“Bear in mind that in 2025, pricing will not flow through as of day one. And so it will take a little bit of time for profit to improve and quite frankly profit improvement is more towards the second half of the year.”

In context

“basis and that I think will help us understanding a little bit better Q4 next year. We have landed today all pricing in line with our expectations and we are in general priced to a level that is higher than our actual cost of cocoa for the first three quarters as our cocoa buying strategies have been clearly quite advantageous compared to in-market costs. As you rightly point out, the implied EPS for Q4 based on us reaffirming guidance is down year-on-year. But I said in the prepared remarks that I see that as a sort of anomaly. First of all, because cocoa costs for Q4 were locked in when cocoa was at peak value. And second, clearly in the numbers in Q4, there is no effect of additional pricing or for that matter of the cost measures that we will put in place as of the beginning of 2025. Bear in mind that in 2025, pricing will not flow through as of day one. And so it will take a little bit of time for profit to improve and quite frankly profit improvement is more towards the second half of the year. Please also consider as we talk about 2025 that cocoa costs are lower in the second half versus half one. On ‘25, I can tell you that we have done a lot of work in scrutinizing all our costs and we will be removing sizable costs, particularly in the area of overhead and non-productive media expenses. We have increased the amount of productivities that we'll be delivering to our supply chain and we've had clearly a full slate of initiatives in our GM that should limit elasticities. As I said, it is hard to see a path to EPS growth into 2025 unless cocoa adjusts now materially and that is still a possibility and/or elasticities are more benign, allowing us to price more. We have seen as of late following the price increases we put in place in Europe, for instance, that elasticities have bee”