Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I am Sabrina, your call's co-operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Symrise Nine Months Results 2018 conference call. In the beginning of today's call, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. The presentation will be followed by a question-and-answer session. If any participant has difficulty hearing the conference call, please press the star key followed by zero for operator assistance. Now I hand over to your host of today's call, Mr. Tobias Erfurth. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you very much, Sabrina, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to our analyst and investor call on the results of the first nine months of this year. In today's session, our CFO, Olaf Klinger, will guide you through the results in detail. You will then have the opportunity to ask questions in the Q&A round. All corresponding materials have been published on our IR website this morning. A replay of this call will be available later today. Having said this, I now hand over to Olaf.
Thank you, Tobias. Ladies and gentlemen, also from my side, a very warm welcome and good morning. I think we have again good news to report. Symrise has delivered very strong sales and solid earnings. Slide two will give you a detailed overview. Symrise continued its dynamic growth course in Q3 despite an ongoing challenging market environment. For the nine-month period, we can report a very good organic sales increase of 8.8%. Our EBITDA came in slightly below prior year at EUR 476 million. One reason for the slight decline in EBITDA were the ramp-up cost for our investments in strategic growth initiatives, namely the Diana site in Georgia, which we just opened last week, but also the OPEX for the capacity to come, like the new menthol production in Bushy Park or the new site in China. Our lower earnings were, however, primarily impacted by some external factors.
As in the first half of the year, we continued to face headwinds on the raw material side. What started in China and with Citral last year continued over the year in a shortage of further other raw materials caused by fire and hurricane-related site shutdowns. We were affected ourselves at our site in Charleston with a one-week shutdown. Suppliers of ours were affected by Hurricane Michael in the Gulf area, leading to new force majeure situations in the industry. Even the currently low water level of the Rhine River causes newly announced force majeure situations, leading to additional supply shortages and therefore higher raw material costs. In addition, exchange rates, namely the US dollar, but also the Brazilian real, Argentinian peso, as well as Turkish lira, worked against us, especially in Q3. Despite these challenges, we kept our profitability at a healthy level.
Our EBITDA margin for the nine-month period amounts to 20% and as well within our medium-term target corridor of 19%-22%. Let's turn to slide three for a deep dive into our Scent & Care business. The segment achieved a very good organic sales increase of 9.2%. Cosmetic Ingredients and Aroma Molecules were strong growth drivers. Both achieved double-digit organic growth. Cosmetic Ingredients saw particular good demand in Latin America and Asia Pacific. Aroma Molecules reported increases in all regions in the high single digit or even double-digit percentage range. The fragrance division posted high single-digit increases despite the tense raw material situation, where we are still facing the ongoing shortage of various raw materials, which are key components for our fragrance applications. In short, the raw material situation remains tense.
While we are affected by this turmoil in the raw material markets, we are strongly benefiting from our backward integration, which allows us to honor all our orders and prove again that we are a highly reliable supplier for our customers. Securing supply for our customers comes along with partly higher transportation costs, as you can imagine. Segment EBITDA amounted to EUR 192 million. The EBITDA margin in Scent & Care stood at 19.2% accordingly. Due to the increased cost base for raw materials, we early on entered into negotiations with our customers regarding price increases. As a result, we start to see the impact from price increases in our overall Scent & Care growth.
We will continue to enforcing further price increases with our customers as we expect a further rise of raw material prices over the coming months, however, with a less dynamic upward trend compared to this year. Let's turn to slide four. Let me also use this opportunity today to present you one of our latest projects from Scent & Care. It is a perfect example in how we effectively use artificial intelligence in developing fragrance compositions. Developing new scents is, of course, a highly creative process. However, with AI, we can innovatively support it by combining historic data on consumer preferences along with existing fragrance formulas and patterns. That way, our perfumers are guided towards completely new compositions that they have never seen before. Our first customer for this project is O Boticário from Brazil.
We are currently working on two fragrances, which we aim to bring to the market next year. This innovation quickly caught the attention of the fragrance industry related news flow over the past few days, and is a good example for Symrise ambition to be one of the innovation leaders in the industry. Another example of how we fuel the Symrise organic growth is the latest Scent & Care CapEx project in Charleston, U.S., which you can see on slide five. Only in September, we presented Hydrolite 5 green at the in-cosmetics Fair in Brazil. The multifunctional cosmetic ingredient hydrates the skin and enhances the efficacy of active ingredients in cosmetic formulations. It has the same properties as the original pentylene glycol Hydrolite 5. The new version is based on a renewable raw material, a by-product of sugar production derived from the sugar cane.
As consumers more and more explicitly ask for natural cosmetic ingredients, Hydrolite 5 green perfectly meets this demand. Moreover, it supports our sustainability footprint. Please turn to slide seven to have a look at the segment flavor. After a dynamic first half, flavor kept its high pace. For the nine-month period, the segment reports double-digit organic sales growth of 10.2%. Including foreign exchange effects and contributions from Cobell, the segment grew by 8.3% in reporting currency. Latin America delivered the strongest growth with a double-digit increase. This was driven by new business for beverage applications. North America also benefited from the increased demand for beverage applications. EMEA saw particularly good dynamics in Western Europe and Russia. Demand there was especially strong for applications of sweet and dairy products. Asia-Pacific delivered double-digit organic growth across all application areas.
EBITDA for the flavor segment grew to EUR 187 million compared to EUR 183.4 million in the prior year period. EBITDA margin came in at a solid 20.5% despite the impact from the currently still margin diluting Cobell acquisition. It is worth noticing that also the flavor segment was able to pass on raw material price increases, which nevertheless has a certain diluting impact on a full cost base. Let's move to slide seven. Nutrition successfully gained momentum in the third quarter. For the overall reporting period, the segment achieved organic growth of 5.7%. All business units contributed to the solid development. Pet Food showed high single-digit organic growth, with particular good demand in Latin America. We also saw dynamic growth in Food, with North America posting particularly strong demand. EBITDA declined to EUR 96.9 million.
This is mainly due to weaker order intakes by one of Probi's major customers during H1. In addition, we had ramp-up costs for the new Diana site in the U.S., which we just opened last week. Nonetheless, EBITDA margin stands at a good 20.5%. Overall, we are optimistic for the further development of the segment. Probi delivered a strong operating performance again in Q3, driven by improved commercial execution and recovery from this U.S. customer de-stocking program. Also, our new Diana site in Georgia was opened and will start to support our superior growth ambition very soon. Please turn to slide eight for some more details on our new capacities there. Healthy and conscious nutrition plays a more and more important role for consumers. The market for natural and sustainable Food ingredients is therefore growing. As you know, we have early on detected that trend and dedicate investments to it.
We now took another step, which is part of our current investment program dedicated to organic growth opportunities. We invested EUR 50 million in the production of Food ingredients, flavor, and Pet Food applications. The capacities are state-of-the-art in terms of safety, efficacy, and backward integration. With this investment, we also laid the foundation for further profitable growth in the U.S., the traditionally largest flavor market. For our outlook, please move to slide nine. Based on our successful course during the year so far and a promising start into Q4, we are overall optimistic for the full year. Therefore, we raise our organic growth guidance further from above 7% to now above 8% in 2018, which is far above the expected market growth of 3%-4%. We are confident to deliver the superior growth with an EBITDA margin of around 20% for the full year.
We think both is very good news, particularly in light of the ongoing headwinds from foreign exchange rates, the continuing raw material shortage, and further increases in raw material prices. We are well positioned to mostly compensate those effects thanks to our strong backward integration. Back to you, Tobias.
Many thanks, Olaf. We would now like to open the floor for questions. We kindly ask you for a maximum of two questions. Many thanks. May we hear the first one, please.
Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star followed by one on their touch-tone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star followed by two. If you are using speaker equipment today, please lift the handset before making your selection. Anyone who has a question may press star followed by one at this time. One moment for the first question, please. The first question is from Alexandra Trum of Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. Just firstly, on margins, can you please provide some more detail around what you can do in the fourth quarter to get to the full year guidance of around 20% margins? I guess just taking into account that the fourth quarter is seasonally weaker usually.
Yeah, of course. I mean, I mentioned a lot around the raw material situation, which we are managing through at the moment. This takes longer than expected. Clearly, we expected that with Citral, this crisis would come to an end. We are taking more action at the moment, especially on the price side. We acted when all this started last year quite quickly. We talked basically to all customers in Scent & Care. You see the prices coming through now also as part of the growth. Given that this raw material crisis continued with different elements, and in a mode which definitely nobody could forecast, we will enter into further price negotiations with customers, and we are actively working on that. This is one element. I think we will, and we have said that in the past, continue to protect our margin environment.
In that connection, we also will take active measures given the shortage of many raw materials. We are in discussion with customers when it comes to reformulations because certain raw materials are just not there. That's part of the program. Last but not least, we are at a point where we start to look at lower margin businesses, and we are ready to give this up if necessary, especially if customers are not understanding the need for further price increases. That is all going on at the same time, and therefore, let me give you an optimistic view that we will do a lot to come in with around 20% by end of the year.
Okay, understood. You're willing to maybe give up a little bit of volume to get the margins up if it's a lower margin businesses?
Yes. Especially if the situation is there that customers are not willing to support any price increases, which is, from our perspective, of course, no longer acceptable. Therefore, that will be one of the measures if necessary.
Okay, thank you. Just my second question on organic growth, the 8.5% you achieved in the quarter, are you able to quantify how much of that was pricing and how much of that was volume? I am not sure if you usually provide this, but if you could also do it across the divisions.
Yes. As mentioned, we see the price elements coming through now, therefore, in Q3, we see about 50% of the growth in the price area and 50% in volume. In flavor, the picture is more one-third and two-third. One-third price, two-third quantity. In nutrition, it is even three-quarter of price and one-quarter of volume, which we see there. In Scent & Care, this is the probably biggest change since half year, we see 50% in price and 50% in volume. That is about the picture for the Q3.
Okay, thank you. Just a follow-up question on that pricing. Did you get any benefit from the US dollar pricing of contracts in Latin America?
In Q3, the picture changed a little bit compared to H1. There was a slight benefit from the US dollar environment coming in, yes. That is more on the Scent & Care side, to be more specific. Flavors is more dominated by local currencies. While in Scent & Care, you have quite a good part in the US dollar-based environment. On both sides, on procurement as well as on the sales side.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Welcome.
The next question is from Heidi Vesterinen with Exane. Please go ahead.
Hi. First question on flavors. You talked about raw material inflation being an issue. I was quite surprised that you came in under 20%. Is there more to it than raw material inflation? Because I thought most of the issue was on the synthetic side, Scent & Care. Could you elaborate on what happened, please? Thank you.
Yeah, happy to do, Heidi. I mentioned Cobell. Of course, this is a margin-diluting business at the moment still, which is part of the flavor margin environment from a portfolio perspective. Maybe as an additional comment on this, if we have been quite successful with our price increases, but that's naturally only on the raw materials side, it's not on the full cost base, and therefore we have a certain dilution on the margin side in such an environment where prices are going fast in vanilla and citrus. That is a little bit more explanation why we see a slight margin dilution in flavors. It's the same environment. We will continue to negotiate on the price side and protecting the business will be an important measure of flavor also going forward.
The next question on margins. Would you be able to quantify the ramp cost and the hurricane effect and basically, one-off type issues that you saw in Q3? As we go into 2019, because these ramp costs should be behind us, can we expect margins to increase next year?
The ramp-up, and hurricane environment, I would quantify was around EUR 5 million, which we have seen. You know that we have an investment program, and there are a number of larger projects, in the pipeline at the moment. We are heavily investing into organic growth opportunities, which we have. They are all going in the right direction and in the profitable growth environment. From that perspective, I think we are doing the right things at the moment, and that's across the board.
Is it too early to comment on 2019 margins? Logically, it would make sense that if you're ramping in higher margin areas, the margin should increase. Is it too early because of ramp-up?
It's a little bit too early. One reason is that the harvesting season is still ongoing. The vanilla price situation is still ongoing and not fully clear yet where it will go. That is from the flavor perspective, a little bit too early to guide. On the Scent & Care side, as mentioned, we are not through this raw material crisis at the moment. I think we have a better position given that we have our backward integration, and we are using this situation actively. I think it's very positive that we can supply in this situation and honor our orders. Just on my desk, I have three letters from suppliers declaring force majeure over the last few weeks. If you ask our procurement people, they will probably tell you it's a perfect storm situation at the moment.
It's a storm, the storm will be over at some point, things should normalize. It's a little bit too early to guide for next year given where we are at the moment.
Thank you.
Welcome.
The next question is from Patrick Lambert of Raymond James. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. I think all my questions have been asked. Maybe just one follow-up on what was the specific impact on Charleston, the one week of disruption, just to understand the 220 basis point margin pressure on, well, differential on Q3. Thanks.
The hurricane, of course, has an impact. We are basically sold out with all the materials. If you have to shut down, and this was basically without causing any damage, but it was forced by the governor, and we had to give up this one week. If you are sold out, basically, you are missing this quantity, and you cannot sell it. That's basically the situation. I would quantify it as around EUR 1 million impact from this hurricane.
Do you think you can somehow recover that in Q4?
Again-
Somehow?
Again, if you are sold out and the quantity is basically fully absorbed, if you miss a week, you cannot recover this.
No. Okay.
That's not possible. I would also mention the foreign exchange side again. We had seen extremely strong volatility, especially in August in Argentina, in Brazil, in Turkey. These were transactional effects that you, of course, cannot foresee in such a situation. The magnitude there was around EUR 3 million just out of transaction hitting the result situation.
For the group, right?
That's for the group, yes.
Okay.
As mentioned multiple times, this raw material situation is there, and there is a well-known time delay before you can recover these kinds of price movements on the raw materials side. I think we need a little bit of time, and I can assure you that we are continuing to push on the price increase side, plus all of the other measures which I mentioned to protect our margin environment.
Thank you.
The next question is from Thomas Volfova of Société Générale. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good morning, gentlemen. I have two questions as well. Coming back to the startup costs, looking into 2019 again, I'm sorry for that, you were in the midst of a bigger problem. I'm just wondering, thinking of the startup cost sequentially, is it fair to assume that startup costs will be lower year-over-year in 2019, or they actually could increase year-over-year going into 2019? Could you give an indication on that, please?
Yeah. Good morning, Thomas. No, I don't expect that they will increase further. I think we will have some ramp-up costs also next year. We are getting closer to the menthol capacity in Bushy Park. Also the China site as well under development, we will have to hire the first people now to run this facility. That will bring some extra OpEx startup costs, it should not be more than we have seen in 2018 from today's perspective.
Perfect. This is very clear. The second question, coming back again to the emerging markets. You already mentioned this transactional issue. I'm still wondering what should we think about LATAM? You have 25% underlying growth in Q3. My question is: Is this a kind of a same situation like with the raw materials where the currencies devaluate, you are losing profitability, and you need time to catch up? Is this still in effect, which we should be seeing going forward, that you recovered the profitability in LATAM? Are you basically increasing your prices in local currency in a very timely manner?
In inflationary environments, you need to act, of course, on an ongoing basis. We do that, of course. This has nothing to do when it comes to the raw material situation. That's across the globe, and we take action across the globe to compensate for raw material price increases. That is not so much linked to the LATAM situation. Keep in mind that the LATAM business for us is around EUR 300 million, so 12%, 13% of turnover for us. That is not the biggest impact, and we have seen very good volume growth in LATAM over the first nine months so far. The growth in LATAM is twofold. It's part of the inflationary environment, but it's also very much driven by volume growth, which we enjoy in this region.
This is very helpful. Thank you.
Welcome.
The next question is from Patrick Schmidt of Warburg Research. Please go ahead.
Hi, thanks for taking my question. My first one was already been answered. I continue with the second one. You mentioned your great R&D developments with IBM Research and also mentioned that you're strengthening your innovation power. Looking at the industry, you have, let's say, one of the lowest R&D costs to block in terms of your percentage of sales. Can we expect this to change and that you have maybe slightly higher R&D costs going forward? Or is that kind of a non-event?
We are pretty comfortable with the R&D spend which we have. You should expect that on a similar level as in the past. I think, as you always like to say, R&D success is not a question of money. I think it's the way you do it. This project which we have just done with IBM is a very good example of how we invest and where we really enter into the future. Just this week, we will be part of an IBM conference in Switzerland where we present this as one of the major development projects also from an IBM perspective. Dedicated R&D spend, which we do here, but not with the ambition that we need to spend more at the end of the day to be successful in R&D.
Thank you.
The next question is from Daniel Chung with Redburn. Please go ahead.
Hi there. Thanks for taking my questions. My first one is just to understand dynamics in Europe, as I can see that organic growth has dropped to 1.9%. It'd be helpful just to elaborate on what's happening there. My second question is for the organic growth that we've seen in LATAM and APAC, which has been pretty strong, how much of this growth is being offset by the weakness in FX?
I think the situation in Europe is nothing specific. I think we have seen very strong growth in North America and Asia Pacific. That's where we are primarily also investing at the moment. I wouldn't hint to anything specific that Europe is coming out weaker, except that we are really pushing in areas where we see also future growth. That drive the higher numbers in Asia-Pacific and North America, where we also, in comparison to last year, were not that strong, and now it's coming back basically. On the Latin question, I cannot really give you the perfect answer on the growth, which is FX related. The universe is just too complex with US dollar pricing elements in there. There is, as I mentioned, a good volume growth. At the same time, a little bit of the organic growth is influenced by Latin America currency developments.
It's, again, as a proportion to our total business, not a substantial impact on the growth profile.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Welcome.
The next question is from Geoff Haire of UBS. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning, gentlemen. Thank you for taking my questions. Just two quick questions. First of all, the 8% guidance you've given for the full-year organic growth, does that include any element of trimming low-margin products? Secondly, can you just comment on the exit EBITDA margin in the quarter? Was it higher or lower than the average for the quarter?
Sorry, I didn't get to the second part.
The EBITDA margin for the group in September, as you moved into Q4, was it lower or higher than the average for the quarter?
Just the month of September?
Yep.
Geoff, I think you know that we are not commenting on monthly basis. That would be a little bit far-fetched.
What I'm trying to understand is, as you move into the fourth quarter, how successful has the price increases been in lifting the margin, given obviously the lag between price increases and offsetting that margin pressure?
That's difficult to answer. What we can tell you is that we had a very good start into the fourth quarter. I think that's what I can give you at the moment. Commenting on EBITDA margin profiles month by month is very difficult. You have overlaps between months. I think sticking to the quarter is the right thing to do in this environment.
First question was on the guidance.
Yeah. Geoff, on the first part, the guidance includes basically our expectation for the full year, and includes also the measures which we are taking at the moment to protect our margin environment.
Okay. Thank you.
Welcome.
The next question is from Gunther Zechmann with Bernstein. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning. Two questions. Can you firstly comment on any changes you've seen in competitive behavior after the consolidation in the industry by your competitors, particularly on the flavor side of the business? The second one is, you already indicated that around Citral, we are still in a crisis situation. Can you just confirm if you expect that to continue on an unchanged level for the remainder of Q4? Tied in with the raw materials as well, can you quantify the impact you've seen on your cost from the lower water levels on the Rhine River? Thank you.
On the first part, the competition and any change there related to recent acquisitions, no. There is nothing which I could really mention. There's no discussion in this regard in our company that there's really a different dynamic related to these acquisitions. That's the first one. I think the fact that we are growing the fastest and still continue to grow, and that's our ambition, faster than anybody else, is a good indicator that we are not so much worried about any movements on the M&A side at the moment. We clearly focus on organic growth, and that's where we are investing. On the Citral side, I think BASF will come back. That's the incident which we saw in Ludwigshafen at the end of October last year. I think they are starting to ramp up. The surprising part is that there are many more incidents.
We have seen this China situation where all of a sudden production capacity was shut down for environmental reasons. This will not come back. The situation in India with two fires at Privi and DRT, they will be resolved at some point next year. That's the expectation. Hurricane shutdowns, now the Rhine River water level leading to further shortages, they will all go away. I cannot quantify them on the incident, but it's the situation which we need to steer through at the moment, and it goes clearly beyond what was initially only Citral and BASF.
For you, because it's hard to see what inventory levels you're working through, especially around your German production facilities, can you just comment on when you started to see an impact on your costs from the Rhine River water levels and if you would agree that this has continued year-to-date, i.e., at least a month and a half into Q4?
The situation is in discussion for a few weeks now that ships cannot be loaded as in the past. They are running with limited volume. The more important piece here is that because of this, certain production apparently cannot take place, and therefore we get information from suppliers that certain material is just not available. Again, a situation where we need to find replacement solutions to cover, and basically still be in a position to honor all the orders which we are getting. We are very proud of this situation that we can supply. One reason for that is our well-established backward integration, where we are an active player in the market on the other side. Again, excuse me if I cannot quantify just the Rhine River level cost impact.
Okay. Thank you.
The next question is from Charlie Craig of Citi. Please go ahead.
Good morning, gentlemen. Thanks for the presentation. Most of my questions have been asked, but just one. If you look at nutrition, could you quantify the ex Probi organic growth in the quarter?
Just the quarter or the nine months?
You know it was 10% for the quarter. I was just wondering what it looked like ex Probi, just for the quarter.
Give me a second. It's a little tricky. Let us follow up on this one.
Okay.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Okay.
The next question is from Knut Hinkel of equinet Bank. Please go ahead.
Knut?
Mr. Hinkel, your line is open. Please go ahead.
He dropped.
Yes. Sorry. The next question is from Isha Sharma of MainFirst. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning. I just have one question. You have reported strong growth in Cosmetic Ingredients and Aroma Molecules and Scent & Care and also beverages and flavors. I assume or I understand that these are high margin businesses, and then we have seen this contraction in the EBITDA margin. I also understand this is because of the raw material inflation and the ramp-up cost, but it would be really great if you could give us a little bit of guidance going into Q4 in 2019 as to the situation improved. Would you assume similar growth in high margin businesses and then see a little bit of relief in the other areas that are causing this contraction in the margins? Thanks.
Yes. As said, we are very comfortable and that's why we increased our growth guidance to more than 8% now. We are enjoying a very, very nice growth environment across all segments at the moment. The fact that we increased the guidance is, I think, the perfect indicator that we believe to deliver on this also in Q4. The margin compression which we have at the moment is explained with some extraordinary items, foreign exchange-wise, startup cost-wise, but specifically with raw materials. I think I've commented on the actions which we are taking to protect our margin environment. At the moment at least, it's an ambitious environment. It's a demanding environment, but we are steering through this and I think given our positioning, our backward integration, we have good reasons to believe that we will be able to protect our margin environment, even if it's challenging.
The around 20% EBITDA guidance is out there, and that's what we want to deliver.
Okay. Thanks a lot.
Welcome.
The next question is from Patrick Lambert of Raymond James. Please go ahead.
Oh, thanks. Just a quick follow-up. FX for Q4, have you done the exercise of trying to quantify the impact on your top line? You get -3% in Q3. U.S. dollar is a bit better, Brazilian real is a bit better, but still some other currencies are still as bad as in Q3. If you had some calculations to share with us.
Yeah. The expectation is that we will end the year with an impact somewhere between 4.5%-5%. It should further improve, coming from the 5.8%, I think it was.
Yes
That was for the first nine months. You should see less headwind for the rest of the year, with a full year guidance of 4.5%-5%.
Okay. Thank you.
You're welcome.
The next question is from Liz Cohen of Wedbush Davies. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, gentlemen. Just a follow-up from an earlier question, please. On flavors, you said you've been quite successful on achieving price increases on the raw material side, but not on the full cost base. Can you just elaborate a little bit more there in terms of, let's say, non-raw material cost headwinds you're seeing, and then the outlook for inflation there? Thank you.
Yes. Thank you for the question, Liz. I think it's very important. Except for the raw material situation, the cost situation is fully under control. We are not seeing any dynamic cost developments. It's really around the raw material situation. Naturally, you get the price increases on the raw material price increases through, but the rest is then always a question of time. There's also one element which I like to mention that also in flavors, we have a portfolio of activities, some with higher margins, others with lower margins, and some products come with higher raw material proportions. In this environment, a portfolio effect is also part of the margin compression, which we see at the moment.
Again, the message is really we are working actively on protecting the margin environment there, and so far, I think we have been very successful in passing through price increases to customers in flavors where the price environment started much earlier than in Scent & Care, as you might remember.
Yep. That's great. Thank you, Olaf.
Welcome.
Okay. No more in the line or in the queue. Ladies and gentlemen, we are coming to the end of today's conference call. I would like to hand over to Olaf for final remarks. Please go ahead, Olaf.
Yeah. One final, before we conclude today, just a reminder on our announcement during the first quarter this year regarding our reporting calendar for next year. In line with competition and also clients, we will move to trading updates only for Q1 and Q3. We take this step to inform you more promptly towards the quarter end and to further emphasize this long-term nature of our business. I just would like to give this reminder that this will come for next year. This being mentioned, I am looking forward, we are looking forward to seeing you, or certainly some of you, during our upcoming investor events this month, be it in London, in Edinburgh or in Paris. With that, we would like to conclude today's call. Thank you very much for your attention and participation. Goodbye.
Thank you. Bye