Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for holding and welcome to the analyst call. At this moment, all the participants are in listen-only mode, and after the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions only for the analysts. I would like to hand over the conference to Jacques van den Broek . Jacques.
Yes. Thank you, Robert. Good morning, everybody. We issued a press release. I would like to make some remarks to, maybe not so much clarify, but give you a little bit of color why we took this decision. Roughly six weeks ago, we closed the year. Of course, we looked at what about capital allocation. We also shared with you when we presented Q4, the outlook for Q1, which of course was, as you know, also negative. January and February and even the first half of March turned out to be pretty much in line with that outlook. Of course, Corona hit.
We were faced with some very disturbing, almost developments in countries. First of all, from a human, from a health point of view. Secondly, from an economic point of view. We quickly moved and recognized the fact that we are moving into what we in our capital allocation policy have as a first priority or a first condition, and that is the serious adverse effects on the economy. Many of you, and me included, we went through 2009, and in 2009, we went from -6 in December to -9 in January.
To - 30, a little bit over - 30 in March, April, and then it sort of stabilized throughout the year, and we ended the year with - 27%. What we don't know about this situation is how deep it's going to be and how long it's going to last. That's not just us. I think that's anybody out there, economists. Nobody really knows what this is. The first priority is, of course, to save people's life and the healthcare system.
What we do, however, see is one basis point, sorry, one fact, and that is France, where last week it was issued that as of this week, it was around a - 77.0% decline in the market, something we of course, have never seen on such a short notice. Signals, not a data point, but signals from the Belgian market also quite serious double-digit declines. We're not going to talk specifically about numbers. For example, Italy, which is a big human crisis, but from an economic point of view, still a lot was kept open. People still could go to work, but that will be also closed off. Italy also will move to total lockdown.
That's the European situation, but the U.S. is still the big unknown, biggest staffing market in the world. It's early days yet there, but as you've seen, they're going into lockdown. There are markets, of course, where we are not just hit as a company on the revenue, but also hit on idle time. Such as our German business and our Swedish business. You know that in these times we always want to manage our cost, but we don't know how much of our cost we need to bear and how much government support we can get.
We do know that, for example, in the U.S. they've issued measurements, but that's for companies with less than 500 people, so probably we won't be eligible for it. In Europe, there's a lot of, I think, great leadership from leaders in Europe. They've all announced government support schemes, but in many countries they are not up and running yet. Very tough for us to ascertain at this moment in time how much support we can get. We are in contact with our clients daily. As you know, we're a fully digitized company.
Our 38,000 people are in daily contact with all our stakeholders. For clients it's also very insecure. Will they keep their flex workers? Will they pay them? Will they pay them with margin? Excluding margin? Wherever we look, there's uncertainty. Let me share you a bit on sectors which we're currently seeing. You know, airlines, totally down. Automotive, already in trouble before Corona in many aspects. Big supply chain issues from China and also Italy.
Tourism, events, restaurants, retail, leisure in general and also education, which in our U.K. business, Australian business and New Zealand business are big businesses, totally down. There are growing sectors, as you probably know, healthcare, government as providing answers, and managing and enlarging call and contact centers. Online delivery, IT, and in general, the food sector. Having said all this, and again reiterating that we don't know how deep and how long, the conclusion is we need time. We need time to see what this is and that's why we have taken off the agenda the point on dividends.
I would like to conclude my opening statements with the fact that, and I mentioned it already, first of all, by the way, the resilience of our people. It is remarkable to see our management, but also our consultants, the vast majority working from home every day. Yeah, they do it, and they've got full access to all our clients. They've got full access to candidate databases. We are continuing business as much as we can. Of course, this is unprecedented and, yeah, we'll see where this will take us, Randstad, but the world at large. That's what I would like to state as opening remarks. With that, we're open for questioning.
Ladies and gentlemen, we will start the question and answer session now. To be registered for the question and answer queue, please press star one. This is only for the analysts. If you have a question or remark, please press star one, only for the analysts. Your questions will be answered in the order that they are received. There is a question. Introduce yourself and then followed by your question. Go ahead.
Hello?
Yeah.
Hello. Hi. Jacques. No, it's Paul Sullivan from Barclays.
Paul.
Hi there. Could you just remind us, in terms of covenants and covenant discussions, have you entered into any conversations or early conversations with the banks? What are the most onerous, do you think? Do you think covenants are a bit of a red herring because it feels like they're all going to be waived? When it comes down to liquidity, how are you feeling there? Have you pulled your RCFs at this moment in time? Have you drawn down on them?
Also in terms of the employee protection schemes, when you look at what's being proposed, say in the U.K. or in other markets where they're more established, and I'm focusing on Europe here, what proportion of your own employees and those with bench risk do you think could be eligible? In terms of, is it the majority? What are your initial thoughts? I know it's very fluid, but anything you can tell us would be helpful.
Yeah, sure.
Thank you, Jacques.
Yeah. Paul, I'll answer the first part of your question, and Henry will do the second part. On the first part, it's tough to answer. As I said, I'm positive about the leadership in Europe from all the governments. They've announced schemes, that's great. Of course, it's way out of proportion to the normal situation. As you know, we have been in a similar scheme in our German business in 2019, where we had a 10% decrease of working time because of the German situation.
Yeah, it's overflowing, certainly with SME companies. It's all about time, talking to governments. It's too early to call that one. Of course, in general, it goes for all of you, we'll update you again, when we present Q1.
Yeah.
Henry, on your question regarding financing. Paul, good morning. Thanks for your question. Mostly, we were very pleased that we ended the year with a 0.7 leverage ratio. We are prudently financed at that stage. There's no liquidity problem. We see it's really important that we are fully operational. As we speak, we are able to run payroll, we issue invoices, we collect funds.
Just by way of numbers, with net debt excluding lease, EUR 750 million at the end. You know that we have a EUR 380 million CP outstanding. We have not entered into any discussion with banks, and we feel we are on good ground. Yeah, as Jacques mentioned, the earnings visibility at this point in time is impaired, and hence our decision.
Yeah. Paul, prudent is the word here. I alluded to 2009. When we started 2009, we had a 2.3 net debt to EBITDA leverage ratio. Totally different situation, but still, prudent.
In terms of covenants, what's your thinking there? Do we worry about those? If you have been looking at total profit wipe out in the second and third quarter, what do we think about sort of covenants?
Yeah. Too early, Paul. Too early.
Okay.
We're definitely worried. I think everybody's worried as we speak.
Yeah. No.
More about the health. You know.
Yeah. No, I hear you.
We have colleagues infected in Spain.
Right.
That is our first priority, to keep our people safe and healthy. Then, of course, weather the economic storm. Definitely, but too early.
Yeah. Okay. Thank you, Jacques. Appreciate it. Thank you very much.
There's another question. Please introduce yourself followed by your question. Go ahead.
Yes. Hi, this is Hans Pluijgers of Kepler. Can you hear me?
Yeah, I could not hear your name. Say it again.
That's Hans Pluijgers from Kepler.
Oh, yeah.
Okay. Hi, Hans.
Morning, everybody. Strange times, so of course the focus is on the business and very good that way. Question from my side with respect to the idle time. You already mentioned it. Could you give maybe some feeling, and understand, of course, let's say the government measures also play a role there. Could you give, let's say, some idea on what the risks on that and what amount, let's say, is at risk with respect to idle time? What risk of outflow without any coverage of income do you see?
Hans, sorry. Too soon. I can give you the percentage of people that are on the bench. It is fully in Germany, but there's a scheme, so that helps. Sweden almost everybody, and then a part in the Netherlands. 60% at Yacht and 10%-15% in the staffing businesses. Please be aware that this is not all indefinite contracts. Of course, managing idle time in countries like Germany and Sweden is part of the business. We have these stacked contracts. That of course doesn't help if a full client closes down. What we are trying to do, of course, is to replace people into sectors with demand.
Again, the fact that everybody's online, we are per country saying, "Okay, we know this company is closing. Can we get these people into other clients?" That depends on, of course, the capabilities, the geography. Again, so too soon, and I can't give you the total amount, not because I know and I'm not telling you, but we really don't know.
Maybe one follow-up on the credit facilities. Could you give maybe a number? You provided a number that I didn't quite hear what is still the facility that was available, and do you have, let's say, any facilities you can draw or could increase? Could you give some numbers there?
Yeah. We do have a facility of EUR 1.85 billion, which is at this point in time, totally undrawn.
Okay. Thank you very much.
There's another question. Please introduce yourself followed by your question. Go ahead. Your line is open.
Hello?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Hi, this is Anvesh Agrawal from Morgan Stanley. Just got one question really. You mentioned some of the sectors which are still growing for you. Can you first just tell us what your exposure to those sectors at the group level?
We have a rundown which, well, partly talks to these sectors. Let me give you the rundown. Manufacturing is 30%, 3-0. Transport distribution 20%. Business IT 10%. Financial services 10%. Public health and education 10%. Automotive 7%. Construction 3%. Leisure 3%. We have totally different portfolios per country. I think that gives you a bit of flavor on where we are exposed, where we're less exposed. Yeah.
One minute. I'll go. Thank you.
There's another question. Please go ahead. State your name followed by a question. Go ahead.
Hello. Good morning.
Good morning.
Yeah. Good morning. Good morning.
Hi there. Sorry. It's Tom Sykes from Deutsche Bank.
Hi, Tom.
Hi there. Thank you very much for the details. Sorry, I wasn't very quick at writing down those sector numbers again. I want to just give those again.
Sure. You're not getting any younger, Tom. Here we go again.
Manufacturing, 30%.
Yeah.
Transport and distribution, 20%. Business and IT, 10%. Financial services, 10%. Public health and education, 10%. Automotive, 7%. Construction, 3%, and leisure, 3%. That is not entirely 100%.
Sure
somebody wants to add it up.
Yeah.
There's some other in there.
Yeah, there's another point I need to make. With us, you always need to talk about sectors and profiles.
Yeah
You see sectors in which we're active, but at the same time, everybody needs IT people, for example. Certainly in these times. When I say there's demand for IT, there's no demand for IT in the IT sector. As many of you know, banks have never hired a financial professional in the last 10 years. They're only hiring IT people. Sectors and profiles are different.
Okay, perfect. Thank you.
It gives you a bit of insight. Yep.
Exactly. Then just on the working capital movements, is there anything different? I know it's early, but is there any delayed payment from your client base in terms of working capital? In terms of them paying for it, obviously, we would expect bad debts to go up to some extent. Is there any difference in that dynamic, and is that happening more slowly at all?
Then just in terms of the dividend, and obviously you're doing it from a prudent point of view because of the macro, but is there anything that you feel if you're taking what might be considered state aid in terms of Or not state aid, but if there is short time working and you're having that happen, is it then seen as probably not the best thing to then also be paying a dividend to shareholders at that time? Was that at all part of the thinking?
Tom, on the first one, it's too early to say. There is zero evidence at this point in time of any delayed payments or whatever. There's none of that. As far as second question concerned, Jacques, do you want to?
Yeah, Tom, let me answer your question again from the capital allocation policy point of view. We've been on many road shows, so let me share that with you. Well, maybe back, I didn't mention it explicitly, but we always say that the business is way more resilient than it was 10 years ago because of geographical presence and the fact that in normal circumstances, economic cycles happen at different stages and different times with different tempos. That's not the case now. I'm, and Henry also, with our businesses twice a week.
We have three groups of businesses, the Asian businesses, the European businesses, and then the American businesses. It feels a bit like you have the same, call it, rundown of first people infected. Oh, what do we need to do? Lockdown, partial lockdown, full lockdown, barring travel and what have you. For us, it's all happening roughly at the same time in a four to six weeks period. Then, of course, our, call it, geographical resilience becomes less.
Then we said, for example, on the minimum dividend to EUR 1.62, that we had tested that against 2009 scenarios, and that we would be able to pay that even in 2009 scenarios. Where we sit now, I'm not ruling out that this is worse than 2009. I really don't know. This is not a call where we know a lot and we're not sharing it with you. This is a call where we're very transparent on the fact that we don't know. I said again, how deep we don't know and how long we don't know.
That's why if we would've been here six weeks ago, then we would've said, "Well, guys, although we are at 0.7 at the moment, we're not topping up towards one because it's too uncertain." That is the second part of the dividend. We're testing the scenarios currently, but if it turns out to be worse than 2009, maybe we cannot even keep up the guaranteed dividend. That's really what's happening today. If it improves throughout the year, great, but we'll keep you informed. There are moments where we are in contact, which will be the Q calls.
Yeah, sure. If I could just ask one quick one, just the practicalities of running your business at the moment. Are all your branches open? I know in other releases you've sort of mentioned the use of the internet, in things like KYC, for clients or candidates, what are the actual kind of on the ground difficulties that this presents rather than just a reduction in demand? If we could try and understand that a bit.
Yeah, sure. Tom, KYC, what's that?
Know your client.
Oh
kind of compliance-wise, because what proportion of your temps necessarily would go into a branch?
Yeah, sure.
Does the internet help you?
Yeah.
Just trying to get our heads around that.
No, good point. Let me shed some light on that. Last year we issued, in our press release in the Q call, that we had our GIS, Global IT Services. We moved all of our databases to the cloud, which means that we have unlimited bandwidth. If we compare to other companies in our markets, competitors, but also our clients, they can't handle that. They have like 30% of their people that can go online because their systems can't handle it. Also, they lack hardware. Every Randstad consultant, with a few exceptions, but then I'm really talking India, they are already fully functional online.
We're very happy with our digital journey because as we speak, depending a bit on the lockdown and the level of lockdown, people are fully online, either from home, sometimes still with an A/B schedule in terms of branches. Communicating with our clients, definitely every day, full access to the files of the client, to what goes on, even on a global scale, because in our Randstad Enterprise group, we are discussing.
I just got a report, 150, 160 clients, interviews we had with those clients, what they are asking, what they're willing to do, what they're not willing to do, where we can really help them. That's helpful. Roughly 70%-80% of our candidates is directly connected through us through their own Randstad app. We can send messages, they can look into their planning, and we can communicate very effectively. Even for me, and I would say I know the business best, I'm talking to the whole world.
I'm sitting behind my desk at home and I'm talking to the whole Randstad world, not just on phone, but on Google Hangouts, so I can physically see those people. In a strange way, that means that we're actually more effective. From a process point of view, there's nothing wrong at Randstad. Of course, there's a total lack of demand, and that is what we're currently facing.
Yeah. You can place people.
Oh, yeah.
without them having to come into a branch and show, I don't know, driving license or documentation.
For a long time already, Tom. In our Randstad Innovation Fund, we're running our ecosystem to see what we can offer our clients. As we speak, we're offering free video assessments. We are offering, for example, in Spain there's many people who are on temporary unemployment. They're worried. We offer them free online career coaching sessions. There's a lot we're doing to help our clients and our candidates to weather this storm and a lot comes out of our digital portfolio. I would have never thought we would use it for these circumstances, but we are.
Okay. All right. Thanks very much, Jacques. I'll leave it there.
The next question is state your question followed by your name. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning. Can you hear me?
Yeah, Konrad.
Hi, it's Konrad Zomer with ABN AMRO.
Yeah, I recognize your voice.
Two questions, please. The first one is did you consider changing from a cash dividend to a stock dividend? My second question is at the start of your call you mentioned the 70% market decline in France. I might have missed it, but did you also give us the source of that - 70% market decline?
Yeah, the source is mostly lack of demand, Konrad.
No, sorry. I meant the source of that number because the Prism data is not publicly-
Yeah, I see. It's the Prism, yeah.
Oh, it is. Okay.
Yeah. Again, I don't know if it's - 70%, but you can guess even if it was - 60%, that's still serious. Every government needs to do the trade-off between economic development and health and most of them, of course, are choosing in a majority for health. France apparently seems to have gone to a very quick lockdown. Whereas for example, in Spain and in Italy you could still go to work.
In France, apparently that's less the case. We'll see. It was the only real data point we could share with you because it's out in the open and for the rest we just take it at Randstad now day by day, but certainly week by week.
On your first question we came to conclude what we've put out in the press release this morning is the most sensible thing to do to balance interest of everybody, employees, customers, clients, and stakeholders, and shareholders. Yes, we had discussions about it, but we concluded to deal with it the way we did in the morning.
Okay. Obviously none of us knows how long and how deep and I share your views on that item completely. You preserve about EUR 800 million of cash by not paying a regular and a special dividend. Given your credit lines and your current very healthy balance sheet, it is something that you might have considered because by preserving just south of EUR 800 million it's not going to change the fundamentals of your company.
You will be able to reduce costs. You will be able to adapt to whatever new world we're going into. I understand the difference of EUR 800 million, but in the big scheme of things, it looks to me as if Randstad is going to survive anyway.
Well, thanks for the confidence, Konrad, and I totally share your view on that. It's not just cutting cost because if it's a V shape or a U shape, we want to come out of this effectively stronger. Of course we can fire thousands of people and immediately cut our cost but then there will be a bounce back. For us, the big challenge is together with government schemes how much do we need to take out because, of course, I hate to fire one person let alone a thousand .
That's early days and for that prudence is the word and thank you for the confidence. I totally share it. Yeah, it's like Henry said, it's about all stakeholders. It is shareholders, but it's also our clients. Our clients are also asking us to take care of people, our own people. In that sense, this is the call we're making, which is not even a call on no, it's a call on not now.
Yeah. Understood. Thank you very much.
There's a next question. Please state your name followed by a question. Go ahead. Your line is open.
Yeah.
Go ahead.
The line is open. It's a bit like a radio broadcast, all of a sudden you're live. Yeah.
Hello. Hi, this is Simona Sarli from Bank of America. Can you hear me?
Yeah, absolutely.
Yes. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Hi, just a couple of clarifications. I appreciate that at the moment you have not withdrawn the revolver facilities, but I see that in Q4 you have two corporate notes of $400 million and one of EUR 150 million expiring in Q4. What is your underlying assumption? Have you discussed with the banks the possibility to extend the maturity, or are you going to withdraw the revolver for that?
The second question is related to the peak leverage. I am not talking about the peak leverage at year-end, but what also during the year, during previous recessions or crisis, have you been able to sustain, and what was the underlying earnings decline for that? Thank you.
On the first one, while I understand the question, please understand that it's far too early to now make a comment on that. Just rest assured we, of course, are looking into how we finance our balance sheets, but I'd rather not discuss it here in public now.
On the leverage ratio in 2009, we entered the year at 2.1, 2.2, if I remember correctly, and then we quickly dropped to 2.6, but then as I mentioned earlier, it started to stabilize in March, April. The peak was 2.6. Again, there's two things not comparable to 2009. First of all, it is this crisis had totally different origin, very difficult to predict with where I'm sitting here, short term, a deeper dive, but maybe a quicker recovery. Again, we don't know.
The second one is we're a totally different company, of course. That has good and bad. Hopefully, the resilience will help somewhat. Our people in China are back in the branches, but we do think it will take time for that economy also to recover. They are early in the cycle, so to say, so hopefully that helps. Of course, we have way more perm. Perm drops like a stone in these times, and that goes directly into margin. We have bigger businesses, where we have people on idle time.
We have more services in outplacement, in handling RPOs and MSPs. Again, the elements that drive up or downturns is a little bit more gross margin, so to say, or margin fee-based, than we were more of a staffing company 10 years ago, so to say. There are differences, but of course, from a financial, from a leverage point of view, we're a way more, call it a wealthy company at the moment, and I think that's what Konrad alluded to. Still, we don't want to just survive by cutting only costs. It is striking a balance.
Probably, one more question, if I may. As you're saying, yes, you're a healthier company, does this mean that probably compared to 2008, 2009, there is less room in terms of cost cutting? What's the difference today compared to the past, and how much you think you can cut from the business? Thank you.
Yeah. Well, good point, because in 2009, we had just done the Vedior deal, so we had synergies, certainly in countries like Belgium and Netherlands. That helped, because we were going to do that anyway, which we already did in the summer, so Q3 of 2008. We took the benefits in 2009 that we already had. We were just harvesting that, so that helps. At the same time, a big difference with 2009 is the reaction of governments. There are way more support schemes, which there were less of in those days. We're hopeful that that offsets.
As I said, our people, and probably good to mention is that probably all our European leaders have seen 2009. Rodrigo Martín in Spain going down 50%, Marco Ceresa in Italy, Herman Nijns in Belgium, Dominique coming from Belgium into the Netherlands, Richard Jager, long time with our business. They all seen it, so they know what to do. We have, I think, good access to government. We hope to know soon where we can also benefit as an employer, both for our flex workers and for our own staff.
Thank you.
Okay.
There's another question. Please state your name followed by your question. Go ahead.
Yes. Good morning.
Yes. Good morning.
Sylvia Barker from JPMorgan. Just going back to the cost base. Obviously we don't know how long this will last for. It's extremely sharp. Going back to Tom's question in terms of the branches, could you just remind us what part of your cost base is basically in the branches, and could you close them temporarily? How many of them are still running?
The branch is the least of our worries, because you never get a short-term benefit by closing them. Effectively, we're not using most of them, but yeah, we still need to pay. That's not it. As always, it's personnel. As I said, we try to damage our frontline the least possible. As management, executive board, top 500, we're already abstaining for any bonus provisions for this year. That helps. All to support as much our mid-term stability in the front end of the business. It's not the ability or the lack of ability. It's of course clear as such, no events, nothing with clients, marketing less, IT projects postponed.
We do the full gamut. Yeah. No travel. That's not even a decision we need to take. There's a lot of our cost which almost automatically goes down. There's variable pay, yeah, 10%-15%, hiring freeze. That's all the usual stuff out there. Then, yeah, then you come to your own people and again, ideally we can put them into, like we did in Germany, unemployment schemes and keep them on as long as we can and hit the ground running when we have the rebound.
For example, in France, have you put people on the kind of temporary unemployment scheme as well or?
It's too soon. Actually, that is really unknown. I've never seen it, and as you know, I'm 33 years in this business. As I said in my opening remarks, half of March until the second week of March, there was not a lot going on. Some degradation in Italy. Now, boom. It hits fully and we still need to see how deep, how long, and the unemployed. Of course, we're planning. Maybe for your information, our management always makes scenarios.
They always do that as part of budgeting anyway, and we just, in this case, downgrade the scenarios, and we can take it as it comes, and we want them to have actionable schemes within four weeks. We just make calls on countries and adding it up at a group level. That's how we work in these times in general, but certainly now.
Okay, thank you. Any payments from governments that you might be able to get a deferral on? We've heard from other companies that maybe they're not going to have to pay taxes or benefits for a while. Is that anything that you've heard about?
Yeah, absolutely. The tax-free payments or the kind of down payments due quarterly, that's all been adjusted already as we speak. We look into that in each and every country we have. There's, as you can imagine, all hands on deck to protect liquidity and not that we are in any issues there, but that is what you do when you are in times like those. Absolutely.
Okay. Thank you.
There's another question. Please state your name followed by your question. Go ahead.
Yes, you're on the call. I don't know who, but.
Hello, can you hear me?
Yeah.
Yeah. Hi, it's George Gregory from Exane. Good morning.
Hi, George
Jacques. Good morning, Henry. Just to be coming back to your very last point, actually, Jacques, around the government's employee support schemes. I appreciate that they have yet to kick in, but when you read what has been proposed, in terms of the coverage for France, the proposal in, I'm not going to try and pronounce the German scheme because I'll get it wrong.
Kurzarbeit.
There we go. Also obviously the scheme we've got here in the U.K. and other markets. Again, I appreciate that they haven't yet come into force, but based on the proposals, what sort of offset do you think they will afford you or could afford you?
Good question, George. What we do actually, we do top-down scenarios. Then we need to rely on our people because the situation is totally different per country. First of all, because of the sectors they are in. Some countries are differently hit than others. Then the schemes. Then they come up with scenarios which, yeah, the German system, as said, is a good system. That was a six weeks thing, but that was a year ago when we were hit but the country as such was not hit that much.
Now, just in the Netherlands alone, there is a system, but I think there's like within a week, 75,000 companies applying for it. There's also a bit of logistics here on how to manage it. We are calculating what we could be eligible for, but then we need to find out if and when we get the money. There might be quite some time lag here.
No, we've not brought that all up to top-down, because it's such a fast-moving space because to be eligible for a scheme in many countries you also need to have a certain drop down in revenue, which you cannot based on the first week of business. You need to show monthly numbers, that sort of thing. Also proof points takes time. Again, that's why it's all about prudence at the moment.
If we look at the schemes, am I right in thinking that currently Sweden and the U.K. have proposed the greatest coverage? I think Sweden is 90%, the U.K. up to 80%, obviously subject to the pay level. Could we do it in terms of?
I've really not done the numbers because.
Okay.
Sweden might be great for our own staff, but in Sweden, we have a different issue, is everybody's on our bench. We don't know yet if those schemes would also transpire into the people we employ in that sense. No, too early. Again
I see.
As I said, Q1 will share the most detail that we can. Again, you might now have short-term support, but if it lasts longer, we don't know it.
Okay.
On a positive note, there is clearly lots of movement.
Yeah
from authorities to keep structures in place and to avoid unemployment.
Absolutely.
That is a probably never seen dynamic in there.
No.
How it pans out remains to be seen, but that is really a positive.
No, it's absolutely, and that is, we think, a big difference with 2009. Yeah, good to see. Again, as I mentioned, but I'm gladly doing it again, I see a lot of leadership, great, impressive leadership from politicians in Europe. Yeah, we have not touched it.
I think there's something wrong with the line. There's another question. First, I'd like to make the statement, you can still create by pressing question remark, put on your telephone. Go ahead, only for the analyst.
Yeah, there's something funny. We have a dialing tone now.
Okay.
Robert, do you hear also the dialing tone?
Yes, I also hear it. I'm trying to locate it. There's only one line open.
Now it's gone.
Okay. Well, we go back to the question and answer session.
Yeah.
There's another question. Please go ahead. State your name followed by your question. Go ahead, your line is open.
Yes, you're on air. Hello? Jacques here. You have a question?
No.
No.
Ladies and gentlemen, you can still ask questions by pressing star one. Go ahead, star one for questions or remarks, only for analysts.
No, Robert, I think we've answered-
Yeah
as far as we can. Let me do some closing remarks. Thanks everybody for calling in. It's good to talk to you, actually, in these times, to share with you what we know or we don't know now. The final point I would like to make, this is all about prudence. This is not about survival, whatever. This is prudence. You know us as a company. We lack a lot of transparency in our markets, and that's why we're doing this. We'll keep you informed at the regular moments, next one being on our Q1. I wish you also in your business the best, and of course, stay healthy. Thank you very much.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the event call. You may now disconnect your line. Thank you. Have a nice day.