Following prepared remarks by UAC's management team, there will be an interactive Q&A session. I will now hand the call over to Folasope Aiyesimoju. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Temitope. Good day, all, and welcome to UAC's half year 2023 results presentation. As Funke and I run through our prepared remarks, we will refer to page numbers which can be found in the top right-hand corner of each slide. Please now turn to slide five. Operating conditions in the first half of 2023 were very difficult. We experienced high levels of inflation, continuing a trend from 2022. We grappled with acute shortages of cash and circulation on account of challenges with the execution of a currency redesign program. Businesses were closed as Nigeria held elections across various tiers of government. The economy suffered a dual shock of petrol price deregulation and liberalization of the foreign exchange regime. These factors affected businesses in multiple ways. Trading days were lost, consumer purchasing power reduced, input costs escalated, and distribution costs rose.
In addition, companies with foreign exchange denominated liabilities recorded meaningful mark-to-market losses. At UAC, we focus on capital allocation and operational execution, and continue to try our best to navigate the current climate. A factor that is not reflected in the charts on this slide is the continued loss of talents to immigration. This remains one of our biggest headaches. Slide six outlines the price escalation for key raw material inputs in our operating segments. In the animal feeds and edibles segment, the biggest concern over the course of the half year has been sharp escalation in the cost of maize, with prices increasing from NGN 250,000 a ton to more than NGN 400,000 a ton. Key raw materials in the paint segment were relatively stable in the first half.
However, we expect the sensitivity to foreign exchange rates to drive price escalation over the course of the second half of the year. Our packaged foods and quick service restaurants businesses have both experienced sharp escalation of key raw material inputs. Prices for flour, vegetable oil, milk powder, and sugar have all risen meaningfully. Here also, we expect the trend to continue on account of pressure on the naira. As mentioned, perhaps the biggest macroeconomic shock in the first half of the year was the increase in the price of petrol, which had broad inflationary implications. We've seen increases in our selling and distribution costs, and we'll see increases in employee costs going forward.
On our full year 2022 results call in April, we highlighted the negative impact of underperformance at our animal feeds and edibles businesses, as well as challenges in the second half of 2022 in our foods business. Our focus over the course of the first half of the year has been on reversing the performance trend in these businesses. Slide eight highlights the progress we have made, which culminated in an overall return to operating profitability in the second quarter of the year. We made certain capital allocation decisions, which resulted in net profit meaningfully in excess of operating profit. Slide nine outlines progress in our foods business, which still requires considerable efforts. We reduced operating expenses and refined pricing to achieve a more than 80% reduction in the monthly loss rate.
We have also revamped the technical and operations teams with a bid to improving product quality and consistency. We are implementing projects to reduce energy costs and deepen distribution and expect to see the full benefits over the course of the year. It is important to note that this business is the most sensitive to the challenging economic conditions and rising interest rates, and as such, progress will not be linear. We expect a very challenging Q3. In our packaged foods and edibles business, we similarly delivered meaningful operational improvement from driving efficiency and improving product availability. We also carefully selected target markets to manage distribution costs. Here also, we'll be affected by current challenges, but we expect the overall positive trajectory to continue. Slide 11 touches on our other businesses.
Our paints business continues to deliver solid growth in revenue and profitability, and we're increasingly focused on localizing supply chains and deepening distribution. Our quick service restaurants business currently has 30 corporate stores, and we're implementing initiatives we expect to meaningfully reduce the operating cost base in this business, leveraging scale within the group. MDS Logistics continues to deliver operationally and grow its haulage business. At UPDC, we're accelerating the property development aspect of the business to drive profitability. In addition to the operational initiatives discussed, slide 12 outlines efforts relating to governance, people, and structure. To better align overall strategy and governance, I now chair the board of directors of our key businesses, Grand Cereals, UAC Foods, CAP Plc, and UAC Restaurants. Livestock Feeds, the other core business within our group, continues to be chaired by J.I.D., Joe Dada.
Debola Badejo, who was most recently Managing Director at UAC Restaurants, has been appointed Executive Director, Investment at UAC and will work with me on driving overall value creation, as well as seeking new opportunities for growth. We recently received shareholder approval and court sanction at a UAC Foods and Swan Water level for the merger of these businesses. You may recall that UAC Foods, a 100% owned subsidiary of UAC itself, owned 97% of a separate legal entity, Spring Waters Nigeria Limited, which owns the business Swan, our spring water business. We're combining these two companies into one entity. Post the merger becoming effective, UAC will own more than 99% of the equity in the enlarged UAC Foods.
Finally, we continue to try to actively manage borrowing costs, leveraging the capital market as appropriate. We have NGN 6 billion of commercial paper outstanding, which we've on-lent to our operating segments. I will now hand over to Funke to run through details of our financial performance.
Thank you, Fola, and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Please turn to slide 14. This slide provides an overview of the group's financial performance, comparing the half year results for 2023 with 2022. Our results for the first half of the year were mixed. Performance in the first three months of the year was characterized by slower top-line growth, which was impacted by limited trading during the general elections and scarcity of cash, which affected consumer demand. In the second quarter of the year, we delivered double-digit growth in revenue, gross profit, operating profit, and earnings per share. Looking at the entire six-month period compared to 2022, the results are modest. To put this context into numbers, UAC Group recorded consolidated revenue of NGN 52.9 billion, 2% higher year-on-year. All of our operating segments recorded top-line growth apart from the packaged food and beverages segment.
The group's revenue growth was primarily driven by price increases implemented across all our operating segments to mitigate the impact of inflation, as well as strong volume growth in our paint segment. Gross profit margin contracted 87 basis points to 16.3% from 17.2% as a result of rising raw material costs, which were not sufficiently offset by price reviews across all our businesses, apart from the packaged food and beverages segment, which recorded a 379 basis points expansion in gross margin. The packaged food gross margin expansion was a result of improvement in conversion cost, particularly in raw material costs and also power efficiency as we transitioned from diesel to gas at our snacks factory in April this year. The group recorded a small operating loss of NGN 35 million. This was impacted by two things.
The first is higher operating expenses, which increased 14% year-on-year. This increase is reflective of the broader impact of inflation on expenses. As a group, the most significant increases experienced were electricity and power costs, distribution expenses, and personnel expenses. These are attributable to higher electricity tariffs and diesel prices, higher haulage rates, and cost of living adjustments to employee remuneration. The second factor to note is that in 2022, UAC, the holding company, recorded NGN 400 million as other income, representing profit from the disposal of non-core property assets, which affects year-on-year comparison. We recorded profit before tax of NGN 3.2 billion. Our profitability was supported by two key things. The first is net finance income of NGN 2.7 billion recorded in 2023 compared to net finance cost of NGN 1.5 billion in 2022.
Our finance income was driven by higher yield on financial investments and, more materially, the naira devaluation in June, which resulted in foreign currency revaluation gain of NGN 3.6 billion on the group's treasury investment portfolio, of which approximately 30% is denominated in foreign currency. Our finance costs were broadly flat year-on-year, reflecting the impact of deleveraging to mitigate rising borrowing costs. The second is that we recorded a share of profit from our associate companies of over NGN 480 million compared to a loss this time last year. The share of profit reflects the net impact of the profit from our logistics business, MDS, which was driven by sales from haulage operations and a small loss from UPDC Plc, our property development business. Overall, our earnings per share for the period was NGN 0.53 in 2023 compared to a loss per share of NGN 0.17 in 2022.
Please turn to slide 15, which provides additional context on the key drivers of operating profit in the second quarter of 2023. We recorded operating profit of NGN 665 million in the second quarter. This was supported by higher revenue across all operating segments, which more than offset increases in operating expenses. We also recorded a small profit as other income from the disposal of investment property. Please turn to slide 16, which provides additional context on the key drivers of our operating profit in the first half of 2023. As explained earlier, we recorded a small operating loss of NGN 35 million in the first half of 2023. The profitability that we recorded in the second quarter of the year did not offset the underperformance in the first quarter. Please now turn to slide 17, which shows a snapshot of the group's financial position as at 30 June.
The key things to highlight here are our debt. Our group's net debt is NGN 3 billion. Our overall debt to external parties is NGN 18 billion. This amount is largely short-term in nature to support working capital across our businesses. We are conscious of the impact that finance costs have on our profitability. We continuously seek to optimize funding and have taken deliberate steps to reduce leverage, particularly in our animal feed segment. The second point worth highlighting is the capital expenditure, which is largely attributable to our packaged food and beverages segment, more specifically, the final phase of our recently installed bottling line for our spring water business. I will now hand over to Fola to take us through the next section of the presentation.
Thank you, Funke. In conclusion, we expect more short-term economic challenges, which we hope will give way to improved market conditions as the effect of recent reforms are felt. As such, we expect that margin pressure will continue. We'll seek the balance between absorbing rising costs and passing these on to the already stretched consumer. We have taken certain steps to ease the burden on some of our most vulnerable employees. We need to do more. Our focus over the rest of the year will remain firmly on performance at our animal feeds business. We will continue to focus on simplicity and efficiency and work hard to address the immigration-related challenges as relates to talent acquisition and retention. Thank you for making the time to participate in this call. We will now take questions.
It is now time for the Q&A session. To ask a question, please raise up your hand or type in the chat box. Kindly introduce yourself and the organization that you represent before asking your question. Your first question is from Michael Oyeleke. Please unmute yourself and go ahead.
Thanks for the call. I didn't catch anything on the restaurant business. I know a couple of quarters back you've talked about your expansion plans. Just wanted a bit more context around the routes, investments into the restaurant business. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Michael. I think you're probably referring to was our commitment to get to, in the near term, 30 corporate stores opened, which we have achieved. What we're doing now is on trying to drive profitability through those 30 stores, and we've identified a number of initiatives where we can leverage the overall scale of the group to meaningfully drive down the costs in that restaurant business. We're implementing these projects over the course of the second half of the year. We will go back to continued acceleration of corporate store rollout for the restaurant business. Michael, I hope that addresses your question.
Thank you. Yes, it does.
To ask a question—
Sorry, to ask a question. I apologize that we had a bit of a glitch with the slide movements. We had an internet connectivity challenge. It threw the slides off. Hopefully, we've caught up now. Temitope, back to you.
To ask a question, please raise up your hand or type in the chat. Kindly introduce yourself and the organization that you represent before asking your question. Your next question is from Brad Virbitsky. Please go ahead and unmute yourself.
Hi. Thank you for taking my question. Just a couple of questions. On the QSR business, what number of restaurants do you think is the right number for profitability to start to come through there? Do you need 50 restaurants to see profitability, or can you see it, you think, close to the number you're at?
Thanks, Brad. I think if you asked this question a year ago, the target number we had in mind was between 50 and 60 restaurants. Somewhere around there, depending on how well each individual store performed.
If we are successful with what we're trying to do now, that number comes down meaningfully to, I would say, maybe between 30 and 40 restaurants.
Okay. The things you're talking about is sort of sourcing, using the group balance sheet? When you're talking about using group resources to lower, is that what you're talking about?
Look, at the danger of giving away our strategy, what we realized was UAC Restaurants is 2% or so of the group's turnover, relies on several inputs that we use in other parts of the business. The foods business and the restaurants business both use meat, beef, flour, sugar. The restaurant business is consuming fractions of what the food business consumes. The restaurant business factory was running on diesel. There are factories in very close proximity running on gas. It's just at least half a dozen of operational initiatives, from sourcing to cost of energy, which we are already implementing. If we get this done successfully, we should take out easily half of the conversion costs in this business, which would bring profitability much closer, even at the number of stores we have today.
Okay. Also following up on that, you moved the restaurant MD back to the group. Who's the new restaurant MD and what's that person's background?
The restaurants, we are in the market for a GM for the restaurants business. In the interim, the restaurants MD, Debola, continues to oversee that business. He's the Executive Vice Chairman of that business. Part of the thinking for this change was, if we're successful, and I don't see any reason why we will not be, with this group leverage we're trying to achieve, a lot of the back of house, a lot of the factory of the restaurants business would be meaningfully reduced. Then the focus would then be on a GM to run the corporate stores. We're in the market for a GM, and we expect to appoint one by late third quarter, early fourth quarter. In the interim, Debola continues to oversee that business.
Okay. Another question I have is that the margin in Q2 for paints and packaged foods was significantly higher than Q1. It was good margins. Are those margins, do you think, sustainable going forward? Were there one-time reasons for the higher margins in those two businesses?
I would say, it's a very difficult question to answer. Let me deal with the second part, which is easier. Q1 was very affected by the month of February. The month of February was the month in which the impact of the currency redesign program was most acutely felt, and volumes dropped January to February by, let's call it between 30% and 40%. Even at the same naked margin, revenue minus material costs with a 30% drop in volumes, you really compress your gross margins. Q2 and Q1 are not directly comparable. That's the one off that may skew those numbers. Going forward, both businesses have reasonably strong brands and good pricing power. We're going to attempt to maintain those margin levels. It is difficult to overstate how stressed the consumer is in this current period.
We expect things to settle down over the course of the year, so the extent to which we can keep pushing those material price increases, without seeing a meaningful drop in demand, is very difficult to estimate. Over the long run, given the pricing power in those two businesses, we don't see any reason why the margin profile will be meaningfully different.
Okay. Thank you. Just last one from me. Obviously, with new administrations, lots of changes happening. I'm curious from your perspective, from either a capital planning perspective, either big CapEx projects you're looking at or from an M&A perspective, has your outlook there changed at all? Are you more willing to do something big? Is it still wait and see? You have to turn around animal feeds, and that's a priority. I'm just curious what you guys are focusing on now.
Okay. Look, I think we're long-term bullish, and our view is that in times of pain, like Nigeria is going through now, there's going to be opportunity. Companies like ourselves who've been here for over 100 years must position ourselves to take advantage of the opportunities that come our way. That's long term, and that's our sort of stance. Short term, we think there's going to be a very difficult couple of quarters, whether it's one or two or three, we don't know. We're going to be short term cautious, just making sure that we're liquid, we're not overextending ourselves, so that we're around to take advantage of these long-term opportunities as we see come our way.
Okay. Great. Thank you.
Your next question is from Ifeoma, who works with Ecobank. Ifeoma has two questions. Firstly, Fola mentioned that short-term economic challenges are expected. My question is, what measures are being put in place to cushion the effects of these challenges when they occur? Secondly, how did the group manage with employee remuneration and compensation?
Thank you. I think the first one, Ifeoma, when you refer to cushioning the effect, I'm not sure if you're referring to on our numbers or for our stakeholders. I would address both. I think for our stakeholders, we have to be taking baby steps, and we need to do more on our primary stakeholder in this regard, our employees. For the most vulnerable, the lowest-paid employees, we've done one-off palliative payments, and we're currently going through reviews to try to move compensation to match this higher cost of living that employees are going through. For the business, we are focusing on liquidity. We need to make sure that there's liquidity to survive whatever storms come through. We are laser-focused on margin. Laser-focused on margin because it's very easy for your margins to be eroded, in this high inflationary environment and avoiding unnecessary expenditure.
Those are the things we're doing for the business and the primary stakeholder we focus on in this regard.
Thank you, Fola. Your next question is from Chioma, who works with Stanbic IBTC. Chioma wants to know how many restaurants you have currently.
We have around 60 restaurants currently, 30 corporate-owned and around 30 franchised restaurants. The number of franchisees moves about quite a bit. It's come down from over 100 because we are very aggressive in shutting down any franchisee that does not meet our quality standards.
Your next question is from Goke.
Temitope, I've lost you. If you please take that question again.
The next question is from Goke Adetoyinbo. Goke, can you please unmute yourself and go ahead with your question?
I can read Goke's question. Goke, I believe your question is around exports to African countries. We have not started. We plan to start with Cameroon. We've recruited a team that is now in place. Unless we're very unlucky, we would get the first batches of paint off to Cameroon sometime this year. We have modest aspirations for what this would then do to the business, just in terms of the scale of Nigeria relative to Cameroon. It's about 10 times the size, and the difference in market position of the brands in Nigeria versus Cameroon. We plan to learn from the experience and then accelerate therefrom. It's not going to be a meaningful driver of top line for the paint business at this near term.
All right. Thank you. That explains it.
Your next question is from Sruti Patel. Please unmute yourself and go ahead.
Sruti, you're speaking, you're still muted, so I can't hear you. Okay. Temitope, can we go to the next question and then come back to Sruti?
Okay. To ask a question, please raise up your hand or type in the chat box. Kindly introduce yourself and the organization that you represent before asking your question. Your next question is from Mike. Please unmute yourself and go ahead.
Hi, this is Mike McGaughy from Research Alpha. I wanted to see if we can get some insight into the market share of the feeds business. Is that market share increasing or decreasing or what's the trend there? Also, who are the biggest competitors in that sector? Thank you.
Okay. Just to point out, the feeds business operates in three big segments, poultry feed, fish feed, and edible oils. The biggest contributor by far to that business is the poultry feed business, about 70% of the company. There we're about 18% market share. We have lost market share in that space over the last few years. The biggest competitors there are Olam and Top Feeds, which is part of the Flour Mills Group. Again, I'm referring to the commercial feed millers. You have big players who mill for their own consumption, but I'm limiting to the commercial feed millers. There's also a company called Hybrid Feeds. I would say Olam and Flour Mills being the most direct, and then Hybrid being another meaningful player in the segment.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Your next question is from Sruti Patel. She says: "Thanks for the results call. Much appreciated. I'm looking at slide 11 and wondering how those segments shift over the next five years, i.e., how much contribution to revenues do you see from QSR in 2028, for example?
Sruti, it's difficult to put a number onto it because I know you're going to hold me to that number in five years. We expect to grow, if you look at slide 11, two, three, and four, are packaged foods, paint, and QSR. We plan to grow them aggressively. Every dollar for growth goes first into those three segments. How quickly they each grow would determine the relative percentages, we plan to grow those three very aggressively. Those three would take up a bigger and bigger share of the overall revenue pie.
Your next question is from Ielhaam Ismail from M&G Investments. "Since FX market liberalization, have you seen an improvement in liquidity?
I think that's one for Funke.
Thanks, Fola. To be honest, we haven't seen much improvement in liquidity. I think for us, our FX requirements are pretty limited, we're not typically in the market for that, it's not one that would materially impact our business in terms of seeing FX liquidity being available. I hope that addresses your question.
The next question is from Onome, who asks, "What was the source of the FX gain recorded during the period?" Onome works with Money Africa.
Okay. I'll say, look, this is one where we were better to be lucky than smart. We first of all try to avoid foreign exchange mismatch. We avoided dollar liabilities almost at all costs. In the course of our business, we do require FX to buy plant and equipment to import items. We try to make sure that we have a bit of liquidity to do these things. I think the avoidance of big FX liabilities and just managing our treasury to ensure that we're able to meet our needs. I would add also that a very big focus on localized supply chains is what resulted in the gains we recorded in the first half of the year.
Thank you, Fola. Your next question is from Wale Okunrinboye of Access Pensions. "I think it's good to see numbers like this after recent weak trends. Where do you see yourself in terms of your strategy when you took over UACN? Has the recent economic dislocation put you off things relative to your North Star? I see UACN active in the CP market. How do you assess bank financing relative to working capital financing for UAC entities? What is the play for your real estate over the medium term?
Okay. I think firstly, thank you. Where do we see ourselves relative to strategy? Look, it's fair to say that the last few years have been very difficult, and we in no way anticipated macro conditions as difficult as those we've experienced. You may recall that at the very start of our getting involved with UAC, we set ourselves three broad buckets. People, improve the talent, quality, and culture in the group. Structure, simplify the structure of the group, and growth. We're quite harsh critics of ourselves, so we'll say we have a lot of work to do, but we've also learnt a lot in the last few years. From the people perspective, we've, I think, done a pretty decent job, just in terms of strengthening talent, bringing through management trainees, and strengthening culture, but we are not immune.
That work is never going to be finished. Structure. We're now a minority in UPDC. We've sold out of control. We're a minority in MDS. We've sold out control. We've merged our paints businesses. We've acquired 100% of our food business. We've merged the subsidiary of the food business with the food business. We've also made good progress. There's still more work that we're going to do with simplifying the structure of the group. I would say work in progress there. Growth. I would say we've had a mixed record, but the companies that have been the core of our focus and our aggressive growth areas are packaged foods, paint, and QSR.
I would say we've done a decent job, but it is crystal clear that the challenges we've recently experienced in the animal feeds business have almost overshadowed all the progress in those businesses. Our focus is on addressing those challenges. I think Funke would take the question about CP and bank financing. Our play for real estate. We're a minority. Custodian is doing a fantastic job of growing and managing that business, where we try to be supportive partners. Over the long term, we would exit the business, but our focus for now is on supporting our partners, Custodian, and continue to grow value in UPDC. For the real estate on our books, our focus is to divest these things. They're non-core, low yielding, and have a meaningful amount of operational intensity to keep the licenses, permits, titles up and running.
We're going to divest these things and reinvest in our core. Funke can take the question around CP and bank financing.
Sure. It's a relatively easy response on this one. As a group, we try and get the best financing for group companies. Sometimes UAC, the holding company, plays a role by sourcing better priced funding from the capital markets via commercial paper. Essentially, we just try and look at opportunities to refinance bank debt. We use a combination of bank debt and commercial paper.
Thank you, Funke. Sruti Patel has another question. How much room do you have to increase prices? Any categories where it is easier or impossible?
Thank you, Sruti. I think I will start with the second half of your question. It varies meaningfully by operating segment. We are fortunate that in certain of our segments, packaged foods, paint, and QSR, we have very good market position. It is not easy, but we generally move price and the industry follows. It also, I think a lot depends on the nature of competition within the industry. For those, it is not easy, but has not been a major headache. We are conscious that regardless of how strong the market position is or how sensible the competition within an industry is, the consumer is stretched. If prices have gone up 30%, 40%, 50% and salaries have not moved up, the consumer quite simply will not be able to absorb these price increases. I think it is important to give that color.
The industry or the segment in which it is by far the most difficult to move prices is in the animal feed and edibles segment. I think it is for a number of factors. One is the lowest margin, and two, it is the segment in which you have several large players that do not have that huge difference in terms of market size and position. For the paints, QSR, and packaged foods, I would say not overly complicated, but not easy by any stretch.
Thank you, Fola. Your next question is from Francis Daniels, who works with Anibok. He has two questions. Could you give more color on your long dollar investment exposure and whether you intend to keep it at current levels or reduce it? Secondly, what are your long-term views on your logistics investments, which seems to be growing under current management?
Thank you, Francis. I think I've addressed the dollar exposure. One, I think we're more lucky than smart. We're not a hedge fund, so we're not trying to profit from taking dollar positions. We will just keep on trying to avoid FX mismatches. We will try to avoid dollar liabilities and try to ensure that we have some dollars to meet our working capital and CapEx needs. In some certain periods, we'll be lucky, like where we are now. If the naira appreciates as some people expect, we may not be as lucky. Trying to make money off trading dollars is not, by any stretch, part of our business model. We are trying to invest to grow our operating segments and have, quite frankly, been lucky in this particular quarter. Logistics, our partner, there's Imperial, now DP World. We are still very big minority shareholders.
I think it's important to note that with both UPDC and MDS, we own 43%. We're very active on the board of those companies. It is likely that at some point in the future, we will exit this business, but there's no rush. We focus on working with our partners to deliver value. It's not on our radar. The day-to-day focus is on growing the business with our partners, DP World.
I notice Sruti and Mike's hands are still up. Are these for new questions or your old questions? Okay. Your next question, Fola, is from Manjunath of Themis Capital Management. What initiatives has the company undertaken to enhance the performance and offerings of UPDC Hotel since its reopening?
I'll say we brought in a gentleman called Shousha. He was the GM of the hotel several years ago and at a time when the hotel was operating at its best. He now runs a hospitality consulting company to support us. I think the focus has been very much on the basics, which is the quality of offering to the guests of the hotel. Invested in infrastructure, cooling, water, power, just to make sure that the base hygiene factors are in place. He's now launched several micro initiatives. Trying to get a particular night at the restaurant of the hotel to draw in local traffic, which will then spread the word that the hotel is indeed back and operational and hopefully drive room rate. Then also doing a lot of work with corporates.
It's one of the few hotels that has the scale to host big conferences. I think those are the broad things that have been done, and we hope will drive some benefit and value in that hotel.
Thank you, Fola. Mike, your hand is still up. Please unmute yourself and go ahead.
I'm sorry, I didn't have any other questions. Let me take down my hand.
Thank you. To ask a question, please raise up your hand or type in the chat box. Kindly introduce yourself and the organization that you represent before asking your question. This ends the Q&A session. I will now hand the call back to Folasope Aiyesimoju for his closing remarks.
Thank you so much, Temitope. Thank everyone for making time to participate in this call, and to the insightful questions. I wish everyone a wonderful rest of the day. Thank you.
That concludes the UAC of Nigeria PLC half year 2023 results call. Thank you for your participation. You may now hang up.