Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Aegon First Half 2024 Results Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there'll be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Please note that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker, Yves Cormier, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. It is good to have you join us for this conference call on our first half 2024 results. My name is Yves Cormier, Head of Investor Relations. Joining me today to take you through our results are Aegon's CEO, Lard Friese and for the last time before his retirement, our CFO, Matt Rider. As usual, after that we will continue with the Q&A session. But before we start, we would like to ask you to review our disclaimer on forward-looking statements which you can find at the back of the presentation. Now I would like to give the floor to Lard.

Thank you, Yves, and good day, everyone. Thanks for being on the call. As we go through the highlights of the past six months, I would like to take a step back and place these results in the context of the implementation of our strategy. Our strategy is to grow our strategic assets as well as our positions in other core markets and to risk-manage and shrink our financial assets. Our ultimate objective is to build leading businesses in investments, protection and retirement solution in chosen markets and by doing so increase our operating results, OCG, and free cash flows over time, leading to growth in capital returns to stockholders. In the US, we are making good progress building our distribution reach. We continue to grow in Indexed Universal Life and in retirement plans and at the same time, the momentum in Brazil remains solid and we have achieved very strong net deposits in the UK Workplace and in Asset Management. Softer spots are in China, Spain and our Advisor platform in the UK which I will touch upon later. Again, we want to reduce our exposure to financial assets and we have indeed delivered approximately EUR400 million decrease in required capital over the first six months of 2024. The overall consequence of these developments is a further shift in the mix of our group operating capital generation and our IFRS operating results towards our strategic assets. We are also on track to meet our EUR1.1 billion operating capital generation guidance for the year as we just delivered EUR588 million for the first half of the year, despite unfavorable mortality experience. Business growth and the higher investment result benefited the OCG which was offset by higher new business strain, demonstrating that we are successfully growing our strategic assets. During the…

Thank you, Lard, and good morning, everyone. Let me start with an overview of our financial performance [Technical Difficulty] 2024 the IFRS operating result was impacted by unfavorable mortality claims experience in the US and amounted to EUR750 million. Operating capital generation before holding, funding, and operating expenses was impacted by unfavorable claims experience and decreased by 5% over the first half of 2024, coming in at EUR588 million. Free cash flow amounted to EUR373 million, following receipt of planned remittances from all units and included the final 2023 dividend payment from ASR. Cash capital at the holdings stood at EUR2.1 billion at the end of June. The decrease compared with the balance at year end 2023, was driven by the completion of the EUR1.5 billion share buyback program, partially offset by the free cash flow in the period. In April, we redeemed a EUR700 million subordinated bond that had matured and we refinanced it with a $760 million senior bond with basically no impact on cash capital at the holding or on our financial leverage. The gross financial leverage remains at EUR5.1 billion. The group solvency ratio decreased by three percentage points since the end of December 2023 to 190%. This was mainly a reflection of the redemption of the subordinated bond, the announcement of the new EUR200 million share buyback program last quarter, a previously announced fungibility haircut on the own funds of the Chinese insurance joint venture and the interim dividend that we have announced today. This was partly offset by favorable market movements and one-time items, including the impacts from our stake in ASR. Let's now move to the operating result on slide nine. The group's operating result was EUR750 million, a decrease of 8% compared with the prior year period. In the US, the operating…

Yeah, well, thanks, Matt. And let me recap today's presentation with slide 22. The transformation of Aegon continues at pace. We have seen continued momentum in the majority of our businesses, growing our strategic assets and we are making progress in reducing our exposure to Financial Assets in line with our strategy. Both the operating capital generation and the operating result were impacted by unfavorable underwriting experience. Nevertheless, we remain well on track to meet the guidance we have set out for 2024 and we reaffirm our commitment to our targets for 2025. The capital ratios of our units remain above their operating levels and in addition, cash capital at Holding of EUR2.1 billion is also above the operating level. We do expect this to decrease in the third quarter of 2024 as a result of capital returns to stockholders in the form of dividends, but also as a result of the progress we're making on our ongoing EUR200 million share buyback program. This buyback program and the increased dividend are a testimony to the progress we are making in transforming Aegon and our commitment to generate attractive returns for our shareholders. Before we move to the Q&A, I would like to say a few words about the upcoming changes in our management team. We announced this morning the appointment of Shawn Johnson as CEO of Aegon Asset Management, effective September 23rd. Shawn's appointment comes at a natural moment for Aegon Asset management following the completion of some key milestones. He brings extensive expertise in asset management, having spent more than 25 years in the industry, combined with his strategic consulting and leadership acumen. This makes him uniquely qualified to guide Aegon asset management through to the next phase of its transformation. And as you know, today is also Matt Rider's last set of results, and he will be succeeded by Duncan Russell on September 1st. Again, Matt, I would like to thank you for the great partnership over the last four years. At the same time, I wish Duncan all the best in his new role. With that, I would now like to open the call for your questions. Please limit yourself, as usual, to two questions per person. Operator, please open the Q&A session.

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. We will now go to our first question. And the first question comes from the line of David Barma, Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. The first one is on back book management. So you've made several assumption changes in the US during the period. To what extent may these make it easier for you to do a third-party in-force management action in the future? And just linked to that, can we expect you to look at more in-force deals in Universal Life or is this part of the book be in a good place after the previous reinsurance deals and the buyout? That's my first question. Thank you.

Thank you very much, David. Matt, you want to take these?

Yeah. So your first question was on the impact of, let's say, assumption updates on back book and will that improve or not the ability to do some kind of a transaction to mitigate the experience that we've seen there. The short answer is, no. We have just simply made an assumption update that we reflect our best estimate experience. It would have no real impact on any kind of management action that we would see in the future. On the in-force UL book, Universal Life is considered a financial asset and in fact this is one of the books that we really want to run down over time and in fact we saw a lot of our negative mortality experience in the course of the first half of the year was really in that Universal Life book. So that's one that we really want to reduce over time. And Lard spoke to that where we're actively reducing the capital deployed to that book of business over time. Yes, the reinsurance deal that we've done with Wilton Re is helping there and it's also a good reason why we are continuing with our program to repurchase institutionally-owned contracts from institutional investors, which should hopefully tame some of the mortality volatility there. But in general that UL block is one that we expect to want to run down over time.

Thank you. And then secondly, on cash, so you keep adjusting assumptions and strengthening the quality of the capital in the US, but at the group level more generally. But solvency and cash keeps going up. So what do we need to see for you to be comfortable to reduce the holding cash towards the midpoint of the target range, which you said you would over time? Thank you.

So let's step back one minute. So right now, at the end of the first half of the year, we've got cash capital at the holding of roughly EUR2.1 billion. If you do the math with respect to the dividend payments that we expect to make, the completion of the share buyback program that we've instituted for the second half of the year and those kind of things, you get to a number that is more like near the top end of our range. So we have that range of EUR500 million to EUR1.5 billion and we're going to be near the top end of that range by the end of the third quarter. And again if you do the math throughout the end of the year, you might come up to a number that is a little bit north of that number. And it's only really at that moment that we would consider, again, do we want to reduce the level of cash at the holding. We have always said that we would reduce the cash at the holding over time as the transformation continues. And I expect that, that would be a continuous reevaluation that Lard and Duncan will do over time. And the next time to sort of reflect on that is probably going to be year-end this year.

Thank you.

Thank you. We will now go to our next question. One moment please. And your next question comes from the line of Steven Haywood from HSBC. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Thank you very much. There is obviously a lot of items to consider here, one-offs and below the line. Can you -- first question from me is starting on the IFRS operating, below the operating line, can you give us some more color on both the alternative investments portfolio performance. And on real estate and land, the negative valuation here. Is this a trend you're concerned about? And also on the impairments side of things with bond rating downgrades and mortgages model changes here, is there anything really concerning here? I remember you used to give a chart out about impairments and showing the average yearly impairment basis points over the last 20 years or so. Can you give us an update on that as well? Sorry for a very long first question, but if you could give us some more color, it will be very helpful.

Yeah. Thanks, Steven. Matt, over to you.

Not really a long question. So your question on the performance of the alternative assets, I guess the main driver of that is we hold you know we have real estate, effectively, that is linked to oil and natural gas prices. So we saw a revaluation of those real estate holdings on a market value basis that reflects lower energy prices effectively. Is it a concern? No concern whatsoever. This is a non-cash item. It does not affect our, let's say, ability to generate capital in the US. So that is just mark-to-market noise, I would say. The impairments and this is a new one, frankly, for the industry as we record impairments as a consequence of IFRS 9, where you're using external models and establishing an expected credit loss, largely driven by external market environment. But again this is just -- it's market value noise. It does not really impact our ability to generate capital in the businesses at all. So that was only a modest increase. The one that you didn't mention, but it is a below the line item for IFRS results is the charge, obviously, that we've taken mainly related to the assumption updates and again, mainly related to mortality assumption updates that we've made during the quarter. So that one, on an IFRS basis, we take roughly round numbers, $400 million charge for that one. It reflects our ongoing sort of thinking as to mortality experience as we emerge from COVID. But the upshot is that we're able to increase -- so because we're increasing our expectation of mortality in the US business, we're able to increase our expectation for the ongoing operating result for the half year results of something between EUR700 million and EUR800 million a year. And that's where we kind of because we updated our assumptions, it means that we've taken a chunk out of what we had systemically been seeing as an over the last six or eight quarters or so negative mortality experience variances. So now we take a chunk out of that and that allows us to increase our expectations for the IFRS operating result for the US to $700 million to $800 million per year and it allows us to increase the operating result expectation for the group in a commensurate way to something like EUR800 million to EUR900 million again per half year.

Thank you. That was clear.

That's probably the long winded answer to your reasonable question.

That was going further than I thought and led me into my second question, which was actually on the operating profit guidance uplift. Does the changes you've made here have any impacts on the operating capital generation as well? I know obviously two different accounting regimes, but is there any uplift to the guidance for your operating capital generation because of what you're seeing in the mortality and underlying trends here?

So let's hit the mortality underlying trends first. So we say on the you know and again and you called it out, the frameworks are somewhat different. So on an IFRS basis, because we have updated our mortality assumptions, there will be an uplift in our expected operating result going forward full stop. In the statutory framework, in the capital framework, it's a little bit of a different impact. It actually creates a small drag on the operating result going forward, but it's actually quite small. You can think of it as, okay, EUR400 million is kind of a big number, but it's also present value of all these future expectations over time, whereas the OCG comes through kind of year by year. So there'll be a small drag on the OCG. But importantly, and if you do the math, you can kind of figure this out, what we are seeing is uplifts in OCG as a result of the business performance. And that's where we've seen there have been improvements both in the US and at the group level of the strategic asset sides of the business. We see it in increasing fee income, we see it in increasing investment income and other areas. So it does come in different, it does hit the frameworks in a little bit different ways. But the important part is that the business growth that we're seeing is impacted in both frameworks in one form or another.

That's great. Thank you very much.

Thank you. We will now take our next question. And the next question comes from the line of Michael Huttner from Berenberg. Please go ahead.

Hi. Thank you. Congratulations, I think, they're lovely results and well done, Matt, and thank you. And I hope Aegon will keep you busy in some way. Anyway, on the results, I'll give you my two questions. I know I'm only allowed one at a time, but I'll give them both because it may be related. Can you talk about the large lives miss in terms of mortality and also in the context of your investment in reducing the institutionally-owned outstanding? I know it sounds like noise, but it sounds like recurring noise. That's why I'm a little bit unsure how to kind of gauge it. Any insight you have would be hugely. And then the second one is, there appears to be almost like a structural offset from long-term care. So every time you have a negative in mortality, long-term care seems to pop up and say, we'll give you some reserve releases. Is that how I should think about it, given that I know that they are slightly different cohorts, but the underlying principles are roughly offsetting. That'd be my two questions. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Michael, and also thanks for the congratulations. The underlying business is indeed doing very well. And on Matt, we're going to keep him busy. I want to remind everybody that Matt's going to continue as a Board Member, a Non-Executive Board Member at Transamerica, our largest business in the US. So we are happy that he's willing to take that on and continue in that capacity. Matt, two questions for you.

So, on the mortality miss, yeah, we had mortality experience variances and we are going to continue to see volatility in the result. There's no question about it. But importantly, what we've done is we've knocked a big chunk out of that in terms of the assumption update that should reduce it going forward. So what we're saying for the US business, on an operating result basis, we think that like a, how do you want to say it, like a central expectation for operating result for the half year might be around $750 million. And then, yeah, mortality is going to vary. It will be maybe plus or minus $50 million. We'll see how that comes over time. But we are right now on the central scenario and that is a fundamental part of the business. We are exposed to mortality fluctuations. In the context of the first half of the year, as I said in my remarks, yeah, we were punished by a relatively an unusual, frankly, large number of high face amount claims. And that goes immediately to your second question, what are we doing about high face amounts. So one of the things that we do is we continue to progress, reducing the amount of insurance that we have among institutional investors. And we've made good progress. More than 30% or actually far more than that done by the end of the first half of the year. And we're on track easily to be on target for our 40% reduction over time. So that's what we're doing there. And that continues to progress well.

And the [indiscernible]?

Yes, sorry, the LTC offset. So for and this is a little bit of accounting, but you got to bear with me a little bit here. So the mortality assumption updates are really occurring in the context of contracts that are already onerous. So that means that if you have a mortality assumption update and onerous contracts become even more onerous, it comes through in other charge, it comes through in other charge, and that's reflected in the P&L. On the long-term care, the assumption updates actually did result in a negative, but it more happens in the CSM. And the reason it happens in the CSM is because there's a lot of CSM in the long-term care book that can absorb these fluctuations. Now, having said that, there was some negative experience that was updated in the CSM for the long-term care book, but it was offset for about half by anticipated future rate increases that we think we can get from insurance departments, because now our expectations have changed, really as a result of claims utilization and incidents that have come through the assumption update. So it's not all coming through other charges, some of it comes through CSM, but in this case it can absorb a lot of CSM. And you see that reflected a bit in the CSM walkthrough that we had provided in the slides.

Thank you.

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Farquhar Murray from Autonomous. Please go ahead.

Morning all and obviously best wishes for your retirement, Matt, and many thanks for the help over the years. If I turn to my questions, two if I may. On the new operating result guidance of 800 to 900 per half and two elements there. Could you explain the walk from, say, today's 750 to that 800 to 900? It looks to be more than just the $50 million step and I wonder if it's the commercial performance on top. And perhaps related, how quickly do you think we can grade into that 800 to 900? I think previously you were suggesting maybe a bit of a graduated increase into a run rate. And then on the assumption model updates of 373 million, please can you just decompose that between the term and the UL components? In particular is that focused on a particular cohort of policies, again, akin to the experience variances. Thanks.

Thank you very much, Farquhar. Matt?

Okay. So on the first one, on the operating result guidance for the group, the 800 to 900, the short answer to your question is, yes. Reminding you the question that you asked is business growth really the one that's driving that thing up. Yes, it is. So 50 million think of it as the additional uplift that we'll get from resetting mortality assumptions and the like and the balance of it is from business growth. And you see that actually coming through in the strategic assets where we're emphasizing. So the life business in the US, you see it in Retirement Plans. You especially see it, frankly, in the General Account Stable Value, driving investment income margin up and in other parts of the business too. So that 800 to 900 is not a, hey, that's what it's going to be in three years. No, that's what it's sort of going to be for the next half year. So there's not really a grade in there. The second question, oh, the term and the life mortality assumption updates, roughly 50-50, roughly 50-50, maybe skewed a little bit more to the traditional blocks, but it's very small. So think of it as a 50-50 thing.

And is it specific to a particular cohort again, i.e., high value, high age?

Well, the mortality assumption updates. I mean, when we went through it, it's really, we're really more focused on the older age mortality. That was the, let's say, the crux of the or the biggest driver, unless you want to talk about it by product. But it's really older age mortality, we increased our expectation for older age mortality. It's just as simple as that.

Right. Thanks a lot.

Yes.

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Nasib Ahmed from UBS. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Firstly, on the Financial Assets, you've got 3.5 billion of locked in capital in there. How much of that reduction since '22 has been delivered by your actions versus markets, because I think a big proportion of the reduction is markets. And then you're targeting 1.2 billion through management actions. I guess, any market movements will come on top of that? And then kind of sub-question is, is the 1.2 billion more back-end loaded towards the 2027 or you'll chip away at this as and when you get attractive pricing in the market? So that's question number one.

Okay. As far as a split between the markets versus management actions, I must say, I don't really have a good split for you. So we'll have to get back to you on that one. And in terms of the how much is it going to reduce and by what time, we have that 2.2 billion target out there. It will quite depend on the pace of management actions that we will take in the future, which we continue to work on, of course, but we're not ready to talk about those things yet.

Perfect. Thank you. And second question, it's a quick one. US GAAP reporting, I think, you've indicated in the past that you will look into it, now that IFRS 17 is embedded. Any update on that?

So, basically, no. We are you know we can say IFRS 17 is embedded, we are dutifully reporting the figures. I think we have a good handle on the, let's say, the sources of earnings and those sort of things, the various movements. We still do need to work, frankly, as well as everybody in the industry, I think, on speeding up the close process. So we continue to work on that one. Work has not begun on US GAAP. We still want to make sure that we are really rock solid on our IFRS 17 figures, together with having a really, really good projection capability for that under that accounting framework. The US GAAP implementation is going to be a decision for the future. We still think it might be valuable in terms of being able to compare against US peers. But that's something, of course, that Duncan and Lard will be able to handle going forward.

Okay. Thank you, Matt.

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Jason Kalamboussis from ING. Please go ahead.

Yes, hi. First of all, I wanted to thank Matt and to wish him indeed a very happy next phase of his life without the analysts us best during [indiscernible] results, finer details. And, of course, welcome to Duncan and congratulations in his new role, where I hope that he will do an excellent job like he did in the past already at Aegon. Moving on, I have just a couple of quick questions. On the OCG guidance, Matt, you said that, yeah, normally we should assume zero going forward and if anything, we'll have a small drag from the change in assumptions. But effectively you're more likely to see positive, as you had in the past, you were seeing, for example, in the US morbidity, you had many years of positive experience. So is it fair to say that at the end of day there is going to be somewhere an uplift? It's just that you assume it at zero. You guide us in OCG with a zero in mind, but effectively we're more likely to see, if anything, positive experiences. So I would like your thoughts on that. And also OCG in the US on the Financial Assets, could you help on what you would expect in the second half of the year? And then a couple of small things. In Spain, I assume that given that now interest rates are going down, we should see a bounce in the second half. So this is maybe more of a statement, but just looking to confirm that. And on the cash, you said probably the next update for share buybacks is the full year. My calculations show that you will be north of 1.7 billion at year-end. So I just want to make clear that we're not going to have any surprises with the third quarter trading update and you're looking at the next date, February '25, for any capital updates. Thanks very much.

Let me, yeah, thank you very much Jason. And, I will hand over for Matt in a minute, but I'll take the last two. So in Spain, first of all, in Spain as we mentioned in our presentation, we've seen slowdown in sales because, as you know, we are working there with our partner, our bank distribution partner, Banco Santander. And because of the rates up, basically there was less demand for the life insurance products that are usually bought in conjunction with mortgages because there's just lower mortgages. Now with rates coming down, we do expect, of course, that trend to reverse gradually because the rates are not plummeting. So this will come back gradually. And in the meantime, by the way, there's a lot of other product lines that we are developing. So we're pushing forward to reverse the picture in the second half of the year. Then when it comes to any capital returns, I mean, Jason, let me remind you that we've done a EUR1.5 billion buyback, which we completed. We've announced the EUR200 million buyback, which we're currently repurchasing in the open market. We hope to be able to get that done before the end of the year. Matt just took you through the movement of the cash capital position, also taking into account the interim dividend that we would need to pay out, et cetera. We will, we are well capitalized, the operating units are well above their operating levels. We have a strong cash capital position at the Holding company, which we like to have because we're in, this company is in a large-scale transformation effort, and as a result, we like to be that way. We have a policy that any capital that we have in excess of the 0.5 billion to 1.5 billion range has and that we cannot use for value creating opportunities, will go back to stockholders over time. And this is something we evaluate on an ongoing basis.

Okay. Let me get to your OCG question. So, first of all, I think you were trying to link assumption updates to the OCG guidance that we are giving. Just to refresh your memories right now, we reported a second quarter, and I talk in Group terms, we reported a second quarter OCG of 332 million. That embedded a bunch of negative mortality and morbidity experience variances that you need to add back. There were various one-off items in the International and in the UK. And when you do, when you boil it all down, you end up with a run rate of about 290 million per quarter for the Group. We are not changing our guidance for the full year. We've always said something in 1.1 billion range. The basic math would get you somewhat higher than that. But we will see, we still have mortality volatility. But the big thing is that the change in assumptions does not have a big impact on the run rate expectation for OCG. It's very minor and it's more than made up for in terms of business growth. You second asked a question about OCG and Financial Assets in the US. We don't generally give guidance at that level of detail, but we look at perhaps 205 million a quarter for the overall US business. Again, that's going to be subject to mortality fluctuations and the like. The question on Spain, interest rates, Lard already covered it, so we don't need to do that. And cash, Lard already covered that one as well. So I think that's about it.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. We will now take our final question for today. And your final question comes from the line of Farooq Hanif from JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much and thanks Matt, too. Question one, can you please talk about in long-term care, the driver of the really high actual to expected, because obviously we probably expect higher old age mortality to be positive for that. And related to that, when are you expecting the next approval for price increases? And if you do get those price increases, am I right in thinking that in the CSM you've already taken that into account? It's not really going to uplift. So that's question area number one, and I'll wait for your answer. I'll give you my second one.

Okay, thank you very much, Farooq. Matt?

The actual, the higher actual to expected ratio in the long-term care business that we saw in the first half of the year, I'd say, the majority of it is due to just simply a claims backlog that was caught up in the first half. We also had minor updates relative to incidents and claim amounts, but frankly those are taken care of in the assumption updates. So we would expect that to come back to zero over time. So actually there's not really a lot happening in the long-term care book. In terms of the expected approvals of price increases, we get these all the time. These stagger in. We have 50 states for which we have sought increased prices for the long-term care book and those are trickling in all the time. And you have it exactly right that our long-term expectation of the approvals of these rate increases are already reflected in the CSM. And frankly, every half year, every quarter when we do our financial results, we true up to what did we expect for the quarter or the half year versus what approvals did we get in for the quarter or the half year. So we're constantly monitoring that one. But you're right, you're not going to see an uplift in the IFRS results except to the extent that we get more approvals than we thought we were going to get in the main. But I think the best way to think about it is just in terms of our EUR700 million guidance. We tracked that dutifully for you guys and let us handle the accounting, but there are no big movements really anticipated there.

Thank you. And my second question, I suspect you might not be able to answer fully yet, but your RBC ratio is clearly well above target levels. It feels to me like you're much more positive now on experience and assumptions. But you've given us this impression that as you release capital from financial assets, you'll reinvest it in strategic, but it feels to me that balance is net positive. So at what point, as a group, as an organization, do you think you'll decide to maybe increase remittances from the US? Thanks.

Matt?

So, I have to correct one thing, and that is that we plan that we've always said that as we release capital from the financial assets then we will redeploy that to reduce capital even further on the financial assets. We really want to work those books down. We have plenty of capital to invest in the strategic assets. You've seen, by the way, that our new business strain in the US has increased relative to the prior year last year. And we actually expect that to continue, which I frankly love because we're effectively planting seed corn in terms of being putting profitable business on the books that will ultimately come through capital generation in the future. But, yeah, I mean, look the RBC ratio is at an -- it's at a pretty high level today, but that will be really up to Duncan and Lard here to think about what happens in the future. But for right now, you don't know what headwinds are coming. We saw a blip in the equity markets there, credit markets are still benign, and we're in the middle of a transformation in the US. So for right now, I would say, we're pretty okay where it is. But that could obviously change in the future.

Thank you so much. Thank you.

Thank you. This concludes the Q&A session. I would now like to hand the call back over to Yves Cormier for closing remarks. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much. This concludes today's Q&A session. Should you have any remaining questions, please get in touch with us in Investor Relations. On behalf of Lard and Matt, I want to thank you for your attention. Thanks again and have a good day.

Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.