Solvay SA (SOLB) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

[Foreign Language] I was just mentioning the joy that you must have felt to a few months ago when you reunited with your friends as the pandemic receded. Alas! the joy was very quickly dampered by the unthinkable. the outbreak of the cynical and deadly war in Europe which is causing untold suffering and marking the start of a new period of uncertainty for all players of the global economy, including Solvay. Solvay immediately on the talk to protect its local employees, and their families, too, to exfiltrate those who wish to leave. We have also mobilized the Solvay Solidarity fund to the tune of EUR 1 million and take measures, viz.a.viz., Russia, that are in line with our values. [Foreign Language] We can clearly observe that market, as we know, favor pure-play companies, whether in specialties or commodities with different multiples. The power of 2 projects is a major step in this direction and will allow the 2 entities to specialize with specific business models, with different governance and management principles that will unleash the potential of both entities. [Foreign Language] From an investors' perspective, we are considering a capital structure tailored to support long-term value creation objectives. With the EssentialCo adopting a cautious financial strategy to better generate sustainable cash and SpecialtyCo committing to maintain a high investment-grade rating, thus gaining full financial flexibility, at times separation to fund growth. Both companies will have clear and specific profiles. At the same time, they will be both supported by the reference shareholder and managed in a totally independent ways in accordance with the highest government standards. The group management has begun to flesh out this [ formidable ] project, which we will submit to your votes during an extraordinary general meeting next year. But I already invite you to share the enthusiasm it has aroused within the Board of Directors. Together, we will make history. Remember, when Solvay celebrated a century and half in existence, we call for another 150 years of prosperity. This is exactly precisely what we intend to achieve with a project that will create long-term value, keep us relevant and thus, project us far into the future. [Foreign Language] Let us now review the main recent developments in Solvay's governments -- governance Group management and the Board of Directors have reinvented the way they operate, not only because of the pandemic, but also more profoundly through a concerted approach to fostering trust through transparency. As a result, the Board and its various committees held a total of 32 sessions in 2021. [Foreign Language] A strengthening of the existing remuneration policy will also be submitted to your votes today as remuneration committed the necessary to align it even more closely with the objective to create shareholder value, taking into account the most recent standards. The committee has called for an even more demanding remuneration model and a greater focus on our sustainability and total shareholder return objectives. This is a first in our history. This policy, which ensures a uniform approach for all members of the executive leadership team, including the CEO, has been designed to align with our strategic objectives. As Solvay continues to reinvent itself, we want to ensure that all executives remain focused on responsible long-term value creation. This is a key success factor for the greater good of the company and its key stakeholders. [Foreign Language]

[Foreign Language] Ladies and gentlemen, [Foreign Language] a very warm welcome to all of you. [Foreign Language]. As our Chairman, I'm also especially happy to be back in person after the last 2 virtual meetings. Today, I'm truly honored. I am honored to come to you as the spokeswomen for the 21,000 of us, who run our business every day, they serve our customers and create value for all of you. In fact the photo you will see in this presentation today are the real people of Solvay. Remember last year, I spoke about innovations and the solutions we bring to the most pressing challenges humanity is facing. And today, I would like to come back to the why; why we are doing what we do. Remember, I shared with you our vision of the city of the future. It was a compelling way to increase awareness of how our sustainable products and innovation are the service of humanity and its progress. Science and people are our anchor. And together, we make progress. Whenever humanity needs us to make a step ahead, Solvay has and will be there. Our purpose, our mantra is exactly that. People bonding together, forming ideas using science and we are chemists, the Mendeleev table to reinvent progress. We also realized what took us here will not bring us there. This is a real evolution because we need to reinvent progress for our kids, for the kids of our kids. I'm really proud of our people. They are the Solvay heroes who make it happen. So today, I want to celebrate them. I want to celebrate their unwavering commitment and their passion that has driven our remarkable process, as you will witness today on growth and sustainability ambitions. Talking now about reinventing progress, let me share with you a story. Earlier in the year, I had the privilege of visiting the World Expo in Dubai. I lived there in another life. We were honored to represent Belgium and showcase Solvay solutions and innovation to the 24 million visitors coming from all over the world. As I was walking between pavilions and admiring some of the finest pieces of technology, our science and culture from all continents, I had an insight. Over the last century, we have seen innovation transform the way we live. And all this happens in time where humanity was faced with immense challenges. Humankind had shown its best and a much stronger, closing the century with more technological and scientific discoveries than ever before. And here we are. The last 3 years alone have been so remarkably intense for the world. And I dare to say almost as intense as the entire last century with a major pandemic, social unrest, catastrophic wildfires, several droughts and storms and now and barely said and completely unacceptable war. And this has had so many consequences, as you know, to our societies and businesses such as supply chain challenges, inflationary pressures and more. But the reality, and I've seen it all along my life is that adversity has always stimulated transformation. And you all know, necessity is the mother of all innovations. At Solvay, we have experienced it this way, and our people have shown their best during these tough times. Look at this circulating image of an air taxi that was presented at Dubai Expo. This aircraft was developed during COVID by Vertical Aerospace, one of our partners. It's unique. It emits 0 emissions. And Solvay's lightweight and innovative composite materials make this possible. More than 60% of these aircraft is built with materials that were innovated and produced by our people. So you can see, despite this past 3 years filled with significant challenges, we continued to innovate, and we continued to progress. Indeed, humankind overcomes hardship, and so that's Solvay and our people. I will now take you back to 2019. Remember, when we launched our growth strategy at the Fall 2019, we realigned our businesses into 3 segments: materials, chemicals, and solutions, each with distinct mandates and a disciplined allocation of resources. We set demanding targets for each business to unleash our potential. This is how, in fact, we started our transformation, and we have accomplished a lot since then. Just look at all we have done together, 21,000 people living our purpose, inspiring a performance mindset throughout our group to build a better company. By executing our growth strategy, living our purpose and values and living this deep cultural change, we got fits. Let's now take a closer look at our strategic performance. Our plan was to achieve our ambitious targets by end of 2024. And through all of the adversity including 737 MAX stoppage in 2019, the COVID pandemic and the difficult inflationary environment, we achieved our strategic goals 3 years ahead of time. We delivered on earnings. We delivered on cash. We delivered on returns, and we even delivered on debts reduction. On costs, we raised our target not once, but twice. And I'm pleased to tell you that we will achieve those higher levels in advance too. Let me spend some time on cash. And as I told you, this was one of my very first priorities when I joined the company to address it and fix it. The whole organization became more disciplined and it's paid off. Quarter 1 2022 was the 12th consecutive quarter of positive cash flow for a total of EUR 2.6 billion in cash since 2019. By now, we have a free cash flow conversion ratio of over 30%. On returns or return on capital employed, we call it ROCE, remember it was still around 8% in 2019, and now we are over 11%. Results matter more than promises. And again, our people delivered. Finally, I can only particularly proud of the speed and the magnitude of our debt reduction. Our debts and pension liabilities are now 33% lower than in early 2019 with a reduction of EUR 2.7 billion. While our debt ratio, as you can see, is now at 1.7%, the lowest ratio since 2015. You may be wondering how does it compare to our peers? Our EBITDA has been trending positively, and we are pleased that now we are approaching top quartile performance in terms of EBITDA growth. Look at our margins. Frankly, they were already great. But as you can see, we went from being in the top quartile to becoming best-in-class. Now on cash and returns, simply said, we went from laggers to leaders. And this brings us to 2021, which was a year of great success for our teams. We hit three new historical record despite the fact that we have to face major inflationary cost, actually EUR 465 million, never heard of. First, EBITDA was up 27%. Second, our margin reached historical level, 23.3%. Last but not the least, our returns were 11.4%. We also improved our cash management with EUR 843 million of positive free cash flow last year. Balance sheet. It's important in tough and good times. Our balance sheet has never been as healthy, and we are able to propose to you today a total gross dividend of EUR 3.85 per share. In fact, your company has emerged stronger on all fronts from market position and pricing power to profitability, from cash generation to returns. And again, I'm so proud of our people for this first ever great achievements. And this brings me to today, where we just, as you know, published our first quarter results last week, and our track results continue, again hitting more new records on sales, EBITDA and returns and again, all the people delivered. One of the lessons learned from the crisis was that we could do a much better job on pricing, and we recognize that. And in fact, our people embrace our core behaviors, our people are -- and all of us are eager to learn and learn and relearn. We learned how to leverage our pricing and sell on our unique value proposition, especially during inflationary times. Well, just look at the slide. All of our businesses delivered price increases to overcome rising costs, which is actually between you and me something we've never done before. So proud of our teams who mobilized and defended our margins. And the strong pricing momentum enabled us to raise our 2022 EBITDA outlook. This may be surprising to you in a world with so much uncertainty. So let me tell you why we did this. Obviously, because of our strong start of the year, fair enough. Second, because our people have demonstrated they can manage an inflationary environment. And finally, because our order book is solid, till today, and our customers continue to need our solutions. And therefore, we are confident that we can continue to deliver in a challenging global environment. Now as you know, beyond the strong financials, let's take a closer look at our people and our people's home, our planet. And as you know, both are equally important if you want to thrive. On sustainability, actions matter more than words. And you remember, we launched Solvay One Planet, our sustainability road map back in February 2020, just before the global pandemic started. And this slide is a bit busy, but it shows you the robustness of our approach and our results, in fact. This road map is led by all our business presidents as sustainability is part of our strategy and yearly objective, and it is facilitated by Pascal, who is on stage with me today, our Chief Sustainability Officer. We are very proud of the strong progress. And as you know, we are fully committed to reducing carbon emissions, and this is a priority at Solvay. What is more significant is the fact that across a 3-year period, we have achieved an 11% reduction, which is substantially well below -- well above, sorry, the 6.6% required by Paris agreement, we almost did the double Paris goals. And obviously, we had made many more achievements in our other 2 pillars, resources and better life, which I will also highlight a bit later. And our efforts are getting recognized. And we recently rewarded by the rating agency CDP or Carbon Disclosure Project. In fact, they upgraded us from B to A, higher than the chemical sector average of B, and we are proud to be in this leadership band. Another important recognition come from one of our top shareholders in Nordea, who recently launched a new global investment fund focused on the climate. And we are really thrilled to learn that Solvay will be part of it. They recognize our Solvay One planet plan, but also the progress and also how our solutions matter to enable the energy transition for our customers and their customers. And this is a real example of ESG investing. So let me now come back. Let me now come back to the roots of our transformation, our people. You heard me saying again and again, we care and we there. So let me tell you what does it mean for us? It means to continue building on our pioneer heritage from the humanist, on the scientist earnest all the time when it comes to social responsibility. And beyond ensuring safety is about solidarity, is about ethics, is about listening. And of course, promoting diversity, equity and inclusion. All of this with a strong social dialogue culture as a foundation, simply put, its caring about our people. We want our people to go back home every day safe. Health and safety of our employees and communities remain our first priority. And we have put in place a robust program. As you can see on this graph, the strong positive trend observed over the last 10 years, which we are proud of. But frankly, we will never be satisfied, and we will continue to raise the bar with a zero accident mindset. Now Solvay solidarity fund has been caring for our employees and the local communities for the past 2 years. Remember, the fund only exists because of you. You and us coming together to help. It's what many have named here in Belgium or elsewhere responsible capitalism. And I want to thank you, our these shareholders for your generous contribution. Together with donations from directors, officers and employees, we raised over EUR 15 million. And thanks to the fund, we had helped more than 7,000 families in 24 countries, families who were impacted by the pandemic, by natural disasters, including close to our home, as you know, here in Belgium. The fund also helped local communities around the world through 30 projects with initiatives relating to urgent health care needs, support for mental health or caregivers and assistance for schools. Again, thank you. In 2020, we lived through the pandemic, protecting and care for our employees and the surrounding communities. This led to the creation of what you call a Solvay safety net for all employees worldwide, irrespective, by the way, or where they live. And frankly, this exceptional time is unfortunately not over, it's not over. It may be hard for us today to imagine as we sit all together here in a country where the COVID crisis seems behind us. Yet, all of our colleagues, for example, based in Shanghai, remain confined at home. So to support our employees there, our Industrial Director, Liu Yang, who you see on the screen has led the initiative to provide our employees and their families with a fresh package of food delivered in their homes, as they couldn't go out. Exceptional times call for exceptional actions. We stand behind all our Ukrainian and Russian colleagues in such unprecedented crisis. We provide them the necessary support, including salaries and benefits. And our Solvay Solidarity Fund donated EUR 1 million to support civilians impacted in Ukraine. And I'm truly touched. I'm truly touched by how our people come together in good and bad times by the way to support each other. Let me share with you now some of our people's stories. In March, we exfiltrated the 69-year-old mother of our colleague, Victoria from Ukraine to Brussels. Believe it or not, it was a real rescue mission. The trip took 3 days to travel 1,000 kilometers to the Polish border. The support from our teams from the security and regional teams enabled this to happen. And we have been all moved by the solidarity, by the sense of belonging of our people. Another one. Our colleagues in Germany prepared housing for refugees in the [ Rheinberg ] plant, renovating and furnishing apartments, which are already being occupied by Ukrainian families. Another one. Our site in Poland is collaborating with the local city hall to provide refugees with vital aid, while we are supporting Ukraine with commodities and Solvay products where it's needed to help civilians. These are inspiring examples, inspiring examples; inspiring examples of hope, of humanity, of bonding and caring in times of crisis. As you have read in the news and in support of the people in Ukraine, we have suspended direct business and new investments in Russia. We went even further by suspending all dividend payments from RusVinyl, an independent 50-50 joint venture. Values matter. We set high standards in relation to ethics and we drive compliance hard. Our Code of Business Integrity issued in 2021 is now deeply embedded. It's the foundation on which we make sure that we do the right thing, everywhere, all the time. Remaining in close contact with our people is key. Through a first survey, we hear their feedback. Feedback is a gift, as I always say in the company. We hear their ideas, we hear their concerns Think of it as listening to 10,000 of people every 3 months, sharing the feedback openly and acting to drive improvements. This is the culture of your company. Speaking of improvements, we have integrated lessons; lessons learned from the pandemic and evolved to a hybrid work model. It has been a revolution. Our people tell us that they prefer this new way of working, unlike the vote we've just seen. So we like that at Solvay. And those in customer-facing roles, by the way, have returned to visiting our clients, and we are so happy. I'm so happy we can start traveling again and meet customers and partners around the world. Also, a highlight of the year. We launched the Solvay Care Program, enabling new parents to spend more time with their new bonds or adopt the children supporting the family, 16 weeks. This also had actually women to progress in their careers, thanks to the support of their spouses. Now, putting human dignity first. It's about building an inclusive environment, which ensures that everyone feels respected, welcomed, heard and valued at work for who they are, no matter their backgrounds. This is what we are working on with our Solvay One dignity program. So for the first time, and this is very close to my heart, we have 48% women in the senior leadership community that we launched earlier this year and will be very close to the 50% very soon. And the picture you see on the slide here is one of the first A effect, which is A, A for ambition. This is a program we love at Solvay that helps women to boost their careers. And I can tell you, it's not only highly effective program, but also a very popular one and one of the most popular in our Solvay Academy. By the way, you may have noticed in our annual report that we disclosed for the first time in our history, the gender pay gaps. I hope you've seen it. I'm very proud that we can do that. And of course, we are closing the gap as quickly as we can. We are also simply encouraging employees to bring their whole self to work. and are supporting that ambition by helping colleagues create employee resource groups. We launched 2 new groups last year. One for African-American employees and one for LGBTQ plus community. You may see the award image as a bit small on the screen, it is from the economic times which has just recognized Solvay in India as one of the best organization for women. I take this opportunity to send our congratulations to our teams there as they fully embrace the Solvay One dignity program. Our people are engaged and we continue to reward them. In December 2021, we launched a global share purchase plan for employees, which was one of the outcomes of our social dialogue with unions and employees. And by the way, this is historic at Solvay. The first of its kind since the company went public in 1967. And the aim is to promote deeper engagements, deeper ownership by our employees and participation to simply drive superior value for you all. And we continue. We continue to maintain a strong social dialog including with industrial ALL, a global union representing 50 million workers in 140 countries. And in fact, with Herve, our Chief People Officer, who is on stage here, we just renewed and strengthened a 5-year agreement with them, where Solvay commits to respecting the international social standards. And it's so important to have strong partners to promote a healthy and constructive social dialogue that helps us to raise the bar and continue improving, and we are truly living our purpose. Let's now look at our planet, our home and what measure Solvay's taken to protect it. As you know, we belong to the chemical industry and the chemical industry represents less than 10% of the total global greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, as you can see, emissions in Europe were halved in less than 3 decades, as you can see. This is remarkable given at the same time, production in the chemical industry expanded by 45%. But this is not enough. And we know by now that we have only 3 years left to tackle greenhouse gas emissions in a meaningful way according to United Nations. So the case for action is clear. So what are we doing at Solvay? As you know, we joined the Paris Accord in 2019. And as I mentioned before, we exceeded Paris goals, almost doubling the level of emissions reduction versus the target. So really proud of the team for the sense of urgency they put in, for the way this has happened. In addition, with the blessing of the Board of Directors, we have set a very ambitious goal last year to reach full neutrality, full carbon neutrality before 2040 for all our businesses and by 2050 for our soda ash business. To achieve this, not for free, we plan to invest up to EUR 2 billion by 2050. And we have a plan. As you can see, we will follow a 3-phase approach, spanning 3 decades. Today, in fact, we are in the first stage that involves a new energy transition projects for all our industrial sites. For the next 2 decades, we will focus on processes, on innovation and new technologies that are defined on this slide. And since 2019, we have built, as you see 40 energy transition projects from Georgia to Brussels to Mumbai using biomasses, solar or wind, replacing fossil fuels as primary energy in our industrial sites. These represents 2.8 megatons of CO2 reduction annually. And let me give you a perspective. This is equivalent to taking 1.6 million vehicles off the road every year. Let me give you some examples. We have now the equivalent of 500 soccer fields, European soccer fields possible, not American. 500 soccer fields, full of solar panels in the State of South Carolina in the United States of America. And thanks to this, we transitioned already 4 of our major businesses to 100% renewable electricity, which has, in fact, placed us among the top 10 companies for installed solar power in the U.S. And this allowed us to be recognized by one of our customers Apple in their Supplier Clean Energy. And the latest projects, by the way, was signed no later than last month we approved a 10-year utility agreement that will enable our site in Finland to operate on 100% wind-generated electricity as from next year. So we are expanding. We are agnostic to renewable energy and using all forms of renewable energies and biomasses to accelerate this ambitious road map. Also we are exiting coal. And as part of our Solvay One planet, remember, we committed to fully exit coal latest by 2030. When we commit, we act. You can see here the photos of [ Norbert ], Nicolas, [indiscernible] and Todd. They are our site managers who are leading the exit of coal in their plants. In 2021, I told you about our site in [ Rheinberg ], Germany. It was the very first soda ash plant worldwide to be powered primarily by biomass, based on nonrecyclable wood waste. We announced in 2022 that our Don Bell site will produce energy with industrial and household waste from 2024 onwards. This is the first and, frankly, the largest project of its kind in France using trash, right, as the primary energy. We are also announced -- we also announced that the first -- the very first step in our largest European site in Devnya, Bulgaria by converting a boiler to biomass, now this one is based on sunflower farming waste. And finally, we are switching our Green River sites in the U.S. from coal to gas, despite the absence of any trade system, as you know, in the Wyoming state like the one we have in the EU. So Solvay implements voluntarily coal-to-gas projects to significantly reduce our emissions. So as you see, our people are transforming. They are transforming our sites to be at the forefront of the industry in terms of reduced emissions, environmental footprint and, of course, competitiveness. And by the way, all these projects, they generate returns above 15%. So beyond our own footprint, which we call in our jargon Scope 1 and 2 inside our walls, we are also tackling Scope 3 emissions, which are only in direct emissions of a company value chain from suppliers to customers. And in fact, these are the hardest one to address. We launched last year our first supplier engagement program. We collected ideas. More than 69 projects now are underway from our suppliers, addressing CO2 emissions, waste reduction, circularity and social impact from our suppliers. This is supported by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and while prioritizing the circular economy wherever we can. And in fact, it started with the Veolia and Solvay partnership for recycling end-of-life batteries, which is a project close to our heart at Solvay. More recently, we also partnered with Carbios, its pioneer Champion in PET recycling in France to recycle our PVDC using film packaging. Finally, our sustainable guar initiative in Rajasthan in India, welcome the new member this year, Procter and Gamble Beauty, and continues to improve our supply chain sustainability efforts. In fact, we were innovative here. We innovated and launched last year what we call a blockchain platform, a digital platform to ensure full traceability and transparency and boost equality and revenues for local farmers. And so far, believe it or not, 2,000 farmers have already started using the platform which also includes program dedicated to the financial empowerment of women farmers and aiming to give them a financial identity. Solvay is an industrial company. And industrial is the heart of everything we do at Solvay. Our thousands of industrial employees, and I would like to recognize them today have mobilized during COVID times and didn't stop coming to our plans while many were confined to support our clients and at the end of the day to support all of us in our daily lives. By the way, no plants were sold, they were shut down because we were recognized as essential around the world. Our industrial employees are working hard on transforming how we produce, how we store, how we ship, how we recycle, how we do business to improve the performance of our plants. We have recently launched a program to prepare our facilities for the next decade because again, what brought us here will not take us there. We call it the STAR Factory program. And Augusto, our Chief Operations Officer, who is with me here and Marco, our Chief Industrial Officer are brilliantly driving this program, and we count on them, by the way. So what is STAR Factory? It is the plant of the future, which is fully digitalized and connected with our customers, with our partners and communities. We make the invisible visible, where we develop and retain the best talents and we go beyond manufacturing 4.0 by integrating Solvay One Planet and Solvay One dignity goals at site level, on the top, of course, of digitalization and competitiveness to satisfy our customers to make them win. And thanks to this operational boost, we will become the champion of the next-generation chemical industry by 2030 with a network of best-in-class factories. And by the way, we have selected 2 sites, our Tavaux site in France and Spinetta site in Italy to be the flagships of our program. So let us now look together at some exciting investments we have been making for a bright and sustainable future. Let me give you some examples. Earlier this year, we announced a EUR 300 million investment in Tavaux, which will be the largest PVDF plants in Europe and the largest in suspension technology in the world, supporting the automotive sector transition to hybrid and electric vehicles. Another sector in electronics. We have created a new joint venture in Taiwan, for the production of high-purity hydrogen peroxide for the fast-growing semiconductors markets. Now in [indiscernible]we acquired the [indiscernible] product line in France, making us one of the three leading companies in this area of sustainable and bio-based solutions. Healthcare is important to us. We invested in Invizius, a biotechnology startup in the U.K. that is developing an anti-inflammatory solution for hemodialysis. In biotechnology, we invested in DMC Biotechnologies based in the U.S. It delivers biocatalysts for use in animal feed, human nutrition, sustainable cleaning and pharmaceutical applications. These leads me to our growth platforms, which, you remember, we started back in 2019. And where we have actually doubled down in terms of research, technology, CapEx money and investments. And we are focusing our research in these fixed areas. This includes EV batteries, thermoplastic composites and green hydrogen. And last week, we launched the last baby, the fourth growth platform, which will focus on renewable materials and biotechnology. And together, these platforms represent more than EUR 10 billion growth opportunities for our company and for you, our shareholders. So going back, going back to my stroll in Dubai and the insight it's brought me. Putting things into perspective, the 20,000 of us can say that despite so many challenges Solvay has also reflected the best of humankind. We had never been as fit. We have never been as ready to take on the future as we are today. And our accelerated transformation over the past 3 years has made us stronger. And now it's the time. It's the time to unlock the next wave of superior growth and sustainable value. This brings me to our announced plan to separate into 2 strong industry leaders in fact, 2 strong industry champions. Let's have a look. [Presentation]

So this is building on what Solvay has always been through the history. We are essential, and we are special. We're essential because the world needs us. We are special because the future needs us. Those 2 lighthouses in their industries, our business shall be ready to step into a new level of performance to create 2 independent pure players, public companies by setting the link between each company's unique needs, strategic path forward, setting them up for success. We truly believe we can unlock value for all stakeholders and for you, our dear shareholders. Let's take a look at EssentialCo. The entity comprises mostly our Chemicals segment today, which includes our larger businesses of soda ash and peroxide and also silica, coatis and special chem. Sales are just over EUR 4 billion with 20% in APAC, 40% in Europe, Middle East and Africa and 40% in Americas, and it operates from 45 sites. EssentialCo will get cleaner, more cost efficient and reinvest in saving for its own growth, expanding by the way, both organically and inorganically, while focusing on its ambitious energy transition goals. Now let's look at SpecialtyCo. This entity comprises our Material business segments and most of the solutions segments representing EUR 6 billion with 34% in APAC, 38% in Americas, another 28% in Europe, Middle East and Africa, operating in 68 sites. The company would be a pure-play specialty in materials and the leader in consumer markets, delivering superior economic growth. You know the Materials segment. It includes specialty polymers and composites just like it is today. And the Consumer Resources segment includes our businesses, Novecare, Aroma, Technology Solutions and Oil & Gas. SpecialtyCo will provide innovative, value-added solutions to our customers that help disrupt their industries, make them win and make them more sustainable. I received from many of you the question, how each business was put in its respective company? And indeed, it's an important question I would like to address here. The allocation of the businesses was based on different fundamentals of the 2 entities. And this may be easier to see in this side-by-side summary. As you can see, EssentialCo is driven by supply-demand. It's all about operational excellence, lean supply chain, lean overhead structure, it's about quality on time efficiency, high volumes at low cost, and its strategic ambition is to maximize cash generation and enhance its cost leadership. By the way, as you've seen last week, we announced the acquisition of the 20% minority stake at AGC in the Soda Ash joint venture operated in Green River in the United States of America. This strengthens Solvay's leadership position in the soda ash market, mainly to serve the American business and Asian markets. Now SpecialtyCo. It's driven by product innovation to solve our customers' needs and unmet needs. Its innovation focus will be about bringing new solutions for most demanding applications like EV, for example, electronics and anticipate even the unmet needs of tomorrow. Therefore, the operating model is very different. It needs to be flexible. In fact, mastering and managing complexity, complexity of products, complexity of SKUs, complexity of product mix to adapt again and again to different customer needs. Its strategic ambition is to achieve growth, but growth that are above -- that is above the markets and maximize its returns. So we are talking about 2 strong companies, each with its own focus, its own strategy and own indeed, operating model. So this is what we started preparing just after the recent announcements. And we are so energized about Solvay's next chapter as we work to launch these new industry champions each with a bright future. So let me go back now to my very first word today, science and people. I'm so proud of the progress we made in just 3 years. And frankly, it's the best ride in a life. But let me tell you, the next 3 years are critical for humankind. And from what I have seen, our people accomplish, I truly believe that together we can make the impossible possible and the best is yet to come. Let's have a look now at what [ your ] Solvay looks like and what our people are the most proud of. [Presentation]

And now -- now let me tell you what I'm the most proud of, our people. Thank you very much.