Anne-Francoise Nesmes
Management
Thank you, Tom. So quite a few areas to cover. I'll take the first around growth, that’s your first question around gross margin. Clearly, gross margin is driven by two things, one, the revenue growth and the second, our production level, the cost, et cetera. And whether it's gross margin or trading margin, it's important to understand that they will recover as revenue recovers, and as we drive revenue growth. So clearly the investments we're making behind R&D, M&A innovation is to drive growth. And we'll support, you know, trading margin over time. Now, in terms of the gross margin and where we expect it to be in 2020 – 2021, sorry. There will be with signposts in the continued impact from COVID due to reduce production levels. And if you, you know, refer back to what we were discussing our views COVID will continue to impact in 2021, the first half in particular, and therefore, as part of that, which means we've got less production and certainly that impacts the gross margin and which is what you know, those production inefficiencies, as in part will you see in 2020. And, you know, the impact in 2020 was material up to 400 basis points. So I'm not signposting something as material, definitely not but just to give you a perspective that there's a negative operating leverage. Similarly versus 2019, you need to bear in mind that you've got two years of price mix, two years of price cost. And that's why we're saying, you know, we will - we are implementing our second efficiency program, but it will just enable us to offset the cost increase and production inefficiencies that we see. So that's why there's a small headwind in gross margin, quantifying, it will depend on the bounce back and the speed of the recovery. But we're just signposting that. So in terms of the cash and capital deployment, it's fair to say that we have – we are in a strong liquidity position. And we wanted to do so you know, at the beginning of the pandemic, we wanted to make sure unlike most businesses, we were in a good position. We're highly cash generating, therefore, as we recover, cash come through. Our capital allocation policy has not changed, we first and foremost, reinvesting in growth, we’ll continue our progressive dividend policy. And then importantly, we've talked about the M&A tuck-in. And, you know, that's where we will continue to see the use of the cash. So we believe we're well-funded to execute our strategy. Now, in terms of…