Koninklijke Ahold Delhaize N.V. (AD) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome. My name is Maria Verheij. I'm responsible for communications at Ahold Delhaize. And I'm very well happy to welcome you to this shareholder meeting. I'm glad you all made it safely inside. Before we start with the Annual General Meeting of shareholders, I would like to take the people here in the building through some safety instructions and practical tips. I will switch to Dutch. So if you do not speak Dutch and require translation, please use your headset. If your headset is not yet working, please raise your hand if you need assistance. [Audio Gap] [Interpreted] I would request you to leave the room. The different exits here, you can see them. And you must have seen the main entrance where we all took to enter the building. Of course you're allowed to leave the meeting whenever you want but please don't forget to take your voting card with you, or your admission card. You will need one of these in order to reenter the room. This meeting will essentially be held in the English language but some speakers will be speaking in Dutch. All the presentations shall be interpreted simultaneously, and if it is necessary, you will have received headphones at the entrance. Should you not have received a headphone, or should you want to have a headphone or if the headphone doesn't work properly, please inform one of our staff members. You can ask questions both in English and in Dutch. For the people present here, the questions and answers will also be interpreted simultaneously. We'd like to kindly request you to switch you mobile phones and other devices to the silent mode. Please keep in mind that you're not allowed to make any audio or video recordings during the meeting. We will be making an audio recording of the meeting in order to draft a notarial record of the meeting, and the meeting will also be webcast. And the video of the meeting, the webcast will also remain available on our corporate website. For reasons of privacy, the face of those attending the meeting will not be shown on the webcast, only those people here on the stage. Voting is only possible for those shareholders and proxy holders that have logged on in a timely fashion prior to the meeting. Should you not have logged on, please check your device. You can log on with your own mobile phone or the device that you received upon registration with your personal login details that you received when you registered for the meeting. And once you've logged on correctly, you'll see a welcome message. If you don't see the welcome message displayed on the display, please raise your hand. One of our staff members would assist you. So thank you very much for your attention. I wish all of you a calm and good meeting, and I'm happy to give the floor to Peter to start today's meeting. Peter, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Maria, and warm welcome again to the Annual General Meeting of Shareholders of Ahold Delhaize. My name is Peter Agnefjall. I'm the Chair of the Supervisory Board, and I will be sharing the meeting, and I'm very pleased that you have been able to join us today. With me here on the stage are Frans Muller, our CEO; Natalie Knight, our CFO; Wouter Kolk, who is CEO of Europe and Indonesia. And to my very left, we have Kevin Holt, who is CEO of the U.S.; Franka Huisman, who is our Company Secretary. And on the back row, we have the 4 committee chairs present, Katie Doyle, who Chairs the Health and Sustainability Committee; René Hooft Graafland, who chairs the Audit Finance and Risk Committee; Helen Weir, who is the chair of the Governance and Nomination Committee; and finally, Bill McEwan, who chairs the Remuneration Committee. We also have Martin van Olffen our notary, who is present on the stage when required. Also present here is our external auditor from PricewaterhouseCoopers, and on behalf of PwC, Shana Laurie De Hernandez will give a short presentation and answer any questions that you may have about the audit and the audit report. It's always our wish that all our shareholders have the opportunity to attend our Annual General Meeting. Shareholder democracy is important to us, and we appreciate the dialogue and the interactions that we have, both with shareholders residing in the Netherlands as well as those who live abroad. Those who can easily travel to come to the meeting and those who prefer to attend virtually. This is why following last year's meeting and last year's hybrid AGM, we have again organized a hybrid meeting today, which enables the greatest number of shareholders to attend and ask questions. During today's meeting, we will also look back at 2022. It was yet another challenging year for many reasons. The war in Ukraine, the resulting energy crisis and unprecedented inflation not only impacted Ahold Delhaize and our business, but also associates and people across the brand's communities. The incredible efforts within entire organization give help and comfort to civilians fleeing the war. They supported matters that cause -- they supported causes that matter to communities, and they continue to keep prices as realistic as possible. So customers had access to healthy and affordable food. I'm personally very proud of these efforts and the role we have played in society and that we continue to play in helping neighbors, customers and suppliers to get through these challenging times. In his speech, Frans will expand on how Ahold Delhaize responded to this challenging year and how the company's unique strengths and strategy enabled the company to move forward. We will also take a moment to reflect on some of the highlights of last year. Our business posted strong results, leadership across the company presented accelerated plans and targets towards 2025; aim to further unleash the power of Ahold Delhaize model with great local brands, close to the customer, working alongside support businesses that enables them to harness economies of scale. The company also made a significant step forward in the area of sustainability. It invested in people, both in support associates development and also to meet the customers' expectations by offering great shopping experiences across our brand. As you are aware, the agenda today contains several proposals to appointments and reappointments of both the Supervisory Board and the Management Board. We will cover the proposal to appoint Julia Vander Ploeg as new member of the Supervisory Board. The proposal to reappoint Bill McEwan, Katie Doyle and myself as a member of the Supervisory Board and the proposal to appoint JJ Fleeman and reappoint Frans Muller as member of the Management Board. During this meeting, we will also say goodbye to Bala Subramanian, who will retire as a member of the Supervisory Board as per the end of this meeting. And besides that, we will also say farewell to Kevin Holt, who will retire as CEO of the U.S. and member of the Management Board as per the end of this meeting. And finally, I will say a few words to Natalie Knight, who will retire as CFO and member of the Management Board in a couple of months. But before that and before I hand over to Frans, I would like to note that we have complied with all the statutory requirements to hold this AGM. And we will now turn to the agenda of this meeting, which was published on our website on 1st of March of this year, starting with agenda Item 2 to 5. First, Frans will talk about the company's performance during 2022, followed by our CFO, Natalie Knight, who will present the 2022 financial results, the policy on additions to reserves and dividends as well as the dividend proposal for 2022. Then it will be back to Frans to share a bit of an outlook for 2023. And lastly, I will hand over to Shana Laurie De Hernandez from PwC for the audit presentation. After these presentations, we will cover questions on agenda Items 2 to 5, being the questions from participants here in the room at Taets as well as from our virtual participants. And please note, as previous years that questions may be bundled and answered together. Questions regarding agenda Item 6 through 19 will be covered during the reminder of the meeting item by item. Voting will be closed after each agenda item, and we will present the voting results per agenda item. And I think that is it from my side. Welcome again. And with that, I would like to turn over to Frans and Natalie. Frans, please go ahead.

Thank you very much, Peter. I'm going to speak Dutch now. [Interpreted] A warm welcome to all of you here in Zaandam and to those who are virtually listening in. I'd like to look back on the past year together with all of you, but I will also give you an outlook for the present year. Thinking back to '22, it is most impressive how the world has changed. We thought after COVID normal times would start. But when the doors were open to what we expect to become a normal life again, the war in Ukraine started with all consequences. We have to deal now with social insecurity, a volatile and complex market, an increase in inflation and climate change. As a supermarket concern with 7,600 stores in Europe and America, we are placed in the middle of society, and I'm proud of the role that we can play as a financially solid company. I'm also proud of the role that we play for 414,000 associates for whom we are a good employer. I'm also proud of the healthy nutrition that we make as affordable as possible to so many. And I'm proud of our investments in sustainability, the support we give to good goals and the local communities. The history of our company dates back 155 years. We are good in change. To give you an example, I spoke to Chris Liberatore in October, our store manager at the Stop & Shop supermarket in the Bronx, New York. Chris and his team saw that the community was changing around their store. There were more people with a Dominican, West African or Puerto Rican background. The existing products weren't popular with them. They did some research. They talked to the people around the store. And on the basis of those insights, they changed the assortment in the store. It offers flavors of the childhood of the inhabitants in the neighborhood and packaging in large formats. Customers tell them that they are now coming to this store on purpose because of this renewed assortment. Having a heart for your customers, understanding when change is necessary, leads to more loyalty and involvement, engagement in general. Furthermore, a double-digit increase in sales. If circumstances change as quickly as in the past year, I believe it fits with my responsibilities as CEO and with the responsibilities of our company to take the opportunities and to take the right steps. I trust in our efficiency in facing these challenges and opportunity. And I'd like to tell you more about them, which steps have we taken in these times of crisis and change. Our European brands, for example, started to take action immediately when the war started in Ukraine. They offered support, shelter, food and financial donations to the Red Cross. For example, Albert in the Czech Republic had welcome refugees who were arriving at the train stations. Also, our Mega Image colleagues supported them. We supported others too, outside our own market areas, via donations to the Red Cross to help Turkish and Syrian inhabitants affected by the earthquake. It's not only incidentally that we support. In 2022, the total value of donations by our local brands amounted to EUR 218 million. I'd like to give you 2 inspiring examples. Albert Heijn donates 4.3 million products on a yearly basis to the food charities. Together with them, they organized a fundraiser. You can't learn on an empty stomach directed to children at school. In the United States, the program, Food Lion Feeds, achieved the unbelievable milestone. They handed out the 1 billionth meal since the start of their program. As you know, that -- you all know the war in Ukraine caused a hike in inflation. Everybody recognizes the increase in prices in energy and interest rates in groceries. As a supermarket company, we understand our task in this respect to keep prices as low as possible. But we cannot prevent an increase. Raw material prices, labor costs, transportation costs, all of that has risen. But our local brands have done their utmost best to keep groceries affordable for everyone. They did that by negotiating hard with large international suppliers. They introduced special offers via loyalty programs. They extended their offers at entry-level prices as you will recognize from the price favorites in Albert Heijn in the Netherlands and the Little Lions at Delhaize in Belgium. They also offer recipe ideas to cook a healthy meal for $2 or euro per person. They absorbed a part of the increased costs with as a consequence, lower profits and a lower margin in Europe as you will read from the annual report because we believe that more price increases would burden our customers too much and also by tightening our own belts by introducing a cost savings program of EUR 979 million. Let me mention a third topic. The climate crisis in this age of change, a crisis that will hit all of us, young and old. In 2022, we saw understandable concerns and interest in this subject matter from our colleagues and associates within the company, from our customers, from our stakeholders like yourselves, the shareholders in this call. And of course, I get questions from my own children, my family about the climate crisis. This interest is about how Ahold Delhaize sees its own role within international food retail and what we are going to do to contribute to the transition of -- to a sustainable food system. We have taken concrete steps, which I will talk about in a minute. You can only make impactful steps in times of change, if your economic basis is solid. Our Leading Together strategy offers this basis and gives us direction. Let's have a look at the 4 parts of this strategy. Let's start with omnichannel growth. This means that the shop experience for our customers has to be consistent, inspiring and easy where and whenever it happens. Our power in omnichannel makes us unique but also our presence in local markets with strong and trusted brands, which are anchored in the communities. They combine that with high market share and a broad own-label offering. These elements together are the unique DNA of our family of strong brands. Every week, every week on a worldwide basis, 60 million customers shop at one of our brands in the store with their laptops or via click-and-collect points. To make this omnichannel experience even better, we invest in our stores in digitization, in data and technology. Let me mention a couple of examples. We invest in loyalty programs and personalization. Albert Heijn, for example, in the Netherlands, added the premium option to the bonus card. Customers now receive personalized offers and 10% extra discount on biological products. We also invest in the relevance for customers by building retail media platforms together with new digital partners in Europe and the U.S. They offer personalized tailored and advertising, better customized to the customer needs. They also ensure a new source of income, with which we can invest in what is most important for our customers an omnichannel offering in various channels. We also invest in pricing and the most relevant local assortment in modern shops. This is extremely important. We invest in mechanization and technology, leverage our scale so that we can use our expertise in an accelerated form in all our markets. In 2022, for the giant company, we opened the Island Avenue facility in Philadelphia. In the Netherlands, Albert Heijn is going to open the first mechanized Home Shop Center in Barendrecht this year. We're also extending our e-commerce offering. Food Lion extended and rolled out the same day click and collect service in all 10 states where they are active. More customers can now benefit from online ordering and collecting. These efforts make it possible for our customers to eat well, save time and live better. You remember this customer proposition from last year. You see the 7 points here depicted. Our brands differentiate themselves with respect to fresh and healthy, local and trusted and personalized. It's good to see that our efforts resonate. Our brands are all #1 or 2 with respect to market share. Many have increased their share. I'm especially proud of the dedication of our associates who earn this loyalty each and every day. I know -- let me talk about healthy and sustainable now. An important part of taking our responsibility is that we set clear goals and are transparent about our progress. Our sustainability strategy is directed to a sustainable food system. Another goal is to make healthy and sustainable choices easier, accessible and affordable for everyone. We can't do this on our own. That is why we look at where we have the most impact. We leverage our scale to stimulate the necessary changes. As one of the most leading retailers, we are intent on engaging other suppliers in our mission. Next to goals with respect to the use of plastic, food waste, healthy nutrition. We have taken concrete steps in our climate plan last November. Our CO2 emission reduction targets in the whole supplier chain, the so-called Scope 3 goals is to reduce CO2 emissions by at least 37% in 2030 compared to the baseline 2020. And for 2050, we want to be net 0. For own emissions and our own operations, the so-called Scope 1 and 2 goals, we want to achieve net 0 in 2040. Our climate plan is based on the goals of the United Nations to restrict global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. The science-based targets initiative is our guideline. We realize that this is a complex role to take. And we, as a company, can have a lot of effect here, but we do need cooperation with others in the chain, not only with suppliers and farmers but also with the 60 million customers per week. To achieve our goals, we strive to optimize our assortment, the way in which we sell our products and how they are produced. We also strive to support the growth of our brands in a sustainable manner via our efforts and investments. That is why we work together with our stakeholders, internal and external ones without placing the burden on them, but by taking our own responsibilities. In the meantime, customers can come to Albert Heijn and find an ever-increasing assortment of vegetable protein products and Albert Heijn opened its program better for nature and farmers for other parties even for competitors. The company recently installed a climate hub for suppliers so that they can register their own CO2 emissions. Another example is healthy nutrition. It is crucial to follow common standards per region. We do that in the U.S. via Guiding Stars; in Europe via Notary score. I'm not going to maintain that these are perfect systems but they are improving, and they help customers make healthier choices. We actually insist in our sector and with the government that these quality marks should become commonly implemented. The third part of our strategy is best talent. We are absolutely proud of how we can attract, develop and retain people. It's essential for our success, thinking of those 414,000 associates. I believe it is crucial to stress that we are open for everyone. This expresses itself in our strive to find a 100% balance between male and female associates to be a 100% reflection of local communities and to become 100% inclusive. Our brand support groups of colleagues such as the Ahold-Delhaize Pride, which was started last year, according to Pride groups at many local brands. In 2022, our culture of diversity, equity and inclusiveness was again recognized. Our American brands were chosen as best places to work for the LGBTQ+ community. Another step ahead is that our pay equity score was publicly recognized. Men and women have to be paid the same pay for the same work and transparency only helps. This topic was also treated in our extensive human rights report for 2022. I would like to advise you to read that report download it next to our annual report and the ESG report to obtain more information about the activities of our company. Last year, we booked progress with our new Chief Human Resources Officer, Natalia Wallenberg, who started at flying speed. Let me now talk about the last part of our strategy. If we do things right here, we will remain stable and healthy. This is operational excellence. It's very important only a healthy company can continue to invest in innovation, sustainability, digitization and shops and can pay market form salaries to associates. Thanks to our solid results, we can invest a new EUR 2.5 billion in 2022 for our shop renovations, IT and digitization, new stores and distribution centers. Only in the Netherlands, we already invested EUR 600 million. It has a positive spin-off effect on the SME and indirect employment in this country, such as with IT and construction companies. Let me talk more about our local activities in the regions where we're active, Europe, Indonesia and the U.S. The portfolio of these 2 continents is of strategic importance to us. In Europe, the pressure via increase in costs and the war so close by was extremely high. Still, the EU team under Wouter Kolk was able to take positive steps. I'd just like to mention a few. Bol.com, for example, extended its fulfillment center in Waalwijk in the Netherlands to be able to grow even more. It's one of the most sustainable DCs in the Netherlands and Belgium with 13,000 solar panels and many packaging machines. In Central and Southeast Europe, the brand's Albert Mega Image, Delhaize Serbia and Alpha Beta have aligned more than 700 own label products to offer the same quality and price to their customers. They are going to extend this cooperation. Delhaize in Belgium opened the largest wine bottling factory in Benelux, a capacity of 18,000 bottles per hour. This factory will bottle wine for all Ahold Delhaize brands. Now talking about the U.S.A. I'd like to mention a couple of initiatives, but for the American brands under the leadership of Kevin Holt. At the Eastern Coast of the U.S., we now have 1,500 click-and-collect points. 98% of our American customers have access to our online offering. The transformation of the supply chain in the U.S. has also booked progress in the past year. More than 90% of our shop volumes by the end of this year are going to be controlled by ourselves. And finally, I'd like to talk about the operational transformation of Hannaford, which ensured that the company in 2024 will be working on 100% renewable energy. All of our efforts led to solid results in 2022, as you were able to read, a net sales of EUR 87 billion, online sales including the sales partners of bol.com, a total of EUR 11 billion, even. A net income of EUR 2.5 billion with a group margin of 4.3%, a solid result. And I would like to mention that these results are due to our strong American market mainly practically 2/3 of our sales come from the U.S.A. The stable American consumer helped us and the strong dollar as well as our own cost savings program, which is also contributing to this strong result. Naturally, will now tell you more about our results and why we believe that we are a good investment for our shareholders.

Thanks, Frans, and thanks for that help. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. As Frans already made very clear, '22 was not an easy ride. We're living in a VUCA world where the levels of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity have changed the game in terms of how we do food retail. Whether it's the war in the Ukraine inflation or climate change, all of these are challenging our brands and the communities we serve. At the same time, I know it's exactly these challenges that bring out the best in Ahold Delhaize. When times get tougher, we work harder. We think boldly, creatively, we act decisively and pragmatically. That's why today, I'd like to explain how we've used the last 12 months to strengthen our position as a front runner in food retail. So let me start with the underlying performance. In 2022, Ahold Delhaize sales increased EUR 11 billion to EUR 87 billion. Comparable sales, which represent revenues from stores that have been open for at least a year, increased 5%, which is 2 to 3 percentage points above our historical pre-COVID growth levels. Now the story here isn't just about growing. It's about how we're growing. The future of food retail is omnichannel. Each week, we interact with over 60 million customers in our 7,600 stores, 1,800 e-commerce pickup points and via our highly rated websites and mobile apps. In an environment where most retailers reported declining online revenues, our net consumer sales increased by 5% at constant rates to EUR 11 billion. Moving on to profitability. The group's underlying margin was 4.3 percentage points, still nicely above historical levels. As a result, our underlying operating profit grew 3.5% at constant rates. In euros, that's now over EUR 3.7 billion. And diluted earnings per share were EUR 2.55, up 17% versus 2021. Next on the screen, you see our reported IFRS performance. In 2022, the most important items included here, which exclude -- or we exclude from our underlying performance were impairments of EUR 235 million as well as gains on the sale of noncore assets of around EUR 200 million. As you see here on the screen, we met or exceeded all of our original 2022 financial commitments. But winning is more about just the headline figures. Winning is backed up by having brands that are strong, locally relevant and consumer-focused. Our customers, they appreciate the 155-year history, quality and care that we've developed with 19 brands in 10 countries. The core belief that local matters, that's the name of our AGM this year. It differentiates us from our biggest peers. It's our secret sauce. It's what's yielded us the #1 and #2 market share positions in 96% of the markets that we serve. For example, in the U.S., we expanded our position as the #1 food retailer on the East Coast. Net sales were up 8%, with revenue surpassing EUR 55 billion. On a comparable basis, that's an increase of 7%. Food Lion, the group's biggest brand achieved a milestone for which there are a few historical presidents in our industry, delivering comparable sales growth for 42 consecutive quarters. That means it's 10 years in a row, where every single quarter we've been able to grow sales consistently. At Stop & Shop, the region's next largest brand. Sales momentum started returning, especially near the end of the year. This was anchored in 3 key pillars: remodeling our fleet, aggressively addressing price competitiveness and modernizing our product assortment to better address the changing customer demographic in the Northeast U.S. While the journey is far from over, we have positive market share momentum in our key metropolitan areas and most importantly, new customers are engaging with the brand. Another key highlight is our online sales. In 2022, U.S. e-commerce revenues grew 15% to over EUR 4 billion. Since the pandemic began, sales in this important channel have grown over 300%. we have rapidly expanded our pickup points so that customers can come and collect online purchases directly in our stores. This now represents 49% of our total online sales. And it's something in the states that just was 31% just 3 years ago. The model allows us to leverage our strong in-store teams and eliminate costly last-mile delivery, which lays an important foundation to achieve fully allocated e-commerce profitability in 2025. Turning now to Europe. Sales in '22 grew 5% or 3% on a comparable basis to EUR 32 billion. our largest brand in the region, Albert Heijn, led the way, growing market share by 130 basis points and now holding an all-time high 37% market share. At Delhaize in response to customers who are extremely focused on value in an overstored Belgian environment, we focused on price competitiveness and profitability. Nonetheless, we remained one of the strongest brands in Belgium in 2022. In Eastern Europe, all brands delivered strong growth rates and stellar results. I'm also proud of these teams for beginning a major operating model transformation, an important step to secure continued success going forward. I'd now like to zoom in on bol.com and the performance here separately. GMV, excluding VAT, was EUR 5.5 billion, down 1.9% against a market which had declined around 6%. To put that in perspective, this number, which includes our own but also third-party sales on the platform has doubled versus pre-pandemic levels. In 2022, bol.com also continued to grow market share. Despite higher investments in the business, cost increases and sales deleverage, bol.com remained EBIT profitable and delivered EUR 125 million of underlying EBITDA. Looking to the future, I am excited to see the first green shoots of our investments in new revenue streams. For example, in 2022, bol.com advertising revenues and logistics services were able to increase by 40% and 20%, respectively. I'm also pleased and also very pleased with the high-quality work we completed in preparing the bol.com for a potential sub-IPO last year. While market conditions led us to suspend the process, the rationale to pursue a sub-IPO under the right conditions remains valid. So now I'd like to focus on another key area for our business, and that's our underlying operating margins. Margin is the real-time measure of profitability, and we believe it needs to be strong, stable and consistent. It gives us queues to what's working and what's not working in the business. And unlike our peers in our industry where margins have dropped significantly over the last decade, at Ahold Delhaize, we have delivered industry-leading margins above 4% year in and year out since the merger in 2016. And 2022 was no different. At 4.3%, it was down just 10 basis points with a strong divergence across regions. The U.S. business delivered an underlying operating margin of 4.7%, right in line with the performance of 2021, inflationary pressures in both product cost and operating expenses were offset by positive insurance results and other onetime effects. In Europe, on the other hand, the operating margin was almost 1 point lower at 3.6%. This was largely due to escalating energy and volume deleveraging following the Ukraine War and soaring input cost inflation, partly offset by cost management measures. So for the group in 2022, overall, we saw our average product prices were up over 10%. Our labor costs grew at mid-teen rates and energy costs grew more than 300%. To reduce these impacts and to support customers, our teams pushed hard on value-enhancing measures. They increased the focus on promotions and expanded entry price point assortments. They added more owned brand offerings and further rolled out creative and digitally led loyalty programs, and they tirelessly focused on cost control initiatives, delivering nearly EUR 1 billion of save for our customer savings. All of this highlights the dependability of our operating model. It also speaks to the quality of our people and their eye for detail. And speaking of what drives our people, let's move on to healthy and sustainable. At Ahold Delhaize, we want to play a role in society, making healthy and sustainable food more accessible and affordable for everyone. This is a deep-rooted passion in our associates and a core element of our culture. To approach this pragmatically, our main focus has been on reducing carbon emissions from owned operations, reducing food waste and plastic product packaging as well as increasing healthy food sales. So let me start with the CO2 equivalent emissions from our own operations. We plan to reduce operation -- these emissions by 34% in 2025, 50% in 2030 and be net 0 in 2040 from our 2018 baseline. After a substantial reduction in 2021, supported by the switch to wind energy in both the Netherlands and Belgium, we reduced our emissions by another 100 basis points in 2022, thereby achieving a reduction of 32% to date. As a result, and as Frans mentioned in his comments, we are now embarking on a similar journey to reduce carbon emissions across our entire value chain. We have an ambitious climate plan. Our Scope 3 targets are in line with the science-based target initiatives guidance at a 1.5-degree trajectory. We have already reduced our Scope 3 emissions by 4% in 2021 versus our 2020 baseline, and we are working on transition plans to precisely identify the steps we need to make it possible and ensure delivery of that 37% target reduction in 2030 and net 0 by 2050. Moving on to food waste. Our goal is to deliver a reduction of 50% in 2030. 2022 was a big year for us here, where amongst other initiatives, we step-changed our support for food donation programs and delivered 13 percentage-point improvement and reduction in food waste over the last year. To date, that means we have delivered a 33% reduction, giving us confidence that a 50% reduction in 2030 is within reach. And last but certainly not least, encouraging consumers to eat more healthy foods is a high priority for us. Our aim is to have at least 55% of our own food designated as healthy being clearly marketed with nutritional navigation systems. And while many of the low-hanging fruits here have already been harvested, our brands are constantly finding new and innovative ways to increase the representation of healthy products in our assortments. I'd also like to speak briefly to one sustainability KPI that's not on the chart, plastics. The reduction is in the use of plastic remains a priority at Ahold Delhaize. Last year, we introduced a new target to reduce the absolute use of virgin plastic in our own brand, primary product packaging by 5% by 2025 compared to 2021. Our original ambition was to have 100% reusable, recyclable and compostable own brand plastic packaging in place by 2025. We and many of our peers have struggled to achieve this target. It's been driven by the speed at which suppliers have been able to adopt reusable packaging and the lack of recycling infrastructure in most of our markets, and -- have been some of the issues that challenged us all. While we're disappointed with this outcome, we have reflected and incorporated our learnings, and we're excited to have -- be working on using virgin plastic, as I already mentioned. So beyond the clear progress that we've made on these targets, we also have made significant progress on the behind-the-scenes portion of how we support the long-term sustainability agenda. We've integrated healthy and sustainable metrics into our regular strategic and financial performance management drumbeat. For example, we embed sustainability considerations into our investment decisions through the implementation of carbon pricing model and are developing more detailed roadmaps and scenario planning to execute our sustainability ambitions. We've also made major improvements on the ESG reporting front by creating common definitions, methodologies, documentation, standards and controls. We work with frameworks such as the task force on climate-related financial disclosures, the Global Reporting Initiative and the Sustainability Accounting Standard Board standards. We are also engaging early with partners and peers on the upcoming implementation of the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, or CSRD. Lastly, we consider sustainable finance, those instruments as a key contributor to support our efforts. With our sustainability-linked credit facility, an inaugural green bond, we hope to accelerate the transition to sustainable food systems and broaden our investor base to reach like-minded investors. On that note, it's a good time to switch gears to how all of this comes together in our overall financial management. We know that clear financial management principles and dependability provide confidence in tough times like these and even more importantly, it gives us room to maneuver real time. Food retail is an asset-intensive business. So our long-term success is highly dependent on our ability to maintain and expand a modern store network, run a complex distribution and logistics chain, plus manage the transition to a new omnichannel business model with extensive e-commerce and retail media infrastructure. This is a big undertaking, and it's one that requires us achieving near-perfect balance between a strong cash generation, financial liquidity and smart stewardship of our capital expenditures. So let's unpack that a little more. In 2022, we generated EUR 6.1 billion in operating cash flow, driven by strong operating results and continued focus on working capital. The latter is another area where we are very clear about our potential. Here, for example, we're pursuing a self-distribution model where we are able to have full control to invest in automation as well as develop a seamless integration of data insights through our supply chain. Now let's talk about investing. At Ahold Delhaize, we have never compromised on preparing for our future as evidenced in our EUR 2.2 billion net investments in 2022 and the nearly EUR 7.5 billion in total over the last 3 years. On average, we spend more as a percentage of sales than our peer group and not just to drive growth but also to unlock value and long-term cost savings potential for our customers. We also don't hesitate to use our cash flows to invest in our people. Where in addition to spending more than nearly EUR 3 billion incrementally over the last 3 years on personnel expenses, we were able to use extra cash generated during COVID to reduce our exposure to our off-balance sheet pension obligations by EUR 1.8 billion, thereby improving the funding levels of our biggest pension plans. After these investments and expenditures, what's left is our free cash flow. This is what we use to guide our policies and our long-term leverage, M&A strategy as well as shareholder returns. Here, we remain committed to maintaining our investment-grade rating exemplified by the Moody's AA 1 rating and the S&P's recent upgrade to BBB+. I think it's safe to say that our track record is clear. We are a financially stable company, and we consistently deliver on the key KPIs the financial community utilizes to value our company. The drivers of total shareholder return in our 2022 financials were earnings per share, which were up 16.5%; share buybacks totaling EUR 1 billion, marking 6 years in a row of returning excess cash to our shareholders. And our proposed dividend is EUR 1.05 in 2022, up 11 percentage points versus 2021's EUR 0.95. So I hope that this review of our 2022 financial results gives you the confidence that our company is focused on the right things. It's about driving strong local brands and growing and gaining share. It's about delivering industry-leading margins that prove the efficiency and relevance of our unique transatlantic business model. It's focusing on sustainability as a leading indicator of the unique and full impact that we play in society. And it's about being rigorous and prudent with investments that fuel all of these ambitions while also providing strong shareholder returns. This is the core of our financial strategy at Ahold Delhaize plus 1 additional nonnegotiable element and that's consistency. I believe strongly that our company only has the right to ask for your trust when you know that you can count on us to deliver what we promise and delivering on our commitments year in and year out is one of the most important financial achievements of Ahold Delhaize because it also ensures when we do that, that we can deliver consistency to our customers, associates, suppliers, to you, our shareholders and other stakeholders in good times and in dynamic and changing times like these today. As was announced earlier this year, I'll be leaving the business in the middle of the year to return home to the States with my family. And I just want to take the opportunity to say what an honor it has been for me to serve you, our associates and other stakeholders as CFO of this great company. I appreciate the collaboration I've been able to have with you as well as with the outstanding team of professionals that I've worked with over the last few years. I want to personally thank Frans, Wouter, Kevin, the rest of the executive group and the Supervisory Board. I really also want to make sure that you know I have the highest confidence in Ahold Delhaize, our financial strategy, the strong financial results that it yields and the robustness to consistently deliver this going forward. Thank you very much. And I'm going to hand back to Frans.

[Interpreted] Thank you, Natalie. Today, Natalie and myself look back on 2022 and discuss today's situation with you. But now I would like to look to the future. It will not surprise you that we expect the circumstances to remain challenging in 2023. It will remain crucial to do the right things for our customers, associates and communities, to remain a stable company, which is not only relevant for our 414,000 associates and their families, but also for you as shareholders. We have a strong basis. Our Leading Together strategy, which will show us the direction towards the future even in a very volatile market such as today's. We are going to invest in digitization, our omnichannel strategy and our competitive client proposition, and we will continue to invest in sustainability. This year, we are going to write up a detailed root card for our Scope 1, 2, 3 targets and an investment plan to go along with that. Our cost savings program, our financial results give us the room to make these investments. Moreover, we will create new income streams with our retail media services. Looking forward to the finance expectations for this year, we see an underlying operational group margin of at least 4%, EUR 2 billion free cash flow, EUR 2.5 billion investments and a diluted underlying profit per share of a comparable level as in 2022. You can also count on us to keep our eyes open for the right M&A opportunities, which will support our strategy. And as Natalie said, we will always wish to remain investment grade. Financial stability is an important point of focus for us. Our focus, though, is broader than that, as you all know. It remains in making accessible, healthy and sustainable products for everyone. It remains interested in contributing to a more sustainable supply chain by collaborating with our partners. I explained to you today how we face these times of change, how our experience, our Leading Together strategy are the basis for our future. And I have to end by talking to my most appreciated colleagues, Kevin Holt and Natalie Knight now. Kevin, in the 9 years with Ahold Delhaize and with Delhaize, you've shown excellent leadership in our management board. Thank you. Thank you for your exceptional performance with our American brands. Thank you for always keeping in mind our customers and associates when you were heading our teams. You're known as a real builder of strong brands, and you've shown that. I am happy that you'll stay this year. Thank you very much for this transfer. Natalie, I understand and respect your decision to return to the U.S. after more than 25 years in Europe with your family. During your time here, you had a clear positive influence on our company on the financial column. I look forward to cooperating with you in the coming months to your sharp and driven spirit, which will be missed by the Executive Committee. Thank you very much, Natalie. And today, a couple of appointments are on the agenda. You've heard that from our chair, Amongst others, the nomination of JJ Fleeman as a successor to Kevin Holt in our management board. I'm looking forward to that. And I would also like to thank our local teams, our own people in the brands, in the distribution centers, in the offices with their dedication, energy and drive. They make an offering that our customers come back to all the time. You make our company to what it is. Thank you so much for that. And thank you to our shareholders too for your support and trust. If I'm reappointed today, then it will be in honor to meet to serve this great company in the coming 4 years. You can continue to count on us, and you can also continue to count on me. Thank you for your attention. I now hand back to Peter.

Thank you, Frans, and thank you, Natalie. I suggest we move straight on to Shana from PwC to share us the presentation. Shana?

Good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity to discuss our audit with you. Before I explain our key audit matters and address our observations with respect to climate risk and going concern, let me first start with the outcome of our audit. We have issued 2 opinions, both dated February 28. The first on the financial statements and the second on nonfinancial information, specifically related to ESG. I will speak to both opinions. We have issued an unqualified opinion on Ahold Delhaize's 2022 annual accounts as included on Page 294 of the annual report. That means that these financial statements give a true and fair view of the position of Ahold Delhaize as at January 1, 2023. It also means that the annual report of Ahold Delhaize contains all information required by law. I would like to use this opportunity today to provide you with comfort that we have performed a robust and independent audit. Each of our more than 80 team members worldwide understands this expectation and our responsibility to you. I will give you some color on the elements that make up an audit as it is no one individual procedure, but the sum of many parts. It starts with understanding the business. I have personally visited local management and met with our local PwC teams in the U.S., Belgium and in the Netherlands. My team has also been to the Czech Republic and to Romania. I've also personally spent time with our specialists in valuations, treasury, tax and IT to pensions and sustainability as well as interacting with the financial reporting group on a weekly basis throughout the year and more frequently during the quarters and term and year-end. My team and I meet regularly with the risk and controls group and with internal audit. To give you an impression, we have met at least on a monthly basis. I participate in the full audit committee meetings, and there's an appropriate level of discussion and constructive challenge. In addition, I have regular engagement throughout the year with Natalie Knight and Frans Muller as well as with the other members of the ExCo. I would describe those relations and those discussions as open, professional and they're genuinely interested in our impressions, observations and feedback. In past AGMs, you've asked me for a sense of the timeliness of when I was informed about emerging topics. I can reconfirm that when they arise, management is proactive about reaching out to me to consider potential implications to the financial reporting. There's been active engagement and our insights are respected and taken seriously. Moving on to materiality. Our audit was performed using an overall materiality of EUR 160 million and was based on 5% of profit before tax with a coverage of more than 80% -- 83%. Let me now speak to the key audit matters or we call them KAMs. They are the most important matters that we have identified in our work during the year. These matters often include critical accounting estimates and management judgment. Our 2 key audit matters are outlined in our audit opinion and are consistent with those identified in 2021, except that we additionally focused on the impairment recognized for Fresh Direct and the procedures underpinning Delhaize based on the sensitivity of the impairment test. Our first KAM speaks to the impairment testing of goodwill and brand names. Management tests goodwill and brand names for impairment annually. They compare the recoverable amount of the CGUs to the carrying amounts. We consider this to be a key audit matter because, one, the magnitude of the balance, the impact of the key assumptions on the valuations which involves significant management judgment. And lastly, the sensitivity on the impairment test. Our audit focused on evaluating management's process and design and effectiveness of internal controls. We challenge management on the assumptions, most sensitive to the outcome of the test, namely sales growth, margin increase and the discount rates. We benchmarked key assumptions to external data and compared assumptions to historic performance and to local economic developments. We also involved our valuation experts to evaluate the impairment models and the discount rates. Lastly, we compared the sum of all future cash flow forecast to the market capitalization. We concluded that management's assumptions were adequately supported. The second key audit matter relates to the recognition of vendor allowance income. Ahold Delhaize receives various vendor allowances from its suppliers, which make up a significant component of the cost of sales. Vendor allowance agreements contain both volume and promotional allowances. We have identified this as a key audit matter because, again, in the magnitude of the amounts involved, the judgment required in determining whether the group's obligations stipulated in the agreements were fulfilled. We evaluate the design and operating effectiveness of controls on the completeness and accuracy of the contracts. We challenge management's assumptions and performed a retrospective review to assess whether the collections were in line with prior estimates. We also tested material write-offs and evaluated them for possible [ bias ]. Lastly, we tested whether the allowances were recorded in the correct period. We concluded that the vendor allowances were appropriately recognized. Spending a moment on internal controls, the audit of the financial statements, we rely solely on internal control to the extent that it's relevant for our audit. That means that we don't conduct an independent investigation into the company's internal control. The audit is intended to express an opinion on the effectiveness of internal control. That said, based on our audit, we do have an impression of internal control over financial reporting. On Page 162, management explains their 3 lines of defense model. On Page 163, management confirms in their internal control statement that the financial reporting does not contain any material inaccuracies. As part of the audit of the financial statements, we also examined the information in the management report. You may conclude that management's confirmation is consistent with our assessment based on everything that we saw during the audit. I will now address climate risk, fraud risk and going concern. Climate change is important as a social theme affecting companies. On the one hand, companies have a responsibility to combat climate change and its impact. On the other hand, many companies will experience the impact of climate change on their business at some point. As a result, the impact of climate risk on the financial statements is an explicit part of the audit. The starting base is an identifying and assessing the risks of material in the statement on the financial statements. We have considered our Ahold Delhaize's ambitions and climate plans and assessed how the business might be affected by climate change. We consider how the effects of climate change may affect the business model and risk profile. For example, how risks have been translated into the lifespan and valuation of assets and liabilities. In the Risk section of the management report on Page 98, Ahold Delhaize describes the most important climate risks, namely extreme weather events, which may negatively impact the operational infrastructure and supply chain. This is in line with what we would expect. We agree that climate risks do not currently have a material impact on the life and valuation of the assets and liabilities. Turning to fraud risk and going concern. Our auditor's report includes a separate paragraph in which we explained how we responded to fraud risk that could lead to a material misstatement in the financial statements. We have summarized in our report, our audit approach towards the risk of fraud and the going concern assumption. As potential fraud risk, we called out the risk of management override of control, the risk of fraud due to overstating revenue and the risk of fraud inappropriately recognizing vendor allowances. To give you a flavor of the types of procedures we performed, we tested manual journal entries, reviewed the remuneration packages for incentives and assessed significant estimates and judgments for management bias. Based on our audit work, we did not note any indications of fraud resulting in material misstatements. Management prepared the consolidated financial statements on the assumption that Ahold Delhaize is a going concern and that will continue its operations in the foreseeable future. We reviewed management's assessment, evaluated their current budget and projected cash flows for the next 12 months and also considered external industry developments. Our procedures concurred with management's assessment. Finally, in addition to the opinion on the financial statements, we issued an unqualified, limited assurance report on the nonfinancial information in the 2022 annual report as included on Page 304. The procedures we performed in this context consist mainly of understanding the relevant sustainability themes, making inquiries and determining the plausibility of the ESG information and the indicators. As part of our work, we visited multiple brands. We further performed inquiries, reconciliations, review analytics and substantive testing. We paid specific attention to the change from operational to financial control. We value the relationship with you as shareholders. On behalf of PwC, thank you very much. And I'll now give the floor back to the Chairman.

Thank you, Shana. So now that we have finished the explanation of agenda Items 2 through 5, I would like to continue with the questions on those agenda items. And for the participants here at Taets, could you please use the microphones that are set up in the room. And for those of you who are attending virtually, please raise your hand in the virtual meeting attendance systems and wait until you will be unmuted to ask your question. For all of you, before asking a question, please state your name and, if applicable, the name of the shareholder you are representing. I also ask you to keep your questions short that you avoid repeating questions that have already been answered and avoid a lengthy statements so that everyone who wants to ask a question has the time and opportunity to do so. And to ensure that questions are answered efficiently, we will collect and combine a number of questions before we answer them. And finally, I would also like to inform you that all questions and answers covered in this meeting will be published in our website in due course. So I then give the floor to the lady at Microphone #1.

Thank you. I'm Winney. I'm 20 years old, and I am a student. But not today, today, I am not attending my lecture of environmental politics. Today, I am here attending your AGM. And believe me, I would have much rather joined my lecture. However, it's necessary for me to be here because we are in a climate crisis. The climate is here now and action needs to be taken today and not tomorrow. That's why I'm here. And I'm not here just representing myself. I'm not here just representing young people, I'm here representing over 16,000 people that signed our petition. Our petition asking Ahold Delhaize to reduce its climate emissions and to improve their environmental policy. That's what I'm doing here. So there, Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask you for permission to hand over this petition to Frans Muller after I've asked my question. Because Dear Mr. Frans Muller, I would like to ask you, will Ahold Delhaize reduce its CO2 emissions by 45% in 2030 in absolute terms in the entire value chain. So that means Scopes 1, 2 and 3 compared to 2019. Thank you.

Okay. We move on to the gentleman at microphone #2.

My name is [indiscernible] from Robeco. And today, I am speaking behalf of a group of institutional investors, including [indiscernible]. To start with, I would like to thank the management and the Board for the ongoing discussions that we have had on topics like strategy, remuneration, sustainability and corporate governance. Looking back at the last year, Ahold Delhaize has made progress in delivering its strategy and has proved that climate, biodiversity and human rights have been under serious consideration by the Board. We encourage the Board to keep their focus on developing strong policies on the above mentioned topics, which we believe that is going to be in the benefit of the company in the long-term. We note that the main focus has been on its own brands but also would like to see Ahold Delhaize use its interest on its suppliers and other brands. I have a question about the tax reporting of the company. Ahold has committed on the tax governance code but has not yet provided a full country-by-country tax reporting over the course of this year. In our pre-AGM conversation, we were informed that you are waiting for a standardized framework provided by the regulator. However, we see an increasing number of companies publishing their country-by-country tax reporting, which we regard a best practice and in line with the transparent tax governance code. Therefore, we would urge you to proceed with a full country-by-country tax report. Can we expect this type of reporting next year? And if not, why?

Thank you. We move on to the lady at Microphone #3.

[Interpreted] Dear Chair, dear Frans Muller, dear other shareholders. I'm [indiscernible], I'm an agro-ecological farmer in the countryside of the Netherlands. We very consciously do not supply a supermarket because we cannot take care of nature and of our land and pay ourselves a good income. Ahold is responsible for monocultures, using insecticides, et cetera. The climate, the nature and farmers are exploited for the agro industry. It's not nourishing people but creating more and more capital for shareholders. That is the goal. As farmers, we have to balance the climate change difficulties, whereas Ahold Delhaize reaps the profits. This way of agriculture is at its end. You will have to see to it that farmers are more small scale, more domestic than global. My question now for Mr. Muller, is Ahold in 2030 going to reduce its CO2 emissions by at least 45% in absolute sense and throughout the whole chain, Scope 1, 2, 3 in comparison to 2019?

We move on with question and to -- it is a little bit dark. I have a hard time seeing you, but a lady at Microphone #4. Thank you.

[Interpreted] Hello, everybody. Good afternoon, everyone. I'll continue in Dutch. My name is Ben [indiscernible]. I'm a shareholder. Today, [indiscernible] and what is the cause? The cause is ecology. The reason is ecology. That is why I am here. I am seriously concerned for my children and grandchildren. My 2 children are between 20 and 30 years old. My children wonder and ask me can we actually put grandchildren into this world? Do we actually dare to do that? This is a societal responsibility, which we all have to bear. And if I look at the colors represented here today, green. Then if I listen to the words, they seem green too, but are they actually green? And I'd like to know from the management board, whether the Management Board is prepared to play an influencer role, which they carry out in their supermarkets every day to -- towards their consumers and customers. Do they really want to increase that influencer role, make it more realistic, more effective by deciding to sell less, sell differently, all those products that they have in their dairy shelves and in their meat shelves to see to it that there is a change in behavior with the consumer, which we need for the future for all of us. And I'd like to end: a quick profit is always a great loss. Thank you.

From the lady at Microphone #5 and then we'll start providing some answers.

[Interpreted] I'm actually eager to say something here. I've read your extensive annual report with great interest. Things are going well at Ahold Delhaize, and I'm very happy about that. This is great. It offers opportunities to do more. And that is the background to my questions. I believe that economically sound company should play a leading role in the world market. We have to be the example for all other companies in that respect. We see good developments with respect to natural vegetable products, but also more and more products for people with intolerances such as lactose and gluten. That's important. But even more importantly, the climate damage via dairy products and meat products is enormous. I'd like to ask you to do the following the -- following the best step forward would be reducing prices for vegetable and vegan products. The question to you is can you actually do that. The next question I'd like to ask you -- would you please switch over to using more sustainable raw materials and explain how you wish to achieve that? My third question, would you please do research for -- into the origin of clothes and other products that are produced by children at a much too low wage and under terrible circumstances. Do you wish to play a leading role here as a forerunner? Can we expect a plan of approach from you this year as shareholders? And I'd like to ask you, please look to pay an honest price? The farmer from the earlier question wonders about this, too. How can a consumer pay such a price, even though the farmer only receives a small percentage. Now if such profits are being booked, how can we then, with decency, pay only EUR 5.40 to associates per hour? Shouldn't we look at a better remuneration for our associates and could you make a plan of approach there, too? And if yes, when can we expect results from you? Who do you believe you can attract and retain more women in your company in higher positions too and to retain them. Environmentalists say that you do not stick to the climate agreement of Paris. You've probably read that in the papers as well. But I read in our annual report that you maintain that you do stick to the climate agreement. How can you explain that because this is at loggerheads. Finally, I'd like to ask you to think about the following for older people to let them think about these developments to and to accept their input. Thank you.

Thank you very much. It was quite a few questions related to climate, biodiversity, climate change and so forth. And there was also then 1 question that was related to tax and country-by-country reporting. Maybe Natalie, if you go ahead with the first -- with country-by-country reporting, and then I hand over to Frans, and you could cover the remaining questions related to climate, climate change and so forth.

Yes. Thanks for the question. I think as you know, we put a big value on supporting all the principles of the VNO tax governance code. And I'm proud of the increase in substance on the reporting that we've brought in tax reporting in the last few years. If you look at our annual report, and on Page 139, you'll see a lot more detail than we've had in recent years, and it is something where you can expect to see continued disclosures over time. I think what's important is, you'll also see this year an update of our tax policy online later this year. And with respect to your specific question, we are planning to do the country-by-country disclosures in line with the legislation when it's finalized. We think right now that's likely to be 2024.

Okay. Thank you and Frans?

[Interpreted] Yes, I'd like to come back to the question as raised by Ms. [ Van Oster ], is that correct? Yes. You are referring to your experience in the Netherlands, and you're very much engaged with the industry and also very involved with the way in which we are approaching agriculture at Ahold Delhaize. Soil, health and fertility is very important as a starting point for us. And so we are aiming for a positive net impact with respect to the relationship we have with our suppliers and very often also the farmers. As you know, we have excellent relationships with our farmers with respect to dairy products, meat and vegetables and fruit. And the Ahold Delhaize brands beyond the Netherlands also work with farmers that pursue several approaches and practices that also make a positive contribution to regenerative agriculture, and we're very much advocates of regenerative agriculture and we support that. Also, the international global [ gap ] for or the platform for farmers sustainability assessment, and we also engage in certification within the Rainforest Alliance to have good agricultural practices and to support regenerative agriculture. And furthermore, we also want to look into biodiversity and in further detail to support that over the next few decades. And we're also looking at how we are reporting on that. And so therefore, we have nature-related financial disclosures and other frameworks and we're reflecting on that and also on reporting on that, and we want to further support our global approach with respect to biodiversity. As you know, we are a frontrunner in the Netherlands with respect to our relationships with our partners, our farmers and the way in which we sell our products in our stores as well. And if we then look at the next question on the target of 45%, 2030, in my opening speech, I gave you more detail about our commitment, our climate plan that we updated last winter, I must say it was in November. And we committed to a reduction of 37% of our Scope 3 value chain emissions in 2030 and 2020 was a base year, as I said. And we also commit to a net zero in 2050. And our approach is based on 1.5-degree scenario, and we have submitted our revised targets with the science-based target initiative for approval and the science-based target initiative for us is a very important organization because it is being recognized by the industry at large and for the sake of clarity and also for the shareholders. Science-based target initiative may not be a very clear topic as such. And so therefore, I would like to give you a bit more detail about that. It's a partnership between CDP or the Carbon Disclosure Project, the global compact of the UN; the World Resources Institute and the Worldwide Fund for Nature, WWF. Since 2015, 1,000 companies have joined, and we see this initiative as an excellent climate initiative based on science in order to benchmark our initiatives. And STI has become a standard in order to establish the climate goals supported by science and we are supporting the initiative and we are also adjusting to this framework. And it's very important because that way we can work with the same definitions as many partners in our supply chain, and that way we can also work with partners to develop a standard to further introduce improvements. [ SBTI ] is also linked to the Paris Agreement. And as you know, the Paris Agreement is more of agreement between governments. And furthermore, we're also making progress in the definition of science-based projects. We're not going to say that science-based project is perfect, but we do expect that in due course, they will evolve and revise their programs. And it's important that companies such as our company take action now and comply with these standards. And then I'd also like to reply to Mrs. Vik's question, Ms. Vik. Just like as you do we are also faced with questions from our children. And we also ask ourselves how good is the future for our children, and that's why it's so wonderful to be able to work in such a wonderful company such as Ahold Delhaize because you actually have the possibility to exercise influence. And I mentioned climate and the way we can also influence healthy choices for our customers, the reformulation of our products. I mentioned that in my speech, the way we can help people eat healthier food. And as a company, we feel that we have a good opportunity to improve people's lives to better inform people about the quality of food. And if you allow me to finish, the Chairman may give you the floor later on. And it also allows us to speak about the future for our children. I'm not only talking about climate and food but also food waste. We're also talking about plastics and all the other things that are so important to us such as a well-balanced structure in our own company. So that is the question I wanted to answer. Question raised by Mrs. Vik. And then there was a series of questions about lactose and gluten and our position on vegetable products, clothing, origin, et cetera, et cetera. I think that we can be very proud of our company here in the Netherlands, Albert Heijn, a company that is very much focuses on working sustainably with the producers and suppliers of our meat products and dairy products, but it's very important as well for Albert Heijn to be able to offer vegetable protein as compared to meat protein, and Albert Heijn has a target to make sure that soon most of the products are based on vegetable proteins by 2030. Our raw materials, commodities, we look at that very closely. We work with thousands of suppliers, hundreds of thousands of products. And here again, we are trying to have a proper tracking and tracing method to trace back products and to certify products. This goes for food products, nonfood products but also for clothing. And as you said, we also look at the origin of textile products, clothing. And of course, we want to exclude children working, underage children working. And we have the certification standards that we also endorse in this respect. Last question concerning women or the representation of women. You've heard me speak earlier about [ 100, 100, 100 ] as a company. We want to be a company that is well balanced in terms of the representation of men and women in our company, not only at management levels but also the lower echelons and other parts of our company closer to the shop floor. There where our customers will encounter a well-balanced staff composition in the stores. And we're very pleased with the progress we have made. And if you look at our report, you will see that leadership in our company has made headway with respect to giving more women, more responsibilities, achieving more balance on the shop floor. And as I said, we're making headway here. So this is the answer to the first round of questions, Mr. Chairman, back to you.

We'll come back to your question in a minute. So we have a virtual question that I would like to hear, and then we move on to the lady in -- at Microphone #6. But first, the virtual question. Please go ahead.

Good morning. My name is [ Marita Canedo ]. I'm connecting as a proxy for Domini Impact Investments and I'm part of dairy farm worker organization, Migrant Justice in Vermont USA. I appreciate the opportunity to address you today. Our organization is composed of dairy workers mainly on farm source and milk to Hannaford supermarkets own brand label. These workers suffer profound human right abuses, from sub-minimum wages and [indiscernible] shifts without breaks to high rates of work-related injuries without safety equipment and training, to pervasive harassment, discrimination, violence and retaliation. In 2019, we asked [indiscernible] to talk about Milk with Dignity program, a social responsibility program in the dairy industry created by farm workers themselves. Since 2018, Milk with Dignity has been implemented in the dairy supply chain of Ben & Jerry's ice cream and has developed a strong track record of success. After repeated attempts to meet with Hannaford executives with our response, farm workers have begun to publicly call on Hannaford to join the Milk with Dignity Program. During this time, Ahold Delhaize has expected to -- have expanded its pickup line to workers in supply chains, providing a grievance mechanism for workers alleging violations of Ahold's standards of engagement. Over the last year, Migrant Justice has supported workers on 10 dairy farms to seek redress for clear violation of your standards of engagement. When complaints were investigated, farmworkers waited an average over 100 days for resolution, none have received any remedy. As we have shown in documentation and analysis provided to the company, the pickup line has applied to Hannaford diary suppliers lacks transparency, fails to provide adequate investigations, exposes workers to retaliation and provides no access to remediation. Ahold Delhaize has made a commitment to respecting the human rights of its supply chain workers. You have thus far fallen short in this commitment to the dairy workers supplying Hannaford brand milk. Yet a proven alternative exists, we, at Migrant Justice continue to extend an invitation to participate in Milk with Dignity Program. This program will allow you to make good on your human rights commitment. So today, on behalf of the workers on these 10 farms, 100 more, my question to you today is, will you agree to meet with farm workers in Migrant Justice to discuss how Ahold Delhaize can benefit from a partnership with Milk With Dignity program?

Thank you very much for your question. Again, may I just repeat, should we try to avoid lengthy statements and keep this to Q&A session. So everybody has the opportunity to ask a question that would like to do so. Before I hand over to you, Kevin, maybe we'll just take the question from the lady at #6 and then we listen to the replies on the respective questions.

[Interpreted] Thank you very much. [indiscernible], is my name. I'm 21 years old and I am a student in Amsterdam. And I'm also involved in the trade union FNV for young people, FNV is the largest trade union in the Netherlands, because I think it's important to defend the interest of young people and also to give them a voice. Together with Milieudefensie, we issued a petition, which has been signed more than 17,000 times. Speaker one has mentioned it, we would like to present this petition to Frans Muller, to you, because we would like to underscore and share the concerns of these 17,000 people. On behalf of these people, I would like to ask a question. These people certainly won't have children. We're talking a lot about children. I don't have children, but we could be your children really. So we really hope that you take us seriously. The question I would like to ask -- on behalf of myself and the 17,000 people, who signed the petition, will Ahold Delhaize by 2030 reduce its carbon dioxide by 45% in Scope 1, 2 and 3 vis-a-vis 2019?

Okay. Good. Kevin, I hand over to you regarding the virtual question from Vermont.

Thank you, Peter. And Marita, I think I understood your question and your statement there both. I think what I'd do is I would start with the fact that similar to our approach with sustainable seafood at Hannaford, Hannaford works with many of the industry groups, as does ADUSA in order to invoke change and we've seen significant progress from this, that's helped us a great deal. So I want to address your comments about the human rights abuse in the Hannaford supply chain that you were asking inside of your question. And I want to be clear that every Ahold Delhaize brand, including Hannaford is committed to ensuring that the products we sell are responsibly sourced from suppliers and farms that treat their workers fairly and humanely and adhere to all of the labor laws. We require that all of our suppliers sign our standards of engagement, which is a supplier code of conduct that clearly defines the expectations that we have for our suppliers as it relates to the workers in our supply chain. Ahold Delhaize and Hannaford take the allegations of labor abuses and human rights risks in our supply chain very seriously. Hannaford has been and continues to be engaged in a thorough due diligence review across the dairy supply chain. Hannaford's private label milk suppliers completed the farm workforce development assessment, and this is a byproduct out of the National Milk Producers' Foundation and other trade associations and so on that we work with. And the idea behind this is to develop assessments on the farms across Hannaford's entire geography and eventually to get this even to an independent third-party kind of assessment being developed. There's been a substantial training done on this for people as well. Hannaford specifically is actively working with their private label brand milk suppliers to develop a program that will further validate that our expectations are being met. Not only by our direct suppliers, but also by their suppliers. In your comments, you referenced 10 reports that have been submitted to the speak-up line. Hannaford investigated every single complaint submitted by Milk with Dignity, including on-farm site visits in several of the cases. Half of these were complaints that were referred to farms, and these farms are not in the Hannaford supply chain. Many were filed months after the incident of concern had occurred, and we won't discuss the specific allegations or finding of the individual cases. But we can assure you that each report has been investigated and we took action where needed. To date, Hannaford has not uncovered any credible information of violations of legal standards to our own standards of engagement related to the migrant workers at any farm within Hannaford's private label brand supply chain. Your comments also take issue with the effectiveness of the speak-up line. The speak-up line has been independently benchmarked by, among others, the corporate human rights benchmark. We are continuing to build additional awareness and to expand the reach and availability. There's always more that we can do, and we're committed to that to get that work complete. However we believe that your assessment of the speak up line is not accurate, fair or constructive representation of what it is or how it works. And then finally, to your question, will Hannaford meet with Migrant Justice. Ahold Delhaize and its brands strive to engage with programs and initiatives that we assess to be collaborative, transparent and effective to advance our human rights objectives across our industry and the supply chain. Migrant Justice continues to engage in tactics that make this meaningful dialogue very difficult. And that is why we support Hannaford's decision to, at this time, decline to offer to meet and join the Milk with Dignity Program. Hannaford is fully committed to respecting human rights and we'll continue to engage with private brand milk suppliers and other relevant groups across the industry to drive positive impact.

[Interpreted] Mr. Andres, I wanted to answer your question. Personally, as a father of children indeed and also being the CEO of this company, I have great sympathy for your arguments not only young people, but also the elderly and all the concerns they have with respect to climate and climate change. I believe I've been very clear about this in my speech the responsibility that we want to take in this respect and the concerns that we have as a company, but also what we can do and the actions we can take. We are one of the few supermarket companies that with science-based goals set their goals for Scope 1, 2 and 3. I'm very proud of the work that we've been carrying out over the past few years to address climate change. And I believe that we have a very strong plan for the next few years. Our climate plan is focused on making sure that in our own operation and in our supply chain that we address emissions, and we have specific goals for Scope 1, 2 and 3. With our Scope 3 interim goal of 37% reduction in 2030 and net-zero goal for 2050 as compared to a basic year of 2020, we are complying with the 1.5-degree scenario, the science-based initiative that I just referred to. Our interim emission goal, Scope 1, 2 or 3 are aligned to the net-zero standard of SBTi. Those are the best standards that we have at this point in time. So that is what we focus on. These are very ambitious goals for a company such as ours, both for our own operation as for the supply chain. By the end of 2021, we already achieved Scope 1 and 2 for equivalents vis-a-vis the reference year 2018, which is the base year for Scope 1 and 2. And 2021 is the reference year for Scope 3. For Scope 3, we report a 4% reduction as compared to 2021 vis-a-vis the same reference year of 2021. In our work, we have 3 -- we identify 3 main priorities for Scope 3. We want to accelerate it and implement the goals together with our suppliers, our farmers, but also our customers, because you also have a possibility and opportunity as customer of ours, hopefully us to reduce CO2 equivalents and to engage in less food waste. In your own consumption, we also want to make sure that we invest in products that have been produced with less carbon dioxide emissions. The Better for program. I mentioned that in my speech, the strong program of Albert Heijn in order to introduce the emissions of those products that are produced in an agricultural way. And we will engage in a more proactive collaboration with our customers. Ahold Delhaize and its brands at this point are elaborating a transition in order to map out very specifically what the impact will be of all these different priorities. And we will be sharing more information about these plans later on this year. I referred to the road map and also the specific information that -- about what we are going to invest in order to achieve our goals. At this point, we're working towards reducing our emissions. Concerning Scope 3, we can't do this on our own. Our brands have hundreds of thousands of products in the shelves and thousands of suppliers we work with Scope 1 and 2 many -- for many of our suppliers is our Scope 3. So we need to engage with our suppliers. We need to work with our suppliers, higher up in the supply chain in order to pull this off. In the previous meeting, I said that we wrote more than 300 letters to our suppliers so that they help us to engage with them because we can't do it on our own. And anything that will enable us in the different associations that we're part of, we will always aim at being a frontrunner, taking a lead role in reducing carbon dioxide emissions in our supermarket. Now [indiscernible], I wanted to comment on your question. I needed a bit more time not to reflect on it, but to gather the information. Your question was already known to us. The petition -- handing over the petition, we were already aware of that. And I think that we'd already replied to that, that we would be happy to receive the petition earlier on today. And within our company and within the management team, Jan Ernst is in charge. He's a Chief Sustainability Officer, and he is in charge of the policy with respect to sustainability. And furthermore, Jan Ernst works with a team of Daniella Vega, our Senior Vice President, Sustainability. And these 2 people are prepared to receive the petition because we're quite interested in hearing your points of view on this. And I think that together, we can pool forces to further reduce emissions and to make sure that the climate is no longer under such pressure. And I understand that Jan Ernst and Daniella talked to you this afternoon outside. But I also understand that you decided not to hand over the petition to them, which surprises me somewhat, because we thought that, that was what we had arranged and that we had offered to indeed receive the petition, but we're quite happy to do so after the meeting and to receive the petition, Jan Ernst and Daniella are available for that. Because Jan Ernst is responsible and in charge for our policy in that respect and he's the knowledgeable person to do this. And he's the one who engages in a dialogue with people. And so if you hand it over to Jan Ernst, you will be handing it over to me. We are not sidelining anyone. I've already explained how engaged we are, and Jan Ernst looks forward to receiving the petition after the meeting.

And to microphone #2, you were a bit eager to get your question going.

Sorry about that. I'm going to continue in Dutch. [Interpreted] I would like to address Frans Muller, because you are my boss. And I'm also kind of your boss, because I'm a shareholder, recently became a shareholder. I'd like to say that I'm standing here for everyone, for you, for myself, for every person I know, every person I don't know. It's always a bit strange to hear you repeating that you're doing all of this for your associates. I work at the DC in Geldermalsen, and I see that things aren't going very well. The monster profits that you are achieving are all at the expense of the planet and also at the expense of your own associates. Will Ahold Delhaize with respect to 2019, not 2020, not 2018, in 2030, be reducing its CO2 emissions by 45%. Why are we limiting ourselves to that? Why don't we do our very best to ensure a future on this planet a normal life, because this life is not the right life. I feel used, abused, misled, lied to. We just cannot keep up and continue like this.

We move on to -- no, I don't see you very well, the person at microphone #3. Please go ahead.

[Interpreted] [indiscernible] and I'm a student and I work as part of a Food Justice NGO based in Amsterdam. We aim to bring together farmers and activists to create a more regenerative and equitable food system that benefits everyone. By extracting natural resources from indigenous and peasant regions in the Brazilian rainforest and Indonesia, Ahold Delhaize's profit is based on the exploitation of people and nature. If Ahold Delhaize continues on its current trajectory, it will be responsible for EUR 110 billion in climate damage by 2050. As it is the case already today, people in the Global South will overwhelmingly bear the burden of the damage's impact. And instead of taking tangible steps towards addressing these criticisms, Ahold Delhaize chooses to engage in greenwashing, misleading customers by proclaiming to be the most sustainable grocer in the Netherlands. It is high time for Ahold Delhaize to acknowledge its position of power and take a leadership position in addressing the climate crisis. Therefore, I would like to ask you the following question. Will Ahold Delhaize reduce its CO2 emissions by at least 45% in absolute terms in the entire value chain, i.e. Scope 1, 2 and 3 in 2030 compared to 2019?

We move on to the gentleman at microphone #4. Please go ahead.

[Interpreted] I'm [indiscernible]. In the past spring, my parents went to Belgium, and I now do my own household shopping, et cetera. My mother loved chasing offers. So I'm a premium member, and I have a double bonus book. I save the stamps. I love the extra offers. I'm a select member at bol.com. I buy all my liquor at Gall & Gall. And even though I'm such a major customer, it's really strange to be shopping at a company that is so detrimental to our climate, to our biodiversity and so polluting. Shopping with a company that doesn't take these concerns seriously. It feels strange, but I have to get my grocery somewhere. I believe that you have to enable all your customers to do their shopping in a climate friendly way. Don't put the responsibility on the consumers, take the responsibilities yourself. In Indonesia [indiscernible] in the U.S. at my parents home in Belgium with Delhaize. I would like to ask you to make clear that Ahold in 2030 is going to reduce its CO2 emissions by at least 45% in the full chain Scope 1, 2, 3 compared to 2019.

Thank you very much. Before we move on to -- I don't see very well the person on microphone #5. May I just repeat -- please initiate by saying your name, avoid lengthy statement, also avoid asking questions that have already been asked.

Thank you, Chairman. I'm going over to the Netherlands. [Interpreted] I've been standing here for a long time. I'm going to talk -- speak Dutch. My name is [indiscernible]. I am a shareholder now. I'm also in the government and representative of West Papua, one of the colonies and one of the tropical islands. All promises have not been kept. Four months after my birth, my father was murdered by Indonesian special forces. As 1 year old, I arrived in the Netherlands, and I'm a member of the military here. I always engaged in international peace and justice. I have always been engaged in a more secure community. And as indigenous person, I would like to protect our life on this planet. We believe that the way of life of indigenous people has led to 80% of biodiversity was maintained. I know how soya plantations and palm oil plantations in Indonesia, et cetera, have cost a lot of indigenous lives and how other biodiversity disappeared or was damaged for products of Ahold. Is there no one with a human heart at Ahold, no one with children that worry about their future, I just cannot and will not believe that. That's why I'm here. Everyone here understands the pain and the sorrow of all people in Ukraine. But for the 500,000 murdered Papuas, including my father, there hasn't been much interest in the past 50 years. Lives in Europe are valued higher than lives in the Global South. So my question is, to the management board for the children in West Papua, in the Amazon and elsewhere, but also for children here in Europe for your children, is the Management Board prepared to keep to its pledge of GASCO, to stop the emissions before 2030? Because I haven't heard a yes or no, I will repeat: will Ahold Delhaize in 2030 reduce its CO2 emissions by 45% in absolute sense in the full supply chain Scope 1, 2 and 3 as compared to 2019?

Then we start to answer them. And we move on to the lady at Microphone #6.

My name is Nicky van Dijk and I'm a legal researcher affiliated with the University of Tasmania in Australia. My research focuses on how many organizations are very short-term oriented and how that does not only impact long-term-oriented problems such as climate change, but also how that negatively impacts the company itself. I specifically want to focus on litigation risk at the moment. So I was listening to these questions and statements of other people. And I noticed that this room is full of lawyers, of employees, of very angry people. And I assume that when we talk about litigation risk, you will say that you have a risk appetite statement that you know what your litigation risk is, but I think you're severely underestimated it. You've talked about the SBTi, but I think you know that if we listen to climate scientists, that they think they know that SBTi will not meet what we need to do to go to 1.5 degrees. They will say that it's especially short for the Scope 3 emissions and that if you follow SBTi that you're definitely not doing enough. And I also think you underestimate the litigation risk to your company. So you might think about some lawyer costs, but it's also a risk to your reputation to all your employees that are leaving your company, which I suspect you already have trouble getting in. So I also want to repeat the question that I've not heard an answer to yet, will Ahold Delhaize reduce their emissions by 45% in 2030 in absolute sense for their whole value chain, so Scope 1, 2 and 3 with a base year of 2019?

Okay. So it was quite some questions, Frans. I do believe that we have given an answer to some of them, but is there anything you would like to add?

Yes. I would like to come back to [indiscernible], Food Justice. Is it correct? Do I pronounce it correctly? Okay. So when you started talking about rainforest in Brazil, I thought you were going into deforestation. And I can tell you that for a longer time already, we are very focused on our critical commodities to avoid deforestation, so that we are certified to avoid deforestation. And if you look at our annual report and you look at palm oil, soy, cocoa, coffee and these kind of things and including wood fibers, you will find that we have had very high performance levels already on certified -- rainforest-certified free products there. We think that we can achieve in 2025 that we are 100% certified for deforestation-free products in our total supply chain, talking about those critical commodities. That's one thing I at least would like to share. But then you, as a few other speakers also talk here about the question on the 45% CO2 equivalent emissions, I've been earlier already, hopefully, pretty clear that we find alignment with the science-based target initiatives, and there are plenty of associations, the United Nations, as I mentioned before, who see this as the global acceptable standard for the moment to orientate ourselves to align ourselves. That's what we do. And we have for Scope 1 and 2, the targets set, which we already measure where we report on the performance there and around delivery. But on Scope 3, we have also handed in our plans to the science-based targets initiatives for their approval. And as I mentioned in my opening remarks, we will come back to everybody who would like to know how are we going to deliver what is our route map to deliver on Scope 1, 2 and 3? And how are we going to be more concrete about this at the end of this year. 37% is our information and our knowledge that would be in line with the 1.5 degrees, maximum 1.5 degrees warming up of the planet. That's what we fight for. That will be a long way that will be a big investment and effort. But I think it's our company and our company values tradition and ambition for the people we work with that we bring it there. And that's what our target is. It's very ambitious compared to a lot of peers in our industry, but we do not care that much about this. It's about Ahold Delhaize and we, with our people feel that we are committed to this. And that's why the 37% 2030 and net-zero 2050 is a realistic target in line with SBTi.

Ladies and gentlemen, the interpreters cannot understand the current speaker because he's not speaking in a microphone.

Good to have also colleagues here in the room from our DC in Geldermalsen to be with us here today because our companies also...

Sorry. Please Keep order. Keep order. Interpreters apologize, we cannot interpret what is not being said into a microphone. We cannot understand the gentleman.

[indiscernible].

I just mentioned already earlier. I think you underestimate a little bit -- you underestimated a little bit our common employer in the seriousness of our ambitious and intentions. And we don't recognize your 33%. Again, we work not with our own targets, we work with the science-based target initiatives, a very serious institution. And based on their numbers, we think that the 37% is the 1.5 degrees Celsius type of measurement. So that's one thing. On the other hand, you also mentioned a few other things on labor conditions and these kind of things. Also there, we are a very proper company and not only in the Netherlands, but also in all the other geographies where we work. We pay according to the law, we pay according to market and especially in the Netherlands compared to our total sector, we don't only have a strong CLA, we also have a profit-sharing plan for all our more than 100,000 people in the Netherlands with is very strong, well-funded, very solvent pension plan and pension fund. And we also have a very good health insurance plan for all our people. This makes us unique in our sector of supermarket retail. And that's also one of those elements where we would like to be a good employer, a good partner. But it's also good to hear in our company the various voices in the company with different opinions. That makes us also a company where we are a true representation of our society. There are different opinions on our company, and that's also the good thing to do so. And that's why we appreciate the discussion and the dialogue.

Okay. We then move on to the person at microphone #1, and we will take on a few more questions, and then we will try to answer them. So microphone #1, please go ahead.

[Interpreted] Thank you, Chairman. My name is [indiscernible]. I'm speaking on behalf of the Association of Stockholders, VEB. Chairman, we have about 50,000 members, and I can assure you that all of them are extremely pleased and satisfied with Albert Heijn. Let me start by giving you a compliment, because you're portrayed here as greedy people, bossy bullies without a vision for the future, people are dying because of you. That's almost what they're saying. The VEB certainly doesn't subscribe to this. We also are concerned with the climate. And we're trying to motivate and engage with companies in order to take time and visit many, many companies. And I see lots of annual statements, financial statements. And I think that a lot of people who are asking for the floor haven't even read the annual report. If they simply start by reading the annual report, they would reach the conclusion that Ahold Delhaize is taking many, many steps and is very much ahead of many other multinationals listed at the stock exchange. This by way of introduction, I don't like lengthy declarations, because the shareholders meeting is not the medium to put forward your political positions, your climate-related labor relation positions. So as far as I'm concerned, and I think that many people here in the room will agree, the answer should be shorter, and you should give less leeway to these activist groups. Now my questions. Bol.com, lots of investors were disappointed that the IPO didn't happen. Could you point out what would constitute a favorable conditions to allow for such an IPO to take place? And because an important reason to go ahead with the IPO was to make sure that the value in bol.com could be released so that bol.com would not be only valued as a purely retail company, but as a tech platform, because that's what it is. Profits have declined and our investments in bol.com. capital productivity means lower returns on invested capital, ROIC, return on invested capital. Can Ahold Delhaize give us more details about the ROIC potential in the longer term and in which measure this has changed as compared to a couple of years ago. Bol.com does experience more competition, stronger competition from Amazon that is emerging. Chairman, you see yourself as a consolidator of the East Coast or perhaps the entire U.S. in this fragmented market. You're already leading in that process. Are there any candidates now that Albertsons and Kroger, hopefully for them are going to merge? Are there any candidates left? Or are you just going to restrict yourself to the East Coast? Or are you going to take steps towards the West? Now carbon emissions, a lot has been said about the targets and goals and they can be sharper and they could be better, et cetera. But you can't always succeed, particularly not if the economy isn't backing you. You don't have the financial resources to make that transition to even make that transition for that you need the economy. For that, you need good performance, you need profit. And it seems as if nowadays, this is a dirty word. But profit, and I'll come back to that later on. Otherwise, people approach me is saying that everything needs to be paid back to the shareholders. But we also have other ways to allocate profit, but you need profit to make the transition. And so linked to that, electrification of transport. That could be a positive element in reducing carbon emissions. What has that got to do with the economic shelf life? Or are you saying that it's irrelevant if we have enough resources, we will quickly proceed to electrifying vehicles. And Mr. Chairman. Mr. Muller just pointed out that the profit margin with suppliers is much, much higher than the tight margins in retail companies, supermarket companies, 15 compared to 4, more or less by and large. But has Mr. Muller succeeded in having suppliers pay part of the inflation costs and interest costs? And is he able to make sure that the lower prices in energy, but also in grains and sunflower oil to return that -- to return the lower prices to the consumer? So those are my questions. I don't know whether you want me to ask questions for the auditor and the financial statements. Do you want me to address those questions now or in the second round?

I would do that in the second round.

From the gentleman at microphone number 2.

[Interpreted] Good afternoon, Mr. Agnefjall. My name is Robert [indiscernible]. We connect you, Public Relations and Investor Relations. Ahold is a white raven among the supermarkets. And I agree with [indiscernible] of the VEB. Andre is his name. I'm sorry. Never mind. Because the VEB is a pleasant organization and is becoming more sustainable. Ahold is, I believe, #1 in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index. And I haven't heard a word about this. And something else I haven't heard a word about is that Frans Muller since 1995 is a vegetarian. And that means that if you produce 1 kilo of beef, you need 25 kilos of feed, cattle feed. And I will save you a lot of carbon emission if you cut back on meat. But at Albert Heijn, vegetarian meat, I mean you could display that in a more prominent way because it all starts with meat and then there's this tiny little corner with vegetarian product. Now what if we expand it, that would really make a difference because meat -- vegetarian meat is really -- tastes really good, but not enough people know about this. And as far as I'm concerned, there is room for improvement here. And there's also room for improvement if you look at smoking and drinking, 20,000 people die in the Netherlands every year as a consequence of smoking and drinking. And it would be great if Heineken 0 alcohol, Carlsberg 0 alcohol would be displayed in a more prominent way in Albert Heijn shelves. It's very simple because we have René Hooft Graafland of Heineken. We have a Dutch CEO, [indiscernible] and Cees 't Hart of Carlsberg. He is a Dutch CEO. And it would be great if they would really display Heineken non-alcoholic beer and other drinks that are nonalcoholic in a more prominent way. What else? Salt and sugar. That is really, really bad for you. Yes. Yes, really, because it's costing us a lot of money in terms of health care. And wouldn't it be great if sugar and salt could be reduced as quickly as possible in the products that you make? And you do have a say in that, I would say. So you work closely with the farmers in the Netherlands. We've got lots of roofs in the Netherlands, the farm roofs and they still are lacking solar panels. You can help set up cooperatives for your customers, for your associates to make sure that people who do not have a roof of solar panels that they could take part in these cooperatives and Ahold could play a front runner role. Those are my comments so far. Yes.

I have someone here, Mr. Chairman, to distribute the questions, if that's okay for you.

Sorry, I didn't hear it.

I have an idea how to distribute the question so far.

IPO regarding [indiscernible].

The questions on Bol both Natalie and Wouter will make that combination in answering the question. Then Wouter will come back, Mr. Frake, to your questions on the specific things for the Dutch market and the Albert Heijn proposition. Let me say 2 things to Mr. [ Jorna ]. First of all, your remarks on CO2 emissions and the task there is correct. That isn't quite capital-intense trajectory, and therefore, it's indeed good that we are a healthy company. We like to stay in healthy company and at the same time, become more durable, more sustainable. On M&A, there is -- we expect further consolidation in the U.S. market. We have #1 and 2 positions on the East Coast in the U.S., but at the same time, we see also consolidation efforts there. You'll refer to Albertsons and Kroger that is an announced merger. We don't know if that is going to happen. But we are more focusing on our own plans. That means we would like to grow ourselves on the same footprint on ourselves. And Kevin and his team has been very successful there. The second thing is that we also try to pick up in our geography, in our own geography. We try to pick up also store networks, which are good fit to our brands in the U.S. We picked up, for example, 70 stores of Southeastern Grocers under the Food Lion banner. And the third element of potential acquisition and a further consolidation of the market is that we look at other companies, which might come up for sale, and we have a very open and very active M&A strategy there. On the suppliers, and I think I can switch even to Dutch, Mr. Jorna. [Foreign Language] Bol.com Natalie and Wouter together.

Thanks for the question about bol.com, because the sub-IPO was something that we thought long and hard about because obviously, we believe that bol.com is one of the jewels in the crown when we look at the future of our business, growth opportunities. To the question about ROIC in the medium and long term, we think it's going to have above average ROIC versus the rest of our business. So that's why we looked at it. But essentially, when we chose to do this sub-IPO and pursue that path, we looked at it because we had 3 reasons. And that was, one, we wanted to look at how did we fund the journey; two, how did we potentially have the ability to look at M&A and have some capital on that front; and thirdly, what was it going to be in terms of crystallizing value of the business. Well, the market has changed a lot in the last 18 months and that's meant that the environment has also changed. So when we look at that business, Again, the -- what are the conditions of when we would look at that again, it's when those 3 conditions have been met. And I think growth, we're starting to see really a change versus what we had seen in the last year. And don't forget, our business is twice the size it was pre-COVID. So when we went through this process, we were able to learn a ton in terms of how do we best value the business, what are the growth opportunities? How do we look at our peers. And I think that process has been very, very valuable for us. When we see valuations improve in the market and we see, therefore, also a return of growth in the market and also in our business at a stronger rate. I think that's when those would be the conditions we would start to use in terms of looking at potentially doing a sub-IPO in the future. I also want to share with Wouter, because there was a piece there on Amazon, and I know that's one of the hot ticket items when we look at bol.com, and you've got to be passionate.

Thank you, Natalie. [Foreign Language]

Thank you very much, Wouter. I suggest we take a few more questions. And I would just like to repeat again, state your name, avoid lengthy statements and avoid asking the questions that have already been answered. If that continues, we just have to move on to the next agenda point. With that, I move over to the person at microphone #3. Please go ahead.

[Foreign Language]

Thank you. We take another question from speaker at microphone #4, please.

[Foreign Language]

Thank you. I also understand that we have virtual questions. Can we see if we can get that on the screen?

Thank you. So just responding to -- my question was an answer actually from Mr. Holt, I wanted to say that my question wasn't if Hannaford will meet with Migrant Justice. It's more about calling to Ahold executives to understand and learn about the Milk with Dignity program, because everything that was said about the investigations in the farms that put complaints, we have direct proof that these workers haven't been reached out to from these investigators that have gone to these places, haven't been protected from retaliation. And there is a confusion between what is the Milk with Dignity program and the Milk With dignity campaign. So when you said that you were going to do some assessment with, for example, the farm workforce development is something that is only saying some suggestions to farms, not enforcement mechanism. Trainings to who, in your answer, develop a program, what kind of program is Hannaford developing? And when you talk about your standards of engagement, we can assure you that these farms are not following these standards of engagement, and we want to understand if there are legal or different standards of engagement, because we know that these farms are not working in any -- under any circumstances with human rights. So just to go back to your answer before, we're not asking just Hannaford to meet with farm workers. We're asking their whole executives to understand about this program and really address those people. Again, we have proved that workers haven't been reached out by investigators [indiscernible] investigation.

Thank you. So quite some questions there. Food waste, [ hamstring weeks ], organic meat, COVID risk for staff, biodiversity, working conditions in supply chain, plastic, et cetera. Frans, would you like to dig in on that?

Yes, I would like to ask Wouter, if you could answer the question on [ hamstring ] and [indiscernible]. [Foreign Language]

[Foreign Language] Frans, Chairman?

[Foreign Language] Mr. Chairman, is it okay for you?

Yes, please. And then we also had a question related to the auditors. I feel we have actually covered pretty well now all the questions related to climate, biodiversity and so forth, especially when you take into account everything that's in the annual report. So, if you had a question later on to more directly to the auditors, maybe you could raise that as well before we move on to the voting procedure. So please go ahead.

[Foreign Language] So back to you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you so much, Frans. And Kevin, now you're prepared just to give a short statement on the final input from the virtual participants.

Yes. I can comment [Indiscernible]...

You need to turn the microphone on.

Yes. I appreciate the feedback there and the second time I'm getting an echo. Can you hear me okay? That's why. Yes. Okay. Thank you very much. The way I would answer this, I'll go back to it again, is that Hannaford as well as ADUSA, we're very committed to working with the industry, working with our suppliers to make certain that all of the human rights and the kinds of things that happen in our supply chain are compliant and they're up to the standards that we need to have today in the forward-looking view of what we believe for the future. If I go back to what Hannaford has been doing, and I'll go through this again, just to be clear on it, we have our suppliers that signed the standards of engagement, and this is contractually required code of conduct that clearly defines the obligations of all of our suppliers as it relates to workers in our supply chain. This is important. We also work with a national milk producers federation to institute a second-party assessment, and I mentioned that before, under the farm assessment. That assessment tool has now been out. We've trained a substantial number of trainers in this and how to do this. And they've now assessed over 4x the Hannaford private brand milk supply network. So it's a substantial investment, not just in our own suppliers, but for an industry initiative to try and continue to move forward with these things. In May of this year, we're actually implementing now a third-party on-farm audit process to validate the assessments that were already conducted. We see this as a model to succeed and it also replicates other models that we've used in the past for seafood sustainability and working with a number of the associations, the research organizations and so on to achieve these things. We believe that, additionally, the private brand and the co-op partners that we work with, they hold -- come together and they hold regular monthly meetings to continue to pursue this. This is very important to us. We're looking for industry-wide change in order for us to continue in our supply chain. To continue to promote the kinds of partnerships that we need to have and the kinds of things that need to be in place for the workers in the supply chain. This work is ongoing, and we have not, as of this time, uncovered any specific or credible information that ties migrant worker abuses to being identified with any of our supply chain in the Hannaford network. If we look at where we're going with this in the future, we continue to look at all of these complaints through our third-party hotline as they come in. If milk with Dignity has any individual employees of any of these farms that they believe have had legal violations committed against them. They should file those with the appropriate authorities. And I go back to the statement that I said at the end, and that is that we really -- our brands, we work with a lot of different groups in the cause and many of you today here have many causes as well. and we strive really to engage in programs and initiatives that we assess to be collaborative, transparent and effective to advance our human rights objectives. And it's difficult with Migrant Justice because they continue to engage in tactics that make meaningful dialogue difficult, and I covered this before, and that's where we are at this point in time, and that's why we declined to continue looking at meeting further with them in the program. So that would be my answer to the -- try to further explain that a little bit.

Okay. Thank you very much, Kevin. And we need to move on the agenda, and we have quite spent quite some time on climate-related questions. But before so, I'm going to allow a final round of questions. And could we then please try to focus on the questions that have still not been asked. I heard VEB had a question relating to the auditors. And if there are any other participants that has questions in areas that have not been covered very well today, we could move to them. We start with VEB. Please, could you use microphone #2.

Thank you [Foreign Language].

Okay. Good. Maybe if I start with turning to René Hooft Graafland, Chair of the Audit Committee, to share a couple of points regarding our thinking of the auditor's role in the AGM. And then Shana, maybe if you would like to say a few words as well. And then we move on to the other questions regarding cost reductions, goodwill and so forth. Please, René.

Yes. Thank you, well, Peter. [Foreign Language]

[Foreign Language]

[Foreign Language]

[Foreign Language]

[Foreign Language]

Okay. Thank you. So I'm going to allow our last question on this agenda point, and I suggest we move to microphone #5. And then we're going to move on to the voting item of agenda item 2 through 5. Please go ahead.

[Foreign Language] Thank you.

[Foreign Language]

So we still have some questions left regarding financials, goodwill, loss reduction and so on. And then we had some questions, maybe more directly to you Wouter about on the agreements in the Netherlands and finally, Kevin, on U.S. and our relations to trade unions and so forth. And after that, we are going to continue with the voting of Agenda Item 2 to 5, it's now 5 o'clock, and we have not still come to Agenda Item 5, and there are 19 totally on the agenda. So after this, we will move on to the next agenda point, so Natalie.

So, on financial questions that were raised, happy to get back to those 3. I think the first one was on safe for our customer. This is something that you know we do as a group every year. We're looking at the cost of our goods sold at efficiencies in our supply chain, what we can do in terms of store efficiencies, and I'll call it all other costs. And this is something that we have diligently increased over the years. The question was, do you see it in the bottom line. Well, I'd say you see it indirectly in the bottom line. It's not something where that billion number translates right to the bottom and you can map it 1 to 1 every year. But it is something that has been a key driver in terms of, one, how we, I'll say, invest in the business, fight inflation, give prices are able to do more with pricing for our customers, but it's also why we've got the industry-leading margin and why we've been able to hold over 4%. And you've seen in the last few years, it's actually ratcheted up a little bit. And I think that's because of the strength of that program. The second question was on free cash flow. And as you know, in free cash flow, it's a composite of different things. So one is operating results, but it's also what are we doing on the investment front, what are other different pieces in terms of everything, that's working capital, lots of different things that can impact the timing. But again, here, if you look at pre-merger our free cash flow was 1.4 billion. You talked about us having 2 billion every year. That's only been the last few years, and that's something that we really have improved, I think, as we've been able to take our sales up. So I think that is one where you will see, and do see us as a company being very committed to free cash flow. It's one of the core of our financial strategy, and it has continued to move up, and we expect that to continue to move forward as well. And the last question you had was on goodwill. Goodwill is with respect to Fresh Direct. For those of you who don't know about that business, it's a online business in the New York area. We took in the third quarter an impairment of EUR 188 million. And this is essentially just a question of having, I'll call it, a food tech business that we bought at the height of COVID and now seeing what the markets have done. We talked a little bit about what has happened in market valuations with bol. Here, you could also look at what's happened with UberEats, HelloFresh, DoorDash, all the last mile folks and the valuations have moved. That is the primary reason in terms of what's happened and needing to look at impairment on that business.

Thank you, Natalie. Wouter.

[Foreign Language]

[Foreign Language] I think that's a new given over Kevin, the question regarding trade unions in the U.S. and our partnership with the social partners over there.

Yes. So in the U.S., we have -- each of the brands is a little bit different, but a little over half of the U.S. brands have union representation or I should say, of the associates, about 50% plus of the associates are under collective bargaining agreements in the U.S. and then the others are direct with management inside of the different brands that we have in the U.S. We, of course, recognize and support the right of associates to form or join trade unions if they choose and to have their legal rights to collective bargaining respected. We work to -- with the unions in order to build the right kind of compensation packages and so on in negotiations that we do with them periodically as those expire. And then we also work to make certain that we're competitive in the marketplace in what we're doing as well. And so when we look at all of the components inside of the marketplace like our supply chain in the last few years, we've had to make a fair number of changes. And we do those dynamically but we always do those in conjunction with, in the case of the trade unions or if we're doing that direct inside of our nonunionized operations. So that's how we work with them, and we continue to support that.

Thank you, Kevin, and thank you to all of you for all your questions on agenda items 2 through 5. As for the order of this meeting, we will now continue with the voting items on the agenda. And before that, I will just explain the voting process in a little bit more detail. So as I mentioned earlier, voting will be closed.

[Foreign Language]

Sorry, I have not given you permission to speak. Can you please wait. As for the order of this meeting, will now continue. We are going to move on now, and I please ask you to respect the order of this meeting. We cannot accept those kind of outburst. So with that, I'm going to move on with the voting. So as I mentioned earlier, voting will be closed after the discussion of each agenda point and also presented on the voting results per item. So as we open up the voting, you will see 3 choices on the screen; one, meaning that you are in favor, two, meaning that you're against and three, meaning that you abstain. After you've made your choice, confirmation will appear on your screen. And if you want to amend your vote, you can make your vote again, and the last choice will be counted as your vote. If necessary, you may ask help from one of our support staff present in the room by raising your hand. So before we proceed with the voting items on the agenda and open up the voting, I would now like to ask our civil law notary, Martin Van Olffen from the law firm, De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek, to make the necessary statements, Martin.

Thank you, Peter. I have 3 statements. Today, we have [Foreign Language]. That's it, Peter.

Okay. We will now start with the voting on agenda Item 4, the proposal to adapt the 2022 financial statements. And since this item has already been discussed, and there has been the opportunity to ask questions. Let's vote for this agenda item. So for the very first voting item, we will keep the voting open a little bit longer. And with that, voting is now open. Now we are halfways -- please submit your vote in time. And voting is -- there seems to be some people that need support. We keep the voting open a little bit longer for those who want to still cast their vote. So it's still open and support staff is supporting. There is one more person over here who needs support. Voting is still open. We keep it open a little bit longer, so we sort out all technical issues. So we give it 5 more seconds, and then we close the voting. Okay. Voting is now closed. And I kindly ask you for a moment of your patience while we process your votes. So we will now go to the voting results of agenda Item 4. And I can see also on the big screen that 99.98% of the votes were cast in favor of agenda item 4. So I conclude that the proposal has been adopted. Thank you. We will now go to the proposal to determine the dividend over the financial year 2022. And as discussed earlier, a dividend of EUR 1.05 per common share is proposed. An amount of EUR 0.46 was already paid as an interim dividend and the remaining amount of EUR 0.59 will be payable at the end of this month. And also here, since the item has already been discussed, and there's been an opportunity to ask question, let's vote for this agenda item. Voting is now open. Voting is now closed. And again, moment -- there's a gentleman over here in the front who needs assistance, please. So could we have some support staff to the gentleman here in the front? Okay. So with that, we're going to -- can somebody help here, technology wise -- so we will now go to the voting results of agenda item 5. And as you can see on the screen, I cannot see it for some reason. 99.85% of the votes were cast in favor of agenda item 5. So I conclude that the proposal has been adopted. So with that, we will now continue with agenda item 6, the remuneration report. And please be reminded that is concerned and advisory votes. And if the votes are cast -- advised positively on this agenda item, we thank you very much for your support. And if the votes cast negatively on this point, we would take that advice very seriously. But before moving on to the voting, I would like to ask Bill McEwan, the Chair of the Remuneration Committee to present the remuneration report. Please, Bill.

Thank you, Peter, and good afternoon, everyone. As both the Chairman and our CEO, Frans Muller, have already expressed, the people across our brands and markets were greatly affected in 2002 by the war and humanitarian tragedy in Ukraine and the consequence steep inflation at levels we haven't seen in decades. I am proud that our teams were able to effectively navigate through the volatility and sustain a high level of service and provision of healthy and affordable groceries in each of our local markets. Throughout the year, the Remuneration Committee continuously monitored internal and external developments and strive to make through careful and rigorous processes, prudent decisions that took into account the turbulent market and social conditions. Since our remuneration report already provides extensive context for the remuneration determinations for the Management Board in 2022, rather than repeating our report, I would like to focus today on certain key topics. These topics are: the increases in individual base salaries in 2022, the outcome of the ex-post disclosure of the 2022 cash incentive awards, the pay ratios and the performance conditions going forward in 2023. First, our commentary on the increases of individual base salaries. The remuneration committee recognizes the sensitivity of executive pay in society at large. While we believe adjusting compensation is often necessary for the company to remain attractive for top executives, we also are keenly aware that our considerations must be informed and never excessive or at odds with developments in the market or in society. The committee, therefore, always carefully considers internal and external compensation developments, individual and company performance and the remuneration of similar positions at companies in our labor market peer group before ever recommending salary adjustments for members of the Management Board. After careful review, the individual base salaries for Frans Muller was increased by 1.9%, Natalie Knight by 2.5% and Wouter Kolk by 1.5% in January 2022. This was in line with the projections at the time for market cost of living adjustments in our major markets. Kevin Hawks' base salary in dollars was unchanged. We believe all of these increases were reasonable and within the company's remuneration philosophy and market context. Second, our determinations with respect to the 2022 cash incentive. The target payout of the 2022 annual cash incentive as a percentage of base salary was 100%. Tied to performance and on a graduated basis, the range of percentage paid was from as low as 0% to as high as 150%. In line with the new remuneration policy as adopted at last year's AGM, the maximum payout level has been adjusted from 150% down to 125%. Although the Supervisory Board considers the performance targets for 2022 to have been robust with clear, specific and auditable metrics, it also recognizes that the ongoing market volatility is likely to persist due largely to the conflict in Ukraine. It is challenging to quantify the effects of the war in Ukraine on business performance. At the same time, it would be inappropriate to ignore the extraordinary efforts of management to successfully steer the company through these exceptional times. Our goal as remuneration committee members was to strike a balance between acknowledging the potential tailwinds associated on the one hand and acknowledging the performance of the Management Board on the other. We believe that the 124.8% payout strikes that balance. We're very pleased and thankful for the efforts of Frans and his team. Historically, we have elected not to disclose the performance targets for our short- and long-term incentive plans as we have considered this information to be commercially sensitive. However, as part of our ongoing dialogue with major stakeholders and proxy advisers, we have been urged to disclose targets and intervals. This year's annual report is our first to report on the new remuneration policy, which we believe provides the optimal starting point for our enhanced disclosures. We have followed through on our commitment to provide clear ex-post disclosure of all targets, performance intervals and actual results for the full year 2022, short- and long-term programs. Third, on pay ratios. Our pay ratio disclosure illustrates the ratio between the total remuneration of the individual members of the Management Board and the average remuneration of all associates across our group. Since a large part of the remuneration of the Management Board is linked to business performance in the form of variable pay, this ratio is, to a large extent, influenced by the overall business performance of our company. Therefore, in years of strong performance, the ratio will almost always be higher than in years of below target or at target performance. As the slide illustrates, the pay ratios in 2022 were lower than in 2021 due to an average increase in the FTE remuneration and the pay ratio for the CEO for AD USA has been higher in 2022 compared to '21 conversely. Finally, a few words on the performance conditions for 2023. The year 2023 will undoubtedly continue to be challenging and volatile on several fronts. While we anticipate the rate of inflation to slow somewhat, the overall cost of living is expected to remain higher and will continue to impact customers, our associates and our communities. The committee recognizes the market volatility is almost certainly, as I said, likely to persist. We will, therefore, continue to monitor business performance and internal and external conditions throughout the year and if and when prudent we will take appropriate action. We will continue to invest in our communities, our associates and our key strategic initiatives, all with a keen focus and commitment to sustainability. This concludes my remarks, and I hand back to you, Mr. Chairman, thank you to the shareholders and stakeholders for your continued support.

Thank you, Bill. We will now cover the questions on the remuneration report, and I invite you to ask questions in a similar manner as I have explained earlier. And please, again, it refers to the remuneration report. If you have other questions, you will have to address them at the appropriate agenda point. So I suggest we go to -- microphone #2.

Thank you, Bill. [Foreign Language] Okay.

Do you have a question related to the remuneration report?

[Foreign Language]

So then we move on to the next question, and I repeat again, I will cut off you pretty quick if you have questions that doesn't relate to the remuneration report. Please go ahead. #2.

[Foreign Language]

Do you have a question related to the remuneration report?

[Foreign Language]

Next question. So if you move aside, we'll take #2 again. Thank you so much.

Yes, my question is related to remuneration. [Foreign Language]. We do acknowledge that the company has been confronted by [indiscernible].

Come a little bit closer to the microphone, please.

Yes. And we do recognize the positive performance. Also, we applaud the remuneration committee decision to increase the weight of ESG metrics on both the STI and the LTI plan, reflecting your broader commitment to sustainability. On that front, has the remuneration committee assessed also a social component, for example, a DNI metric? And do you intend to include targets with respect to biodiversity and also extend the carbon emission targets to include scope 3 emissions too? Also in the remuneration -- yes, there is only scope 1 and 2, and I'm wondering if they are planning to increase to scope 3. How does the committee also ensure that the similarly focused sustainability metrics under the STI and the LTI differ and that would not result in overcompensating for similar results? Thank you.

Thank you for the questions. I'm happy to answer that. First of all, this is a reasonably new area for the entire industry in setting targets and sustainability. We recognize in some cases that in some cases, we've gone through the targets more quickly than we thought we would. We've had significant conversations as a committee and as a full board about the need for robustness in the target setting both on food waste, healthy and sustainable sales and carbon reductions. So we believe at this point that we've got the right formula for the STI, the short term program with the food waste and healthy sales initiatives weighted as they are in total 25%, and secondarily, the 25% carbon reductions in the long-term program. As the situation evolves and as more information comes available, we will continue to revisit what metrics make sense to include from an ESG perspective going forward, including those that you talked about in Phase III initiatives when and if the time comes appropriate for us to do so. At this time, for this year, we are comfortable that these are the right targets for us, said as aggressively as we think is responsible as our responsibility is within the communities we serve. And we will continue as a committee and as a board to revisit it on a yearly basis to update them as appropriate.

Thank you, Bill. We'll continue with microphone #2. Please go ahead.

[Foreign Language]

Well, on the first question, we'll be in compliance with whatever the requirements are to come forward. And so we'll consider that as appropriate. And to your second question, if you could just repeat that from me again just quickly. What was it?

[Foreign Language]

Okay. Thank you very much. I think I would say at this point, having gone through the remuneration policy review last year and sought approval and secured approval of the AGM, we're comfortable at this point that we've got the appropriate weights on ESG metrics at this time. It will be an ongoing effort of the remuneration committee and the Board, along with the Management Board to revisit that as time goes by. I think Natalie did a very good job explaining the dilemma that we've had on plastic packaging. So as an example, there may come a time when plastic packaging, we are able to measure it in a more robust, more consistent fashion. And if that's the case, it could be considered as an additional metric. So I would just suggest that you stay tuned to the emerging developments over the course of the next year or 2 or 3. And we expect to hold ourselves to account on everything we can measure properly. And with a reasonable auditability going forward, you can expect that there will be changes that will be positive supporting our commitment to sustainability. It will be a year-by-year initiative, not necessarily every year, will it change. But as things develop, you can anticipate that, yes, there may be weight changes and there may be KPIs that come in that are currently not part of the program.

Thank you very much. Are there any other questions in relation to the remuneration report?

Yes. Here.

Microphone #3. Please go ahead.

[Foreign Language]

So we will move on. So we move on then to the voting. As it does seem not to be any more questions related to the remuneration report. Thank you for your questions. I'm going to give you one more chance.

I promise. [Foreign Language]

We move on from speaker #4. Okay. Sorry, you don't have the permission to speak anymore. Please have a seat. Okay. Thank you so much for your questions. I would now like to move on to the vote of agenda item 6. And voting is now open. Voting is now closed. And I kindly ask you for a moment of your patience while we process the votes again. And we now have the voting results on agenda item 6. And I can conclude that 94.43% of the votes were cast in favor of agenda Item 6. So I conclude that the general meeting of shareholders has given a positive advice on the remuneration report. Thank you very much. So with that, we will now continue with agenda item 7, the proposal to discharge the members of the Management Board in office in 2022, from all liability in relation to the exercise of their duties over financial year 2022. And I would like to give you the opportunity to ask questions regarding this agenda item. And again, questions that is not related to this agenda item, I will just have to cut off. I'm sorry about that, but that's just the way it's going to be. So are there anyone who has any questions related to Agenda Item 7, and then we move to microphone #6.

Thank you. [Foreign Language]

So we have already dealt with that question. So I'm not going to come back and repeat the answers on it one more time. So let me see, we go to Microphone #5, that is. And if you have a question related to agenda Item 7 on the agenda. And please go straight to your question, avoid lengthy statements.

[Foreign Language]

We are going to move on then. There doesn't seem to be any more questions related to agenda Item 7. So I suggest that we proceed to the voting of agenda item 7. And to the lady who's still speaking, you are disrupting the meeting. I ask you to stop it immediately or we will have to remove you from the facilities. So with that, we move on to agenda Item 7, the proposal to discharge the [Audio Gap] And voting and just a second, and we will have the voting results on the screen. And as you can see on the slide, 98.4% of the votes were cast in favor of agenda item. So I conclude that the proposal has been adopted. Thank you very much. We then move on to agenda Item 8, which is the proposal to discharge the members of the Supervisory Board in office in 2022 from all liability in relation to the exercise of their duties over the financial year 2022. And I'm going to give it to try one more time to open up for questions. If you have a question related to this agenda item. If not, I'm going to turn off your microphone, and we're going to move on to the next agenda item. And I can see the lady with -- waving back there at microphone #5. I'm going to give you the first shot. Please go ahead.

[Foreign Language]

Okay. We will take your proposal of consideration. And in the meanwhile, are there anyone who has any questions related to the agenda item 8, I'm going to give the floor to microphone #2. Please go ahead.

[Foreign Language]

If you go to the microphone, I'm going to give you a fair chance to ask your questions, if you continue to disrupt the meeting, you will be removed from the facilities. Please go to the microphone and ask your question. But if you go to the microphone, it will turn on. Please don't be too emotional. I understand that you would like to ask a question. I do hope that it is related to agenda Item 8. And so if that's the case, please go ahead. If not, then -- so please, stage is yours.

[Foreign Language]

Frans, do you have a quick reply to that?

Yes. [Foreign Language]

I think we are not going to come back to that anymore today. I'm going to give the gentleman -- the person on microphone #4, I cannot see you properly. The opportunity to ask questions related to agenda Item 8, and then we're going to move on to the vote. And please keep it short and please keep it to agenda Item 8.

Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. My name is [indiscernible], and [Foreign Language]

Do you have a question related to agenda Item 8?

I sure do [Foreign Language]

I conclude that you don't have a question, it seems. I've been asking now 3 times to please ask a question. Can you ask the question or we are going to move on?

[Foreign Language]

Okay. Then we move on to the voting. So thank you for your questions. Unfortunately, they were not related to agenda Item 8, and it was related to what we have already answered at several occasions today. So with that, I'm going to move on to the voting of agenda Item 8, the proposal to discharge of liabilities of the member of the Supervisory Board, and with that, voting is now open. Voting is now closed. And I kindly ask you for a moment of your patience while we process your votes. And as you can see on the screen, 98.4% of the votes were cast in favor of agenda item 8. So I conclude that the proposal has been adopted. Thank you. And with that, we move on to the agenda item 9. And since this agenda item concerns the proposal of my own reappointment, I've asked Helen Weir the Chair of the Governance and Nomination Committee to present this proposal to you. Helen, please go ahead.

Thank you, Peter. Good afternoon, everyone. I'd like to explain agenda item 9, the proposal to reappoint Peter Agnefjall as a member of the Supervisory Board for a term starting immediately after the present AGM and ending at the end of the AGM to be held in 2027. After a full process of deliberation, the Supervisory Board recommends reappointing Peter for a further term of 4 years. Recognizing his significant contribution to the Board, which draws in turn on his own considerable retail and strategic experience. He's a highly committed Supervisory Board member. And in addition, since 2021, Peter has been an inspiring chair and has built a strong and diverse board team. We look forward to his continued leadership as the company delivers on the next phase of its Leading Together Strategy. If you want to see more information on Peter's background, please see the agenda and the explanatory notes of this meeting. I'd like to give you the opportunity to ask any questions relating specifically and uniquely to Peter's proposed reappointment. Does anyone have any questions relating to the reappointment of Peter Agnefjall. Fine. Bearing in mind the...

I do have a question with regards to the reappointment of Mr. Peter Agnefjall. Because today, he has been conducting this meeting, and he has shown us that he has a lot of patience. He has shown us that he can deal with the frustrations in a room like this on different sides. But I think that what we have discussed is something that has to do with the values, traditions and the ambitions of this company today. And it has been said that this may not be the place and time to deal with a political agenda to deal with something like environmental damage [Foreign Language]

Could I ask respectfully you get to your question, please.

[Foreign Language]

I think the question has been asked before. There has been a response given to the question. I think you should respect the response. So thank you for asking the question, but the response has been given. Can we turn again to microphone 2, and then I'll come to 1.

[Foreign Language]

So thank you very much for the question. And I appreciate, especially that it's a question related to agenda Item 9. So thank you very much for that -- and I try to be very patient, but from time to time, you have to raise your voice. Well, first of all, climate change is a reality and especially during my time at IKEA when I was an executive, obviously, I engaged myself in this subject in a couple of ways. We had a strategy, which we called growing IKEA together, where one rather significant component was that we wanted to make IKEA people and planet positive. Basically, making sure that IKEA had a positive impact on the planet and on climate. And as that vision became kind of industry leading for a number of occasions, I was invited to be a speaker on several occasions at the United Nations opening at the climate meeting in Paris and so forth. So my passion for climate and the climate change and for people overall, I think is 100%. Then in my role as a supervisor and a Supervisory Director, obviously, it's management that proposed the strategy. And I can assure you that we, from the Supervisory Board live very close to this subject. We have a dedicated health and sustainability committee that deals with it. That meets, that ask questions similar to the ones that you have asked here today, that challenge, encourage. But then at the end of the day, also from time to time approve investment and so forth in this area. So it was a rather lengthy answer, but climate change is a reality. I'm very much on the same side as most people of the room even if I dislike the way you try to disrupt this meeting. I think that's a non constructive approach, and I hope we will find a more constructive approach together going forward. So I will continue to be a fighter for the climate going forward also in case I would be reappointed as directed to the Supervisory Board.

Thank you, Peter, and thank you for your question. Over to microphone 1.

Hello. My name is [Foreign Language]

With respect, I believe that we have already responded to that question, I would ask you to respect that as well. Thank you. In the absence of other questions relating to agenda item 9, I would now like to move to a vote. On the proposal to reappoint Mr. Peter Agnefjall, as a member of the Supervisory Board. Voting is now open. Halfway through. Voting is now closed. I kindly ask you to wait for a moment while we process the votes I will now go to the results of the agenda Item 9 voting. As you can see, 99.53% of the votes were cast in favor of agenda Item 9. So I conclude that the proposal has been adopted. And congratulations, Peter, on your reappointment to the Supervisory Board. We're delighted. Thank you all very much, and I'd now like to hand back to Peter.

Thank you very much, Helen, and thank you to all shareholders. So that's a very positive news. I am indeed very humble to be reappointed. So the next agenda item. Item #10 is the proposal to reappoint Bill McEwan as a member of the Supervisory Board for a term starting immediately after the present AGM and ending at the AGM to be held in 2024. The Supervisory Board recommends reappointing Bill for a term of 1 year in the view of his extensive executive experience in North America retail, as well as his valuable contribution as Vice Chair to the Supervisory Board. And I would also like to stress that given the number of recent appointments we've had of members of the Supervisory Board, his reappointment is also in the interest of continuity. And same thing goes for Bill's background. For a more extensive information, please see the agenda and the explanatory notes of this meeting. And Bill, you have already identified yourself to the remuneration report, but maybe you could just raise your hand so everybody knows who you are. So with that, I would like to give you the opportunity to ask questions on this agenda item and this agenda item alone. And please do not repeat what we have already answered. It's really disruptive and disrespectful. So with that, I would like to give the floor to the lady at microphone #2. And I will cut you off if you start with your lengthy statements.

Hi, my name is [indiscernible]. I am currently working in the healthcare sector as a healthcare professional.

Okay. We'll stop there. Sorry. Sorry. Please, you do not have the -- please stop it, stop it. Next. So can you please move aside. There is actually a real question that we would like to hear from your side?

We see that Mr. Bill McEwan has been nominated for reappointment for 1 year. And prior to this AGM, we raised a question to you about his long overall tenure. And the fact that the Supervisory Board no longer takes into account his prior tenure on the Board of their highest group. We would like to thank the Board actually for providing additional clarification on this, and we do understand that it takes time to find the appropriate candidates. But we would like to hear a little bit more into what extent can you reassure us that the Supervisory Board is working hard on the broader succession planning of its member at the same time continuing to consider multiple aspects like experience, contribution, diversity, tenure and clearly disclosing how these aspects contribute to...

Helen Weir Chair of the Governance and Nomination Committee to share a little bit of thinking around how we reasoned back in 2016 and why we came to this conclusion and so forth. Helen, could you share a couple of comments.

Thank you, Peter. Absolutely. Concerning specifically Bill's reappointment, this is something we considered quite carefully given clearly the voluntary agreement that we've made previously in terms of his accounting the tenure that he had at Delhaize. However, we really value as a Supervisory Board, and we think you as shareholders also would really value the -- or do really or should really value the contribution that Bill makes to this, which is valued very heavily. We believe that asking for a further term for Bill on the Board is consistent with Dutch governance. And we -- but we also feel that it's appropriate it should go to a vote of shareholders, which is what we are doing today. But as a Supervisory Board and as Chair of the Governance and Nominations Committee, I would very much encourage you as shareholders to support Bill's renomination. In respect to the broader agenda that you talked about, which is about succession planning through the Supervisory Board, about consideration of a broad set of characteristics, diversity and individual contributions. I can assure you that it's something that is very much on our -- and that's very much what we seek to do when we appoint new Supervisory Board members and also in our consideration at the management board level as well. So your points are very well made and I think very consistent with the work that we are doing as a governance and nomination committee to make sure that we have a broad range of talents around the Supervisory Board table to best lead your company.

And a follow-up on that.

Yes, indeed. It's more related also to the election of management board members, but it's also relevant to the [indiscernible]. Indeed, we see that the company has a certain timeline for these aspirations similarly to climate targets. And can you provide an update on the succession plan of the CFO? And if the preferred candidate will be women?

Thank you. Very good question. I think my simple answer is that our aspiration and wish is that the company should be equally led by men and women. And then obviously, it's a journey to get there. And Frans, you can maybe share a couple of more comments on that and maybe if you want to pitch in after that, Helen.

Yes. Thank you very much for the question. [Foreign Language] Executive Committee.

Helen, anything to add from your side?

So it's hard when you go second, and Frans' answer makes all the key points. But just to reassure, I mean, the CFO process is clearly one that is under our way... [Audio Gap]

Voting is now closed. And we will now present the voting results of agenda Item 10. And as you can see on the screen, 95.97% of the votes were cast in favor of agenda item 10. So I conclude that the proposal has been adopted. Congratulations Bill on your reappointment to the Supervisory Board. So we will now move on to the agenda item 11, the proposal to reappoint Katie [indiscernible] as a member of the Supervisory Board for a term starting immediately after the present AGM and ending at the end of the AGM to be held in 2027. The Supervisory Board recommends the reappointment of Katie for a term of 4 years in the view of her extensive experience in the field of omnichannel retail, her expertise and continued focus on healthy living and sustainability, as well as her global experience. The Supervisory Board also recommends the reappointment in the light of the services provided for Ahold Delhaize in the previous year. And also on this agenda item, for more extensive information on Katie's background, please see the agenda and the explanatory notes of this meeting. Katie, you're with me here today on the stage. Could you just raise your hand to identify yourself? So I will then give you the opportunity to ask questions related to the reappointment of Katie as a member of the Supervisory Board. And please keep your questions related to that. If you do not [Audio Gap] Sorry, I do not hear you, but we have already covered that question previously in the meeting. So we will not come back to it again. So with that, I suggest that we move on to the voting of agenda Item 11, the proposal to reappoint Mrs. Katie Doyle as a member of the Supervisory Board. Voting is now open. Halfways. Voting is now closed. I kindly ask you for a moment while we process your vote. And as you can see on the screen, 99.66% of the votes were cast in favor of agenda item 11. So I can conclude that the proposal has been adopted. Congratulations, Katie on your reappointment to the Supervisory Board. So with that, we proceed to agenda item 12, the proposal to appoint Julia Vander Ploeg as a member of the Supervisory Board. And Julia has a Dutch [ klinkend ] name but if you would like to address her you would have to do so in English because her Dutch is rather limited. Anyhow, the Supervisory Board recommends to appoint Julia Vander Ploeg to the Supervisory Board given her seasoned executive board member and we're sure she will bring extensive and relevant experience from a number of international and dynamic companies to Ahold Delhaize. And I say especially her background in digital and ecommerce will be important to the Supervisory Board as Ahold Delhaize continues to implement its Leading Together strategy. And also here for more extensive information on Julia's background please see the agenda and the explanatory notes of this meeting. Julia, you are present here today. May I ask you to stand up and introduce yourself briefly?

Hi, I'm Julia Vander Ploeg. It's great to be here with you all today. It's an honor to be here. Thank you.

Okay. So also here I would like to give you questions related to this agenda item. So we go to microphone #2. And please keep your questions to the point and short. And avoid any lengthy statement.

I will. Dear Board, dear Shareholders, my name is [indiscernible]. I actually have a question related to the previous point, but since I didn't get a chance, I'll ask it here because it's related to health. From my research in food security, we know that food security is a big issue in the world and from your introduction statement, I also noted that food security is close to the heart of Ahold Delhaize. Now, what I've seen also in your introductory statement is that you're already doing a lot regarding food waste you're working together with food banks and that is really great, that is really helping the health of many people in Europe and in the U.S. There's another aspect related to food security and that is climate change. And that brings me to the question. Will Ahold Delhaize in 2030 reduce its CO2 emissions...

Next. Please move aside. Okay, then we have another question from #2.

[Foreign Language]

Thank you for your question. Helen, as you were not so fond of coming next after Frans last time, I ask you to go first this time and provide an answer to the question.

Yes of course. Thank you very much and thank you for the question. W e underwent an extensive search to find Julia, we interviewed a lot of different candidates, and I can assure you that Julia was the best candidate, meeting the needs that we felt that we as a Supervisory Board but also the business of Ahold Delhaize had, and that is particularly understanding not just ecommerce but the whole digital word. It's about us learning how you use data in a much more effective way, how you can connect with customers in a much more effective way and through quite an extensive process, I can't remember Julia, how many people you met. But it was a number of the members of the Supervisory Board, all of the nominations committee, and also members of the management team through that process. We were really satisfied that she was going to be able to add a lot to the combined experience and expertise of the Supervisory Board. Hopefully that answers your question but it was a pretty extensive process.

Thank you, Helen. Are there any other questions relating to the appointment of Julia Vander Ploeg? No questions related to Julia Vander Ploeg?

I was told to do this in English.

That's perfectly fine. And keep your questions to the point.

Certainly. A tiny bit of context. My name is [indiscernible]. I am here on personal title. Natalie Knight, a few hours ago, you gave an example of, like, goals about plastic.

How can you see that this is related to the appointment of Julia Vander Ploeg? Please come to the point.

If you open your [indiscernible] app, and search digitally, as Wouter told us, someone somehow thought that it would be a good idea to offer customers who want to buy Ahold [ biologics ], individually packaged, in plastic, ginger. I couldn't see in the app whether that was virgin or non-virgin plastic, but I don't really think that, that's the problem here. We should -- I'm sorry, I have it in Dutch -- we should be able to expect from an oil tanker, like this large organization, that it has vision, that it looks forward. But in this annual report, I see a lot of whole phrases between. [Audio Gap]

So we go to microphone # 1.

[Foreign Language]

Sorry, we are not going to go back to that agenda item again. It has already been answered. Thank you. So with that, I see there are no questions related to the reappointment of Frans Muller. Very quickly, straight to the point, nothing else.

[Foreign Language]

So we've heard your question. Thank you. Frans, any comments?

[Foreign Language]

[Foreign Language]

[Foreign Language]

Okay. Then we move to the gentleman at microphone #2. Please go ahead. Microphone #2.

[Foreign Language]

[Foreign Language]

Okay. To the point related to Frans' reappointment, please, no lengthy statements.

[Foreign Language]

Okay. Next, please move ahead. Sorry, you're not allowed to speak anymore. Please, stay quiet. I will ask to remove you from the facilities if you don't step away. And then we move on to the next question at microphone #2.

[Foreign Language]

[Foreign Language]

Okay. I have to turn on the microphone as well. I suggest we move on to the voting of agenda item 13, the proposal to reappoint Mr. Frans Muller, as a member of the Management Board. And with that, voting is now open. Please place your votes. And voting is now closed. I kindly ask you for a moment of your patience while we process your votes. And as you can see on the screen, 99.95% of the votes were cast in favor of agenda item 13. So I conclude that the proposal has been adopted and congratulations, Frans, on your reappointment to the Management Board.

And thank you very much for your confidence and trust. And you heard me in my opening statement. I will dedicate the coming 4 years for this company and do the best for all our targets, as I mentioned before.

Great. So with that, I would like to continue with the agenda item 14, the proposal to appoint J.J. Fleeman as new member of the Management Board for a term starting immediately after the present AGM and ending at the end of the AGM to be held in 2027. The Supervisory Board recommends the appointing of J.J. for a term of 4 years in this view of his inspiring leadership. We are confident that J.J. will advance the U.S. businesses through the omnichannel market share growth and continue to deliver on the connected customer strategy. And also for J.J. for a more extensive information on J.J.'s background, please see the agenda and the explanatory notes of this meeting. And J.J., you're present here today. May I ask you to please stand up and introduce yourself briefly. Please, J.J.

Good evening, everyone. It's a pleasure to be with you J.J. Fleeman. Let me just share my sincerest gratitude for the opportunity to lead Ahold Delhaize USA with your approval and obviously, with your positive vote, it would be a real honor to serve you and to continue to serve our associates and our customers. Thank you very much.

So I will now give you the opportunity to ask questions on this agenda item, and please for this agenda item alone and nothing else. We go to microphone #3. And no lengthy statement.

[Foreign Language]

Okay. Thank you very much for your statement. You don't have a question apparently. So we move on. So thank you very much for your questions. I suggest we move straight on to agenda item 14. The proposal to appoint Mr. J.J. Fleeman as new member of the Management Board. And we now have the voting results for agenda item 14. And as you can see on the screen, 99.95% of the shareholders have cast a vote in favor of agenda item 14. So I conclude that the proposal has been adopted. Congratulations, J.J. to your appointment, and welcome to the Management Board. So we continue with agenda item 15, the proposal to reappoint KPMG Accountants N.V. as the external auditor for financial year 2024. And I would then like to open up and ask if there are anyone who has questions to this agenda item? And if so, please approach one of the microphones. That seems not to be the case. So with that -- no question. With that, then I move on I'm a little bit confused. Sorry about that. So with that, I suggest we move straight on to the voting on agenda item 14 and with that voting is now open. Sorry. So we pause the voting for a second.

[Foreign Language].

Thank you. Is there another question?

[Foreign Language]

So -- the questions came kind of in the middle of the voting. So we keep the voting of agenda item 15 open a little while longer. So please cast your votes now on agenda Item 15, and the clock is ticking. Okay. So with that, voting is now closed. And I ask you for a moment of your patience while we process your vote on agenda Item 15, and as you can see on the screen, 99.92% of the votes were cast in favor of agenda Item 15, so I conclude that the proposal has been adopted. Thank you. We move straight on to agenda item 16, the proposal to authorize the management board for a period of 18 months from the date of this AGM until and including October 12, 2024 to issue common shares and grant rights to acquire common shares subject to the approval of the Supervisory Board and to a maximum of 10% of the issued share capital. And I would like to open up to see if there are any questions to agenda Item 16. Please go ahead. Microphone #2.

As you comfortable, I will do it in English. Can you give me an indication if there are any shares issued last year in the year-over-year speaking today of? And if so, how many or what percentage of your outstanding?

And Natalie, you might be able to respond to that.

Yes. There are no new shares...

The proposal has been adopted. I'm going to speed up a bit now. Thank you. We continue with the agenda item 17, the proposal to authorize the management board for a period of 18 months from the date of this meeting until and including October 12, to restrict or exclude, subject to the approval of the Supervisory Board, [ preemptive ] rights in relation to the issuance of common shares or granting the rights to acquire common shares. Are there any questions related to agenda item 17? No? Okay. Then let's vote. Voting is now open. Please place your votes. Voting is now closed. I suggest we go straight to the voting results of agenda Item 17. And as you can see, 97% of the votes were cast in favor of agenda item 17, so I conclude that the proposal has been adopted. Thank you. Agenda item 18 is the proposal to authorize the management board for a period of 18 months from the date of this annual general meeting until and including October 12, 2024, to acquire common shares in the company [Audio Gap]

[Foreign Language]

[Foreign Language]

Thank you very much. I suggest we go straight on to the vote. It is getting late. So let's vote on agenda item 18. Voting is now open. Please place your vote. And voting is now closed. Reduction of the company's issued share capital. And I would like to give you the opportunity to ask questions also on this agenda item. I see no questions, so then let's go straight to the vote. Let's vote. Voting is now open on agenda item 19. Please place a vote. Voting is now closed. And we go straight to the agenda item results of agenda item 19. [Audio Gap] The Management Board in a couple of months. I would like to start to thank my colleague on the Supervisory Board, Bala, who has served on the Supervisory Board for 2 years. And his tenure is unfortunately cut short due to a new executive challenge, but I would like to wish Bala all the success in his new role. And I can assure you that his expertise and knowledge in the field of digitalization, omnichannel has been really helpful, and we thank him for his invaluable support. His incredible financial expertise, strong leadership have contributed to deliver the strong results that we have seen at the end of this year. I would also like to say that our focus on sustainability and diversity have been really valued, and we will really miss that. Again, to all of you. Thank you, Bala. Thank you, Kevin, and thank you, Natalie. We wish you all the best in the future. So at least, we could present you with a very dynamic final AGM. So with that, I would like to verify whether there are any questions left? Please go ahead. Microphone #2.

[Foreign Language].

Thank you so much. I appreciate your input. Certainly, we will need to evaluate how things went down today, and we'll come back and see how we can improve going forward. Next.

[Foreign Language]

[Foreign Language]

Thank you so much. Appreciate your input. Certainly we will need to evaluate what went down today and see what we can improve going forward. Next.

[Foreign Language]

Thank you so much. Thank you so much. That was a nice way to end. I suggest we do so. So to everyone present here in Zaandam and virtually, thank you for attending and participating in today's meeting. To repeat what I said initially, we believe that shareholder democracy is of vital importance, and I have enjoyed the dialogue mostly with every one of you here today at [indiscernible] and present via virtual connection. We look forward to continue the dialogue throughout the year. I would also like to take the opportunity to thank all the people that have been involved in the organization and preparation of this AGM under the leadership of my dear Company Secretary, Franka Huisman. And as the meeting closes, I would like to invite you to have a drink outside in this hall, and I kindly ask you to hand in your headphones and voting devices when you leave this room. And after that, please do not forget to take with you a pack of fresh products for a delicious meal offered to you by a great local brand, Albertine. I now declare the meeting closed, and I wish you a pleasant evening. Thank you so much. Thank you again. [Portions of this transcript that are marked [Interpreted] were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]