Conference Transcript - WMG 2026-06-02

Cutgun Maral, Analyst — Evercore ISI

Well, welcome everybody. My name is Cutgun Maral. I'm the Media, Cable, and Telecom Analyst at Evercore ISI, and we're very pleased to welcome to our conference Armin Zerza, the Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer of Warner Music Group. Armin, thanks so much for being here. Thanks for having me. Yeah, absolutely. And so maybe let's kick it off with a very high-level question, and it seems like a very exciting time to be at Warner Music Group. I think you've had several quarters, faster core growth, share gains, margin expansion, stronger cash conversion. When you look back over the last year, what are the two or three changes inside the company that have mattered most to get

Armin Zerza, CFO

to this point? Yeah, first, again, thanks for having me. What we really focused on is making sure that we create value for all of our stakeholders. Let's start with our fans, our artists and songwriters, and then of course our partners and then the company and our shareholders. And how do we do that and what are the key changes we have implemented over the last year? First, we really made sure that we implemented very strong growth culture in the company, which means that I've personally spent a lot of time in the US but also traveling around the world to ensure that we work with our teams to develop very strong growth plans so we can actually deliver consistently over time against our sustainable growth model and it's really all about delivering hide single digit or higher revenue growth double-digit profit and EPS growth and then improving our cash productivity which we have done and you've seen it in our results yeah the second thing is we're very focused on making sure that growth is profitable so the other focus areas we have is making sure that we drive productivity in everything we do and as you know I come from gaming and I've been a little bit surprised how slow this industry was in embracing the digital nature of the business so while we have implemented you know some productivity this year we think there's years of productivity ahead of us and that's important for us because that creates a flywheel to invest into growth which then in return ends up in higher profit and cash flow for the company and then last but not least it's all about people as you know you know this business is all about relationships with our fans with our artists and so on and so forth so we spend a lot of time making sure we get the right people and the right capabilities in the right place and all in all we are very happy with the progress we've made over the last 12 months. A lot of more opportunity that we can talk about though. Perfect and we'll certainly

Cutgun Maral, Analyst — Evercore ISI

unpack some of that and maybe we'll start off with recorded music where subscription streaming revenue growth accelerated meaningfully last quarter to mid-teens after running closer to the high single-digit growth rate over the last few quarters before that. As we move towards the back half of the year, how should investors separate the structural acceleration from the more transitory elements like PSM timing, comps, the release slate, or share gains?

Armin Zerza, CFO

Yeah. So first, what's important for us that growth is consistent over time, as you said, and we now did now four quarters consistent or ahead of our sustainable growth model. But it's also important for us to see growth broad based across the company. Why is that important? That shows us that we have the right leadership and capabilities in place across the company. And what was important for us is that over the last few quarters you know each of the quarters we deliver growth across business units across regions across dsbs and across vintages and what's driving that again it starts with our strategy that is working now very well having the right people and the right capabilities in place to ensure we can actually execute against that strategy when we think about capabilities we mostly focused in our markets on A&R, so artist development and songwriter development, very focused on developing our marketing muscle in the markets, and also making sure we have the right deal-making capabilities. We do more than 2,000 deals every year, so that's really critical for us. Looking forward, why do we think this is not just a blip that we can continue to sustain? It's simply because, one, we have a very, very strong initiative, so release pipeline in place, and we have much better visibility now that we do 12 to 36 months planning where we can look at our global portfolio of projects to ensure we have good visibility of what the impact of those initiatives is on our top line on our bottom line but also on cash and as you know most of the growth to date has been organic a lot more opportunities to add to that one from a m a perspective we've been working successfully with bain now deployed you know some capital now successfully and very good returns by the way two we are very focused on making sure that we grow value in the industry we can discuss this also a little bit more three we are very focused on making sure we lead with ai that's what we believe is one of the biggest opportunities out there that we can actually materially benefit from starting next fiscal year and then last but not least we also acquired a company called Revelator which will help us to build the right distribution capabilities to ensure we can start to grow that part of the business stronger. So we're really focused on making sure that the growth is sustainable over time and we think of the

Cutgun Maral, Analyst — Evercore ISI

right plans in place to do so. Perfect, you know next I want to talk and I think you alluded to this a little bit but about pricing in the industry and you know I think we've talked for a long time about music being under monetized and dsps have now finally started to take price and segment the product more regularly what changed in the conversations with partners and what would convince you that the industry has moved from episodic price increases to a more repeatable

Armin Zerza, CFO

value capture model yeah first of all i don't think the industry is under monetized it's significantly or materially under monetized you know when you think about the fact that consumers globally spend three to four dollars a month for a music subscription service in developed market is like six to eight dollars. That's about the value of a Starbucks coffee for a full month of all the music in the world. It's unbelievable frankly. So we are very focused on working with both AI entrants but also with DSPs to ensure we can take the value of this industry up over time and there's a ton of opportunity and to illustrate that when i left i said i was in gaming when i left gaming in 2024 the global digital gaming industry was about a 200 billion dollar industry globally today the music industry you know globally is less than a 50 billion dollar industry and the last time i checked there's more people listening to music than playing games right so this really doesn't make any sense so we believe there's a tremendous opportunity to increase value by one, taking pricing up, two, ensuring we innovate into new tiers, and then three, come forward with innovative business models like add-ons or in-app items. And what has changed is that we're not the only ones seeing that now. You see that with new engines like Suno, which will launch with multiple subscription tiers and in-app items. You even see it now with our DSPs, which are introducing new add-on items and premium tiers. And that's great to see because when we lift all the boats in the industry, then everybody wins. So that's really a critical focus area for us, and we're really excited about the opportunity here.

Cutgun Maral, Analyst — Evercore ISI

Yeah, and speaking of DSPs, I want to talk about Spotify a little bit. And at their recent Investor Day, you know, they use that event to maybe frame premium less as one product and maybe more as a base of highly engaged segments that could support multiple add-ons and a la carte products. As you look out to the next wave of ARPRO growth, which path do you see as the most likely driver of it? Is it, you know, a broad super premium tier, a set of narrower add-ons or usage-based AI tools? And what would Warner Music Group need to see on rights holders' economics to be comfortable with each of those?

Armin Zerza, CFO

Yes, the first thing I should say is that, you know, we see AI as one of the biggest opportunities for the industry. Why? Because it actually enables consumers to engage with our content. And when consumers engage with our content, then they have a better experience. When they have a better experience, they will spend more time with our content. When people spend more time with content, they actually spend more. We also know this from gaming. There's a lot of parallels here, right? And by the way, in addition to all of that, AI gives us the opportunity to organize our processes in a way that we can automate things and also build AI on top of that, so we as a company become much more efficient. And as I said before, there's years of productivity for us to gain here. So we're really excited, first of all. secondly we're not too focused on what the execution is you know again I take a parallel from gaming here when you think about a game like Call of Duty you know we have been selling you know full games we've been selling subscription services we've been selling in-game items what mattered most in that process is not the execution it's really the value proposition to consumers so in our work with AI platform and DSPs we're mostly focused on how do we ensure that we offer consumers a great value proposition, and then we do that, then consumers will spend money, you know, and frankly, you know, anything from zero to thousands of dollars a month. Are you playing a game called Candy Crush?

Cutgun Maral, Analyst — Evercore ISI

No comment. I don't want to admit to it. But yes, I used to...

Armin Zerza, CFO

There's about three billion people globally who have downloaded Candy Crush, okay? And consumers spend anything from zero dollars to thousands of dollars a month. and that's beautiful because we give the consumer the choice to spend what they want to invest in the game based on their spending and playing behavior, right? In the gaming industry, you basically offer the consumer one price. It doesn't make any sense in the world. So what we're doing now is making sure that we work with our partners to ensure we have consumer more choices that they can actually engage with and that's the most important thing. Now what's important for us is that one the models that are being used are licensed so they respect our IP two that we ensure that we and our artists and songwriters get fairly compensated it's obviously critical and three that we and artists and songwriters are legally protected so if the content of an artist or songwriter is being used we want to make sure that they have the opportunity to opt into that content in rather than the content just being abused, so to say. Now, in addition to that, all of our deals are variable, which means that as those companies grow, we grow. And then second, we're also making sure that they are creative. I talked a lot about value creation. All of those deals will launch with multiple tiers. All of those deals will launch with add-ons and or in-app items that will ensure that the pricing per stream is hard and in our current base business.

Cutgun Maral, Analyst — Evercore ISI

And some of the opportunities that you've talked about music it's not even you know fantasy I think you know I don't know that there's a lot of parallels that people have drawn in here but you look at concerts and people pay you know fifty dollars in or maybe less in certain seats and then they could pay thousands for you know be right next to Metallica and I think that gives you a clear vision in terms of what the monetization opportunity is as some of these products and platforms evolve you're Turkish so you must be a

Armin Zerza, CFO

big soccer fan you know you can spend anything from a hundred dollars for a tickets to thousands of dollars for a ticket. You're absolutely right. And at the end of the day, we need to reflect what I call the consumer demand curve much better. And we haven't done that well, frankly, in the digital part of the business. We're very well in the live part of

Cutgun Maral, Analyst — Evercore ISI

the business, as you say. Yeah, perfect. We've talked a little bit about, a lot about AI. I think one investor concern on the topic is that AI music could ultimately be dilutive to the majors. You know, when you look at the actual data, it certainly seems like the actual share of consumption from fully AI generated music has been fairly small so far and so you know what has surprised you most about real consumer behavior with AI versus the market narrative which is perhaps weighing on some of the you know

Armin Zerza, CFO

the stocks and the labels yeah let me start a little bit kind of with the time before AI yeah because people have a little bit more history on that remember over the last five to ten years every DSP would tell you that the amount of content being uploaded to their platform has multiplied yet the consumer behavior hasn't really changed people are really focused on their core stars or you know iconic catalogs that's what people spend most of their time on so if you take our business less than five percent of our songs represent more than 90 of our revenue which shows you how focused that activity on those platforms really is and frankly with the idea dynamic hasn't really changed so we know from you know one of the companies we know very well Lisa who publicizes the data that 75,000 songs are being uploaded on a daily basis so on a daily basis to their platform that represents about half of the songs being uploaded yet they represent a very small fraction of their listening behavior so this dynamic for the idea that AI has diluted our content doesn't really exist now we haven't seen any material dilution and that's why we are so excited about one continue to develop our artists and songwriters buying iconic catalogs but also lean forward on quality I content that we can work with with AI and DSP

Cutgun Maral, Analyst — Evercore ISI

platforms yeah anything you could argue that with so much clutter and noise that you you know artists who are trying to make it big would need labels to cut through all that noise and you know for the marketing effort and you know you're

Armin Zerza, CFO

getting to the role of the label now you know so there's always a question what's the role of the label you're absolutely right the role of the label has become more important because to get through that noise with millions of songs being uploaded every week you know it's really important that you have a partner who works with you to make sure you cut through yeah I want to ask about one

Cutgun Maral, Analyst — Evercore ISI

part of the business that doesn't get enough attention from my perspective Warner Chappell especially in this AI conversation you know many of these new AI and remix use cases require both masters and publishing rights so maybe you could talk a little bit about how investors should think about the strategic value of publishing in a world of AI covers remixes short form videos

Armin Zerza, CFO

and new DSP add-ons yeah you know I've been here now for a year and I've always thought that publishing has been somewhat undervalued you know in the industry overall but generally also speaking in our business and the more i learn about it the more i see the value in it so give you give you a couple of examples one you know in our business we just did a strategic review of the publishing business and that team has doubled the business of the last five years top and bottom line which really speaks to the quality of the team and the leadership there and you know their aspiration is to do the next same in the next five years how basically by doing more of the work they've been doing by investing in the proven ANR to by making sure they are more focused on developing markets like Latin America where we have a great recorded music business by the way and three also by benefiting from all the M&E and AI work we're doing now in the context of AI publishing is actually more important why because there's a lot of cross ownership of rights across you know labels and publishers i'll give you one example if you look at the billboard hot 100 in 2025 you know our team owned about more than half of the rights or partially owned those rights across the top 100 songs on the billboard hot 100 into 2025. that's incredible yeah that's amazing right it shows you all this cross ownership that happens with multiple songwriters working on many different songs. So in a world of AI, it's not surprising that there's more attention to the publishing business from investors and you see evaluations also very very strong so really excited about our publishing business in that world. Perfect. Let's

Cutgun Maral, Analyst — Evercore ISI

talk a little bit about share because I know it's been a big focus for you guys internally and you've said that the share gains that you're seeing have been brought across regions, DSPs, labels, catalog vintages. What are some of the leading indicators that you watch internally to determine whether these share gains are becoming more repeatable rather than a bit more cyclical?

Armin Zerza, CFO

Yeah, I'd say a couple of things. One, the first thing is we want to make sure that we have the right strategy, focus, people and capabilities in place. You know, when you have those in place, typically, you know, results are more repeatable over time. But we don't stop there. We are very focused as a company to ensure we have a better global view of our portfolio and a better understanding how it plays out over time so what does this mean when i joined the company we looked at each project individually and then decided based on the project's return whether we move forward or not today we have a global deals office that looks on a rolling 12 to 36 month basis at all of our projects then we decide based on that entire portfolio on how we invest into the business to drive consistent top-line bottom-line growth and then cash conversion and that gives us much more visibility and therefore also much more confidence that we can deliver against a sustainable growth model over time that's why is CSK pretty confident to say look that's the right growth model for us we have the right plans and we have confidence we can deliver net over time perfect and just

Cutgun Maral, Analyst — Evercore ISI

a little bit on catalog because again I think investors there's a lot to understand about these companies and I think there's some misunderstanding or not enough appreciation but on the catalog side you've talked about the long tail opportunity where technology can identify demand signals and create marketing assets at a scale that humans can't touch what milestone should investors watch to know that this is moving from successful testing to being a real growth driver for the business it's simple it's kind of our growth

Armin Zerza, CFO

of a time right but but let me talk a little bit about catalog yeah so this is a really critical business and again that's another part of the business that has been somewhat neglected for many years it represents about 65 percent of our recorded music streaming business typically operates at 50 plus percent margins those are the margins i start to like as a cfo and you know frankly hasn't been growing for a long time because there wasn't a lot of attention to it so about a year ago we decided to put a dedicated leader on it and that dedicated leader you know formed the dedicated teams who ensured that we start to focus on the top 50 percent of the catalog which is about 200 catalogs in our universe that we have you know focused on for the last 12 months and so and surprise surprise we're starting to overshare you know on those businesses not just growing but actually growing share in the marketplace right now what we struggled with is that when you go beyond the top 200 there's thousands of catalogs that humans can touch you know you can throw people at it but that gets inefficient you know at some point in time so we actually use the tech investment that Robert and the team have been doing in the past to see how could we actually address that bottom half of the catalog to ensure that we better support you know those type of artists and songwriters and the idea then turned into a project which we launched last year and then now we're at the stage where we're going to roll it out where we are able to identify one opportunities in that universe but to actually automatically create marketing assets to support those catalogs so the consumers actually start to engage with them you know the testing was very successful obviously you also have to scale that you know testing one or two catalogs is easy you know scaling that you know is more difficult but now implemented the process and system so we can scale that and at the end of the day you can measure us based on our share and growth results yeah it seems like there's a lot of

Cutgun Maral, Analyst — Evercore ISI

low-hanging fruit um it's just a matter of being able to optimize it's kind of a dormant business

Armin Zerza, CFO

as you say right and um you know every time we we started to activate that you know starting with the top 200 we have seen great success yeah um maybe switching gears a little bit to talk

Cutgun Maral, Analyst — Evercore ISI

about distribution which again I think from my conversation is still not that well understood of a business but it's been a large part of the about the large part of the industry historically not always an attractive margin business with revelator and the changes in leaderships that you've had what has to be true for distribution to become both a share gain engine and a

Armin Zerza, CFO

profitable growth engine for Warner yeah so stepping back you know we missed really two things on distribution that were critical for us before we you know we're ready to invest in them one it always starts with people and capabilities so on the leadership side you know we looked for quite some time for a leader who can grow this business in a profitable way as you say and when we looked around the world we actually identified our Latin America leader as the best leader for this business why because Latin America is mostly distribution business you know and that leader has been growing that business for a long time actually five years in a row mid-teens at profitability which were almost almost consistent with the average of the company and that was very impressive and so we appointed that leader now about six to nine months ago and the second thing we did is when the leader was appointed say what are the capabilities you need to grow a kind of by nature lower margin business in a profitable way it's only if you're very efficient right you know if you have a more bulk business you're going to be super efficient so we had to you know either build or buy the right capabilities to one inject those businesses efficiently but also run them efficiently and frankly we didn't you know have the ability to build it because we didn't have enough time to do it so we basically bought a company called Revelator it's an Israeli based company which was basically an aqua hire which gives us both those opportunities so it actually enables us to serve what we call the independent artist and label community much more efficiently and in a way that we can be profitable over time you know and what's really important there is that we're not focused on either buying a big distribution business and or you know driving excessive growth through distribution we're really very thoughtful in making sure that the distribution business that we built is both driving revenue growth as you mentioned but also at the same time is a highly profitable business for us

Cutgun Maral, Analyst — Evercore ISI

understood you know I don't want to harp too much on the quarter but you know last quarter you had bright spots kind of all over the place I think one of them was ad supported streaming as well and so when we think about ad supported streaming again growth over there was faster than it had been recently how much of that recovery is tied to better ad markets and maybe platform execution versus Warner Music Group specific share gains and improved licensing economics?

Armin Zerza, CFO

The ad market is pretty focused among less than a handful of partners that we work with. You know there's basically the two largest DSPs if you think about those. There is one which is a very well established ads business and has been growing the ads business double digit for many years on average over time and obviously we grow with that partner when we grow share we grow even faster you know than double-digit the other partner has been working in building the ads business and you know a lot of confidence in the leadership and the management team there that you know they will do this over time but again we grew share there so we grew a little bit faster but on average we believe that this business in our DSPs can grow double-digit over time from an ads perspective you know obviously there are always market dynamics but on average that should be the right target and then if you take the other part of the business is social platforms and social media platforms i'd say there's two dynamics that are happening one we did a new deal with one of our partners which obviously helps us you know as we compare versus a year ago but two there's also a lot of interest in ai and that also enables us also to have a broader discussion with those platforms to see how we can accelerate growth on those platforms

Cutgun Maral, Analyst — Evercore ISI

yeah okay and you know speaking of the social platforms you talked about improvements with one partner you know should away from that specific deal should investors think that you know that was a one-time contract reset or is it evidence that short form and social monetization is structurally getting

Armin Zerza, CFO

better for music rights holders I think that that team is that sorry that deal throughout a short term it is more of a you know short-term step up however as I mentioned there's a lot of interest in AI from those social platforms and we see this as an opportunity like with DSBs to kind of relook at the overall relationship and then transform those relationships into a more viable structure which really respects the value of the music and by the way you know artists and songwriters you know much more than has done in the past so we're actually very confident that we can evolve those relationships over time. Perfect. Another

Cutgun Maral, Analyst — Evercore ISI

bright spot in the quarter and something we should talk about, margin expansion, and how important for you. Margin expansion, the goals that you've laid out, you're running ahead of them and ahead of the original targets. You also have clear opportunities to continue investing in ANR, catalog, distribution, AI, data. In your seat, how do you decide which savings flow through versus which get reinvested and what's the threshold for reinvestments yeah so

Armin Zerza, CFO

the first thing I should say is again we're really happy about the progress on margin you know when I arrived here margins were in the low 20s that doesn't compare to the margins we earned in gaming which are the 30s to 40s and this is a digital business so we should earn much higher margins but margin is not our only objective our objective really is to make sure that we deliver you know acceleration in driving shareholder return, which means accelerating growth, driving margin, and improving cash flow productivity. And that balance is really important for us. We want to do all at the same time. I always say to my team, you have to walk and chew gum at the same time. There's no either or, you have to do both. The second thing to say here is that, you know, the progress was primarily driven by cost savings, you know, operating leverage and focus on profitable growth there's much more frankly to come with you know margin accretive M&A with AI that will be value accretive and many other things we are working on and better be continued productivity which is really important for us now what this does for us and I think most people don't understand that is it creates a flywheel which allows us to actually invest into growth which in turns helps us to drive scale to improve margins okay and that flywheel with the productivity plans we have for years to come that will help us for the next years to ensure that we can continue to deliver that growth without compromising margin. So that's really critical for us that fly will affect. The second thing that's important for us is that we ensure that some of those savings flow to the bottom line and some of those savings can be invested but the bottom line really helps us deliver what we call the mid to high 20s margins that You had a second part of the question, can you remind me of that?

Cutgun Maral, Analyst — Evercore ISI

Just in terms of how to think about thresholds with reinvestments.

Armin Zerza, CFO

I think again if you step back, it starts with the right strategy. The right strategy means for us first and foremost investing into core music in markets that have either high repertoire value or in markets where we see a lot of repertoire growth in the future. So it's really prioritization of markets and genres and artists and so on and so forth. That's the first important part for us. The second part is once we have checked that off, we want to make sure that those projects are competitive in our global portfolio. So again, we don't look just at a single project by itself. We really want to make sure it's competitive in our portfolio to deliver against the return thresholds that we have and that's the third part. once we kind of say check on one check on two we ensure that those projects deliver on average 15% plus returns in developed markets and then 20% plus returns in developing markets to account for a little bit of a higher risk profile

Cutgun Maral, Analyst — Evercore ISI

but those are return thresholds. And just from my seat you know as you think about I know we're not getting too specific on numbers but you know 2026 is shaping up to be a very healthy robust year it doesn't seem as though we're gonna turn patient 2027 and it's a massive decel or the margin expansion story goes away a lot of these to your point it's a flywheel continued reinvestments and especially as mna kicks in and the ai contributions increase it seems like 2027 and on should be quite healthy as well yeah as i said

Armin Zerza, CFO

we uh you know i think what you're referring to is what we call portfolio sufficiency so when we look our portfolio on a forward-looking basis we always want to make sure that you know we can consistently over time and broad based across the company deliver against our sustainable growth model and that again just to repeat it again and it's really important you know that means high single digit or higher revenue growth double digit eps and profit growth and a better cash flow conversion and with the projects we have in place and we are very very confident we can deliver that

Cutgun Maral, Analyst — Evercore ISI

over long term. Perfect speaking of cash flow conversion again yet another bright spot as you think about the balance sheet and the flexibility that it affords you how do you weigh returning capital against catalog and bolt-on M&A and in today's market are you seeing catalog deals priced at a level where warner music can clear its return threshold that you talked about earlier?

Armin Zerza, CFO

yeah the answer to your question is yes but let me talk about capital location maybe more from a corporate perspective there you know when we think about capital location as a company then we are of course very thoughtful about how we allocate capital in investing in the business on the one hand but also returning it to shareholders on the other hand on investing in the business our first priority is investing in our own business organically why because we see very very strong returns doing that you know they see that with the results obviously you've seen in the last four quarters and we do this much more thoughtfully by making sure we prioritize the highest report on markets make sure they work in our portfolio so we invest into the kind of highest opportunity highest return projects and so on so forth the second priority is you know because we believe so much in opportunity behind AI and people will focus more on key artists and core catalogs is really investing organically but also inorganically into iconic catalogs because we believe a lot of activity will happen around there especially when consumers start to engage with their favorite content and then the third priority for us is obviously returning capital to shareholders and we have done this I think very well you know we increased our dividend now for five years in a row we plan to do the same in the future and we are also in a process to started to buy back shares basically to offset, you know, long-term dilution from our long-term incentive program.

Cutgun Maral, Analyst — Evercore ISI

Perfect. And maybe just close out one last one for me, and you and I were talking about this a little bit earlier, is just, you know, when you think about the Warner Music Group story, and maybe about the industry overall, you know, what do you feel like investors are maybe under appreciating or not really thinking through appropriately? Because, you know, from my seat, I don't know what more you guys could be doing in terms of checking off all the boxes on top line, margin, M&A, smart capital allocation, and thinking through the flywheel that should give investors confidence in the medium to long-term opportunity. I think there are a lot of question marks around the broader industry and where the labels fit in it. um but it seems as though uh you know at least from a financial perspective near term starting in 2027 those benefits will start to accrue and i think the conversation will likely shift pretty dramatically um but i'll spin it over to you for any closing remarks and when you think about uh you know investor perception and what folks are likely getting wrong yeah first i couldn't agree

Armin Zerza, CFO

more that our public valuation doesn't really reflect the progress that we are making and will continue to make. But talking about kind of how to think about the industry and the company, the first thing is that this industry has seen a lot of tailwinds and frankly will continue to see more tailwinds than in the past. We will not only benefit from volume growth, which will continue to see subscriber growth, will now also start to benefit significantly from value growth. And you see that with DSPs, you see that with AI platforms who are innovating into new business models, which will raise all the boats in the industry. And then AI will be a significant opportunity for us because it will concentrate consumer activity on the best content and catalogs. And we own a lot of that, as you know. So we're really excited about the growth opportunity of the industry going forward. From a company perspective, you know, we believe you have the right strategy, but as you mentioned the most important thing is that we now have a flywheel where we can invest in a very thoughtful way and real clarity on what those investments will drive. Now I haven't talked about this but when you invest into one project you don't really know the outcome all the time, but when you invest into a portfolio of 2,000 projects it's like investing in the S&P, you actually know the outcome over time pretty well. That's we actually have actually really good visibility on what the future looks like from a growth profit and cash perspective and then last but not least it always comes down to people we have great leadership in place now across labels regions and many other areas of the company including functions obviously too and that gives us real confidence that we can continue to deliver these type of results for the long term perfect well armin thank you so much for being here with us

Cutgun Maral, Analyst — Evercore ISI

today. That was great. Thank you. All right. Thanks. Thank you for having me.