Christophe Beck: We’ll see where we end up in ‘24. If I’m looking at currently, I’m pleased with the fact that we’re better than the market. The fact that we’re improving ex-Europe, as well in Q2 and that we are in positive territory is a very good sign. I like the evolution that we’re having in Europe as well. We have a great team doing very good work over there. So, Europe is going to improve as well. So, over time, new business is very strong, as mentioned earlier. So it’s really focusing on what we can control, new business, penetration, innovation, enterprise selling. Those are the old fashioned good ways of driving volume. We’ve been successful so far. As mentioned, the last two years, we focused primarily our attention on pricing and margin.
We shifted our attention primarily on volume a quarter or two ago, and it’s working. And usually, those trends take a few quarters to take hold in our organization. But when we have good momentum, it remains as well. So, I feel positive about where we’re going for the second half, so for sure. And I see no reason why it shouldn’t be good for ‘24 as well.
Operator: The next question is coming from the line of Kevin McCarthy with Vertical Research Partners.
Kevin McCarthy: Perhaps a two-part question on the price-cost spread. Christophe, on the price side, would you call out any particular areas where you’re seeing the most positive sequential momentum on price realizations and perhaps other areas where it’s more of a struggle and starting to flatten out sequentially? And on the cost side, really a similar approach or question in that, are there particular areas you would call out, where your costs are dropping fast on a sequential basis and other areas where you have stubborn increases?
Christophe Beck: Yes, Kevin, I’ll give that question to Scott. But before we get there, again, mentioning and underlining how we look at pricing. It’s really twofold. It’s, on one hand, making sure we keep the carryover, that we don’t give price back. And that’s been working really well across the board and at the same time that we can drive new pricing as well in all businesses. And that’s been working very well as well in the organization. But with that, I’ll leave it up to Scott to give us some more insights.
Scott Kirkland: Yes. Hi. Thanks, Kevin. Yes, as we talk — as Christophe said, there’s the carry-in pricing, the pricing we executed last year, which we said had peaked at the 13% in Q1, but continue to drive that new pricing. And really, the pricing across the board, as I think about it by segment, very strong pricing across I&S, Industrial, Healthcare, Life Sciences and our other segments, which is mostly passed this as you’re aware. But really strong pricing, both that we had in that the carry-in, the structural price we did last year as well as the new pricing that will continue to accelerate this year. As I think about to your other question, from a cost perspective, DPC, Industrial took the lion’s share of the cost increases over this inflationary environment over the last couple of years.
So that’s where we’re going to see the biggest impact as that DPC costs have started to ease, which we talked about in Q2, which was 5% relative to the 9% last year. So as that continues to ease, we’ll likely see the biggest benefit in Industrial, just given that they took the lion’s share of the increase over the last two years.
Christophe Beck: And Kevin, I’d like to remind you is just two facts I mentioned before as well. So, we saw Industrial having reached in Q2, already the 2019 operating income margin, which is a very good sign. And I&S, so Institutional & Specialty in dollar terms, not in margins, being back to 2019 in the fourth quarter of this year as well. So, two big indications for our two major businesses that our margin recovery is really well on track, and it’s not going to stop there. It’s going to keep improving.
