Ipsos SA (IPS) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Well, good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Welcome to Keys, our monthly broadcast to our clients all around the world. It's still January, so I think I can wish you all a very happy new year from everyone at Ipsos. We hope we can support you in whatever you're looking to do over the next 12 months and beyond. And for today, because it is the new year, we thought we would start to think about different visions of the future, whether we're talking about the next few weeks, the coming year or indeed further ahead than that. And to help us do that, I'm delighted to be joined by our expert panelists for today's session. We have Tayo, who is in Lagos, Nigeria, who's going to be helping us understand how Nigeria is weathering the storm. We have Mallory, who is in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States, who's going to help us understand better the state of America. We have Mike over the border in Ottawa, Canada, who's going to be helping us think about what happens best next, or maybe even what happens best, with some scenarios for the future. And he's going to take us back in time before we dive into that future moment. So thank you for that in advance, Mike. I'm talking to you from London in the U.K., not London, Ontario. And I'm going to be thinking about public opinion, public attitudes and what that means for both behaviors and, indeed, sentiment of people around the world, whether they're consumers, customers or citizens. And I'm particularly going to try and think about what the next 12 months might need -- might have in store. Questions. I hope you have them. Please put them in the chat box, and we've got time at the end to ask our panelists your questions, and we can follow up anything afterwards. I should also mention that all of the slides that we're going to present to you will be available to you after the webinar as well. So just to kick off, I'd try to think about public opinion, thinking about the public opinion in trade. And I've just drawn out 6 questions that we, at Ipsos, are going to be following this year, because in some way it feels that they will help us better understand the overall story, wherever it is in the world that any of us are sitting. So these are our 6 questions. We start with the economy. Mallory will also touch on that in a moment. But will we be feeling better at the end of the year than we do now? Well, what we can say at the moment is that at the start of the year? Consumer confidence, which can be a tricky one to measure, and we found it zigzagging all through the last 12 months. We are finding some better numbers in consumer confidence in Europe, for example, which is up in the capital of pessimism. We're also finding, when we look at the year-on-year change, some better numbers overall in many markets around the world. Our prediction survey that we do every year does find some more optimism than we had, for example, last year. Although it isn't still at levels that we were seeing during COVID times. And we have questions about the optimism that we're spot on. It does seem to be slightly guarded. We still have very high proportions of people worrying about interest rates, inflation, unemployment. Now there may or may not be right in those predictions, but it does suggest a rather muted mood. If I'm thinking about cost of living in particular, our today [indiscernible] is the world study, and inflation is #1, again, as it has been for 22 consecutive months. So the economy, of course, will need to be watching. We'll also be watching questions around populism and politics. Is it in advance? Or is it in retreat? Well, we'll know by the end of the year, we have elections in more than 50 countries, 2 billion people will be voting. And each of those will tell a particular story, of course, about those countries. We'll hear about the U.S. in a moment. And overall, we'll, of course, be trying to join the dots and make connections about what it's telling us about the mood internationally. We'll also regrettably be thinking about conflict and its consequences. We know that there are more than 100 conflicts in various parts of the world at the moment. We know that the public is a little bit unnerved by what they see. Near consensus that the world is becoming more dangerous. In my own country, the BBC this morning quoted our own -- one of our politicians saying that we're now moving from a pos-war environment to potentially a pre-war environment. So it's huge questions about geopolitics and what that means for all of us. Also raises questions about the economy because we may be seeing a plateauing, or indeed at all, inflation rates on average. But what do the Red Sea attacks mean? Another new question that we didn't have in our intro a few weeks ago. What we did have in intro, of course, was climate change. And one of the big questions for this year is about just how urgent it is. Yes, the public do express concern about this. In our prediction study, we have 71%, anticipating more extreme weather events in my country this year compared with last year. 6 in 10, so they can already see the effects of climate change in the area where they live. But, and there is a but, when we asked climate change alongside other topics, as we do in what is the world question, it ranks 8th when we're asking people about what's the biggest concern in that country. And so the question we have to continue asking is, is it urgent or is it just important? We see that here. Yes, people agree we're heading for disaster if we don't change our habits quickly. But the intensity of that feeling, if you look at the red in our chart, in many countries, the proportion agreeing with that statement has been on the decline in the last 12 months. Next question, and one which we may be watching very carefully in our own organizations, is what we're going to see at work, evolution or revolution. The story about for office workers, where that ends up in terms of the balance of staying at home versus being at work is still being played out. And of course, the story of artificial intelligence, including its new powers is perhaps starting to be even more played out. For now, the public feel it's more of a job loser than a job creator in that country. Are they right? We'll be watching. Final question on our intro is about populations and, more importantly, around population change. We're going to hit on Tayo, in Nigeria, and the population growth that, that country is very much still experiencing. But many countries, like China, are now recording population decline for the second straight year. We've got more than 30 countries, in fact, around the world,which are registering a population decrease. And we're starting to see the reality that demography, which may be in something that's a university course or something we might study at various points in our lives, is now politics. It raises big questions around, for example, what is our policy on the immigration. It raises questions for countries about whether they can or whether it's possible to increase fertility rates. It raises questions about whether countries or economies can increase productivity rates. So huge questions arise. And the public, in at least some of the countries, are now registering that this is a big topic. In these 5 countries, people are predicting that the population will fall in 2024. In other countries, the debate perhaps is still to start to play out. And Germany, in particular, is one. We've got just over 1 in 4 people at Germany think the population is going to fall this year. That's exactly what the numbers are suggesting. So we'll be monitoring this question as well as we explore the changing contours of public opinion. So those are the topics we're going to be tracking this year. The Keys Webinars, we'll be updating you on some of the latest themes each month. So we're looking forward to having you with us. We're looking forward to discussing also what the implications are for brands. A whole series of topics. Again, we can have on our checklist. For example, premium brands versus value brands. Or local brands versus global brands. How to maintain empathy in a changing environment. How to stay close, for example, to the middle classes, which Tayo will help us understand a little later on. And of course, what technology does or doesn't disrupt. So we're going to be looking at that. As well in our Keys webinars, of course, one of the big frames we're going to be doing that through is our Ipsos Global Trends Study, which is reaching its tenth anniversary. So in the middle of the year, we will be able to reflect on what 10 years of looking back and looking forward is telling us about where we go next. But we're impatient to do that today. And so with that in mind, Mike is going to also take a look back and a look forward based on the work that he's been doing and help us understand how different scenario planning, different thinking could help us better understand today's context. Mike, thanks for being with us.

Thank you, Simon. And as you said, I'm going to take a look at where we were in 2020 when we were doing some future scenario work and then take a brief look at Canada. I can't help but sort of share a little bit of the Canadian outlook with everybody as well. So back to 2020, I had the pleasure and a great opportunity to work on this project with one of my colleagues called Shaping 2025 and Beyond. You can find the full report on our website. It was a fairly typical, I would say, future scenario piece, horizon scan, expert interviews and workshops. One big difference is we were focused on the outcomes of the pandemic, we are all living through the pandemic. So we were all wearing masks. Personally, we had children at home, off of school. We were hearing both the economic and health tools every day. So it was a very different piece from that perspective, I think than we normally would do. We came up with 4 plausible futures. I'm only going to talk about the familiar power returned to me power, because that was the one we saw as the most plausible today. But before I do that, I just want to look at a little bit of the context that we were working in 2020. Because it seems like it was a long time ago sometimes. And then other times, it seems like it was just the other day. Back to mid-May, June 2020, we had views on the economy. We had a lot of uncertainty. Vaccines were definitely accelerating, but they weren't here yet. It was late 2020, early '21, at that time, people were expecting it to happen. The economy had rebounded or was starting to rebound much faster than we initially thought it was going to be, in part because governments had injected a lot of funds in or ahead -- at least hinted that they were about to inject funds. And also because our clients, big corporations, small companies, had tacked and moved and figured out how to innovate, serve clients and were really good at sort of keeping things going. On the flip side, we also recognize that there were some long-term cost on health and education that were unknown and we didn't know where that money is going to come from, given the government spending. And most of the pundits at the time thought that we would see sort of long-term unemployment sort of stay and increase. So that was sort of the mindset that be was in. We also had a lot of uncertainties on the other side on the noneconomic side, right? From an static standpoint, house prices are on the rise, affordability was a concern for people. In COVID-19, just a couple of months set back -- in some places, decade worth of gender and ethnic gains, ethnic minority gains. So that was a real sort of challenge and a worrisome sort of looking backwards. We also saw some more progressive queues that we thought would be very interesting in terms of online communities that we're organizing and working together, and a real rise in the social justice movement. So that was the context in which we set out to do the bridge scenario. And as I said, we came up with 4 scenarios. The most popular one or the most plausible one was just familiar power. And that was because we really saw people wanting to get back to normal. And back to normal meant for us at that time back to 2019. So we thought we'll feel a lot like 2019. And -- but less resilient, high debt, less stable. We won't have made social progress on the areas where we would hope to make some progress because of the pandemic shadow. The next couple of slides I've highlighted some of the storylines we saw coming out of the familiar power. I've put some in green where I think we more or less were on mark or we're vectoring towards the market, and somewhere I think we missed out. So in politics, we saw greater left and right distance forming. We saw limited progress on cutting CO2. And I don't think we've seen any serious reforms, at least across the board, in terms of investments or reforms in the social programs. In brands, I think we do see that people are looking for more meaning in brands. We see it in our ESG work. Purpose is becoming a bigger factor. We know that it's becoming an increase factor. If not in the purchase decision, the people at least penalizing companies that are seeming to be offside on that. I think we -- at the time and I still think so, we overestimated the impact of health. Yes, health is a bigger concern. Mental health has risen up. But brands that aren't attached to health directly, haven't had to tailor their attributes to say we're safe. We're sanitized. We're in a virtual world. So I think we're blinded a little bit by our COVID mask at the time into thinking that. In terms of the environment, we thought then and we see now in our data that climate change would remain a threat. And we see that people want progress but they don't really feel it's their responsibility to make that progress. They think it's government. It's companies. But that's -- on a personal level, I don't know if I should have to change my lifestyle to make it happen. And I think we have seen fewer international agreements or even local agreements than we would hope to have seen going forward. So I think we've seen a lack of progress in where we assumed that we would see a little bit on that front. A little tip for people if you're doing it again, if I had to go and do it again, this is my considerations. We tried -- and if you read the report, you'll see regional variations. We tried to weave them in. I think the local context matters more than we thought. It would have made for a much longer report, which no one would have wanted. But I think in the hindsight, you'll hear from Mallory and Tayo, how much local context matter. I think it's really important to think beyond the present. Like I said, we were a little caught up in wearing mask and what we were living through and couldn't see beyond, at least I couldn't see beyond some of the pieces. And I thought it was really interesting, we talked a lot about change, but we didn't recognize the change would likely be things that we hadn't thought of that weren't connected to the pandemic. That they would be climate, aging, immigration, and that those things would have a bigger influence. And I think we underestimated the geopolitical tensions, we thought there'd be a lot of trade wars. We didn't necessarily know the clear prospect for war. So I couldn't resist but take a little bit of time to talk about Canada. And I chose this slide because this is the stereotypical view around the world of Canada, peaceful, calm, nature. In reality, we are by far an urban nation. We far more live in cities. This is not the reality for most folk, unless they go away on the weekends or get away. And this calm, placid scene is not at all how Canadians are feeling both the world right now. We run in Canada -- actually running on Global Advisory in some 30 countries, the Ipsos Disruption Barometer. And what it is, is it really recognizes that citizen consumer sentiment has emerged over the last half decade, decade or so. People don't think separately about their consumer issues and their citizens issues, they blend them. It's one of the drivers of ESG and why they want corporations to step up. When the citizen consumer sentiment combined to the disruption bummer is high, people are more open tolerant. They're likely to spend more, try new products, less critical of their service experiences. And you can have a more positive upbeat tone. As you'll see in the next couple of slides, this is not working entirely today. So this disruption barometer from fall of 2018 through to November of 2023, November. And what you can say are broken into 4 groups. You can see prepandemic, before the pandemic, sentiment in Canada was on a decline. People were concerned about longer-term issues, failing institutions, cost of living, those kind of things. What the pandemic did, after the initial sort of scare, concern and uncertainty of the first couple of weeks, first couple of months, actually gave us a common purpose. Gave us a focus. Gave us a reason to focus on a single set of issues and some unanimity around how our focus is going to be. And it allowed us, more importantly, to park all those other issues and not think about climate change and not think about housing and not think about immigration. And so we got a little bit of really governments rolled out a lot of vaccines. Cash came as well and they seem pretty good. Since then, when we've got the polycrisis square in the eye and now we started to see a decline. The combination of higher interest rates, inflation, the polycrisis, climate change. All the issues we parked and said let's worry about them in the future are now much more pressing and a concern for Canadians. And our sentiment both today and as you look forward is about as low as it's ever been. So just the bottom line for Canada, I'll put all 4 of these up. I think we'll see a more turbulent year in terms of the outlook, both the short term and long term. I will expect challenges in consumer behavior, that is in spending. More potential for labor disruption, more potential for social protests as issues arise. Interestingly, prior to the last sort of year or so, the generations had different views, but they're all converging on this negative sentiment now, but for very different reasons, and that's making it a real challenge for companies and for governments to sort of address all of those challenges at the same time because they all have different reasons for being down right now. The mood is being reinforced by what we're seeing is an increasingly political culture. And I think -- while we don't have an election scheduled, we're not one of the 50 million have an election scheduled in 2024, we do have one in 2025 and I think we'll see that be a big change action for Canada. So thank you very much.

Well, thank you, Mike, and thank you. That's -- anybody who was stuck in serene Canada, that was Canada. So that does exist if you want to go there, I could remind you really of some of the realities. And I think we might come back to that before the end of the webinar. But I want to just come back to your opening reflections because I think this mantra of thinking about what we now know about what we didn't know, but which we have known, is quite an interesting one. Just to pause on -- if you could just pass one parting piece of advice from that topic. If we were looking to do a similar exercise, scenario is 2030, let's say, what would be your advice to those of us on the call who might be [indiscernible] embark on that.

Well, hopefully, you're not doing it in the middle pandemic, which definitely changed at least my personal outlook. But given where we were, I don't get captured by the biggest current concerns or the biggest current condition. I think we took a look at this and we said, how will the pandemic change the future. And we probably should have used it as a lens in that as a driver. We should have said, what's the normal path on social issues, technology issues, economic issues? Where are that likely to go? And then said, is there a reason that pandemic would accelerate, move that back, shift those gears, et cetera. So rather than put the current big issues, say, today, it's -- if you're in some places, words a geopolitical situation at the fore, make it a lens. Or if you're looking in a place where your focus is largely on the economy, make that sort of the secondary lens. Say what's the normal path and then say how will the economy change it.

Okay. Great advice. Thank you for that. We'll be back to you before the end as well. So thank you, Mike. If you're looking at Mike's slides, you will see he's vetting the change election in 2025 that he's expecting. It's time now to go to one of the countries who is going to have an election in 2024. And Mallory in Michigan is going to tell us what we should expect or at least what we could look out for in the year ahead. Mallory, thank you for being with us today.

Thanks for having me, Simon. Hi, everybody. Greetings. I also chose a picture that is sort of emblematic of probably right now, the White House. I think 2024 is a historic election year for many reasons, both here in the U.S. but also abroad. So I'm happy to join you today to unpack the political landscape here in America. Well, obviously, Simon touched on this in his intro. But one thing that we are watching very closely here is the economy. Basically since COVID began to recede and inflation in the U.S. began to rise in early 2022, the economy has been the main issue facing the country. That continues to be the case even if it's a little fluctuation. I think one thing of note is that, here in the U.S., virtually every issue is viewed through a political lens, whether you're a Democrat or a Republican, our 2 main political parties here, that tends to color how you view the world around you. But viewing the economy is the most important issue facing the country is something that we all have in common right now. And as Simon pointed out, global consumer confidence, I want to drill down and look at U.S. consumer confidence here. Which, if you look at that blue line sort of a top of the 3, you can see that it's fluctuated quite a bit, especially in the past year or 2 amidst the pandemic kind of received from focus, inflation rising. But one thing that's really interesting here is that there are other economic indicators here in the U.S. that signal that things are getting better. And that's certainly the message that President Joe Biden is trying to convey with very mixed success. But inflation is at its lowest point, it's been in quite some time. Inflation here at a state seems like it's easing, but consumers aren't really feeling it yet. And yes, there's been a little bit of improvement, but there does seem to be this greater divorce between perception and some of the other indicators here. Now I mentioned that everything is sort of viewed through that partisan lens, and consumer confidence is no exception. If you look at the years during the Donald Trump administration, from 2017 to early 2021, Republicans, his party, felt better about their own consumer confidence. Felt more positive, more bullish about the economy. And Democrats were kind of lagging behind, lagging behind the national average. And then you can see right in the middle of the screen in November 2020 when our last election was, which, by the way, it looks like we're headed toward a rematch between the 2 men, Biden and Trump, consumer confidence, basically the parties got to parity and then it flipped. When Joe Biden was inaugurated in early 2021, Democrats started feeling increasingly optimistic about their consumer confidence, and Republicans started pulling back and feeling more negative. And so I think this is just a really great example of how the party that's in power, whether it's your party or the opposition, really does kind of creep in and color your views on a number of given topics. Now let's dive into the election itself. As I mentioned, it's likely to be a rematch between these 2 men. But taking a step back, I want to talk a little bit about where we're at with just how people are feeling about the system as it were. Simon called out that we're keeping a very close eye on populism and how that is unfolding, how those sentiments are unfolding across the globe. We've been doing the same here in the U.S. basically since 2015 and the rise of Donald Trump. And the particular flavor of populism that we see here in the states is that roughly 2 in 3 Americans feel that the economy is rigged to advantage the rich and powerful, that traditional political parties and politicians don't care about people like them. And here in the U.S., we have a very strong, clear 2-party system. And then one that I think speaks to the arrives and the power and appeal of Trump himself,is this notion that America needs a strong leader to take the country back. And that's particularly prominent among Republicans. So these populist sentiments the notion that the system is broken isn't new, but it's certainly something to contend with as we enter this election year as well. And currently, President Biden sits at roughly 40% for his job approval rating. It's been interesting, despite all of the change, all of the fluctuation all of his work that he's been trying to do to voice all of these positives around the economy, his approval rating has held remarkably steady in the high 30s to low 40% range. So pretty tepid from the public overall. But let's put that into some context. Here in the U.S., we've done an analysis of global Ipsos data and elections across the world. And what we found is that an incumbent, a sitting president with an approval rating of around 40% has roughly 50-50 odds, slightly better than 50-50, in terms of their chance for reelection. So despite any sort of tepid approval rating for the president, any grievances among Democrats or independents about Biden's age or other qualifications, he remains the best chance for the Democrats to achieve victory for him to be reelected in 2024. But I do think it's important to note if he were to be able to just improve his approval rating by, say, 3 to 5 percentage points, those odds for reelection certainly improve. So that's something that we'll be keeping an eye on and tracking over the coming months. Now on the flip side, the Republican party remains the party of Donald Trump. As you can see, he's that red line at the top. And if you look at the primary race, he has a commanding lead so much so that 2 of the 4 lines on the screen, 2 of the 4 people running in that race, have dropped out. It is now a 2-person race between Donald Trump and Nikki Haley. We've started to have primary elections and caucuses here in the U.S. In Iowa and New Hampshire, our first 2 states, Donald Trump has come out on top in both of those states. And it's looking increasingly like this is his race to lose. Now obviously, I've spent the majority of my time talking about national sentiment and how Americans largely feel. But I think it's really critical to remember that this is not a national election. Elections in the U.S. are on at the state level. In fact, this election is likely to come down, as the past few elections have, to just a few key battleground states. So the map is colored. You can see blue, those are states that lean heavily Democratic in favor of President Biden and his party. Red states are our Republican states. And then there's only 6 states that are gray in the middle. If you look toward the top -- for those of you on the call that are not in the States, you look towards the top northern part of the U.S., you've got 3 sort of clustered close together. Wisconsin, my home state of Michigan and Pennsylvania, those upper Midwest states that played a critical role in the past 2 presidential elections. Donald Trump won in 2016 because of narrow victories in these 3 Upper Midwest states. And in 2020, Joe Biden won all 3 of these states. In the Southeast, you have the state of Georgia and then in the Southwest, Arizona and Nevada. So these are the states that we, along with election analysts across the country, are going to be watching really closely. But of course, we're here today to also unpack what the landscape and what the election means for brands and companies. One thing -- going back to this note of declining trust and institutions, Mike, you highlighted that it's happening in Canada, it's happening here too. It's happening everywhere. This is a new phenomenon. But over time, Americans have really seen a steep decline in the level of trust toward all institutions, but particularly politics and government. And at the same time, their level of confidence in those running major companies has really kind of stayed flat. And so the vast majority have a great deal or some confidence in major companies, while their trust in the executive branch, meaning the President of the United States, has diminished over time. So when you think of the notion of looking for a strong leader here, Americans are increasingly turning to brands, to companies, perhaps to fill that void and pick up on different queues that they have to offer. Now that doesn't come without risk. When we ask Americans how companies should or should not kind of weigh into the fray here, a majority of Americans agree that companies should remain neutral on political issues. And we see a similar phenomenon when you ask about social issues. So that's things like abortion, gun violence, immigration, et cetera. This is particularly true for Republicans, a little less so for Democrats and Independents, so a little bit more openness with them to kind of weigh in on those issues. But it also does have real impact for a company's bottom line. A slight majority of Republicans and Democrats alike agree that if a corporation takes a stand on an issue that they don't agree with, they're less likely to buy their products or use their services. But I want to be clear here, what the data finds of that companies shouldn't just stay out of it and not say anything. But when you do decide to take a stand on an issue, do so authentically and make sure you're understanding your customer base. Our data also finds that just over half of Americans feel that if a corporation takes a stand on an issue, they should stick by their decisions even if it is off-putting or make some folks angry. That's particularly true for those who identify as Democrats. So I think overall, the takeaway, especially in a year like this, is to just understand your consumer base, understand the issues and who you're trying to reach and do so in a way that is authentic and not kind of wishy-washy, back and forth.

Lovely. Well, thank you so much, Mallory, and very, very clear picture, both in the political team and perhaps, where businesses are adapting and responding. I really love the slide had about the incumbent and the successor based on the satisfaction scores because, of course, that has parallel with parallels with brands, because we have often incumbent brands and challenger brands. And of course, looking at the -- your particular scene now, you've got 2 kind of incumbents that are both at top spots. So it's going to be -- I know it's going to like no other. For those of us in business offices are thinking about how we can best communicate with the American public. You made the point about sticking to your decisions and staying authentic. And any other advice for us if we're to try to do as good a job as we can in getting the message across?

Sure. I think there's just a couple of things to remember that the findings from our survey research on the topic tell us that taking a stand or not taking a stand can be risky. But I think caving to pressure may be even riskier. For example, we saw some brands, Bud Light and Target kind of facing boy cuts this year for celebrating LGBTQ Pride Month, even though they had done so for years. And so really just understanding that many Americans, especially affluent consumers, are making values-driven purchase decisions. And so when you take positions to kind of take on some of these big challenges, understand the risk, but also understand and really know your customer base, who they are, what they care about what causes they care for or maybe driving their purchase behaviors.

Lovely. Thank you. Very clear. Really great. So thank you also, Mallory. We're going to come back to you for the end of the webinar. But it's time now to go from the world's biggest economy to Africa's biggest economy. Tayo, thank you for being with us to tell us more about how Nigeria is weathering the storm. Over to you.

Thank you, Simon. The past couple of months has been quite turbulent and rocky in Nigeria. But somehow, we are surviving it. But before I talk about the trouble lens we've gone through, it's very important I talked to you about why Nigeria is a giant of Africa. There's so many reasons why they call Nigeria, [Foreign Language] a light of few. I'll highlight a few. First is that land mass is quite big. Big sitting on about 900,000 square kilometer. It's got natural resources, natural gas, solid, mineral, oil, we've got it all. It's the largest GDP in Africa, but certainly not largest in the world. It boasts of a population of about 200 million people, making it the seventh in the world, and forecasted to be the second by to 100. Diversity is one of our strengths. Over 500 lights and over 8,000 dialects. That means within a space of 5 kilometers, we can't communicate effectively. It's got a very youthful population. About 70% of the population are less than 35 years old. On the flip side, wealth inequality and distribution is so ingrained in nature. Looking at this chart, you will see that the top 1% own about quarter of the wealth of the country, and the bottom 50, just about 5%. The middle class is big, no doubt. But what we see happening in recent times,is the middle class shrinking. Unfortunately, it's not like the moving up the ladder, rather getting down the socioeconomic class. So what does this mean? The poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer. We had our election last year. And by May last year, a new president was sworn in. He's trying to fix things. And the first thing it did was to put some reform case, and I'll talk about the best or the top 2 ones that are really shaken off now. First is you try to unify the dollar, the official pillar market rates so that it will promote transparency. But what's happening in recent times is the gap is getting wider and the naira continues to fall. Secondly, we are a big exporter of crude oil. Oil is big source, oil is big to us. They removed the subsidy we've always enjoyed on oil, and that has true the country into chaos. The retail price of oil has grown by over 400%. And I'll use myself as an example. My new reality, actually, before the subsidy was renewed, I used to fill my tank with about NGN 10,000, which is equivalent about $10. Now I feel my tank with $50, the same car. That's ridiculous. That's a lot for me to bear. It speaks to tough times for consumers and businesses as inflation continues to climb. The last time I checked, we're already in tune towards a 30% reach of inflation. How are the consumers adapting into this, especially the middle class? I'd like to share how they're behaving, how they're shopping, how they're living. It's all about survival. When it comes to consumption they've reduced the frequency of consuming the regular brand, no surprises. And of course, it's more indoor now. It's quite expensive eating outdoor. And also reduce the number of times they eat in a day. That's not good news. But more importantly, what [indiscernible] needs the most is, there's a reduction in the quantity of protein in their food. Nigeria food is highly carbohydrate. So protein is big deal. Protein is poultry, milk, fish and stuff like that. So how are they shopping? Lately, the middle class have switched to cheaper brands, no surprises there, and they are searching to find where the products are cheaper. That's not the fact that they're still loyal to the regular brands, but reducing the pack sizes they buy. So buying in bulk is becoming history. Who doesn't like freebies, they look for products on promotion. What are the lifestyle [indiscernible] the middle class are making. We know electricity in night is a big challenge. We own generators, 1 or 2. But nowadays, the middle class are using less of the generators. At after power, which I told you, about 400% incurring the rating. We love parties, we love to enjoy, it's part of our culture. But what the middle class is saying that doing now is reducing at parties or socially events. And of course, we're switching to cheaper modes of transportation. Usually, it's probably the public transport or we're pooling cars with friends and colleagues to the same destination. Working from home is neither here nor there, because it's a personal choice. If you choose to work from home, you have to buy full in your generator to power it. If it go to the office, you need to fuel your car to do that. So if the choice is, you have to choose. So what are they doing in terms of allocating their resources. We see that they're reducing expenses are not essential. As expense of transport and electricity spiking, they're reducing the CSMB. Also they're not going out. Most of these are consumed of trade. Interest in the brands are now slipping, they're stepping up to the plate and trying to show some empathy to consumers. And how are they doing this, they're driving accessibilities with price using pack sizes and formats. I told you about pack sizes earlier. But before I show you some examples, I just wanted to remember that Nigerians are very big on brand appeal and they are willing to spend extra for a brand with an image that to save. You can see on this chart, we come top across many countries in the world. Now taking a look at what the brands are doing. There's a lot of line extension in the event of space of flavors or small SKUs, as dairy across food, everybody is doing for small park sizes. And sometimes they do the flavor, I don't know how well those levers are working. But I tell you the pack sizes are working. This really blows my mind with innovation into new formats. ORAL B is a premium toothpaste, and what we see now is this spaces available in sachet. So small quantities. It's quite difficult to put it in your toothbrush no doubt. But at a price at which you're buying it, you can't do wrong. [indiscernible] is a premium client. Nigeria is one of the top markets for them, and they can't afford to lose this market. And we see them also coming in sachet. Drive accessibility. So everybody in the middle class, of course, would have access to it. To wrap up, I would like you to remember this about Nigeria and Nigerians. It's a young population. 70% are less than 35. When it comes to life and inspiration, fulfillment for us is about achieving a prominent position in a career with a blue or white collect job. And we will sacrifice convenience it means we're going to get healthier products. Talk about the love for our country. It's very important to us that we remain different from all other nationalities. We want to stand out. But these days, we're not sure the country loves us just as much as we love it, and we're beginning to feel like strangers in our country. How do we choose brands in Nigeria. I told you we've begun image. We tend to buy brands that reflects our personal values, and we don't really care about corporate social responsibility or ethically produced. We just want manufacturers to make good products for us to buy. We are willing to spend extra for a brand with an image that appeals to us. Thank you.

Well, thank you for that, Tayo. I've already got a couple of questions building that from the audience. First one is on the gas subsidy, why was that removed?

Okay. What's happening is that in the past few years, the government have subsidized well for us, but accountability has been a problem. All the money that comes from the subsidy, we don't know how it's been managed. And of course, there's so much corruption here, and I hate to say that. So it's gotten to a point where the government can no longer subsidize as well. The new president thinks is the waste of money. As for Subsidy, we are not making enough money to improve the life of people or to invest in infrastructure. So we are just removing it and nobody is steals the money. Yes.

And another point actually just come back from the people watching is around the inflation more generally. To what extent are other markets, for example, in South Africa seeing this level of inflation or pressure?

I tell you inflation is a global problem. No doubt about Yes. But it's stronger in the western part of Africa, it's higher. And that is largely Ghana and Nigeria. Ghana is way higher than Nigeria, I must tell you. They've been suffering or struggling with inflation in the double digits for the past 2 years. For us, it all just started with all these 4 crisis identification of [ parallel ] and official market rate. It's more recent in Nigeria. You can see the chart I showed you, right? Are you getting [indiscernible] and it's really spiked this year. It was last year, 2023 was worse for us. But for other part of Africa, base inflation were not as well as West Africa.

Before we go to Mallory and Mike, we have got a couple of questions come through for them as well. You actually you ended by reminding us about -- excuse me, I can't speak, specificities of Nigeria. So what was the one takeaway that you'd give us on the call that you would say, look, guys, if you want to understand Nigeria, remember this point.