Fresenius SE & Co. KGaA (FRE) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Wolfgang Kirsch. As the Chairman of the Supervisory Board, I would like to open the AGM 2022 of Fresenius SE & Co. KGaA. And I will take the chairmanship of the meeting in accordance with the Articles of Association. The AGM takes place in the Fresenius headquarters in Bad Homburg, Else-Kröner-Straße #1. On behalf of the Supervisory Board and the Executive Board, I kindly welcome you, our shareholders, as well as the shareholders' representatives and the representatives of the media. A very warm welcome to all of you. As we have already did in the last 2 years, our AGM takes place in a virtual form via the Internet, that is our shareholders are not present here, where the meeting takes place in Bad Homburg. After duly pondering all the best interests, the Chairman of the General Partner, Fresenius Management SE and the Supervisory Board of Fresenius SE & Co. KGaA have decided to organize this year's AGM again as a virtual meeting, just like almost all other companies listed in the German stock index, the DAX index, have also had virtual AGMs or will have virtual AGMs. Unfortunately, this virtual form of the AGM only offers restricted ways of having a dialogue with you, dear shareholders. In order to have a more lively dialogue with you, this year, we have opened up the opportunity to send a video message and to upload it in the shareholders' portal before the AGM. So some people have uploaded their contribution for a discussion. And we will discuss it later during our general debate. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the first AGM where I take the chairmanship. It's my first year in office. This time was very much marked by the worldwide pandemic. And other than we thought at the beginning, it came with a lot of changes for our company working in the public health sector. Excess mortality of dialysis patients and restricted treatment options in our clinics serve as good examples. Now we are confronted with the war and aggression from Russia. And every day, it breaks our heart to see human suffering. The economic factors like increases in material prices and disruptions in the supply chains are creating major challenges for us. I am a member of the postwar generation. I had the privilege to live in peace and liberty. Now we have to fight for our happiness, securing the knowledge that we should have been more vigilant in the last couple of years. Nevertheless, the strength of our community of values that links us with so many countries should give us the hope to walk through these difficult times and make the right decisions, provide better medicine and health care to more and more people. This is a guideline of Fresenius, and this is our commitment in this day and age. Ladies and gentlemen, let me now talk about the formalities of our virtual AGM. The invitation to today's AGM has been duly published in the Federal Gazette on March 30, 2022. In due form and time, all documents can be accessed and are open for inspection on the website of Fresenius SE & Co. KGaA. So all required documents and informations can be accessed, and they can still be accessed beyond today's AGM. One copy of all the documents is held by our Notary Public, Dr. Carsten Angersbach, who takes the minutes of today's AGM. Dr. Angersbach is here and present. He's sitting right next to me. A very warm welcome to you, Dr. Angersbach. The members of the Supervisory Board who are present here are, apart from myself, both Vice Chairpersons Frau Grit Genster and Mr. Michael Diekmann. I also very warmly welcome Mrs. Susanne Zeidler and Mr. Dr. Christoph Zindel, who are offering -- who are standing for election under item #7 as the representatives of the shareholder. Frau Zeidler has been a member of the Supervisory Board on the basis of judicial appointment as the successor of Frau Hauke Stars since the 9th of February 2022, and the traditional appointment ends with today's AGM. From the Executive Board of the General Partner, Fresenius Medical -- Fresenius Management SE, we have 3 representatives from Fresenius Management SE here present: Stephan Sturm, the CEO; Mrs. Rachel Empey, economic member of the Board members. Dr. Sebastian Biedenkopf is responsible for human resources, risk management and legal as member of the Board. I kindly welcome the members of the Executive Board who are here present. A warm welcome to you. Members who are not present in person of the Executive Board of Fresenius Management SE and the Supervisory Board of Fresenius SE & Co. KGaA are following this AGM via the Internet. We would like to discuss 2 changes in our Executive Board. As you have read in the press statement, Rachel Empey and Rice Powell attend our AGM this time for the last time as members of the Executive Board. It is Frau Empey's wish to leave Fresenius Group end of August. Mr. Powell has reached the age limit for the CEO of Fresenius Medical Care Management AG. So he's reaching the age limit and will leave the company as of 31st of December 2022. Ladies and gentlemen, I think it's not too early if I already say, thank you for the great cooperation and the great job done by both members of the Executive Board also on your behalf. All the best for your professional and private future and plans and endeavors. I am very happy to state that Frau Sara Hennicken, future Executive Board Member for Finances; and Frau Dr. Carla Kriwet, who will be the future CEO of Fresenius Medical Care Management AG. We have 2 excellent successors as members of the Executive Board. Both have exhaustive know-how and will contribute to the success of our company after this discussion of the members of the Executive Board. I would also like to warmly welcome Dr. Bernd Roese, from PricewaterhouseCoopers GmbH auditing company, who were auditors for the business year of 2021 and are also taking part in our AGM. Dr. Roese is present here in Bad Homburg in one of the adjacent rooms. Ladies and gentlemen, again, we have a list of attendance for this virtual AGM as is legally mandatory. The proxy votes of the company, Dr. Thomas Richter and Sebastian Schlagwein are also registered with the shares they represent. In this context, I would like to say and state and declare that the share capital has slightly changed since the invitation. The share capital is now EUR 558,502,143 of the share capital of the company, amounting to EUR 558,502,143, split in 558,502,148 no-par value shares. 406,580,533 no-par value shares are present with the exact number of votes, corresponding to 72.80% of the share capital of our company. We have received proxy votes for 1,500,764 no-par value shares. In total, we have 408,081,297 no-par value shares. This amounts to 73.07% of our share capital. The list of attendance is open for inspection here in the meeting room and will be updated during the meeting. Shareholders who have registered in due form for our AGM were able to send in questions via the shareholders' portal. Those who registered in due form and time were able to submit questions via the shareholder portal on the Internet in the run-up to our virtual AGM. These questions will be answered after the speech given by Mr. Sturm and after my explanations for the activities of the Supervisory Board in the past business year. We will answer these questions as exhaustively as we would do if this were an in-person meeting and AGM. Questions who -- subjects are repeated or questions who form one block will be answered. So questions that are repetitive will be grouped. Furthermore, our shareholders who have duly registered could vote before via proxy or via postal vote or via sending a proxy vote to the shareholder representatives of our company. During this virtual AGM, you can still vote via the shareholder portal on the Internet until the Executive Board has answered the shareholder questions submitted in advance, and we proceed to the votes. At this point, I will again expressively point out that this is the last opportunity to cast your votes or issue instructions. However, I would kindly ask you to do this earlier. Maybe, there can be delays in the transmission. I would also like to state and declare that we have received a countermotion subject to notifications and has been received by this company. This, including our statement hereto, is available on the company's website. So these were the formalities. Ladies and gentlemen, now we are starting to deal with the agenda. First of all, I will discuss the individual items on our agenda. In this context, Sturm will talk about the situation of the company, and I will explain the Supervisory Board's report. Afterwards, we will answer the questions that you have submitted prior to the meeting. And then we will vote on the individual items on our agenda. Item 1 on our agenda deals with the presentation of the annual financial statements and the consolidated financial statements for Fresenius SE & Co. KGaA and the group and the report of the Supervisory Board of Fresenius SE & Co. KGaA for the fiscal year 2021 and the resolution on the approval of the annual financial statements of Fresenius SE & Co. KGaA for the fiscal year 2021. As I've already mentioned, the aforementioned documents since the invitation invocation for the AGM are available for your inspection via the website of the company. Of course, during the virtual AGM, you can read or download these documents. You can also find the report of the General Partner according to the information according to Section 289a, Paragraph 1 and Section 350a Paragraph 1 of the HGB German commercial law. I do assume and deem all documents as well known. One hard copy is open for inspection here with notary public, Dr. Angersbach. I kindly ask Mr. Sturm to take the floor and also discuss the current business year. Dr. Sturm, the floor is yours.

Dear shareholders, I wish you a very warm welcome to the Fresenius Annual General Meeting. Last year, I opened my speech with the words, "These are extraordinary times that applies to the entire world but that also applies to us as a company." What I did not expect was that words would once again still apply today, maybe even more so than 1 year ago. There is a war in Europe, only 1 day's drive away from our headquarters. It is a war of aggression provoked by the Russian leadership, which I strongly condemn. As a healthcare company, Fresenius fights to save lives. Putin's army is fighting to destroy an entire country, with a contempt for people and a brutality that appalls me. On the other hand, I am very proud of the truly heroic performance of our employees in Ukraine. Until the war began, our business in the country included 3 dialysis centers. Chronic kidney disease patients receive life-saving dialysis there. For weeks, our employees kept these clinics going despite the worsening situation, despite the fiercer bombardments, despite the constant worry about the safety of their families and their own lives because they realized that giving up may well have meant the death of our patients. Our clinic in Kharkiv now lies in ruins. We succeeded in moving its patients and those of the Chernihiv clinic together with their families to relative safety. This was very heartening news amid all of the suffering. In the meantime, we've even been able to reopen the clinic in Chernihiv. At the same time, our colleagues are working tirelessly to get urgently needed medicines, blood supplies and other medical products into the country despite the increasingly complicated logistics involved. These and many similar stories that I've heard have moved me deeply. They also make me extremely angry, angry at Vladimir Putin and angry at a system that would tolerate such barbaric warmongering. Yet Fresenius is -- continues to be active in Russia. And as things stand now, we will remain so because that too is part of our responsibility as a healthcare company. We operate some 100 dialysis clinics in Russia. And we provide hospitals and other healthcare facilities with important medicines and clinical nutrition products. We cannot simply abandon our patients there. Even in light of the atrocities and butcher in other places, we have to continue to provide them with medical care. It is very easy to shut down a fast-food restaurant but not a dialysis center. If Fresenius produced consumer goods, we would immediately have pulled out of Russia. But we are a healthcare company. Many of our products and services are essential for life, life-saving, in fact. Our patients depend on these products and services, even in Russia. There aren't any substitutes available, at least not in the short term. And even though it is Russian soldiers who are fighting and killing in Ukraine, we cannot and must not set human lives against each other. That would rob us of our own humanity. We have a special duty to protect the lives and health of our patients, all of our patients. We cannot simply refuse them life-saving treatments and coldly stand aside and allow them to die. This is especially true for our doctors who have sworn an oath to protect human life. I can assure you, there are no financial incentives for us to continue caring for our patients in Russia. At this point in time and in the foreseeable future, we will not be earning any money whatsoever. And of course, the Russia of today is not a market in which we can expand. We have put all of our investments there on ice. And in Russia, we will continue to only provide what our patients urgently need in Russia. In the first quarter of this year, the war had an adverse effect of EUR 14 million on our net income, which we reported in our financial statement as a special item. I do not want to speculate on any additional effects. But of course, we will be monitoring the developments very closely. I fervently hope that the Russian leadership will come to its senses. The fighting and killing -- unnecessary killing in Ukraine must stop immediately. Vladimir Putin has this in his power. And with all my heart, I wish for an end to the violence in this region and a lasting piece. However, the war in Ukraine was not the only challenge we are facing. The pandemic remains a burdensome factor for all of us personally, for you, for me, even the way in which we must hold our Annual General Meeting, again, in a purely virtual format for the third year in a row. And as a healthcare company, we are especially affected by the pandemic. As I've already said, we are fighting for lives. Never has this fight been as hard as during the coronavirus pandemic. However, we have done our part, played our role and lived up to our responsibility. Also in the year just ended, we set up special isolated units where infected patients could continue to receive their dialysis treatments. We treated meted more than 42,000 COVID-19 patients in our hospitals. In total, we've vaccinated well over 1 million people against the virus. And again, we did all we could to maintain our ability to deliver crucial medicines and medical products, even as the demand for some of them rose substantially. And to provide follow-up treatment, we developed a special program for post-COVID rehabilitation at Fresenius Vamed. This sounds like additional business, sales or profits, but it only sounds like that. In reality, the pandemic continues to impose a heavy burden on our business. An important and very sad aspect is the excess mortality among our dialysis patients. Chronic kidney disease patients are especially vulnerable to the disease. Last year, significantly more dialysis patients died than would otherwise have been the case. Above all, this is a human tragedy, but it also has an impact on our business. Treatment volumes are declining, resulting in lower sales while costs continue to rise. And this applies to Fresenius Helios but also to the rehab facilities that Fresenius Vamed has. Concurrently, we had higher costs for additional hygiene measures. And it is also true that fewer treatments and fewer operations have translated into less demand for many of Fresenius Kabi products. And Fresenius Vamed's project business was also impaired due to pandemic travel restrictions and due to the hesitation and uncertainty of many clients. Nevertheless, we achieved a lot in 2021, and we made some key decisions. One of them, Fresenius Medical Care's FME25 transformation program. This will significantly simplify the company's global structure, which, in future, will comprise only 2 global segments. In the Care Enablement segment, Fresenius Medical Care is consolidating its previously decentralized product business under one global medical technology umbrella. The global healthcare services business will be combined in the Care Delivery segment. This will make our company more agile and allow us to make better use of our existing know-how. It will accelerate innovation and deploy capital in an even more efficient manner. At Kabi, we have also defined a new strategy called Vision 2026. This is the guideline to transforming the company for the next decade. Going forward, we are going to focus on 3 growth paths: first, broadening our biopharmaceutical offering; more launches of clinical nutrition products; and the expansion in the field of medical technology. The foundation for this is our volume-driven business in infusions and liquid pharmaceuticals. Here, we aim to strengthen our resilience. And we have come up with a very simple formula called 3.1 (sic) [ 3 + 1 ]. Another milestone despite the pandemic is a record order backlog at Fresenius Vamed. And at Fresenius Helios, we again made some very attractive acquisitions. First of all, in Germany, where we acquired a German Red Cross hospital in Kassel. And not far away, in Warburg, there is already an existing Helios hospital. So in addition to the second German Red Cross hospital, we will be forming a regional medical network, and this will be expanded over the next few years, completely in line with our cluster strategy. And in Colombia, we also acquired an oncological center and an eye clinic. And then even though this was early this year, we also acquired a majority stake in another fertility center in the United States. As a result, we are strengthening our new business, the Eugin Group. With regard to all of our successes, I want to stress once again, 2021 was anything but an easy year. This applies to our company but especially to our employees. Protective clothing and masks and tests, quarantine, filling in for colleagues and special shifts, home office alongside homeschooling, video conferences that seemed endless and worries. This was an awful lot, but our employees were always there. They kept going, and they are still going for our patients, for our customers and for Fresenius. Without them, this could not have worked. And for all that, I can only say thank you. Our workforce expanded once again in '21. And yes, we have launched cost-reduction measures to increase our efficiency. However, that doesn't really seem to indicate growth in staff. But at Fresenius Medical Care, we have concrete plans for the reduction of 5,000 full-time equivalents. That was and is a very painful decision but a necessary one because it's all about making accelerated growth possible in other areas to be able to do even more for our patients and for even more patients as well. At this juncture, I would like to talk about 2 impending changes on the Management Board, as already mentioned by Mr. Kirsch. The first involves my valued colleague, Rice Powell, CEO of Fresenius Medical Care. He will turn 67 this year. Our age limit for Management Board members is 65. Therefore, Rice will complete his contract, which ends on December 31. Then after 25 successful years at Fresenius Medical Care, he will commence his well-earned retirement. And I'm very pleased to be able to report that we have found an outstanding successor and quite early as well: Dr. Carla Kriwet. Until the end of April, she was CEO at BSH Hausgeräte GmbH. And I'm certain that together with the entire management team, she will lead Fresenius Medical Care into a successful future. Regretfully, we are also losing another highly valued colleague. She is sitting here next to me: Rachel Empey, our Chief Financial Officer. For personal reasons, and -- she has decided to leave Fresenius the summer after some intense and challenging years. I'll be sorry to see you go. Of course, I respect her decision. Here too, we have found an outstanding successor from our own ranks: Sara Hennicken. She currently heads our Global Treasury and Corporate Finance Department and has worked closely with Rachel over the last few years. Although both of them will still be giving us their best for some months yet, I am already very grateful for everything that Rice and Rachel have done for Fresenius. And at the same time, I wish all of them the best. At the same time, I'm very much looking forward to working with my 2 new Management Board colleagues. We are and will remain a strong team. Dear shareholders, we come to our business results for 2021. Under the circumstances, it was an okay year for us, a decent year. We were able to increase sales by 5% at constant currency. Unfortunately, EBIT declined. At constant currency, it fell by 6%. This was due mainly due to the already mentioned COVID-19 burdens at Fresenius Medical Care. Nonetheless, we were, again, able to increase our net income by 5% at constant currency. In the fourth quarter, we turned in a very strong final spurt. And therefore, I can happily say we have met all of our announced targets for 2021, even though we raised our outlook twice during the year. You could see that we are continuing to work on rebuilding capital market confidence in us as a reliable, high-growth company. And this brings me to our dividend proposal for 2021. We -- because we want you, dear shareholders, to once again participate in our success this year. And therefore, we are proposing a 5% dividend increase to EUR 0.92 per share. This would be our 29th consecutive dividend in series. For the first time, we would also like to offer a scrip dividend, that is, you, dear shareholders, are allowed to have the choice, a choice of receiving your dividend in cash or in the form of new shares. The latter is a very simple way of reinvesting your dividend directly in our company. The Else Kröner-Fresenius Foundation has informed us that it would like to wholly opt for the scrip dividend, which is a strong signal of support, I believe, which makes me very happy. Another premier, we have set a climate goal for the Fresenius Group for the first time. We want to reduce both our direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions by half by 2030, as measured from roughly 1.5 million metric tons in 2020. By 2040, at the latest, we want to be climate-neutral. In this, we are guided by the scientific target set at Paris Agreement and its goal to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. How do we intend to achieve this ambitious goal? The key for the first few years will be to switch our consumption of electricity to renewable energy. In addition to this, we'll, of course, continue to work on making our hospitals, clinics and production sites ever more energy-efficient. We will also look at every investment from a so-called green perspective. And where it is economically and ecologically feasible, we will install more renewable energy generation capacity at all our sites. So let's talk about our vision for the future, this time, our 2022 financial guidance and medium-term targets. As stated earlier, the COVID-19 pandemic remains a burdensome factor, just how much depends, among other things, on the further progress of vaccinations in our important markets and, of course, on whether new and dangerous variants of the virus will emerge. Added to this, there is also the impact of further external factors: first and foremost, the war in Ukraine; supply chain bottlenecks; cost increases, in some cases, very substantial cost increases that are not or only partially reflected in reimbursement rates. We have tried to factor all of this into our 2022 forecast to the best of our ability. Of course, there will continue to be uncertainties. Nevertheless, we will, once again, continue to grow this year. Currently, we expect to increase our sales by mid-single-digit percentage on a currency-adjusted basis. And we expect to -- our net income to increase by a low single-digit percentage at constant currency. Our business development in the first quarter was encouraging. We made a good start into 2022. Fresenius Medical Care and Fresenius Vamed performed in line with our expectations. Fresenius Helios and Kabi performed somewhat better. I, therefore, expect that we will reach our targets. I also would like to confirm our medium-term targets for 2020 to 2023. And I want to emphasize that these targets were set in 2019 before the onset of the pandemic. These targets are annual average organic growth in sales of 4% to 7% and 5% to 9% in net income. We are sticking to these targets. At the same time, we wish to be more precise regarding our expectations. For sales growth, we expect to be at the bottom to middle of the range. And for growth in net income, we will likely reach only the lower end of this range. To achieve even this, we will have to meaningfully accelerate earnings growth in 2023. We are confident of our ability to do so. Our growth strategy, as defined last year, will help us. You will recall that a year ago, we started down the path to becoming an even stronger healthcare group. So what have we achieved during the first stage of this journey? We have optimized Fresenius. We have made the decisions for accelerated profitable growth in the coming years. Among other things, we launched an ambitious cost-cutting and efficiency program. We are making good progress even faster than as originally expected. That means we are saving even more money and sooner than expected. This allowed us to substantially increase our sustainable cost savings target to more than EUR 150 million after taxes and minority interest in 2023. After that, we are aiming for even higher sustained savings. We have also put our group structure to the test, open-ended without any taboos. We have analyzed this very carefully. Where do we see the best growth opportunities? How do we want to seize them? And how do we want to finance them? First of all, our broad-based group structure has proved its worth, particularly in difficult times such as these. It has made the growth of the past decades possible. And today, it continues to offer us many advantages: stability through diversification, also due to our size; economies of scale; synergies between business segments; and tax advantages; and of utmost importance, better financing conditions, especially when it comes to borrowing. At the end of the day, dear shareholders, a lower interest rate expense is also a big advantage for you. Another important result of our analysis, we continue to see excellent growth opportunities for all 4 business segments. All 4 have strong market positions, either we're among the leaders in the respective field of that business segment, or for example, in dialysis, we are clearly the #1. In all 4 business segments, we have identified very promising strategic growth areas. And we now want to exploit this potential. We want to promote and actively drive this growth forward. Organic growth was, is and will remain the basis for us. But beyond that, we also want to take strategic growth steps in the future, specifically by making significant investments, for example, in our digital transformation or the realization of large acquisitions, just as we have repeatedly and successfully done in the past. At the same time, we want to maintain our investment-grade credit rating. That lowers our interest costs and assures us access to the capital market, especially in difficult times like these. A capital increase would only again become an option at a significantly higher share price. And that is why we have to tap new sources of capital and distribute the available capital wisely. And that is why we have analyzed our current setup, i.e., our 4 business segments, very closely and have developed a strategy for an optimal capital allocation within the group. In this way, we aim to combine more dynamic growth, with the advantages of a diversified structure in an optimal fashion. I would like to present the strategy to you now briefly. The top priority for capital allocation within the group will be Fresenius Kabi. Why? First of all, in comparison of all 4 business segments, we see Fresenius Kabi as having the best overall growth prospects and the best profile of return on our investment. Our program called Vision 2026 strategy will make a significant contribution here. Secondly, unlike Fresenius Medical Care and Fresenius Vamed, we are the sole owner of Kabi. Thirdly, while we have primarily expanded our services business in the past, we now want to strengthen, in particular, the product side of Fresenius. And fourthly, Fresenius Kabi's pharmaceutical business is the nucleus of our company. Drugs, infusions, that's where we come from. As a listed company, Fresenius Medical Care already largely finances its growth independently. Through its FME transformation program, Fresenius Medical Care will strengthen its long-term profitable growth. In doing so, it will create additional value. And this also applies to our share in the company. Helios and Vamed will continue to be able to finance smaller acquisitions from Fresenius Group funds. For larger growth, we are now consider bringing in suitable equity investors on board but not at the level of Fresenius SE & Co. KGaA but at the level of these business segments. We are already implementing this growth strategy. At the end of March, Kabi launched 2 important acquisitions. One is a majority stake in mAbxience, a leading international biopharmaceutical company based in Madrid. mAbxience already has 2 biosimilars that have been launched on the market, and they have a very promising pipeline. This company also operates 3 state-of-the-art plants for producing biological agents, and this superbly complements our existing manufacturing network. Fresenius Kabi has also taken over Ivenix, a U.S. company. Ivenix has developed a highly innovative infusion system or pump that is easier to operate and, thus, safer than standard pumps. In addition, it works seamlessly with other systems. With these 2 acquisitions, we are strengthening Kabi's position in 2 important growth markets. And Fresenius Medical Care also took another important growth step in March. The company is participating in the merger of 3 partners to become the leading value-based kidney care provider in the United States. Fresenius Medical Care will bring its own division for value-based care in North America to this merger. In addition, we will be adding a leading network of nephrologists in the United States and the operator of a leading patient data platform. The new company will be called InterWell Health. And it will be fully consolidated by Fresenius Medical Care as a majority owner, with a valuation of $2.4 billion. InterWell Health has outstanding prospects for significantly improving renal therapy in the United States. Its ambitious goals include reducing hospital stays; slowing the progression of the disease; increasing the number of transplants; speeding the transition to home dialysis; improving the clinical results and, thereby, improving the quality of life for our patients; and last but not least, reducing overall cost for the healthcare system. Moreover, InterWell Health will treat chronic kidney diseases long before these patients need dialysis. In this way, we can more than triple the potential market volume for Fresenius Medical Care in the United States from around $50 billion to around $170 billion. So you see we're not just simply making announcements. We're actually putting them into effect. Our decisions will enable the accelerated growth of each individual business segment and, therefore, also accelerate the growth for the entire group. We want to move Fresenius ahead at speed. But we also want to -- a measured and well-managed transformation of our company. Fresenius remains a diversified healthcare group with a sharper profile. We will continue to be active in wide-ranging and very exciting areas of medical care. Because not only the world finds itself in eventful times, we as a company too are going through turbulent times. We have a number of challenges to overcome, no doubt. But our path is clear. We have set a strategic framework to achieve sustainable and accelerated profitable growth. Our goal is and remains to create added value and benefit for all our stakeholders by doing what we have done best for 110 years: providing high-quality medicine at affordable prices and tailored to the needs of more and more people around the world who need medical care. To put it succinctly, ever better medicine for ever more people. We will continue to broadly and steadily progress down this path. So come with us. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much, Mr. Sturm, for your detailed explanations. The Supervisory Board wishes you and your colleagues on the Management Board continued success and good luck in shaping the long-term future of Fresenius. And let me take this opportunity to thank all employees of Fresenius working on a global basis for Fresenius. I'd also like to include the Management Board, of course. I'd like to thank them for their tremendous work and commitment in these very challenging times. So thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, I would now like to say goodbye to those people who are following the AGM outside the password-protected shareholder portal via the Internet. The public broadcast will now end. For shareholders and shareholder representatives following the AGM via the shareholder portal the broadcast is going to continue. [Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]