Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Mitch Collett from Deutsche Bank's Consumer Staples research team in London, and I'm delighted to be joined on stage by Dolf van den Brink. Dolf, hello, and welcome. Thank you for joining us. Maybe just to get us started, you're four years into your tenure as CEO, how do you reflect on the key achievements and challenges during that four-year period?
Yeah. Good afternoon, everybody. It was for sure more eventful and turbulent than I imagined it to be. I was nominated on February 11, 2020, blissfully, blissfully ignorant of what was about to happen, and then when I landed in my seat, it was June 1st, and, and COVID was in full, full swing. In the back half of 2020, we kind of set our EverGreen strategy, and I think it has been extremely helpful in terms of, setting out to prioritize, to, future-proof the company, but also to navigate all that, that volatility. It provided us, for now four years, with stable strategic priorities to, to sail by. Three key priorities standing out: one around growth, about the importance of the Heineken brand, the importance of premium.
Actually, over the period, premium has been a very good source of volume growth. The Heineken brand, almost one third up in absolute volume. Digitizing the business, extremely important, both front end and back end, and we ended last year at almost EUR 12 billion in digitally generated B2B revenue, but also a lot of investments and attention going into digitizing our back office. And then, of course, productivity, which was not something I guess that we were known for, but that we made a big priority as part of EverGreen, not just to kind of use for mitigation in terms of what hit the company during the period, but especially to set the company up to accelerated investments.
When you look at the aggregated numbers, over full year 2023, we delivered EUR 8 billion incremental revenue compared to 2019, EUR 0.5 billion in absolute operating profit. So in that sense, we're proud of how we were able to navigate the turbulence and still delivering those kind of bottom-line results. What remains a big priority is making sure that we kind of get in a consistent run rate of performance, where the top line, as well as the bottom line, are growing. So we're very clear as to where we are going from here.
Understood. And how do you think about the health of the beer category globally? And I'll dig into some of the specific markets in a bit. But, you know, are you seeing any signs of increased competition within beer as a category?
Yeah. No, it's a much-debated topic these days, but actually, like what we shared a year and a half ago in our capital markets event, we really see health in global beer. Global beer, over the years, has been growing share of throat. I think it's important to distinguish between, let's say, your emerging market footprint and your more developed market footprint. I think the core engine of the beer category in emerging markets, driven by demographics, driven by GDP per capita, is still very healthy and is there, and it's something that we're really investing in strongly.
In the developed markets, it's really important to differentiate between the U.S., where there are share-of-throat issues and have been for a long time, and compare it with Europe, where actually beer has been holding or slightly gaining share of throat because we're still sourcing a lot from wine. So across our Heineken footprint, we actually believe that we're in a good place because we have exposure to Europe rather than North America, and we have a big emerging market footprint with big sources of ongoing volume and value growth like Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, Ethiopia, Vietnam, now more recently, India. So we believe that we're well set up to capture the category growth, going forward.
That's great, and you talked about EverGreen in your opening question. I appreciate there's more to EverGreen than just cost savings, but can you talk about the cost-saving element of EverGreen? Has it changed the cost culture and focus within the business, and is that something that you can sustain in the long term?
Yeah. Deliberately, I called it out as the number three priority rather than one. EverGreen is not meant as just a productivity program. EverGreen is a cohesive strategic framework for the company, starting with growth and digitizing the business. But indeed, productivity has been a very important part. When we set out that EUR 2 billion in gross savings target in February 2021, I think a lot of people externally, but also internally, were really thinking like, "How the heck are we ever gonna deliver that number?" And we delivered EUR 2.5 billion in savings cumulative by the end of last year. And I think the organization is really growing in confidence in our ability to deliver productivity savings on an ongoing basis.
I think there's a big shift in mindset, where before we were a bit more of an either/or: either we grow, but then we don't really focus on productivity, or the other way around. I think the organization is understanding that if you want to play Champions League, you need to invest in growth, and you need to go after productivity savings. That was very important from a cultural point of view and very deliberate. Harold and I, late last year, when we delivered the EUR 2.5 billion program, we deliberately communicated that we would now commit ourselves to at least EUR 400 million in savings on a year-by-year.
The audience was not per se you. The audience was our internal organization in the sense of, "No, this is just part of how we do business, and we need to keep leaning into it.
... So let's talk about the reinvestment aspect. There are three areas, I think, of reinvestment, so marketing, digital platforms, which you talked about briefly, and sustainability. Can you talk us through each of those and, you know, how you allocate those resources towards those improvements?
Yeah. Now, first of all, marketing and selling expense is very important. Actually, linking back to your second question about the health of the category, I think it's actually very promising that all the major beer players are talking about the category, are investing in the category. Because that gives us confidence that we will see continued growth going forward. We really are committing ourselves not only to a pretty significant expansion in absolute euros being invested but also to restore it as a percentage of revenue. We still have some ways to go, but this year will be a big step up, both in the dollars and the percentage of revenue. This is really about, you know, our global brands like Heineken, Moretti, Desperados, Amstel, Tiger.
They will get disproportionate in investment, as well as kind of our local power brands like Kingfisher in India or Tecate in Mexico. I think also the last years allowed us to be much more focused in what are the global, regional, local power brands that we really deploy our investments against. And it's... the purpose is not to spend as much money. The purpose is to really ignite growth. So it is a commitment in investment but also a step up in how efficient and effective we are in that spend. So that is one area, and that's not something for the future. That's actually really happening this year. Particularly the second half of this year, you will see that big step up coming through. Second one on digitization.
As I said, we have a big emerging market footprint. We have huge fragmented trade exposure globally. At the beginning of EverGreen, we worried about disruption by pure tech players and others. That's why we made it, even in the middle of everything going on, a real priority to digitize that fragmented trade. I think at EUR 12 billion, we're well advanced on our target of EUR 15 billion, and the vast majority of our fragmented trade being digitally generated. Now, it's really much more about, okay, what kind of value do you create? And because converting an offline to an online dollar in and by itself doesn't generate value. But the underlying either revenue or margin or productivity creation, that is what we're really focused on at this moment in time.
We're also really investing on digitizing the back office, and this is an area that I've been quite vocal and transparent about, where I felt the company was behind. We still have 43 different ERP instances. We really now need to kind of move to a much more harmonized global platform, not just on the tech. Everybody talks about the tech side, but we still have a big step up to do in harmonizing transactional processes, as well as our data definitions. And in the world of AI, that's actually extremely important because only when you have your data and your processes clean and well-organized, you can capture that full potential. So also quite hefty digital investments going into digitizing that back office.
We have been using the last few years to really get ready, and the first pilot markets are being implemented in the course of this year, and then it's basically a 3-4-year run to kind of harmonize the portfolio of operating companies. And then the last bucket being sustainability. A brewer, we are known for beer and brands, but we have a huge manufacturing footprint around the globe. Almost 200 breweries in 75 countries. Breweries are relative energy intensive. 2/3 is thermal energy. That's hard to convert to renewable. We don't want to get too far ahead of things and others, but we do know that, in time, we will have to decarbonize that footprint, and that will take investments. And you better use the value of time, where you can kind of spread those investments.
We also will, starting this year, really start ramping up those investments. Those are indeed the three main priorities that we deploy our step up in investments against.
Understood. Let's dive into a few markets then. So Vietnam has been a phenomenal growth driver for the group, very profitable market. Clearly, 2023 was more challenging. I think you said at the Q1 stage that the market was still down mid-single digit. Can you give us an update on what you're seeing in Vietnam and the outlook for the remainder of 2024 and beyond?
Yeah. Now, so we have had 30 years of ongoing growth. This has been one of the most growthy markets that we have been operating in globally. Last year was extremely tough, and we took a step back. Second half of the year, the total market was still down high single digit. First quarter, we saw the market down mid-single digit, but actually coming out of Tet, so looking at end of March, April, going into May, we see the market stabilizing, so that is really great news. We really believe in that sense that the market has bottomed out. Think some of the macro is starting to be more positive, exports up double digit, GDP looking good.
There's still some political turbulence, although we hope and believe it's ending a little bit its final stage. And that Decree 100, the stepped-up enforcement of the don't drink and drive legislation, that really started in end of Q3 last year, so pretty soon we will start cycling that. Because still year to date, even though the market is stabilizing, total, the on-trade channel is still, you know, low double-digit down in April, May, and that will, we hope, start to stabilize as long as soon as we start cycling that. So when the aggregate starts to feel much better than last year, we don't see it worsening, we see it stabilizing to improving. And I think for us, our strategic priorities are very clear. We made a very deliberate decision not to rightsize the operation. We remain fully invested.
We have a huge confidence in the future of Vietnam, urbanization rates, GDP growth, industrialization, geopolitical location. We really believe this is one of the, the, the key assets we have, but we need to make sure that we have a more balanced portfolio, where we balance the premium with Heineken and Tiger with the mainstream portfolio, which we have with Bia Viet and Larue. And year to date, that starts to come through, but still our mainstream market share is about half of our total market share. So that is something that in the years to come will remain a priority.
Okay. Moving on to Mexico. So you, you've managed to grow your business, take some share, despite the obvious drag of OXXO mixing. OXXO mixing is now done. Does that give you an opportunity to accelerate that share gain, that volume performance? And what sort of growth rate can we expect from Mexico in the medium term?
Yeah. Now, very proud of our operations in, in Mexico. I, I used to be the managing director in Mexico, and we, we always were extremely worried about mixing OXXO. It was by far our largest, customer channel, a quarter of our volume. But I think in the end, how that was handled, whereby we agreed a staggered mixing, which allowed us to avoid, any moment of, of operating deleverage, has really set us up, for continued performance. Because actually, during the mixing, we never declined in volume. We, we gave away some volume share, but our profitability has actually accelerated because we are converting very low-margin OXXO hectoliters into very high-margin Six store, hectoliters. We made a major step up in the investments in our Six retail chain.
We have now passed 17,000 outlets, and I think this is actually one of the largest small store operators in the world, and a very important part of our strategy. Now, for these last few months are the first clean months in five years, five years' time. And I think we aspire to that kind of continuation of solid topline, top-line growth, accelerated operating profit delivery, and small but steady market share increases. We don't want to rock the boat too dramatically, but we do believe over time we need to gain back the market share we lost during the OXXO mixing.
Okay. Staying in the Americas, let's talk about Brazil. So another market where you've achieved growth, but clearly there are some changes to the competitive dynamics. Can you talk about what you're seeing in terms of competition and pricing within Brazil at the moment?
Yeah. Well, first of all, very happy with the results out of Brazil over the last 5-6 years. Basically, since the Brasil Kirin acquisition in 2017, we have completely transformed the portfolio and the route to market. Where at the time, we were 75% economy, just a quarter was mainstream and premium. Now, that's the other way around. We're almost 80% premium, with particular the Heineken brand and the craft portfolio and mainstream with the Amstel, Amstel brand. That has served us well because, you know, after decades of not making money, last year we passed a EUR 300 million absolute operating profit, so this is starting to become a very meaningful source of absolute operating profit for the company.
It's already a top four operating company, and I think, before long it will be a top two, top three operating company from a profit delivery point of view. Q1 results, high single digits up, continued growth on the key brands. Q2, starting a bit slower, and in particular, I think that's what you're referring to. At the low end, we see more competitive behavior. We took some pricing in early April, which is not sticking, so we had to adjust to that. So we see softness at our economy brands portfolio and to some extent on the mainstream, but very important and critically, our premium portfolio, in particular the Heineken brand, continues to grow very fast also in the second quarter.
We remain very confident in our trajectory and also the underlying profit delivery.
Okay, let's move to Western Europe. So I think you've talked about consumer sentiment starting to improve within Western Europe. Clearly, Western Europe had to endure big price increases last year as a consequence of some of the COGS pressure. What are you seeing in Western Europe in terms of beer demand, and are you confident you can get some sort of volume growth now that those price increases are all comped out?
Yeah. Now, so first of all, I think consumer confidence is still minus 15 or whatever it is. It's not worsening, it's slightly improving, but I think it's not yet all lights on green. What we do believe, we have had two years where wage inflation was below CPI, and I think this year will be the first year where wage inflation will be ahead of CPI. And I do believe that will help consumer goods in general, but also the beer category. So that is more on the macro. In terms of the beer category and our own portfolio, in our Q1 results, very happy to see both volume growth and some pricing. I think there was a lot of angst out there. Did we take too much pricing or not?
We made a very deliberate choice in Europe to aggressively price, to recover as much as possible of the cost inflation that we were suffering at that time. Given the consolidated retail landscape, you only have one opportunity. There's no second chance at defending your gross margin. But of course, early this year, the proof in the pudding was, okay, do we see ongoing declines, or do we see the market and the portfolio bouncing back? And very happy, we see the latter. We see volume growth across markets. We also see market share growth across markets as we are stabilizing now our pricing. We did take pricing, so we are not seeing deflation.
We're taking, I think the number in Q1 was 1.7% net revenue per hectoliter increase, and that's even with some negative channel effect because off-trade performed better than the on-trade. So, so far, so good. Also, going into the second quarter, we see volume growth and the pricing sticking, which is where we want to be. Setting ourselves up, hopefully, for a good summer with all the sports events and hopefully some better weather than we had last year.
Okay, let's hope so. It's certainly sunny in Paris today, so hopefully that will continue.
Yeah.
Thinking about that pricing, opportunity longer term, you know, Western Europe has always been a tough market to achieve price increases. Do you think the experience of the last year and the price increases that the industry's taken potentially position beer to have a better pricing environment in the medium term going forward in Western Europe?
I think it's too too soon to tell. I think it's encouraging to see that this year we were able to get pricing basically across all our markets, including France. But I don't want to extrapolate that at this point. That would be a bit too too soon.
Okay, understood. So moving to a very different type of market. So India is a market with huge growth potential. Per capita consumption is very low. Can you talk about how important India could be for Heineken in both the medium and the long term?
Yeah. So I believe India is the single biggest opportunity remaining in global beer. We all know it's a huge market, 1.5 billion inhabitants, and the beer market's very, very underdeveloped. About 10% share of total alcohol. We believe that with UBL and Kingfisher, we are in a prime position. We have around 50% market share. We have the, by far, most relevant mainstream brand in the market, the Kingfisher brand. And we're very early stage now in terms of starting to premiumize our portfolio, which is a strategy which we know very well from, you know, doing it across the world, but only since we got control, end of 2021, we are now in a position to start investing in that.
I was in India just, you know, a month, a month and a half ago. It's amazing, the capital flows going into India, the investment levels, the construction, so very confident on the kind of macro environment. With beer and alcohol, you always need to be cautious because the legislation is still state-based and is very complex, so it won't be one straight line up. But I do believe mid-long term, this is by far the biggest, opportunity. And in terms of scale, the profitability is not yet there, but in volume, it's already the size of our Vietnam business, so this is not like a small thing, even within our global footprint.
Understood. Let's go to South Africa. So you've significantly increased the size of your South Africa business through the acquisition of Distell. Can you talk us through where you are in the integration of Distell? And also, you know, a bit of color around the performance of your legacy beer business within that market.
Yeah. So, South Africa is a very important market. It's by far the largest profit pool in, in Africa. We had done a good job standalone with, with Heineken and Amstel and Windhoek over the years, but we felt we were really subscale. And the Distell acquisition, and the, in a way, the three-way merger between Heineken South Africa, Namibian Breweries, and Distell, was to create a much bigger platform, to capture a much bigger part of that, that profit pool. I think we always knew it was gonna be a complex integration, but it was even a bit more so. When you think of it, we were really merging three companies, two of which were stock listed. One we take, private, one we kept the listing.
Multi-category, which was a new dimension, multi-country, which is another dimension, and in a way, it was a reverse takeover because we folded the business up into the legal structures and systems of Distell. Now, having said that, I think we're starting to come to the end of that kind of the heavy lifting integration, sales force, trade terms, manufacturing footprint, all of that is sorted out by now. The Distell portfolio doing very well. It will only enter our organic growth numbers as of the date of consolidation, first of May. So in our Q1 numbers, that is not yet reflected. We did reveal that we grew the Distell portfolio, cider wine spirits, by 10%.
The weakness, indeed, is on the beer side, and to be honest, in all of that integration and rolling up Heineken South Africa within Distell, for sure, we took a big, big step back. I think brand Heineken is starting to be back on, on track. One of the big synergies out of the deal is that the deal allowed us to move to returnable packaging on Heineken, and returnable is the, that's the main pack type, 70% of the market or so is returnable. We were never able to participate there with Heineken. Now we can, so we're rolling out, as we speak, returnable packaging, which will allow us to capture much better gross margins than we, historically have done. Windhoek is performing well. The brand that we are worried about is Amstel.
There we need to do a better job. In Q1, by the way, our beer volumes were flat to slightly up, so also there I think things have bottomed out, but we really need to restore some of the volume that we have lost.
Understood. So Nigeria is another market where 2023 had some external factors affecting performance. Can you talk us through what's changed with your business in Nigeria and how that positions it as a geography to drive long-term growth?
Yeah. Long term, we remain confident in Nigeria, 250 million people, we have 65% share. We're multi-category between beer, stout, and malt. I think it's an enviable kind of footprint. Even last year, in operating profit, we were still able to generate operating profit, but then indeed, due to all the devaluations and interest cost, we were pushed into negative territory on the net profit. That's not acceptable. We need to we need to get that back. But it's certainly a market where we want to remain for the long term. I'm actually very proud of our operating team, how they've navigated that turbulence from you know, intervening in the cost structure, the portfolio, the price points, the channel mix, et cetera.
Also, with the benefit of hindsight, there's not something I would have asked the team to do different. So in that sense, from operating point of view, very good. From a conversion of OP to net profit, it was absolutely brutal. And we are in the process... Actually, this week is an important week. We're really restoring our balance sheet with the rights emission. By the end of the week, we will have full clarity on that. That's really important for the future, to reduce negative exposure. But again, from a market share, portfolio, footprint point of view, we're very proud of where the company is. We need to work our way through this extraordinary, yeah, impact that the country has had.
And when you look at that, when you zoom out, why did this happen to Nigeria and one or two other countries? It's the coincidence of the interest cycle reverting, where the Western central banks took the interest rate up by 400 basis points. In the best of times, that is very destabilizing for emerging markets because the capital flows reverted. But that coinciding with the war in Ukraine and the energy and food hyperinflation, which really badly hit a market like Nigeria, which is a net importer of energy and food, which created a balance-of-payments crisis alongside the capital flows reverting, and that kind of tipped them over.
What we are encouraged with is that the government is now really starting to take those very painful, difficult, reform measures that will set the country up for a better trajectory in the future.
Okay, so that was the last geography, I guess, on our quick world tour. Let's talk about 2024. So you've given a wider than normal guidance range, low single digits to high single digits, organic EBIT (be) growth. Can you talk about the drivers of that range and the puts and takes that would see you arrive somewhere in the bottom, the middle, the top of that overall range?
Yeah. So after the turbulence of particularly last year, we were very deliberate in guiding conservatively and cautiously. I think it's clear that we are not aiming for the low end of the range. We're clearly aiming for the mid or the high side of the range. At the first quarter, it was not the moment to update. The first quarter in the Northern Hemisphere is relatively small. On the operating side, I'm also looking at our performance now year to date, May. Actually, things look good. Things look as we expected them and hoped they would be. So on the operating side, right now, so far, so good, no major concerns. But there's still a risk of a devaluation or hyperinflation in Nigeria, Ethiopia, Egypt.
That is giving us a bit of caution, and we just want to make sure that we get a little bit more visibility on that. So logically, the half year results would be a moment where we would do an update, if any.
Okay, and you talked a bit about the phasing of marketing. I think there's been some commentary around the phasing of profit growth as well.
Yeah.
Can you update us on that?
Yeah, maybe different for, compared to other companies. Our, our profit growth will really skew to the first half of the year. Because with all the pricing we took early last year, we have a relative easy comp in the first half of the year. We have a more difficult comp in the second half of the year. Then also, we really triggered an accelerated set of productivity savings in the second half of the year, that we're now also benefiting from in the first half of the year. And last year, we started with an accelerated step-up in marketing investments. At the half year mark, we were up EUR 200 million in marketing versus 2022, but then we had to unwind a big part of that in the second half.
So we will be up on marketing in the first half, but by a relatively small measure, cycling that big step up, but then we will be up in a major way in the second half. So those are the three basic components. Overall, this has all been taken into account in how we think about our guidance, but it will be strongly skewing to the first half of the year.
Got it. So, you talked earlier about the Heineken brand, and the growth you've achieved over the last, I think four years-
Yeah
... for Heineken as a brand. You had very good growth for Heineken brand in Q1. You talked earlier about reinvesting some of the EverGreen savings behind marketing. Can you talk about your confidence for the Heineken brand going forward, given that up-weighted investment, and also about your broader premiumization strategy?
Yeah. Well, Heineken is the single most important asset that the company has. And indeed, full year 2023, our total beer volume was flattish versus 2019. Brand Heineken was 35% up. If you look to Q1 2023 compared to Q1 2019, we're over 50% up, so 50% growth on what's already by far the largest brand in the portfolio, and as we all know, at very good pricing and gross margins. You ask why? I think it has a lot to do with consistency. Consistency in strategy, consistency in investment levels. We had to flex some of our marketing investment up and down as we navigated the turbulence, but on brand Heineken, we always have been leaning in.
On that consistency, this weekend we celebrated the Champions League final in Wembley Stadium, and we celebrated the 30th year, 30, year 30 of our Champions League sponsorship. We are actually the longest standing sponsor of the Champions League, which is the biggest sponsorship platform on the planet. So 30 years of investing, leaning in with the brand. I think what we more recently have started to do is to bring excitement and innovation, or excitement through innovation with the launch of Heineken 0.0 in 2016, 2017, which has now become a very important strategic pillar of the brand. Ongoing growth over the years, double-digit CAGR. In the first quarter, 0.0 was up almost 20%. And then Heineken Silver more recently, and it was a single country proposition back in 2019.
Now, it's in over 50 markets. It's doing exceptionally well in Asia, where it has become a critical part of the brand. We had a decade of negative growth on brand Heineken in the decade leading up to 2020, and Silver has completely changed the dynamic on the, on the brand because it really addressed a consumer barrier. And globally, Silver is now double the size of Heineken 0.0 in half the time, in half the, the footprint. Silver, Silver has not worked out to the same extent in other regions like Europe, North America. Europe, difficult. North America, more promising. But it's really on fire in, in Asia and has been very important in that sense.
So very happy with, with Heineken, and then some people may say, "Yeah, it's just the China effect or the Brazil effect," but actually it's over 30 markets, 30 markets, with double-digit growth year over year. So again, happy to see where brand Heineken is, and it shows you the, the power of global brands with consistent strategy and consistent investment levels. What we are trying to do is replicate that now with our second, let's say, set of global brands like Tiger, Amstel, Moretti, and Desperados. Those are kind of the next level brands that will benefit from stepped up investments and structurally higher investment levels. And you also see that they always are leading the rest of the portfolio. The overall premium segment is super important, and we are by far the most exposed to premium.
Even throughout the whole COVID period, et cetera, premium beer has continued to grow. If I take Q1 2024 to Q1 2019, we're about 20% up on premium, so premium also remains a very important part of our portfolio. Yeah.
I'm glad you brought up Heineken 0.0. So you talked about the strong growth you've achieved with that so far. How big can Heineken 0.0 become? How important is it to the Heineken brand? Does it allow you to tap into different occasions and consumers and have a broader footprint?
Yeah. I think it's one of the most important things for the company. I think what alcohol-free beer has been around for decades. It's not a new thing. In that sense, it was not innovation. I think what was unique about Heineken 0.0, first, we cracked the taste, so it tastes actually like a normal beer, which is quite critical. The second thing is, alcohol-free beer was very mainstream or economy. It was sold at a discounted price. It was not cool, and by actually using that new recipe on brand Heineken, the most famous, the largest premium brand on the planet, and making the decision to line price it with Tiger or T...
Heineken Original, that was actually instrumental to completely change the perception of 0.0 beer from something that was bad taste, low quality, low price, to something that was aspirational. And we believe that that has really helped in making 0.0 beers more socially acceptable, because that was the other inhibitor that kind of blocked it. And almost every single market where we went in with Heineken 0.0, we have ignited not just Heineken 0.0, but also the segment. So if you look to the US, until 2018, the year where we launched, the 0.0 segment was declining, and the minute Heineken 0.0 came in, we ignited the segment, and we're still the value leader in the segment with many more players coming in. And again, in a way, that's a good thing because everybody's investing in it.
Now, in the U.S., it's still barely 1% of the beer market. In Europe, it's about 5%. In my home country, the Netherlands, it's almost 10% of the market. So we believe that this will have decades of growth ahead of it, and that's why we keep leaning in on it. We keep disproportionately investing in it. We are the global market leader as a company. Heineken 0.0 is the global market leader as a brand, and we really, you know, are investing to maintain that leading position.
That's great. So we started this conversation talking about your achievements and what has happened over the last three years. Perhaps a good way to finish it is to talk about what you see for the next three, five, 10 years. What do you hope to achieve with Heineken as a company over the next three, five years?
Yeah. Now, as I said, we are proud of, you know, the kind of tough things that we have been doing these last few years, navigating the turbulence, proud of some of the financial results, but we're also very clear that we have not yet been able to deliver kind of consistent top-line and bottom-line growth, and that's where we need to get to. That kind of consistent and boring growth algorithm has not been there. That is the number one, two, and three priority. We really believe that we have done a lot of heavy lifting, a lot of portfolio transformation, also in our geographical footprint, very tough measures on productivity, where some of the benefits have not yet been visible because we didn't have operating leverage on the volumes.
So really kind of getting back to consistent growth in volume and top line, then translating to above-average operating profit growth. Getting the, you know, starting to grow our margin again, that is the promise that we want to deliver against, and we believe that the EverGreen priorities are designed to do just that.
Perfect. Great place to leave it. Dolf, thank you very much for your time and your insights. Appreciate it.
Very good. Thank you.