Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Welcome to Strauss Group first quarter, 2024 results. Following management's formal presentation, we will conduct a Q&A session. Please feel free to post any questions you may have in the chat box, or send them directly to me on WhatsApp. As a reminder, this online Zoom conference is being recorded today, Monday, 27th of May, 2024. I would like to remind everyone that this online webinar may contain projections or other forward-looking statements regarding future events or the future performance of the company. These statements are only predictions and may change as time passes. Strauss Group does not assume any obligation to update that information.
Actual events or results may differ materially from those projected, including as a result of changing industry and market trends, reduced demands for our products, the timing development of our new products and their adoption by the market, increased competition in the industry and price reductions, as well as due to risks identified in the documents filed by the company with the Israeli Securities Authority. On the line with me today are Mr. Shai Babad, Strauss Group CEO, and Mr. Ariel Chetrit, Group CFO, and myself, Daniella Finn, Director of Investor Relations. As usual, we shall start with a recap of the quarterly results by CEO Shai Babad, and then move on to the financial highlights of the quarter, presented by CFO Ariel Chetrit. Shai, please go ahead.
Thank you, Daniella. Thank you very much, everybody, for joining us today. What I will try to do in the next five to 10 minutes is just give a general overview of where we stand this quarter, and how is it in line with our strategy that we have published three months ago, and then I'll pass it on to Ariel. I can't start talking about the results of this quarter without talking about what we are going through for the past seven, eight months. Israel is in a war situation, and this has an effect on all of us, not just on the citizens, also on companies, companies' employees.
We had a soldier that died a week ago, and we had a hostage that was brought back, that was brought back, back, dead, on last Saturday. As a company, we're doing our utmost to support during this very, very difficult times, all citizens around this country in multiple activities. And I here want to take just to say a word, that we take a good prayer that this situation will end, that the hostages will come back quickly, and that our soldiers will come back safely back home. Looking at the results, so we see that net sales have grown by 1.5%, but organic growth went down by 0.7%.
The major reason is the fact that this year, the Passover, the Jewish holiday, last year, occurred in the beginning of April. This year, happened, in the end of April, and because of the shifting of the Jewish holiday, it affected our sales. If we look at January till the end of April, we see also organic growth, and we see growth according to plan. But when we look at our gross profit and EBIT, we still see that the margins are relatively low. We used to be around 39%-40% on the gross profit side, and around 12%-13% on the EBIT side, and we see that we have deteriorated because of cost of goods. Cost of goods is the major effect on our results.
Net profit, we actually exceeded our results from last year with almost 90% increase, but it's mainly because of tax audits that gave us some refunds of tax back, and that impacted the net profit results. When we see we look on the different companies, so looking at Strauss Israel and operations in Israel, margins are still relatively big, and also there's a small increase in revenues and in EBIT compared to last year. But our major deficit this quarter happened in our other coffee operations, mainly in Brazil. Brazil is in a situation where Robusta green coffee has been increasing for the past 3-4 quarters gradually without any stabilization. Last year, we were under the assumption and the forecast that green coffee prices are going to decrease, it...
and therefore we reduced discounts. At the end of increased discounts, sorry. At the end of the day, it didn't happen, and what we did since then is went back to increasing prices, but our increasing prices lags the increase in Robusta, and therefore our margins have been affected by that, and the results accordingly are relatively low compared to what we're used to. When we look ahead and focus ahead, we believe that at the end, prices of Robusta will stabilize and eventually will start going down.
As we have a lag when prices increase, we also have a lag when prices decrease, and therefore, we believe that, we hope and forecast that for the next second half of the year, prices will stabilize or even a little bit go down, and we'll have a much more robust second half in 2024 when it comes to our coffee operations in Brazil. In Strauss Water, relatively, had a good quarter. There's still continuous growth in revenues and in EBIT. Especially there's growth, and I'll mention it a bit ahead, in our operations in China, where there's a double-digit growth in sales and also growth in profitability. And overall, this is the picture and the results.
Where we're going in Israel, I think the major thing to notice here is that Fun & Indulgence has a substantial increase in revenues and also substantial increase in EBIT. I think that our confectionery business is on track with the turnaround plan according to our strategy, and slowly we are getting back market share. We have now managed to got back to 26.6% market share compared to the 28 we had before. So we're almost fully back, and with a double-digit EBIT margins this quarter. When we look at our coffee operations, still there's a little bit of deterioration in operational profit because of coffee prices that have been continuing to increase.
But overall, you can see that we are totally on total margins of 11.5%-11.6% of on our overall activity in Israel. As mentioned before, our major setback this quarter is with our international operations in our coffee business, mainly in Brazil. Central and Eastern Europe operations are relatively the same, same as last year, and the major difference is Brazil, with what I described before. It's important to notice that in Brazil, our strategy is talking, also talking about how do we increase our operations in non-RNG, understanding that RNG is very, very volatile and prices are going up and down and affecting drastically our margins.
Our strategy talked about reaching 40% share of non-RNG activity, and we are growing towards that through M&As and through adding activities to our non-RNG. All our operations in the non-RNG segments are with double-digit margins and with a very good and mid- to high-single-digit CAGR. So, as the more we're moving to those categories, the easier it will be for us to hedge our margins in Brazil on the one hand, and on the other hand, we are working on productivity on the one hand, and on increasing prices, continuing increasing prices in Brazil in order to mitigate the rising in green coffee.
Another important thing to notice in Brazil is that, in the first month of this year, because we were the first one, we had a marketing, we were the first one to increase prices. It took time till the competition increased prices as well, and in the first price, we lost volume, and therefore we lost revenues. So overall, this quarter, we were impacted by the fact that also in January, we had a loss of market share and, a loss of, loss of profit. And looking ahead, we don't believe that the, you know, the loss of, the loss of market share is sustainable. We think that we'll get back the market share that we lost, and we still stay, the market leader.
But we do think that because of the volatility of coffee prices, there can be an effect on the market share, especially when we lead the market, and we are driving the price increases in Brazil. Looking in the water business, just to mention that in China, you can see that there's a substantial increase in sales, with 30% growth and continuous improvement also in our EBIT in China. And overall, the business of our water business is with 12.3% market share. Looking into our strategy, strategy was broken down to four major pillars. So one was talking about stronger home base in Israel. How do we invest more in our core activities? How would we get more in our core activities?
How do we use the fact that our categories mainly play in the snacking segment, where we are very, very diversified there, having snacking solution in almost all our categories, in the dairies, in salty snacks, in the confectionery, and in the fresh salads. And since this category is growing, and it's a trend, that people don't eat already usual meals, but they move into snacking solutions. So this is a lot of what we are working on, and we're investing a lot in our brands, in our core brands, while we optimize our portfolio, that we close SKUs that we think are irrelevant. And we're also getting out of activities which we don't think are part of our core.
When we look at Brazil, I mentioned before, so one is working on productivity, the other is increasing prices in RNG, but also increasing our non-RNG through M&As and continuing to grow our company as... In Brazil as a dry food company, not just in the coffee segment. And last but not least, in our international water play, our strategy is talking about how do we enhance our portfolio offering by giving different machines and developing different machines on different segments from low-end to high-end and with different functionalities. And the other side is how do we become, how do we get back to being... Or get back, how do we get into being number one in China, in market share, and increase, and also deploying in new geographies. All of this is going and working according to our strategy.
And last but not least, our strategy is talking about how do we make the company future fit, and how we do we go through transformation and resiliency. And here there are three major things we are doing under that transform. The first parts of the slide I already talked about in how do we deal with the core. I'll just mention that in Israel, we are also when we look at our growth engines, we're also looking at innovation and plant-based. We are building right now, we're in the midst of building a plant-based factory in Israel. The plant, the factory will be ready by mid to end next year, and then we'll launch our new products. And this is a new segment, a very growing segment, that we are getting into.
Going back into the transformation, how do we make the company resilient? There are three different layers. The first one is performance. How do we enhance our performance and make our performance much more productive and transform it? We have eight different streams that we launched. In how do we take the way we operate today and transform the operate today by bringing new technologies, by bringing new methods, by bringing new tools, and by training our people to do things differently. Those eight streams go through revenue management, marketing and ROI, design to value, manufacturing, supply chain, logistics, procurement and working capital, and in all of those, we are transforming the way we operate.
We set a target, that by the end of 2026, we'll reach ILS 300 million of productivity, platformatic productivity, which is supposed to help us increase our margins to the target that we set ourself between 10%-12%. So that's the first area that we are working on. We can see also in the first quarter that we are on track with those streams, with the targets that we set for ourself. When we look at our culture, we understand that in order to drive performance, we also need to change our culture. We need to work on becoming much more accountable and more execution-driven, and more agile to the way we are today.
And there is also streams that are working on, we call it account execution, accountability and execution, that are working along the company in order to train our people to be more agile, to be adaptive to change, and to learn how to use all the new tools in order to make that transformation work. And last but not least, we set a goal that our core activity from 65% today of core activity, which is a core activity we define as growing by 5% or mid-single digit, and with double-digit margins, and place where we are either number one or two, and we have a substantial position in the market.
So anything that doesn't fall under that category is not core, and by optimizing our portfolio, what part of the operations that we have today, activities that we have today, we will divest, as you've seen we've done with Serbia, and as we announced in Israel, the activities we are divesting here. Alongside with the turnaround that we need to do to some of our businesses, such as the confectionery and such as Sabra. Last thing I will say before I pass to Ariel, is Sabra. Sabra today is under a turnaround plan. There's a new CEO in place that comes with vast experience in the food industry, works for PepsiCo for the past 20 years, and there's also a new chairman in place. The new chairman, he used to be the CEO of Frito-Lay in the U.S.
His name is Tom Greco, a very, very, experienced professional. And by August, we are supposed to come up with a strategic plan, how do we do the turnaround in Sabra to bring Sabra back on track? Because although there's an improvement, this quarter in Sabra result, we still don't see a path and a track of a full turnaround, unlike what we see in confectionery, that we do see the turnaround, and we are now affected by the cocoa prices, which eventually we believe will stabilize. So taking that into consideration, we believe that in Sabra, once we'll have a plan ready, we'll either execute it, do the turnaround, or we'll think of other solutions about what to do with Sabra in our portfolio. That's it for me, and I'm now passing it to Ariel.
Thank you, Shai. Good day, everybody. I'll start with mentioning that in the first quarter, we structured the segment reporting according to our managerial new structure, a new operating model, and then, of course, according to the strategy that we published a few months ago. In a way that the segment of Coffee Israel moved from the general segment of Strauss Coffee to the general segment of Strauss Israel. Still you have all the information about all the segments and the sub-segments that you've seen before, and the corresponding numbers for previous years were adjusted accordingly. Starting with the sales, we grew in this quarter by 1.4%, organically -0.7%.
If we look on the right-hand side, we can see the main causes for this growth. So starting with Strauss Israel, again, including Coffee Israel in it, the segment grew by 1.7%. As Shai mentioned, the timing of the Hebrew holidays, the Hebrew Passover holidays, affected us very strongly. In April, we see—we've seen a very high growth in Strauss Israel compared to April of last year, and therefore, we have to compare the first trimester, January till April, of the whole year, in order to really understand what happened economically. What we see, as Shai said, is that our growth momentum and growth rate in Strauss Israel is roughly what we've seen in previous quarters and according to our strategic plan.
Moving onwards to Strauss Coffee International, this is only our activities, coffee activities in Central and Eastern Europe and in Brazil. We see that we grew in Israeli shekel nominal terms only by 0.3%, but in local currencies, we decreased by 4.5%. The decrease came mainly from two main areas, two main geographies. The first one is Brazil, and Shai explained the reasons of this decrease in quantity. The other geographic area is mainly Russia. We see this Russia decline as a temporary decline, and we expect sales to return to normal rates in the coming quarters.
In the water segment, we are very pleased with the growth of 3%, taking into consideration that we're experiencing still the war here in Israel, and the demand for appliances, electronic appliances, it has slowed down in Israel. But still, although the slowdown, we're managing to increase our install base of customers in Israel, and as you can see, very solid and good results, top line and bottom line for Strauss Water. And in the other segment is the Sabra sales growth, which in Israeli shekel terms was 3%, but in local currency, only 0.5%.
As Shai explained, we are still experiencing the challenges of going back to the sales points and increasing our market share. In gross profit and gross profitability, we can see that the nominal numbers are growing very nicely, ILS 874 million gross profit this quarter, much higher than the previous quarters for several years backwards. This is on a positive note. Also, on a positive note, we can see that our gross margin increased by 1% compared to the first quarter of 2023, but we still have a long way to go to previous gross margins of 36%-39% that we know from the past.
This is a part of our strategic path, as we explained two months ago, and we are planning to increase gradually our gross margins over the next three years. The EBIT margin is around 8%, like the first quarter of last year. The EBIT result is also pretty much the same as it was last year. We are still investing in operating expenses, mainly sales and marketing more than we have in the past, because we want to make sure that we invest in our brands, and make sure that according to our strategy, we allocate our resources mainly to our core activities, and this is exactly what we're doing.
So we're increasing our core resource allocation according to our strategic plan, and therefore, you can see that the result is similar to last year, although the gross margin was higher than the first quarter of last year. In the net income, as Shai explained, we enjoy a benefit of a positive tax audit for the years 2018 till 2021. Looking forward, it means that we will enjoy a couple of million ILS of tax benefit in the coming years, as long as the tax audit perspective will not change in the future. So, we see it as a very good sign.
Of course, this helped us to enjoy a 6.2% net profit margin this quarter. I will end by talking about our net debt-to-EBITDA ratio, which is 2.3 at the end of the first quarter. We always have a zero/negative free cash flow in the first quarter of the year. First quarter of the year is a more challenging quarter in terms of cash flow. Therefore, it always affect a little bit negatively our gearing ratio.
But also in the first quarter, we invested ILS 130 million in building our second factory of Haier Strauss Water in China, and we believe that this investment is a strategic investment that will benefit us very much in the future. So, this investment also had an effect on our gearing for the first quarter. But all in all, looking forward to the next quarters, we will see an improved gearing ratio. I will stop here, and let's give some time for questions.
Thank you, Ariel and Shai. Just as a reminder, please, if you have any questions, feel free to post them on the chat box in this webinar. The first couple of questions are from Chris Reimer from Barclays. Thank you, Chris, for your questions. The first one is: Can you elaborate a bit on how the strategic plan is progressing, and touch on the main points and the company's expectations going forward?
All right, so I'll jump to the slide that talks about the different pillars of the strategy, and we'll take it from there. So, when we look at the pillar, there's renew the core. When we look at the pillar of how do we work with the core categories, how do we optimize our categories and brands, and this one, working with stacking. So it's pretty much around the plan. We don't see any setback there. When we look about Brazil, optimizing our R&D in Brazil, leadership in Brazil, so we do have our leadership in Brazil. We do think we are lacking behind because of the prices of green coffee, and improving the margins in Brazil is not according to plan.
But we don't foresee that for long, green coffee prices will stay the way where they are, the level that they are. And at the end of the day, like we are lagging behind today, when we increase the price, when green prices... When green-
Coffee prices will decrease, we will enjoy, and that will increase our margins. When we talk about optimizing the increase in portfolio offering of water, we have a couple of solution in progress that we are developing right now in affordable machines, medium machines and premium machines that will launch to the market. This is according to plan. When we look about the expanded building and the plant-based in Israel and working with the engines in Israel, that as I mentioned before, this is also a long plan. We will probably start operating our new plant around August, September next year, and launch our new products in plant-based category.
When we look about expanding non-RNG and beyond coffee, all those categories that have a double digit margin that will help us bring Brazil to be less volatile and much more solid on margins. Here, we're still lagging behind. We are examining a number of M&As that we think of doing in Brazil. Still a little bit lagging behind, but it's the first quarter of the strategy. There's still a lot of time, and we believe we'll get back on track there. When we talk about growing in China and into new geographies and waters, so growing in China is going way, way over plan, and we are progressing there very, very well. We believe that we will reach the target of becoming number one till 2026, and with very high margins and, and, and growth.
When we look about entering new geographies, this is still in, as we say, diapers, this is still in planning, but it is according to the track that we set ourselves of what geography, which partner with which products, and this is it - this is it at work. When we look about the transformation journey of performance and transformation, we are on track with the targets that we put ourselves, but we actually stretched our target a lot because of cost of goods, and we set ourselves new targets that will help us deal better with the cost of goods, understanding not everything can come from pricing.
When we look at the stretch targets, we are a little bit lagging behind, but we believe we will be able to catch up somewhere around the end of the second quarter, third quarter. When we look at the goal of high-performance culture, this is still in the works. This is a journey. It's changing the culture of the organization, bringing more accountability and execution into our organization. It's a journey that takes time. We are on track, but it was something that will follow us in the next 18 months. And when we talk about portfolio optimization, so when it comes to our portfolio optimization operations, so we have seen that we have divested Serbia. We have set to divest three operations here in Israel. Hopefully, they'll be on track.
A lot of it, it doesn't depend on us because it has to go through legislation of the Israeli Competition Authority, so it depending on the time of the authorization that will come from there as well, but overall, that is also on track. The major places that we see... Also, when we talk about optimizing the portfolio, it talks about also the turnaround for businesses that we are looking to do turnaround. So in our confectionery business, we think that the turnaround in the confectionery is on track and even above what we have expected. The only thing that is affecting there is the cocoa prices that will affect us in the next few quarters.
But taking into consideration that the cocoa prices are not fairly sustainable for the long term, we believe that the turnaround will be completed by the end of 2026 in our strategy. When we look... We talk about Sabra, I mentioned it before, there, there's new management in place. There's a new CEO. We are coming up with a strategy plan for the next few years with the turnaround plan. We'll have to check this planning to see whether it's valid. If it will be valid, then we'll set it up as part of the KPIs of the strategy. If not, then we'll have to think about other solutions for Sabra. So overall, if I look at where we are with strategy, mostly everything is on track.
We are a little bit lagging behind a little bit because of coffee prices, mainly in Brazil. We are lagging a little bit behind because we still haven't managed to get the full turnaround plan for Sabra, but for the rest of the activities, we think we are on track. And of course, cost of goods is affecting us way more than we thought, and therefore, we are stretching our productivity efforts and making sure that we'll be able to meet the challenges that are brought upon us with the cost of goods. Hope I answered your question.
Thank you. The second question from Chris is: How are plans for the expansion of products in Brazil going?
It's not the expansion of products like M&As in the dry categories. We have set ourselves there with a platform, a logistic platform and a supply chain platform that can reach 150,000 clients today, and we'll be able to reach, by the end of this year, beginning of next year, 200,000 clients. It's one of the largest supply chain platform, distribution platforms there are in Brazil. And on that platform, there are many categories in the dry categories that we can actually distribute and sell.
And therefore, we are already there in corn and in plant-based, in protein drinks, in ready to drink, we are there in the juices, powder juices, cocoa juices, cocoa, cocoa drinks, and also in non-RNG, which are coffee-related, which is coffee machines and capsules and beans, which we are there as well. So we will continue to enhance and go into more M&As, either in the categories that were already there, such as corn or powder, juice powders or cocoa drinks, but we will also look at other dry categories which can fit our platform very, very well, and that we have economy of scale that will allow us to increase our margins and increase our sales there. So it's going up to plan. There are several M&As that we are examining right now.
It's a little bit too early, because it's less than a quarter have passed since we launched the strategy to see what we'll finalize, but we hope that already this year, we'll be able to finalize at least one deal.
Thank you. The next questions are from Feng Zhang, from Jefferies. Feng, thank you very much for your questions. The first question is: Could you specify about the weakness in health and wellness in Israel and in coffee? How much impact was from the holiday phasing, and how much from the underlying weak demand? How much of the phasing effect will benefit Q2, and any color on the current consumer behavior?
So we don't see any color on the current consumer behavior, logic, the behavioral change. Almost most of the weakness that you see, if not all of it, is because of the phasing. When we look at January, April, we already see that we are mostly up to date. There are some technical malfunctioning in our plants, in dairies in the south and a little bit in the north, that a little bit affected the supply and demand, our ability to supply on time. And it will affect a little bit, but mostly there's no change in market trend. The holiday was the main reason for the slack.
We do think that in the coffee segment, there is another problem with coffee prices, that, as long as coffee Robusta will stay as high as it is, it will affect the results for H2 as well. So, margin-wise, there is an issue that we're still watching, but on the dairy, we don't see any impact that we should have. Especially when we focus on snacking and going a lot around the snacking solutions in our dairies, we think there's a boost there, and since we are very... We launched several products also with proteins and launched them on the dairies, we think that will also help us and assist us in getting additional growth.
Thank you. The next question from Feng is: Do you expect fiscal year 2024 to be within the range of midterm guidance, i.e., top line to be over 5% and operating margin 10%-12%?
2024, we don't think that this will be the case. As we said in our, our strategy, we are aiming to have 5% CAGR. We do think that on growth side, we'll be able to meet it, but on margin side, getting to 10%-12% will be by 2026, as we launched in the strategy. Especially with COGS as they are today, I don't think there's any way that we'll be able to reach in 2024 between 10%-12% margins. And this is not, by the way, the tracking of the strategy plan. The strategy plan is set at how we get there in three years. All the transformation in performance that we set ourselves to do is broken down to stages. It's a long journey of changing the way we operate.
It's not just doing savings or cost cutting. It's really transforming in each stream the way we operate. This takes time, this just takes training, this takes a lot of recurring activities that we have to do in order to make sure that this comes into place. And this also takes CapEx investment in IT and machinery to bring that productivity, and that takes time.
Thank you. The next question is: What level cost inflation do you expect for fiscal year 2024? How much cocoa and coffee is covered or hedged?
So we don't disclose our hedging for our commodities. But what we can say is our hedge policy, usually we're hedged anywhere between 4-12 months, because this is our hedging policy. So, we are hedged for these two commodities also, in between these periods. And, what we see in the cocoa arena is declining of prices, but still the prices are very, very high, double and triple what they were a year ago. And taking into consideration also the ratio of turning cocoa beans into cocoa butter, we see a dramatic incline in prices.
So we are building plans to manage with the, let's say, cocoa price, commodity price, crisis, at least for the next 12 months, as we all understand that the cocoa prices will remain high, even though they are lower than what they were at the peak. And in these plans, our, our strategic plans, our productivity plans, bringing more productivity into our production in the confectionery plant. And also, we're building other components to our business plan to deal with this crisis.
But as Shai said, definitely, it will be a challenge to maintain or to continue our improvement in the margins in this area, in the confectionery area, although we are sure that, looking forward, once cocoa prices return to more normal prices, you will be able to see a very significant improvement in our margins, because the fundamentals of the business are improving as we speak, quarter by quarter. Moving to the coffee arena. In the coffee arena, as you see, in Brazil, we are increasing our selling prices. In Eastern Europe, we are increasing our selling prices. There is a lag between the increase in selling prices and the increase in Robusta and generally green coffee prices. Once the green coffee prices stabilize or even go down, hopefully, we will catch up with this lag.
We'll experience stabilization in the gross margins, and after that, if green coffee prices go down, we will enjoy a lag of the period that it takes us to adjust our selling prices downwards, where we will see increased margins. We have seen this in the past. We are not alarmed by these temporary green coffee price changes. We understand that it's more than a quarter to look at it. We need to look at it on a longer period in order to really understand what's going on in the business, but we're definitely not alarmed about it.
Thank you. And the next couple of questions are on Brazil. Do you see volume recovering in April, May? Did your competitors follow on price increase? Who are you losing market share to? And any color on consumer behavior?
So, I think that the competitors are following, and as I mentioned before, in January it wasn't the case, but competitors are following and increasing prices as well. I don't think there will be any volume loss. I think it's very hard to look on a monthly basis. At the end of the day, you have to look at longer periods to see what happens, especially when the prices are so volatile. I think that by the end of this year, while we look at the year behind, I don't think we'll lose market share, and even if we do, it will be something small and negligible. I do think that pushing up prices and if we boost the prices will stabilize.
So for the second half of the year, we will be managing to show solid margins and solid profits in Brazil. And once we boost the prices, we'll go down and we'll even enjoy higher margins, as we did in 2022, when that was the case. And I don't see any change right now in consumer behavior.
Thank you. The final question is: Is the tax refund to recur going forward?
So again, we cannot assure anything about the future, because, you know, the tax authorities, they can, they can decide whatever they decide, and we will have to discuss it. But, at least part of it, as we see it, we could see it going forward, and therefore, as I said before, maybe we have a, a year possibility to enjoy a benefit of ILS 2 million on an annual basis, according to this tax, tax audit result.
Okay, thank you very much. This concludes our presentation today. I'd like to thank everybody for joining us today. A recording of this webinar will be available at a later stage on the Investor Relations site, on our website. Couple of closing remarks, Shai?
No, just to say that those are not easy times in Israel right now, and I hope, hopefully, that the situation will be resolved quickly. All the hostages will come back, and all the soldiers will come back home as fast as possible, healthy and sound. I do think that this is a challenging year with cost of goods increasing. We did set ourselves with challenging strategic goals for the next three years. I think that mostly in this quarter, we are on track, and looking forward, we are on track with our strategic goals. I don't think that, you know, this is something that will be - you can see as was us before, already in the next quarter or by the end of this year.
But I do think that gradually we'll see, with the focus on our core activity and investing in the core, focusing and directing and precising exactly where we should operate, how we should operate, on the one hand. On the other hand, with all the transformation of the way we operate and how we operate in the different streams and the different layers, making ourselves more productive and more efficient than we were. Working on our culture and optimizing our portfolio, divesting some of the activity, and investing in core activity, and doing turnaround to some of the activities, we will meet the strategy goals and targets that we set to ourselves, and we will see gradual growth in the next quarters.
Thank you very much. See you all next quarter.
Thank you.