welcome you very warmly to today's annual shareholders meeting. I'm very happy that so many of you are attending. As the Chairman of the Supervisory Board, I should like to open the annual shareholders meeting, and according to Section 18, Number 1, I will chair this meeting. I'd like to welcome all of the shareholder representatives, ladies and gentlemen of the media, photographers, and all of the guests. Prior to going through the items on today's agenda, I'd like to ask you to rise from your seats. As always, we are commemorating all of the employees and retirees who passed away since the last annual shareholders meeting. Thank you. As you can see, all of the members of the Supervisory Board and of the Board of Executive Directors are present. On the Supervisory Board and the Board of Executive Directors, there will be changes.
I will briefly inform you about these changes. First of all, the Supervisory Board, with the end of the last annual shareholders meeting on the 29th of April, 2016, Mr. Wolfgang Daniel resigned from his mandate. I'd like to thank him for his more than 10 years on the Supervisory Board. Mr. Waldemar Helber, Deputy Chairman of the Works Council, and maybe the cameras can point out Mr. Helber. Deputy chairman of the Works Council of the Ludwigshafen of BASF SE is the replacement member elected by the employees representatives. Mr. Robert Oswald will today resign from his mandate. Mr. Sinischa Horvat, Chairman of the BASF Group Works Council. Mr. Horvat, he will step in for him. He will take his place. Turn around, please, for camera. Okay, you're faster than I am.
I cannot look up and read at the same time, you know. That's difficult. Allow me to say a few things about Robert Oswald, because I'd like to thank him, in particular, as a full-blooded BASF employee. For more than 40 years, you, Mr. Oswald, moved a social partnership in our company and beyond forward. For more than 15 years, you have been the Deputy Supervisory Board Chairman, and you always looked far into the future. You were future-oriented. You tried to make sure that people are taken care of, and integrity was your hallmark.
As a partner for many years, I can only tell you that the times we spent together, in good times and bad, even the difficult times, like the world financial crisis in 2008 and 2009, these times were a lot of fun for me together with you. You were extremely committed to BASF, and you worked hard for our company. We are very grateful to you, and we wish you the best health and much success for the future. Now, concerning the changes on the board of directors, Ms. Margret Suckale will retire with the end of this annual shareholders meeting. She's been on the board since 2011, and she was a work director, HR Director, responsible for engineering, maintenance, environmental protection, health and safety, European site and federal management, and human resources.
In the context of long-term planning for her succession, Dr. Harald Schwager will also leave the board today. He has been a member of the board of directors for almost 10 years. He most recently was responsible for Construction Chemicals, Region Europe Biotech Services. I'd like to thank Ms. Margret Suckale and Dr. Harald Schwager on behalf of the Supervisory Board and also on behalf of you. Thank you for your commitment. Thank you for working very well for BASF for many years, and thank you for the constructive cooperation. We wish you the very, very best for the future. There's another applause. The Supervisory Board, in its meeting on the 15th of December 2016, nominated Ms. Saori Dubourg and Mr. Markus Kamieth as members of the board of directors.
I'd like to introduce the two, board directors, the two new board directors. I'd like the two to rise from their seats. Now the cameras. Maybe you can turn around so that everybody can see you from the front, too. Ms. Saori Dubourg joined in 1996, and, after several positions, both at home and abroad, especially in Asia, she was the president of Nutrition and Health. As of tomorrow, on the board, she will be responsible for, production, chemicals, crop protection, bioscience, research in the region of Europe. Dr. Markus Kamieth joined BASF in 1999. After several positions, held in Germany and the United States, most recently, he was responsible as the president for Coatings in Münster.
On the board, he will be responsible for Care Chemicals, Nutrition & Health, Performance Chemicals, Advanced Materials and Systems Research, Region South America. Dear Ms. Saori Dubourg, dear Mr. Markus Kamieth, we wish you much luck in your new positions and we look forward to cooperating with you. Ladies and gentlemen, now I'd like to move on with the organization of the annual shareholders meeting. On the 31st of March 2017, this meeting was announced in the Federal Gazette, and the shareholders meeting has been called according to the law. All members and all of the participants have received the documents once again. At their request, I'll show you these documents so everybody can see them.
This is the invitation to the annual shareholders meetings, including the agenda and the information sheet for voting and the BASF annual report 2016. I will refer back to these documents in the course of this annual shareholders meeting, and it's worth it to read this report. It's very interesting. The notary public, Mr. Milser, is present. From your point of view, he's on the right-hand side in the front. There is signage, and he, Mr. Milser, will do the certification under the stock corporation law. Your entry ticket contains all of the information necessary for the list of participants and for the voting. Today, you were given a block of voting cards. If you have several entry tickets, you need one set of voting cards for each entry ticket.
If you leave the assembly before its end, please give one of our employees at the exit check your voting block, your voting slip block, because then they will change the details of the attendance. There are two types of cards for the shareholder representatives leaving prior to the end of the meeting and who want to be represented by somebody else for the vote. I'd like to point to the explanations in item two and three in the information sheet that was handed out to you. We would like to ask all of the shareholders, shareholder representatives who want to speak during the meeting to announce their request at one of the two request-to-speak tables. Please present your voting slip block and to use the form sheets that are available there.
Please make those requests to speak soon. Best of all, right now, so that we know how many speakers we will have to count on. The course of the annual meeting will not be recorded, and we would like you not to record it either. Please don't make any video recordings with your smartphones. This is simply due to the right to privacy of every individual. Because of this, and to avoid disturbances, we should like to ask you to switch off your mobile phones during the shareholders meetings. Please look again and please switch off your mobile phones now. Thank you. This year, there will be an electronic list of participants. There are two desks with screens near the president's seat of the notary public.
Now, you can watch the course of the event, not just here, but in the Musensaal, Gustav-Mahler-Saal, and other rooms. There will be a sound and a video transmission there. This year, you can also use different rooms in the Dorint Hotel. There is a bridge for pedestrians, so you can go to the conference center there at Level 2. Please use that. You can also take part in factory tours this year that will focus on innovation at BASF. You will hear how BASF develops new products and solutions for the challenges of the future. These factory tours will take from 11:00 A.M. until 4:00 P.M.
Those participants who would like to take part in the tours should have or should nominate somebody who can stand in for them during the voting or to present their voting sheet block as they leave. Even after the end of the annual meeting, there will be one more factory tour. Now I'll give the floor to Dr. Bock for the report of the Board of Directors.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders. On behalf of the Board of Directors, I'd like to welcome you to the annual meeting of BASF SE. Thank you for your interest in our company. BASF had a successful start to the new year. Sales volume, sales and earnings increased substantially. We achieved record earnings in the chemicals business.
We have proposed to you, our shareholders, that the dividend be raised once again to EUR 3 per share. The proposal reflects that we achieved our economic goals in 2016. After a moderate start to the year, our chemicals business grew in every quarter. At year-end, our earnings before interest and taxes, EBIT for short, were considerably higher. As expected, our sales and earnings in oil and gas business declined primarily as a result of the divestiture of the gas trading business at the end of 2015. The annual figures more than met our expectations. We also know that 2016 was a painful year for some families and for BASF. As a result of the accident on October 17 at the North Harbor of the Ludwigshafen site, four families lost sons, fathers, brothers and husbands.
The pain is still being felt today. Other families were worried about their injured relatives whose recovery was uncertain for a long time, and in some cases is still ongoing. For BASF employees, the accident and the loss of colleagues and friends came as a shock. We all know, you know that working in the chemical industry can mean handling dangerous materials. That is why we have such comprehensive safety measures, and that's why we have a rule we live by at BASF. We never compromise on safety in all our decisions. Human and environmental safety is fundamental for us, both in production and when our products are used. The authorities have not yet completed their investigation into the causes of the accident.
It is clear, however, that a mistake was made, which as far as anyone can tell, and in light of all of the precautionary measures should never have happened. During maintenance work, a cut was made in the wrong pipeline, which had not been emptied. This is no consolation to the relatives of the accident victims. Our thoughts are still with you, the families and friends, and with the injured. We wish a return to health for those injured. BASF will continue to provide support to them in the future, and we will do everything we can to ensure that an accident like this never happens again. Yet the accident also demonstrated the strength of the BASF team and this company.
The way our fire department, the doctors and paramedics worked with the emergency forces from the cities of Mannheim and Ludwigshafen to fight the fire and its aftermath was exemplary, quick, professional and also brave. Looking at the pictures immediately after the incident, all of us saw the pictures. Many thought that the site would be disrupted for months because a key logistics bottleneck was badly damaged or out of operation. Our team performed an incredible feat, getting logistics and production almost fully back to normal in a very short period of time. They worked day and night to achieve this. Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the Board of Executive Directors, I would like to thank all employees for this effort and for their unity with BASF. We stand together, and this solidarity makes us strong.
Dear shareholders, you can read in detail what BASF does for you in our annual report. It is especially worth taking a look at the online version in order to get to know BASF even better. This reading material often puts the focus on economic success, which is important to secure our future for research and development, for investments, and also for your dividend. Just as important are the protection of humans and the environment, as well as our social contributions. You will find a lot of interesting information about those, too. We focus on the conservation of natural resources, as well as safe and fair working conditions. In this way, we contribute at BASF to reaching the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals that were adopted in 2016.
We are pleased that BASF, as a leading European company, was just recognized for its contribution to reaching these global goals and reporting extensively on this. Today, I will present you with examples relating to the three dimensions, economic, environmental, and social. What goals have we set for ourselves, and what have we achieved? I will then tell you about how we want to further develop BASF and in particular, the role digitalization will play in this. Let me start with our business performance in 2016, the economic dimension. We reached our growth and earnings goals. In 2016, we wanted to sell more in our chemicals business to improve our earnings and to save costs at the same time, and we did it. Here are the most important key figures. Our sales volumes rose from quarter to quarter compared to the previous year.
Volumes were up by 2%. In our chemicals business, we sold 4% more. We therefore slightly exceeded the growth in global chemical production, and this is our objective. We were especially successful in Asia. We increased our sales volumes, improved substantially. This shows that our investments in plants as well as in research and development are paying off. Nevertheless, the growth in the chemicals business could not offset the decline in sales in the oil and gas segment due to lower oil and gas prices and in particular, the divestiture of our gas trading business. Sales and earnings did not surpass the previous year's level until the fourth quarter. In line with our expectations, sales therefore declined by 18% to EUR 57.6 billion.
Compared with the previous year, EBIT before special items of EUR 6.3 billion was 6% lower, while net income was 2% higher at EUR 4.1 billion. Our discipline with regard to expenditures and costs was important as it gave us room to maneuver. For example, our excellence program, Drive Efficiency, contributed EUR 350 million to earnings. After several years of high expenditures, as planned, we reduced our investments. They will, however, remain slightly higher than depreciation amortization in the future. This means we want to continue to grow in the future. How have each of these businesses developed? In the chemicals business, we delivered an impressive result. Earnings increased considerably in the segment's performance products and functional materials and solutions. The chemical segment was affected the most by the accident, but earnings nevertheless almost matched the previous year's levels.
Oil and gas. The average oil price in 2016 fell by around 15% on average to $44 per barrel of Brent crude. At the beginning of the year, it was even below $30, but we rolled up our sleeves, did our homework, lowered our costs, and still managed to produce nearly 10% more oil and gas. Earnings were down considerably compared with the previous year, also due to the lack of contributions from the gas trading business. That was what we had expected. In the crop protection business, we kept our earnings stable in a difficult market environment. This was a solid performance, especially in comparison to our competitors, although we had been planning for slightly more at the beginning of the year 2016.
Overall, we showed that we can do both, be very disciplined with our expenditures and grow at the same time. This is even more important in times of low oil and gas prices when this business, therefore, makes a considerably smaller contribution to our success. Here you can see this in a long-term comparison. Traditionally, the oil and gas segment has accounted for around 25% of EBIT before depreciation and amortization. But in 2016, this figure was just 15%. It is therefore even more important to improve the profitability of our chemicals and crop protection businesses year after year. In recent years, we've managed to do this by an average of around 5% annually.
Despite weak earnings in the oil and gas segment in 2016, we managed to finance our investments and pay out the dividend entirely from the funds we generated ourselves. Against this backdrop, we propose to raise the dividend once again by 10%, EUR 0.10 rather. EUR 0.10 . I mean, you may have wishes, but we'll give you EUR 0.10. More this time around. That's a proud increase to increase the dividend to E UR 3 per share, and that's EUR 2.8 billion to you, our shareholders. We thus remain true to our dividend policy. We aim to increase our dividend each year or at least maintain it at the previous year's levels if we are not able to increase it.
We have achieved this every year since 2001 with the exception of the crisis year, 2009, and this demonstrates that BASF is reliable. For you as shareholders, the share price also plays a decisive role. In 2016, our share price rose by 25% to reach EUR 88 at the end of the year. This was the third-best performance in the DAX 30. As you know, if you want to applaud, that's okay with me. As you know, it is not just the past twelve months, it's a marathon run, really.
If you look at longer period of time, you know, if you had invested EUR 1,000 in BASF shares 10 years ago and had reinvested the dividends in more stock, your shareholding would have been worth EUR 3,538 in 2016, and that would have achieved an annual return of 13.5%. That's better than the increase in the DAX 30 6%, the DJ EURO STOXX 50 1%, and the MSCI World Chemicals 7%. BASF's economic performance is impressive, but for us it is just as important how we achieve this. How do we fulfill our environmental and social responsibilities? Dear shareholders, you ask this question, and so do our customers, our neighbors, and employees. The answers to this question are becoming ever more important, and we do have answers.
Our purpose is we create chemistry for a sustainable future. We have criteria we use to examine our actions in terms of a sustainable future when we manage risks, when we make decisions about investments, or when customers use our products. Today, I want to focus on two topics. What is the significance of safe work at BASF, and how do we work together with our suppliers? Safety always comes first. Safety has two aspects which are equally important. How safe are our plans and processes, and are the people working at our sites doing so in a safe manner? We, as BASF, ensure that our chemical plants work processes are state-of-the-art. In our chemicals business, each year, 5%-10% of our investments are spent directly on measures relating to environmental protection, health, and safety.
The expenditures to constantly update our plants also mainly serve this purpose. In Ludwigshafen alone, last year we invested EUR 1.5 billion. As I said, the trend is rising. When making these spending decisions, safety always comes first. That is not enough. It is also vital that every employee knows how to act on a day-to-day basis in an exceptional situation and in an emergency too. At BASF, this comes as no surprise. We have concepts, rules, and regulations, training, and inspections. Around 1,400 employees worldwide work exclusively on safety. We organize training such as the Global Safety Days. This year, during one week, nearly 1,000 events took place at 360 sites. In this way, we want to raise our employees' risk awareness and learn from each other.
As part of the Safety Champions initiative, in Ludwigshafen we have a training center dedicated to making BASF safe. We trained 19,000 employees and partners there in 2016. Around the world, the corresponding figure was 118,000. The results, we are very safety conscious. We have high standards, and we have a very strong safety culture. The statistics bear this out. Our work-related accidents have decreased by more than 20% in the past five years. That's good, but not good enough from our point of view. Only every tenth accident involves chemical products. The lion's share of accidents involve everyday causes, such as tripping or slipping. Compared with the German chemical industry, the accident rate at BASF is four times lower. We know that nobody is interested in statistics. Figures mean nothing when an accident happens.
Every accident is one too many. We are working on decreasing the probability of accidents occurring. To do this, we are calling in external experts to evaluate our measures. We want to learn and become even better. I can promise you that. How do we handle this responsibility outside of our site gates? Well, this also has to do with safety. When it comes to social responsibility, it's all about what we do outside of the factory gates. One example is the UN Sustainable Development Goals for labor and social standards. These are particularly important for emerging markets. These countries are increasingly relevant to BASF, both as markets and as suppliers. We require that our suppliers recognize our code of conduct. This covers compliance with human rights as well as labor and social standards, protecting the environment and anti-discrimination policies.
As early as back in 2011, BASF and six leading chemical companies established the initiative Together for Sustainability, which now has 19 companies participating. We want to ensure that our suppliers uphold these standards. Last year, BASF audited more than 100 of our supplier's sites and commissioned more than 500 reports from external experts. If we identify deficiencies, we help our suppliers meet our standards. If our suppliers cannot or do not want to improve, we are not afraid to end the business relationship, and we did so twice in 2016 for the above-mentioned reasons. I think it is clear to all of us that BASF is not only focused on growth and economic success. For us, how we do this is at least as important. Some things require perseverance.
To us, sustainability also means that the short term should not take precedence over the long term. It's an old question: Should we invest for the future or make a fast buck now? It is a question that you also have to ask yourselves very often. What creates value for BASF and thus for you? Let's look forward into the future. How will we further develop BASF and our portfolio of businesses, and what opportunities does digitalization offer? BASF has a very broad portfolio, but most importantly, it is a highly effective one. Each of our businesses should achieve a leading market position if possible, especially in comparison with the competition. The Verbund helps us achieve this. Our factories are connected. The byproducts of one factory serve as raw materials for another factory. The heat given off by one plant supplies energy to the next plant.
As a result, we conserve raw materials and energy and lower our emissions and transport costs. Our competitors prove how modern and up-to-date our Verbund is because they try to copy our model as best they can. Our Verbund includes production and logistics as well as research and development and our market presence vis-à-vis our customers. One example is the automotive industry. There, as BASF worldwide, we achieve EUR 10 billion of our sales. We offer our customer solutions in more than 50 areas, ranging from coatings, catalysts and components for bodies and motors to electronics, batteries, engine coolants, and brake fluids. Our portfolio is constantly changing. We buy and sell businesses, both small and larger ones. When doing so, we ask ourselves one crucial question. This one question is important. What creates value for BASF? I'll give you three examples. Last December, we acquired Chemetall.
Chemetall is the market leader in the pretreatment of surfaces made of metal, plastic, and glass. I admit this sounds boring. The products, however, are very innovative, and they're geared towards specific requirements, and they are enormously important for the customers. For instance, in airplane construction, to harden turbines and make them more resistant. Now, with this acquisition, we expanded the business of BASF Coatings division. Our purchase of Rolic AG was a technology-driven acquisition. The Swiss company is a specialist for LCD and OLED displays for television, computers, and smartphones. With its patents and the expertise of its employees, we're making advances in electronic chemicals. In March, we agreed to combine our leather chemicals business with the Stahl Group. The Stahl Group is the leading supplier of leather chemicals. That's a product and business of BASF that is very old.
It hails from the nineteenth century. In the future, BASF will hold a stake of 16% in the firm, and this company will then even be higher performing in this market. In the future, we will continue to adapt our portfolio towards more growth and earning stability. We strengthen those activities, we do well, and we divest businesses that can create more value in someone else's hands. New products, better processes and investments, operational excellence and customer proximity, these are the core factors that make us competitive. In order to strengthen these, we also utilize digitalization. Many of you will associate digitalization more with risks and less with opportunities. We see mainly the opportunities for BASF since digitalization offers new and often unexpected possibilities. You all know the buzzwords Industry 4.0, big data, connectedness, and the Internet of Things.
Even though we do not yet know exactly what digital work will look like in the future, we are determined as BASF to take advantage of the opportunities it offers under the heading of 4.0. With this initiative, we bundle, focus, and accelerate many promising projects. What drives us to do this? In the future, we want to work with our customers and partners more seamlessly and develop new business opportunities. We want to make our factories even better and our logistics to be controlled even more elegantly. We see additional interesting opportunities in research, for example, because of the opportunities offered by artificial intelligence. Our research and development team was looking for a new very specialized surface coating for a customer. Well, actually, a computer did the job. Our scientists conducted the research.
They tried everything, but could not find a solution in spite of all of their decades-long experience, expertise, and persistence. We tried out a new technology where the computer made a suggestion, and all of the scientists said, "This doesn't make any sense. It contradicts all of our experience." We tested it in the lab and on the customer's premises, and it worked. This shows that digital technologies have led to a qualitative advance in knowledge that otherwise would have remained hidden. It's important. It's not just about speed. It's also about generating new knowledge. To this end, we are working with Hewlett Packard Enterprise, big computer company, on one of the world's largest supercomputers for industrial research in chemicals. This will give our scientists the best instruments for their models and simulations before they go into the lab.
In production, one aim is being able to better plan maintenance work. We can then better predict when we will have to replace a plant component like a pump because it may experience problems soon. Digitalization will also help us make processes even safer and improve the support of our teams in the plants. At our Ludwigshafen site, we are introducing a completely new digitally controlled transport system. Since April, we've been testing a self-driving remote-controlled vehicle. It fits perfectly in our sophisticated logistics operation, especially for the new tank containers, which will replace the tank rail cars. The prototype conceived by BASF is 60 meters long, has 32 wheels, and is very maneuverable. It can carry three times the payload, the tonnage of a conventional tanker vehicle.
Now we only need a few hours rather than an entire day from the time an order is placed until delivery. With a transport volume of several million metric tons per year in Ludwigshafen, this is valuable progress. It's worth it for our customers and the, for BASF. You can see this in 3D in the foyer. The first vehicle that we got, and I thought it was charming, was called Margaret by our employees. What a nice idea. Now, this is how you can, you know, make your name, famous, for a long time until eternity. We're also working with digital technologies at our customers, for example, in crop protection. Since 2016, we have offered farmers a digital application called Maglis. Maglis collects, interprets, and monitors data about crop management, including information about the weather, soil condition, conditions and weeds.
Maglis therefore helps farmers make the right decisions, and the result, better harvests, higher income, and less risk. Our application combines innovation, digitalization, and sustainability. It means farmers only use exactly the amount of crop protection products necessary. This will be even more important in the future. That is why we signed an agreement at the end of April to acquire ZedX, the U.S. firm as an expert in digital intelligence in agriculture. As you can see, we are working with an eye on the future, but we also make sure that our businesses are running well today. The first four months of this year were good for BASF. We had substantial growth, especially in Asia, and our sales and earnings increased considerably. Our oil and gas business continued to recover.
In light of many uncertainties, we will nevertheless continue to be economical, act cautiously, and closely monitor our costs and investments. This year, we want to achieve a slight improvement in earnings. In our language, this means an increase of up to 10%. Are we too cautious, too conservative, as some equity analysts claimed after the good first quarter? The second half of the year will show whether we are really being too modest, as the newspaper, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung wrote. The economy is growing, yet the political risks remain high around the world, but especially in Europe. This also includes the German federal election on September 24th. It would be nice if the new German government would lay the right groundwork for growth and more participation. A regulation that is not just well-intentioned, but that actually gives companies more flexibility, for example, for digital workplaces.
A predictable energy policy that actually reduces greenhouse gas emissions, stops creating energy winners and losers, and no longer punishes those who have in fact made their contribution, namely the chemical industry. A tax policy that encourages rather than discourages performance and dedication, and therefore increases the size of the pie that everybody would like to share. I hope that these will not just be pipe dreams for 2018, so that the chemistry will be right for our business. I hope, I was not just talking about, corporate taxes. I was talking about your taxes too. We have good chemistry here at BASF. Also, in our Board of Executive Directors, we work well and happily together. Today, Margret Suckale and Harald Schwager are leaving the Board of Executive Directors.
The Supervisory Board has appointed Saori Dubourg, formerly head of the Nutrition & Health division, and Markus Kamieth, previously head of the Coatings division, as members of the Board of Executive Directors. I'm looking forward to working together, and I wish them both a lot of success and enjoyment of their new roles. To conclude, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to say thank you. Margret Suckale came to BASF in 2009 and has been a member of the Board of Executive Directors since 2011. Her role as industry relations director included human resources, but in fact, her responsibilities were much broader and also included the Ludwigshafen site with its 35,000 employees, engineering, environmental protection and safety. These are vital and highly complex responsibilities.
Appointing a board member from outside to BASF was an experiment, Margret, and it turned out to be a great success. Margret, you were the right woman for the job. Harald Schwager has been with BASF for 29 years. From joining the company as a chemist in polymer research, you eventually headed up the Ludwigshafen site and then joined our board of executive directors in 2008. You have been industrial relations director and were later in charge of our oil and gas segment, as well as the region Europe Crop Protection and our construction chemicals business. You're heading north, and we wish you all the best and lots of success with your new challenge. Today is also, Mr. Hambrecht mentioned this, today is the last time Robert Oswald will be sitting here on the podium.
Dear Mr.
Oswald, for 17 years you have been the head of the works council, and you were a member for 27 years. You came to BASF nearly 47 years ago as an apprentice chemical lab technician from the Bavarian Forest. With your departure, the board and BASF are losing a dialogue and negotiating partner with a lot of humor, somebody both smart and assertive, but somebody who was also very fair in negotiations and discussions. You have set milestones, not least the 5 side agreements that benefit the employees as well as BASF. Thank you very much for that. I'd like to thank you, dear shareholders, for your trust in BASF and your interest in the company. BASF's economic performance is impressive, as we believe, but it is just as important how we achieve this.
I hope you will continue to support us in the future, and I look forward to the discussion with you. Thank you.