are obviously very consciously managing our P&L. We did the statement on Sunday. We were very clear that we are ring-fencing all investments to protect the P&L. So we are stopping any nonessential cash outs basically. And last but not least, ensuring really access to liquidity and rubles. So again, we are cash generative in rubles. We are self-sufficient. And we are doing everything to make sure that we have a very affluent exchange with our suppliers and with our customers.

So we are -- I mean we are obviously managing the situation extremely closely. You have all the details on what's the financial impact, that it's limited. All the options are on the table. So we keep the flexibility, and we do that in very close cooperation and alignment with the French government.

So the point on China, it's -- the new regulatory change with 2 years grace period given to all industry players is putting pressure in the system. I think I explained that in the breakout session. And at the same time, I believe that we have taken all the necessary steps in order to be successful in that process and also to create our room to maneuver for ourselves, be it around upgrading the capabilities and the compliance of our manufacturing footprint overseas and investing recently in having room to maneuver in local manufacturing. I believe that we are putting the right amount of science behind our brands in order to be seen by the [ SMA ], which is the authorities regulating the market to be seen as a very critical player. So we are taking all the necessary steps in an environment, which as usual in the concept of trying creates some element of risk but also opportunities to be among the ones we're going to be successful in managing that hurdle.

Tom Sykes from Deutsche Bank. Just firstly on the at least 5% productivity. I know it was a topic of discussion at the full year, and you said that you know what those are now rather than having to find them. But could you maybe give a bit more detail on where those productivity gains are going to come from, please? And then just to be clear on the EUR 700 million and maybe the middle part of the EUR 700 million, you were saying you're going to invest in partly IT and operational efficiencies. Is every part of the EUR 700 million fixed into the P&L now going forward in '23 and '24? Are you expecting any of that, perhaps the EUR 200 million in the middle to come out in '23 and '24, please?

I think it's going to be a question for Juergen and Vikram.

Yes. Maybe I'm going to start. So when we talk about COGS productivity in the last year, we did 5%. I think it's important we put it a little bit in perspective. When you look at our average COGS productivity between 2018 and 2020, we delivered every single year around 4.5%. This is why in 2021, we talked about the record delivery of 5%. Now 2022, we are going to deliver more than 2021, so more than 5% of productivity, which is important in the context vein, and this is not only an ambition, but there are also very tangible drivers behind. And maybe, Vikram, you can take that.

Yes. I think -- so first of all, as I said, we are not starting this year from scratch. We built a healthy funnel in 2021. So it is more a question of accelerating what we already have in the funnel rather than trying to look for something new. So we are not in a situation where we are just hunting to find what are the projects and how do we deliver this year's productivity. What we have -- besides acceleration, what we are doing is a much more structured approach to how we look at the opportunities. I described those 4 blocks, which lie in the area of simplification, which is a big driver. In terms of simplification, not in terms of SKU, that's a different discussion, but simplification on the variety of the ingredients and the packaging components that we use in trying to consolidate them and therefore, getting more buying leverage and getting more manufacturing efficiencies out of it. The second one is in formulation on packaging. Now before I go into that, I think for us it's an absolute sacred cow is the product superiority. That is something which is an uncompromisable. But if there is something which is in our product, which the consumer doesn't care for and for example, putting more plastic than necessary in a bottle, then that is something indeed which we will go after in terms of optimizing our packaging, yes. Same thing for equivalent examples in packaging, maybe too much sugar, and that's what we will go after. The third area is around manufacturing. I already spoke at length about manufacturing efficiencies. And we see the 4-wall improvement using techniques such as world-class manufacturing to be a structured mechanism for loss reduction in our factories that thereby get -- reduce our conversion cost in the factories. And the last one also I referred to, which is about logistics. And there, the big opportunity is about synergizing the different supply chains we have, which have evolved historically with 4 divisions into 1 and actually using that as a platform to be more value-added in our logistics and distribution rather than just operating parallel chains.

So we'll take one last question on the phone from Pierre Tegnér from ODDO.

Pierre Tegnér from ODDO. I have 2 questions, one on operating margin guidance for this year and another one on the brand portfolio. So first, on the guidance, what's the risk today to have inflation going beyond 15%? And my question on this is, what's the mindset for this year if we are going beyond 15%? Will you keep the investments in capabilities and then accept to land towards below 12% operating margin because there is a kind of urgency to rent business? So that's the first question. And the second question on the brand portfolio. It's more a question for Antoine. Do you think that it's key to be focused on the biggest brands and to reignite the strategy of umbrella brands as it was 20 years ago? Or do you think that you need to have a better balanced brand portfolio in order to address the very different consumer needs in every division where you operate?

So Pierre, I'll take, as you suggest, the second question. When it comes to portfolio, I think, and I said it, the chance that we are -- or where we are blessed is we have a fantastic mix of actually very, very strong global brands and very, very relevant local brands. And the name of the game when you play in categories is to play a portfolio game. So it helps you segment. It helps you segment from a pricing standpoint, help you segment from a consumer segment standpoint. And there, I think it is a big asset that we have. So are we going only into umbrella brand? No, actually, we have fantastic local brands, which play a very important role in our portfolio. That's why we keep looking at categories. That's why we do category management. And we do believe that winning in categories entails having a mix of offering from very global to a very local, covering consumer needs and covering different price points. On the inflation, do you want to...

Yes. On the margin guidance, I would say, as any margin guidance, this guidance is built on several assumptions. When we were together 2 weeks ago for the full year publication, you heard me talking about low to mid-teens in terms of inflation. And at the moment, internally, rather at the mid point when it comes to that corridor. Today, we see this year rather trading at the upper side of that corridor. We also see that things are evolving very fast, up and down. And so we know what we know and we don't know what we don't know. But the important point is that this is not only about inflation. This is not the only variable in our P&L. We talked about productivity and the new record level we are going to deliver in 2022, but it's also about pricing, mix and volume. And obviously, our level of pricing in one way or the other also depend on the level of inflation we are having. And so the level of aggressivity of us putting pricing in place will depend on how inflation is going to go as we travel through this year. Mix is an important element, and I don't want us to underestimate it because you saw us delivering pretty solid mix quarter-by-quarter throughout 2021. We have an ambition to deliver again solid mix contribution also in 2022. Volume is, of course, one of the elements where today we have a little bit less visibility just because in many geographies, we are putting pricing in place as we speak. And what yes is important for us is that we are going for reinvestment. I think we took the conscious choice to make 2020 a year of reinvestment and a year of rebuilding our foundations.

Good. I'm afraid it's time for us to conclude. If some of you that are here want to have half a lunch before you catch your plane. So first, I really want to thank all of you online or here for taking the time to listen to our story and for the many questions, also for the many interactions. For the people that are around, we learn a lot from them, and it helps us hopefully improve and get better. So we will keep interacting either directly on one-on-one or as we organize other events because it is, for us, very important in terms of feedback, in terms of learning, but also, hopefully, in terms of conveying the strength of the team and the mood of the company. Secondly, I hope we have been clear on how our plan is and how we plan to renew Danone based on the 4 pillars we set out earlier. If anything, I hope that also, as I said, beyond the strategy and the numbers you've seen a real team in action, and you've seen people that are passionate. We are opening a new year for Danone. We are determined to make this journey a success. The plan presented today will be delivered by us around, but also by a very large card, and I said it many times, of very passionate Danoners. We will be also, and Gilles talked about it, be supported, challenged and ultimately held accountable by what is a very strong and a profoundly refreshed Board under the leadership of Gilles. So let me end just to say that I have no doubt that with this, all the 100,000 Danoners are united behind that single ambition, which is to bring Danone where it belongs and do it good. Thank you.