Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the KWS nine months 2022/2023 results call. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode. The floor will be open for questions following the presentation. Let me now turn the floor over to your host, Eva Kienle.
Thank you very much. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Eva Kienle. I am the CFO of KWS Group. I am happy to present you very positive results for our first nine months. Welcome to the occasion of this conference call. Let's look into the details. I'm very pleased to report to you today about a very successful business performance in the first nine months of the current financial year 2022/2023. Not only do we benefit from a very positive conditions in the agricultural market, but also from the continued strong performance of our innovative product portfolio. We increased sales by around 25% and achieved a significant growth in all crop segments. To a certain extent, seasonal shifting effects, meaning slightly earlier deliveries than in the same period of the previous year, also contributed to this.
Nevertheless, we expect a significant double-digit growth in the range of 15% for the fiscal year as a whole, which is at the upper end of our previous forecast range. Our growth this year is mainly attributable to higher selling prices, which enable us to more than compensate for inflationary cost increases. This is also reflected in our EBIT performance, where we recorded an outstanding increase of around 30%. With good visibility for the remaining weeks of the fiscal year, we have once again raised our forecasts, both in terms of sales as well as EBIT margin. All in all, this is a very pleasing picture so that we can also subscribe to another record year for KWS.
Looking at the current market developments, it can be said that agricultural commodity prices have moved away from their highs, but are still well above the historical average of recent years, creating a positive business environment for both farmers and seed companies. We are currently in the process of finalizing our business plans for the upcoming financial years, which we look at in great confidence. Although the particular high growth rates of the last two years will likely not be achieved so easily. After these introductory remarks, let's now take a look at our key financial figures in the first nine months. In the increased sales of 25%, exchange rate effects had only a slight impact on sales all in all.
Positive foreign exchange effects, especially from the Brazilian reals and from countries in Eastern Europe, were largely offset by the negative impact of highly inflationary countries, Argentina and Turkey. EBITA and EBIT increased overproportionally by 32% and 40% respectively. In our financial results, we have recorded a significant decline to almost EUR 90 million, both higher interest expenses and a decline in earnings from our equity accounted joint ventures had a negative impact here. For the year as a whole, we expect these effects to continue. The bottom line is a significant increase in net income or earnings per share of around 32%. In terms of operating cash flow, we continue to be in negative territory due to the seasonality of our business, but at the level of the previous year, which I believe is a good success in view of our significant expansion of business.
In terms of capital expenditures, we are developing in line with our expectations of around EUR 100 million capital expenditure for the total year. Net debt increased again on the reporting date due to seasonal factors. A reduction is expected at the end of the financial year, especially with regard to short-term financing. Let's move on to the individual product segments. Sales in the corn segment increased by 25%, and we are thus well on track to break the EUR 1 billion level in sales this fiscal year. Growth in the corn segment was once again driven by Brazil and Europe, where we achieved a very strong performance with our high-performance corn hybrids. Our North American joint venture, AgReliant, on the other hand, recorded again disappointing sales with declining volumes.
In the course of the positive sales development, the segment's results also rose significantly from EUR 73 million to EUR 93 million, driven by our European business and an increase in earnings in Brazil. For the corn segment, we continue to expect a significant increase in sales in the current fiscal year, but now expect an EBIT margin slightly below the previous year's level due to lower earning contributions from AgReliant. Let's move on to the sugar beet segment. With also a 25% increase in sales and overall stable acreage for sugar beets, we are once again underpinning our position as a global market leader in this area. This development is closely linked to the success of our innovations, such as CONVISO SMART and Cercospora Plus, CR+, which now account for 40% of our total sales.
In the fourth quarter, we expect further sales for the segment, especially in North America, that nothing should stand in the way of another record year for sugar beet. The positive business development is also reflected in earnings, where the EBIT rose from EUR 162 million to EUR 195 million. This already includes a write-off from the destruction of stocks as a result of changes in the direct regulatory framework for crop protection products in Europe in a mid-single-digit million range. Against the backdrop of a strong business performance, we continue to expect significant sales growth for the year as a whole, now even expect a slight improvement in margins compared to the previous year. Now let's move on to the cereals segment, which already generates the majority of the business in the first half of the fiscal year.
Here we achieved a strong increase of 20% compared to the previous year. The main driver of growth was once again our rapeseed business, with an increase of 33%, followed by wheat and rye. In addition to the mentioned crops, sorghum, a less well-known but very robust and healthy cereal, also recorded an increase, especially in Brazil. The segment's very positive business performance is also reflected in our earning figures. With an EBIT of EUR 72 million, we achieved significant year-on-year growth driven by price effects and product mix. We are also raising our forecast for the cereals segment slightly for the year as a whole and expect a slight increase in profitability. Coming now to our Vegetables segment, which has now returned to growth after challenging two years, mainly due to COVID.
As expected, we are seeing a normalization of demand here and are recording a growth path, especially in sales of spinach seeds to the U.S. and China. This also contributes to a significant improvement in the segment's underlying profitability. Excluding the effects of the purchase price allocation from the Pop Vriend acquisition and plant R&D expenditure for the breeding of new vegetable varieties, the EBIT was around a plus 10 million euros, which corresponds to a very strong underlying good profitability of the business of over 20% in terms of EBIT margin. In line with our long-term plans, we are continuing to invest in the expansion of our breeding activities. We have now established breeding teams and stations in Italy, Spain, Turkey, Mexico, and Brazil to drive our breeding programs forward.
Here we are right on schedule, and this will be reflected in growing business in the medium term. We are now also more optimistic about our full-year forecast in the Vegetables segment, especially with regard to profitability. Finally, let's take a look at our expectations for the KWS Group in the current financial year. As already mentioned, we have already raised our forecast last week with an ad hoc announcement. In terms of sales, we now see ourselves at the upper end of our previous forecast of 13%-15%. We are now aiming for an EBIT margin of 11%-12%. That is one margin point higher than originally expected. We now expect the R&D ratio to around 18%-19%, continuing to invest in future innovations as planned and at a high level.
All in all, we are well on our way to a successful financial year, the results of which we will report to you at the end of September. With this, I would like to conclude my presentation. I thank you for your attention. I'm looking forward to your questions.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press nine and the star key on your telephone keypad. If you would like to cancel your question, please press nine and the star key again. Please press nine and star key to ask a question. The first question come from Christian Faitz from Kepler Cheuvreux. The floor is yours.
Yes. Good morning, Mrs. Kinle and the IR team. I have a couple of questions, if I may. I get back in line. First of all, can you elucidate what kind of inventory measures in sugar beet seeds you had to take due to changed regulatory issues? The other point is, which other areas in vegetables are you currently targeting? You mentioned you're beefing up R&D investments in various regions. In this context, how much does spinach still make up in your current vegetable seeds portfolio? Thank you very much.
Okay. Thank you, Mr. Faitz. First question, a little more background on the inventory measures. You might all be aware that the European Union is more and more restricting the use of herbicides and insecticides for agriculture. Some years back, the famous neonics, to name it short, the normal word is very, very complicated, have been banned for application fields. Also the sugar beet tools are coded with a neonics treatment. This has been banned some years back already, but there have been derogations for a lot of countries in the European countries, in the European Union still to be used. We had prepared under the derogation scheme, we had prepared the products to be sold for sowing season 23, that is March, April.
Then in February, there was a court case of the Court of Justice of the European Union that confirmed the ban, again, very strictly, and that canceled all the derogations that had been granted, especially in France. The derogation was not granted any longer in France, and we had already produced the product for France to be sold and of course sewn and exported. We had to destroy all the inventory that was on our stocks for France. That was a single-digit EUR million amount that we had to take to the results, because we could not sell and we had to destroy this product.
Okay. Understood.
On the second... Sorry?
Understood. Thank you. Thank you.
On the second question, vegetable areas. I mentioned the main regions where we are building up our stations. This is also the areas where we will basically do business. Italy, Spain, Mexico, South America, Turkey, the Mediterranean area. Focus crops are tomato, pepper, cucumbers, melon and watermelon. Of course, with the acquisition of Koppert Cress and a smaller tomato breeder in Italy, Geneplanta S.r.l., we have already some commercial products that we are selling. Out of those sales, so there's a lot more others like, a little bit of onions, still chards, Swiss chard, red beets, spinach is about 80% of the total sales of the vegetable so far.
Very helpful. Thank you very much.
The next question comes from Andreas Heine from Stifel. The floor is yours.
Thanks for taking my questions. I'd like to start with corn. You are extremely successful in Europe and Latin America in gain share. It is the opposite with AgReliant Genetics in the US, where sales were declining while Bayer today reported +16%. With the strong growth you have in Brazil and Europe, I would assume that in both regions you have seen quite a strong margin increase, which was all margin-wise, offset by AgReliant Genetics, which seems in the margin to become very low and is losing ground. Is there anything you can do to change this or is that only be possible over the very long term? Is there something, a new variety is coming changing this? That's my first question. I come later and then back to this others.
Thanks very much, Mr. Heine. Very clear analysis and you depicted it right. The issue with the American corn business is that in the last years, we have Or you might remember that we have concluded a trait access agreement with Syngenta some years back in order to increase the margin. With an upfront payment, the plan is to sort of replace the running costs of trade usage in corn and having thus an increased margin. However, the proportion of the portfolio that we are, and we are still today using, a lot of Bayer-traded products, is very high. The art of switching the portfolio to increase margins, moving away from Bayer more to a Syngenta portfolio is very, very sort of difficult to steer.
Of course that comes along with price policy, price increases that we want to make. Of course, if we talk about Monsanto related products, there is a strong link made to the Bayer products, and there is a huge competition in the marketplace, of course, especially by Bayer. You have rightly quoted so that they have won in most cases of the competition in the marketplace. The mid to long-term strategy to increase margin is clearly depending on increasing the share of proprietary germplasm in the U.S. market and sort of reducing further slow by slow the Bayer of Monsanto or Bayer-traded products and germplasm.
Again, in the marketplace for commercial going to market, this is limiting quite a bit the price freedom we have, because here of course, we always have to pay a price for the in-licensed traits here in, from Bayer and in that case. That's why the change is really more mid than long-term. On the other hand, we are clearly not satisfied with losing volumes. Also a main reason for losing volumes is that we had quite some churn in our sales force, and we lost some customers with that.
This has been analyzed clearly, and we know the regions and the reasons for this, and this is a gap that we ran into because we had a sort of a churn in some of the district sales managers that was not expected and that the customers were lost. That is the main reason for the real under-promising performance in this fiscal year.
The change in the sales force, that, might be a more short-term issue.
Can I confirm that you are still satisfied with the performance of your new varieties into germplasm?
Absolutely.
Which is most important, actually.
Absolutely.
Okay.
Sure.
The losing ground is not
Yes.
due to being less competitive to Corteva and Bayer in the performance
No.
in the
Product performance is okay.
Okay. The next question is on sugar beet. I guess I ask this question every year.
[Mm-hmm.]
It's just an outstanding performance again. Congrats on that. It is driven very much by the traits you have, which are unique and a different setting, selling point for you. Both now, Clearfield and CONVISO SMART, you were able to increase the margins slightly. I know that you always have to find the right compromise in investing in the future with R&D and showing higher results. Going forward, I would assume that the penetration, maybe not in the same speed, but the penetration of CONVISO SMART and Clearfield will further increase, which means that the price per unit or per acre is going up. You know this, of course, so then you plan your R&D accordingly.
With the market share increasing close to 60%, you have anyhow, well, I would say from the total R&D budget, all of your peers can spend, you have not only more than 60% as your market share, but probably more than 80%. I would say there is a limit to need to invest more in R&D and to show more in earnings and margins. Maybe you can share your thoughts on these assumptions.
Where to start with, or where to, how to slice it? Maybe starting with the shift of, I'll give you an idea on technically what it means. If we look back, like five years back into eighteen nineteen, looking at the sort of the mix of products that sugar beet was offering, we were two-thirds of what we call classic varieties and maybe a third of Roundup Ready and a very, very tiny bit of CONVISO when we started eighteen nineteen. For this year, we expect the innovations, so Clearfield, CONVISO and Roundup Ready, in comparison to the classical varieties, to be all ready to make up already over 50% if you take the whole sugar beet assortment.
This is going to grow almost close to 70% in the next two years. There will be a very clear movement into innovation, into the sort of the higher quality or higher quality product at the cost of classic varieties. That clearly means that, of course, prices, that is sales, are going up. Margins, however, are not necessarily going up, and this is to some effect also has some technical reasons. Of course, in absolute terms, the margin is increasing. For example, you know that for CONVISO, we have this part of tech fee that is then also shared with Bayer on the herbicide that comes along with the sugar beet.
So there is a sort of, there's a slight erosion percentage rise in the margin. In absolute terms, it's definitely going to increase. Don't forget, while we are now cashing in on the innovations that have been creating R&D costs 10, 20 years back, we are now already working on the next generation to come. There is no right sort of direct connect between today's R&D costs and the sales and margin development. We are now spending heavily investing R&D into the next herbicide tolerance. The after Roundup Ready era, genetically modified, trait sort of herbicide resistance, and that costs EUR millions, especially deregulation in, for the U.S. market.
While we are now seeing the profits on CONVISO and Clearfield, which is, as you know, non-GM varieties, we are already now spending money for the herbicide second generation GMO tolerance. That's why you won't see an decrease in the R&D spendings in the next years in sugar beet.
I never, ever expect a decline in R&D spending. Is the R&D spending going up in line with what you can, what you envisage in sales? so to speak, that the R&D percentage to sales stays the same in the sugar beet or is there a flattening?
Well, that's a changing pattern. Is what we do is, of course, we target the overall R&D budget, which is, as we said, 18%-90% of sales. There might be a shift from one year to the other or in a two or three years term between the crops. There is not-
Mm-hmm.
A pot, so a bucket per crop that is sort of managed or related stable. We look at the programs, we look at the results year on year. If we might have a very, very positive and very speedy year in sugar beet, we might the year after allocate some means from sugar beet to corn or oilseed rape or vegetables and the other way around. If we see we're not sort of, we need another two or three years to get really to turn the vegetables, we might not sort of push more money into that, because we need the time and the results to choose and select, and then we put it in other places. We're not steering percentage-wise by crop on what we spend in R&D.
The last question is cereals had an outstanding performance. Hybrid rye, we know, and rapeseed, we know. Could you spend a minute on the smaller crops, which you mentioned also, contributing to growth?
Mm-hmm.
perspectives are?
There's quite a lot in this segment. By far the largest, roughly EUR 90 million of turnover in the first nine months, is rye. The second largest crop is oilseed rape that is here. As I mentioned, that was a very nice performance in the first nine months, over 30% growth compared to the last year. The next biggest crop in here is wheat, which also grew by almost 20%. That's what I mentioned. We get over to barley. Barley is a little stable, so there's very little development in barley. The other thing I mentioned is sorghum. That's a very small proportion, but that's the fifth largest.
It's grown by over 100%, has doubled sales in sorghum. There comes a lot of smaller crops that have either, but very small numbers, significantly grown, like catch crops or also for example, peas and lentils. We talk here about small one, EUR 1 million, EUR 1.5 million, EUR 1.1 million. That's really small numbers compared to the other big crops. Very nice growth. The rye growth is still the smallest, so clearly doubling in sorghum, 30% in rapeseed, 20% in wheat and a stable barley. That's the main contributor to the first nine months.
That basically means that the very well-known largest are also which drive, which will drive the growth in the coming years. The others are simply [crosstalk].
That is a good question. I would say the distance to the others by sales is still quite high. We see, at least as I say, we see a strong uptake in sorghum. We see a strong uptake in organic seeds, in peas. That's depending on our strategic path, because we are now putting more emphasis on protein plants and starting more programs for plant-based proteins. That's why there might be an over proportional relative increase in the smaller ones. Again, relating EUR 1 million to EUR 90, you see that there's a huge difference there.
Okay, thanks. I go back to the line.
Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press nine and star. The next question comes from Michael Schaefer from ODDO BHF. The floor is yours.
Thanks for taking my question. Three of them. First one is on sugar beet, coming back to the success story and penetration story of CONVISO and CR/CR+. I wonder, you indicated that the share is increasing on a combined basis to 70% next couple of years. I know part of the story at CONVISO SMART always has been the application in Russia with those kind of acreages and the design and the structure of the market. Is this a threat, what we hear from Russia, basically, that they are planning to ban, let's say, seed imports and which may affect, let's say, your growth path there in sugar beet?
What are you making out of that, in terms of, let's say, short-term, mid-term outlook there?
Yeah. Russia is a daily sort of watch out and daily management of the situation. The law that you are mentioning or what you're referring to is in the pipeline. It is supposed to be decided upon by September, October this year, it proposes to regulate the import of foreign seeds to certain quota. Of course that includes all crops, not only sugar beet, but all crops. There are different quotas still to be allowed for imports per crop. The point being, for sugar beet, there is a reality that sugar beet seed cannot be multiplied in Russia. By climate conditions, it's not possible to grow and to produce or multiply sugar beet seeds in Russia.
One should know that sometimes politics go beyond, or politics considerations go beyond biology. The government is clearly of the conviction that it will be possible to localize sugar beet also into Russia, which we definitely don't see. Sugar industry neither. There's strong lobbying efforts and strong discussions also from the Russian sugar producers with the government. What we're expecting is that there might be a very, very small quota that could be imposed on sugar beet and that is very, very, very slowly increasing. To give you an idea, our first indications might say that they might sort of put a local quota, so locally to be produced of around 20% in 10 years time. That's the expectation as of today.
Again, we know there is a strong opposition between logic and politics, and if it, if it comes that they are really putting import quota, then of course, the track sugar has still higher priority in Russia. Also to be known is the quota cannot be imposed on what there is a sort of a Eurasian Economic Union that is existing, which includes, for example, Kazakhstan and Belarus. The Russian quota would not hold up against imports, any imports to Kazakhstan or Belarus because they cannot ban their trading partners from those imports. We are also thinking about ways of sending sugar beet seed or other seeds through to one of those neighboring countries, most of course, most likely Kazakhstan.
That's very clear. Thank you very much. The second one is coming back to AgReliant. I mean, we touched this point for quite some time now, and indeed I understood basically the transition and that it takes a long time basically to increase the share of your own germplasm and the Syngenta trades, et cetera. Now we have seen recently a change in the owners, or at least a perceived change in the ownership structure of your JV partner. Is this anything which may make you think basically more strategically to streamline operations there and to get it under full control? Is this something which you may look at as a result of what we have heard from Vilmorin & Cie?
You're referring to the announcement of Vilmorin & Cie that they're sort of buying back, or they wanna sort of de-list the shares from the market? The discussion or the information we shared, or the discussion we had with them is that they feel a larger freedom to operate strategically, if they have, again, not the sort of strict regulations and constraints from a capital market. This is somehow a reasoning for us it's hard to share because that means that any growth would either need to be financed from the shareholders, which is, as we know, all it's farmer cooperatives. There is not abundant means available in this cooperative, individual farmers, and there's hundreds of farmers that own the shares.
That means the other perspective is that they would have to finance externally through banks, which comes at a cost and at increasing cost, as we know. We have not yet fully depicted on. It's all considerations. We don't know on their thoughts on that. With regards to Adventure, there is nothing to change. Clearly we have aligned with them on that. We are having very close meetings the recent weeks because of the budget and the AgReliant expectations. There is nothing that is indicated or shared or discussed with us about we wanna also cash in on that and we wanna take it over, whatever. Nothing at all from that perspective.
Okay. Thanks. Pretty clear. Last question is on vegetables. Well, thanks for sharing basically the R&D budget in the first nine months, so the EUR 11 million. I wonder whether you can indicate maybe on a full year basis, and I know that obviously there are a lot of breeding programs going on and you wanna accelerate that. What we should think about the R&D allocated to vegetables, which is a bit of a special animal in your portfolio there. What should we think about next two, three years in terms of R&D budget acceleration?
Yeah. Well, the current plans, again, we're discussing about the current plans. The current plans go to a maximum, sort of in the next years to EUR 15 million-EUR 20 million. Again, it depends on the success of the current breeding programs. It might be that again, for example, like in Geneplanta, if we have the chance or the possibility to acquire another smaller standalone breeder, of course, then we have increasing R&Ds that come along with that breeding operation, which usually the smaller ones have nice germplasm and breeding programs and very sort of limited sales. That, of course, can be sort of step-fixed costs, you would say in German, additions to the R&D budget in the coming years, which we don't have very concrete as of today.
Thank you very much. This is all.
The next question come from Christian Faitz again. The floor is yours.
Yeah, just, one follow-up question remaining. On hybrid wheat, how is your breeding program on that front at the moment? Are you getting anywhere?
Yes, we are getting anywhere. The milestones are very successful and have been successfully completed to complete or to reach a hybrid crop. Again, however, it takes some more 10 years to really make it sort of repetitive and reproducible and at an adequate quality. It comes right now with a still a significant yield range. We are now improving the yields under a hybrid crop. That is, of course, what you're aiming for. If, if you can make a plant hybrid, but still the yield is not attractive enough, then you cannot commercialize with the price levels that you're expecting. This is why it needs some more time to confirm the heterosis effect here.
now the heterosis effect is indeed promising, you're saying?
Yeah. Yeah.
Okay. Very helpful. Thank you very much.
We have a question from Andreas Heine. The floor is yours.
I would like to come back to Brazil and the earnings there. I see strong growth and meanwhile also progression in EBITDA. On the other hand, you had high interest costs in financing the net working capital. Could you outline how that is going forward? Net working capital as you grow will hopefully increase further. If that then jeopardizes your profitability, that is, of course, not great. Is there anything you can do to finally get also the earnings to a level which represents the nice market share of 10% you might have now in that region?
We have started last year already, different considerations and programs to free up cash. To sort of manage network capital in a more, let's say, aggressive would be the wrong word, but put more focus clearly on the networking capital management and on the plannings and the production plannings, and also with regard to means and models on how we can insight customers to pay earlier or even to go to pre-cash sales. There are about 12 programs, different programs in Brazil that we are undertaking with the business to really get an earlier cash result. We had started some years back. It comes at also very high costs. We had started a program, some sort of factoring. It's a little more complicated. It's special to Brazil.
It's called FISIC. We had started a program where there's a fund where you can allocate certain accounts receivables to, and you get the money. Again, it comes also at a cost. That's not much more cost-efficient than financing or interest costs to loans. That's why we're switching again. And of course, we have to balance the growth also a little bit more looking forward and steer that one a little better. There's little we can do on the accounts payable side. The target, the focus is on inventory management. We have also now carefully managed the inventory. We have looked at, as I mentioned, the safety stock, so to say, and the steering out of the proper out steering of portfolio and of outdated products.
That should help really to get inventory levels a little down in the next years compared to growth and also to get some more cash in due to customer models that we are implementing.
If it comes to the interest cost, is there any way that you finance this, let's say, from Europe? Or really does it have to be financed at very high interest rates in Brazil?
Well, both. Even if we finance from Europe, we would have to charge intercompany interest at arm's length. Of course, it's a little more favorable, but we cannot charge. The other thing is that we give equity in. That depends on. We have done a mixture of equity increases, intercompany loans, and local loans, also, favorable, let's say, research-based loans that you can tap into from the Brazilian state. From an interest level perspective, we are really trying our best to make it a mixture of the best sort of cost possible. There comes also to a limit, clearly, when the over-indebtedness or indebtedness in Brazil is so high that the banks say they need either a parent guarantee or, again, the equity needs to be increased.
That's why we have to look into cash improvements.
Lastly, also on Brazil, if it comes to the performance on EBIT, I don't know how you didn't want to go there, but in recent years, you had to invest a lot in growing the infrastructure and the production facilities. Approaching these 10%, I get most of that is done. Can we expect that the EBIT margin will reflect that most of these startup investments or growing investments are done and that the margin goes to maybe not where Europe is, but to a very decent level? Usually it's at as much percentage you have, as much the EBIT margin should be. 10% EBIT margin would then be the right to look at.
Mm-hmm.
Any thoughts on that?
Yeah, but that, there is still one more production expansion to become. The question is the years exactly, we don't know. The growth pace of the last years and also the chances that we still see is requiring some more investment in, especially in the corn storage and in the shelling and drying capacities there. Again, due also especially to two seasons. Then, of course, we're trying to increase the margin, especially through the product portfolio mix, and also here, a higher share of own germplasm, which we are very well underway. We have, again, very promising hybrids in the pipeline.
You might have seen that in the last years, we have even sort of won a prize in the marketplace for having the most, let's say, liked, corn variety in Brazil. They have a sort of hit list every year that the farmers vote on, which is the most, sort of, most beloved corn variety. That by, year by year, the profitability should improve, but not in big steps and certainly not up to over, as you mentioned, over 10%. That's basically due to the GM-related part of the business.
You changed that also, right? To the Syngenta traits where you have...
Yes, yes.
the fees already.
Yeah.
Why should the margin not get to the 10% if you have?
Yeah, yeah. 10% is achievable, but not very much beyond.
Oh, okay. That's fair. Okay. Thanks. These were all my questions, and I leave you in peace.
Okay.
At the moment, there seem to be no further questions. You can press nine and star if you want to ask a question.
As there seem to be no more questions, I thank you very much all for your participation, for your interest in KWS. I'm happy that we could prove you that the business model is maybe not sexy in the sense of super stable, super steep growth and very increasing profitability, but it's really more of a marathon invest. We are expecting another great year. We're well underway, irrespective of inflation, war, global crises, because people need to eat and the production, food production needs to go on. Happy to have you on board and hope to talk to you soon, especially for the publication of our full year results, 2022, 2023. Looking to that occasion to meet you all again in September. Thank you very much. Have a nice day. Bye-bye.