Daniel Fairclough: Thanks Patrick. As we’ll move now to question from Dominic at JP Morgan.
Dominic O’Kane: Hi! Thanks for taking my question. I have two questions. The first one on working capital. Given the initiatives that you have for 2023, could you maybe just talk to us about how you are thinking about the normalized working capital levels for maybe 2023 and maybe even long term. And then second question, again really interested in your comments on you know the destocking cycle. Could you maybe just maybe drill into a little bit on the U.S. How you see the U.S. playing out in current markets. Thank you very much.
A – Aditya Mittal: Yeah, maybe I’ll start with the working capital question Dominic. So as you know we have invested significantly in 2021, 2022. We had of course, a good release already in quarter four, and we can see now we released that our expectation is to continue to release working capital in 2023. We are not quantifying that, but what gives us confidence that we should be able to see that, in fact that the cost of our inventory, the cost of our metal stock is still impacted by the high raw materials that we bought in the first half of 2023, that’s one. Second, the energy costs also that were very high, especially in Europe up to Q3, also is due to some extent sits in our inventory. So as cost is normalized, then naturally we would see our requirements for working capital to come down, so that’s one aspect.
And typically as we, we stopped ourselves in Q4, you see also an impact in payables, and as we start also procurement of raw materials, then you recover that support from suppliers as well. So that was €“ that really gave us confidence of course, and then the dynamics, the working capital dynamics we know will be really much €“ pretty much impacted by what happens in the last three, four, five months of the year. So that’s our expectation, that’s what we can see today. In terms of the destocking, I think the dynamics that we see, they are relatively similar in U.S. We also saw in the second half a significant biz stock, especially in flats, much more than in some of the other segments, loans and tubular. So our expectation is that we should start to see that normalizing as well.
So the dynamics are the same, although the levels, the intensity of the destocking in Europe, they were greater.
Dominic O’Kane: Okay, thank you.
Daniel Fairclough: Thanks Dominic. So now we’ll move to our next question from Rochus at Kepler Cheuvreux.
Rochus Brauneiser : Yes, thanks for taking the question. Yeah, let me go back to your volume guidance. I think the 5% you’re expecting to grow this year is I guess quite a constructive number, particularly as we’re still you know dealing with kind of a recessionary environment. What I’d like to understand is what your kind of real demand assumption is behind. Are we talking about kind of a flex demand you’re seeing for the whole of €˜23, and in times of the dynamics of whether we end up in a software and hardware scenario for the rest of the world, in your guidance have you baked in kind of a similar real demand that was in the second half compared to H1 or is there any nature valuation to that for the second half.
