Welcome, everybody, to the Cloetta conference call. My name is Jacob Broberg, I'm head of investor relations. With me today is Lilian Fossum Biner, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Cloetta, David Nuutinen who is departing CEO of Cloetta, and Danko Maras who is incoming Interim CEO of Cloetta. With that, I leave the word to Lilian. Please go ahead, Lilian.
Thank you, Jacob. As you have all seen today, David Nuutinen, CEO of Cloetta, has due to personal reasons decided to leave Cloetta as of September 1st. The board has therefore appointed Danko Maras, our CFO, as Interim CEO. We in the board will now initiate a normal recruitment process to find a permanent CEO. Even if I respect David's decision to leave the company, I have to say that in the board we very much regret David's decision. He's been a successful, appreciated, and well-liked leader during his 13 years with the company, including now the last year as CEO. David has, throughout the years, demonstrated both excellent work, loyalty, and dedication to the company. As you have noticed, Cloetta has developed well during his time as CEO. The decision to leave, therefore, is 100% his own decision, and his reasons for this are private.
Before continuing, I would just like you to say a few words, David.
Thank you, Lilian. As many of you hopefully have noticed, I have really enjoyed working for Cloetta. These past 13 years have absolutely been the best years in my career. But as you know, in both business life and private life, there are challenges and demands. And I have therefore, for personal reasons, decided that it is best for me and the company that I step down as CEO. I can understand that many of you might wonder why I'm leaving, but I can reassure you that my decision is driven by personal reasons. And with that, I will hand over back to you, Lilian.
Thank you, David. Now I'm very pleased that Danko has accepted to take the role as Interim CEO. Danko is very experienced, competent, and has been a key player in recent years' development within Cloetta. We also have a very experienced management team in the company, and I'm confident that together with Danko, they will be able to together drive profitable growth. For those of you who don't know him, I will now ask you to give a brief introduction of yourself, Danko.
Thank you, Lilian, and good morning, everyone. First of all, I would like to say that I'm very sad to see that David is leaving as CEO. We have worked very well together in the time that has passed. But as a short background on my professional career, I've been with Cloetta as a CFO for 4.5 years now, and prior to that, I was a CFO for Leaf. And before joining Cloetta Leaf, I spent almost 20 years in Unilever, mostly abroad, actually, in different senior positions in the Unilever world. And as Lilian mentioned, from the outset and forward, I have very much been involved in creating the strategy and financial targets for Cloetta and then also implementing them. I think we are on the right track. We have grown organically and through acquisitions over the last year.
Our EBIT margin has progressed and improved over the time. Our cash generations have significantly increased. Our leverage has decreased, and we have started to pay dividend in line with our strategy. So this demonstrates that our strategy works well. For me, as an Interim CEO, I will now, together with the group management team and all employees in Cloetta, continue to drive profitable growth in line with our strategy and targets. We have the plans to do so, and we continue to go ahead with that. With that, I think we open up for questions.
Yes, please go ahead for questions.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question for the speakers, please press zero one on your telephone keypad. There will be a brief pause while questions are being registered. Our first question comes from the line of Martin Lindholm from Direkt. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Thank you. Good morning. Question to Danko. Are you ready to take on the position as permanent CEO?
Hey, Martin. Well, I have a lot of good energy in driving the profitable growth agenda, and for now, I've taken this interim role in that spirit. It is the board who has to decide who will be a permanent CEO.
If you would be asked, would you be ready to accept that?
Again, I'm going in with this with a lot of good energy. So for me, I have a very clear agenda of driving this as good as I can.
All right. A question to the chairman then. For a long time, do you expect to be in this recruitment process? When do you expect to have a successor there?
Well, we were informed about David's decision on Monday, and we have therefore now just decided to launch a normal recruitment process.
Okay. So no time frame as of yet?
No. Just a normal recruitment process.
All right. Thanks.
Thank you. As another reminder, if you do wish to ask a question, please press 01 on your telephone keypad. Once again, if you'd like to ask a question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad. We have a question from the line of Erik Sandstedt from Handelsbanken. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Hi, Erik. Here with Handelsbanken. Hi, all of you. Hi, David. I, of course, also regret the decision, but I have full respect for it. I just want to sort of double-check, although I think I have a fair idea of the answer that I mean, should we expect any sort of anomalies in terms of financial performance during the quarter here, or I mean, this truly seems to be private and personal as such?
I think I will take that one, Erik. As you know, we don't do any forward-looking statements, and we keep on driving our performance in line with our strategy. And if I look at the performance that we have had so far during the year that has passed, we have been in the second quarter, but also in the previous quarters, we have been driving performance in line with the strategy. And that's basically what I can say at this point.
Yeah. Perfect. Thank you very much. That's actually all I had.
Thank you. As there appear to be no further questions, I return the conference to you.
Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you for joining us this morning, and speak to you next time. Have a good day. Thank you, and goodbye.
Thank you. This now concludes our conference call. Thank you all for attending. You may now disconnect.