Interview with Pablo Perversi, President Europe, Danone

All right. Good afternoon, Pablo. Very nice to welcome you in our Growth FMCG CEO podcast. How are you today? I'm super. Thank you very much for inviting me, Frederick. It's a pleasure, Pablo. So, you know we have just launched this podcast. Right. The objective of this podcast is to welcome aspirational and successful growth CEOs. Right. And as well, to develop an understanding about who they are, the person behind the function, their personal leadership journey, and their experience from strategy to execution. So that's what is ahead of us for the next 90 minutes. I look forward. So let's start with a very simple question, is who is Pablo Percy? Well, I'm the son of an immigrant family, all of them Europeans, that went to Argentina, as many had done at the time that had to work their way up. And my grandfather being the patriarch of the family who had to study medicine with very few means. And from the other side, a family that set up the Cordon Bleu in Latin America. So I came from a family that was very good in food and developed my palate very well. And at the same time, a family that really cared for society and wanted health to be at the forefront. But most of all, I think, from a family that was very keen on developing themselves to become better, to have access to a better life and to be able to give their kids a better life than they actually had from the war in Europe. And that became a common denominator across my whole life. I'm a person that is married and six kids between the two of us, three of my own and three of my wife, which we nurture and we actually enjoy all the time that we can. Very close to the family, very close to my roots, both in Spain, because I lived in Spain a very large part of my life, but also in Argentina, where I actually have a farm, and I connect to nature, and I do other things than I would normally do in business. But a person that is really challenged all the time to see how things will develop, how things will change. Very inquisitive, with an intellectual intelligence, but also inquisitiveness that is always wanting me to learn new things, to do new things, and to try and continuously improve in what I actually do. And. And I try to nurture that from my early age, but also with my kids and people that I actually am around. Lots of friends all over the world. I've lived all over the world. And I think having lived all over the world, I have an acceptance of culture and an understanding of culture that makes me enjoy lots of different Occasions in a very different way. I'm a person whom, if you ask what's the best place in the world, I really cannot say there's one because I love many things about many different places and there's a combination of places where I actually connect and I really enjoy. As a general rule, I'm a very positive person. I look for the opportunity and I try not to play politics. I feel politics is for those that are actually not understanding what the problem is. And therefore you get politics through different understandings of the problem. But at the same time, I'm very straight, I'm very performance oriented. I like to actually get growth because I think growth is the biggest motivator in life and it's the one thing that actually gets everybody going together. Yeah, I'm very good. And how you define your shaping values and principle as an individual? I think values are a very important part of what you do in whatever you do in life. And in fact, a lot of my recruitment is through values. I think in the past people said if you want to recruit, recruit for performance, but also for attitude. I really believe values goes much further because I think values are ingrained in people and they shape culture of companies and they shape relationships with people. And therefore I have a set of values which I try to work with, but both in terms of being integral as a person, but also in terms of the way that I relate to people. I am a challenger, but I actually also help people in terms of their development in terms of getting there. I try to see the future. I am positive, but I also understand the people that are actually on the other side of that equation and the reasons why they're on the other side of the equation. I tend to be transparent because I don't actually like the fact that hierarchy doesn't allow transparency. And I think that it's important for everybody to understand why decisions are made in the context of that transparency. I think it aligns people better as well. I'm a person that is actually always wanting to find the solution to problems, but I'm also a person that is also looking forward to and as a result of that, trying to understand and give clarity to people of why we're doing something or why we're going in a certain direction. So very clear. So when you grew up, you grew up in. You told me before we start that you spent the first seven years of your life in Argentina, then you moved to Spain where you spent most of your time, and then you went studying in UK a bit in Spain. And then you went onto the world. So. So what were the dreams of Pablo when you were a child, and what were you hoping to achieve? Well, it's interesting because I have two sides of me. One, I studied to be an economist and also an engineer. And that's because I could never decide what I wanted. I wanted to run my own group of companies at the time, and I wanted to fix the economy of Argentina because I thought it was a huge waste. There's a guy that just got the job. That's right. Yes, exactly. Maybe a little bit more crazy than me, but albeit doing a decent job in what he's actually doing. But interestingly, I realized as I went through life that I was not going to solve the problem of Argentina. It was bigger than I could actually ever handle, and I wasn't going to be the one that had the biggest group of companies that I would have envisaged. And really, my challenge in life was to really start to find sustainable growth in people, in businesses, and really making that epicurean feeling that you get when you're having good food, good friends around the table in the groups of people that I actually work with. And that's been what I've done across my whole life. Very, very marked by a number of different things. Both my upbringing, but also the fact that rugby has really marked me in the way that people really club together and work together, and teams actually collaborate with each other. And to perform, you have to be there for the other person. And I think that that has been something else through sport that you actually find. The fact that I lived in so many countries has actually made me understand that you can generalize about almost every society in the world, but every society makes things happen. And if you understand how that happens in the different societies, you have a huge advantage in terms of what you can impact as a person and as a leader in different places. I never thought it that way. It's very interesting. Can you give an example? Because I think it's very powerful, what you just said. Well, if you ask people about the Mexicans, for example, they'll say to you. They'll say, true. And it's true. They might say manana or like they say, but in reality, they also have a way of working that if you engage them in the right way, they will come to you and they will actually do the stuff and make the impact that you want. And it might be that you have to go out and have a tequila with them as a friend, but if you know how to engage into that society, it works. The same thing in Russia. I've worked with Russians and I've had great experiences with Russians. But there have been some unblockers of that. For me to understand how you need to operate within that society. And in Asia it's the same thing. I used to go to Indonesia and sit in meetings and thought, I've understood everything, everything is agreed. And then you leave. And the next day the boss of the person in that meeting would say, not really. And you understand that there's a hierarchy that you have to respect in that society. And because of that respect, that society works. And if you know how to respect that, you can also get things done with a lot of impact. So values are extremely important. I mean, I'm a huge believer. That's why we always start interview with values, because they shape individuals who were your role models that shaped your values? PABLO I had many role models. My dad played a very big role. My dad was a big entrepreneur. He actually was also leader of many companies. He's helped presidents actually do things in a number of different countries. He's recognized in Spain as an Illustrisimo by the Courts of Aragon. He was a mentor to the king now of Spain, in industry. And to be honest with you, he was a very big role model for me in many different ways, because he was always shaping me to be better, positively asking me to see how I could see things differently and to find the opportunities and development in my person. And when you know a person that well and they can be your friend as well as your guide and your father, and you can see the impact that they've actually had and you're close to them, obviously that plays a very key role. But even today I have many mentors outside of the business who are people that have become close friends, whom I go and I ask for advice or a different point of view. And they're very influential in the way I think, the way I actually carry myself out, but also the way I understand and I grow as a person. Because not all of them are just about leadership. Some of them are people who are in the world of digital advising BlackRock, and you want to be close to them because they're the ones that are leading the AI revolution around the world. And therefore this is hugely valuable to me in all walks of my life. Yeah, I think it's very important in leadership to be surrounded by the right people, because you cannot become what you cannot see. So if there is not the right role models, or then you leave it with luck. So it's very important to have role models or if you want to achieve something, is to be surrounded or surround yourself with those role models. And I think it was in the Roman Empire that said that power corrupts, and complete power corrupts completely. And you see it in many walks of life where leaders lose touch with reality and they start to live in a bubble, which what they believe is what everybody tells them they're great at. And soon enough, you create a gap with the reality. Having people from outside in a leadership role, which is lonely at the end of the day, that can actually bring you back to earth, that can give you an honest feedback, that can actually give you guidance on something that is new or advancing in life that you don't see so much, is hugely, hugely valuable, both as a person, as a professional, as an individual. It's. It's really, really nice to have. So you have this upbringing first in Argentina, then in Spain. Sport played a huge role. We mentioned it. You did rugby. You did. You did as well, basketball. What brought you to start in fmcg? Because it's an industry you have been in now for 30 years plus. Right? You started in the 90s in Unilever. You spent there 25 years. Then you went to Barry Calabo, then to Danone. Could you please a bit explain us what draw you? Maybe circumstances, maybe a real desire to the industry and what has been the journey? I think when I was at university and I was doing my two degrees, I found that brands play a huge role in people's lives. You choose a car because you like one thing more than another, and you associate yourself with one thing more than another. You choose a shirt because of one thing or another. You eat certain brands because you love them, because you've grown up with them, because you create an emotional connection. And I think FMCG for me was the hub of creation of brands. And having had the luck to actually see this very close in a country like the uk, where brands are exquisitely crafted and developed. And also at the time, it was an industry that was flourishing all over the place, that was expanding, that had lots of opportunities to travel, to understand culture. And for me, because I grew up as a son of an expat, I enjoyed that sort of life as well. And that brought me very close. And interestingly enough, I had two offers. I had an offer from Unilever for the trainee program and one from Procter and Gamble, and I made my analysis and I eventually chose Unilever. Why so? Because I studied at P and G, so it's not like I'm biased, but look at the time I actually felt that the values of Unilever were closer to the values that I actually wanted for myself. P and G had a very aggressive image. And I think that aggressiveness is okay, particularly when you are competing in many things. But at the time I really wanted a company that would nurture me as a professional and gave me more opportunities in that way. And that's why I actually chose it. And again, maybe I was being true to myself in that. Development plays a very important part in somebody's life. And where did you start? You started in Latam, right? No, I started in the uk. I started in finance. I made an agreement with the people that recruited me in Unilever that they would give me the chance to do finance for two years, three years. So I did SEMA exams and all the different things that the finance people do. And following that, I came to a crunch in which I said to myself, if I continue in finance, I want to be in a business whose core business is finance, but if I continue in fmcg, I need to change and go into what functions, drive the business into the future. And I had a great believer in me called Kevin Havelock, who is now very well known person in the uk and he actually took me to marketing and he placed me in PG Tips and which was the first brand at the time that came out with Pyramid teabags. I think Pyramid teabags now are bags that you can find absolutely everywhere. And I had the luck to develop myself with people who were absolutely brilliant marketeers and people who really knew how to craft brands and bring people with them and that focus on crafting brands, having consumer understanding, really making consumers come into the franchise of the brand through the offers that you can actually do for them, was something that was a huge valuable learning in a country where it is known that the creativity and the crafting of brands is top notch. So can you unpack your journey at Unilever? Because you stayed there like a quarter of a century, right, Pablo? And you walked in, I mean, you lived in maybe half a dozen countries when you were there, traveled probably 100. So could you please a bit unpack that? Because it was extremely rich, right? Unilever has been a great place for me and I have a very special place in the heart for Unilever because of all that I have been able to do. And I am very much a product of Unilever. But I also understand in Unilever the limitations it's had because I've actually been able to Understand lots of different business models of Unilever and the good things and the things that were not so good. But I started in the uk, as I said. I worked in finance, then in marketing, and then I was given the opportunity to actually lead a project in Argentina to almost go and rediscover my own country. Because I had never really worked in Argentina, hadn't gone to school in Argentina. So basically it was me going back to Rediscover. Was it a coincidence or did you raise your hand for it or how did that happen? Argentina at the time was booming. My family had gone back to Argentina for some time and basically they said, ah, this is a great country. You were earning more money than you could earn in Europe. At the time, it was a bit crazy, but it really seemed like Argentina was on the track to become again what it used to be. And I made a choice to go to Argentina, partly because I wanted to be with the family, partly because I wanted to rediscover my country, and partly because the opportunity that Unilever was giving me was a fantastic opportunity. And it was an opportunity that then led to a number of decisions that Unilever took as well, which I'm sure weren't completely because of my doing. But at the time, I felt that we contributed a lot to the thinking of the category and of the business. And Unilever at the time only had margarines and frozen foods. It hadn't bought Best Foods at the time. I arrived in Argentina with a mandate to see if we could expand frozen foods in the whole of Latin America. We had bought a company in Argentina of frozen foods. And basically I went there and I stayed for three and a half years, for almost four, trying to understand how we could expand that business. Only that at the end, we did not decide to expand it. We decided to withdraw from that business. And that was an experience, because it was an experience where when companies are set on developing something and you eventually have to convince them not only to withdraw from that, but to sell the assets that they have just recently bought. It set a precedent then for many people to actually start querying other things, which led to the disposal of a lot of the frozen foods divisions in Unilever. But what I can say is that at the time, it was a huge leadership journey. I was made the first or the youngest director in the region that they have had. I actually grew tremendously because you had to do a lot of things in terms of mergers, acquisitions, disposals, all sorts of things, as well as managing the operation. It wasn't a huge operation. So you had very much an end to end role to play in many of the things until we decided to leave and then we decided to move as a family back to Europe. Yeah. And when you look at those 25 years in Mune Levant, what were the assignments that you enjoy the most and that shaped you the most as a leader, as a person you are today? Look, you can take out something from almost every single assignment that you do. If you really look for your development and you plan your development in a way where you're using every stepping stone to consolidate certain knowledge. I think coming back to Europe and leading a marketing team that was actually European, being part of a global category board, which was actually expanding all over the world, gave me the understanding of power of influence and not necessarily the power of you as a leader in a country being able to tell people what to do. Because with categories, you need to sell mixes, you need to improve with innovation, and you need to convince people that this is what they need to do because they're putting the money of the company behind these bets that you're actually producing. And I think that that power of influence is normally underestimated. If you can do a good job and therefore the amount of time you take to really craft some amazing mixes that then people can actually take, or equity jobs that you're doing, et cetera, is really impressive. And I think there's a huge learning in that, especially as a young professional in your life. I think the second job that I took that actually really gave me a completely different perspective was when I became sales director in Spain. And it's very different when you're working in marketing because you're spending money in marketing and you're very detailed in terms of saying, no, no, you got to get this pantone color right, because otherwise people don't see it very well, etc. But you get into tremendous amount of discussions about very deep things that don't necessarily sell a lot more boxes, but they are actually producing the equity of brands. When you move to sales, you're actually managing a completely different equation. You have many more people in charge. You're trying to lift them all the time. And you can't lift them just by calling them and saying, hey, push your sales. We need to close the month. You need to lift them by giving them capabilities, by developing them, by giving them IT infrastructure that is going to help them spend more time in front of customers. Instead of doing administration, you got to lift them by really inspiring them. And not just yourself, but Also with them, but also with customers. And customers. People think that sales guys actually are naturally born to go out and pick the bag and leave the house every day. But it's a tough job, sales. And I think that that actually gave me a lot of understanding of how to manage people for performance, how to improve the capabilities of people, how to build big teams with a mission. And I'm lucky today to say that the team that I had in Spain, we still all are on the same WhatsApp and we still see each other and we still share food together. It was like 20, 20 years ago. 20? Yeah, something like that. Wow. It was fantastic. And. And if you have to pick one, one assignment when you watch Unilever, that was challenging. Where you had to say, hey, this is difficult. This is putting me outside of my comfort zone, where you had really to have a very steep learning curve. What would that be? And can you tell us a bit more? Because there is this belief, I think it's a wrong belief, that the career of successful leaders and CEOs is linear. There is never any setbacks. There is never anything that is easy. Everything has always been like a straight progression line. But I don't believe in this. What's your take? No, I don't think. I don't believe in this either. And the other day I was actually talking to a CEO that said, you know, when they give you a mandate, you think things are going to be okay, but in reality, you can never plan for the unknown. And almost every year you will have an unknown that is actually challenging you to the end. But my most challenging mandate was when I went as a GM for Mexico. It was my first GM position. It was a challenging country, but because of a number of different things that were happening both within the company and outside of the company, it was a company that really needed a lot of deep change and a surgical change. And that mandate then turned into a mandate of the whole of North Latin America, which was actually an even bigger mandate. But when you actually have to deal with corruption, when you actually have to deal with accounting challenges, when you have to deal with customers that are in conjunction with your salesforce doing things that you wouldn't want to know, when your teams are not consolidated as teams, but as individuals. I went through a period of six months in trying to stabilize it, and I was finding it really difficult. And I had a number of points at which things started to change and suddenly they eased off. And you could see that the team started to come along, but that did not come with a Big change in terms of teams, in terms of strategy, in terms of controls of the company, in terms of the way that we operated in sales and with customers. But slowly it actually changed. But I have to say, after the first six months, I sat down there and I almost wanted to cry thinking, what is going on? How can I change this? It was something that it felt at that point bigger than me. But I have to say, I learned about resilience. I learned about conviction. I learned about how leadership sometimes can feel lonely. But you will get people coming with you if you're straight, if you're saying the truth, if you're actually having a direction, and if you're unequivocally following that direction and correcting as you may need, because not every direction is perfect and not every journey is linear. But you have to be able to listen to people and slowly correct. And with that, I think we got the company back into gear, back into huge amount of growth. And it was a company that flourished and became an example for many, many different parts of the world. I think it's very good that you share this because a lot of people have fake beliefs about careers of leaders. And again, everything is easy or steady progression. So when you look backward at those 25 years and if you will get the opportunity to talk to your younger self when you started in early 90s, what would be the advice you will give to your younger self? I think when you're in your younger years, you try to demonstrate that you can perform, that you can actually really thrive and you can run. And I think that you tend to rely very much on yourself rather than on teams and wider and wider audiences. And I think that if I look back on myself, I would definitely say don't put it all on yourself. Try to work better through other people as well. And don't always hold yourself so toughly against yourself in what you're doing. So don't be so harsh on yourself in terms of what you're doing. Because life is long and people will not judge you in the longer term only through your performance. And I think that is a big, big learning. And it's not what you do, but the way you do it that really counts. And I think that's a big learning for me from when I was actually young. Did you understand it quickly or did it take you some time to understand that? Look, maybe as an engineer and an economist, I was actually a very functional person, not so emotional. And therefore you need to actually go through a couple of failures to learn how you have to actually work. And I always say to people, don't worry, because I think there was a culture at the time of whenever you had a personal development discussion, people telling you what you're not good at to justify that you're not going to move to the next job. And I always say to people, that's the wrong discussion. To actually have the right discussion is telling people what they're great at. Because all of us are wired in such a way in which we have great things and we have a shadow to those great things. And you will never be able to change the way that you're wired, but you will be able to understand yourself so much better. And if you know yourself and you can be authentic with that personality, that's what basically unlocks the potential that you have. But I also say to people, if you're good at something, be bloody good at what you do. Yeah. And I say, messi knows how to play bloody good football, but don't ask him about his finances or his tax returns or anything like that, because he may not know anything about that, but he knows how to actually tackle that with a different person that is actually helping them. So how you set yourselves up through teams to cover up for that shadow that you actually have is super important. So what are your big strengths and reflecting that you have been nurturing and focusing on to make a difference in your career? I think I have a huge intellectual curiosity, and that intellectual curiosity is constantly leading me to learn about things, to question myself, particularly about consumers. But why are they doing that? Why are they doing the other? How is it that demand is generated and all the different things? And that curiosity is a learning curve that you're on the whole whole time. That's a big driver of me. I'm also competitive in a good way. I played rugby, I played basketball, I've skied, I sail. That's my nature. And I like to do it. But I actually like to do it in a way in which I'm developing and I'm actually nurturing competencies and capabilities. And that is something that, again, for me, has been very important. I have a very clear dialogue with people in the sense that I try to give clarity all the time because the world is very ambiguous. And for everything that you say, right, there's a left, but people need to manage that. And you need to be clear what is the direction that people need to go on if you're leading a company. And I think I have a gift in trying to bring that clarity and influencing through that clarity that Actually creates followership and at the same time creates results. And that's why I always say with me, one of the constants that I've had in my career is that I find growth, I find ways of growing because the world is continuously changing. And if you can get into a world in which you're generating that sustainable change, but also creating a world in which your business becomes sustainable as a result of the way that you work for that change, then you creating sustainable models into the future of people and of companies. And that is what really makes me thrive. I think it's quite powerful. Replicable skills can create value in a lot of different circumstances. Young generation generally, but as well in the FMCG industry. We have a very young workforce in FMCG. Right. People, they weighted average ages, maybe low 30s. So a lot of young people, many people started during COVID Right. And we feel that working a lot with our clients is they didn't get the opportunity to spend too much time in the office, didn't get the opportunity to shadow leaders and to see it, to take a lot of store checks. And their learning curve might not be maybe different, maybe just let's put it different. What will be your advice, your career advice for people in the FMCG industry that got started or that are different levels in their career? I always say that the value of any person is the backpack that they have and the experiences and the development opportunities that they've had. So individually of when you've started, I think there's a continuum that you are who you are because of what you've lived through and what you've learned and what you've developed. And I always say to people, look, the harsh reality is if you don't believe that, go to the market and prove it yourself. Because in the market you are actually faced with the reality of having to compete against other people that might done more of that or less of that. And that's where the harsh reality comes to play. And I think that that is the most valuable advice that I give both young people, but also elder people. Yeah. That are actually in whatever walks of life in the industry, you are what you are because of the backpack of experiences and development that you've managed to nurture for yourself. And in many, many ways that is coupled with performance because you need to demonstrate that what you're actually learning can be put to performance. So how you develop as a person, how you work through teams, how you're able to impact, is actually all a bundle of things that comes together. Basically, we tend to look a lot about on skills and development, but we don't look enough at performance. Performance is the proof of the pudding that that development can actually be put to good use in turning around situations, in understanding consumers better, in delivering mixes, in a lot of different things that you need to do in the world of fmcg. Ultimately, I think that there's something else or two other things that last week I actually said to young people in Netherlands when they were asking me. I think the world of the future is also going to be digital. You cannot escape from the digital reality. And the more you understand that digital reality and you can become a digital native, the better a chance you have. And that's also part of development in this world. And I also think that kindness, not taken wrongly, you don't need to also not be authentic with it. But kindness is important because you are respected as a person more so nowadays than in the past. In the past, I used to go to meetings, people would get up, yell, bang the tables, all this sort of stuff. I think today people actually understand that a good relationship is based on the understanding of the other person and the facilitation for that other person to be successful. And I think more and more we need that type of characteristic in people as we go forward. They're very useful. We had a conversation before together about what you're looking for in talent and sometimes the fact that we shouldn't have maybe two stereotypes too fitting in a box. But as well, embracing different people, that brings sometime some radicality because sometimes it's difficult to drive the change in an environment where there's a lot of inertia. So could you please a bit unpack this and your perspective, which I found very refreshing when we had the discussion. Look, I think talent is a very big word, but at the end of the day, what you need is the different combination of things that are going to make that source extremely appetizing. And diversity for me is the most important part of growing great talent, because diversity actually will bring in lots of different points of views. And those points of views are the nurturing of great ideas and also great execution eventually. And you need to make sure that the right talent is on the right places, that you're actually recruiting the right talent, that you're retaining the right talent, and that the talent that you're actually recruiting is the talent that actually nurtures the culture of your company. And ultimately, culture is one of the most important things that you have in the company if you really want that company to perform in the Market. And I think when you look at talent, you need to look at it in that way. You need to look at it in terms of what do you bring to the party that is going to help us elevate? What do you bring to the party that is actually the values that we want for this company? What do you bring to the party from your experience in performing and impacting and your ability to actually do that across different cultures. And therefore, talent for me is a very important question in the mix of performance and actually getting it right for the company. Very interesting. After your time at Unilever, you moved to Barry Calabo, which is a bit of a FMCG business, but more B2, B2C and B2B type of business in a role that was very different from anything you did before. When you look at the job title, could you please give us a perspective on your journey there and what did you learn? Barry Kellebout was a great company, actually. It still is a great company. It's a company whose culture is basically because of Klaus Jacobs. So it's a family nurtured company, Great visionary. But also it's a company that actually has a culture which is very demanding in terms of customer first. And this was by contrast to where I had actually been before. I could really sense that culture in everything that was being done. You would get the customer point of view in the meeting. The meeting would not be six people. It could be 30 people in the meeting room. But everybody left knowing what the mandate for that customer was and they needed to execute and everybody killed to actually make sure that that happened. And when you live through that culture in a world that is not so customer focused and you see how that actually performs for me, it was a very revealing play, basically. And yes, I was doing very different things, but things that also opened me into a world which was a little bit different and a little bit the same. I used to manage a global part of Barry Callabout, which became almost half of the cash that Barry Callabout was actually doing, where we had to change a lot of the ways that we were working in the market. And that unleashed a huge amount of growth. But at the same time, I was managing sustainability, which I had never actually done before. And it was a very interesting time because sustainability was a checklist that people were actually measuring against. And I was one of the first with Antoine actually saying sustainability we must do, because it's the preservation of companies into the future. Absolutely. If you do not preserve your environment, if you do not take Care of your farmers. And there are no farmers. Hey, you don't have a business into the future. And I think changing that and working with a lot of banks actually to help them understand that equation and change the equation in their, in their algorithms of how they measure companies and all the rest of it was a fascinating journey for me. It also exposed me to a lot of the external world because there's a lot going on on sustainability in the external world. And it was a time in my life in which you start to have an impact outside as much as inside. I think in big companies, until you get to that space, you're pretty cocooned. But in Barry Callabout, I was talking to analysts, I was actually talking to World Business Council for Sustainable Development, I was talking to Nestle Mondelez, Unilever, a whole lot of customers. And this is actually something that was fantastic in terms of growing as a person, my maturity in terms of being able to talk to the outside world, bring a clarity and a point of view also from the company that might have been a little bit different. But that led us to huge success. We were one of the first companies that installed a traceability system for its cocoa, which today, with the European directive of mandated traceability so that you can check whether product is from the forest or not. Then it was a big thinking forward in terms of really understanding the context of how we could nurture our environment. And then in September 2021, if I'm, if I remember well, Antoine was appointed as a Group CEO of Danone, leaving the position of Group CEO at Barry Callebau. And in January 2023, officially you start as a CEO Europe, which is a big chunk of the business, right. And we're then on started, right. So could you please give us a bit of perspective about what was the mandate and that was given to you when, when you join this business. I think Antoine said to me, this is probably the most challenging job in the, in the industry and within Danon, there's a lot to be done to be at the caliber that we need to be. And Danone has all the right ingredients to be of that caliber. But we're undershooting in terms of what we can do. Can you come and fix it? And I think at the time the Renew strategy, the Renew Danone strategy had actually been set out. And I set on a journey because normally people have a 90 day plan when they start. Friends of mine in Danone tell me that I had the -90 day plan before I started because I started talking to analysts, I Started talking to consultancy companies that had worked with non lots of different things. And as I was traveling around, I was actually going into all the different supermarkets and places where they sell their own products to really understand the nature of the problem. And I'll start by saying that I had an assessment of Danone, which was a really good assessment before I started. But Danone is a great company. It just hasn't lived up to its expectation at that point in time. Danone is a company that has great people that probably haven't had the experiences that needed to be had in order to play at the. At the space that they needed to be in. Danone has amazing brands, probably some of the most resilient brands that I've ever seen. If you look at the amount of money that was actually put behind them versus the way that they were actually seen by consumers. Consumers love Danone and the brands of Danone, be it in medical care with Nutrisia or be it in yogurts with the Danone brand or Activia, et cetera. Yeah. So really, really resilient brands. Danone has huge science behind it, but never had somebody come in and put the science at the disposal of brands and the differentiation for consumers. And I could go through a whole list of things that Danone has. Danone has the biggest channel play in the whole industry. And only just when I came in had Danone done the Danone local first, where they put all the different parts of the business together in a country. But the multiplicity of channels that Danone has is just amazing. I mean, in other companies I could only dream of some of the things that Danone had. But did Danone know how to use that in their advantage? Maybe not so well. So Danone had lots of opportunity and this is what I saw immediately in Danone. And therefore the challenge is only matched by the opportunity that you actually have in the spaces where you can actually see Danone. And don't forget, Danone was born in Europe. And the pride of Danone comes from a lot of the performance that you actually get in Europe. Absolutely. So that was my task. Let's get everybody feeling like leaders again and really leading the market and bringing Danone back to that level of pride that might have been there in the past. I think that there are not a lot of people that know the story of Danone and how it all started and why. There was a gentleman that actually started knocking at the door, not in France, but in Spain, in Barcelona, to try to sell ferments, milk fermented With a ferment in a glass bottle. Right. More than a hundred years ago. And he was selling it to pharmacists. Mr. Carasol. Right. So it started as cheer Audacity. Right. You can Compare it to Mr. Pemberton, for example, at Coca Cola at the end of the 19th century. Right. So very few people, they think they started in France, started in Spain. I think they say, hey, it was in supermarket, in fridges at the time, there was even no fridges, actually was sold in pharmacy as not a remedy, but a better for you ailment. Right. So I think that the company has very rich history and a very entrepreneurial spirit, right? Well, not just that, actually, it's a company that is very on the ground because when you're actually working with farmers as your key ingredient, you are very close to the ground in terms of what you need to do. And you are very close to the supply chain because food safety is super important. And it's a company that more than also just the entrepreneurial nature of it, it started with a purpose. And that's again, when you build culture. I think starting with a purpose is very, very important. And when you look at bringing health through food to as many people as possible, which is the purpose of Danone, what you actually find is that 90% of our portfolio, no other company actually has this in the industry, serves that mission according to the highest nutritional standards that you could actually have. And that means basically that we're not just talking about what we want to do, but we're playing the game and walking that leadership into everything that we do. And I think that consistency within the company is something that traps you and traps you and makes you want to do much more of. And today, the discussions that I still have with people is how are we going to do much more for the adult population in health through nutrition? And how will we actually help people that have had stroke or oncology challenges in order for them to be fitter in a malnutrition world? So all of these things live very strongly within the culture of the company. And it's not just through the medical nutrition, it's through Activia, it's through Actamel with immunity, it's through cholesterol reduction with Danacol. We have lots of different products that are actually living exactly to that purpose and helping us in our mission of trying to go much, much further. Very interesting. If we look at the numbers and the sellout data of Danone, what we have been seeing over the last quarters is an acceleration of volume, performance which is very notable because it's very different from the historic trends of the last few years, especially in Europe, especially on edp, which is the largest part of the business. What we have been seeing as well is EDP started to grow faster than total food, which was not the case historically, which is very interesting. And all of this happening in a context post high inflation on a category that is reputed as being the most priced elastic category or one of the most priced elastic category in the FMCG industry. So could you please a bit unpack the levers that have been used at Danoneleval, but as well in Europe to achieve those early promising results? I think in order to understand the levers, you have to understand the consumers, you have to understand the segmentation of the market and you need to understand what are the opportunities within that so that you can actually drive the market into the next phase. But overall, our mission is to go from lagging to leading. And as a leader, you need to make sure that the market is actually also growing in the places that you're driving. And what I can say is that when you start to unpack the market, we are not just the leaders in protein, but we are growing in protein at a rate which is faster than the growth of the market. So we're leading the market in that growth. Yeah. And I think that is exactly what we're trying to do. We're trying to take the positions where we see the opportunities. You know, the gut is going to be the next brain. People are looking more about gut solutions on Internet today than many other things. Because people start to understand that having a healthy gut is actually something that actually reduces stress, that makes you sleep better, that makes you have less problems in the stomach. And as a result of that, people, when they start to understand that relationship and you've got brands that are positioned to actually help you in that, like Activia, then that's actually the space that you want to be driving. And I think the team has been doing a super job of driving that. And you will see that we've launched Kefir. That's the turbocharge of your gut through good bacteria that are actually giving you some of the effects that we've just been talking about. But then you also have fiber that we've launched. And fiber is the way in which good bacteria travels way longer through the gut. So you don't actually have colon problems or other problems as well. And you have a healthy gut throughout. And then you have your maintenance portfolio. But being able to segment with A reason, explain it to consumers and be able to move from a space in which you are actually one brand that tries to solve everything to a brand that can segment itself in a space which is growing and where there's huge consumer interest is the type of stuff that we're doing as well. We've recognized as well that the volume, the big volume of the market is in some simple yogurts. But even then, consumers are changing because they want more protein, so they want more Greek yogurt, they want more Skyr. Some of them want it with a little bit of fat because it's indulgent. Some of them actually want it with less fat because they care more for their body. It doesn't matter. You have to recognize it. You got to play that Skyr today is one of the biggest growing parts of the portfolio as well as Greek. So you talk a lot about the portfolio before doing all of those things. One of the key enabler was to reset the portfolio because there was maybe up to 10% of the net revenue that was divested over the first 24 months of Antoinette, if I remember well publicly stated, which was most likely a big enabler to be able to refocus on things that matter. Right. And I think that was very relevant as well for Europe. And if you remember well as well, there were a number of SKUs as well that were discontinued because there was as well business being divested and then there were a large chunk being discontinued. Right. How much of an enabler those two things have been to be able to refocus on the things you just mentioned? I think it's an enabler because what you don't want is complexity that doesn't drive value. And complexity that doesn't drive value and requires people's attention means basically wasted effort from the company. So cutting that plays a big role for you to focus more time on the things that really matter. And in the nature of the company, complexity was something that also people were playing back very, very strongly. So you need to simplify, you need to rationalize, you need to make sure that the factories can run for longer on the same type of product and get their productivity or efficiency down those lines. And I think starting to do all of those things all contribute to also selling better in the others because the moment that you actually have longer runs on your production line, you've reduced your cost of the good that you really want to sell and that makes it better for you in terms of competitiveness in the market. So you need to work the portfolio in a way in which you're always keeping yourself focused to the added value into the market and into resolving consumers tensions. Yeah, I think that there's something that we discussed before the exchange, I think that is very, very relevant. Especially on food where the gross margin is often low double digits, sometimes mid double digits, but part of the portfolio of many food companies are low double digit, like 20 to 30%. The operational leverage or deleverage can be brutal. And one of the things that we discuss, and I think it makes a lot of sense, is to exit the religion because it is a religion of the percentage margin mindset. Could you please a bit give perspective on this and why it is a deadly religion and how you have tackled it within your business. So I always say to people that I've never seen anybody negotiate their salary on a percentage basis. I think everybody's negotiating their salary on absolute and the companies are the same. It's cash that you actually earn and it's return on capital employed that actually gives you the share price more or less basically in terms of progressing forward. But we're so hooked on percentages because percentages are a predictor of health of the company in many cases. The problem is that not all the portfolios fulfill the same role. And when you have installed capacity, you have to watch out that you don't deleverage yourself by working a percentage game rather than a volume game and a cash game. And therefore I don't believe that going into the future in a world where you actually have a duality of portfolios and you have some portfolios that are margin accretive and some portfolios that are not so margin accretive but play a crucial role in terms of leveraging your cost for the other portfolio, but also for generating cash, that you can only be black and white about which percentages you want to apply across the whole company. And you need to de average this discussion and you still need to actually look at the total company with some percentages and say, okay, let's actually play the game to understand the health of the company into the longer term. But at the same time, let's make every portfolio win on the merits of what it has to do. If consumers don't want a price increase, or if consumers are actually very much not buying your product because the price is too high, you've got to ask yourself a very serious question. How long will you be there in the market if that indicator is not right? And therefore yes, you can premiumize, yes you can segment, but the portfolio existing there, if it's too important to actually move into other spaces you still need to deal with. And that's where you have to ask yourself, is it a percentage discussion? Is it a cash discussion, Is it a leverage discussion? And from that you take your discussion to the next level, bearing in mind that cash and return on investment in what you do is what you need to actually be driving for the equation. You know, we've been seeing so many businesses as a firm over almost the last decade shrinking to glory, right? Shrinking to glory, focusing on margin, getting operational deleverage, especially on food and bev where fixed cost is so important. So I think it's a very aspirational case and to have a growth mindset to drive expendability on the category and as well being very clear about the role in the portfolio of each segment. Right. So I think it's very great examples. We talk a lot about portfolio. We talk a lot about first portfolio reset, then focus on the portfolio being more consumer centric, leveraging science and the two understanding consumers leveraging science and using the right brands in the portfolio that has the highest right to win to address those segments. It's a great case of Activia being very refocused on its historic heartland, which is Gart and Aktimail and the others and, and Danette and the others that have different headlines. Could you please touch base a bit about channels? Because one of the key things and you touch it base a bit saying hey, now we have one then on and there's so much channels we could get into. I think there's something very big with away from home as well and to take the categories out from where it is today through expanding its occasion footprint. So could you please a bit unpack your perspective about the work that's been done on channels that goes as well through addressing more occasions and making EDP a more ubiquitous category. I was very inspired at one part in my life when I was actually teaching at university about being within hands reach of desire. And it was a company that was actually using that to demonstrate that you need to be where consumers want you. And I think that channels plays a very important role in being within hand's reach of desire. And if you have a brand that can be expressed in different ways for you to be within hand's reach of desire in different places and for different things that consumers want to, you need to be able to play that. And you see that a lot of companies that are actually growing very healthily are using that very, very well. Now what I can actually say is that if you've got like Danone has the widest portfolio of channel play that you could actually have in the industry, you have a lot of expandability of the brands across the different channels. And that's what we've been trying to leverage in Danon in these last two years. Because you cannot fix everything in two years, but you can roll out a lot of things into new spaces. And that has actually been a very healthy equation for us. Away from home growing tremendously. Cash and carry growing tremendously. E Com growing tremendously. Discounters growing tremendously. And we're not going to say no to any channel where the consumer is there to actually take our products because they want to be within hands reach of desire. And the truth of the matter is that you need to know what's the business case that you're going to put so that you can win in those channels. And for me there's still lots of opportunity still in deploying across channels most of the categories that we actually have. But the interesting thing also is that if you look at the science, when you started with science, the expandability of science across life stages and across channels is huge. Because at the end of the day many of the products that we actually have, that we sell to the hospitals or the healthcare systems or pharma are produced with some of the same science that is actually behind our performance products in Hipro. And that science was obviously of a different level, but the reality is that there's a lot of commonality there. So the more that you understand the science and you can actually deploy it against different brands and different opportunities in the different channels, the better you are in terms of maximizing that ability to be within hands reach of desire. I like this expression. The first driver of mental availability is physical availability. And very often the physical availability footprint drives the occasion footprint. And if you want to expand the occasion footprint, we need to expand the physical availability of footprints as a channel footprint and then to understand what it takes to win, what are the occasions. The four piece strategies are disavraged by channel and sometimes sub channel. So it's job that I think you've been doing quite well, Right. Maybe it's a good transition to talk about a business that is highly omnichannel, that is growing very well for you and that is very strategic, which is Alpro, which is plant based. So could you please give a bit of perspective about your take on the plant based space? Where it comes from, where is it, where is it going, what's your vision and what's Your play in it and how much have you been participating to the growth and what you think is ahead? Let me start by saying that Alpo is a beautiful brand. Actually. It's another one of our Belgium born jewels with lots of expandability, but mainly because consumers are looking to balance their diet. And you see that the growth of flexitarian eating is actually growing all over the place. But Alpra has managed to capture it now not just in one space, which is dairy alternatives or stuff like that. You have yogurts that are now becoming the norm for people. It has a uniqueness in that normally when you actually eat protein, dairy protein, you have a different digestion than you actually have with vegetable protein. And what actually happens is all of a sudden you have a lightness in the way that you perceive these products, that it gives you the same as the others, but in a very different feeling to your body. You feel lighter. And that is something that we really can actually expand much more and drive into other spaces. And we have a plant based sector in yogurts that is doing fantastically well. We have growing brand share across the brand now in Europe. And the diversity of options that you have, the quality of the products that we actually have, the functionality of the products that we started to bring out. Because the barista range is almost better than foaming your own milk at home to do a cappuccino. There's something that is very important you say. And I think that what has been missing to to a lot of plant based or alternative protein businesses, the inability to win on taste, which is what you do. I mean, in everything you do at Denanas, you focus first on taste because otherwise that's not purpose to be. I mean, plant based is not an end in itself, it's a means to an end. Right? Absolutely. And it's not just copying the taste of milk. It is about having a fantastic taste in itself. I mean, people who are actually using coconut as either a yogurt or a dairy alternative is absolutely fantastic. And the other day I had my Alpro chai latte with a coconut variety. It was incredible, indulgent, nice. What you actually also find is that if you go to the coffee shops, already 50% of the offers are from plant based alternatives. And we need to be there. And our brand is well loved by all the consumers. And it's a brand that positions itself on the merits of plant based and of the brand. And I think this is actually really, really positive. It's creating a huge franchise with consumers. And I have to say we have a team managing that, which is a fantastic team as well. You know what we love with what you have been doing at Danan is it's an example about you can have an average neighborhood. When you look at the neighborhood is your where to play. A lot of people for decades have been saying EDP is not attractive. EDP is not attractive because the margin are not so great, the growth is not so great, the return on capital employed is not so great. So that's one side of the coin. The other side of the coin is EDP is the largest category in the FMCG industry. Very few people know that. When you look at the numbers, point number one and the reason for that is because it's a category that has the highest penetration and the highest frequency. So on one side it's something that is large, that is relevant to the immense majority of people and that is in the basket and the repertoire of a lot of people. On the other side, it's essentially there's a lot of private labels and so on. So I think that what you've been doing is testimony that it's not about as a neighborhood, it's about what you make out of it through being consumer backed, driving expendability, understanding unmet needs and leveraging your unique portfolio and channel footprint to create incremental value. So there is no like accident, say oh yeah, the footprint is not so nice. It can drive. The footprint can drive expendability, it can change things. So I think it's a great case and great inspiration for many in the FMCG industry. I love your analogy of the neighborhood. And I'll tell you, in New York today, some of the best neighborhoods and most expensive used to be pretty poor neighborhoods in the past. And you can see that conversion in many cities. And I really do believe that our role is not to look at private label. Our role is to lead the market into a better neighborhood, into a great place to be, into a space where consumers have no doubts that our products are the products of the market. And to be really honest with you, that's where I spend my time. That's where my teams are focused. We're creating the portfolios of tomorrow and people are changing all the time. And the reality is that if you know how to read that change, you know how to drive that change. You're putting more money behind the brands for them to actually shine. What you're actually creating is the franchise of brands that will be there tomorrow creating the better neighborhood. Yeah. So it's a great case And I think it's very aspirational for many in the FMCG industry at a time where price elasticity is kicking in and many businesses are struggling with volume. But being consumer backed, leveraging unique assets works and expendability is possible even on neighborhoods that are traditionally more challenging. It's not always about chasing greener pastures. Yeah, and let's not forget that the reason of being of private label is to copy the people that are leading. There is no private label that has actually created a new category of its own. There's no private label that has attracted more consumers to the category. There's no private label that has actually brought science and new knowledge. And there's no private label that talks to consumers in order to actually move them into the portfolios of the future. I know you read our latest report on private labels about demystifying or killing some myth about private labels. When we look into that, one of the key learning was actually the higher the prevalence of private labels in a category, the more the category has decelerated because the less it's getting oxygen, investment, innovation and looking at private label and say, oh, this private label is always difficult. First, statistically, private labels are relevant only to a few categories, only in few markets. But even when they are, they often do not drive category value. So there is a real trap risk to fall into a trap to mimicking their strategy and to have a race to the bottom. Whereas the races is actually to create incremental growth and to iterate from consumers and to leverage unique assets to do that. And I think it's one of the things that you're doing very well. Yeah, but I always say our role is not to focus on private label. Our role is to make consumers happy and move them into the spaces of the future that are going to make better health for them, that are going to make better choices for them. And private label plays a role for the supermarkets in the way that other things do as well. But let's not forget that I don't necessarily think that in the trade the biggest amount of money they make is from private label. And therefore there's still a huge role for brands to play to lead and to actually drive consumers in the spaces of change and in the spaces of opportunity for the future. Because without that there's no private label either. There's one topic we have not yet touched base on is M and A is how now you start complementing your organic growth strategy with very selective, synergistic, accretive and high return capital employed M And A, we saw that in two instances. One instance in Europe, we saw that with two deals in the us One last week. But a couple of months ago, could you please a bit unpack M and A strategy at Dunan and how do you see it and what do you expect from M and A and which role it plays in the strategy? I think Anton has been really. And Jurgen as well have actually been very eloquent about the role of M and A into the future. We will examine M and A in the places where we actually have a right to win. We will try to look for things that actually give us a step ahead and consolidate us in those places to win. We're looking for things that will add value to the company and we're looking for things that are going to make our finances stronger. And I think that in that context, what you've seen also from the rotation of portfolio that we're trying to do in the things that we divest from is a consistency with the strategy that the company has actually said. And I think that's more to come as we actually talk into the future. But that's the role that M and A has to come. It has to give us more capabilities to consolidate ourselves, to go further in the spaces where we really believe that we can go further and at the same time take us away from the spaces where we don't have so much of a right to win or where we believe somebody else might be able to do it better than us. Yeah, I think that what is great about 70 strategy is you are avoiding the pitfall of the last decade in M and A, which is very big things, which is stay away from the big things, stay away as well. In terms of percentage of ev. Right. In terms of acquisition point number one, point number two is shiny object. And there are many and there have been many. Right. And to focus as well on ownable strategic thesis, because what you have done in Poland, for example, and on a specialized nutritionist is very ownable. Right. There's not too many companies that can do the same deal, same thing with a cheap business. You got into us. So focusing on things that are highly synergistic, high growth, very accretive hierarchy and as well ownable investment thesis. I think that's very interesting and it's very aspirational for many in the industry. Right. So well done to that. And I think that as you say, the Polish example is another example of consolidation, of making us go further, of having proximity to patients where we can actually add value. But at the same time relay that value back to the government so that they understand that we can be a great partner for them in delivering a service to their patients. And I think that's the way that you also play the health economics. Because what we do saves a lot of money to the governments in the way that we actually deploy our services to get people out of hospitals quicker as a result of people who are feeble and cannot actually manage themselves. So that in itself is actually straight in line with what we know how to do well and where we can progress much further. Could you please shed a bit of light now on the culture and the people aspect of the transformation you have gone through? Because we talk about portfolio, we talk about channel, we talk about M and A. That's all hard stuff, but it starts with people, finishes with people. So what have been the learnings on the people side of this transformation, of this tragic transformation? I think that whenever you do a big transformation, the first place to actually understand is where you come from. And we come from a company that is extremely caring for people. Danone Care is something that was there way before we actually came to the company. Frank Ribou and his pledge to the dual project is something that was way before we actually came, but it's installed as something that the company really cares for. And I think that going back in the transformation to that culture of care for people, to that culture of making sure that you have respect for your social environment, to that culture of sustainability in a Danone impact journey concept where we're just not only caring for the planet, but we're caring for health and we're caring for society as well, is part of what we're actually doing. So what you see is the transformation is not just a transformation, it's an upgrading of our people through skills and capabilities that we want to train our people to be better and we depend on our people. So making sure that we are actually totally focused on not only becoming competitive, but also having much better talent and people in our ranks which are performing in ways that are actually habilitated through the training that we can actually give them is exactly what we believe in. So when you look now at the last almost two years, because you started looking at it before joining, right. Like very often in those cases, what would be the advice you will give to your younger self in terms of things you will have done differently and the things that went well, things that went not as per plan like every time. So anything or any reflections on those 20 months journey? I think when you look at Europe from outside of Europe. What you actually say is, oh, Europe, European Community, free movement of goods, everything is really easy. But Europe is not as much as the States is a world which is homogeneous across Europe. And I think that I probably underestimated the speed at which you could do things in the context of all the different European respects that you have to pay to the laws, the society, all the different things. It's not as easy to bring Europe together and to leverage it as fast as you probably would want to. But that doesn't necessarily matter so much if you understand it and if you can actually then respect it and move forward. But you have to be more careful than you might actually think in doing that. Because the trade do work a little bit different in different countries. The way that the governments put pressure on pricing is also a little bit different. At the same time, you have a huge amount of pressure that has suddenly emerged from. Because we've suffered from inflationary years, the deflationary years or the less inflation years are putting a huge amount of pressure on price. Absolutely huge amount of pressure on price. I never would have estimated the amount of pressure on price that there is in Europe at this point in time. Some of it partly because of the nature of the situation of the trade and the P Ls that they actually have. And you have a lot of pressure from overcapacity in trade that is leading them to intense competition and that intense competition, reducing their margins and having problems because they can't advertise their own label, having problems because their margins aren't where they need to be. And part of that pressure comes on us as a translation of margin towards them. And I think that is actually a pressure which is real and it's being managed, but it can only come through having fantastic brands, having fantastic product portfolios and having an offering that consumers can't do without. Anything that you'll have done differently. If you have talked to your younger self like 20 months ago and say, hey, I will have gone faster in some areas, I will be go deeper, going further or I don't know, I have to say, the intensity with which I live this job, I've never actually done before. So if I could go faster, I don't really know that I've underestimated certain things, maybe would I have done them differently? I'm not 100% sure how much differently. And at the same time, if you want to respect the culture of companies, the people in the companies, there is a pace at which you have to be able to go and you have to Be patient that if you transit in the right direction and you're doing the right things, things do come and at a certain point they also take off. But I think that I'm not sure that I would have gone much faster with the speed that we are going. I think the results have been fantastic. And 20 months is a short amount of time, especially on categories that are so large with such inertia and so high fixed cost base as well. And with a backdrop we had, I mean if you look at the backdrop has been pretty dramatic in terms of price increase, price elasticity and. And challenged with the trade challenge with consumers. So I think it's pretty remarkable. I think a lot of companies will envy the numbers, especially with the context. There's just one last point or one last topic I'd like to touch. Base, which is very close to my heart and I know to your heart as well, is sustainability. And it's so ingrained in the DNA of Danone. As a firm, we believe that it's important that FMCG companies start understanding the true cost of water CO2 and to be able to have double accounting so that they can take decision and to start allocating resources to make this change. And whether it will happen or not with regulators is one thing and we can debate is not so important. But that's the right thing to do. And to start to shift that at scale and just not running like a list of initiatives, but really strategizing sustainability. Right. So what's your take on this and how have you been approaching it now? So first let me just do a general point of view on sustainability. When you actually look at the insurance industry and how they're actually doing studies today to ensure for wind farms or for buildings or for factories, you will realize that already in everything that we do in life, there's an element of sustainability being considered. Because some people who are building wind farms are doing models to actually take forward 20 years to understand where the wind in that area is going to still be there or not in the way that we actually perceive it today. So what happens is sustainability becomes an equation to make sure that your business is going to perform into the future in the same way, taking to account and slowing down the conditions that you might actually be working under today. Absolutely. And that has different aspects in the way that you do it. You obviously try to decarbonize because you want to make sure that the equation for the future improves. And that's not just us. The food industry is only a part of the much bigger pie that is actually in the energy sector and in a number of other areas. But everybody plays their part. And I think that the part that we're actually playing is being very conscious of how we want a better world into the future and how we also want that to play in that better world so that we are positioned strategically to be able to continue the business for as many years as we've had it so far. So sustainability is a must. Without farmers, there's no food. Without cows, there's no milk. And we don't necessarily want to go into the future without any of these things, particularly in a world where food safety is actually becoming a much, much more important thing. So that's a generic comment in terms of the way I perceive the players in the market and the way that I see the world going in. Danone. I think we're doing the right things in terms of making sure that we help in terms of the environment and nature. And for that, we're decarbonizing. We have a AAA rating. We are taking methane very, very seriously. Regenerative farming extremely seriously. We're even doing. And I was part of this, and it was actually published last week in the press. We are actually leading now into testing genetically so that we actually reduce methane and carbon emissions from cows that actually are in our dairy farms. And you can see how genetics starts to play a role, both by giving you improved productivity, but at the same time potentially reducing the amount of emissions as well. Now, all of this is the level at which we're actually playing in order to contribute to the equation of sustainability in the company. If you take our portfolio, 90% of our portfolio is at the highest standard of nutrition. And there's no other company that actually has that type of a number. But not just that we continue to improve every year in the reduction of sugar, in the composition of protein, in the way that we're actually tackling different pathologies with consumers, in the way that we're actually developing vegetable protein to actually compensate for animal protein, but without any secondary effects, because one is exactly as good as the other one. So what you actually find is that there's a lot of initiatives going in a direction which I think we can be extremely proud. And not just that, but then when you actually come to society and how we're actually skilling people to be prepared for the future, this is one of the most important things that we can actually do for society. Prepare them for the future that is actually going to come. And also make sure that within our company, we're actually surviving in this context, yeah. And sustainability is very good for business. And it's a fake dilemma. It's not either or and just makes sense, especially in the categories you operate in. Pabruit has been a very rich exchange. We touched many topics right from your personal journey, your professional leadership journey, your experience, Cunilever at Barack Laboratory, at Danone, the transformation that is just the beginning of, hopefully a very long success story with Danone and with Danone in Europe. So now, if we have to summarize it, and what will be your parting thoughts and your key messages for your team and for the Danoner? Well, as much as you talk to me today, my success is a team success. I depend on great people that do absolutely amazing jobs. I depend on people's inspiration, I depend on people's collaboration, and I depend on people's stamina to win every day in the market. And I have to say to the Dan owners out there that are hearing this, this is a huge amount of kudos to them because I represent them. I don't represent just myself. And I think that's really, really important. I also represent a company, which I'm extremely proud of, and talking to the stakeholders on the company side, I think I represent a company that has actually managed to step up, to show that continuity, to show that clarity of strategic direction through Antoine and through the rest of the leadership team that we actually have in the company. And I represent a company that is completely tight in the belief that we're going to actually get even better and that we have lots of opportunities out there. So I also represent a lot of trust in leadership that is actually put behind me and the rest of the team that we have in Danone to deliver even much more. And I think that's also very, very important. But we live in an ecosystem, in an ecosystem of suppliers, in an ecosystem of farmers, in an ecosystem of people who are also working really hard to make the whole ecosystem successful, including competition in some cases, because we have competition. That I have to say, I take my hat out to them and I love the fact that we actually have them because it makes us better, because it sharpens us. We work with trade and the trade. Our customers are great. Sometimes not, but mostly yes. And we really enjoy the fact that we can work together to add value to the industry, to add value to the markets, to add value to their pockets as well, because we actually make plans to win with them. So in the whole ecosystem of what we play, I want to thank all of those people as well, because there is a huge amount of work that we put day in, day out with all of them to make us all better. But I think that if we go back to, you know, the start of this conversation, which is, you know, what would you recommend people to continue doing? I go back to my purpose. I represent the fact that I love the world to be better. I love growth both in companies and in people. And I think we can make sustainable change into the future. I think it's a fantastic way to wrap up the conversation. Just like to thank you for this rich exchange. I thoroughly enjoyed it and I hope our audience will so thank you. Pablo. Thank you very much. Really enjoyed. Thank you.