SEB SA (SK) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the General Meeting of your company. I'd like to indicate, first of all, that the assembly is being sent -- streamed directly, and it's available offline on the group website. I'm presiding this with Stanislas, General Director; Nathalie Lomon, who's the person in [indiscernible] CFO; and Philippe Sumeire, who's the General Manager [indiscernible] President of the Board of Directors. I'd like to salute the Board members in the group that are in the first row. I'd like to thank them for being with us today. Members of the General Management Committee and the Executive Committee are behind that. And I'd also like to thank our statutory auditors sitting in the second row. I can see them here. I'd like to thank them so much for being present with us here today. First of all, I would like to -- this is your meeting. This meeting is for you. And it is a privileged moment of information and exchange with the management of your group. Last year, we celebrated the 165 years of the group, our 165th anniversary. This year, we're celebrating 70 years of the famous casserole of the pressure cooker that everybody has heard of. So we'll be seeing this in the film a bit later on. It's a very important anniversary because it was the most emblematic of our products. We're going to start this meeting with -- We're going to talk about 2022 and some figures. And then we're going to be talking about the group strategy around 3 topics that we've chosen for this year. First of all, our acquisition strategies which, as you know, it's an important part of our group and China, which is our #1 country and sustainable development that we'll be hearing about in the film as well, which is at the heart of our group strategy. We will return to the key events of governance in 2022 as well as the makeup of the Board and the Board's committees. We'll be providing you with information on the resolutions you will be asked to vote on. And after a summary of the statutory auditor's reports, we will answer any questions you may have. I would like to inform you that the written questions from shareholders have been received before the meeting. And as the law allows, our response has been provided and is available on our website for these questions. We will conclude the meeting by voting on the resolutions, the text of which are set out in the Notice of Meeting brochure. The Notice of Meeting brochure is published in the bulletin des annonces légales et obligatoires and in Universal Registration Document dated 2022. The Notice of Meeting, the convening notice relating to this combined general meeting was published in the bulletin des annonces légales et obligatoires on March 15, 2023. And this convening notice relating to the combined general meeting was also published on April 19, 2023, in the bulletin des annonces légales et obligatoires and in the Legal Gazette [indiscernible] le-tout-lyon.fr. The registered shareholders and the statutory auditors were duly notified by letter of this meeting. I must now constitute the office, of which I will assume the presidency, I will call 2 members of the assembly present and representing the greatest number of votes, and I propose them to act as scrutineers. First of all, Mrs. Damarys Braida, representing VENELLE INVESTISSEMENT; and Mrs. Caroline Chevalley, who represents GÉNÉRACTION. Ladies, thank you for [indiscernible] thank you very much. And in addition, Philippe Sumeire will assume the function of Secretary of this meeting, if you will. Thank you, sir. I have in front of me on the desk the file. Here it is. Thank you for that. All of the documents required by existing regulations in force. In addition, all prior documents have been sent or made available to shareholders through the shareholder services department and on the company's website in accordance with legal and regulatory requirements. It is now at 14:40, I declare the meeting open. The quorum, Philippe? The quorum provisionally is very high. It's greater than last year, which was already very high. So we have [indiscernible] shareholders [indiscernible] voted remotely. 120 shareholders are present and 347 are represented. In total, [indiscernible] shares are present, representing 73,359,699 votes. In percentage terms, today, for this assembly, we have 85.84% of capital represented in [ 88.70% ] of votes. For the quorum of AGM, it is slightly lower. It's quite close, but it's -- in percentage terms, it's 84% of capital and 86.67% of votes. So we have very largely the quorum necessary to validly [indiscernible]. So let's get into the topic. I'm not going to go back over the summary. I'm going to move right on to Stanislas de Gramont, who's going to talk to us about the financial results for 2022 and prospects for 2023.

Thank you, Thierry. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. We're going to start by reviewing the performance in '22 and starting with sales. The key figures, first of all, sales standing at EUR 7.960 billion, down 4.7% like-for-like, which translated into ORfA profit of EUR 620 million and operating margin of 7.8%, down 2.3 points. Net income of EUR 316 million, down 30% and the net financial debt standing at EUR 1.973 billion, representing a leverage of 2.3 at year end. When you break down the sales between organic and growth, we observed that 2023 was strongly impacted positively by the currency effect on sales. Since the currency effect, the ForEx effect was positive, standing at 3.3% and an organic -- decrease of organic growth of 4.7% and improvement effect of 0.1%. So a decrease in sales carried over in euros, standing at 1.2% down. The year was contrasted in '22 within consumer activity, mass market activity, which was down by 2.6%, 5.9% like-for-like. On the contrary, the professional activity, mainly coffee machines, was up by 15.6% in terms of sales, 9.2% like-for-like to reach EUR 725 million. I'm going to start with that. So this is a professional activity that has held up well. We saw in the beginning of the pandemic, our professional activity was penalized by the closing of these companies. We had announced at the beginning of last year a ramping up -- the gradual ramping up and that did happen. Recovery did happen. It did happen in Asia with a 2-figure growth, especially in China, which is one of the -- with Luckin Coffee. It also happened in the U.S. a lot of a good dynamic there, and a very good support by Wilbur Curtis, which is a company that we acquired at the end of 2018. They do traditional filter coffee in the Americas area, very strongly up WMF and Schaerer in Europe and in the DACH zone. And lastly, a growth of machines as well as services was strongly up. This is our professional activity. And this after sales service is a non-negligible contributor to the activity. And lastly, a small hotel business delivered double-digit sales growth in 2022, very good recovery in '22 for them with a 2-figure growth. So now mass market by contrast was a more difficult thing. It was difficult because there is a very good in demanding 2021. As you recall, the euro was up 16% and mass market by 20%. And this over sales and small domestic equipment had a kind of whiplash in 2022. There's an underperformance more marked in France and Germany, which had been those that had benefited the most from the positive effect in 2021, so the whiplash was greater. Also, we had a huge effect of the Russia-Ukraine war, which had a direct effect on those 2 markets, but indirectly as well on end consumer in Eastern Europe and so forth and also the consequences of the relation in inflationary and the lack of enthusiasm in Europe. So more good news about confirming that positive momentum in China. The market is very volatile. There have been a lot of ups and downs in '22 . We'll talk about Supor a bit later in the presentation, but they are continuing to outperform the market in all of its activities. And the other activities in America and Asia is highly contrasted to activity and kind of irregular from one country to another. Now let's drill down into some details here. We have on the bottom, total consumer like-for-like of minus 3% and organic minus 6% like-for-like. This minus 6% is broken down into EMEA standing at minus 11% with Western Europe standing at minus 13%, penalized by France and Germany. The other European countries, Eastern Europe and Central Europe were penalized by Russia and Ukraine, standing at minus 7%; America, minus 6% with a contrasted situation between north at minus 10%, which is historically very high in 2021. In South America, which picked up into positive figures standing at plus 6. And Brazil picked up a bit more at the end of the year. And then professional markets was 2%. I'm going to hand over now to Nathalie Lomon, who is going to comment our financial results subsequent to sales.

Thank you, Stanislas. Ladies and gentlemen, hello, I'm going to start with the first chart, which gives us the operating results from activity with the decrease in 1.2% in sales with an operating result, the ORfA of EUR 620 million following 2021, which was a record year for the SEB group. The operating margin stood at 7.8% compared to 10.1% in '21. I'm going to present to you in the next slide what is currently going on. Now here's the breakdown in the operating -- in the ORfA in these 2 years. We're going to start with the volume effect. You recall after a very long first quarter, there was a decrease in demand in products of consumer goods. This Stanislas just commented on, we are very strongly impacted by the performance of the company, as you can see. We were marked by a decrease in volumes sold, which impacted almost minus EUR 360 million, mainly in the consumer goods. We also were impacted last year by an increase in the cost of sales for EUR 367 million. And the main drivers between that -- of the increase -- with the increase in maritime freight, which was EUR 367 million, raw materials and components repurchasing more than EUR 80,000 and EUR 75 million coming from the decrease in production. [indiscernible] Adjusted in the second quarter of last year to observe the decrease in demand, which had an impact in the unit production cost. Now given these negative trends, the group attacked us very resolutely by pursuing the product mix to increasing that product mix and by increasing the sales. The 2 factors combined, changing the product mix and increasing the sales price, brought in more than EUR 600 million into the ORfA, that's the one that I just commented on. And the expenses, in other words, the commercial expenses and overhead were up by EUR 24 million between those 2 years with a strong adjustment in the rhythm, which was materialized in the second semester. Yes. So [ we ] have the marketing expenses and advertising, which we're committed to promote our products and R&D was the design. And so far as the currency, the ForEx effect, which is negative for EUR 41 million, this has to do with what Stanislas mentioned earlier. As you know, an important share of the expenses of the group are in U.S. dollars or in renminbi. These amounts exceed greatly the sales figures that we actually sell in these currencies. So as a result, the positive currency effect over sales in these 2 currencies produced a negative effect on the operating results despite the protection we had set up in hedging on exchange differences. So we're going to move on to net income. So employee profit-sharing was down in '22, which translates the decrease in sales in France and also the decrease in activities and production sites in France. Other operating income and expenses were very close to what they were in 2021. And in 2022, as the most significant of minus EUR 56 million compared -- expenses linked to the reorganization of our consumer activities in Germany, which had been planned ahead of time. So we had to unify [indiscernible] and WMF for consumer goods. So operating profit stood at EUR 547 million compared to EUR 715 million last year. And the financial result goes from minus EUR 65 million to EUR 81 million from the refinancing of our activities in Russia, in Brazil and in Mexico. There was a deterioration of interest rates in these various currencies. And tax was down in line with the decrease in operating income and noncontrolling interest were mainly for Supor. Let's move on to the balance sheet. Now the total is greater than EUR 6 billion. EUR 3.449 billion is the equity amount. Net debt, I'll get back to. I'm going to talk about working capital requirements, which is EUR 1.393 billion for WCR, up compared to 2021, and this increase is mainly due to the reduction in supplier debts between the 2 years, which translates to a decrease in activity at the end of '22 compared to the situation in 2021 at the same time. Free cash flow generation by the group was close to 0 last year, starting from the operating result of EUR 620 million, the group generated an EBITDA of EUR 874 million, which was used up by increased working capital requirements by CapEx investments standing at EUR 345 million. We didn't slow down investments, as you can see in 2022. This represents roughly 4% of sales. In the EUR 345 million, EUR 126 million of that were investments in the application of the accounting norm called IFRS 16, which transforms rents into assets. It was also EUR 36 million for the new logistics platform, which will be in Bully in France, which will be inaugurated in the next couple of days and the other investments linked to industrial activities, which we did not slow down and that stands at EUR 111 million this year. As to tax and interest, the amount -- this is the amount actually paid in '22 and EUR 79 million of nonoperating working capital requirements and other items. This doesn't concern operational items. We can comment on that, if you like. What's important to note in this table is the change in free cash flow over the period with a very strong consumption of cash in the first half year, which came mainly from the increase in our requirements for working capital requirements and inventory and then free cash flow generation standing at some EUR 300,000 -- EUR 300 million. So there's a question of reducing cost and need in free cash flow. So we had to face up to the decrease in demand. So as to the financial debt of the group stands at EUR 1.973 billion at the end of -- so the difference comes from the consumption of cash, which is about EUR 120 million. The dividend paid out for EUR 204,000 is EUR 140 million to the SEB group, EUR 62 million to the minority shareholders of support and the other for minority holdings of the group. And the other factors which were impacting debt for EUR 197 million were mainly comprised of acquisitions of Zummo, and there are also investments in the vehicle, SEB Alliance. There's also restructuring costs paid out over the year. And share buyback for EUR [indiscernible] million, which are intended to cover the long-term shareholding plan, which is defined by the group. To conclude with this presentation, the financial ratios over a long period demonstrate that the gearing of the group. I'm going to comment on the gray line at the bottom is 0.6%, which translates a very robust balance sheet. Now the gearing at the end of '22 stood at 2.3 and [indiscernible] under the new IFRS standards to compare that over a long period and 1.9 excluding acquisitions at the end of the year. That's for 2022.

Thank you, Nathalie. Now let's go over in a few moments, the start-up of the year. The start-up of this year was characterized by 2 things. First of all, some online performance with our expectations historically in 2022 in the first half year, we're still at a record level. A speeding up of sales in the professional sectors. We saw this in the first EUR 209 million, up 22.1% like-for-like. And consumer is doing better for the third and fourth quarters last year, but it's still negative, standing at minus 6.6%. I'll get back to that for a total amount of like-for-like minus 3.7%. If we're going to go into more details, the professional market has picked up accelerated growth, 2-digit growth in all the region. That's remarkable because the biggest markets, China, Germany, the United Kingdom and the U.S. all have two-digit growth figures. That's good news. It's very well balanced between the geographical areas. I was telling you earlier that the sales were driven by the machines and the trend is reinforced for the first quarter 2023. And finally, we have strengthened our presence -- our foothold in this area by acquiring San Marco in Italy. Thierry will come back to that when we talk about acquisitions later. Now customer -- consumption goods -- consumer goods performance is in line with our expectations. We have decreased demand for small domestic appliances through all the markets. The demand is lagging because we had a record year last year. We have still a challenging situation in Western Europe, France, Germany and North America. We're now getting out of this challenging situation. Sales in China decreased during the first quarter. That was to be expected, partly because the first quarter last year had a 11% growth, organic growth from 1 year to the next and also because this year, the Chinese New Year celebrations happened late January. So in December, people tended to store in preparation for the New Year celebrations. For consumer goods, we have Ingenio brand doing really well, but also oil less frying machines, a new category are developing fans, steam cookers and water kettles driving the growth. EUR 65 million operating result coming out of difficult and challenging years, but we have a very high comparison here. And beyond the fact that our profit decreased, the sale -- the cost of sales increase. Manufacturing costs in 2022 had an impact on the manufacturing -- the sales cost in the first quarter of 2023. However, the decrease in the price of raw materials, decrease in maritime freight cost is now coming. Everybody had been expecting it. We see it now in manufactured products which already are in our inventories. And in the second quarter of the year, we will benefit from this result once we sell the goods and bring them out of our inventories. Exchange rates, we expect a negative impact on -- for all the year. Unfortunately, that will be the adverse effect. And after that, the group's operating margin should start improving in the second semester of 2023. The debt situation late March is better than the 31st of December, we've decreased on our net debt by EUR 100 million, thanks to cash flow generation during the first quarter, more than EUR 200 million of free cash flow. That's a great performance. Again, because we have been making efforts to reduce our inventories and this cash flow allowed us to fund the acquisition of La San Marco, a company that I hope you have been able to admire the -- one of the flagship products, which is here exhibited on the ground floor, beautiful product. Now the group's financial structure is still quite sound and balanced, trending towards a maturity through the financial instruments that we have access to.

Thank you, Nathalie. So if we want to comment the earlier phases of this year, we have provided an indication in early February when we disclosed the 2022 results. So we said the -- earlier -- the first part of the year was challenging. We're doing a little better than we expected. We said there would be a progressive recovery in the consumer goods sales. And now that we see these sales picking up during the year, we can start talking about growth. We said there would be a professional sales rate increase and what we have observed during the first quarter confirms a very sound situation for the professional industry. And finally, we said that the operating margin would increase this year. The first quarter being what it is. We believe that in the second quarter, progressively, the operating margin will start increasing, and this would lead us to an increasing margin from 1 year to the other at the end of 2023. Now Thierry, in his introduction said that 2023 was the year when we would celebrate the 70th anniversary of the SEB pressure cooker. For those of you who are in France, you will see many, many commercial events, celebrations in the retail shops. But because we couldn't bring the retail shops here, we shot a video, just to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the SEB pressure cookers. So please welcome the [ seventh ] anniversary video. [Presentation]

Now let's talk about strategy. As I said earlier, we are going to talk about 3 subjects. I'd like to talk about acquisitions and Stanislas will then talk about China, and we will talk about sustainable development. So let's just start with the external growth strategy. As you will understand, there's nothing new under the sun, we have performed many acquisitions over the time, over the years, but I'd like to remind you of a few fundamental principles. We are always looking for companies that can be complementary with ours, both in terms of product categories when we believe we should be present in that particular category. And also for the brands, we have some beautiful brands, most of which have been acquired. Regarding geographical areas, there are still areas where we don't have a foothold, not strong enough. And acquisitions allow us to maybe fill the gaps. And complementarity also of the business because we started working in the field of professional cooking a few years ago, and we believe this is going to be a complementary activity with consumer goods, and I'll come back to that in a minute. Now the acquisitions are always targeted. Why targeted? Because regardless, whether it's consumer goods or professional cooking, our business is still fragmented. And therefore, there are very few big players and is -- there are a number of small players. And except for [ WMF ], all our acquisitions happened when the companies were small, and we allowed them to grow. It's better to buy a small company and allow it to grow than the other way around. But we have to be able to do that. And our operations so far have been acquired through debt. We never used our own equity, ever since we were listed. Nowadays, we don't need to use our own equity and being the leader, the global leader, we don't see any reason we shouldn't continue to do it. And as Nathalie said, we still have a very good operating results. And therefore, every new acquisition brings in profit which allows us to reduce our debt and then take out a debt again to be able to make another acquisition. More than EUR 600 million have been invested in 6 acquisitions, we acquired WMF in December of 2016, and we did not wait very long. Although, as we will say in a few seconds, the COVID period was difficult. Now on this slide, you can see the 1953 pressure cooker and then acquisitions started with CALOR, Tefal in France, initially to widen a large product portfolio. And then internationally, with Rowenta in Europe. And then we moved outside of the European borders [indiscernible] Brazil and more move in Colombia. And then Moulinex in 2001, and you will remember, and [ All-Clad ] in U.S., Lagostina in Italy, Supor, which was not a big company when we acquired it, EUR 130 million in [indiscernible]. It's phenomenal. It's huge. It's one of those acquisitions that has acquired a great value for us. Vietnam, IMUSA in Colombia, a big acquisition in Germany, [ WMF ] [indiscernible] in Belgium [indiscernible] joint venture. And we are moving closer to the recent past [indiscernible] Curtis in the United States, Professional Coffee filters based in Los Angeles. Krampouz, a French company based in Brittany. They make crepes. So it's the world leader of professional crepe makers for consumers. And more recently, StoreBound in the U.S., Zummo in 2022 in Spain, and finally, in 2023, San Marco in Italy, which we signed in 2022, but the closing happened earlier this year and Pacojet in Switzerland, which I'll come back to later. So the last acquisitions were performed in professional cooking. Why? Because we believe the professional cooking is an interesting business, and we believe that our group should strengthen its presence in this field with a much greater profitability than consumer goods. And we find what Stanislas and Nathalie said earlier, regarding sales, we sell machines, but we also sell services. And when we have a change such as Professional Coffee shops, such as Starbucks, it's essential that the machines never break down. And so after we sell them the machine, we have sell them the services, maintenance, and obviously, it doesn't come free of charge. So lots of synergies with consumer goods as well, less and less gap between the top of the range consumer goods and the lower entry range for professional goods. And we have an interesting portfolio of coffee makers for both professionals and consumers. And there are also niche players, which are organized by product or by geographical area, and our strategy consists in performing acquisitions to develop strategies between companies, and I'll come back to that. And synergies also with the group, and this will allow us to grow those companies and reduce their costs. The ambition is to become a consistent and comprehensive player. We have coffee makers with the acquisition in 2016 of WMF. WMF is German and also [indiscernible] In Switzerland, Curtis in the U.S. in 2019, La San Marco in Italy, Northern Europe markets -- automatic coffeemaker markets. And in Southern Italy, France -- Southern markets, France and Italy, they prefer traditional machines, rather sophisticated in Italy San Marco and slightly more conventionally in France and Spain, but we have to be present everywhere. And then fruit juice makers with Zummo in Spain. If you go to Gare de Lyon, the French station in Paris, I mean, when I live in [indiscernible], I have to take the high-speed train to come to Paris all the time. So I land in the Gare de Lyon. And there are coffee shops there selling coffee. And they also use machines to make oranges or pineapple juice and that's the kind of product that we sell to them with Zummo. Now if we move out of the professional kitchens, we also have hotels and restaurants. We have been present in professional kitchens with [indiscernible], it's an American brand which most chefs use across the world, at least the famous ones, but Tefal as well. Tefal is being used in many, many professional kitchens. Next, in 2016, we acquired WMF. WMF was also working in hotels. They sell cutlery, they sell machines to make scrambled eggs or display scrambled eggs. So they are very much present in hotels, and there are 2 German brands, [ WMF, ] very famous in German-speaking countries. And it's still developing as Stanislas said earlier. Stanislas told us that last year, they experienced very good growth. [indiscernible] that I mentioned, Zummo. Zummo is a Spanish company created in 1992, present in more than 100 countries. Their operating profit is relatively limited, 115 people working for the company. Their production site is where -- well, where they grow oranges, especially Valencia in Spain. And this company has a wide range of product on offer. Here, you see an example of a machine to make pineapple juice. They can also make apple juice. Apple juice is actually #1. But we believe there is complementarity here. And we've already seen synergies developing between WMF because when WMF sells professional cooking appliances, they also suggest and offer Zummo machines. We saw this yesterday, a very big customer in France switched supplier for the orange juice maker when he discovered that Zummo was part of our group. And so they decided to buy Zummo machines. I believe that there will be stronger synergies in coming years. San Marco is an Italian company. I hope that you have had a chance to see the machine in the exhibition downstair, beautiful machines. The company is based in Gradisca d'Isonzo [indiscernible] very close to Venice. The company is a very old company. It was actually created in 1920 at the time the machines were highly sophisticated, they still are. It's a beautiful company, admirable. And we're very happy now it's part of the group. And we do hope it will grow. And I'd like to show you a video. The video is in Italian with subtitles because coffee wouldn't sound the same if it was an Italian. [Presentation]

This movie is 3 years old because it was the 100th anniversary of La San Marco. It's a beautiful, splendid machine, and we hope that La San Marco will continue developing while it is part of our group. We also have Pacojet, a Swiss company based in Zug, funded in 1992. In 2022, [ EUR 24 million ] sales. Some of the manufacturing is subcontracted, but it's an icon company for professional cooking or chefs. All restaurants that ever had one cannot do without it. It's a beautiful acquisition we signed 2 weeks ago, and we believe it will have a promising future, and we believe it will quickly grow and develop because this will solve all the problems that chefs may encounter in their kitchen. And again, a very quick video, just so you can see what the machine can do. It's actually the new model from Pacojet. [Presentation]

This is a machine to prepare [ dishes ] upstream and when the restaurant is packed, you can actually serve the customers more quickly. And all the chefs who have acquired this machine are very happy they did so. China -- thank you. we've been talking about China for several years now. We're talking about how the group is developing in China. It was absolutely remarkable, the way the group developed. And we thought it might be useful to discuss this with you to explain why we had such outstanding performances and why -- for the last 15 years and why it is continuing. First of all, demographic evolution. You can see here that we have the evolution of the middle class in China. And obviously, they are the ones who consume set products, 50 million people in 2006, 110 million in 2015, 400 million in 2022 and according to the forecast, it should be 800 million people in 2025. And the middle class is at the core of our business because they are target consumers, and we want to work for innovation for their sake. The middle class in China is developing -- extending towards new territories such as Western China. There are new categories of products we have been working -- well, Supor has been working on traditional conventional cooking appliances, but also developing new cooking utensils such as mugs, bottles, kitchenware. Supor is also developing vacuum cleaners with new ranges of vacuum cleaners that also cleaned the floor and digitalization is the subject that everybody talks about. We all know that China is digitalizing and Supor is ahead of the rest of the Chinese market. And digitalization provides access to markets in the Central and Western regions of China because it is easier to have access to products, thanks to platforms, which push back the limits of access to products by making it possible to deliver goods in very small towns, which until 5 years ago, were only served by shops with 2,000 square meters. Whereas now, online sales give this population a faster and easier access to cooking utensils. Digitalization for Supor was exponential in 2006. When we acquired Supor, there was no e-commerce virtually to be in China, and it's now 45% in 2018, 65% in 2020. Also COVID actually had a very strong impact and more than 70% of the profits in 2022 come from e-commerce. Supor uses more than 2,300 influencers on the social media to sell products. We went to China a few weeks ago, and we saw groups of 70 to 80 people who work 7 days a week, 24 hours a day to activate Supor products online. Supor is present throughout the platforms, Tmall, JingDong, TikTok. TikTok is growing faster, WeChat, all the Chinese platforms are converging -- social media and e-commerce, and they are actually converging. And Supor wants to be the leader of the pack in all the platforms regardless of their development level. Now what about the consequences? Innovation strategy, penetration of new territories and also a constant need to question the methods and find out new strategies, new methods. And this translates into a growing leadership of Supor in cooking utensils where we're #1 with Supor brand in 2006 when we acquired the company. At the time, the sales were 1.5 the sales of the #2. And now our sales are 3x greater than the sales of the #2 competitor. And we want to reinforce our lead -- leadership. We want to work on kitchenware, mugs, bottles, carry away bottles, cooking utensils. And as far as electrical appliances are concerned, 15, 17 years ago, we were the #3 behind Midea and Joyoung. We overtook Midea in 2015. We became the #2 -- Joyoung, sorry, Joyoung in 2015. We became the #2. And last year, we actually took the lead by beating Midea and we combine online and off-line sales to become the #1 of cooking appliances in China. This is resting on strong competition. We have a very good production unit, 5 units in China, 1 in Vietnam, 3, 4 cooking appliances, 1 in Vietnam and household appliances, 2 big sites, Hangzhou, which is the headquarters for support and [ chosing ] 1 hour from Hangzhou, with a large kitchen appliance factory to make cooking stoves and 12,000 people working there and the capacity of production between [ 2016 and 2025 ] was multiplied by 5. It's a fivefold increase. We increased our manufacturing capacity to 150 million units. So very good performances, constant innovation. We enlarge our categories, we penetrate the existing categories of products. We enlarge our geographical coverage, and this translates into exceptional performances. Our operating profits have been multiplied by 10 in 16 years. In Renminbi, we went from CNY 1.5 billion to CNY 15 billion in 2022. And as Thierry said, EUR 2.5 billion. This is our activity, our business in China. And it is almost like an aircraft carrier for our group's -- flagship for our group and we believe that we will remain the #1 and we will increase the gap between us and our competitors in the second market of the world, a growing market, the market is driven and fueled by demography. And we believe that this is an asset for our group, and we will continue developing our business in China. A few sentences but a video will give you a much stronger message regarding our growth in China. [Presentation]

That is [ Supor ] by the brand, and it's great -- the best image in terms of innovation in China. Everybody knows what this is. Talking about sustainable development, I wanted to go back over the history. You have 2 slides on this that go over the history. I'm going to do that, and we're going to -- we made quite a few advances in '22. There are 3 colors. You have green as you can -- that represents the first pillar of ESG in the environment, both climate and this circular economy, which for us is fundamental. Secondly, the blue is social and yellow is growth. So we started with [indiscernible] long time ago in the independent Board members. We created the first Audit Committee [indiscernible] in '95. In 2003, we signed the United Nations Global Compact, which was the commitment prepared by the UN. Everything having to do with responsible approaches. And then we created the sustainable development department in 2004 and the SEB foundation in 2007, with [indiscernible] against exclusion in housing, education, employment and health, that was involved in. It's a foundation which every year pays something like EUR 700,000 in the total amount of a [ charitable ] work that SEB is contributing to, linked to exclusion is more around EUR 3.5 million, if you cover the whole of the group. It was EUR 4 million in 2022 because we had wanted to give EUR 500,000 for Ukraine, given the conflict that is currently raging. These actions are variable in China. Supor started before we acquired it. They were building schools. And now we've got more than 25 schools built, primary schools, which are generally in very distant corners of China, remote areas where the population doesn't have much opportunity for education. So the first product line for cookery articles being recycled, the aluminum articles, and we did this 10 years ago. This is the first line, and it was a bit specific. So we had -- initially, consumers didn't like the idea because it cost us more than having the firsthand aluminum. Now consumers are supporting that. We have a demand on an ongoing basis. And it's a good demo as the fact that recycling is an important point. 2012, we signed the ethical code in the ethical charter. There are 18 measures in that we ask of our staff members throughout the world to respect without any excuses. Then we created a stakeholder committee in CSR. These are people outside of the company, which they're sounding boards for us to help us validate what we're doing to make sure we're headed in the right direction. In 2014, we had the first operation of our charity week. Now these are projects throughout the world where we have staff members that are in projects are involved in those, and we had 75 sites involved in 43 countries, a very concrete action, such as in France, we go and help the homeless in [ Leon, ] do some painting work to prepare a location for people that are on the street. In 2015, it was important to us because we declared that all of the group products that could be fixable within 10 years. In other words, after the 10-year anniversary, they would not be sold anymore. But now we sell parts for 10 years. For those who are interested, go have a look at the [ Faucogney ] site and [ La Mer ] site, which is not in Brittany, but in the [indiscernible] area, which is our site where we store all of the parts that we ship throughout the world. In 2017, we had a Board member representing a staff for the first time. We didn't have an obligation to do it because it was less than 3% of capital. But we thought it was important to involve the staff and their representatives. So we've always had staff representatives holding some capital and staffs have always been able to buy shares at a lower price. And we thought it was important to have -- and that's been going on since 2017. Mr. [indiscernible] who's here represents them. And we have also 2 Board members that represent staff, 1 is named by the committee in France and the other by the European Committee of the SEB group. In 2018, we determined our trajectory towards carbon neutrality by 2050, which was validated by SBTi, which is the international authority that commits us to decarbonating over a long period. In 2019, we moved along that ambition [indiscernible] acting for a more sustainable daily life. 2020 -- 2022 was an important year. In COVID, we opened the first store in Paris by -- open [indiscernible] store, was providing products for consumers that could -- we have a lot of things -- independent repair people. This is our own structure for repairs. And they sell products -- secondhand products. So we're -- that's really part of the circular economy, repair things, we resell them instead of throwing them away. So I think that we're really very much [indiscernible] in that respect. And the people that are working in [ repair SEB ] are people that are out from -- people that were excluded from society before. 2021, we have brought repair and our commitment thereof from 10 to 15 years. We call this Act for Nature, which concerns the biodiversity. We created our own logo for ECODesign, which follows so as to have a way of impact [indiscernible] behavior in this respect. I don't want -- in 2021, we have the Includeo range. Now this is an inclusive range. This is to fight against -- to support people with handicaps. We think of the handicap, but we forget that people that have these challenges is every day. But it can be temporary, maybe you break a leg, or you break an arm. It could be long over the long haul as well. And you can't use your -- both of your arms, for example, and you maybe have -- you might need a product. So we thought a lot about how we could use innovation to have people that were handicapped to give us some advice and to finding products that are better adapted to their situations and we have full product ranges that can be used by absolutely everybody, but which are easier to use by people that do have a handicap, whether it be permanent or temporary. In '22, we separated the function of the chair -- the Chairman of the Board from the CEO. So it was then 2 people. And we also decided to increase the share of bonus of all staff that intervened, several hundred people and multiply the impact by 3 of the CSR criteria. So we created to demonstrate how heavily this weighs for us in CSR. We created a strategy and CSR committee, which met for the first time in 2022. And about 2022, Stanislas is going to talk about a few things having to do with some carbon neutral trajectory. There are dozens of performance indicators that we are tracking. All of those are identified in the Universal Document. We wanted to share those with you, some of the main ones or emblematic ones in that CSR performance. So let's start with carbon emissions. We are targeting carbon neutrality by 2015. We have very firm objectives in 2030, on the basis of 2016, we have reduced by 34% our carbon intensity that's in scope 1 and 2. In other words, direct from the plant and also from of the work. So this is an ongoing work, which has an overview of all the areas where we issue -- where we emit carbon and plants and so forth. And all of the operational teams, whether it be supply chain, logistics or industry. And it's a topic where we are accelerating and we are increasing our investments in this area. In particular, we've identified in the next 2 years and invested in EUR 44 million additional from existing front to work on decarbonization of our activities. Another important factor and quite specific to our industry with respect to CSR, this is the circular economy. Now the circular economy is our sector of activity, we have equipment that can be repaired and reused, and we are working a great deal on repairability and reusability of our products. Thierry mentioned that we were 10 years, and that was ramped it up to 15 years repairable. And you can see this, the logo here. It's repairable at a fair price. In other words, we have to make sure that the cost of the repair and the cost of the spare parts will not be higher than a new one by more than 30%. So the repair has to be worth it as it were for the consumer. So we're working right from the design and the manufacturing of product, we are already working on a design that will make it possible to do a repair at an accessible price. And that's something that people don't talk much about, but it's actually using recycled materials in our products and in our packaging. And obviously, aluminum, Thierry said, we're talking about aluminum-based pans. We've talked a lot about recycled packing materials. You can see that this is almost seen expanded polystyrene disappeared. The white polystyrene, it's been replaced by molded celluloses or honeycomb cardboard. So we use a lot of packing material that is recyclable or recycled. And Thierry also mentioned RépareSeb. Now this RépareSeb is an interesting activities because we've given ourselves the means to repair and repackage products. And we've done that by using an insertion company in RS. Now this is a company that hires people that are excluded from society. They are no longer working. And we hire them. We train them for 3 to 6 months, and they stay with us for 18 months to 2 years, and then we put them back into working market. It's a very virtuous circle. And this is a company that we're very proud of. I think because we're doing something good to our fellow beings and for the planet. And this initiative was widely recognized. We won 2 prizes, the corporate citizen award in the stock market. And we're -- so we've been going very far in the whole dimension of repairability and work in social. And participating in this way in the circular economy. There's another social aspect, which is of great importance. We learned this -- it's very important to reduce our lost time injury rate, LTIR. And we've exceeded the level 1. We've gone under the bar of one. And we only had 0.84 accidents per million for those of you who know standards, we're starting to be in the level of performance for the industry as a whole, which is extremely high level of performance. But we're not giving up. We're going to continue ramping up our ambitions in the way. This is a job you have to do every day in plants, in logistics, in the stores and headquarters, and we've seen considerable progress on the part of all of our staff here. Another thing we don't speak much about is what we call the women manager ratio. I'm going to spend a minute here. We have 43% or 44% of staff who are women in the group and 40% of managers are women. So there's almost as many women manager as women employees in the group. And you can see that's the curve on the right, which is that ratio and it's on the way up every year, year after year. So this is a daily job. More than 30,000 staff more than 5,000 managers. So we are working to make sure that accessing is fair to this type of managerial position to men and women in all geographies. And the last point, these are the encouragements that we've had, we're followed by a certain number of ratings agencies and auditing companies, CDP EcoVadis, Vigeo Eiris and the MSCI, which are recognized ESG rating agencies, extra financial ratings agency and we're the number one in Vigeo Eiris, on the top 3 of EcoVadis, we're A rated at the MSCI. We're in the top 8% of CDP. So this is extra financial performance that are tracking us, that are assessing us without any contact with the group. These assessments are made and discovered when they publish them. But that's fine. It's neutral. So that was just a brief overview of what we are doing in ESG. Obviously, as I said, the universal document will provide a more detailed view and more precise indications about the whole set of criteria that we are keeping track of. But I'd like to draw this part to the close by thanking all of our staff in the group. We've come out of 3 years where things were disturbed with the lockdowns and lockdowns and lockdowns. And 2023 is starting with 70% of the Chinese population is infected with COVID in a few weeks. We've been through some very strong periods of inflation. We've had problems with dealing with the supply chain and stressed inventory too much or not enough inventory. And I think that today, the group is holding firm and keeping on our heading. More than 30,000 people are working in the group. There are a few representatives of them here. We'd like to share with you a short film just to thank them for the activity of our staff, let's have a look together. [Presentation]

Thank you so much to all of you. Now we're going to move on and talk about the second part of the meeting, which is going to be more legal in nature. We're going to start with capital, dividend, share price and governance. Let's quickly have a look at the capital breakdown as of the 31st of December '22. No big changes here compared to the previous year. still a floating amount of 40.5% of the capital is floating and the Founders capital with some 33% voting blocks in the FSP and the BPI, which are with us holding 5% of capital. So the capital has not changed much, but it is robust and stable. Same thing, obviously, and even better with the breakdown of voting rights. Floating is 31% of voting rights with a representation of 7%. The stock market price. This is the stock market listing. This is not the easiest one to combat on because since the meeting last year, we've overperformed in fact, compared to the French stock market, stock market went by 15%, and we went up by 2%. But there was a recovery in the second part of '22 linked to China and the problems of inflation and we're more present in China and which was directly impacted by inflation, but we suffered much more than the SBF financial rating in France. So we have some catching up to do still. Over 15 years, the SBF is plus 50, and we're plus 168, which does not mean that we have an obsession with the past. We are obviously going to be taking all the major necessary to ramp us back up to the best levels that we've known in the past. Dividend trends over the last 15 years. We have a loyalty bonus of plus 10% for registered shares that have been held for 2 consecutive years. Now the Board of Directors, which met a few weeks ago proposed to the assembly to freeze the dividend at the same level as last year which is down compared to -- but we're confident about the future. So we don't want to decrease the dividend. We want to keep it. So the group policy since it was started to be listed in the stock market, I think in 75 was to -- it's not a percentage -- it's not a percentage payout. But our purpose is to increase regularly, this dividend. And I think that has been the case. Sometimes, we just maintained it. I think that's happened once. In 2020 based on 2019, this was subsequent to the request of the President of the French Republic and the MEDEF. We will ask companies to that on a pro rata basis, thanks because of COVID. So they did ask us to decrease the dividend, which we did. So today, we've ramped it back up very quickly. That's why this year, we're presenting EUR 2.45. I'm going to hand over now to Philippe Sumeire, who's going to be talking to us about governance.

Thank you, Thierry. So the events of note having to do with government of 2022 are the separation of the roles of Chairman of the Board and the Chief Executive Officer. In accordance with the CGR and the Board worked in July '22. And this was decided by the Board meeting 10, February 22. So the separation has become a tandem. And the Tandem is 2 people who are pedaling in a very cooperative way. And what's specific about this organization is that each of these people has a role to play, and you see that's described on the slide here. The Chairman is running the Board of Directors. He's organizing sessions, make sure that the Board has everything it needs to do its work. There's also committees, as you can see. We have one more committee this year. So we have an activity, which is already quite time-consuming. And the second point is the relationship with the shareholders. Shareholders, whether it be families or institutional. These are top-level relationships with institutional. And the whole strategy area, CSR, which we just spoke about and acquisitions. And the General Director, the CEO, who has extensive powers for actually in charge -- in charge of running the business in the broader sense of the term and the implementation of that strategy. And he's the manager of all of the teams of the company. So this operation has been in place since July '22, and this has been percolated throughout the company. Now, the composition of the Board of Directors hasn't changed much. There's still 16 members. As you can see in the table, it's the same thing every year. There's nothing very new. It is comprised of family representatives in the various components and these 3 components, it's also represented by independent members for 1/3 in compliance with the AFEP-MEDEF agreements. And the staff representatives are duly elected members of staff and there's one representative from the styloid shareholders. And there are 16 members in all. There are 5 independent, so 1/3 is independent. Now outside of the salaried members, there are 7 women out of 13. So the ratio is 54%. But if you take the total number of members of the board, the 9 members. So 56% represented -- women are represented by 56% on the board. So this presentation does indeed reflect the fact that we are compliant with AFEP-MEDEF requirements. So a few details about the board and what it looks like. Average age is 55 years of age. We renewed a certain number of Board members in and attendance rate, 96%, which is linked to the fact that we had a lot of meetings, 10 meetings of the Board. 4 were exceptional meetings. In the previous years, we had 8 meetings of the Board. The percentage of women as you've already mentioned, and we did have the number of meeting members over the period has remained stable. It was 14. It went up to 14 and now it's 16. Now what about committees? The Audit and Compliance Committee, which is very old. It was created back in '95 after the Bouton report, there are 4 members in this committee. The Audit and Compliance Committee is comprised of 3 independent Board members and 1 Board member representing the family. The Chair is Catherine Pourre and she's FSP representative. And all of these people have skills and experience in finance and accounting. And this committee meets 4 times or more time than previously, 100% attendance, the missions are traditional for this type of meeting. Obviously, the idea is to identify risks and handle them and handling your risk. This internal control policy, with annual internal audit programs, which are implemented by the company, which are reviewed by the committee and validated by them. There's also -- they also look into the relevance and reliability of the accounting methods that were used, in compliance and anti-fraud and anticorruption procedures. Now this particular scope was added to the work of the committee in 2018 which means that they change names and they became the Audit and Compliance Committee now. Now CGR had a very sustained activity in '23, more than '22 because we had 7 meetings in '22 to prepare -- but in 2021. But in 2022, there were 5 meetings, 100% attendance. There are 5 members, the Chair is Jean-Pierre Duprieu who is an independent. We have 2 components of the family, 1 representative from the salaried shareholders and another independent Board member. Now the purpose is obviously the succession plan for executive officers and senior managers. They also look into all everything having to do with governance, ethics and diversity. The other important mission that they perform is to look into the composition of the Board, the operation and evaluation of the Board of Directors. Every year, there is a formal assessment of their work and their activity and the way they are working, there's obviously they take care of the compensation policy for board members and executive officers and senior managers and the they perform an annual review of Human Resources. And the third committee created last year, the strategic and CSR committee with 6 members, 3 independent members, 3 -- the chair and 2 family shareholders. They met once in '22, but already the first time in '23. There are 3 missions. The first mission is obviously, as we just said, it's the CSR to work on the strategic CSR orientation and measuring the performance thereof. They review the strategic orientations that are established at the end of the year by management. And they will also be talking about product development for upcoming periods. And they also work on competitive intelligence activities and external growth projects. So now some information prior to the note on the resolutions. So we have ordinary resolutions, in the ordinary part we have the usual first 3 resolutions, is approval of the separate financial statements for the year for EUR 181,969,480. Resolution 2, which is approval of consolidated financial statements with a net profit group share EUR 316,215,448 million. Resolution 3, the allocation of the result, setting a dividend -- ordinary dividend of EUR 2.45. And that is for the basic part. And then we have the composition of the Board of Directors. This is Resolution 4 to 8. First of all, Mr. Jean-Pierre Duprieu, is being proposed to have his term renewed for 4 years. Mr. Duprieu has been working for Air Liquide during his career. He was an independent member of the Board. He has participated in the CGR and the Korian Member of the Board at Korian and is a member of the Supervisory Board of Michelin. Then we are proposing a renewal of the term of a Board member on the family. Mr. William Gairard, he was a graduate of EM Lyon and worked in the Pernod Ricard Group and who is currently a partner and CFO of Zumit in Mexico, where he lives. He's a member of the CSR and Strategy Committee that we just spoke about. Then we propose that we renew the term of GÉNÉRACTION, which is represented by Caroline Chevalley, whose term started in 2019. So we just -- we propose the renewal of that term. She represents the -- she's a member of the CGR and Association of Shareholders of SEB SA. Then there's Thierry Lescure, whose term is being proposed for a renewal. He has the masters in tax, has been a long career abroad in various functions. I think in Great Britain. And since 2016, he's a senior asset manager for an asset management team in Geneva. He's also our Director since 2019. And he's a member of GÉNÉRACTION and he's a member of the CSR and Strategic Committees. And lastly, we propose to renew the term of Aude de Vassart, who has graduated from the ISEP, has an MBA from HEC, for 20 years, she's working in R&D and in marketing and corporate management in Great Britain and then in France. She was also a Board member at VENELLE INVESTISSEMENT. So much for the Board members. And then we have a whole set of resolutions as is the case every year that have to do with pay of corporate officers. The first 3 have to do with all of the remuneration paid to executive officers including Board members, that's resolution 9. Resolution 10 is the approval of the 2022 pay for Thierry de La Tour d'Artaise from 2022, which is broken down in 2 parts. We'll get back to that. The same thing for Mr. Stanislas de Gramont, remuneration of 2022, which has 2 parts. Before and after when it became -- that was the ex post. And three, about the future or the ongoing 2023 policy, the approval for the Chairman of the Board; number 13 for the Chief Executive Officer; and lastly, approval of the compensation for directors on Resolution 14. Let's move on and talk about the Say on Pay ex post resolution 2022. Resolution #10, is about Mr. Thierry de La Tour d'Artaise and concerns the 2 aspects that we mentioned, the first part of the year 2022 when he was the CEO. And the second part, when he was President and the attribution was different. The same goes from Mr. de Gramont, Resolution 11. It was the Deputy General Manager and then the General Manager. Now all of these elements can be found in the brochure that you received with the invitation. Here, we have a table with the annual retribution of Mr. Thierry de La Tour d'Artaise and you have a perspective for the coming years, 2020, 2021, 2022, explanation. 2022, there are 2 fixed elements, components, one as the CEO and one as the President. The variable part is lower than the previous years because it only applies for part of the year when he was the CEO and as you probably have understood through the previous presentations regarding the performances of 2022 because it was not part with our ambitions and the goals. This led to a decrease in the bonus component of his retribution. It is reminded here on the right-hand side of the table, the attribution of shares, which was divided by 2 because his term as CEO was decreased by 1 semester. Mr. de Gramont 2022, the same logic. On the one hand, you have the annual remuneration on the right-hand side, we have the medium and long term remuneration variation in 2022 of the fixed remuneration for the reasons I have just explained, different in the fixed remuneration, increase in the fixed remuneration versus the one when he was the Deputy General Manager. And there is here a component impacted by the change in ratio between DGD and CEO. And the effect also that I have explained regarding the performance, not in line with the aim, the goal set by the Board. And we also have the shares allocation for 2022, taking in consideration the change in statute of Mr. Stanislas de Gramont. Ex ante, here, we're talking about the remuneration policy for coming years. A quick reminder, the principles, the Board and the CGR apply these principles based on principles found here. They need to be complete and simple, balance and consistency, balance between short-term and long-term variable and fixed, motivation and performance and transparency regarding the criteria for and components of remuneration. Regarding the process, the remuneration is set or rather approved by the Board. On proposal from the Governance and Remuneration Committee, the GRC working on benchmarks or external audits and studies. Now we move to the resolution. Resolution number 12 regarding the Board, Chairman of the Board fixed remuneration of EUR 950,000. There is no annual variable remuneration or performance shares, remuneration for the office of director, EUR 55,000 plus benefits in kind, the use of a car and a driver. Next, the Chief Executive Officer remuneration. Here, we have the pie chart showing the quantitative part connected with quantitative criteria for the variable part and the part that is more quality based. Although the corporate social responsibility criteria, as was explained earlier, quantifiable and quantifiable criteria representing 15% of the variable part of the CEO remuneration. The CEO of remuneration -- executive officer remuneration, sorry. Here, so we have a fixed remuneration, EUR 825,000 identical to what was calculated and set for 2022 as the Executive Officer, the variable remuneration could be 100%, and it's limited to 150% of the fixed remuneration, performance shares 12,000 -- 12,000 and advantages in kind which in total stand at EUR 50,000. And also has a pension fund, a health security insurance and the initial conditions are in agreement with the immediate conditions with a noncompetition agreement and an indemnity for leaving the company, which in some conditions, could apply. And one last item regarding remuneration, the directors' remuneration policy. Last year, the general assembly voted an increase to bring the Board members' remuneration to a better level because it was relatively low. It's still relatively average, not very high, but the Board consider that it was sufficient 40% fixed and the rest is variable. The variable part has to do with the motivation and attendance of the Board meetings and the committee meetings for the members of the 10 committees. Finally, we have the annual program of share buyback, always the same. It could be up to 10% of the capital. The maximum price theoretically, which allows your Board to use it is EUR 240, same as last year, no change. And for extraordinary resolutions, there's only one. The performance share plan, which is similar to the previous 112,000 shares for the General Manager. And this is 14 months authorization and this year because we did not have another extraordinary authorization. All the financial authorizations were voted last year for 2 years. And therefore, we don't need to vote on this particular resolution. This is it with the resolutions.

Thank you. Well done for these very lively explanations. I'd like to ask the statutory auditors whether they would like to come here and deliver their report. I'd like to give the floor to Mr. Roper from KPMG.

Thank you, Chairman. Thank you, CEO, dear shareholders. On behalf of the statutory auditors Board, KPMG and Deloitte have established a report, which I'm going to present. It is in the documents that were handed out to you. The reports are the following: report on the financial statements, report on the consolidated financial statements, special report on regulated agreements and report on transactions relating to capital. So that you don't have to listen to the exhaustive reading out. I would like to summarize and highlight the most important part of the financial results . According to our professional standards, we want to make sure that these accounts do not contain any significant abnormalities. Our report on the financial statements is presented in Page 354 to 358 for the universal document. We, therefore, certified that the same annual statements in accordance with the French accounting standards are regular and sincere and that they provide a sincere image of the past fiscal year and the financial situation of the company at the end of the fiscal year. We also have shown in our report, the key audit matters of valuation of investments in subsidiaries and the diligences that have been conducted. We have no comments to make on the management report and the other documents relative to the financial situation and the corporate governance. Finally, we conclude that the presentation of the annual statements to be included in the annual documents are in compliance with the European single electronic format in all material respects. Regarding consolidated financial statements, our report is on Pages 326 to 330 of the universal document. We certify the financial systems are in the consolidated financial systems, regular and sincere and give a true image of the past fiscal year as well as the financial situation of the group at the end of the fiscal year. In our report, we presented the key audit matters regarding measurement of the recoverable amount of goodwill and trademarks with indefinite useful lives and measurement and recognition of provisions for deferred rebates. We also inform you that we don't have any comments to make on the sincerity of the information provided in the group's management report. We conclude that the consolidated statement to be included in the annual documents, including the accounts complies in all material aspects with the European single electronic format. Owing to the technical limits inherent to the macro tagging of the consolidated financial statements, it is possible that the content of some of the tags in the notes accompanying the financial statement may not be reproduced in an identical way to how they were presented in the June report, in the current report. Our report is based on the characteristics and the modalities of agreements. It's shown in Pages 386 to 389 of the universal document. No agreements authorized and entered into the past year to our knowledge. We also remind of the agreements already approved by the shareholders' meetings, i.e. agreement on joint research and development projects with the Zhejiang Supor Co Ltd. This agreement was concluded on April 14, 2022. And with Mr. Thierry de La Tour d'Artaise, defined benefit supplementary pension plan with certain rights, which was executed during the past year. Agreements with Mr. de La Tour d'Artaise, which were not executed during the past year regarding termination benefits and maintenance of stock options, performance criteria governing the payment of termination benefits as far as Mr. Thierry de La Tour d'Artaise is concerned. Agreements with no execution during the past year with Mr. Stanislas de Gramont regarding termination compensation in the event of revocation of its corporate appointment, determination of the performance criteria governing the payment of termination benefits in the event of revocation, non-compete compensation in the event of revocation or dismissal or resignment sorry, resignation, individual life insurance, supplementary defined benefits pension plans with certain rights. The agreements with Mr. de La Tour d'Artaise and Mr. Gramont expired in June 2022, as was foreseen in their terms. We also have a special report regarding Resolution number 16 on the authorization for a period of 14 months to award existing bonus shares to employees and/or senior members free of charge. We don't have observations regarding this report. This is, ladies and gentlemen, the summary of our reports on fiscal year 2022. Thank you for your attention.

Thank you very much, Mr. [indiscernible] and thank you to the -- all of the statutory auditors. We will now take questions. Maybe we can have light to be able to see who is asking the questions. Microphones will be circulated. There is a question here on the right-hand side. Microphone, please.

Chairman, Mr. [indiscernible] APE Association [indiscernible] individual. I learned one expression, one acronym, and I'd like to ask you a question. Expression is Moya Motte, which you said in French. The acronym was DACH. I heard that it mean Deutschland, Austria, Switzerland. The question. The labor market seems to be relatively challenged globally right now. So how do you organize yourselves to recruit and retain talent, skilled people? And second question working capital consumption. The working capital has increased significantly. We're now talking EUR 1.4 billion, although EUR 79 million should be -- will be used differently according to your Chief Financial Officer. Are you using incentives to stabilize the working capital need? And third question. The fact that the middle class population is increasing in China is very good for SEB. Could you tell us whether your group will depend mostly from this geographical area of the world.

Well, I will answer the first question, Nathalie will answer the second one, and Thierry will answer the third question. Based on your extensive experience regarding China. The labor market yes, it is challenge. It is very difficult. Wages are increasing in the United States because there is more demand and offer. And for France, China and Germany, we have loyal workers. We see that in the field of IT, marketing, digital marketing or e-commerce, it is difficult to find manpower. Our recruitment flow is more difficult than it used to be. It takes longer for -- to recruit the right people. But the people who work for us, our head count is relatively stable where people are loyal to the company. But it is true that in some businesses, it's more difficult to hire new people. But overall, the group is coping relatively well, and we have organized ourselves to face these challenges on the labor market. Regarding the increase need for working capital, this was consecutive to 2022 because 2022 had a very irregular pace. The beginning of the year was very dynamic and then our supply and purchasing policy generated very high inventories until the end of June. And this led to a decreased demand, which demanded that we decrease our purchasing. And at the end of the year, our working capital need for was higher than it was the previous year. And among the aims that we set to our workers, one was to decrease the need for working capital expressed in terms of a ratio between the working capital -- the need for working capital and the operating profit to orient the working capital need in the right direction. Regarding China, if you consider the size of the Chinese market, in the past growth and the future growth, it makes sense that maybe China will be a huge share of our profits, 25% currently, but it could -- then the figure could raise and we will keep a very strong position in China, but we don't want to depend solely on one specific market, i.e., China. We want to continue growing in many different areas. There are areas, geographic areas where we are not the leaders, Southeast Asia, for instance, Southeast is a market that will grow very quickly. Let me remind you of one statistic in 2006, there was 1.4 billion middle class population. In 2030, there will be 1 billion middle class in mature countries and 4 billion in emerging countries. And the group should obviously have a greater operating profit in emerging countries where we want to be leaders because there will be China, but there will be other countries. And through the acquisitions that we are currently performing in professional appliances, we want to develop our profit of professional activities, which is highly profitable, and we want to strike a balance. We always wanted to have a very balanced spread between the different geographical areas, 55% in mature countries, 45% in emerging countries now. And we're trying to strike a balance between manufactured products and sourced products. So we always try to begin the balance situation because the world is very volatile, emerging countries can be volatile. So we want to hedge ourselves. There are walls. We thought we would never have a work again in Europe. And actually, we do have a work right now. So we have to be careful. I've answered your question.

Yes. If I may add, we want to continue growing in all geographic scenarios. We may face temporary challenges in France or Germany. But we want to maintain our midterm and long-term growth in all geographical areas.

Good afternoon. I have one question. And I'd like to make an observation. First, we asked the Board of Directors 5 questions in writing. First of all, regarding results, which we find worrying. External growth without ambition. Innovation is slowing down. Fourth, commitment towards environmental friendly transition, which is not up to our expectations. And finally, governance protects a particular interest, and this is no longer also adjusted to the SEB group ambition. So we don't see the answers from the Board of Directors. It says here, we can find on FÉDÉRACTIVE website, the questions and our comments. We have not found on the website any observation regarding the SEB release on the first semester sales figures, but there are observations on the FÉDÉRACTIVE website. Now I come to the questions that I would like to put to the Chairman and the directors regarding external growth. Historically, external growth accounted for 4% per year, and it was carried out with the acquisitions of companies such as Moulinex, Supor, VMF. This growth meant that we had to reimburse the acquisition debt every year around EUR 300 million. So it would represent EUR [ 200 ] million if we continued along the same lines. Now nowadays of paying dividends is absorbing EUR 200 million is from your slides and the small acquisitions that you have chosen San Marco, Pacojet, Zummo, KRAMPOUZ are going to absorb of EUR 104 million if we believe that we are going to perform 2 acquisitions. But yes, although the figures are not quite right where we don't have the figures really. So the group should have EUR 600 million cash available to pay for the EUR 300 million reimbursement of the debt. The acquisitions and the other expenses. We believe the group will no longer -- we feel the group will no longer be able to make significant acquisitions. And therefore, will deprive itself of a 4% of growth every year. How are you going to make sure that the group has EUR 600 million cash available to continue with the current trend of historical acquisitions.

Well, there is one mistake, if I may, because if you look at all the acquisitions performed by the group, all 3 important acquisitions that you referred to, Moulinex, was not very expensive considering the very poor situation Moulinex was in. Initially, I think it was EUR 300 million for a EUR 125 million profit on the domestic market and EUR 40 million to EUR 50 million for super customers, which we were told would be lost because they were going to our competitors. Now if we take all of the acquisitions, they have always been relatively small acquisitions because that's one of our rules. It really matches reality in a very fragmented industry. There are many different small companies. And for a very long time, we have believed that it would be more relevant to buy the companies when they were small because it absorbs less cash, and we can create synergies and help them grow. We will continue doing exactly that. So why 2 acquisitions per year. I don't know, we might make more than 2 acquisitions now that COVID is over. The COVID pandemic is over. We might still perform a couple of acquisitions by the end of the year. So we are going to continue with the same strategy. Bearing in mind that if we buy small companies and absorb them in the group, we allow them to become big companies. I mean that's what we've always done and that's what we will continue doing. And we believe it's going to work. And we believe it's going to help us continue paying for those acquisitions, thanks to our profit. So we are in a recovery period, and the figures are showing it. Operating profit is EUR 230 million in 2021. And we have the cash, we need to apply the dividend policy that we want to apply and also encourage regular growth when our profit allows us to do so and have targeted acquisitions performed. I'd like to add that small and average size companies acquisitions are far less risky than acquiring big companies. When you absorb a company with a headcount of 6,000 to 10,000 people, it's much more risky. So acquiring a smaller company is a fact for stability.

[indiscernible] Individual Shareholder. Three questions. The first having to do with this phenomenal success of Supor. Is it possible to know your recipe to succeed so brilliantly in China, despite the obstacles, you certainly had to meet because I imagine that the competition and the government were not -- didn't cross their arms. So how did you do it? Second question, what are your most ferocious competitors there in the world, in the world or in China maybe and your visibility in the future metaverse, which is going to come someday. Do you have any presence strategy in the kitchen of the metaverse?

Thank you for those questions. I think I'll leave the metaverse to Stanislas, there's no reason you shouldn't have to answer that one. About China, I think there are 2 recipes. The first is a Chinese in China. As you recall, that was unusual for us to -- I think we're the only group in the world that has had the authorization from the Chinese and the Ministry of Commerce in the BoCom and the [indiscernible] were the only group in the world who have been authorized to take the control of a listed company that had never happened before us. Once to be frank, after Hu took over [ Arendelle ], but was a company whose capital was held on a majority basis, but the Siaci in other words, the Chinese government, which -- and Supor was private. There was listed on the stock market. In over 18 months, we get the authorization. What does that mean? It means that we are listed and Supor is listed in China. We have 15,000 shareholders in China, who buy and sell shares every day. And they are very concerned with Supor. Several years ago, we were accused of having too many -- too much manganese and are stainless. And we succeeded because the stock market reacted very strongly. But we -- and the Minister of Health in 5 days, he demonstrated that it could only have an effect if you actually ate the plate -- ate the pan. So there were 3 independent Board members who certified -- certify every transaction between sub and Supor. All the products that we buy and so forth. Obviously, that's once a year, and it's global. But this is verified and they have to is in good English. It's an independent opinion. We have to justify it basically. And our independent board members have to pass an exam in the Shenzhen stock market and they require that Board members have to take an exam with a training program. So this means that we are Chinese and the Chinese consumer is selling to middle class. So I think that fundamentally, no consumer in China imagines for a second, that Supor is French. They don't know. They think it's a Chinese company. I was in China with President Macron a week ago, and I was dining with the representative of the Foreign Affairs Minister, who didn't even know himself that Supor was held by 83% is 82.43%, thank you for that indication by the subgroup and the rest is in the stock market. So I think this is the first recipe. I think that is the recipe that makes it possible for us to be more tranquil with respect to the position of the Chinese government because we're a national actor. And I think it's interesting. If I look at the -- in culinary cookware, there's only one competitor who is 3x smaller and whose products in electrical cookware. We cited the names already. Midea is a very big Chinese group, but they're #2. The second one is JieYang, and then there's us. But Midea and JieYang and Supor, we have 90% of the market between us 3 and the Chinese market is a market that's held by Chinese, so including Supor. So that's the first recipe. And the second recipe there's 3. The second recipe, I think that I was lucky enough to have an extraordinary partner. And when we're talking about that, it's the Su family. They were owners of Supor and notably of the manager of Supor whose name was Su Xianze, that's his first name, who at the time was under 40, and he had the vision that it was better having SEB with them instead of against them. And the -- I think he supported values that were very close to ours. This is a family company with a very great loyalty on the part of staff and all people working so that when today, I look at the first line of management, the 10 top executives more than half were already there in 2006. And this is 17 years later down the road. It just shows how loyal people are. And I think that -- I believe that thanks to these directors and the culture they had, which is very close to ours and stays very close to ours to such an extent that Mr. Su Xianze is no longer a shareholder. He has very few shares. Hi family has none. But he's still on the board at my request. And he presides over the strategy committee at my request because I think that he has a knowledge of China that Stanislas and I, neither of us do or Philips has that we could not possibly have and it's important to have -- so the partners indispensable. The third point, I think we have the intelligence and the luck to have managers a very great quality. The only manager we sent to support right away was Vincent Tai, who is a Chinese, from Hong Kong. We hired just 1 year before in the eventuality that we succeeded in buying Supor, Vincent after Su Xianze, who is the General Director of Supor. And today, he's a boss of all of Asia based in Hong Kong, but supervising very close to Supor, but he has very good quality managers around him, all with tons of degrees and wonderful CVs. I think that's the team. Innovation is continuous, and we're the best on the market. We have a step advance in terms of digitization. And today and Stanislas will share this point of view where we have the best teams in terms of digitalization? Is it in the U.S. or is it in China, which has the best team? It's in China, There's no comparison. So those are the 3 factors. The Chinese structure, our partners choosing the right one in the right country. We could have made a mistake. I was thinking of India, it wouldn't have been as good. Maybe not as reliable and the teams. So I guess that's my answer for your question.

What about competition?

Well, competitors in the world. Globally, if we look at our traditional activities, we're roughly the only player in the world to be both in cooking and small screens. Globally, we have a big competitor in cookware, our 2 American groups, [indiscernible] and Mayor in Indonesia called [indiscernible]. Other than that, it's a business that's very -- there's thousands of people involved in -- including in emerging nations. In terms of SDA we have #1 as Philips, who belongs to a Chinese fund now. So he's a 100% Chinese. De'Longhi in Italy, notably in preparation cookware and coffee makers. And in the U.S., there are many players which are not doing very well and the American market is very complex. And then we'll have in each of these countries, a few local players. And that is these groups that we are trying to target and to buy when we can because it makes it possible to take the #1 position in these markets. Now if we talk about professional, there are players that are only in professional markets. Often, I say their average or small size in terms of coffee, the coffee machines, fully automatic coffee machines is a business that's kind of European with the main competitors being totally -- mostly Swiss and German but we are -- that's what's interesting about VMF is that we're able to break into this new business for us of professional coffee machines, by taking a position of #1, which was not frequent and which is not always easy. Metaverse. Now, thanks for the question about the metaverse. Our products, which simplify and make people's lives nicer. We use them a lot. We don't buy them very often, maybe every 5, 10 years, some robots are 40 years later. And so these are products that are used on a daily basis. They're practical. They transform an ingredient into a dish. They transform a wrinkled up shirt into an ironed shirt. So from that point of view, we've got our feet on the ground. We're in the daily lives of people. But we're also curious. When we see things such as the metaverse and things like the NFT, we look at it. We get informed. We look at how it's going, what's being done. We do a lot of technology watch. But I'm -- I have no scoop for you about the group developing a third branch of activity after consumer and professional. This metaverse is no. But we're looking at stuff. We're looking at it carefully. We have not bought 300,000 square meters in the metaverse. We haven't bought any NFTs or -- however, if someday, we feel and understand that there's any interest on the part of consumers with respect to our brand and our offers what they offer in the real life, we'll certainly go for that because innovation and calling oneself into question and what models into question is the fundamental of the group development. So we're looking and if it's ready, we'll talk about it with you. 5, 7, and 8 and 4.

[indiscernible], Individual Shareholder. I had a little question about Supor. Capitalization is 80%. It's roughly 75% of the stock market amount of SEB, is that normal? Do you think your other activities are not developed enough or valued enough? I have another question concerning the compensation. I saw on Page 109 of the registered reference document. The cap was EUR 500,000 for retirement per year over 12 months. That's something that we don't vote on, and this is not included in the compensation of the chair. That's my question.

The first question, how about the Supor, the capitalization. That has -- it makes some sense to the extent where if you take the Supor capitalization and readjusted exactly to take into account the fact that there are interco sales, it's much higher anyway. And the rest, it's apparent because our professional activity with a very strong profitability is worth more than the rest in capitalization other than Supor. So it's unusual. We don't know how to enhance that manage that in any other way other than continuing to improve the profitability of the rest. One comment or 2 comments. The first is that the Shenzhen stock market, in Asian stock markets generally, they have multiples that are higher, much higher than the European stock markets simply because the growth in these markets is stronger. And therefore, the multiples of valuation are higher. It's not surprising that Supor, which is quoted is listed in Shenzhen has a value that's higher than SEB, which translates the activity and is European and in North America and so forth. And my second comment is that for a Chinese shareholder, what do they see? We are not only talking about a domestic market. But in fact, when we say that Supor does EUR 2.1 billion of sales, Supor the listed company does EUR 3 billion because they have EUR 900 million that are products that are manufactured by Supor for the group and that we sell them in all the countries in the world. I'll take an example, the kettles. We manufacture 100% of our kettles in China. And we stopped production in Europe in 2006 because of the cost price was no longer competitive. We could no longer manufacture it in Europe. We had some contracted that out to a Chinese manufacturer. And for 4 years, we've reintegrated in our support structure, a lot of products, all of the basic products such as kettles, toasters, deep fryers, deep fat fryers, and we're the #1 manufacturer of kettles in the world with more than 15 million kettles every year being manufactured in chasing Shaoxing plant. All of this in a period of growth in the world. This is also a vector for growth for Supor, and it's not unusual that Chinese shareholders should attach value to that. The second portion of the P&L but we don't talk about it because when we sell products manufactured by Supor in Germany, it accounts for Germany. That's all I can say, but it's unusual. But actually, the truth of the matter is it isn't that Supor is listed too high. The services listed too low. It's very simple, sir. You've already voted. You voted quite a while ago. What you see on Page 109 is the amount of -- that was paid in virtue of a retirement program, a cash app retirement, which is a former -- it's a regulated agreement that the origin was set up in 2000, and that was renewed subsequently. Why? Because at every renewal of a term, the law provides that we must re-vote the regulatory agreements, and -- which determines this is collective retirement. It's not just for the director. It's for all of the [ Comm Ex ], and he was benefiting from that. So every time a term is renewed, 2004, 2008, 2012, 2016, the agreement is submitted to your vote. So what you see today is that agreement has ended. There's no longer any payments for that, but the retirement has been paid. Is that understand -- okay. 5 and 7, however it comes.

I've heard a lot of good things. And it's true that some you had already answered. There is one point which I like, is having repair centers and doing -- helping people with that work get reinserted. But we don't have any paper or any figures about that. We're wondering if this is a drop of water, or is it something that's significant in stature. For me, that's important because it's a counterpart of your success. I know that my predecessor will be hating me if we said that your results were not great. Well, I have a question to ask you. When you buy a company, you do external growth, which is good, but I didn't really understand what you do with it. Do you buy it one day when the market lends itself to it, like in China, if the listing -- because of COVID, maybe there are some companies that are ill or are you buying their knowledge in China? You have to tell me which ones are -- they're saying that people are shut down, but there must be people at the companies that need cash. Is this a know-how in a machine that you don't make, and that you're going to be selling to other countries in Europe and so forth? What are your criteria? My additional question is, do you export in France? Because you have a lot of production centers. The ultimate thing would be buying companies from China and selling machines that you re-localize the production in France. Then you'd be strong. That would be hard. So do you export to France?

I'll start by the third question. We're a very big exporter of products -- of French products. I don't have the precise figure, but I think roughly half or maybe a bit more is exported outside of France, [indiscernible] in cookware. If I'm not mistaken, more than 40% of what's making it in [indiscernible] is exported. Ponte Vecc, which is a huge plant, and steam irons and so forth, and steamers, second in Europe, is a big exporter as well because France must represent 25%, 30% of Ponte Vecc volumes. So we're a very big exporter. And in France, we produce a very high added value products with a lot of innovation, and we export not only in Europe but also to Japan, Korea and the U.S. and others. And just a couple of figures. The share of France and sales is 8%. Roughly, 9 max the share of our sales worldwide is 30 for products manufactured in France. So that's the answer. And the second question about China, to be frank, today, there's no undervaluation. Stanislas was saying earlier, I don't know if you noted that down, that COVID -- after the Communist Party Congress last year, they gave up, and COVID spread massively into China. We saw that 70%, I think you were there. But if -- our staff caught the COVID it at the same time. And this lasted a few weeks, because the virus was -- it got through to everybody and they replaced their vaccine, which was not very effectively. The reputation was that it wasn't effective and everybody got COVID. So all of the Chinese had the COVID and nobody is talking about it anymore because everybody got it. And everybody is working again, and working on growth. So the Chinese companies are absolutely not undervalued. And then the last point, the reason for our acquisitions, I want to bring you back to the slide that I commented on a bit fast, but -- is how complementary we are. We don't want it to be something just doing the same thing. It's either you got a product family that we don't have or not much of. In 2000, when we bought Moulinex, they were a leader in motorized products. It was a very small manufacturer of motorized products, made it impossible for us to become #1. Sometimes we need to have premium brands such as VMS and Lagostina to sell products in that segment. Sometimes, it's geographical, and China is an example of geographical concentration. Tomorrow, if we do acquisitions, for example, what we did in Colombia, we bought the leader there for culinary articles. And then the SDA leader, which made it possible for us to become #1 in Colombia in absolute terms. And the third point, in our business, we think there's a real interest in having a consumer activity and professional activity, which is what we did with VMS first and then what we're doing right now. So it's clear. The strategy consists in buying companies and setting up the whole group is there, and all of our affiliates in the markets are there. And all of the R&D services are there at the service of these new acquisitions, and the team that's running that so they can give them everything we can. Our IT systems when they are adapted to them and all of the advice in all areas to help them in areas of synergy. We talked about fruit juice, we talked about coffee. And the [indiscernible] Salon Trade Fair, we've seen many companies that were customers of VMS, but who are not doing orange juice, or they're with competitors. In Spain as well, and they all switched over to Zummo because they're helping each other out. That's what we're looking for, cross-selling. We can help them to accelerate and boost their growth. That's what we're -- that's all we want. And to see with this growth, we can have some economies of scale industrially. And have -- that way, have margins so we can invest in other energetic areas and working on communication as well. Number 5.

[indiscernible] individual shareholder. I observe and have observed for some time that French politicians have a hard time understanding what our big companies are doing in terms of buyback -- buying back shares and what big American companies are doing, believing that the French are the same. Could you explain to us, for shareholders and for politicians and maybe for the public, your policy in terms of share buyback programs? And maybe at the end, you can give the percentage. Now that staff hold which, to a great extent, came through free shares that were distributed to staff. Thank you.

You're right. We've never considered that share buybacks by cancellation was a dividend. That's not a policy we wanted to have. We've never done that. We consider that we have to give our shareholders a dividend, and we're not buying back shares for that reason. However, we do, do share buybacks and that was said earlier. And for Supor as well, in 2 cases. First of all, in the reaction, we're giving out performance shares for people, and there's a resolution on that. So there are like 300 people, if my memory serves me well. And this is to motivate executives and top execs on several levels, maybe 300 people. These are performance shares, and we've always done this. We've done it -- we'd rather buy shares than do capital increases. So it's true for SEB and it's true for Supor as well. And the reason for which we do it at Supor is because in China, Supor is listed on the stock market. We don't have the right to give the free actions of SEB. They can be Supor shares. And as far as SEB is concerned, we have the first aspect, which are free share plans. And the second aspect is salaried shareholdership, and the last one was in 2019. And that's done regularly. We believe that that's always a good idea to involve staff in the shareholdership. And we have the intention of doing that on a regular basis, and with a contribution and a reduced price. And a contribution on the part of the -- it was in the presentation. One last question? 5 and one last one here.

Question on a topic we have not addressed so far. Last year, you talked about a new project. The Angel bicycles, which I was lucky enough to test. And earlier this year, there was a new announcement between Mini and Angel. There seems to be a partnership between the 2. And I'd like to understand what role SEB is playing in this partnership and where exactly we stand with regard to the Angel project.

Two things. We are manufacturing the bicycles. We produce them in our Is-sur-Tille factory. And we then sell them to Angel, and Angel sells them. Our teams, the Angel teams have signed a contract with Mini. And we really are counting on this contract because it's an interesting project. It's very good for our brand image, and it's also very consistent with the bicycles we produce. We, our shareholders, we have a 20% participation in Angel, so we have a minority share of the company. We want to support them in their development. And we manufactured the bicycles. And this allows us to keep our Is-sur-Tille factory in Burgundy active, and we're hoping to keep it active. So we're very happy about this new contract. It's always a bit difficult to begin with Angel. But if we don't improvise ourselves as a manufacturing company, well, we have a very good collaboration with Angel. And we are really confident in the future. Next question might be the last. I mean I have time, but not everybody.

I'm an individual shareholder. How does the group consider the trend towards replacing the use of the ownership of the product with the use of the product?

Well, we have a few initiatives. There are long-term leasing options. There are options where we can actually take the products back, recondition them and sell them again. So we develop secondhand -- sale of secondhand products. So many start-up companies are contacting us because they offer these midterm and long-term leasing option. There isn't one model that we find really convincing, but we are absolutely certain that this trend will continue in the future. We -- what we have in mind is have a good control on the system that will retrieve the products once they are no longer usable to recondition them and sell them again, and we want this to become a lasting sustainable business model. So 2 things. It's a good idea. There are many initiatives, but not yet a one very convincing initiative at the right scale. Last question. Last question. Yes. sir, go ahead. Could we give the microphone to the gentleman?

Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. Congratulations, Chairman, for your very good Chinese accent. You're pronouncing the names in the right way. And don't go to China, they'll keep you there. We hope that your French executives are making the same effort to pronounce the names well. I haven't checked. Chairman, you have been supporting us for years. We are used to coming here, listen to your presentations. I'm not talking about the cocktail. I remember you talking to us privately in the room. We're used to seeing you, and now you are moving on. So before you move on to your new phase as a CEO, I'd like to say on behalf of some people here. Thank you.