Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to our analyst investor conference call on results for the third quarter of 2018. On the call with me today are Thomas Schulz, our CEO, and Michael Bernhardt, member of the Executive Board. We will start now with the presentation, which will be followed by a Q&A session. With this, I would like to hand over to Thomas Schulz.
Thank you, Bettina, and also from myself, good afternoon and welcome to our Q3 call. If you look at the headlines, you'll see that we're definitely on track. What does help, of course, is the favorable business environment. We've been able to report yet another quarter book-to-bill greater than one. That makes it four out of five quarters. Underlying growth is in place. Conversion of those orders into revenue also on track. As you see that our revenue again has grown vis-à-vis the same quarter last year. EBITDA adjusted is slightly higher. EBIT reported is a definite improvement on the prior year, we'll go into those numbers very shortly. Net profit has improved, that we have such a thing as a red zero. Maybe it's not quite zero, but just a little bit below. Also there, tracking in the right direction.
You'll see that cash flow is good. Operating cash is actually positive, which also gives us strength and reaffirms our commitment to the plan 2020. Of course, based on all what I've just told you, no surprise that we're on track on our outlook for 2018. Boring performance, we like that. We're proud of that. We're making progress. These many small steps we mentioned before, delivering on our commitments. I'd like to say a few things before Bettina gets into the numbers on the market and the trends, beginning with E&P, essentially our project business. No surprise, a favorable environment in oil and gas. Our customers are making money. That is good for the business, good for us. They're spending some of that money.
In Europe, typically on brownfield development, facility enhancements, expansions, and build-outs. Whereas in the U.S., it's definitely around greenfield investments and new plants. There is another interesting development in the U.S., a gap growing between downstream and upstream, specifically around shale gas. A lot of new projects around shale gas are coming to fruition, coming onstream. They require Y-grades, which essentially is the liquid part of the gas. Upstream is producing enough gas, there's not enough conversion activity or midstream, if you like. That's being converted in form of cryogenic units or strippers, as we call them. That is favorable for us because we have a good track record in building these strippers. We've built 30 in total. We're currently working on five. That's up from three same time last year, we have about 20 of those on the radar screen.
I think at least for the building the business, we have a good pipeline that we're currently working on and a good pipeline ahead of us in construction activity around the U.S. shale gas. Moving on to chemicals and petrochemicals, similar story. Greenfield investments continue in Europe. New projects in the U.S. These are actual projects where the customers are soliciting bids around EPC. Finally, I think what is really very affirming is the fact that in the Middle East, a lot of early signs on significant investments. I think you've seen them in Saudi around SABIC, around Jubail, and then Abu Dhabi wanting to do Sindalah, around Borouge, talking about EUR 40 billion+ investments. I think you would have read a couple of weeks ago, Abu Dhabi saying that they wish to increase their oil production up to 5 million barrels a day.
All of that, of course, is significant investment. Good news for us because we're well-positioned in Abu Dhabi. We're well-positioned with ADNOC. Energy utilities for us is a flat arrow there. No uptake, but no downtake either. We're still doing well in nuclear around refurbishments in France. We're still on track for Hinkley Point. That will materialize I think next year, but we're already embedded in the customer's organization in Bristol and already working on early parts of the project. What's also been good for us, we've mentioned a few times, is the emissions environment around ships. The IMO, International Maritime Organization, is enforcing its low sulfur requirements. That in turn is yielding in orders for us for our scrubbers. We have reported significant order intake in the 3rd quarter, and we still continue to see a lot of signs from the customers.
It is a tight market, high demand, low supply, and that's really good news for us. Rounding up on the project business is pharma and biopharma. We see continued strong demand. We've actually made our first sale into Russia, which I think we'll be announcing soon. Also, the Far East continues to draw on our availability, on our modules, on our know-how. I think pharma has been for us about 20% compound annual growth and continuing to be so throughout 2018 and also expected to be so in 2019. That's the 4th arrow definitely pointing up. In MMO, our modification maintenance operations market, oil and gas, the London North Sea. The customer's cash flow is driving our revenue. Their cash flow is good. Shell and BP both reporting more than EUR 11 billion in Q3. Equinor, Statoil reporting more than EUR 4 billion in Q3.
Of course, that cash strengthens the balance sheet, allows them to catch up on delayed maintenance work. As I mentioned, we're seeing that in our revenues. The North Sea on both sides, the U.K. side and the Norway side, very favorable for us. Chemicals and petrochemicals, a lot of turnarounds being planned in Europe, roughly 90 a year. It's 2018, but already are booked to the full for 2019, and we're doing planning work on 2020, leading 2021. There is, again, I would say, stability at a high level for chem and petrochem in Europe. Energy utility, I think, fairly flat, as the arrow shows. We're still well-positioned. We're doing very well in Saudi and Kuwait, and quite happy to be there. Finally rounding up on metallurgy.
Aluminum is good. Also steel, especially European steel, is now coming back and asking for quotes on long-term service agreements. We get an arrow up for metallurgy, especially around Europe. I think that's the very fast roundup. I'm sure we'll get into more detail on questions. With that, I'll hand it back to Bettina and ask you to walk us through the details on the numbers. Over to you, Bettina.
Thank you, Thomas. Now some details on the financials starting on page six. The positive momentum in orders received continues. The 6% organic year-on-year increase in Q3 was especially driven by a strong E&T segment against a comparably weak prior year quarter. A number of new contracts awarded for scrubber systems for the shipping industry contributed to this growth. Order backlog grew by 13% organically, building the base for future sales growth. Book-to-bill in Q3 was again at 1.1 despite a significant growth in sales. Now to page seven. Revenue was up 8% organically as a result of positive development in both segments. EBITDA adjusted of EUR 22 million improved slightly, whereas margin was on prior year level. As you might remember, the prior year quarter was impacted by a positive one-off effect in E&T.
Burdens from special items decreased from EUR 26 million to EUR 11 million, resulting in an EBITDA reported of EUR 11 million. This includes EUR 7 million restructuring costs and EUR 5 million IT investments for our process and system harmonization projects. There was also a small positive effect in compliance due to timing issues. Costs in Q2 were expensed, which were in Q3 offset by the release of the corresponding provision. For 2018, we expect special items in EBITDA to amount to approximately EUR 50 million, as already communicated last year. Now to page eight. Regarding both the adjusted gross margin and adjusted SG&A ratio, we have seen a positive trend in the third quarter of 2018. Adjusted gross margin in Q3 was at 9.5% and thereby below the third quarter of 2017, which was supported by project closeouts in E&T, as mentioned.
The SG&A expenses improved sequentially, were higher than the especially good prior year quarter. The recent figure of EUR 91 million now includes some expenses related to business development and digitalization, which are expected to sum up to EUR 20 million for the full year 2018. The adjusted SG&A ratio stands now at 8.6%. Our target is to reach approximately 7.5% by 2020. Turning to E&T on page nine. Orders received were up by 64% on a reported basis and 16.3% organically. This is impressive. We have seen this strong growth, however, against a low comparable. A number of new contracts awarded for ship scrubbers contributed to this growth. This was in total more than EUR 60 million. Revenue has increased 10% organically, and the book-to-bill ratio was 1.5.
We still have underutilization, especially in some ex-power entities. This should be filled up step by step going forward with orders also from the nuclear sector. Overall, we have realized an adjusted EBITDA of EUR 4 million against EUR 10 million in the prior year, as I said, which included some positive project closeouts. For 2018, we expect an organic stabilization of revenues combined with a significant increase in earnings, turning EBITDA adjusted back into positive territory. We look at MMO on page 10. For MMO, we have seen an organic decrease in orders received of 15% due to high comparables. The prior year quarter, as well as the first half of this year, were positively impacted by catch-up effects and the entry of new framework contracts, i.e., we have now seen a more normalized level also expected for Q4 on a similar level. Revenue in MMO grew by 8% organically.
Regarding earnings, EBITDA adjusted increased to EUR 37 million in Q3, resulting in an improved EBITDA adjusted margin of 5.2%. In the prior year, we had seen a depressed margin due to new contracts, which have in the meantime increased their efficiency strongly. For 2018, we continue to expect a slight improvement in EBITDA adjusted. Looking now at OOP on page 11. In other operations, we have made good progress on our M&A track. All 13 dilutive units have been either sold or terminated by the first half of 2018. Regarding our accretive units, we are in the sales process for two of the four units right now. Looking at the business development of OOP, we have seen a positive development in orders received in Q3, which amounted to EUR 58 million and was organically 29% above prior year.
Revenue has been declining to EUR 45 million in Q3, being organically 2% below the prior year quarter. This was mainly driven by our South African entity, which is facing delays in customer requests due to their currently difficult situation. Looking at earnings, EBITDA adjusted slightly improved from minus EUR 2 million to breakeven. For the full year 2018, we expect a decrease in revenue and a significant improvement in EBITDA adjusted in this segment, last but not least, due to the completed sale of the dilutive entities. Turning to page 12. Reported net profit improved significantly to minus EUR 1 million as a consequence of a lower amount of special items. In this quarter, there was no change to the valuation of the Apleona Preferred Participation Note.
The next review of the book value of the PPM will be done in the year-end closing on the base of Apleona's financial performance, planning, and financial parameters, potentially leading to another valuation upside as long as the asset continues to develop so positively. Adjusted net profit was stable at EUR 13 million. The figure is excluding special items in EBITDA and is reflecting a normalized tax rate of currently 31%. Adjusted operating cash flow decreased a bit in Q3 against prior year. It was positive. Recorded operating cash flow as well as free cash flow increased against prior year. Our target for 2018 remains to reach a positive free cash flow on an adjusted base. We expect a significant win-back in working capital in Q4.
Having a closer look on that, net trade assets in absolute terms as well as in days increased in Q3, both year-on-year and sequentially. This is not satisfactory. However, there were some negative effects resulting from the migration of ERP systems. For example, we paid some suppliers early before the go-live of the system in some important entities. For the fourth quarter, we expect a significant release of working capital, also leading to better MTA numbers. Net debt has increased to EUR 37 million at the end of Q3, and the development of liquidity was again significantly impacted by the meanwhile completed share buyback program. For the year-end, we do expect to be back in a net cash position due to cash earnings and the swing back in working capital. With this, I hand it back to Thomas.
Thank you, Bettina. I think, ladies and gentlemen, you see that all of our numbers are up except for one, which is then, that's the headcount. We're doing more with less. We're driving efficiency, we're driving productivity, that gives us high confidence to achieve our outlook. Just to recall what that outlook is on the final page here. Organic growth in the mid-single-digit % range. Mid is obviously 5%. I think we'll do a little better than that given momentum, I think we can, compared to a soft or a very good quarter last year, I think we're going to do well in the fourth quarter this year. Quite frankly, the 5% is going to be at the low end of our own expectations. Revenue organically stable to slightly growing. I think underlying the slightly growing.
We have been growing in the last quarters. We'll do, I think, similar, driven by a strong backlog in the fourth quarter. For me, anything below slightly growing would be a little bit short of the mark, but we're confident there also decently. Finally, on the EBITDA adjusted three last year on account of the very poor Q2. I think we talked a lot about that last year. This year, we said we would increase significantly mid to high double digits, nearly in the mid. We thought we'd try to put a bandwidth on that. For the year, we're looking at EUR 60 million to EUR 75 million, which gives you, I think, a little bit more upper and lower bandwidth in terms of our expectations. We also show you our strategy horizons as we close out. You would have seen the big green tick mark the last quarter.
We went into the buildup phase. The tick mark we assigned ourselves in this quarter is around the share buyback plan. You recall that that plan was sanctioned by the board to buy back 10% of the shares or spend EUR 150 million, whichever came sooner. It was the latter, the EUR 150 million, which we reached in September, therefore, we concluded the buyback program. We announced that, we gave ourselves the tick here. In essence, we're on track. Our strategy, three phases, a lot of small steps. It is hard work. I don't deny that. We are making progress. We are confident, I think the results show why we're confident, why we're confident not only for 2018 but also going forward to 2019 and ultimately 2020. With that, I will pause and hand over back to Bettina, happy to take your questions.
Thank you.
We would now be happy to take any questions you may have. If you would like to ask a question, please press 0 and 1 on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press 0 and 2. I repeat, to ask a question, please press 0 and 1. The first question comes from Gregor Kuglitsch from UBS.
Hi, good afternoon. I've got two questions. From the guidance, obviously EUR 25 million range with kind of one quarter left is obviously pretty wide. Can you maybe elaborate why that is? Is it to do with closeouts of various projects that there's some uncertainty around? Because I'm kind of calculating, kind of EUR 20 million-EUR 50 million, if this is rounded for the fourth quarter, which is obviously a pretty wide range. Secondly, on the cash flow. I think you said in your statement that you expect to see the net cash balance, the EUR 37 million, which is currently net debt, to become net cash. Obviously, we can all see that you've done another, I don't know, EUR 25 million of buyback in the fourth quarter.
I want to understand what gives you the confidence that flows back, and if you can perhaps kind of update us on how the sort of special item unwind is happening, because maybe that's probably the answer that it's a little bit less. One maybe broader question. We're now at the end of 2018. 2020 is obviously not very far away anymore. I'm guessing the orders you are taking in now kind of already will probably extend into 2020 in terms of delivery. Can you give us some confidence or perhaps some detail as to, are you actually seeing the growth margin uplift in the new orders that you're kind of targeting to get there? How much sequential improvement in the market do you need, in other words, to get to that 5% that you've laid out previously?
Thank you.
Okay. Let me begin and maybe hand to Bettina for some of the granularity. First and foremost, on the range. When you're dealing with large numbers, it's easy to deal with a small range. When you have small numbers, the range becomes very germane. We've been very careful for reasons that I think I don't need to go into. Our past performance was not always as predictable as we think we are today. One of the reasons we are predictable is that we take care to make sure that we stay within expectations. We do a lot of work on trying to forecast to avoid surprises. When we do that, we typically, these are internal processes, we have something called the MOR, the Monthly Operating Review. In that, we look at the upside and the downside.
When we run those numbers, we come to a EUR 60 million plus or minus number for the quarter, and that essentially gives us a range. There are still things within our ability. I'll give you an example. When we do projects, especially large capital projects, we don't report any profit until we're 20% complete. You recall that we announced a project towards the end of Q2. This was the project for Linde out in McAllen, Nebraska, and in Texas. That project is approaching the 20% completion mark, but it's not there yet. Only when it does so do we recognize the profit. You see the kind of variance we're working with. Assuming it comes in, of course, it goes up. If it doesn't materialize 20%, there's no negative effect, but it'll be zero.
When we add up all these effects, we're at the EUR 60 million plus or minus sensitivity, and that gives us really the bandwidth. We ourselves, of course, are pushing as hard as we can. We had a very good fourth quarter last year, we need to do something similar to come in the range of our expectations. You mentioned cash flow. Let me pass that to Bettina, but also say immediately, we've concluded the buyback, the buyback has no impact in cash flow in
The latter end forecasting our cash flow towards the latter part of the year. Over to you, Bettina.
Thank you. Yeah, looking at the cash situation, we had after nine months, we had EUR 95 million minus of adjusted free cash flow, and we have the target to break even at least for the year-end. That means only from that side, we expect roughly EUR 100 million positive effect coming then from cash earnings and a positive swing back in net working capital. This is partly a normal seasonality coming back towards end of the year, but it also reflects the strong focus we have on that topic. We definitely have to have a lot of activities going on to make sure that we bill in time and that we get in the working capital in the right direction. As I said, the minus EUR 95 million adjusted free cash flow right now after nine months should go back to at least zero.
We will also have some net CapEx and some cash out from special items and also some leftovers from the share buyback in October, which is in the meantime completed. Overall, this should cover then the net cash situation in a way that it can be back into positive territory. This is at least what we have in our planning.
Okay. Thank you.
Let me take the more complex one, that is the question of margins going forward. If I look at our two segments, the service segment or MMO, and then the project segment, E&T, I think the MMO one is, let's say, predictable. We work within a bandwidth of 4.5%-5.5%. You see that our Q3 performance this year, it's shown on page 10, 5.5%, which is up from the 4.4% in the prior year. It shows you that we're moving in the right direction. As we've been able to take in more orders. I know that order intake in Q3 this year wasn't as high as last year, but you see the revenue progression, you see that our backlog's increasing. We're able to be a little bit more selective on our customers.
We're able to push back a little bit, that gives us the confidence that going ahead, we're going to remain in the middle to upper part of that bandwidth, we're able to achieve the margins we set ourselves as targets for 2020. On the E&T part, this is a more challenging issue, also there, we're making good progress. The EUR 2.8 billion in total backlog we have, we look at the quality of that backlog. The margin quality is up on the prior year. It's up on the prior quarter, it's moving in the right direction. What is driving that is, I think, a little bit of a firmer business environment, also the ability for us to extend scope into the higher margin areas. We talked about the scrubbers. The scrubbers are 3%, 4%, 5% higher gross margins in our run rate.
There's an uplift. It's only a small amount. Our order intake on scrubbers was EUR 65 million in Q3. That's having a marked effect. As we go forward, we expect that order intake to continue to increase. We expect the margins to continue to go up because it is a seller's market, much more demand than supply, therefore that is the second component. The third component will be around portfolio rotation. As we go through our budgeting process, we see that some of the companies have been coming out, the dilutive companies that we referred to. That was priority one, to eliminate them from our performance. Priority two, we can take a little bit more time with, we're equally focused on, that is taking low margin business, margin that's below our ultimate target.
If we find a buyer we've been approached in one or two cases, we are interested to enter a dialogue. We will then sell such companies then convert the returns of those sales into bolt-on acquisitions, which is concurrent with our phase 2 of the strategy, essentially look at picking up higher margin businesses that we can then add on and continue to be accretive to our overall margin targets. The three focus: customers or being selective on customers, scope development, and ultimately portfolio rotations will continue to add our already current, our very slow momentum on picking up the gross margin.
Okay. Thank you very much. Very clear.
The next question comes from Norbert with Deutsche Bank.
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Two questions, if I may. First, on the E&T business, you mentioned again the overcapacities. Maybe can you shed some light on where these overcapacities are allocated at this time? Maybe you can give us an idea about clustering, what dimension of sales are affected, and also maybe indicate how the order intake and in particular also the project pipeline is with respect to these capacities. Second, on the order intake in the MMO business, book-to-bill was 0.9 times in Q3. You mentioned that the driver was also that there have been some framework orders being booked in H1.
Can you maybe shed some more light on the drivers of the 0.9 times with regards to the current project pipeline? To put it in other words, is this sort of a short-term temporary exhaustion, or is this rather a trend that we would have to look at with regards to, say, Q4, Q1 going forward also to see book-to-bill below one time?
Okay. Thank you for the question, Norbert Reis . I will begin with the overcapacity that we referred to on and off. This really is around one of our business lines focused on nuclear. We have been referring to Hinkley Point and the expectation of a large order for some time. Until that order is in-house, it means that we are holding capacity for the order. That is an unfortunate statement because normally if you have excess capacity, you would like to unload that and take the cost in line with the business level. In this case, that excess capacity is also part of our qualification for the business.
The customer that ultimately will then give us the work, that is EDF, that gives the work based on our ability to execute and that is driven by the people, by the certification, by their know-how and expertise in welding very close to nuclear reactors. For that reason, yes, we have been holding capacity. We still do expect that contract to materialize. If I listen to the customer, it is in Q4 this year. I am a little skeptical there. I think it is more late Q1, early Q2, but it will come because, as I said, we are already embedded there. We are already in the customer's team working on the early phase of that project. That, of course, gives us a very good position to negotiate the right kind of margin quality required to meet our 2020 targets.
I think, on MMO, you asked about the backlog and the 0.9. When you look at the overall order backlog, I am sorry, you quoted the book-to-bill ratio. If you look at the overall backlog, and we have it again mentioned on page 10, we are 3% higher than we were last year. Last year, we actually recorded a number of projects that came in, multi-year projects. Our accounting is such that even if there is a five-year on the page last year, the 14-year contract, as we negotiated, agreed, and signed with Equinor, we only ever show 12 months of that at a time. Although our backlog is shown to be EUR 1.7 billion in MMO, if we were to unravel the whole thing and show all the forward-looking contracts, it will be even higher. We are kind of content with that.
We have a stable business, we have long-term contracts, and we are not too worried about the volatility of one quarter or the other.
That's good to know. Very helpful. Thanks.
There are no further questions at the moment. If you want to ask a question, please press zero and one. Next question comes from Jasmin Dentz.
Yes. My first question is on the nuclear business, because you mentioned that you hold some capacities free in order to be available to take those order in. How sure are you that those orders will come in in the first half of 2019? What is the risk that it might be even postponed a year further? Also related to this, are the client paying you to some extent for those capacities you hold free?
Good question, and thank you for that. I've been to the site, personally. I went to Hinkley Point in September, and while I was there, I signed a big poster. I didn't sign a contract, but I signed a big poster along with, I think, 10 other CEOs of various companies that are working on the project. Hinkley Point is budgeted to be roughly GBP 16 billion, the cost of the project. There are GBP 5 billion into the project, so one third. There are 3,800 people working on site, and it is quite spectacular when you're there and you see the extent. This is a real project. It's materializing. It's moving forward. The other CEOs have signed their contracts, and as well signing the big poster. They were signing for early work, so a lot of foundation work, a lot of painting and scaffolding.
We could have been part of that consortium. We chose not to be. We chose to hold out a little bit longer, and for our own expertise, which as I mentioned, is around very high-skilled welding, close to the nuclear reactor. Our track record is Olkiluoto in Finland. Our track record is also the request of the very same client, not Olkiluoto, but EDF in this case, for us to come in Flamanville and do some of the remediation work on other people's welding. All the signs are there that yes, it will come to us. We are discussing, negotiating the contracts with the customer. The people that we have in the customer's office for the early upfront work, yes, it's being paid for. That early upfront contract also we signed in September. Therefore, other than that, I can't give you any more confidence. I'm very confident.
If you'd like to bet a bottle of wine, I will take you up on your bet. It will come our way. It will be good margins. If it doesn't come in the first half of 2019, then the overall project, a 15 billion GBP project, will see significant delays. I think that really isn't worth the hold-up on a small part of the project. I can't get more confident than that, and I hope some of that is at least convincing to you as well.
Okay. Thank you. That's helpful. The second one is regarding those turnaround project you are indicating for the chemicals industry in 2019 and 2020. Could you give us a rough feeling? What about the volumes you could face in that period for 2019 and 2020?
Yeah, I think we're still looking at that. Obviously, we'd like to take as much as possible, but without putting our customers at risk. What we've been able to do, you recall that last, I think early Q1, we mentioned that of our accretive companies in OOP, we originally had five. One of them we pulled back, and that's a company called VAM in Austria. The reason we pulled them back is that they are a specialist in turnaround projects. Although they're based in Austria, they're quite used to doing projects outside of Austria, as far away as Chile, to be honest, and even in parts of Africa. Those are not turnaround projects, by the way. They were previous projects in hydro power generation. Turnaround projects they've been doing in Finland over last year. They've done some in Germany.
Overall, it's becoming a stronger focus of Bilfinger because what we recognize is that customers have moved away from trying to put turnarounds in the hands of many companies, and they're saying, "We want to reduce interfaces. It may cost a little bit more money, but we also then de-risk the project." De-risking is important because if a turnaround drags on by one or two days later than planned, that, of course, is a lot of money going into our production. We think we're well-positioned to do that. We can ramp up 200 or 300 people at a time. If I look back on 2016, I think we had about EUR 20 million in turnaround revenue in 2016. That's the year I arrived. We had very little in 2017. We had very little in 2018 and 2019.
We expect that to begin to come in, and it comes in also at higher margins. Again, a margin story. We're still fine-tuning, but we think well upwards of EUR 20 million is possible. It's not hundreds of millions, but it is a good uptake, and more important, it's actually a margin uptake for us.
Okay. The final one is on your digital spend. Could you give us a feeling what was the figure for a digital spend after nine months? Maybe also an indication what you would now expect to see in spending in fiscal 2019.
Yeah, I think at the outset of the year, we said it could be as high as EUR 10 million for the year. I think we're going to be well below that come the end of the year. It'll ramp up towards EUR 10 million next year on spending. On the other hand, we are also beginning to see revenue coming in. It's coming in drips. We have our first orders, commercial orders. We've been doing demos until now, but we have roughly our first EUR 250,000 in commercial orders came in in the quarter. Our target for next year is half of the cost that we have to be covered by revenue. Not quite breakeven. Breakeven, as you recall, was for year three. We are on track a little bit short on the spending this year. We'll catch up on that as we bring around people.
The good news is that revenue is beginning to trickle in.
Okay. Thank you.
If you want to ask a question, please press zero and one. The next question comes from Christian.
Thank you very much. I just have one, and that is related to the monitor from the U.S. Department of Justice. Unfortunately, I was a little bit late, so I'm not sure if you already mentioned anything about that. Is there any update that you could give us right now? Thank you very much.
No, we didn't talk about that. It's the first question in that direction. As you recall, DPA is programmed to end on December the 9th, as is the monitorship. In the past quarters, past statements, and some interviews as well, we've been quite confident that both the DPA and the monitorship will end on December 9th. That hasn't changed. You should be looking for announcements on December 10th. Until we're there, we're crossing our fingers, but we are highly confident. December 9th is the official date when we can then finally say it's behind us, but we're not quite there yet. Very high confidence.
All right. Thank you very much. Let's take it from there.
There are no further questions right now. We conclude this presentation and this Q&A session. If there's more, don't hesitate to contact the IR team. Thank you very much for joining, and have a good day. Bye-bye.